LOVE, WAR AND A WHOLE LOT MORE
She was shy, he wasn’t. They married is 1945, and the rest is Hamilton history
It’s 1922. On Feb. 19, in her parents’ bedroom at 56 Beach Rd., Anne (Penny) Pendzay is born.
A few months later, on May 26, it’s a big day at 252 Catharine North as Joe Borsellino comes into this world.
Anne and Joe are both children of immigrants. Her parents came from Ukraine. His roots are Italian. His father arrived from Racalmuto, one of seven brothers who left that pretty town in the Sicilian hills for Hamilton. Those brothers all named their first sons Joseph — and their first daughters Leonarda.
Anne was shy. Joe was not. They met at the Alexandra roller rink on James South. They skated, hand in hand.
But the romance didn’t start until a couple of years later, at a wiener roast on the Beach Strip. Joe thought it was time he and Anne went steady, and asked her to take a walk by the water.
“And that’s all you need to know about that,” says Anne.
War got in the way. Joe signed on with the navy, a gunner on convoy duty in the Atlantic.
“I have a photo that went through the war with me,” he says, and points to a glamorous tinted glossy of Anne.
She was home, working in the Otis Elevator plant, on the line building the Bofors anti-aircraft gun during the war. She wrote Joe nearly every day.
Joe was in the middle of the ocean in May 1945 when they declared victory in Europe. A couple of months later, he and Anne married at St. Mary’s. That night they got a $5 room at the Royal Connaught — the serviceman’s special — and the next day caught the train to Niagara Falls.
Honeymoon over, a long life together got underway.
“We wanted a home and we wanted a family,” Joe says.
On Nov. 11, 1948 — Joe remembers all dates — they moved into a place of their own, a fourroom, $4,400 cottage at 152 East 26th. They had David, Chris and Sam. Then they moved six blocks east and had three more children — Joey, Nanette, Jennifer.
Money was short; life was good. No budget for Florida vacations, but there were backyard barbecues with neighbours, euchre nights, bowling tournaments, house parties.
And Joe had a job he loved, with the Hamilton Street Railway. He started off as a streetcar driver on the Belt Line and rose through the ranks. Today we call the streetcar the LRT, and Hamilton is to get a billion-dollar line.
Hamilton’s last street car went down the tracks on April 6, 1951. Joe remembers the guys who manned the line when he did, and there have been too many funerals.
“I think I might be the last surviving street car driver,” he says.
It’s good to live long, but by 95 losses do mount.
“That’s the hardest thing,” Anne says. “We had such wonderful friends, and they’re all gone.”
Joe and Anne lost children, too. Daughter Jennifer was hit by a car, age five. And cancer took son Chris a few years ago.
“Many, many days, you still shed tears,” Anne says.
She and Joe have 11 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren, and that is a comfort.
Granddaughter Emma Borsellino is 28. She started teaching at Delta Secondary this fall, and is now head of the music department. On a PD day this month, she brought her grandmother to school.
Anne graduated from Delta in 1940. The school scared her.
“My family had nothing. We were on relief. And Delta was in an area where all the kids had nice clothes.”
With Emma, she went to the office where principal McGarvin ruled in her day.
She walked the halls, went to the gym. The memories flooded back.
“Before Delta, I was just a girl,” she says. “At high school, I became somebody.”
Then along came Joe. And the rest is Hamilton history of the very best kind.
Paul Wilson’s column appears Tuesdays in the GO section. PaulWilson.Hamilton@gmail.com @PaulWilsonInHam