PORCH TALES
MaryAnn Hammill has a fine porch for passing the time. It runs right across the front of the house where she was born 82 years ago. It’s a good place to talk.
So MaryAnn and I sat right there, and the first topic of conversation was what she’d done the day before. She had a birthday dinner with her husband. Daughter Virginia was there too.
The menu: Dairy Queen takeout, burgers and butterscotch sundaes. The place: Hamilton Cemetery, near the gate closest to the High Level Bridge.
And there they dined, with Eugene. “He’s been gone eight years now,” MaryAnn says. “We do silly things like that.”
Buried there with Eugene is the son MaryAnn lost long ago, at 14 months. The memories are not lost.
It was not by chance that I ended up on MaryAnn’s porch on Inchbury, an old street just steps from Dundurn Park. I’d had an email from sidewalk fiddler Mike Leech, who’s entertained this city for many years.
In work like that, you come to understand people. And Mike understood right away that MaryAnn is a woman with a
story or two. He lives not far from her. He spotted her on the porch, struck up a conversation, and then a tune.
“He serenaded me from the sidewalk,”
MaryAnn says.
He played her Gershwin’s “Summertime,” then sent me a note.
MaryAnn’s father, Archibald Turcotte, married Kate Connor. She was a farmer’s daughter, and the land around there was part of a family spread.
“There were cow barns at Barton and Locke,” MaryAnn says. “I remember the stalls.”
Kate died, and eventually Archibald married again. This time it was to Virginia Smith. And along came MaryAnn, born in the middle room on Inchbury.
The family was Catholic, so MaryAnn went to Basilica School, behind the cathedral. What was that like?
“You mean walking past Strathcona and all the Protestant kids yelling at me?” she asks.
It made her sturdy.
A favourite outing was Dundurn Castle. “It only cost 10 cents to get in,” she says, “and down in the basement there, we played cops and robbers.”
Father worked for Borden’s Dairy, John North at Robert (highrises today). He kept the machines running there, and sometimes took MaryAnn in with him.
He collected things.
“Right there in our side yard, he had two ships’ boilers, great big suckers,” MaryAnn says.
Where did those come from? “Lord knows. He was a real pack rat.”
The war on and shortages everywhere, Father called Stelco and asked if they wanted some steel.
“They came by and cut it all up,” MaryAnn says. “Dad got rid of the boilers,
and Mom got a garden.”
Dad died, and for a while the family left the house on Inchbury. MaryAnn’s mom rented it out, and took her three children to the north shore of Cootes Paradise. There was a simple Smithfamily homestead there, boathouse below.
And there, mother built a new house.
“My brother John was challenged,” MaryAnn says, “and mom wanted a place where he’d have something to do. He could garden.”
The family had water lots there too, and a tenant would haul out carp and truck the catch to Toronto.
MaryAnn went to Notre Dame high school in Waterdown. Uniforms and nuns.
“When they have arms folded, you better watch out,” she says.
MaryAnn became a nurse, worked at St. Joe’s, married Eugene, moved back into the house on Inchbury and raised four kids.
As for the house on Cootes — the only one — it left the family some 30 years ago. MaryAnn offered it to the RBG.
“I only wanted a pittance for the property, $76,000.”
The RBG declined. The home’s still there, with a view like no other.
But for MaryAnn, Inchbury is the home she loves. “I was born here. I’m going to die here.”
Each summer day is a porch day. It’s the spot to nurture times past — and on the odd day, be treated to a sweet serenade.