In June 1971, the month I turned seventeen, I made the transition from amateur performer to professional. After years of auditioning for rock musicals, I managed to make it right to the end of the selection process. Urbania was slated to open at the Poor Alex Theatre on Brunswick Avenue in September. It was co-written and directed by Des McAnuff, a recent high school graduate from Scarborough, who, at twenty, was building a reputation as a precocious theatre talent. (McAnuff, one of the most successful theatre directors to ever come out of Canada, went on to win multiple Tony Awards.)
A rock musical was not the ideal forum for my talents. I made it into the cast because the auditioning panel emphasized singing, my strength, and minimized the acting and dancing. My dancing was so abysmal that no words can begin to convey its massacre of rhythm. Suffice it to say my powers of self-delusion—one of the by-products of being a teenager—considerably outshone my abilities.
When I informed Dad that I would be performing—for really big dough (fifteen dollars a week)—in a downtown theatre production, six nights a week, starting the day I was to return to school, he asked, “Are you saying you expect to be gallivanting downtown, night after night, the same week you start grade twelve?”
“That’s right, Dad. If we’re lucky the show could run a year, maybe even get picked up for a Broadway production in Manhattan.”
“But in theatre, don’t many shows shut down quickly if no one shows up to see them?” Mom asked, managing to put my dreams of glory into perspective while reassuring Dad that this little distraction from school could be over before it began.
Dad, sounding anything but reassured, said, “I forbid you to be scampering around downtown at night when you still have your high school education to focus on.”
“Well, guess what, Dad? I’m seventeen. Legally, I don’t even have to go to school. I can do whatever I want.” My hands, folded on my lap underneath the kitchen table, were shaking.
“Then you’d better find another place to live. Because if you can’t obey the rules of this house, you don’t belong here anymore.”
In my head I’d already played out this conversation a dozen times. I’d prepared myself for this moment—Dad kicking me out—but somehow I’d expected more fireworks. But Dad was unusually calm, which meant one thing—he wasn’t bluffing. I looked over at Mom, understanding she couldn’t go against Dad. Still, a part of me wanted her to feel bad for siding with him, even if she was bound by the rules of our family: the struggle between Dad and me had to take its course. That this didn’t lessen her sadness gave me a small measure of satisfaction. Because if Mom was sad, Dad would have to pay.
I wasn’t happy about leaving, but I wasn’t torn up about it either. To Dad’s credit, he’d always remained consistent on the theme of school being the be-all and end-all for Hill kids. Part of me respected him for that.
Then again, I had a backup plan: a family willing to take me in. My most consistent running partner at the time was Brian Maxwell, who had a shot at representing Canada in both the 1976 and 1980 Olympics. At eighteen, Brian was about to go to Berkeley on a track scholarship. His parents, who’d immigrated to Canada from England in 1956 with Brian and his older sister, Sheila, had arrived in Toronto with next to no money. Their story was the classic tale of carving out a new life in a new country through hard work, penny-pinching and slow, steady self-advancement. The Maxwell parents, thrilled as they were over Brian’s college scholarship, had made a decent life for themselves without the benefit of post-secondary education. They believed in the value of old-fashioned “roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty” work. Although my musical activities didn’t fall under the category of hard labour, the Maxwells could see that I was constantly busy, determined to make something of my life. My grit and drive were similar to their son’s, and yet thankfully our respective talents were worlds apart.
Despite their modest means, the Maxwells refused to take any rent money from me, even though I was working full-time that summer, in addition to theatre and coffeehouse gigs. Their kindness was extraordinary. Mr. Maxwell, impressed that I’d fixed his neglected Gibson guitar, took it as a sign of my musical genius. Mrs. Maxwell packed lunches befitting an Olympic marathoner for me every day. Many times I’d bring my guitar to the breakfast table, my sad songs frequently making Mrs. Maxwell cry, while Mr. Maxwell, unnerved by his wife’s tears, begged me to write some happy songs.
“How did you become such a sensitive boy?” a usually reserved Mrs. Maxwell would wail.
“Don’t be fooled, Mom. Danny’s not that sensitive!” Brian would complain, dragging me out for a punishing run as payback for scooping up too much family attention.
“My mom may go gaga over your singing, but you know what she told me when I came in third in my last marathon?” Brian would ask.
“Uhhhahhh,” I’d respond, while trying in vain to match his repeat sprints up the local ski hill.
“‘We drove all this way to watch you place third?’ I’m puking on the grass right after my race and my mom’s complaining about how I’ve let her down.”
“Uhhhahhh,” I’d grunt in sympathy, realizing that the grass always looked greener, or the other family always looked happier, from a distance. Collapsing into a heap halfway up my fourth hill, I’d gradually feel my body recover as Brian hurled himself up five more times—the last three, running backwards.
Once more I’d found myself drawn into the orbit of a talented, highly disciplined kid my age. In between logging one hundred running miles a week and experimenting with carbohydrate loading (consisting of three days of all protein, no carbs, followed by three days of the reverse before competing in a marathon, presumably to prevent hitting the dreaded “wall”), Brian shattered several national records in various distance events. This, the single-minded dedication to achieve something magnificent, rubbed off on me. I wasn’t simply competing with myself to write better songs, I was measuring myself against the achievements of Brian (who would eventually go on to invent the Power Bar, selling it to Nestlé for half a billion dollars), or Cynthia, weighing scholarship offers from several U.S. colleges thanks to her ranking as an elite sprinter, or Matt, composing film scores.
Okay, so maybe performing in Urbania was a far cry from being the next Gordon Lightfoot, and maybe I didn’t mention to my friends the daily chastisement I earned from the cast’s choreographer, or the snickers of ridicule from my fellow performers. Just the same, it was a step in the right direction.
During that summer, my parents and siblings drove to the Maritimes on a camping vacation. Dad, fearing I might use the house for a month of non-stop partying, made it clear I was not to set foot on the property. “You’re not responsible like Larry or Karen. I trust you about as far as I can throw you!”
Even had I wanted to party, when could I have fit that in? At this stage in my life, a crazy night would have been joining Brian in a pre-competition carbohydrate binge, or arguing with Matt into the wee hours about whether or not Lightfoot had “gone commercial” now that his records were more lushly orchestrated.
Breaking Dad’s rule, I took to biking over to the house every Sunday night (my one night off from rehearsing), sitting in his cherished chair and listening to my favourite records with headphones. As the music poured into me, I’d glance up at the family photos on the wall, feeling an unfamiliar ache. What had happened? How did I come to fall out so deeply with my father? What had I done that was so wrong?
Being all alone in the house made me miss my family terribly. Previous summers, Larry and I would compete in three-mile races in our neighbourhood. Because I was bigger and faster, Larry was awarded a head start. The real competition revolved around our intense debates as to the proper handicap: whether Larry deserved a ninety-second jump, or more, or less. Invariably, our arguments lasted longer than the actual race.
“Okay, Larry, I’ll give you eighty-six seconds before I start chasing you.”
“How do I know you won’t cheat?” “‘Cause Karen will keep time.”
“How do I know you won’t bribe Karen with money?”
“Larry, if you can’t trust me or Karen, who can you trust?”
“I trust you just fine. I trust you to cheat your ass off.”
But now, without Larry to chase on my summer runs, my three-mile course felt boring. Especially since our last race had been so spectacular, based on its controversial finish. Midway through our course, when I realized I couldn’t catch him, I’d hitched a ride and cruised a mile or so until Larry, running like he was gunning for a national record, turned the final corner onto our street. Once I knew he couldn’t see me, I’d jumped out of the car, turned the same corner seconds later, and, fresh as a daisy, sprinted past him just as we approached our house. The best part of my “victory” was hearing Larry, who rarely swore, unleash a series of swear words at me—”cheater” being the only non-profanity—that made him sound as possessed as that creepy girl in The Exorcist.
Not only did I miss getting my brother’s goat, I missed the sound of my mother and sister cheerfully singing along with the pop songs tumbling out of the kitchen radio as they kneaded dough for biscuits. I missed the sound of Dad’s snoring, the way it rumbled through our house like a freight train, scaring away, as Dad put it, any robbers who may have otherwise thought the house was unoccupied.
“That’s the last time I’m going anywhere with Mom and Dad,” was how Larry described the family vacation when I called the house. He refused to offer up any details beyond “Danny, if you’d travelled with us, either you or Dad would be dead now.”
“It was a lot of fun,” Karen summarized. “Too bad we couldn’t have stayed out east longer.”
“Why don’t you ask your father?” Mom said, as I continued my family poll.
When I reminded her that Dad and I weren’t on speaking terms, she replied, “You two—Jesus Christ, Danny. Sometimes I want to take you both and knock your noggins together, until some of your common sense is jarred loose.”
“Hmmm,” I said.
Mom, knowing this was my way of avoiding the subject of Dad and me, asked, “How’s your rock musical coming along? Even your father’s been asking about it.”
“Oh, fine,” I lied, before saying goodbye.
How could I admit to Mom that my original claim—that Urbania would enjoy a hugely successful run—was as exaggerated as Dad’s prediction that it would be the ruin of me? A TV station filming our last rehearsal had caught me stumbling badly as the cast and I ran through one of our dance routines. An understandably irate Des McAnuff threatened to fire me (no budget for understudies, combined with not enough time for Des to write me out of the script, left him stuck with me for the time being) if I messed up one more dance move. When the TV station chose to air ten seconds of the dance rehearsal, naturally zooming in on me flailing like a web-footed drunk, the choreographer tracked me down at the Maxwells’.
“I hope you’re satisfied,” she said, after Brian handed me the phone.
“Pardon?”
“You’re the reason Urbania is gonna flop.”
Well, what did she expect? Considering that the gist of my performance consisted of dancing in a blazing red halter top, a puny pink loincloth, see-through stockings and ballet slippers, it was a wonder we didn’t all get arrested for obscenity. Each evening as I dressed for my performance, I couldn’t help but think of Dad’s reaction to my wardrobe. I was living the greater part of each day in a theatre environment where I was the only straight man in the entire cast. This was absolutely fine with me, as I figured that left the females in Urbania—who were abundantly heterosexual—all the more susceptible to my feeble attempts at flirting. (They weren’t.)
“Whatever you do,” I pleaded to Larry over the phone, “don’t let Dad see this show.”
“Why’s that?” Larry asked.
Halfway through the description of my dance wardrobe, Larry, dying of laughter, threatened to personally take Dad to see Urbania. So he could watch him have a heart attack.
Towards the end of Urbania’s run, as attendance fell off and the cheques started bouncing, the women in the cast took to amusing themselves by singling out and fluffing a male performer, minutes before performance time. Since I was the only straight male in the cast, I ended up bearing the brunt of this teasing. As half a dozen women took turns flashing their breasts and bottoms and slithering their hands up and down the inside of my stockinged thighs, I was a goner. When the curtain flew open, I spun into dance mode, the jerky movement popping my rising hard-on through my itsy-bitsy loincloth, lodging it against my sheer stockings. I put on my best “the show must go on” face, noticing with relief that the theatre hosted only a dozen or so patrons. In the seconds it took for my eyes to adjust to the spotlight and see the shadowy figures in the audience take shape, I heard an all too familiar whinny: “Donna!” Only Dad’s hysterical voice could slice through the wall of music pounding from the stage. “What did I tell you about Danny? I warned you this would happen.”
My loyal mother, knowing this was the show’s final week, had decided to show up and surprise me, guilting Dad into joining her. The blood retreated from the centre of my tent-sized loincloth, leaving me to wonder if I’d ever get it up again.
“Son, it’s time for you to come back home. Your mother misses you terribly.”
“You mean you’re not going to try to stop me from performing at night, after school?”
After a martyred ahhh-hmmm throat clearing, Dad offered, under considerable duress, “Well, your mother tells me you’re still keeping your grades up. Tell you what, son: if you maintain that B average I’ll give you fifty dollars at the end of your school year and take you and the family out to a restaurant of your choosing.”
So I returned. Reluctantly—the Maxwell parents and I were even closer now that Brian had departed for Berkeley. When I arrived home, Dad was waiting on the front porch.
“You’re seventeen years old now, son. Near the same age I was when I entered the army. So I’m going to stay out of your hair so long as you obey the house rules.”
“But I was already seventeen when you kicked me out. So why—”
“Chalk it up to a long, relaxing summer, Danny. Nothing like a break to get a little perspective on things.”
Dad and I enjoyed a kind of uneasy truce throughout the remainder of the school year. The OHRC’s all too public loss at the Supreme Court left Dad, for the first time in his career, shaken, in transition and unsure of his next move. As usual, I paid little attention to what was going on in Dad’s world, nor did he choose to share any of his professional disappointments with me. I returned the favour, speaking little of my musical pursuits, knowing that Dad would take it as salt rubbed into his wounds. With the added feature of “professional theatre performer” sexing up my resume (since none of the club owners had actually seen Urbania they didn’t know enough to use this as a strike against me), I was finding more outlets for my songwriting, opening up for better-known acts at establishments ranging from Grumbles to Egerton’s to the Riverboat. To everyone’s surprise, I managed, with the help of supportive teachers who frequently showed up where I was performing, to keep up my marks. As the year drew to a close, I came pretty damned close to achieving the impossible. I passed grade twelve. With a B-plus average. I had officially graduated from high school. (Technically, there was still grade thirteen for Ontario students who wanted to go to university.)
Upon receiving my final report card, I went straight home, took my guitar out onto the front porch and waited for Dad to get home from work. When he finally drove up the driveway in his dark-green government sedan, he looked tired. He slowly unfolded himself from the driver’s seat, grabbed his hulking briefcase and closed the car door.
“Don’t forget your promise, Dad.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You owe me and the rest of the family a big expensive dinner at the restaurant of my choosing. As well as my fifty-dollar prize for pulling off a B-plus average.”
“Work out the arrangements with your mother.”
Mom booked the restaurant for Friday, four days away. Four days that Dad and I didn’t talk. Mom selected the Underground Railroad as our celebration restaurant. It specialized in southern food and was owned and largely patronized by Blacks, all of whom were aware of Dad’s work in human rights.
Dad made his typical swaggering entrance, shaking hands with the three owners of the Underground Railroad and asking for their corn-bread recipe.
“They gave us the best table in the house!” Dad roared once we were seated, causing everyone in the restaurant to look over at us, disapproving of our “preferred seating.” Going out in public with Dad was always like this. Embarrassing.
I ordered the most expensive item on the menu. Though never a big fan of honeyed, barbecued spare ribs, I’d happily muck up my long, classical guitar–groomed fingernails if it produced the required result. Pissing Dad off.
By the time the food arrived Dad was warning me, in his meant-for-all-ears voice, that I was doomed to failure for choosing to turn my back on a college education. I didn’t have to look around to know that the entire restaurant was in on our conversation. Playing to the audience, I said, “You don’t care about me or my future, you just care about how it will reflect on you and your big-shot image.”
“That’s a falsehood, boy,” Dad growled, scraping his chair closer to mine. “And you know it.”
“Can you stop crowding me?”
“Jesus Christ, can’t you guys just enjoy the meal and for once try to lay off each other?” Mom pleaded. But once started, neither Dad nor I could be seen backing down. Something about this restaurant, with its sepia photos of American Blacks fleeing slavery into Canadian border towns, combined with my family shrinking in their chairs as Dad and I got into the thick of it, brought back all the years of Dad’s disparaging remarks. I was tired of feeling not good enough.
“Face it, Dad. You’re too old and set in your ways to do anything daring. I’d be happy to turn down your fifty dollars—donate it to your precious NDP that no one ever votes for—if you’d drink my finger bowl. You and I both know that’d never happen ‘cause you’re too worried about what people might think.”
In a flash, my finger bowl, polluted with oily grease, congealed rib bits and lumpy scraps of napkin, was scooped up and gulped down by Dad. As he brought a napkin to his mouth, he had a look on his face I’d never seen before. As if he was as shocked by his behaviour as the rest of us. Maybe he thought he’d gotten the best of me, but I knew better. It was well worth the fifty bucks to see Dad down my finger bowl while the entire restaurant watched. Because, grossed-out as I was, I knew that this was one of the few times I’d actually gotten to him.