Joanne Naiman
AUDIO INTERVIEW
SUMMARY
March 22, 2015
00:27 Personal
00:45 NEIGHBOURHOOD LIFE/DOMESTIC LIFE: Four generations connected to St. Clair Ave.
01:25 Joanne’s grandmother lived above the store with her dad and uncle at Arlington and St. Clair.
02:20 Divorce: Grandfather and Grandmother’s divorce in 1930’s was a big scandal.
03:15 Gossip papers: Flash and Star printed story that GM hired a detective to prove that there was an affair, it was the only way to get divorced at the time.
05:30 DOMESTIC LIFE / LIFE OF A CHILD: An emotional time for her dad.
05:50 1946 Joanne’s grandmother came to live with the family.
06:06 NEIGHBOURHOOD LIFE / LIFE OF A CHILD: Race track: There was a race car track so on in the evening when there were races, Joanne and her brother would park cars on their lawn for 25 cents. This was in the early 50’s. Before it was a racetrack it was a swimming pool.
07:20 Crossing street alone: At the age of 4, Joanne decided to visit a friend north of St. Clair and she walked out on the main street and a truck slammed on the brakes and a bunch of potatoes fell out. Her grandmother saw and gave her a big spanking.
08:12 TRANSIT: Bus Loop: The bus on Alberta looped.
08:27 SCHOOL: McMurrich: Joanne started school at McMurrich in 1950 when the first year of JK started in Toronto.
09:11 SCHOOL/ POLITICS: Communist Fear: Apparently there was a communist woman who was a school board trustee who tried to start creche (day care) which made the Toronto Board worry that this was going to be a Soviet plot so the city started free JK to prevent the creches.
10:30 SCHOOL/ LIFE OF A CHILD: Walked to school with her brother at age 4.
11:08 Christmas: Joanne remembered played Mary in the school Christmas pageant even though was she was Jewish.
11:30 Student Art Show: Joanne was proud that the painting she did as 4 or 5 year old was chosen for the Exhibition show. She still has that picture framed on the wall. Her teacher helped with the painting.
12:35 HOUSE OF WORSHIP: Their family belonged to the Shaarei Shomayim Synagogue and her brother had his bar mitzvah there.
13:09 DEMOGRAPHICS: Wychwood / Hillcrest was a very mixed neighbourhood at the time.
14:11 RESTAURANT / LIFE OF A CHILD: Soda: She has a very vivid memory of her aunt taking her to the Cottage restaurant for a ‘soda’ - what we would now call a “float” – this was like chocolate ice cream with syrup and soda water so the flavour was from the ice cream.
15:18 TRANSIT: Streetcars Joanne vaguely remembers the streetcars along St. Clair and Yonge.
15:37 SHOPS / NEIGHBOURHOOD STREET LIFE: Car Store: Her Uncle Harry owned Hillcrest Motors south of the loop at St Clair Bathurst. He eventually sold it where there is now an apartment at Vaughan. He moved it across to the east side of Bathurst, just south of the library where he still might have an office there.
16:46 NEIGHBOURHOOD STREET LIFE/ DOMESTIC LIFE: Joanne’s maternal grandparents moved to Lonsdale 1920’s or early ‘30s with her spinster aunt. They continued to live there well into the 1970s. Next door lived her aunt and uncle, who had two children.
17:42 TRANSIT / ACTIVISM: Women 1939-40? When her parents married they moved to an apartment on Bathurst north of the bridge. Her mother protested and picketed to extend the bus route north of St. Clair because at that time the streetcar ended at St. Clair and Bathurst. It must have been in 1939 or 1940. They had to walk north to go home before they picketed.
19:06 DOMESTIC LIFE: Home Purchase: Her parents together with her aunt and uncle bought their first house together, a bungalow on Claxton for the families to share. Joanne’s brother and elder cousin were born there.
19:48 War: Then the war came and they sold the home.
20:00 Her mom moved to Petawawa where her dad was stationed.
20:06 DOMESTIC LIFE: Home Purchase When the war was over in 1946 their family bought a house on Alberta where they lived there till 1952.
20:48 TRANSIT/ MEMORABLE EVENT: 1956 Subway Opens Memories of being able to take the bus alone and the subway opening, like getting transfers from every stop.
21:10 TRANSIT/LIFE OF A CHILD: At the age of 10 Joanne remembers taking the streetcar with a friend to Exhibition on their own.
21:28 DOMESTIC LIFE: 400 Walmer Rd: 1964 her family moved to high rises popular in the age of ‘Modern Toronto’ at 400 Walmer Road, close to St. Clair and Bathurst.
22:14 “There’s something about St. Clair that pulled our family together” since her Uncle Jack also had an office at St. Clair and Avenue Rd.
22:50 DOMESTIC LIFE: 1967 she moved downtown for graduate school until she and Neil married.
23:19 DEMOGRAPHICS/ 1974-1986 they bought house on Braemore Gardens with a small inheritance that Neil had. Earlier on it was a very Jewish street but by the time they moved, it was more mixed.
24:10 Joanne’s grandmother spoke Yiddish.
24:40 DEMOGRAPHICS / NEIGHBOURHOOD STREET LIFE: Braemore Gardens has a few kids on the street but she learned that when you don’t have kids you don’t get to know your neighbours well.
25:06 MEMORABLE PEOPLE: Sam the Record Man: Sam Sniderman lived at the end of the street facing the park.
26:10 PARKS: Hillcrest Park: Skating In those days, the park across the street, Hillcrest, had a natural ice rink that the city put in.
27:17 DOMESTIC LIFE: In 1986 they moved to Tyrell because they decided to have kids and they needed more space. One day they went for a walk to the library and saw a house for sale and one day later they got it! 8 weeks later they moved to Cuba for a year so they had friends live in the house for a year.
28:31 BARNS / ACTIVISM: The barns was just a storage space for streetcars in 1986 when they moved in and they fought to get Barns renovated.
29:05 NEIGHBOURHOOD STREET LIFE / PARK: Living near the park with their son and their dog they got to know neighbours well.
29:23 SCHOOLS: Hillcrest Son attended after grade 1.
29:45 Hawthorne Son attended before then he attended the bilingual school between kindergarten and grade 1.
30:17 LIFE OF A CHILD / SCHOOL: By grade 2 their son walked to school with friend. And either she or her husband would pick him up after school.
31:00 Winona and Oakwood. Their son then went to Winona and Oakwood, the latter where his father went to high school as well!
31:27 NEIGHBOURHOOD STREET LIFE / LIFE OF A CHILD Safe Their son was a very outdoorsy guy and would play outdoors in the neighbourhood, played street hockey. They didn’t worry about him.
32:00 SPADINA EXPRESSWAY / ACTIVISM: Joanne and Neil did fight the Spadina expressway and demonstrated with a lot of people.
33:10 Joanne got involved with the movement through her job at Ryerson where she was hired to do research and then became a teacher of Urban Sociology in 1971 with David Crombie who was then an Alderman.
35:18 ACTIVISM: McDonalds drive through: One of their neighbours was on the other side of the coin on this, so it created some conflict around the issue.
35:44 NEIGHBOURHOOD STREET LIFE / DEMOGRAPHICS: “Our shock and surprise that St. Clair never changed” perhaps because the street is very wide, with streetcar tracks. It never became very vibrant.
36:22 Whereas on the other side of Oakwood where it was more ethnically similar, by Dufferin there was more of a vibe with streetlife.
36:55 Over 30 years the neighbourhood hasn’t changed!
37:50 LANEWAYS: Joanne thinks that they’re difficult with Toronto weather.
38:33 WYCHWOOD PARK: Great place to walk, Braemore and Tyrell backed onto it. Walked often and they used to take visitors for a walk there to show them the special place.
39:18 WYCHWOOD PARK / MEMORABLE PERSON: Marshall McLuhan: The day after seeing a Woody Allen movie, Annie Hall, there’s a scene where Woody Allen is speaking with Marshall McLuhan, and the next day, they’re walking in the park and Joanne remembers seeing a man in a three-piece suit running past her and her friends, as he passed by she realized that it was Marshall McLuhan! It was a very strange experience! He lived in a house facing lake on the west side of the park. Had she not just seen the movie she would have not known who he was, or have recognized him.
41:45 SHOPS / LIFE OF A CHILD: Corner store: Joanne’s son become friends with the son of a Korean family who owned a corner store and how the boys loved to go out for Halloween together.
42:06 - 42:48 cut the story that assumes the kid collected candy on Halloween and his father sold it - still need to be cut out
43:16 ENTERTAINMENT: Radio City Joanne remembers going to Radio City cinema as a kids.
43:54 Saturday matinees They used to have Saturday events for kids so they would occasionally come down to the Radio City for this.
44:16 NEIGHBOURHOOD STREET LIFE: Cars: Most families had a car. Joanne’s grandmother learned to drive in her 50s and everyone in her family had a car.
44:50 SHOPS / DOMESTIC LIFE: Joanne looked up to see the name of the store that her grandfather had, and found two stores with her grandfather’s uniquely-spelled name. He probably owned the store and let his wife continue to stay there after the divorce.
46:36 DOMESTIC LIFE / TRANSIT: Her aunt died when her cousin was very young so she had strong memories of taking the streetcar alone every day to a school at Bay and Davenport.
47:25 NEIGHBOURHOOD STREET LIFE / PLACE OF WORSHIP: St. Matthew’s memories: Joanne remembers seeing the whirly gig as a girl when visiting her cousin’s, and later on, taking yoga there in 1990s and attending son’s concerts there, in that church.
48:04 PLACE OF WORSHIP: Shaarei Shomayim synagogue Joanne was sad when the synagogue was torn down.
48:39 SHOPS: Joanne didn’t shop often on St Clair, though they did go to the Dollar Stores and a green grocer but otherwise they often took their car to Loblaws at Christie.