By Francesca Taucer
Critically acclaimed author and former Lowertown resident Brian Doyle mingled with the crowd at the newly redesigned Jules Morin Park (formerly known as Anglesea Square) on Saturday, July 19. Doyle’s much loved novel, Angel Square, is named after this space that he remembers crossing every day to get to York Street School. In the book, as well as in Doyle’s own memories, the square was a risky place for a young boy. It was bordered by three schools: Brebeuf for French-speaking Catholic boys, St. Brigid’s for English speaking Catholic children, and York Street for Jewish children and others. Tensions between religious and language groups rose to the surface as children crossed paths here.
“There were two or three fights a day,” he recalls. “It seemed vicious at the time, but it was pretty benign when you think about it. There were no guns; you hardly ever saw a knife.”
Brian Doyle lived with his mother, Charlotte (nee Charlotte Duff), his father Michael, and his two older sisters. Although they moved around a bit, his strongest memories are from the house at 32 Cobourg and they often show up in his books. Since they were close to Macdonald Gardens Park, or Heney Park, as Doyle calls it, he remembers spending the winter tobogganing on the hill in the park.
“We used to slide there, on cardboard,” he says. “We didn’t have sleighs, but cardboard worked fine, especially when it was icy.” He talked about one of his teachers at York Street School, remembered as “a kind lady” who gave him special consideration. “I had a Down’s syndrome sister, my father was an alcoholic. I probably did need some attention,” he says. “It turned out I had to do it myself, give myself the attention. I think that’s why I started to write.”
Doyle says his family was never devout and he had no trouble working with any religious denomination. He was an altar boy at St. Brigid’s Catholic Church and a choir boy at St. Albans Anglican church. “At night I was a Protestant and Sunday morning was a Catholic,” he jokes. He even went with a friend to clean the floors at the Talmud Torah Jewish School. For Doyle, who grew up in the depression and war years, working as a child was expected.
“We all worked. We just took that for granted,” he says. Doyle says he feels bad for young people today who can’t get that kind of work knowledge from adults. “It’s a great experience, it’s a school,” he says. “And it gives you confidence because you know what you’re doing is essential.”
Despite the passage of years, Doyle feels that many things in Lowertown are still the same. He comes to his old neighbourhood every year to speak at York Street School. The school, he says, is very diverse, and the majority of students are non-white. This diversity reminds him of growing up in Lowertown, when the neighbourhood was a mix of Irish, French Canadian, and Jewish families. “It was vastly different, but very much the same, in the sense of a racial mix,” he says. “It’s just the ‘races’ were different. The attitudes were the same. Funny.”
In the bright sunlight of the Jules Morin park opening, Doyle makes his way through families at the play structure, children running on the grass, and neighbours lining up for the free hot dogs. He sees some of the park’s new design features. Three new weather vanes are topped with winged cherubs, in a nod to the park’s history as Anglesea or “Angel” Square. Two low ridges on either side of the paved path running through the centre of the park are also meant to resemble angel wings when viewed from above. The pool has wing shapes. Doyle seems flattered by the tribute to him and his work made by the landscape architect, Kaja Cerveny. “Lovely!” he says when he sees the weather vanes.
Angels in this Lowertown park may not be the only compliment to Brian Doyle and his literary work. Members of the local community want to open a community garden in front of the Patro and Lowertown Community Centre and would like to name it in his honour. So, 70 years after the Doyle family left their home on Cobourg Street, a Brian Doyle Garden or Angel Square Garden could soon be a feature within the same block. Francesca Taucer is a Canada Summer Jobs student with the LCA.