When I first came to Texas from Toronto, I marveled at how many entertainers and broadcasters were also immigrants from Canada. (I arrived here in December, 1996.)
On 9-11, Hubby and I were headed to his college reunion in Terre Haute, Indiana. Bags packed, we saw the same thing you saw on our television screen. That was more than a wake-up call for me and was a focal point in my defining the differences between Canadians and Americans. The first thing I went for was my passport and retrieved it from the filing cabinet. That - back then - was a Canadian passport. (I know have American and Canadian passports. Dual Citizenship is available in U.S.A. to persons immigrating from 130 countries.)
When I was a kid, it was the atomic bomb people worried about and I remember my Dad always saying we would get into our car and drive north (from Toronto) . Well, that was my first thought that morning. Well, we were driving north all right, but we would have to drive about 1,600 miles just to get to the Canadian border and then the drive to isolated country - or "safe" country - would be about 200 miles or more. Two Hundred miles drive north of Toronto would put you approximately in Algonquin Park which is a National Park with lots of wildlife, lakes and is probably not a hot spot for terrorists to target.
So, now I was really afraid! This was another challenge for my thinking. Back in 2001, I definitely thought from a Canadian perspective and I probably still do today.
My mother used to talk about Peter's father, Charlie Jennings who wrote for a Toronto newspaper going to North Toronto Collegiate with her and how she would see him at parties. If you listen to the interview above, you will hear Peter talk about his father and mother loving to socialize and inviting all kinds of people from the arts into their home. Charlie Jennings loved to socialize!
In this interview, Peter also talks about smoking (after having quit many years before) during his coverage of 9-11. I remember him taking calls from his children who called to say they were safe and I recall he was still on air when we got to - I think it was Hope, Arkansas (yes, Bill Clinton's birthplace) toward the end of the day to stop for the night.
I remember my friend, a broadcaster, calling on my cell phone to ask about gasoline lines. Yes, there were lines at some stations and none at others where they had run out. That meant we did a lot of stopping just to make sure we were going to get there.
That is a little digression there to tell you how omnipresent Peter Jennings was in our lives.
When he announced in 2005 that he had lung cancer, ABC welcomed messages for Peter to encourage him. I tried to think of something that would indicate to him that I was also originally from Toronto. (There is a camaraderie when talking to someone who is from the same place you are.)
Toronto is very much a north-south, east-west city. It sits on the north shore of Lake Ontario so if you drive too far south, you will be in the Lake! As opposed to when Peter and I were young and there was a population of 500,000, there are now 5.5 million people in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area). The center of the city is a street called Yonge (pronounced "young") which goes all the way from Lake Ontario, north to the Metropolitan limits and beyond, up to cottage country as Highway 11.
So, you could pick a Nom de plume to use at the ABC website and rather explaining I was Canadian, I figured right away, Peter Jennings would have to know a Yonge Street Texan was from Toronto! When I started this blog, which would reflect how a Canadian living in Texas feels about things, it was a natural name!
A few months before I became an American Citizen in 1994, Peter Jennings also became a Citizen in a ceremony in New York City. My swearing in was in Houston with just Hubby and the official present. My party may well have been as flashy as Mr. Jennings' as 150 well-wishers came and went.
On Sunday, August 7, 2005, Peter Jennings lost his battle with lung cancer at his New York home. He is lovingly remembered by millions for the 22 years be came into our homes each evening as well as covering special events and interviewing heads of state worldwide.
I like to think he enjoyed knowing a fellow North Toronto neighbor enjoyed his frequent slips to Canadian pronunciations of words like "schedule" which Canadians say "shhhedule" and of course the letter "Z" which we say "zed".
So, now you know why I am the Yonge Street Texan!
No comments:
Post a Comment