Reminiscences of a Raconteur: Between the '40s and the '20s

It has been said by facetious friends that I have several birthplaces. However that may be, Trenton, Ontario, is the first place where I saw light, on August 23rd, 1847, and on the spot where I was born has been erected a touching memorial in the shape of a fine hotel, which was an intimation, if we believe in fate or predestination, that my life should be largely spent in such places of public resort. After events confirmed this idea. Hotels have been largely my abiding place, from London, England, to San Francisco, and from the city of Mexico and Merida in Yucatan as far north as Edmonton.

My father was a country doctor, but, tiring of being called up at all hours of the night to attend a distant kid with the stomach-ache, or a gum-boil, wearied and disgusted with driving over rough roads in all sorts of weather to visit non-paying patients, he gave up the practice of medicine, studied law, passed the necessary examinations, and in 1849 moved to Kingston and was associated with Mr. (afterwards Sir) John A. Macdonald. Two years later he was appointed a sort of Pooh-bah at Whitby, Ontario, when the county of Ontario was separated from the county of York, as part and parcel of the then Home District. When questioned about my early life, it was usual for inquisitive friends to ask: “How long were you in Kingston?” And my truthful answer—“Just two years”—invariably evoked a smile and the satirical remark that that was about the usual sentence.

My first recollections in babyhood were of my arm being vaccinated before I was three years old, and to mollify any recalcitrancy—I didn’t know what that word meant then—a generous portion of fruit cake thickly covered with icing was diplomatically given me. I immediately shoved out my other arm for another dose of vaccine with the cake accompaniment, but it didn’t work. Another recollection is my going out with my sister Alice to see a military parade. We took along the family’s little kitten carefully wrapped in my sister’s new pelisse. At the corner of Princess and Bagot streets, the martial music of the band frightened pussy and with a leap she disappeared under an adjoining building, pelisse and all. That’s seventy-odd years ago, but every time I visit Kingston, even to this day, I watch around Bagot street to see if the cat’s come back. Which she hasn’t; nor has the pelisse. Curious to relate, the C.P.R. office now occupies the site of my boyhood home.