Interviewee: Mickey Matsubayashi
Interviewer: Lisa Uyeda
Date: June 23, 2010
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Accession Number: 2010-030[Start part 1]
Lisa Uyeda: Okay. So, this is an interview with Mickey on June 23, 2010.
Mickey Matsubayashi: [laughs] Yeah.
LU: Um, Mickey, where were you born and when were you born?
MM: I was born in Vancouver, at the Vancouver General Hospital, in, uh, September
2nd, 1930.
LU: And why were you born in a hospital and not at home with a midwife?
MM: Um, I really don’t know [coughs]. I think I may have been a sickly baby because
my childhood was just, uh, just one after another it was some sickness, until I moved
out to the interior of B.C., and then my health improved 150% [chuckles].
LU: So, everybody calls you Mickey, but did you ever receive a Japanese name aswell?
MM: Yeah, apparently “Mickey” is a, uh, translation of my father’s name Kanichi thatis a complex symbol with a [gestures with hands] horizontal bar underneath, whichis “ichi” or “one”, and the upper part, “kan” part, you can read that two ways- one is“Kan” the other is “mickey”. “Mickey” in Japanese apparently means “the trunk of atree” [laughs]. It matches my physique! [chuckles].
LU: [laughs] So, what generation Canadian are you?
MM: Second generation.
LU: Which is nisei.
MM: [Nods] Nisei, right.
LU: Tell me a little bit about your parents. Where were your parents born?
MM: My father was born in, uh, Hikone - Sorry, I’ve forgotten the name of theprovince that he was born in - his father lived and worked in a girls’ school in
Hikone, and my mother’s family was from Osaka, and they met in Vancouver, andthe rest is history! [chuckles]
LU: So, when did your father come to Canada? And how did he get here?
MM: He came by boat in - let me see now, 1918 – 1895 - 12 isLU: Oh, so your father was born in 1895?
MM: [Nods] Yeah.
LU: What about your mother, do you remember when she was born?
MM: 1902.
1

LU: Oh, wow.
MM: Yeah. So,he [father] came to Canada in, uh, when he was about, 15, I think it
was. And my mother, she was younger than that, because she had to go to a school in
Vancouver. English school. So, [coughs] she spoke English and wrote English quite
well, whereas my father went to night school to learn, and to read and write English.
LU: So, why did your father decide to come to Canada?
MM: Um. I don’t know the reason, I don’t think he ever told me the reason, but his,uh, his older sisters were in Canada, and married to other gentlemen here in Canada,
and they were urging him to come to Canada because there was lots of work
available. Not so much in Japan, so, uh, my Dad took their advice and came to
Canada, and the first job he got was, um, working as a bell boy in one of the chain of
hotels in Calgary, I think. And then, uh, from there he got transferred to- in the same
chain of hotels- in Edmonton and then further and further east, until he ended up in,uh, the hotel in Winnipeg, and that was the farthest east that he was able to come.
And then he went back to Vancouver, and he met my mother, and they got marriedin 1923, in Vancouver. So, my mother would have been 21, and my father was, uh,ten years older, I guess. 10 or 12. So, he’d be 33.
LU: You had a really funny story about your Dad working as a bell boy?
MM: Oh, yes [smiles, chuckles]. Yeah, he was a bell boy working on the night shift,and he went down to the main floor, the main entrance, to get the day’s paper- thepaper was delivered to the hotel, rolled up in a roll, and he was carrying this roll into
the lobby and towards the elevators when this, uh, inebriated guest of the hotel
started after him about something or other, getting quite abusive, so he followed my
Dad into a elevator, and, uh, it got worse, so my Dad with his kendo [Japanesemartial art involving traditional fencing weapons] background took the newspapers
and poked his [the drunk man’s] forehead with it using a kendo move and knocked
him out. [laughs] He, uh, he left that hotel quite soon after that. [laughs]
LU: [laughs] Now tell me a little bit about your mother. So, she was how old when
she came here with her parents and her brother and her sister?
MM: Um, I believe she was about five or six. And, um, her sister was about two years
older, and her brother another two years older than that. So, that would make themborn in 1920- Sorry, 1904 and 1906 or 1907. And my mother’s mother and father
had a small Japanese restaurant, um, downtown in Vancouver; not in the Japanese
town, but a little farther east, and, uh, all the children worked in there except mymother, who was sent to school, and she worked there after school and on
weekends. That’s about all I know about that store. Except that my mother and my
grandmother’s, uh, when they made sushi, the uh, taste of the sushi [chuckles] was
one that I can’t forget. There’s a restaurant in downtown Toronto right on Bloor
street called Ichiriki that makes sushi rice that tastes exactly like my mother and my
grandmother used to make, so my wife and I go there once a week at least[chuckles].
2LU: [chuckles]. Now your mother was the only one going to English school out of thefamily.
MM: That’s right.
LU: Was she the family translator for everything?
MM: [Nods] She was, yeah. So, uh, I don’t know how much translation she needed todo, but, uh, she was always available. And, um, after they got married, my father
would help out too.
LU: So, when did, uh, do you remember when the restaurant closed down?
MM: [Shakes head] No, I don’t, I don’t. It wasn’t until [coughs] quite a few years after
we came out to Toronto that, uh, I found out that they had this restaurant for quite awhile [nods slightly]. But I imagine that because of the evacuation that they weren’t
able to keep the restaurant going.
And that the evacuation came quite a while after they [his parents] were married,and I’m sure they did not have the restaurant at that time, it must have been in thethirties when they closed that restaurant. 1930’s.
LU: So, your parents got married in 1923.
MM: [Nods] Right.
LU: And where did they live together?
MM: Um, my uncle, Mr. Xengya [Zenya?] Hori owned a dry goods store on Powell
Street [coughs]. In downtown Vancouver, opposite Powell Grounds as it was known
then, it’s Oppenheimer Park now, but it’s still there. Um, my Dad was very close tohis sister and his brother-in-law, so it got on well - and, uh, what was the question?
LU: Where your parents lived when they first were married.
MM: [Nods] Oh, yeah. Um, my uncle owned a house a little further west than where
Japantown was. And they moved into that house when they got married, and that’s
where we lived right through until the war started. It was, um, on Dundas Street. It
was roughly halfway between downtown Japantown- [interrupted by rattling noise,
construction noise]
LU: [chuckles]
MM:[continuing] between Japantown and Hastings Park. So, we used to see a lot of[interrupted by rattling again] Holy moly.
LU: Why is it shaking?
[Interruption from construction noise]
LU: Alright. Um, where were we?
MM: Um.
LU: Your parents- oh! What do you remember about growing up?
MM: Growing up in Vancouver? Um, I was a…there were no close neighbours thatwere my age. There was the hakujin [non-Japanese] family across the street that, uh,3there was a girl that was about my age but she had her own circle of friends, so, uh, I
played with the neighbour’s dog and other dogs [chuckles]. And after a while we got
our own dogs so I would travel around, there was no restrictions as far as having
dogs on leashes, so I’d just follow them through the bushes and everything. We had agreat time [smiles].
LU: [chuckles] Did you have any siblings?
MM: [Nods] Yeah, mm-hmm. Two older sisters. My one sister is five years older thanme, and the other one is three years older than me. And my older sister had, uh,appendicitis, and it was very severe, so she had to miss one year of school, so turns
out my second sister and my first sister were in the same grade at school. They were
stuck together [chuckles]. But fortunately, everything worked out alright. But, um, I
was the real sickly one. I had every childhood disease you can imagine. And kidney
troubles of some kind, appendicitis, tonsillitis - and I had to eat- the doctor
recommended to my mother that I be fed liver for each meal and for in-between
meal snacks. So, I had, uh, lived on liver for six months.
LU: How was that?
MM: It wasn’t very tasty, the liver.
LU: [laughing] No.
MM: And I still like liver! [chuckles] It’s amazing, you’d think I’d be sick of it, but -.
LU: [chuckles] What was life like in Vancouver at that time? What was it like to go
shopping in the general store and where did you find, you knowMM: Most of our shopping was done at, downtown, past Japantown, in Vancouver uh, was it Eaton’s? Uh, Hudson’s Bay store - and another general stores, and all the
shopping that we did for clothes and things like that, either in one department store
or another. And we didn’t buy anything too fancy, anyhow, as far as I was concerned
it was just another chore to go shopping [chuckles].
LU: Did you ever get an allowance, you know, for sweet treats or anything?
MM: No, I don’t remember ever getting an allowance. We had treats because my
grandmother would give me treats [smiles]. My grandmother was a Zen Buddhism
Buddhist and, uh, she had a little prayer nook in her bedroom, and she would say
prayers in the afternoon, so some days I’d sneak into her bedroom and listen to her,and that’s when I got a snack [chuckles].
LU: So, was your grandmother the only one who was religious? Or Buddhist?
MM: That’s right. And the rest of the family was definitely not. At that time. Later on,
after we were evacuated and left Vancouver, we joined the Anglican religion because
it was quite active in Slocan. But that was the only exposure that we had. We were
never a very religious family at all. But I think it was more for the social aspect that
we joined the church.
LU: And what do you remember, do you remember playing any games when you
were younger? Did you have any non-Japanese friends that you played with as well?
4MM: [Shakes head] No, I had a friend next door who was quite a bit younger, and I
used to play with him but it wasn’t as much fun because he was so young [chuckles].
The other time, people I played with were all acquaintances from school, and, uh,there were two people especially, the Sakaki boys, they were cousins. And they werein the same class as me in public school, and they lived not too far from us, so weused to get together on weekends sometimes. And, uh, we used to get together to go
to Japanese school every day after school, too. So, they were the boys that I hung out
with most of all [coughs].
LU: So, what public school did you go to?
MM: It was, it’s called, uh, Hastings Public School. And it wasn’t too far away, it wasup the hill, over a couple of blocks, and I used to- my dog used to walk me partway
to school in the morning. We’d get to a corner and I’d say, “Corkey, you stop and stay
here,” and he would stop, and then he would lie down on the sidewalk [chuckles]
and I would walk up the hill, look back, and I could see this black dot on the sidewalk
where he was [smiles, laughs]. After school when I came home, he’d be there. I don’t
think he stayed there the whole day, but he knew when I was coming home, so he’dbe waiting for me there [laughs].
LU: And after public school ended, how much time did you have until you had to go
to Japanese school?
MM: Uh, I think it was about…an hour. About an hour to an hour and a half, I guess,because we used to walk towards the school and take a detour, and go very widearound one area, and then to the school, to avoid getting into fights with some of theneighbourhood kids who didn’t like Orientals [chuckles].
LU: Oh, really?
MM: Yeah…that was the first exposure that we had to discrimination. We didn’tknow it as discrimination in those days, I guess. They just didn’t like Japs [chuckles].
LU: Did you ever have any encounters with them?
MM: [Shakes head] No.
LU: You just avoided them?
MM: Yeah, just - they’d run after us and call us names and that was about it.
LU: So, how long was Japanese class for? Once you got there?
MM: Uh, an hour and a half. So, it’d be from four to five-thirty, so we’d be home by
six o’clock, and we’d have dinner, and then homework [chuckles].
LU: And did you go to Japanese school every day, or - ?
MM: Every day, yeah. It’s amazing that I didn’t learn more, or I can’t remember morethat I learned [chuckles]. But that was quite a few years ago.
LU: And how long did you do Japanese school for?
MM: Hmm…five, five years? Five or six years, I guess. I think it closed up in 1942.
So…it would be about six years, I guess.
LU: That’s a long time.
5MM: Yeah, it was, yeah. I got to a high enough grade that I could read the Japanese
language newspapers and things like that. But, uh, I forgot it just as easily. I could
speak Japanese much better than I could read it. We used to speak English at homebecause my father and mother both spoke English, but when my grandmother wasaround, we spoke Japanese, so, I did get some practice.
LU: How did your parents learn English?
MM: My mother was young enough that she had to go to English school, and myfather went to night school before he started working. Or he went to night school
after work, or something like that. He went with some Japanese friends of his. One
turned out to be his brother-in-law, and another one was just an acquaintance.
LU: So, how old were you when the war started?
MM: I was eleven years old - yeah, 1941. December, so I’d be eleven, yes.
LU: And what do you remember about the government posting their signs?
MM: I don’t remember very much at all. I know that it was something that was very
serious, because, uh, my aunt and uncle, two sets of them would come to our placeand some other people, and my Dad and Mom, and they would sit and discuss things
with serious faces, and that was about it. I had so many other things to do that I
didn’t pay too much attention, but I could tell that there was something very serious
being discussed.
LU: And do you remember when your parents told you that you had to pack up?
MM: No, I don’t remember that. I didn’t have that much, anyhow, to pack up anyhow[chuckles].
LU: [Chuckles] You didn’t take any of your toys with you?
MM: No, I didn’t. I remember I used to have, uh, a toy bear. A brown bear, that I used
to carry around. And then - this was, uh, the summer before the war started, andsomebody called us to go with them for a car ride or something, and somebody said“Hey, Mickey, you’ve forgot your bear!” and I turned around and, sure enough, I
didn’t have my bear, and I said [gestures with hand] “Aw, never mind.” [chuckles]
LU: So, did your parents have a car as well?
MM: Yes, my Dad had a car because he sold insurance and he had to drive all aroundthe interior of the coast of B.C, selling insurance. The $2,000 life insurance policythat was designed to help pay for the funeral expenses. But he sure got to know thefamilies of the people he sold insurance to, because, when we met them down at
Powell Grounds or Oppenheimer Park, whatever it was called, he would be able toname the children, each one by name, and it impressed the owners, I’m sure[chuckles].
LU: Do you remember swimming or going hiking when you were younger, as well?
MM: [Nods] Yes, we used to go swimming, not every day, three or four times asummer we’d go to Spanish Banks or one of the other beaches in Toronto, and wewent, uh hiking, and went up the mountain that was, uh, outside Vancouver. I’ve
6

forgotten the name of the, uh, mountain, but we went up there for a hike and apicnic. It was quite an experience. I think it was the longest walk I’ve ever been on[chuckles].
LU: And what about during the winter? Was it cold enough to play hockey, or
tobogganing?
MM: No, the only time we ever had a chance to go skating was, uh, in 1935, I think,when we had a cold snap that winter and one of the lakes or ponds or somethingfroze up, and so everybody went skating there. That was fun [smiles].
LU: So, getting back to the beginning of the warMM: [Coughs] Sorry.
LU: Have some tea.
MM: [Drinks some tea].
LU: So, what happened to your family at the beginning of the war? Were they splitup?
MM: Yes. Uh, we were told pretty late in the preparations and, if I remember
correctly, that we were expecting all of us in the family would be going to the sameplace. But then, as it turns out, near the end of the preparations, our parents told usthat my father would be going to one place with my uncle and other friends, and wewould go with their wives and children, excuse me, to another place. I remember itcame as a bit of a shock to me because I couldn’t see us carrying on without my Dadaround.
LU: Mmm-hmm. So, where did your Dad go? Do you remember the name of where
he went?
MM: [Scratching head] Hmm, no, I don’t remember.
LU: Was it one of the detention camps, or-?
MM: [Shaking head] No, no, it was a road construction camp. So, they lived in one
place and they were trucked to the site of the construction that was going on andthen- back again in the evening or, uh, the afternoon [interview cuts out].
[End of part 1][Start part 2][part 2 cuts in almost as if the interview is already in progress]
MM: It was pretty hard work for him, because he hadn’t done that kind of manuallabor for years and years, but, um, as it turns out, the son of a friend of ours passed
away, he drowned in Slocan Lake, and so, for some reason or another, my [clears
throat] father, my uncle, and the father of the boy that died were taken out of thatroad camp and brought to Slocan, where they stayed for the rest of the war. So, weweren’t without a father for too long. A year and a half, or there abouts.

7

LU: Do you remember having any correspondence with your Dad when he wasaway?
MM: No, I don’t as a matter of fact. I’m sure my mother wrote to him. But, uh, I don’t
remember ever hearing, she never read any mail or correspondence to us.
LU: So, what about you and your older sisters and your mother, where did you guys
first go?
MM: Um…when we got to Guelph- sorry [shakes head]-when we got to Slocan, it wasa bus ride from New Denver with a train stop [coughs]. Excuse me. A bus ride to
Slocan, and then the bus stopped at a place called Oddfoggle’s Hall, which was a kindof auditorium in the city of Slocan, and there were…they basically, built uh, alldouble-decker beds, with, uh, sheets hanging down the side for privacy, and that’s
where that whole trainload of people had to stay for a while. Until otheraccommodations were prepared for them. So, after about a week or two weeks, we
moved to a tent that was put up in the parking lot of a natural ice skating rink,hockey rink - about halfway to Bay Farm, between Slocan and Bay Farm. And we
stayed there for two or three months, until the houses were built in Bay Farm. And,uh, we moved to Bay Farm finally, we were one of the first houses that was built in
Bay Farm. So… we were never lacking for any spare lumber if we wanted to build
shelving or anything in the house [chuckles]. Just had to go out in the evening andpick out some lumber.
LU: And what was it like, living in Slocan when you were living in the double bunkbeds? Where did everybody eat, and go to the bathroom, and bathe? Do you
remember much about that?
MM: Yeah, we - it was - they had washrooms in that hall, but there was no bath oranything. The bath we went to, the hockey rink where they had shower rooms, so
we went there for showers, there were no baths, and when we got to Bay Farm,
some of the houses were built, but the washrooms, the bath houses were not built.
We had an outhouse in our backyard, so that’s what we had to cope with. It was…our
backyard happened to be a river bed, and digging down was quite a chore becauseof all the rocks, and they told us that our best bet would be to dig a four-foot by fourfoot pit outside the kitchen of our house, and let the kitchen sink water run into [thepit] and seep away. So, it was up to me to dig that thing, and I kept digging, I’d dig
down as far as I could until I hit a big boulder, and then I’d avoid that and dig around
it. And then there’d be a boulder on the other side. And, uh, the hole [pit] kind of
tapered from four-by-four down to about one-by-one [chuckles]. But it was linedwith stones so it wasn’t going to collapse or anything. But it worked alright, wenever flooded it with water from our sink.
LU: And, going back to when you were living in the tent, how big was the tent?
MM: [Coughs] The tent was - there were five of us in the tent, and there was one
two-decker bed. Uh, it was a double bed on the lower level and a single bed on the8upper level. So, I was in the upper level, my father and mother were in the lower
level, and, uh, there was another double bed for my two sisters. So, it was a fairsized tent. But, when it rained, we didn’t know that you shouldn’t touch the canvasof the tent [chuckles]. So, every time we leaned against it, the water would just run
in and get us all wet, so we were huddled in the middle of the tent most of the time
when it rained [chuckles].
LU: And what season was it when you were living in the tent?
MM: Late summer.
LU: So, it didn’t get too cold.
MM: No, and that part was good.
LU: And was it like camping, when you were in the tent? Were you having your own
barbeque out in the front, a fire pit, or - ?
MM: [Shaking head] No, nothing. We hadn’t took [sic] all our meals from the hockey
rink, it was set up for, uh, being the meals, and I think some of the men had living
accommodations in the rink. And so, uh, we took all our meals in the rink. It waspretty good meals, actually.
LU: Do you remember what you ate?
MM: [Shakes head] Not really, no.
LU: Did you still have a lot of fish?
MM: No, not-excuse me- not much fish. The area was, Bay Farm especially, there
were a lot of Doukhobors in the area, and they were farmers, and they had livestockthat they sold to the local meat market and grocery store. So, the meat that we ate,
we bought from the grocery store, so we were never short of meat, beef. I don’tknow if I could tell the difference between beef and pork in those days. But we were
well-fed [chuckles].
LU: So, tell me a little bit about your house that you had in Bay Farm.
MM: Oh, yeah. This was a very simple house. The center part, it was 16x24 orsomething like that, and it was in three sections, the center section was the kitchen,
the dining room, and the living room, all combined into one, and then on one side ofthat room was our bedroom, which had a double-decker double bed, and a single
bed, which I had, was raised off the floor about four feet, so that all the luggage andeverything would be stored underneath. And my two sisters slept on the upper partof the double bed and my father and mother slept on the lower part. And then on theother side of the kitchen was my aunt and uncle and my cousin, and, um, I think- I
don’t know what kind of an arrangement they had [chuckles]. But I guess they had adouble bed and a single bed or something like that. So, it was communal. Communal
cooking, communal eating, and that was about it. And then the rest of the time, wewere sitting around the radio listening to it [chuckles].
LU: And did you have a stove in your kitchen inside the house?
MM: Yeah.
9LU: Did you do any cooking outside?
MM: No, we had a big stove which did all the heating for the house, and for thecooking. And it was wood, a wood-burning stove. Quite a large top on it.
LU: And was all this already there when you were moving into the house? Or did you
have to buy the furniture, or make the furniture?
MM: [Shakes head] No, it was all there for us. Yeah [coughs].
LU: And what were the different seasons like? What was it like living there in thesummertime?
MM: The summer times, the summer time is was hot, and dry. When they had rain, it
was a pretty dense shower, but not too long, the wintertime, it was cold, and dry. We
did not have an awful lot of snow that I remember. Maybe it was a foot deep
overnight or something like that. It didn’t interfere with, uh, having to go to schoolor anything like that. And the trucks came around and plowed the main streets of
Bay Farm. So, I mean, getting to the bath house and things like that, it wasn’t a
problem.
LU: And what was it like waking up? With the icicles?
MM: [Laughs] You had to get up very carefully [chuckles].
LU: So, tell the story about where the icicle[s] was - ?
MM: Well, the houses were built with a two-by-four frame, and then the outside wasa shiplap horizontal boards [coughs]-excuse me- which overlapped a bit, and I think- I’m pretty sure that there was a layer of tarp paper that was put on the two-byfours before they put the shiplap on. And, uh, that was it, if you wanted some inside
covering on the two-by-fours, on the inside of the house, you had to do it yourself.
Which some of the people did, and it looked more cottage-like. But whoever was the
carpenter had put the shiplap on it, sometimes they missed the two-by-fours, so thenail would be sticking in all by itself and that’s where the icicles formed [chuckles].
LU: [Chuckles] Yeah, right over where your bed was.
MM: [Laughing] Exactly.
LU: And, so when you’re in Bay Farm, did you start going to school right away? Or
did you have some time off for a while?
MM: That’s right, there was no school for a year. For a whole year. And then they
kept building it and building it and finally they completed the two large two-storey
buildings that were [to] house the school. And the British Columbia Board of
Education created, uh, what do you call it? The schedules that each grade should
follow, so that they would catch up on the year that they missed. And so, ourteachers were only maybe a half-dozen years older than us and had never taught
before in their lives; had to have meetings and sessions, instructions from the Boardof Education and things like that, to learn how to teach. And they were given
instructions from the Board of Education and worked very hard to make sure that
we got through the curriculum and passed the exams. So, there was a great deal of10credit that was due to the teachers that worked in the school. And, thinking back, at
the time [scratches head], we looked at them as teachers, but then, later on werealized what they had given up, what hard work they had to do to become teachers,
so there’s a lot of admiration for them. They certainly made the schoolwork
interesting and enjoyable. At least from my point of view [smiles].
LU: And what were your school days like? What time did you start in the morning?
MM: Gee, I don’t remember. It must have been around 8:30 or so. It was a pretty
long day, we broke for lunch, and then, uh, it was around 3:30 I guess. Not too many
people had watches in those days [smiles, chuckles]. And certainly, the classrooms
didn’t have any clocks. Just went by the bell that they had in the school building.
LU: So, was there any Japanese school in the camps?
MM: I understand that there were, I went to one at Raymond Moriyama’s motherran [a school], but this was very, um, very late in the year that we were there, so, I
only got about two months’ lessons. And this was just once a week, I think it was on
a Saturday, and, uh, there were, I think a total of about four students besides myself,that were there taking Japanese lessons, so I didn’t really get that benefit from them.
LU: Do you remember how many people lived in Bay Farm?
MM: No, I have no idea. It was quite a large bunch, though.
LU: Mmm-hmm. And a lot of people had to share their houses with other families.
MM: [Nods] That’s right. Not related, even.
LU: But you shared your house with your aunt and uncle?
MM: [Nods] That’s right. And my cousin.
LU: Tell us a little bit about your uncle who wasn’t put in the camps, he was out inAlberta already.
MM: I had one uncle that was the chief bell boy of this hotel chain that he worked at,
and when he got through that, he opened a store in Calgary. So, Calgary being inAlberta, they weren’t part of this evacuation away from the coast of BC, so, they had
a pretty normal life. He had a dry goods store, I believe- no, it was a dry goods andclothing store. It was called “Silk-o-lina” Store, in Calgary, and I think they branchedout to Edmonton and as far as…I think it was Regina, too, they had a branch inRegina. I don’t think they came as far east as Manitoba…they did quite well, they
were pretty well known, pretty popular store. My aunt and uncle had, one, two,
three, four, [speaking] four boys and one girl. And I got to meet them when we wereleaving Slocan [British Columbia] and heading out for Guelph [Ontario]. We stayed
there for the better part of one week while the Calgary Stampede was on [chuckles].
And we attended that. And I got to know my cousins there, and I think they’ve allpassed away, except two.
LU: And what kind of correspondence did you have with your uncle? When you werein Bay Farm and he was still at home?

11MM: None at all. I think my Dad might have corresponded with him, but we had nophone that we could use, so it was all by mail. And certainly, we were thankful thathe sent us this radio [smiles] that we had and listened to every day.
LU: And what did you listen to on the radio?
MM: Oh, my sisters listened to the hit parade every Saturday, and recorded all thesongs in the order that they made the hit parade and all the lyrics and everything,
they recorded. And my Dad and I used to sit around and listen to the hockey game[chuckles]. My Dad and my uncle- my two uncles- and a couple of other gentlemen
used to take turns hosting a poker game, and so sometimes I had to sneak the radio
away from them [chuckles] so I could listen to it in the bedroom [laughs].
LU: And how did you get the news? About what was going on?
MM: We would get the news around dinner time, and, uh, aside from that, my uncle
would travel up to an abandoned, a defunct mine that was about maybe two miles
away, and he would go up there, and whoever was the caretaker that was left had aradio, a short-wave radio, that my uncle would sit and listen to the radio and makenotes, about war news and anything else, and then bring it back to Bay Farm, climb
up to the top of this [coughs] alarm station that was behind the bath house, and, uh,they had a gong sort of thing that was, uh, he would hit with a hammer and thatwould be the signal for everybody who wanted to hear the news to gather around,and then he would announce the news, first in English and then in Japanese, andthat’s about the extent of how we got the news. Slocan did not have a newspaper,and we never had any coming in the mail, either.
LU: I’m just going to stop and change the tape on the recorder.
LU: So, what was it like interacting with the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted
Police], did you have much interaction with them?
MM: No, apparently they were in Slocan City and the offices there, but they did not
patrol around to Pop Off and Bay Farm, that I knew of, and I never saw them, so, I
remember hearing about one young fellow [coughs]-excuse me- that climbed overthe mountains and left Slocan, never to be seen again [chuckles]. But that was the
only time I heard of the Mounties ever-excuse me-being required to take any action.
So, uh, it was certainly different than what we expected, I think.
LU: So, they didn’t have any watchtowers or fences up?
MM: None at all.
LU: So, you’re free to go hiking, and swimming, and go across to different camps?
MM: [Nods] That’s right. It was amazing. I think if…we used to take the bus to New
Denver, which was north of Slocan, along the Slocan Lake, I guess it was about ten or
fifteen miles? Or maybe not that long. But, even going there, I don’t think we ever
had to get a travel permit from the Mounties, because to go to New Denver was
where the hospital was and where the doctor was, so, if we had any ailments orsomething like that we had to go to New Denver and, whoever it was, the patient12

usually went with somebody from the family to, uh, look after them and that was it.
But I, uh, maybe I was too young to realize what was going on, but I never had any
exposure to the Mounties or heard of any action that they had to take on or be had
against us.
LU: So, how old were you, again, when you were in Bay Farm?
MM: I was there from 11 [years old] to 13 [years old].
LU: So, did you start high school? When you were in the camp?
MM: Yeah, I didn’t in Slocan, or in Bay Farm, when I got out, because of theaccelerated program that the BC Department of Education promoted for us, I wasable to get out of public school and when I went to Guelph, I could start in highschool. They didn’t have junior high in those days. So, I went right into high school.
LU: And what else do you remember about Bay Farm? Do you remember any special
events, or what did everybody do for holidays, or birthdays, or the stuff that we donow?
MM: Nothing very much. We had - the school organized a sports day, and everybody
went into training for that, running around and uh, throwing the javelin and things
like that, that was pretty exciting. So, we had that. And in the summertime, during
vacation, there was ball teams, baseball teams. I don’t remember any softball teams,
but then, there could’ve been softball going on when I was eating at home orsomething like that there. We didn’t have enough hockey rinks or a nearby area
where we could get water easily, so that we could have a hockey rink, so there wasno hockey played. Just about every house in Bay Farm had a small skating rink in the
backyard, so [chuckles] you could visit any kind of neighbours you wanted wearing
skates and just skate from one rink to another, all the way over there and back[chuckles].
LU: And where did the skates come from?
MM: Oh, we had-we ordered from Eaton’s and Simpson’s, the mail order. And thecatalogues, the Eaton’s and Simpson’s catalogues were always in short supply
because they made the best shin guards for hockey [chuckles].
LU: And what did your parents do, when they were in the camps?
MM: My father started off as a kind of - I don’t know, there was a mill, that madeboards for construction, and he looked after the inventory there. And then when theschool was built, and the construction of other things slowed down, he got a job asjanitor in the schools. So, he took that on. And my mother stayed at home and looked
after, helped my grandmother look after the garden, and she did the washing and allthat.
LU: Was your grandmother in the same house? With you?
MM: No. No, she…one, two-- she lived with my aunt and uncle about three doors
over.

13

[interview cuts out]
[End of part 2][Start part 3][Part 3 cuts in almost as if the interview is already in progress]
MM: But she spent a lot of time at both houses. So, she – if I can remember correctlyI think she had a bit of a garden in both [chuckles] behind both houses, where we
lived and where my aunt and uncle were. When my grandfather [smiles], who was avery, very skilled carpenter and cabinet maker, he used to chop firewood, and stack
it up to dry so that it wouldn’t be dripping whatever it is, and the one thing that heforgot was that, being so neat, he wanted the stack of wood to be very secure, so hewould use his axe and shave the four sides of each stick [chuckles] so that there
would be no rocking of the wood pile. The only problem was that the pile was sotight, the pile didn’t get any air through it, so the wood pile in the wintertime it was
just a solid block of ice [laughing]. And I remember in Vancouver, when he wasmowing the lawn at my uncle’s house, my grandfather would mow the lawn andthen he would get on his hands and knees with a pair of pinchers and he’d be pulling
weeds with these pinchers all over [chuckles]. And the lawn ended up being pretty
bare [laughs]. But he was amazing, he had an armoire, we had an armoire in our
house that he had built, and he used no nails, just bamboo nails, I guess you could
call them. And he’d drill a hole and he’d push this bamboo thing in, and glue.
LU: Oh, wow.
MM: Yeah. And everything fit so perfectly.
LU: Mmm-hmm. And, what kind of food did you eat when you were in the camps?
Obviously you weren’t getting any of the Japanese goods imported in, so, what did
everybody do for shoyu [soy sauce] or miso or rice?
MM: Um, I think we were quite fortunate in that the gentleman that owned thegeneral store where we did our shopping, um, got supplies of shoyu and things like
that, mostly Chinese shoyu and other goods like that, he ordered and he’d get it in,tell everybody, and then everybody would go shopping there. But, we were nevershort for food, and then the Doukhobors were also there, and they had pork, beef pork and beef that I know of, that they sold for us, to us.
LU: What about chicken?
MM: Yeah, chicken too. Yes, absolutely.
LU: And was there any lakes or ponds nearby that you could go fishing in? Did a lotof people go fishing?
MM: No, some people used to go fishing in the Slocan River, which ran south of, fromthe Slocan Lake, which was in downtown Slocan city. But I don’t remember seeing
too many people fishing down at the lake. But then, I wasn’t interested in fishing, aswell, so I wouldn’t have paid any attention to that [chuckles].
14LU: And what did your sisters do, in the camps?
MM: Gee, I don’t remember. I think they used to go and visit some friends, either in
Slocan or somewhere else. My one sister, had to have her appendix removed, I think,so she had to go to New Denver by bus for the operation. My sister went with her,and the road, the highway that the bus travelled was mountain on one side and it
was a cliff more than anything else. And on the other side was the lake, and where
there was [sic] one or two spots on that highway to New Denver that [coughs]excuse me- the highway pulled into the mountains a little bit and away from the lake
and, for some reason or another, the bus turned over in that part where it was awayfrom the lake so the bus turned over, but it didn’t go into the lake.
LU: Oh, wow.
MM: Yeah. So, that was a bit of excitement there. It didn’t affect my sister,
fortunately.
LU: What happened when people passed away in the camps? Did they have little
cemeteries? Or did they cremate them?
MM: Mostly they were cremated, yeah. And I don’t-I image that their remains werecarried by the family to wherever they’d be settling down later on. I don’t remember
attending, uh, the only funeral that I remember attending was for this young friendof ours that drowned in Lake Ontario- uh, Lake Slocan, sorry-but it was quite
fortunate that they were able to recover his body because Slocan Lake is so deep
and that, um, the local people used to say that Slocan City was built on a ledge of dirtthat went into the lake, and that the lake went underneath this ledge they were on.
So, if somebody drowned in the lake, many times the body would be under thisledge and they wouldn’t come up until, there was a really violent storm, and, uh, thebody may be washed up after that. When it did, the body was so well-preserved
because the lake was cold, and there’s no deterioration at all. So, that Kinoshita boy
drowned in the lake, there was a storm that night, it wasn’t an especially violent one,but there was a storm and, uh, they found his body in the morning. So, they werequite lucky. And, I don’t know where he was buried, I don’t think he was cremated,
I’m pretty sure he was in a casket. I don’t know if he was buried in Slocan or not.
LU: So, when the war ended, what did your family decide to do?
MM: When the war ended, we were in Guelph [Ontario]. AndLU: Oh, so you left the camp before the war ended?
MM: [Nods] Yes, yeah.
LU: Oh, so when did you leave camp? And why did you leave the camp?
MM: There was a lot of- not a lot, I guess, but- inquiries from places in the east…they
were looking for families to come and work in hospitals or other areas like that, so
we had the opportunity to go to Guelph and work, and this Homewood Sanitarium[hospital], so we took that, and we left Slocan in 1944. So, that was [coughs]-excuse
me- before the war ended…and, uh, my Dad worked as a janitor, my mother as a15

kitchen help. My two sisters and I went to school, and we worked at the hospital
after school.
LU: Do you want more tea?
MM: No, I’m fine. Thank you. And quite a few other families did the same thing,
about inquiries. Like the Noguchi- no, no, the Yamashita family, from Montreal[Quebec], they had one, two, three, three boys, four, five boys. And one girl. And thenthe mother and father did approximately the same thing, but they ended up in
Montreal, and they all worked in Montreal. They left Slocan about the same time we
did - a lot of people, after that- well, mostly they were mostly single men, andwomen, too-left and went to Toronto [Ontario] and a lot of them stayed at the YMCA
and YWCA to find a job, not too many had jobs, like, you know, we were lucky
enough to get these jobs.
LU: And did you have to get special permission to leave the camps?
MM: Not that I know of.
LU: No?
MM: Yeah. I’m sure that we had to inform them that we were going, and where wewere going, and things like that.
LU: Now, I know when some families left the camps- this might have been after thewar, though- they had sponsors, or people who would sponsor them in Ontario. You
didn’t have a sponsor?
MM: Well, the Homewood may have been our sponsor. It sounds logical.
LU: And what kind of jobs did you do?
MM: At the Homewood? Mostly in the kitchen, whenever any of the kitchen help had
vacation, I took his place, and I got operating the dishwasher, washing pots, peeling
potatoes [chuckles]. Cleaning up, mopping the floors, that sort of thing. And, I
worked there and I worked waiting tables in the dining room, getting food readyand taking it to different wards of the hospital, and then helping them serve it andbring it back. And I worked in the boiler room for a few months, and I worked as award aide, and anything else you can think of [chuckles]. Gardening…[smiles].
LU: So, all this time you finished high school as well?
MM: [Nods] That’s right, yeah.
LU: And when did your family decide to move from Guelph?
MM: When I graduated high school, my sister and I came to Toronto. My second
sister enrolled in St. Joseph’s Hospital, I think, in Guelph, to become a nurse. My
other sister and I came to Toronto and I enrolled at university.
LU: Which university?
MM: University of Toronto, in Mechanical Engineering. And so, I forget what
happened but, ah [chuckles], I flunked my first year.
LU: And what was the year that you went into university?

16MM: ’49, I think it was. Yeah, ’49. So, my mother and father decided that they’d leave
Guelph and come to Toronto to make sure I was still in line [chuckles].
LU: And did your other sister stay in Guelph?
MM: [Nods] Yeah, she finished her nursing course and then she came to Toronto andgot a job at East General Hospital, I think it was.
LU: And what did your other sister do, when she came to Toronto?
MM: Uh, she got a job with the YWCA on McGill Street, downtown. And she worked
there for, oh, hmm, quite a few years.
LU: And what about your parents?
MM: My parents, my mother got a job as a seamstress. And I forgot what she wassewing, it was a, she worked for a while, living in Guelph, and working in Hamilton,
and then when they decided to come to Toronto, she got a job in Toronto as aseamstress in one of those places downtown. My Dad got a job with Simmon’s
mattress factory, and he was a janitor there. And one summer I got a job- no, twosummers I got a job-working at Simmon’s. In the factory, working assembling all thesprings in the shape that they have to be to be a spring-loaded mattress. And thecovers for the mattress so that there’s three or four different sizes, so I learned how
to use a sewing machine to sew the covers [chuckles]. Had a good time, there was athird floor that had a pretty high storage area where I’d get the springs from themetal shop, and then I would put the burlap-lined cover on the springs, and thenstaple the end of the cover, and then label what it was, and then take it upstairs andstack it up. So, I got ahead of the department that did the packing and stitching andall that, of the mattresses, so, my stock was getting bigger and bigger [clears throat].
I told my Dad that I was going to fill that whole end of the shop with mattresses andhe says, “Yeah.” [chuckles] I did, I finally did.
LU: [laughing] You did?
MM: [laughs]
LU: Did you find that your family had a hard time being welcomed in Toronto?
Having a hard time find jobs at all?
MM: [Shakes head] No, no, Toronto was very good to us. We really enjoyed Toronto.
Anytime that we had a job anywhere, we had nothing but nice people that we
worked with, or worked for, so it was a real pleasure.
LU: And did you have any contact with any other Japanese Canadians? In Toronto or-?
MM: Yeah, we had our relatives that we were always close to, and we kept in touchwith them. So, we would meet them, and then there was a Kisuragi [sic?] Club, youknow the club for seniors? No, adults, I guess. It’s a social club that really advanced
the visitors from Japan, artists, singers like Aiko Saita, things like that, theyencouraged them to come to Toronto and then they entertained them. And, uh, they
kept busy that way. My - yeah, my two sisters, in their spare time they’d play tennis
17with me and some of the other guys, in the summertime. In the wintertime, there
was badminton, so we kept busy that way.
LU: And where did you live in Toronto?
MM: When our family came, when my mother and father came to Toronto, I was in, I
had - I’m getting mixed up here.
LU: So, you and your sister came to Toronto first?
MM: Yeah, and after a year, my father and mother came. So, we had - we lived in thethird floor of a house that was owned by [coughs]-excuse me-a Mr. and Mrs.
Koyama. And I had a room on the first floor, my parents and my sisters lived up on
the third floor, and there was several other people living in that house, too. We
stayed there for, oh gee, quite a few years, three or four years.
LU: And you rented?
MM: [Nods] Yes.
LU: Did you eventually buy your own family house?
MM: Yeah, we bought a house near Keele and Eglington. It was a detached house,um, storey-and-a-half with a full basement, and my sisters did not stay there too
long, because they both got married, so I had the whole second floor to myself pretty
well [chuckles].
LU: And, after you graduated university, what did you go on to be doing?
MM: I left Toronto and I got a job with Canada Air, in Montreal. I stayed with the
Yamashita family, in downtown Montreal, and I had a great time with them. Then
my Dad decided to buy a house, so he said, “It would be nice if you could come backto Toronto and get a job, and help us to buy the house.” So, I quit my job at Canada
Air and came back to Toronto, and I stayed in the house on Strathnarne Boulevard.
And I got a job, didn’t take me long to get this job, which was with an architecturalfirm, called Page and Steel, and I was with them in the engineering department, andthen my chief engineer decided that he’d go out on his own and he asked me if I
wanted to join his firm, I said “Absolutely!” So, yeah, I went with them and I waswith that firm - it changed names a few times - and I was with them for 45 years.
LU: Oh, wow.
MM: Yeah [smiles]. He was a great man.
LU: So, when did you meet your wife and decide to move?
MM: [Smiles] Oh, my first wife, I met her on the tennis court. She was, we used toplay tennis at a place just on the north side of Queen Street, near the Princess Gates.
And somebody would have to go there early on Sundays with the nets because it
was a public tennis court, whoever got there first had to put the net up [gestureswith hands]. That court was theirs for the day. So, somebody would have to getthere early and put the nets up, and it was me! [Smiles, laughs] So, and then, ofcourse, you had to take down, after everybody finished, and this girl stayed on andsaid she’d help me, so that’s how I met her [smiles, chuckles]. That was it.
18LU: And how long were you married for?
MM: Oh, 20 years? And then, she got cancer and died.
LU: And did you have any children?
MM: [Nods] Yeah, we had one, my son, about a year after we got married. This was
the one who was born the day after my father died- oh, the day before my father
died. And then, we didn’t have another child for a while, so we went to see Dr. Roy
Shinobu, and explained the situation, he said, “Well, we don’t have any basis in fact
about this”, but- in his experience, he said that “a couple that has proven that they
can have children, but can’t seem to have one, I’d advise them to adopt one, thenthey’d have a natural child soon after that.” So, he said, “it’s worked 70% of the time,it’s worth it.” So, we adopted a [coughs] [smiles] half-Japanese, half-Irish baby girl,
and, sure enough, a year after that we had a natural daughter [smiles]. A third child.
And, uh, we’ve been - we had a really good time. My first wife was very active insoftball and badminton and tennis, anything else, so she encouraged the kids to playsports whenever she could, so - but the adopted one wasn’t very athletic, so she kindof felt left out, I think, sometimes when we were all having a lot of fun playing tennis
or something [chuckles]. Then, she [first wife] passed away, and a year or so afterthat I got together with Laiko, who I knew from when we were in Vancouver,
because our families lived in the same area in Vancouver and we went to the same
Japanese language school.
LU: Oh, wow.
MM: Yeah, that was fortunate for me. And she had a son and a daughter from her
first marriage, so we didn’t have to bother having more children [chuckles].
LU: And did you find it was hard to stay in touch with all your friends from before
the war?
MM: Yes. I lost track of these two cousins that I used to go to Japanese school witheveryday. I haven’t - in 1992, we went to a reunion out in Calgary, I think it was. And
I met one of them there, but, uh, we hadn’t been in touch at all, not even Christmas
cards or anything for all that time, so, it was kind of difficult.
LU: Did they know that you had relocated to Toronto?
MM: I imagine so, because, uh, in the Japanese newspapers, I had news of all of thecommunities, whether they were in Montreal or Toronto or anywhere, it would go
right across Canada, so, I played a lot of tennis and tournaments and things, so myname was in the paper quite a bit, so I think they knew where I was. But they had
their own interests and things to do.
LU: And, you had a really funny story last time, about when your first son was bornMM: [chuckles]
LU:- and you’d go to the badmintonMM: [smiling] Yeah.
LU: Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?
19MM: [Smiling] Oh, yeah. We had- my first wife and I- joined a badminton club inToronto, that was made up mostly of niseis, and we rented space in some highschools or church halls, things like that, we were always competing with otherbadminton clubs for members, so we couldn’t raise the entrance fee or membershipfee too much. So, we kept looking for places, and finally we found that the Japanese
Canadian Cultural Centre was open, and this was in 1960-’61-1, so I went to- thiswas after it was, the construction was finalized, I went there to see if we could rent
space in there for badminton, and we got the approval to play badminton, and there
was a funny story, I don’t know if you should publish this, butLU: Oh [laughs].
MM: Raymond Moriyama was the architect, and he didn’t want- he was consulted
about this badminton business, and he says, “Oh yeah, it’d be alright as long as they
took the lines up after they finish every night.” [gestures] You know, all the lines on
the corners? And I said, “I think that’s a little out of the question.” So, I went [clears
throat] down to the auditorium, and I looked at these inserts in the floor-[interview
cuts out].
[End of part 3][Start part 4][Part 4 cuts in almost as if the interview is already in progress]
MM: - and I opened it up, and there’s a hole, and it’s lined up [chuckles], so I said,“Wow, you know you have inserts for badminton posts in your auditorium already?
So, you going to let it go to waste?”[chuckles] So, we got to be able to play there, andwe played there three nights a week, I think it was. And, then we had [coughs] thebaby boy, and [smiles] he was a good baby, when it was bedtime, he slept, so we
could take him to badminton and open a closet there and throw him in there[laughs]. And play badminton and then, when it was time to go, we’d open the door,
pick him up, and in the car. So, one night we were cleaning up, and getting washed
up and everything, and got out to the car and sat down, started the car, and then, we
looked at each other and said, “Where is- where’s Barry?!” [laughs]. So, lucky thingthat I was- they trusted me enough to give me a key [chuckles], so I got in there andturned on a few lights so we could find our way in [smiles], and got him out of thecloset, he was still asleep [laughs]. Got him out to the car, and I said, “Barry, you
don’t know this, but you almost became the youngest volunteer caretaker.” [laughs]
Or night watchman! [laughs].
LU: [laughs]. And did you have any participation with the redress?
MM: [Shakes head] No.
1 The Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre was built by late 1963 and officially opened its doors in 1964.

20

LU: No? None whatsoever? Did you remember having any feelings about theredress?
MM: Not, not really. Um, I think that it was a real injustice, there’s no question in mymind that it was illegal, but I didn’t- I was too busy with other things to get involved
with that. So, I didn’t have anything to do with it.
LU: Mmm-hmm. And did you ever have a chance to go to Japan, and visit Japan at all?
MM: No, um, we had chances, yes, to go to Japan, but we, neither my wife or I werereally interested, because all our relatives that were in Japan were-died in the war.
So, there’s nobody that we could see. And there are places in Canada that we wanted
to see first, so, we spent a lot of time driving from here to the east and then to thewest, all around. So, we got to know Canada first [chuckles].
LU: Well, you were born there!
MM: [laughing] Yeah, absolutely!
LU: And, um, so, have you always been an active participant with the JCCC [Japanese
Canadian Cultural Centre]?
MM: As far as I can remember, yeah. I got involved when their first campaign toraise money for the centre, and…you know, have you met Mel Tsuji? Yeah, his father
or grandfather - he and I went door-to-door raising money for it, and, uh, some of
the Japanese that we went to see, they were so poor, they were having trouble
making ends meet as it was, and they were so embarrassed to turn us down, but it
was getting so bad that we almost [chuckles] we almost contributed something tothem! But, uh, that was when I got involved in part of that program. It was quite
successful. But we had to go door-to-door to raise the money. And, we had a meeting
there for it, and we all signed a certificate or something like that, that said that wewould pledge our support to the Centre [coughs] if they ever needed money orsomething like that.
LU: And how do you think that the centre- what kind of role did it play in theJapanese Canadian community? Bringing everyone together?
MM: I think as far as Toronto went, I think they did an excellent job. They got thewhole community involved, there’s - in Toronto, I think, you mention the Centre andthat was, everybody knew you were talking about, what was coming up, things likethat. And, the Centre now, being five times as large, it’s still getting that way, and it’s
expanding. People from Hamilton, Montreal, they all know where the Centre is andwhat it’s doing, and so on. It’s really admirable. And so much of it is done byvolunteers, it’s just incredible, the amount of help they get from the community.
LU: Mmm-hmm. And what are your thoughts about the Sedai Project?
MM: I really don’t know too much about it, except for the article that you put in thething [newsletter].
LU: And how important is it to you that your children and your grandchildren andyour great-grandchildren will learn about their history as Japanese Canadians?
21

MM: I think it’s good that they are educated in that direction. Like, I’ve tried to write
to my kids, tell them things about the community, tried to bring them here
whenever I could, whenever they could work it into their schedule, but it’s difficult,
you know? They have so many things that they are involved with-especially, uh, mygrandchildren, uh, they live in Barrie or London, it’s quite a distance to come here,so - and they are involved in dancing and soccer, everything like that. So, I keep
telling my son that, when his kids grow up and get married, something like that,then he’s going to come to the Centre and take my place [chuckles]!
LU: Yeah [laughs]! That’s good. And, is there anything else that you would like toshare, that you can think of?
MM: The only thing that I remember is ,uh, when we first went to Guelph, I started
working in the kitchen, and the head chef there was a very nice man, and very loudspoken and blunt, but he was still very nice. He said that when he heard that the
Homewood had hired a Japanese family to come and work in the kitchen andeverywhere else, and they were coming on this particular day, he said ‘We all werelooking out the window waiting to see you come walking down the street in yourkimonos [chuckles].”
LU: [chuckles] And did you arrive in kimonos?
MM: No, no [laughs]. But he was funny that way, he was a hard worker and I learned
a lot from him. The, uh-my boss, particular boss, in the kitchen was the dietician, andshe was very nice. And she gave me every job in that kitchen that you can imagine.
Yeah, “just go ahead and do it.” She said, “it’s good for you.” [chuckles] “If you have
any trouble, come and see me, but you can work it out.”[chuckles]
LU: And, before we finish, do you want to tell the story about your Dad and Bloor
Street?
MM: Oh! [laughs] My Dad used to drive the car, and we’d be in the back, and he’dsay, “Oh, we’re here, we’re coming up to Bloor Street.” And we’d say “Dad, it’s not‘blow-er’ Street, it’s ‘Bloor’ street!”, “No, no, it’s Bloor. B-L-O-O-R.” “What about this?
F-L-O-O-R. How do you pronounce that?”[chuckles] “Floor”. He says, “Argument
over.” [chuckles] And my mother was in hysterics, she was laughing. [giggles]
LU: [laughs] Is there anything else that you would like to add?
MM: I’ll probably think of something later on [chuckles].
LU: Well, thank you very much!
MM: Thank you! Gee, time goes fast.
[End of interview]22