New reviews

 

I just reread your book and I again found it a really good picture of the the Park at that period. Bravo!

Margaret

These comments from an unknown correspondent named Iremedix,

If nostalgia had a postal code, it would probably be Lawrence Park in the middle of the last century.

And A Mid-Century Childhood: Growing Up in Toronto's Lawrence Park does something quietly radical. It refuses to let that world disappear without being witnessed.

Children playing outside until the street lights flickered on; Shopping trips that were events, not errands; Church and Christmas woven into the rhythm of ordinary life; Schoolyard games that required imagination, not Wi Fi. You did not just write a memoir. You preserved texture.

The beauty of your book is that it reads like anecdotal social history wrapped in warmth. It answers the question so many of us whisper after it is too late. “How I wish I had asked Grandma about that.” And instead of letting that regret linger, you answered it. That is meaningful work.

Your voice carries calm observation rather than exaggeration. There is no frantic nostalgia. Just careful remembrance. Through stories of food, birthdays, bedtime routines, and your immediate family, you illustrate how ordinary life once moved at a different pace. Safer. Slower. More rooted. In a world that feels increasingly overstimulated, that reflection is not just charming. It is grounding.

A Review from the North Toronto Historical Society

 

Hilary Dawson, North Toronto Historical Society

In 1943, Mary Elizabeth Welsman (Hughes) was born into 72 St. Leonard’s Crescent. She lived there until she was seventeen. It’s where she grew and played, made friends and discoveries, and learned about life’s ups and downs. Mary gathered her memories to produce this book for her daughters and  grandchildren. Importantly, she added context: current events, changing social attitudes, developments in household appliances and the like.

Mary and her friends seem to have been “free range” children, although in practice they remained on St. Leonard’s Cresc., and the one block of Dawlish it enclosed. Once school age, Willer's at Yonge and Ranleigh was "a terrific source of penny candy. You could get a bag full for a nickel.”

The blend of social history and nostalgia makes A Mid‐Century Childhood a great read whether you grew up in Lawrence Park or even in the U.K.! 

GUIDED WRITING GROUP

 Somewhat inspired by my own book, and considering how often people will say they wish they could write, I am facilitating a pilot project in my neighbourhood - a strata community of 235 small modular homes - and have launched a Guided Writing Group.

We met last week for the first time. I had promoted the idea as widely as I could within the village and a dozen people showed up for the first session. They arrived with a notebook or laptop and pens.

The structure of the session was fairly simple. The focus would be childhood, up to the age of about ten.  For the first ten minutes everyone wrote about a specific topic - in this case, the first home they remembered. After the writing segment, a few people shared what they had written. We moved on to one more fixed topic, and then it was a sort of pot luck. 

I had written numerous short subject suggestions on small pieces of paper, and passed the envelope around the table. One was "cars" and the woman who pulled that one was a person born in England in 1940. The family, predictably, did not have a car. She pulled another slip of paper and carried on. 

Ten minutes was too long for some and not enough time for others. By the time we were through the 90 minute meeting, everyone had shared at least once. The age range of these attendees was about 20 years. 

We will meet twice a month over the coming months. 

KIND COMMENTS FROM RECENT READERS

 I purchased your book at the Lawrence Park Church Christmas Market and have just finished it. I devoured it. It is such a fascinating, and well written, social history of mid-century life in Toronto. Thank you! I’m now kicking myself that I didn’t buy your book about the cottage. I would love to read it as well! (David John Harrison)

From St. Clements' friends:

I have finished your wonderful book and found myself on race day in the Brown School playground. I almost shed a tear in recollection Beautifully done, I loved it all. You really captured it. (CMGS)

What a fun romp through so many similar and some shared memories. Got quite a chuckle from the photo of you at that mixed party. Didn’t we think we were grown up! But what fun we had. I do challenge one thing. I was very privileged but I did have a glass, albeit small, of freshly squeezed orange juice every day of my childhood, so oranges must have been available in my neighbourhood. My paternal aunt who was a nurse took a very proprietary view of guarding my health so it was mandated for me but everyone in the household got some too. Lucky me. ( S. D. M.)

Hi… loving your book. So much parallels my own experiences. I physically felt the mustard plaster! Fascinated by it all. (Cynthia Luks)

And neighbours, both English born:

I just had to let you know that when I returned home from choir last night I made a cup of tea and opened your book! I was quite thrilled to see that we seemed to have lived in a parallel universe. Every page I turned described a situation, home habits or games where I had an identical experience! Even the potato fist tapping and the Teddy Bear skipping verse! So there we were, on different continents, playing the same games, which has me wondering how that could be, unless someone somewhere had a child that had travelled from Britain or Canada to share these games ? (Liz T.)

 I have been enjoying your book! I'm amazed at how much you remember... I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to recall even half of my own memories, and details. (Jill S.)

 

Introduction to

A Mid-Century Childhood - 

Growing Up in Toronto's Lawrence Park 

It has been my ambition to write this book less as memoir and more as social history. My personal story is far from exceptional and not in itself especially interesting. Nevertheless, many snippets of memoir have intervened.

Years ago when I was doing research for Frank Welsman, Canadian Composer, I came across Clarence Duff's memoir of his childhood in Toronto in the 1880s.¹ It was an invaluable book for my purposes as I sought to imagine my grandfather's early years. I know that non-academic books of this nature can be helpful for anyone wanting to gain a particular sense of what the times were like.

My mid-century childhood was decidedly different from that of my daughters and vastly different from that of my grandchildren. It is for them, therefore, that I have made this record of the way things were when Grandma was growing up.

I grew up in Lawrence Park which, in the middle of the last century, was very much a suburb in North Toronto. Time and place play significant roles in one's childhood, and Lawrence Park is a foundational part of this story. For that reason I chocse to start the book with a brief outline of its history.

With times being what they are right now, I was perhaps drawn to exploring this subject with the hopes that future generations might take a page from this book and remember to enjoy the simpler things in life.

1Duff, J. Clarence. Toronto Then and Now. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside 1984

A Mid-Century Childhood Now Available

 

A Mid-Century Childhood began as a modest chronicle for our grandchildren, to acquaint them with the details of daily life when Grandma was growing up. I have written about what we ate, what we wore, how we got to school, what games we played. There are chapters about church and about Christmas and about birthdays. It's a work of anecdotal social history with a large dose of memoir with some help from contemporaries and a diary.

My generation was blessed to grow up in a quieter simpler world. Our parents had lived through two wars and a depression but we children enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity.

There's an Order Form on this website, with a PayPal option. Price is $20. 😌

A Mid-Century Childhood Coming Soon

 

My latest book, “A Mid-Century Childhood – Growing Up in Toronto's Lawrence Park” is almost finished. The book is a kind of Jeopardy for Grandchildren. It answers the questions that one of these days they may wish to ask. And when that time comes, I won't be around to answer. I'm sure we have all said, “How I wish I'd asked Grandma that”.

There is a decided focus on the neighbourhood I grew up in, namely Lawrence Park, which these days is practically mid-town Toronto. But in the 1940s and 1950s it was a suburb on the edge of the city.

There are chapters on food and shopping, church and Christmas, birthdays and bedtime, school and school yard games amongst others. And I've written a little about my immediate family to illustrate how different their ordinary lives were, in the middle of the last century.