family – Phyllis Writes Words

Those who know Toronto might be able to picture Victoria Park and Lawrence. For those who can’t, here it is.

1955

In a now-familiar story, the farms near this intersection are sold to developers and cleared to make way for subdivisions. My Grandad buys a 30 x 60′ barn, and he and Dad dismantle it. Many evenings, after the field work is finished, and with the help of family and friends, they haul it by wagon loads up Vic Park to Sheppard, then east to Meadowvale, and north, past what is now the Toronto Zoo, to our farm.

They reassemble the barn about thirty feet from the farmhouse, and it ends up being called “the shop”, but it’s so much more. The tools, workbenches, and welders are there, but so are the family vehicles — a pickup and two cars — and lots of accumulated stuff. The second floor is a chicken pen, holding at least two hundred chickens.

June 1962

I’m five-and-three-quarters years old, and it’s a beautiful Saturday in June. I recall nothing from that day except that, late in the afternoon, our shop catches fire. Continue reading “A Farm Fire Is a Terrible Thing.” →

This is the lane at my first home, a hundred acre farm located just a few miles north of the Toronto Zoo.

I’ve always loved that lane and some of the trees are really old. In my Dad’s words, “My grandfather, Ben Diller, told me that when he was twenty years old (he was born in 1864) he and his father dug young saplings from the wood lot. ‘Father planted one side of the lane and I planted the other.’ Doing a little math you can see that the trees are 128 years old.”

Although title to our farm was snatched from my own grandfather by the federal government during widespread expropriation for airport lands in the early ’70s, this hundred acres has not only managed to survive, its outlook is bright. Continue reading “The lane I love.” →