OTTAWA, 1999: my partner’s uncle shows me the program of a reunion, several years earlier, of Fort Erie Secondary School. Leafing through, I see a photo of a rugby team, taken in the year 1932-1933—the fourth of the school’s operations. In the background, the familiar school building. I discover my grandfather, Alfred Spear, in the front row, second from the right.
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Tagged 1932, Buffalo, Fort Erie, Memoir, Personal Essay, war, WordPress
It’s odd what one recalls years after — the expression of a face, a sound, words spoken which at the time seemed of no special importance. I remember the smell of the glossy hockey programs sold in the 1970s and 1980s at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium. For some years my uncle Mark held seasons tickets, and together we watched a number of games. But of course everyone with a connection to the French Connection will recall above everything else the 1975 Stanley Cup final, the Buffalo Sabres versus the Philadelphia Flyers. I watched those games in the bedroom of my grandparents’ Fort Erie house where my father had grown up, and I can recall with great clarity the bats and fog which constitute a good part of Sabres legend.
