Gary Fogarty: Painter, Poet, Loving Husband, “Feisty Senior”

Gary Fogarty: Painter, Poet, Loving Husband, “Feisty Senior”

My full name is Gary Allan Fogarty.

I was born in Toronto, in a house on a tiny street called New Street, which is near Bay and Davenport on January 21st, 1937. I’ve lived in Toronto all my life. I think my father’s mother was born overseas so I would say I’m Irish Canadian.

I was the first born in my family, and after me came my brother and sister. From there, we moved around a bit. My father and mother, well sometimes it was a little dicey. They got along and sometimes they didn’t. My father was a drinking man and that was bad for the family. He was a bane to our lives. Over time he was very abusive and it got worse and worse. It just wasn’t happy.

Gary Fogarty

We got along as best we could. Mother was just wonderful and braved it all out. Her name was Selma but everybody called her Sally. My Dad’s name was Thomas Earl Fogarty. My brother is 76 now, and my sister is 74. They all live in Toronto.

I mostly grew up on the Bathurst/Bloor area. I went to Palmerston Public School and we lived on a little street called Euclid Avenue. After public school I went to Harbord Collegiate and I was in the Arts & Academic program there. I really wanted to be an artist and a painter. I did a lot of sketching back then but somehow I gave it up.

Do you do any sketching or painting now?

I mostly play with it now, I write pieces of poetry. The stuff I mostly write- I call it “word pictures”. I learned that from Japanese Haiku. That’s a three lined little verse that has seventeen syllables in it. It’s a wonderful tool, it gives you such a wonderful picture up here.

When I was growing up, everybody knew everybody. Our street was Euclid, then there was Manning Avenue and we used to go to Christie Pits. We used to go skating there in the winter time and in the summer we used to slide down the slopes there on a piece of cardboard. We used to play Cowboys and Indians in the back alleyways (laughs).

On Halloween we would go out trick or treating and we would go out four or five times. My favourite was always candy kisses, and then they had lollipops too.

Central Tech was a good school, I had great teachers in the Arts and Academic Section. Some of the teachers were quite memorable. Our home room teacher, his name was George Turner. He was a vet from the War. A tough guy but a heart of gold. I remember the first day of class, he came out and said “Some of you guys look pretty tough. If you have any beefs with me, let’s just get it out of the way right now. We can go into the back room right now.” And that was his introduction to us (laughs) and he was wonderful. Another one of my teachers, in the Arts Section, her name was Doris McCarthy, she just died several years ago, she was 100 years old. Every summer she used to go up to the Arctic and she used to paint there. She was very well known in Toronto and in Canada I think. She was an amazing teacher and she was a kind of mentor to me. She always remembered me too. I guess I was a good art student (laughs)

I always wanted to be a painter, but I just never got there. I left school when I was sixteen, things were tough at home. My mother was raising us alone and she was going all the way to New Toronto from downtown to work every day. She was getting wearier and wearier every day. My father didn’t turn out so well and they broke up and he went out on his own. It was a good thing he left when he did because he was very abusive. I went out to work then.

(Laughs) I was an office mail clerk for a motion picture company- Odeon Pictures of Canada. Their head office was on Carlton Street. They had an office tower that was part of a theatre.

There was all sorts of movie stars coming and going. I met a few of them (laughs). There was Mae West and then David Niven- he was a very elegant gentleman. Oh, and a stripper (laughs). She had a part in a motion picture and she got on the elevator one day with all the big shot execs one day, her name I think was Sally Rand.

I used to hang out with the guys in the Art Department. They used to draw the ads that were in the newspaper on the weekend for the movies that were playing. They were great people. I really wanted to do what they were doing. I was pretty young in those days.

And as I got older, sixteen or seventeen, my life took a great big change at that point.

What happened then?

I guess I was 17 when I met Carol, who was my wife for 53 years. Well, she wasn’t my wife at the time, but she turned out to be. She was 15 years old then and she was just coming home from being in foster care. Her mother put her out to foster care when she was 3 years old and she didn’t come home until she was 13. They lived in the Carlton & Jarvis St. area near Allan Gardens.

At the time I was working for a company called Rapid Grip and Batten. They were connected to the motion picture company. They did all the art work for Odeon Theatres. I had great relationships with everybody I ever worked with. A couple of the guys went out for lunch one day, to a little café at Queen and McCaul Street where we used to go. Next door was a record shop called Records Unlimited. All the kids went there when they wanted the latest rock and roll recordings. So this day we had lunch and we went to the record shop and I saw two girls in the window. And I said “just a second guys I want to check something” and I went inside and one girl turned to me and I said “Oh my God, that’s it for me”

So I went in and I spoke to her. And she smiled and I smiled and we went for a coffee after work and that’s how it all started. We were together for a little over 53 years. As kids we were really in love. She was struggling to find herself after being in foster care so long.

We used to go to the movies, and the dances at St. Peter’s Church on Bathurst Street just north of Bloor, every Friday and Saturday night. We had a tight group of friends in the neighbourhood.

Tell me about your family.

Carol and I were married for 53 years and we had 3 kids, a boy first, his name is Bruce, he lives in Dorney Court. We had a daughter named Kelly Anne and several years later we had a boy named Richard. Carol really was my life. She was such a sweetheart and we were best friends.

At the time we were living in Suffolk Street in a tiny attic with 2 children. You could hardly stand up in there. I can remember how hot it was. There was a lot of mice and things in our place. And I was telling the guys at work about the conditions and one of them told me about this ad in the paper for a place called Ontario Housing. And they said I should try it and maybe get a better place for my family. So I thought that would be great. One of the guys called Jack helped me with a letter that said all the problems we were having. So I sent this letter off and within a week I had a call back.

I can’t give you the exact date when we moved here to Lawrence Heights but it would be around 54 years ago. We were the 3^rd family to move into 22 Varna and I’ve lived there ever since. It was brand new. We thought it was so fantastic- there was the open school yard at Bathurst Heights Collegiate- grass, trees, it was unbelievable. When there was DeHavilland airways, the planes used to fly so low right down Varna Drive, sometimes we would look out of our window and we could wave at the pilot, and they would wave back.

At that time, on the East side of Varna Drive, there was nothing. We watched them build all those houses up from Lawrence. The neighbourhood was so wonderful, it was like living in a new world. We got to know everyone in the building. There was never any scrapping, we all helped each other. I remember the family across the hall, their names were Richardsons. Carol was friends with everyone. She was one of the darlings of Lawrence Heights - even today people talk about her. She used to babysit for a lot of the mothers. She never charged anyone a penny. All the mothers that used to have kids, they helped each other. The whole building was like that.

It really saved us, coming here. We needed a decent place to bring the kids up and we were very fortunate. If it wasn’t for the people who helped us then I don’t know where we would be now.

But it’s changed a lot over the years. There never used to be the conflict there is now. A lot of it now is scary and shameful. It always used to be downtown, these problems, I guess it was inevitable it came to Lawrence Heights. But it certainly wasn’t like that for many many years here - all the conflict. I mean, I guess there was always the guys who would get tanked and come home and take a swipe at their wives but nothing near what has gone on here in the past few years.

I guess the grass and green areas. There was Lawrence Plaza, everybody used to go there. There was either a Woolworth’s or Kresge’s and they had the best lunch counter in the area. Carol and the other mothers used to take the kids there - that was a big deal there. I was working a lot and didn’t spend a lot of time in the outdoors. I was out of the house at 7 am and not get home until 8 or so at night. No matter what time I got home, she always had supper on the table within 5 minutes. I used to like her stew, with beef and vegetables in it, and she was a great baker, she used to bake cakes and pies.

I guess I could say it always had a certain camaraderie. I`m friendly with a lot of people here. People mostly here know me, and they recognize me from my baseball cap (laughs) Lawrence Square mall became a meeting spot for me. It became my sanity after Carol died. There used to be a lovely restaurant there upstairs. The people there were so nice, I don`t know why they left, but I think the mall people raised their rent. They had nice breakfast and dinners in the evening. There wasn’t a Tim Hortons back in the days (laughs).

Well the population has certainly grown over the years. And it’s become very diverse, with different people from all over the world. We haven’t had the conflict that we have now, especially with the kids. And there’s a lot of violence attached to it and that’s not a good thing. It’s become so territorial now, all the groups. We’re not alone though, Lawrence Heights is not alone in that kind of thing. We’re really a microcosm of what’s happening in the world. It’s just connected to the lack of money and security that people have, it seems to be getting less and less secure for people.

But you know, it was an experience for me coming here and it still is. I love it here. When I look out my window and I see the sun, now there’s a sight that I’ve looked out at for more than 50 years. I worry about not having that sight to see. If I had to move somewhere else and not see the sight that I’ve seen for 50 years, I wouldn’t know what the hell I would do. I really wouldn’t know. And that’s the way I feel about that.

What are your hopes and aspirations for the future of the community?

One thing I’d like to see more of is a little more harmony between the families that live here. We have to get past this scrapping one another to make a better place for our kids. I hope it changes in the years ahead, because if it doesn’t we are all going to be in big trouble.

I’d like to see is a decent place for people to come to and be safe with their children, and bring them up. A place for families and young people to connect in a decent atmosphere without fear or looking over your shoulder at night when you’re coming from the bus shelter. Where people can have better safety and really feel like they will have a better life than the place they came from.

Are you part of the Feisty Seniors group?

Yes I am.

I go over there and volunteer. They have Bingo, and every once in a while they have an outing. We went to St. Jacobs and then we went to the Cirque du Soleil, that’s amazing. We have lunch sometimes too- they lay out a good spread too (laughs) I wasn’t really clued into to a lot of things until after Carol died. I love people and I love helping people. I’d like to see a hell of a lot more seniors coming there. I wonder if they know about it. Sometimes there’s only 5 people, sometimes more (laughs)

There’s 99.9% women over there (laughs) I have a good time.

What are you most proud of in your life?

I would say it’s being married to Carol, who was my wife and raising our kids here. I think of here every day, and I look at her picture the first thing every morning. She died of pneumonia in 2009.

The only kind of wisdom I can come up with is that instead of disliking each other, people really need to try and get to know people and become friends. They spend too much time thinking about differences instead of being friends. There is too many divisions.

I don’t want to move from here when all this building starts and I know there are other people who don’t want to move from here. When I get up every morning, I look out that window, and that’s what I see. If that was taken away from me, I don’t know what I’d do. I talk to my wife’s picture every morning. I say my prayers and ask about her. She’s still really deep in my heart. That apartment of mine - she’s there and I really wouldn’t like to lose that. I don’t know where I’d go if I lost that. It’s important to think of the human side of things when change comes.