blog

"My memories of Dad are like a rear-view mirror of life lessons and “what ifs?” of events that have come to shape my life as a husband and a good role model for my kids today.  When I was young, my Dad and I never really got a chance to bond because of the difficult choices in their life – coming over as an immigrant with a wife and two children at twenty-one to Canada and looking to start a new life, there weren’t many opportunities to be the perfect Dad that many people will write about. After finding the financing to buy a restaurant in Northern Ontario, life became very routine for the next thirty years. Basically the restaurant was open eighteen hours a day and three-hundred and sixty three days a year. I wish I could say that I had a Dad that attended my parent-teachers’ interviews, sat in the bleachers to watch my hockey and basketball games or sat down with me after supper to help me with my homework (or my avoidance of homework). But that didn’t happen. Regardless of the excuses that my Dad had to tell me to ease the pain, I never really understood because everybody else’s Dads were in the stands except for mine.

Now, forty-five years later, my Dad is trying to relive the memories of “what could have been” by playing a part in the grandchildren’s lives as if he was twenty-one all over again. As well, my childhood bitterness has turned to regret; not regretting that they didn’t get to see me grow up but that regretting that I never understood why I never had a Dad in the “kid’s sense”. 

With life maturity, comes an understanding of the sacrifices my Dad made to make sure we had enough money to pay the bills and put the boys through university.  It’s a new understanding of the excuses my Dad had to make up to explain his absences from our events, to the sadness that I remembered in his eyes when he saw us coming back from the hockey arena with the other dads and kids. If only Dad knew it’s what he never got to do that had just as much impact on the “great Dad” I’ve become– never knowing that he unknowingly taught me  tolerance, respect, understanding, patience and the importance of being a major influence in my kids lives today. Dad -  It’s not about what you couldn’t do; it’s about what you wanted to do.

Now when I walk down Bay Street, wearing the nice banker’s uniform from Harry’s, I think about how to tackle the day’s problems and work crisis so that I can leave those behind at the end of the day; and become the Dad, my Dad always wanted to be."