Call Me Russell Read online

  Let me tell you about my mom’s stepfather, KK, whose real name was Kewal Kohli. He was a Punjabi Hindu who married my grandmother after she divorced my grandfather, Christopher Waike. We called him Dadda, but to everyone else he was just KK.

  My grandfather Christopher had taken up with another woman when my mom was in her early teens, and my grandmother filed for divorce. KK took Christopher’s place. He adored my grandmother and she adored him. He was the coolest guy I have ever met. Even as a small child, I could see that this guy was an operator. He knew how to work a room and could get things done. Running late for a flight? KK could get you right through the usual customs formalities and straight to the gate without any hassles. He was charismatic and charming. Being a Hindu never seemed to be any issue. I remember visiting him as a kid in 1975 and seeing this huge portrait of Sai Baba (a Hindu holy man) in their flat on Elliot Road. There was also this small altar with a statue of Jesus, Mary and other Catholic icons. I remember being a little creeped out by the altar. I don’t know why, but there was just something scary about it.

  But back when Dad was courting Mom, he was not KK’s first choice of marriage partners for her. KK had hoped to make a match of his own for “his” daughter. Eventually, though, he too was won over by Dad and accepted him into the family.

  So back to Mom being smitten … Once Dad realized he was making progress with this woman, he immediately went back to his father and told him, “Dad, I’ve met her, the girl of my dreams.”

  “You mean you’ve met the right girl again?”

  Dad was a bit of a player, which explains why he wasn’t married at the age of thirty-nine. Before he met Mom, he was having a great time in Calcutta and had developed something of a reputation as a playboy—like father, like son? Anyhow, this wasn’t the first time he’d told his dad he’d met the woman of his dreams.

  “This one is different. She’s the one,” Dad said.

  Granddad asked, “How old is she?”

  “Sixteen years younger than me.”

  “Good choice, son!”

  Mom and Dad were married on December 28, 1963. One hundred and fifty people attended the wedding at St. Francis Xavier Church in the Bowbazar section of Calcutta. Mom kept Dad waiting half an hour at the church, while his friends took bets on whether she would show up. After the wedding, they took bets as to how long the marriage would last. According to Mom, people said it wouldn’t last because of the age difference. According to Dad, people said it wouldn’t last because he was Protestant and Mom was Catholic. The church sanctioned the marriage only on the basis that any children be raised Catholic. When Dad died in 2004, they had been married forty years.

  Mom and Dad on their wedding day.

  Mom and Dad got a small one-bedroom flat on Theatre Road, which they shared with Dad’s pal, Trevor Lewis. Work opportunities were slim, and Dad knew that they and their still-unborn children would have better opportunities overseas. Dad wanted to go to England, where a lot of his pals had already moved and were doing well. Mom had no intention of setting foot on British soil and warned Dad that if he went to England, he’d be going alone. She hated grey and gloomy weather and had heard stories of how badly the Tommies—British soldiers in India—had once treated her beloved Grandmother Jessie when she had worked for the Women’s Army Corps during the war. Every day, the WAC would be picked up by truck and taken to various locations around Calcutta. On one particular day, a Tommy thought he’d be smart and told the driver to accelerate just as Jessie was getting on. The truck lurched forward, and Jessie landed on her face, chipping a tooth and scraping her skin. She pulled the laughing Tommy down from the truck and slapped him. My very tough great-grandmother made sure that she wouldn’t be disrespected by the Tommies ever again. Mom had also seen the 1935 version of the film David Copperfield several times, and this too had put her off of England.

  Now that England was off the table, my parents began to explore other options. Some Anglo-Indians were leaving for Australia, but it never occurred to Mom and Dad to move there. Of course, the United States was also an option; but my father, who was always very aware of social and political climates, felt that a darker, brown-skinned man stepping into that country in the mid-’60s would be asking for trouble. He knew what street riots looked like—having seen the Hindu–Muslim riots in India in 1947—and he was well aware of what was happening with the civil rights movement in the U.S. He knew what Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were doing. Having seen India go through its growing pains after independence, and self-conscious about his own skin colour, it didn’t make a lot of sense to him to try to raise a family in the States.

  Word began to spread among Anglo-Indians about another country that had opened its doors: Canada. It was a young country that needed an educated workforce to grow, and while many immigrants arriving there couldn’t speak English, Mom and Dad were fluent. They should get in, no problem—right?

  When my father was alive, he’d occasionally tell me stories of those early years, and I have to say that even though decades had passed since his arrival in Canada, his memories of those days never lost their edge. Even before Dad arrived in this country, he had to face the hard truth about what it would be like as a new immigrant in Canada. In his first encounter with a Canadian consular representative working in Calcutta, whose job it was to screen immigration candidates, my dad was told, matter-of-factly, “You’ll never get a job in Canada, Mr. Peters. You’re just too old.” My father was thirty-nine, going on forty.

  My dad was told, matter-of-factly, “You’ll never get a job in Canada, Mr. Peters. You’re just too old.”

  “That’s okay, I’ll be fine,” my father replied.

  Mr. Walker, the immigration officer, continued: “What Canada needs and wants is young people. They want people who speak English.”

  My dad stared dumbfounded and said, “And what the bloody hell am I speaking to you in? I’m speaking to you in English, aren’t I?”

  Mr. Walker didn’t have a comeback. My father railed. “Now tell me, you have immigrants already in Canada who don’t speak English, do you not? How come they’re allowed in?”

  “They’re cheap labour. They’re the construction workers, and they clean the streets.” My dad shrugged his shoulders and asked, “So you’re discriminating against me because I speak English?”

  That was my dad’s first encounter with a government official. Amazingly, my mom and dad were accepted into the country, under the condition that my mother, who was pregnant with my brother at the time, give birth to the child in India. My father’s sister, Eileen, had also applied to emigrate and was accepted.

  In 1965, less than a year after my big brother, Clayton, was born, my parents picked up and left, choosing Canada as the country in which they would raise my brother and later have me.

  Eric and Maureen Peters landed in Toronto’s west end in August 30, 1965. They had with them their savings—a grand total of $100—and two steamer trunks that contained all of their wedding gifts, Mom’s best linen … and a tiger skin from Dad’s last big hunt in India. For the first ten days in Canada, they stayed with friends, Uncle Mervin and Auntie Edna, while Dad worked odd jobs to put together enough money for a deposit on their first apartment in Canada, a one-bedroom on Rockcliffe Boulevard in Toronto.

  Once that was taken care of, the next hurdle became furniture. They had nothing at all, so they went to Caplan’s on Weston Road, a furniture store still there to this day. They had no money and decided to level with the salesman.

  They said, “We’re new immigrants. We have no money and we need to get some furniture.”

  The salesman asked, “Well, how’s your credit rating?”

  My mom and dad looked at each other in total confusion, then asked, “What’s a credit rating?”

  You see, India didn’t have anything like that; a system where you could actually borrow against future earnings was beyond their wildest imaginings. To their “credit,” the Caplan family who owned the sto
re proved to be good and trusting people who enabled my parents to get credit until they got on their feet. My mom and dad brought furniture home soon after, and although it was nothing extravagant, it was a start.

  My dad got a job soon after arriving. He went from working in Calcutta as a white-collar, trilingual (Dad spoke English, Hindi and German) public-relations person for a German engineering company called Koppers India Ltd. to a paint mixer for CIL in Rexdale. The transition crushed my dad—to the point where he hated the smell of paint until the day he died. There were days when he thought he’d thrown away everything he’d ever accomplished, only to start at the bottom. It was hell.

  He hated his work and he hated Canada. He also became aware of the open racism towards him at the time. Here’s the thing: my mom is very light-skinned, and when she arrived in Toronto, no one could tell where she was from. But my dad was dark, and even in India, within the Anglo-Indian community, he was very much aware of his colour. When walking down the street with Mom in Toronto, he noticed that people would look at them funny. In Dad’s mind, they were asking themselves why a girl like that would marry a darkie like him. He was very sensitive to what he viewed as open racism in Canada.

  And there were other questions, too, like “Where are you from?”

  “I’m from India,” Dad would say to whoever was asking.

  “But if you’re from India, then why do you speak such good English? Where did you learn?”

  In my act, as much as I make my dad sound like he had an Indian accent, in fact he sounded more like a British army officer.

  “On the plane ride over,” Dad would answer sharply. He’d often use sarcasm, wit and his command of the English language to disarm the ignorant. Most strangers never saw him coming. They were expecting him to come at them with something lame, in a thick Indian accent and without any humour—but he was quick-witted and didn’t suffer fools gladly. He’d never hesitate to throw out a quick barb or observation at someone—in the checkout line or just in passing—and was always amused by their blank expressions he got in return. He called it a “dah look” (not “duh” but “dah”) and would imitate the person—mouth hanging open and a blank stare on his face. I should also point out that in my act, as much as I make my dad sound like he had an Indian accent, in fact he sounded more like a British army officer. Think Higgins from Magnum P.I. or Sir John Gielgud’s Hobson, the butler in the movie Arthur. That was closer to Dad’s voice and delivery in real life.

  At home, in Mom and Dad’s new, sparsely furnished Canadian apartment, Christmas was getting closer and closer. When Christmas Eve finally arrived, it consisted of Mom and Dad and my brother. No tree, no decorations, no turkey, no presents. Nothing. My dad walked home that night from his job at CIL, and on his way he stopped at the Kresge’s department store on Dundas Street in the Junction, where in the bright window he saw a beautifully decorated little Christmas tree. It was ten minutes before closing time. He quickly entered the store, spotted an employee and politely asked to speak to the manager. When the manager arrived, Dad asked, “Can you sell me that tree in the window?”

  “We can’t, sir. We have to keep it there for Christmas.” It was then that my father decided to tell the man his story, to explain that he was a new immigrant and he was going to his empty home and to his family on Christmas Eve with not a thing to bring them. I guess the guy felt sorry for him, because he gave my dad the tree—with all the ornaments, too. So a few minutes later, my dad was on the sidewalk outside of Kresge’s, walking home, grinning, with a fully decorated Christmas tree under his arm. Once he brought the tree inside the house, he plugged in the lights, and the little family of three began their first Christmas in Canada.

  Although both my parents were Anglo-Indian and Catholic, my mother had no idea what the traditional Canadian Christmas meal was supposed to be, so she made some rice and daal. Truth be told, this was actually all she could cook. She had never learned to cook back home because her family had a cook. Now, I know this may sound strange considering that she grew up in a small flat with six people, but having a cook or other servants wasn’t something that was exclusive to the very wealthy in India at that time. With millions living below the poverty line, there was always someone you could hire to get things done, and it didn’t cost much. Mom says that Dad never complained about rice and daal for dinner, or her still-undeveloped cooking skills. Soon she mastered mince curry, a dish that we’d all come to love, especially my dad.

  On Christmas Day, Mom went out into the hallway to wish her neighbours a happy holiday.

  “Merry Christmas to you, Maureen!” they said. “And where were you yesterday?”

  “Where were we? We were home.”

  Her neighbours scolded her, saying, “Oh, you should have come over!”

  My mom, a little shocked, replied, “How could we come over? You didn’t invite us. Am I supposed to just knock on somebody’s door and say here I am?” To which they replied, “Yes. That’s how it’s done here.” One woman even said that her husband had won a huge turkey in a contest and they hadn’t even gotten around to cooking it.

  “Would you like it?” the woman said, dumping the turkey she didn’t want on my mom. I wasn’t even born yet, but somehow I can see this image of my bewildered mom, standing in the hallway of the apartment block on Christmas Day, holding a massive raw turkey in her arms.

  “What do you want me to do with this?” Mom asked, as the woman turned on her heel and went back to her apartment.

  “Cook it,” was the response.

  There was a Canadian lady across the street that my mother had started babysitting for, and she knocked on her door.

  “Could you please tell me how to cook this turkey?” my mom pleaded. Eventually, the bird was cooked, and eaten, and my family’s first Canadian Christmas was, if not successful, then at least over.

  There were a lot of moments like this among my family’s first experiences in Canada, and over the years my parents have recounted these stories to me and my brother many times. There’s no anger, no resentment; they were just new immigrants adjusting to a strange and very, very different land.

  My mom had a good sense of humour about some of these misadventures, but my dad was miserable in Canada at the beginning. He missed his father a lot, and his father was not well. He cried when he thought of home, and it really disturbed him to think of his dad in ailing health and being so far away. We have a thing about dads in my family. I’ve got it, Brother’s got it, and Dad had it, too. We all idolize our fathers. We romanticize them and remember them as larger-than-life characters who had great adventures drinking, hunting, travelling. As much as we remember the mundane details of our day-to-day lives with Dad—seeing him leave for work at six in the morning, doing groceries, and always being somewhat angry because he had to get up at five-thirty in the morning—we focus more on who he was as a man, his sense of humour, his style and who he was before we were born.

  In 1967, Dad followed his heart and went back home. He didn’t have enough to pay for the flight, so he bought a fly-now-pay-later ticket on Air India. It was planned as only a ten-day trip, but my mom didn’t believe that was really the extent of it. I think she believed he might never return. Dad begged Mom to go with him, but she refused.

  “You brought us here to this new place,” she said. “I’ve given everything up in India, and now I’m staying here, no matter what.” That’s my mom, strong-willed and determined, and one of the few people I have ever met with the power to shut my dad up instantly. My mother, always hopeful and encouraging, kept pressing him to stick it out. She kept reinforcing her belief in him, telling him to give himself a chance, a little more time at least to forge his way in this new place.

  But Dad went to India on his own. Despite my mother’s fears, he returned exactly ten days later. “I had to come back” was all he said. After living in Toronto for over a year, it had been a real shock for him to see India through new eyes. Despite the despair regarding his qu
ality of life in Canada, he’d gotten used to the clean streets and orderly society that Canada offered. He could never go back and there was no looking back. Like it or not, Canada was home now.

  Despite all the early difficulties my mom and dad encountered, I have never once caught my parents looking back on their lives and wishing they had never left India. With time, they became truly happy in Canada.

  They moved from Rockcliffe Boulevard to sharing a two-story flat above a store on Bloor Street, near Christie. They shared the flat with Aunty Elsie and Uncle Jimmy and their four children, their grandmother, two older sisters and one of their husbands.

  Mom got a job at the Garfield magazine kiosk at the Eglinton subway station—working for a dollar an hour. Dad left the various blue-collar jobs—working at CIL, as a night security guard at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, as a police dispatcher at Toronto’s 51 Division—and eventually landed a clerical job at William Mercer in downtown Toronto. Mom and Dad got another flat of their own on Avenue Road, and Mom started working in the cash office at Holt Renfrew.

  My parents laid the groundwork for our success. They gave me and my brother all the things that they had never had themselves back home. And when it comes down to it, I think that’s what so many immigrant parents hope for: not necessarily a great life for themselves—a better life, perhaps—but at least the promise of an easier one for their kids. I know my parents are thankful that they ended up in this country. They couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. I firmly believe that I wouldn’t be Russell Peters if they had emigrated to Australia,