The entire book revolves around a boy growing up while living in back of the family's small grocery store in Toronto's less than affluent area that was once Cabbagetown. Although it's a charming little book there's really not much to it. It's just a collection of short stories about the family store and other aspects of life in the last twenty or so years of the 1800's.

It tells of how the little store barely kept itself afloat by extending credit to the locals and of it's eventual demise due to the same. I think that anyone who lived in the original area would get the most from this book. That's not to say that others won't find it an enjoyable read.

Although better than half a century had passed by the time the author got around tho writing these memoirs in 1953, little had really changed in Cabbagetown. Of course the area had deteriorated into a slum area, and indoor plumbing was still somewhat of a luxury. Many of these tiny grocery stores still dotted the neighnourhood in the fifties and still gave credit to their hard pressed regular customers. Also, many deliveries were still brought by horse and wagon, including bread, milk, ice and coal. Although by the end of the fifties the horses and public horse troughs had disappeared.

I remember this store very well. It was on the east side of Parliament just north of the corner of St. David. Very close to the Gay Theatre and Regent Park school. Although when I frequented this store the owners mentioned in the book were long dead. By this time it was just a run of the mill junky little variety store with tin soda pop and tobacco signs plastered all over the outside of it. There was a great billboard beside the store with a platform behind it. We used to climb up there and watch the people and traffic cruise up and down Parliament Street as we gobbled down the goodies we'd just purchased there.

Here's a couple of excerpts from the book.

"From this store, and members of the clan whose headquarters it was, there came in later years a Minister of Finance of Canada, a mayor of Toronto, a Speaker of the Ontario Legislature and a director of the T. Eaton Company, besides others of lesser celebrity. So if it appears that the store though small, and in a sense humble, was no ordinary store, and no ordinary family, it is my contention that appearances, in this instance at least, do not deceive."

"And as a boy the first boots I remember came from what the English call a "bespoke" shoemaker, that is, they were made to measure. The mass production of boots had not come into existence though it did very shortly afterward. Nowadays the average citizen would no more think of having a pair of shoes made to order than he would of having a hat made to suit the special bumps on his head."

Although the book has been long out of print I managed to find a copy in the Canadiana section of the Toronto Public Library at the below branch.

S. Walter Stewart Branch
170 Memorial Park Ave.
Toronto, Ontario
M4J 2K5
(Coxwell and Cosburn area)