I first met my friend Trevor in Grade 9 at the Ottawa high school we both attended more than sixty years ago. Where I was an impractical dreamer in my teenage years, Trevor was both practical and realistic. I did not suspect then that he would maintain links with me for the rest of his life. I did not think we had much in common, and were not kindred spirits. He had been born in Montreal, the only child of a high-school math teacher whom I only ever met briefly once, in his Cote des Neiges apartment shortly before his retirement. I never met his mother. He lived with his uncle and aunt in Ottawa. It would have been rude to ask why: the manner of his life was personal, and none of my business. I lived with my parents and two younger brothers in a spacious suburban Ottawa house after a childhood abroad. I loved reading, languages, and history for their own sakes, thought nothing of career preparation, and disliked with growing intensity science and math, resentful at having to study subjects I did not care for. Trevor saw all school subjects as a means to a practical end: the formal education required for the job market that awaited him. As the years passed, it became clear that he was interested in social work, perhaps in criminology, while I had only the vaguest idea of what I wanted to do once I had finished with school, but that was impossibly far into the future. A career in public service or journalism might call, or perhaps not. Wait and see, I thought. It will all become clear.
What we did have in common was an interest in cars and driving. Trevor acquired his driving license early, as he needed to drive himself to school in his aunt’s 1957 Nash Metropolitan, a curiosity even then, with its minuscule Austin engine propelling an unwieldy and bulbously overweight American two-seater then billed as an “economy” car meant to rival the appeal of the ubiquitous Volkswagen Bug, but failing disastrously to be competitive. Trevor’s aunt and uncle had moved to a new house, but their nephew was permitted to finish his education at the same school so long as he made his own way there. He became adept at servicing the car he affectionately called “Suzy,” changing her oil and tires, and keeping her on the road at a time when all cars, especially smaller ones, were unreliable and the mark of eccentric buyer choice. Naturally, I clamoured to learn to drive my mother’s Mini, and with Trevor’s encouragement, practised three-point turns on our driveway before becoming licensed myself. With my parents’ permission, we took the Mini on a three-day camping trip to New York State. The gas then cost us a total of ten dollars before the four-fold increase in its price imposed by OPEC in 1973.
