The Road to Del Was Paved with Good Intentions

For those of you who went to Del it was easy, you already had your foot in the door. For the rest of us, it was sometimes a long and torturous journey. I was always meant to play for Del; it just took longer than I'd hoped. So, if I seemed a little more exuberant than the next guy, it's because I was making up for lost time, in addition to also running out of time.

When it was time to pick high schools in 62/63, my choice was clear. I didn't know anything more about Del than about any other school, and I didn't care either: they had the Drum Corps. Unfortunately, my mother had other ideas. Now it's not that she had anything against the corps or thought that it would interfere with school. After all, she took Jimmy and I up to the Leaside Lions parade corps (feeder corps for the Jungle Kings) each week in the late 50's, we were involved in Sea Cadet bugle bands until the mid-60s and she told us about Monarchs looking for kids in early 65. No, she was bewitched by these Celtic priests from Neil McNeil. No wonder they were called the Holy GHOST Fathers.

These guys had a real racket going - hanging out at Irish clubs and dances, getting themselves invited to Sunday dinner, constantly hustling and recruiting. (It might also have had something to do with the fear Irish people have of the Christian Brothers, given their reputation for harshness in Ireland. Ted Kennedy's father for example clearly remembered his Irish school days and made Ted go to St. Mike's. Actually, I think it was more like: “Over my dead body”. Ted also came in through the back door after York Lions folded, and played French horn in 67, 68 and 69.)
My parents even went further and paid extra for me to take music at Neil instead of typing, though in retrospect it would have done me more good to learn to type, than to learn trombone. Yea, that's right a trombone, with a mouth piece half the size of my face. Paying extra, and I don't even get to choose my instrument. You see some music teachers had a philosophy that you were there to learn music and it didn't really matter what you played, as if it had no relevance to the real world. So I was far enough down the class list that all the trumpets were gone. My appeal fell on deaf ears, even the fact I was playing soprano 3 times a week with cadets, or I could already play better than anyone else, or I could even bring my own coronet my parents bought me for Christmas if there was a shortage. Or maybe it was just spite. In his view bugle bands didn't play real music anyway. (On the other hand, the Latin teacher was great. He was with Jesters.)
At one point in grade 10, I had seven practices a week between playing soprano in Cadets and trombone in the Neil band. What a way to ruin your lips. Why did I stick it out you may ask? It was an easy 80% on my report card, and if you were in the band, you didn't even have to do a music test. I might not have liked it, but I'm not stupid. Meanwhile Eric Scanlon is also at Neil, but marching with Del, so I start pestering him about getting me in. You see there was a perception throughout the 60s that you had to go to the school to be in the corps. Whether that was true or not, I still don't know, but it stopped a lot of guys from trying. Scanlon however, had family connections. For a whole year he keeps telling me he'll talk to the Monk, who ever the hell that is.

Rosary Sunday was the final straw. There we were lined up on the field at Exhibition Stadium next to Del. In a brass band the trombones are in the first rank so that you don't bash the guy in front in the back of the head, unless you're lucky and can hit the music teacher pretending to be a drum major. This means I'm almost in line with Eric the cymbals smasher, and we start trading insults across the gap during the proceedings. Naturally, this did nothing to endear me to the maestro, who kept turning around and glaring at me. (Some people just take these religious events too seriously.) Mind you, I wasn't in his good books to begin with, especially after thinking he was away one day and he walks through the door while I'm playing Del's 64 record for the class. Hey, what was I supposed to do? Scanlon had just brought my copy to school that day and I couldn't wait to hear it. So my career as a trombonist is over, one way or the other. I turned in all my stuff at the end of term, without regret.

That really was the summer of change, because Jimmy and I also quit Sea Cadets and joined Golden Monarchs. By the time September rolled around, I decided not to go back to Neil at all. Having been welcomed into Monarchs we committed to staying on so I ended up at East York Collegiate. What a change: from a school of 700 where almost every teacher new your name (and knew your parents), to one of over 2000 where you could be anonymous. Plus the music teacher would let you play any instrument you wanted, so obviously it wasn't the damn trombone.
The guys in Monarchs were impressed when I said I had played for Vanguard, thinking I meant some outfit in Chicago, but it was really the Sea Cadet Corps named for HMS Vanguard. My exposure till then had been limited to watching shows at Varsity, the Ex or East York Stadium. How was I supposed to know there was another group around using the same name? So at last I'm in the real world, even if it's only Jr. B. There wasn't much choice. We couldn't get into Del (as far as we knew), York Lions was too far and Michael Power was the other side of the world. So what does that leave, Opti? Not on your life.
The Sea Cadet bandmaster was constantly frustrated by kids staying for a couple of years and then joining Opti after they learned to play. To make matters worse, he also played for Toronto Signals for years, and they went through a bigger problem when a bunch left to form Ambassadors. He really didn't think much of the M&M types. The band members also happened to be same bunch most actively involved with the boathouse at Ashbridge's Bay, sailing all summer and keeping everything in repair, so the bandmaster knew me well. But when I ran into to bastard at the Ex during the Centennial Military Tattoo, he just turned and walked the other way, still holding a grudge.

While I'm thinking about it, let me tell you something about my little brother. Jimmy was very ill as a child. He had multiple operations and spent months at a time in Sick Children's for over two years when he was around 7 or 8. Some of you may remember the scar that wraps around his left side from his middle front to his upper back. It looks like a shark tried to bite him in half. He rarely took his shirt off because it grossed everyone out. In fact I still get grossed out. When we joined Leaside Lions he naturally wanted to play drums, but the Doctor told him he would never (probably in his whole life) have the strength to carry a drum, so he played cymbals and pounded the sticks at home. But the one thing you should never tell Jim is that he can't do something. By the time he was 11 he was playing snair in Navy League Cadets (the drum was about half his size) and at 14 was the lead snair in Sea Cadets, and teaching other kids. However when we got to Monarchs it was summer and all the drum spots were filled, so he played Rudimental Base Drum - with a solo off the line. So the kid, who would never have the strength, was walking around the field with a monstrous drum attached to his chest: so much for doctors.

Actually, he surprised me even more when he tried out for Del. He had severed a tendon in his hand, and had a huge cast on for months after the operation. I only realized about 10 years ago how difficult this must have been when I had the same operation myself. The cast not only intentionally restricts the movement of the wrist and fingers, but also weighs about 5 pounds. I think that would be similar to trying to play a horn with your jaw wired shut.

So we put in two seasons with Monarchs and had a lot of fun. For a small corps, there really was some terrific talent in the group and great loyalty. I could have listened for hours to the three Rouselle brothers playing baritone, doing their own arrangements too. I think the loyalty was more to Fred Hehn than the corps itself, and why this guy is not on the ODCA honour list I don't know. Fred went back to the scout band at Danforth Tech that became Opti, then with Midtowners, Monarchs and finally Scarborough Firefighters. Few have given as much of themselves to Drum Corps, both as horn instructor and corps director and created a good environment for kids, especially in the less glamorous Jr. B ranks. Fred called me the week after I joined Del about coming to Firefighters, and if I hadn't already committed, I would have been hard pressed to say no. That was the kind of loyalty he inspired. And I think the reason Dileo was still with Monarchs even after he started going to Del, but then he had a history with Fred going back to Midtowners.

Unfortunately, the Lions clubs pulled their sponsorships of both York Lions and Golden Monarchs at the same time in 66, leaving only 2 major corps of choice for the serious minded. How drastically things had changed in 5 or 6 years.

There really was only one choice for Dileo, Jimmy and myself, but we thought we'd bugger around a bit. A number of our guys went to Opti and through them we were invited to their practice at the Armouries. So we figured we had nothing to lose by checking it out. We were treated royally, given refreshments, and shown around by one of the instructors. We said we would think about it. Yea, right!

Next stop on the tour was Del, but someone must have spilled the beans to Zack about what we'd been up to. So at last, here he was “The Monk” in the flesh! No warm greeting. No offer of a can of pop while we took a leisurely tour. Instead, he's tearing a strip off us! His message was quite blunt: if you want to join fine, if you don't, get out. I loved him right away. Naturally, we stuttered out a response: of course we're here to join, Brother. With that he hands horns to Dileo and me, dropped Jimmy of with the drummers and quick stepped the two of us up to the smoking room, where we were immediately inserted into the Sop section and started playing numbers we sort of knew. Just like we'd always belonged.

And the rest is (shared) history, and the best three years of my youth.

Murt

PS - I don’t know how it was for the rest of you guys, but my Mother was forever taking pictures of us. The usual reason was to send them to our Grandparents in Ireland. Sometimes it wasn’t so bad, such as when we were Cadets, because we had to wear uniforms on cadet nights and she’d just grab us on the way out the door. Those are usually the ones where I look pleasant. But other times she’d drive me crazy until I put on whatever uniform, just so she could get a picture - and my expression I think is obvious. The most obvious is “the happy trombonist”, and why not. I had to change out of my school uniform and put my band uniform on at 7 in the morning because I was handing in all my stuff at Neil that day (and hadn’t told her), then put my school uniform back on, catch the bus and be at school by 8:30. I wonder how cheerful you’d be? As much as I detested this posing at the time, 30 some odd years later I’m kinda glad.

I don’t think the route Jimmy and I took to Del would be all that unusual for kids not attending the school, so why not share your stories.

M