Opinion My dad was intensely sharp, eager for knowledge, widely travelled and well-read. He was also quick, good-looking, streetwise and, after the clawing terror of war, bored and restless. Like many men of his age, he couldn’t settle down and decided to see more of the world. First was New York and then he came up to Toronto. He worked at Eaton’s and, at the job interview, this red-haired Jewwas asked about the origins of his name. It was code of course, from people who were uncomfortable with Jews. But Phil Coren’s cockney accent confused them and, when he said that his family had originally been Irish, nobody seemed the wiser. He left Canada in late 1950 and never returned. When I was a boy, he sometimes spoke of the “good times” in Toronto and Ottawa, and how rich everybody seemed compared to post-war Britain, but he never gave us many details. It was as though there was something painful at the core of it all. In 1986, I was invited to deliver a lecture at the University of Toronto, met a beautiful young woman, fell in love and married her a year later. Thus son followed father to Canada, but this time the move was permanent. But we were married in a Roman Catholic Church and dad was viscerally hostile to organized religion – he had seen Christian bigotry when he was young and then Jewish bigotry when he married out of his faith. He wouldn’t attend the wedding and never visited us in Canada. It was partly lack of money, but the genuine reason was an apprehension, even a fear, of what he thought would be our religiosity. Mum came over and we went to Britain. That was the best it was going to be. Then in 2000, he suffered a stroke. This fit, active man suddenly had the vitality trashed and thrashed out of him. It broke my heart watching him fight to form words, to walk and to be. Yet from that oppressor came a strange liberation. He said that he would visit us. Mum and dad, my parents, flew to Canada and for three weeks, we showed Phil Coren his old haunts and arranged meetings with some of his old buddies. He’d lived on Spadina Avenue all those years ago and we drove up and down that long, changed road until he said, “Here, it was here.” He got out of the car, walked for a few moments and then put his head in his hands and began to cry. I hugged him, told him it was ok. He looked at me and said, “I left it too long. I’ve left it too long.” The last time I saw my dad alive was at the end of that trip, as he walked arm in arm with my mother through the departure gate at Lester B. Pearson Airport. A few days later, he had a second stroke, fell badly, and died in hospital shortly afterwards. After his funeral in London, I went back to my parents’ home and I sat in his room and wept. I had to sort through his papers and was constantly jolted into tears as I read notes and letters and saw photographs showing how proud he was of my family. Why, then, couldn’t he have broken through the old feelings and visited us earlier? Then I understood. In an old box file were keepsakes from half a century ago. At the bottom, as though hidden, was a photograph of a young Phil Coren with his arm round a lovely young woman. As I looked closer, I realized that they were standing in front of the Toronto house in which he had lived. Attached to the photo with a rusted paper clip was a letter. “It just can’t happen, Phil. I am so sorry. My parents don’t hate Jews and they like you but if I married anyone who wasn’t a Catholic, they would never speak to me again. I can’t do that to them and I can’t do that to me. It would never work. I’m sorry.” There was no name, no address and, yes, I have tried to find out. I do, though, now know why he felt the way he did about the worst of religion and why he wouldn’t visit. I miss him very much indeed and every time I walk or drive by that part of Spadina, I have to fight back tears. God bless you dad. with Michael Coren CSANews | FALL 2016 | 21
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