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are. In retrospect, at the same time I discovered how vulnerable some people can be to persuasive talkers and how people can be consumed by cults.

      The grim experiences I encountered in Harlem, fortunately, are not all that I remember. There are good memories. My first sexual encounter took place in Harlem, in the rumble seat of a car. It was a passing moment of youthful exuberance. These things happen. No matter how you cut it, the Harlem years are a part of my roots and have helped define who I am. I’ve gone back many times, including on my honeymoon. When I went back I would often see some of the gang I knew as a boy, still hanging around the same corners or sitting on their front stoops. When they recognized me, they greeted me with the same foul language and love they expressed back then.

      In New York, I started a habit that would eat away at me for half a century and threatened my life at one point. I started smoking cigarettes. Back then, we used to “dinch,” which means you choke off the lit end to save the rest for later. I kept my smoking from my mom, but I used to put the cigarette butt in my pocket, where she would find it when she was doing laundry. In some respects, I guess I wasn’t too bright as a young fellow.

      I played around a bit with reefers, or marijuana. The stuff was all over the place down there, and it was hard to avoid, so I tried it a couple times, but it just didn’t work for me. Unlike Bill Clinton, I did inhale. I also started to drink while in Harlem. I didn’t drink beer down there. Instead, the beverage of choice was Sneaky Pete wine, which is American slang for fortified cheap wine. There’s a song about it, “Sneaky Pete” by Sonny Fisher. It’s a classic:

      Well the old hound dog come a-snoopin’ around my door

       Took a drink of Sneaky Pete, ain’t seen that hound no more

       Like the little white rat he drunk on Sneaky Pete

       Told the big tom cat don’t you even bat your eyes at me

       Well down in the hen house I thought I heard the chicken sneeze

       It was a big red rooster he was drunk on Sneaky Pete

       I wants a big fat woman, bottle of Sneaky Pete

       Now I’m a tellin’ you boys that stuff just can’t be beat

      When I came back to Canada I had to learn how to drink beer because it was far more common. I soon discovered that I liked beer. It was easy to get and cheap. I can remember it being ten cents a glass.

      Meanwhile, through the dirty thirties the world had slowly begun to turn its attention to Europe, where tensions were growing astronomically in the wake of the rise to power of the Nazis in Germany. Their racist policies and expansionist belligerence perhaps didn’t resonate immediately with this seventeen-year-old, Harlem-living Canadian kid, but in time the dangers hit home. My mother grasped the threat, and as the Second World War was breaking out, she sent me home to Canada. I’m not sure how I would have turned out if I had stayed in Harlem. There were many negative influences and not a lot of hope for young blacks. In that regard, you could argue that the war saved me. We were in New York, but Canadians were being asked to register for the draft, so she told me I’d better get back to Canada and sign up.

      Soon after I came back I began living with my father. None of the women my father knew were aware he had a son my age. He had never talked about me, and he told me not to mention I was his son (though we were known as Big Alex and Little Alex). One night I was going home with my girlfriend at the time, my first serious one, Eulie Abbott. Eulie was beautiful but possessive. Girls would surround me, because I was a pretty handsome dude, and she would yell, “Leave him alone, he’s mine.” That didn’t sit too well with me because I don’t like possessive women, so that relationship was doomed. Anyway, as Eulie and I were going along Queen Street and looking up Spadina, I could see and hear a big fracas outside the beer parlour on Spadina where all the porters used to hang out. The ladies of the night used to hang around as well, so they could get to the porters (who had a pot full of money after returning from their runs) before they got home. I was told the next day that my father had been beaten up by a young guy named Wilfred Hayes in that fracas. Now, I remembered Wilfred as one big, tough dude and a boxer of some repute. I was fuming the next morning when I got up, so I grabbed my switchblade, a souvenir from my recent term in Harlem, and went looking for Wilfred.

       This picture was taken in Toronto, shortly after I returned from New York. I am nine teen years old.

      There was nothing out of the ordinary about carrying a switchblade on the streets of Harlem. Most men and many women carried them there. But that wasn’t the case in Toronto. I made my way over to Wilfred’s apartment, near University Avenue, north of Queen Street. When he came down stairs and opened the door, he was surprised to see me. He hadn’t seen me in the three years I’d been away. The moment he opened the door I flipped open the knife. “Wilfred,” I said as calmly as I could, because I was angry, “I hear you had a fight with my father, and I’m telling you I’m here to cut your goddamn throat from ear to ear.”

       The dapper Alexander brothers, Linc and Hughie, shortly after my return to Toronto from New York.

      I was a mean son of a bitch and, having just gotten back from Harlem, I was very schooled in the facts of life on the streets, even though I wasn’t a street regular. His eyes were wild with fear at the sight of the knife, and as he backed slowly and cautiously up those old wooden stairs, he was mumbling and stuttering. He started to cop a plea, apologizing and trying to justify how and why he would beat up an old man.

      I said, “I’m sorry, Wilfred, I’m still going to cut your goddamn throat.” Eventually, he persuaded me to let him tell his side of the story, but that blade stayed a couple of inches from his neck. He was a boxer and a good one; that’s why I had a knife in my hand. I let him tell his story and try to justify why he beat up my dad.

      He said my father had started playing around with the girl he was going with, who was beautiful and shapely, and he was very jealous of my dad and worried about the embarrassment he would face if he lost her to an older man. When Wilfred was done I said I guessed he had some justification to beat my father up. In a way I was relieved, too, because using that knife was nothing I fancied. But I added, “Let me tell you here and now, if I ever see or hear of you molesting my father again, I’m going to cut your throat, I’m going to kill you, you son of a bitch.” Then I backed carefully and slowly down the stairs and made my way along University Avenue. As I was walking away, I kept my knife at the ready and kept looking back over my shoulder to see if he was following. He didn’t, and he never bothered my father again.

      Later, I stepped into the bar where the fracas had happened and gave everyone there the same message: “Don’t you ever touch my father, any of you sons of bitches, or I’ll come after you with my switchblade too, you bastards.” It hurt me deeply, a young man beating up an old man.

      Another time — a non-confrontational one — my dad was coming off work and I went down to the station to meet him. This was in around 1940, not long after I’d returned from Harlem. Quite proudly, I think, my dad introduced me to his boss, A.B. Smith. Smith, trying to be positive and encouraging, said that I was a big and strong and would make a good porter one day. Now, I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful, only truthful, but I replied that I would never carry anyone else’s bags but my own. “You have the wrong man,” I said. “I intend to go to school and see what happens.”

      Between returning from Harlem and preparing for war, I met Yvonne Harrison. I remember seeing her for the first time at a social event in 1940 in Toronto and saying, “Who the hell is that?” She was considered one of the “untouchables” — not necessarily aloof, but very shy and elegant. I was just back from New York, bold and sharp looking. I said to myself, “That one is for me.” I was bowled over by her beauty, and I decided right then I would marry her. How brash is that? It would take time and effort, but I was prepared to make the necessary sacrifices to win her over. On returning from New York, I had taken some machine-shop training in Toronto and subsequently

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