[bc-chris]

i was in preschool - so 4 years old. the fire department came by one day to show all us kids a fire truck. i thought nothing could be cooler... then they got a call and had to leave with lights and sirens blaring. i believe that is the day i went home and told my mom that when i grew up i wanted to be a fire truck... yea... a truck!

cool aside... my preschool teacher was robert munsch. best story times EVER!!

another memory from when i was 4 was seeing the original star wars not only in the theater but also in a drive-in!

another memory i'll never forget was going tobogganing one time. it was me, my dad, older brother and younger sister. we were having a blast one afternoon on kortright hill (i'm not sure what the name of the actual hill was, but it was on kortright road, so that's what we called it). some kid went flying down the hill and lost control and completely ate it into a tree (this was the mid 1970s, so helmets were not even on the radar back then). i remember my dad grabbing the old blue metal toboggan and ripping down the hill to see if the kid was ok... he was not. other parents also went to help but the parents of the injured kid were nowhere to be found. the adults put the kid onto our tobaggan and my dad and some others loaded the kid into the back of our van. my dad told us to keep going down the hill on our crazy carpets/plastic toboggans and he'd be back soon (again... the 70s when it was not uncommon to leave your kids unattended). they headed off to the hospital to get the kid some help. i remember when he got back there was still blood on the tobaggan - probably the first time i ever saw a substantial amount of blood. i still have no idea who the injured kid was or the extent of his injuries.

and one final memory from childhood... we had "big days" with dad. my childhood was in guelph ontario (about 90 minutes west of toronto). my dad owned his own business and it was the late 70s/early 80s... so a really tough economic time. my dad worked - a lot (he had too, couldn't afford a lot of staff). with the exception of sunday (becuz businesses were closed sundays) he would be out of the house before us kids were up and didn't get home until well after we were in bed. one thing he did every year was put a card in the christmas tree for each kid asking us for a 'big day'... a saturday where each of us got to spend the entire day with just dad. it usually meant going into his store early so he could get things done/ready for his staff, and then by 10am he was all mine! my big day would usually include an early afternoon jays game where we'd get footlong hot dogs and a pop and maybe a bag of peanuts or some cotton candy and then go out for dinner too. as i got older and was able to stay up later i remember that one year we went to a leafs game at the maple leaf gardens. don't recall who they played, but they lost - ha! ha! some things never change! he continued to do big days after we moved to bc and in '89 my big day was stretched into 2 days as he somehow got us tickets to game 2 of the stanley cup final. the habs won that game, but it was still unreal to be in the dome for game 2 of the final... my very first flames game at the dome!