Greg Warren:  

Born 1950 in Kitchener-Waterloo Hospital (the old one building version) over which a parking garage now stands. Loved Preuter Public School except for Mr. Loney and Mr. Epp. Best school hill in Ontario for shoe surfing on hard snow & ice. Smithson gave me the best teacher I've ever met, Mildred Reed. At Margaret Avenue I promoted my first music event ... the Grade 8 year-end dance with D.J. Grantly. Founded Margaret Ave chess club and interclass basketball league, neither of which games I've ever been any good at. At Eastwood I worked a half year building the set of "Anne Frank's Diary". It was an amazing experience to be on the crew. The guy who was head set designer was an artsy tech nerd before it was cool. Anybody know his name? 61 through 65 were tough years on the home front. My Dad remarried and found myself in a 'not-so-fuzzy-warm' mixed family situation ... the Brady Bunch from Hell! In summer 65 went to live with my mother Shirley in Ohio. She'd been divorced 7 years from my Dad at that time. Shirley lived in Avon Lake Ohio with her new husband Ed who worked for the, then still publishing, Cleveland Press. That summer Ed got a position at the Akron Beacon Journal and we moved from beautiful Avon Lake to Wadsworth Ohio. First year in Wadsworth was culture shock. I'd moved from an semi-urban area where you drove from one city right into the next one until you got to Toronto (area pop. 5 mil today). Avon Lake was connected by suburbs to Cleveland and felt very much the same as Waterloo Ontario where I'd grown up. Wadsworth was surrounded by farmer's fields and golf cubs no matter what direction you drove. It was the first time I wasn't living on a large lake or river. I remember how strange that felt at first. It's like, "how did these people get here? ... they must have walked, rode horses of ridden ox carts." In Wadsworth there was no public bus service or rail transit. Everybody drove cars. I walked everywhere because Shirley and Ed both had commuting jobs in Akron and worked nights. We had two cars but not three. After school I used to walk from WHS to the Redbird where I bagged groceries. There was a wonderful sweet lady working a cash register there who gave me rides home. I remember those wonderful kindnesses that first year. People helped each other. When I was able to get a ride somewhere from my mother Shirley, imagine how embarrassing it was driving around Wadsworth with my forty-something mom in a flashy red 62 convertible with the top down. Second & third years at WHS were great! I met great friends! I promoted rock dances with Pat Tighe to raise money for the Young Republicans. Ran the Young Republicans Pop Bottle Spin at the Wadsworth Summer Fair. (Know why I don't promote dances for Republicans any more? ... Leads to water boarding. <lol>) I was able to quit my job at the Redbird after christmas of my junior year because my guitar teacher Bob Johnson started sending me students. Compared to minimum wage, teaching gutar washuge money. Plus I played in a bluegrass band with my teacher Bob who's first instrument was banjo. My senior year I sang in a folk trio with John Koppitch and Cindy Taylor. That year I learned to travel on my own by Greyhound. Expensive college tuition in the US made university impossible for me in Ohio. Went back to Waterloo, Ontario to do my Ontario Academic Credits (OACs). OACs were Ontario's way of giving students one year of university free ... a non-mandatory 13th grade for students who couldn't afford to go directly to university from grade 12. Did my OACs at Waterloo Collegiate Institute (class of 69). Worked for room and board playing in a folk rock band Symposium with Alan Davies, Bob Doze and Ted Griesbach. I had great friends at WCI! Miss them all! Produced a print media broadside called "The Wurd" with Harvey Enchin, Barb Beckerman and Gord Singbeil? (anybody got their email addresses? Finished my 13th school year at WCI and the very next day started working at Kaufman Footwear. The depressing industrial era gloom of the place freaked me out. I woked there for six months then joined a travelling rock band Phase III with Jeff Billo. Phase III morphed into Jack Pine. Fell in love with a girl from Montreal. Followed her there, got my own apartment and went back to teaching guitar. Played in a rock band that toured incredibly beautiful Gaspe. "Les Fortunaires" were so named because we'd bought a truck from societe Fortune (like Saint Vincent DePaul Society in US). But we couldn't afford to paint the van. Gaspe natives started laughingly calling us les Fortunaires so we just went with it. (an English translation of les Fotunaires would loosly be "The Ex-Cons". We was gangsta befo it was sick. I loved the Gaspe but Montreal was the best City I ever ived in. Busked streets, played guitar side-gigs and backed up a Qebecois style fiddle player at Le Saint Vincent Boite a Chansons" in old Montreal. Nights were magical. Ofte...Expand for more