How We Were.

In this compilation of four previously published stories by Teddy Jam, a.k.a. Matt Cohen, the reader travels back in time to hear stories by the folks who built this great nation.

“The Year of Fire”: An elderly grandfather bonds with his granddaughter while harvesting maple syrup and telling stories of his youth. One of his granddaughter’s favourites is about a fire so big, it burned down half the town and smouldered under the snow all winter long! “Nowadays a person would just pick up the telephone, but there was none then.” … “You might have thought the world had come to an end. It looked so awful, you kept turning your head away.”

“The Stoneboat”: A courageous youngster saves the life of a surly neighbour only to find out that his father owes the man $200, an impossible amount of money for poor farmers. Late at night, the boy goes to Mr. Richards’s field to ask for the debt to be forgotten, but too scared to talk, helps him move rocks left over from the winter. “But now Mr. Richards was bent almost down to the ground, huffing and panting as though he might explode.” His father finds his son there and the three men do the task in silence until his father tells his son to go home. Upon father’s return, we learn that the boy’s actions have saved the family.

“The Kid Line”: Set in Toronto, a story of a father who went to elementary school with Toronto Maple Leafs superstars brothers Big Train Lionel and Charlie Conacher. Before the war, a bricklayer by profession, he helped build Maple Leaf Gardens. After the war, a ticket scalper, spending his nights outside the gardens, sometimes with his son, dreaming of days past. “Before the gardens closed he like to stand outside with me after the game, watching the building go dark,” it reads. “Now … you can almost see the ghosts coming in and out, almost hear their skates cutting up the ice, their shouts, their laughter.”

“The Fishing Summer”: As a boy, the narrator’s mother would take him to his three uncles’ fishing boat in the summer. Desperate to join his uncles, even though his mother forbade it, he stows away on the boat. In the morning, his uncles continue their business as usual, pretending not to see the “stowaway” until they are out at sea, working the nets. This begins the eight-year-old’s “fishing summer” as a member of the crew. His mother also joins the crew. “From that day, we both went out with my uncles everyday. By the end of the summer my arms had new muscles and my hands were tough as canvas.”

Beautifully written by Teddy Jam and illustrated by Ange Zhang, this book will entice even the most reluctant readers. Zhang’s watercolour illustrations throughout the book bring new life to the words in a sophisticated manner for readers younger and older.