Always Give a Penny to a Blind Man

Christine Hughes is a policy analyst at the Ontario Native Affairs
Secretariat.

Any fan of Eric Wright’s Charlie Salter detective stories will be
delighted to read this memoir. The book recounts Wright’s early years
in a working-class London neighborhood during the Depression and World
War II and his arrival in Canada as a young man. Interspersed with short
anecdotes of his grandparents’ lives and his parents’ adages (e.g.,
“always give a penny to a blind man”), it is very readable and
entertaining.

Wright’s father was a mover (“with a big van and four horses”),
his mother a tailoress, and together, they worked hard to raise 10
children. Wright paints a vivid picture of what it was like to be a
child during those years through his often comical descriptions of his
boyhood friends and their street games after school and on Saturdays and
of their “explorations” on Sundays and bank holidays. The stories
are told in conversational format. Family vacations, holiday
celebrations, singing, card games, and other activities are carefully
recounted in a chapter titled, “Diversions.”

One can see the beginnings of Wright’s interest in literature. He
says he can never remember a time when he could not read and describes
how he hid himself away on Christmas to read comics and library books.

Several chapters recount time spent living with a married sister in the
countryside for the early part of the war. When he returned home, he won
a scholarship to a boys’ school, but as the war continued, the male
students attended classes in a neighboring girls’ school. He includes
a number of interesting accounts of Londoners’ attempts to cope during
the blitz.

After graduating from high school in 1945, Wright got a job as an
“office boy” in London with a petroleum company, and at age 18
joined the air force. In 1951, he emigrated to Canada, and the last few
chapters of the book describe his arrival in Canada and early years in
Winnipeg and Churchill, Manitoba. Overall, the book provides a revealing
glimpse into one of Canada’s most well-known mystery writers.

Wright is married with two daughters and lives in Toronto.