reflecting, the lake was covered with a fine mist. Strong light reflecting into eyes, mere slits or eyes just opening. At 6:45 am we were in the main Toronto Bus terminal. We bought a map in the bus terminal of Toronto. I found a telephone, and dialed the number of the Toronto Anti-Draft league, no answer. We crossed the street and had breakfast.
After breakfast I called the number again, then again after we had taken a walk around the city. It was a clear cool day, the air seemed exceptionally clean, the city’s architecture seemed welcoming, it’s novelty attractive to me. Both of us had the feeling we had escaped, and hadn’t we? There was rioting and violence, burning in Detroit. After more coffee, around 10 am we contacted the Anti-Draft League. They gave us directions to their office and told us where the nearest YMCA was where we could stay.
Once settled in the YMCA, about 1 pm we set off on the subway for the Anti-Draft League office. At the end of the subway line we came up to a brilliant sun. We walked a couple of blocks through Saturday afternoon shoppers. Once we found the building, we traveled up a flight of stairs, down a narrow hall, walls and floor brown. Once in the office we waited in a small waiting room. I gazed at the pictures on the walls, a book lying on the table.
We left April 5, 1968, one day after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in Memphis, Tennessee. In Detroit there was an 8 pm curfew. John and I climbed into a cab at five minutes to eight. Several months earlier we had decided to immigrate to Canada. We picked the date, April 5th. It was a Friday night in Detroit, from the cab windows we saw Woodward Avenue- empty, neon lights flashing, barren sidewalks. The streets were moist, the buildings seemed tense. As we moved along the cabbie spoke, “Yea, you’ll never see me taking this thing off the streets, I’ve driven this thing for twenty years, nothin’ yet has kept me from rollin’. Let ‘em know you’re scared, and you’re in trouble, I keep rollin’. Sure, my wife worries, but this is my business right, you know.”
Once downtown, we went to the Post House Restaurant in the bus station. In the next couple of hours we drank several cups of coffee, read horoscope books, smoked cigarettes and talked while watching police cars and cabs racing up and down the streets. At 10 pm the restaurant closed and we moved to the twenty-four hour coffee shop near by. About 11 pm three plainclothes policemen or reporters came in the restaurant, all carrying rifles. Back in the bus station lobby I addressed post cards then sat idly watching people cross into and then out of my view again.
Our bus was the 12:30 am bus to Toronto. We left on time, passing in the center of the tunnel, the two flags. The flags symbols of Canada and the United States were side by side with a white line separating them, the white line seemed significant, the precise point of departure from one country and arrival into another.
I was worried the Customs official would find the three hundred dollar money order I had not declared, not wanting to give him any reason to think we were anything but college students on vacation. My selective service classification was II S (student), my hair was trimmed, there weren’t any problems. With few questions we were through, without even a check of our bags. A nervous smile was exchanged between John and me, my muscles began to relax, my neck was particularly tense. The bus ride lulled me into a semi-conscious state, broken only by a rest stop somewhere– bright neon lights, coffee and donuts.
At dawn I awoke as we entered Summer Side, a suburb of Toronto. I remember thinking, this could have been Sunny Side, the sun off the lake, Lake Erie, was orange, brilliantly
