New: Creators of the Classic City

Memories of the Festival by Vince Gratton

To coincide with the festivals 50th season, in 1992, the Stratford Beacon-Herald asked readers to submit some of their memories of the early days of the theatre in Stratford. This was a story submitted by local historian, Vince Gratton (1945-2026).

Vince Gratton

I was born in Stratford in 1945 and raised in a large gray brick home on Cobourg Street just east of Queen Street. It was a wonderful neighborhood in which to be a youth during those boyhood years. There was, at the time, no shortage of playmates both boys and girls living in the surrounding homes with the park nearly on our doorstep. It seemed like our own private domain to play in.

Gathering together a group of playmates was easy for Cowboys and Indians, tin can cricket, hide and seek and in the evenings, playing football in the leaves during the fall and enjoying fabulous toboggan rides down the hill behind the Normal School in the winter. It just did not get any better and being allowed to play for a day in the park without parental supervision was the way it was then.

It was a wonderful time of innocence that seems strangely absent today.

Climbing the fire escape at the back of the Normal School to the top allowed us kids a very commanding view of our private playground. Then one day a group of workers and equipment arrived and started to dig a big hole behind the Normal School right in the middle of our hill where we tobogganed every winter.

How could they do this to us? What were they doing?

We kids from time to time climbed the fire escape and watched the men work. They made the strange looking round set of cement steps in the ground and then eventually covered it with a circus like tent. But there was no mention of any circus coming to town. I suppose that as kids we just accepted what they did and carried on playing.

Photo: Vince Gratton

Bea Lennard with Vince 1953 . (See Diana Court). Tom Patterson is in the right foreground. Photo: Vince Gratton

I was alone one Sunday afternoon during July 1953 and was driving around the park in my Austin pedal car when I noted a large number of adults standing around and chatting on the front lawn of the Normal School. I remember quite well that there were people lined up along the sidewalk from Queen Street to the front steps of the school, shaking hands and greeting people as they moved along.

Near the end of the line by the entrance to the school, I spotted this lovely looking lady also greeting people. As a kid I had no time for formalities and just simply paddled my car right over to this nice lady and much to my surprise, she took the time to come over and bend down and we had a nice little private talk.

It seems this situation caught the attention of a reporter who was there from the London Free Press. The following day much to my parents' surprise there was my picture in the paper with actress Bea Lennard who played Diana in Alls Well that Ends Well. (See Diana Court). I would come to realize in the later years what I had accidentally attended that day was an inaugral garden party for the opening of the Stratford Festival theatre hosted by the local IODE.

As an invited guest this year to the theatre's 50th garden party, I wondered how many people there like me might have attended that first gathering half a century ago.

The theatre has been a wonderful, most gracious addition to our community over the past many years. Few would ever have imagined the size and the success that the theatre would reach here in Stratford.

With all this, I am happy. I still see children tobogganing down the hill to the east of the theatre every winter, and each spring, without any word to anyone, the theatre grounds people repair the worn grass for another season of fun.

I congratulate our Stratford Festival on their golden anniversary and thank them for this and many other memories of their presence here in our community and theirs.

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