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Published: August 7th 2015
My mom grew up in Burnaby, British Columbia on Union Street and they were very poor. Grandma Mabel was a stay at home mom, and Grandpa Alec was a truck driver, and a very hard worker. I seem to recall they even had an outhouse when they lived in Burnaby. The family grew up during the great depression in the 1930's, so they learned quickly how to be very frugal. My mom had one sister Joan, who died of cancer, and a brother Eddie who is still alive today. Eventually my grandma took in my auntie Lillian and auntie Betty, who were actually my mom’s cousins so it was a full house.
My grandma lived in Richmond, British Columbia, which is a suburb about 20 minutes drive from Vancouver. Our address was 10300 Shell Road, and it was a little 3 bedroom bungalow that had white stucco and yellow trim. My mom found the mortgage documents and the original purchase price was around $20,000. If anyone knows the Vancouver real estate market that is an insanely low price, but this was the early 1900’s. It was located right across from some railroad tracks, and it had a ditch in front
with a little bridge. The backyard was amazing and we had a full garden with snap peas, rhubarb and a rose plant among other vegetables. There was a bird bath and small pond which we periodically stocked with goldfish and koi. Occasionally we would see the odd muskrat in the ditches, and the odd crane or raccoon trying to steal our koi for a meal. When we first moved to Canada, my mom had to start her life all over again.
One of my near life death experiences happened at a shopping centre at the corner of Shell Road and Williams Road, just down from our house, and it had a Safeway, a bowling alley and a place called the Pop Shoppe. I used to go there with my friends to get sours, cola bottles, root beer, liquorice and gob stoppers. One day I was sucking on a gob stopper and swallowed it by accident. By chance, it happened to be the exact same size as my throat and I couldn’t swallow it. I tried everything I could to get it out of my throat, and finally it popped out on the ground.
My grandma Mabel was a
very religious person, and I used to attend church with her in Richmond at a place called Glad Tidings in Vancouver. My mom isn’t religious, and I’m not either to this day, but I first attended Seacliff Christian School for grade 4 when I moved to Canada. After that I went to a public school called Woodward Elementary School, which was a 5 minute walk from my house down a back alley. It was here when I experienced what it was like to be the only black kid in Richmond.
When I moved to Canada in 1980 there were very few minorities, and I was the only black student at Woodward. I had quite the afro when I first arrived, and I was certainly the school spectacle. Students and teachers were always touching me and making fun of me, which I wasn’t a fan of. A student named John Gray used to make me dance like Michael Jackson every recess, and I had no idea who Michael Jackson was at the time.
There was also a student named Richard Booth, who was one of the biggest dick heads there. One day he decided to bully me and beat
me up, and call me niggar and every other racial slur there was. I went home crying and told my mom what happened. Right away she packed me in the car and drove right over to his house, and knocked on the door. His mom answered and my mom laid into her, telling her what Dickhead Booth had done. All his mom said was, “Richard get ready for hockey.” She obviously didn’t care that much. My teacher at the time, Ms Caley, wrote us a letter saying that she and the school did not tolerate that sort of behaviour and they were very apologetic for his actions.
There was another student there named Inder Toor, and Dickhead Booth used to rip his turban off at lunch time.
One of my favourite stories involved one of my favourite teachers Mr. Whitehead. My mom always taught me to call any teachers or parents by their last name, so he will always be Mr. Whitehead to me. He loved Bruce Springsteen and he had all of his posters in the class. He would walk in the morning strumming his air guitar and say “The Boss!” He was awesome. Inder Toor was
at the front of the class, and he kept farting really loud. Mr. Whitehead kept telling him to stop farting, and Inder wasn’t listening. Finally Mr. Whitehead had enough and yelled, “Inder!” and kicked the top of Inder’s desk right off. Lol it was so funny! The whole class went “whoooo” and no one farted in class after that.
One of my favourite memories of Woodward was an air band competition we had. My band mates were Geoff Cornwall on drums, Uriel Pineda and I were the guitar players, and we covered ZZ Top’s Sharp Dressed Man. At some point Uriel walked out with sunglasses on, and two girls on his arm. I bet we looked really cute at around 12 years old.
This is when I first started getting interested in basketball, and I started in grade 6 at Woodward. None of us were that good at the time but we still had fun. There was a small court in front of Woodward, and during the summer we would play EVERY DAY. We would play 1 one 1, 2 on 2, and American 21 all day every day during the summer.
My third near life death
experience happened when I was riding my bike home one day from this same court. I was tossing the ball up in front of me without my hands on the handle bars. One of the tosses hit my front tire, and I fell into some grass on the side of the road. I had a little scratch on my elbow and that’s about it - I was about 11 years old at the time. As I was riding home I started to get really itchy, so I took a shower to see if that helped. When I got out of the shower I looked in the mirror and my face had swollen up so much I could barely recognize myself, and I was having trouble breathing. My auntie Lillian was in town at the time and her and my mom got me in the car, and drove me to the hospital. On the way my throat was slowly closing up, and I was having more and more trouble breathing. When I walked into the emergency room the nurse on duty took a quick glance up at me, looked back at her chart then looked right back at me. As soon
as she had a good look at my face she rushed me into a room and I had about 9 or 10 nurses and ambulance attendants all around me. They put an oxygen mask on me, started an IV drip, and pumped me full of anti-histamines.
Eventually the swelling went down and I could breathe properly again. Weeks later when I took allergy tests it turns out I was allergic to grass, and when I fell on the grass it went straight into the bloodstream which caused such a bad reaction.
The Richmond school system at the time was very different. After grade 7 you graduated to Junior High School which were grades 8 to10. After that you graduated to high school which were grades 11 and 12. The junior high school I attended was Hugh McRoberts and our sports team name was the McRoberts Strikers. This this is where I met some of my best friends that I’m still close with to this day. Because the Bahamas used to be an English colony, they start kindergarten at age 4 so I was a year younger than most of my classmates. When I started grade 8 my mom
enrolled me in a youth soccer league through the South Arm Community Center. For the life of me I can’t remember our team name, but we had blue uniforms with yellow trim. This is where I met one of my best friends, and the best man at my wedding Mike Stark. We were defenders on the team and we just played all the other local teams in the league. Some of the other teammates I remember are Dean Leites, Roger Yabunaka, John Sulmona, Danny Cabral, John McDougall, Craig Hirose, and our goalie Gary Monson. We used to call Craig boomer, because every time he kicked the ball, it was with a toe punt and he would yell “boom!” Gary Monson was an awesome goalie, and very aggressive which is what you have to be. I remember him slide tackling a few kids, legally of course, and sent them all to the hospital. Our coach was Frank Bognar and he was awesome. Some years we weren’t that good, but one year we were really good team and played a team called the Tigers, who used to always beat us. This one year we actually won, and after the game they spit
in their hands before we gave high fives after the game. A real dickhead move and I remember we were crying after.
One game I remember vividly was at Rideau Park, and Mike was the centre defensemen. The ball was at half field and it was slowly rolling towards him. Mike ran up to the ball and gave it a good smack. True story, it headed straight at the goal slowly fading to the right top corner. You could see the goalie slowly tracking the ball, but the shot was too good and it went in. That was one of the best goals I’ve ever seen.
Two of my closes friends at McRoberts were Dieter and Trevor. We were kind of rebels, never went to school dances and didn’t go to our grade 10 graduation. We were too busy playing video games, basketball and buying comic books. This was the day in age when you actually played OUTSIDE, and walked to school. Remember that? I don’t remember my mom EVER driving me to school, she was too busy working and starting her life over, and it wasn’t a short walk either for that age. I remember Dieter used
to have this red 10 speed bike that he would ride everywhere. One day Dieter was walking past Palmer Junior High School, and a guy named Jamie Tremblay called him coco boy, obviously a racial slur. After school that day, Diet went back to Palmer and waited for Jamie to leave school and started beating him up. During the fight his older brother Ray succer punched him giving him a fat lip. Diet looked so angry in his grade 9 grad picture, and he still had his fat lip. I’m actually proud of him for standing up to the racism we faced back in the day.
Through grades 8 to10 at McRoberts I played basketball on the McRoberts Strikers. The Richmond teams were always better for some reason, and we would destroy all the Vancouver teams. Our coach was Mr. Hiriyama, and he was one of my favourite teachers. I was slowly getting better, and in grade 10 Mr Hiriyama called me into his office. That year I got the most improved player, and Mr. H said there was a basketball camp at a technical college that year, BCIT. He offered me a spot, it was a week long
and all we did all day long were drills and scrimmages. My coach was the infamous Paul Eberhardt, known as Eebs, and if you’re into basketball at all and lived in BC you will know Eebs. He coached the McNair Marlins years after I was there, and his advice and coaching skills really ramped up my game. That week I was the leading rebounder, and it really prepared me for high school basketball at McNair Senior Secondary. Thank you very much Mr. Eberhardt and Mr. Hiriyama.
When I graduated from McRoberts, my friends and I all attended Matthew McNair High School, on number 4 road in Richmond, BC. Our team name was the Marlins, and we had blue and white uniforms. At the time the best teams in the province were all in Richmond. The Richmond Colts coached by Bill Disbrow, the Steveston Packers coached by Dennis Bejin, and the McNair Marlins coached by Mr. Bob Spearman and Brent Watson. At the time they had different tiers of teams determined either by school size or the amount of students. There was single A (A), double A (AA), and triple A (AAA). When I attended in grade 11 it was the first year we went from AA to AAA, and boy that was quite the jump. I remember the Colts and the Packers absolutely destroying us every game by 30 or more points.
Where you lived determined where you played basketball, but some high school coaches resorted to recruiting players from other zones. Richmond and Steveston were absolutely notorious for this, and that’s how they got so good. I remember during our grade 10 basketball season,Coach Beijen invited our entire team to a game at Steveston, and he gave us front row seats. During half-time he took us to the locker room, and tried his absolute hardest to recruit most of the team. He told us about all these tournaments they would go on, some overseas, but we all held tight and went to McNair. Mr. Disbrow used to do it as well, and the way they did it was to offer classes at Richmond High that weren't available in other zones. The main course they used was cafeteria, which was offered at Richmond High and other schools, but not necessarily at schools in other school zones. If there was a player at another school in another zone, or even in another city, the recruiting school would offer them cafeteria, enabling to attend school there.
As I said, our grade 11 year wasn’t a great success, but in grade 12 the Marlins made a big break through. At that time, the way the different divisions were set, the best 4 teams in the province were all in the same grouping, and only 3 out of the 4 teams could advance to the Provincial Championship. These teams were the Richmond Colts who were always ranked 1, The Steveston Packers who were around 2 or 3, Burnaby Central who around 5, and the McNair Marlins, and we were ranked 7th in the province in that year, 1990.
The starting lineup at the time was Lak, Greg, Jake, myself and Trev. This year we were 7th in the province, which was a huge improvement from the previous year. We had a very entertaining warmup. My friend Paul had this yellow and black ghetto blaster that he would put under our hoop. Our entrance song was Kickstart My Heart by Motley Crew. As soon as it started we all came out, led by our best player Lak. Jake had all kinds of dunks, Mike had a nice wrap around dunk, and I had a nice off the backboard dunk in my arsenal. Still, when we played Richmond and Steveston they always beat us. Whenever we played the Vancouver teams we would absolutely destroy them, but unfortunately 3 of the best teams in the province were in Richmond, and only 2 of them were going to the provincials. We had one horrible performance against a Vancouver team, and the next game was against the Steveston Packers. Mr. Spearman and Mr. Watson absolutely berated us in the locker room, and they tore a strip off of every single player. They told us how bad we played, how we didn't try and everyone was very upset. Right after the tip off you could tell we were a different team. We were hustling, playing inspired defence, and we stuck close the whole game. Remember, this is a team that would normally murder us by over 30 points. And also keep in mind that the stands were packed, because we were playing quite well this year. With only a few seconds left we were up 61-59, and Steveston had the ball. By chance the ball ended up in their best player’s hands, Jeff Sharpe, and he put one up from just outside the 3 point line. We all watched this ball head straight at the hoop, only to bounce out and we won the game. The entire stands emptied out onto the court after our victory, and that was the absolute highlight of our basketball career. That was the first time McNair had beaten another Richmond team, and our coaches were very proud of us. Their way of firing us up was yelling at us before the game, and it sure worked.
A game I would like to forget, but I will discuss anyway, was later that year against Steveston. At the time Richmond was a lock into the provincials, but there was a tie in the standings between Steveston, Burnaby Central and Mcnair. What the league decided is to have a sort of round robin tournament, and the best 2 teams would advance. We had another game against Steveston, and if we won we were guaranteed a spot in the provincial tournament - the first time ever for a McNair team. Again, this was a very close game and we were up 2 points with about 10 seconds left in the game. The ball ended up in Jeff Sharpe’s hands, and he drove to the hoop towards me. I don’t know WHY I sagged in, but I did because I was guarding their worst 3 point shooter who was deep in the corner. As soon as he raised up to shoot I knew it was going in, and it sure did which absolutely deflated the team and our fans. We had a few seconds left and Lak passed the ball down to Greg, but it was too late. We lost, and I cried lots in the locker room because I felt so bad. We had another game against Burnaby Central to get a chance at the provincials but we lost, so it wasn’t meant to be. I remember I had a fever that game but still played, and I was so sick I had to lay in the lap of Sharon our manager, on our way home from the game.
For anyone reading this that played basketball in Richmond, you will remember open gym at the south arm rec center. I used to go there with my teammates at McNair, and even after we graduated to play whoever showed up. The filipinos were always the hardest to play with, they were so rough! We had a couple guys on our team who were really good, Ben Ancheta and Ferdie Daouz. I remember when one of them went to a different school, they let each other score to get more stats.
My favourite dunk there was by Jake, and it was on my friend Mike. Jake drove to the hoop and Mike was right under it. As Jake lifted up, he put the ball in his left hand for the dunk. Just as he put it down, he put his right behind behind Mike’s head, and cupped his face right in his balls laughing the whole time. I know Mike remembers that one and so does Jake!
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