John Assaraf narrates a personal, on-camera drive through Montreal retracing places where he lived and played as a child, accompanied by his father, Prosper Assaraf. He visits his childhood apartment building, Coronation Grade School, a later neighborhood with a park and Jewish Community Center, mentions working at local shops (earning $0.65/hour), and recalls dates/ages anchoring memories around 1967–1975. The tone is nostalgic and conversational, mixing specific facts (locations, years, earnings, family) with reminiscence.
Questions this video answers
Prosper Assaraf
1967
Approximately 1967–1975
$0.65 per hour
80 years old
Chapters
Hey, this is John Assraf and I am getting ready to go on a little drive over to where I lived 43 years ago. On camera right now is my father who's here from Israel. Right now we're both in Montreal, Canada, retracing some of the past that we've shared together. We came into Montreal for a wonderful celebration that my sister and her husband just had and that was amazing. And so I decided to go back to my old neighborhoods where I grew up as a kid and I'm going to be doing a little video of that and share with you some of the thoughts that I had 43 years ago back in 1967. And right over here I'm going to turn the camera around. That is my 80 year old dad who's laying there with his head back and meet Prosper Asaraf, the man who started this all. All right, so I'm driving up the street of where I grew up as a kid when we first came from Israel. I'll get out of the car in just a minute, over. But we're looking for the apartment building that I grew up in and you can see it's just a average neighborhood over here. And there it is right over there. Let me get out over here. Give me a second. I'm going to get out. I'm going to park over here and I'll get out. Do a little commentary for you. Hold on a second here. This is the building that I grew up in. This was a neighborhood over here that a whole bunch of the individuals that were coming from around the world, from different parts of the world, the African Americans, the Asian friends we had, the Caucasians and every other culture in the world. This is one of the areas that we grew up in. I remember playing in these streets, playing hot hide and go seek as a kid, you know, and just having these nice little alleyways and lots and lots of places to run around. I don't remember these trees being so big. Obviously this was 1967. And right up there, that is the apartment that we used to live in, my brother and sister and I and my mother and father. This is the building that you're looking at. There's that front door. I used to run around here every day with the other kids and play around the streets. And at that age when I was, you know, six, seven years old, I really didn't get into any trouble that I was going to get into later on in my life. This is a nice little walk down memory lane, up the street all the way up to the Top of that street was a park that I used to play in and played soccer and went swimming. That was a nice little treat. Alright, on to the next stop. So I'm going to continue. This is where I went to my first grade school. That's Coronation Grade School. I went here for a few years, obviously, and this is where we went to school. I'll take you for a quick little walk into the yard that I played in. There's kids playing there right now. This is where all the ethnics came from all over the world. And it looks like they're still coming in here. The kids are still playing. Here was the little schoolyard and here's some of the kids still playing over here. Look at that, that's the school. And this is the little neighborhood. Oh, you ran around. Here's the little neighborhood around where the school was. Yeah, I'm in the car right now. We're gonna drive up to where I used to do some work and where we used to live next as we moved. So you guys get to come on the drive with me. I've got my father here running gunshot with me, giving me directions. I guess that's what dads are supposed to do, right? Telling me, go, go right, go right, go left. And there he is right now giving me instructions on how to drive. 48 years old, dad still telling kids what to do. Alright, we're gonna go up the street here. I'm gonna show you a couple areas that I did some work, moved up into this neighborhood, probably about five miles away. And we used to eat at that bagel shop. And I used to work right over there at this pharmacy. I used to work over here and I used to make 65 cents an hour. And then right, you're going to see a little grocery store. I used to work in that little grocery store. All right, so we just arrived at the second place that I lived here in Canada. We lived again up on that top floor up there. And this is a little nicer neighborhood, you know, a little bit nicer neighborhood right over here, as you'll see across the street, this is a little park. And so this is the park that I got myself into a whole lot of trouble. And I'll let the truck pass. And this is the park right over here where these benches are. There used to be a little croquet place to play. I tell you, I got into a lot of trouble in this park here. I used to play here day and night long with my friends and we did a lot of things you shouldn't have done, but we also did a lot of good things. But right over there, that was really my saving grace. That was the Jewish Community Center. And as you can see, I lived over here, but I used to go over here to play basketball every single day in hockey. And then I got a job working here when I was about 10, 12 years old, believe it or not. I was able to work there and just give out balls. And that's where I used to go into the sauna. You know, at the end of the day I was able to go to the men's health club in the sauna. And I would listen to the stories of very, very affluent individuals who actually just behind this building starts a really nice area in the beginning of some beautiful homes, nicer schools and that. So I was right on that border. And I used to go to this little place here called the Jewish Community Center. And thank God for that because I started to have a sense of responsibility and a sense of belonging. But I also got a whiff of highly successful individuals. And so this. I was probably around 13 years old here because up the street up there was a synagogue that I got bar mitzvahed in. And so interesting little area. As you can see. It's just a nice little park, you know, nothing fancy, but I lived here from around the age of about 8 or 9 years old till the age of 13. And then we moved to another area. But this was going back to 1967 to 1975 or so. Somewhere in that range. Amazing. And right there I'm back in the car. Say hi dad. Hi. That is my father Prosper, who was going to be 80 this year and September of 2010 he'll be 80, he's in great shape, still looking good, still totally coherent, thank God. All right, say goodbye to the old neighborhood. All right, bye bye. So now we're back in the car and park. Spent a lot of time at the park. This is where I could use up a lot of my energy. Showing you over here, right over here, we used to fly our kites and play soccer. It was good to have a little open space for this kid, being me with all this energy. And then right over here across the street, this was another school that I didn't go to, the synagogue up here as well. So you're getting a first hand view. My dad says this was the oldest synagogue in Montreal. I'm going to show you something unique here that's called the Orange Julep. And we used to go there as a kid and sorry I had to put that down. This is right next to me. But that's the orange julep. We used to go there to get this special orange juice that was uniquely created. And now I'm gonna hop onto the highway and go back to our home.
