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My father, Thomas Peake 111, was born in Hamilton, Ontario, the only child of Thomas Peake 11 and Martha Alice Howarth. My mother, Marguerite, later known as Margaret Roth, was also born in Hamilton to Edward Morton Roth and Martha Currie. After the birth of their first child, Thomas Edward Peake, in 1936, my parents moved out to the country just outside of Hamilton and built a house on Margaret Avenue, Fruitland, Ontario, next door to dad's parents' house.
I was born in 1938 in Hamilton General Hospital and for for four years there were just the two of us children. My mother, being a 'city girl' complained that she was moved out to the 'sticks' and felt like a 'fish out of water.' Our home was very small with no running water except what could be pumped out of the well. Bathroom facilities included a path to the 'get-away'behind the garage. Donald James Peake came along in 1942 and in 1945 Robert Norman Peake entered this world to complete our family.
This southern Ontario community was centred in the fruit producing region of Hamilton-Niagara. There were no farms in the area of Fruitland where we lived because the soil was of the hard red clay variety. As a child Tom and I worked on the farms in the area picking everything from strawberries, raspberries to peaches, grapes, and apples. We mostly road our bikes and there was no shortage of jobs until it got close to the end of the season. The most well known farm in that area is E.D. Smith's and is still producing fruit today making jams, ketchup and pie fillings.
Lake Ontario was within walking distance of the farms we worked on and although we were told to come straight home after we were finished picking, the call of the lake was too great a temptation. We could actually see it from where we worked and during the hot weather we were dirty and sweaty and anyway we were dry by the time we got home on our bikes.
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