Bernadette Hardaker

To a 13-year-old Orangeville boy in September 1945, news that the father he hadn’t seen in four years was on his way home from the battlefields of Europe was cause for high excitement.

The friendship among graduates of the old ‘school on the hill’ has stood the test of time.

In Sketching Sunshine, actor and playwright Joe Matheson delves deep into the complex character of Canada’s iconic humorist.

The producers were stunned. “I told them I’m buying a farm. I didn’t realize at 28 I was just supposed to be having fun.”

Children were expected to work, often in the cruellest of conditions. Destitute, abandoned or orphaned, many children survived by their wits on the street.