Feb 20, 1966
Toronto
I’m still unmarried but not lost, I do know what I want from life and I will continue to go on, not seeking but constantly finding things and ideas that delight me.
Dear Tom & Joan,
You must know exactly how long a letter takes to get to Canada. Because I received your birthday card right on my birthday morning, thank you very much! You are a couple of of smart cookies! as they say.
I take it by now you are living in your new home. I am glad that someone in the Kimpton family is industrious. You must be very happy and I think Joan is a wonderful woman. She impressed me very much when I met her on my short stay in London in ’64. I think you and Les have got very understanding wives. Especially after my very abrupt visit at home. I guess Joan and Barbara don’t quite know what to make of me. But from my view after coming home after a long time, away and seeing the whole family or rather my brothers all bunched up together with hardly anything managed and not really doing something for themselves or, something positive or better themselves instead I got the impression that without a mother to look after them, they seemed lost. I realize I am not one to talk, I am still unmarried but not lost, I do know what I want from life and I will continue to go on, not seeking but constantly finding things and ideas that delight me.
I admire the way you are building a home for you and Joan and I believe Les will also do this, also you and Les seem to make strides in your professions.
When you mentioned you are installing central heating in your house, I thought Tom lives with the times instead of dragging ones behind and hoping the only the soccer pools are going someday to give one the luxuries of the 20th century. Good for you Tom. I wonder Ronald doesn’t start to get industrious instead of just peddling gas on his bicycle. He is an intelligent man but he seems to let the times pass him by while he sits at the bonds ranting on about Churchillian times and Mr Batty and forgetting that we are young men and we are living now in a totally advanced era, when things are happening, when to be young in these times and having health, the rest is up to the individual to get up and go, have fun, make life fun, a challenge instead of being a vegetable. These days to take a chance is not running into insecurity especially in our western world. We eat good these days we have no cause to fear starvation. I think Ronald and maybe Ted should stop always talking about what a couple of smart guys they are and instead do something positive, change maybe would measure up to what they always brag about. I know I pound critical but when you Tom, spent years in hospitable and then come back fighting and work and study practically every night, I remember I watched you. I also know a lot more now than I ever did and it was not because I sat on my behind but because I went ahead trusting my ideas, trying very hard to make decisions and finally learning to make those decisions instead of doing the worst crime of a man that has something to go after and that is stagnate. There is an old saying the one only gets out of life what one puts in. And it is right for life can be fun if one has the initiative to participate.
One only gets out of life what one puts in. And it is right for life can be fun if one has the initiative to participate.
Ronald once accused me of trying to escape, maybe he had a point, but I’m afraid his point didn’t hold much weight because I can never really take a sitter on the fence seriously, a man who seems to tired to get involved in life, I don’t mean about wife or kids. The first important thing with a man is his work, because without it or without a profession or what have you, a man has no self esteem and without that I can’t imagine and especially in this space age a man giving his family the stimulation that will prepare them for a profound life.
I sent Diane a beautifully illustrated book that was photographed and written by two acquaintances of mine. I think it’s a good book and will give Diane a lesson in geography, and of Canada and some very contemporary and up to date happenings of life in Canada.
I was not sure what age young David is but I sent him a book of the Pied piper that was illustrated by a friend of mine, that reminds me of what Ron is waiting for, a Pied piper to come along and time fully seduce him and show him the way to a better living. A bad joke no doubt but I have to express my feeling to someone of our family if I am to communicate with the family at all. To me coming home periodically and spending evenings in the Royal Oak and with everybody not having nothing to say really and instead of having the feeling I was away 8 years, but having the feeling I went back 8 years is to me depressing. To come back to negative attitudes instead of positive. Whether they be socially, politically, business or anything else that effects is in life. But rather to a family that does not think rather sits and waits - for what I don’t know! A family whose fate seemed to be sealed during those trying times of the forties with war, the estrangement of our parents, the sickness of you coming home from the war and mother trying so desperately in her simple but admirable and wonderful way to keep the family alive, with working everyday out on the vegetable stool of Wiffins for the sake of all of us. For a woman to combat the upbringing of six men and later Bob Simpson is a hell of a job. She put everything in it for us and maybe even sacrificing her own personal needs even of a love that might have been hers, had she not have had her hands so full. Because when I think back I feel she may have got the short end of the stick for all her efforts! But as I said I think our mother was a simple woman who didn’t ask too much out of life and we were all she had. All of us clinging to her apron strings until the end. I do hope we don’t fail her. For I would like her to be proud that she brought into this world and sustained some men who will go on to greater things than what the late Mr. and Mrs. Kimpton had in their lives. After all we all often brag about our intelligence. Now is the time for action, it is the time to use what we have been given. And to me, I don’t want our mother’s work and the lesson she gave me to be in vain. If anything out of all of you, she is the one who inspired and has given me the courage to do whatever I do or go in life.
She put everything in it for us and maybe even sacrificing her own personal needs, even of a love that might have been hers, had she not have had her hands so full.
If anything out of all of you, she is the one who inspired and has given me the courage to do whatever I want in life.
I want to be an inspiration to my children and stimulate them and nourish them, and I don't mean their belly's but rather their minds. A sort of nourishment I had to stimulate myself!
I hope someday when I am married and have children, and when they are adult, that nothing would give me greater pleasure and make me more proud then to see them stand on their own feet and become enterprising or industrious or sail away on a sailing ship or do something and not become a vegetable. I want to be an inspiration to my children and stimulate them and nourish them and I don't mean their belly's but rather their minds. A sort of nourishment I had to stimulate myself!
The reason for writing this letter and I seem to have got off the point but never the less I trust it is good reading and in some way very profound and I can’t see anyone else in the family I can get some sense out of, except maybe you Tom. You are the eldest and I think the wisest. I don’t mean to flatter but at least you own your own home or are a home holder.
However I don’t be at this address much longer or even in Canada. In about five weeks I will be heading south to Mexico to live. I have quit the C.B.C. and with a few bucks in my pocket I am off to Mexico, the land of sunshine, palm trees, tequila, and beautiful women.
When I say a few bucks I mean enough money to live like a king for a year down there without having to work. I fell in love with Mexico when I was down there last year and this time I hope to go steady for quite some time.
As for my health my personal physician has given me a clean bill of health. My ulcer has completely healed and no trace of scar tissue. And I am still young 32, and very optimistic and caring to adapt myself to a completely different people with different attitudes. And what the hell I am excited about the whole project. I have a purpose and life is not easy it is tough but that’s what makes it interesting. That is why books are written, paintings are painted, poetry is composed, even because the negroes of N. America wrote and sang the blues - because life is tough, trouble and each day we combat it to stay alive to create, for survival because life is all we know! Hereafter or before we know not of. And to me to combat this everyday living is a challenge that never makes me pessimistic because I love this life very much, I don’t have contentment probably. But there are a thousand and one things that keep me fully occupied and intensely happy.
They even offered me more money if I stayed at CBC, but I had already made up my mind to go to Mexico. And I am glad I can stick to my goals and that they do materialize if I make the trouble to work at them.
I hope you understand what I mean in this letter, especially because I am going to a very foreign land to live with a different language and I don’t know when I can sit down and write such a letter and express my feelings philosophically. I guess the reason my brothers and I have not corresponded freely is the simple fact that we have little in common and have nothing to talk about. Just like the conversations I remember at home which seemed to range from Mr. Batty of N.T.G.B to how England single handedly beat the Germans. Now how in all seriousness can a boy or young man react to such dull and absurd mutterings! No, a person of some intellect demands something more stimulating from his family than that, and I might add quite rightly that is what this letter is about. I only wish I could personally hold another conversation with you all. However this letter is a small effort on my part.
I have a purpose and life is not easy, it is tough but that’s what makes it interesting. That’s why books are written, paintings are painted, poetry is composed…
Since the last time I saw you all I have been doing all sorts of exciting things in work and also at play. Just after leaving England in ’64 last I used to spend many weekends in Cleveland, Ohio with a girl I met in Rome. She was an art student there. And that’s another exciting thing about travelling, things always materialize and one always meets different and exciting people. Like this art student in Rome, I had no idea we would continue a relationship back here in Cleveland and also Toronto. It is nice to do things and travel and never know what is around the corner. For me to know everything and what’s to come and almost to know my fate, would seem so terribly dull.
Hansi and I drove to New York at Christmas in his Mercedes 190 SI. I was screeching along route 17 about 90 miles outside of Manhattan when the damn thing blew up. So there we were stranded and had to be towed in. But nevertheless we had a ball at Christmas and flew back to Toronto. His car is still there but he will pick it up and sell it before we leave. I have sold my car and am selling most of my furniture now.
We are still driving down to Mexico on April 1st with a friend of ours who is going on vacation for a few weeks. He has a big American Ford so we will take turns driving and can also take a lot of equipment and luggage. It will be very interesting drive by way of Missouri & Texas to El Paso and then over the border. We might buy a car in Mexico.
However if there should be a war between China & America at least I shall be in a country that is politically safe. And has a stable socialist government that is politically and economically independent. That is to say she owns all she has and foreign investments are made on Mexican terms. Mexico is politically independent of the United States not like Canada. For Canada is tied very closely economically to the United States. I would also point out that Mexico is also independent from other latin American states especially Cuba.
I wouldn’t say Mexico has a standard of living compared to her northern neighbours. But they are more independent and a very proud nation.
I do hope Tom & Joan that we have made some rapport from this letter. Because even though physically we are thousands of miles apart and will soon be even more. But that to me is not for concern, but what concerns me is to be mentally and intellectually close by means of corresponding until I see you all again.
Sincerely, David
P.S. I hope you will drop me a line soon before I leave Canada.
