A Montreal Childhood is a recently discovered memoir by Eric Berne about growing up and coming of age in Montreal in the first decades of the 20th century. The first new book by the well-known psychotherapist and author since his death in 1970, it offers an affectionate and revealing portrait of the city's immigrant community on lively Ste. Famille St. during and after WWI.
The evocative and humorous depictions of the many social and cultural differences which reigned in Montreal at the time are among the books most memorable passages, as are the anecdotes recounting just how the children of Ste. Famille St. often painfully learned to cope with these differences.
"So there was I, a direct descendant of Adam and Eve, facing the world at seventeen. I had few material things and no spending money, but I had lots of relatives, a card admitting me to college, a job and a girlfriend. The most important things I owned were in my head. First, all the things that had been put there by my parents and teachers, by books and by friends: freedoms and duties, aspirations and prohibitions. Second, all the knowledge of the world and its ways, and of the things it had to offer and could take away. Third, all the memories and desires that had grown in me since birth, all the hopes and ideals and strivings and creations that welled up from my youthful soul. So I could stride down the street, head up, swinging my arms straight and firm like a free British subject, and feel myself a part of the world, with all its trees and birds and beasts and people that pulsated and strove on the earth and above it, and yes, the questing roots below its surface as well"
Eric Berne.
The evocative and humorous depictions of the many social and cultural differences which reigned in Montreal at the time are among the books most memorable passages, as are the anecdotes recounting just how the children of Ste. Famille St. often painfully learned to cope with these differences.
"So there was I, a direct descendant of Adam and Eve, facing the world at seventeen. I had few material things and no spending money, but I had lots of relatives, a card admitting me to college, a job and a girlfriend. The most important things I owned were in my head. First, all the things that had been put there by my parents and teachers, by books and by friends: freedoms and duties, aspirations and prohibitions. Second, all the knowledge of the world and its ways, and of the things it had to offer and could take away. Third, all the memories and desires that had grown in me since birth, all the hopes and ideals and strivings and creations that welled up from my youthful soul. So I could stride down the street, head up, swinging my arms straight and firm like a free British subject, and feel myself a part of the world, with all its trees and birds and beasts and people that pulsated and strove on the earth and above it, and yes, the questing roots below its surface as well"
Eric Berne.
