Home-Grown Talent

One Saturday in the winter of 1965 I talked my father into driving me to Toronto from our home in Oshawa, Ontario, to see a particular movie that I knew I would never see at the local cinema. I was 14 years old. My father did not come in with me; he went off to do some errands and we agreed on a time when he would pick me up. What I saw that cold night made a profound and lasting impression on me. In the darkened theatre I became enthralled with black and white images of two plain teenagers, painfully in love, angry at their parents and the world. The boy played the banjo and sang folk songs. What struck me more than anything was the fact that these people lived in Toronto. They shopped at the Coles Bookstore at Charles and Yonge and rode the subway that I knew so well. They spoke like my friends and I did. They had the same ideals and confusions. The film ended with the two parting unhappily, with little in the way of narrative resolution.

I grew up watching...