It’s routinely listed as one of Ontario’s worst roads.
Despite its grand status as part of the Trans-Canada system, Highway 17 is a narrow, two-lane ribbon that winds through rock cuts and dense forests as it curves around the rugged north shore of Lake Superior.
If it isn’t transport trucks barreling down the road or moose wandering onto the shoulder, it’s the Alberta Clippers blowing in from the Prairies that jeopardize safe driving.
It would have been even worse 35 years ago, but Highway 17 was the only route from Schreiber to Thunder Bay, the only way to get young Mario Commisso to his piano lessons. And his father’ Cosimo, was determined to get him there.
Every other Monday, he piled his kids Into the family car, sometimes their mom, Teresa, too, and drove the 240 kilometres west on 17 from their lakeside railway town into the big city. When their lessons at the Avila Music School were over, he drove them all the way back again.
There was no other choice. Growing up poor in Italy’s Calabria region, Cosimo never got a chance to develop hls own musical abilities, although be did play harmonica and concertina. His children had talent, too, but there’d been no one to teach them locally ever since the nuns left town.
Mario, who went on to earn his Grade 10 from the Canada Conservatory Of Music, remembers those long drives. His father would take the day off from Costa’s, the family grocery store, and the klds would get a day off school.
“My dad sacrificed a lot to take me to music lessons,” say 45-year-old Mario. “And not just time.”
Today, to honour the man who gave him music, Marlo is giving the music back.
While 77-year-old Cosimo struggles with the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, Mario has recorded a disc of his elegant piano playing and called it Reflections. The title and tracks, which include sentimental favourites like My Way, The Shadow of Your Smile, and As TIme Goes By, are appropriate, given the nature of the illness that insidiously robs its victims of their memory and their memories. |
It’s every musician’s dream to record a CD, but Mario’s album means more than personal fulfillment. He has committed to donating $5 from the sale of each $20 CD to the Alzheimer Society of Hamilton-Halton, which marks national Alzheimer Awareness Month throughout January. With 1,000 CD’s pressed — and 600 already sold — that could men a a welcome $5,000 for the society.
The gesture won’t directly help his dad, who is still living at home in Schreiber in the care of Mario’s mother. But it will go toward programs that support people in this area who are living with Alzheimer’s disease.
Sheree Meredith, the society’s executive director says that for every one of the 11,000 patients in this area with Alzheimer’s or a related dementia, there are at least 10 family members, caregivers or others directly affected by the illness. And as the population ages, the numbers will only go up.
“Mario just called me up one day and said he wanted to do this,” says Meredith. “He’s incredibly genuine, with a real desire to honour his father. And he’s an amazing pianist.”
Music always came easily to Mario, who had a natural ear and rhythm. By the time be was a teenager, he and younger brothers, Marc and Len, were playing accordion, piano and guitar as the Commisso Brothers at weddings birthdays and local gigs, including TV and radio. Mario remembers playing when Terry Fox loped through town on his cross-Canada run that ended too soon after in Thunder Bay.
Cosimo saw music as a way to keep them out of trouble and keep them together. |
He’d arrived in Canada at 21 and worked in the grain elevators before settling in Schreiber, where families had emigrated to work on the railway. He married the daughter of the local grocer and worked hard in the store, but always made time for those music lessons and to take his boys fishing for speckled trout in the cold, clear waters of Steel River.
Customers came to Costa’s from Marathon, White River, all over, just to pickup Cosimo’s famous homemade sausage links. He was a perfectionist who kept his meat counter spotless and taught his four children to do every job right the first time.
Like his mother, Mario grew up in the store, delivering groceries during his high school spares. His dad wanted him to stay indefinitely, but finally, at 29, Mario’s adventurous nature took him away from Schreiber.
“It was really hard to leave,” he says. “l remember the day exactly. It was Nov.19, 1988, snowing and cold. My wife and I left at 7 a.m. and drove two hours to White River. Neither one of us said one word the entire time.”
Being so far from home is particularly difficult now, with only brother Marc still in Schreiber to help their Mother with Cosimo’s care. The Reflections CD is Mario’s way of helping from a distance.
“It’s really hard on my mother. She has to be there 24/7 and she doesn’t get any breaks at all,” he says. “She’s an optimist who always hoped he’d get better. But now we realize he’ll never be the same person, that the person he was is gone, and that’s the saddest part of the disease.” |
