Canadian Graffiti: ’60s ‘gang’ still defines city’s soul, as The Continentals (Inch Park scallywags), remain together

You have your whole adulthood to outgrow the people you grew up with, and so when you don't, when you stick together, you have a precious gem indeed - a lifelong friendship.

When you're lucky enough to have a gang of five such lifelong friendships, that's a string of pearls.

When you have a literal gang" of 10-plus lifelong friends, including girlfriends/boyfriends who ended up marrying and are together 50 years later; when on top of that you saw the Beatles together and fought the Parkdale gang and survived; when your gang" helped build your city, as if you were the calcium in its bones and you're still meeting three times a week 60 years on, then you can be only one thing.

Then you're Fort Knox gold and the Hope diamond crossed with a unicorn and a four-, no, five-leaf clover. It's a wonder you exist at all. But you do. You are ... The Continentals. Stand up.

Readers, say hi.

The name? I guessed the car. Lincoln Continental? Or the breakfast at Econo-Lodge? No. Continental boots. What they called Beatle boots before the Beatles came along.

Ian Sutherland and I were walking to the teen dance at Onteora and we ran into Mike Woodrow and the Bruce Park gang," Paul Anderson explains. The Bruce Park gang - older guys. Tough. This was, apparently, when the Mountain" was still cooling from the planet's formation, and gangs, like roving T-Rex's, stalked the new streets that superseded the farmsteads on the brow.

Ian had saved up newspaper money - he and I had the biggest Spectator route on the Mountain," Paul digresses - and bought these stylish boots he knew the girls would love.

Mike started mocking us," says Paul. Off to a dance, they wore houndstooth pants, button-down collars, ties.

What do you call those (boots)?" Mike scoffed.

Ian said, We're The Continentals. Don't mess with us or we'll feed you the Continental boots!' and then we ran," Paul recounts.

The Bruce Park gang never caught them; they didn't even try. They were laughing too hard, says Paul.

So it began. The Continentals staked a claim to Inch Park. They got along passably with the Bruce Park gang, less so with the terrifying Little Chicago (from the wartime houses neighbourhood) with their weapons box" (no one will say what was in it); not at all with the notorious Parkdale gang.

Nancy (nee Smith) Clause married a Continental; Terry Clause, nicknamed Boots." They all had nicknames. Jay Bird, The Music Man, Shawsie. Aforementioned Ian Sutherland made them up.

Sandy (nee Tocher) Shields and Dianne Kemp (nee Beswick) are two other Continental girlfriends still married to gang" members.

The men still meet Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, parking lot, Inch Park.

What's the best way to endure a pandemic?" Nancy's husband Terry asks, then answers. Enduring friendships."

And enduring fun. It's what attracted the girls to the gang back then. The guys were into dancing, music, playing pool, chatting and cheeseburgers, mischief and sports, all sports, and the Inch Park teams that won several city titles back then were made up largely of Continentals - athletic guys like Jim Taylor, Paul Anderson and his twin brother Barry, who still do the Wentworth steps several times a week.

These guys had it all going on.

There'd be house parties, mostly when the parents weren't home!" Nancy recalls. She'd pull Dianne Beswick along. Dianne's parents were strict but Nancy was a good student, trustworthy, so they let her. What could go wrong?

For one, Guy Kemp, whom Dianne started dating. He bought an Austin Mini - for $15. Barry Anderson was one of the group driving with Guy when the brakes predictably failed on the Jolley Cut.

Guy hammered on them but nothing," Barry recalls, and they went barrelling down the access, high speed, shooting into south downtown like a pinball, through the red lights, knocking over street signs," humping curbs, unable to slow, the wrong way on one-way Forest Avenue," and finally coming to rest, but not until Caroline.

We had our feet out like the Flintstones trying to slow it," says Barry. They scattered like startled fish as soon as the car finally stopped.

You can imagine how long Dianne lasted with Guy. No, you can't. They're married 57 years now.

Dianne's parents let her marry him but, earlier, they didn't let her go see those degenerate Beatles, even though she'd won prize seat tickets in a radio promotion.

She gave them to Paul Anderson and a couple other Continentals.

Unbelievable," says Paul, of the concert, Toronto, 1964. Their seats were right behind the stage, so close that John Lennon turned around and talked to them. What did he say?

You couldn't hear anything" for all the screaming, he remembers.

Music was huge for The Continentals. When they weren't fighting they were going to the clubs, watching the Hawks at The Grange or dancing in Lewiston, New York, because then the drinking age was lower there.

Two of The Continentals were drummers. Barry Powell played with the Undecideds, Bryan Shields (Sandy's husband) with Bobby Washington's band the Soul Society. Brian also played with the legendary King Biscuit Boy. There was singer Pat Brandino, tragically killed in a motorcycle accident when he was 19. Others too.

Of course, the girls loved the musicians. I was a lover, not a fighter," Bryan winks, but you know he was in there whenever the occasion called.

Like the big rumble" at Albion Falls. Literally, they did rumbles, a la West Side Story sans switch blades (it was all mano a mano; we never used weapons," says Terry). The Continentals. Little Chicago. The Parkdale gang. The cops got wind of Albion Falls and showed up. The gangs fled.

It wasn't like you think," says Nancy, about gang culture then. Just bloody noses and black eyes," says Sandy.

They weren't outlaws per se - out-bylaws, perhaps. Tough but lovable troublemakers, who also troubled to make, as they grew into adulthood, this city great.

Their initiation kinda says it. You ran at midnight through backyards, especially the one with the scary German shepherd barking, jumping fences until you got to Inch Park swimming pool, where you swam lengths, naked.

The Continentals. They've lived to tell the tale. Not all of them, sadly. Hamilton lost Ian Sutherland in 2020. Shawsie" was Bob Shaw, the courageous firefighter who died in 2004 of complications from the Plastimet fire which he so bravely fought. Our Jon Wells wrote the book Heat" about him.

Others have gone. Most are still here and, amazingly, together.

Youth gangs, right? Give them an Inch (Park) and they take a yard, a backyard, then another and, before you know it, a continent. The Continentals. The continent of friendship, squared by time and loyalty and ... OK, I'll use the word, love ... sturdier, more enduring than any land mass.

I could go on. Oh, the stories. How they joined the militia and learned to decontaminate after a nuclear war. How Brian Pozzo came back from B.C. after two decades and not a beat was skipped. I met them, at Inch Park, on a cold sunny January morning, and I scrawled to keep up - the stories! - and, miracle, my pen didn't freeze; I think the very energy of their telling warmed the ink in the barrel.

Rare? Oh yeah. Shine on, you crazy diamonds.

Jeff Mahoney is a Hamilton-based reporter and columnist covering culture and lifestyle stories, commentary and humour for The Spectator. Reach him via email: jmahoney@thespec.com