The Smith family lived half a block up the street on the other side of McIntosh. They had kids. Girls mostly, as I recall. One of them was Dianne. Here she is on the right. I think the other girl’s name was Wanda. I don’t think she was a sister. A cousin maybe or just a friend. She was much tougher than Dianne and always seemed to be skeptical about stuff.

The girl in this next picture, with Dianne Smith, was called Wilma. I’m not sure what she is doing in this picture. Picking her nose maybe.

Dianne was not really a close friend of mine. She was a bit older and perhaps was friends with the Evil Sister or maybe just a neibourhood kid. I’m not sure how it came to pass that we went to a dance together.

The dance was put on by the Army Cadets, as I recall. Perhaps a fund raiser. It was held somewhere near Polo Park. The band was Chad Allan and the Reflections. They later would become Chad Allan and the Expressions and after that became The Guess Who. This is what they looked like back then.

Nope, Burton Cummings came later. Yes, that is Randy Bachmann bottom right. All good Winnipeg boys.

I, of course, had never been on a date and I’m not really certain this dance thing was a real date. And I had no idea how to date or what it really meant. Dianne Smith and I weren’t particularly close, we certainly weren’t a couple of any sort. I confess that I was much more interested in seeing what the Army Cadets were about than being at a dance, with a girl.

The band music was really good, though not even close to what they would become as the Guess Who. And because I wasn’t a total knob, I did do one dance with Dianne Smith. A slow dance. It wasn’t like real dancing; it was more like rocking back and forth to the beat of the music. I could only do one dance because the zipper on my pants came apart and I had to remain seated at the table after that, until it was time to go. I guess I wasn’t much of a dater back then.

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