The Person Next To Me

By Vito Montez

The Person Next To Me is the true life story of a self made Canadian real estate developer. The book takes you on a journey from his youth to his current age of fifty years old and depicts all of :the good, the bad and the ugly" that he has had to deal with over the years. It also depicts a realization that few people ever come to in their own life time - the true meaning of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Aug 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9780228815976

Vito Montez

Vito Montez was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. Vito has persevered the real estate market in Toronto and its ups and downs for the last thirty years and continues to do so to this day.

Book preview

Preface

My name is Vito Montez, and this is my story. Sex, drugs, action, death, and so much more all in half a lifetime – who knows what the next half will bring? There are people that have asked me why I would share my inner most personal stories, and then there are those who know me best and have urged me to share my stories with the rest of the world – obviously I chose to appease the latter group.

All that you are about to read is true except for the names of the people involved. I do have a lot of acquaintances in my life, but very few real close friends. They know me as V. It seems in life there are many situations that can bring out the reality about others, and either you accept them or cut them out of your life. Over time, and especially more so as I get older, I have decided to dismiss any form of negativity in my life, even if it involves those that are closest to me.

My story is one of abuse – both physical and emotional – and my overcoming the duress of this abuse to try and succeed in life. Trust me when I say that the emotional abuse has left me with the worst of scars. Some of you may not believe some of the stories, especially the ones that are spiritual in nature, but believe me when I say they are real.

I am the proverbial black sheep of a very wealthy real estate family who, like most families, would rather hide their skeletons in the closet rather than have others know the reality of their lives. I have learned one thing over the years about skeletons and closets – every family has them, and most try to bury them. In this case I am dragging out the skeletons for all to view.

I have been blessed by God and have been fortunate enough to succeed on more than one front in my life, so I have nothing to lose or gain from revealing my stories.

I thank you in advance for taking the time to read my story and hope that you thoroughly enjoy it.

1

The Early Years

Where to start? I was born in the great city of Toronto, Ontario, on September 28, 1966. My parents, Julio and Maria Montez, were Italian born immigrants who came to Toronto individually in the late 1950s and met in Toronto. Surprisingly enough they were from two small adjacent towns in Southern Italy, but they had to cross halfway across the globe to meet each other. My mother is from a small town called St. Vito and my father is from an even smaller town, even though he will not admit that it is smaller, called Cenadi, which are both located in Calabria, Italy. My parents wed on June 24, 1964, and I was born just two years later. I am the oldest of four siblings – John was born two years after me, then Lisa was born seven years later, and Freddo was born two years after her.

My maternal grandparents, Vito and Maria Lago, had six children named (in order) Mick, Maria, Toni, Anna, and Freddo, and my paternal grandparents, John and Maria Montez, had three children named Cristina, Julio, and Freddo.

I always remember the day I was born as told by my beloved nonna, Maria Lago. I was the first born of all my cousins on the maternal side of the family. I was born at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto just before noon. My nonna always told me how my father had gone to work on that day like any normal day and my mother went into labour not long after – remember this is 1966, well before the technology years and well before the cell phone. My nonna went to the hospital with my mother, and I was born at 11:11 am, a healthy nine pounds eleven ounces. My nonna went to the job site where my father was working, he was a brick mason at the time, and let him know of my existence.

My nonna and nonno [grandmother and grandfather], as I lovingly referred to them while I was growing up, held a special place for me in my heart. My parents both worked when I was growing up in an effort to advance the family financially as much as they could, so I was always dropped off in the mornings to stay with my nonna.

The running joke in my family was that, since I was the oldest sibling, I had claimed my maternal grandparents as my own, and my brother John, being the second oldest, claimed our paternal grandparents as his own since we were both basically raised by the individual grandparents.

My parents and I lived in a townhouse on Ossington Avenue just a couple of blocks south of Bloor Street West with my maternal grandparents, my three uncles, and my aunt. Most of the stories I mention here of my early youth are stories that have been recounted to me by family members as I have very little recollection of my early years.

I started walking at a very early age, approximately seven months old, which made for a very few interesting moments especially when my teenaged uncles were asked to watch me. I remember an unusual Tuesday late afternoon watching TV with my dad and my uncles in the living room. I kept waddling back and forth to my Uncle Dave who was smoking a cigarette. I kept trying to grab the cigarette from my uncle who kept taunting me. This is one of the rare times I clearly recollect as an infant. Firstly, I remember my dad and uncles jumping up and cheering every so often. Secondly, I remember my Uncle Mick jokingly putting the cigarette to my lips and how much I gagged afterwards. Finally, I remember hearing a large uproar of people yelling and screaming outside the house. What a day it was: yelling and cheering and gagging on my part. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I later came to learn a few things about that special day which was May 2, 1967. I learned that I did not want to nor would I ever take up smoking. I learned that I had probably just witnessed the last time the Toronto Maple Leafs would ever win a Stanley Cup. Ever. Somehow, however, I had unknowingly become a diehard Toronto Maple Leafs fan.

My uncles and my father loved to play cards for fun in their spare time. There was one instance when my mother left me in the care of my father and my uncles as she was going out to do some shopping. I guess I was a little colicky that day and would not stop crying or fall asleep. As my Uncle Dave recalls they decided to swap out the milk in my bottle with some homemade red wine. My father recalls how they put me in my crib, and I started drinking the bottle without hesitation and apparently there was not another peep out of me for the rest of the afternoon. As the story goes, my mother came home from shopping and came to check up on me in the crib and I wasn’t there. Needless to say, my mother started to panic, and they all started searching everywhere in the house for me. It got to the point that the called in the police because they thought I had been kidnapped. The police brought in one of their canine units, and the German Shepherd found me in mere minutes. I had apparently climbed out of my crib – it had lower sideboards made of foam that were covered – and had managed to get under the sideboard and was sleeping peacefully under the crib the whole time. What can I say? It was a strong wine.

Another story that my dear father recounts a lot is about how he was driving home from work one day going southbound on Ossington Avenue (we were the third house from the corner on the southeast side) and he spotted me on the street corner. I guess there wouldn’t have been a problem with that except for the fact that I was not even eighteen months old and wearing only a diaper. As he tells it, I recognized his truck, a big red Ford crew cab, and was waving at him. He recalls how he had to cut across traffic to block the road so nobody would hit me if I jumped into the street. He jumped out of the truck and rushed to pick me up and get out of harm’s way and his reward for being such a loving father… shit all over him that exploded out from my cloth diaper as he picked me up. I guess that was the start of the demise of our relationship.

My father has told me quite a few stories about our first home, but other family members have chimed in their two cents’ worth along the way as well. I think my favourite tale involves my mother’s two eldest brothers, Mick and Toni. Back in those days, we lived in my nonno and nonna’s house which was basically a three-storey townhouse. Imagine that there’s my grandparents, my parents, my mother’s four unmarried siblings and myself all living in this townhouse, and on top of that, my grandparents rented out the top floor to another family for extra income. It was a busy household, and space was limited even for a little guy like me – I guess that’s why I liked to venture outside a lot. My uncles, who I think I resemble and take after in terms of character, were quite the wise guys in their time, and they loved nothing more than a good laugh. Well it seems that my father, in his youth, had a very jealous streak when it came to my mother, so much so that, before they were married, he would park his car out on the street in front of my grandparents’ home and sleep in it all night to make sure no other guys were coming over to court her. My mother was, and still is, a very beautiful statuesque woman who – at five foot seven – loomed over my father’s five-foot-three frame. Well needless to say, both of my uncles always picked on my father who has a very limited sense of humour especially when it was directed at him.

On one summer evening, just before my parents were to be wed, my father was parked outside my grandparents’ home sound asleep in his Chevy convertible. Now if you don’t know Ossington Avenue in Toronto just imagine this – there is the curb, the sidewalk, and the house right adjacent to the sidewalk – there is no front yard to speak of. My uncles who shared a bedroom at the front of the house on the second floor had noticed him sleeping there so they decided to prank him. They proceeded to open their bedroom window and crawl out onto the porch roof and urinate down onto my father who quickly woke up thinking that it was raining until he looked up and saw my uncles almost in tears from laughing so hard. As a rule of thumb, nowadays, anytime I drive my convertible I always put the roof up when I park it – after all you never know when or what’s going to rain down on you.

For those of you that can remember the original televisions back in the sixties, you probably recall that they were big, bulky, and heavy – very unlike our slim and lightweight LED versions today. Well there is one more thing that I remember about those televisions, and that is they had knobs on them to change the channels. Apparently, the knobs could be removed as I learned at the tender age of two. It seems that I thought it was fun to take off the knobs and throw them into the toilet and flush it. After a hard day’s work, my father would come home and have to take apart the toilet to recover the knobs. Why I say that my twos were tender is because of how many times I was spanked or my hands were hit by my irate father who didn’t find it to be such a fun game as I did. Now that I think about it, the incident by the side of the road was definitely the commencement of the demise of our relationship.

On February 20, 1969, my brother John was born, and not long after that my father came home with a German shepherd puppy. This incident clearly sticks out in my mind to this day. It was the day of John’s baptism – we were raised as Roman Catholic. At the time, I wasn’t even three years old, and my mother had dressed me in a bright peacock blue suit for the baptism. While everyone else was getting ready, I went in search of the puppy which I found in the basement. I tried to approach the dog to play with him and he kept running away until I finally cornered him under the sofa. I did what any normal three-year-old child would do; I went in after the puppy and came out with my suit jacket all torn. My mother was not impressed to say the least, and my father’s response was a swift whipping with his belt. I quickly learned how painful leather could be against the skin. Needless to say, the puppy found a new home soon afterwards. Just for the record, I always hated that peacock blue colour on a suit anyways.

My brother John and I always had the typical sibling relationship growing up – there was always love and hate in everything we did together. The one thing that always stood out for me was that anytime he would do something wrong, I was to blame since I was the oldest child, and it was my duty to watch him. He was always the total opposite of my husky size even later in life as an adult he maxed out to five foot six inches tall and probably weighed no more than a hundred and sixty pounds. As children we did everything together – we played, we fought, we sometimes even got into trouble together, but it was me that took the brunt of most of the punishments.

On one occasion, while we were living in Scarborough, I remember the first year that John started school. I would have to walk him to and from school on the days that he attended because he was only there three days a week for junior kindergarten. It was a beautiful spring day and I was violently ill so I could not attend school. Sammy said he would take him, but my grandfather decided to walk him to school anyways. I remember I was under a blanket on the couch watching Sesame Street when the phone rang.

My grandparents couldn’t speak English, so they handed over the phone to me for translation. Apparently, John was hurt during recess, and my parents could not be reached so the school had to take him to the hospital for stitches. My grandfather went to the school to retrieve him and when they returned, my grandparents asked John what had happened. John was playing baseball with some of the other kids and somebody hit a high fly ball in his direction, which he lost sight of in the sun, that landed and hit him square on top of his head. The result was that he had five stitches put in. When my parents returned home from work that evening somehow it turned out to be my fault, and I received a beating for it happening.

Little did I know back then that this was just the beginning of a series of events that John would walk away leaving me with having to take the punishment no matter what form it came in.

One of the saddest stories my parents ever told me – this was much later in my life when I was capable of understanding it – involved my father’s brother Freddo. My father was very skilled with tools, and my uncle was one of the top real estate agents in the city at the time. They bought some fixer uppers together and flipped them. I guess you could say that they were the original property brothers in Toronto. On one occasion they sold one of their homes to a nice family from Calabria close to where our parents originated. Well the story goes that this family had a very beautiful daughter, and my uncle started dating her. After a few months of dating, the girl became pregnant. My uncle insisted that the child was not his and called her every name in the book and told others that she was sleeping around with multiple guys. Why did he do all of this? I guess mostly to save face in front of family, friends, and the Church because abortions and pregnancies out of wedlock were not the norm back then. My uncle packed his bags and left for Italy. When the child was born, the girl’s mother came and informed my father of the child’s birth. My parents decided to visit the girl and her new daughter after they returned home from the hospital. I have rarely seen the face of remorse as the time my parents were telling me this story. When they visited the newborn child, they knew for sure that my uncle had lied because the one thing that couldn’t be hidden was genetics – the newborn had bright orange hair the same as my uncle and something that is very rare amongst Italians. Karma came to play a very important role in this story. My uncle returned from Italy almost a year later with a bride in tow. He insists, to this day, that the child was not his, but my parents believe otherwise. My uncle and new aunt, Isabella, who is one of the sweetest ladies on this earth, were never able to conceive children together – karma defined.

There is very little else I recall about those early years save and except for two things. Firstly, I recall how much snow we would get in the winter months, how high it was piled up on the sides of the road, and also how it was riding as a passenger in a car in those years because nobody had snow tires back then. I recall how I went with my father to visit someone on a cold winter evening and how he left me in the car with the car running for heat. I don’t know what got into me, but as soon as he was out of sight I clambered over from the back seat to the front seat and started playing with the steering wheel. Then, for no reason at all, I pulled down on the transmission shift lever, which was on the column, and the car started to move. It wasn’t moving fast, I guess, because of the excessive snow on the street, but it was moving, and I didn’t know how to stop it. All of a sudden, I saw my father running frantically towards the car – he pulled the driver’s door open and jumped in and stopped the car. Boy did I get a beating for that one when we got home, but looking back, I can see now how much I wanted to be a driver even at such a tender age.

I also recall when my Uncle Freddo Lago – whom I never called uncle or zio – started school which was on the opposite side of Ossington Avenue. I would watch every day from the top floor of my grandparents’ home and wait until I saw my uncle returning from school. Due to the fact that my uncle is only eight years older than me, I always looked at him like an older brother instead of as an uncle, that is, until the day he started loving disco – that’s when I distanced myself from him until, as time went on, I started appreciating the same type of music.

However, it came time for us to move on and my parents moved us on to the next chapter in my life – out to the suburbs of Toronto, a city I would eventually come to know as Scarberia because of its remote location as the time.

I really loved that old neighbourhood, and I still do. Even today, whenever I’m in Little Italy, I drive through it and gander at the house I was born in.

2

Scarberia

I still remember that early spring day in 1970 like it was yesterday, even though I was only three years old. After a very long ride, we arrived at our new home on Brantford Drive in Scarborough. I was in awe at all the big houses in our neighbourhood and all the greenery surrounding them. My parents had purchased their first brand new home – a thirteen hundred square foot, two-bedroom bungalow with a double car garage on a 50- by 170-foot lot for a total purchase price of thirty-one thousand dollars. What I remember most about that day was meeting the next-door neighbours who had a son my age that would become one of my best friends for life, or so I thought at the time, Sammy Revnik.

Sammy’s family was Yugoslavian, which was the beginning of a cultural enlightenment for me. Sammy’s dad, Hugo, was a big burly man who drove a cement truck for a living and loved two things in life – his Molson Canadian beer and my grandmother’s cooking. Hugo made a habit of just happening to show up at our front door about twenty minutes after he would see my father arrive from work, which was coincidentally about the same time it would take for my father to wash up and be ready for dinner. At first it was a novelty, but it became a little bit of a nuisance when he started to suggest, to my mother, what my grandmother should make for dinner for the following day. That went on for almost three years until we moved on to another home, and Hugo still asks to this day why he was never invited over for dinner after we moved away.

Sammy’s mom, Mirna, was a very beautiful statuesque woman who stood almost six feet tall and had very bright green eyes.