Lisa LaFlamme
CTV News reporter and anchor
It sounds so cliché, but my favourite toy was a doll, and her name was Walking Wendy. I was four years old when she was given to me. I remember vividly that we were all up at the cottage, and my dad came up on the weekend carrying this big box. It was overwhelming for this big box to arrive and to see a doll that was the same height as I was!
Wendy and I were inseparable when I was a very small child. We both had short blond hair and were the same height, so I must have felt that she was my twin. Every birthday and every Christmas my mother would make matching outfits for the doll and me.
When I left home, Wendy stayed forever in my old room, and when I moved to Toronto and had my own house, she showed up there. My mother brought her – and all of her clothes – and now she sits in a guest room. In fact, throughout my life, she's always just been sitting quietly. That's been her role forever. She can't talk but I guess I always felt she could listen, and she became this calm, constant presence in my life. Now, whenever my nieces come over, they get to go into the Walking Wendy room. Of course, her eyelashes are gone – I don't know how they disappeared – she's got a hole in her heel and her hair is a little matted, but Wendy is still around. It's nice that there's something for my nieces to play with other than a computer.
CBC TV satirist
When I was six or seven years old, I got an Easy-Bake Oven. You know, it takes a real man to admit that he had an Easy-Bake Oven. I'd asked Santa for one; it was probably because my sister was diabetic. We were all raised on a diabetic diet and I thought, If I had my own oven we could have dessert! There was never any dessert, really. You'd get fruit salad and cottage cheese. That's what passed for dessert in my house. If it was a really crazy weekend, you might get a Fresca.
I remember my brother telling me that boys didn't get Easy-Bake Ovens. But I certainly got one, and it was yellow, and I was thrilled. But, for some reason, it never really worked well. It took hours and hours to bake a cake. I found out later it was because I had 40-watt bulbs in it, and you're supposed to use 100-watt bulbs. I remember my father explaining to me that the 100-watt bulbs were very, very expensive, but I realize now he was worried that the thing was going to burst into flames.
It wasn't until I was 18 years old, in a Canadian Tire store one day, that I picked up a 100-watt bulb to look at the price, and I was aghast to see that it was the same price as the 40-watt bulb! My entire life I had been under the impression that 100-watt bulbs were outrageously expensive.
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