A widow finds a place for husband's beautiful poem

If poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, Andrea Vincent can take a little credit for making it a better place.

After reading a Fixer column, the 89-year-old widow persuaded the city to use one of her late husbands poems on a plaque mounted to a wall on St. Clair Ave.

In July of 2012, we wrote about an odd rectangular slot in a new retaining wall at the northeast corner of St. Clair and Spadina Rd., which had people wondering what it was for.

We reported that a city engineer said the slot was meant to hold a plaque with a poem on it, part of a project called Poetry on the Street, and that it would eventually be filled.

We forgot about it until an email recently arrived from Peter Vincent Jr., which included an old-fashioned, typewritten letter from his mother, which he scanned and attached to his note.

In her letter, Andrea Vincent said that after reading our column, she thought that one of the many poems written by her late husband, Peter, would be a worthy candidate for the vacancy in the wall.

You see, my husband was a true Renaissance man, she said, adding that he was an engineer with the former Department of Highways, but he was also, heart and soul, a poet.

Peter Vincent Jr. told us his parents came to Canada from Hungary, and that poetry was his fathers lifelong hobby. His mother, a professional translator, translated his poems into English and eventually published them in a book.

She submitted one of her husbands poems to the guy in charge, and he agreed with me that it would be suitable, for the wall at Spadina and St. Clair, she said.

These things take time, but I am glad to report that this poem is now embellishing our fair city, for all to see and enjoy. And also commemorating, or dare I say immortalizing, the name of Peter Vincent.

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A widow finds a place for husband's beautiful poem