Mel and Me ... A Love Story
I sent this note to you because you will understand the passion with which I wrote it and the heartbreak. It's about family and friends. And, the most important friend ... "My Best Friend" Who is your best friend? A person with whom you grew up? You went to grade three with? Your "best" man? Your golf partner? For me, my best friend was my brother-in-law, Emilio Matteo Campanile. His nickname, "Mel", was given to him by a teenage girl who lived across the street from him and couldn't pronounce Emilio. Mel grew up in Anglo-Saxon Toronto in the 1930s on Chestnut Street, behind the Sick Children's Hospital. At that time, before the hospital was built, the area looked like that scene from New York City’s “Little Italy” in The Godfather. A few of the original 12-foot-wide homes on Elm Street are still there. His father was a barber who raised a family of ten children in their tiny house with 15-cent and 25-cent haircuts and shaves. Emilio ...