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Rez Rocket Romance: A love story between two cultures 1045 Brant County Hwy 54 Ohsweken 519-770-3628
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Pete and Rita Bomberry met on a TTC streetcar in the sixties that spawned a modern Indigenous love story and a family legacy that will be featured on TTC streetcars and buses for Indigenous History Month in June. It was like the Montagues and the Capulets - but with an Indigenous twist. The late Rita Bomberry was Anishinaabe and raised Catholic on Christian Island in Georgian Bay. She was a residential school survivor, having attended the Spanish Indian Residential School on the north shore of Georgian Bay. Pete Bomberry - who is happily enjoying his life as the family patriarch on the Bomberry homestead on Fourth Line Road, affectionately called “The Bomberry Patch” - was from a traditional Longhouse family. He never attended a residential school and was raised in Burlington, Ont., where he went to a secular school. The two lovebirds met by fate on a spring evening on a Toronto streetcar in 1960. Both were headed to a dance at the North American Indian Club. Elaine Bomberry, one
2024
The TTC is honouring Indigenous Peoples Month in June by wrapping four streetcars, four buses, and FILE four handicap vehicles with Indigenous Artwork by various indigenous artists.
of four children the couple eventually had, said her mother reminisced, “He was the most handsomest Indian man I had ever seen.” Pete got off the bus before the two had a chance to meet but little did Rita know he was headed to the same dance as she. The two met at the dance later and ended up hitting it off so well that Rita gave Pete her number. Four months later, Pete proposed. Their parents were not happy about the impending nuptials. Coming from two entirely different backgrounds brought them concerns. Pete’s family wanted him to marry a traditional
Haudenosaunee girl and Rita was supposed to marry a Catholic man. The day of their wedding, which was being held on Christian Island and was only accessible by ferry, was to be presided over by a Catholic priest. But the priest never showed. Decades later, the family found out about the priest bragging to parishoners on Christian Island how he had once “saved” a young woman from marrying an “Indian Savage” years before by purposely not showing up to perform the nuptials. But the loving couple insisted on tying the knot and got married at a church in Toronto two weeks later and the two
families eventually accepted the union. The happy young couple started their family in Toronto, where they eventually had three girls and boy: Elaine, Mike, Tracy and Nancy. The kids spent their childhood split between Toronto, Six Nations and Christian Island, their summer getaway, where they fished, swam and enjoyed sun-soaked summers for years on end. Rita went back to school to learn Anishinaabe and Pete was fluent in Cayuga. Later, their grandchildren Jayden and Jared would attend a Cayuga immersion school on Six Nations to keep the language alive. Rita passed away from
breast cancer at 59. Pete, now a great-grandfather, is enjoying the beautiful, large and fun-loving family he and his wife created with endless laughter and get-togethers at the Bomberry Patch. On Sat. June 8 at 1:30 p.m., the "Rez Rocket Romance" Toronto Transit Commission's (TTC) streetcar will launch at the Main Street Subway station. The TTC is honouring Indigenous Peoples Month in June by wrapping four streetcars, four buses, and four handicap vehicles with Indigenous Artwork by various indigenous artists. Pete and Rita’s family photos and story will be one of the wraps. Earlier this year, Elaine was approached by Denise McLeod, Indigenous Consultant at the TTC to ask if the story could be reflected through artwork that would wrap a streetcar and of course, she said yes. “My mom left quite the life lesson to our family: you’re never too old to learn your language and never too old to go back to school,” she said. “She graduated from her Anishinaabe language program at Lakehead University but only substitute-taught for one semester before she passed away from breast cancer in 2000.”
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