Just steps away from where he grew up, retired Ontario Superior Court Justice and poet James Clarke will be in the audience at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre in downtown Peterborough in early June when his 2012 memoir The Kid from Simcoe Street is brought to life by Trent Valley Archives Theatre.
Playwrights Ed Schroeter and Gerry McBride, joined by James’ grandson David Francis Clarke as script consultant, told kawarthaNOW it’s a “daunting” task to write a play about someone’s life knowing they will watch it being performed. But they knew it was worth the challenge to bring James’ memoir to the stage because of its historical context and messages about resilience and community.
Taking its title from James’ memoir, The Kid from Simcoe Street will be performed at 7:30 p.m. on June 4 and 5, with 2 p.m. matinee performances on June 6 and 7. The play is suitable for ages 14 and up, but parental guidance is advised due to the play’s mature content.
The play is a coming-of-age story following James, who also goes by Jim, as he grows up in poverty at 249 Simcoe Street in Peterborough during the Second World War. When his father returns from the war wounded and likely suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, he becomes an alcoholic and gambler and is no longer the man James once idolized. As a result, James faces challenging and dark times during his childhood and adolescence.
Despite his dysfunctional family, James went on to attend McGill University and Osgoode Hall, practising law in Cobourg for many years before his appointment to the bench in 1983. He served on the Ontario Court of Justice from 1990 to 1999 and the Superior Court of Justice from 1999 until his retirement in 2008.
When Ed first read the frank and moving memoir shortly after its publication and not long after he met James for the first time, he immediately saw its potential to be adapted for the stage. In fact, when Trent Valley Archives Theatre was first formed in 2023 to bring local historical stories to the stage as a fundraising initiative, Ed had James’ memoir in mind.
While the theatre group decided to focus on the bicentennial anniversary of the Robinson emigration for its first two productions (Tide of Hope in 2024 and Crossing Over in 2025), Ed says he was happy they could revisit James’ memoir this year.
“(The first time I met him) Jim was such a lovely, generous, hilarious man, and then I read the book, and it’s just clear that he came from this downtown troubled area of Peterborough and still became a judge in the Ontario Superior Court,” Ed says. “That journey on the surface just attracted me and then, when I started looking at the book, the situations that Jim had overcome, as well as his sense of humour about some of those situations, it just all seemed like a perfect coming-of-age story.”
For his part, Gerry — not having met Clarke by the time he read the memoir — saw it as being a story about Peterborough in the war-torn era of the 1940s and 1950s.
“I’ve lived in downtown Peterborough for 30 years and I knew exactly the geography of the places that he was talking about,” Gerry says. “Not necessarily the buildings because most of them are gone, but I was able to picture things the way they were and make the connections. There were things that really touched me from his references to growing up in a city that I’m familiar with but at the same time not familiar with, because it was a whole different time and place. I found that really interesting.”
The play takes both of these perspectives — the resilience of a boy growing up plagued by hardship and Peterborough in the mid 20th century — to explore how a close-knit community came together to support James. From his mother to local firefighters, teachers, nuns, and coaches, those around James lifted him up and led him to a career as not only an esteemed judge, but also a poet with upwards of 20 published books of poetry.
“You meet Jim and you think this man could not have endured some of those conflicts, but he said to me the other day ‘I learned from that and we all rise on the shoulders of the people that helped us get through those tragedies or challenges,'” Ed says.
“For me, it’s about the importance of community. It’s how people band together and take care of each other, and I think that’s an important message these days. I think over the decades we’ve all become in a way very independent and insular, but when you look at someone like Jim and his life, you can see, as he says, he rose on the shoulders of others. I just feel that’s something we’ve lost in some ways.”
Rounding out the writing team, David was able to be a representative on his grandfather’s behalf, using his short film background and personal knowledge of his grandfather’s stories to provide editorial feedback on the script during its development.
“I’ve grown up with these stories,” David explains. “I’ve read his book a lot and I know a lot about his childhood. Ed and Gerry were very generous, very receptive, and collaborative with feedback and I’ve learned a lot from working on this.”
Since the story begins with James as an adult, before following his childhood from when he was a young boy until he went off to university, director Drew Mills and stage manager Barb Mills decided to cast three different actors to play James during the different stages of his life.
Grade 8 student Charlie Harris will play the youngest version of James, 12th grader Zoe Shufelt will be playing the teenaged version, and veteran actor Jim Mills will be portraying him as an adult.
Amongst the rest of the 14-member cast includes a cameo from Murray Byrne, an old friend and former football teammate of James’ while they attended St. Peter Catholic Secondary School, who will be playing his own father in a high school football banquet scene near the end of the play.
Now a Bridgenorth-area resident, Byrne noticed the call for auditions for The Kid from Simcoe Street back in February. No stranger to community theatre, he asked to join the cast and also said he wanted to see his old friend after 73 years.
On April 28, accompanied by his grandson, James travelled from his home in Guelph so the two old friends, now both in their 90s, could be reunited. They enjoyed lunch at Princess Gardens of The Gardens of Peterborough Retirement Residences, a platinum sponsor for the The Kid from Simcoe Street, and watched a rehearsal of the play.
“They hadn’t seen each other in almost 75 years before this lunch and it was really interesting, because they very quickly just became two teenage boys (again) talking about pulling pranks on the teachers and stuff like that,” Gerry says.
In advance of the play’s world premiere, Trent Valley Archives will be hosting “The World of the Kid on Simcoe Street” walking tour led by local historian Elwood Jones. leading up to the play’s world premiere. The tour will explore what Simcoe Street was like when James lived there in wartime-era Peterborough. The walks are being held on Sunday, May 24 and Sunday May 31 at 2 p.m. The rain-or-shine tour costs $20, with tickets available at eventbrite.ca/o/9633726313.
“We live in the present but that past is always with us, and when you look at some of these old pictures of downtown Peterborough from a distance, they don’t look that much different, because we still have a lot of the same buildings and things,” says Gerry. “There’s a history here that’s worth maintaining and learning about.”
Whether you’re a history buff eager to learn more about Peterborough during a transformative time period, or are just looking for an entertaining and empowering story, David says there’s something for everyone in his grandfather’s memoir and its stage adaptation.
“It’s a story of overcoming against a lot of things — a bit of a broken home, setbacks — and I think people are moved by those stories because, I think in some capacity, we can all relate to them,” David says.
Special limited-edition copies of James’ memoir will be available for purchase at Trent Valley Archives (567 Carnegie Avenue, Peterborough) leading up to the performances and at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre during the shows.
Tickets for The Kid from Simcoe Street cost $40 for assigned cabaret table seating or $30 for regular assigned seating and are available online at www.markethall.org.
Proceeds from ticket sales will support Trent Valley Archives, a non-profit charitable organization that houses an extensive and growing collection of local historical resources and makes them available to the public. Trent Valley Archives also encourages local and family history research, operates a facility, and raises awareness of local history through historical tours, events, publications, and presentations.
kawarthaNOW is proud to be a media sponsor for The Kid from Simcoe Street.
