Rear Admiral​ John Newton​ shares his greatest gift

We asked you to share your #CBCGreatest Gifts with us. Today, Rear Admiral​ John Newton​ tells us about one of the best gifts he has ever received.

As a little boy, John Newton didn’t quite know where he fit in.

The future Rear Admiral belonged to a Navy family, but they didn’t live in military housing. When he visited his friends who did, their cookie-cutter houses and social scene felt unfamiliar.

He lived on the Bedford Basin near Kearney Lake Road, full of big, beautiful homes with ocean views — where his own home looked small and modest.

"I thought it was poor, compared to the neighbourhood I lived in," he said.

When Newton was about seven, catalogues began arriving at their house before Christmas, and he became fixated on one page. It showed a big toy tow truck named Big Bruiser.

"I remember doing what my kids do to me now," he remembered this month. "I've got six kids, and they all went through this phase where they demand their parents buy something that's totally illogical."

Big Bruiser was battery-powered, it drove on its own and "had a hook and everything," Newton said.

"There was no chance I was getting Big Bruiser. It just didn't fit in our social economy. But I just kept asking, and bugging and bugging."

His best friend and neighbour was one of the kids living in the big houses. Newton laughed as he remembered declaring to the friend that he was getting Big Bruiser for Christmas.

"You're very assertive as a young kid," he said. "But in the other half of my brain, [I knew] that was the biggest lie I probably could have been telling."

'I remember the size of the box'

That Christmas morning brought the inconceivable.

"I remember the size of the box," he said.

"I certainly remember being overwhelmed. It's fused in my brain: I can remember the smell, I can remember the sound, I can remember the flashing lights, I can remember all the switches."

"It was totally monstrously big and so beautiful, and it did everything the Sears catalogue said it did. I remember playing with it until I broke it, literally the next day."

Newton’s parents had six children, just like he does, and he said he can’t imagine the compromises they made to "afford the unaffordable."

But he has carried the memory with him every Christmas, especially since he became Santa to his own children.

"The memory of Big Bruiser is obviously sticking with a 55-year-old man. We shouldn't dismiss those illogical gifts as not having any effect," he said.

"You pretty well have learned to listen to what they're really asking for. We try to be very practical. The $1,000 skis of a daughter who's so busy at university she can barely get to a ski hill anymore is illogical, but it's a desire by the kid to return to something she's really good at, if she could just find the time."

If only once for each child, Newton and his wife have found a way to deliver the over-the-top clothes and shoes, toys, and other Big Bruisers of their minds’s eyes. 

The skis are another story, he said.

"That's a big secret for this year."

Please keep the stories coming.

You can email [email protected], or tweet us using #CBCGreatestGift. We'll keep putting them together to share with everyone else.

And remember to tune in to CBC TV for The Greatest Gift, a special program we're preparing for the holidays. It will run at 11 p.m. Dec. 24 and again at 6 p.m. Dec. 26.