Exhale

By 

Dan de Souza

Christmas 2020

In Wolford, the Protestants are buried north of the highway and the Catholics lie on the South.  Their gravestones face each other across a frozen trans Canada highway, staring bitterness and hatred towards each other long after their bones are ice.  Amira Ahmed imagines her family on the centre line of that highway as she makes her way past those graves, from home to school and back again.  She and her brother and her parents, perfectly placed on a narrow white strip,  defining the fault lines of the northern town.  

It’s not like the highway divides everything in Wolford.  Hockey divides it; you’re either a Wolford Wolves fan or you're a Marystown LumberKings fan.  Geography divides it too.  You're a “townie” or you're a “woods kid”  Her parents usually know which way the wind is blowing when it comes to these divisions.  Her father makes sure the store is stocked with merchandise from both hockey teams.  Makes sure to smile and talk to everyone who comes in.  Makes sure there is a crucifix on the wall and his Koran below the counter.  

Bishop St. Louis is a woods kid, riding the bus to Wolford High School and he is beautiful. If you can use that word to describe a sixteen year old boy with long hair sticking out from under his Stihl baseball cap.  “There’s probably an argument around that too”, Amira thinks.  And who calls a boy Bishop?  That was the question Mrs. Sharpston asked on the first day of grade 11 English. “Who names a boy Bishop in rural Ontario?” she said, staring at him sitting right beside Amira.  She could feel the heat of his embarrassment through his plaid shirt.  Could swear the heat was travelling through the plaid, across the desk, up her arm, her scar serving as a dam, stopping its advance at her throat. 

Amira couldn’t look up that day.  Neither could Bishop.  And that posture carried on for the semester.  Bishop, looking at his shoes whenever Amira managed to furtively glance his way and she turning away anytime there might be a chance of Bishop looking at her.   

When she could get a good look at him, usually across the hall where his locker faced hers, she would pretend like she needed something in the bottom of her locker and then, hunched over, one knee on the ground, the other near her chest, she would turn her head, just so, so she could see him, side-on as he looked for something in his.  She sometimes felt that they were in some sort of tableau, with the rest of Wolford moving around them as they were frozen in that pose. 

When news of the pandemic hit and the school shut down,  Amira walked home, Bishop went on the bus, and they lived together in her imagination, while the world stopped for a while. “It would be nice to be frozen in place beside him”, Amira thought, walking along the highway on that last day. “If we were frozen”, she dreamed “then I couldn’t say something stupid and he could just be there and the world could just keep going by.”  She would not have to worry about where to eat lunch or if her jeans were the right ones or if her mother found the make up in her drawer.  She could just stay there, with him, turned sideways, so he could only see her good side.

When school was called back the third week of December, Amira’s dream thawed.   She climbed the hill behind the store, passed the dead Catholics and Protestants, her anxiety rising with every soggy boot step. With the school fence in sight and the Marystown bus spraying slush onto the sidewalk in front of her, the sweat gathered under her jacket.  When she reached her locker, Bishop was at his.  He is staring into the top shelf, while Amira dials her combination and then kneels on one knee, assuming the pose of the past, side on to Bishop.  Her jeans stained from the slush on the ground.    

They reach Sharpston’s door at the same time.  He stops and let’s her go in first, nodding slightly; she can feel the wet stain on the knee of her jeans, the sweat stains under her arms.  Wonders if he sees them.  She adjusts her mask, hoping  her eyes are calm and shining, thankful that she will not have to turn side-on to him today, the mask doing for the scar what make up never could do. 

In Sharpston’s class the divide between those who had computers to learn on and those who didn’t, fell along the same lines as those who had this year’s styles and those who dressed out of the thrift shop.  Amira, like Bishop, had no device and had to use the google chromebooks provided by the school.  Bishop sits meters apart from her, allowing her an even better side glance of him;  his dirty boots, worn jeans and forearms built thick from work.  Mrs. Sharpston, permanently seated at her desk behind a plexiglass window, can no longer stalk her classroom as she had done only a few weeks ago.  

Amira fiddles with her chromebook, trying to keep up with the lesson.  

“Amira, is there a problem?” 

“Oh, no Miss.  I mean, yes Miss.  I can’t get on the Internet Miss.”  Her eyes move from her screen to Sharpston, who is leaning into her plexiglass window.  

“Refresh your browser Amira and then click on the icon in the lower right corner.”

“Yes Miss.”  Amira, having already done precisely that, hangs her head over the keyboard,  the sweat is now trickling down her back. 

“Did you do it Amira?”

“Yes Miss.  I mean, no Miss.”  Before Amira can look up, Sharpston’s arm comes across the keyboard and her fingers begin to move over the mouse pad.  

“She doesn’t like that Miss.”  Bishop is standing by his desk.  “She doesn’t like that,” he points, as he repeats.    His glance moves from his desk to Ms. Sharpston.  

“I just need to get her on the Internet Bishop.  Thank you.  Please sit down.”

“I know Miss,” Bishop says, taking his seat.  “She’s nervous Miss.  She doesn’t like anyone near her.”  

Amira is still.  Her ears pound as the blood rushes to her face.  She cannot raise her eyes to look at anyone  but she can see Bishop sitting to her left.   She knows her face is blotchy and under her mask, her scar must be deepening red.  She can feel, she thinks she can feel, Bishop glancing at her from across the room but she doesn’t dare look up.  

Instead, she fiddles with the Internet connection and presses the mouse pad rapidly and furiously.  When the “ping” of messenger sounds, Amira jumps back from the keyboard, like it has given her a  shock.  

“It’s OK.” the cursor blinking behind his message.  Amira tucks her lower lip under her front teeth, beneath her mask.  “It’s OK.”  She places her fingers over the keyboard, the cursor demanding she reply.  “Thanks” she writes and glances over towards him but he is looking straight ahead at his screen, chin resting in palm.  

The walk home at this time of year is dark.  Amira trudges along, towards the divided cemetery, heading towards the tramped down path in the snow that leads to the store and home.  In this December light, everything is grey and dark.  The Marystown bus plows by, sounding like a wounded beast.  “Bishop is on that bus.”  

The wind from the lake whips snow up onto the road, polishing the headstones of both the Catholics and the Protestants. She walks past them in the dark, her head down. The solstice has dropped the sun in the lake, “never to be seen again”, she thinks.  

“Saturn and Jupiter are going to kiss.”  Amira jumps into the road at his voice, snow avalanching down her boot.  “On this solstice, Saturn and Juptier will come within a degree of each other, even though they are hundreds of millions of miles apart, they will look like they are kissing.”  Bishop is sitting in a snowbank, his back to the dead Protestants, looking across the highway above the heads of the still dead Catholics, towards Lake Superior.  Amira can see his white teeth, smiling in the dark. “Sit down, I’ll show you.”  

Amira steps over the snow bank, off the trans Canada and sits down in the snow with Bishop.  She feels their arms touch as the snow under her caves a little and levers her toward him.  He points with a mitt that has the fingers cut out, “see, over the lake, you will be able to see them get really close.  Just over there.  It only happens every couple of decades.”  Amira follows his finger out to the horizon.  Bishop turns toward her, “it’s like they are kissing even though they are hundreds of millions of miles apart.”

Much later, she lies in bed listening to the wind creaking the house.  She thinks about planets kissing and remembers the mist from their exhale, traveling out across Superior into space.

A strange Canada Day.  No Main Street gatherings; maybe a muted family picnic.    Maybe a shrug with gloves on.  The polite Canadian nod, with a mask...from a distance.

It makes you long for the days of your uncle bear hugging you in the backyard, your mother kissing you.  Your friend grabbing you by the arm and hugging you as only old friends do.  It is like typing with your fingers askew of the keyboard; things are familiar but little seems to be coming out right.  We aren't fist pumping this Canada Day.  If there are fireworks where you are, they'll be shadows of what they were because, none of us are what we were.

 We are tired, worried, frightened.

There have been many casual, ordinary Canada Days.  Holidays where we have migrated to a cottage or a beach or a bonfire or a park, and gone through the motions of a celebration:  "Ya CANADA!".  We sat on coolers, stretched back on nylon strapped lawn chairs, pulled our hats down over our eyes.  Like drunks, we  declared, that indeed, we are "BUDDIES FOR LIFE." only to wake up July 2nd wondering "who was that guy?" 

Not this Canada Day.  Nothing is as it was.  We are subdued, quiet, reflective.  But for a Canadian, "subdued" is the resting place, the point of stasis.  It should not be confused for a lack of determination.  The pebbles of Juno and the cliffs of Dieppe implore you not to confuse the two.   Canada begins and ends with that quiet, stoic, sober, determination.

That determination has failed us at times and we carry that shame.    Citizens without potable water,  regional insurrections nip at our heels, poverty that persists in a land of plenty.  It makes you want to look away.

But maybe this Canada Day, this quiet Canada Day,  we can see what we have.  Maybe, if we are fortunate enough to see fireworks, we could  draw our eyes away and see our friends, our family, our country in that starburst.   That bright light will illuminate our faces in clear relief.  It may allow us to see this quiet determination, this commitment to the other, this value of a collective response over the swagger of an individual, anew.

Maybe we will see the most Canadian of virtues, civility, as the great weapon against a virus that has brought super powers to their knees.  That civility (wash your hands, respect spaces, wear a mask) is a weapon now against a foe that we can vanquish.   Covid has never met anything like us, it has never met the polite Canadian.

Happy Canada Day. 

No Shade from the Sun Room

If you motor to the end of the lake and cross the portage you will be in a State that is on fire.  I am sitting in a sun room of a lovely cottage looking towards Minnesota and when you are in this position, a position of quiet and calm and beauty, you can fail to understand that a short distance away there is mayhem and sleeplessness and injustice.

I've sat in this sun room over the past few days reading Dave Badini's book Keon and Me.  Is there anything better than reading a book in a sun room on a bucolic lake with chaos a long boat ride away?  In the book, Badini attempts to accomplish two things; he wishes to bring his hero, Dave Keon, back to the Maple Leaf fold and he wants to vanquish a bully who tormented him throughout school.

I was bullied for a while in school.  I will call my bully, um let me see, I will call him... Greg Puchalski (sometimes I don't have a very good imagination for names).  During my teaching days I went to a lot of workshops about reconciliation and forgiveness.  I went to more than my fair share of conferences on bullying and peace keeping.  In those libraries and conference rooms, in those board offices and church basements, there seems to be sound, peaceful solutions to the bully. 

I don't want to ruin Badini's book for you but he attempts to emulate his hero Keon for a long time by not fighting his bully.  When I was bullied, I took it for about a year.  I have a vivid memory of finally confronting my bully (I call him Greg Puchalski).  It was not particularly heroic or romantic and certainly not poetic.  I stumbled on my words and I am pretty sure I was crying or at least I had something in my eye.  My voice got stuck in my throat but I think my desperation, my anger promised a violence that if unleashed would not be controlled.  I would inflict as much damage as my 117 pound frame could inflict.  It wouldn't be much but it would be everything I had.  I remember it as righteous.

There's a breeze coming from the south, from Minnesota, into this sun room, over the keys of my computer.  It is cool. Just down the lake from here, a man died under the knee of a bully.  A group of people have taken to the streets after a 400 year bullying.  They have tried everything.  They did what Badini did for a time, what Keon did during his career; peaceful protest, quiet resolution, civil, organized, disobedience.

Some of it worked but most of it did not.

400 years plays in nine minutes.  People have decided enough. They are confronting a history, and it would be the height of arrogance for someone like me, sitting in the position I am in, to decide how or when or what they should do.

When you are sitting in the sun room, you don't judge the people who are forced to live in the shade.

Nature was a hallway.

It has been a way for us to get from one place to another.  A quick drive through, to the cottage, to the beach, to mom and dad's, to a friend's.  Nature has been a drive through.    We drove through it, rushed through it, on the way to work, on the way to anywhere, other than to her.

We gave it the same attention we give to all hallways.

This may not be the case for everyone.  Some people have always seen nature for what it is, a beautiful retreat, a means to refresh and renew, a place to heal.  A place to love, find love, be loved.  To realise you are loved.

A natural thing, a virus, is making us see nature in a new, old way.  It may be driving public health officials wild but, it is heartening to see people flocking (with some social distancing) to trails, to woods, to lakes, to rivers.  Somehow, we are discovering what she can do to us.   It is like watching people find their first love.  You are excited for them.  Their love makes yours stronger, better.

There is an epiphany here and it is spreading like a virus.

Nature is our home.

Happy Canada Day! The Nuns are Coming.

We are all looking forward to Canada Day, hoping for a normal Canada Day, pleading for a normal Canada Day.  So let's think of that lovely day in the future when you can use a different excuse other than "social distancing" to leave your neighbour's house early.  And while we are thinking of that lovely Canada Day of the future, would it be OK if I told you about a Canada Day of my past?  I could write it and you could read it and we would both kill a few minutes of quarantine, so there's that.

When I was in grade nine my parents bought a cottage on Little Kennisis Lake and my Dad was the head of English at Paul Dwyer Catholic High School in Oshawa.  Sister Mary Elizabeth was my English teacher and of course, out of every fourteen year old's nightmare, my Mom and Dad invited Sister Mary Elizabeth and ALL the Sisters of St. Joseph to our cottage for the Canada Day weekend.

Now before we continue, the cottage at Kennisis was what realtors would call "rustic".  It was the cottage with an outhouse outback, newly abandoned because Dad and the music teacher he worked with, had put in running water in the spring.  Musical pipes. 

It was the cottage that was used three seasons and had no insulation between walls.  No sound proofing.  I repeat...as if you didn't hear me, NO SOUND PROOFING.

The nuns arrive on the Friday of Canada Day weekend.  If there is a more depressing sentence than the last, I don't want to read it and I hope I never write it...again.  The nuns arrive on Friday of Canada Day weekend and they, there are three of them, are given the room beside me with the two sets of bunk beds in it.  I know.  You are picturing nuns in bunk beds.  I will wait.

Did I tell you there was no sound proofing?

By Sunday morning, I am an atheist.  Dad and I are outside, in front of the cottage and because the cottage is too far away from the local Roman Catholic Church, the nuns are forced to gather on our lakeside deck to read their Breviary, their book of prayer. 

Dad and I are working at trying to remove a stump, the nuns are up on the deck, "reading" and down comes Floyd .  Floyd was the York Regional Cop who had the cottage next door that clung to the side of a cliff.  Floyd's only running water was him, running to the lake and back.   Sunday is Floyd's bath day, he is wearing a swim suit from the '70's.  Google it if you must.  And he does what Floyd does at the cottage.  He dives in.  He soaps up.  He repeats.

I am digging at a rather persistent root and Dad gives me a nudge. I finally look up and there is my English teacher and all of her sisters, their eyes peaking over the tops of their prayer books, enjoying Floyd's bath. 

We all pray for something. 

Of Poetry and Viruses

There is truth in poetry and viruses. 

A virus, for those of you who have not yet pillaged your local Costco for Purell, is a microscopic organism that replicates its DNA in its host, causing suffering and sometimes death.  They are contagious and can leave a path of destruction behind.

A poem is beauty and beauty is truth.  It leads you to places that you don't see coming and at its best it reveals universals.  Contrary to what you might think, poems have a logic.  They have a beat, a meter, sometimes a rhyme, that gives the poet and the reader a feeling of control. If the poet wishes, he or she can give a sense of chaos too, simply by changing the way these tools are used.  Chaos or control, what matters is when you are in the hands of a good poet, you can trust where they are taking you.

"Covid-19" is a poem.  The name itself is musical, making you think of a boat you might buy ("Welcome aboard the Covid-19") or a band you would like to hear ("Ladies and Gentlemen, Covid-19!").  It is a poem because it is revealing, peeling off masks and exposing. It has stripped Mr. Trump, who is virulent, parasitic; replicating the hate within him in others and leaving a path of destruction behind.  It has exposed small men in big empty shirts. It has thrown in contrast political ideologies that cannot understand a problem that cannot be solved with a tax cut or a trickle down theory.  The sworn enemy of these ideologues, the people in public service, is now the only thing standing between them and chaos.

"Covid-19" is a beautiful poem.  It reveals the beauty of humanity.  Nurses and Doctors and public health officers (are they all women? It seems so.) who are seen as items on budget lines to be cut  in good times walk down halls into the breech.  Researchers and lab technicians who toil in fluorescent basements, peer through scopes to find answers.  These public servants are our poets and we trust them to bring chaos to order, to bring us back to truth and beauty.

We need these poets to write us a new poem.

Don't Tell Gainey

by 

Dan de Souza

I hope Bob Gainey never reads this. As a matter of fact, I am hesitant to tell anyone but if the story of our love of hockey must be told then I suppose I will have to violate the code and draw attention to Mr. Gainey and our hockey heroes and their humility will have to bear the bruise.

I took Bob Gainey on a canoe trip the summer he was GM of team Canada. He was looking for a getaway from the meetings around the selecting of the team that would go to Nagano and he saw the ad our little canoe tripping company placed in the paper. The Gainey’s lived in Peterborough as I did. His brother was a friend of my sister. It was rumoured that Gainey would skate on the lake sometimes. The Captain of the Montreal Canadiens, six time Stanley Cup champion. The player the Russians called “the world’s greatest player.” The man the Selke Trophy was invented for, my childhood idol, was going to be on my canoe trip.

Superheroes in Canada arrive in rented sedans with a back pack. Everything Gainey did that weekend was unassuming; the first to pitch in to pump water, to cut wood, to portage. He spoke very little, as did I, but I watched him like a kid on a Saturday night. He put everyone ahead of himself. He listened politely to the advice from one of his fellow paddlers who was sure Gretzky should not be selected because “all he does is score goals.”

But there’s one conversation that still resonates.

Another traveler told Gainey how much she loved watching him play and Gainey, after looking up in the summer night sky said to her: “That’s very nice. Thank you. But I wonder if what you really loved, was being around the tv with your family on a Saturday night, you know. It was that time with your family that you really loved. I just happened to be there.”

Gainey was almost right.

I remember with great fondness watching the game with my Dad on a Saturday night and hiding under the coffee table in the hopes that I could stay up past the first intermission. I remember Gainey beating my Dad’s Leafs over and over again. It’s that Saturday night, that warmth of home, that comfort of family with us that we love about our game.

I am hesitant to tell you this story because my hero, Bob Gainey, might not approve. Hockey is played by people of ordinary proportions who prefer the corners to the center. They live in our towns. Their siblings are friends of our siblings. They arrive in vans and station wagons with hockey bags and tape. They coach our kids and organize the 50/50. There is no desire in them to be recognized or to be put first but they are not “just there”. Rather, that humility, that work ethic and selflessness of our heroes is who we are.

The Humanist Canoe

I am sitting in a classroom at the University of Toronto.  I am in my third year, taking my third course in religious studies and the professor, Father Mosey, asks the class to describe a sacred place.  I am slightly hung over, slightly distracted by the young woman who sits across from me and completely surprised that he asks me first. “My canoe” I blurt out.  My canoe? How do I reconcile my canoe to a sacred place? Thankfully the professor moves on to another, let’s say, more earnest student but I am left with that answer.  

The course was called Ritual: The  Sacred and Profane and now that I look back on it, the sacred was the place that the religious see as special and the profane was for everyone else.  Now, thirty years beyond that class, I am very happy with my answer.  

My canoe is neither sacred nor profane.  What it is, is a perfect metaphor for what it means to be human, what it means to be a humanist.

The canoe is based on a design by our Indigenous peoples.  In that, it honours and respects the past and traditions of thoughtful people.  It really is a tribute to science, thought and research, without which the boat would never reach its symmetrical beauty and its perfect balance.  This is exactly what humanism offers as a philosophy for life. Rational thought and reason, built on the work of others, in order to provide a rational approach to the trials, tribulations and jubilation that we face as we travel around the sun.  

My canoe has been on countless rivers and lakes with me.  It has transported me down rapids, it has served as a kitchen table on camp sites and in one instance, served as a large beer cooler in my backyard.  By any measure it is a practical thing. Isn’t this what we want most as people? We want to be able to adapt, to be able to rely on our own ingenuity, our own strengths.  We want to use our minds to understand, to be empathetic and compassionate and to be able to react and respond to a particular situation with clarity. We want to recognize our weaknesses, our human foibles, and we want our friends, our family, our community, to help us out when we need it.

It is the freedom that my canoe gives me that I most value.  I am free to navigate rapids, to paddle swift rivers and calm lakes, just as humanism frees me to think for myself, to listen to the arguments of others and to tolerate them but ultimately, I find comfort that my decisions about my life are mine and mine alone.  This is very much like reading a rapid. Some may pray before they take on a raging curl or a large drop but I would prefer to rely on my wits, my experience and my knowledge.   

Ultimately my canoe will fail.  I will puncture it or wrap that beautiful body around a cold rock in a rapid.  It will die. There will be no resurrection. There will be no rebirth. There will be no reincarnation.  Most likely, its corpse will be left to rot in a river and eventually eroding to a point where the difference between it and the water will be indiscernible.  Knowing this gives me some comfort. Knowing too, that it will live in my memory, in the stories I tell, in the memories I share with the people who went with me on those trips, that will be the comfort I will need.  

I began with Father Mosey and I think I should conclude with him.  While I reject the ideas of religion, and I reject the language of religion, there is no sacred and there is no profane, I have to give my professor credit.  He argued that people need ritual. They need to come together to recognize the important moments of their lives. Whether it is a welcoming or a farewell, whether it is an end or a beginning, there is a need among humans to share these events with each other, to have them acknowledged by our friends, our family and our community.  

We need these rituals.  We need language and symbol to allow us to connect. Rituals and symbols, language and ceremony that is designed by humans, focused on humans, this is what we need. If it can be done with balance, and care, with freedom and tolerance, it would be as important and as rewarding as paddling in a beautiful canoe.