The Great Adventure Before Him

 

Christmas 2023 

 

Bill knew Walter had many journeys ahead of him but this year's was the first to pose real danger.   

The preparation for the mission began at the disappearance of the last bit of Halloween candy, when Walter took off his Commander's uniform, sought a leave from Star Command and set his sights on what lay before him.  

“This year” Walter stabbing the air with his spoon, Bill catching the drips with a cloth, “this year, I am going to prove to those kids that he is real.” He went back to reading the cereal box as his father rinsed the cloth at the kitchen sink, “that a boyo Walter, go get it” he said over his shoulder.

Walter’s plan was simple.  He just had to sneak downstairs on Christmas Eve and take a picture of St. Nick in the family room.  But like all simple plans, the execution of it was in the detail and this required careful consideration and to consider things carefully, Walter needed to get to his boat. “Dad” he shouted down from the attic bedroom he shared with his three older brothers, “Dad, I need my oars, where did you put my oars?”  Bill came to the top of the creaky stairs and watched his youngest son through the unfinished spindles of the railing,   

“Did you look under the bed?” Bill could see the mini-sticks from where he stood.  Walter stood in the center of his blanket laid on the floor, its edges rolled up and reshaped into the hull of his boat. He looked from his father on the stairs to the ocean rolling around him and then stepped carefully over the side of the boat and swam, with great exaggerated strokes.  He reached where he knew the Marianas Trench lay below and with a quick plug of the nose, dove a thousand fathoms beneath the waters to get the oars from the bottom of the Trench.  He emerged triumphant, holding both of them above his head, waving at his blinking father on the top stair.  “Got them", shaking the dripping water from his hair.  Bill ducked so as to not get wet. 

Walter climbed back into the boat, nodded farewell to his father, pushing with one oar and pulling with the other, turning towards the Cape and with each pull he began the meticulous contemplation of the great adventure before him.

There were threats, traps that needed to be avoided.  Snotty nosed kids in school yards telling you that Santa didn’t really exist.  They were persistent, trying foes.  He gripped the oars tighter. There was already a mountain of evidence.  The toys, the presents, the stockings, all of them, arriving like clockwork each of the previous seven Christmas Eves.  Yet, those kids persisted, attacking him and his closest allies, demanding greater proof.  They were like the rocky shoals he drifted past on the way to the Cape, they were the sharks that circled his small boat.  He rowed further out, buttressing himself against the rising tide, knowing he could not fail. 

To stop the doubt, to quell the uncertainty, Walter needed evidence that was absolute.

His mind turned toward the route he must take. It lay before him like a great map. From the attic to the family room built in a repurposed garage, he would have to negotiate three flights of stairs, each a treacherous mountain pass, and then past his parents’ room, an arid desert he would have to army crawl to navigate it. He would have to be absolutely silent so as to not wake the sentries.   Then through the dining room, a lush plain with long grasses, hiding man-eating lions. Finally to the step, leading to the family room, to the tree, and if he was lucky, to the great man himself. It was the Hillary step, to navigate it was to live in infamy, but if he failed at the step, if he failed, Walter knew there would be no return. He would remain forever frozen on the cusp of the great discovery.  

He prepared with perhaps an over-exuberant enthusiasm.  He wanted to convey the sense of excitement for Christmas Eve but not betray the nervousness he felt at the onset of the mission in t-minus five hours, so each movement felt rehearsed, forced.  He poured the milk. He left out the cookies. Laid the carrots down for the reindeer. His brothers and sister and parents looked on.  He knew he could not take them with him. It was his journey and his alone and knew in his heart that they would understand. He hugged them, stepped away with a salute and then headed to the attic.

He lay in bed for a very, very long time, his phone charging beside him. Finally, after what seemed like months, his brothers’ breathing became rhythmic. He reached for his phone, taking it under his covers. “It’s time to go over the top boyo.  Godspeed to you.”  He gave himself a silent salute and began the journey to the step. 

The first mountain pass was treacherous, creaky.  It took a long time to descend.  The army crawl along the desert proved very difficult, the buttons of his uniform scraping on the wood floor with each movement.  Two more mountain passes lay ahead.  He rested for a moment, gathering himself.  Then with an unmatched stealth, he dropped down, navigating the second pass and the third in absolute silence.  The lush plain now ahead, Walter became afraid of the man-eating lions.  He could feel his heart race, peering across the dining room to where the final step lay. He needed to stop, to calm himself.  After a long moment he slid along the wall, his palms pressed flat against the rock face, watching for one of the mighty lions to make a fatal lunge. 

Then the step.  He lay on his stomach, his cheek turned and resting on the cold rock tile of the step leading to the family room, the tree, the great man. He gathered himself for his final approach; a Rocket Man about to land, but first he needed to rest.  He needed a moment to think of how far he had come, how far he had to go. He needed to be ready to take “one small step.”

Bill found him on the step and scooped him up into his arms. He felt his boy wrap his gangly legs around his waist.  He was so much heavier than last year and longer too, feeling Walter's heels pressing on the back of his thighs, just above his knees. He shuffled past the sleeping lions, wishing them a good night. Then climbed the two mountain passes, breathing harder as he climbed.  Then, across the desert, noting the trail left in the sand by the uniform of the Commander and then up the final pass. 

He tucked his boy in bed, whispered to all "go to sleep" and pulled the remnants of the boat up to the great adventurer's chin. He whispered, “Good job Commander”, kissing him on the forehead.  He stopped at the top of the creaky stair and looked back at his four sleeping boys. He put his hand on the wooden rail and sighed “I fear you'll make it next year.”

A Horrible, Beautiful Place

In the early '90s I guided canoe trips to earn a little extra cash. It was better than the alternative- teaching summer school.  I met Hana and Gerta Frieberg on one of these trips and had the privilege of taking them on a number of trips over the following two or three years.  Gerta Frieberg died recently.  Her obituary  (Globe Obituary for Gerta Frieberg) drew me up short, reminding me of what a truly remarkable person she was.

In my early days of trying to become a writer, I wrote an essay about a trip I took with her and sent it to her on a whim.  Not only did she arrange to have it published in The Canadian Jewish News, she used it during her presentations to raise money for Nueberger Centre. In a preamble in the publication of the piece, Gerta said "It is a testimony to all those aging volunteer survivors who share their painful story..."

I republish it here in honor of Gerta and in the memory of all those who were lost.  May her memory be a blessing.

A Horrible, Beautiful Place-The Canadian Jewish News, 1997

My introduction to the holocaust was typical of most kids growing up in Canada.  It consisted of the one film they showed in history class from grade nine through grade thirteen.  It showed the bodies of the Jews being bulldozed into mass graves.  The image remained with me but the whole thing seemed unreal, like my mind was protecting me from fully understanding the horror.

I guide canoe trips during the summer.  This past summer I guided a trip through Algonquin Park's Barron River Canyon.  The river is remarkable for a couple of reasons.  It winds through one of the deepest canyons in Ontario.  There were two sisters along with us.  One of them sat in the bow of my canoe.  She is about seventy years old and as we pass through the magnificent canyon she began to talk.  Not so much to me, because I am unseen in the back of the canoe, but to these huge granite cliffs that have been scarred by glaciers.  She speaks in a whisper but because of the depth of the canyon, her words echo.

She says in a heavy accent:  "My father would love this place.  He was a naturalist.  I would hike in the mountains with him and my sister and all we would take would be some bread and lemon.  We would squeeze the lemon into a cup that was filled with mountain water and we would eat the bread by the stream.  My father owned a Harley Davidson Motorcycle and every time I see one today I speak to the owner and tell them that my father owned one.  When the Nazis came in '39 they took my father's motorcycle. It was the first thing they took in our village.  They put us in the ghetto six months later and then my sister and I were sent to the camp.  I never saw my father again.  We spent four years after the war in a camp waiting for some country to take us."

I stop paddling and let us drift by the walls of the canyon.  That image of the bodies being bulldozed into the mass grave comes back to me.  Her father, an owner of a motorcycle and a man who would love this place like I do, was in that pile.  That horror is now real to me, part of me.

We slip past the rocks.  Her words echo as we move and there is only one other noise.  It is in the distance and it serves as a drum beat to her lyric.  The Barron River is also remarkable because of its proximity to the artillery range at Petawawa Military Base. This holocaust survivors words enter my ears at the same time as the sounds of an army practicing for war.  Artillery punctuates her tale.  

The canyon has become a horrible, beautiful place. 

Half Light

Christmas Eve found her standing under the arch of Soldiers Tower, waiting for the carillon to ring.  She’d hope to be under the tower with John, waiting for the bells, watching the snow fall.  It was the same hope she held each of the four years he’d been gone.  She watched the late winter dusting through the northern arch of the tower but could not feel the flakes on her hair, on her cheeks, the arches of the tower protecting her, the unseen bells overhead saving her from the elements. The snow hypnotized her, holding her stare with the beauty of their fall.  

She roused herself by stuffing her hands deeper in her pockets, shrugging and turning to the east wall, the “gate”  they called it, the one that held the etched names of the dead from the first world war.  The one to end all wars.  She wanted to go and place her hands on the cold names, run her hands over them, stick her numb fingers in them but the metal bollards, like four sentries, kept her from advancing. “If I wanted to,” she thought “I could easily step around the barrier and reach out for them.”  But she knew it was not the attraction to the names of the dead from the war to end all wars but rather the repulsion, the revulsion of the blank wall ahead of her, the west wall, waiting for the inscriptions of the new war dead.  The wall that could take John’s.

“Are you alright Miss?”  Barbara spun around.  “Are you looking for someone?” The old man stood with his back to the blank wall having entered from the north side of the tower, the frozen football field behind him in the falling snow.  His hands were stuffed inside tweed pockets, his cap wet with melting snow.  His shoulders were pulled up toward his ears. “He mustn’ like the snow,'' she thought. “Are you looking for someone?” he said again.   This time Barabra followed his eyes to the wall behind her, turning slightly toward the names.

“My son is there.”  She turned back to him.  “Third column from the right, sixth row, third down.  Terrance O’Donnell.  We called him Terry.”  She found his name quickly.  “ I come here every Christmas Eve.  My wife can’t stand it but I don’t know, it helps me”

“I’ve never seen you here before.”  Her voice shocked her and she feared that she had brought offence.  “I mean” she concentrated on her tone, “I mean I’ve been coming here for the last four years on this night.  We used to come here on our way home some nights.  Since he shipped out, I haven’t missed a Christmas Eve”  she stopped and then continued, “or a birthday or an anniversary or…”  Her voice trailed off into the archway and then out into the gathering snow.

“I suppose we just missed each other.”  The old man was looking directly at her.  “I’m sorry.  You are missing someone tonight.  It is a difficult thing.  I will leave you to him.”  Before he turned to go, he looked up into the tower, imagining the bells hanging in the carillon above and thought it was like they were waiting for someone too. She could see a spot on his chin that he’d missed shaving.  She followed his gaze up into the tower.  They stood like that long enough to make her neck stiff.    

“I suppose we are too early for them to ring.  I just couldn’t stay in my apartment any longer.” 

“Yes.  We’re both too early.  I left the house quite a while ago.  I wandered through the campus.  Tried to convince myself not to come this year.  It’s strange.  Ever year, I promise myself not to come back.  I should be getting better, I say to myself.  Move on I tell myself but…” he watched her walk behind him.  “But, here I am back again, even earlier than last year.” He turned round to see her framed by the waiting blank wall.  

She nodded, like she had made up her mind.  “I’m sorry for your loss.”  Her voice was firm, not as kind as she hoped.  “It must be very painful.” She was short with him.  She watched him root around in his pocket and pull out a handkerchief.  He wiped his nose.  He put the handkerchief back in his pocket and walked away from her  to the gate, turning back towards her when he reached the bollards at the opposite end of the archway. She looked at him.  She imagined his son’s name perched on his shoulder.  “I will leave you so you can have some time to yourself.  Merry Christmas.  She turned away from him, stepping out into the snow, feeling it melt on her cheeks. 

“When we lost Terry we lived in a half light.  Like the light leading to the solstice.” His voice echoed from the other end of the arch.

She turned back. He had moved back towards her and stood in the center of the archway. He was staring at the unseen, silent bells.  “I couldn’t live like that any more.  I couldn’t live waiting for a return. Waiting for word."  He heard her footsteps on the concrete floor of the tower and knew she was beside him.  “It’s like standing here waiting for the bells to ring but they never will. I imagine you understand what I am talking about.”  He looked at her, the shoulders of her coat covered in snow.  She heard him take a deep breath.  “Heat and light.”  He let the words linger in the archway of the tower.  “Warmth and beauty”.  He held out his hand in the half light of the tower.  She hesitated and then, she reached out and put her hand in his.  

They stood like that for a moment, waiting, hoping the bells would ring.  He felt the warmth of her hand in his, then the pull of her arm, guiding him through the arch, past the blank stone wall.  They walked like that, the snow falling heavily, past the frozen football field waiting for spring, the flickering lights of the city to the north, and after a time, the sound of the bells bringing beauty and warmth and calling the light to return.

Unfurling Flags

In another life time, I stopped a young man in the hall of a school because he had a badge sewn on his backpack that was a depiction of a cross in a circle with a line through it.  Being a Catholic school I figured the young man was taking a stance against Christianity and stopped him to ask him about it.  He pulled out of that back pack an essay defending the symbol, taken from a band called Bad Religion.  He explained to me that he was not against "Christianity" but all religion.  I  admired his attempt at defending such a bad use of symbol but if you are going to protest all religion, you better find a symbol that encapsulates them all. 

This, of course, brings us to Britney Spears.

You may remember Ms. Spears performed at the MTV music awards in 2001 as a 19 year old in a loin cloth, with a yellow snake around her neck.  It may be possible that Ms. Spears did not know she was playing Eve, the temptress, the reason for our expulsion from the garden. We understood even if she did not. It is not an article of faith.  It's just that we, as a Western culture, have come to associate snakes with temptation.

Both our young man and Ms. Spears were run over by symbols.  One fails to see the meaning or significance of them and the other muddles meaning with an inexact use of them. Symbols are powerful things and when you play with them, you're playing with fire (see, I just did).  You don't get to change the meanings of symbols to suit your personal agenda or to sell more records. When it comes to symbols, you don't get to make up your own rules.

Now to our convoys.  

There is a small group of people using our flag as a symbol for their desire for freedom. Their definition of freedom does not match mine, or the majority for that matter but that is alright.  Reasonable people can disagree. The problem is the way they have used our symbol.  This is one of the things that has raised our ire, more ire than I think they counted on. They have used the flag as a cape, as car ornament and in some cases, as a towel to cover themselves as they get out of a hot tub. They've sewn it together with American flags, decorated it with swastikas, trying to warp it into a symbol of their movement. 

Ultimately they are using the flag as a cover to hide imprecise thinking.  The flag, coupled with a shout of "freedom" looks like thought and freedom of speech but (as Northrop Frye would say) it is nothing more than a bark of a dog. We want them to stop. Perhaps yell at them or  give them the finger but at the same time we don't want to dishonor the flag that they are dishonoring. If  we give the finger, are we giving it to veterans? To Terry Fox? To new citizens who have come to embrace it?  In that moment of struggle, that moment of hesitancy, they zoom by, perhaps feeling that they have our support.  

They do not. 

A flag, our flag, is a symbol for all of us.  We place our collective ideas about country in it and it is big enough to hold many and sometimes opposing ideas within it.  But it can't be used as a bath mat or car wrap.  When you do that, you are not making the political statement you think you are making. You are co-opting our symbol to defend an idea you cannot defend with reason.

The good news is that the majority of people know how symbols work and the power they hold. The better news is that a poorly constructed argument, a poorly thought out premise will disappear in a strong breeze, the same breeze that will unfurl a flag. 

Too Early for the Moon, Too Late for the Sun

“It’s a compass Pep.”  Jerry looked down at the boy holding the compass in his pudgy hand, his fingers straight out, the compass in his palm, the red needle moving to and fro, searching for north. The little boy took his eyes off the compass for an instant to look up at the old man standing beside him in the driveway.  

“A compass?”  

“It helps you find your way Pep.”  Jerry thought back to finding the small brass compass in the filing drawer where he kept their wills and Sarah’s last wishes. He tried to remember how old he was when his Dad had given it to him.  It must have been in that drawer for over forty years. 

 

Jerry figured he’d missed the mark again.  Last year’s gift giving, his first without her, had not gone well.    Bamboo wok steamers for the women and clocks for the men was a stroke of genius; efficient, economically sound, an organizational dream.    He used the same wrapping paper and piled them in the trunk of the car.  Even in the dark of a driveway before heading into a house alive with light and music, he could tell by just feeling them, which was the wok and which was the clock.  The rhyme made it even better.  But, he had to admit, watching them open last year’s gift, their responses were muted at best.  

His mind went back to Christmases before, before she became sick.  Sarah would have individual gifts for everyone.  All carefully wrapped, placed in gift bags, organized by households, with hostess gifts included.  Jerry really didn’t understand the concept of a hostess gift.

“A compass?” Pep looked up at him again.  “It’s ok Mr. Jerry, my mom has a gips that tells us where to go.”  The boy continued to watch the needle struggle to overcome his fidgeting nature and settle on north.  

“A gips? I don’t understand you sometimes, Pep.  I really don’t.”  Jerry jammed his hands into his pockets, feeling a balled up kleenex in the right one.

“You know?  The gips that talks to you in the car.” It was Jerry’s turn to stare.  The top of the boy’s head, the part in his hair, revealing white scalp, the dripping nose and the palm of the hand, outstretched swaying giving the compass a nervous twitch.  

“The only thing that talks to me in the car is me.”  He looked down at the boy staring at him.  Sarah never talked in the car, she slept.  Pep turned circles in the driveway, his boots scuffed the dusting of snow on the asphalt. “What are you doing?”  The boy stopped doing circles, finishing facing away from the old man.  He looked over his shoulder at Jerry standing behind him wearing that funny little hat he always wore and those boots that his mom told him were  “galoshes.” The word made him giggle.

“I’m trying to get the arrow lined up with the arrow on the bottom but I can’t do it.  It keeps moving.”

“Stop moving, Pep.”  Jerry walked over to the boy.  “Just stand still and wait for the needle to settle. See?”   Jerry was over Pep’s shoulder.  “See its settling down.  Just wait.  Good.”  Jerry put his hands on Pepper’s shoulders and slowly rotated him, watching the compass in the outstretched hand, it’s red directional arrow, settling in the painted arrow, “the house” on the bottom of the compass.  “There.  See.  Look up.”  The little boy looked up at his house across the cul de sac. “See, that’s north.”  Jerry pointed over the boy's shoulder at the semi-detached house that once held a father too.

“My house is north?”  The little boy’s eyes moved from the arrow on the compass to his house and back again.  Jerry looked over Pep’s head, over the little house with its sagging Christmas lights, letting his eyes move up toward the darkening, lake blue sky.  It was too early for the moon, too late for the sun and the north star had not yet come over the top of the house.  

“That can’t be right Mr. Jerry.  My house can’t be north.” Jerry brought his eyes back to the boy.

“Why not?”

“If my house was north, Santa would live there.  He doesn’t.  I checked.”  The boy wiped the clear drip from his nose with his sleeve, his tongue licking underneath.  Jerry had not considered this problem when he slipped the compass into his pocket for the next time he saw the boy.  “Mr. Jerry?”  Pep turned back toward the old man, snow falling on his little hat, the arrow stuck to its task and  pointed behind him at his house.  “Mr. Jerry?”

Jerry tried to think of an answer.  He looked over the boy’s head toward his little house, the north star just starting to climb above it.  “There’s a difference between north and the North Pole, Pep.  If you followed that arrow and walked for a really long time, you would finally come to the North Pole and Santa. Jerry crouched down to the boy, putting his knee on the asphalt of his driveway, feeling his trousers getting wet. He turned Pep back towards his house, placing the arrow back in its home.

“How long would I have to walk Mr. Jerry?”  Jerry put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and pointed to the star rising above his house.  

“You pretty much have to walk to that star.  You use that as your guide.  The compass and the star.  But you can't go by yourself, OK?”

“Ya.  that’s too far for me Mr. Jerry.  I couldn’t walk that far.”  His tongue went to the new drip under his nose. 

“It would take a long time, Pep.  A lifetime.”

“Thanks for the compass Mr. Jerry, I gotta go now.” The boy was down the end of the driveway.  “Merry Christmas, Mr. Jerry.”  He didn’t look back at the old man.

“OK Pep.  Merry Christmas.”  His hand was raised in a half wave.  He watched the boy walk across the grassy circle that served as the centre of their cul de sac, past their melting snowman.  The little boy had his arm out in front of him, his eyes on the compass, his path moving to and fro as he tried to keep the arrow in the house, pointing north.  When the boy was safely inside, Jerry turned back to his house sitting in the December darkness, the stars slowly emerging from their day blindness above it.  

He thought of a little boy and a compass, of missing fathers and of Sarah and how wonderful a long, quiet walk toward the stars would be.

 

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.