The lives and times of my parents were busy,from an historical standpoint.Both were young children when war came to Europe,but their lives must have been affected.The war memorials in both Canterbury and Springhill attest to that by the listing of those sacrificed.Nearly every town has such a memorial.
When the war ended,it ended in a world divided,in two armed political spheres staring each other down on the territory fought for in World War II.The shooting,the active killing might have stopped,but the world was hardly less uneasy.The nuclear age brought fearsome new possibilities in warfare,such that nobody would be far from any armed conflict.Such was true of my parents,because,for whatever reason and by whichever route,they ended up in the town of Goose Bay Labrador that was a part of the war machine.
Goose Bay is located in the mainland portion of the Province of Newfoundland.During the Second World War it served as a port for trans-Atlantic convoys.By the time my parents moved there both the Americans and Canadians maintained air bases there.It's barren and undeveloped,from the pictures I've seen,really more a part of the Canadian North than it is of the Atlantic Provinces.That was "Away" for my parents,and judging by appearances,it must have seemed very far away indeed.
I've never been told how my parents came to meet.I believe it must have been in Goose Bay,but that may just be a part of our family's mythology.Neither of my parents were really storytellers.My mother had the intellect but not the inclination to be one,and while my father was inclined to relate tales,he was only skilled at doing so verbally.The picture I get from his tales though is of a young man,free from home and loving it in the sense that most men seem to.Life was a bit of an adventure.But there was a certain virtue rooted in the belief that being where he was and doing what he was doing served a great purpose.That of protecting right,Canadian values from a very real enemy.So in that sense he was defined by the historical reality of the time.
In 1955 my father went to Jamaica.By then he'd been in the north for a time and I suppose like most people who've been in the north for some time without a family to support,he had a bit of money.And he hated snow,so he went on that once in a lifetime trip.I'm not certain who he went with.but he tells a rollicking tale of those times.Rum was cheaper than coke,according to him.When they arrived,they rented a car,something which few people did.There were very few cars there at the time,but they had one and rode in style from one end of the island to the other.My father told the story of how,when they were riding about,they came up behind a cart being pulled by some sort of a beast of burden,and it was stacked high with many different things,including chickens.He assumed that it was going to a market.But as they were trying to pass it,a chicken flew off of the cart and into their windshield,killing the bird.This was followed by a full attack by a big black woman with a stick,angry that he'd killed one of her chickens.Not knowing what to do in this situation, my father told me,he reached into his wallet and pulled out an American twenty dollar bill and handed it to the irate woman.Her demeanor changed in an instant as she grabbed the bill and then began hugging my father.And that is one of the few tales my father told about Jamaica,but from it I knew that it was a great time in his life,that he really enjoyed the trip.
My mother traveled some too.She went to the American Northeast,as far south as Washington,and she documented her trip with hundreds of photos that she kept on slides.But again,she was not inclined to relate much of that trip by way of story.
However my parents met and whatever their lives were like they came to be married in the church at Dead Creek,near my mothers childhood home.The year was 1959.I don't ever recall seeing wedding pictures,but that could be a failing of my own memory.
My memory may be failing me,or it may be that I've not been told so much about my parents lives,as I seem to be woefully ignorant of things that others know about their parents.This poses a problem in my own telling of my story.You see I really want to know that my parents were good,decent people,and,for the most part I do.I believe most people want to know that.But for me,a lot is left to interpretation and I fear that I may interpret wrongly
Nineteen fifty nine was the year that saw Fidel Castro come to power in Cuba.Cuba immediately aligned itself with the Soviets Nakita Khrushchev was the leader of the U.S.S.R. and Eisenhower was the President of The United States.Here in Canada,the Prime Minister was John Diefenbaker.
Alaska and Hawaii became the forty ninth and fiftieth American states.
Future Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was born in 1959,as were Magic Johnson,Nicole Brown Simpson,actors Hugh Laurie and Kevin Spacey,and 2016 Vice Presidential candidate Mike Pence.
Frank Lloyd Wright,Cecil B.Demille and Lou Costello died in 1959.
In 1959 the average house cost about twelve thousand dollars,a loaf of bread twenty cents and the average year wage was about five thousand dollars.
Boing launched the first trans continental flight from Los Angles to New York,aboard the new 707.The ticket price was $301.00.
Bonanza debuted as the first weekly television series broadcast entirely in color,and Ben Hur,North By Northwest and Some Like It Hot were popular films in 1959.
The arms race continued and both The United States and The Soviet Union were beginning to develop their space programs.The world wasn't getting any safer.
Wednesday 27 July 2016
Tuesday 26 July 2016
before-part II.
My mother hailed from the village of Canterbury,in the province of New Brunswick,not far from where it borders on the state of Maine.The whole of that area is well treed and the main industry relates to the harvest of those trees,on both sides of that border.The towns on one side are not very different from towns on the other.
Canterbury was a thriving little village ,once, with a busy downtown.It's main street was the same as the highway that passed through it and all of it's stores and most of it's better houses were located along Main Street.There were a few cross streets that led up into the surrounding woods and generally the houses and people became less prosperous the farther you ventured from Main Street.Canterbury bore very little resemblance,as near as I can tell to the town after which it was named.
My mother's home was in the land past Canterbury.It was rough country,the land hilly and rocky,the soil thin and with trees all about.It was not so well suited to farming,but they lived on what they called a farm just the same.You could raise a few animals and enough food to subsist,but I believe them to have been poor as well.That's the story one look at the land would tell you.
Like my father,my mother was born in winter.She never spoke much of the event,so I don't know if she was born at home or at the place of a midwife.But it seems unlikely she was born in a hospital,as Canterbury has never in my memory had a hospital.
The thing that she did speak about happened about two months later,in May which was hot and dry.A wildfire swept through their community,and their house was burned to the ground.I've heard it said that a certain man is credited with rescuing my mother from the house,but others say she was never really in much danger.According to her,my grandfather walked away from the fire with nothing but the clothes on his back and a ten dollar bill in his pocket.Still he rebuilt there,it became my mothers home,and my grand parents lived there until well into the 1960's.
Life must have been hard for my mother,as they would have been living off the land,off of what they could grow,and the timber which my grandfather cut.I've heard her make reference to going to school in a horse drawn sleigh,and of not being able to get there once because of a snowfall that made the road impassable for the horses.Still my mother went to school and graduated from the high school in town in 1950.She must have been quite clever to have completed her schooling in just ten years.
My mother left Canterbury after her schooling,becoming,along with my father,the first in my family to be "From Away." In those days that term had a slightly different meaning.It could have referred to someone who moved to the next town,or a bit farther off.But it didn't always mean someone who left the region or even the province.
My mother was a short little woman,a stoic,which,if you had ever seen the land she grew up in would have made perfect sense.She came a long way from that home,but she belonged to it without any doubt.Her whole outlook on life emanated from that rough little farm in the New Brunswick backwoods.
Canterbury was a thriving little village ,once, with a busy downtown.It's main street was the same as the highway that passed through it and all of it's stores and most of it's better houses were located along Main Street.There were a few cross streets that led up into the surrounding woods and generally the houses and people became less prosperous the farther you ventured from Main Street.Canterbury bore very little resemblance,as near as I can tell to the town after which it was named.
My mother's home was in the land past Canterbury.It was rough country,the land hilly and rocky,the soil thin and with trees all about.It was not so well suited to farming,but they lived on what they called a farm just the same.You could raise a few animals and enough food to subsist,but I believe them to have been poor as well.That's the story one look at the land would tell you.
Like my father,my mother was born in winter.She never spoke much of the event,so I don't know if she was born at home or at the place of a midwife.But it seems unlikely she was born in a hospital,as Canterbury has never in my memory had a hospital.
The thing that she did speak about happened about two months later,in May which was hot and dry.A wildfire swept through their community,and their house was burned to the ground.I've heard it said that a certain man is credited with rescuing my mother from the house,but others say she was never really in much danger.According to her,my grandfather walked away from the fire with nothing but the clothes on his back and a ten dollar bill in his pocket.Still he rebuilt there,it became my mothers home,and my grand parents lived there until well into the 1960's.
Life must have been hard for my mother,as they would have been living off the land,off of what they could grow,and the timber which my grandfather cut.I've heard her make reference to going to school in a horse drawn sleigh,and of not being able to get there once because of a snowfall that made the road impassable for the horses.Still my mother went to school and graduated from the high school in town in 1950.She must have been quite clever to have completed her schooling in just ten years.
My mother left Canterbury after her schooling,becoming,along with my father,the first in my family to be "From Away." In those days that term had a slightly different meaning.It could have referred to someone who moved to the next town,or a bit farther off.But it didn't always mean someone who left the region or even the province.
My mother was a short little woman,a stoic,which,if you had ever seen the land she grew up in would have made perfect sense.She came a long way from that home,but she belonged to it without any doubt.Her whole outlook on life emanated from that rough little farm in the New Brunswick backwoods.
before
My story really starts with what came before.The year is 1934.By some accounts the world is starting to emerge from The Great Depression.But times are still hard.In the western part of North America the land is drying up and blowing away
Adolph Hitler becomes the leader of Germany.Franklin Roosevelt is the American president and Joseph Stalin rules The Soviet Union.Here in Canada the Prime Minister is Richard Bennett.
It's the year that The Queen Mary is launched and Alcatraz,or The Rock as it's called is opened.American outlaws Bonnie and Clyde are gunned down,as is John Dillinger.
In 1934,a new house cost just under six thousand dollars,monthly rental of a house was about twenty dollars,gas was ten cents a gallon,bread eight cents a loaf,a new Studebaker truck cost six hundred and twenty five dollars,and average wages were about sixteen hundred dollars annually.
Ralph Nader,Hank Aaron,Sophia Loren,Bridgette Bardot,Pat Boone,Giorgio Armani and Charles Manson were born in 1934.So was future Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien.
Nineteen Thirty Four was also the year that both of my parents were born,nearly two months and about two hundred and fifty miles apart,one in the province of Nova Scotia,the other in New Brunswick.They came from very different sorts of towns and very different backgrounds.
My father was born in the dead of winter,and I recall my grandmother saying both that it was bitterly cold,and that she went to the hospital in a sleigh.My father was the third of four children,and my grandparents were separated,a thing which would have been regarded very differently then than it is now.They must have been poor.My father never talked much about it,at least not with the purpose of doing so,but if you listened close and recalled well,you could get something of a picture of their lives.He mentioned more than once walking down the railroad tracks,collecting bits of coal that had fallen off trains.He said a lot of people did that and that it was regarded as stealing by the railroad,but still they had to do it.He stopped one day outside the liquor store and gave a five dollar bill to a man from The Salvation Army.When he got back into the car he said "Son,always give to The Salvation Army if you can because they never do anything but good." And so he must have been poor for him to have known this truth.
Springhill,Nova Scotia was his hometown.Of course it is known for the singer Anne Murray.But it was better known as a coal town,and for mining disasters and hard times as all mining towns seem to be.Part of Springhill is built on a hill,it's main street snaking out to the flats below where the mines were and where all the poorer people,and the blacks lived.There used to be an old slag heap out there that contained coal mixed with other sorts of rock,such that it could not be sold.Sometime,long ago I suppose,this heap, which was huge caught fire and it burned for years.I recall passing by it on one occasion in the car and asking my grandfather if that was Hell.The air stank from its blue smoke,and at night it would give off an eerie orange glow.Up on the hill the air was not always bad like it was in the flats.Downtown was attractive and featured a beautiful clock tower.But that's all gone now too,much of it burned to the ground in the 1970's.What I see there now makes no sense to me.On the other side of downtown,leaving town is the graveyard.You pass the houses of all the wealthy towns people first,then the cemetery gate is on the right as you start downhill on the way out of town.Here the air smells of roses and lilacs,with hardly a trace of coal smoke.Both of my grandparents are buried here,and I believed my father would be as well.But he is not.
My father was firmly rooted in Nova Scotia,as Nova Scotian as you can imagine.If you don't know what a stereotypical Nova Scotian is,picture the sea,and fish and some trees.Picture someone who identifies with ancestors Scottish or Irish.Picture hard workers,but not prosperous people,at least in terms of money.Picture family oriented people.That was my father.
References:www.thepeopleshistory.com
Adolph Hitler becomes the leader of Germany.Franklin Roosevelt is the American president and Joseph Stalin rules The Soviet Union.Here in Canada the Prime Minister is Richard Bennett.
It's the year that The Queen Mary is launched and Alcatraz,or The Rock as it's called is opened.American outlaws Bonnie and Clyde are gunned down,as is John Dillinger.
In 1934,a new house cost just under six thousand dollars,monthly rental of a house was about twenty dollars,gas was ten cents a gallon,bread eight cents a loaf,a new Studebaker truck cost six hundred and twenty five dollars,and average wages were about sixteen hundred dollars annually.
Ralph Nader,Hank Aaron,Sophia Loren,Bridgette Bardot,Pat Boone,Giorgio Armani and Charles Manson were born in 1934.So was future Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien.
Nineteen Thirty Four was also the year that both of my parents were born,nearly two months and about two hundred and fifty miles apart,one in the province of Nova Scotia,the other in New Brunswick.They came from very different sorts of towns and very different backgrounds.
My father was born in the dead of winter,and I recall my grandmother saying both that it was bitterly cold,and that she went to the hospital in a sleigh.My father was the third of four children,and my grandparents were separated,a thing which would have been regarded very differently then than it is now.They must have been poor.My father never talked much about it,at least not with the purpose of doing so,but if you listened close and recalled well,you could get something of a picture of their lives.He mentioned more than once walking down the railroad tracks,collecting bits of coal that had fallen off trains.He said a lot of people did that and that it was regarded as stealing by the railroad,but still they had to do it.He stopped one day outside the liquor store and gave a five dollar bill to a man from The Salvation Army.When he got back into the car he said "Son,always give to The Salvation Army if you can because they never do anything but good." And so he must have been poor for him to have known this truth.
Springhill,Nova Scotia was his hometown.Of course it is known for the singer Anne Murray.But it was better known as a coal town,and for mining disasters and hard times as all mining towns seem to be.Part of Springhill is built on a hill,it's main street snaking out to the flats below where the mines were and where all the poorer people,and the blacks lived.There used to be an old slag heap out there that contained coal mixed with other sorts of rock,such that it could not be sold.Sometime,long ago I suppose,this heap, which was huge caught fire and it burned for years.I recall passing by it on one occasion in the car and asking my grandfather if that was Hell.The air stank from its blue smoke,and at night it would give off an eerie orange glow.Up on the hill the air was not always bad like it was in the flats.Downtown was attractive and featured a beautiful clock tower.But that's all gone now too,much of it burned to the ground in the 1970's.What I see there now makes no sense to me.On the other side of downtown,leaving town is the graveyard.You pass the houses of all the wealthy towns people first,then the cemetery gate is on the right as you start downhill on the way out of town.Here the air smells of roses and lilacs,with hardly a trace of coal smoke.Both of my grandparents are buried here,and I believed my father would be as well.But he is not.
My father was firmly rooted in Nova Scotia,as Nova Scotian as you can imagine.If you don't know what a stereotypical Nova Scotian is,picture the sea,and fish and some trees.Picture someone who identifies with ancestors Scottish or Irish.Picture hard workers,but not prosperous people,at least in terms of money.Picture family oriented people.That was my father.
References:www.thepeopleshistory.com
Identity.
Identity is all to an Atlantic Canadian.We view ourselves as distinct from other Canadians in much the same way as those from the American South view themselves in relation to those Americans who are from other regions.And,perhaps what we see as distinction,other Canadians see as peculiarity.We might well be peculiar too.We can be clannish,inhabiting the same watering holes,working together,sleeping on each others couches and living in the same neighborhoods when we are away.We tend to be aware of someone recently met as being from home by the way that they talk.Some of us can even pin down the particular region of origin,within a few miles by accent alone.But,wherever we find ourselves,home,that is,Atlantic Canada is never far from us,from our hearts and minds.Many,if not all have longed to go home,at least at some point in their exile to other regions.Whether we return or remain away,home has a pull,as strong and as real as gravity.That is something that those who have remained at home,in the region do not always understand,and it is sometimes a source of tension,even division among Atlantic Canadians.
This has become a central issue in my life.It probably was always so,but it's taken years for me to become fully aware of it.You see,my childhood was spent in Atlantic Canada.But I left,as many Atlantic Canadians do to find opportunity elsewhere.The four Atlantic Provinces are economically poor in comparison to other parts of Canada and that takes many of our number away.
My adult life,to this point has been spent in Alberta and in Ontario.I found work in Edmonton,Alberta in the late 1970's.I married there and had my only child there.I still have family there.So my ties are deep in the west too,and,Canada is such a vast place,it changes from region to region and even from town to town.But,without really thinking about it much,I became one of those who other Atlantic Canadians refer to as being "From Away."But of course I don't really view myself that way.
In Atlantic Canada,there are those "From Away" such as I am.Then there are those "From Here",those who either never left home,who stayed and made their lives at home,or who left for a time and returned.In a sense it's a factual sort of division,just a description of what is.But what bothers me about it,if I were to be fully honest is that it is a dichotomy dictated by those who live in the region,as though it is their prerogative to decide who is and who isn't ,who belongs and who does not.To say someone is from away is not always said with an unkind intent.But sometimes it is.Sometimes it's a kind of xenophobia as extreme as any other.
For my part,I say without the least hesitation that I admire those of us who have stayed in the communities where their roots are.It's never really been easy to do that,and most of those that I know who have done that have struggled.I've known so few who have really prospered.But decisions are hard,and I often wonder if those "From Here" have ever thought that the decision to leave might have been hard as well.
Over the most recent decade,I've felt that gravitational pull.that force of nature called being more intensely,calling me back.My parents passed,each on the Family Day Week-end three years apart,nearly to the day.My mother was killed in a car accident in Moncton,less than ten minutes from home.I never had a chance to say good-bye,and that was so incredibly difficult.My father passed in 2009,the last twenty years,at least,of his life being lived in poor health,until nothing remained but for him to draw a last breath and find his peace.
We buried my mother in June of 2006.People in Atlantic Canada,because of the climate are never buried in the dead of winter.I was home for two weeks then,and I guess I could have stayed.On the night before I left,I visited the sight of my mothers accident and received God's assurance that she was in a better place when I stepped down into the ditch and viewed the white cross that my sister had erected there.My friend David waited beside his truck while I visited.Earlier that evening David and my friend Robyn and I went for a drive,out to what we in Moncton refer to as The Mountain.David had taken a picture of Robyn and I together too in the driveway of the home I grew up in.We had our arms around each other in the manner of old friends and she wore a pair of jaunty yellow knee highs.It's the only picture of us together that was ever taken.It was the single night in my life when I felt most like an Atlantic Canadian,when I allowed myself to think of possibility in terms of returning.There were things I'd missed out on and still wanted.I wonder if either of my friends really knew me that night,knew my thoughts.But the visit ended badly,with my sister questioning that very identity that I was beginning to discover.And I went west again,two more times.
For about a year in 2009-2010,I stayed in Moncton.It was a brief interlude before moving on to Toronto,deciding again that I really couldn't get by at home.Then,in 2012 I moved on ,back to Calgary where work was plentiful.That trip I now view as a disaster,and on May 23,2015,I'd finally had enough and started out for Toronto again,with twenty five dollars and a left foot and ankle that I was not sure would make the trip.But I was wonderfully cared for,fed by ravens so to speak.It only took twenty-three rides to get to Richmond Hill and I walked into downtown Toronto from there.I was getting a bit closer to home.
When I say that the last trip out west was a disaster,I do not mean that no good came from it.On the way out I came to a decision about what I really wanted in my life,and began to think of what I would need to do to bring it about.I met a woman named Michele when we were working together at a factory that makes fruit juices and over those few days of packing skids we talked and became good friends.We talked about our lives.Michele was a tough,gritty sort of a person.Tough enough to beat both addiction and cancer.So we'd both gotten some hard earned wisdom about life from The School Of Hard Knocks.She imparted me with a single piece of advice,and I considered it a bit forward of her at the time,but it was good advice,and I wondered if I might have come to know her for the sole purpose of that advice.She said"We don't always get to choose who we love."
Some time passed,I got up each day and went to work.The city of Calgary flooded and there was much restoration to be done.I spent much of that time doing asbestos abatement,until my foot grew sore to the point where work became so difficult and medical care hard to find.Many days I was unable to work.
Then came June 4th,2014,another day that pointed out to me,in not such a subtle fashion how important my identity was.On that day I gotten up early and gone to check my email,intending to be just a few minutes before getting on with my day.But when I opened up my Facebook account I discovered that Moncton was in a state of lock down because a gunman had murdered three policemen the night before and still had not been captured.So I ended up spending the day talking to various people in Moncton as the story developed.What was worse was that all of this was going down in my old neighborhood,where many people I know still lived.My sister lived there,as did my nephew.And so did Robyn.
By mid afternoon there were pictures of an armored personnel carrier going down Mountain Road,along the route we used to walk to church when I was small,and to high school when I was older.And I can't begin to tell you how violated I felt,that my town was being desecrated when I was far away,when I was sitting in a far city following it all on Facebook when I really should have been home with my family.Calgary,like Moncton is a train town.So I sat and looked across at the tracks,at east bound trains,trying to imagine where the tracks led,thinking of how far they went and of how different the various places they went through were.Thinking of where I belonged,of how life should be and wondering how to get there from where I sat.And I decided that from that point onward my footsteps needed to be leading me eastward.But it took another year almost for me to take those first steps and even then I stopped short,thinking there's still plenty of time. But there wasn't.
It's been hard to get this memoir started.The words I want are sometimes elusive or don't come out in a way that I'm satisfied with,so I scrap it and start again.I could be satisfied with it all.It's not so much that I'm being picky.But things change,and they change in a way that,for me implies a different way of telling.It was only so recently that I understood the importance of identity in the way I do and that changes so many things.
This has become a central issue in my life.It probably was always so,but it's taken years for me to become fully aware of it.You see,my childhood was spent in Atlantic Canada.But I left,as many Atlantic Canadians do to find opportunity elsewhere.The four Atlantic Provinces are economically poor in comparison to other parts of Canada and that takes many of our number away.
My adult life,to this point has been spent in Alberta and in Ontario.I found work in Edmonton,Alberta in the late 1970's.I married there and had my only child there.I still have family there.So my ties are deep in the west too,and,Canada is such a vast place,it changes from region to region and even from town to town.But,without really thinking about it much,I became one of those who other Atlantic Canadians refer to as being "From Away."But of course I don't really view myself that way.
In Atlantic Canada,there are those "From Away" such as I am.Then there are those "From Here",those who either never left home,who stayed and made their lives at home,or who left for a time and returned.In a sense it's a factual sort of division,just a description of what is.But what bothers me about it,if I were to be fully honest is that it is a dichotomy dictated by those who live in the region,as though it is their prerogative to decide who is and who isn't ,who belongs and who does not.To say someone is from away is not always said with an unkind intent.But sometimes it is.Sometimes it's a kind of xenophobia as extreme as any other.
For my part,I say without the least hesitation that I admire those of us who have stayed in the communities where their roots are.It's never really been easy to do that,and most of those that I know who have done that have struggled.I've known so few who have really prospered.But decisions are hard,and I often wonder if those "From Here" have ever thought that the decision to leave might have been hard as well.
Over the most recent decade,I've felt that gravitational pull.that force of nature called being more intensely,calling me back.My parents passed,each on the Family Day Week-end three years apart,nearly to the day.My mother was killed in a car accident in Moncton,less than ten minutes from home.I never had a chance to say good-bye,and that was so incredibly difficult.My father passed in 2009,the last twenty years,at least,of his life being lived in poor health,until nothing remained but for him to draw a last breath and find his peace.
We buried my mother in June of 2006.People in Atlantic Canada,because of the climate are never buried in the dead of winter.I was home for two weeks then,and I guess I could have stayed.On the night before I left,I visited the sight of my mothers accident and received God's assurance that she was in a better place when I stepped down into the ditch and viewed the white cross that my sister had erected there.My friend David waited beside his truck while I visited.Earlier that evening David and my friend Robyn and I went for a drive,out to what we in Moncton refer to as The Mountain.David had taken a picture of Robyn and I together too in the driveway of the home I grew up in.We had our arms around each other in the manner of old friends and she wore a pair of jaunty yellow knee highs.It's the only picture of us together that was ever taken.It was the single night in my life when I felt most like an Atlantic Canadian,when I allowed myself to think of possibility in terms of returning.There were things I'd missed out on and still wanted.I wonder if either of my friends really knew me that night,knew my thoughts.But the visit ended badly,with my sister questioning that very identity that I was beginning to discover.And I went west again,two more times.
For about a year in 2009-2010,I stayed in Moncton.It was a brief interlude before moving on to Toronto,deciding again that I really couldn't get by at home.Then,in 2012 I moved on ,back to Calgary where work was plentiful.That trip I now view as a disaster,and on May 23,2015,I'd finally had enough and started out for Toronto again,with twenty five dollars and a left foot and ankle that I was not sure would make the trip.But I was wonderfully cared for,fed by ravens so to speak.It only took twenty-three rides to get to Richmond Hill and I walked into downtown Toronto from there.I was getting a bit closer to home.
When I say that the last trip out west was a disaster,I do not mean that no good came from it.On the way out I came to a decision about what I really wanted in my life,and began to think of what I would need to do to bring it about.I met a woman named Michele when we were working together at a factory that makes fruit juices and over those few days of packing skids we talked and became good friends.We talked about our lives.Michele was a tough,gritty sort of a person.Tough enough to beat both addiction and cancer.So we'd both gotten some hard earned wisdom about life from The School Of Hard Knocks.She imparted me with a single piece of advice,and I considered it a bit forward of her at the time,but it was good advice,and I wondered if I might have come to know her for the sole purpose of that advice.She said"We don't always get to choose who we love."
Some time passed,I got up each day and went to work.The city of Calgary flooded and there was much restoration to be done.I spent much of that time doing asbestos abatement,until my foot grew sore to the point where work became so difficult and medical care hard to find.Many days I was unable to work.
Then came June 4th,2014,another day that pointed out to me,in not such a subtle fashion how important my identity was.On that day I gotten up early and gone to check my email,intending to be just a few minutes before getting on with my day.But when I opened up my Facebook account I discovered that Moncton was in a state of lock down because a gunman had murdered three policemen the night before and still had not been captured.So I ended up spending the day talking to various people in Moncton as the story developed.What was worse was that all of this was going down in my old neighborhood,where many people I know still lived.My sister lived there,as did my nephew.And so did Robyn.
By mid afternoon there were pictures of an armored personnel carrier going down Mountain Road,along the route we used to walk to church when I was small,and to high school when I was older.And I can't begin to tell you how violated I felt,that my town was being desecrated when I was far away,when I was sitting in a far city following it all on Facebook when I really should have been home with my family.Calgary,like Moncton is a train town.So I sat and looked across at the tracks,at east bound trains,trying to imagine where the tracks led,thinking of how far they went and of how different the various places they went through were.Thinking of where I belonged,of how life should be and wondering how to get there from where I sat.And I decided that from that point onward my footsteps needed to be leading me eastward.But it took another year almost for me to take those first steps and even then I stopped short,thinking there's still plenty of time. But there wasn't.
It's been hard to get this memoir started.The words I want are sometimes elusive or don't come out in a way that I'm satisfied with,so I scrap it and start again.I could be satisfied with it all.It's not so much that I'm being picky.But things change,and they change in a way that,for me implies a different way of telling.It was only so recently that I understood the importance of identity in the way I do and that changes so many things.
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