Won’t You Be My Neighbour?

My husband Douglas and I moved into a lovely red brick Victorian home in the hamlet of Millbrook when our firstborn was 10 months old. The house was in excellent shape and featured a wraparound porch, a white picket fence, and about a half acre of property. Pretty much the ideal North American family home. Our street was very short, having only seven houses in total and ending at the entrance to our driveway. There was a long wooden fence running behind the house which separated us from our closest neighbours, the Raabs.

George and Evelyn lived on a lovely three acre property with their children Dustin and Jared. Evelyn was writing a monthly cooking column in “Today’s Parent” magazine when we first became neighbours, and soon after wrote a fantastic cookbook for beginners called “Clueless in the Kitchen.” My daughter Hannah’s version is so well used that most of its pages are spattered with ingredients, and the whole thing is falling apart. George was, and continues to be, a well-respected artist. Their property features not only a lovely Victorian home, but also a spacious studio for George, well-tended vegetable and flower gardens, and a large field which ends at a clear running stream. There is a sizeable hill which gently slopes down to a small pond, and a dilapidated treehouse the kids loved to play in because it felt like it was going to fall apart at any minute.

Evelyn is a lover and collector of animals, and when we moved in there were two horses in the stables, Annie and Spot, and a chicken coop bursting with laying hens. She had a peacock named Archie and two peahens, Betty and Veronica, and a bunch of guinea fowl. Guinea fowl are plump and round, with black plumage covered in numerous small white dots. They have teeny little heads with a spiky crest on top like a faux-hawk, and small red waddles on either side of their short beaks. They are hilarious to watch because they always walk in a row, and generally we liked having them around, at least when they were quiet. Guinea fowl, like most birds, are easily upset, and they generally send up a ruckus whenever they’re riled. Unlike other birds whose calls are pleasant and soothing, however, the sound of a guinea fowl is loud, repetitive, and annoying. Imagine the persistent, grating sound of someone playing for hours on a rusted, squeaking swing, and you’ll have a good idea of the guinea fowl’s call.

I was very nervous when we first moved to Millbrook, having always lived in large and densely populated areas. I wasn’t sure that I would like the slow pace and quiet of the village, and I had no idea how I was going to make friends. Evelyn took care of the latter concern the very day we moved in. I was in the kitchen unpacking boxes when there came a knock at the side door. I was perplexed as to who it could be, seeing as we literally didn’t know a single person in the village. I opened the door and there stood Evelyn, holding a basket filled with homemade cookies, a small bottle of champagne, and a dozen eggs courtesy of her “girls.” She introduced herself and welcomed me to the neighbourhood, handed me the overflowing basket, then promptly invited me to a large party she was holding for her husband’s birthday that coming weekend. I was introduced to scads of like-minded, friendly people at that party, and just like that my fears of being lonely were erased. Many of the people I met that day remain good friends thirty years later, all as a result of Evelyn’s kindness.

The Raab boys, Dustin and Jared, are respectively eight and six years older than my eldest child Max. They were always welcoming and happy to entertain both him and, eventually, my youngest child Hannah. They would kick around a ball or play hide and seek for hours when they were all kids, and Jared babysat a lot as they got older. Maxwell idolized Jared, and that was fine with me because other than being somewhat scattered, Jared is about as good a role model as a mother could hope for. He is kind, well-spoken, funny, and intelligent, and seemed to have endless good-humoured patience for my fawning son. Max was so enamoured of Jared that one year he insisted on “dressing up” like him for Hallowe’en – a development which suited me fine because it meant I didn’t have to buy, or worse yet try to make, a costume. 

The Raabs have a very long driveway, and in the winter the plough deposits all of the snow beside the house. The snow pile thus created is usually enormous by late January, and provides a perfect opportunity for all kinds of fun. My kids and the Raab boys would play in the snow for hours, sometimes repeatedly jumping in it from an overhanging tree branch, but more often than not tunnelling through it. I’ll admit most of the excavation was done by Dustin and Jared because they were older and more competent, but Max and Hannah helped as much as possible. What was once a pile of snow turned into a complex maze by the time the boys were done, with multiple tunnels and small caves featuring built-in snow chairs. It made me wish that I was little so I could play inside too.

Dustin is one of those rare people who knows what they want to be for their entire life. He has always been fascinated by marine life, and when he was a boy, his room was full of aquaria and cages holding fish and reptiles of all kinds. I believe he now has his Masters in marine biology and works in his field on Canada’s east coast. Jared was much more interested in movies and the mechanics of making them than the natural world. He studied cinematography in university and is now a filmmaker. 

Many productions are made in Millbrook because of its pristine, historic downtown, and because filming in Canada is relatively cheap for American production companies. David Cronenberg came to town in 2005 to make “A History of Violence,” and Jared came home from university to watch the filming. One evening most of the town turned out to watch a long scene which took place on the street in front of the post office, and it so happened that Jared was standing right next to me. I tried to make conversation, and while he politely responded to my queries, it was clear that he didn’t want to make small talk. He simply wanted to watch, so I shut up and let him. His eyes greedily took in the action before us, and his face lit up with pure joy every time Cronenberg opened his mouth. Occasionally he spoke to me, describing the different functions of the various crew members and parsing Cronenberg’s directorial decisions. I had previously seen movies being filmed in both Toronto and Millbrook, and frankly had mostly found the process exceedingly boring. This time, however, Jared’s expertise and enthusiasm led me to see movie production as an exciting, multi-layered activity, with myriad skilled people all seamlessly merging their talents toward a shared goal. For the first time I saw the artistry of the whole enterprise, not just the acting, and I have Jared to thank for that.  

The Raabs hosted two annual events for all their friends; a corn roast on the Sunday before Labour Day, and their own version of the winter Olympics. Both occasions included pot luck suppers, with the hosts providing all the corn at the roast and homemade medals for the Olympics. The corn roast featured an extremely good-natured round robin volleyball tournament for the adults on the front yard, and croquet for the children on the side lawn. My kids informed me that the croquet field was lumpy and hard to navigate, but they loved it because it added an interesting level of difficulty to an otherwise pretty sedate game. Lots of people would pitch in to get all the food laid out on the long tables set up beside the porch for the pot luck, while still others would help with shucking the many bags of corn needed to feed such a large crowd. The corn was boiled in a huge black cauldron, reminiscent of the one used by the witches in Macbeth, hanging over an open fire at the edge of the yard. Four men would heave the pot away from the pit after the meal was done, and more logs would be added until the fire was raging. Folding chairs and stumps would then be placed in a ring around the bonfire, and we would have a rousing sing-along as night descended. It was always a lovely day.

The winter Olympics were extremely silly and incredibly fun. Evelyn would send out tongue-in-cheek invitations and make up just the most ridiculous events. The relay event was called the frozen chicken trudge, and instead of a baton, team members carried and passed off an actual frozen chicken as they slogged through deep snow for their leg of the race. There was a horse patty throw, where contestants pitched frozen horse poop, and the yellow snow penmanship event, held in a discrete part of the yard so men could privately write their names with their urine. The judges would come later and make a decision as to whose writing was the neatest. A snow ramp was built at the bottom of the hill for the distance sledding competition – an event won by whomever went the furthest on the pond after taking the jump on a GT. Max was hesitant about taking part in this event and consequently held the break down for the whole of his descent. He was going so slowly by the time he got to the bottom that he simply stopped on top of the ramp and then just sat there not knowing what to do. It was hilarious, but nobody laughed. Everyone loudly and heartily agreed that he had made a good attempt, and congratulated him for trying. Such nice people!

There is a winter meteor shower called the Alpha Centaurids which occurs every year in early February. It was predicted to be especially bright and spectacular one year, and Evelyn invited the kids and me over to watch on a night which was forecast to be perfectly clear. There is virtually no light pollution in Millbrook and the large hill on her property provides an unobstructed view of the cosmos, so it promised to be quite a show. I set my alarm for 3 a.m. on the night in question and woke the kids up when it went off. We all bundled into our winter gear, grabbed some blankets I had purposely left by the door, and went over to the Raabs’. There were several tarps covered by blankets and sleeping bags laid out on top of the hill, and some people we knew, including George, Dustin, and Jared, had already staked out their spots. The boys called Max and Hannah over, and we all snuggled in together. I had just asked George where his wife was when she crested the hill balancing a tray of mugs filled with steaming hot chocolate – the kids’ drinks topped with marshmallows, and the adults’ laced with booze. The meteor shower was spectacular, the company was excellent, but as always it was the kindness and thoughtfulness of Evelyn and her crew which made that night so memorable. 

At one point Evelyn added turkeys to her menagerie. One afternoon her large male turkey, Lurch, came through the fence and made for my children. I knew Lurch was a brute because he had beaten up his mate, cutting her so deeply with his beak and claws that Evelyn and a friend had had to use maxi-pads as bandages to stem the bleeding. I felt bad for the poor bird, but there is something inherently funny in seeing a large fowl strutting around the yard with feminine hygiene products strapped to its wings and body. I am afraid of most animals, and Lurch was no exception. I picked up a shovel with which I tried to nudge him through the fence, but when it became apparent that he had no intention of leaving, I simply hustled the kids into the house and let him have free range. Moments later my husband came home and, being absolutely fearless, he immediately ran out with only a broom for protection. He repeatedly swatted Lurch’s ass until he was back on the Raabs’ property, and then securely locked the gate behind him. 

There were two ferrets in the Raabs’ house for a while as well. Evelyn and I would meet up every Sunday morning in her kitchen for coffee and a chat, and so I could get my eggs for the week. The only time I didn’t enjoy these visits was when the ferrets were around – everything would be fine until all of a sudden one of them would slink across my foot and send me shooting upright with a frightened squeal. One time when the kids were all playing hide and seek, my daughter Hannah chose a tiny little cupboard upstairs as her hiding place. She was the only one small enough to fit in the space and felt sure they wouldn’t even look for her there. The game had been going on for some time when she heard a shuffling noise behind her. The cubby was pitch black so she couldn’t see what had moved, but she instinctively turned to look anyway. Just then something slithered across her hand and she popped up with a scream, banging her head and scraping her arms as she scrambled out the tiny door. Hannah had been ferreted, and I empathized entirely with her plight.

The Raabs were perfect neighbours, other than the occasional run-in with creepy or aggressive animals. They welcomed me into their social circle without hesitation, looked after my kids whenever I asked, proved staunch allies through the dissolution of my marriage, and supported me during my husband’s illness and after his death. I always feel at home when I’m at their house, and am inexpressibly grateful to have had them literally and figuratively beside me for so many years. Everyone should be so lucky.

The Song Remains the Same

I’ve always felt sorry for people who do not regularly listen to music. Very rarely does one encounter situations which wouldn’t be improved if accompanied by a song. I find music can turn simple contentment into unbridled joy, especially when I dance and/or sing along. Heartache becomes more poignant, but also somehow more bearable, when you listen to break-up songs, as does sorrow when you listen to sad songs. The universal language of music communicates our common human condition, and reminds us that our vast range of emotions are shared and, for the most part, relatively fleeting. 

Certain individual songs have punctuated the music which forms the soundtrack of my life, and these songs stand out in my memory because they accompanied and enhanced seminal feelings and experiences. The first time I remember hearing a song which became emblematic of an important incident in my life occurred in the basement of my childhood home when I was no more than 9 years old. David and Lisa, my two eldest siblings, are respectively nine and seven years older than me, and when I was a girl they seemed like beings from another planet. David had extremely long hair which he tied back in a headband like Jimi Hendrix, and he sported bushy muttonchops which in retrospect look ridiculous, but at the time were groovy, man. Lisa was super pretty, had about a million friends, and was extremely independent. She and my mother regularly had major yelling fights, and although they were scary at the time, I still couldn’t help but admire Lisa for standing up to the titanic force which was my mother.

David and Lisa both took on almost mythical proportions in my young mind because although I lived with them, they had virtually nothing to do with me. Younger sisters are at best a nuisance and at worst an embarrassment to most teenagers. Lisa always babysat me when our mother worked the evening shift at the hospital, but even then we went our separate ways. We had an understanding that I could do pretty much whatever I wanted as long as I didn’t tell Mum what Lisa was doing. I got to stay up as late as I pleased, and she got to have over any number of friends. This agreement suited us both down to the ground.

There was one afternoon, however, when for a fleeting moment the dynamic between us changed. I was in the basement doing a jigsaw puzzle and could hear Lisa and Mum going at it upstairs. Eventually the argument died out and Lisa came storming down the stairs in a great huff and threw herself into the overstuffed green chair. She sat there fuming for a bit, no doubt feeling put-upon and misunderstood, while I quietly went about my business hoping that she wouldn’t take her bad mood out on me. The basement in our house had been designated by our parents as the kids’ area, and our dad had bought us our own TV and a very mod record player with a cool clear blue plastic lid. Lisa got up after a few minutes and put on the album Beatles for Sale. She, along with almost every other teenager in the western world, absolutely loved The Beatles, with her particular favourite being Paul. 

The music filled the room and Lisa’s mood began to visibly lift. By the fourth song she was swaying and quietly humming along, and drifted over to the table where I was intent on my puzzle. We always did jigsaws on my dad’s poker table – an ugly, round monstrosity with a brown formica top and collapsible legs. I was studiously working on one side of the table while Lisa was on the other. Now and then I would tentatively steal a glance at her, hoping she had put the argument behind her and was feeling better. I looked up at her just as The Beatles’ cover of Little Richard’s “Kansas City” came on, and Lisa smiled back at me and started to sing out loud. I sensed that this was an invitation to join in, so I did. Pretty soon we were both singing along and circling the table, ostensibly doing the puzzle but really just dancing around and around in a joyous moment of synchronicity. I’m not suggesting that we became the best of friends after that, but the rhythm of the music and Paul’s gritty voice allowed us to elementally connect, however briefly, as sisters.

When I was 14 I had my first celebrity crush. This is going to sound weird, but I absolutely loved Richard Dreyfuss. I had first become enamoured with him in American Graffiti, and then fell head-over-heels when he appeared in Jaws. There was just something about his manner that really captivated me, and his laugh sent me over the moon. There were many more conventionally attractive actors I could have fallen for, not to mention scads of super cute teen idols, but for me no one held a candle to Richard Dreyfuss. What can I say, I was a queer duck. There was a song on the radio at that time called “Magic” by a little known group named Pilot. You might know it if you were alive then, otherwise you probably don’t. Somehow this song became fused with my love for Richard Dreyfuss, and every time I heard it it would elicit fantasies of him pledging his undying devotion and the two of us running off together. I listened to “Magic” before writing this article. It is a pretty crappy song, but it still makes my stomach a little fluttery.

The musician who really stoked my adolescent yearnings was Barry Manilow. The aching desire in “Could It Be Magic” fed my romantic dreams of one day finding a great love, and the remorse in “Mandy” and “Looks Like We Made It” stirred up images of an invented future lover who would heartlessly spurn me and then forever lament his decision. Sigh! I was listening to my Barry Manilow Live album one day when my middle sister Susan came downstairs. She was 19 at the time and had just enrolled in the three-year Theatre Arts program at Ryerson, studying stage management. Susan was always an artsy and affected person, and she became exponentially more so now that she was in theatre school. She seemed suddenly world-weary and condescending, rather like Margo Channing in All About Eve. “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy three years.” 

I was so entranced by the music that her entrance barely registered on my consciousness until she let out a derisive laugh. So this was the romantic tripe I listened too, she said with a condescending sneer on her lips. Well, she was saddened by my bad judgement, but not entirely surprised given that I was still a dewy-eyed 14 year old who had yet to develop good taste. She then turned on her heels and headed back upstairs, leaving me to feel thoroughly admonished and questioning my loyalty to Manilow’s music. The instrumental introduction to “Looks Like We Made It” came on when Susan was about halfway up the stairs, and she noticeably slowed her ascent. She reached the top just as Manilow began to sing, and while the basement ceiling blocked her body, I could still clearly see her feet on the landing. She stayed rooted there for the entirety of the song. I could have called her out at any time during those three and a half minutes, but I chose not to. It was nice to know that buried beneath my sister’s sophisticated, snooty veneer there still beat the gooey heart of an adolescent girl susceptible to the power of a sappy song. 

The disco era was in full swing by the time I was in my late teens, and my girlfriends and I all got fake IDs so we could go dancing. Say what you will about disco music, but it was absolutely fantastic before it got hijacked by the crass commercialism best exemplified by the horrible and annoying song “Disco Duck.” The music of The Bee Gees, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, and Donna Summer was joyous, catchy, and compelled you to dance. This presented me with a problem because I was a very insecure dancer. Many of my peers at school dances had amazing John Travolta-like moves, and I figured the number of skilled dancers would only increase at an actual dance club.

I was incredibly anxious the first time my friends and I arranged to go to a disco. We were set to go out Friday night, and earlier that day I had a spare period at school so I wandered outside to the area students jokingly referred to as the smoking lounge. This was not a lounge at all, but rather the dark and dirty alley which ran between the two wings of my high school. I was standing by myself just outside the smokiest area when a girl I barely knew named Grace walked up to me. There were two scholastic streams in high school at that time – the four year program which prepared students for college was called academic, and the five year program for university-bound students was called advanced. Grace was in academic and I was in advanced, meaning we didn’t share a single class, but we had a passing knowledge of each other because my brother Michael and her sister Shirley were dating. She asked me what was wrong, and I explained my trepidation about making a fool of myself at the disco. Someone had brought a radio outside and just then The Commodores’ song “Brick House” came on. A few of the smokers started dancing, and Grace, who I knew was a very good dancer, said she’d be happy to help me if I wished. She then taught me several really good go-to moves which I used liberally on the dance floor later that night and on many subsequent occasions as well. Michael and Shirley are still together over 40 years later, and I occasionally see Grace when she comes to visit her sister. I inevitably think of “Brick House” whenever I see her, and know that I’ll always be grateful for her spontaneous kindness on that day so many years ago.

My brother Michael had two fast friends all through his teen years, Brent and Douglas. For years I had a raging crush on Brent. He was cute, blond, and friendly, but what really drew me to him was his kindness. On one occasion Brent and I ended up alone in the furnace room in the  basement of my childhood home. I think we were in there on a dare because I remember we were expected to stay for a certain amount of time. I desperately wanted Brent to kiss me, but he didn’t. He explained that he thought it would be wrong because he was three years older than me, and because he admired me too much to take advantage of the situation. I was heartily disappointed, but understood that he was motivated by respect, which in the end only made me like him more. I knew that our age difference was sure to become less important as we reached adulthood, and that then we would be together.

Two events transpired when I was 17 which made that future impossible – Brent got married, and Douglas began to show a romantic interest in me. I was heartbroken by the former, and incredibly confused by the latter since Douglas had barely even acknowledged my existence before that time. He liked me fine in a peripheral way, but there was never any question that I was just his friend’s little sister. When I started grade 13, however, he suddenly started calling and asking me out. I was flustered by his advances, but I went out with him just to see what would happen. We had been dating for a few months when I realized that I was in love with him. He was smart, funny, and attractive, and his laser-sharp attention swept me off my feet. 

Douglas was in his first year at U. of T. at this time, and shared a house with several other students near the downtown campus. I came into the city to visit him often, and one day when he let me in I felt a new and exciting energy in the room, and noticed that he had a look on his face I’d never seen before. We were both big fans of Average White Band, and once I’d taken off my coat and settled in Douglas put on one of their albums. He cued up the song “You Got It” and approached me singing the opening verse, “Well you’re making a big mistake girl trying to hold back your love from me, ‘cause there’s nothin’ I can’t do for you. Sure got the lovin’ you need. Everything, anything, in the world, if I can be your man.”

That was the first time I slept with a man. It wasn’t seamless like they portrayed in the movies – it hurt a bit, there was blood, and at one point as I was undressing I accidentally kneed him in the face – yet despite all that it was somehow magical and otherworldly. I was in a daze when I sat down on the subway to make my way home later that night, and I remember thinking that my life had just elementally changed. That I had been one person up to this point, and that I would forever after be someone else. I was a woman. I kept taking surreptitious glances at my reflection in the subway window to see if my face had changed, and wondered if the people around me could sense the monumental thing that had just happened. 

Douglas and I eventually got married, and I have written at length about his mistreatment of me, but one song in particular reminds me of all the good times we had. “Chloe” is a jazz standard from the 1930s which was most famously recorded by Duke Ellington and his orchestra. Douglas and I regularly listened to a longtime CBC radio program called Eclectic Circus hosted by Allan McFee, and the theme for the show was a lively country version of “Chloe” arranged and performed by Ry Cooder.

One time when we were having a calm and connected day, “Chloe” came on the radio and Douglas came over to where I was sitting on the couch. He bowed and offered me his hand, saying, “May I have this dance?” I immediately agreed and he pulled me to my feet. We took the pose couples traditionally take when doing an old-fashioned dance, with his left hand on my lower back, my right hand on his shoulder, and our other hands clasped in the air. We then began dancing around the living room, and I let Douglas lead. It was magical. I felt afraid, unhappy, and uncertain for much of my marriage, but there were occasional times when Douglas and I got along like a happy couple. I have been single for almost a quarter century now, with Douglas dead for nearly 23 of those years, and I’ve found as time passes that my memory is more likely to land on happy images like the two of us joyously dancing to “Chloe” than on sad or upsetting ones. This is a very good development.

Yet another song helped propel me out of my relationship with Douglas after 18 long years. Shawn Colvin is a contemporary singer/songwriter who was particularly active in the ‘90s. Her album A Few Small Repairs contains “Sunny Came Home,” her most famous and only Grammy winning song. “Nothin’ On Me” is the last track on that album, and it became both an anthem and an inspiration as I finally found the courage to leave my marriage. I attended a weekly playgroup at that time, and although the gathering served mostly to provide our kids with playmates and to give us all a break from parenting, it often ended up being a group therapy session. We shared all kinds of intimate details with each other (as women are wont to do), and my playgroup companions were the first I told about the difficulties in my marriage. They, along with my therapist, gave me a new perspective on my relationship, and made me realize that there was no truth in the negative things Douglas regularly said about me.

All of these elements were beautifully mirrored in Colvin’s song. My playgroup and therapist were reflected in the lines, “I got friends uptown and they don’t talk down. They’ve been keepin’ me safe and sound. We got somethin’ to be.” : my new perspective on Douglas’s criticisms morphed into, “So don’t you try to save me with your advice, or turn me into somebody else, cuz I’m not crazy and you’re not nice, baby keep it to yourself.” : and my final decision to leave became, “I’m not gonna cry and I’m wavin’ goodbye, and I know this time you got nothin’ on me.” It was exactly the right song at exactly the right time. Thank you Ms. Colvin.

There are myriad other songs which immediately take me back to important stages and events in my life. When anything from After the Gold Rush by Neil Young comes on, I’m transformed into my 15 year old self feeling helplessly out of my depth with my first serious boyfriend. If a song from Rumors by Fleetwood Mac or Breakfast in America by Supertramp plays, I’m suddenly sitting in my high school cafeteria, eating fries with gravy and playing euchre with my friends. Or when I hear the lullabies “Little Green” by Joni Mitchell or “Sweet Baby James” by James Taylor, I am once again a young mother perched on first her son’s and then her daughter’s bed, rubbing their backs and singing them to sleep. Listening to music is an immersive experience, and the impression it leaves is both highly evocative and extremely visceral. I can’t wait to hear the new songs which will enrich and inform the rest of my life.

All the Ladies I have Loved Before

Last Monday was International Women’s Day, and two days after that marked the 20th anniversary of my mother’s death. She becomes harder to conjure up in my mind’s eye as time goes on, but the utter devastation I felt when she died is firmly etched in my memory. It happened on the cusp of March break, so I had over a week to grieve at home. When I got back to work, a kindly EA named Pat, who had lost her mother just over a decade earlier, sat down next to me on a couch in the staffroom. My sorrow was so intense and overwhelming that I felt as if I was literally going mad, and I asked my friend how she had gotten through the initial stages of her grief. She took my hand as she assured me in a low and calming voice that the intensity would wear off, and that the memories of my mum which now felt so torturous would in time become welcome friends. She was a living testament to the veracity of what she said, and I was mightily comforted.

Remembering my mum and Pat got me thinking about the many other wonderful women who have influenced and mentored me over my lifetime, the most important of whom, after my mother, were my grandmothers and my many aunts. My father had four older sisters, all of whom were caring women who enriched my life immeasurably. The eldest Monis sister was Adelaide, whom everyone called Lida. Aunt Lida was definitely the brightest of my father’s siblings. She lived in Brooklyn with her husband and three daughters for about 30 years, and moved back to her home town of Fall River, Massachusetts when Uncle Fred died. She brought her teenage daughter Anne Marie with her, but her two eldest daughters were grown and gone by that time.

The youngest Monis sister, my Aunt Alice, along with her husband, my Uncle Barber, owned a large house and property on North Main Street in Fall River. There were three apartments in the building – Aunt Alice and Uncle Barber lived on the ground floor, Aunt Mary and Uncle Chuck lived in the middle apartment, and Aunt Lida, Anne Marie, and Nana Monis lived on the top floor. Nana Monis was already quite old by the time I was a girl. She was rather shy and self-effacing, and extremely religious. There were images of a broken and bleeding Christ on the cross all over her apartment, which I found distinctly creepy as a girl. Nana Monis was sufficiently old that she went to bed even before us kids, and every evening during our summer visits we were expected to visit her bedside and give her a goodnight kiss. I hated going into her room, partly because it had a weird old person smell, but mostly because of the beaten Jesus that hung over her bed. He gazed out helplessly at his surroundings, his face set in a rictus of pain and suffering with blood streaming down his cheeks. His mute agony was absolutely terrifying, and appeared to me like something out of a horror film. 

Nana Monis developed pronounced dementia as she aged, eventually becoming so incompetent and confused that Aunt Lida could no longer care for her. She was consequently put in a home, but her children visited her often. I asked Aunt Lida what it was like going there, and she answered with her usual sly and sassy humour. She said it was kind of fun because you could leave and re-enter Nana’s room several times during the same visit, and since her memory was so bad, she would greet you with a big, grateful smile as if you’d just arrived every time you walked in the room. Nana’s dementia had also caused her to completely lose her ability to filter what she said. Tales of her frequent and varied sexual escapades with my grandfather came up at some point during most every visit, a development which Aunt Lida found very disconcerting. Also, after a lifetime of being a prim and proper Catholic lady, Nana began swearing like a sailor, which Aunt Lida described as sometimes awkward but generally absolutely hilarious.

My Uncle Chuck died in his 50s, leaving Aunt Mary a relatively young widow. Aunt Lida and Aunt Mary had always been friends, but they became especially close after Nana Monis left and they both found themselves alone. Aunt Mary was a gentle and loving soul. She’d had a weak heart since childhood which made her virtually housebound, although I never once heard her complain. One side effect of her condition was that she was constantly cold, and she consequently always had a sweater draped across her shoulders no matter how hot the day. Her medication sent her scurrying to pee about once an hour, and she apologized every time she excused herself to use the bathroom as though it was her fault. Aunt Lida was pretty loud and gruff, but she consistently toned down her personality when she was with her fragile younger sister, as though Aunt Mary were a skittish animal that would bolt if not approached in a quiet and calm manner. 

There was only one time I remember Aunt Lida speaking to Aunt Mary at her normal volume and with her usual fervour. I was standing outside Aunt Mary’s door and just about to knock when the intensity of Aunt Lida’s voice made me stay my hand. I listened from the hallway as Aunt Mary kept saying that she simply couldn’t believe it was true, and Aunt Lida kept insisting that such things happened all the time. In fact, the exact same scenario had played out with one of her priests in Brooklyn – he was accused of inappropriate behaviour, and then promptly transferred by the church to another parish. Aunt Mary then protested, “No, our Father John wouldn’t do that,” and Aunt Lida replied, “Yes, our Father John would.” I was about fifteen at the time, and even though it was years before I figured out that Aunt Mary’s priest had probably diddled either one or a series of altar boys, I knew that whatever had happened was leading to tension between two women who had always been the closest of friends. I hoped my entrance would be sufficiently distracting to allow a change of subject, so I gave a quick knock and entered the room. Luckily my plan worked – both women reverted to their normal tone and temperament, and I never heard them exchange heated words again.

Aunt Lida and I had a special connection. I have no idea why, but we just really clicked. I remember one time when I was a young woman I went down to Fall River to attend the annual summertime Monis family reunion. I was in my cousin Steven’s house, which was full to the rafters with relatives gathering food and drinks to bring outside where the party was being held. All of a sudden there was a commotion by the door, and people started jumping aside, making room for someone I couldn’t yet see. Then I heard Aunt Lida’s distinctive voice saying, “Where is she? Where is she?” just as she came into view, pushing people out of her way as she made a beeline towards me. She nearly knocked me over as she took me into her strong embrace, and later we sat together for almost all of the day’s festivities.

Aunt Lida, unlike most of her siblings, remained lucid until she died at 96. One time she told me she was determine to retain her “marbles” until the end of her life, and she was such a strong woman that I wouldn’t be surprised if she did so out of sheer will. The last time I saw her she had shrunken significantly, and was sufficiently stooped that she had no choice but to constantly look down. When I asked her how she was doing, she replied, “I’m fine. I mean, all I do is stare at my feet, and I wouldn’t even mind that so much if they were nicer feet.” Not only did she keep her marbles to the bitter end, but she kept her sarcastic sense of humour as well. I miss her greatly and often.

My Aunt Olive was the only Monis sister who didn’t live in the house on North Main Street. She came around when we visited in the summer, but I didn’t know her nearly as well as my dad’s other sisters. Her husband, Uncle Ernie, was a fireman who loved to fish on his days off. One time I asked Aunt Olive if she ever went out on his boat, and she promptly and emphatically replied, “Me? Never! I get seasick when I’m sitting in the bath and see my feet bobbing at the other end of the tub.” The only thing I knew about Aunt Olive up to that point was that she was an excellent cook, and now I also knew that she had a pretty good sense of humour.

I have written about my Aunt Alice before. She was what you would call a character. She regularly danced and sang as though she lived in a musical, and had an infectious joie de vivre. Aunt Alice had a pronounced tic on one side of her face and would regularly say, with her right cheek and eye involuntarily dancing, “Margie, can you see my tic?” I would always laugh in response to her query, assuming that she was joking because it was so very obvious. Now I sometimes wonder if perhaps she wasn’t, but rather was sincerely asking because she was embarrassed by her affliction. Aunt Alice and Uncle Barber owned a corner store, and she allowed us to have whatever we wanted when we visited her at work. She also kept a large bowl of M&M’s on her bookcase at home which we were welcome to dip into whenever we wished. Our mother was fairly strict about what we ate, so Aunt Alice’s indulgences really brought her up in my childhood estimation. 

My Uncle Barber suffered a severe heart attack just a few years after he and Aunt Alice had sold the store and retired. His immediate medical costs and those for his ongoing prescriptions meant that Aunt Alice had to go back to work. She took the necessary courses to get certified as a nurse’s aide, then took a full-time position in a local nursing home. Over time they paid off enough of their staggering medical bill that she could go part time, but never once did I hear her complain about how things had turned out. Her outward demeanour was always fun-loving and vivacious, and I like to believe she felt that way on the inside too. She was what used to be called a live wire, and her energy was cheering and infectious.

My maternal grandmother was the Nana I knew well. Nana was never very touchy-feely, but she showed her love in other ways, like with baked goods. She came to dinner every Sunday when I was growing up bearing two cookie tins full of homemade treats, and she’d take home the two tins we’d emptied over the previous week to accommodate the goodies she’d bake for her following visit. There was also a time when she literally gave me the sweater off her back in a show of mute support. I had come to my parents’ house for dinner after visiting my terminally ill, newly ex-husband in the hospital. I was exhausted and drained by all of the upheaval in my life, and had a good cry before we ate. Nana didn’t say anything as I helplessly sobbed on the couch, but I saw her surreptitiously taking concerned glances at me over the top of the newspaper she was pretending to read. She accompanied me to the door as I was leaving later that evening, and just before I headed out she abruptly took her sweater off over her head and held it out to me. I was confused by her offer – I’d never seen anyone hand over a piece of clothing as a parting gift. I looked at her perplexed, but she forcefully thrust the sweater into my arms and said, “I just want to give you something.” It was an unbelievably sweet and extremely welcome gesture, and pretty much sums up Nana’s character to a tee. 

Then there was Aunt Carolyn, my mother’s only sister. She and my mother were both emotionally damaged when they lost their father as girls. My mother responded to his death by losing all self-esteem, while my Aunt Carolyn withdrew into herself and became loath to show warm emotions or neediness of any kind. She was also extremely judgemental and kind of snobby. She regularly took me to see the Boston City Ballet when I visited – they were a competent enough company, but definitely not world class. Every time someone in the corps made a mistake of any kind, no matter how small, she would sharply intake her breath through her teeth making an unmistakeable hissing sound which carried throughout the whole theatre and brought the hapless offender’s mistake to everyone’s attention. I always felt bad for the dancers when she did that. Aunt Carolyn was a nursing supervisor and often worked nights, meaning she got home from work at seven in the morning. It turned out that I was visiting when Charles and Diana got married, and she was already watching the nuptials when I woke up and came into the family room. I had barely crossed the threshold before she turned to me and said in her most disdainful voice, “Well, the dress is just a nightmare!” The comment was so quintessentially Aunt Carolyn that all I could do in response was laugh.

There was only one time in all the years I knew her that I saw Aunt Carolyn drop her emotional guard. She and Uncle Bill came up from Boston when my mother died. My Uncle Bill immediately started sobbing as they entered my parents’ house where we were all gathered, and it was clear from his red nose and eyes that he had already been crying. He embraced all of us kids in turn and said he remembered well how devastating it had been for him when he’d lost his own mother. Aunt Carolyn, on the other hand, was dry-eyed and aloof as ever. We all sat and talked for a few hours until it was time to go and see Mum at the funeral home before she was cremated. Nana could not bear to see her dead daughter, so my eldest brother David stayed with her while the rest of us went off to the viewing. We all took our turns saying goodbye except for Aunt Carolyn who stood apart, silent and still. It wasn’t until someone from the funeral home came in and said our time was up that Aunt Carolyn moved to her dead sister’s side. She broke down, so much so that Uncle Bill had to support her, and began repeatedly saying through her mournful sobs, “I can’t leave her. I can’t leave her here all alone!” It was absolutely heartbreaking, but also revealed the fragile, all too human core of my aunt which I had suspected was there but which almost no one ever got to see.

My mother, Jean, was the woman who had the biggest impact on my life. I have mentioned that my mother had very little regard for herself or her own worth, but she was hugely impressed by, proud of, and fiercely loyal to her five children. She sat to the bitter end through every mediocre school play or musical performance in which we took part. She calmed our fears, kept us safe, encouraged our dreams, and fed our bodies, minds, and spirits. She was very particular about language, and a real stickler for proper usage and grammar. My large vocabulary and advanced abilities in speech and writing are entirely due to my mother’s exacting standards. I often visited my mother in hospital in the weeks leading up to her death. One time I mentioned a story I’d just read concerning Sati, the Hindu practice of widowed women killing themselves on their husbands’ funeral pyres. I mispronounced the word Sati and my mother, who was intubated at the time and could not speak, rapped her wedding ring on the metal frame of her bed to get my attention. I looked at her and immediately said the word correctly in response to her disapproving expression. She then smiled and nodded, letting me know that all was forgiven and I could continue with my story.  

My mother was extremely impatient. She had an explosive temper and yelled a lot, but she also calmed down almost immediately and would become solicitous and loving again. She was the kind of person who was scary until you got to know her, being someone who, to use a common expression, was all bark and no bite. Mum was extremely smart, and I owe the lion’s share of my intelligence to her DNA, example, and influence. She learned to drive, trained to be a nurse, and then went to work in the mid 1960s with five children at home, placing her well ahead of the feminist curve which would only begin to emerge at the end of that decade. She also gave excellent hugs and called me every Sunday just to make sure I was okay.

I didn’t have to say a single thing to her about why my marriage fell apart when it eventually did, she just assumed that my husband Douglas was at fault and was instantly in my corner. She had liked Douglas well enough, but she immediately started referring to him as “the prick,” leaving no doubt whatsoever that she was entirely on Team Margaret. Mum also insisted on paying my tuition when I went back to university to get my Bachelor of Education degree after Douglas died and I was left to raise two young children on my own. When I was 19 I totalled my father’s car the day before I was planning to move out. Not only did my mother not get mad at me for wrecking the car, but she also took me to the hospital to get checked out just in case. I clearly remember resting my weary head on her shoulder as we sat in the waiting room, enveloped by her familiar scent and relaxing into the soothing sensation of her strong hand stroking my hair. We were at the hospital where she worked as an emergency room nurse, and whenever people she knew stopped to say hello, she would introduce me as her baby. Even now I feel a glowing sense of warmth, safety, and gratitude at how special and singular that made me feel. Her baby.

You never really get over losing your mother, and it makes me sad to think that all of these other wonderful, important women are gone as well. I recently had a video chat with one of my nieces, and when I hung up it hit me that now I am the aunt who will be remembered. I’m a mentor and example to my daughter and my nieces, and I’m the one whose help and support is needed to guide a new generation. It is a humbling responsibility, but one I gladly take on. I can only hope to be half as good at it as the older women in my life were.

No Woman, No Cry

Anyone who regularly reads my blogs knows that I am an unabashed and avid feminist. I’ve composed numerous pieces about the plight of women and girls around the world, but in the last four months I’ve consciously taken a break from writing about this topic. The first reason is that it started to feel like I was flogging a dead horse – repeatedly making people aware of a problem only goes so far. Secondly, I found myself rather downhearted as this past winter set in, and I just couldn’t face reporting more bad news. The start of this week marked another International Women’s Day, however, and I feel it is time to look at what headway (if any) has been made in the last year with regards to the rights and treatment of females.

The pandemic has had a deleterious effect on the progress of the women’s movement as a whole, as well as in the everyday lives of millions of women. Let’s start with the larger picture – what many observers have coined the “she-cession.” The shutdowns and job losses resulting from Covid-19 have hit women particularly hard, especially those earning minimum wage. A paper recently published by the Labour Market Information Council reported that employment for women in low-earning occupations is 14 per cent below pre-crisis levels, while their counterparts in high-earning positions have already fully recovered. In other words, women in the worst paying jobs are both the most severely impacted by this recession and the furthest away from getting back to work. 

Single mothers have been negatively effected as well, with many experts suggesting that the recent economic lockdowns have wiped out the workforce gains they made over the past two decades. Single-parent mothers with children under six are not only disproportionately unemployed, but they have also become chronically under-employed, with many working almost two-fifths fewer hours now than they had pre-pandemic. 

The good news is that Canadian women who have been negatively impacted through this recession have a champion in the person of Chrystia Freeland, our Finance Minister and an accomplished woman I hope will one day become our first elected female Prime Minister. She has recently convened the Task Force on Women in the Economy to advise the federal government on ways to address financial imbalances between the sexes exacerbated by Covid-19. Freeland said, “Canada’s future prosperity and competitiveness depend on the ability of women to participate equally and fully in our workforce.” Justin Trudeau clearly agrees with this sentiment, saying in a media statement last Monday, “To build a fairer and more equal Canada, we must ensure a feminist, intersectional recovery from this crisis.” I’m not naïve enough to believe that all the progress lost through the lockdowns will be gained overnight, but I am heartened that the welfare of women is paramount in our government’s mind as we crawl out of this recession.

Many women’s lives have been impacted negatively on a personal level as well. The increase in domestic violence has become an international problem on such a massive scale that the United Nations is calling for immediate global action to halt the surge. I’m not sure how the rest of the world is responding, but I’m happy to report that Canada is stepping up. Maryam Monsef, our Minister for Women and Gender Equality, recently sponsored federal consultations regarding domestic abuse during the lockdowns. The reports found that there has been a 20 to 30 percent increase in domestic violence in certain regions throughout the country over the last year. Meanwhile, social distancing directives have forced shelters to restrict the number of victims they can take in. Monsef has said, “What the pandemic has done with the self-isolation measures, with the closures of some of the support systems, is create a powder keg.”

Many urban shelters have reported a huge uptick in calls for help, some increasing by as much as 400 percent. Rural support services are experiencing exactly the opposite phenomenon – women have simply stopped reaching out. Wanda McGinnis, head of the Wheatland Crisis Society in rural Alberta, fears that many women feel that they and their children can no longer be accommodated in shelters because of Covid-19 regulations. McGinnis’s centre received 333 crisis calls in January, but the number dropped to 203 in March when isolation measures ramped up. She says, “A pandemic doesn’t make [violence] stop, a pandemic just makes that silent.” McGinnis also notes that the calls they are getting indicate that victims are in increasingly dangerous situations, with reports of women being “strangled and threatened with weapons.” 

Monsef is now working on a plan of action to address this problem. She wants to implement “immediate support to families and to victims,” and to set up “a helpline for men so that they have a place to call when they are feeling stress and anxiety.” Lise Martin, the executive director of Women’s Shelter Canada, has been heavily involved in the consultation process with the government. She and the leaders in her organization feel that “there will be a huge surge in the demand for services once the isolation measures start to be reduced. That is where I think we will require further resources down the road, and I think shelters are already starting to prepare for that.” Let’s hope for the sake of all those brutalized and displaced women and children that Monsef will receive and distribute enough money to allow for such massive, ongoing support to an extremely vulnerable population. 

Women’s access to abortions has suffered because of the pandemic as well, especially in the United States where reproductive rights have been progressively dwindling over the past several years. A 2013 judgement by the American Supreme Court virtually ceded control of this issue to the individual states, effectively making Roe v. Wade moot. Many states have used draconian laws to close abortion clinics as a result of this ruling. Texas, for example, went from offering 72 sites down to 17 with a single bang of its legislative gavel. These same states have also limited access to the morning after pill which used to be offered at local pharmacies, but is now only available at abortion clinics. There are six states which each have only one abortion clinic, meaning women now have to travel great distances just to purchase the pill. I read the account of one woman who had to drive 16 hours each way, making her miss two days of work she could ill afford to lose. In the end this woman considered herself lucky because there are so many others who don’t have the time, money, or means of transportation to take such a journey.

This scarcity of facilities means that many women have to go out of state to terminate their pregnancies. Lockdowns and border closings during the pandemic have made such trips impossible. Several states which are seemingly determined to outlaw abortions altogether have also used pandemic restrictions to make them even harder to attain. They have deemed abortions as “unessential services”, even though they are so clearly time sensitive. This new designation means that abortions, like all elective surgeries, cannot be performed. One of the few remaining Planned Parenthood offices in Texas had to cancel 261 previously scheduled appointments while turning away 583 calls from patients trying to book the procedure in the first week of lockdown alone. Many of the reasons which lead women to terminate a pregnancy have increased during this time of crisis, especially job and money insecurity. This collision of increased need with decreased access has left countless women in a terrible situation, facing the inconvenience and physical hardships of an unscheduled pregnancy and labour, followed by the heart wrenching decision of what to do with an unwanted child.

One feminist initiative which has been conspicuously absent over the past year is the #MeToo movement. I was so heartened by all those women with pink hats who marched on Washington, and felt cautiously optimistic that the sheer number of demonstrations around the world might be harbingers of a growing trend towards equality between the sexes. Then George Floyd was killed and Black Lives Matter demonstrations grabbed the media spotlight, which seems able to illuminate only one injustice at a time. There is no question that the race protests are warranted and necessary, I just wish they had left some air in the room for further attention to the ongoing struggles of women. I was thinking about these issues when I came across a new documentary on HBO called Allen v. Farrow which explores, in four episodes, the very public dissolution of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow’s relationship amidst charges of child abuse. This whole sordid affair took place in the early 90s. I was peripherally aware of the case at the time, but I never really got the details because the bulk of my attention was taken up by my two young children. I decided to watch the program to see what had actually gone on.

Allen and Farrow never married or lived together, but they were in a committed relationship for over a decade, holding keys to each others’ New York apartments, spending much of their free time together, and collaborating closely on Allen’s movies. Eventually Farrow, a woman who clearly loves being a mother, adopted a child with Allen, a girl named Dylan, and had a biological son with him as well. Their son was initially called Satchel, but has since taken the name Ronan. Ronan Farrow is a reporter for The New Yorker, and his investigation into the Harvey Weinstein abuse allegations won the magazine the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2018. Allen is legally Ronan’s father, along with Moses (another of Farrow’s children) and Dylan, both of whom he adopted in 1991.

The real drama began in 1992 when Farrow discovered almost simultaneously that Allen and her 21 year old daughter Soon-Yi were having an affair, and her 7 year old daughter Dylan claimed that he had sexually interfered with her in the attic. The documentary definitely has a pro-Farrow feel to it, and while I’m sure that some mitigating details were omitted, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that something untoward happened between Allen and his little daughter. Dylan, now 37, insists that her father touched her inappropriately, and she seems genuinely damaged by the whole affair. 

The thing that really caught my attention as a feminist relates to the defence tactic used by Allen’s lawyer. He drew heavily on a book called The Parental Alienation Syndrome, written by American psychiatrist Dr. Richard Gardner. Gardner coined the phrase ‘parental alienation’ as a way to describe children in acrimonious divorces who are coached by one parent to make false claims of abuse or mistreatment at the hands of the other parent, essentially as a form of revenge. There is no question that this scenario does occasionally play out in custody battles, but Gardner asserted that 90 percent of mothers who make such claims are liars who intentionally program their children to repeat false accusations. Gardner held fast to that number even in cases where there was no corroborating proof, or when there was a preponderance of evidence that some form of abuse had actually occurred. He theorized that mothers alleging abuse were expressing, in disguised form, their own sexual inclinations towards their children. It turns out that Gardner’s concepts have no scientific basis whatsoever – they are not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association or any other professional body, and all of Gardner’s books were self-published without benefit of the usual peer review process. 

Gardner’s parental alienation theory was used by Allen’s lawyer in his trial despite resting on such unproven ground. He claimed that Farrow had coached Dylan as an act of retribution for Allen’s dalliance with Soon-Yi, and that his client was blameless. Domestic violence experts roundly denounce Gardner’s work, with one going so far as to say that it is “probably the most unscientific piece of garbage I’ve seen in the field in all my time,” and with the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry writing that it is “a recipe for finding allegations of sexual abuse false, under the guise of clinical and scientific objectivity.” Yet despite all this, Gardner’s undeniably suspect theory cleared Allen’s name. 

Gardner’s work is to this day regularly cited in the American justice system – a fact I largely attribute to its central assertion that women are often hysterical (Gardner himself wrote a book called Sex Abuse Hysteria), and are natural prevaricators to boot. Even though it is demonstrably true that the vast majority of rapists, pedophiles, and violent criminals are male, and even though it is widely acknowledged that physical and sexual abuse are common occurrences, the overwhelming perception still seems to be that men accused of such crimes are probably innocent. Women either brought the abuse on themselves, are over-reacting to it, or are flat out lying. I would argue that this underlying assumption pervades not only the justice system and countless other institutions, but also exists in the minds of many in our society as well, particularly men of my age and older. This fact was verified the other day in a conversation I had with a 63 year old male friend.

We were talking about the Allen/Farrow documentary, and he kept insisting that there was no point in dredging the whole thing up again. I suggested that Dylan might feel differently – that speaking her full truth might be quite healing, especially considering that Allen was exonerated. My friend then forcefully asserted that no, she wasn’t going to get anything out of it. He, like many men his age, is ridiculously sure of his opinions, a perspective which I imagine comes from years of unquestioned privilege and validation. He then went on to say that it could very well have been the case that a hysterical woman (Farrow) simply made a false claim. We’ll just never know. And there it is – without having seen any of the documentary or really knowing any particulars of the situation, he confidently reeled off the unfounded yet ever present presumption that the woman involved was off her head with emotion and thus couldn’t be trusted. 

I am immensely cheered by seeing strong, smart women like Freeland and Monsef in positions of influence in this country, and feel confident that they are making decisions which will positively impact the lives of Canadian women. I have maintained for some time that progress for women will only be achieved when we are allowed at the decision making tables, and I’m gratified to see that this seems to be happening more and more. Further steps in our quest for equality will only be possible, however, when old white guys, particularly those with power, die off and take the most limiting, damaging, and sexist patriarchal ideas with them. The young men I meet seem refreshingly egalitarian in their outlook, and their advancement into positions of authority, alongside a growing number of women, will be to everyone’s benefit. I feel very optimistic about the world my daughter and future generations of females will live in.

Fame

I was out for a walk the other day when a lovely young woman came around the corner towards me. It is general etiquette these days when you’re about to pass someone on the sidewalk that one or the other of you will move to the side to create the recommended 2m distance. The person who didn’t move says, “Thank you,” the person who did says, “No problem,” and you continue on your respective ways firm in the knowledge that the unspoken social contract is intact. This young woman, however, was absolutely engrossed in her phone, so much so that she didn’t even realize I was there. I jumped over a snowbank onto the road when it became clear that she was not going to move, and said a rather snarky “You’re welcome” as she passed. That got me wondering, after my initial annoyance had abated, exactly what she was looking at with such rapt attention.

I have never been one to follow social media. I check Facebook a couple of times a day, but do not even have Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok accounts. None of these thing have ever interested me in the least, and I only use my phone to text people and to play music – it has never functioned as a pocket computer for me as it does for so many others. My guess is that the young woman who was completely oblivious to my existence was caught up in one or another of these apps, which begs the question of what it is that makes them so damned interesting.

It seems logical that social media sites evolved from reality TV, which itself has changed dramatically over the past decade. The only reality television I ever watched with any regularity was the Food Network. I began watching Food in the early 2000s, and at that time almost all of its shows were instructional. Ina Gartner was very congenial and had great recipes, Anna Olsen was a master baker and incredibly creative, and my favourite, Nigella Lawson, employed a wonderfully rich and evocative vocabulary when describing her food, and was, like me, a little more slap-dash in her approach. She was also an unapologetic eater – every episode ended with Nigella, clad in pyjamas and a robe, brazenly launching a late night raid on her fridge to gobble up leftovers with wild abandon. Women are not usually shown eating with such relish, and I always found it incredibly cheering and liberating to see a beautiful women displaying such a devil may care attitude about her love of food.

I became a much better cook thanks to the Food Network, but about 10 years ago its programming began to change. Chefs were replaced by cooks who in turn were displaced by hosts. Instructional shows started to dwindle, and shows featuring cooking competitions and restaurant reviews and makeovers became the norm. Food morphed from a place where cooking enthusiasts could improve their skills into a network full of mindless programs, many of which bore only a tangential relationship to food. This trajectory has been mirrored on other networks that started out being educational like HGTV and TLC, and this trend capitalizes on the voyeuristic nature of our species. Why do something when watching someone else do it requires no effort yet can be equally diverting?

CEOs of social media companies have simply picked up where reality TV programmers left off, but they have added a brilliant and addictive new twist. For years I have been baffled by people in crowds who act like attention seeking idiots as soon as a camera is pointed in their direction – partly because their behaviour is often embarrassing, but mostly because I would simply never consider acting that way. I am an intensely private person, and despite having for decades seen masses of crowd members jump up and down and pull faces for the camera, I always assumed that those individuals were the exception and most people were like me. Turns out I had it backwards all these years – the average person not only likes watching others on film or TV, but they would do almost anything to be seen themselves. The men who designed social media sites cleverly exploited this common desire and thereby secured their immediate and lasting success while ensuring ever rising profits.

For some time now there have been many individuals who are famous for being famous. I think the first person I was aware of who fit this description was Paris Hilton. Her position as a well known socialite led her to being dubbed “New York’s leading It Girl” by the tabloids in 2001, and her fame exploded when a sex tape featuring her and her boyfriend was “leaked” in 2003. She starred in the vapid television series The Simple Life with fellow socialite Nicole Richie for five years, and the show regularly drew up to 13 million viewers. Hilton is sometimes called out for her uselessness, like when she was named the most overrated celebrity in the 2007 Guinness World Records, but her fans still slavishly love her. She was the first to be dubbed a celebutante   – a portmanteau used to describe someone who has become famous not through talent or work, but rather because of inherited wealth and a lavish lifestyle. I think most would agree that this term applies perfectly to Donald Trump as well.

The Kardashians are the most recent and successful iteration of the celebutante phenomenon, led by momager (mother/manager) Kris. Here is a woman who is perfectly content commodifying her children, even turning a profit when her second eldest daughter Kim’s sex tape was somehow “leaked” to TMZ in 2007. Eventually the tape landed in the lap of a porn company that released it under the title Kim Kardashian, Superstar. Kris advised her daughter to sue. In the end they allowed the company to continue playing the film, thus increasing the family’s fame and bankability, and received a $5 million settlement for damages. Kris then parlayed the notoriety gained from the tape into the incredibly successful show Keeping up with the Kardashians, which ran for more than a decade and made the family $30 million per season the last five years it ran – all for just allowing themselves to be filmed as they led their lives. Meanwhile the Kardashian and Jenner children have become Instagram darlings, with the youngest, Kylie, becoming a billionaire at 21 thanks to the cosmetics she hawks to her more than 200 million followers.

Instagram stars are known as influencers. I was curious how many followers one needs to become an influencer, but the numbers I found were all over the map. My understanding after reading several articles is that you earn the moniker as soon as you begin to represent a brand. The whole point of posting on Instagram is to amass likes and followers, and some people do so as a way to launch a company or service. I read more than one piece featuring entrepreneurs who achieved success through their savvy use of the platform, and I applaud their initiative. Most people, however, are hoping to be influencers to feed their egos, and to gain swag. Many businesses have employees whose sole job is to scour social media looking for people who fit their brand. Once these individuals are found the company sends them free wares on the understanding that they will tag and feature these products in their posts. The company thereby receives advertising at no cost, and the newly coined influencer gets free stuff. The term influencer is actually just a fancy word for salesperson, the only difference being that they are paid in merchandise rather than money.

I recently watched a documentary on HBO called Fake Famous which explores Instagram and the explosion of influencers it has spawned. The film was written, produced, and directed by Nick Bilton, a tech reporter who often writes for Vanity Fair. Fake Famous opens with vignettes of dozens of different people taking selfies in front of an expansive, bubblegum coloured wall in Los Angeles. Bilton’s voiceover notes that this wall has been the backdrop to so many pictures in the last few years that it has become the largest tourist draw in the entire city. He then goes on to describe a recent change in the goals of American children. Whereas their top answers to the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” used to be astronaut, teacher, and doctor, now their number one answer is famous. They don’t necessarily want to be famous for anything – no skill or effort or achievement – they just want to be famous. This new aspiration comes from somewhere, and Bilton suggests that the ready fame made possible by social media has made it a part of the zeitgeist. The overwhelming desire to be seen and known explains the unprecedented popularity of a blank, pink wall in a city which is home to such iconic sites as The Walk of Fame, the Hollywood sign, and Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Everyone wants to be famous, and there is no better avenue to reach that goal than Instagram.

Bilton is fascinated with the rise of Instagram, and Fake Famous records his efforts to make regular people into influencers. He holds auditions and eventually chooses three subjects for his film – Wylie is an anxious young homosexual who recently arrived in LA looking for a broader gay community and work as a model or actor; Chris is a confident black man who already has a bit of a following for his custom designed clothing; and Dominique is a pleasant if rather bland young actress who has landed a few small roles in student and independent films. These three all agree to be part of Bilton’s experiment. 

Evidently many Instagram posts are counterfeit. People use inexpensive techniques to give the appearance of living the high life, and Bilton employs several of these in the initial photo shoot with his subjects. He holds a toilet seat behind their profiles to mimic the window in a plane, he puts cucumber slices on Dominique’s eyes then has her lay her head in a kiddie pool full of rose petals as though she were at an exclusive spa, and he poses Wylie seemingly choosing from a tray of large chocolate bonbons which are in actuality generous pats of butter sprinkled with cocoa powder. The more glamorous an Instagram story appears to be, the more people will buy into it.

The next part of the plan involves purchasing bots to pad the number of followers on the three subjects’ Instagram feeds. I had heard about bots and their dissemination by Russia to sway opinions about, and the ultimate course of, the 2016 American election, but I didn’t know what they actually were. Bots are basically electronic amalgams, or virtual identities, which are made by bringing together bits of information garnered from the profiles of real people who have an online presence. One woman’s occupation, plus another guy’s hometown, a third person’s face, and another’s name all come together to form a convincing yet completely made-up individual. There are numerous companies whose sole purpose is to create and sell bots without any regard for how their product will be used. Bilton deploys the bots he buys to increase the followers on the sites of his three subjects, and also to bolster their likes and comments. This is evidently fairly common practice on Instagram, and seems to fall under the heading “Fake it til you make it.” In other words, the more followers you have, the more you are likely to get, so padding your viewership in the beginning only makes sense.

Two of Bilton’s subjects leave the experiment at this point. First Wylie goes because the combination of waiting for likes plus having to weather negative comments makes him unbearably anxious. Next Chris, who feels he will be genuinely famous before long for his clothing designs anyway, finds that he can’t stand the phoniness of the enterprise and drops out. That leaves only Dominique, whose inoffensive demeanour and willingness to play along in short order make her into a genuine influencer. She begins to receive all kinds of swag which she dutifully features in her posts, which leads to more and more products rolling in. At one point she works with an established influencer who has, with Bilton, rented an empty mansion for the day’s shoot. She helps Dominique choose clothing to bring to the event and the two of them don various outfits throughout the day as they travel from room to room having their pictures taken. It all seemed rather surreal and ridiculous to me, especially considering that this is actually how more and more people are making a living – putting up pictures of themselves in the hopes that companies will pick them to shill their products. Weird.

I discussed this documentary with a former colleague a couple of weeks ago, which prompted her to relay the following story. She was recently at Winners with a friend, and as they wandered through the store they repeatedly encountered a pair of young women. While my friend and her companion conversed as they walked, the young women were busy independently filming the products around them and then repeatedly stopping to talk to the camera about what they were doing and seeing. I have encountered people acting in a similar fashion – filming their surroundings and themselves while engaging in the most mundane of tasks. As strange as I find this behaviour in and of itself, odder still is the fact that others avidly watch these films, or stories, as Instagram calls them. Not only do they watch them, but they actively search them out. My mother used to say that watching boring programs was “about as interesting as watching paint dry,” and in my estimation, the film those young women took at Winners that day falls squarely into this category. Why in hell would I waste my time watching people shop? What is the appeal?

I doubt that anyone knows the answer to that question. I’m pretty sure that social media companies don’t, but they are laughing all the way to the bank nonetheless. They couldn’t possibly have predicted in the beginning just how hypnotic and consuming their sites would become. After all, the explosion and influence of social media is a real-time experiment we are all currently living through. I fear that this cultural obsession with hollow fame and irrelevant content is distracting people from larger issues of concern, such as growing income disparity and the climate crisis. On the other hand, it is young people, the ones who seem most obsessed with their phones and social media, who are leading the charge for positive, systemic change. Maybe they can multitask after all. Let’s hope so.

Good Fences make Good Neighbours

I was born at the tail end of the baby boom, and there were scads of children on my street. We played massive games of British bulldog, red rover, tag, and hide and seek. Our neighbourhood was our well used playground, and thus we knew it like the backs of our hands. We had a crab apple tree in our front yard, and my brother Michael and his friends would regularly set themselves up behind our front hedge and chuck crab apples at passing cars. Every so often an irate driver would stop, and the boys would escape through the gap in our back fence which led them safely to the next street. All of us kids were aware of that opening in the fence because we used it when playing hide and seek. 

We knew the names of almost every family in the neighbourhood, and would use their houses as boundaries for our games. Our field for tag would be the grassy boulevards between our house and the Taggarts’, or the prescribed area for a game of hide and seek would be from the Romanuks’ to the Shaws’. My mother set strict limits when I first ventured out on my tricycle alone – I could go as far as the Albrechts’ house, but that was it. I was expected to turn around in their large double driveway and head back home. Mrs. Albrecht often came out and waved to me as I completed laps between her house and my own. All the moms knew the kids, at least by sight, and we knew them as well. This made our neighbourhood extremely safe because we could confidently go to any house if there was an emergency, and any potentially dangerous strangers would stand out like a sore thumb.

Most of our neighbours were very nice – working class people raising their families as best they could in a spacious environment full of new homes and well appointed yards. My neighbourhood was overwhelmingly white, as I imagine most Canadian suburbs were at the time. We had only two black families on our long street, the Steeds and the Blackwoods, and one Japanese family, the Imais. I regularly played with Shirley Blackwood, and my brother was friends with Jay Steed. I don’t remember hearing any derogatory remarks about these kids or seeing any racist acts against them, but I’m sure they quietly suffered their fair share of such indignities.

Our house was one over from a cross street, and the people who lived next to us on the corner were the Cestnicks. Mr. and Mrs. Cestnick (Otto and Alice) had immigrated to Canada from Yugoslavia after WWII. Otto constantly complained about how crappy Canada was in comparison to his homeland, and I remember my dad one time impatiently saying to him that if that was the case, then perhaps he should go back. Mr. Cestnick decided that was a good idea. He was an evangelical Christian, and one summer he packed up and went home, determined to spread the good word back in the old country. His plan was to send for his family once he became established. Otto lasted for just a few months in Yugoslavia before they kicked him out and he was forced to return to the house next to us with his tail between his legs. It turns out Tito and his bunch had no interest in bible thumpers. This humiliating incident marked the end of Mr. Cestnick’s Canada bashing, much to my father’s glee.

There were four Cestnick children, all of whom unsurprisingly had biblical names. From eldest to youngest there was Grace, Paul, Ruth, and Esther. Grace and Paul had already moved out when I was a girl, leaving Ruth and Esther. Ruth was the same age as my eldest sister Lisa so I didn’t know her at all, but I got the definite impression from the times I fleetingly saw her that she was a rather shy and awkward teenager. Esther, on the other, could not have been more outgoing. She regularly spread out on a lawn chair in their front yard to sunbathe, holding one of those trifold metal reflectors on her chest to reflect maximum rays to her face, and wearing the skimpiest bikini imaginable. This behaviour drove Otto crazy, which I think was the whole point for Esther. Good fundamental Christian girls simply did not behave this way, and I heard the two of them arguing every time she had a tanning session. I don’t know what eventually became of Esther, but I would take odds that she never took up her father’s evangelical mantle.

Mr. Cestnick was that neighbour who would adamantly refuse to return stray balls or frisbees that landed on his property. One time my brothers were out front throwing around a football when it accidentally went over the fence into Otto’s front yard. He gleefully pounced on it and smugly announced to my brothers that it was now his. They had only been arguing with him for a minute or two when our dad came storming out of the house. I don’t know if he saw what had happened through our front window, or perhaps heard my brothers’ raised voices, but whatever the impetus he was hopping mad as he drew up on the edge of our driveway a few feet from where Mr. Cestnick stood. Dad placed himself squarely in front of the fence, held out his hand, and staring straight into Otto’s face said in a low and menacing voice, “Give me the fucking ball.” Otto, coward that he was, immediately crumpled and silently handed the ball over. He then slunk into his house as my father, without comment, returned the ball to David. Neither my brothers nor I said a word, but we all watched with admiring eyes as our hero made his way back into our house. 

Otto’s refusal to return lost items made him infamous and hated amongst kids in my neighbourhood and beyond. The incident between him and my dad became common knowledge as well, so now the local toughs knew that he was not only an ass, but also spineless. One gang of teenage boys consequently began a campaign against Mr. Cestnick. They would stand on the sidewalk or boulevard outside his house and loudly insult him, then run away when he finally came out to confront them. He didn’t seem to understand that they were getting exactly what they wanted every time he allowed himself to be drawn out by their taunts. If he had simply stayed in the house, they would have eventually become bored with the game and left to find someone else to torture. Otto called the police, but there was nothing they could do because the boys always stood on public property. Finally he hit upon the bright idea of taking their pictures. I guess he thought that the threat of having their bullying recorded would for some reason force his tormentors to stop. Unfortunately for Otto, however, his plan had the complete opposite effect. The boys not only continued to goad him from the sidewalk, but now they would strike ridiculous poses while singing out in silly falsetto voices, “You hoo, Otto. Take my picture!” He was such an easy target, and his persistently dickish behaviour meant that everyone in the neighbourhood was on the side of the bullies. No adults openly condoned their behaviour, but none of them tried to stop it either.

The neighbours on the other side of us were much nicer and more normal. Marg and John Chapman were typical of the couples in my neighbourhood. Marg stayed home to manage the house and raise their three kids, Lyn, Susan, and Brian, while John financially supported the family as a mailman. Lyn was much older than me and had a boyfriend named Larry whom she eventually married. Susan was friends with my sister Lisa, and Brian was my friend. My first memory of Brian occurred on the day the Chapmans moved in. My mother and I were out on the driveway watching the moving truck unload – me seated on my tricycle, and my mum leaning on the trunk of the car having a smoke. Just then a little boy on a trike zoomed around the front hedge and, seemingly unaware of how to stop, slammed directly into my mother. Mum doubled over in pain, clasping her lower leg and making that hissing sound we all make after barking our shins. Meanwhile the boy, seemingly oblivious to the damage he’d caused, hopped off his trike and said his name was Brian. It turns out that this introduction summed Brian up perfectly – he was friendly and well-meaning, but he wasn’t very bright.

Brian was one grade ahead of me until I accelerated and we landed in the same grade 6 class. Our teacher was Miss Bonk, an old-style disciplinarian who delighted in hitting and humiliating her slower students. Unfortunately for Brian, he was the slowest in the class. I vividly remember Miss Bonk hitting him over the head with a ruler, a blackboard eraser, and, on one particularly brutal occasion, a large, hardcover dictionary. I grew to hate Miss Bonk through the course of that school year, partly because her repeated assertions that I was the smartest kid in the class despite having skipped grade 5 made the other kids hate me, and partly because of the way she treated Brian. Over time I began to push back against her cruelty by adopting a sarcastic and dismissive tone. I became a real smart-ass and undermined her authority whenever possible. My subversive behaviour gained me respect amongst my peers, but more importantly provided Brian with the satisfaction of seeing his tormentor thwarted.

Three doors up from us were the Taggarts. I was friends with Jackie Taggart and loved going to her house because her parents were both from Scotland and I found their accents charming and hilarious. Mr. Taggart was a policeman and stayed in shape for his job by jogging. He was the first adult I remember seeing run for health reasons. There was a family much further up the street that owned a large German shepherd which they walked twice a day. Somehow the Taggart’s lawn became this dog’s favourite place to do his business. There were no poop and scoop laws at the time, and one often found dog crap in the yard. We all just cleaned it up and moved on when it happened. Somehow Mr. Taggart got it into his head that the people who owned the German shepherd were encouraging it to crap on his lawn in particular. He thought that perhaps they didn’t like cops. One day Jackie and I were playing on her driveway when Mr. Taggart came home from his jog only to see the German shepherd and its owners a little way up the street and a fresh, steaming turd on his lawn. He angrily grabbed a shovel from the carport, picked up the poop, and began following the couple up the street with the loaded shovel in hand. This was new and exciting behaviour, so Jackie and I fell in behind him to see what would happen. The dog owners eventually turned into a driveway, and Mr. Taggart picked up speed. He got to the edge of their yard just as they were about to go inside, and after getting their attention with a shrill whistle, he dumped the contents of the shovel on their grass saying, “This is where your dog’s shit belongs. Don’t let me find it on my lawn again.” And he never did.

One of my best friends Andrea lived just around the corner, and across the street from her were the van der Vechts. Mr. and Mrs. van der Vecht were from Holland, and they and their children were all fair skinned and blonde. There were three girls in the family – Ingrid, the eldest, was beautiful and reminded me of Julie Barns from The Mod Squad; Linda, the middle daughter, was tough and outspoken; and Joanne, the youngest, was rather unremarkable. She had a very round and freckled face, and I sometimes played with her when no one else was available. It wasn’t that she was dislikable in any way, she was just boring and uninspired. 

One summer Joanne’s maternal grandfather came over from the Netherlands for a visit. He didn’t speak any English, so I hung around their house a lot that summer just to hear the family conversing in Dutch. What really struck me about Joanne’s grandpa were his culinary habits. He had oily, stinky little fish on toast every day for breakfast (probably sardines), and most interestingly of all, he ate everything with a knife and fork. Joanne breathlessly told me this one day after witnessing him eat a sandwich with cutlery. I felt sure that there must be some things he would eat with his hands – chocolate bars, for example. We doubted it was even possible to eat a chocolate bar with a knife and fork. Wouldn’t it just fall apart as soon as you cut into it, and wasn’t its surface too hard to be pierced by a fork? So Joanne and I decided to conduct an experiment. We went up to Ozzie’s, our local convenience store, and bought a Coffee Crisp. We then brought it back to her place and presented it to her grandpa as a gift. He said thank you as he fully unwrapped it, placed it on a sandwich plate, and then proceeded to eat it with a knife and fork. First he cut it into sections, and then used the knife to maneuvered each piece onto the top of the fork, thereby entirely sidestepping the need to use the tines. I have since wondered if perhaps the old fellow had a touch of OCD which precluded him from touching anything that went into his mouth, but at the time no explanation was necessary. His amazing dexterity with cutlery was sufficiently fascinating in and of itself.

The Reynolds family lived across the street from the Cestnicks. My sister Lisa was friends with Marnie Reynolds, and her little sister Linda was widely known for her penchant for screaming. Linda was a couple of years younger than me, but my friends and I allowed her to join in when we played on the street. My dad was a guitar player who worked enough that he was rarely at home. He generally went from doing studio work or teaching during the day directly to a show of some kind in the evening. Occasionally he had enough time between jobs to come home in the afternoon to, as he put it, “shit, shower and shave” and put on his “monkey suit” – the black suit and tie band members were required to wear at most evening gigs. Linda was over on one of those rare afternoons when my dad was home. We were playing in the front yard when she sent up a shriek which so jarred my father that he cut himself while shaving. He came bursting out the front door in a rage, and it was understood from then on that Linda was not welcome at the house if Dad was home. For years I thought my father was over-reacting, and then I became an elementary school teacher and began to encounter screamers on the yard. It is hard to put into words how shrill and annoying a child’s scream can be, but experiencing it as an adult has allowed me to better understand my dad’s position.

I recently had another flash of insight into the brain of an adult I knew as a child. The Bennetts lived in the house directly behind ours. To me they seemed really old, although they may well have been close to the age I am now, and their children were grown and long gone. I only saw flashes of Mrs. Bennett, but Mr. Bennett was often outside putzing around in his carport or mowing the lawn. My brother David was learning to drum, and his bedroom was downstairs at the back of the house, a mere stone’s throw from Mr. Bennett’s side windows. David needed to practice daily, and while he sometimes used his full kit, he mostly used his practice pads to keep the noise down in deference to our neighbours, Mr. Bennett in particular. I often played in the backyard while David practiced, and I can remember several such occasions when Mr. Bennett hollered at me over the fence about the “infernal racket.” My brother’s drumming didn’t bother me, and I felt that Mr. Bennett was being unreasonable and needlessly unpleasant. David needed to practice, and he was trying to make as little noise as possible, so what was the point in constantly complaining? Lately a similar situation has arisen in my life, only this time I’m the adult being annoyed. Last summer a family on the street behind me set up a basketball net in their driveway. When I’m in my backyard the whap, whap, whap of the ball bouncing on the pavement really disturbs my peace, and drives me into the house every time. Now I understand why David’s practicing so bothered Mr. Bennett all those years ago. 

My husband Douglas and I were living in downtown Toronto when I became pregnant with our first child. We knew the names of the neighbours on either side of us and said hello when we saw them, but otherwise we didn’t know a single person on our street or in our larger community. There were also often used condoms and syringes in the alleyway behind our house which made us wary about how secure our neighbourhood was for children. Both of us had grown up in the relative safety of Scarborough in the 1960s, where parents could comfortably let their kids roam free and kids could enjoy big swaths of time without adult supervision. We wanted that for our children and thus moved to the small village of Millbrook. It was like stepping back in time. The kids enjoyed hours of unstructured play, and we knew where all of their friends lived as well as who their parents were. My experiences as a child and then as a parent confirm the old adage “It takes a village.”

The Eighth Deadly Sin

For the past several weeks I have been writing stories about my world travels, and this process has been illuminating. I’ve enjoyed revisiting places and situations I remember often and usually with great fondness, but writing about them in such detail has reintroduced a dark shadow in my mind. I am well past the trauma of my abusive marriage, but retelling these stories has called up memories of the pall of unhappiness and fear I lived under during the 18 years I was with my husband Douglas. It has reminded me of the person I was then, and of the person I have fought to become over the past 24 years since I left my marriage.

Douglas died of leukaemia a scant 10 months after I moved out of our matrimonial home, and I assumed at the time that his being gone, along with the passage of time, would naturally bring me to a place of forgiveness. It did not. I realized about a decade after he had died that I was still haunted by the way he had treated me, and that I simply could not proceed happily in my life until I actively forgave him. I promptly made an appointment with my therapist and went to the library to find resources about forgiveness. I ended up with a couple of very good books and an excellent video which featured three situations wherein exceptional people had managed, through sheer will and intrinsic goodness, to truly forgive others who had caused them grievous harm. 

The documentary opened with Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor whose harrowing time in Auschwitz and Buchenwald forms the basis of his brilliant novel Night. Wiesel famously forgave his persecutors as a way of moving forward with his life, and he spoke often of his experiences to try and prevent such atrocities from ever happening again. The second part of the video explored the shocking mass shooting in an Amish schoolhouse in 2006. A man named Carl Roberts entered the school in the morning and took 10 girls hostage. By the end of the day he had shot eight of them, killing five, and taken his own life. The Amish community, although shaken to its core, immediately responded with forgiveness for this troubled young man. Their compassion was almost unbelievable. The third segment concerned a man whose teenage son had been shot by a schoolmate who was strung out on drugs at the time. The young murderer was tremendously remorseful, and the video showed the father of the victim meeting his son’s killer in prison and offering his full and free forgiveness. Extraordinary.

Watching this video was incredibly inspiring, but it confirmed what I had feared all along – I am simply not a big enough person to truly forgive. I was not willing to continue feeling sad, hurt, and vengeful for the rest of my life, so I knew I had to find another path to healing. That’s when I began to think about hatred. The Buddha said that holding hatred in the mind and heart is like tightly clutching a hot coal in your hand – all it does is cause you to suffer. I began to understand that I would have to stop hating Douglas if there was any hope of me being happy, and the first step in that process was to get to the bottom of why I had stayed with him for so long. In other words, I needed to forgive myself before I could stop hating him.

Douglas was one of my brother’s best friends and I had known him since I was 12 years old. It was just bad luck and propinquity that led me into a relationship with him. We began dating when I was 17 and I didn’t manage to leave him until I was 35, meaning he was among the people who shaped my adolescence before becoming the dominant influence during my formative adult years. He was extremely controlling, and I bent to his will and worldview as a matter of survival. My safest way forward was to parrot his thoughts and actions, and thus I never really became my own person. Part of the reason I eventually screwed up the courage to leave Douglas was because, as the years passed, this lack of selfhood began to make me feel like I was literally going to die. I was so amorphous and adrift that I started to feel like nothing and no-one. Once I was on my own, the passage of time along with a lot of therapy and hard introspection allowed my true self to blossom, and I eventually came to quite like the person who emerged.

My therapist said all these things when I saw her again 10 years after Douglas had died. She reminded me that I had long since discounted the terrible things he had insisted were true about me along with the awful names he had regularly called me, and that I had thoroughly proven myself to be someone worthy of care in the decade since his death. These assertions were ringing loud and true in my mind when I finally forgave myself for staying in that miserable situation for so long, which left me free to take a more balanced view of Douglas and his motivations. Douglas grew up in a family where ‘every man for himself’ was the guiding credo. The familial lack of love, support, and acceptance – elements every growing child needs – warped him into the hard and narcissistic adult he became. I was now able to consider these factors much more objectively and dispassionately, and my hatred simply slipped away. 

This entire process got me thinking more deeply about the nature of hatred. The Buddha spoke extensively of the suffering it causes, but I couldn’t really think of any other religion that tackled it head on. A cursory dip into the guiding principles of Islam brought up the concepts of sincerity, honesty, and goodwill – all noble aims, but none of which specifically proscribe, or even touch on, hatred. Then I looked at the Ten Commandments, the first four of which admonish God’s people to consistently love, worship, and praise him. The need for this much adoration suggests a surprising insecurity given the whole omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence thing. The final six Commandments are for me extraordinary in what they do not prohibit – there is of course no mention of hatred, but more disturbingly rape, assault, and slavery are not explicitly forbidden. Huh.

My investigation then led me to the Seven Deadly Sins – a series of behaviours or feelings which, according to Roman Catholic theology, are often the gateways to further and worse sins. The list was compiled by a 4th century Christian ascetic, but didn’t gain traction until it was picked up and elaborated on by Sir Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. The sins are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. They correspond inversely to the seven virtues of humility, charity, chastity, gratitude, temperance, patience, and diligence. Lust, gluttony, and sloth really only become problematic when they are taken to the extreme. Lust is pleasurable and harmless when it is reciprocated, over-indulging from time to time can be extremely fun and satisfying, and having a messy space means nothing if that’s how you like to live. I think they are spot on in naming envy, wrath, and greed, but would argue that not all pride is bad. 

At the age of 28 I went to university and got a three year B.A. in two years. At the end of my first year I was awarded a cash endowment called the Hodgkin’s Prize along with The Prince of Wales Gold Metal, both given in recognition of academic excellence. When I shared this exciting news with Douglas his response was, “Yeah, but school is easy for you.” It was impossible for me to take pride in anything I did when my husband constantly undermined and dismissed my accomplishments. It wasn’t until years after my marriage had ended that I realized those prizes were worth celebrating. I had been awarded two scholastic accolades in a faculty of some 26,000 students despite having taken on a particularly heavy academic load while still running a household. It was a straight equation – I had worked my ass off and was rewarded for my efforts.

This was surely a case where pride was merited. I think bad outcomes often follow when one’s sense of pride is unfounded, or when it leads to feelings of superiority. Donald Trump perfectly embodies the dangers inherent in this kind of pride. If one’s pride springs from feelings of fulfillment and satisfaction resulting from either one’s own or another’s efforts and accomplishments, then I think that is a good thing. Pride which follows a job well done is uplifting and inspiring, and there is nothing better than knowing that someone you love is proud of you.

I looked at other writings and religious tenets but couldn’t find anything which spoke to what I would call the eighth and most dangerous deadly sin, hatred. Every faith has a version of the Golden Rule, but that only speaks to right action, not right feelings. I would argue that hatred of the other is actually a cornerstone of many world religions. The subjugation and genocide of indigenous peoples and the Inquisition were carried out by devout Christians with the blessing of their church. In America the abomination of slavery was consistently justified with the bible, the twin towers came down in the name of Allah, and many people who believe Q’s hateful rhetoric are evangelicals. The Vatican (led by the notoriously anti-semitic Pope Pius XII), remained silent throughout the Holocaust, and for years many Muslim nations have proudly proclaimed their wish to drive Israeli Jews into the sea. Hatred not only exists between religions, but also within them. There is constant tension that occasionally erupts into violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims in the Middle East, as well as between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland.   

The arts consistently explore hatred and its costs. In Les Miserable, Jalvert’s raison d’être springs from his abhorrence of Valjean and his ongoing quest to capture him. Valjean’s unexpected mercy towards Jalvert towards the end of the book so upends Jalvert’s sense of reality and purpose that he can see no way forward and kills himself. The historic antipathy between the Montagues and Capulets in Romeo and Juliet ends up costing both families their beloved children, Captain Hook’s hatred of Peter Pan dooms him to a joyless life which ends violently in the jaws of a crocodile, and Ahab’s loathing of Moby Dick leads him to a watery grave.

I recently experienced an incident in my own life which could easily have left me feeling protracted hatred. Peri-menopause can lead to many symptoms – insomnia, hot flashes, mood swings, etc. I experienced all of these along with profound anxiety. Lucky me! The anti-anxiety medication my doctor recommended made me very sleepy, and the antidepressants he prescribed led to side effects worse than the problem they were designed to alleviate. Over time the anxiety began to negatively impact my ability to do my job. I was skittish, inattentive, and often short tempered with the children in my care. I did some research about alternative medicines and found numerous anecdotal accounts of cannabis being extremely effective at alleviating anxiety. My doctor refused to prescribe medical marijuana, so I secured some THC gummies elsewhere. I took the time to figure out the proper dosage at home, and began using them at work on days when my anxiety was particularly acute. Much to my delight the THC worked perfectly – it calmed my stomach, elevated my mood, and allowed me to focus without causing any detrimental side effects.

Many people on staff knew I was using cannabis to treat my anxiety, and one day I mentioned to a colleague in the staffroom how grateful I was to have finally found such an effective medication. There was a new teacher at the table who clearly did not approve of what I was doing. Rather than talking to me about her concerns, however, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She let herself into my locked and darkened office after school,  rummaged through my personal effects until she found what she was looking for, and then promptly reported me to the principal. I usually kept the bag of gummies in my purse, but had hidden it in my office that morning when some kids had come in unexpectedly while I was taking my dose. The bag was so well hidden that I stupidly forgot to put it back in my purse at the end of the day. 

The ordeal that followed because of her betrayal was just awful. Firstly I was humiliated by having to talk to complete strangers from HR, as well as my principal and superintendent, about peri-menopausal health issues which were absolutely none of their business. Then I was verbally rebuked, suspended without pay for ten days, and had a letter of reprimand placed in my permanent record. My case was also sent on to the College of Teachers, a notoriously punitive body, which meant I needed a lawyer to represent me in the investigation which would follow. Meanwhile there were absolutely no repercussions for the young woman who had so obviously invaded my privacy.

The pressure of the investigation along with my general dissatisfaction with my job led me to take an early retirement. I was full of hatred for the young woman who had so blithely exploded my life, and deeply resented that her actions resulted in me ending an otherwise spotless 19 year career on an absolutely terrible note. I knew from my long and hard struggle after Douglas died that I needed to purge my hatred or it would end up making an already terrible situation exponentially worse. Douglas was at least someone I had once loved, and I knew the roots of his behaviour. I didn’t know this young woman at all, and I couldn’t even begin to guess at her motives for doing what she did. I was therefore at a loss as to how to frame her actions in a way which would allow me to stop hating her. 

I am very close with my cousin Greg. I was talking to him a few months after I’d retired and asked if he had any suggestions about how I could get past my hatred of this woman. He said, “You don’t have to do anything, just move on. The way I see it, people who’ve screwed me over don’t deserve another thought. If I’m hating them, I’m thinking about them, so I don’t.” I thought this sounded awfully simplistic, or at least like something I couldn’t do, but it turns out I could. In Greg’s scenario, not hating someone is a way of saying “Fuck you!” That was exactly the advice I needed, and it worked so well that I can now recount this whole nasty incident with almost no negative feelings whatsoever. 

I absolutely believe the Buddha’s assertion that hatred increases the suffering of the person holding on to it, but it can also lead to terrible consequences for others. Hatred blocks reason and empathy. It allows one to disregard the humanity of others by justifying a lack of compassion in oneself. It paves the way for torture, war, and genocide. This is why I deem it to be the eighth deadly sin, and why it might be the only one worth worrying about. The good news, however, is that like the other deadly sins, hatred has a virtue which corresponds inversely to it – love. If we hold on to love, if we ignore the hatred and closed-mindedness endemic to organized religion and choose rather to practice love in the way Buddha and Jesus Christ and Mohammed all admonish us to, then we will find ourselves on the right path.

The Land of Kiwis

I got married on December 2nd, 1985, and my new husband Douglas and I headed out on a world tour of indeterminate length on the 29th of that month. We bought special tickets from American Airlines which allowed us half a dozen plane trips over the next 12 months provided we always headed west. This allowed us to choose destinations as we travelled, with our last flight bringing us back to Toronto. Our first stop was Hawaii, and we spent New Years Eve in Honolulu on the beach at Waikiki. The fireworks were breathtaking and we loved Oahu, but it was really expensive so we left for Fiji the very next day.

Fiji is a series of more than 330 volcanic islands situated in the South Pacific, some 2,000 km northeast of New Zealand. Like most countries in Melanesia, Fiji passed through the hands of many European colonizers over the centuries, eventually coming under British rule in 1874. The British brought in more than 60,000 indentured labourers from India over the next 45 years, many of whom stayed. One could sense a lot of tension between native Fijians and Indo-Fijians when Douglas and I were there, and a series of revolts and coups erupted in the years following our visit. By 2014, however, things finally settled down and after drafting a more equitable constitution and holding a free election, the newly minted Republic of Fiji was welcomed into the Commonwealth, where it remains to this day.

We landed in the capital city of Suva but didn’t stay long. Suva is situated between mountains which catch moist trade winds, making it rainy year round. Also, there is no beach in Suva, and we had heard that Fiji’s coral reef was an absolute must see. We consequently left the capital the same day we arrived and headed for a small town on the southern coast recommended in our guide book. I honestly can’t remember the name of the town, but the locals were friendly, the beach was amazing, and the fruit in the local market was unbelievably fragrant and flavourful. I had the best mangos and pineapples of my life in Fiji. I simply couldn’t stop eating them, even though they consistently sent me running for the toilet.

We found a place to stay quite near the water and then immediately hit the beach, setting up next to a friendly Australian couple who had been there for several days. They told us that the reef started at the very edge of the water and we would need surf shoes if we didn’t want our feet sliced by coral and shells. They also warned us that the sun was incredibly intense and unfiltered in the South Pacific. We should stay out of it as much as possible and ensure we were either covered by shirts and hats or slathered in sun block whenever we ventured into the water. I am half Portuguese and therefore have a fair bit of melanin in my skin. I had never in my entire life had a sun burn, and I therefore assumed that their warning didn’t apply to me. 

I haphazardly applied sun screen before going in the water, but otherwise took absolutely no precautions whatsoever. My hubris caught up with me later that day when I developed an excruciating sunburn. I was feverish and in substantial pain over the next few days, becoming progressively more exhausted as my stinging skin made it impossible for me to sleep. Finally on the third day things calmed down and my battered skin started to slough off in sheets – a process which I found equally gross and fascinating. By the fourth day I was feeling like myself again and, assuming that I had now achieved what is known as a base tan, I once more went blithely out in the sun with very little protection. I wish I could report that my base tan theory proved true, but alas I cannot. The second sunburn was ever worse than the first, not just because my skin was still incredibly raw, but also because I was furious with myself for letting it happen again. It reminds me of that old proverb, ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. But if I fool myself twice, then I’m clearly a moron.’

We stayed in Fiji for a few more days to let my body heal, and I had no defence against Douglas’s ribbing because I was so obviously responsible for my own misery. Finally we got on a plane to Auckland which is located about two thirds of the way up New Zealand’s north island. Wellington is New Zealand’s capital, but Auckland has always been its largest city. It is bordered by the Tasman Sea to the west and the Pacific Ocean to the east, making it one of the few cities in the world to have a a harbour on each of two separate major bodies of water. The hills around the city are covered in rainforest and the landscape is dotted with 53 dormant volcanic cones. Auckland is home to the largest Polynesian population on earth, and despite being extremely expensive it is recognized as one of the world’s most liveable cities, having ranked third in the 2019 Mercer Quality of Living Survey.

All of these things of course make Auckland a very desirable place to visit, but we had mostly come to meet a whole branch of Douglas’s family. Douglas’s dad was named John Beall, and his people came from a suburb of London. John’s father Frank lived on a street which was also home to the Hamers – a house well known to the boys in the neighbourhood because it contained five sisters. People’s worlds were much smaller in the early 20th century so it’s no surprise that Frank and his brother each married a Hamer girl. This meant that John, his older sister Val, and his younger brother Barry came from exactly the same genetic pools as their cousins David, Josie, and Anne. 

One of the Hamer girls died at home with her parents during The Blitz when their house collapsed after a direct hit by a German bomb, and another married a French man and moved to Paris. John’s mother died when he was a boy and his father quickly married the last available Hamer sister to help him raise his kids, so the Hamer/Beall influence in John’s life remained unbroken. Everyone in John’s generation emigrated after the war – Val went to California, John to Canada, Barry to Australia, and all their cousins went to New Zealand. We had arranged to spend time at David’s house in Auckland before we left home. He and his wife Mair said they were overjoyed to host us, but Douglas was still nervous when we finally arrived on their front stoop. 

He hesitantly knocked on the door which was immediately thrown open by a beaming couple. Mair was a pleasant looking if somewhat dowdy middle-aged woman with a warm countenance and lots of laugh lines. Douglas and I both gave her awkward hugs at her insistence, but it was David we couldn’t take our eyes off. His physical resemblance to John was absolutely extraordinary, and as he welcomed us into the house and showed us to our room it became clear that he moved and spoke just like John as well. He shut the door behind him as he left us to get settled, and Douglas and I dropped our bags and looked at each other with our eyes wide and our mouths agape as soon as he was gone. We began speaking simultaneously after a few seconds of stunned silence, astonished at the profound similarities between David and Douglas’s dad. These two men had not seen each other in 40 years and yet they remained uncannily alike in every way imaginable. Genetics are a miraculous thing.

Every day David revealed more of what made him similar to John as he used identical turns of phrase and facial expressions, and even had the same physical ailments of varicose veins and arthritis. The only way in which he was unlike his cousin was in temperament – John was openly racist and tended to be morose, whereas David didn’t seem to have a hateful bone in his body and was quite optimistic. His wife Mair (pronounced “My”) had an equally sunny disposition. She spoke with a lyrical Welsh lilt, and was one of those people who made you feel welcome by constantly pushing huge amounts of food at you. She would ask Douglas and I if we were hungry a mere hour after an enormous meal, and when we responded with a resounding “No!” she’d say, “Alright then. I’ll just make you a wee sandwich.” 

My favourite memory of Mair involves her reaction to a comment I made in passing one day. I don’t know exactly how the subject came up, but at some point I mentioned that an American company was selling diet potato chips. I believe they were lower in calories than conventional chips because they were baked rather than fried. Mair was seemingly amazed at this development. Later that day her daughter Pam (pronounced “Pim” with a New Zealand accent) dropped by. Mair immediately made me tell her about the diet potato chips, and Pam seemed equally as gobsmacked as her mother. She was quiet for a moment and then looked at me and asked, “Couldn’t they just eat fewer chips?” to which Mair added, “That’s exactly what I was wondering.” I thought her astonishment was in response to the ingenuity of U.S. food scientists, when all along it was just a profound misunderstanding of the American character. I chuckled at their charming naiveté and simply said, “Americans would never consider having less of something. That’s just not how they work.”

Douglas and I stayed with David and Mair for about four days and then hitchhiked down to Wellington, both to have a look around the country’s capital city and to catch a ferry to the south island. Wellington proved to be a pleasant if unremarkable place, and luckily it was a calm day so the 3.5 hour ferry ride was quite lovely. We landed in Picton and proceeded directly to Nelson, a nice little city on the island’s western coast. There was a well reviewed hostel in Nelson which had rooms for couples, so we immediately made our way there.

We arrived late in the morning to find two young Maori men with fishing gear leaving the building. One of them was quite outgoing and introduced himself to Douglas with a hearty handshake. The other man seemed much more shy, and even though he hung back we noticed each other right away. We have all experienced such encounters in our lives – a chance meeting with a stranger to whom we are inexplicably drawn. I don’t know if it’s pheromones or what, but when it happens there is no denying the primal attraction. The young man and I surreptitiously exchanged probing looks until he drove off with his friend and Douglas and I entered the hostel.

Later than day Douglas and I brought possibly the best fish and chips I have ever eaten back to the hostel for dinner. Every commonwealth country I’ve been in other than Canada calls takeout food “take away”. I think we only call it takeout because that’s what Americans say and we are profoundly influenced by their culture. New Zealanders put a singular spin on the phrase “take away”, pronouncing it “TA-key AH-way” to mimic the particular cadence of the Maori language. To me this seemed like a nice little nod to their indigenous people. 

We had just finished our meal when the two young Maori men we’d met earlier in the day came into the kitchen. The more social of the two put a bag of fresh caught fish into the fridge while the one I was attracted to put a small cooler down on the table. The former called Douglas and I over to watch as the latter pulled a sea urchin out of the container and placed it spiny side down on the table. He then drew a knife from his belt and used it to open the urchin, revealing its still beating heart. The other man explained that in Maori culture being offered the raw heart to eat was a real honour as his friend skillfully extracted the heart and held it out to me on the end of his knife. I knew it would be impolite to refuse, but I also knew that I would vomit if I put that gelatinous lump in my mouth. I thanked him profusely for the gesture but said I was so full from dinner that I couldn’t manage even one more bite. Douglas then came forward clearly expecting to be offered next, but the young man simply shrugged his shoulders and popped the heart into his own mouth. He and I then managed to exchange a few more longing looks before Douglas bid them goodnight and we headed up to our room. Douglas always got very angry with me when I was singled out in social situations or succeeded when he did not, so I studiously avoided mentioning what had just happened in the kitchen. On the inside, however, I was secretly glowing because of that handsome young man’s attention.

Douglas and I were impressed by the immaculately maintained, thoroughly signed hiking paths we encountered in every New Zealand forest we entered, and we experienced some of the most beautiful landscapes we’d ever seen on its south island. We marvelled at the Remarkable Mountains, located just outside Queenstown on the edge of Lake Wakatipu, which earned their name by providing a stunning backdrop for the waters and because they seem to magically change colour over the course of the day. You have seen the Remarkables if you’ve ever watched the Lord of the Rings movies. Then there are a series of fjords on the south island, the most famous of which is called Milford Sound. Milford Sound was carved out by glaciers during the ice ages and features lush forests atop steep cliffs with plunging waterfalls crashing down into inky black waters. Rudyard Kipling called Milford Sound the “eighth wonder of the world”, and it is acclaimed as New Zealand’s most famous tourist destination. I can say from experience that its reputation is well earned.

We visited the Franz Joseph Glacier, which was breathtaking and absolutely enormous. I really wanted to take a helicopter ride to the top of the glacier but Douglas vetoed the idea, claiming it was too expensive. It turned out that it wasn’t the money that made him refuse, however, because the very next day he booked us into an expensive white water rafting trip without my knowledge. I had absolutely no interest in such an excursion as I am not a strong swimmer and don’t particularly enjoy taking risks. Douglas got mad when I said I didn’t want to go, railing on about what a drag I was and that I would be wasting our money if I didn’t go since my ticket was nonrefundable. I quickly capitulated in the face of his anger – shooting rapids would be faster and less scary than enduring days of his protracted rage and disdain.

New Zealand’s south island is home to the Shotover River, a fast flowing waterway with numerous rapids which first came to prominence in the 1860s when gold was discovered in its bed. The Shotover is now famous for white water rafting and several companies vie to take untrained enthusiasts down its treacherous course. Douglas and I got on a bus at the head of Skippers Canyon, the deep ravine through which the river runs, to begin the first part of what for me was a harrowing day. The road at the start of the canyon was plenty wide, but it soon began to narrow until it could just barely accommodate the bus. I was already feeling quite uneasy after the first ten minutes of the ride when we passed a sign which proclaimed in bold black letters, “All insurance policies are null and void beyond this point.” My anxiety took a noticeable leap after reading these ominous words, and things got exponentially worse from there. 

We eventually got to our camp at the head of the river, and after eating a sparse lunch provided by the tour company we received a brief tutorial from our guide. He told us we had to follow his instructions to a tee, to tightly grasp the handholds provided on the inside of the raft whenever possible, and, if we were accidentally pitched into the water, to lie on our backs with our arms and legs outstretched to prevent smashing our heads against one of the many semi-submerged boulders. Every single thing he said just made me more alarmed, but I gamely put on my helmet and life jacket and took my spot in the raft with a terrified smile on my face. The trip itself was kind of like a nightmare – the rapids were so loud that I couldn’t hear our guide’s instructions, and there was no way to hold on and paddle at the same so I felt incredibly insecure every time we hit white water. Everyone high-fived and hugged when we got to the end of the run, feeling the euphoria which comes from having survived a high adrenaline experience. I joined in the celebration, but my joy came from the relief of knowing that I would never have to do anything like that again.

New Zealand, at least at the time we visited it, was like paradise. They generated electricity in a sustainable way, their indigenous people were treated with respect, and their wilderness was so pristine that you could drink directly from any stream or river without fear of getting sick. Their society was civil and democratic, their language and culture were completely familiar, and their climate was beautifully temperate. I don’t imagine I will every get back there given how far away it is and the great expense of a plane ticket, but it remains, of all the countries I have visited, the place I would most like to live. 

Portugal

The ancestors on both side of my father’s family came from Sāo Miguel, the largest island in the Azores. The Azores, an autonomous region of Portugal, is an archipelago comprised of nine volcanic islands situation in the North Atlantic Ocean about 1,400 km west of Portugal, and about 1,900 km southeast of Newfoundland. It enjoys a beautifully temperate climate due to the passing Gulf Stream, and its main industries are agriculture, fishing, and (in more recent years) tourism. I got the impression from my dad that the men on both sides of his family made their living as fishermen.

My father’s relatives all settled in Fall River, Massachusetts – a small city situated on the Taunton River about an hour south of Boston. Fall River was a booming industrial town at the time and the leading textile manufacturing centre in the United States for much of the 19th century. The town was full of Portuguese immigrants, many of whom worked in the local textile mills. My grandfather was a machinist, and my eldest aunts and uncle worked at the mill after school when they were children. They picked up the Portuguese that was being spoken all around them while they worked, but the younger children in the family never learned it. My grandfather refused to speak Portuguese at home, insisting they should only speak “American.” Thus my father spoke only English.

I am 50% Portuguese, so it was natural that I would be interested in visiting Portugal after Douglas and I left Spain. Portugal is located on the southwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on one side and Spain on the other. It has always been fiercely independent despite being mostly engulfed by a much larger country. Portugal is one of the oldest nation states in Europe, having maintained full autonomy since the 12th century. Portuguese explorers were some of the most daring and famous during the so called Age of Discovery – the period in the 15th and 16th centuries when various European countries began colonizing the new world. Tiny little Portugal established the first global maritime and commercial empire, and for decades monopolized the spice trade and divided the world into hemispheres of dominion with Castile (Spain). Portugal’s dominance began to fade in the 18th and 19th centuries due to a combination of factors including a massive earthquake which razed the capital city of Lisbon, the country’s occupation by Napoleon, the independence of Brazil, and the unstoppable juggernaut that was the British empire.

Douglas and I had previously arranged to meet up with my cousin Greg in the Algarve – the region occupying Portugal’s southern coast. We had no idea in what town or when, nor did when even know exactly where Greg was. It turned out that he and Douglas had both been in Pamplona the previous week, but we didn’t know that at the time. This was in 1989, meaning that we  had no way to contact Greg directly, and had therefore devised a cumbersome relay method of communication before leaving Canada. Greg would call my Aunt Carolyn in Boston with his location which she would pass on to my mother in Scarborough. Then I would call my mum for the information and Douglas and I would move forward based on what she said. It was circuitous, but it actually worked.

We had taken a train from San Sebastián in Spain to Lisbon and I made the call home from a phone office downtown. The line was terrible and my mother and I had to yell the entire time, but eventually I came to learn that Greg would be in a specific hotel in Faro in three days time. That gave Douglas and I time to explore Lisbon before our rendezvous. The greater Lisbon area is home to over five million people, meaning it is by far the county’s largest city. It is numbered amongst Europe’s major economic centres with a growing financial sector and one of the  largest ports on the continent’s Atlantic coast. It passed through many hands before finally becoming Portugal’s capital in 1147, and is the second oldest capital in Europe after Athens. 

One would think that Lisbon would be brimming with extremely old buildings given its great age, but unfortunately that is not the case. The city endured three minor earthquakes in the 17th century which destroyed several streets, and then in 1755 it was ravaged by a devastating earthquake with an estimated magnitude between 8.5 and 9 on the Richter scale. This horrifying catastrophe destroyed 85% of the city’s structures and initially killed as much as 20% of its population, with many more losing their lives in the tsunami that followed. Lisbon was of major importance in Europe at the time, and its devastation left the whole of the continent in shock. This natural disaster created such a deep impression that the poets Voltaire in France and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. way over in America wrote famous works commemorating the event.

I honestly don’t remember much about Lisbon except that there were a lot of stairs and the buildings were quite lovely. One thing that really stands out, however, is that many people  looked like they could be part of my father’s family. The Portuguese are not a terribly attractive race – they tend to be plain, swarthy, and hairy, and that’s just the women. Despite this there was a certain comfort in seeing so many seemingly familiar faces. The language was completely foreign to me – it features the jay sound in Jacques and lots of sh sounds, creating the impression that people are buzzing as much as talking. Yet despite my total lack of understanding I felt right at home in Portugal. It was highly reminiscent of my wonderful summertime trips to Fall River as a child.

Douglas and I made our way to Faro on the third day and found Greg exactly where he said he would be. Faro is a small city of about 120,000 souls on the southern coast of Portugal – an area known as the Algarve. It was just a small provincial city of not much importance until the tsunami which followed the 1755 earthquake destroyed almost every other city on the coastline. Faro remained standing since it was protected by a natural lagoon, and subsequently became the capital of the Algarve district when the previous capital of Lagos was washed away. It’s a nice town with a lovely beach we chose to visit right after we met up with Greg. 

The waves were enormous and it looked like great fun so we all jumped in. I have always loved swimming in the ocean and I was excited to body surf on such spectacular waves. I successfully surfed my first two waves, catching them at just the right moment and riding them all the way onto the beach, but the third wave proved my undoing. I don’t know if it was bigger or more ferocious than the others, or if I simply caught it at the wrong time, but it almost killed me. Everything was fine at the beginning – my extended body skated easily on the top of the wave, with the surge of water carrying me ever more quickly towards the shore. Then suddenly I was pulled under. The sound of crashing water pounded in my ears, and I couldn’t tell up from down or right from left as the raging surf spun me around like a dry leaf in the wind. Eventually, just as I felt that I would burst if I didn’t take a breathe, the wave spat me out on the shore, grinding the entire front of my body into the sand. I stood up as soon as I was fully on the beach, gasping for air and beginning to feel the stinging burn of scrapes on my face, arms and legs. Douglas and Greg came over to inquire if I was okay, and then immediately plunged back into the surf when I assured them that I was. I, on the other hand, chose to stay on the beach, feeling that one brush with death a day was quite enough for me. In the shower later that afternoon I found sand in places on my body I didn’t even know existed.

That evening at dinner we met an Australian couple who told us about a beautiful beach further west along the coast called Praia de Marinha (Navy Beach in English). They described an idyllic scene of pristine sand surrounded by breathtaking cliffs and rock formations which concealed a beautiful cove at their very centre. We were headed west anyway so we decided to spend a day at this beach along the way. I thought it would be nice to have lunch in the cove so I packed food and drink in my bag while Greg and Douglas put the towels, sunscreen, and their beach ball equipment in theirs. Beach ball is a sport that the two of them made up involving wooden paddles and a hard plastic ball. The rules and scoring were like volleyball, and one lost service or a point by letting the ball hit the sand. They would literally play this game for hours on the beach while I amused myself reading, bathing, or simply daydreaming as I gazed out at the waves.

We got to the beach late in the morning and after a quick swim made our way into the cove where two couples had already staked their claim – a young pair of unknown nationality who had set up on the farthest side and clearly wanted privacy, and a naked Norwegian couple who happily welcomed us as we lay out our towels. This couple was typical of the many Scandinavians we met on our travels in that they were completely unabashed about their bodies. I tried to be blasé as they came up and shook our hands, but I must admit that I was really uncomfortable. The man was uncircumcised so his penis was novel and odd looking to me, but I tried very hard not to look directly at it, although I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have cared if I had. Scandinavians just don’t view nakedness the same way we do, or perhaps it’s that they don’t view the human body the same way we do. For most cultures there is something inherently sexual and somewhat shameful about an unclad adult, whereas for Scandinavians there is no hidden agenda to nudity – it’s just the skin we’re in. 

Douglas, Greg, and I ate our lunch, then they began to play yet another interminable round of beach ball while I began to read. They finally took a break from their game after an hour or so and the three of us settled down for a pleasant afternoon nap. The sound of the surf seemed to have gotten much louder when I awoke some time later, and I sat up to see that the tide had rolled in while we slept. The water was at the very edge of our towels and the sandy walkway we had taken to enter the cove was submerged under several feet of water. I immediately woke up Douglas and Greg and we hurriedly packed up our stuff before it got washed away. We began to discuss how we were going to get out of the cove without everything we owned getting soaking wet. I am not a strong swimmer and was unsure I could get safely out under my own steam. Greg suggested that he and Douglas could put the bags on their backs and swim out, then one of them could stay with our possessions while the other came back and helped me. The water was rising very quickly now and I was feeling less than confident about staying behind when suddenly our new naked Norwegian friends came to our rescue. They had an inflatable one-man raft which they offered to let us use. In the end I got on top of the raft and held on to everything we and the Norwegians had brought into the cove while the four of them each manned a corner and kicked us to safety. It affirms one’s faith in human beings when virtual strangers are so helpful and kind.

We got on a bus heading west after our harrowing afternoon and reached Sagres just before nightfall. Sagres (pronounced Sagresh) is a small beach town on the southwestern most tip of Portugal. We secured a large room in someone’s house and then headed out to get some food and explore the town. It was the case when we visited Portugal that people would leave their houses and rent them out to tourists. I’m not sure where they went, but we almost always stayed in personal residences rather than hotels while we were there. I guess they were just ahead of the Airbandb curve.

Douglas and Greg got along very well – they enjoyed the friendly competition of beach ball, they shared a similar sense of humour, and they delighted in drinking to excess. I am allergic to alcohol and consequently do not drink. Douglas had found the dryness of Morocco onerous and drinking by himself in Spain lonely, so he was primed for getting completely blotto with Greg every night we were together. At first I didn’t mind so much – sometimes drunks can be pretty entertaining. By the time we got to Sagres, however, we had been together for several days and I was finding their nightly drinking tiresome, inconvenient, and annoying. The first night in Sagres we found a bar called A Shot in the Dark which was run by a Canadian expat. It was famous for creating shots with unique combinations of booze, and Douglas and Greg considered it a personal challenge to sample every last one. They were barely coherent by the end of the evening and Douglas couldn’t find the key when we returned to our place, so they lifted me up to a second floor window and I broke us in. That was somewhat amusing, but when they got sloshed and obnoxious the next night I simply returned to the room without them, knowing that they would wake me later when they came banging in despite their best efforts to be quiet. Stealth and drunkenness simply do not mix.

Greg became aware by our fourth day in Sagres that I was unhappy, something Douglas would simply never notice. As long as he was having a good time, all was right with the world. I’d needed to stay unnaturally close to him in Morocco for my own safety, and even though we had spent a few days apart in Spain, I was getting progressively more miserable in his company. Douglas was very controlling and hypercritical of me. I could take his abuse when we were at home because we spent a fair bit of time apart, but being with him day in and day out on an extended trip eventually took its toll on my mood and mental health. There was a big 65th birthday party planned for my Uncle Bill (Greg’s dad) in Boston in a couple of days’ time. Greg was heading back the next day to attend the party, and he suggested that perhaps I should come with him. Douglas wasn’t interested in accompanying us because he wanted to travel up the coast to the city of Porto. He planned to sample the various, world class ports for which the area is renowned (the fortified wine called port is actually named after this city). Greg and I got on a train to Paris the next day.

Our shared grandmother was a long time employee of American Airlines and thus got several free flight passes every year which could be used by any member of her family. Using one of these passes put you even lower than standby on the passenger list, but it allowed you to fly for free if there was a vacant seat anywhere on the plane. Greg and I waited impatiently as everyone boarded the Boston flight, biting our nails and wondering if we would even get out that day, when all of the sudden our names came over the loudspeaker. The attendant at the checkin desk informed us that there were two first class seats available, and we were escorted to an American Airlines food van which then rushed us to the plane just before takeoff. The people on board probably thought Greg and I were important. After all, we were personally driven to the plane by the airline at the last minute and had first class seats. Greg and I shared a quiet laugh at the thought of how annoyed they would be if they knew that we were actually just a couple of freeloaders cashing in on their grandmother’s years of hard work and dedication. A first class ticket is extremely expensive, but I can tell you from experience that it is worth every penny. We started with champagne (I gave Greg mine) and heated cashews, then were given warm, fragrant towels with which to wash up before digging into a delicious prime rib dinner with scrumptious sides, including light, steamy Yorkshire pudding, all lovingly served up on fine china. The pillows were fluffy, the blankets were soft and warm, and the ambience was quiet and calming. I highly recommend you splurge on a first class ticket at least once in your life. I guarantee you won’t regret it.

No one was expecting me at my aunt and uncle’s place in Boston. I hid when Greg knocked on his parents’ door which was promptly opened by our Nana. She embraced him and invited him in, but he hesitated in the doorway and said, “Wait a second, Nana. I brought something back from Portugal for you,” which of course was my cue to come out. I wish I’d had a camera to record the look of joy and surprise on Nana’s face when she saw me – a look which was repeated by Aunt Carolyn, Uncle Bill, and my parents when I made my way down to the living room. The party was a great success, and I went with my parents to visit my dad’s family in Fall River a few days later. Their reception was equally welcoming to the one I’d received in Boston, and they were all rapt as I described my experiences in Portugal. None of them had ever travelled to their ancestral homeland even though every single one of them was 100% Portuguese. I am determined one day to make it to Sāo Miguel as I hear the Azores are strikingly beautiful, and I would very much like to visit my paternal family’s place of origin.

Holiday in Spain

Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, and it is world famous because of the enormous rock rising up from its centre. It sits on the northern shore of the Strait of Gibraltar, the only entrance to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean. This unique location has made it of strategic significance for both military and economic purposes – whoever controls this naval choke point can keep hostile ships at bay (excuse the pun), and charge any levies they wish on goods coming in and out of the Mediterranean. Half of the world’s seaborne cargo passes through the strait to this day.

Gibraltar is a strange mix of British and Spanish culture. It was ceded to Britain in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht and has remained under its governance ever since. Spain has tried several times over the years to wrest control from Britain, but Gibraltarians will have none of it. As recently as 2002 99% of their population voted against joining Spain, and they have agreed to the terms of Brexit and will soon be leaving the EU along with the U.K. Gibraltarians all speak English, most speak Spanish, and many use a language called Llanito (pronounced yanito), a amalgam of predominately Andalusian Spanish and British English along with smatterings of several other Mediterranean languages.

The most outstanding feature of Gibraltar, both literally and figuratively, is the rock at its heart. The Rock of Gibraltar is made of Jurassic limestone and rises an impressive 1,393 ft from a flat coastal lowland. Its interior houses a large water desalination plant along with several tunnelled roads which are controlled by the military and therefore closed to the public. One accesses the top of the Rock via cable car, and once there you encounter the famous Barbary apes. Douglas and I did just that when we visited Gibraltar after our month in Morocco. These apes, which are actually monkeys, have lived on the Rock for as long as anyone can remember, and a local superstition has it that their leaving would signal the end of British rule. Douglas wanted a picture of himself beside one of the monkeys and crouched down right next to one with complete abandon. He was never the least bit afraid of animals. I, on the other hand, am very hesitant around animals, particularly wild ones, and was therefore less than thrilled when he insisted that I squat beside a monkey so he could get a picture of me. The resulting photos could not look more different – Douglas appears calm and happy, with his outstretched hand mere inches from the beast’s face, while I look stressed and frightened, forcing a strained smile with my arms pulled tightly to my sides. These diametrically opposed images perfectly encapsulate our respective attitudes towards animals.

We stayed in Gibraltar for a few days, revelling in the fish and chips, beer, and spoken English in the pubs. All these things were wonderfully familiar after the foreignness of Morocco. We also needed time to figure out where to visit in Spain. We knew we didn’t want to go back to Madrid. Douglas and I had flown from Toronto to Madrid before our visit to Morocco and had spent three days in the city before heading south. I found Madrid unexceptional and remember little about it except that the air was hot and extremely dry. One thing that does stand out, however, is the Prado Museum. The Prado is the national museum of Spain, and it is situated in the very heart of the city. The building itself is extremely impressive and beautifully designed, and the collection is even better. The Prado is home to works by world famous Spanish artists such as Goya and Valázquez, and holds the largest collection of Italian masters outside of Italy. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in European art from the 12th century on.

We also knew we didn’t want to go to Seville. Douglas had previously visited Morocco and Spain and he’d had an unpleasant experience in Seville. He had just arrived in the city and was walking up a three-lane boulevard with a landscaped median, much like University Avenue in Toronto. It was midday and there was lots of traffic, and still a man audaciously jumped out at him. He grabbed hold of the bag on Douglas’s back and began dragging him into the bushes, presumably planning to at least steal his possession and possibly also to do him some bodily harm. Douglas called out in distress, hoping someone in a car or walking on the other side of the road would stop and help, but nobody did. My husband was a large man, 6’2”, close to 200 lbs, and muscular from years working as a carpenter, but no matter how hard he pulled he found himself being inexorably dragged backwards. Suddenly he had a flash of inspiration and stopped pulling. The thief, who was yanking with all his might, was caught completely off guard. Douglas came flying towards him and they both landed on their backs with Douglas on top. The assailant let go of the bag when he landed, so Douglas immediately jumped up and turned around, hovering over his attacker in a menacing way. He had no intention of hitting the guy, but the mugger was sufficiently cowed that he scrambled to his feet and took off. So Seville was out of the running.

After consulting our all-knowing guide book, we decided to start in Grenada. Grenada is the capital of the Andalusian province and is situated at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains at the confluence of four rivers. Its beautiful geographic location certainly drew us to the city, but there were two other elements which peaked our interest as well; its large population of gypsies, or Roma as they prefer to be called, and the Alhambra. Members of Europe’s Roma communities are generally known for being thieves and grifters, and I’m sorry to say that this reputation seems to at least be somewhat merited. I know several people who’ve had items stolen by swarms of Roma children. The element of Roma culture that interested me, however, was their much lauded mastery of flamenco dancing.

Douglas and I were having dinner one night at a club which featured flamenco, and the performers were extremely good. Immediately after the show, a lovely, dark haired woman approached our table with a piece of paper in her hand. There was a short paragraph on the card written in English which said that if we wanted to see real flamenco, then we should follow her. So we did. She picked up several other people from around the club using the same card, and when she finally felt she had rounded up enough of an audience she led us out into the night. The young woman took us down dark, winding streets, and eventually right out of town. 

There is a Roma neighbourhood just outside of Grenada called Sacromonte. This community consists of a series of cavelike dwellings dug into a hillside. Sacromonte includes an open air museum about Roma culture, shops featuring local handicrafts, and bars where one can enjoy the Roma spin on flamenco which is known as zambra. Traditional flamenco has musicians and singers and dancers, all of whom serve just one function, but in zambra the singer also dances. The young woman took us to one of these cave bars. The temperature dropped several degrees as we entered, and the air became redolent with the comforting smell of freshly turned earth. The walls and ceiling had been recently whitewashed, with the latter cut into the shape of a dome. Several people were already seated facing a small stage empty but for three chairs at the back, and a waitress was circulating between the rustic wooden tables with a large pitcher of sangria. There were small candles on each table which kept the audience in semi-darkness, while several high-powered spotlights lit up the performance area. We paid an entrance fee and found a seat.

We had only just gotten our sangria when the performers came on stage. A guitarist and two singers, one male and one female, sat in the chairs provided and started the show. The guitarist began alone, strumming ardent phrases interspersed with lightening fast flourishes on the fretboard. Next the male singer joined in, calling out in that plaintive, yearning way of all flamenco singers. Then a beautiful, fiery woman dressed in red boldly took the stage. The musicians poured their hearts into the music as she danced with purpose and passion, twirling and stomping and gyrating with a look of pure intensity on her face. I clapped enthusiastically when she had finished, thinking that this was truly the best flamenco dancer I had every seen. And then the man came out

He took the stage with authority and confidence, as if this was his natural habitat and he was graciously allowing us an exciting albeit brief glimpse into his domain. I was immediately mesmerized by his palpable sensuality and his perfectly tailored outfit – a loose deep purple silk shirt that shimmered in the stage lights and was tucked into form-fitting black pants that clung to his taut lower half in all the right places. I’m guessing he had a face, but I was so entranced by his body that I honestly didn’t notice. The room fell silent as he began to dance – a breathtaking tour de force of unbridled male power and raw sexuality. I was completely enthralled by his performance when Douglas leaned over and quietly said, “I don’t know much about these things, but that guy is really sexy, right?” I reluctantly tore my gaze away from the stage to briefly look at him, and although I said nothing, my wild eyes and the thin line of spittle running down my chin from my open mouth confirmed his suspicion. 

The next day Douglas and I made our way to the Alhambra, a Moorish castle which rests on a hilltop on the outskirts of the city. The name Alhambra is the Spanish approximation of an Arabic phrase meaning “The Red One”, and refers to the distinctive red stone with which it was built. It was originally constructed as a small fortress in the 9th century by the Romans, and then remained largely ignored until the mid-13th century when it was renovated and became the primary residence of Yusuf I, Sultan of Granada. The Arabs who lived in Spain at the time were called Moors, and they were actually Berbers from Morocco who in the 10th century invaded the Iberian Peninsula as well as parts of Sicily and Malta. They brought advanced architecture, mathematics, and arts to Spain until 1492 when Christian forces, under the rule of Ferdinand and Isabella, finally expelled them from the country. The royal couple took up residence in the Alhambra that year, and charged Christopher Columbus with his famous voyage in its throne room.

The Alhambra is an absolute jewel of Islamic architecture and remains Spain’s most significant and well known example of the style. The interior walls are adorned with vibrant, intricate tile and scrollwork, and the elaborate floor mosaics are stunning and complex. As lovely as the interior is, the gardens are even more glorious. They are overgrown with colourful roses, oranges, and myrtles, and in 1812 the Duke of Wellington brought in dozens of English elms which have subsequently grown into an inviting, shady wood. The most outstanding feature of the gardens for me was its many fountains. It’s just amazing to think that 14th century architects were clever enough to figure out how to make eight kilometres of underground pipe deliver endless amounts of water uphill, all without a pump. There is an apocryphal story that the Sultan insisted on the fountains because the sound of running water would allow him to carry on illicit liaisons without being overheard. I can’t imagine a Sultan would worry about such things, but it was rather nice to wander down the fragrant paths imagining that there used to be clandestine trysts around every corner.

We took a train from Grenada to Barcelona, our next chosen destination. Barcelona is the capital of the Catalan Province and the second largest city in Spain. It sits in the north-eastern corner of the Iberian Peninsula, bordered by the Mediterranean Sea. Barcelona is a beautiful and very tourist friendly city with numerous inviting beaches and a welcoming, expansive pedestrian mall called the Rambles running through its very centre. The Rambles is dotted with interesting, eclectic shops and dozens of sidewalk cafes, and Douglas and I spent many happy hours wandering up and down its length during our time in the city. 

Perhaps the most famous feature of Barcelona is its many buildings by Antoni Gaudí. Gaudí was a Catalan architect who spearheaded a movement called Catalan Modernism, and he felt that buildings should be reminiscent of natural forms as a way to reference and give thanks for God’s great creation. He integrated such crafts as ceramics, stained glass, wrought ironwork, and carpentry into his projects, and rather than drawing up plans he worked exclusively from three-dimensional scale models to which he would add details as he conceived them. His most famous work is the Sagrada Família, a cathedral begun in 1882 which has yet to be completed and which was only consecrated in 2010. I loved Gaudí’s structures because to me they looked like fanciful imaginings out of a fairy story, and his groundbreaking, iconoclastic style is considered so internationally important that seven of his buildings have been designated as U.N. World Heritage Sites.

From Barcelona we went to San Sebastián, a small city on the Bay of Biscay in the Basque region, Spain’s northernmost province. We chose San Sebastián because of its lovely location, but also because Pamplona is a short bus ride away and Douglas wanted to see the running of the bulls. I’d had my fill of bulls being mistreated when we attended the bullfights in Madrid, so we agreed that I would stay in San Sebastián while he went to Pamplona for a couple of days. The running of the bulls is part of the nine-day festival of Sanfermines held in honour of Saint Fermin, Pamplona’s patron saint. It consists of wooden hoardings being set up along a designated route through the centre of town which leads directly to the bullring. Masses of men gather at the beginning of the course and six bulls are released behind them. The idea is to get to the ring and out of the bulls’ way without being trampled or gored.

Unbeknowst to Douglas or I, my cousin Greg, with whom we planned to later rendezvous in Portugal, was one of those men. He told us about his Pamplona experience over dinner when we met the following week. Greg travelled extremely light, roaming for months at a time with only what he could carry in a small gym bag. He didn’t have sneakers, so he went to the first aid tent before the race and had a medic bind his Birkenstocks to his feet with surgical tape. Greg was in excellent shape and had played baseball and football extremely well throughout his youth, but even so he’d had to run so fast to stay ahead of the bulls that he said it felt as though his lungs would burst.

Finally he reached the bull ring and sprinted off to the side to avoid the incoming beasts which ran straight through the arena and out a set of large double-doors on the far side. The stands were full of excited spectators (one of whom was Douglas), and Greg, following the lead of the gasping men around him, sad down to catch his breath. Then the entire audience began to sing an anthem which we later learned was a song of praise to St. Fermin. Suddenly Greg noticed men on the other side of the ring starting to pop up. He had no idea why until he saw an angry bull forcing its way through the crowd and heading directly for him. He jumped up and dodged just in time to avoid its sharp horns, and noticed to his horror that another bull had been let into the space. Eventually all six of the bulls were running harum-scarum through the mass of exhausted men, while the audience continued its raucous song, now throwing in an occasional enthusiastic “Olé”. This went on for a seeming eternity until finally the bulls were herded out of the ring and the spent participants could safely leave. The whole thing sounded like a living nightmare to me, but Greg was overjoyed that he’d taken part.

I’ve failed to mention many other wonderful things about Spain which make it an amazing and worthwhile destination. The food is delicious, fresh, and incredibly varied, and the climate is absolutely amazing, particularly on the Mediterranean coast where the sun always shines and it’s consistently hot enough to make swimming in the sea a delight. The people are friendly, the trains run on time, and there is enough culture, history, and beauty to keep even the most hardened traveller enthralled for weeks at a time. I very much look forward to someday returning to Spain, and whole-heartedly recommend others do the same.