High School Confidential

I started high school at Woburn Collegiate Institute in Scarborough in 1974. Woburn is a huge school. It has separate tech, art, and athletic wings, a large cafeteria with an outdoor quad, and a full-size auditorium with plush, fold down seats. There were some 2,400 students at the school when I attended, and I was extremely scared when I began because I was barely 13 years old and still looked like a child. The grade 12 and 13 boys in particular made me nervous – they were big and loud and intimidating. Many of them already had facial hair.

Most high schools now have an orientation day for grade 9s featuring food, games, and other fun stuff to make freshmen feel welcome. Not so in my day. We had a whole week of initiation during which grade 9s were expected to unquestioningly perform various humiliating tasks at the command of over-zealous prefects. They might have to sing the school song from atop a table in the cafeteria, or push pennies down the hall with their noses. At some point during the week pretty well every grade 9 ended up with a large, poorly formed “W” written on their cheek in bright red lipstick. None of these pranks seemed welcoming to me. In fact, just the opposite was true. I dreaded going to school during initiation because I feared I would be publicly humiliated.

I managed to make it to Thursday without being noticed, but then a couple of prefects stopped me in the hall and told me to open my binders and empty them on the floor. Then one of them got out a tube of red lipstick and came towards me. I’m not a violent person, but I have always been pretty good at sticking up for myself. On this occasion I pushed the prefect’s hand away and refused to open my binders. They both noted that this was supposed to be fun, to which I replied something along the lines of, “Fun for whom?”. That’s when they escorted me to the office, and why only four days into my high school career I had my one and only discussion with a vice principal. 

His name was Mr. Hannah, and the first thing he said to me was, “I know your sister.” He was referring to my older sister Lisa who was a regular in the office during her days at Woburn a few years before me. She was the kind of teenager who viewed high school as more of a social club than a learning institution, and she consequently had little concern for pesky details like attending classes and following school rules. Clearly I was already behind the 8 ball as far as Mr. Hannah was concerned. He asked me why I wouldn’t play along with initiation, and I said again that I thought the pranks were humiliating. Mr. Hannah felt that if he made an exception for me, he would have to do the same for everyone. Therefore, I could either get on board with initiation or I would have to serve detentions after school every day the following week. The decision was mine. I don’t know where I got my moxie from, but I told him I would be doing neither and if he had a problem with that then he should call my mother. Mum and I had discussed initiation just the day before and she had agreed that it sounded awful, so I was pretty sure she would back my hand. I’m not sure if Mr. Hannah ever phoned my mother, but I do know that the prefects left me alone from that day on.

I had made some good friends while I was in senior public school, all of whom attended Woburn as well. It was comforting to have built-in allies in this strange, frenetic new world. We pretty much stuck to ourselves throughout grade 9, but by grade 10 I felt confident enough to join the wind ensemble and the drama club. I had no interest in acting, so I took on the position of assistant director to the two theatre arts teachers, Mr. Wilcox and Mr. Hunt. Mr. Wilcox was a no-nonsense kind of guy and a very good director. Once a year he and I would go downtown to shop for props, set pieces, and costumes for our upcoming production. He was a very nice man, and always took me out to lunch at Shopsy’s Deli on these occasions, treating me to an over-sized corned beef on rye with an ice cold root beer. I was also very fond of Mr. Hunt, an Irish immigrant who’d come to Canada as a teenager. He had a lovely Irish lilt to his voice, a disarming, crooked smile, and was completely dreamy overall. I had a killer crush on him for the entire four years I worked with him. He was happily married with two young daughters and a good 20 years older than me, but that didn’t dampen the flames of my devotion. There is nothing quite so satisfying to a teenage girl as overwhelming unrequited love. It allows one to be the heroine in a gothic romance fraught with drama and hopeless yearning.

The theatre arts department at Woburn was well-established and very well funded. The auditorium had a full-sized stage with large wings, and there was an entire classroom in the arts corridor devoted to costumes and props. There were stairs leaded up from the apron on either side of the stage with rooms at the top. Stage right housed a large makeup room with expansive mirrors on every wall, and stage left was where the office of Mssrs. Wilcox and Hunt was located. I had a position of some responsibility and consequently had keys to all the theatre rooms. 

On one occasion both teachers had to leave immediately following an after school rehearsal and consequently asked me to lock up. I systematically went around locking all the doors, and then made my way to the office to pick up my coat and bag before leaving. I was about half-way up the stairs to the office when I heard noises coming from behind the door. There shouldn’t have been anyone else in the space at that late hour, so I was a little alarmed by this development. I placed myself right in front of the door and tentatively put my hand on the knob. Just then the door flew open revealing the entire stage crew. They were all laughing at my alarm so I called them stupid a**holes, thinking that was the extent of the gag. It was then that I realized that Mike Filipowitz, the crew member who’d pulled the door open, had his pants down and his penis and testicles were hanging out. The guys all burst into loud guffaws when they saw my face – jaw agape, with wide eyes that I couldn’t seem to tear away from his dangling genitals. I don’t know exactly how long I stood staring, but eventually Mike pulled up his pants and they all marched past me. I’m pretty sure Mike had exposed himself on a bet because some of the guys were handing him money as they departed. I grabbed my stuff, locked the office door, and hurried out as quickly as possible. These days such pranks are forbidden, falling under the umbrella of sexual harassment, and I say “Huzzah” to that. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was traumatized by the incident, but it was none the less a mortifying experience. I could never look Mike fully in the face again.

I had a crush on a boy named Jim McGilton in grades 9 and 10. He had piercing blue eyes, wavy blonde hair that hung perfectly to his collar and, best of all, he didn’t know I was alive (see the unrequited love reference above). In grade 10 he started dating a girl named Laura Neilson. She was tall and well developed, with deep green eyes and beautiful, lush red hair cascading down her back. She also had a locker just two over from mine, meaning I was constantly having the sometimes salty evidence of their attraction rubbed into my open wound. Such delicious pain!

One day I came to my locker to find Jim and Laura standing at hers. She was busy searching for something while Jim loomed over her. I couldn’t hear what they were saying at first, but eventually Jim loudly said, “As hard as you can.” Then he took a couple of steps back, spread his legs firmly apart and planted his fists on his hips with his arms bent out to either side. Laura was giggling and acting all girly as she insisted that she would never punch him. This ridiculous banter when back and forth a few more times before Laura finally relented. She put down the books she had just withdrawn from her locker, stepped closer to her paramour and, as instructed, punched him as hard as she could in the stomach. Jim immediately doubled over, gasping for breath as he clutched his gut. Laura began vociferously apologizing. She put her arm around Jim’s shoulder, but he shrugged her off and stood up, desperately pretending that he was fine when he clearly was not. I bit my tongue so as not to laugh out loud and at that very moment my crush on Jim McGilton simply evaporated. The guy was clearly an idiot.

We had two music teachers – Mr. Fowler, an affable, largely incompetent Woburn fixture, and Mr. Danes, a new hire who really knew his stuff but had a distinctly rigid air about him. Mr. Fowler was pretty laid back about attendance and silly details like hitting all the notes. No, that’s not fair. He really did care about how we sounded, he was just highly ineffectual. He desperately wanted us to like him. That impulse is, as I learned throughout my career in education, the number one no-no in teaching. You can’t possibly maintain control if you care more about students liking you than respecting you. Kids can smell desperation on a teacher as readily as sharks smell blood in the water. 

My favourite memory of Mr. Fowler occurred when we were playing a Star Wars medley at a school performance. Never a stickler for tempo, he counted us in at far too fast a clip. We all dutifully followed his lead, but by a few bars into the piece he realized his mistake. He looked up at us with real alarm on his face, his eyes desperately telegraphing, “Yikes. I know it’s too fast, but I don’t know how to slow it down!” The theme we were playing was extremely well known to the audience as the first Stars Wars movie had just come out earlier that year, and it wasn’t long before we could hear people tittering. Everyone in the auditorium knew that the conductor had made a substantial mistake. Poor Mr. Fowler.

I had some friends in the band, but my posse was in the drama club. It included me and four actors: my best friend Vera and three boys named Dan, Peter, and Chris. Vera and I had been fast friends since grade 7. Our backgrounds and families were completely different, but somehow we just fit. There was an ineffable quality to our friendship which I just put down to chemistry. We got each other through our difficult teen years, then unfortunately lost touch in our late 20s when I moved out of the city. Happily though, we recently reconnected on Facebook and met for lunch. I know we were both nervous before the meeting, but that old chemistry was still there and we just fell into stride as if no time had passed at all. There are people in my life that I will always love regardless of where they are or even if they are still alive. Vera is one of those people.

Dan was a good actor but a little intense. He fancied himself a method actor and thus would stay in character throughout an entire play, even when in the wings waiting for his next entrance. I always stood backstage during performances making sure people got their props and entered on cue, and occasionally whispering prompts to actors who’d clearly frozen. One time when we were doing The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Dan stood next to me in the wing. He quietly whispered a greeting addressing me as Goody Monis, “Goody” being the preferred term for married women in 17th century Salem, where the play is set. I turned to him and said in a withering tone, “Don’t do that.” He never did again – at least not to me.

Peter was a very nice if rather exacting guy. I didn’t mind his fussiness though, because he expected at least as much of himself as of others. Both Peter and his older sister Natalie were in the band, so I knew her as well. Natalie was utterly lovely, but unfortunately was known more for her very large breasts than her kindness. I remember Peter coming into the band room one day, clearly distraught. He was desperately trying to smooth down the front of his sweater which sagged with the outline of a pair of large boobs. Clearly Natalie had worn the sweater and stretched it into its current embarrassing shape. “This,” he said, pointing angrily at his chest, “is why she is not allowed to borrow my clothes.” 

Peter was perennially the guy in the back calling out, “Wait up!” He was just somehow always the last – to know, to arrive, to make a decision. We often went out to eat after rehearsals, and one time we landed at Dairy Queen. Peter had clearly decided he was tired of being last, so on this occasions he pushed past the rest of us as we left the restaurant. He made a mad dash for the car and was sitting in the back seat when we got there, looking very pleased with himself indeed. Unfortunately, in his haste he had mistakenly gotten into the wrong car. We all knocked on the window and gave Peter the thumbs up as we walked past him and made our way to the car we had actually arrived in. We had a quick discussion in the car before Peter got there and all agreed that we wouldn’t mention what had just happened in an effort to spare his bruised ego. I won’t recount how utterly shamefaced Peter was when he finally climbed into the car, but I’m sure you can imagine.

Chris was also a very nice guy, full of energy and fun. He was extremely effeminate and as a result spent the entirety of high school insisting he wasn’t gay. This was at a time when such an admission could have dire consequences, so even though we all knew he was, we heartily endorsed his charade for the sake of his safety. In grade 12 an odd situation arose with Chris’s father and the sister of another friend of ours named Susan. It came to pass that Chris’s parents were separating, and his dad, rather than running into the arms of a woman his age, somehow ended up dating Susan’s 15 year old sister Elaine. I’ll never forget a party Chris hosted for the cast and crew. We all made our way into his basement to be greeted by the vision of his middle-aged dad with Elaine on his lap. We tried our best to ignore them as the party heated up, but they insisted on furiously necking from time to time, making the whole experience more embarrassing than fun. We all stayed for Chris’s sake, but it was clear he felt humiliated by his father’s behaviour.

I was thoroughly fed up with high school by the time I got to grade 13. I was absent more than I was there that year. I was particularly remiss at showing up for Relations and Functions, as math had never been of much interest to me. My teacher that year was Mr. Glickman, a fine teacher and a very kind man. He simply couldn’t understand why I was away so much. Every time I was absent, which is to say most of the time, he would ask my poor friend Vera if she knew where I was. Eventually she asked me if I would please start attending because she was tired of seeing the hurt look on Mr. Glickman’s kind face every time she replied, “I don’t know, sir.” I heard what she was saying and I felt for both of them, but I still didn’t go. I had come to realize that I could skip and still get good marks, so what incentive was there for me to attend? I made my way through that year and was overjoyed to leave high school behind.

I know I had some terrible teachers in high school, but the human memory is beautifully selective and I really only remember the good ones; Mr. Patterson, my quiet grade 10 history teacher who taught me as much about patience and humour as about the past; Mrs. Verashack and Mrs. Wilcox, both excellent English teachers who fanned and fostered my love of reading; Mr. Dick, whose quick mind often outstripped his hand while he was writing notes on the board, leaving whole words out in his haste to get his ideas down. I loved science, but for those who didn’t Mr. Dick was deadly accurate with a piece of chalk. His projectiles wouldn’t hit people who were chatting, but they’d come awfully close. High school is an intense time of change, growth, and learning. I know that many people don’t have a good high school experience, and that’s why I feel fortunate to have attended a school where I felt safe and free to engage fully in everything it had to offer. I’m happy to say high school wasn’t the best time of my life (because who wants to peak that early?), but it was one of them.

Ya Gotta have Friends

When I  was a young girl I had two best friends. Coincidentally they were both named Andrea, although they pronounced their names differently. Andrea Romanuk said her name in the traditional, North American way – AN-drea. Andrea Johnson’s pronunciation was more European sounding – an-DRAY-a. Her family all called her Bumper because of some hilarious thing she’d done as a toddler, but as I am not a fan of cute nicknames I never really listened when they told the story. I always called her Draya, and for the sake of clarity I will refer to her as such throughout this piece. Andrea and Draya didn’t particularly like each other and were completely different. In fact, the only thing they had in common was that they were both friends with me. There was often a feeling of unease when the three of us were together, and they openly fought for my approval and time – a situation which suited my ego to a tee.

Andrea Romanuk came from a very troubled family. Her father, a tall and beefy first generation Canadian with Slavic looks which attested to his Ukranian heritage, was loud and scary. Her mother, on the other hand, was willowy and slender with red hair, extremely fair skin, a care-worn face, and a demure manner. Andrea had an older brother named Tim and a much younger brother named Desi. I think Desi was an accident, but he was dearly loved and doted on by his mother and siblings none the less. 

I don’t know exactly what Mr. Romanuk did for a living, but it was definitely a blue collar job. Andrea only invited me over when she knew he wouldn’t be home, and over time I came to understand why. This was in the days when kids would call on each other, meaning you would simply go to a friend’s house and knock on the door (as in, “Mrs. Cleaver, can Beaver come out to play?”). It was when I dropped in to Andrea’s place uninvited that I came to see Mr. Romanuk’s true colours. My siblings were all glad to see our father on the rare occasions when he was home from work. When Mr. Romanuk came home the house got eerily quiet, and everyone tried to make themselves as small and inconspicuous as possible. Mr. Romanuk would put Johnny Cash on really loud to break the silence, and move in on whichever hapless family member was closest at hand. One time I saw him lift Desi clear off the ground by his hair and then backhand his wife in the face when she rushed in to protect her child. He soon grew tired of Desi’s pitiful screeches and dropped him in disgust, calling him a faggot and then launching into Folsom Prison Blues. I can’t stand listening to Johnny Cash to this day.

One time I met Andrea at her house early in the morning. She must have thought we would be gone before her father got up, but just as we were about to leave he staggered into the kitchen, no doubt still drunk from the night before. He ordered us to sit down because he felt like company, and of course we both immediately complied as neither of us fancied being picked up by the hair. He told us he was going hunting that day as he poured a beer into a glass, cracked three raw eggs into it, and then downed the whole thing, leaving stringy bits of egg white dangling from his chin. I would have gagged if I wasn’t so afraid it might make him mad. He finished off his noxious concoction with a deafening burp, wiped his chin with his sleeve, and then announced that he’d decided we should come hunting with him. Andrea and I left to get my mum’s permission, and as soon as we were out the door I told her I didn’t want to go. She then broke down in tears and begged me to come with her as she absolutely did not want to go with him alone. Her fear was palpable, so I lied and told my mum that we were just going for a drive in the country, and she let me go.

We watched in trepidation as Mr. Romanuk loaded up the car. I had never seen a rifle before and it looked terrifyingly large. We drove for some time to get far enough into the woods, with Mr. Romanuk singing badly to a Johnny Cash 8-track between swigs of beer. Andrea and I sat in rigid silence in the back seat. Finally we arrived and the three of us humped into the forest. After we’d walked for some time, Mr. Romanuk announced that he would give each of us a shooting lesson, saying I should go first as I was the guest. Andrea had no problem with that. He loaded up the gun and handed it to me, positioning me in front of a large tree so I wouldn’t be knocked over by the recoil. He gave me a bunch of instructions which I didn’t take in at all because I was distracted by my own fear and by his hot, reeking beer breath. I just nodded and said I understood as he positioned the rifle against my shoulder and warned me it was going to be loud. I squeezed the trigger and the whole world exploded in a blast of noise and pain. Next thing I knew I was lying flat on my back with my head ringing and my arm throbbing. The recoil had dislocated my shoulder and thrown me to the ground despite the tree. Mr. Romanuk came over and looked at me. He said he’d seen this sort of thing before and, without any explanation or preamble, grabbed and wrenched my arm, putting my shoulder back in its socket. Andrea was a bit taller than me but very skinny. I guess he decided if I got blown back like that then she would probably fare even worse, so he packed up his gear and we made our way back to the car. I shook and silently wept the whole way home with Andrea’s arm protectively around my shoulder. I simply couldn’t get my head around what had just happened. Looking back on it today, I recognize that I was clearly in shock.

Andrea usually came to my place to play, for obvious reasons. One time we were playing house in the bedroom I shared with my sister Susan. Susan is a very crafty person who has always been interested in creating art and sewing. She kept her needles in a miniature coke bottle on her headboard. At some point in our game Andrea, who I think was playing my defiant teenage daughter, grabbed the bottle and pretended to drink from it. The needles immediately slid into her mouth. She screamed as she threw the bottle away, and my mother, an emergency room nurse, came running into the room. I quickly described what had happened and she firmly sat Andrea down on the bed, saying comforting words as she tilted back her head and opened her mouth. She casually pulled out the needles that were stuck in Andrea’s tongue and cheeks, and told me to grab a flashlight and the needle nose pliers. When I came back, she instructed me to shine the light down Andrea’s throat, and expertly fished out a needle lodged behind her uvula. As soon as Andrea had calmed down the three of us walked over to her house and Mum explained to Mrs. Romanuk what had happened, suggesting that they should get an x-ray in case any needles were lodged in her esophagus or had made their way into her stomach. It turned out that there were no more needles, but the x-ray revealed that Andrea’s appendix was enlarged, so they kept her in for an appendectomy. I felt very guilty about the whole affair as I thought a stray needle had made its way into her appendix. I didn’t have a very firm grasp on anatomy when I was 8.

Childhood diabetes was quite rare in my day, but Andrea (as if her life weren’t benighted enough by her brute of a father) was diagnosed with it the same year as the needle incident. I remember Mrs. Romanuk trying to describe the disease to me, emphasizing that if Andrea ever started to seem woozy or faint that I should remind her to eat the apple she always carried with her for just such occasions. She also showed me how she gave Andrea her daily insulin shot in the leg. I was  horrified by how black and blue Andrea’s thigh was, but she seemed to take the needle in stride. 

One day the two of us went to our school’s playground together. We were both on the swings, just starting to pump up to some height, when Andrea suddenly fell off backwards onto the sand below. I immediately jumped off my swing and went to see if she was okay. She was lying perfectly still with the whites of her eyes showing through partially open lids. I shook her several times, calling her name and willing her to wake up, but she didn’t. The playground was in the middle of a large open area, and I figured Andrea’s house was probably no further than those I could see on the periphery of the park. Somehow I hoisted her up onto my back and began the slow slog to her place. When I got there I slid her down onto the front lawn and ran into the house to find a grownup. Unfortunately only Mr. Romanuk was home, but I bravely went right up to him and pulled him out the front door. He bundled Andrea into his car then got in himself. I asked through the driver’s window if I couldn’t please go with him because I was so concerned and wanted to stay with her, but he just yelled “No!” in my face and pushed me in the chest with such force that I landed flat on my behind. It wasn’t until that evening that Mrs. Romanuk finally called and told my mum that Andrea was okay. 

Andrea and I remained friends until I accelerated in the middle of Grade 4, when she mercilessly turned against me. I was unbelievably hurt and upset by her behaviour, but looking back I think she was unconsciously acting in response to her own miserable home life. She pushed me on the ice, breaking my finger and later my heart by turning all of our classmates against me. She had absolutely no control over the violence and fear she experienced at home, but at school she had found a place where she could exert power and be in charge. She may also have been jealous of me because my family life was so much more normal than hers. Maybe it was just too much for her that I was happy at home and had been singled out as exceptional at school, and she just broke. Regardless of her reasons, I forgave Andrea for her betrayal many years ago. 

Draya’s home was tense as well, but for a different reason. Her mother, Mrs. Johnson, was unbelievably neurotic. I think now that she probably had OCD and maybe some other mental health issues as well. Everything had to be perfect in their home or Mrs. Johnson would just break down. For example, we were not allowed to sit on Draya’s bed when we played in her room because her mother couldn’t stand the thought of her bedspread being creased. She didn’t even have to see it to find it unbearable. She was always hovering around, making sure we didn’t make a mess or leave anything out of place. It was very stressful.

Mr. Johnson, on the other hand, was extremely laid back and affable. Perhaps you would have to be like that in order to live with someone as high-strung and demanding as his wife. The Johnsons had an enormous chestnut tree in their front yard, and every fall Mr. Johnson would host “Chestnut Day.” He would make up invitations which Draya and her older sister Lee would hand out to neighbourhood kids. We’d all gather on the designated day, separate into groups of three or four, and then each team would be given a large apple basket with two handles. Mr. Johnson would blow a whistle and we’d all be off, gathering up chestnuts as quickly as we could. This would continue until every nut was off the ground, and then Mr. Johnson would serve us all hot chocolate while we waited for the grownups to count the contents of each basket. Whichever group had gathered the most would get a small prize, but really it was just fun to take part. I realize now that this was Mr. Johnson’s clever way of getting his yard cleared, but it was a very nice occasion nonetheless.

Mr. Johnson was an avid antique collector, and on many weekends I would accompany the family into the countryside to search out yard sales and flea markets. Mrs. Johnson was always very prim and controlling on these outings – barking directions at Mr. Johnson as he drove, and making all the decisions about where we would stop for our picnic lunch and which shops and markets to patronize. Mr. Johnson always mutely obliged his bossy wife, but in one small way he proved a rebel. Some of the country roads were very hilly, and whenever we got onto that terrain he would speed up. Pretty soon we’d be bouncing along, sometimes going so fast that all four wheels left the ground. Mrs. Johnson would white knuckle the dashboard while admonishing him to slow down. Mr. Johnson would blithely ignore her, sending sly smiles in the rearview mirror to we three girls, all of us giggling helplessly as we were bounced around on the back seat. This being the 1960s, none of us were belted in.

Mrs. Johnson’s fascination with old things also extended to houses. She was never content in her family’s 1950s bungalow, and eventually she talked Mr. Johnson into relocating to a large brick Victorian home in Agincourt. She was the only member of the family who wanted to move, but they all just dutifully followed after her. Then, only a few months after they moved into the new place, Mrs. Johnson abruptly left the family. She became a follower of Maharashi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of transcendental meditation, and went to live in an ashram. Poor Mr. Johnson now found himself alone with two young daughters in a house he never wanted in the first place. Draya’s new house was filled with all the antiques Mrs. Johnson had acquired on our many weekend outings, and the age of the house along with its contents made me sure that it was haunted. There was an old high-backed wheelchair at the bottom of the basement stairs that I found particularly terrifying. Just sitting there, empty. Yikes!

The last time I visited Draya was in the summer after grade 6. I hadn’t seen her for some time, and while I was still flat chested and very much a girl, she had blossomed into a genuine teeny bopper. She wore hot pants and a halter top which clearly outlined her burgeoning breasts. She also had long, straight auburn hair which flowed beautifully to halfway down her back. I, on the other hand, had mousey brown, close cropped curly hair which wasn’t the least bit stylish or grown up. We hung out with her friends for an afternoon, all of whom called her Bumper, and it soon became clear to us that we no longer had anything in common. I was still just a nerdy kid, while she had become a cool and popular tween. Draya declined her father’s invitation to accompany us when he drove me home later that day, and just before we pulled away she stuck her head in my window and said, “I’ve never like the name Draya.” I couldn’t have been more saddened and surprised if she had reached in the window and slapped me in the face. So that was the end of that.

One of my favourite memories with Andrea and Draya was one time when we had the bright idea of picking all the blossoms from the Japanese snowball bushes in our backyard and having a snowball fight with them. We had denuded the first bush and were beginning work on the second when we heard my mother yelling at us from her bedroom window, “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?!” We could tell from her tone and the way she quickly turned after speaking that she was coming down to deal with the situation in person. My mother was quite a yeller and had a famously bad temper, so both my friends immediately dropped the evidence and took off. I found myself alone before Mum even appeared at the back door, and steeled myself to face her considerable ire on my own. I had to clean up the mess all by myself and was grounded for weeks as a result. I don’t blame them for running away as I would have done exactly the same thing were the situation reversed, but I’m still astonished at how quickly they disappeared. It’s amazing how fast one can move when well motivated. 

It is normal to have people cycle in and out of one’s life. Even good friends sometimes lose touch. People get married, or move, or have kids, or find new jobs. Andrea and Draya were not the only friends I’ve lost, but they were the first. For that reason alone they will always hold a special place in my heart.

Everyday I Write the Book

Books have been a constant in my life. My earliest memory of discovering a book on my own happened when I was 5 or 6. We were visiting my cousins in Raynham, Mass. when I slipped into my youngest cousin’s bedroom to get away from the noise and delirium of eight children in the family room. I was sitting on his bed and scanning the room when my eyes lighted on his book shelves. I went over and after browsing for a bit I grabbed Babar, then went back to his bed to read it. The memory of looking through that book is indelibly etched on my mind. I can see myself so clearly – lying down with my legs up on the headboard, totally entranced by the sun-drenched book perched on my belly. Every page was a revelation, and from that moment on I was hooked.

I don’t remember exactly what I read next as a little kid, but it wasn’t long before I had discovered Roald Dahl. Matilda was smart like me, The BFG was extremely kind, and Willy Wonka’s world was endlessly fascinating. Next I dove into The Wizard of Oz books – I inhaled all 15 of them. I liked Baum’s Oz much more than the Hollywood version – it was a real place, and eventually Dorothy went back and ruled the kingdom along with Ozma. I liked that she earned her place based on merit rather than by simply being pretty and marrying a prince. Baum was a bit ahead of his time in this regard, I think.

My mother was an avid reader, and every Saturday she let my brother Michael and me ride our bikes to Cedarbrae Public Library. It was a large, airy space with huge windows all around. You got to the children’s section in the basement via a spiral metal staircase – so cool! The books were housed on shelves around the perimeter of the room, and in the centre was a large circular area filled with beanbag chairs. Kids of all shapes and sizes would sprawl out on this marvellous mound and read at their leisure. Hanging out in the library was almost as good as being able to take three different books home every week. 

Mum also bought me a new book at Coles once a month. I was always drawn to books with strong female protagonists such as the Oz series and Island of the Blue Dolphins. My absolute favourite heroine was the title character in Harriet the Spy. Harriet is not only very smart, she is also extremely disciplined and mature. She has special gear and a particular spying route she follows on a daily basis. She speaks her mind and has good friends despite her sometimes tactless honesty. Harriet reminded me very much of myself, and helped me feel okay about being blunt and opinionated. I still love Harriet to this day.

My tastes changed as I got older, and by the time I was in grade 6 I had fallen in love with mysteries. I devoured all of Agatha Christie’s novels, admiring Poirot’s cool certainty and adoring Miss Marple’s ditsyness. Next came all of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which I liked because they painted a realistic picture of Victorian England and because of Holmes’s shear brilliance (or should I say Conan Doyle’s?) I was so fascinated with late 19th Century Britain that I immediately immersed myself in the works of Charles Dickens. I loved the way things always tied up so neatly at the end of his novels, and his character names alone were worth the price of admission. Names like Mr. Fezziwig, Dick Swivelled and Luke Honeythunder – just fantastic.

By high school I had moved on to Kurt Vonnegut, still one of my all-time favourites. His books are simultaneously poignant and hilarious – an amazing feat for any author. I was introduced to Robertson Davies and Margaret Atwood by my English teachers, and loved Shakespeare’s work from my first reading of Romeo and Juliet in grade 9. There were some books I had to read which I didn’t like. I found A Separate Peace incredibly boring, and Wuthering Heights didn’t contain a single character I liked or cared about in the least. All the other girls were gaga for Heathcliff, but to me he seemed a self-involved and cruel dick. Sure he is intense and brooding, but he hangs Isabella’s dog for crying out loud!

It’s no surprise that I spent most of my working life in libraries, given my childhood love affair with books. I started as a library clerk at Locke Library in Toronto’s north end when I was 20. The head of the branch was a rigid, unpleasant woman named Helen MacNeil. Miss MacNeil had never been married but some years previously had delivered a child out of wedlock whom she immediately gave up for adoption. I mention this only because I thought maybe this experience explained her bitterness and cruelty. She delighted in intimidating young pages (students who work part-time after school shelving books), and tried to pit her employees against each other for her own amusement. She was just a misery all the way around.

I have a lot of difficulty with authority at the best of times, but if my boss is in any way tyrannical I become completely intransigent. I know my rights and I will not be moved! I had a colleague at Locke named Carol. This was 1981 so hippies were long gone, but Carol never got the memo. She regularly wore loose fitting long skirts, woven tie-dyed shirts, and a fringed leather vest. Sometimes she even wore a headband. Being a hippy made Carol deeply and unshakeably wary of authority, so she and I got along very well. I remember one time our immediate supervisor, a lovely lady from Trinidad name Daphne, took Carol and me into a room. Evidently Miss MacNeil had been treating Daphne badly in response to our non-compliance, and Daphne asked if we could please be nicer for her sake. Carol and I both liked and respected Daphne, so we bit the bullet and behaved better for as long as we could stand it. Eventually Miss MacNeil made a naive new clerk cry, and that’s when Carol and I both reneged on our promise to Daphne and fell back into our old, defiant ways. 

Locke Library is at the corner of Yonge and Lawrence, a well established monarchist stronghold in Toronto. The local Monarchist Society held their meetings in the branch and housed their documents there as well. One of the library technicians at Locke was Sylvia Thewlis – an immigrant from somewhere in the north of England. She had an accent which in her home country would have be considered working class, but Canadians have a less discerning ear and the ladies in the Monarchist Society thought Sylvia was just the bee’s knees. She lorded her stature with the society over all of us lowly colonials and was an absolute toady to Miss MacNeil. She spied and tattled on us, and overall was an absolutely despicable woman. 

I was desperate to get out of Locke because of Sylvia and Miss MacNeil, and eventually managed to land a job at the Yorkville branch. I made some good friends at Yorkville, loved the location, and found the clientele much more interesting. There was one guy who was always waiting when we opened the doors at 10:00. He would ask for a large piece of clear tape and the bathroom key, then disappear into the men’s for about 10 minutes. We often speculated on exactly what he was doing in there, but none of us was brave enough to ask him what the tape was for. We also had a women who came in all the time who was so profoundly mentally ill that she regularly twisted large chunks of hair off her head. She wasn’t loud or bothersome, but I felt very sorry for her.

The most heartbreaking regular we had was an old blind man who often came in to use the facilities and then would just sit for hours on the front steps. One day, after several months of him doing this, a middle aged woman came in. She hesitantly approached the desk and asked in a halting voice if we had ever seen an old blind man hanging around. At just that moment her quarry entered the building and made his way over to ask for the gent’s key. The woman stared at him the whole time and moved out of his way when he got to the desk. She silently watched with tears in her eyes as he went to the bathroom and then again as he made his way out of the building. Once he was gone she told us that he was her father and had simply walked away from his life and family after her mother had died some months previously. He had warned them not to look for him; that he knew what he was doing and just wanted to be left alone. She came to the branch several times after that but always respected his wishes and never once approached him – she just needed to make sure he was okay. What a good daughter.

My husband and I went travelling for several months after I left Yorkville, and I got a job at the film library in the Albert Campbell branch in Scarborough when we came back to Toronto. I was pregnant with my son by then so only stayed in the job for about 7 months, but I really enjoyed it. Those were the days when public libraries lent out 16mm films and equipment to schools and other organizations on request. I liked researching titles and putting together groups of films to meet the needs of our clientele, and working with the films generally. It was a nice change from always working with books. By the time I left I was supervisor, so I got some useful scheduling and management experience while I was there as well. I regularly screened newly acquired films with the staff to keep us all abreast of the collection and allow us to make educated recommendations to customers. This was exactly the time when Pixar came into existence, and their first short film was called Tin Toy. We were all blown away by the animation and I knew they were going to be big, which begs the question of why didn’t I invest in the company, dammit!

My next library job came three years later, after we had moved from Toronto to the small village of Millbrook. Peterborough is a small city located about twenty minutes from Millbrook, and I landed a job spending half of my time on the adult reference desk and the other half in the children’s department at Peterborough’s main branch. It was a dream job for me. I loved working reference because it could be really challenging to find the exact information a patron requested, and consequently extremely satisfying when you finally laid your hands on it. One time a guy came in with a query about the respective populations of Canada and America. I found the information for him in an almanac, and as we looked up from the page he turned to me and said, “Well, you just cost me a hundred bucks.” Another time a rather distressed teenage boy came to the desk saying he’d spent ages at the computer looking for a book and simply couldn’t find it. I went over to the terminal with him and asked the name of the book, to which he replied “How to Kill a Mockingbird.” I guess he thought it was some kind of manual.  

The only duty I didn’t like at Peterborough Library was having to run toddler time. I was okay doing story time with older kids, but I didn’t have an affinity for the really little ones. I always felt a bit foolish pretending to enjoy singing and reading in front of them. Every session ended with the babies just lying there like lumps, leaving me singing Where is Thumbkin? to a bunch of strung-out, sleep deprived young women. Much more to my taste was arranging for guest speakers to give talks in the library. Dennis Lee signed posters for his then latest poetry collection The Ice Cream Shoppe, and Barbara Reid laid out the nuts and bolts of illustrating with plasticine. Both of them were excellent presenters and very nice people.

I left Peterborough when I was eight months pregnant with my daughter. When she was a year old I landed the job as librarian of the maximum security prison on the edge of my village. My library work there was minimal as most of my time was taken up with reading, censoring and organizing incoming prisoner mail. I’ve written in the past about my time in this job and the many extremely tense situations which I endured. Needless to say I was overjoyed when I could finally afford to leave it and go back to university for my Bachelor of Education.

The last 14 years of my career were spent as the teacher/librarian of an elementary school in Peterborough. I was happy to finally be in charge of a collection which I could weed and build according to my own perception of what was needed. I loved my space, as it included a story pit consisting of two wide circular steps leading down to the area where I sat in my big, comfy chair and read to the children. It was essentially a stage recessed into the library floor, and its design allowed the kids to see me and the pictures in the book I was reading without having to shift around or go up on their knees. As long as everyone stayed seated, everyone could see. This arrangement also allowed me to see all of them, so I could make eye contact as I read and easily spot any misbehaviour which needed correcting.

Reading to the kids was my absolute favourite part of the job. I loved changing my voice – pace, volume and pitch – to enhance the impact of a story. I also did lots of accents, and although none of them was terribly good, they were all good enough for the children. There were many occasions when the kids inadvertently made me aware that I was having an effect on my audience, but I’ll mention just two here for the sake of brevity. The first occurred when I was reading a rather spooky book to the grade 5s. At one point I looked up to see that the three girls sitting directly in front of me all had their hands up to their faces and were staring at me with wide eyes through splayed fingers – a technique usually reserved for watching scary movies. The second happened when I was reading Matilda to the grade 3s. I had just read the section where Matilda loses her temper with Miss Trunchbull after being falsely accused of putting a newt in the water jug. Two girls were walking in front of me as we left the story pit, and one turned to the other and said “I didn’t know Matilda could yell that loud.” 

I feel fortunate to have spent my professional life surrounded by books, and extremely gratified to have inspired and fostered a love of reading in so many children. Books can educate and entertain. They can introduce us to magical characters and locations that could never be, and help us understand people and places that existed in times which will never come again. They are passports to whole worlds, and illuminate the human condition. While all of these things are true, the thing I like best about books is their constancy. They have been my life-long companions, and I love them dearly.

What’s New Pussycat?

We never had pets when I was a girl. My eldest brother is afraid of animals, and I think my mom felt that having five kids along with all of their friends in the house was quite enough. I don’t recall ever asking for a pet, possibly because of my experience with a couple of good friends’ animals. One girlfriend had a dog which one day, completely out of the blue, bit her brother hard on the arm, and my best friend from grade 7 up had the meanest cat I have ever met. Her name was Mitzy and in the many years I knew her I never once saw her approach a human or accept any affection. She was great at snarling and hissing, but not much else.

All my relatives in the States had pets which I got to hang out with in the summer when we went to Massachusetts to visit. My Aunt Lyda had a dog named Sash and a cat named Buster. Sash looked like a walking footstool. He was low to the ground with a rectangular body and ringlets of unkempt fur hanging down like tassels. He was much like the dog in “Beauty and the Beast”. Sash was very yappy but otherwise quite nice. Buster, on the other hand, was a real devil. He had a mind of his own and was always getting into mischief. My Aunt Lyda had lived for many years in Brooklyn before returning to Fall River after her husband died, and she consequently had a very odd, and quite pronounced, accent. Whenever Buster would misbehave or make a mess she would cry, and I’ll write this out phonetically so you can hear the accent in your head, “Oh Busta you lit-el bugga.” 

Uncle Chuck was a hunter and had three beagles which he kept in a large outdoor cage at the top of the yard. I don’t remember the dogs’ names, but I do remember their gamey smell and the sound of their baying as I approached their enclosure. Uncle Barber and Aunt Alice had a lovely, well behaved poodle named Muffin, and two cats, Bonnie and Clyde. I’ve written before about how Uncle Barber could get Muffin and Clyde to sit nose-to-nose and to stay that way until he released them. They would growl the whole time, but they would obey. Uncle Barber had the most compelling quiet authority I’ve ever encountered. I don’t think I ever heard him raise his voice in all the years I knew him, yet I always felt like I wanted to please him.

My Uncle Cesar and Aunt Lucky lived in Cape Cod. They never had children because she’d had a traumatizing late-term miscarriage and refused to get pregnant again. We discovered years later that Uncle Cesar was profoundly bi-polar and thus constantly medicated. This led me to wonder if Aunt Lucky decided to forgo kids not only because of her miscarriage, but also because her husband needed so much care. Whatever the reason, they had no children and got a toy poodle as a surrogate. Her name was Buffy, and she has the distinction of being the most annoying dog I have ever met. My aunt, and especially my uncle, spoiled her rotten and spoke to her in a baby voice – a sugary-sweet tone I don’t even like when it’s directed towards babies. Buffy was hyper-active and totally untrained. She did what she wanted whenever she felt like it, and regularly tore my shins to shreds with her nasty little claws when I visited. Oh how I hated that dog!

Relatives on my mother’s side also had pets – a lovely ginger cat named Tiger, and a beautiful Irish setter named Jonathan. Tiger was very timid and spent most of his time outside, but the few interactions I had with him were always nice. Jonathan was perhaps the most stunned dog I have ever met, but my middle cousin Cameron loved him dearly. Cam was heartbroken when Jonathan was struck and killed by a car after incautiously running into traffic to chase after something or other. It was sad, but none of us was overly surprised. It was just a matter of time until Jonathan’s stupidity got him killed.

I don’t remember ever asking for a pet, but maybe I did. I received a card on my 16th birthday featuring pen-and-ink drawings by my middle sister’s very talented boyfriend. The picture on the front of the card featured a set of drawn theatre curtains behind a small sign atop an easel which said, “Coming soon.” Inside was a drawing of two cats standing on the stage on their hind legs. Their front legs were stretched wide to the side and they had sappy smiles on their faces. The single word “Ta-da!” was printed underneath. I looked up with glee and surprise to have my mother confirm that I was indeed getting two cats for my birthday. I was overjoyed!

We went that very afternoon to the local Humane Society shelter and I chose two kittens. They were brothers, although they looked nothing alike. Shatsy had short white fur with brown spots and a large, solid body. Gato, on the other hand, had long, mottled fur and was quite slight. It turned out that their personalities were entirely different as well; Shatsy was docile and dumb, whereas Gato was testy and smart. Gato regularly beat up his larger brother, and Shatsy simply let him. I’d often wake up to see a clumps of fur all around the house and know that Gato had worked his brother over yet again.

Shatsy loved people and was very domestic. He also loved to eat. He would regularly jump up on the kitchen counter looking for scraps, but was so clumsy and heavy-footed when he jumped down that I would inevitably hear him land. I’d run into the kitchen to reprimand him for going on the counter, something he knew was forbidden, but rather than running away he would always turn onto his back as if to say, “You wouldn’t punish a cat as adorable as I am, would you?” If he’d had eye lashes, he would definitely have been fluttering them. I would speak sternly to him, and he would flip over and lovingly rub up against my leg, too dumb to even understand that he was in trouble. 

One of my favourite memories of Shatsy involves my father whom Shatsy seemed to particularly adore. Dad, who had a fairly dramatic streak, would start walking down the driveway and Shatsy would run up to walk beside him. My father would then begin strutting and put out his right hand as though he were holding an invisible leash. In the end he looked like a pompous nobleman taking the air with his trusty, tethered cat by his side. Shatsy would faithfully keep stride with Dad as many times as he would circle the driveway. It was hilarious.

Gato was much more independent than his brother. He was often missing tufts of fur or bore scratches from the various fights he got into with neighbourhood cats on his nightly rounds. He was also an excellent hunter. Gato often came home with a limp rodent or bird in his mouth which he was always reluctant to drop before coming in the house. One time I woke up to his loud purring, and the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the body of a decapitated bird right beside my pillow. I guess Gato was giving me a gift, but the whole episode put me in mind of the scene with the horse’s head in “The Godfather”. I didn’t yell as long as John Marley did in the movie, but I definitely screamed as I shot up in bed and flicked the corpse across the room with the back of my hand.

My mother took me to San Francisco for a week when I turned 18 to celebrate my upcoming graduation from high school. My brother picked us up from the airport on our return, and my dad was waiting on the porch as we pulled into the driveway. He came down to the bottom step looking distraught, and started speaking as soon as I got to him. He was full of apologies as he explained that Shatsy and Gato had been missing for several days. I was shocked and saddened by this revelation, but of course immediately told him he needn’t apologize as it wasn’t his fault. It turned out that about nine neighbourhood cats had gone missing on the same night. My mother suggested that perhaps someone who worked in a lab had snatched the cats to use in experiments, but my father and I thought another explanation was more likely. We had recently acquired a new neighbour whose backyard was kitty-corner to ours. He kept all kinds of birds caged outside and was constantly complaining about my cats harassing them. Dad and I suspected that he had finally had enough and simply got rid of the cats himself. It’s a real dick move to gather up nine domestic cats from a suburban street in the middle of the night regardless of who did it, especially as most were owned by children.

Not long after this we bought my dad a new cat and called him Merlin. He was a lovely pearl-gray Maine coon with an absolutely beautiful face. It turned out that my father didn’t want another cat, so when my brother Michael and I rented an apartment together in the annex neighbourhood of Toronto, Merlin came with us. Our place was on the second floor of a house with a large deck in the back. Michael and I were concerned about how Merlin would get down to the ground, so we came up with a clever plan to help him out. We got some pressboard and used it to build a long runway which ran from the top railing of our deck down to the picnic table in the back yard. We made it in two pieces with a piano hinge in the middle so we could fold it up and store it on the deck when it wasn’t in use. We even stapled carpet down the middle of the ramp to make it easier for Merlin to get up and down. It took some time to built, but finally it was ready. We put it in place and let Merlin out. He immediately jumped to the top of the deck railing, and without even looking at our glorious catwalk hopped on to a large tree beside the house and shimmied down. Michael and I looked at each other and started to laugh. Oh yeah, cats can climb trees.

The first cat my husband Douglas and I had was a slinky ginger we named George. George was incredibly friendly, and liked nothing better than to lie draped across your chest with his head resting on your shoulder. You could literally wear him around the house like a stole. Douglas and I were planning on travelling for some months and weren’t sure what to do with George. My eldest brother was subletting our place, so there was no way George could stay there. About a week before we were set to go George just disappeared. It was fortuitous timing, but we were both sad when he didn’t come home.

After out travels we got a new cat we called Bemo after the taxis we’d ridden in Bali. Bemo wasn’t overly friendly, but we loved her just the same. One day, after being missing for almost a week, she hobbled into the backyard looking badly injured. We gently placed her on a blanket in the house and tried to nurse her back to health, but after two days of refusing to even drink we decided to bring her to the Humane Society. The vet examined Bemo and told us she would need orthopaedic surgery to deal with the injuries in her back legs and hips. Even with that there was no guarantee that Bemo would ever walk or be pain-free again, and the procedure was going to cost about $1,000. It seemed unreasonable and kind of stupid to spend that much money unless we could be sure of a favourable outcome for the cat, so we decided to have her put down. The receptionist at the front desk was unbelievably rude and condescending when we told him our decision. He not-so-subtly suggested that it was typical of Yuppies like us to bail on our pet when things got expensive. I was already feeling terrible about the decision and burst into tears in the lobby. Douglas instructed me to go wait in the car and that he would handle it. I don’t know if he had words with the man behind the desk – all I know is he came out of the building about five minutes later with an empty box. Bemo had been put out of her suffering.

I’ve had my current cat Mo for 13 years now. She is an unremarkable looking grey cat, but since my kids moved out she has become very attached to me. The first dozen years we owned her she was very anxious. She was extremely skittish and neurotically licked all the fur off her belly, leaving it bald, red and raw. That continued until a year and a half ago when I retired. Mo became much calmer and better adjusted once I was home all the time. She regularly sits with me and likes to be picked up and hugged in the mornings and when I come home after being away. She bumps noses with me and purrs like mad whenever I touch her. She has stopped compulsively licking, and the fur has grown back on her belly. I’ve come to understand that most of her anxiety was due to being alone so much. I feel guilty about not realizing this sooner, but at least now we have each other and are best buds. 

My children have for years encouraged me to get a dog. I see people walking their dogs in the park every day, many of whom are crazy cute and seem to have lovely personalities. Dogs are much more devoted than cats, and love their owners in a way cats simply cannot. They are more human in nature than felines and therefore almost certainly make better companions. Dogs are also more work than cats, requiring much more attention, walks, and baths. Of these three, the attention is what concerns me the most. I already raised two children alone and spent 19 years working in an elementary school, and I’m not sure I want to have to provide unending care and attention yet again. I fear it could become onerous. Cats are beautifully independent – they come to you when they are feeling affectionate, and gladly snub you when they aren’t. They can be real assholes, but I kind of like that about them. I still can’t clearly see if there is a dog in my future, but I’m absolutely sure there is at least one cat.

Boys Don’t Cry

I am a secular humanist. I don’t really understand the appeal of religion – all the ritual and rigamarole – although I can see that believing in God could be comforting. I firmly believe that religious dogmatism and tribalism account for many of the greatest ills in history, one of the most recent and prominent being the sexual predation of boys by countless Catholic priests, almost none of whom were charged let alone tried or incarcerated. The scale of the abuse almost defies belief, and while the guilty priests certainly acted (and likely continue to act) in an appalling way, I think the cover-up by the church leadership is even more despicable. The reputation of the institution meant more to them than the welfare of those innocent boys. Disgraceful.

As a humanist, I try to treat everyone with compassion. As a human, I often fall short of this goal. I previously wrote an article about rape culture in which I noted that more males are raped than females, and then went on to rather smugly suggest that this fact was beside the point. I apologize for my glib dismissal of the violation of males at the hands of sexual abusers. It’s true that rapists are almost always men, but that has no bearing on the suffering of those they defile regardless of their gender. Male victims are still victims and deserve to be heard and to have their assailants brought to justice. 

My son recently sent me an article from Sports Illustrated  entitled “Why Aren’t More People Talking About the Ohio State Sex Abuse Scandal?” The article, written by Jon Wertheim, recounts how the sports doctor for Ohio State University, Dr. Richard Strauss, spent 20 years sexually abusing male athletes while also handing out illegal steroids. A great many people are aware of the abuses of Larry Nassar, the sports doctor for Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics. I have seen two documentaries about this scandal, and the countless accusations against Nassar and his trial were all over the news. A paper commissioned by Ohio State reported that Strauss committed at least 1,429 instances of fondling and 47 instances of rape between 1978 and 1998, yet only a handful of victims complained about their abuse at the time and almost no media coverage ensued. Why?

There are many factors which play into the answer to that question. Firstly, many Ohio State athletes confirm that it was “an open secret” that Strauss regularly fondled his patients. Athletes in varying sports had different nicknames for him – some called him “Dr. Feel Good”, to others he was “Dr. Jelly Fingers”. There was also “Dr. Nuts”, “Dr. Balls”, and “Dr. Drop-Your-Drawers”. These young men needed to make light of the abuse because their ability to compete depended on Strauss clearing them to play. Many of them were at school on athletic scholarships, so they needed to compete and do well to ensure they could continue at Ohio State until graduation. Ultimately it was up to Strauss whether they completed university or not.

Secondly, Dr. Strauss was only about 5’7” and 140 lbs, whereas most of the patients he abused were big, strapping young men. Many of them felt ashamed that such a small, slight man had taken advantage of them. They thought both their reputation as team players and their manhood would be called into question if they reported the abuse. They were ashamed of and confused by what had happened, and felt turning Strauss in would reflect worse on them than on the doctor himself. Also, this was happening at a time when the awareness of sexual assault, let alone same-sex sexual assault, was very limited. These young men didn’t have the comprehension or vocabulary to express what had happened to them. As one of the victims says in the article, “We never thought a man could sexually abuse a man. We joked about it. But I don’t think we were really joking.” 

Thirdly, Dr. Strauss was handing out steroids of all sorts to enhance the athletes’ performance. This was at a time when not a lot was known about performance enhancing drugs, or PEDs, and university drug-testing protocols were lax at best. Strauss openly offered PEDs to various athletes, then when their performance improved he would threaten to withdraw the drug unless the athlete silently submitted to his fondling. A trainer in the article is quoted as saying Strauss prescribed PEDs on the understanding that, “I’ll make you bigger. I’ll make you a better performing athlete. But you have to do what I say.”

There were some young men who told authorities about Strauss’s behaviour over his twenty years in the position, but nothing was done about it. The same thing had happened with Nassar at Michigan State and in USA Gymnastics – athletes came forward, but those in power chose not to act. I think these organizations did not want to become embroiled in a scandal and therefore chose to ignore the abuse in order to protect their reputations. It is the same thinking that has allowed pedophile priests free reign for decades despite the Catholic Church’s knowledge of their behaviour. These institutions are therefore complicit in the vile conduct of their employees.

The coaches at Ohio State are also to blame for Strauss’s unchecked abuse. The SI article claims that they were well aware of his predations and would regularly use the threat of having to see the doctor to make their athletes run faster or train harder. They also knew that Strauss was distributing untested PEDs to their players, but rather than being alarmed by such behaviour they were grateful that their athletes now had a competitive edge. Clearly winning is everything to people of this mindset, and the health and welfare of the young adults in their charge was willfully ignored in favour of acquiring championships and medals.

In 1996 the number of complaints became so overwhelming that the University quietly dropped Strauss from their athletics department, although he would remain on campus as a tenured professor. Wertheim writes, “No formal reports were prepared. No state of Ohio licensing personnel were notified.” In other words, nobody was told what Strauss had been doing, and he faced no official repercussions for his heinous behaviour. What’s more, because the medical authorities had no idea about his misconduct, Strauss opened a private men’s clinic in Columbus as soon as he lost his position at OSU. He was sufficiently sure that he would never face charges from the university that he brazenly offered student discounts at his clinic in the campus newspaper. 

Strauss’s fate changed once he began treating the public. The men using his services no longer needed his approval to play on a team or maintain their scholarship. These independent patients began to complain about the doctor’s behaviour and in short order Strauss left the clinic and voluntarily retired from OSU in 1998. The article notes that, “Upon his retirement, Strauss was conferred the honorific emeritus status by OSU.” How galling to the hundreds of men he abused that he never faced any repercussions for his actions, especially considering how many of his victims continue to deal with the trauma he inflicted decades after they were abused. Some have psychological issues and struggle with rage, and many deal with chronic pain that could have been avoided had they felt comfortable going to the doctor when they first suffered their injuries. 

I was shocked that I’d never even heard of Strauss until I read this article, especially considering the scale and duration of his serial abuse. It is a testament to how awkward society still finds male rape that this story was buried for so long. The reparations victims are receiving from OSU as a result of recent lawsuits also speaks to how much same-sex sexual abuse is underplayed and misunderstood. The female athletes who sued Michigan State for institutional neglect in the case of Larry Nassar received an average of almost $1.3 million per claim, while the male athletes who sued OSU with regards to Strauss received roughly $250,000 per victim. Why is the pain and suffering of abused men worth so much less than that of women? 

Compensating men the same amount as women would be an admission that they are as susceptible to psychological and emotional damage as the so called “weaker sex”, and this is a point pervasive toxic masculinity cannot cede. I would argue that the distress and shame of sexually abused men, and their deep reluctance to come forward in the first place, can be laid at the feet of toxic masculinity as well. This is a type of hyper-masculinity promoted in patriarchal cultures which manifests in attitudes detrimental to society at large, and to men themselves. These include the stereotype that men must be socially dominant, which can in turn lead to misogyny and homophobia. Toxic masculinity can also perpetuate the normalization of violence in the lives of males, an example being the continued use of expressions like “boys will be boys” in response to aggressive behaviour.

Peggy Orenstein has recently written a book called “Boys and Sex” which was excerpted in The Atlantic this January. Orenstein spent two years researching the book, interviewing over 100 American boys between the ages of 16 and 20. She spoke to them “…about masculinity, sex and love: about the forces, seen and unseen, that shape them as men.” Orenstein interviewed boy of all races and ethnicities, but concentrated on those who were either in college or college bound because “…like it or not, they’re the ones most likely to set cultural norms.”

I was encouraged when I read through Orenstein’s article because almost all of the boys had very egalitarian opinions about females – feeling they were smart and deserving of their positions in college, on the athletic field, and in school leadership. Many of the boys had female and gay friends, marking a a huge shift from what you might have seen even 20 years ago. They also were very savvy about toxic masculinity, citing mass shootings, domestic violence, sexual harassment, and campus rape as direct results of its existence. Orenstein consequently didn’t have to spend any time finding a shared definition of the term with these young men. Rather, she began delving into how toxic masculinity played out in their lives, and how, if at all, they hoped to counter it.

What made me sad in the article was the reported result of a 2018 national survey of more than a thousand 10 to 19 year-olds commissioned by Plan International USA and conducted by the polling firm PerryUndem. The study found that the girls believed there were myriad ways to be a successful women and that they could shine in many different disciplines (with the big caveat being that they still felt valued primarily for their appearance). The boys, on the other hand, were of the opinion that there was only one path for respectable men – they had to be dominant, aggressive, tall, sexually accomplished, stoic, athletic, and, at least some day, rich. Further, Orenstein writes “One-third said they felt compelled to suppress their feelings, to “suck it up” or “be a man” when they were sad or scared, and more than 40% said that when they were angry, society expected them to be combative.” 

So how do these boys break free from the strictures of such narrow, pervasive definitions of masculinity? One of the young men Orenstein interviewed, Cole, relayed a story. He had joined the rowing team at his high school when he was a sophomore, and one day a senior on the team started bragging about a sexual encounter with one of Cole’s female classmates. Cole and another sophomore felt uncomfortable hearing such private details about a female friend and told the guy to cut it out. Cole says “I started to explain why it wasn’t appropriate, but he just laughed.” The next day a second senior told a really sexist story, and while Cole’s friend stepped up again, he decided to hold back. Cole explains that as his friend continued to object, “…you could tell that the guys on the team stopped liking him as much. They stopped listening to him, too. It’s almost as if he spent all his social currency” trying to get them to stop making sexist jokes. “Meanwhile” Cole continues, “I was sitting there, too afraid to spend any of mine, and I just had buckets left.”

Which begs the question, how do good guys who don’t agree with the oppressive definition of manliness perpetuated by toxic masculinity make any progress in the face of it? If speaking directly against the sexist and homophobic elements of toxic masculinity leaves them without any social currency, then how can they possibly combat it? Orenstein cites research which shows that those who rigidly adhere to these masculine norms are “not only more likely to harass and bully others but to themselves be victims of verbal or physical violence. They’re more prone to binge-drinking, risky sexual behaviour, and getting in car accidents. They are also less happy than other guys, with higher depression rates and fewer friends in whom they can confide.” 

Many of the young men victimized by Dr. Strauss experienced periods of depression and unaccountable rage over the years after their abuse. How much easier might their lives have been had they been able to express the hurt that was done to them, and subsequently received the same kind of non-judgemental counselling and support as female rape victims? Clearly men have to start allowing other men to feel the full panoply of human emotions without shame, but society generally does as well. Every adult – every parent, coach, and teacher – must begin to allow boys to express empathy and pain without fear of their masculinity being called into question, in the same way that they should stop telling girls that anger is unladylike. We must also model these behaviours amongst ourselves. True freedom for both sexes will never be achieved unless we stop emphasizing what makes us different and start celebrating what makes us the same – our shared humanity.

I Got the Music in Me

Music has been a huge and integral part of my life. My father was a professional musician and his whole family was very musical. My mother, though unable to play herself, was an avid music lover, as were her mother and sister. Both my brothers are professional musicians and my middle sister is a stage manager who often works in opera. Altogether I have four older siblings and grew up in the ‘60s. This means our basement was always filled with loud music and even louder teenagers. My dad, my mom, and my siblings all had different tastes in music, filling my childhood with every genre you can name (other than country).

My father was at heart a jazz guitarist and played jazz gigs whenever they were offered, which was only every so often. He had a large family to support and consequently spent the bulk of his time playing in dance bands at various functions and in the studio recording TV shows and jingles. Dad frequented Toronto’s jazz clubs, and as my brother and I got older he would often take us with him. We went to George’s Spaghetti House and Bourbon Street, both of which featured excellent Italian food and smoking hot jazz. Moe Koffman, a famous Canadian jazz musician I mentioned in a previous article, was the booking agent for the Spaghetti House and often gave himself the gig. There was a joke amongst jazz fans and musicians in Toronto at the time who would call in to the club and say, “I’d like to know who’s playing tonight, and I won’t take Moe for an answer.”

Dad listened to a lot of jazz at home, most often guitarists like Joe Pass and Jim Hall, but also to other instrumental soloists, singers, and big bands. Listening to jazz with Dad was interesting because sometimes he would take apart what we were hearing, talking about chords and progressions and why a particular resolution was so fitting or brilliant. He also listened to a lot of classical music, with Brahms being by far his favourite composer.

My mom listened to classical music as well, being particularly drawn to Prokofiev, but she wasn’t a fan of jazz. She preferred Broadway tunes and popular music. She had cast recordings of “Jesus Christ Superstar”, “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris”, and, most exciting of all, “Hair”. There is an incredibly explicit song in “Hair” called “Sodomy” comprised almost entirely of the names of sexual acts. It was beyond thrilling that I could listen to and sing along with such racy stuff as a girl. Mom also had recordings by contemporary singer/songwriters like Elton John, Harry Nilsson, Laura Nero, and my personal favourite, Cat Stevens. Not only did he write and sing extremely well, but he was also dreamy to look at. My mother listened to absolute drivel while she read, music my father called “pap”. It was basically elevator music and pretty much faded into the background. Mom was about the brightest person I ever met, and yet she regularly read pulp fiction while listening to insipid wallpaper music. Weird.

My two eldest siblings were respectively 9 and 7 years older than me, and because this was the ‘60s they were into what has now become classic rock and roll. I heard The Who, The Beatles, The Kinks, Cream, and Sly and the Family Stone. These acts were followed in the ‘70s by Led Zeppelin, Yes, David Bowie, and a no longer little Stevie Wonder. My sisters each had a crush on a different Beatle, and my eldest brother David almost worshipped Jimi Hendrix. He wore a headband just like Jimi’s and his friends were all huge fans as well. One of them could draw amazingly realistic pencil sketches of Hendrix in any pose and on any material. David gave me a Steppenwolf album for Christmas one year, and no sooner had I got the wrapping off then he asked “Can I borrow it?” I immediately obliged because I had no idea who they were. 

I was in high school in the mid to late ‘70s and by then only one of my brothers and I were still at home. This is when I began to forge my own taste in music, discovering new bands that my friends and I could relate to. There was a lot of really good music at the time, and I found people and groups I liked in almost every genre. Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor were my favourite troubadours. Steely Dan, Talking Heads and Roxy Music were my favourite groups, Chicago had my favourite horn section, and Average White Band and Earth, Wind and Fire were my favourite funk bands. I had for a long time loved The Jackson Five, standing out from the rest of my suburban white girlfriends who all adored The Osmond Family. Blech – their music was bland and boring compared to the groovy beats and amazing harmonies of the Jacksons. Besides, Marlon was really cute and Michael’s voice was unparalleled. 

Not all of the music I liked was good. I had a ridiculouslyhuge crush on Barry Manilow and would helplessly swoon when I heard one of his many over-the-top love ballads. I recognized at the time that it was all rather insipid and cheesy, but I just couldn’t help myself. I also realized that I would be mercilessly ribbed if my friends, or particularly my siblings, caught wind of my Manilow mania, so I kept it to myself. The late ‘70s brought in the disco era, and say what you will about disco music, it was extremely catchy and incredibly fun to dance to. Songs by KC and the Sunshine Band and The BeeGees have become iconic, and Donna Summer had an absolutely glorious voice. If the prime directive of pop music is to make you feel good, then I think disco takes the prize as the happiest iteration of the genre ever.

At the dawn of the ‘80s a second wave of music came roaring from across the pond. New Romantic and New Wave bands filled the airwaves. The Smiths, Tears for Fears, New Order, and The Cure flowed out of my radio and demanded my attention. Howard Jones was a captivating one-man-band, Echo and the Bunnymen were fresh and exciting, and Depeche Mode blew my mind. These bands and many others created the soundtrack for my 20s – a carefree time before kids when my Friday and Saturday nights consisted of smoking up then going to a club and dancing my head off in a jacket with ridiculously large shoulders. My husband was an uninhibited dancer – some might even say he was a menace, especially after a few drinks. He would careen recklessly around the dance floor, often crashing into or even knocking over those in his path. Luckily everyone was either sufficiently stoned, drunk, happy, or chill that no altercations every ensued from his exuberant gyrations.

My father’s whole family was very musical. My paternal grandfather brought his Mandola from Portugal when he emigrated to America – an instrument which now has pride of place in my brother David’s home. My dad was a professional guitarist, and my aunt Alice owned a huge Wurlitzer organ with a bunch of bass pedals and endless stops. I loved playing with its many rhythm buttons when we visited – rock beats no. 1, 2 and 3, dixieland, and cha cha. Aunt Alice would launch into a hilarious Carmen Miranda imitation when I pushed the samba button, swivelling her hips and trilling her tongue. She had wanted to go into show business as a young woman, but her father had forbidden it. It’s too bad because she was a natural and unabashed performer, and would break into song at the drop of a hat. One time when my brother and I were adults we visited Aunt Alice and her husband, Uncle Barber, with our kids. We were all going out for lunch so my niece, my daughter, and I all piled into the backseat of my uncle’s car. No sooner were we on the road than Aunt Alice launched into “Some Enchanted Evening”. She sang with gusto, turning to include the girls and I in her joyous song. I simply smiled and nodded when she looked at me, but the girls froze. Who was this crazy lady in the front seat? Did she think she was in a musical? Well, she wasn’t crazy, but yes, she did live as though everyday life were a performance. What’s wrong with that?

We would visit my father’s family in Fall River, Massachusetts every summer when I was a girl. Three of Dad’s five siblings lived in the same house, and at some point they would all collect in my Aunt Alice’s apartment and play “stump the Hank”. This game entailed everyone calling out the most obscure songs they could think of in an effort to stymie my father. I watched this scenario play out for at least 10 years, and never once did they get him. At most my dad would have to think for a bit before he began playing, but usually he would just say, “What key?” and launch into the song. He was a journeyman musician and lived by his fake book – a collection of popular songs professional musicians bring to every gig in case they are asked to play a song they don’t know. You couldn’t survive and thrive as ably as my father did in such a competitive profession without having an encyclopedic knowledge of songs. I often thought, as my father got older and his memory faded, that he had probably forgotten more music and theory than I had learned in the first place.

My cousin Sonny had two boys, Gary and Brian, both of whom were very musical as well. Unfortunately their talent was of the most annoying variety. Whereas the kids in my family just studied our instruments and performed on stage, Sonny’s boys were shameless attention hogs. One time my Aunt Mary, Gary and Brian’s grandmother and a lovely, gentle soul, asked my dad to play “Swanee” so the boys could perform it. My dad immediately agreed then shot a surreptitious “oh brother” eye-roll to my mother. He started in a-strummin’ and the boys came out a-smilin’. They were every bit as over the top and corny as Al Jolson – the only thing missing was the blackface. They even wore white gloves! The boys finished down on one knee with their jazz hands a-flutterin’, and the crowd went crazy. Well, everyone except myself, my dad, and my mom. We all politely clapped, but later agreed that the boys’ performance, while proficient, was incredibly cheesy and somewhat embarrassing.

I started playing an instrument in grade 7. Our music teacher was Mr. Mugford, a flamboyantly gay man who regularly wore lime-green briefs with a yellow happy face on the crotch which shone through his tight white pants. Looking back I’m surprised this was allowed, but perhaps our principal expected eccentricities in our art teachers. I also don’t remember anyone making fun of his campiness, but I only hung out with artsy types. I’m sure there were other groups in the school that ridiculed him. Mr. Mugford allowed us to choose our own instruments. Almost all the other girls opted for the flute or clarinet, but I wanted the French horn. I’d learned to love the sonorous, smooth brassy sound of the French horn as it was featured in both “After the Gold Rush” by Neil Young, and “Down to You” by Joni Mitchell. 

It became clear in short order that I was proficient enough to play first horn in my intermediate band, and by the time I got to high school my father had bought me my own instrument and I was taking private lessons. My school had a wind ensemble which was open to students from grade 11 up, but Mr. Fowler, our loveable if largely inept music teacher, recognized my talent and allowed me to join in grade 10. Insult was added to injury for the 19 year old first horn player when I, at the tender age of 14, was made first chair. The other horn players took umbrage on her behalf and they all snubbed me. It soon became clear to them, however, that I was actually a better player and section leader than the girl I had replaced, forcing them to show me some begrudging respect. They never welcomed me into their group, but they no longer actively ignored me. I didn’t care either way because I had plenty of friends in my own grade and was in the band to play, not to socialize.

I was sufficiently good that I played first horn in the North York Youth Orchestra. Buoyed by that success, I tried out for the National Youth Orchestra. I don’t remember where the audition was held, but I do remember the process. Each applicant was given a number and told not to speak to the panel no matter what. We were to enter when our number was called, play pieces as instructed, and then leave by the same door. I remember I was number 6. I walked into the room with my horn and music and was surprised to see a large black curtain hanging between my chair and the judges’ table. I’m sure the person who gave the audition instructions had mentioned this, but somehow in my haze of nerves I must have missed it. The visual barrier was there to ensure that the judges made their decision based on our playing alone – not our gender or ethnicity or age or any other bias which might inadvertently influence their decision. 

I did really well on my pre-approved pieces and in the sight-reading section. One of the judges thanked me for a job well done and I felt pretty pleased with myself as I began to gather up my music. Just then, out of the blue, one of the other judges said, “Just one last thing, number 6. Play us a G flat major scale.” I don’t know if it was nerves or because I’d assumed the audition was over, but my mind went absolutely blank. I couldn’t remember the order of flats and sharps, I couldn’t remember the fingering for a G flat, and I couldn’t get my mouth to produce any more saliva. I began taking deep, measured breaths to try and calm my mind and access the necessary information. This was the only sound in the room for what seemed like an eternity until one of the judges finally called it. I left the room with my head down and a lead ball in my stomach. I made 2nd alternate, but feel pretty confident I could well have gotten in had I not frozen at the last minute. Ah well, I guess I’ll never know.

As an adult I picked up the recorder and began playing classical duets with my brother Michael on guitar. We regularly played at family gatherings, with our mother just beaming as she pretended to conduct. It somehow felt as if we were playing just for her, even though the room was full of people. About a year after she died our Aunt Carolyn, Mom’s only sister, came up from Boston. She asked Michael and I to play, and even though we hadn’t done so since Mom’s death, we obliged. We were about halfway through the second piece when I started crying and Michael put his head down and stopped playing. All the joy had been sapped from the experience by the absence of our mother. She has been dead now for almost 20 years, and I have just recently started playing recorder again. I am hopeful that enough time has passed that Michael and I can resume playing for the family. I feel pretty sure Mom would want us to – she was always so proud of all our musical abilities.

For the past 6 years I have been a member of a local choir, and absolutely love the experience of making music with others again. Music is an international form of communication which pre-dates formal language. It is intrinsic to the human condition, and creates community in a unique and elemental way. It elicits emotions, bridges silences, and evokes memories. A song can take me back to a time in my life like nothing else can. Music is visceral and emblematic. Whether you create it or simply consume it, music, and the arts in general, are the seasoning in life’s stew. Our existences would be terribly bland without them.

Black and Blue

HBO produces excellent television. Their series and movies are extremely good – imaginative, well-written, and superbly cast. They also make informative and artful documentaries. Last week I watched one of these called “On the Record” which deals with accusations of sexual assault levelled against Russell Simmons, co-founder of Def Jam Records and one of the most revered figures in the hip hop community. Simmons is also a highly successful entrepreneur, having started lucrative fashion lines and co-produced highly popular films such as “The Nutty Professor” and “Dude, Where’s my Car?” His net worth was estimated at $345 million in 2011. He is a huge success story and an icon in the American black community. 

His stellar record remained untarnished until the L.A. Times published an investigative report on Dec. 13, 2017 in which five women accused Simmons of sexual misconduct, including one rape. The New York Times simultaneously printed a story in which four more women accused Simmons of inappropriate conduct, with three more rape allegations. The #METOO movement had empowered these women to come forward. Simmons, like so many other powerful men, denied everything. “On the Record” includes several of Simmons’s accusers, but primarily focuses on one, Drew Dixon.

Dixon is a bright, capable and talented woman who turned her passion for music into a successful career in the 1990s. She started out working as a receptionist at a few record labels, but made sure to insert herself into as many meetings as possible. It became clear over time that the outspoken Dixon knew talent when she saw it, and in 1992 she was hired by Simmons to work in the A&R department at Def Jam. A&R stands for artists and repertoire – the division of a record label or production company that is responsible for talent scouting and overseeing the artistic development of songwriters and musical artists. Dixon proved her worth in short order, earning the company massive revenue and the notoriety and legitimacy which come from winning industry awards.

Simmons and Dixon had to work closely and things were strictly professional between them for her first few months at Def Jam. Things took a turn one night when the two colleagues were out at a bar after work. Simmons grabbed Dixon as she came out of the washroom, threw her into a closet, and began kissing her. She managed to get out of that situation, but then the real harassment began. According to Dixon, Simmons came into her office every couple of weeks and propositioned her while exposing himself. She always delicately rebuffed his advances (he was her boss after all) and he always apologized later. 

This was the point in “On the Record” when several other African American women joined the conversation and made two points clear. Firstly, it was understood by black women in the record industry that men were going to harass and sexualize them at work. Smart women had to figure out how to flirt just enough to keep the man’s ego intact, but not so much as to make themselves vulnerable to rape. If you didn’t play the game perfectly you were likely to be assaulted and/or fired. 

Secondly, there is a lot of pressure brought to bear on black women by their culture not to complain when they are sexually harassed or assaulted by black men. Society at large perpetuates the stereotype of black men as aggressive sexual predators. Black women who report such crimes are considered traitors to their race, according to the African American women in the documentary. Tarana Burke, founder of the #METOO movement, put it this way, “Black women’s need, and our duty, we feel, to protect black men is definitely a hindrance to protecting ourselves.” Perhaps the most graphic and poignant quote on this subject came from Kimberlé Crenshaw, a black author. She said that when it comes to being raped by a man of her race, every African American female is tacitly taught, “Your responsibility to muffle your screams is greater than his responsibility not to do it in the first place.” 

Dixon had been working for Simmons a couple of years when one night after drinks he offered to order a car to take her home. He suggested she come up and wait in his apartment. Dixon had reservations, but she figured she had proven to be a sufficiently valuable asset to Def Jam that, despite Simmons’s repeated sexual advances, he would not do anything to her for professional reasons. She also thought that they were friends. Simmons said there was a CD of a new artist that he wanted her to listen to. The CD was in the stereo system in his bedroom, so Dixon went in to get it. No sooner had she got the CD out of the player than Simmons walked into the room naked but for a condom. He proceeded to forcibly rape her and somewhere in the process she blacked out. Evidently many people in traumatic situations do the same as a coping mechanism. Dixon came to some time later and found herself naked in the bathtub with Simmons, having no idea how she got there. She then reports he said to her, “So now that you and I are f**king, Drew, we can hang out and f**k all the time.” She left the tub, found her clothes, and in a daze made her way home. After gritting her teeth for another few months at Def Jam, Dixon resigned.

Siu Liu Abrams, who had been Simmons’s administrative assistant and friend in the early ‘90s, told a very similar story. They were out socializing one night and she came up to Simmons’s place to crash on the couch because she was too drunk to get home. Simmons came on to her as soon as they entered the apartment and she refused, reminding him that she was in a committed relationship. She alleges that Simmons responded to this by saying, “Siu Liu, we are friends. That is your pussy. I would never take anything from you that you didn’t give me.” She later passed out on the bed, and when she came to she saw him walking towards her wearing nothing but a condom. When he had finished with her, he simply called his driver to take her home as if nothing had happened. Abrams was sufficiently devastated by the rape that she tried to OD on sleeping pills later that night. The doctors barely saved her.

Dixon then went on to work at Arista Records for Clive Davis and had much success there as well. After four years, Davis retired and an esteemed black record producer name L.A. Reid took over. Reid almost immediately began sexually propositioning Dixon. She repeatedly said no as politely as she could, but that just made him angry. Dixon brought both Kanye West and John Legend in to audition, and each time Reid said no and dressed her down in front of the A&R team. Dixon came to understand that he would only sign her talent if she slept with him. It was a simple quid pro quo. She could not endure this kind of treatment again, so she left the industry completely. Dixon closed off her love of music and her creativity and went to study at Harvard Business School. 

It took years for these women and 18 others to come forward with their allegations. Black women have been horribly abused and freely raped since the time of slavery. According to Crenshaw, this has led to a perception that, “You can’t really rape or abuse a black woman because there’s nothing that they won’t do.” Additionally, white women, who are cast as demure and sweet, are often not believed when they cry rape. What chance then does a black woman have? Russell Simmons stepped away from Def Jam and all his other businesses in the wake of these accusations. He vehemently denies any wrongdoing, but has relocated to Bali which conveniently does not have an extradition agreement with the U.S. As for L.A. Reid, he left Sony Epic in 2012 amidst complaints of sexual misconduct, but has recently secured $75 million in financing to begin a new label. Neither man has been charged, due to insufficient evidence.

This is the point that I find so infuriating. 20 women have independently come forward to testify to Simmons’s sexual misconduct and, in several cases, rape. How does this not represent sufficient evidence? Is it feasible that for some reason they all got together and conspired to bring Simmons down? Why would they do so, especially considering that the majority of them are African American and therefore face incredible pressure from their race to stay quiet? These accusations range from 1988 to 2014, clearly indicating that Simmons is a serial rapist. 

I suspect the reason these many testimonials are not sufficient is because law enforcement, and the patriarchy in general, still believe that most women who report rape are lying. I recently read an article published last August in The Atlantic entitled “An Epidemic of Disbelief”. This piece, written by Barbara Bradley Hagerty, is an investigation into the huge backlog of rape kits in the United States that sit untested in warehouses all over the country. Hagerty convincingly argues that this is due to systemic apathy resulting largely from widespread lack of belief in the victims’ stories. 

Before getting into the specifics of Hagerty’s article I would like to take a moment to describe the process of collecting a rape kit. The alleged victim first removes all of her clothes and puts them in an evidence bag, leaving her naked and vulnerable under a flimsy hospital gown. Next, very close pictures are taken of the areas where she was violated, meaning she has to expose her most intimate parts to strangers. Then her pubic hair is combed and pulled, which is evidently quite painful, and internal and external swabs are taken of all areas where she was defiled. This means she is being penetrated again in her vagina, mouth and/or anus depending on where the assailant entered her. This process generally takes from two to four hours. 

Imagine enduring this after having just been raped. I applaud the women who go through this often traumatizing procedure for their courage and stamina. They understand that the evidence they are providing may prove crucial in catching and convicting their assailant, so they push down their feelings and allow themselves to be poked, prodded, swabbed, and photographed in exactly the same places where they have just been violated. Now imagine how furious these women must feel when they find out that this evidence is often not even processed let alone used in an investigation.

The incredible backlog of unexamined rape kits in the States first came to light in Detroit in 2009. An assistant prosecutor named James Spada had noticed that Detroit police often had difficulty providing the evidence he needed to successfully prosecute cases. He decided to have a look at the city’s main evidence lock-up and was directed to an off-site warehouse. He was appalled by what he saw there – windows were broken, birds were nesting in the rafters, and evidence boxes were piled haphazardly throughout the cavernous space. He came upon one particular area which housed rows and rows of steel shelving lined with white cardboard boxes. His police escort told him these were all rape kits, and readily responded “of course” when asked if they had been processed. Spada was unconvinced by the officer’s reply and began checking the kits himself. It turned out that none of them had even been opened, and doing a quick calculation in his head, Spada estimated that there had to be about 10,000 of them. It turns out there were 11,341 untested rape kits in the building, some of them spanning back 30 years.

Similar numbers of unopened rape kits have been found in countless large cities in the States since them. The federal government began handing out special, one-time sums of money to local law enforcement all over the country in an effort to help speed up the processing of these kits. Several cities, including Detroit, have been very good about compiling cases and trying suspects, but most of them have done little with the money. Hagerty suggests in her article that the reluctance to process these kits and open investigations is like, “…a mole on the skin that hints at a hidden cancer just below the surface. The deeper problem is a criminal justice system in which police officers continue to reflexively disbelieve women who say they’ve been raped.” Even when cases are opened, odds are very much against a conviction. “In 49 out of every 50 rape cases, the alleged assailant goes free”, making rape “…by far the easiest violent crime to get away with.”

Cleveland provides a perfect example of the prevalent disbelief of rape victims. Their prosecutor’s office hired a research team from a local university in 2015 to pore through police files and other records connected to untested rape kits in the city. A random sampling of cases found that notes from many police investigations barely filled a single page, that in 40% of cases detectives never contacted the victim, and that in 75% of cases they never interviewed her. Half of the investigations were closed in a week, and a quarter in a day. It is hard to know what to do in the face of such indifference, but I think this systemic disbelief or at least ambivalence towards women who come forward with rape accusations goes a long way to explain why so many women are hesitant to do so. What’s the point in coming forward if at best almost nothing will be done about it, and at worst you will end up being discredited or even blamed for being raped in the first place?

My research revealed that rape kits in Canada are processed promptly. The problem up here is accessibility. Nurses who compile rape kits are specially trained – they need a high degree of professionalism and must remain emotionally unattached from their patients because they will almost certainly be required to give forensic evidence. There can be no question of them feeling sorry for the women they serve. Kits and trained personnel are available pretty well everywhere in Ontario and Quebec, but in Saskatchewan and Manitoba only urban hospitals have them. Rural facilities in those two provinces and all hospitals in Alberta must request kits specially from the RCMP when the need arises. Facilities exist in abundance in the southern half of B.C., but are few and far between up north. Newfoundland has a generous 36 sites that can deliver kits, while Nova Scotia and P.E.I. have only three and one respectively, which advocates assert is woefully inadequate. 

The stigma and shame attached to rape go a long way towards explaining why so many women don’t report it, but so too does the dismal record of the justice system in following up on their claims. I had many encounters with cops during the five years I worked at a prison, and I understand they deal with horrible people and proficient liars on a daily basis. It is hard for them not to be cynical. The skepticism their job breeds, however, should be reserved for suspected criminals and not alleged victims. In every violent crime other than rape, it is. The Black Lives Matter movement has put a spotlight on the need for law enforcement to receive training on how to deal with people of colour. I would argue that equally pressing is their need to rethink the way they perceive and treat women who have been raped, and how they investigate their cases. 

What’s in a Name?

My maternal grandmother was born on August 29, 1911 and christened Margaret Jean Fargey (pronounced far-gee) – I always assumed her schoolmates gave her the rhyming moniker Margy Fargey. Her hometown of Weyburn, Saskatchewan is a small city in the southeast corner of the province, just 70 km from the North Dakota border. It is perhaps best known for being the birthplace of W.O. Mitchell, author of the iconic Canadian novel “Who has Seen the Wind”. My Nana (as everyone my generation and younger called her) gave me her first-edition copy of Mitchell’s book, printed in 1947. The title page bears the inscription, “To Margaret in memory of childhood in Weyburn. Bill Mitchell”. My great-grandfather, Harry Fargey, owned the town’s hardware store, and Mitchell’s father ran the local pharmacy.

My great-grandmother, Jean Milligan, was an Irish immigrant, while my great-grandfather Harry’s family had lived in Saskatchewan for generations. I’m not sure if Margaret is a family name, but Nana’s younger brother was named after their father. Evidently Nana’s mother was very keen on calling the boy Robert after a brother she had lost as a child, but her husband was having none of it. My uncle’s registered birth name is Harold Fargey Jr., but his mother always called him Bob. What’s more, she introduced him as Bob and registered him for school as Bob when the time came. He may well have been Harry on paper, but for all intents and purposes he was his uncle’s namesake, not his father’s. We always knew him as Uncle Bob.

In 1930, at the tender age of 19, Nana married David Cameron. He came from Winnipeg and his family was well known and highly regarded in Manitoba. My grandfather was, by all accounts, a very bright man. He probably could have carried on the stellar reputations of his father and uncle, but either the Depression got in his way or perhaps he simply didn’t want the pressure. Either way, he moved away from Winnipeg and married my Nana who promptly gave birth to first my mother and then my aunt Carolyn before she was 21 years of age. They lived in Regina for a time, then moved to Winnipeg, but like so many during the Depression, David couldn’t find work anywhere.

They relocated one final time to Ottawa when the war started. My grandfather probably felt he could find work in the Ministry of National Defence, but alas they were not looking for men with his skill set. In the end it was Nana’s secretarial skills that paid the bills. Nana told me years later that my grandfather felt emasculated by this turn of events, as would most any man of his generation. After casting about for work in Ottawa for almost five years, he finally joined the army. He needed to contribute to the family coffers to regain his pride. Unfortunately for his wife and daughters, however, he was killed in Italy early in 1944 – a loss my mother never really got over. Nana, now a mere 33 years old, was left to raise two girls on her own.

Nana stayed single for many years after her husband died. My mother married in 1952, and Aunt Carolyn followed suit in 1956. My parents settled in Toronto in the early ‘50s, and Nana followed them to be close to her grandchildren. She got a good secretarial job working for an American Airlines executive and took advantage of the city’s lively art scene, becoming a member of the ROM and the AGO and buying yearly subscriptions to the ballet, the symphony, and The Royal Alex Theatre. 

I always assumed that Nana didn’t remarry because she just never found the right man – after all, she was still relatively young, intelligent, and attractive when my grandfather died. Nana had the most lovely legs I have ever seen – even nicer than Betty Grable’s. It turns out, however, that she deliberately stayed single. My Uncle Bob, Nana’s younger brother, told me what actually happened. A friend and I were visiting him at his lovely home in California in the early ‘80s when, after I solemnly swore that Nana would never know, he told me the following story. Nana make a conscious choice to stay single after she was widowed so she could concentrate on her girls until they were married. In the late 1950s, with both her daughters settled, Nana began dating. It wasn’t long before she met a man named Bill whom she liked well enough to introduce to her friends and family. My father was an excellent judge of character, and when I returned from Santa Barbara I asked him if he had met this Bill character. Dad said he remembered him only too well and instinctively felt there was something off about the guy, but chose to keep his opinion to himself. Nana had been alone such a long time and was so happy that he didn’t want to burst her bubble.  

Nana and Bill dated for several months, and then one day he disappeared. There was no answer at his home phone, and when Nana called his workplace she was told that they had no record of anyone by that name ever working there. Feeling confused and more than a little alarmed, she then began contacting her friends to see if any of them had heard from him. None of them had, but one friend after another told Nana that they had loaned Bill money. Nana had vouched for him so they had assumed he was trustworthy. That’s when the penny dropped. Clearly this guy was a grifter who had conned Nana and taken advantage of her and her friends. Embarrassed and humiliated, Nana stayed in Toronto long enough to pay back every dime Bill had scammed, and then got transferred to Vancouver to lick her wounds. I’m not sure how long she stayed out west, but from the time I can remember, which is probably the mid ‘60s, Nana was in Toronto and very much in our lives. She put the whole episode behind her and never spoke of it again.

I was born August 10, 1961 in Scarborough and was named Margaret Jean after my Nana. I began dating the man I would eventually marry at the tender age of 17. We married when I was 24 and eventually had two children, my son Maxwell and my daughter Hannah. When the kids were 6 and 4 respectively my marriage fell apart, and shortly thereafter my husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer. A scant ten months later he died, and at the age of 36 I was left to raise my two young children alone.

I was working as mail censor and librarian at the maximum security prison situated on the edge of my small village. Two inmate workers were assigned to the library from Protective Custody, or PC. That meant I usually worked with rapists. There were always guys, however, who were put in PC for reasons other than their crimes – often it was because they had enemies in general population. I had three inmate workers over my five years in the prison who fit this description, one of whom was a thief I will call Donald.

Donald had been in the system most of his life. He was the second of three sons, all of whom were born by the time their mother was 16 years old. His family was poor, and his home life was violent. His mother simply couldn’t afford to raise three boys, and out of desperation she put her middle son into care. Donald was sent to a Catholic orphanage run by monks when he was 7 years old. When I asked him what that was like, he simply said, “Did you see the movie about that orphanage in Newfoundland?”. He was referring to “The Boys of Saint Vincent”, a Canadian film made in 1992. It documented the scandal which arose when it was discovered that the brothers who ran the facility were physically, emotionally, and sexually abusing the boys they were supposed to be caring for. Yet another example of Christian individuals and institutions betraying the trust and compromising the well-being of those in their charge. Evidently Donald endured similarly terrible treatment in the facility where he lived. He ran away at 13 and began living on the street. At 14 he was picked up on his first offence, and had spent the intervening sixteen years in and out of prison.

Donald had a son with his girlfriend when he was 28, and mere months after his son’s birth he was back in prison for robbery, his crime of choice. When he returned home after a 13 month sentence, his girlfriend was pregnant. She did not tell him this or try to explain, rather he learned it by seeing the sonogram image of her fetus proudly displayed on the fridge. This was yet another in a long line of personal betrayals Donald had endured throughout his life and he responded as he always did – he got stupid drunk and stole a truck, and then sped away when the cops tried to pull him over. He was currently serving two years less a day in my prison as a result of this stunt. 

Once when Donald came in on one of his regular library visits he approached me and said he was an artist. He had drawn up a few mock pictures which he thought might make good murals for my space. I really liked his work and approached the superintendent to ask for supplies and permission, which he readily granted. Donald then began spending substantial time painting in the library, and when one of my assigned helpers left the facility, he stepped into the position.

I did not mean to get emotionally involved with him, but I was vulnerable after my marriage breakup and my husband’s subsequent death. Donald seemed equally raw after the horrible way his girlfriend had treated him. I thought I could trust him not to hurt me because he himself had been hurt so often. Donald said he wanted to get a tattoo business going after he got out, so I loaned him some money. I left my job at the prison two weeks before his release date, and we arranged to meet in a local motel the evening he was let out. He never showed, and I had to face the abject humiliation of being abandoned and very likely conned.

He contacted me a couple days later, claiming he had taken the money out of his bank account and had every intention of meeting me when a former inmate who’d overheard us talking in the prison had robbed him. I reluctantly accepted his apology and we subsequently saw each other on several occasions. I gave him more money over that time despite harbouring serious doubts about his motivation. He disappeared after about two weeks, but I always felt that we actually were in love and he only took my money because that was how he had always survived in the past – it wasn’t personal. 

A few years later Donald called me completely out of the blue. He explained that he was living on his own in the bush making an honest dollar as a lumberjack, and had not gone back to his old ways. He apologized for the way he had treated me, and said that while he truly loved me, he simply couldn’t see a way to make it in my straight world. He needed to be alone and redefine himself as an honest man, not a criminal. Donald signed off, expressing gratitude for the kindness and financial help I had given him while wishing me the best. I assumed what he said was true since he had nothing to gain from calling me, and I felt heartened by his words. My faith in human beings was restored. I wish Nana had received similar closure.

So Nana and I were both widowed young with two children, and had been taken advantage of by opportunistic men. I am a huge patron of the arts and have done a great deal of travelling, just like my grandmother. She, however, did eventually have a long-term boyfriend which has so far not been the case for me. His name was Barney McKinley and he was a reporter for the Toronto Sun, a muck-raking publication known for printing every scandalous bit of news they can get their hands on. My father called the Sun “a rag” and did not respect Mr. McKinley at all. The two of them never got along and one time they argued so heatedly that Mr. McKinley stormed out of our house. I’m not sure what the fight was about, but I’m pretty sure Dad won.

At some point in her 70s Nana slipped and fell on some icy subway steps. She broke her ankle in several places, requiring surgery and the implantation of a pin. My brother Michael and I came to her apartment during her recovery to serenade her. Michael plays guitar and I recorder, and Nana always enjoyed our Vivaldi and Bach duets. Nana needed a cane for some time after her cast was removed, and one day when she was still at this stage Mr. McKinley came over to watch some golf. At some point she hobbled into the bathroom, and as she limped her way back into the living room Mr. McKinley said, “Why don’t you make me a sandwich while you’re up?” Well, something must have snapped in Nana when she heard this because she replied,“Why don’t you make your own damn sandwich? And while you’re at it, make it in your own kitchen and don’t come back!”

I always felt this was probably a “last straw” scenario, although Nana didn’t go into details when she told me this story. She was always very discreet. At one point years later my daughter was considering opening up a sandwich shop. She loved this story so much that she wanted to call it “Make your Own Damn Sandwich” as an homage to her independent great-grandmother. 

Nana never dated another man after turfing Mr. McKinley, but continued to find joy in the arts, travel, her family, and her many friends. I too expect to remain single the rest of my life but find fulfillment in all the same ways my grandmother did. Do I miss my Nana? Naturally. Or, to quote the lady herself, “Well, natch”, but I am grateful to have had her strong, trail-blazing example to follow. 

Blinded Me with Science

Human beings are such a mystery. They can be breathtakingly smart and unbelievably stupid. Scientists can often demonstrate both of these traits simultaneously. Throughout history they have made amazing discoveries thanks to brilliant insights and very hard work, while completely overlooking how their creations could end up being detrimental to mankind. Robert Oppenheimer felt terrible remorse after creating the A-bomb. All of the computer scientists in the documentary I mentioned last week were embarrassed and apologetic about their part in creating unbridled social media platforms. They simply did not foresee the terrible costs individuals and societies would eventually pay as a result of the algorithms they created. 

There is a relatively new technology which has recently been created in biochemistry called CRISPR which could very well lead to untold problems. CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat, and it refers to a form of DNA peculiar to microbes. DNA in most living things lives on long strands, but the DNA in microbes occurs in short fragments which are repeated many times at regular intervals, hence the term CRISPR. This sort of DNA sequence had never been seen before its initial discovery in the late 1990’s. 

CRISPR cells were interesting to scientists not just because of the recurring sequences but also because of the pieces of code which lay between these repeats. Researchers called these “spacers”, and unlike the DNA strands they separate, spacers are all unique. Scientists began to question what the purpose of spacers might be and, as with many advances in science, the answer was discovered accidentally. A researcher at Danisco, a company which sells microbes to food manufacturers, was trying to figure out how to beat viruses that kill the bacterial cultures necessary to make yogurt. A virus is a very simple cell with one function – to find a host, drop in its genetic material, and overrun it. It hijacks the cell and uses it as a factory for its own reproduction, thereby killing the cell. In all viral attacks, however, there are some cells in the host which do not succumb to the disease. 

Danisco scientists decided to look at the DNA of cells which survived viruses, hoping to discover the key to their resistance. What they found was that the DNA sequence in these cells had changed – they now contained a new spacer which had not existed before. What’s more, the new spacer had an identical sequence to that of the virus. Somehow this made the cell immune, offering scientists a clue that they could investigate. They conducted several experiments wherein they took a strand of viral DNA and intentionally made it into a spacer in a microbe, and without fail that cell would then became resistant to the disease. Conversely, when they took that new spacer away, the cell was immediately overrun by the virus. Scientists concluded that CRISPR spacers of this kind were actually part of an adaptive immune response. In other words, bacteria have memory and can recognize invaders and kill them.

Enter Jennifer Doudna, a Biochemist working at UC Berkeley. Biochemists study chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. Doudna was very excited when she learned in 2007 that bacterial cells had a built-in defence against viruses. Somehow microbial cells stored copies of viral sequences and reproduced them when they were attacked, but it was unclear how the new spacer know exactly where to cut the DNA chain to stop the virus. Doudna and her team discovered a new protein she called Cas9 which was responsible for putting the defensive spacer in exactly the right spot. Cas9 polices the cell’s DNA, bringing with it a copy of the invader’s code for reference. If it discovers the virus, it then cuts the host’s DNA where the virus has attached itself, ending the invader’s ability to reproduce and thereby kill the cell. Doudna and her team were very excited by this discovery, because here was a potentially programmable protein which was able to target and cut DNA at a particular point. It was clearly a tool which had massive potential to alleviate human suffering caused by viruses and genetic diseases alike, and could also be used to aid other animals and to improve agricultural outcomes. The scientific paper announcing the discovery of Cas9 concluded with the observation that this new protein had “…considerable potential for gene-targeting and genome-editing applications.” This discovery could change our relationship to the entire biosphere.

Cas9 was an absolute game changer. Scientists already knew where many genetic diseases lived in human DNA, but what they didn’t know was how to change the code. Even if they could figure that out, they had no idea how they could possibly ensure that any new code would be placed in exactly the right spot on the incredibly long DNA chain. CRISPR and Cas9 provided the answers. RNA and DNA communicate using the same four letters- A, T, C, and G – with RNA acting as the chemical messenger between DNA and the proteins it forms. RNA sequences can easily be made in labs, and scientists realized that it might therefore be possible to place manmade RNA sequences into Cas9 molecules which could then cut DNA at a desired point and rewrite the code in a beneficial way. In other words, as Doudna puts it, scientists had discovered a tool which allows us to “…change our relationship to nature. It actually allows us to change human evolution if we want to. It’s that profound.” Powerful stuff.

Let’s look at this technology as it could apply to one deadly genetic disease – Sickle Cell Anaemia, or SCA. This is a blood disorder inherited from one’s parents which is predominantly seen in individuals of African descent. The disease changes normal round red blood cells into a crescent shape, hence the word “sickle” in the name. These malformed cells inhibit and eventually stem the natural flow of red blood cells, thus depriving the body of oxygen and leading to a host of unpleasant symptoms such as pain, anemia, swelling in the hands and feet, bacterial infections, and stroke. Most people with this affliction live a maximum of 40 years, and until now the only known treatment was to periodically swap-out diseased blood cells with healthy ones in a transfusion. 

Scientists have long known what the genetic mutation causing SCA looks like, and have tried releasing re-written RNA into the system of individuals suffering from the disease. They were never able to target this cure, and consequently only about 1-2% of affected cells received the newly coded information. Now they can put manmade RNA in a Cas9 protein which will search out the same sequence in every cell and cut the code in exactly the right spot. Use of this technique has resulted in the disease being corrected in 50-80% of SCA cells in test subjects. This is a very promising outcome which speaks to the potential of CRISPR and Cas9 technology eventually being capable of curing a whole host of diseases at the genetic level. Experiments into its potential to cure Muscular Dystrophy and cancer are underway right now. 

So much CRISPR research is being done, in fact, that there are now companies whose sole purpose is to produce customized CRISPR edits. This means labs working on genome engineering can focus solely on their experiments while a whole other entity creates the RNA sequences they need to further their research. Many scientists are studying the use of this technology for the betterment of humankind. For example, a lab called ReGenesis has recently received a very large grant to figure out how to make pig organs compatible with humans. The ReGenesis lab is using CRISPR to implant desired genetic changes in their animals subjects, as well as to cut out unwanted porcine DNA. In this way they hope to engineer swine which will grow organs that human bodies will not reject. I am a meat eater so I can’t really complain about the ethical implications of killing an animal, but I do have to say that the idea of changing the genetic code on such a large scale makes me uncomfortable. 

I am not the only person feeling this unease. Many learned people have concerns about where this technology might lead, and how quickly it could outstrip our ethics. Scientists already know where to make a change on the DNA strand to make us more muscular, to allow us to get by on only four hours of sleep, and to completely inhibit feelings of pain. There is a single gene which is responsible for making the protein which relays pain signals from the body to the brain. People missing this gene experience no pain whatsoever, and CRISPR could easily be used to remove this single letter from a person’s DNA strand. Imagine excising a single gene and completely eradicating pain. How revolutionary for chronic pain sufferers, not to mention end-stage cancer patients whose pain is off the charts. There are so many ways this targeted gene editing could be used humanely, but what about its misuse? Do we really want to enable aggressive governments to create special forces soldiers who are immune to pain?

The long and horrible history of eugenics makes scientists very wary about making genetic changes to embryos. There is an international understanding in their community that such things are not allowed, but a doctor in China has already stepped over that line. He knocked out CCR5, the receptor to HIV, from twin-girl embryos. While it may seem like a good idea to make humans HIV resistant, the worry is that furthering this branch of bio-medicine may lead in time to tailor-made babies. John Zhang runs the 3rd biggest fertility clinic in America and he recently started a company called Darwin Life. Zhang himself has said of the company, “Everything we do is a step toward designer babies. With nuclear transfer and gene editing, you can really do anything you want.”  

Antonio Regalado is a reporter for the MIT Technology Review.  He managed to get hold of a taped shareholders meeting held by OvaScience, another well known bio-fertility company. On the tape the CEO baldly states, “We will be able to correct mutations before we generate your child. And that may not be in 50 years, that may be in 10 given the way things are going.” Let’s pause a moment to parse that first sentence. The word ‘mutations’ concerns me. What does he mean when he says ‘mutations’? Is he talking about genetic diseases or malformed limbs, or could that term be applied just as easily by some people to traits like brown skin or average intelligence? What about the way he says they will ‘generate’ a child? Such a cold, industrial term. As though humans, in his estimation, are just products. Just widgets that can be designed to meet the purchasers’ requirements. I find this whole statement extremely chilling.

Scientists recognize the potential for harm in this technology and therefore have placed an international moratorium on using CRISPR on germ lines. Every part of our bodies – organs, tissue, blood, etc. – is made up of somatic cells. Any genetic changes made to these cells are fine as they are contained within an individual’s body and die with them. Cells in sperm and ova are called germ line cells, and changes to these will be passed down through the genetic code. There is simply no knowing what ancillary harm such a change could produce in subsequent generations, and once an edit is made on a germ line, it is impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. 

As for designer babies, Alta Charo, a Bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, notes that science is a long way from being able to produce babies with exceptional patience or a good sense of humour or increased intelligence. They do not know what the code for any of these traits looks like, making it impossible for them to design it in a lab. Many fears about this technology are overblown, says Charo, and besides, humans have always found ways to commit horrible acts without it. Eugenics, discrimination, and genocide all flourished well before CRISPR was discovered. It is just the latest scientific tool, and whether it produces laudable or despicable outcomes is completely dependent on the user. 

Stephen Hsu is an example of a scientist who feels he is using CRISPR for good. He is co-founder of a company called Genomic Prediction which specializes in providing advanced genomic testing for in-vitro fertilization. They use pre-implantation genetic sequencing on embryos to identify those which are most likely to improve newborn health outcomes. In other words, like all IVF facilities, they often produce many viable embryos, and their machines do genetic tests on each candidate to determine which is the best one to implant. Right now there are only a handful of genetic traits they can definitively identify, but the science is moving so quickly that before too long they may well be able to learn pretty well everything genetics can reveal. It may be that our understanding of DNA will be so comprehensive in the future that IVF facilities can produce a single viable embryo and then make lots of edits to just that one. Procreation would no longer be a lottery, and genetic diseases could be eradicated.

Part of the problem with this technology is the cost. Clearly only rich people have enough money to pay for the services of companies like Hsu’s. While they can ensure their children are genetically primed to thrive, people of lesser means will continue to roll the dice when they procreate. This could lead to a class of people who not only have the advantage of wealth but also of excellent health and longevity. The negative implications on society of such a scenario are frightening, and rather put me in mind of the dystopian future described in “Brave New World”. 

Certainly we need to be cautious about the applications of this technology. It opens up the possibility of alleviating much human suffering, but in the wrong hands could be used to interfere in natural processes in a tremendously detrimental way. I tend to fall on the more optimistic side of the debate, and feel that overall CRISPR will turn out to be a boon for humanity. I also believe that the fears about creating a super-race are exaggerated. Stephen Hsu often gives public talks about the future of embryonic genetic testing, and he notes that the comments he receives afterwards from listeners vary widely depending on which member of the audience is speaking. Aryan-looking people expect that everyone will opt for their child to be tall and blond, nerds predict parents will all want kids with high intelligence, and jocks assume the most sought after trait will be athleticism. As long as people have different priorities, even pre-determined genetic traits will remain varied. If we can have that while getting rid of the genes which predispose a person to developing breast cancer or early-onset Alzheimer’s, then I say hurray for CRISPR.

Ghost in the Machine

I used to be an avid follower of “The Daily Show” when Jon Stewart was the host. Stewart’s sense of humour and intelligence really made the show worth watching in my estimation. In 2015, after 16 years at the helm, Stewart decided to step down. He said he was leaving because he was tired and needed a change, but recently Trevor Noah, Stewart’s replacement, told a different story. He claims that Stewart confessed to him at the time, 

“I’m leaving because I’m tired. I’m tired of being angry. I’m angry all the time. I don’t find any of this funny. I do not know how to make it funny right now, and I don’t think the show deserves a host who does not feel that it is funny. Relish the fact that you can make jokes about these things, because there will come a day when you are too angry to laugh.”

I had sensed that Stewart had become disillusioned, and there were shows where he could barely mask his fury at the way America was going. Bill Maher, another political comedian I used to watch, went down a very similar path. Maher’s main frustration came from the growing perception of his guests, Republicans in particular, that opinions and facts are interchangeable. I remember one show where Maher, after trying to get one of his more intransigent panelists to admit that there is a difference between the two, literally banged his head against the desk out of sheer frustration. I used to think this conflation of subjective views and reality was due to biased reporting, but after watching “The Social Dilemma” on Netflix earlier this week, I have revised my opinion.

“The Social Dilemma” explores the many ways in which individuals, as well as societies at large, have suffered due to the proliferation and practices of social media platforms. Tristan Harris is chief amongst the many former Silicon Valley programmers and engineers featured in the program. Harris worked as a Google Design Ethicist from 2013 to 2016. His job was to help develop a framework to ensure technology would ethically steer the billions of people consuming it on a daily basis. In early 2016 he created an inter-office memo outlining deep fears that Google, and other social media companies, had fallen off the ethic’s track in their pursuit of profits. Harris’s paper created a stir for a while, and many colleagues told him they had similar concerns, but then it simply disappeared. No one at the top wanted to acknowledge that creating technology which honours the autonomy of its users is impossible without limiting the power and reach of advertisers. Executives buried the memo, prioritizing their bottom line over the dire costs Harris predicted for individuals and society were their technology allowed to grow without proper oversight. Harris left Google in 2016 as a result and created the Centre for Humane Technology later that year. He has now become one of the most outspoken and famous critics of the reckless nature of social media companies. 

FaceBook, Instagram, YouTube, Google, Reddit, Twitter, and a host of other social media platforms like to portray themselves as benign conduits to human connection. Harris and the other engineers featured in “The Social Dilemma” paint a very different picture of these companies, claiming that they actually have three main purposes which have nothing to do with bringing people together. Firstly, they want to engage viewers for as long as possible. Secondly, they strive for growth – to have people use their platform more and more, and to get them to bring others on board. Finally, they want to increase the advertising users see because their profits go up with every item purchased from a social media view. These companies use very direct strategies to achieve these goals. They employ software which records every click you make, including what you see, when you see it, and how long you look. Algorithms then use this information about your interests, habits, and even emotions, to determine what will appear on your screen next. Advertisements, videos and recommendations that pop up on your feed are all driven by these algorithms.

What’s more, the algorithms are capable of (for want of a better term) learning. For example, if you are engaged less by one video than another, the algorithm will notice this and change what you see accordingly. This feedback loop is constant and exists solely to ensure you are watching for an optimal number of hours a day. Programmers on social media platforms pointedly use techniques taught at the Stanford Persuasive Technology lab to grab and keep people’s attention. They study the research of B.F. Skinner, a 20th century American psychologist and behaviourist, whose experiments demonstrated that human reactions are largely in response to conditioning. In other words, subconscious cues and habits are more responsible for human behaviour than free will. The most entrenched behaviours are created by something Skinner called “positive intermittent reinforcement”, wherein an individual receives unpredictable, random rewards in response to repeated behaviour. Perhaps the most famous example of this theory in action is the slot machine. People will play slots for hours and hours, often losing far more money than they can possibly hope to recoup, on the off chance that at some point they will be rewarded. I have heard many psychologists compare the cell phone to a slot machine; there is nothing on offer most of the time it buzzes, but every so often something good appears, and that is enough to keep a person enthralled.

A perfect example of positive intermittent reinforcement on social media is the “like” button. One of the engineers who designed this button was included in the documentary. He insists that they really just wanted to make a nice, easy way for people to support each other, and he is horrified at how powerful and addictive this button has become. The like button on FB simply says “like”, and on Instagram it is a heart symbol. Everyone can see the number of “likes” a post gets, and this has become a very sore point for many users, particularly pre-teen and teenage girls. Not getting enough likes, along with countless negative comments on selfies, have fostered increased levels of anxiety and depression in girls. This in turn has lead to drastic increases in both self-harming and suicides rates in their demographic. According to the CDC, hospital admissions due to self-harm for girls aged 15-19 have gone up 62% since 2009, and a whopping 189% for girls aged 10-14. Suicide rates for girls aged 15-19 have gone up 70% over the same period, and 151% for girls aged 10-15. I had coffee this morning with a friend who knew a 14-year-old girl who committed suicide just last week. These tragedies are playing out everywhere.

Social media programmers use many cues to entice viewers, one of which is photo tagging. Individuals receive a notification when someone tags them in a photo, which is to say puts their name over their likeness in a picture. The image is purposely not included in the notification, prompting the recipient to log onto the platform to look for it. The algorithm then begins working to draw them even further in once they are re-engaged. Harris suggests that the constant distraction of these platforms acts as “…an electronic pacifier which is atrophying our own ability to sooth ourselves.” Boredom, fear, anxiety, and any other negative emotion can be sidestepped by simply diving back into your cellphone or tablet, meaning skills like resilience and fortitude are never learned. This is the reality particularly for young people in Gen Z (people born after 1996). Their entire generation is statistically more anxious, fragile, and depressed than any previous cohort. They are risk aversive and consequently much less likely to get their driver’s licence. Many have never dated. The only time most kids in previous generations watched TV unsupervised was Saturday morning, and there were strict standards in place concerning which programs and commercials could air at that time. YouTube has no such restrictions, and children are seeing very mature and often disturbing content from a young age. Unregulated social media platforms are stealing their childhoods and leaving them ill-equipped for adult life.

In addition to the suffering of individuals caused by unregulated social technology, entire societies are also beginning to experience negative effects. Take, for example “Pizzagate”, the bizarre fake news story which gained traction before the 2016 U.S. election. This conspiracy theory started when Wikileaks published the emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta in November of 2016. Conspiracy theorists falsely claimed that the emails contained coded messages that connected several high-ranking Democratic Party officials and U.S. restaurants with an alleged human trafficking and child sex ring. One of the establishments named was a pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong in Washington, D.C., which was reported to be harbouring child sex slaves in their basement.

The theory immediately gained traction on many right-leaning sites as well as from many Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook users. Before long, workers at Comet were being regularly harassed on social media and the restaurant’s owner began to receive death threats. Musicians who had played at Comet and an artist who created a mural on the back wall were attacked on social media, as were the owners of businesses on the same block as the pizzeria. The situation came to a head on Dec. 4, 2016 when Edgar Welch, a 38-year-old from North Carolina, arrived at Comet and fired three shots in the restaurant from an AR-15 rifle. Welch gave himself up without a fight after he’d discovered the pizzeria had no basement – a fact he could easily have ascertained online if he had only looked. Luckily no one was hurt in the exchange, and while Welch apologized for his actions he still maintains that the reported Democratic sex ring is real. 

The Pizzagate debacle formed the basis for an even further-reaching conspiracy theory called QAnon. “Q”, a person or persons claiming to have access to classified government information, initially posted on an anonymous image board in October of 2017. The heart of the theory is that there is a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles (Democrats all) running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against Trump. QAnon claims that Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, Bill and Melinda Gates, and the Clintons are all involved. It has also helped to revitalize the anti-semitic lie of the “Elders of Zion”. The theory claims Trump is bravely battling against these horrible people and will eventually bring about a “day of reckoning” when there will be mass arrests of the guilty parties. Everything QAnon claims has been completely debunked, and yet its popularity continues to grow. Believers in the theory tag their social media posts #WWG1WGA, signifying the motto “Where We Go One, We Go All”, a rather chilling indication of their adherence to this dangerous clap-trap and to one another. In August of last year the FBI published a report that QAnon could be a potential source of domestic terrorism, the first time the agency has so rated a fringe conspiracy theory. Donald Trump has invited several outspoken proponents of the theory to the White House, and according to Politico, he has to date amplified QAnon messaging at least 216 times by retweeting or mentioning 129 QAnon-affiliated Twitter accounts, sometimes several times a day.

Social media platforms are banning and shutting down QAnon sites, but Facebook only began doing so in May of this year and Twitter started just two months ago. I would argue that this is a clear case of closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. This theory of Trump as a modern day saviour and the Democrats as satanic pedophiles has already gained enough traction that several Republican candidates in the upcoming election are touting the truth of it and calling “Q” an American hero. There have also been many illegal acts committed in the name of “Q” over the past few years, including kidnappings, the occupation of public and private buildings, and various forms of harassment. The FBI suspects that two people may have been murdered because of QAnon accusations.  

Unchecked social media has led to the rise of this deeply troubling theory, but I would argue its most pernicious side effect is that it has polarized society by feeding people divergent “facts” on their news feeds. Jaron Lanier, one of the founding fathers of virtual reality, poses the following hypothetical to explain how social media news feeds work. Imagine you look something up on Wikipedia, secure in the knowledge that everyone who uses the site will see the same verified facts. Now imagine if Wikipedia had algorithms that altered the page for each individual user based on information they had garnered through tracking every virtual move that person had made, and further that the changes made to the page were intended to steer that user towards buying a particular service or product. That is how news feeds work. The algorithms are serving up a reality that falls in line with your previous search history, while simultaneously nudging you towards satisfying the monetary goals of both advertisers and the platform you are using. 

What’s more, many of the things recommended on social media sites are only tangentially related to something you previously searched, but they heedlessly invite you down that rabbit hole to further their financial interests. “Rabbit hole” is the actual term the tech industry uses in relation to items on social media which draw users in and push them towards spending money. Many people who came to believe the truth of Pizzagate, for example, had never even heard of it until their social media platform suggested they might be interested. A recent Pew Research study found that 62% of American adults get their news from social media, and I suspect this goes a long way to explain the extreme political polarization in their country. If everyone using Facebook for news were seeing the same subject matter then there would be no problem, but having every individual’s feed skewed towards their interests and opinions means that there is no balance, and often questionable veracity, in the information being presented. Everything a news feed gives a user further justifies and entrenches previously held biases and beliefs, producing individuals who are absolutely sure of their facts and making civil discourse virtually impossible. It’s also why passionate articles exposing how the U.S. Democrats are hellbent on ruining their country appear on the same Google page as equally convincing descriptions of how it’s the Republicans that are passionately committed to ruining America. They are a country divided, and the subtle manipulations and misinformation for profit peddled by social media platforms have gone a long way in pushing them apart.

“The Social Dilemma” ended with several suggestions on how to best protect yourself against getting sucked in and manipulated by social media in particular, and technology in general. If you can’t see getting off social media completely, then at least provide as little personal information as possible on your sites, do not post a lot of images, and never click on recommendations. These are called “click bait” by tech insiders, and their only purpose is to hold your attention as long as possible and help algorithms subtly nudge you towards advertisements. Also, if you are someone who is constantly checking your phone or social media feeds, start shutting down all devices at least one hour prior to bed and make it a rule that no screens are allowed in your bedroom. Try taking a walk or running some errands without your phone. Many people have become absolutely dependent on their technology, and the only way to break that hold is to employ established anti-addiction techniques. Edward Tufte, Professor Emeritus at Yale University, said, “There are only two industries that call their customers users; illegal drugs and software.” Kick the habit if you can, limit its hold on you if you can’t, and take everything you read on social media with an enormous grain of salt. Better yet, never use social media platforms for news at all. Instead, look for reliable sources elsewhere, read more than one article on any given topic, and then make up your own mind. I find the truth usually lies somewhere in the grey area between two opposing sides.