Don’t Speak

I need to start this week by defining a few terms coined by George Orwell in his dystopian novel “1984”. “Newspeak” is language introduced by the totalitarian government in the novel which is, in Orwell’s words, “…designed to limit the range of thought.” It is a prescribed lexicon designed to eliminate ambiguity and nuance in language and thus cognition. The second term which warrants explaining is “Thought Police”, a secret police force in the novel whose only job is to discover and punish people who express personal or political thoughts unapproved by the government.

I mention these two Orwellian concepts because they seem to have been gaining traction in Western cultures for some time now. This increase is not designed to consolidate the power of a totalitarian regime, but rather to further the agenda of an increasingly intolerant progressive faction of society. Those who consider themselves “woke”, which is to say aware of social injustice and ready to stand up against it, have become increasingly willing to shut down meetings where people are discussing ideas they find distasteful or insulting, and to shut up anyone who does not agree with them or uses words of which they don’t approve.

University campuses have historically been hotbeds of free speech and breeding grounds for radical ideas. For several years now woke college students have been suppressing, and sometimes even eliminating, these functions. There have been many instances of students trying to disrupt campus events where controversial ideas are likely to be voiced. Unfortunately a number of these attempts have succeeded.

Heather MacDonald is a Fellow of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative American think tank, and she holds many opinions which are highly distasteful to the left. She has suggested that welfare and food stamps should be eliminated, that American police need to be more militarized, and she has loudly criticized Black Lives Matter. Last year Ms. MacDonald was invited to speak at Holy Cross, a private liberal arts college in Massachusetts. The politically correct element of the student body was having none of it. Protestors took up every seat in the auditorium and chanted the entire time Ms. MacDonald spoke. They simply refused to listen to anything she had to say because they had already that decided they didn’t agree with her, and therefore her arguments couldn’t possibly have merit.

I find a lot of Ms. MacDonald’s ideas objectionable and contrary to my way of thinking, but I would never consider denying her the right to voice them. Individuals in a free society may say whatever they wish (that is what makes it free) and if you don’t agree then you may choose not to listen or to question or rebut their ideas in a civil manner. What you don’t – or at least shouldn’t – do is deny them the right to speak in the first place by drowning them out.

Bill Maher, the host of the political talk show “Real Time” on HBO, was asked to give the commencement speech at U.C. Berkeley in 2014. Maher has for some time maintained that Islam (at least as it is currently practiced) is a largely intolerant, misogynistic and often violent religion. He bolsters this position with examples of Islamic terrorist activities like the attempted assassination in 2012 of the then 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai, and the 2015 killing of 11 journalists and 6 others at Charlie Hebdo in Paris. He also sites the 9/11 attacks and the coordinated bombings in the London transit system in 2005, as well as the accepted practice of honour killings and the oppression of girls and women throughout the Muslim world.

Left-wing Berkeley students didn’t take the time to look at the meat of Maher’s argument, but rather immediately claimed that he was clearly an Islamophobe. In short order 4,000 of them had signed a petition to keep him from speaking. The school’s administration specifically wanted Maher because 2014 marked the 50th anniversary of the birth of the U.S. free speech movement which, as it turns out, began at Berkeley. Maher is known for having people of all political and religious stripes on his program and therefore seemed a particularly apt choice. The irony in trying to deny Maher a platform because of his opinions at a ceremony celebrating free speech seems to have been lost on the protesting students. In time Maher was allowed to speak and gave a graduation address that dealt solely with the graduates. Imagine that.

Not only have students suppressed free speech on campuses, they have also held administrators hostage and forced the firing or resignation of numerous professors with whom they do not agree. One of the most famous examples of this occurred at Evergreen College in Washington State. For decades the college observed a “Day of Absence” wherein minority students and faculty would voluntarily stay home in order to highlight their contributions to the college. The college flipped the day around in 2017, inviting people of colour to come to the school while white participants were directed to attend an off-campus discussion of race-related issues. A resident professor of biology, Bret Weinstein, objected to the change. He sent an open e-mail saying,

“There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and underappreciated roles….and a group encouraging another group to go away. The first is a forceful call to consciousness, which is, of course, crippling to the logic of oppression. The second is a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself.”

A contingent of about 200 students took extreme exception to Weinstein’s argument, calling him and the college racist. They verbally harassed and bullied him during one of his lectures, becoming so aggressive that Weinstein had to be physically protected by campus police as he was led from the room. Weinstein began holding classes outdoors to avoid further disruption, but the militant confrontations continued until Weinstein decided he’d had enough and resigned. These same protesting students occupied the office of the college president, George Bridges, effectively taking him hostage. There is video of them storming in and the first thing one of them says to Bridges is, “F**k you, George. We don’t want to hear a God-damned thing you have to say!”. There is the whole problem in a nutshell.

Politically correct tyranny exists in the world outside college campuses as well. In 2017 a researcher named Maya Forstater lost her job for saying that people cannot change their biological sex. A human’s sex is determined at a chromosomal level, whereas gender deals with personal, societal and cultural perceptions of sexuality. If humans could change their biological sex, then trans-men and woman wouldn’t have to take hormones for the rest of their lives to maintain the outward characteristics of the sex they have transitioned into. Ms. Forstater’s statement is empirically true, but the thought police labelled her transphobic and therefore she was fired. It is a sad day when a biological fact can be overruled by progressive newspeak.

J.K. Rowling soon got in the mix by supporting Ms. Forstater, tweeting,

“Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.
But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?”

Rowling took a fair bit of heat for this stance, with people suggesting she was transphobic. Just last week another tweet from Rowling reignited and redoubled the outcry. A piece on the website Devex, a media platform for the global development community, used the phrase, “…people who menstruate”. Rowling posted a rather cheeky response to this, saying,

“I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

Remembering the backlash she’d received for suggesting that biological sex was a reality, she continued,

“I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.”

Oh, but according to the ever-righteous left it most certainly is. Countless people immediately piled on Rowling, calling her stance “disgusting” and again labelling her transphobic. Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson were amongst those who immediately jumped into the fray, scantly acknowledging that they owed their entire careers to this women before effectively throwing her under the bus. Publicly taking umbrage on behalf of another to further one’s own public standing is called “virtue signalling”, and I think that is exactly what both these young actors were doing here (unwittingly or otherwise).

I interpret Rowling’s statement as meaning this – not all women menstruate (trans-women, menopausal women, women who’ve had hysterectomies, etc.), but only biological women do. Myself, my sisters and most of my friends haven’t menstruated in years, but we are still women. The only reason we had a period at all is because we were born female, with an XX chromosome. Why isn’t it therefore okay to use the term “women” when talking about menstruation since only “women” do? How is that exclusionary?

The politically correct climate of the times makes me nervous. Comedians are being censured for making “inappropriate” jokes and using “unacceptable” language. Wearing a costume on Hallowe’en which originated in another country is deemed “cultural appropriation”. Free speech is constantly and increasingly under threat. Most alarmingly, the left which traditionally championed free speech is now leading the charge to police people’s thoughts and words. A functioning democracy hinges on the existence of an impartial press and the absolute right of individuals to say anything they want. Both sides of the political spectrum are responsible for allowing news media to become so incredibly biased, but I lay the loss of free speech squarely at politically correct liberals’ feet. Once anyone who values democracy is awakened to how dramatically these foundational precepts are currently being eroded, it becomes their responsibility to stand up. That means it is my civic duty, and yours, to try and stem this corrosive tide by calling it out whenever and wherever we see it.

Sit Down, Be Humble

Last week Justin Trudeau was asked by a reporter to comment on Donald Trump’s threats to mobilize the army against his citizens. After a very pregnant twenty second pause he said,

“It is a time for us as Canadians to recognize that we too have our challenges; that black Canadians [and racialized Canadians] face discrimination as a lived reality every single day. There is systemic discrimination in Canada.”

Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, contradicted the Prime Minister a few days later, claiming that we do not have systemic racism in our country. I’m sorry to say that I suspect the majority of Canadians agree with Mr. Ford. There has been a lot of shocked outrage in Canada at the killing of George Floyd and the ongoing police brutality against minorities in the U.S., and that is an appropriate response. The tenor of these comments, however, is one of superiority, as though we and our policemen are above such things. This is demonstrably not true.

One need only look back on one’s life to find instances of bigotry. Perhaps the most senseless manifestation of racism I’ve witnessed came the day after the 9/11 attacks. I was driving home from work and stopped at a gas station I frequented. Two of the large front windows were covered by wooden panels which bore the words “We’re open” in big red letters. After filling up I went inside to pay and asked the young man at the counter what had happened.

It turns out that the previous evening some men in a car had raced through the parking lot, slowing only to throw bricks through the windows and yell, “Go home!” Luckily no one was hurt in the incident although the cashier’s younger brother, who was manning the store at the time, was badly rattled. The young man continued with tears in his eyes and a quivering chin, saying his parents were from Sri Lanka, a country that was completely blameless in the 9/11 attacks. They had worked incredibly hard to buy and then maintain the gas station, and he and his two brothers were born and raised in Canada. The knee-jerk racism of the attack had shaken him to the core, and he was clearly shocked and disappointed that such aggressive hatred was so close to the surface in a country where he thought he was viewed as an equal.

More recently I witnessed racism in the elementary school where I worked. There were at least two times I can think of where a white student called a black classmate the “n-word”. This ignorance was not limited to the children as just last year one of my colleagues demonstrated a textbook example of unconscious white privilege. The keynote speaker at our 2019 grade 8 graduation was Maryam Monsef, our local M.P. Ms. Monsef is a Muslim woman from Afghanistan who emigrated to Canada as a refugee at the tender age of 12. She had attended my school for grades 7 and 8 and mentioned in her speech that although she had been teased and bullied by other students, the staff had made her feel welcome. Later that evening the graduates crossed the stage to receive their diplomas, and Ms. Monsef made a point of getting up and shaking the hands of the dozen or so students of colour. She said a few quiet words to each of them, and although I couldn’t hear what she said I assume she was acknowledging the unique bond they shared for having made it through despite the many slights and insults they had both undoubtedly endured.

The next day I was in the lunchroom discussing the graduation with my staff. I was relaying the gist of the M.P.’s speech when a colleague who had been in attendance cut me off and said,

“I didn’t like the way she singled out kids when they were getting their diplomas. She should have shaken all their hands. I don’t think it was fair to the other kids that she didn’t shake their hands too.”

Wow! Here was an opportunity for me to bring a clear case of white privileged thinking to someone’s attention, so I did. I explained that only shaking the hands of the minority students was Ms. Monsef’s way of saying that she understood how difficult their school journey had been, especially in relation to that of the white majority, and that they consequently deserved special notice and congratulations. We couldn’t possibly know the on-going, subtle (and not so subtle) discrimination that these kids had almost certainly experienced in our school. We should feel happy for the few who had their hands shaken rather than feeling sorry for those who didn’t. Our Muslim, brown and black students had almost no role models to follow in our small, extremely white city, yet here was a successful woman with a similar background publicly demonstrating her faith in them. The white kids who crossed the stage had absolutely no need for that level of encouragement as our whole society is set up for them to succeed. I don’t think my colleague really understood what I was saying, but her initial statement and her inability to take my point are a microcosm of the unquestioned white privilege that permeates our country.

One need only look at the report on systemic racism in Canada issued by The United Nations in September of 2017 to see how widespread the problem is. The report recommends in its summary that the Canadian government should offer an official apology for slavery, which was practiced in New France from the early 1600’s until it was abolished in all British colonies in 1834 (just thirty years before the United States). The report also suggests that survivors of Africville, the freed slave settlement established in Nova Scotia which was razed by the provincial government in the 1960’s, should be paid reparations. Further, they should be given land because their ancestors, despite being the original settlers in the area, were not allowed to own the land they worked and developed.

The report says that in Canada,

” History informs anti-black racism and racial stereotypes that are so deeply entrenched in institutions, policies and practices, that its institutional and systemic forms are either functionally normalized or rendered invisible, especially to the dominant group.”

We can see the reality of these findings in statistics relating to black Canadians today. Landfills, waste dumps and pollutants are disproportionately located close to black communities in many cities, black families are twice as likely to go hungry as their white counterparts, and up to 60% of black students are dropping out of high school in our major urban centres. The most telling systemic racism exists in our criminal justice system. The number of black inmates in our federal prisons rose by 71% between 2005 and 2015, and statistics suggest that black people are “extraordinarily represented” when it comes to police use of lethal force, although the lack of race-based data concerning such incidents makes it difficult to assess how big the problem really is. Canadian law enforcement agencies regularly practice racial profiling, with blacks and other people of colour making up a disproportionate number of random street checks. Black inmates are also much more likely to spend time in solitary confinement.

Not only do we have systemic discrimination against black people, we also have a long and continuing history of mistreating our Aboriginal citizens. I found a very interesting table of statistics in an issue of Macleans magazine, and although it was published five years ago I can’t imagine much has changed. The table compared key statistics for Aboriginal Canadians and African Americans, offering proof that our indigenous people are faring worse than black Americans by almost every measure. The African American median income is 74% of the national average, while the number for Aboriginal Canadians is 60%. The African American unemployment rate is 1.9 times the national average and they are 3 times more likely to be incarcerated, while Indigenous Canadians are 2.1 times more likely to be unemployed and 10 times more likely to end up in jail. Two-thirds of all First Nation communities have been under at least one drinking water advisory in the past decade, and just last month Alberta’s Energy Minister enthusiastically suggested now was the time to push forward with the Trans Mountain pipeline because Aboriginal protesters can’t gather due to Covid-19 restrictions.

My son recently told me that I have a habit of mentioning when black people are articulate, almost as though I’m surprised that a person of colour could be well spoken. I’m grateful he brought this to my attention because all of us, no matter how equitable we think we are, need to be vigilant to unconscious biases as well as to instances when white privilege rears its ugly head. We also need to be willing to call out others when they act or speak in privileged or racist ways. “We the North” are constantly humble-bragging about how much more egalitarian we are than our southern neighbours, but I would argue that this only appears to be the case because we are willfully ignoring the systemic racial problems that exist here. Canadians should redirect the time and energy they spend looking down on Americans into addressing and redressing the inequities that exist in ourselves and our institutions. It’s time to clean our own house.

Hitchin’ a Ride

Hitchhiking seems to have fallen out of favour in recent years. My husband Douglas and I hitchhiked whenever possible when we were travelling in the Eighties not only because it was a free means of transportation, but also because it afforded us the opportunity to meet people and go places we would otherwise have missed.

When we were hitching in New Zealand in 1985 we rarely had to wait more than an hour before some kindly Kiwi would pick us up. One day, however, we ended up standing at the side of the road for almost two hours with only a flock of sheep for company (not surprising in a country with 22 sheep per person). Eventually Douglas got bored and started noodling around on his harmonica as he was wont to do. We are all familiar with the saying, ‘Music soothes the savage beast’, and my experience on the side of the road in New Zealand that day confirmed that music also mesmerizes the docile and stupid beast. The sheep all looked up at Douglas and headed towards him as soon as he started playing, as though being pulled by a tractor beam. I have a picture of them all bunched together on the other side of a fence looking raptly back at use. It was hilarious and kind of touching at the same time. It’s always nice to connect with animals, whatever the reason.

Eventually a man picked us up. We started talking and soon learned that he ran a sheep station (surprise, surprise). He kindly offered us room and board for the night which we gratefully accepted. I asked him how he had chosen his job, and he launched into a long tale which reminded me of “It’s a Wonderful Life” recast on a New Zealand sheep farm with our host George – a name I’ve given him for the sake of the analogy – and his younger brother Harry. His father, who had run the station for decades, had died about five years previous. George had agreed to manage the place while his younger brother went off to university in England, and then Harry was supposed to return to take care of things allowing George the opportunity to go off and see the world. George was currently waiting for his brother to come back, but hadn’t heard from him in some time and was beginning to worry that Harry might not hold up his end of the bargain.

We came around a curve at this particular point in the story and had to stop to allow a large flock of sheep to cross the road, a common occurrence when driving through New Zealand. I was about to ask George if it would really be so bad to continue living and working at the station when suddenly he slammed his hands on the wheel and said in a quiet voice dripping with disdain, “I hate ficken’ sheep!” (New Zealanders pronounce most vowels with a short “i” sound, turning Douglas’s cousins Pam and Dennis into “Pim” and “Dinnis”.) So that answered that question.

We headed to Australia after New Zealand and bought a used van to make our way around, putting us in a position to help out other hitchhikers. We picked up a Japanese fellow just as we were heading into the Outback. His name was Seiji, a name I remember because I tagged it with that of famous conductor Seiji Ozawa. Australia was his first stop on the year-long, round-the-world trip he was taking before heading back to Japan to attend university in his hometown of Tokyo. Seiji’s English was very good although he had a fairly pronounced Japanese accent.

We made idle chit-chat for a while and then fell into silence. We ran out of things to discuss once we’d laid out our respective travel plans, and there was nothing worth talking about in the monotonous landscape. At some point later in the afternoon I noticed an especially large termite mound by the side of the road. I commented on it and asked Seiji if he could see it. There was no reply. I turned in my seat to ask the question again and saw Seiji sitting frozen, eyes wide and jaw dropped, staring out the window. After I said his name a few more times, he slowly turned to me and said in his heavily accented voice, “So mucha space! So mucha space!” He had spent the whole of his life in one of the most heavily populated cities in the world, and the vast emptiness of the Outback was freaking him out. I tried to reassure him that he was safe, and although he did calm down somewhat, he was clearly uncomfortable the rest of his time with us.

A few months after leaving Australia we were hitching in a mountainous part of Italy. European cars are much smaller than those in North America, presumably because gas is so much more expensive there. Eventually we were picked up by a woman driving a car which was small even by European standards. It was customary for me to sit in the passenger seat when we were picked up in non-English speaking countries because Douglas was absolutely tone-deaf when it came to foreign languages. He once ordered a bottle of sparkling water using words from three different languages. The waiter, much to his credit, didn’t laugh at Doug’s mistake but rather promptly went and got the item he actually wanted.

We got into the Italian woman’s tiny car and I sat next to the driver as usual after Douglas had crammed himself and our bags into the back. The hilly terrain was already proving difficult for the car’s small engine, and our added weight made upward progress even more problematic. The embarrassed driver kept turning to me and saying, “Che macchina!” (“what a car”) while rolling her eyes in exasperation at her gutless vehicle. We soon found ourselves repeatedly rocking back and forth on our seats in an attempt to spur the car forward, much like the motion one uses to get a reluctant toboggan started down a snowy hill. I don’t know if our furious movements made any difference to the car’s progress, but we all certainly felt better for trying.

Late that afternoon we drove into a small village that Douglas and I had never heard of. It was quite lovely and as we had no set timetable, we decided to stay for a while. We settled into a charming family-run hotel and headed out for dinner. The piazza (town square) was at the end of the first street we went down, and it was abuzz with activity. Men were setting up chairs and long tables on which women were laying out plates and cutlery along with huge platters and bowls overflowing with food. Several TVs were set up on tall platforms around the edge of the square. Douglas and I must have looked completely bemused because a kind gentleman stopped to explain in serviceable English that Italy was playing a very important soccer match that night and the whole town was coming out to watch. He then recommended a restaurant where we could get a good but not overly expensive meal, and we wished his team luck as we headed off to eat.

The trattoria he’d suggested was tiny, containing only a dozen small tables. The waitress, who it turned out co-owned the place with her husband the cook, encouraged us get the house specialty and we gratefully took her suggestion. It’s always difficult to know what to order from a menu written in a foreign language. First came an absolutely delicious, freezing cold and fruity white wine that was bottled in-house, along with a warm loaf of crusty bread and a small dish of herbed olive oil. Next came an olive, greens and tomato salad topped with shavings of a local cheese which, the waitress informed us, was famous all over Italy. The entrée was a creamy, savoury pasta topped with salty ham, fresh green peas and nutty parmesan, and for dessert a refreshingly tart orange gelato with a decadent double-chocolate biscotti on the side. I describe this meal in detail because it definitely ranks among the best dinners I’ve ever had, rivalling anything I have eaten in the many fine restaurants I’ve visited over the years. All of this in a little town we would never have known existed were it not for hitchhiking.

We strolled through the winding streets back to the piazza after dinner, and stepped into a scene of utter despair. People were cheerlessly disassembling all the trappings of the expectant celebration we had encountered mere hours earlier. Clearly Italy had lost the match. The next morning we headed out to explore the town and ended up visiting a small church which stood above every other building in the village. The church was cool and damp with paintings scattered throughout of various saints being persecuted. In other words it was a typical Italian church except for one noteworthy difference. There was a niche in the wall off to one side of the altar containing a rectangular glass box, about 30cm wide by 1m tall, lavishly adorned with gold filigree. Inside the box was a small piece of bone, the length of a clothespin although much thinner, nestled in the centre of a tasselled deep-burgundy velvet pillow. This, according to local lore, was a hand bone from a saint, although I forget which one. Once a year the village held a festa (festival) for the saint which involved parading the relic through the streets then sharing a huge celebratory feast. If you’ve watched the scene in “The Godfather, Pt. 2” that culminates in Robert De Niro killing the don in the white suit, then you have a pretty good idea of what an Italian festa looks like. I could believe that the bone in the box was human, but there was no reliable proof that it had come from a saint. Its provenance hinged on a story which had been orally passed down the generations from parent to child, and that was good enough for the townsfolk. Faith is a baffling thing.

Our first foray into hitchhiking occurred four years previous to our trip to Italy when we had visited France. At one point Douglas and I were hitching through the Massif Central, a very old volcanic mountain range, when we were picked up by three pimpled, gangly teenagers in an old Citroën which was more rust than car. The roads were extremely windy and the young man driving began taking the curves at a patently unsafe speed. Douglas and I cried out in alarm as we careened along, and all three young men reacted with peals of derisive laughter to our growing concern. I asked the driver in French to please slow down, and he responded by shooting me a mischievous smile and then speeding up. After another minute or so of this increasingly dangerous situation, Douglas had had enough. He barked for the driver to stop in his most authoritative voice, and seeing as he had several inches and a good thirty pounds of muscle on the driver and both his scrawny mates, our cowed chauffeur meekly pulled over and let us out.

The next car to pick us up was a Citroën as well, but this one was brand new. The whole car lowered when in park to allow easier entry, and then rose up when put in drive to improve the suspension and make for a smoother ride. It had a sage-green finish buffed to a sparkling sheen and, much to our delight, incredibly comfortable plush white leather seats. The driver looked to be middle aged and monied, sporting slicked-back hair, a well-tended moustache, and a tailored suit. This ride proved infinitely smoother than the one we had just experienced in the young man’s heap. We were probably going as fast as we had been in the previous car but didn’t feel the least bit unsafe owing to the expertise of the driver and the maneuverability of the vehicle. The driver clearly didn’t want to talk, choosing rather to periodically exchange silent smiles with me. We were both soundlessly acknowledging our gratitude for his beautifully engineered car and the wonderful drive we were sharing.

Later that month Douglas and I were making our way to Paris when we were picked up by a truck. There were three lavender air fresheners hanging in the cab – one on each visor and another on the rear view mirror. Now I like lavender as much as the next guy, but the floral smell was so intense it almost caused us to choke. We learned in fairly short order that the driver smoked but couldn’t stand the smell of cigarettes, and that he most likely had OCD. Every time he lit up he would open his window about a third of the way down, letting in a blast of cold air, and then hold his lit cigarette outside the cab. Each drag was short and intense, and he would blow the smoke out the window through the corner of his mouth, keeping his eyes glued to the road and his hand so tight around the wheel that his knuckles literally turned white. When he was done he would throw the butt on the road and then frantically close the window. Evidently he could still detect traces of dreaded cigarette fumes in the cab because he would immediately reach under his seat and pull out a can of lavender air freshener which he sprayed liberally around. We had planned to take this ride all the way into Paris, but the overwhelming floral smell was so noxious and the driver so intensely odd that we bailed out at the side of a deserted road over 100 kilometres outside the city.

Douglas and I realized as soon as our feet hit the pavement that the chances of getting a ride this late in the day on such a quiet road were slim to none. We dejectedly hitched our bags up on our backs and started to walk, hoping to come upon some kind of habitation before the sun set. Only a couple cars passed us in the next half hour or so, but neither stopped to pick us up. Eventually we heard another lone car coming up from behind, so we half-heartedly stuck out our thumbs. It drove some distance past us and then pulled over and stopped on the shoulder up ahead. A man stepped out of the car and began walking towards us. He looked vaguely familiar, but was far enough away that we couldn’t yet make out his features. As he got closer we could hear him calling out to us by name. How was that possible?!

Eventually the approaching man coalesced into the form of Douglas’s younger brother Robert. He was also travelling in Europe, although last we’d heard he was making his way around Portugal. Robert had begun hitching northward from Lisbon the previous week and had just picked up this ride to Paris about half an hour before seeing us on the side of the road. They had been driving quickly enough that he hadn’t been able to make out our faces, but the 10 inch disparity in our heights had registered somewhere in his brain, prompting him to yell at the driver to stop. She asked us, after taking Douglas and I into the car, if we had set up this rendezvous, and was as gobsmacked as we were that our meeting happened completely by chance. The odds against us leaving the truck at exactly that place and time, and then of Robert driving by at exactly that place and time, must be infinitesimally small. This unlikely incident remains the greatest coincidence I have experienced in my entire life.

I never see hitchhikers on the side of the road anymore and it’s been at least 15 years since I picked up my last group of them. They were three young adults – two women and a man – huddled at the side of the road holding a hand-drawn “Toronto” sign. I initially had been fully prepared to go past my exit and take them to the 401 so they’d have a straight shot to the city, but wound up choosing not to because they clearly hadn’t washed in quite a while and were extremely stinky. It was some days after our encounter before their gamey smell fully left my car. I’m not sure why people don’t hitch as much as they used to. Perhaps all the TV shows, movies and social media dealing with horrible people doing unspeakable things to one another has something to do with it. I am just grateful that I lived in a time when lots of us were out there hitchin’ a ride. My life has been enriched enormously by the people and out- of-the-way places I got to experience because of it.

Just like This Train

One of my favourite ways to travel is by train. You can quietly enjoy the scenery or read a book, and unlike air travel you always have the option of getting up and stretching your legs, eating a meal and using the toilet if necessary. The rhythmic sound of the wheels clickety-clacking over the rails is soothing, and the gentle swaying of the cars evokes the visceral memory of being rocked to sleep. The trains in Europe are particularly excellent because they are punctual, widespread, and frequent. You don’t have to worry if you miss your train because there will inevitably be another one in an hour or so.

Douglas and I took many trains when we were gadding about in the 80’s. We got around almost exclusively by rail during our month in Morocco, only once renting a car to get us over the Atlas Mountains and into the tall dunes of the Sahara Desert. These train trips were all uneventful except for one in which we witnessed some really horrible violence. This was the second instance of casual brutality we saw while travelling in Morocco – a country which seems to be a peaceful place governed by the rule of law, but which actually harbours and condones a lot of anger and aggression just beneath the surface.

The first such example took place during our week in Marrakesh. There was a small outdoor café across the square from our hotel which we patronized in the mornings for café au lait and pain au chocolat – delicious holdovers from Morocco’s 44 years as a French colony. The proprietor seemed a pleasant chap, always welcoming us with a big smile and a bow. There are poor children all over Morocco who regularly ask for money from tourists, and one little boy begged from Douglas and I the first three mornings we ate at the café. Every time he approached with his hands out, the café’s owner would come streaking outside and flap his hands at the boy while shouting “Imshi, imshi!” (Arabic for “go away”). He’d then apologize to us in broken French for the inconvenience, and we’d continue with our meal.

The same pattern played out on the fourth day, except this time the man came storming out carrying a kettle of boiling water. He strode purposefully over to the boy and instead of simply shooing him away began pouring the steaming hot liquid over his head. The poor little tyke recoiled and ran away screaming in pain while the café owner beamed at the other Moroccans in the square who responded with laughter and applause. It was as though they had just seen a good show rather than an inhumane and unwarranted assault on a needy child. We patronized a different café for the rest of our stay in Marrakesh.

We saw another vicious attack in Morocco when we took a train from Rabat to Tangier. No sooner had we settled into our compartment than a Moroccan family entered. The two children immediately sat down on the bench opposite ours while their parents arranged their luggage on the overhead rack. We exchanged smiles and nods as we settled in and prepared to spend the next 90 minutes sitting across from one another in awkward silence.

The train pulled out of the station and as soon as it had settled into a steady rhythm the mother brought down a basket from the overhead shelf. She pulled off the heavy towel covering the top, releasing a disgusting smell reminiscent of overripe cheese and rotten fish – an odour so disgusting and noxious that Douglas and I immediately exchanged silent looks of alarm as if to say, “We have to put up with this for the next hour and a half?!” I think the father mistook our expressions for ones of appreciation and desire because he immediately made a loud clucking noise with his tongue to catch our attention. He pulled back his jacket to reveal a gun nestled in the waistband of his pants, wordlessly warning us to keep our hands off their food. No problem there!

The family had just begun to chow down on their foul lunch when a commotion broke out in the passageway. There was a lot of yelling and a chase, followed by someone being tackled to the ground. We heard a protesting man being forcibly dragged past our door and then thrown by his seemingly furious captors into a compartment further along the way. Douglas and I immediately left the cabin to see what was happening, and the Moroccan father followed. There were other passengers coming from the opposite direction and we all converged in front of the compartment where the fleeing man had been corralled.

Someone slid the door open to reveal a struggling man being held by two railroad employees while a third repeatedly hit him with what looked like a bicycle chain. The poor victim cried out in pain as the man doing the whipping repeated the same Arabic phrase with every blow. Whatever he said clearly satisfied all of the Moroccans around us that the man deserved what he was getting. They nodded and smiled at each other as they departed, one of them quietly sliding the door shut so as not to disturb the horrible proceedings within. The Moroccan father explained the situation to us in halting French when we got back to our compartment – the man being flayed didn’t have a ticket and the porters were simply teaching him a lesson. He then said the same thing to his family in Arabic and they all bobbed their heads in comprehension and acceptance, as though this sort of violence were an everyday occurrence. They promptly resumed eating their rancid meal, seemingly oblivious to the cries of the unfortunate man being savagely beaten a mere two compartments away. Clearly Douglas and I were the only ones who felt that the punishment did not fit the crime.

Tumultuous rail travel is not unique to Morocco, a fact Douglas and I had discovered several years earlier when we took an overnight train from Thessaloniki, Greece to Istanbul, Turkey. Hostility between these two countries has existed since the 14th century when Greece was conquered by the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey). The Turks maintained control until 1830 when the Greeks finally won their independence. There have been several short wars between the two countries in the interim, with atrocities being reported on both sides.

The train in Thessaloniki was very dirty and smelled horrible because the toilet at the end of our car was already overflowing when we boarded. Once again we were sharing our cabin with some locals, this time three Greek adults – two men and a woman. We all nodded and smiled at one another and then snuggled in as best we could for the ten hour trip ahead of us. Everyone was quiet and dozing some hours later when suddenly the train came to a squealing stop, jolting us fully awake in the most startling way imaginable. Douglas and I shot to the window to see what was happening and saw several workmen disconnect our car from the bulk of the train. The whistle blasted as the engine re-engaged, pulling away the several cars in front of us as ours and the two behind us were left stranded in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night.

We must have looked really alarmed because the Greek people in our compartment started making calming motions with their hands and speaking in soothing tones to indicate that everything was okay. Douglas said that we must be at the border so perhaps a Turkish engine was coming to take us the rest of the way to Istanbul. No sooner were these words out of his mouth than a covered army truck pulled up alongside the train and about ten soldiers toting machine guns spilled out of the back. Their commanding officer stepped down from the passenger side of the cab and gave his orders. The men immediately split into three groups, one for each of the remaining cars, and headed towards us.

The Turkish soldiers who boarded our car seemed to purposely make as much noise as possible to intimidate the passengers. They trod heavily on the floor, slammed doors and shrieked instructions as they proceeded down the car. Our Greek travelling companions brought down and opened their luggage and got out their passports, so we followed suit. We endured several tense minutes waiting for the soldiers to make their way to our compartment, but soon enough they arrived and threw open the sliding door with a resounding BANG.

One soldier yelled for us to hand over our identification, impatiently snapping his fingers and pointing at our passports, while the other two began going through our belongings. The soldier looking through Douglas’s and my stuff just gave it a cursory once-over and then indicated we should close our bags and put them back on the overhead rack. He then joined his colleague who was gleefully handling the Greek travellers’ luggage with wild abandon, callously flinging out all their possessions and roughly searching their now empty bags for hidden compartments and contraband. When they were done the soldiers carelessly threw the suitcases on top of the messy pile of clothing they had just created, stomped noisily out of our compartment and moved on to their next unlucky victims. The Greek passengers then began the tedious task of sorting and folding their clothes and repacking their bags. When they had settled once again on the bench opposite ours, Douglas and I shrugged our shoulders at them with quizzical looks on our faces as if to say, “What the hell just happened?” They shrugged their shoulders back at us with resigned expressions, silently replying, “What are you gonna do?” A little while later a new engine arrived and pulled us into Istanbul without further delays. I would venture to guess that Greek soldiers treat Turkish train passengers with similar aggression and disregard when they come across the border.

After Turkey we travelled to Yugoslavia to meet up with my friend Vera, a first generation Canadian with lots of relatives in what is now Serbia. Her Baba (grandmother) had invited us to stay at her home and we brought her a large bag of delicious pistachios from Turkey as a token of our appreciation. Vera’s aunt told us that we shouldn’t mention where the nuts came from because Serbians detest the Turks. It turns out that the Ottomans had treated Yugoslavians just as badly as they had treated the Greeks. Turkey is surrounded by countries that hate them because of the brutality demonstrated by their forbears. Some wounds never heal, or perhaps are not allowed to.

I once took another train trip which could easily have become just as unpleasant as the ones described above were it not for my cousin Greg. He and I had booked two beds on an overnight train from Lisbon to Paris. Train compartments usually contain four beds, meaning we would be spending the night with the two strangers who had booked in to sleep opposite us. Luckily we arrived first and were able to claim the forward facing bunks – had I been forced to travel backwards I would assuredly would have suffered from motion sickness. We stowed our luggage and were about to get something to eat when our roommates arrived. They turned out to be a very friendly pair of Kiwi men who were riding their bikes around Europe. We sat down across from them and had a short introductory conversation during which they both took off their shoes. Oh my but their feet stank! Greg and I quickly excused ourselves, claiming that we needed to get to the club car before it closed but really just needing to escape from the reek. As we were leaving Greg turned back and said in a quiet, menacing voice, “I don’t know whose feet smell so bad, but if that hasn’t been taken care of by the time I get back, we’re going to have a problem.” Low and behold the compartment smelled fresh as a daisy when we returned. Greg follows the example set by his dad, my Uncle Bill, and consistently stands up for his rights and those of the ones he loves. Thank goodness for that otherwise I would have spent the night fermenting in fetid foot fumes.

Other than these few examples, I have always found train travel extremely pleasant. Most recently I took a lovely round-trip by rail from York to Edinburgh, passing through vivid green fields, herds of well-fed cows, quaint villages, and rustic countryside. Someday I hope to take the glass-domed train through the Rockies and a day-trip to immerse myself in the Ontario’s beautiful fall foliage. Train tracks often traverse vistas which cannot be seen from the road, and not having to concentrate on driving affords one the opportunity to take in the forest as well as the trees. All aboard!

Fly Boy

In December of 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, crippling the American Pacific Fleet and drawing them into the war. My then 19-year-old father enlisted eleven months later in November of 1942. He knew he was going to be drafted and since boats were not his thing and he didn’t want to engage in hand to hand combat, he decided to join the air force. He was trained as a radio operator and mechanic at the Army Air Forces Technical School in Chicago, receiving his diploma in May of ’43, then went to the Air Forces Technical Training Command at the Boca Raton Field in Florida to attain his radio observer qualifications the following month.

Eventually he was assigned to the 73rd Wing of the 874th Squadron of the Army Air Corps and began training as a radar operator, his eventual role during combat missions. His flight record shows that he trained in a B-17F for about six weeks before moving on to a B-29 in mid-June of 1944. Nicknamed the Super Fortress, the most infamous example of this particular model of aircraft most certainly is The Enola Gay which carried out the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Flying at heights that Japanese planes could not reach and at a speed they could not match, the B-29 proved an implacable and unassailable weapon for the U.S. military.

Bombing runs on the Japanese islands from mainland China using B-29s began mid- 1944, but they achieved only limited success in large part because the capacity of the gas tanks was insufficient to allow them to reach Tokyo – the most coveted target. U.S. Marines captured the Northern Mariana Islands in November of that year, allowing American access to air fields within range of the Japanese capital. My father’s squadron was stationed on Saipan, one of these islands, and immediately began making bombing runs to Tokyo.

These initial forays proved less destructive than desired for two principal reasons. Firstly, conventional bombs need to hit particular targets to be successful as they explode on impact. Tokyo was well protected by numerous anti-aircraft guns, forcing allied bombers to carry out missions at such a great altitude that accuracy naturally diminished as a consequence. Secondly, the buildings in Tokyo were almost all made of wood. This more pliant construction material made Japanese structures less likely to collapse and set off a domino effect of imploding buildings than their predominately brick and concrete counterparts in The European Theatre. The Americans needed to invent a new kind of bomb if they hoped to inflict sufficient damage on Tokyo to bring the Japanese to their knees.

In 1942 a new substance called napalm had been invented in a secret lab set up by the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service at Harvard University. Napalm was formulated to burn at temperatures in excess of 2000˚F and to adhere to whatever it touches. It deoxygenates the area in which it combusts while simultaneously producing large amounts of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. People caught in a napalm bomb attack burn alive and/or choke to death unless they are lucky enough to be immediately vaporized by the heat released when the bomb explodes. Napalm was packed into a new weapon called an incendiary bomb. The American Air Force built a mock wooden Japanese village in China to test their new napalm-packed incendiary bomb. When every structure was burned to the ground in the test run, the Americans knew they had found exactly what they needed to raze Tokyo.

In March of 1945, Curtis LeMay, the Air Force Commander in Chief in the Pacific, began preparations for a large scale assault on Tokyo. He ordered his engineers to lessen the weight of the B-29s by removing all but the rear guns. This improved their flying range and maneuverability. He also ordered that all bombing runs take place at night when Japanese defences were generally at their weakest. On the evening of March 9, 1945, Operation Meetinghouse was launched. 334 B-29s, including my father’s, took off en masse from airfields in the Marianas. 279 of these reached Tokyo and successfully dropped 1,665 tons of incendiary bombs on the sleeping city in the course of one horrible night. Estimates of the number of civilians killed in the raid – mostly women, children and the elderly – run upwards from 100,000, with as many as 1,000,000 injured and another 1,000,000 displaced. Operation Meetinghouse was the single deadliest air raid in all of World War II. To put this in perspective, about 80,000 and 60,000 people respectively were immediately killed by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Altogether my father took part in 31 bombing runs, mostly on targets of military significance like warehouses and manufacturing plants where very few casualties would likely have resulted. Operation Meetinghouse was the only mission he flew which specifically targeted residential areas, but I have no way of knowing if he was aware of the huge death toll at the time or even later. I do know, however, that in 1992 David McCullough’s biography “Truman” was published and my father, an avid reader of history and biographies, read it. He was deeply effected when he came to the section dealing with the bombing of Tokyo. I noticed at the time that he seemed off – I wasn’t sure how or why, but he just wasn’t himself. I asked my mother what was up and she told me to give him space because he was experiencing some deep and troubling emotions stirred up by the book. I can only imagine how awful it must have been for him to remember, or possibly to realize for the first time at 69 years of age, how many innocent people had been killed in that one night. Dying in an incendiary bomb attack almost certainly means burning or choking to death, and I’m sure my father was also traumatized by the idea that he was complicit in inflicting such pain and suffering on blameless civilians.

I will never know if my dad ever fully reconciled himself to this discovery. Like most vets, he very rarely spoke about his war experiences. Eventually he did came back to himself several months after reading McCullough’s book, but one can only speculate as to how he was able to move on once again.

My father returned home from the war a broken man and moved back into his parents’ house to recover. His was one of the only planes in his squadron that survived – this despite once having to make an emergency landing after being hit by anti-aircraft flak. A stray bullet went straight through my father’s torso just above the left hip during his plane’s descent on that occasion. He received multiple medals for his service, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t mean anything to him. He would much rather have gotten back the five years of his young life that were stolen by the war – three of active service and two more of recuperation once he got home.

Despite my father’s reticence to speak about the war, little things about his experiences slipped out over the years. He couldn’t stand the smell, let alone the taste, of pineapple because he’d eaten so much of it in the South Pacific. My mom could only make pineapple upside-down cake when he was out of the house. One time he also mentioned how terrifying it was when the bullet which pierced his side continued to ricochet around the fuselage after he’d been hit and took down two other crew members before exiting the plane. Traces of that bullet were left in his body and he would find little bits of shrapnel on his wash cloth for months after the war was over.

There are currently only two functioning B-29 bombers in existence, and one visited my local airfield last summer. Three of my siblings and I went to visit. It was breathtakingly small inside, and for the first time I got a real sense of how terrifying it must have been for our father and his entire crew every time they flew into enemy territory. My dad was just shy of 22 years old in early 1945, yet he guided his plane safely to and from its target 31 times. 31 times he sat huddled in the freezing cold tail of the fuselage with the stinking toilet bucket right beside his small navigation table. 31 times he sat there for the 14 hour round trip from Saipan to Tokyo and gritted his teeth as they flew in and out of enemy fire. 31 times he sat there constantly fearing for his life. 31 times he did his duty. He did what many young men do, but because he was my father, he is my hero. I just wish I could tell him that.

Here’s the Problem

I don’t feel like writing. I don’t feel like doing anything. This whole pandemic situation has become emotionally paralyzing for me. I wish I could remain optimistic and believe that some positive, humane changes will result from this catastrophe, but I just can’t. The many examples of human kindness and concern which marked the beginning of this crisis have recently been overtaken by myriad examples of people being stupid, selfish and uncaring. And yes – I’m talking about Americans.

I recently read an opinion piece by a young American blogger. His thesis was that the right-wing of his country’s media outlets and political institutions have fostered and promulgated the virtues of being a sociopath for the last 35 years. Psychopaths are born, but sociopaths, like bigots and misogynists, are made. The right have couched sociopathic ideas in patriotic rhetoric, claiming freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution supersede any other consideration. Things like scientific evidence, the health and welfare of yourself and others, and even common sense take a back seat to personal liberty. This is textbook sociopathy wrapped in the Stars and Stripes.

I found an article in Psychology Today which explained how sociopaths are identified. Mental health clinicians use seven markers to make this diagnosis, and the lockdown protestors in the U.S. are currently demonstrating six of these. Firstly, they don’t respect social norms or laws. There are groups of demonstrators in 20 states now, that’s 40% of the country, that are defying emergency laws to self-isolate every time they assemble. They often act without thinking of consequences or considering their own safety or that of others, a behaviour clearly on display in their close proximity to one another at their rallies. They don’t feel compelled to act on personal responsibilities, like being a good citizen by staying home and social distancing. Sociopaths tend to show aggressive or aggravated behaviour – many picketers are loud and belligerent while others pack an implied threat in the form of automatic weapons. Finally they don’t feel guilt or remorse for harming others, which is summed up perfectly in a protestor’s sign I saw on FB this week which read, “Sacrifice the weak. Open up Tennessee.”

Front line medical staff are literally risking their lives every day they go to work, and lately they’ve upped their presence on social media, posting increasingly desperate pleas for people to please stay home. Protesters seem to have no compunction about gathering in large groups despite this, belittling the efforts of these brave workers by ignoring their request to social distance while simultaneously adding to their workload by facilitating the spread of the disease. The demonstrators’ most prominent supporter, Donald Trump, said today it’s “beautiful” to see nurses and doctors entering hospitals and “… running into death just like soldiers running into bullets.” It’s not that the anti-lockdown contingent doesn’t know what’s happening to medical personnel, it’s just that they don’t care. What they want, or at least feel entitled to, is more important than the sacrifice and courage of others. Textbook sociopathic behaviour.

I’ve heard American protestors saying that the pandemic is a hoax. A hoax?! Perpetrated by whom and to what end? There have been a reported 85,149 Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. to date, making up a full 28% of the world’s total fatalities from the disease. That is more people than live in my city. There really is no way that this number could have been fabricated. Where did all those people go and, more importantly, what reason could there possibly be for faking their deaths? Why would every other country in the world, along with the W.H.O. and respected American medical facilities like the N.I.H and C.D.C., make up such a story? With regards to the lockdown, what politician who ever wants to be re-elected would knowingly put their constituents into economic hardship unless they were convinced is was the right thing to do?

Some demonstrators are also carrying signs that say this is just another flu, and everyone should calm down and go back to work. There is no way these people have any idea about the severity or pathology of Covid-19, and yet they are so skeptical of authorities that they are literally willing to put their own lives and those of others at risk rather than take the advice of virologists the world over. All of this points to the deep distrust of governments and experts which has been cultivated in the American people by the G.O.P. and conservative media for decades. The only sane explanation for what is happening is that it is happening – there is a pandemic, the disease is highly infectious and often deadly, and the only way to stop its spread is by social distancing and self-isolation. It is a clear indication of a malfunctioning society that so many U.S. citizens are unable or unwilling to grasp this reality.

There’s no question that Trump inherited a profoundly selfish, suspicious and angry base, but I think a lot of the credit for the mind-blowing stupidity and consequent danger they are facing at the moment must be laid at his feet. The Republicans have for years resisted increasing grants to health care and research facilities, but it is Trump who has withdrawn financial support to the W.H.O. in the middle of a pandemic and is proposing a 7% reduction in funding to the N.I.H next year. Fox News has been reporting falsehoods as truth for as long as its been on the air, but it was Trump who proclaimed Fox’s ultimate credibility while repeatedly undermining legitimate, fact-checking media. The American people have thus been left to wonder if there is any reliable conduit to the truth. It was John Boehner and Mitch McConnell who made it the G.O.P.’s main mission to block Democratic initiatives regardless of their merit and to widen an ever-increasing divide between the right and the left. Trump made that chasm unbreachable by successfully fanning the flames of hatred between the two sides and stoking the engine of fear and distrust.

I look at the States right now and see a country teetering on the edge of something very bad. At least many more thousands of people will needlessly die from the coronavirus, and at worst this will still happen plus their fermenting discontent and massive personal arsenals may lead to another civil war. There is no room for civil discourse or agreeing to disagree in America, and there hasn’t been for some time. The Southern Poverty Law Centre keeps tabs on the number of militias that exist in the U.S., and as of 2015 the confirmed number was 276. I would imagine that even more have formed since Trump took power. These militias have stockpiles of automatic weaponry, and their members are incredibly angry and deeply suspicious of their government and authority of all stripes. They are sociopaths hell-bent on their own survival and consequently extremely dangerous.

I am not suggesting that everyone in the U.S. is a sociopath, but I think a majority of their population truly believe that personal freedom is of paramount importance. I would imagine that many of the thousands of people who are currently flocking to the beaches in Florida, and particularly California, are otherwise socially responsible liberals. As soon as their right to freedom of movement and assembly is curtailed however, regardless of the reason, they flout the rule of law and do whatever they want. That is the unassailable right of every American, regardless of political stripe.

Over 200 years ago Patrick Henry spurred the American Colonies to revolt against British rule with the words, “Give me liberty or give me death.” I think this has become the fundamental credo of the United States. Their citizens are raised to carry it deep in their hearts along with a myopic patriotism reinforced by daily recitations of the pledge of allegiance and omnipresent iterations of their flag in every form imaginable – from underwear to hot-air balloons. I have found our southern neighbour to be scary for some time, and the absolutely crazy behaviour currently playing out all over their country, not to mention in The White House, just reinforces my fear. I wish we could pick Canada up and move it somewhere else – preferably far across the Atlantic to the shores of Europe. Seeing as how this is impossible, the best I can hope for is that our shared border will remain closed for a long, long time. Let’s all keep fingers crossed that Biden will win the fall election and be able to pull his country out of its current tailspin. Economies the world over, ours included, would be devastated by such a crash.

Mother

My mother has been on my mind a lot since the lockdown began; how I’d love to hear her phone greeting of, “Tis I, your pesky mother” or feel the comfort of her physical presence. I know people who almost beatify their parents after they die, but I readily admit that my mom was as flawed and contradictory as the next person. She never acknowledged or praised the academic achievements of myself and my siblings, but she pretended to conduct and beamed with pride when my brother Michael and I, he on guitar and me on recorder, serenaded her at family gatherings. She was never comfortable with children and yet not only did she have five of her own, but on two separate occasions she took in boys from the neighbourhood who were being brutalized by their dads and brokered a peace with their respective fathers before allowing them to return home. She normally never hesitated to vocally criticize musicians and performing artists when they made mistakes, but silently and patiently sat through the whole of every seemingly endless music night and crappy school play in which her children took part.

Jean Edith Cameron was born on New Years Day, 1931. Her father, David Cameron, came from a reputable and accomplished family. My great-grandfather Herman was a noted surgeon in Winnipeg and a leader in the community. He sustained a devastating wound to his dominant hand while serving in the Canadian Medical Corps during WWI, abruptly ending his surgical career. He decided to study law when he returned home from the war and became a successful lawyer. Eventually he was drawn back to his initial love of medicine and ended his career as Manitoba’s Provincial Coroner. Clearly this was an intelligent, versatile and accomplished man.

There was a great deal of pressure on my grandfather to be successful, not just because of the noteworthy achievements of his dad but also because he was the youngest of four and the only boy. Unluckily for David he came of age during the Depression when jobs were nowhere to be found. He married my grandmother in Regina in 1930 and my mother and Aunt Carolyn were born in short order over the next three years. He moved his young family from Regina to Winnipeg and then on to Ottawa searching for employment. My grandfather was unable to find work in any of these cities, but much to his chagrin my grandmother (known to her grandchildren as Nana) was hired as a secretary at the Ministry of National Defence in the early 1940’s and became the family’s breadwinner.

Nana told me that my grandfather felt emasculated by her success, so one day in early 1944 he took the only paying job he could find. He came home in uniform, explaining that he had enlisted with the Loyal Edmonton Regiment and was soon shipping out to fight in the European Theatre. He had not discussed this decision with his wife, nor did he give his young daughters any explanation as to why he was leaving them despite being well past the age when men usually sign up. In August of that year he was killed in action in Italy, leaving Nana to raise her girls alone. I had a discussion with Nana about this episode in her life after I too was widowed and left to raise two children on my own. She told me, after I had sworn never to repeat her words to my mother, that David had had a profound problem with alcohol and was a very mean drunk. She suspected that his behaviour would have continued to deteriorate had he returned from Italy, and that she and her girls were consequently better off without him.

My mom had always been extremely close with her father while her sister Carolyn was clearly Nana’s favourite. With her dad gone, my mother now faced the terrible prospect of being number two in the pecking order despite being the first born. I suspect the loss of her father was a principal reason she had incredibly low self-esteem – her subconscious telling her that surely if she had been a worthwhile person her father would never have gone off like that. She must have done something to drive him away, or perhaps she was just not intrinsically good enough to entice him to stay.

In 1951 my mother met and married my father, and nine months later my eldest brother David was born. Over the next nine years she had four more children, me being the last. We lived in a conventional red-brick house in a conventional suburban neighbourhood surrounded by conventional white families. The men in these households all had 9-to-5 jobs, and the women were all housewives. We differed from these families only in that my father was a musician and worked all hours meaning he only came home to sleep. It boggles my mind that for the first 15 years of their marriage my mother managed to raise us and maintain the house virtually alone without a car or even a licence.

In the mid 1960’s my mother found out that my dad had a mistress. She told me years later that she promptly packed a suitcase and left in response to this discovery. She checked into a rather shabby motel and as soon as she entered the room sat on the edge of the bed and bawled her eyes out. After she had finished crying she cleaned her face and began to take stock of where she was in her life and marriage. She was an untrained housewife with five children to care for, and there was no way any job she might be lucky enough to land would pay sufficiently that she could continue to raise us in the manner to which we had become accustomed. Even if by some miracle she did find employment, she could never afford to hire someone to look after us while she was at work. Her only option was to return to my father, but nothing said she couldn’t do so on her own terms.

I started kindergarten in 1966 and my mother got her licence and began nursing school that same year. My dad bought her a powder-blue Valiant which I can still clearly see in my mind’s eye, and hired a housekeeper to do chores and make lunch for the three of us who still came home at noon every school day. Mom landed a job as an emergency room nurse in our local hospital upon graduating and promptly began taking periodic trips overseas with her sister and mother. Eventually my three eldest siblings moved out, and my mother’s salary allowed her to take my brother Michael and I to the ballet and live theatre whenever a production caught her eye. These massive changes were all part of the deal she struck with my father after returning home from the motel; she would turn a blind eye to his philandering and continue to raise his children provided she had the freedom to work and spend her salary any way she saw fit. I would say my mother was ahead of the feminist curve on this one.

My mom and my eldest sister never got along. In fact, they fought all the time. Things in our home became so tense that we ended up in family counselling. We were in only our first or second session when the therapist zeroed in on Mom and started delving into her childhood. Eventually he mentioned my grandfather and she said, “I don’t want to talk about my father.” When the therapist persisted, my mother became rigid and unresponsive, then simply got up and walked out, with all of us following after like obedient ducklings in a row. That was the end of family counselling. My mother’s reaction laid bare something we had all suspected – she was still elementally damaged by her father; either by his abandonment, or by the relationship they had had before he left, or both. She had erected a fortress around him, and there was no way to breach the walls.

Despite having excelled at school, being highly regarded at her job and successfully raising five children, my mother always felt like a failure. I think her self-confidence was hobbled when her father left, and any possibility of rectifying that mistaken childhood perception was dashed when he died. She felt worthless for the rest of her life. She started smoking less than a year after her dad was killed, and further sabotaged her health in the last fifteen years of her life by retiring early, adopting a terrible diet and refusing exercise of any kind. The women in my maternal line typically live into their 90’s, but Mom’s morbid obesity combined with a half century of smoking took a devastating toll on her health. We lost her at the relatively young age of 70.

I wish my mother had been happier. I wish she had believed my siblings and I when we told her she was a good mother. I wish she had believed her friends and colleagues when they maintained that she was a valuable and skilled person. Her life became a cautionary tale for me as a young woman when I struggled with similar feelings of inadequacy despite friends and family constantly asserting my worth. My mother was the smartest person I’ve ever met, and if she could be so mistaken about her own value, then maybe I was too. This realization was one of the key factors which gave me the confidence to escape from an abusive marriage. I will be forever grateful to my mother for this, along with myriad other things too numerous to mention. Some days I actively miss her, most days I think about her, and everyday I would give almost anything to simply nestle in the comfort of her fat arms one more time.

A Land Downunder

My husband Douglas asked me to marry him in the most romantic way imaginable. We had decided to travel around the world for as long as the money we’d saved would allow and were mapping out a tentative route when he turned to me and said,

“Hey, it just occurred to me – if we get married before we go we can hit the parents up for cash as a wedding gift and travel longer.”

Just the kind of gooey proposal every girl dreams of!

A few months and one civil ceremony later we hit the road with an extra 2 grand in the bank. We planned to circumnavigate the globe from west to east and our first stop was Fiji; an idyllic South Pacific island best known for its glorious climate, laid-back natives and gorgeous coral reefs. Douglas rented a snorkel and flippers from a kiosk on the beach the very day we got there and dove right in. I don’t like putting my head under water so I just waded for a while and then sat down on the sand. I was lazily scanning the horizon when Douglas suddenly popped up out of the surf. He turned and headed as quickly towards shore as the water and his gear would allow, his unwieldy gait reminiscent of John Cleese’s silly walk in Monty Python’s Flying Circus. He yanked his flippers off as soon as he hit the sand and headed straight for the rental hut which sat at the top of the beach in the shade of the tree line. I wasn’t sure he knew where I was sitting, but when he came abreast of me he briefly paused and with a whole-body shiver said, “sea snake.” That was the end of snorkeling in Fiji.

New Zealand was next on the itinerary and luckily Douglas had lots of family there so we always had a place to stay as we hitchhiked around the two islands. It’s a breathtakingly beautiful country and the people are extremely welcoming. After three lovely weeks in New Zealand we flew to Australia, where we had arranged to meet and mooch off of still more relatives. Our plan was to visit family in Sydney and Brisbane and then make our way northwest through the Outback before using the far northern city of Darwin as our jumping off point for Bali. Traffic through the Australian Outback can be pretty sparse and it commonly reaches 45° during the day. We simply couldn’t imagine hitching – possibly for hours at a time – in such intense heat. Consequently we bought a used VW combi van and put an inflatable double bed in the back, providing us with both transportation and shelter.

We made our way up the coast north of Brisbane towards the city of Cairns, stopping along the way to take a catamaran out to the Great Barrier Reef. Increased water temperatures caused by global warming are currently incrementally killing the reef – a process called bleaching because the coral turns white as it dies. I am grateful that no such ecological tragedy was happening at the time and that we got to see the reef while it was still teeming with life and so gloriously colourful that it looked like something out of an animated Disney film.

We parked our van in a beachside parking lot for the night after our visit to the reef and in the evening sat on the sand looking out to sea. Slowly an unfamiliar white light appeared on the far horizon. It caught our eyes as it gradually rose in the pitch black sky, growing in intensity and size. Douglas and I began to have serious concerns about what it was; could it be that New Zealand had just been nuked, or were we perhaps witnessing an extra-terrestrial invasion? The light eventually coalesced into a perfect sphere, with the familiar features of the Man in the Moon taking shape and calming our fears. I have since learned that there is something called a “supermoon” which occurs when the moon’s orbit brings it closest to the earth, and I’m sure that’s what we saw that night on the beach. Our initial fear at the strangeness of this burgeoning vision now turned to awe and delight at the brightness and clarity of the light it produced.

We may have been the only people on the beach sharing in this breathtaking moment, but there were other creatures lurking in the shadows. No sooner had the moon fully cleared the horizon than hundreds of tiny crabs seemed to magically appear. The exceptionally white moonbeams gave them a ghostly pallor, as if they were a rare species of albino crustaceans, and they began to frantically scurry about at the edge of the surf. I’m sure their movements were random, but at that moment it looked as though they were performing a choreographed celebratory lunar dance. Douglas and I sat entranced watching these tiny creatures manifest the unspoken joy and oneness with nature we both felt on that extraordinary night.

There are rest stops positioned periodically along the roads in the Outback, mostly to accommodate road trains (the Australian term for vehicles comprised of one truck cab pulling two or more trailers). Towns in the Outback are dependent on road trains for all of their supplies, and these mammoth vehicles ply the roads both night and day to meet the demand. There are numerous cattle stations in the Outback which are so enormous as to make fencing impossible, allowing the cows to freely range over the roads. Needless to say, cattle and road trains don’t mix. Any poor cow unfortunate enough to get hit dies on impact and is launched several feet to the side of the road. The Outback is consequently scattered with cow carcasses in various stages of decay – from newly dead through bloated beyond all recognition and finally to a small square of wrinkled leather resembling nothing so much as a discarded purse. The heat and dryness of the environment make short work of this entire process.

We had stopped for the night at an Outback rest stop when a group of truckers called us over to their fire. One of the men pulled a freezing cold Foster’s Lager out of his cooler and offered it to my husband, who gratefully accepted. It’s so arid in the Outback that you can drink all day and never need to pee. Very little fluid ends up in your bladder because the moisture in your skin is constantly being leached out by the dry air.

Douglas and I were wrung out from a long day’s drive, and as such were content to simply listen to the banter of the loud and boisterous truckers. At some point my attention wandered and my eyes turned upward. I was so shocked and disoriented by what I saw that I shot up out of my chair with a frightened yelp. All conversation stopped as the men turned and asked me what was wrong. At first I couldn’t articulate the problem, but as I caught my breath and calmed down I realized that the stars were all out of place. The night sky in the Southern Hemisphere looks completely different from ours, and it was very disconcerting and startling to look up into a firmament that didn’t contain Orion or The Big Dipper. I explained the reason for my outburst, and several of the men then took it upon themselves to teach me about their constellations. The only name I remember from that night is The Southern Cross, but I’ll never forget the moment an unfamiliar sky derailed my sense of reality.

We stopped at a beautiful oasis near a town called Katherine. It feels miraculous to come upon a watering hole with lush foliage all around after driving for days through an incredibly dry and barren landscape. Douglas and I bathed in the emerald green water for ages, luxuriating in the cool relief it offered our parched skin. I even put my head under! Afterwards we made our way back to the parking lot. Several groups of people were either getting ready to swim or, like us, were drying off and preparing to leave. There was tall green grass all around the parking lot along with a variety of ferns and some short palm trees. I noticed with some concern that a couple of frilled lizards, each about 2 feet long, were sunning themselves on the edge of the pavement just beyond our van. Frilled lizards are so called because they have a corrugated collar of skin around their necks which they puff out to make themselves look bigger when they are threatened. The movement of their front legs is impinged when the collar is unfurled, forcing them to run on their hind legs to escape predators.

Everything was calm and lovely until a noisy white van pulled in. I was still nervously eying the lizards at the time and saw them take on a defensive posture in response to the racket, frills half-cocked. A kindly Australian gentleman told me to stay calm and that the lizards would simply run into the bush if they became more spooked. The driver of the van then hopped out, resoundingly slammed his door, and opened the side of his vehicle. Out bounded a large dog, barking its head off at the sheer joy of being released. All hell broke loose.

Both lizards reacted with maximum alarm, fully fanning their collars and rising up on their hind legs. The same man as before told us both to stay perfectly still as the frill lizards are arboreal and if they still feel threatened after unfurling their collars, their second instinct is to climb to the relative safety of the highest object in the vicinity. In the split second it took us both to realize that Douglas was that object, the dog tore across the parking lot towards the lizards. One of them took off into the foliage as the man had predicted, but the other ran towards Douglas and scrambled up his side. It parked itself on the very top of his head, hissing at the frantically barking dog which was now circling Douglas’s feet.

My husband was the most fearless person I have ever known, but even he was petrified to have this large, angry reptile perched on his crown. He looked around helplessly as people sprang into action; two men grabbed the dog by its collar and began dragging it back towards the van while a couple of women started yelling at the dog’s owner. Within moments the dog was back in the van. In the silence that ensued we all just stood there – as still as statues – staring at Douglas. I don’t know how long it was before the lizard finally climbed down, but it seemed like hours. Douglas took a deep shuttering breath once the lizard had left and winced as he began to register the pain from the cuts it had inflicted while climbing up the side of his body. He reached up to the top of his head and brought his hand down with a look of horror and disgust on his face. In his palm was a hefty load of lizard poop – a parting gift from his reptilian visitor.

We had a full week in Darwin before leaving for Bali, and Douglas’s wounds healed perfectly with the help of an antiseptic cream recommended by a knowledgeable pharmacist. The “lizard incident”, as Douglas and I came to call it, could not sully an otherwise extraordinary trip to an extraordinary country. Australia is a diverse and beautiful place – jam-packed with deadly animals, but otherwise glorious. It has some of the most pristine and inviting beaches I have ever seen, and a wide variety of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Like everyone I was concerned and saddened by the massive fires which ravaged the country this past winter, and sincerely hope that we can ameliorate climate change quickly enough to ensure that this terrible ecological tragedy will not be repeated.

These Days

Although I am trying very hard to block out what’s happening in the U.S. right now, they exert such a powerful influence that unbidden American news items keep popping up on my Facebook feed. Many Canadians are shocked and saddened by the miserable response of the U.S. federal government to this crisis. While I agree that the lack of empathy and concern shown by The White House is heartbreaking, there is no way in which it is surprising and not just because of the malignant narcissist who now lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Americans have always prided themselves on being fiercely independent and self-sufficient. Their national motto of “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” intrinsically promotes the idea of putting oneself before others, whereas the Canadian credo of “Law, Order and Good Government” extols the sublimation of individuality to ideas and institutions that further the greater good. The rugged, self-made individual is the American ideal, downplaying the value of sharing wealth or acting on the behalf of others. Republicans have fostered and exploited this archetype for decades, and Democrats have only feebly stood up in opposition.

In 1986 Ronald Reagan said,

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are; I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

I can think of much scarier phrases such as, “I’m sorry, but we can’t find your daughter anywhere” or, “People with your diagnosis count in weeks not months.” Clearly Reagan was being hyperbolic, but he definitely believed the essence of what he was saying (as did the millions of U.S. citizens who voted for him). He tapped into their shared picture-book image of the ultimate American success story, with the protagonist pulling himself up by his own bootstraps while spurning help from his government or anyone else for that matter. Ronald Reagan was immensely popular, winning the most electoral votes of any President in U.S. history, and the Republican Party hitched its wagon to his persona and policies with eager devotion. Here was a larger-than-life figure who lent his shiny new face to the conservative movement of the day. He was already well known due to his involvement in the McCarthy hearings and his previous life as a Hollywood film star, making him an ideal poster boy for the Republican Party – a position he holds to this day.

The cornerstone of Reagan’s platform was so called trickle-down economics, a theory originally put forth by an arch-conservative economist named Art Laffer. Laffer posited that cutting taxes on corporations and the rich would leave them with more capital to invest resulting in a more robust economy and a better standard of living for all. This model has been tried repeatedly by U.S. federal and state governments over the past three decades, and every time has proven to be a dismal failure – deficits balloon, the rich horde their money at the top, and average Americans suffer. Still the Republican Party continues in this vein, most recently evidenced by the massive tax cuts enacted when Trump came to power.

The Republican economic policy is empirically flawed, but their ethos of smaller government and every man for himself resonates so perfectly with the deeply held notion of American exceptionalism that they continue to wield power. Their belief in rugged individualism and their frequently irrational fear of socialism are perfectly embodied in the person of Donald Trump. Here is a man who is irrefutably self-centred, a shameless self-promoter, and gleefully dismissive of the pain or needs of others. He is rich, famous, and successful despite saying and doing whatever he wants. He is the ultimate American.

Now that a national emergency has arisen, however, Americans are needlessly dying because of their misplaced loyalty to the Republican party and their ill-conceived notions of individuality. The only course of action which can protect and serve a population during a national health emergency is a well-conceived, expertly executed and generously financed coordinated response. U.S. citizens are now paying with their lives for chronically under-funded government agencies and a deep-seated fear of socialized medicine. They make up less than 5% of the Earth’s population, yet their Covid-19 deaths to date constitute 25% of worldwide fatalities. Were it not so tragic this could be considered ironic given that they consume an estimated 50% of all the drugs produced by Big Pharma.

American belief in non-interventionist governance has greatly contributed to many unnecessary deaths in the short run, and I predict that their bloody-minded individualism will draw out and exacerbate this tragedy in the long run. There is an organized and armed group in Michigan pushing to prematurely re-open the state, and the other day I heard their leader say,

“Being told to stay home when you’re sick is quarantine. Being told to stay home when you’re well is tyranny.”

There it is in a nutshell. They are so distrustful of their government and so wrapped up in their right to individual liberty that they cannot perceive the greater good, even when doing so could ultimately save their own life or that of someone they love. Michigan has a population of 10 million, yet they already have a death toll of 4,135. Meanwhile Canada, with a population of 37.6 million, has only experienced 3,391 casualties. We have been strictly following self isolation and social distancing recommendations, and they have not. Even irrefutable numbers such as these can’t turn them away from their myopic insistence on unfettered freedom. The only thing we can reasonably do in response to the tragedy unfolding to our south is to keep our border closed and hope that eventually calmer heads will prevail, although I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one.

There are millions of Americans who did not vote for Trump who are suffering because of his mismanagement of this crisis, and my heart goes out to them. It is their extreme bad luck that a man so self-serving and callous as to cut funding to the W.H.O. in the middle of a pandemic happens to be in office right now. While they are not directly responsible for his ascension, liberals have mostly sat by while their country devolved to the point where such a loathsome individual could even run for president, let alone win the election.

For years I have watched documentaries and televised rants produced by American liberals about the many ills in the U.S. they perceive to have been created and/or propagated by conservatives. In the end, however, they pretty well all maintain that this is not what Americans are truly like and that they live in the greatest country in the world. To these two assertions I say, “You can’t have it both ways.” You can’t spend an hour delving into a profound systemic problem and then say that the people responsible are better than this, because clearly they aren’t. It is also absurd to expose rampant malfeasance, glaring inefficiencies or huge inequities in your society and then claim as a nation to be better than everyone else. Liberals have been more than happy to sound the alarm on all of the terrible problems they are happy to lay at the feet of conservatives, but have seemingly done very little to correct them. In the end they have reaped what they sowed.

The situation in the States is only adding to the almost palpable anxiety and uncertainty floating in the air these days, and most of us can’t help but be effected. Occasionally I succumb to these feelings, but mostly I can distract myself and find contentment in small things like a delicious orange or the vibrant green buds on my lilac bushes. The Chinese have a saying that crisis is half danger and half opportunity. If one pays more attention to the first half of this adage, then concern and worry necessarily follow. I try to give more weight to the second part, taking solace in the many acts of kindness and courage fostered by our shared fight against this virus, and imagining the good that might come as a result of it.

Sisters and Brothers

Sibling rivalry has existed since the time of Cain and Abel, takes many forms and can spring up for a number of reasons. A child might bully their sibling due to a perceived imbalance in the distribution of parental attention, approval, or discipline. It might also spring from a genuine dislike. Whatever the reason, I think it’s fair to say that the more kids there are in a family, the more likely it is that there will be some rivalry and/or bullying. I am the youngest of five children so it’s no surprise that I experienced a fair bit in my day.

I shared a large room in the basement with my two sisters when I was a little girl. Basements – even fully finished ones like our – are just intrinsically creepy to children. This visceral memory is exploited in scary movies when fear and anxiety are triggered or amplified by the protagonist going down a set of cellar stairs. My bedtime was a good hour before my sisters’ which meant I was expected to go downstairs and walk the long, dark corridor to our bedroom all alone. Every night I would steel my courage and convince myself that there was nothing to be afraid of in the basement – tonight was the night I would boldly walk down the hall, brush my teeth in the bathroom across from my room, and go to sleep like a normal person. By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, however, my bravery would inevitably have seeped away. I would park myself on the bottom step for what seemed like an eternity, occasionally nodding off but still unable to brave the darkness of the hallway. When I finally heard my sisters begin their descent, I would scurry to the room and jump into bed so they’d think I had been there all along.

The storage and laundry rooms were on opposite sides about of the hall half way to our bedroom. Each of them was dark and menacing because both contained machines that randomly made scary noises – the furnace in the storage room and the water softener in the laundry room. There is nothing quite so terrifying to a kid as a loud, disquieting sound coming from an empty room at night. The storage room had a lock on the door because my mother stored our unwrapped Christmas gifts in there every December. My sister Lisa was a clever one, and realized how scared I was of the inhuman noises that emanated from these two rooms. She told me that the pilot light in the furnace was actually the devil, and the noise it made was him waking up and getting ready to attack anyone hapless enough to be within striking distance. One day as I was heading down the basement hall Lisa came up from behind, pushed me in the storage room and locked me in. I started banging on the door and pleading to be let out, and then the pilot light clicked. All motion and sound seemed to cease as I froze and slowly turned around. Moments later, the furnace roared to life. My legs turned to jelly and I helplessly slid down the door to the floor. I sat there shivering, staring at the devil’s lair and waiting for him to incarnate in some terrifying form before me. I don’t know how long I sat there, but eventually I thought to try the door again and found it unlocked. I guess the joke had lost its lustre when I stopped crying and pleading.

My sisters are five and seven years older than me, and throughout my childhood I desperately sought their acceptance. They often took advantage of this eagerness by getting me to do favours or run errands for them. They were particularly fond of having me sneak upstairs after lights out to pilfer them a snack from the kitchen. I would definitely be punished if our mother caught me taking food without her permission, so I had to be extremely stealthy on my mission. As a parent I’ve come to realize that kids are terrible at being furtive, so I’m pretty sure my mom heard me every time I made a late night foray. The only reason I ever succeeded was because sometimes she couldn’t be bothered to catch me, not because I was actually quiet enough to go undetected.

As nerve-racking as these trips to the kitchen would be, it was often part one of a diabolical two-part plan. While I was upstairs one of my sisters would position herself in the storage room and the other would stand in the laundry room, silently waiting for me in the dark. As I drew abreast of the doorways they would simultaneously jump out with a growl and scare the shit out of me. Before I could even cry out they would each grab one of my arms and hustle me into our room to bury my face in a pillow so our mom wouldn’t hear my sobs. This scenario played out on numerous occasions, which might lead one to wonder why I didn’t simply refuse to go after the first time. The answer is simple – I was extremely eager to please and naïve enough to trust them when they swore that this time they wouldn’t scare me. I was the ever-hopeful Charlie Brown who gullibly believing their promise to hold the ball in place, and they were the calculating Lucy who heartlessly pulled it away every time.

I am closest in age to my brother Michael and he and I have always been very close, but there were times when even he bullied me. I was coming home one day at the age of 9 or 10 and noticed Michael standing still in the middle of the driveway. Odd. When I got to the sidewalk in front of our house I stopped and asked him what he was doing, to which he replied, “Nothing.” I started up the driveway and he suddenly revealed that he had a knife in his hand which until then had been hidden behind his thigh. Needless to say I stopped dead in my tracks and asked him why he had a knife.

“You don’t think I would stab you with this, do you? You know I would never do anything like that.”

Somewhat mollified but still suspicious of and concerned by his behaviour I again started up the drive, leaving a wide berth between us just in case. He took a small step sideways to block my path and pointed the knife at me, forcing me to once again stop. This pattern played out a few more times before I finally screwed up the courage to run past him as fast as I could into the house. He never explained why he did this nor did I ask.

Another time he talked me into having a boxing match with him while wearing hockey gloves to protect our hands. Michael is three years older than me and thus greatly outmatched me in size and strength. He was handily winning the fight when our eldest brother walked in. David was a teenager by then and his advantages in size and strength over Michael were proportionate to those of Michael over me. He immediately grabbed my hockey gloves and started sparring with Michael, asking him how he liked fighting at such a clear disadvantage.

David is one of the most non-confrontational people I have ever met, yet he stepped right up in my defence. One of his best friends was the exact opposite. Bob was a braggart and a blowhard who reminded me of Frank Burns from “M.A.S.H.”; thin- skinned and always ready to laugh at another’s distress or discomfort. He was the eldest of four and took particular delight in tormenting his youngest brother Bruce. Bruce went to bed well before his big brother, and one night Bob decided to use this to his advantage. He plunged his hands in frigid water long enough to make them freezing cold then silently entered his brother’s room and knelt at the foot of the bed. Carefully sliding his glacial hands under the covers he simultaneously grasped both of Bruce’s ankles while letting out a ghostly moan. Needless to say Bruce shot up screaming and spent the rest of the night in his parents’ bed. I overheard Bob relating this story to David and he was laughing so hard that he could hardly get the words out.

The most extreme sibling discord I experienced in my young life was between my cousins Cam and Greg. Their family was comprised of three boy ; Matt, Cam and Greg from eldest to youngest. Matt and Greg were both golden boys – they were attractive, popular blondes who excelled at school and athletics. Cam, on the other hand, had mousy brown hair and unexceptional looks, struggled at school and had the worst hand-eye coordination I have ever seen. One time he and I were on a tennis court casually lobbing the ball back and forth for fun. Cam rarely managed to connect with the ball even though it was perfectly placed every time and there was literally nothing at stake. He became so frustrated with his ineptitude that he whipped his racket over the net, almost crowning me in the process. While Matt and Greg were highly praised and prized by their father, poor Cam was mostly overlooked. He responded by becoming jealous, bitter and depressed.

Matt mostly did his own thing and didn’t bother much with his brothers. He knew who they were and seemed to accept them as such. Greg, on the other hand, delighted in hassling Cam. It didn’t help matters that Cam made himself a ridiculously easy target by always rising to Greg’s bait. More often than not Greg would have his fun and use his superior intellect and athleticism to get away clean. On one occasion, however, he pushed his luck too far and Cam finally got the better of him.

My Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Bill both worked so when they deemed Matt old enough to handle the responsibility, they would leave him in charge after school until an adult got home. Most days Cam and Greg returned from school before Matt did, and Greg often took this opportunity to wind Cam up. He would goad Cam into a blind fury, and when his brother came at him Greg would simply deke out of the way and run out of the house laughing. That was how it usually played out, but not always. Matt told me of a time he came home from school to see Cam brandishing a knife, furiously lumbering between a cowering Greg and the outside door. He had to quickly figure out a way to diffuse the situation without anyone getting hurt. My Aunt Carolyn was a fairly icy person and all of her boys craved her approval. With this in mind Matt looked squarely at Cam and calmly said,

“If you kill him, Mom will be really mad at you.”

It didn’t take Cam long to realize the veracity of this statement, and as he lowered his head and the knife Greg bolted out the door.

Sibling rivalry and bullying are just a part of life. I have never heard of anyone being traumatized by it, or of it being responsible for breaking familial ties. Most of the time these incidents are just rites of passage which in retrospect become funny or at least entertaining stories. I know that all of the mistreatment I endured at the hands of my siblings has become that for me – the stuff of interesting tales from my childhood which have no bearing on how I feel about my brothers and sisters today. We all experience difficult situations, and in the end are stronger for having endured them.