A date which will live in infamy...

Today December 7 2011 is the seventieth anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. As the event that brought the United States into World War II it is certainly one of the most pivotal events in world history. No American who lived through that day will ever forget it. For them it was an event so cataclysmic that it became one of those “where were you when…” events. It was one of those events so momentous that everyone remembers where they were when they heard the news; like later generations with the assassination of JFK or the events of 911. Several generations have passed since that day in 1941. Many young Americans have forgotten; if they ever knew, what happened that day. Yet there is still an understanding of how important the event was to the American Psyche. Americans have always been better mythmakers than Canadians. I don’t mean that in a derogatory fashion. They have always been good at taking events; crystallizing the spirit or essence of the event and preserving that. Americans still “get” Pearl Harbor Canadians don’t. I was there last month; in Honolulu and there was no way I would visit Oahu without visiting Pearl Harbor. You will never get the historian out of me. You can never understand Pearl Harbor without understanding what was happening in America and the rest of the world in December of 1941. Like most world events war was at the heart of it. The world had emerged from the First World War, bloodied, exhausted, sick (Spanish influenza) and broke. The victorious Allies (including the Americans) had inflicted a punishing peace treaty on Germany and were forcing her to pay back vast sums of money spent by the Allies on the war. Germany had been forced to surrender by mass starvation and had no money to pay reparations. The whole world descended into the great depression. All nations began to look inward. They were poor and starving and had no time to think of their neighbors in Europe and no money to do anything about their plight even if they did care. America especially retreated into “Isolationism” it was felt that America had been sucked into the First War by her European Allies the French and the English and that the war had been a waste of American lives and money. American politicians began to run on platforms of “No Foreign Wars”. While the economy was going south in America the Germans were starting to rebuild. Hitler rose to power and the world looked aside at his eccentricities because he was rebuilding the economy. When he began saber rattling the European democracies made deals backed up by vague threats that they were ill equipped to support. Had Hitler existed in a vacuum America might never have joined the war. But Hitler had made a pact with Japan and Japan had plans of its’ own in the Pacific that made conflict virtually inevitable. America remained neutral while Germany overran Poland and Belgium, Holland and France and bombed the great cities of Britain into rubble. The American President FDR knew that he should do something but he did not have the people of America behind him. He was a great friend of Winston Churchill (who was himself half American) and gave as much aid in money and materiel as he dared. In the Pacific the Japanese invaded Manchuria and were threatening the holdings of the European powers then at war with her German ally. The two great Pacific powers (the U.S. and Japan) were on a collision course. Japan had few natural resources and the Americans had gotten fed up the Japanese aggression and cut of exports to Japan. The Japanese formed plans to seize the resources that they needed. In secret they formed a plan to strike the Americans hard and fast. Admiral Yamamoto the great mastermind of the Japanese war effort had spent time in the U.S. he knew the awesome power of the industries there. He told the high command he could promise only six months of victory against the Americans. What the Japanese wanted on December 7th was to catch the American aircraft carriers in harbor. They knew the surface ships were there but they wanted the carriers. While the attack was a huge humiliation and blow to American prestige it was a limited victory for the Japanese. They did not get the carriers and they did not damage the naval facilities and fuel storage on Oahu. The Americans lost four battleships (three of which they salvaged and refloated). Six months later at the battle of Midway the Americans caught Admiral Nagumo’s flotilla and sank four of the carriers that were at Pearl Harbor. True to Yamamoto’s word he gave them six months of victory. Today when you go to Pearl Harbor it is still bristling with naval might. The museum dedicated to the battle overlooks Battleship Row where those four ships were sunk. You watch a very moving video put together by the U.S. Park Service then board a launch to visit the site of the USS Arizona. She is the only Battleship left at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. Aboard her are eleven hundred of her crew; they died that fateful day and sleep in her belly. When you look down from the memorial you can see the rusted hull beneath the waves. Oil still bubble’s up out of her seventy years later like the blood of the great lady. Do you remember the old joke about the plane crashing on the border and where do you bury the survivors? Well if you were a survivor of the Arizona you might have a choice to make. For if you are a survivor who was aboard her on Dec. 7 1941 you can opt to be cremated and have your ashes interred with your shipmates in her hull. If you served on her before Pearl Harbor the Park Service will scatter your ashes over the site. This day December 7 2011 they will inter the ashes of three survivors with their old comrades. This is a solemn place; a place of remembrance and reflection; of loss and of forgiveness. For out of the ashes of the Second World War came a different plan. Not to punish our enemies like the Treaty of Versailles did in 1919; but instead the Marshall plan where the Allies (largely the U.S.) helped pick her former enemies up and gave them back their dignity and helped them build two world class economies out of the dust and death of war. These men who are today being reunited with their comrades are heroes too, for not only the dead are heroes. The fact that I observed Japanese tourists on the memorial says to me that they didn’t die in vain. May they all rest in peace.

The miracle of flight

I just came back from holidays. When you live in the north holidays involves a series of plane flights, usually on progressively larger planes on the way out and progressively smaller ones on the way back. I have started holidays in a four seater where I have sat in the copilot’s seat and finished up on a jumbo jet; where, oddly enough they did not ask me to sit in the copilot’s seat. We had a pilot who used to joke “There are two washrooms on this flight; one here in Tulita and the other in Norman Wells. The flight is too short for an in-flight movie but not to worry your life will flash before your eyes!” Bush pilots; you gotta love them.
At some point in time on any number of trips I have made over the years someone standing in the departure lounge staring out at a massive piece of metal and glass and rubber that is their aircraft and will remark; “I still don’t understand how they get them to fly.” It does seem quite unlikely that this massive object can slip the bonds of earth and soar into the sky. I have had the opportunity to witness many flyers who are totally unconvinced that it will happen as they sit in their seats feet plastered to the floor hands lifting the arm rests like they were holding the plane in the air. I feel like leaning over once we have landed and saying; “Thanks for the smooth flight!” But that might be a bit cruel. I do not recall ever being afraid to fly. In fact it is a bit of a rush. I love the feeling of G-Force when you are pushed back into your seats as the plane hurtles down the runway. Where else could you hit such speeds on the ground without blue lights flashing in your rear view mirror? I love this part of flying. The lack of leg room; the sucky food and surly attitudes of fascist flight crew who have studied every rule of flying and want to make you aware of every one of them on every flight is another matter. But the sense of speed and the sheer power of takeoff are great.
No; this is not the miracle of flight of which I speak. I have long ago accepted that the miracle of flight itself is a simple matter of physics; thrust and lift, weight ratios etc. Even those who claimed that it was impossible for a bumble bee to fly if you worked it out on paper are wrong. I once watched a television show where a physicist explained bumble bee flight and they are quite capable. No to me the miracle of flight is something else entirely.
What I find miraculous is when the gate agents announce “This is a pre-boarding announcement only. Will those people requiring extra time boarding and those flying with small children please board the plane now?” Fifty people will surge forward with all manner of physical impairments and board the plane early. As soon as those poor unfortunates have boarded the healthy ones will stand and form a line long before the gate agents voice comes over the speakers and says “ Ladies and gentlemen thank you for your patience we will now begin general boarding of Fascist airlines flight blah , blah, blah.” The rest of us board the airline. Now I would like to point out one salient fact to all who fly. It doesn’t matter when you board; that plane aint leaving until every last mother’s son (and father’s daughter) is on that plane. We have all heard the plaintiff voice of the gate agents as they butcher people’s last names over the pathetic public address system “Would passengers Hrzelsquatch and Spuzzerby please report to gate blah, blah, blah for the immediate departure of their plane? That is passengers Hrzelsquatch and Spuzzerby to gate blah, blah, blah for the immediate departure of your aircraft.” The poor sods are probably fifteen feet away but don’t recognize what the gate agent has done to their names. If even one person misses the flight they have to remove that person’s baggage before the plane takes off so what’s the rush?
So let’s say that all the passengers make the flight. You soar to twenty; thirty or even forty thousand feet on route to your destination and somewhere along the way a miracle occurs. Because lo and behold; when you reach said destination no matter how short the flight; no matter how high or low you flew, when the flight attendants come on the PA and say “Those passengers travelling with small children or requiring extra time deplaning please remain in your seats and we will assist you.” Behold the miracle; only the people flying with children remain. Somehow all the other people who limped on the plane have shaken their impediments and been cured mid flight. It’s a miracle!

Wringing the last drop out of a wrong number

I wonder if Alexander Graham Bell got wrong numbers. I hope so. I hate them. There is nothing as loud as the sound of a phone ringing in a sleeping house at two in the morning. Lina got to it first on about the third ring. “Hello?” She answered weakly and groggily. “Is Wuzzername there?” Said a thick; slurred voice on the other end of the line. “You have the wrong number!” Lina replied, sounding more awake and a lot angrier. We put the incident out of our minds and went back to sleep. This time; when the phone rand Lina picked it up on the second ring “What?!” She barked. “Is Wuzzername there?” It was the same drunken voice. “You have the wrong number!” Lina answered with as much venom as she could muster. She slammed the receiver down even though it was cordless and that’s not what hangs it up.
Now this was far from my first late night wrong number. I remember when I was living in northern Alberta in the 1980’s. Back in those days there were no cordless phones. There was only one phone jack and it was in the living room at the other end of my trailer. When the phone rang at three in the morning I staggered ha length of the trailer in inky blackness stubbing my toe on the kitchen table in the process. “Hello?” I said still half asleep. “This is Alberta Government Telephones; I have a collect call from Henry do you accept the charges?” The operator’s voice sounded young. It figured only someone new would get stuck working at this hour of the night. I could hear a plaintiff voice in the background. A drunken plaintiff voice “Accept the charges Dad it’s me Henry.” Now Henry was a neighbor of mine. He was a sweetheart when he was sober. As there was no place to drink or buy booze in our little town he was usually sober. But every time he went to the nearest larger town he got drunk. Three a.m. was when the bars closed. “You have the wrong number.” I said putting the receiver down. I tried to get back to bed without opening my eyes.
I have had sober people call me back after a wrong number and I had barely put the phone down. I swear they hit redial. That is stupidity. Drunkenness is a different kettle of worms. Drunks have randomness to their thought process which allows their poor victim time to fall back into that deepest stage of REM sleep. The stage where young men are dreaming of waving a fly rod on a clear day in their favorite strip of trout water. A day so still and so perfect that the only flies are in your vest pockets and the only ripples on the water are trout rising to your fly. When suddenly with a deafening clatter the phone bell rends the air like the atomic bomb! I shot to my feet like I had been ejected out of bed. Again I thought I could stay asleep with the lights off so again I navigated the shoals of furniture without the benefit of the lights. I ran aground on a kitchen chair and hopped the last six feet my wounded toe in one hand as I scooped the receiver up with the other. “Hello?” I squealed into the mouthpiece. The same young voice as before; the same professional spiel “This is Alberta Government Telephones; I have a collect call from Henry.” I was stunned. There must only be one operator on duty at that hour of the night in northern Alberta. “Oh for crying out loud! It’s the same number as before lady; it’s still the wrong number!” I could still hear Henry sniveling on the other end of the line. “Well I am just doing my job! I have to put these calls through what if it was an emergency?” She sounded hurt and I immediately regretted my tone. “I’m sorry operator. But this isn’t his Dad’s place I am just trying to fish. I mean sleep.” As I hung up I made a mental note to look up Henry’s Dad’s phone number the next day.
I think the randomness is as infuriating if not more infuriating than the thing itself. I had actually hooked the fish this time when the phone exploded into action. This time I made no pretense of trying to stay asleep and I turned on the hall light which seemed to be a million candle power. It blinded me so badly I walked straight into the end table the phone sat on. “Hello?” I said dumbly into the phone. “This is Alberta Government Telephones; I have a collect call from Henry.” She sounded apologetic almost pleading. “I’ll accept the charges.” I said forlornly. She seemed stunned. There was a long silence only partly filled with the sound of Henry on the other end begging his Dad to accept the charges. “It’s the same guy; the same wrong number.” She said finally. “I know; but it is the only way I am going to get to sleep. “ I said. “I owe you.” She said kindly. For the next half an hour I got Henry’s life story. Once he realized I wasn’t his Dad he asked who I was. In time he figured it out. In time to he passed out. I hung up and grabbed the skinny phone book and turned to the half page that held our town’s phone numbers. Sure enough Henry’ Dad’s number was the reverse of mine. So Henry was not just an alcoholic he was dyslexic oot.
A month or so passed in which I slept well. Then; one night at three a.m.; the phone rang. I had learned a lesson and with a flashlight by my bed I walked the distance from my bedroom to the living room without incident. I picked up the receiver “This is Alberta Government Telephones;” A now familiar voice said. “I have a collect call from Henry for Greg. Will you accept the charges?” I was stunned. “Yes operator I will.” Henry and I had what would become our typical conversation. He talked about how bad his life was and I listened. We didn’t become friends but we became friendly. As the calls were only once in a while; and as they were no longer wrong numbers I actually grew to enjoy them; sort of.
When I moved about a year later my replacement asked me if he could keep the same phone number. We had shared the small trailer for some weeks and his parents already had the number memorized. I gave it no thought and quickly agreed. Some weeks later and in a somewhat testy voice he asked me; over the phone, of course. “Who is Henry?” “Probably a wrong number.” I commiserated. “A pretty damned persistent wrong number!” said he.
Meanwhile back in the present tense the phone rang again. I beat Lina to it this time. “Is Wuzzername there?” The voice sounded a little angry. “You have the wrong bloody number!” I thundered. Lina put her hand on my arm to calm me. “Look this is my own number; I ought to know my own number!” Said the boozy one. You should I thought but obviously you don’t. Just then an idea hit me. “Wuzzername is passed out. After you left she invited us all over and we drank all your booze and broke a few things, sorry!” There was a pause. I could almost see the look on his face as he figured out what that meant. “I am coming right home and you had better all be gone when I get there!” This time he slammed down the receiver. Lina stared at me. “So now he’s coming here?” She asked incredulous. “What do you call that?” I beamed. “Payback!” I rubbed my hands. “He isn’t coming here. He has no idea where we are. He is going home where a very surprised Wuzzername is no doubt sleeping. I’d give ten bucks to see the look on both of their faces.” I wish I had Graham Bell’s number in heaven. I’d love to ring him up and ask him if he has Prince Albert in the can.

The lure and lore of the northern lights

Photo By Brodie Thomas



“When am I going to get to see the northern lights?” Sharon the newest member of our management team asked. Fresh from God’s country (Nova Scotia) she wanted to see the big show. I couldn’t blame her it is well worth the wait though. “Well you’ll have to wait until it gets dark at night which won’t be until late August. Some of the best lights are at the end of August and early September.” I was smiling as I said it her exuberance reminded me of my own when I first went north. I had seen it many times over the years everyone has a natural curiosity about the lights and they are magnificent; one of the great natural wonders of the world. I thought back twenty five years ago to when I first saw them on a bus headed into northern Alberta. I had asked the bus driver if the apostrophe shaped smudge on the northern horizon was the northern lights he said he wasn’t sure but if they were still there in an hour or two they must be. “Otherwise,” he informed me “it’s just smoke from the mill.” Big mill; I thought. As I got off the bus eight hours later they were still there. “Looks like they were the lights.” He said with a smile as I got. Off. They filled the horizon now. “You’re not in Kansas anymore.” I remember thinking.
“What are the lights?” Sharon asked. “That depends who you ask.” I replied. “The peoples of the polar world all have their own explanation. The Finns call it Fox Fire they say that a great fox painted the Arctic sky with snow on its’ tail. The Eskimo of Greenland say they are the spirits of babies who died in childbirth.” Sharon visibly shivered. “That’s so sad.”She replied. “The Sami of Scandinavia believe they are the souls of the dead. They have an icon for them and use it in the artwork and evoke their power in their magic. My people; the Scots, call them The Merry Dancers. Closer to home the Cree I have lived among called them The Spirit Dancers. They too believe they are the spirits of the dead.” “I never knew they had such power over people.” Sharon said in a hushed voice. “Wait until you see them. You’ll understand.” I said smiling at her naiveté. “Don’t whistle when you see them.” Said my wife quietly. My wife is Dene; Chipeweyan to be exact. “Why not?” Sharon asked. “They will attack you.” Lina said seriously. “Some native people believe that the lights will take you away if you whistle or call them down or trifle with them. I think it comes from the awe and reverence in which they are held. It’s like a mark of respect; to take these wonders seriously” Sharon seemed impressed. “They crackle too.” Added Lina. “Really?” Sharon sounded incredulous. “Yeah, to the Dene the lights are a multi media event. They believe that when the lights are low the crackle and they have a smell.” “A bad smell! Don’t breathe it or it will kill you!” Lina added. “There is a legend of five hunters near Hay River who were using the light of the Borealis to hunt. The sound of their dog sleigh bells brought the lights down on them and even though they lay in the snow they were killed by breathing in the vapor.” I added.
“I remember once I was hunting in the Peace country of Northern Alberta. I had just bedded down when my dog raised his head and started to growl. I looked up and the wall of my tent was lit up like daytime. “What on earth?” I thought as I scrambled out through the tent door; my dog beside me. When I got outside I realized that it was not a case of what on earth? But rather of what in Heaven? The sky was dancing with curtains of neon green waving as if in some great cosmic breeze. Then I heard what had made my dog growl. Wolves! Choruses of wolves over the distant hills were calling out to the distant lights. Answered by a lone wolf much nearer; no doubt a lone black male we had spotted earlier in the day. A shiver went up my spine. I petted my dog and stood in awe of the sight and sound. This was what I had come north for.”
“But what are they really?” Sharon’s boyfriend Bart asked; always the skeptic, always the realist. “Cosmic dust carried on the solar wind.” I replied as cryptically as I could manage. “No; seriously.” He added. “Yes, seriously. They are caused by energized ions of dust carried by the solar wind. They enter the upper atmosphere and react with the elements there. The color of the lights changes according to the elements that the charged particles react with. The upper atmosphere is mostly oxygen which makes them green. Other elements make them blue or rarely red. They are often visible further south but they appear lower on the horizon. The closer to the magnetic pole you are the more overhead they will appear. It is largely a magnetic phenomenon.” Like I said you have to see them. A month or so later I was on the phone to Bart and Sharon. “I saw them!” Sharon was saying. She was ecstatic. She was on facebook right away telling her friends. A month after that she was asking me if I had seen them the night before. I had. I never get tired of them.
“So tell me…” Said Bart; the skeptic. “Do you believe the legends of the lights?” I thought for a moment. “I believe there are legends about the lights.” I replied slyly. “That is not what I asked.” He replied. Another pause. It was a touchy subject. I have always believed that I am a guest here in someone else’s land; that I have been privileged to share in the culture of the people who do live here. This is their land and these are there beliefs. I do not take them lightly nor would I ever dream of mocking them. “I do not disbelieve them. I respect these beliefs and the rights of those who believe them. They are formed out of awe and respect for nature and the creator. I share that awe and I share that respect.” I said gravely. “Did you ever whistle at the northern lights?” He asked.

“Never!” I said and I meant it. “And I never will.”

Lord of the Maggots

We grew up on the edge of the city. In what was then being called by a new term “Suburbia” ; a new term for a new age. Our parents had moved to the city from the surrounding countryside. Our fathers were back from the war. “Son; I see your back from the front!” ‘Oh my God!” he replies “It’s that army food! I must be skinnier than I thought!” Cities bulged. The babies were booming and those small; post war homes were popping up everywhere. Forests were cut down. A house or two would spring up and a neighborhood grew overnight. Small houses on big lots; big families in two or three bedrooms right on the edge of the city; up against the forest.
Kids were the order of the day. The depression was done; rationing was done; the war was done. The time for self sacrifice and grimness was over; it was a time to be fruitful and multiply. It was a time for laughter and the joy of youth. A youthful society set free from two decades of woe and care. A society that worshipped youth that wanted to hear the sounds of childhood. It was the sixties man! We were hip and cool and free! The world had probably never known a freer society. Set free by our parents who had tossed aside tyrants and opened the doors to prosperity. We roamed the neighborhood with impunity. We were legion. No play-dates for us just a game of baseball or road hockey at the drop of a ball. We rushed from the house with a ninety nine cent Superblade© on the end of an old broken hockey stick and made our own fun for hours at almost no cost and almost no fuss or arrangements. We were like our own subculture.
Like youth of all cultures we imitated our parents and our society and we formed our own societies with our own leaders and our own rules. Being that this was new ground we were like settlers or pioneers of sorts out here on the semi-civilized fringes of the city. We roamed around and explored the wilderness that surrounded our safe little suburban neighborhoods. There was adventure out there to be had; adventures that would; no doubt, have chilled our parent’s blood. We sailed the lake on an old raft powered by my swimming flippers. We climbed Miller’s Mountain and drank from a spring on its’ crest. We hunted suckers with spears in the swamp behind the school. We did boy things and had boy fun. We were like kids on a deserted island. Like “Lord of the flies” until we went home to our safe suburban one and a half story houses and were folded into our clean sheets.
One thing that boy society worships above all else is courage. There were many unwritten rules to this effect. Never let them see you cry would be number one. A tear or a crack in your voice could bring endless teasing; caustic rebukes and even the dreaded “Nyah nyah: nyah nyah nyah nyah!” the highest form of mockery! It was not uncommon to belong to different gangs of boys at the same time. You might be a junior member of an older boy’s gang or a senior member of a younger boys club at the same time. Important life lessons were learned while lighting firecrackers or climbing trees.
“What is it?” Jed asked as we approached the still form on the edge of the woods. Martin took a long stick and poked the animal gingerly; it didn’t move. “It’s a dead Bobcat!” Phil said with exuberance. ”Cool!” . Said many. We had come across the dead body of a Bobcat on the edge of the woods where it met the highway. We spent some time speculating on how it had gotten there. These woods were no longer connected to the greater forest where there were Bobcats. By consensus we determined that it had come from the nearby forest and been hit by a car and wandered here to die. It was a find of some importance. It was necessary to determine what to do with so sacred an object. There was only one recourse; we retired to the meeting rock. The meeting rock stood in a nearby clearing; it was enormous. In our primal world things of the natural world; things that stood out, were important. The rock; because it was huge had its’ own inherent power. It was a natural place to meet and to decide on things of importance.
We gathered in the lee of the rock safe from prying eyes and ears and sat in a circle in the clearing. “It’s splendiferous!” said one. “Its’ super cool!” said another. Choruses of “Cool!” resounded. It had been decided the Bobcat was officially “Cool!” There was some mumbling then a brief silence. Even brief silences among a group of boys are weighty things. There was some shuffling and then a cleared throat. “All right it’s cool; what do we do with it?” More shuffling; more silence. Then Phil opened his mouth “Why don’t we mount the skull on our clubhouse?” Pandemonium broke loose Shouts of “Skull!” and “Cool!” resounded in the little clearing in the woods. Phil lived on the other edge of the wood. His backyard held an old shed his Father had turned into a clubhouse for us boys. It was Phil’s home turf; of course so he was lord and master within it’s’ walls. A Bobcat skull would; it was decided look very cool over the door of the club house. We all saw it in our mind’s eyes; open jawed and yellowed with age (or maybe some varnish) emitting some silent roar that would instill fear into our enemies; foreign and domestic! It would be a symbol of our bravery and unquestioned badge of honor. Who could doubt the courage of boys who had bested such a creature? “It’s a little small; don’t you think?” said a voice from the back. Silence of a different sort fell over the assembled group. Not a silence of thought but a silence of disapproval and disdain. All heads turned in the direction of this lone voice of discord. It was Lorne one of the smallest of our crew but one who had won favor by being new to the neighborhood. No doubt it was this that saved him a pummeling. “It has been already decided that the skull is cool!” came the reply.
It was therefore decreed that the Bobcat would be placed in a garbage bag and be buried in a most memorable spot where it would later be dug up when nature had run its course and the bones had been picked clean. So we went about our normal summer routines; playing ball and road hockey and having adventures. The Bobcat was forgotten. Then one day, when the wind brought the first hint of fall one of the members remembered the Bobcat. A meeting was struck and the shovel was borrowed and with due pomp and circumstance we trooped down the path from the meeting rock along the trail already strewn with the first golden leaves of fall. Whether it was the leaves covering the ground or the passage of time; but the spot did not prove as memorable as we had first supposed it would be. Eventually the shovel stuck the shiny surface of the garbage bag and the bag was removed from the earth. It appeared unchanged. The bag was heavier than we thought it would be. We stood around it in a close circle as we awaited the first look. Like Carter opening Tut’s tomb or Geraldo opening Capone’s vault we waited with baited breath while the bag was torn open. What happened next was not spoken of in the club’s circle. I personally evoke images of the “Great Skedaddle”. The torn bag revealed a mass of maggots seething and writhing with no sight of the Bobcat whatsoever. Boys flew in every direction there was to flee. Bigger faster boys ran over smaller slower ones. The panic was universal. It spread like wild fire. Boys ran through the woods in all directions. As the mad dash subsided and cooler heads prevailed our societal rules returned and we all wandered back to the meeting rock. The crowd was hushed now and subdued. No one looked at each other. There was an uneasy silence. We were all waiting for someone to speak. No one wanted to bring up the subject of our behavior. This symbol was supposed to announce our bravery to the world. We stared at our feet and there was more shuffling. Then Lorne’s voice could be heard from the crowd. “It was kinda small.” He said meekly. “Yeah small!” repeated the crowd. “Kinda puny!” The poor Bobcat was reinterred and funnily enough the subject of the symbol of our great bravery was never brought up again.

It suits me to a tea

As I sit here writing this my cup of hot water is slowly; magically being transformed. Floating in it is a tea bag; orange pekoe to be exact. There is no doubt a science to making a good cup of tea; but there is also an art and a touch of magic. There is alchemy in the simplicity of the chemical reaction or whatever it is that turns hot water and some leaves into the steaming; satisfying beverage that seems to brighten the day and soothe the soul. Keep your chicken soup; give me my tea.
Now when I have coffee I must have it white with sweetener. That’s because I hate coffee. I have to kill the taste because that’s the only way I can get it down. So why do I drink it? Coffee; to me, is the Buckley’s Mixture of the beverage world. It tastes terrible but it works! But tea I can drink in almost any of its’ forms. I can drink it black. I can have it black with sugar or white with sugar. It depends on the circumstances. Half of the thrill of tea is the circumstances in which you drink it. Tea is very versatile. It can be had with sleeves rolled up, in Styrofoam cups on a busy workday. It can be had in a favorite mug on a sleepy Sunday morning, sunlight streaming in on my pajamaed legs and slippered feet, chez moi. It can be sipped from fine porcelain at five pm for high English tea. It can be drunk from an old melmac mug while seated on a stump replete with embers from the fire and a pine needle or two and none the worse for that. I have had tea on the running boards of a fire truck at five in the morning brought by some blessed angel of a citizen for us haggard firefighters who had been fighting a fire since three. It was the best cuppa’ I ever had. Sweaty; tired and coming down off an adrenalin high, your throat dry from breathing bottled air; there is nothing better than a cup of tea.
There is variety in the way you whiten your tea too. Whether it is milk or cream or powdered whitener or canned milk each has a place. A splash of milk is always welcome. Cream is nice for dessert tea, sweetened with sugar of course. When you are not well black tea with a little lemon and honey is most efficacious. When in the bush; clad in mackinaw jacket with felt lined boots against the cold and damp a bit of powdered cow or better yet canned milk is nice. It reminds me of the tea my Dad made; strong and thinned with canned milk. It creamed into your stomach with warming tendrils. A little apricot brandy didn’t hurt either.
As varied as the ways of preparing and serving tea are the myriad forms of the beverage itself. Whether green or black; Oolong or Darjeeling; Orange Pekoe of Earl Grey. There are many types of tea as there are types of people drinking the beverage. I have tried many and liked most of them. But for the most part just give me an old fashioned Orange Pekoe. But on a cold day when I’ve stolen an hour from the month give me a hot cup of Blueberry Ice wine tea first given me by my best friend. Delicious; just like a warm summer breeze.
I am not fussy when it comes to the preparation of tea but here is what I do know. Good water makes good tea. Aeration is good too, stream water it better than lake water. The water should be boiling just before adding the tea. Let the water just come off a boil and then add the tea. Let it steep for a couple of minutes until the desired strength is reached, this is a matter of preference, I like mine strong. It should be drunk before it goes too cold and remove the tea bags once the desired strength is reached in case you want a second cup; and who doesn’t?
I am from the east coast and I think the tradition of drinking tea is still stronger there. I now live in the north where the tradition has survived the scourges of the automatic coffee maker (shudder!). I will always associate the smell of the tea kettle with my Aunt Violet’s kitchen, warm and sunny, her parlor empty her kitchen table packed. Whenever the screen door slammed another tea bag and some fresh water went into the kettle it was seldom dry. Tea; in my deepest lizard brain is always linked with laughter and friends, with warmth and joy; with sharing and contentment. One lump or two?

The tipping point

This October 3rd will mark a milestone in my life. It will mark the point where I have been away from my native Nova Scotia for as long as I lived there. Exactly half my life spent in the north. I left Nova Scotia on a sunny morning with $150.00 in my pocket and three bags. I had never flown on a plane and had never been further from home than P.E.I. I guess it was the final rite of passage; I was leaving the nest and flying on my own. One thing for sure it was a long way home. I started as a Management Trainee for the HNC for the princely sum of $10,500.00 B&L (board and lodging) which meant that after the cost of my travel was taken off my first six months wages I took home just under $100 a week. Airfare to Halifax in those days was nearly $2,000 so going home really wasn’t an option.
But the weather was nice for early October in northern Alberta. Within a week I had made some friends, met some people from home and caught my first pike. I called home every week. I had a lot to say in ten short minutes that first week. Ten minutes was my ration. We often think that things have gotten so expensive over the years, but not everything has. A phone call in 1985 cost $1.70 a minute at the cheapest rate. Ten minutes a week was all I could afford. Saturday night was my time to call home. I hated when you couldn’t get a line out. The exchanges were crude and “all circuits are busy please try your call again later…” Was a frequent response; in that cold, business likes voice. Still; God bless A G Bell because there is more you can hear in the sound of someone’s voice than can be written in the most eloquent letter.
I wrote letters too; they were way cheaper. I sent pictures home of my new surroundings. When I got a part-time job doing guard duty for the RCMP I bought a truck. I proudly sent pictures home. I wanted them to think I was fine and doing well, prosperous even. I think I even believed it. Until Christmas eve I heard Stan Roger’s “First Christmas” and melted like a snowflake I felt every inch of the nearly three thousand miles between me and home. I may have gone over my ten minutes that first Christmas day; and what a job getting through; I think it took more than four hours. I wanted to thank Mom for the gifts; but most of all for the Santa Bag. She had always put together one as a stocking for us. It was a cornucopia. When opened it revealed a mixture of the practical (combs, toothbrushes and shampoo) the fanciful (Quality street chocolates, Candy chicken bones, and candy canes) and the sublime ( a small toy of some kind, no matter how old we were just to remind us I guess that we were still her little boys and girls). This continued for many years until I met my wife. Our first Christmas together my Mother sent us each a Santa Bag, I was delighted as it meant that Lina was officially “part of the family”. The only thing was I knew it was my last stocking from Mom. From now on Lina and I would fill each other’s stockings. At about the halfway point of the time since I left the little blue house on Third Street I had crossed another bridge; severed another apron string.
Back home communities are small and tight. Move into one and you will always be a CFA (come from away). No matter how long you live there you will always be “from away”. It is like that up here too. Small towns have that dynamic no matter where they are. Nova Scotia will always be the “away “ that I am from. But home we always be wherever Lina and I are together.

Watch Dog

He came into my life slowly, almost by assimilation. When I first met him he belonged to my boss, Nigel. He was in his prime, a fully grown Golden Retriever, though you might have been forgiven if you mistook him for an Irish setter; from a distance at least. He was very dark; which is, so I am told, not uncommon in the breed. His name was Seiko. “He’s a watch dog; get it?” Nigel told me when I looked at him askance when he told me the name. “More people would get the joke if you named him Timex.” I said and over the years when I explained the name to others the joke had spawned at least four dogs named Timex. But Seiko he was. Tall and proud and immensely strong; he was gorgeous. I was new to the north and a long way from home and loved ones. The transition was made a little easier by the fact that Nigel’s wife Anne and I were from the same home town and I knew her family. We had attended the same high school but did not know one another. It was made easier too by this gregarious Golden Retriever.
We struck up a bond right away. Golden Retrievers are notoriously friendly and Seiko was the rule not the exception. He followed me everywhere. When I was working in the warehouse he would come in to get some attention and I was always glad to see him. On my days off I took to asking Nigel if I could “borrow” his dog. Seiko went fishing and hunting with me. We went on long walks together on every trail and back road that there was in the surrounding area. He was good company. If I ever had to go somewhere without him he would follow my vehicle for miles. The speeds he could reach and the length of time he could follow were prodigious. Three kilometers from home I could still see him in my rearview mirror. I spent a happy year and a half in Wabasca but then was transferred in the spring of 1987. I bid Seiko a sad goodbye and thought I would never see him again.
Happily that was not the case. A few months later Nigel called to say they were moving and they would not be able to take a full grown Golden Retriever with them. Would I be interested in taking him? It took about ten seconds to make the decision. I was about to own my first dog. I only had to get him there. Wabasca is over 500 km away but fortunately Nigel was coming to Fort Vermilion. Fort Vermilion was only a short flight away by Cessna 206. I just had to find a pilot willing to fly an eighty pound bundle of muscle and energy in a cockpit the size of a loveseat. I thought I’d better talk to the pilot in person so the next day I met the mail plane and when we’d finished loading my truck I said offhandedly “By the way I wonder if you could help me out. My dog will be in the Fort on Monday and I need to get him in here.” I looked at the pilot with my most pathetic look. “Eighty Pounds!” he exploded when I answered him how big the dog was. “Is he part horse?” I decided to go all in and play my trump card., I pulled a photo of Seiko from my pocket, one taken on one of our many walks. The pilot took it dubiously but a smile crossed his face as he looked at it. “A Golden Retriever; well why didn’t you say? My daughter raises them. He’s a beauty. Look how red he is! Is he a good flyer?” The question caught me flat footed. It hadn’t even occurred to me to ask Nigel if the dog had ever flown. Of course I couldn’t tell him I didn’t know so I stammered “S-S-S-S-rue he loves to fly!” I had to lie as anybody up here who owned a dog any length of time would have had to have flown with him. I called Nigel that night to let him know that arrangements had been made. “How’s Seiko in an airplane?” I asked “I guess we’ll know next week.” Nigel answered. He had never flown before. I was waiting with baited breath the next Monday when the little plane taxied to a stop, I waited for the prop to stop spinning then I ran over and opened the passenger door. “How was the flight?” I asked when the engine noise died down. “He was my Copilot.” Said the pilot with a smile. “He never moved, just sat in the copilot’s seat and stared out the windscreen.” I was worried that he might not recognize me after so long apart but once out of the plane he planted his hind feet on the gravel runway and put his front feet on my chest and licked my face. He was not a dog who did this often so I knew he was saying “Hello; sure I remember you!”
We embarked on a new life together both off us adjusting to a changed existence. I could not have been happier, I know he felt the same. As before we went everywhere together. He slept by my side. He seldom slept on the bed but when he did he took the whole bed, lying diagonally across it stretched out to his full length; I was forced to sleep diagonally too. Usually he slept on the floor by my head. Occasionally I would hear him vocalizing in his sleep his legs would twitch like he was dreaming of chasing rabbits. I would hang an arm over the side of the bed and pet him. His tail would thump, thump thump against the floor in his sleep. I wonder what he was dreaming and was he picturing me petting him? In the mornings when he was ready to go out he would stand between the bed and the wall and his tail would make an arc from the two objects. It would whack the bed frame and then the wall in a whack, ting, whack ting that became my alarm. I woke up every day to his smiling face. No one could roll over and go back to sleep after looking into those brown eyes.
My bass Andrew had a border collie named DeeDee and the two dogs became inseparable. Seiko picked up any number of habits from DeeDee including her habit of sticking her nose under your hand and kind of flipping your hand into the air when she wanted to be petted. Seiko also took to rolling in mud puddles, one of DeeDee’s favorite things. The maddening thing is that he would go for a three mile walk and stay totally clean. Then; less than a hundred meters from home he would drop into a mud puddle like a stone. I kept a garden hose at the back door. He loved the water. Being a retriever that is only natural I suppose. When we went walking by the river which was almost every day; he would plunge in and swim usually grabbing a piece of driftwood. But no matter how far from the river I stood he would inevitably walk to within ten feet of me before he shook himself dry; thus soaking me. It was a game we played and he loved doing it. I pretended to be mad but he always saw through me and I could not help but hold him he was so charming.
From Fox Lake I moved to beautiful Ft Liard. Seiko loved the river and the mountains. He loved walking the trails and chasing the rabbits. He was getting older and he began to appreciate the wood stove as he got quite arthritic, especially in his hind quarters. Golden Retrievers are prone to that. I used to take him for runs on my bike so I could tire him out better. That became less necessary. Soon our normal walks became too much for him. One night in late February I knew he was not going to see another dawn. I had been talking to a friend who was a wildlife officer. He had told me that he could give Seiko an overdose of Nembutal which he had for tranquilizing bears. I wanted to put it off until the last possible moment. The last night I called Jerry but it was too late Seiko did not make it until he arrived. With a loud sigh he passed. I let out a scream of his name and he momentarily opened his eyes and looked right at me as if to say “It is O.K. Old friend it is my time,: amd then he was gone. I wrapped him in his favorite comforter and put his favorite toy a pink “My Little Pony” that Jerry’s kids had given him,. I picked up the toy and remembered how he had gotten it. One night we ewre visiting Jerry and his family. When we got home I noticed that Seiko had the pony in his mouth. I took it back the next day but the kids were adamant that they had given it to Seiko and his tail wagged furiously when I returned it to him. It had no tail and was one the girls no longer wanted. He loved it. He carried it everywhere. Once when he lost the toy he was beside himself. I have never seen a dog so despondant. The girls again came to the rescue with a “My Little Pony” unicorn. He loved that too nut not as mush. That spring under the snow I found the original and he never touched the unicorn again.
I got my friend Rick to pick me up a pick at the hardware store and I buried him in the back yard that Sunday. Rick was going to help but I was finished before he got there. We sat and had coffee. “It was brutally cold today you should have waited for me.” He said . “It was the only trouble he ever caused me. He was worth all that and more.” I put a cross over his grave and nailed his dog tag to it. I buried him with his pony. I thought I was doing well after he died. One evening while walking home from work about a week later I met my friend Elizabeth; the social worker. She was walking her dogs. We had walked dogs together many times. She looked at me askance and asked “Wherever is Seiko?” In her British accent. I tried to get the words out but nothing would come. I stood there like an idiot and she instantly knew. She hugged me and said “I am ever so sorry. I didn’t know!” It must have been five minutes before I could tell her what had happened. Nearly twenty years later I have tears in my eyes. He still stares out at me from a thousand pet food bags. One day I walked into the store and there was a wet Golden Retriever in the porch. The smell is like no other breed. I got down on one knee and petted him. “Sorry, he’s a mess.” said one of my Mountie friends. “He is beautiful and he looks just like a Golden Retriever should look.” I said. I have had a number of dogs since; each one of them as different as each person is. The one common thread is the unquestioning love that I have had from each one of them. I never came home to find them grumpy or ungrateful or not understanding. They have only been a source of undying love. No matter how much it hurts to lose one I will never regret the commitment.

Ask a stupid question...

Steve Martin the comedian once said “If you are studying geology; which is all facts, as soon as you get out of school you forget it all, but philosophy you remember just enough to screw you up the rest of your life.” I minored in philosophy. A light bulb is going on for a lot of my friends right now. “Ahhhh….” They are saying to themselves. “That explains a lot!” I blame Rene Descartes. “I think therefore I am!” He taught me to question everything; shook my belief system right down to it’s’ bones. I used to think I knew that I existed because I was hot or tired or hungry, “I crave a big greasy donair therefore I am!” But that wasn’t good enough for old Rene; no sir he said what if I just think I am craving a big greasy donair; the one from Revanna Pizza on Portland with the works and extra sauce on the side? In spite of the fact that I can almost taste that donair; with its’ toasted pita shell and donair meat glistening with that crusty skin on the outside. He stripped away all the unessential, all that was not pure philosophical logic. He said to himself “I might only think I am hot and tired and craving a donair! But I know this. I know that someone is thinking that they are hot and tired and craving a donair. So stripped to its’ logical essentials. I think I am hot and tired and craving a donair; therefore I am!” Existentialism in a nutshell. I just saved you three years of class time, not to mention tutorials and tuition and books and all that money spent on beer in the student lounge. I cannot however save you the cost of a large donair with the works and a can of Pepsi as they are the essential tools of the philosopher.
But now you see my dilemma. I constantly question everything. If you have to question your own very existence then what about; why do Ketchup chips have to be red they don’t have real ketchup on them and that dye gets your fingers all red. Why is suicide illegal? I mean if the guy dies what are you going to do to him? Why don’t they just lower the nets so that short people can play basketball too? If you ran a school for suicide bombers the only ones getting jobs would be failures and dropouts. What’s with those stupid commercials for automatic soap pumps? You wouldn’t want to touch a germy soap pump so it dispenses the soap automatically. You are about to wash your hands for Pete’s sake! What difference if there are germs on the pump; there are germs on your hands; that’s why you are washing them. The soap will kill all the germs, not just the ones on your hands but the ones from the pump too!That new sugarless gum, the one that brags that its’ flavor lasts forever why does it come in packs of five? Remember those deals on the packages of popsicles when you were a kid? Send in 200 wrappers and a dollar and get a Frisbee or something. Do you suppose they actually had people counting the wrappers? Imagine sitting in a room trying to prize apart 200 sodden sticky wrappers to see if some seven year old was trying to rip off some poor little multinational food corporation.
You can see what deep philosophical issues I grapple with every day. I like to share these issues with those around me too. No sense suffering in silence misery loves company. So it is for my long suffering wife and my employees at work. They get the distilled wisdom of four years of university and thirty years of experience on a daily basis. Sucks to be them. But every once in a while one of the great questions of life gets answered. One of the great mysteries of the universe is revealed; even to a pillar of dust such as I. But of course I shared it with the other human being who was there when it was revealed. It happened while in Winnipeg that center of the Canadian universe last month. I was driving along in a cab when one of those tow trucks with a flat bed on the back passed us with a brown cube van parked on it. I leaned around the Plexiglas shield and said to the cabbie “Well that answers a question I have always wondered.” He looked into the mirror and we made eye contact; in a fashion. “What question is that Sir?” he intoned politely. “Who delivers UPS trucks?” I said. Now if I could just figure out why there are no shocks in any of the cabs in Winnipeg?

Universal Remote

There were just four of us in a passenger van designed to seat ten. We were scattered through the seats; as you do when the chance presents itself. Edmonton was streaking by the tinted windows of the van. Edmonton was bathed in splendid November sunshine. Little or no snow but little or no leaves too. The woman who had joined us last was asking the rest of us where we were going. She had; apparently only half understood our driver, though his second language English was very good. “Are we going to the west end?” She asked tentatively with a southern accent. “Yes.” I replied. “We will stop at the West Edmonton Mall, among other places.” I added. “Oh good I wasn’t sure what he meant by West Ed. I’m from Sacramento.” She intoned. “Not originally, with that accent.” I added with a chuckle. “I always forget.” She laughed. “Is it that bad?” “I like it.” My wife Lina added. “It reminds me of our trip to Nashville.” The lady turned and added “Close, Tupelo.” We might have sped through Edmonton without a word, as I have done dozens of times. But a chance remark had broken the ice and soon the lady in the back of the van was speaking of her home in Edmonton with an English accent. We were all, even the driver from somewhere else. The conversation wound as conversations do through different subjects; it started with Elvis who was also from Tupelo and went on to Graceland where we had all been. Then the lady from the south revealed that she had once dated a fighter and the conversation went on to the great fighters and great fights of the past. Lina faded out a bit as this was not her forte. I love boxing and know a lot about the fighters of the late seventies and early eighties.
We remarked on how, in the old days even the great fights were carried on network TV to be enjoyed by everyone who was inclined to watch. Nowadays you have to buy a ticket to a private screening or pay per view it on cable or satellite. We lamented the loss of the universally shared experience. “I remember the day after a big fight. We would stand around the schoolyard and everyone would have an opinion.” By virtue of the fact that it was free and on network TV meant that even the poorest of us could watch. Even the poorest and most ill informed could have an opinion and could voice it to all. “Something was lost…” she agreed “when great events became pay per views.” The conversation went on until we reached our destination. We parted; not as friends but at least as friendly and wished each other well as we parted.
I never fully forgot that conversation. It dovetailed with some thoughts I’d been having for weeks. You see we have satellite TV at home. One of the big Canadian ones. We have a big package, one of the biggest. I have long since given up on sports so we don’t have a sports package. But darn near everything else. We work long hours and often six days a week so when we get to watch TV I want choice. Even so; on a Sunday night recently I was regaling Lina with the available channels from the built in guide feature on the dish. “There’s never anything on when we have time to watch TV!” I protested. I was; as my boss was fond of saying “preaching to the choir” Lina felt as I did and needed no reminder of the fact. I was seeking commiseration. I wanted to have my opinion backed up; after all misery absolutely adores company. “You aren’t kidding. Even the game sow channel shows poker, POKER!” She replied dryly. “Watching poker is like watching paint peel.” I replied. “I thought the saying was Watching paint dry?” she replied. “Nah, these are reruns of poker games, that paint was dry a long time ago.” I turned off the TV and went to sit in the room where I do my best thinking; a windowless room with a large amount of porcelain. I had Bruce Springsteen’s 57 Channels ( and nothing on) running through my head. Two hundred channels of garbage! I kept thinking. Springsteen didn’t even know the half of it when he wrote his prophetic song. I pondered in my inner sanctum for a while.
“You know what is missing in society?” I asked as I returned to the room of the living from the room of the bath. Lina put down her magazine and was; I am sure, well and truly grateful for my minor in Philosophy. She knew better than to answer this rhetorical question. “We are missing the universal experience. “ I allowed sufficient pause to befit the depth and pithiness of this statement. “When I was a kid the school ground conversation was very much dictated by what we had seen on TV the night before. Mondays meant Hockey Night in Canada. We would stand around and discuss the one game that was on TV Saturday night. When there was a Wayne and Shuster special we all retold every joke the next day. Now we all go home to an entertainment extravaganza every night. There’s a channel for everything; game shows, cooking, shopping, religion, women, men, cartoons, you name it. Everyone goes into their little world and there is no commonality of experience. We are universally remote. Distant from each other; separated by the very medium that used to unite us in a common bons!” I was in full flight now.
“So you think we should have only one channel like the old days?” Lina said with a grin. “Remember when we had only CBC North?” I asked. “What are you talking about? I was born up here! I remember when there was no TV at all. I remember when we got four hours of TV a day, taped from earlier and replayed! Don’t tell me about CBC North!” Justly chastened; I continued. “Well back when we had only one channel we would all get together at the teachers place and watch Dallas.” I retorted. “The women watched Dallas,; you guys stood around the kitchen ate snacks and talked hockey.” She replied with a sarcastic tone. “Yeah but we shared an experience, that’s my point!” Just then the house gave a sort of shudder. The furnace sighed to a stop. The TV made a popping sound and went black. The water pump stopped and there was total silence. I looked at Lina; she shrugged. “Power failure!” I said. “Looks like it.” Lina replied. I flipped the light switch just in case. “Well I guess what’s on TV is a moot point now.” Lina said moving her chair over to the window and picking up her crossword.
The next day at work Gerry walked up to me “I was right in the middle of watching an interesting show on the Discovery Network when the power went off. I thought it would never come back on.” As he was speaking Darren walked into the room. “Yeah it sure was boring with no power I wanted to watch the Riders game.” “Count on the power to go off just when a good fishing show is coming on!” Piped Danny from the next room. I guess it just goes to show; be careful what you wish for…

My memory's good but short...

“I’m going senile.” I said in disgust. My wife looked at me puzzled. I was standing in front of the office with a blank look on my face. “I just walked here from my office and I can’t remember why.” She looked at me and laughed. “Everyone does that; silly. Just walk back in your office and you will remember why you came here.” She was right; of course. I am sure everyone has those spells. You walk into a room for a specific purpose and you go blank. You cannot remember what the heck you walked in there for and that was the only reason for going into the room; whatever it was that you were supposed to do or get. A simple trick of the mind. But it certainly is frustrating. I swear sometimes I am going senile. What was I doing? What was I looking for? I walked back to my office and it hit me the minute I walked through my door. I knew instantly what I had set out to get. I was mortified.
“I can’t go out there and let them know this is what I forgot. I will never live it down.” I thought to myself. Whatever can I do? I leaned against my office door and glanced sideways at the general office. It was a beehive; as it usually was at that hour of the day. Damn; how am I going to do this? There was a lineup at the office and two people working there; my Wife and my Assistant Manager. There was a lineup at both checkouts. It never fails when you want to do something surreptitious there is always a crowd.” I should just be a man and walk boldly up and do this!” I thought. Then my cowardly alter ego said “No way dude; you are going to make a fool of yourself. Do it later.” But I had promised my boss to do this ASAP. I crept out of my office trying to avoid customers. But of course that didn’t work. “Hay Greg do we have a meeting tonight?” One of the guys on the Fire Department called out. “Yep, second Wednesday of the month.” I said as nonchalantly as I could. “You O.K.?” Roy asked, sensing my furtive movements. “Yeah; sure, fine.” I stammered. As soon as Roy was gone I worked my way closer to the general office. I tacked back and forth from one shelf to another. By now there was a lineup at the office and I took advantage of the distraction to make a dash for the showcase.
I fumbled with my keys. Why is it when you are in the biggest hurry you can never get the key to go in? There are two identical keys on my ring that fit the various showcases. Now the rules of probability state that there should be a fifty fifty chance every time I try them of getting the right key the first time. Balderdash! I have never gotten the right one first time. Finally I had my prize; now all I had to do was get through the checkout without my wife spotting me. As I stood up she was right in front of me. “Remembered what it was?” She asked. The words were like an exploding bomb. I stammered and stuttered and mumbled “Buzzerererahhhhhst” I said half under my breath hoping she would let it be. “What?” She repeated not letting it drop. “Mumble mumble wassisname.” I intoned. ”You are making no sense.” Lina said louder this time. I motioned for her to lean over and I whispered it in her ear. A grin split her face from ear to ear. “HEY EVERYBODY!” She yelled. I was making waving motions with my hands and mouthing the word NO over and over. “Greg forgot what he came out here for and had to walk back into the other room to remember it! Guess what he forgot?” She took the package from my hands and held it over her head. “A MEMORY CARD!” The whole building erupted in laughter simultaneously; both customers and staff alike. I walked to the till and paid for the memory card. There were people slapping my back and some people were holding their sides. I remember it like it was yesterday…

Just like Mom used to make

Did you ever notice that some things taste better when someone else makes them? Seriuously; I think this is one of those things where If I were sitting down with a group of friends right now they would all be nodding and agreeing. I am alone at my computer but I am betting that you are sitting out there somewhere in cyberspace nodding and going “Yep.” Well all right maybe you’re not a “Yep” person; I sure am “Yep, indeed”. My Mother once remarked that salads always taste better when someone else makes them. I rest my case. You may argue with me but my Mom is always right. In many cases the thing that always tasted better is made by our Moms. They always know how to make stuff. What I don’t know is how they know all that stuff. Is there some kind of school for Moms that they go to? Is it genetic? Do they learn at their Mom’s knee? Rest assured that it is a universal truth right up there with “We find this truth to be self evident: That all men are created equal.”
But it need not always be your Mom; it could be your partner, or a friend or even a stranger at a church supper. Now I realize that there are those who will argue that the reason that it tastes better is that you didn’t have to make it. I like to think of this as the sheer laziness argument. Sure it tastes better you didn’t have to slave over a hot stove to get it. There is some logic to this. I used to work in a fast food restaurant I was good at what I did. I took pride in turning out a tasty hot, fresh burger. But when I sat down on my break I really didn’t feel like eating what I had been cooking and smelling all day. I would go miles out of my way to prepare something different. We would scrape all the breading off the filet-o-fish™ and pan fry it on the grill. We would cook the McRib™ patty and put Big Mac™ sauce on it, anything for some variety. We even worked out a scheme to take advantage of the proximity of competitors to our restaurant. I contacted a friend who worked at KFC and one who worked at the Pizza place. We all had similar benefits where we paid little or nothing for out food while working. So we would meet surreptitiously in the parking lot with bags of food under our coats and our uniforms hidden and we would swap our lunches. By Golly, it did taste better!
This worked fine until we got caught and the management of all three businesses got involved and kyboshed the whole scheme. Thos guys have no sense of humor. So maybe there is some merit to the laziness theory but I still don’t buy it. There is something to be said obviously for the effect of not smelling what you are cooking for hours and simply being tired of it by the time you have to eat. All these factors have merit but that doesn’t cover all the facts. Case in Point: even the simple things taste better when someone else makes them; even a bologna sandwich. I made one for my wife today which is the reason why all this ink is being spilt. Alright I know that computer screens don’t have ink on them. I am not like the person in the blonde joke with white out on my screen. But you cannot argue that a bologna sandwich is so time consuming that the making of it makes the sandwich taste bad. Now my Mom makes the best potato salad. No offense to my wife or others who have made me potato salad over the years, but Mom’s rules. It wicked cool! Is that expression still in? I never know anymore. I do know that groovy is dated, right? A potato salad is complicated there are many steps and many ingredients. Each salad may not have many ingredients but there are many different ingredients you could add. My Mom adds mustard. My Wife adds pickle juice, see what I mean. But bologna sandwiches are simple. Bread and margarine, mustard and bologna; not a whole lot of ingredients. Not too much wiggle room. Albeit the amount of mustard you use or type of margarine or bread will make a difference but let’s face it not that much difference.
I think I have solved the mystery. I think I have unlocked the secret that has puzzled mankind for years. I think the missing ingredient is care. That’s right care. I think when we make a sandwich or salad for ourselves we do it haphazardly. We slap the mustard on we give no thought to presentation or getting the coverage just right. We press too hard on the bread with our thumbs. We do not use a clean plate nor do we bother to present it with a pickle (when I make sandwiches for my Wife I often add little “eyes” made of olives on tooth picks that I stick into the top of the sandwich so that the ingredients form a face with a bread crust forehead and bologna tongue). We don’t take the extra measure of care for ourselves that we would for someone we loved or a total stranger at a church dinner. In fact I will go one better. Instead of calling it care, I will call it Love. What is missing when we taste our own sandwich is the Love that Mom put in. She always added just the right amount and she never ran out and had to go next door to borrow a cup. Thanks Mom; Bon apatite!

The Blob that ate Fort Liard

No good deed goes unpunished; they say. I know it is true. I once scraped the side of my new car on a telephone pole when I was giving a friend a boost. “What’s a telephone pole doing in the middle of your driveway?” I asked as I surveyed the damage. “Holding up the telephone wires.” Eddy answered sardonically. Ask a stupid question… Another time I delivered some groceries for a customer and when I came out the company truck wouldn’t start and I had to walk back to work two miles in the pouring rain. Another time; well you get the point.
“Hey Barry; the bottom half of the pallet isn’t ours!” I said as I removed the last box of frozen foods. “What?” Barry said angrily. It was nearly midnight and he was tired. “This bread dough is for the IGA Bakery in Ft Nelson. I’m not going back that way. I am headed to Ft Simpson to drop this trailer and then I am Bob tailing it back to Edmonton. I knew his switch (the other driver who usually drives while Barry sleeps) was MIA so I knew he was tired. “Can I leave it and have the other driver pick it up on Thursday?” I looked into his eyes they were underlined by dark circles. We depend on these drivers in the north. We depend on them and we take care of them. “Sure Barry. I’ll keep it here, it will stay frozen like a rock. “Here meant the unheated loading dock at the back of the store. I could close the inside doors in winter and use it as an emergency freezer. Barry helped me pile the cases against the outside doors. At forty below they would be frozen better than in a commercial freezer. The boxes were about two cubic feet. That is to say about as big as an ottoman. There were a dozen or more of them. “Thanks man, you rule!” said Barry as we finished. “Yes.” I replied “But only here in my tiny kingdom!” I wished him goodnight as my assistant Ron and I went home for a few hours sleep. We had to be back here in less than eight hours.
“You ever hear of a comb?” I asked Ron next morning as I knocked on his door. This was our routine. Each morning I walked past his door on the way to work. Each morning I knocked d and waited for him to get ready. He never combed his hair and seldom shaved. “Only in legends” Ron added laughing. He was a cheerful kid. I say kid but in fact in calendar years he was only two years younger then me. In temperament he was light-years younger than me. He was like Peter Pan, he never grew up. We walked the short distance to the store in the crisp morning air. Ron was shivering. “How come you never wear proper clothes?” I asked for the hundredth time. “I want to look cool.” He replied. He looked very cool in a spring baseball jacket, unzipped with baggy jeans and sneakers to finish the ensemble. He was shaking like a leaf. I unlocked the deadbolt and pushed the front door in. As quickly as I had entered I ducked out and flattened against the side of the building. “What’s wrong?” Ron asked his eyes wide. “It’s as hot as the fire of hell in there!” I said loudly. Doubting me or wanting to see for himself Ron walked in. He was back out like a shot. He dropped to his knees and gasped for breath. “You weren’t kidding it’s roasting in there!” He was panting for breath. “What happened?” He looked at me like he looked at me for all things. I felt like a Father to him sometimes. I looked at him, my mind racing. “If I had to guess I would say the high limit went on the furnace.” I replied. Wait for it, I thought. “What is a high limit?” Ron asked. I knew it. “A high limit is a safety feature that shuts the furnace down when the thermostat fails.”
I was working out in my mind what to do next. The thermostat and emergency cut off switch were in the back room. To get to them I would need to shut off the alarm which was in the office. The place has very hot and the air was not breathable. “You stay here and keep the door open. I will crawl to the back down low where the air is cooler. I will shut off the alarm and kill the furnace. “I took a deep breath and made my way in. I shut off the alarm but had to make my way out immediately. I was bathed in sweat when I hit the minus forty air. I gulped huge lung full’s of air and sat on the step. “I can’t even hold the door open.” Ron said. He too was bathed in sweat. I made another dash and this time I killed the furnace. I returned outside, hugely relieved. “That’s killed the heat source. At least there is no more risk of fire.” We sat on the steps and cooled off. “It will take hours to cool down in there.” Ron said unhappily.” I have orders to do today. “I thought for a minute. “We could open the front and the back doors and turn on the fan.” I replied. The store was equipped with a huge fan that was meant to keep the place cool in summer. It didn’t but it kept the flies busy.
We waited twenty minutes for the temperature to drop a bit and walked in. It was like there had been a fire or something. I hadn’t considered what the high temperatures would do. There was a pool of molten shortening and lard on the floors in the grocery department. I picked up an Aero bar it was liquid inside the wrapper and dripped from the ends of the packaging. My mind paced. Every item in the store that had chocolate in it would have to be thrown out. Granola bars; chocolate bars, cookies lots of styuff went into the bin. But the shock I got when I opened the front door that morning was nothing compared to the shock I got when I opened the receiving doors. I had forgotten the favor we had done the night before.. I was trying to ventilate the place when I swung open the inner doors only to be confronted with what can only be described as “The blob that ate Fort Liard” for there in the previously unheated porch was a blob of bread dough eight feet high, ten feet wide and eight feet deep. As I opened the door it surged forward like a living thing. Which; because of the millions of yeast in it; it truly was. It flowed toward Ron and I; albeit it was a slow flow. We dashed back as a wall of dough slumped into the room and surged across the floor. We were up to our wastes in the stuff. The empty boxes stuck out of the mass like flotsam in some giant flood. “No one in head office is going to believe this!” I said looking at Ron. “I don’t believe this!” He said holding one foot in the air and picking dough out of his sock.
Our eyes met in one long glance and we realized how ridiculous each of us looked. We both began to laugh. We were standing up to our waists in bread dough roaring with laughter when my friend Rick, jack of all trades whom I had called to help fix the furnace, walked through the door. He looked at the two of us. He looked at the sea of bread dough. He shook his head. He turned and left. Ron and I laughed louder. Rick returned to the room. “I just had to be sure I wasn’t dreaming!” He added and he too began to laugh. Then we got snow shovels and dug a path to the receiving doors. We dug them out and opened them. The store was cooling off now. We pushed the bread dough onto the snow where it froze. Rick filled a dump truck with it using his Bobcat loader. We hauled “The Blob that ate Fort Liard” to the dump. Like I said no good deed goes unpunished. But look at it this way I am still telling that story over twenty years later, so it may have been worth it.

I am my own grandpa

Like most people I had two grandfathers, my father’s father and my mother’s stepfather. I had two very different relationships with these two men. My grandfather Turnbull, my father’s father is my own blood relative. I am named after him. My middle name Earl was his first name. I am very proud of that. I have very fond memories of him; on one knee holding his thumb between his forefingers saying “I got your nose.’” Somewhere there is a photo of us; taken on my parent’s front lawn. He is leaning on a rock hammer and I am pulling a plastic dump truck be bought me, on a string. Granddad had just demolished a boulder the size of a Volkswagen with that hammer and a bucket of water. He first built a fire around the rock (something you could never do in Halifax today) then he threw a bucket of cold water on the hot rock and it split into pieces. He broke the pieces up with the hammer and the huge rock went away. He was not a big man but he could take a big problem and make it go away with that kind of determined effort his generation took for granted. He was a gold miner so it was second nature to him to go right through solid rock.
I haven’t seen the actual photo for years. I have searched for it every year when I am home. But the image goes with me everywhere I go. We distinguished (my siblings and I) between the two men by what we called them. Grandfather Turnbull was granddad. Grandfather Lewis was grampy. Even though there is no blood between us I am proud of him too. He built boats with his bare hands. In his younger days he built thirty to forty footers. Cape Islanders they were called. He built them in shops barely big enough to hold them. I never saw him work on big boats but I watched my Uncle Andrew build similar boats and I was in awe of these me who turned living trees into living boats that would flex with the waves and bring their crews home safely on those savage north Atlantic storms.
But there was always a distance between Grampy and me and my siblings. In his old age he built little boats, many in glass cabinets. They were models of boats that he had built for real when he was young. Just like he had years before; he built the smaller models with care and patience. True; no one’s life depended on it any more, or did it… Maybe his life somehow depended on it. The detail on the good ones was incredible. He would look for tiny pieces to fashion the rigging; the davits, the life boats and the portholes. He sculpted and painted window putty the exact color green of an angry Atlantic. The models seemed to pitch and roll as their bigger brethren had. He breathed life into these tiny models as he had built flexibility into the full size boats that allowed them to survive the gale.

When I first typed the moniker “grampy” it came up in red. Windows™ did not recognize it as a word. It suggested some possibilities; the first among them was “grumpy”. Now this is particularly poignant and this was a nickname we used for grampy sometimes, under our breath of course, me and my siblings. It was not meant in mean spirits but it reflected our frustration with him as he dealt with his frustration with us. In the summers my parents would take a week and we would drive to Yarmouth; where my grampy and grammy lived. My mother’s mother was a wonderful lady. She was short and round and we loved to visit her. She always had ice cream for us from Cook’s dairy in two quart bricks that you sliced with a knife usually strawberry and served with fresh berries. In those days ice cream was still made with cream; it was wonderful. I remember her eating lemon wafers and drinking what she called “White Rose Tea” which was hot water and milk. When we stayed with them grampy would stay in the porch and build boats. We were not allowed to move. He would get agitated if we broke his concentration. In time we took to camping when we visited grammy and grumpy.
The problem with grandparents is that they tend to leave you before you are old enough to truly appreciate them and I think this was the case with grampy Lewis. I now have a hobby; an avocation (writing) that takes a good deal of concentration… Oh bother what is that noise. “Hey you kids, why don’t you play in someone else’s yard?’” Where was I … Oh yeah, writing takes a good deal on concentration, train of thought you know… “Oh for Pete’s sake… Hey you kids I’m trying to work; don’t you have parents?” I think in time I would have grown to understand grampy and his need for peace and quiet. “HEY KIDS QUIET!!!” I mean he was just a guy who had worked hard all his life who wanted to make a statement about his life and values and …

Oh my God! I am my own grandpa!

Will eReaders Kindle a need to read?

John Doull's in Halifax



First of all I am not a Luddite. What is a Luddite; you ask? Why you young whippersnappers. When I was your age I had to walk to school eight miles, uphill both ways. What is a whippersnapper anyways? Luddites were 16th century textile workers who often threw their sabots or wooden shoes into the wooden gears of the looms they were forced to work in order to intentionally damage them. This became known as sabotage. They were fighting the progress that was stealing the need for their talent and forcing them to accept a much lower standard of living. But I embrace change. I love gadgets. I own an eBook and an IPad and an IPod. I love them for what they are and what they can do. I love that you can download the latest book in seconds and often the old masters like Conan Doyle or Hemingway can be bought cheaply or even downloaded for free. I love that you can change font sizes, switch from single page to open book format and turn the backlight on and off. I love that you can have many books in one small device, eliminating the need to carry many heavy tomes. If you were; for example a businessman who enjoyed reading Harlequin romances you would not have to endure the disapproving glances of your fellow subway riders as the eBooks cover is totally generic. There is much to love about the new format. It’s shiny stuff attracts the jackdaw in me.
The eBook and the Kindle is only the latest format to come along in the modern; build a better mousetrap race to improve everything. There have been books on vinyl, books on tape, and books on CD. All of which had their followers. There may have even been books on 8 track, I don’t remember I was too busy blow drying my hair (yes I had hair) and gluing shag carpet onto the back dash of my Gremlin. I must confess that as much as I like to be thought of as the cool Uncle with the IPad. I also have a collection of books that fit into a different category. It has a lot going for it too. It requires no batteries, is recyclable, can be read in the bathtub and will not crash on you. They are called books on paper.
All right so I might be a bit of a Luddite. I once threw a pair of red plastic Crocks in the fan belt of my F-150 when it refused to start. I love BOOKS! I love the feel of a paperback in my back pocket, to be whipped out while riding on top of a wagon full of hay so I wouldn’t waste the five minute ride back to the barn. I loved leaning against a giant Oak on campus and stealing a few minutes from a busy school day to spend with anything other than required reading. I love the smell of new books their spines still tight and their pages crisp. I love the smell of old books their pages like cloth from repeated use. Used books and; ooooooooh, used book stores. I am drooling thinking of their cluttered stacks. Give me a good honest used book store any day. Like John W. Doulls on Barrington Street in Halifax. It is everything a used book lover could want. There are book shelves; to be sure, miles of them spread over two floors. But the books don’t end there. Books are over door frames and in piles in the aisles. There are boxes of new acquisitions in the front window, still unfiled. John is a man well suited to his calling he is bearded and bookish and ask him, just ask him for that coveted volume; that treasured tome. He will know exactly where to find it. In the world of used books I am a man with tunnel vision. When I approach most store owners cringe. They want customers with wide and varied interests. They wantmen and women who search the stacks with binoculars not a magnifying glass. They want multiple sales and wide interests. But they also need the guys like me. Guys like me who will shell out often more than a hundred bucks for the right book; albeit a very specific book.
I first crossed John’s path a fair many years ago. I had leant a copy of my favorite book to a friend and that friend had not returned to book. Now before you think my friend some sort of cad, some unfeeling bum let me explain. The book was what you might say less than great condition. It was a paperback copy of Fishing With Gregory Clark by the reporter and correspond ant Gregory Clark. It was the Totem Press edition and it had seen better days. Better days when it had been bleached by summer sun and soaked in spring rains. In battered my hip pocket while hiking back to the lake. It was stained with bug dope from days when the fish weren’t biting but the flies were. It’s pages were soft like cloth and it sort of wilted in your hand when you held it. It was tired but like I feel at the end of a long day, it must have been satisfied; proud, fulfilled. It had lived up to the promise of its’ author. It had provided me with countless hours of joy. I knew every story in it by heart. Stories like Bick’s Crick, The Purist or A Sportsman is One. When it was gone it was like a piece of me was gone.
My hopes were not high when I walked into Doullls. I made my way to the second floor where the sporting section was. I had spent a wonderful twenty minutes lost in the stacks of books. For books are everywhere here. They are on window sills and on door frames; in piles on the floors. The place smells, but not of must or even dust but of venerable age. It smells just the way a used/rare/antique book store should. When I handed my books to the lady clerk she said; matter-of-factly. “Did you find everything you were looking for?” “Well, no actually.” I replied a little hesitantly. She allowed her eyes to rise from the fly page she was penciling a selling price on as is the habit in the trade. “Oh?” she asked cocking an eyebrow. “I was looking for Fishing With Gregory Clark” I stated as if it were a can of Campbell’s soup. “Do you know it?” I asked. She did not; from the look on her face. It was then that I noticed John. He was standing behind her and he was beaming.”I do!” he said with some pride. I like a man who loves books. “Do you have it?” I asked hopefully. “I do.” He replied without the exclamation point. “There!” He pointed to a stack of boxes by the door. “Just arrived.” He whispered conspiratorially. “A widow clearing out her husband’s treasures.” He took the top off an apple box full of hardbound books. The revelation that it had come from a Widow did not surprise me. Clark had been a veteran of the First World War, a correspondent in the second and was one of the most widely read Canadians in the thirties, forties and Fifties. He had never retired not officially anyways. He died in his eighties about the time that I had discovered him. “First edition, hardcover with dust jacket.” John said proffering the book. I took it from him with reverence. It was like being handed the family Bible. I opened the cover. There was no notation yet on the fly leaf. John noted my glance and quickly added “I haven’t marked it yet.” “It is for sale?” I enquired. “They’re all for sale.” He said with a grin. “Seventeen dollars sound fair?” It did indeed and I nodded. John wasn’t finished. “You might be interested in these. He took three more books out of the box all hardcovers and all in as good condition. “I’ll do the three for forty five.” “Done.” I replied. He had sold four books in less than a minute.
There have been other memorable finds in Doull’s “Fun with Dick and Jane” for my wife. He would save many other copies of Greg Clark for me. I look for them every year. John has an inner sanctum where he keeps the good stuff. I have never been able to walk in but I have seen in when he has fetched a pricy piece of antique or collectable prose. The book is also an artifact. It has a story to tell that is writ large on it’s’ pages but not in ink; not leastways in the publisher’s ink. Books often bear inscriptions. Most are by their authors but also by people gifting a book to another. I have often found these moving or puzzling or both. An endorsement from a parent wishing that a child get as much joy from a book as they had; which begs the question “Did they?” An endorsement of a special book given on a special day; a graduation or a wedding or anniversary that leaves me feeling voyeuristic when I read it. There are sometimes student’s notes and underlined passages and I love to read these to see if the reader got the same thing out of the book or passage that I did. I often think of the widow who sold her husband’s books and how his once loved copies of Greg Clark had found a new and welcome home. I wonder what he would think of a second generation falling in love with the author’s works and would he be happy that they had found a good home. I once had to pack up the books and music of a deceased colleague and I could not help but feel a connection to a man I had never met because we owned so many of the same books and CDs. How that apple box was like a biography of that woman’s lost love. I wish I could have looked through it with more detail.
Very often I come across other artifacts in used books. So many things get used as book marks. I have found letters and bills, shopping lists and a photo of a child. I have found movie and theater tickets. One day I ran across Barrington in the rain while waiting for the bus. I bought a book from Doull’s and returned in time to catch the number ten Dartmouth which was always late when it rained. Inside the book was a bus ticket from exactly ten years earlier. It was for the very bus I was sitting on. Had someone read this very book on this very bus ten years ago that day? It sent a shiver down my spine. I once paid five bucks for a book only to find a ten dollar American bill inside the book. On another occasion in Doull’s I spotted a copy of “The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes” the exact edition that my beloved Grandmother had given me as a child. I had read it until it fell apart, and every other Holmes book that Conan Doyle had written. I scooped the book up with great joy and it still graces my bookshelf. It is a treasured memory of my Grammy.
None of this will ever happen with a Kindle or eReader. No one will hand their IPad to a friend when they are done with it, like they do a book. There will be no story written in the flyleaf of a Kindle. No tear stains on the pages. No poignant notes as bookmarks. I doubt the electronic media will kill the paper book no more than vinyl or books on tape did. They will do what they do best and hopefully spread the good word of great writers to a new generation. There is always a price for progress. The phone can keep you connected but it costs you some privacy. The jet plane gets you there faster but you lose some of the leisure of a trans-Atlantic voyage. Progress is good but I hope the new mousetrap does not kill the old one entirely. We still have the option to take a cruise or write a letter. Hopefully when I am dead and gone someone will walk into a used bookstore and ask for my copy of Fishing With Gregory Clark. Maybe there will be an owner like John whose eyes will sparkle when he opens the box. I promise the new owner not to cackle too loud when he or she opens the cover. There is nothing like good, old fashioned progress.

If ifs and buts were candy and nuts...

Nothing marks the passing of time like Christmas. It is the exclamation point on the sentence that is the year. Each Christmas, like each year has its’ distinguishing features that mark it from all the rest. There are, for most of us the magical Christmases of youth. Defined and frozen in memory with the joy of the season. But in each passing year there is some moment which recaptures; or comes close, the magic of youth. The unspoiled promise that catches the spirit of the season. Even now; with childhood a distant memory I still seek out that moment. I usually find it too. Though not always where I might expect…
Being the manager of a former HBC post on the banks of the Liard River in the southern NWT I found myself living in a house that I have lived before and since. In corporate lingo it is colloquially called a DB12. I do not even know what the DB stands for. I do know they come in several different layouts. Most have four bedrooms. It was such a house that I lived in on the banks of the Liard. We also owned a tiny dilapidated trailer which the local children called the leggo block because of its’ blue color and the fact that it had virtually no windows. A flood had left the trailer somewhat the worse for wear and the company decided to build a new house for my assistant. When I heard how much they were going to spend I told them they were crazy. I could get them an existing house with land for less than half that much. They called my bluff. I knew of two houses for sale and about what the owners wanted for them. I put it in writing and sent it off to headquarters at the center of our universe and coincidentally, the center of Canada at Winnipeg. In due course they asked me to get a professional involved. I found a real estate agent who had always wanted to come for a visit I offered him a bed and a decent meal and he looked at the two properties and set a price.
We ended up buying a two story log home nestled in the woods. It had belonged to an old friend and helped him out of a scrape so it was a good deal all around. I would take the cottage in the woods and my assistant would have the venerable DB12. I loved the change. My first day off I wandered out onto my deck, coffee in hand and turned to my left to see a bull moose not thirty feet away. There is something surreal when you are half awake about staring at something that huge. I took another sip of java. I closed my eyes. I opened them again, he was still there, chin resting on my clothesline. “Cheers!” I said raising my mug. “Thanks for the welcome to the neighborhood.” As I walked the deck I planned where the bird feeders would go. I hung my black powder rifle on the wall, my Bearskin rug. It really was starting to look homey.
Summer had fled the arctic when one evening my friend Scott and I were sitting around the open plan living room a birch fire crackling in the woodstove. He pointed at the front wall with the neck of his beer bottle “You know you gotta have a big tree this year!” I was floored. I hadn’t even given Christmas a thought yet. Scott was famous for his trees. He too lived in a log house. A beautiful log house. He too had an open plan living room with a loft. He too had twenty foot ceilings. “There aren’t many of us who can. It’s your duty!” He said this like we were facing the Carthaginians at the battle of Zama. “My duty?” I repeated meekly. “Say it properly, MY DUTY!” he repeated. I was warming to the idea, the concept if not the logistics. “MY DUTY!” I declared and we clinked bottles. As I swallowed I was running the logistics through my mind. What had I gotten into?
Christmas approached as it always did, not on kitty cat paws like the fog, more like the piano or giant anvil in a Roadrunner cartoon, just boom a swirl of dust, the Roadrunner sticks his tongue out at you a few times and it is there. To tell the truth I had not figured out any of the what, where when and how of getting an eighteen foot fir tree into my living room. Scott was undaunted. At our every meeting he raised his thumb and gave me a surreptitious wink. It was like we were part of a fraternity. He would whisper to me “two weeks to tree day” then “Ten days to tree day.” It was like the doomed man watching his last hours ticking down. On tree day minus one Scott came over again. We were sitting in my living room like before so I came right out and asked “How the heck do we get a twenty foot tree into my living room?” He laughed. “I am the master of the Christmas tree. Do not worry grasshopper you are in good hands. I have it all worked out .We use my truck.” It was a 16 foot body job. “How does that help, won’t it be too short?” I queried. “Oh ye of little faith, am I not the master?” he said with a smile that some could have seen as a little bit twisted. “Yes master, but how do you get an 18 foot tree into a 16 foot truck?” I replied. He was glowing now. He seemed to take on the demeanor of a mad scientist. “The same way I got that 18 foot canoe in, remember?” I did in fact remember. I remember the same look on his face when he opened the door that time too. “Alright master how do we stop all the needles falling off in the cold?” We both had been up north long enough to know that in the extreme cold up here trees get very dry and can lose all the needles when suddenly warmed up. “Grasshopper, grasshopper, you have no faith in my powers. We put the tree in the truck. TWO FULL DAYS before we bring it in. We warm it up gradually with the space heater. We then bind the limbs when they are supple and we bring it in butt first through that!” He said this with a smile snapping around and pointing to the sliding patio door with a flourish like the prosecutor at the Salem trials yelling “Witch!”
I had to admit it sounded good. I couldn’t think of a rebuttal. As we parted he added “When you can snatch the pine cones from my hand it will be time for you to go.” I was shaking my head as he started his truck. I slept fitfully dreaming of giant evergreens busting holes in my roof and knocking over appliances. When I awoke Scott was already at the door. “What are you waiting for? I thought you were going to sleep all day!” he said brushing by me. “Just how long have you been out there?” I asked pouring us both a coffee. “Travel mugs, grasshopper!” He said handing it back to me. “We are burning daylight!” He added this last part in a very bad John Wayne impersonation. I dressed while he paced. He seemed a man possessed. When I came down stairs he looked me straight in the eye and said “I love the smell of balsam in the morning, it smells like; VICTORY!” He spun on his heel and fled. I followed as quickly as I could. He nearly bounced into the cab. I swung in beside him. “Do you have any place in mind?” I asked holding my hands out to the defroster. “Any place in mind?” He replied mockingly. “I have thought of nothing else since the night we hatched this crazy scheme!” He said his knuckles white on the wheel. We rose out of the valley, still shrouded in winter ice fog, its’ residents still asnooze in their beds as we left Whoville behind. “We are just cutting a tree.” I replied calmly. “We are not pulling off the great train robbery.” “But not just any tree!” Scott added with what can only be described as a maniacal laugh. “This will be a tree that people will talk about for years!” The truck reached the junction and Scott turned left towards Fort Simpson and punched the gas.
Now Scott brings our freight some weeks as he and his partner are our freight handlers. But he drives the road to Fort Nelson B.C. not the Fort Simpson road. If he had found a tree here then he had to have made a special trip to find it. At this point, half frozen and only half awake I wasn’t sure if I was impressed or scared by this realization. We drove quite a ways. The highway follows the contours of the valley, the land to the driver’s side falling off quite dramatically giving us a beautiful view of the picturesque valley the tree tops capped with marshmallow snow. Scott’s eyes followed the contours out his door. We came upon a stream, now just a strip of still white snow passing under the bridge we were crossing. “THERE!” Scott breathed more than spoke. “See it! THERE!” In fact I did not see it. But Scott had not waited for my reply. He had parked the truck set the brake and slid from the cab in one motion. He already had the back door open when I rounded the rear of the truck. He appeared above me in the box of the truck with the biggest power saw I had ever seen. He already looked huge as I stared up at him. The power saw made him look like leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. “That’s not saw mate!” He said in an even worse Crocodile Dundee than his previous John Wayne. “That’s a saw!” I had to laugh. It was a saw alright!
We followed a winding trail down the slope a piece. He leaned against a tree. “Look up, way up.” He said with a smile. “And I’ll call Rusty!” I added. “Is this it?” I said in awe. “None other grasshopper.” He replied readying the saw. I had to admit it was beautiful. He notched it and felled it expertly. He really had done this before. As I looked at the thing on the ground I said to Scott “Uh, Scott…” my voice trailed off. Scott got serious for a moment. He squeezed my elbow. “I am way ahead of you, buddy! I was a silviculturist remember? This tree is going to open up this area.” He said making an arc with the blade of the silent saw. “See these three little guys? Soon there will be three trees using the sunlight that just one tree was taking before. Trust an old hippy.” He had read my mind. We put the tree in the truck from corner to corner and damned if it didn’t just fit.
He dropped me at my place. “I can’t wait to see it up!” I said from the ground as he leaned across the cab to close the door. “Patience grasshopper, patience.” He said tossing me my mug. Two days seemed like two years. I had almost forgotten how time could slow down at Christmas. Like it had when I was a boy. But true to his word two days later Scott returned. When he opened the back door of the truck I could see he had been busy the tree was trussed up like a hostage. I had already prepped the living room and shoveled a path to the patio doors and shoveled the deck. We carried the tree to the back door and straightened it out to its’ full length. We had to take the door off the track as it wouldn’t quite go through but eventually we had the tree in the room. Steve untrussed it. I stared at it in awe. It was magnificent. Huge. “How do we get it to stand up?” It had just occurred to me that the butt of this tree would never fit the tree stand that I had. It had to be six or eight inches wide. “Oh ye of little faith.” Scott chided me. “You are thinking backwards. We will not stand it up.” He said cryptically. “What then? Lay it down?” I asked. He wagged a finger and tut-tutted. “We will not stand the tree up we will hang it!” I thought for a minute. The top of the tree would be less than two feet from the roof log. “Brilliant!” I exclaimed. “I bet no one will even know!” “Yes.” Scott replied “But this must be our little secret. I have done it this way for years and no one was the wiser.” It certainly fooled me. We dummied up the base and put the tree in a wash basin full of water. We then took braided wire and put an eye screw in the roof log and secured it to the trunk mid way down the stem. The tree would actually swing if you pushed the base. It was a thing of beauty. Scott held out his hand. There were two cones in it. “From the top of your tree.” He said. “Only fire will open them up. I will show you the seeds when we roast them open.” I took the cones... “My work is done here grasshopper, you have snatched the cones from my hands it is time for me to go.” I laughed. “You tricked me!” I said. “It’s late.” He said and turned to go.
I went to sleep with the whole house filled with the smell of evergreen. The reason that Scott had left early became apparent the next day. I called him. “As we speak I am staring at the pathetic box of decorations that usually fills my seven -footer.” I said. “Ah yes, there is one more rite of passage before you can be initiated into the two story tree club. That is the opening of the wallet ceremony. Good luck!” That night my friends gathered around and helped me decorate. I bought every string of lights and ornament in town. It still looked a bit Charlie Brownish, but everyone brought some decoration. Nothing new and nothing valuable I told everyone. There were hand-made decorations of paper and plastic balls of all sizes and colors. We hung all my Christmas cards on the tree. Dozens of candy canes, one of the nurses baked cookies with yarn in them that could be hung as ornaments, although a few did not make it to the tree. When we were done all gathered proclaimed it a good tree. Scott was the happiest of all. He got to turn on the power bar that lit the tree. Everyone oohed and ahhhed.
I stepped back to take it all in. Not just the tree but the whole tableau. Scott on the couch with a Santa hat on, beaming; he had just initiated me into his club. The nurses admiring their handiwork. My golden retriever curled up in from of the wood stove. More friends pouring punch from a bowl. There it was, the moment I was waiting for. In that room in that moment, thousands of miles from family. Thousands of miles from the Christmases of my youth. In the laughter of my friends; in the peace of that inky arctic night, snug in that wonderful house so far it seemed from the icy winter winds outside, there was what I had been looking for. The magic of Christmas. It is always the last place you look.