High points…and home

Home at last, after almost three weeks visiting children and grandchildren in Manitoba and Ottawa. Mostly good time, with some disappointments. Too many days in Winnipeg, with too little time with family – a total of six hours out of five days! I did get a good look at the Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, and a good visit with my maternal side cousins over lunch.

Some highlights are memorable for me from this trip. My daughter and son-in-law thanking me for coming to visit them. That was touching. Going downtown in Ottawa to the Canadian War Memorial on the afternoon of November 11. In the morning, there were 50000 people in the street – I watched it on TV. Of course, lots of brass, including Harpo, fresh from his China sellout. Once the official ceremony was done, the ‘hoi poloi’ came forward in their hundreds to lay their poppies on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Grandson Diego had stopped by after class, replete in his Paramedic uniform. We walked down town, about a 30 minutes walk. When we got to the War Memorial, there were still hordes of people slowly coming forward to lay down their poppies and maintain a moment’s silence. We did the same. The poppies were 4 to 6 inches deep on the Tomb.

Some really touching sights. In front of the plaque honouring the war dead of the last decade – Afghanistan deaths, for certain, there stood a man in a dress armed services uniform. He stood for the longest time with his hand over his heart, and then moved to the wall and worked away at sticking his poppy into the mortar, so that it became part of the memorial.  Jennifer assured me that this parade of mourners would go on all day, and into the night, as people came to pay their respects.

Another highlight was the birthday dinner that Jennifer and the boys put on for me. All four boys were there, plus Danyka, Diego’s five year old daughter. She has recently been skipped from ore-kindergarten to grade one, so I asked her what was her favourite part of school. She said, without a moment’s hesitation, “Math.” Her Dad says she is into her books the moment she wakes up in the AM. I’m sure it helps that her Dad is a student who works diligently to remain in the top 5 of his class.

Jennifer had arranged for Kerry Dean and David Blostein to come to Ottawa to celebrate with me. David and I started school together in 1940! I walked into the restaurant, and saw these vaguely familiar faces, wondering who? And why? It was a great evening, with coffee the next morning before David did his National Gallery gig. He will be 80 about two weeks after me, so it was mutual celebration.

Seeing Emma for coffee twice was a highlight in Winnipeg. As a first year University student, she is settled and excited about everything. She has joined the improv group at U of W. She has found the best places to go dancing. (“Fame”, a gay club, tops the lest. “Nobody hits on you, and the cover charge is cheap!” Could there be a better recommendation? Not from frugal Emma!

The plane ride home was endless…four hours seems a long time in cramped seat. I’m getting too old to enjoy this kind of travel, but I don’t have the resources to fly first class…which is super. I had to do that coming home from Bolivia in 2003, ready for back surgery.

Remembrance Day in Ottawa

Finally in Ottawa. I experienced Winnipeg and Brandon the way people from warmer climes experience them: they were frigid! Minus 15, and windy. It’s been a while since I’ve lived in that climate. Walking there brought back memories of my adolescence, walking without a hat (being cool!) and freezing my ears one after the other.

I had a really good visit with Caley and Joe. Enjoyed Angus’ one word responses; Mr. ‘why use six words when one will do.’ Visits with Emma at U of W were great. She seemed no longer an adolescent, but now a young woman, settling into campus life, finding the best clubs for dancing (Fame, the gay club, is the best…cover charge is only $5.00!). She’s back in improve, looking at Biology Club…becoming Emma again, in a new setting, in a new phase in her life.

Arrived Ottawa late last evening. Poor Jennifer, her plane from Halifax was late, late. Rapha picked her and drove her home. She then came right back to meet my plane. It was a late night for me…later for her, as she visited a neighbor after we got home!

Today is Remembrance Day. I had planned to walk down to the National Memorial for the service this morning, until I heard that there would be 80,000 people there! All I would see would be the backs of their heads, so I’ll watch on TV, and walk down and place my poppy on the memorial this afternoon. That way, I won’t have the annoyance of watching our PM, “Harpo,” sucking for popularity as he lays a wreath, just home from selling out the country in China. Grrrr!

On Remembrance Day, I think of my father. He was a Vet of WW2. He joined the army early in 1940, at the age of 38. He never would have been conscripted. Most of the young men in his Service Corps unit were 17 and 18 – he was the father in the unit. Their job was to truck supplies to the front lines. This meant finding roads and just getting there, no matter what. Dad often rode motorcycle, sussing out roads and leaving markers for the boys to follow. He was blown off his bike at least once, because he wrote home for us to send him a new watch…his got damaged in the blast! His other major job was pulling his young guys out of bars when they got wasted, and getting them home to camp before the MP’s caught up with them!

Back then, we didn’t know about PTSD, but we saw it in him now and then. I remember one day, not long after he came home. We were eating lunch (I can’t remember why he was home at lunch time…or maybe it was dinner…fuzzy…. A car went by on the street in front of the house, and it backfired, as old vehicles often did back in 1946. Bang! It went…and my Dad was under the table before the sound had died away. He was so embarrassed…he covered it with anger, as he so often did in those years. But I remember being shocked by this, and realizing, even at the age of 12, that something important had just happened, even if I didn’t understand what.

It will be important for me to lay my poppy on the war memorial this afternoon. My Dad didn’t die in war, but his life was marked, bent, wounded in some way. Much later in his life, after he retired, he and my mother did something on summer Saturdays that recapped my Father’s wartime activity. On a Saturday morning, my mother would pack a lunch, then they would get in their little Volvo and d rive east from Transcona, into fairly primitive farm country, with only mud and gravel roads. They would drive until they were lost, and then my Father would drive this way and that until he found a way to get home. It was like re-doing his wartime job of finding a way to get through to home, rather than the front lines. It always amazed me how much pleasure my Dad got from these jaunts. He was back in his prime, doing what he did best, getting stuff through to the men who needed it. And on these trips, no one was shooting at him or shelling him!

It was so like my Dad to “join up” voluntarily, when he was almost overage, to do his part. He was too young to be in WW1 – 13 or 14 – and almost too old for WW2. But not quite, so off he went. I imagine there were thousands of men like him who did that, and I’m sure there were a lot of them who never came back.

I remember being 8 or 9 years old when the news came back to our little town that Mike Moroz had been killed. Everybody knew Mike. He was a baseball player, among other things, and therefore a local hero and well known to everyone. I remember people talking about his death in the Post Office, in hushed tones, with solemn faces. Like the whole town lost someone.

Another memory: Red Campbell. Red Campbell was a member of the Cameron Highland Regimen in Winnipeg. He was a piper in their band. When his regiment landed on the Normandy beach – “Juno Beach” was the Canadian landing spot -  Red was in his dress uniform, kilt and all. He stepped off into the water, and then stood there, piping his regiment ashore. In the process, Red was wounded in the hip, and sent home.

But that was the high point in his life…it ruined him. After the war, he mostly sat in the Legion and drank himself silly. He was permanently crippled, walked with a cane or crutches. In a way, he “gave his life” in the war, and never had any life after that. He was a sad man, who had one moment of heroism in his life.

All of this, and more, runs through my mind on Remembrance Day, along with the fact that when the Korean War started in 1950, I was 16, and wanted badly to join up. But like my Dad, 25 years earlier, I was just too young…. So I will remember them, for sure.

Of goblins and candy…

All Saint’s Day…or…the fay after Hallowe’en, if that’s your preference. Hallowe’en used to be a blast for me. I loved standing at the door, talking to kids, getting quips from them, and then doling out treats. The most fun I ever had on Hallowe’en was at my daughter’s home in Ottawa. She had to go out for a bit, and I got to tend the door. A horde of Ottawa U students came by, on the way home from the PM’s House and Rideau Hall, where the Governor General lives. Good taking’s I hear…

The kids were all in wild and homemade costumes, filled with merriment and ready to interact with someone. I scared them a bit at the door, I was dressed as a pirate…in rags… and had a 2-inch kitchen carving knife clamped in my teeth! They overcame their initial shock, and we had some lively conversation. Everyone was eager to tell me who they were, in costume, and where they came from. It was clear that many of them were homesick and were trying to recapture their recent childhood. I asked if anyone was from Alberta, and when one young lady put up her hand, jumping up and down, I found that she was – miraculously- from the town where I live. She was ecstatic to find a ‘home-boy’ in Ottawa. I mention this event, less than a decade old, because the event has changed so radically for me. We no longer greet kids at the door. In fact, we are “not at home” on Hallowe’en, or at least not visibly at home. You may wonder what has brought about this dramatic change. I’ll tell you.

We live in a small town in central Alberta…Bible belt country. Our community is about 7000, with other small towns nearby, a city of 12000 a half hour north if us, and another a half hour south of us. Many of our residents are retired, some are in business, and a fair percentage of the men work in what is called in Alberta “the oil patch.” This means they drive big pickup trucks, travel many kilometers to work every day, and bring home large paychecks. The fact that the bulk if these paychecks are tied up in payments for accouterments of what some call “the life”, consisting of ATV’s, Snowmobiles, a large Fifth Wheel (mobile vacation home) and at least one personally owned truck. These are usually heavy duty, crew cabbed, and extra-large tires vehicles. Our long block alone boasts 30 of these monsters!

The relation of all this to Hallowe’en is that many folks from out of town assume the community is wealthy.  Our neighbourhood, for example, looks like a suburban neighbourhood in any city. A few years ago, we noticed, on Hallowe’en, that our street was choked with vehicles from elsewhere. A horde of children poured from each vehicle. Wave after wave of children came to our door. Few of them were in costume, and fewer of them spoke. They simply stuck out their pillowcases, and once they had candy, they turned and left. This went on for a couple or three hours! Slowly, we realized that none of these children were neighbourhood kids, or even local kids. This was an invasion, a candy grab! After a couple of years of this, I became quite annoyed and disappointed by this. No amount of interaction could pry a comment from the kids. It was ‘grab and run’ time. We became quite disillusioned with the whole business, and now I refuse to have anything to do with it. Other years, we had stayed in our basement and watched TV, listening to the doorbell ring. This year, we ran errands in a nearby city, came home and parked in the ally, entering the house form the rear. No lights went on, and we did our business and then went to a movie. Driving toward our street, we noticed that the parking lot beside the soccer fields at the end of our block was filled with cars, 20 or 30 of them. In the dark, at night. Our street was a continual parade of vehicles circling the block, disgorging kids and moving them on to the next few houses. The sidewalks an road were crowded with children. We learned from a neighbour that she had spent $85 on candy, and it was all gone by 8:00 PM.

I would love to host neighbourhood children on Hallowe’en, but I am unprepared to support an invasion of greed and apparent entitlement. Apart from the inappropriateness if stuffing kids with sugar, I do not wish to participate in such a soulless candy raid. There did seem to be more kids with costumes on the street, but the hordes underline my main point. I question the values of a family that voluntarily transport their kids all over town, or even to the next town, just to get more loot.

I miss Hallowe’en the way I have experienced it. Perhaps I am simply an old curmudgeon, but $80 + is not in my budget for kids who come by in an SUV to get their loot!