Story tails

It was an unseasonably warm day, rain was forecast but was minimal. I turned off the heat pump and opened all the doors and windows to get some fresh air into the house, something that is in short supply in the wintertime. I puttered around getting some winterizing chores done. Then I noticed that Hapi was nowhere around and I had left the gate (and the front door) open. So I set out to find her. I headed in the direction that she had last been sighted a couple of weeks ago, a small row house complex up the street and across the field. There were a couple of older men loading junk into a pickup there. I asked one of them if he had seen a large grey wolf-like dog around.

"Oh, I've seen that dog, beautiful! But not today, sorry."

I was about to turn away and head in another direction but he asked for my phone number in case he did spot her. So I gave it to him. One thing led to another and in less than ten minutes we had exchanged the broad details of our past lives, our children, what it's like to live in this town. I'm guessing he was a few years younger than me, but not much. Another younger man with long black hair and tattoos all over bare arms (it was warm out!) came by and the older man asked him if he'd seen my dog. The young man said no he hadn't but he could text his wife to see if she'd seen her.

"That's okay, she only just got out, I'm pretty sure she's still close by," I said.

The young man nodded and continued on his way with a bag of garbage for the outdoor garbage bin.

I went back to chatting with the older man, now we were on to where our children lived and what they were doing there. Eventually though I had to call a halt to the conversation, I was expecting company and I should probably be at home when they arrived. Besides, I had left all the doors and windows open. As I left, the man said he wanted to know more about my son who had recently bought a house in town, he himself made his living as a landlord of over thirty units and was curious about someone just starting out on that career path.

"I made a lot of mistakes when I was younger, I'm not sure I would do it over again," he said.

When I got home Hapi was in the basement, sleeping. I think she was there all along.

An expletive deleted children's story

The weaving project in progress

My big news this week is that I got shortlisted for a prize in children's lit. Actually happened over a month ago but I was sworn to secrecy until they published the official list, which just happened. It's terrible to be sworn to secrecy on something so exciting, and the release was palpable. I immediately fired off emails to friends and family and all of the friends—every last one of them—was just as excited as I was.

Deafening silence from family. A prophet in one's own land sort of thing I guess.

Eventually one brother, the one with the awful diagnosis, broke silence and the three sons one by one also chimed in over the next few days. Have not heard from brother #2, but I believe he does not check email regularly, or so I tell myself.

Anyway, I won't know till the end of the month whether it goes any further than being shortlisted and I don't really expect it will, but the shortlist is exciting enough. There's going to be an awards ceremony (multiple prizes in different categories) which conflicts with my weaving class and I almost feel like skipping the awards but that wouldn't really be kosher. Show up and congratulate the winners, hobnob with 'real' writers. Risk not finishing my weaving project due to too many skipped classes.

Being a 'children's writer' was not really what I was aspiring to but hey! I'll take it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The new couch

In other news I have rearranged and refurnished my living room. I was at a local building supply place a month ago to purchase a tool that was on sale and happened to see a couch there that interested me. It was in the paint and flooring department and there were a couple of customers sitting on it contemplating some flooring samples. I sat down beside them and decided it was comfy. My only issue was whether it would actually fit in my living room which is small and already overcrowded with furniture. So I took measurements and went home, took some more measurements and concluded that if I got rid of a couple of furniture pieces I might be able to fit the building supply couch in.

The old table

One of the furniture pieces that would have to go is my large dining table. It's a good table but it is too large for the small room and really only gets used for piling books and papers on. If it had a leaf that I could remove it would be fine but it doesn't. So I did a bit of moving stuff around and bought the couch. Huge effort to get it home and set up but worth it, I love the couch. Then some internet browsing to find a smaller table and thought I found the right table at the IKEA in the city. A trip to the city with a friend to look at it in real life, combined with a browse of the best Chinese grocery store in the city (or that's what the newspaper review of Chinese grocery stores said) and I came home with a Norden gateleg table (and dark dark soy sauce, noodles and dried mushrooms). The table's principal feature is that it has two huge hinged leaves so that it folds down to almost nothing.

This week I assembled the table. I had forgotten what IKEA assembly projects were like.

The instructions have no words, only pictures. There was a whole separate document of warnings, all in pictures only and some of them quite incomprehensible. At a certain point I was stymied, the hinge screws would not screw in. I tried an electric drill/driver but that did not help. The warnings document had a picture of a person phoning the IKEA store (as opposed to standing there with the manual in hand and a big question mark in a balloon above their head) so I did that.

The person with the heavy accent (I had to get him to repeat what he was saying numerous times because I couldn't understand him) told me to try harder. After huffily telling him that I had already done that (I think I used the F-word) he then told me to bring the table back to the store. I thanked him for his assistance and ended the call. The question mark was now multiple exclamation marks.

The electric drill was lying on the floor next to the offending hinges so I picked it up and selected an appropriate bit and reamed out the pre-drilled screw holes until the screws would go in. I may regret that in the future but for now it works.

I am happy with my new smaller table and the building supply couch. Hapi on the other hand is not, she hates change. She comes into the house and stands at the doorway to the living room and looks around with a big frown, then she turns and goes back outside. Aside from two brief inspections of the living room she has stayed outside ever since. Doggy disapproval is clearly communicated.

Adapting

I was on my way home the other night with two women. They are volunteers who help a couple of Syrian refugee families adjust to life in this part of the world. One of them was talking about a young girl in one of the families—she thought the girl might be around 11 years old—and how tall she is. Apparently this is a concern for the adult women in the families. They feel that because of her height she should start wearing a hijab, like an adult Muslim woman.

The girl is reluctant, no one else in her class at school wears one and so it would make her stand out. She just wants to be like the other girls in her class. So it's an ongoing discussion. The two women I was with thought it was a shame to make the 11-year-old grow up so fast, to mark her as different in a world she just wants to belong in.

It must be hard for refugee parents to see their children resisting ages-old traditions, becoming less and less recognizable to them. The stress of making their way in a foreign land exacerbated by the strain of dealing with children who adapt so much more quickly to the new way of life.

Old People Out On The Town

Last night was the last show in the Performing Arts Series that I volunteer usher for, it was a great concert of the Nova Scotia Symphony Orchestra. They come here every year. This year they have a new and younger conductor, he was very good (and not hard on the eyes!). I learned some things about classical music from his introductory remarks for each piece.

The first was an Octet composed by Stravinsky, then a Tchaikovsky piece written just for stringed instruments ("Serenade for Strings"). The conductor said that Tchaikovsky was the culmination of a classical trend toward bigger and more emotionally grand symphonies, Stravinsky was a return to smaller and more basic forms. After the intermission they performed an early symphony by Dvorak, before he became famous for his Slavonic Dances. My favourite Dvorak piece is the New World Symphony. It was quite delightful listening to this much earlier symphony and hearing premonitions of both the Slavonic Dances and the New World Symphony in it. The final performance was by a composer I'd never heard of with a name (I mislaid my program and don't remember what it was) that sounded Russian or East European but who was actually Irish-French living in England. He pre-dated the other three composers. I think his piece was called Appalachian Spring and it was quite spritely. The last two pieces included stellar performances on a grand piano, by a woman who I found out later is transgender. Which kind of explained her height and dramatic manner of playing.

I had previously arranged with a couple of the other ushers that we would go out for a drink after this show. We went to the new pub in town, a converted church. This town has a proliferation of alcoholic establishments, more coming every year it seems. When I lived here back in the '70s and '80s there was one tavern and another student place on the university campus. Both venues are still here but the tavern in town has become quite seedy. Most "townies" and students avoid it. But in addition there are now a cidery, a wine bar, four pubs and four licensed restaurants. There's another pub due to open this summer. All this in a town of maybe 2500-3000 people.

The converted church is an older stone building with a wood panelled vaulted ceiling. It feels more like a city kind of pub than a small town pub. One of the other ushers invited a fourth along and we got a high table for four. Later our two "bosses" came in with some young women, they waved to us and sat at the other end of the church. Just as well, they would have dominated the conversation.

As it turned out the fourth usher had a really interesting story to tell about herself. She was the youngest at our table, maybe a couple of years younger than myself. She came to Canada when she was six, her family escaping Hungary in the aftermath of the failed Hungarian Revolution. Her description of the harrowing escape from the perspective of a six-year-old was riveting. At one point she said her mother gave her and her younger brother slugs of brandy to knock them out and keep them quiet. She said her mother always denied that she did that but she firmly believes her mother lied.

The day of the escape her mother woke her up and told her that she didn't have to go to school that day because they were all going to the zoo together. Her six-year-old self was very disappointed that they never did get to the zoo. She remembers two train rides that day. At one point the conductors on one of the trains hustled the family and some other people off the train and into a baggage storage room at a train station, and locked them in. She couldn't understand what that was all about, standing in this small windowless room surrounded by luggage in the dark. But Russian soldiers had boarded the train and the Hungarian conductors were hiding all the people trying to escape. The brandy-drugging episode was at night just before they had to cross a field to get to the border with Austria. They waited at the edge of the field for it to be dark before they could cross.

They arrived at Pier 21 in Halifax after their long journey across Europe, but their father did not want to stay in Nova Scotia. There was a large community of Hungarian refugees in Toronto that he wanted to join, but he couldn't find a job in Toronto. They ended up moving to St Catherines, where our friend the storyteller grew up. I remember that the high school I went to in Toronto was smack in the middle of the part of the city where most East European refugees ended up, I met many Hungarian kids in my classes. If her father had found a job in Toronto, maybe I would have met her then. She found school very hard because she couldn't understand or speak English. But the turning point came for her when she actually understood a book they were reading. It was "The Little Engine That Could". The first song on the radio that she understood the words for was "Lipstick on Your Collar", but she didn't understand what the significance of lipstick on a collar could be.

Another memory she had was of going to the baths with her mother before they left Hungary. Budapest sits on top of extinct volcanoes and is full of hot springs. Over the centuries many public baths were built there. The one our friend went to with her mother was a Turkish bath, built by Turks when they occupied Hungary hundreds of years ago. She remembers the amazing blue tiles of the place, but especially she remembers that it was the first time she saw her mother naked. Hungary has a long history of occupation by various peoples, and a certain resulting resentment. Our friend noted this on her last visit there. She is disappointed with Victor Orban and doesn't know what will become of her country of origin.

It was a most interesting evening!

Ringside seat

Hapi and I went downtown today, she was dragging her butt. I may not be able to take her down there much more, she goes so slow and I just want to get my shopping done before the stores close. Plus she wants to visit several shops that I don't want to go to in order to beg for treats. I've had to cut her off those dog treats because most of them are not good for her. I carry good treats for people to give her but they're often too quick for me. Half the time she's not interested in the treats anyway, she just likes visiting. And begging.

I crossed Main Street at a crosswalk to go to the post office. On the other side of the street is a small parking lot and in the slot next to the sidewalk there is a truck parked with an old fellow sitting in it. He is often there, apparently he just parks there to watch the world go by. He was grinning at Hapi slowly crossing the street so I stopped to chat with him.

"You have a ringside seat there," I said. Had to repeat it a couple of times because he couldn't hear me.

Then he basically told me the story of his life. Grew up in the backwoods a little ways from town, adopted by an illiterate couple. He didn't go to school. He says he sits out here now because he doesn't like what's on TV and he can't read, he can hardly write his own name.

I commented on his cap with a logo of a local excavation and building company. I know the company because they did some work for me. He told me he worked for them for 40 years, and before that he worked at a gas station that is long gone now. He said his friend asked him if the company gave him a pension and he told his friend no.

The friend said, "After making all that money from you for all those years, they never gave you a pension? I'm going to speak to them about that!"

The old man just grinned at that. Can't get blood from a stone.

Excision

Branches, 2001

It is not easy to excise a character from a story.

Working on my fantasy story, now into its third draft, I thought that it might be easier to write and draw to a conclusion more quickly if I got rid of some of the excess characters. There are a lot of them, they keep appearing as possibilities that seem good at the time. But each new character complicates the story, they are all hellbent on their own conclusions which don’t necessarily coincide with mine or my original main characters’.

So for the third draft I picked a couple of what I thought were minor characters and wrote them out. I rewrote one pivotal chapter without those two and it went not too badly so I proceeded. The next chapter was also not so hard, but it did mean I had to substitute another existing character for one of the two that were now missing. The third chapter after that was drastically foreshortened due to the missing characters, and by the fourth I was running into problems. It seems that at least one of my missing characters was more integral to the action than I had thought and taking him out was causing some difficulty. How do I explain things without him there to ask the right questions or give the right answers?

Now I was starting to rethink the operation. Did I really want to continue without that missing character? I tried to see into the future of how the plot was going to proceed without him, and it was murky. Perhaps he wasn’t as extraneous as I thought he was. The other missing character I could still do without, but he was related to the first one and I would have some serious rethinking and rewriting to do if I got rid of one and not the other. They were kind of a package deal. The whole idea was to simplify the story and speed up the action, and instead it was having the opposite effect. It is not easy to excise a character from a story.

Sometimes I think my life would have been entirely different and so much better if only I had done this or not done that, if I had turned left instead of right, or vice versa. But is rewriting one’s life any different? Could I really eliminate this or that character from my life and have it not become more complicated than it already is?

Friends of Jane

It is bitterly cold out today, with low temperatures and high winds the chill factor is supposed to be -30C. Along with about 100 others I spent over an hour this morning standing in front of the local RCMP office bearing witness and hopefully providing some moral support in a tragic event. A young woman, a student at the local university is being deported.

Jane came to Canada from Bangladesh a few years ago to study computer science. She met another Bangladeshi student, fell in love, got pregnant and had a baby. At 7 weeks old that baby was rushed to hospital in distress, and very shortly after Jane and her boyfriend were arrested as suspects. While Jane was in custody her baby died. She never saw her baby again, she wasn't even allowed to see it before the baby was buried in an unmarked grave. She was held in prison for almost a year. This past year she was released but required to stay in the country to testify in an upcoming court case related to her baby's death. All her belongings and documents and money had disappeared while she was in prison.

The prison chaplain put Jane in touch with a local pastor who has taken Jane under her wing and tried to provide some support to her in desolated state. Jane has been trying to pick up the pieces of her life, re-registering for courses she needs to complete her degree, volunteering locally, and awaiting the trial. Meanwhile Canadian Border Services has determined that she should be deported, but this is at odds with the court's requirement that she stay in the country to testify in the upcoming trial.

So today, we were at the RCMP office awaiting the Border Services arrival to formally speak with Jane and determine her fate. We bore signs, "Friends of Jane" and "We Support Jane" while we waited. A local coffee shop invited us to drop by for free coffee and tea while we waited in that very bitter bitter cold. We were so bundled up that it was hard to recognize each other through the scarves and hoods and balaclavas. Cars driving by stopped to ask what was going on. The RCMP treated us kindly, they used their back door to come and go and we stayed clear of the exit from their parking lot.

Jane's lawyer accompanied her to the interview with the Border Services people. He came out with her when they were done to tell us how it went. He is the top immigration lawyer in the province and he had volunteered his services to Jane. He said that there are two kinds of deportation orders, a regular deportation order and an exclusion order. The exclusion order is the milder of the two and that was what was issued to Jane. She must leave but she can return after a year. However because of the pending court case the order is not enforceable, so she can stay and continue her school studies. In the meantime the lawyer said, there are several things we can do to have the exclusion order changed, and now there is time to do that. He said that community support was the most important thing, and we had already made an impression on the Border Services people. One of the first things they said to Jane was, We see that you have friends!

Jane expressed her tremendous gratitude to us, she said she couldn't believe the love and support she was receiving and it was hard for her to find words to express how grateful she was.

I try to put myself in her shoes and I think about how terribly awry one's life can go by making mistakes when one is young. I don't know the full details but it seems to me that she made some mistakes that have cost her dearly. I cannot imagine how it must have been for her to lose her infant daughter in the way that she did.

I've been singing in a local church choir the past couple of months, and every Sunday I wonder what the heck I am doing here. But this past Sunday a woman in the congregation got up to tell us Jane's story and invite us to support her the next morning at the RCMP office. I would not have known about this had I not been there. She also contacted several other church congregations in town and many of the people at the RCMP office this morning came because of that. Others were students who knew Jane from school, and others knew about it from a recent NDP meeting at which this woman spoke. This brings home to me the important role local churches can play in a community, to provide support and galvanize citizens to do the same.

Oh but it was cold cold cold out there!!!

Alex's vacation

"It was the last wish of the Icelandic economy that its ashes be spread over Europe." ~New York Times, April 19, 2010.

Alex had a 10-day vacation in Europe planned. With lots of European relatives, he made no hotel reservations, he wouldn't need them. Taiga, his dog, would be spending the ten days with a dog buddy just outside of town.

Alex's KLM flight to Amsterdam was to leave Toronto last Friday morning.

All weekend we speculated at the dogpark where Alex was, we were pretty sure he was not in Europe. And this morning Alex and Taiga were at the dogpark.

Alex said he didn't want to disturb Taiga's vacation with his dog buddy, so with no dog he didn't come to the dogpark.

Alex has rescheduled his flight to this coming Friday, KLM was happy to reschedule his flight to Amsterdam for the following week, but they did not want to reschedule his return flight. They expected him to curtail his vacation by seven days! Alex was having none of that, after some discussion he got his return flight rescheduled as appropriate.

I hear that the wind has changed, and now the Icelandic volcanic ash is headed to Canada, with flights out of Newfoundland already being cancelled, and the Toronto airport watching the situation closely.

Bets on Alex getting his European vacation this spring?

A good yarn

There's a great little blog post over at The Yarn Harlot today (actually, yesterday).
It's not what you think.

Oh, and Josh?
You need a new hovercraft.
Eels indeed...

OK off you go, I'm done here.

Emilie and Vasily

This morning I pulled into the Mimico Adult Ed Centre parking lot in my truck for my day of weaving and woodcarving classes. As I cruised around looking for a convenient parking spot I noticed a woman with a bike watching me. She had a stern look on her face, for some reason she seemed to disapprove of me. Or something. I parked and walked toward the entrance, passing the lady with her bike. She stopped me to talk, asking if I worked here.

I had a hard time understanding her, she seemed upset or concerned, she held up her bike lock and gestured toward my truck. I looked at her blankly, I had no idea what she wanted. Then she pointed in the other direction, at a man walking into the parking lot

Wait, she said, He speaks good English.

So I waited, and as he approached the building entrance she called out to him. He came over and she began to explain to him what her problem was.

Finally he turned to me and said, She has her bike lock but she brought the wrong key, it's her son's bike lock key. She can't lock her bike up and is wondering if she can put her bike in your truck while she is in class.

In the mornings at Mimico Adult Ed, they run ESL classes for immigrants. They are from all over the world. In the hallway, they have posted little one page personal descriptions of many of the students, written in their own words. They are quite poignant, some have good language skills, some do not, they are of all ages and from many different countries. These two people are obviously in an ESL class, but I do not know what language they are speaking, or where they are from.

Once I know what she wants I agree to it. I arrived early today so I have some time to kill anyway. I get a rag to wipe some of the slush off her bike wheels and fortunately have a couple of tarps I can use to protect the stuff I store in the back of my truck. The man helps me manoeuvre her bike into the truck, and I lock it up. I tell the man that they should follow me to my classroom so they will know where to find me when she needs her bike back. I ask the man to be there to help get her bike out again.

A couple of hours later, they are at the door of my weaving class looking for me. I go out to unlock my truck for her.

She pats my shoulder and says, You are a very nice woman.

I say, I am sure you would do the same for me.

After we get the bike out, the man asks my name and I tell him. He tells me that my name is the most popular name in the whole world. Then he tells me his name, Vasily, and she tells me hers, Emilie. She is Polish and he is Ukrainian.

I look at Vasily and say, You just had an election! How was it? Are you happy or disappointed?

He looks around and then says, I am very disappointed. That man is a murderer.

He starts to say more, and then stops and says that he must go, he will explain more the next time.

After my woodcarving class I am ready to go home. I go to the hallway where all the student descriptions are posted and I look for Emilie and Vasily. I find their descriptions, on the wall across from the lunch room. Emilie has included a photo of herself, Vasily a little cartoon of a teddy bear.

Emilie has come here with her husband and children, she has an MA in Administration from a Polish university, and hopes one day to learn enough English to get a job as an Administrator.

Vasily is here alone, his wife and children are still in the Ukraine. He came here to be free. Life is very difficult, he does not have a job, but he hopes to get himself established here and to bring his family to be free too.

Another life

He was in his early 50s---53 to be exact---when he was laid off by the hospital. He worked in a lab there. They gave him a severance package and a counsellor, and sent him on his way.

The counsellor was actually quite helpful, told him the best way to handle his severance for tax purposes and encouraged him to go back to school. She told him there was money available for retraining but it would take time for the application to go through so he should get that started right away. He could figure out what he wanted to study later.

Well, this was in Ontario's Bob Rae days and that counsellor wasn't kidding about there being money available. However she grossly overestimated how long it would take for Walter's application to go through, he had hardly submitted it when they told him it was approved.

Now what school was that again that he intended to go to?

He had no idea.

He did know that at 53 finding another job was going to be darn hard, but he didn't have a clue what he wanted to study or retrain for. The counsellor helped him fill in applications for various community colleges.

He grew up in Saskatchewan, when they said they wanted his high school transcript he was dumbfounded. His graduation diploma had been typed out on a slip of paper, how could he expect to get a transcript? But he wrote away for it and I guess that high school managed to type out a transcript for him, 35 years later.

Most of the colleges he applied to said forget it. They weren't interested in his transcript or him. But he got a call from somebody in Admissions at Centennial College who told Walter to come down right away and talk to him.

Walter hurried down with his transcript, the fellow glanced at it and said, "You're in! Now what was it that you wanted to study?"

Walter didn't know.

So together they went through the college prospectus, and ended up selecting some art classes for him. The fellow told Walter that he could use these classes to put together a portfolio if he wanted to apply to OCAD, the Ontario College of Art and Design.

Walter spent a couple of years at Centennial. He'd never studied art before, but he had the most wonderful time at Centennial doing art of all kinds. By the end of his time there he was pretty sure he wanted to go on to OCAD, and he was pretty sure that the thing he wanted to study there was silk screening.

Walter applied to OCAD, was accepted, and then he applied to have his two years at Centennial accepted as the equivalent of the first two years at OCAD. They agreed. So another two years at OCAD, painting, sculpting, photographing, weaving and of course silk screening, and now he had a degree in art.

Walter owned a house. He bought it when he was in his 40s, back when interest rates were through the roof but house prices were still reasonable. He worked diligently to pay off the mortgage and in ten years he was debt-free. So when he got laid off he owned his own home free and clear, and he had a little bit in savings. Between the help that the Bob Rae government gave him and his own resources, he managed to survive four years of school. After that he just kept taking courses in things that interested him, quilting, weaving, this, that and the other thing.

He says he never thought he'd manage a "Freedom 55", but I guess he did, and two years early at that.

Walter started a small business. It was not intended to be a big moneymaker, but he loved to shop and he had an awful lot of stuff that eventually he had to get rid of if he wanted to continue to buy new things. So he started selling his puchases at the St. Lawrence flea market, then later he got space at an antique mall.

The antique mall suits him perfectly. He has space there for his items, mostly china and pottery, and the operators of the mall handle the sales and take a percentage of the sale price. He periodically shows up to resupply his space when his items have been sold. He goes to second hand stores to browse for more, occasionally goes to yard sales, and has handled one or two estates for people. It's perfect, enough work to keep him moving and learning, not so much to tire him out or prevent him from pursuing other interests.

I sit next to Walter in weaving class. He's been in this class for around 12 years now. He's working on a large tapestry based on a photo of a lake surrounded by multi-coloured trees and rocks.

He's been working on this particular tapestry for a couple of years.

He's in no rush.

Paddy and the U-boat

This is a third-hand true story, as told to me by the son of the central character, Paddy.

Paddy was Irish, he went to sea at an early age, sailed on a variety of ships and eventually worked himself up to owning and skippering a ship of his own. First ship he skippered was sunk by a German U-boat during World War I, second one was too, and the third one bankrupted him. Eventually he emigrated to Canada, settled in Baie Comeau, and his son grew up to be a merchant marine sailor too, got his captain's papers and spent half a lifetime sailing up and down the North American Atlantic coast. Now he (the son, that is) is happily retired in Toronto.

This story is about Paddy's second ship. Paddy was out there off the coast of Ireland, when they spotted the U-boat. It had risen to the surface and the U-boat's captain was out on deck hailing Paddy's ship. The German captain gave Paddy a choice, he could be bombed or torpedoed, whichever he preferred. I'm not sure what Paddy replied, and the German captain wasn't either because although he spoke perfect English, Paddy's thick Irish brogue was beyond him. So the U-boat captain got into a little lifeboat and had his men take him to the ship he intended to sink.

Paddy waited for him on the deck, and as the German captain climbed the Jacob's Ladder onto the ship, the two men cried out in surprise and delight, and embraced each other heartily. The tears flowed. Turns out that before the war they had sailed together as young men on a Norwegian whaling ship in the North Sea. In fact Paddy had saved the young German's life after he was seriously injured in a whaling accident.

After the emotional reunion they retired to Paddy's quarters to discuss the situation, and again the German captain offered Paddy the choice of torpedo or bomb. He told Paddy that he could not shirk his duty to the Fatherland in time of war, but he would certainly ensure that Paddy and all his men would be safely off the ship in lifeboats before the deed was done. Paddy chose the bomb.

True to his word the U-boat captain allowed time for Paddy and all his men to depart the ship in the lifeboats.

The U-boat submerged and disappeared and the men in the lifeboats waited.

They waited twenty minutes and nothing happened.

They waited another twenty minutes and still nothing happened, their ship still sat at a safe distance away.

In all, they waited a couple of hours in the lifeboats, no bomb went off, no ship exploded.

Finally, Paddy ordered the men in his boat to row him back to their ship. He climbed the ladder up onto the ship's deck and ordered his men to paddle safely away. He looked around, finally ending up in the galley where he found a note on a table.

The note said that not even for the Fatherland could his old friend bring himself to leave Paddy on the sea in a lifeboat, there was indeed a bomb but it was defused and the note gave directions for where to find it.

Paddy found the bomb, it was sure enough defused, and he called his men to return to their ship. They sailed away unscathed.

Unfortunately Paddy's next encounter with The Hun ended less happily, he survived but his ship was sunk.

I heard this story this afternoon, in my woodcarving class, the narrator swears it is true and that it can be found in the archives.

Today was the first day of classes in the new year, it was good to see my friends from last year in the weaving and woodcarving classes.

I am at a stage with my carving that I need our instructor's help, but she is busy with a new student for the first couple of classes, so I spent most of the class wandering around looking at other students' work and chatting. In this class there are four women and eight men, and I am one of the younger ones. Several of the men are in their eighties and full of interesting stories. Such as this one.

I also chatted with a fellow student who grew up in a Japanese internment camp in Kaslo, BC (during World War II). He said it was fun for him but maybe not so much for his parents. They started out in a hotel room, and later were moved to a little house. His father was required to do forced labour at another location, building roads. He said his father was a tiny man, it was hard to imagine how the Canadian government thought he was suitable for hard labour on road construction, but eventually they saw the light and returned him to his family in Kaslo.

The instructor tells me that I may have to switch to another class if I want more instruction, I hate to leave this class because these people are so great, but I may have to do it if I want to get anywhere with my carving.

Stories of Ruthe and Bill

I went to Barrie and Bobcageon over the weekend to visit Tim, Lori, Ruthe, Bill and Corrine. I returned home Sunday afternoon, quite exhausted. Since we didn't really do a lot, I think it was as much emotional exhaustion as it was physical.

Ruthe and Bill are my aunt and uncle, the last of my Dad's family. They are both in nursing homes in Bobcageon. Ruthe has kidney failure and has refused dialysis, we thought she would not survive the summer but she's still kicking along. Bill had a stroke a number of years ago and his physical care requires a lot more than his wife Corrine could handle at home. Both of them are otherwise bright and communicative.

I drove up to Barrie on Friday to stay overnight at my brother and sister-in-law Tim and Lori's place, and then on Saturday Tim and I drove to Bobcageon, a couple of hours further away. Although very cold (-25C overnight), the roads were all bare and dry so the driving was good.

We went early to catch Ruthe in the morning while she was still feeling pretty good, she fades in the afternoon. She said this was not one of her better days but still she seemed pretty good. I think we were with her for almost an hour and by the end she was reluctant to let us go but barely able to keep her eyes open. She said she spent a lot of time remembering the old days, especially her very young days at Balsam Lake. She said as she got closer to death her memories were more vivid and alive for her. Tim told her that Mum had said that just before he died, Dad (Ruthe's older brother) had had a conversation with Jess, their oldest but then dead brother. Ruthe reiterated that she did not believe in God or an afterlife, but still, she felt very close now to her parents. Ruthe is a confirmed atheist, no amount of tribulation will sway her conviction.

Ruthe and Bill are in different nursing homes in the same small town. Bill's wife Corrine lives just outside of Bobcageon. Our timing was such that we just had time for a brief visit with Bill before he went to lunch, so we did that and then when Bill went for lunch we also went for lunch with Corrine, at a local restaurant called MacGoo's. We had All-day breakfasts for about $5.00 each. Then we went back to Bill's nursing home for a second visit with him. Bill is in better shape than Ruthe but he also tires after awhile.

Corrine got Bill talking about the old days and about our Dad, she got him to tell a couple of stories and then we asked him questions about his family memories and about some of his own life stories. Our Dad was eleven years older than Bill, who was the youngest in that family. I remember Bill babysitting for Tim and I and mentioned that to Bill, and he said, Yeah, your Mom and Dad were probably out dancing.

Bill remembered Dad riding a horse that was kept in a field near the old Mills place on Long Point, Dad would have made a bridle for the horse and mounted it by leading it to a fence and climbing on from there. Bill would have been just a little kid who looked up to his two older brothers, Ted and Jess. Their Dad was very musical and very handy, Bill remembers Grandad playing the cello, well enough that he played for money and also practiced with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. One time he brought home an accordion, and Jess learned in the space of a weekend how to play it better than Grandad could. Our Dad played fiddle, the three of them often played together, fiddle, accordion and cello.

Jess and Grandad built a kind of mini-railway to put their boat in and out of the water. They got the tracks from an old railway that used to be out on Toronto Island. Grandad made a fiddle out of an old wooden cigar box, a broomstick and some wire. He used his cello bow to play it.

Dad signed up in the Army and went off to War in 1939 when he was twenty. He came back about six years later, a very different man. Bill said he was older and kind of stressed. Because of his service in the war Grandad gave Dad the family sailboat. Unfortunately, Bill would have been around 15 at the time and he was becoming an excellent sailor, having won a race or two with that boat. He was not so keen on having Dad take the boat away. Dad was moving north to Fraserdale and of course took the boat with him. Just before he did, Grandad and Jesse had made a keel for the boat and bolted it on, changing it from a centreboard boat to a keelboat. It was a pretty good job that they did, but the boat leaked ever after, probably because of the bolts. Anyway, Dad had to make special arrangements to take the boat to Fraserdale as there were no roads there, they had to build a cradle for it and put it on the train. A few years later Mum and Dad returned from Fraserdale, but he did not bring the boat back with them, apparently because it leaked so much that he didn't see the point. Bill is still kind of annoyed with Dad about that. If you take it away, you should bring it back!

I can see that this would have been very upsetting for Bill, he was a young man who had his boat taken away from him just at what would have been the start of his sailing career. As a teenager and the youngest kid in the family, he had no say in the matter.

Something interesting, Bill said that Dad wanted to learn to sail (he woke Bill up very early one morning to get him to teach Dad to sail) in order to impress our mother, Anne. Bill said Anne was an excellent sailor, always was and still is a better sailor than Dad. Which surprised Tim and me, as kids we remember Dad being the sailor, not Mum. We also have no memories of Dad playing any kind of musical instrument, so it was surprising to hear how musical he was before the War. A lot of things changed with the War.

The other regret Bill had was over Grandad selling the cottage at Long Point. He loved that place. Grandad sold it because he just couldn't keep up with the maintenance.

Grandad ran away from home at age 14 to join the circus. He travelled to Chicago and other places, he learned to play the cello and he learned a trade, something to do with printing. He met Grandma in Montreal just as she was arriving from Edinburgh. They settled in Toronto where Grandad grew up but relations with his family were strained. I guess they never really forgave him for running away. Or maybe he had good reason to run away? Bill didn't have any memories of his grandfather, he didn't know why they didn't see much of the grandparents, he just knows that they didn't. Grandad went to Jesse Ketchum Elementary as a kid. Grandad was a very hard worker who was careful with his money and took care of his family, but one time he co-signed a loan for someone and that person defaulted on the loan so Grandad got stuck with it. He impressed on his kids never to co-sign on a loan for anybody, no matter what.

Bill was pretty handy too, I remember him building a sea flea (a little speedboat) and when I told him about building the kayak last summer, he told us about building a canvas and plywood kayak. His description of it sounded awfully like Mike's baidarka! For a long time he flew airplanes for a living, he still is intensely interested in airplanes. By his bed he had a lot of photos, including one of the Avro Arrow which was on display at a museum recently. I was surprised at the photo, I thought all the Arrows had been destroyed, but Bill said there were models that they tested and sank over Lake Ontario; someone went and pulled them out of the Lake. I would like to find out where that model is now, I would love to see it.

Both nursing homes are big and modern, clean and bright. Being in a small town they are surrounded by trees and nice views. Bill's nursing home has more common spaces for residents to gather in, Ruthe's doesn't have common rooms except for the dining room and instead residents gather in the wider hallways in front of the elevator. Corrine thought that Bill was better off sharing a room, she thought that Ruthe got lonely being in a room by herself. She knew a lot of the residents and we said Hi to several people that she knew there. So in many ways it seemed more sociable than Ruthe's home, but it's hard to say from just a short visit. However I think seeing so many very old people like that makes one very conscious of one's mortality; these are among the nicer places to end up, but still...

It was wrenching to leave them, if they had had the energy I would have loved to stay longer. I know Ruthe's days are numbered, I hope I see her again.