Traveland RV , parking lot, my birthday

I’ve arrived back from Southern California.  My slide stopped working north of LA but I was able to get back with the slide kept in with a slife lock; The beauty of the Motorhome is everything is accessible even with the slide not out.  That wasn’t the case in the RV.  Traveland was kind enough to take the Thor Motorhome in yesterday at noon but the slide repair wasn’t completed at close of day. Madigan and I spent the night in the parking lot. They had electricity and water though Madigan felt he has to bark with any sounds through the night that he deemed as threatening. I was woken three times by long barking.  Definitely a local terrorist cell. Meanwhile I got a new mattress and really did enjoy it.

This morning I had my own coffee and now am in the office they’ve provided me to wait in.

It’s my birthday. 74.

I’m very grateful . I am reeled with gratitude, thankful to be alive, knowing so many who have died in the last years. I do miss them. The older I get the greater I realize what a wonderful life I have had of so many blessings. I’m thankful today for Madigan. I’m very thankful for my dear friend Laura. I especially love my sister in law, the nephews and the great nephews and great neice.  I miss my brother.  What a blessing to have know such a great man all my life.  I have memories flash through my mind with the long drives in the motorhome and enjoy so many positive childhood memories and adult memories. I have a terrible mind that will select and pull up the few negative events and focus on them when in fact the whole has been stupendous.  My family really was exceptional, my mother so loving and accomplished, my Dad an amazing man and my aunt and grandparents and uncles all a gift.  I tool way too much for granted. I had a great school .  Dad and mom were really keen to have us live in a good neighbourhood and they really did prioritize education. Yet there was sports and I played on hockey teams and baseball teams. Every summer I was signed up for swimming lessons and life saving classes .  I was given guitar lessons and music lessons. I wanted to join the YMCA and my parents supported that so I became a member of the Gymnastics team, swimming team and Leaders Corp.  We attended the Trinity Baptist Church and later the Fort Gary United Church. I taught Sunday school and was encouraged to read the Bible and had this incredibly important moral and ethical training.

Dad loved the outdoors so weeeknds and holidays we out in the wonderful Canadian wilderness fishing and hunting.  I really had an incredible childhood . It was only when I became interested in girls as a teen that life when sideways.  Hormones. I don’t know how my poor parents and teachers didn’t kill me. I’ve a dog that is totally brain dead when pheromes hit him. That was me.  

Then there was alcohol and parties and adolescent arrogance. I was still  successful. Sports champion, and writing.  I had all these outlets. I worked at all these jobs for money. I bicycled a lot.  I was blessed with intelligent.

I had this great friend  Kirk. Lived across the lane. We did volleyball together. Walked to school with our friends Garth.  Later we’d do Jujitsu together and he and I’d both get into meditation and yoga despite our Christian background.  I had a darkroom to do pictures for the year book. His dad made beer and we had it in the basement. The family had a cottage at Minaki and I visited canoeing everywhere and hiking in the woods all day.  Best guy.  All my life I’ve been blessed to know him. Brilliant man. We talk of god together.  

The Manitoba Theatre School became a very important part of my life. I was kicked out of school for reciting a poem with the word fuck in it.  I got a job in carpentry and my life could have taken a very different turn. I liked carpentry. I used to fix cars with my brother and father.  A skill that later stood me well assisting surgery  I met my first wife dancing at Ken Mathew’s. What a creative incredible world. How blessed i was to meet this extraordinary woman . We bicycled across Europe together and lived in London working on jobs and studying dancing.  I loved the cultural and historical learning. We both loved to read.  We loved art. I played chess in coffee shops. We got as far as Morocco and then got awards dancing in London. She would go on to be a highly accomplished dancer and choreographer.  I’d got the bug for study.  I loved learned.,  

Coming home I was able to study at Univerwsity of Winnipeg again and thanks to Dr. Carl Ridd lest the theatre program, studied Christian spirituality and did pre medical studies. I loved University of Winnipeg.  Baiba has loved the dance study in London and hadn’t wanted to return to Winnipeg. She really was without teachers here and left for Toronto to pursue her dance career. I had scholarships for Manitoba and we parted.  I was heart broken but it wasn’t a bad decision. There was too much alcohol in the dance and theatre world and I really loved chemistry and electron microscopes.   Getting accepted to Univeristy of Manitoba Medical school was the very best and fondest of decision s. I’ve never regretted training as a doctor or working as a family physician and community medicine specialist.  

Psychiatry however was traumatic and though I loved the learning it changed my life in many ways including another divorce.  I was attracted to women with alcohol in their families and mine was a non alcoholic family.  They were wonderful but my life went off track with alcohol and when years later, 28 years ago to be exact I stopped drinking, my life returned to the spiritual again. I was always moved by God and beauty and reason and learning. It was a strange life. A year of surgery and taking a year off because of a tremor and that the government was limiting the surgery that grads could do.  I was moved by the missionary doctor idea and Jack Hilda’s convinced me to come north with the Northern Medical Unit. I loved that.

I regretted I didn’t spend more time with my mother and father in later years.  I was away so much I didn’t spend more time with my brother and sister in law. I was always working. I loved the learning and service.  I really was fulfilled in my life. Another marriage died. Physically surgery is demanding. Psychiatry is emotionally and mentally demanding.  I felt alone. 

I’d smoked hashish in Morocco and in Psychiatry smoked pot. I drank wine.  And left Winnipeg.  A major turn.  I got my American license but went to Vancouver and stayed with UBC. Another wife.

These women were amazing. Brilliant beautiful and so incredibly sexy but I was self centred .

I loved homesteading.  I loved the years of sailing. I think my wife’s addictions were ahead of mine but that’s the nature of addiction. The disease that says you don’t have a disease. I stopped drinking and joined recovery and embraced spirituality again.  I loved my practice helping people with trauma and later addiction. I still like my practice.

I had questions and was able to answer them and address them. 

‘I had the most incredible of friends.  George and John. Now both gone.  Bill Mewhort my hunting buddy.  I loved the advanced study in addiction medicine.  Hank was such an incredible mentor.  Art was a mensch.  Then there was Bernie and Scotty and men’s groups and round ups and more beautiful incredible women.  World travel and study in exotic place and sailing. I was blessed to know Willie Gutowski. I’d had John White as a Christian mentor and after Willie I’d be blessed with Phillip Ney.  I have had the greatest life of learning. I’ve delivered a hundred babies, helped keep a country hospital open working with the extraordinary Bob Manness then time in the north, wilderness training, igloos, fly in doctors services,  ST. Theresa Point, Island Lake. Wasagamach.  Years I’d fly north for Jack Hildes as a family medicine doctor then as a psychiatrist.  Universiy of Manitoba and University of British Columbia.

What a joy it is to learn.  I really did work m y mind.  I did family medicine, psychiatry, addiction medicine and masters in religious studies. I was bleswed to be a member of the Self Realization Fellowship, to study hypnosis, then an Anglican and study with Dr. James Houston, the most compassionate man, Regent College. I also studied at Vancouver School of Theology and St. Marks. I’ve audited so many courses in Christian spirituality ,and Hebrew and anthropology.  Last year I told an Oxford course in prehistoric religion .  I was so thankful to have my PHD friends like Aim and Adell help me complete the paper. I’d consulted for the Canadian Military and the Supreme Court and really was impressed by all the people I have had the opportunity to know, working in community hospitals, asylums and jails.

Northern Marianas Islands was a whole other story of extrarordianry experience and learning. The people of the island the the staff were the best.  Playing gold and scuba diving with Willie Gutowski was a blessing.  I loved raising chickens and geese and turkeys and learning to be a ships captain. No small feat to sail across the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii through a winter hurricane and survive. 

I’ve always felt God was with me. I’ve felt intimately that I have a guardian angel. I’ve had many incredibly spiritual experiences . None of the material world explanations could account for the transcendental world I’ve been touched by. Taht’s my friends like Kirk who lives to meditate or meditates to live are so important. I work in a world of political and ego and bean counters and materialists who are afraid and quite Scarey.

This last year though I’ve had wonderful experience. I drove my truck and camper south to Algadones last year, had Mexican deantal work then so enjoyed Bombay Beach and Fountain of Youth in Niland. I loved the recovery community there and the hotsprings .When I returned to Canada I drove my truck and camper across Canada to Ottawa to see my great nephews and the great neice still in house.  It was good to see my cousins after so many years.  I visited my brother and sister in laws home in Napanee .  It’s always good to see my amazing nephews.  My sister in law like my brother continues to be a whirlwind of activity.  I picked up my boat and drove back to Vancouver.  A lot to see and a lot to do. 

Every year I attend an international recovery conference. This year he five year convention was in Vancouver. I rode my motorcycle to the annual conference in Spokane.  It reminded me of the year I rode my elctroglide across the country to Sturges.  That bike got too heavy but I really have enjoyed the Nighster Special I took down to Arizona. I loved seeing friends at the conference, the same time next year experience enriched on by the internet cyberdoctors and western Canada doctors experienced.

Laura and I attended so many theaters and ballet and opera concerts as well as unforgettable events like Paul McCartney. 

Last year Laura and I took the motorhome with madigan out to Princeton. He and I rode around on the Honda quad, shooting and fetching grouse. It’s been a while since I  shot deer and moose and bear and elk. I shot 30 or more dear, 8 moose, elk and a few bear but mostly countless grouse and some rabbits. I sued to fish when I sailed.  Out east I fished pickerel and pike but in BC I’ve not been that successful a trout fisherman but caught so many salmon and cod in the ocean. 

I traded in the Fusion RV for the Thor Hurricane Motorhome.  In December I drove south. Steep learning curve.  In LA at the Hollywood RV Park Laura Joined me for a few weeks of visiting museums and galleries.  She’s come with me to Rome and Ireland and Scotland and Milan and enjoyed the Louvre with me. I really have been blessed incredible companions.

And the best of dogs.  Now I’ve got Madigan for 5 years and he’s such character.

I’ve driven back from the south arriving home this last week.  The slide si being repaired now and I’m here in this office on my birthday, Grateful

I’ve had an amazing life. I’d like to live to be over a hundred and do many more camping trips.  I’m not sure what the next adventure would be. I’ve three books in progress. I have to pray more and meditate more and become kinder and more caring.  I’m a work in progress but I certainly have a loving God and have been blessed. Slowly my mind is waking up to that fact.  

I’ve been bleswed to have so many patients and to be of service.  

Thabnk you Creator for another year around the sun. Thank you Jesus.