Burnaby Journal, July 18,2026

I had a dream where I was an outsider.  I didn’t belong but I wanted to be accepted. There was a Lord of the Manor and his close friends.  He liked my dog and we talked of dogs and clothing for a bit.  People came and went in small groups.  I was alone. It was an English setting.  

I remember my friend in England saying they traced their family and power back hundreds of years.  He’d asked if my family like ‘antiques’ and I’d said my mother liked ‘old’ Canadian furniture. How old. A hundred years I’d said,  My mother likes Roman and pre Roman furniture. He told me we were sitting on a seat two thousand years old.  I remember they haa a horse in the back yard.  He’d introduced me to the Queen’s sister the day before with her Captain. They’d been at the local riding club.  

In other dreams I’m in a great house of light m like the Green Island of Sat….something.  IN this house it seemed a part of the old mansion connected somehow to the cathedral. I’d visited the castles of my relatives in Scotland and the farms of my relatives in Ireland.  

My brother and sister in law in Ottawa were very concerned with status.  I hadn’t thought of it much growing up except we lived on North Drive and the rich with bigger houses and bigger cars and back yards opening onto the river .  When my brother took over my parents estate when my father and mother grew too old to manage his affairs he was angry at how wealthy they were because my parents had been very discrete.  

I’d asked my dad once why he didn’t buy a new car like our neighbor, the chemist. He’d responded , I own all I have. I own my house and all else.  I expect the banks own all our neighbours possessions like I know that new car was bought on credit,  

Dad was a master of living within his means and saving.

He was a mechanic and engineer and fixed everything himself with rare exception.  He hunted and fished.  Mom gardened and preserved.  Looking back we were raised well attending the finest of public schools participating in all the sports we desired, having music lessons and travelling across the country by train and to visit family in Toronto and northern Canada. 

When my grandfather died we found that the lawyer who managed the estate in the small town along with the other small town farmers estates had absconded with the millions my grandfather had saved from his ranching and logging business. He’d arrived as a Scottish immigrant whose family had been farmers and loggers and fishermen in Scotland.  He became the Reeve of the county.  My dad his oldest son described him as very hard.  Still my grandfather came to visit us each year in the south along with the younger brothers.  My father only had 2 sons with my first grandmother I never met.  My father never liked his brother when we were younger because his mother died giving birth to him.  Years later they because closer partly beause my father liked his son as well as us.  Dad had one full brother and 4 step brothers. His step sister died. Mom liked our cousins too.  We visited the north too.  I was old enough to shoot gophers with my 22.  I’d chase chickens and upset my grandfather. “Chasing my chickens will make the meat tough”.  He’d put me high up on the Clydesdales and I could see all over.

My grandad’s grand farmhouse was very large with many rooms but very little furniture and few pictures on the wall.  I think it made it easier for my step grandmother to clean.  My grandfather didn’t believe in ‘frills’ and the farm house seemed always like a house but never like a home My mother quilted and crocheted and had a picture of the ‘Blueboy’ in the sun room where she keep flowers and plants all year.s She especially liked her Christmas cactus which bloomed each year at Christmas.  I grew up in a home my father and mother made.  

I don’t feel an outsider when i was in the Greek conference centre where al lathe young people dressed in light clothing mulled about like I was at a medical conference.

There’s a medical conference going on this week.  IDAA in Chicago.  I’ve always felt a part of there even though I know there’s a hierarchy.  When I was in London the people I knew all knew and felt the hierarchy but I was outside of the restrictions in a different category. 

“You’re a colonial’” the old Scot liked to tell me.  I’m a Scot and not as much of an outsider as the Irish.  Colonials are just thought to be passing through and are treated better for a short while because no one wants to offend the folks who bring in all the money we have.  You’re what makes us an empire.:

I’d been comfortable to be kicked out of high school and to land a job as a carpenter.  I felt comfortable there and think my life may have been quite different and alright if I’dstayed as chiropractor.  My mother wanted me to go to university.  She was concerned bout hierarchy. My uncle , her brother in law.was a dentist and her older sister lorded it over her that her husband was a doctor.  

I liked becoming a doctor.  I felt when I became an MD I was finally a member of a secret society. The felllowship and more advanced degrees including the American MD didn’t add to that sense of being part of something.  I’ver never regretted the MD and loved the training and experiences . I most loved being a country gp but my wife was interested in the hieararchy of the city and wanted to stay with her mother who considered her self superior to her neighbours because she had a nursing degree.  University education made me an ‘officer’ according to the civil/military ‘service’ model of hierarchy.  

I liked most training as a surgeon but the government administration class were such ignorant bullies and a terrible gang of white collar thugs . They controlled the access to the beds and the very best surgeons were always struggling to get opoerating time and space. It was terrible to see, all the politics and the corruption. Government resources were ‘largesse’.  Einstein might not get a lab because the distant cousin had more ‘political pull’.  There were tribes and power and money that was dirty or clean defined that space. I believed in meritocracy and just wanted to save lives. I didn’t’ decide. I was very angry when doctors in Muslim countries were jailed for treating prisoners. I wanted to be a missionary doctor. I was raised Christian and a member of the Baptist church and mystical and spiritual as a teen and early 20’s when i became more and more involved in meditation and Easter religions. 

My mother’s father was university educated. I think he was a banker. In Ireland we learned his brother was a local famous geologists.  My other family from my mother’s side in Glasgow were professors and journalists and great artists.  I met them and loved the laughter in the home because my home more a serious affair and these aunts and uncles were all close family and best of friends.  Even now i think back to the ancient brothers and sisters with everyone talking and story telling hilarity.  I was invited into the queen’s home with my aunt in Edinborough but didn’t register it as I was a self absorbed intellectual in the day all intent on my reading and writing. 

I’m 29 years sober and I like my life today.  I’ve an online meeting with doctors I’ve to attend today.  I have other dreams which are mostly in mountain and valley hunting or in the sailboats at harbour in the sea.  Now I’m sitting in the Thor motorhome.  My girlfriend of many years is sleeping in the bedroom with my little dog who had his hair cut yesterday and looks very dapper today.  I pray each day to know God more truly and to know his will and have the energy and power to carry that out each day.  The next big event in my life is being at my friends 50 year sober “cake’ next Wednesday.  Then Friday I’m taking the motorhome with its Ford motor in for engine maintenance.  I had the Jeep in and the error light on the dashboard was finally ‘fixed’ Thursday and Madigan had his hair cut Friday.  Laura got away early and came Thursday.  I’m very thankful and blessed today.  

Thank you Jesus.