Baiba was Latvian. Naturally as a Canadian I knew nothing about Latvia. I was immersed in the propaganda of my country taught pretty lies in school and rather boring history. Older I’d come to know the extraordinary tale of Louis Riel, how the Feberal Liberals loved prostitutes and how ouija boards were used in the legistislature of Manitoba. As a child I was subjected to the heavily censored chalk tasting history of my country. I was given a geography that told no tale of why these countries were as they were. The truth wasn’t the Marxist lie of ‘good guys and bad guys’, the paranoid position of the binary but rather a wonderful tapestry of family, passsion, romance ,intrigue, bullies, and the brave.
Vecsmanin, Baiba’s grandmother had received her Bachelor degree around the time of WWI. Her husband had been an Army General in Latvia, on the inner council of Stalin, until he was one day purged along with so many others. Stalin, Lenin, Molotov et al had been the Bolsheviks who overthrew the moderate Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks distinguishing feature was their blood thisty nature. The Mensheviks hadn’t wanted to assassinate and get their money by robbing banks. The Bolsheviks with their superior knife and pistol debate and endless cash funding beat the leftist intellectuals who preferred endless trivia hair splitting, sloganeering, drinking coffee and vodka and having sex with underage girls.
Alexander Kerensky, Prime Minister of Russia, the last democratic leader before the Lenin’s military coup backed in part by Wall Street money, « dictatorship of the proletariat’ which has to date been ‘communism’ or ‘international socialism’ it’s other name. International socialism was distinguished from the National Socialism of Nazi Germany. There the Brown Shirts were the low brow thug equivalent of their Bolshevik contemporaries.
Canada’s history was surprisingly dominated by communism in my teen age years despite the fact that Russia had targeted American (Canada included) with nuclear weapons short years before. Quebec was a hot bed of binary intellectualism and Pierre Trudeau who would become Prime Minister, a card carrying communist. At the time I liked his red carnation.
Maija, Baiba’s mother escaped Latvia with Vecsmamin fleeing before the Communist hoards of WWII, the ones who would see the destruction of Germany as the beginning of the Communist overthrow of the world for themselves. Only after the pablum propaganda of Canadian history teaching would I learn of the division of Berlin, the Berlin air lift, the Ptomkin villages, the Katyn Massacre and the hundreds of millions murdered around the world by communists. I remember Maija sharing personal stories of their time under Communist rule and being careful not to shock me too much. It was very much like a Matrix red pill or blue pill situation as the immigrants would share their stories which were ignored by the government. The liberal promoted was propagating terrible lie.
I remember when Aleksander Solzhenitsyn’s heavily censored books appeared exposing the slave labour camps that were the back bone of Russian industry. Maija would send her family in Latvia money for tires because though the central government had finally produced cars that could be bought they’d not produced tires to go with the cars. Even today I find myself feeling like I’m in an endless loop of Invasion of the Body Snatchers as I listen to Canadians old and young who simply refuse to believe the truth of those who have experienced first hand what every year a new politician proposes as the communist/socialist utopia.
I would talk with my father and he’d tell me that what I was learning was true and that he and my mother had to accept the nonsense we’d learned in school about the world so we could learn mathematics and sciences. I remembered coming home and sharing the learning I’d had at school as a child and their later hushed arguments. But now I was an adult and set out to learn the truth that my education and government denied me.
Years later I’d talk to Serbians and Rhodesians and live in Mexico, London and the United States only to return to Canada and again be in this kindergarten dominated by bureaucratic bullies who refused to read Arendt’s studies on the ‘banality of evil’. Finally as a psychiatrist I’d love to read Scott Peck’s A Road Less Travelled and later the follow up People of the Lie. The more I traveled around the world the more I’d learn but feel that in Canada so much was censored and could not be shared because there was this big ‘lie’ , the prevailing narrative.
Communists were aetheists. The religion of the state had replaced all other religions. There would be no other gods but the State and Lenin was his first prophet. A Chilean professor would pull out her hair sharing with me how putrid the politician discussions were at the university where the Canadians were so ‘apathetic’. Here ‘apathy’ is considered a virtue, Apathy is what defines jail and asylum populations.
At Maija’s table and in the Latvian community I’d meet for the first time White Russians who had fought for democracy against the dictatorship of communism. I’d meet Germans who had fought for the Germans in WWII on the Eastern front. I’d later meet Russians who’d show me that the American Hollywood propaganda about WWII was simply not true in Europe. The numbers of dead simply did not lie. Without Russia the Nazis would have prevailed. Yet Stalin and Hitler had initially been best of buds and formed an alliance of dictators against the western weak democracies. The tales of the Pacific War were closer to truth but the American Hollywood approach to the European war would be anathema to my learned friends in London. My parents were Scottish Irish, Old Canadian, British Stock and we’d talk about school and wheat prices over the linoleum kitchen table.. Meals were primarily times to eat. Discussion occurred while working under cars among men or while having tea with Mom.
Baiba’s family always had white table cloths and meal time was a time of conversation. Vecsmamin was the greatest of Latvian cooks and I’d be the envy of the community because I’d be so close to the fountain of flavour. .
« When my grandfather was killed everything that we had was lost,, « Maija told me. « Overnight there was no income no home. We were essentially outlawed by the state. Vecsmamin had to do whatever she could so we could survive. Those were hungry times. She sewed for neighbours, got odd work from friends and she cooked. When we were in the refugee camps everyone said that Vecsmamin could make shoe leather taste like a feast. »
I’d go on expeditions with the two of them in the forest where they’d find fancy mushrooms. My father had taken me into the woods with him and taught me the plants which the Natives had used for food. My mother taught me the nutritional and medicinal value of the plants she grew and here I would often be in the woods with this family learning what herbs they’d used to make water taste and be nutritious when there was no other food. The trouble was with translation. They knew the Latvian names for the plants but not the English worlds.
Dad had been the same. « These are good for salads and these are like potatoes. I’ve eaten them especially when we were hungry. But I don’t know what they’re called., Billy »
For me, raised on meat and potatoes the Vecsmamin cuisine all exotic and wonderful. As well there was always wine and conviviality. Baiba was the most beautiful girl in the world. Her brother Paul, a very funny handsome young artist, and Baiba‘ s younger sister, quiet but wise and soon to become a sultry beauty like a young Elizabeth Taylor..
We all danced too. As a family they came to the functions of the Ken Mathews Dance Studio. Later we’d attend all the Royal Winnipeg Ballet season. Baiba had been a ballerina from childhood.
Vecsmamin did yoga in the living room each morning. That wasn’t what the grandmother’s were doing in my neighbourhood. The first time I saw her doing a head stand I was admittedly surprised. She’d demonstrate her hatha yoga technique and turn out to be a human pretzel. She’d continue doing yoga until she was over a hundred. By then her activities once counted as bizarre and foreign were admired by all.
I was interested in spirituality and art. Maija and her family were too. They were nominally Lutheran at some time but the conversations went more to the strange mix of Christian and pagan spirituality of old Europe. I’d later love Herman Hesse and grasp the flavour of this deeply spiritual tradition in his Nobel Prize Winning books like Steppenwolf and Narcisisus and Goldmund. I’d love Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann and later love Joseph Cambell and Carl Jung. I began reading the great European Traditional literature. This would continue but began in the discussion at the Vecsmamin table. My artist friends at the time were becoming Rosicrucians and Buddhists. It was an extraordinary time of exploration among the creative artists of the day. Everyone was sharing authors and artists and insights they’d found.
The house was full of plants too. An orange tree with miniature oranges stood in the corner overhanging the table. There was an oleander tree as well. My aunt loved oleander and would take us to a favourite restaurant in Toronto where we’d sit among oleander. Here was this house that was half conservatory. Like my mother Maija had a particularly green thumb.
The Assiniboine Park Conservatory with little paths in a jungle had been my favourite place since a child. In winter when I was a child and we had visitors , usually my aunt, my father asked where I’d like to go, I’d shout ‘the jungle.’ As a family we’d don parkas and overshoes and drive to Assiniboine Park. Then we’d walk around the little paths, a tiny space really, the adults talking, the humidity and heat a delicious treat in the cold and dry freezing Winnipeg winter. I loved to throw pennies to the fish there. After we’d go to the elegant Conservatory restaurant where we’d have tea and eat pastry.
Now here was Baiba’s family with their own conservatory.
Baiba and I by now had an illicit relationship. Somehow a sexual nuclear bomb had exploded between us and we did our best to keep it a secret. She was a year younger than me and had become a student at the dance school. It was about her 18th birthday that matters changed. I don’t know the date or technicality. Before Baiba sex was exciting but after Baiba it was transformative. Somehow the local biplane acquired rockets and the sky was no longer the limit.
I used to drink red wine and find the world became rosy. Girls breasts always seemed bigger and rounder and more inviting too. I was fascinated in those days by the Tarot of the Rose and studying the tarot deck. I ‘d later be interested in the rose as the virgin mother symbol. I loved studying Robert Graves.
At the University of Winnipeg I was taking my economics to complete my Gr. 12 and later would find Paramahansa Yognanda’s book, Autobiography of a Yogi in the United College Theological Library. I began studying theatre and took Literature of the Bible with Dr. Carl Ridd and studied DH Lawrence in English. The world transformed from black and white to a myriad of colours. It was so dynamic once the dance and Baiba and the oleanders trees filled my world. I was alive in a way I’d not been since Nina and that had been such a brief time. A boy in love is a wonderful thing. For him. I suspect others found me tedious but I wrote poems and songs and danced and couldn’t wait the extra second to be in the presence of this Venus. Every word and move she made became sacred.
It was the 70’s and ‘all we need is love’ was the theology of the contemporary day. The Beatles still prevailed. I loved Simon and Garfunkel. Maija made fun of my liking ‘folk music’ considering the American folk country scene as contemporary cowboy music. She loved Mozart and considered folk music the ancient music of Europe. The Latvians were great singers and were held together by the truly uplifting and beautiful music of their nation.
I’d join the Latvian Dance Society and learn these lovely quaint dances which we’d take to compétitons with other ethnic groups. Soon I was mixing with Philipinos, Italinans, Germans, Scots, Africans, Brazilians. Baiba’s family were very much involved in the Winnipeg Folk Festival and her brother Paul would eventually become the Mayor of the annual event. Each ethnic community would put together a venue showcasing their food and customs, songs, dances and costumes. Baiba naturally became the Latvian queen. She’d made all her clothing with her mother who was a great seamstress in her own right. The two of them would make their gowns for the ballet and all of Baiba’s costumes in the basement where Vogue patterns would be spread about the room reminding me of Dad with his room full of blue prints.
The house was an actual university factory with everyone creative. I’d entered into this university factory where a thousand activities were going on each day. The smells of Vecsmanins kitchen, the sound of Maija’s sewing machine, Paul painting and Baiba insisting I join her in complicated dance choreography in the living room where her sister was reading a book.
Maija told us stories of the war and translated for Vecsmamin. Visiting dignatories, great religious and political leaders would visit to pay homage to Vecsmamin as much as to eat her famed soups and delicate pastries. I’d be introduced, then Baiba and I would leave so they could speak freely in Latvian and Russian. Looking back I’d be amazed at who I’d meet and the ideas I’d encounter there and then.
Maija had loved a man who was known for his spirituality, a politician and mystic and talked of the sacred in her land where the spirit and spiritual had been so important to the freedom the youth experienced before the war and before the invasions by the Germans and the Russians.
« Journey to the East’ by Herman Hesse talked of the spiritual revival of the Lutheran and European community of the time and this rise of intellectualism and spiritualism in art and consciousness. The Latvian and other East Europeans I met had such grief for the losses they suffered. Years later I’d read Hitch. Hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy when the Vorgons , a bureaucratic empire building race destroyed the Earth so they could build a super highway through the galaxy. I thought of the Vorgons, these great stupid poeople who were so like the Communists with their paranoid binary low brow thug thinking which they thought so brilliant. Vorgons.
I’d begin meditating then. The Paramahansa Yogananda Foundation ‘s Self Realization Fellowship had a series of teachings mailed weekly in what we joked was ‘mail order enlightenment’. I’d begin to study Patanjali and read Emerson and Thoreau. I’d become a pretzel like Vecsmamin. Vivekananda had been the first Indian representative to the world congress of religions coming to America in the late 1800s while Yogananda came for the second World Congress of Religions in the 1920’s. He stayed and developed an Ashram in California near San Diego. I’d eventually join a group of men in Winnipeg, one who was a member of the symphony and another who would become a lawyer. We’d gather in a house with incense burning and a few straight backed seats facing forward. We’d not talk but chant a few of Yognandas’s song accompanied by the Harmonium I’d eventually learn to play. Then we’d meditate for an hour before leaving without any adieu or words. But this would come later, after I’d met the Quakers in Oxford where Baiba and I would do pretty much the same thing but with many more people together sharing the silence. I’d love years later learning that my Dutch mentor Dr. Bernie’s favourite prayer had been « Come, Holy Spirit Come. ».
Mostly I loved making love with Baiba, being in love with Baiba, being young and a dancer and so deeply involved in the passion and spirit of youth.
My roommate Fern was just as in love with the woman he too would go on to marry and have children with.Each of us thought our love was unique and original and never known by anyone else before. Meanwhile everyone was doing it. Everyone in Ken Mathew’s would go on to marry. Everyone was falling in love in the dance world, meeting and marrying, students and teachers alike. All of us teachers would laugh and talk about the students being smitten while the students would laugh and talk about us teachers and our encounters with Cupid. .
When Baiba and I finally admitted we were dating, everyone knew. Ken and Marie at the dance school thanked us for our discretion but we were so glad we were’out’ .What had been taboo and the forbidden fruit, hiding our love from family and work, now just became part of the community and even more fun. Baiba passed from student to teacher and life continued.
My parents loved Baiba though my mother didn’t like Maija at all. Dad of course did but the family as a whole was an organic force. Families were entities of their own and each had it’s character and dynamic. I’d love to watch our families in love over the years with all the foibles of neighbours. Mom and Dad both liked Maija more when Baiba and I divorced. Dad thought Paul was a great guy.
I’d go on to marry Baiba in the months to come and we’d be married a short time, merely a couple of years, this whole time of my life with Baiba relatively brief. I’d stay in Winnipeg for medical school and Baiba would follow dance to the big city of Toronto. She’d done all she could to advance her career in Winnipeg. After London it had been hard for her to shift gears whereas I having been enriched in my study and learning in Europe and England found university alive and meaningful. When I’d left it before I’d thought it staid and old. We parted while I stayed friends with the family, her brother Paul, who became one of Winnipeg’s most avante garde artists continued a close friend. I loved to return to that table under the oleander tree and visit with the family. Maija a midwife had in many ways inspired my going onto medicine. I was so impressed by her and her nurse friends and the work of medicine. In Oxford I’d meet the Quarker medical student and be moved by the university which I’d found before so slow and stifling. Eventually I’d approach Dr. Carl Ridd my Christian mentor and take his advice to pursue excellence and scholarship.
One day in the University of Winnipeg Chapel I’d be on my knees praying, asking God what I should do. Stepping out of the chapel I encountered my friend Glen who said he was going to write the MCAT. I thought I’d tag along. I signed up for the test that day and thought if I do well on this it might be my answer from God. If I do poorly I can return to my other plan to be a play wright. Without any study or preparation I aced the exam. But by then I truly loved biology and chemistry had become sacred. Possibly that was the experience I’d had with LSD’s partial influence. But that’s another story. L Baiba and I became lovers, married and went on to bicycle across Europe and live in London before returning home to start radically new lives. .
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