55-60 Years Old - Dad’s Death, IDAA, Canadian Authors,

The chronology of the more recent years is as mixed up as previous years. I would have thought the closer to now I came the more I would remember the timeline but not true.  There’s a wealth of memories but they’re not arranged in my mind according to year or date. I gather the mind arranges memories in a matter of emotional importance.  The traumas remain for their educational value while the more positive memories remains to point us where the water, food and fun times lie.  The middle drops out.

I’m living on my sailboat working on it on weekends when I’m not sailing it.  I love getting out whenever I can.  

When Gilbert came into my life I moved in with Laura for the initial months of house training. Those were joyful times. This little bundle of love and our walks and talks as a doggy family. We had so many great meals.  I was riding my Harley to work with Gilbert on my bike. At first he was in a sling under my arm before he graduated to his on box on the back of the bike. 

At work Aim would have this little bundle of love at her desk sometimes. At other times he’d be in my office. So many of the patients loved him. The offices and neighbours would love to see Aim, a gentle Buddhist, be dragged about the community by this little guy. She knew nothing about ‘leading’ a dog. He immediately dominated her and took her where he wanted to go on walks. Wagabaga Dog Store was a block away, one of Gilbert’s favourite trips. Other dogs were at a daycare there. The owner laughed as we talked of Aim’s being dragged there for Gilbert’s visits.  She’d be running behind him.  He grew strong pulling Aim about the neighbourhood.  Joanne, not surprisingly having a dog herself, became alpha male in their pack and Gilbert behaved himself when he walked with Joanne but he loved Aim more.  If Laura was Gilbert’s mother then Aim was his girlfriend. I was definitely top dog but the older he got the more I became the room mate and friend.  

For decades I had season’s tickets to Pacific Theatre.  Ron Reed is one of the greatest writer’s and directors and actors, I’v ever know. Year after year I was there in that tiny theatre seeing the most inspirational works by the country’s greatest talents. I’d had season’s tickets to several theatre companies at one time but it was only the Pacific with their high minded drama and great sense of humor that kept me returning year after year. It was very convenient when Laura lived down the street. We’d have great meal’s at Max and attend the theatre. When I took courses at UBC I’d been able to drop Stuart and now Gilbert off at her place on the way.  It was just a little bachelor but it served us so often. It also served her cousins and sister as their place to stay in town.  Gilbert loved the little back yard.

A highlight of my life was joining the Canadian Authors Association.  It was a monthly meeting but the best was meeting Bernice , Bob,Jean and Ben. I loved being on that board and also on the Board of the Drug Prevention Network.

 I’d been on the Board of the Blue Water Sailing Association being a watch keeper.  With Laura’s help, we raised revenue for Currents the offshore sailing magazine. We loved Perry who was there in early days. I’d been attending Wilderness Medicine conferences in the early days of that organization.  Sailing solo in winter to Hawaii was an award winning event. I did so enjoy that years awards night. 

When I was asked to be on the board of the Canadian Author’s Association I so honoured to meet with these great writers. I’d been writing for various publications over the years obtaining a number of awards writing for the Medical Post regularly. In medical school I’d actually had a column in the Winnipeg Sun. I’d put out one poetry book and now with the help of Ben would get another poetry book published. The launch was just a great excuse for a party. The girls were all such fun.  I loved the readings.  I still enjoy that book.  I wanted to ‘know’ how to self publish a ‘text’ so with the help of Bernice I wrote the book Psychiatry and Addiction.  

After hearing a presentation at Canadian Authors I began  my blog, Williamhaywriter.blogspot.com. I thought that it would be an excellent means of maintaining digital copy for ‘cut and paste’ books in the future and the ideas for books and writing. 

My blog Williamhaywriter became 5 blogs in one. I’ve been so often told to separate it but I like the hodge podge and really think I’m doing my ‘lions share of the work’, I’m living and working and writing about it, so enough. The unexamined life is not worth living,said Plato.  Well,  my life was examined.

The purpose of the blog was as follows:

1. I wanted a journal. I had been through a divorce in which my ex had stolen my journals and I wanted to keep my personal writing safe but essential having it public and transparent. I have kept a journal since I was 16. I’d met a famous artist whose wife in spite and drug addicted fury had destroyed a hundred of his canvases, works in progress and many finished.  A million dollars loss as it were. But the courts don’t see beyond their nose and the aim was to punish men for divorce where historically marriages were about family and children were tools and not toys.  Now I wanted my journal safe. I had also had my office journals stolen by my crystal meth addicted lying skank secretary whose lies served the nefarious underworld and also interfered with my work with several agencies. When she stole my confidential files and my office daytimers I notified the police. They sent a policeman out and she said. “Of course I’ve taken all that stuff.  I’m not giving it back and if you don’t go away I ‘ll say you sexually harrassed me too.” That’s duly recorded and the police in terror or the lying woman of today never got my journals back. So there I was years of work, years of private correspondence all exposed and the state unwilling to catch, prosecute or even stand up to the self admitted criminals. The quasi legal burocratic agencies were even worse increasingly aligning themselves with the criminal agents. So faced with years and hours of theft and destruction of the ‘external’ hard drives of my life by two women with drug addiction and a castrated society, I thought I’d like to keep my journals of ideas and activities in a digital place where they were least likely to be stolen. I could also make back ups and copies.  So that was the first consideration. A writer’s journal. All those little black note books I’d carried around with me in high school and university, all those notes and quotes and observations would no longer be on paper and no longer be filed in a storage locker box or stolen by demon possessed women but would have some security in one place

2. I’d learned publishers wanted evidence that we as writers were ‘modern’ and used the net and social media. I ‘d spent weeks learning web page design and put up my own web page at the time. I’d been a head of the times early days of computer when I hacked and enjoyed the whole proto internet experience. Now I was rapidly falling behind with new languages but took the time to study these and apply them. I’d learn how to create web pages and blogs and teach countless patients how to do this to keep in touch with family, have business and extend their social lives. I’m so pleased looking back at the artists and writers I helped to get their work out.  I would have patients who wrote for New Yorker, Science magazine and various other journals and it was a direct consequence of therapy. I was actually envious of the success I saw working those years with Aim and Joanne. I was blessed to know so many people who with help would go on to be able to find their greatness. I felt like I’d had the privilege of polishing diamonds. At one time three of my patients had hits on the radio and I couldn’t seem to turn it one without hearing their creations. I loved Cameron’s idea that mental illness could result from blocked creativity.  With my blog I clearly could show a publisher if I ever wanted that that I was indeed ‘prolific’ and that I was a ‘worker’. The new publishing world was about the artist not the work. The money was following those who were workers not the one shot product.  I could now if I wanted to show an investor what I did, show that I indeed knew the art and game of writing.  

3. Travels with Gilbert. Since Gr 3 I’d loved writing travel stories. Bicycling across Europe I’d written daily of the sites I’d seen, the cobblestone and palaces.  I just loved recording these experiences. I”d been the high school photographer and had a job on the local paper doing photography having my own dark room as a teenager and just continued to take pictures. I loved writing about sailing on the west coast and as well, offshde I’d be paid for my writing and my photography.  I’d approach these as professionally as I could and now enjoyed having a place to put my travel stories and pictures.

4. I wanted to be able to ‘advertise’ the great work of others. Publicity is really important for those people who are ‘creators’.  Mostly the ‘critics’ are the superior ones. I wanted a place where I could ‘celebrate’ others works by providing positive criticism, support and encouragement and just all those warm fuzzy things that make good people keeping on ‘trekking’. So I used my blog to record whenever I found a great movie, book, product, car whatever. I gave ‘free publicity’ to those I felt so deserved it.  

5. I wanted a place where my thoughts on Psychiatry and Theology could be recorded. In a review of my written journals once I found that I’d been struggling with the same issues since adolescent, “why do bad things happen to good people’, ‘what is normal’, ‘what is saniety’, ‘what is it to be a Christian’.  What is psychosis”. What is reality?  What is addiction?  This whole ‘ideas’ section, mental meandering, personal journaling, ideas and conflicts and struggles. I wanted this out there where I could see a ‘record of the themes’.  I’d not made a lot of progress in some areas. I see I’ve continued to struggle with institutional corruption and abuse of power by authorities and justice and morality and ethics. I have read all the great philosophers of the classics and theologians on these topics and even studied bioethics only to have the most unethical individual require me to study it more which was okay with me because I’d done 2 years of Community medicine when these very issues were the de rigo and the grandiose individual had simply only a kindergarten notion of the topic yet they had a gun and that was the limits of their ethical and moral development.  

The Canadian Authors Association was a joyful network. I’d love taking writing courses with Betsy Warland and Susan Juby.  I’d meet the most extraordinary and funny professors from the Vancouver Film School. I’d have these writer and producer and artist friends and just enjoy their company. There was no ‘censorship’. It was so different from ‘government’.  The confidence and ingenuity of these creative people was a joy. I’d meet Lucia Frangione and marvel at the breadth of her mind.  Bernice was such a romantic in her writing but so down to earth and practical in person. I loved these highly competent artists who also paid the taxes and had families they supported.  I loved Margot, and Kathleen and all the writers I’d meet in the great community of writers and artists in Vancouver. I loved dining with them.

I’d go for dinner with Prime Minister Harper and feel good with the world knowing such a brilliant and good man was in charge of the country.I’d spent a day with Prime Minister Turner years earlier and come away with the same experience of admiring the leadership. When I met PM Chrétien I was equally impressed by what a tough experienced leader we had. When I met Pierre Trudeau the summer I was the Youth Parliament representative I had that sense of being in the midst of a rock star character but also thought he was weak and effeminate and had a snake like hand shake. He was smart though in a clever cunning way . I remember thinking that he was terribly intelligent and liking that. I got caught up in the Trudeau mania of the time because I was drinking and smoking dope. When I stopped drinking and smoking dope 22 years ago so much of what that guy was selling lost it’s appeal.  When I was paying taxes I began to watch what was being done with my money and horrified at what I was coopted into supporting.

I’d lunch with an amazing Anglican Queen’s counsell and learn the history of law in Canada. “I felt clean and good as a lawyer until Trudeau began to introduce his whole series of social laws which then made the courts a cultural referee. It was wrong. So much that should have been decided in the democratic forum became dictatorial.. As a lawyer,  I felt more and more dirty about my profession. “. He taught me so much about history. Kind of Mondas with Moray except he sailed and liked to go for coffee with me and look at the sea.

Dr. George and I would have our wonderful grounding, sharing uplifting, collegial story telling « sole food » dinners at Michel’s then head off for more wisdom at Whitcliff.

Dr. Philip Ney would take me under his wing. I was so impressed with his great mind and great heart. He was a Christian Child Psychiatrist who had a PHD in psychology and was the back bone of the pro life movement in British Columbia.  I’d independently seen a dozen women who had had untreatable depression, chronic sadness and disability and in psychotherapy they’d ‘blurted’ out this horror at their abortions.  I’d done abortions and knew that they weren’t anything but killing a baby. I know when I killed a fish, a deer or a moose that I’m ‘killing’. All the politically correct lies can’t change that. I’d actually thought my first abortion would be like taking out a tumor but it wasn’t.  

I remember another doctor saying he did his last abortion when he felt the baby ‘clinging to his mother and fighting being scraped out of his home.’

Well, these women had spontaneously in the course of therapy with no ‘direction’ from myself begun speaking and crying about their having abortions. So much of chronic depression is ‘complicated grief’ and yet the idea of the pharmaceutical industry was that it was all just ‘Prozac deficiency’.  Rarely it really is that but despite the analogy of the ‘reductionist psychopharmacologist’ people, brains aren’t another ‘pancreas’.  So I’d listened and there would be this outpouring of grief and quite miraculously we’d work through the self loathing and hatred that was bottled up under the pus of this emotional abscess.  They’d be well for the first time in decades and stay well. 

I’d always leave people who had had depression on some antidepressants but the therapy had changed their lives. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Prozac, it was a break through in psychiatry akin to the finding of penicillin but it wasn’t the end all or be all of psychiatry which was about the ‘mind’ though the money in the industry was in ‘pushing drugs’.  I’m happy to be a ‘drug salesman’ and a ‘representative’ for the amazing pharmaceutical industry but I’m not a ‘drug pusher’ and I’m not going to sell you a sports car because I make more commission when it’s clear you need a truck.  If I’m ‘selling’ anything it’s mostly ‘life’.  I often think of myself as the ‘complaints department for life’ and say in the next life I’m returning as a talent scout. For decades I’ve been shown people’s ‘worst song and dance’ while the talent scout gets to see peoples ‘best song and dance’.  Mostly I say I fix broken Ferraris, some need an overall ,while some need only a tune up.

I’ve really been blessed to have so many amazing patients and be able to help them over a hump. I love the metaphor of the ‘knots’ or freeing the log jam. Too many of the counsellors I’ve known have seen their job as ‘reparenting’ without realizing that they are infantilizing adults and creating ‘codependencies’ for profit. I don’t ‘parent’ patients.  Doing surgery I was ‘parental’ but in therapy I’ve always been adult to adult in the Transactional Analysis model. This says each person has a mode of Parent , adult and child.  The difficulty with the College of Physicians and Surgeons and other government structures is that they are rigid hierarchies and attract ‘parent child’ sorts.  Ferguson has written extensively in his latest book about the networks and hierarchies.  

The ‘civil’ service was indeed a parallel to the ‘military’ service.  It’s dictatorial, authoritarian, rigid and yet attracts people who have not acknowledged their unresolved childhood conflicts with authority.  In the military ‘authority’ is clear but in the ‘civil’ service it’s all intrigue and passive aggressive.

Professionals by contrast have at their core as the ‘Prince among Princes’.  I’m reading the Magna Carta again because it’s apparent that a lot of the world hasn’t evolved to where the Magna Carta occured. Following that was the French Revolution and then the American Revolution. I love reading Jefferson and Plato but today the ‘sound bite’ is the extent of peoples general knowledge. I’m literally appalled at the ignorance of history and the propaganda and rewriting of history especially in today’s media.  Democracy is certainly under attack on all fronts. 

 Communist dictatorship is such a contrast to even Fabianism which gave rise to the Union movements.  Professionalism has been destroyed by licensing bodies that no longer respect the university and university training. Fundamentally dictatorial they are threatened by autonomy. In their increasing inferiority and fear, lost and out of control, they strive for more dominance and controlling. They applaud them selves moving deckchairs on the Titanic.  They’ve become a deeply evil pawn of a greater evil dictatorship, the destruction of the ‘decentralized power’.

 The democracy and basic capitalism are ‘decentralized’ and place the ‘power’ in the hands of the people. This is a threat to the government worker who thrives on control given their fundamental ‘inferiority complex’.  The independent ‘professional’ was judged not on the sillies like political correctness dictates but on their ‘product’.  The architect had a building that didn’t fall down. Doctors reduced morbidity and mortality. Excellence in the true sense before post modernism and deconstructionism and cultural Marxism destroyed ‘truth’ and returned ‘divide and conquer’ tribalism, was the measure of the professional .  Today a ‘professional ‘ is one who wears a suit. 

My patient said that she was being rejected by her lesbian friends because she’d not had a lover in years. “They say « I’m not a lesbian but I’ve just not met anyone I want to sleep with since my lover died.”  It was around the time that LGBT was becoming popular and dominant. They’d been rejected when gays were not ‘trendy’ but rather persecuted. AT the height of the Aids epidemic the persecution had been horrible but since the miraculous advances in anti virals and the triple treatment of HIV infection had stopped STD’s from being associated predominantly with the gay community and the gay community had moved away from the drug and alcohol and underworld scene, things had changed remarkably. LGBT was now ‘in’.

 

I asked a patient who was a major ‘trendsetter’ and political figure in the community. “When gays were completely out and heterosexuals were totally in, it seemed like if a person sucked one cock they were rejected by the heterosexuals and immediately adopted by the homosexuals.”.  The stats showed that 2-3 % were mostly gay and Dorothy Bea’s work Macho men and fluffy women.showed that 10% who would rather die than ‘Switch’ in the heterosexual males, heterosexual females, and homosexual males and homosexual female groups. There was a 30% ‘opportunistic group that under duress had a ‘default’ position.  So I asked «’now that ‘gays are in ‘how many ‘cocks’ (so to speak) must a person suck to be considered ‘gay’?  ‘

As I knew he’d enlightened me , he answered. “You don’t have to suck any cocks anymore, darling, it’s where you shop.” 

When a person is in terror they mutiny and demand the helm.  When a person is calm they gravitate to the place where they personally are most suited.  Division of labour and specialization have resulted in the paradoxical notion that ‘the best leader is one who doesn’t want to be a leader’. So many in the hierarchy today are their not to ‘serve’ but because of perks and a need for ‘control and dominance’. This occurs in dictatorship and as corruption rises in systems.  

I’d have these corporate leaders and brilliant men and women ‘with it all’ and they’d discuss with me ‘what next’.  ‘What is the meaning of life’. What is purpose’. I’d walk with them on the journey.  I loved seeing PHD’s who were bullied in their workplace make the decision to leave and go to the competitor only to be highly successful in a non toxic workplace.

I was working a lot as always with PTSD and more with refugees and trauma victims. My sailing colleague after a heart attack left the busy demanding practice and became involved with refugees so I’d begin to see torture victims and people who were truly escaping persecution’s, not the ‘economic migrants’ of today but these people who were victims in the truest sense. 

 I’d meet the Dalai Lama and Bishop Tutu and know the measure of greatness and thank God that my own trials were not at the level of Tibetan genocide or prisoners of religious jails in the Middle East where rape and torture were apparently normal. I’d hear first hand stories that were increasingly at extreme variance with the ‘journalism of CBC”.  I’d see the survivors of the Cambodian genocide and was blessed to befriend a Jewish psychiatrist who had survived Auschwitz.  

It’s one thing to read one of the greats psychiatric texts of all times “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Victor Frankl but it was a wholly extraordinary experience to dine with a psychiatrist who had survived that nightmare.  I’d also be blessed to know and share with the most amazing West Vancouver psychiatrist Dr. Millar who wrote Omnipotent Child but had previously been a spitfire pilot in the Battle of Britain. 

I’d also have the amazing benefit of lunching and discussing ideology, theology, philosophy, ethics and morality and politics with Dr. Sam , the great Jewish mensch of a psychologist.

Meanwhile I was working 12 hour days and on weekends increasingly doing medical legal work because my patients commonly were involved in trauma and that involved the legal system .I’d see first hand the failure of the Family Law system and it’s sacrifice of children to the rapacious greed of the courts and the anger of parents fueled by a totally evil system and single gender judges.  By contrast I’d be in the Property and Criminal courts and see truly brilliant judges and lawyers making the whole world a better place with their clear reasoning and Solomon like skills.

I’d be in the city and thought that I never wanted to be in the city so much preferring the country. To make the best of the bad lot I participated in the culture of the city. Being a member of the Canadian Authors Association meant meeting the most amazing people and having intimate discussions with them. In the classes I attended I’d befriend classmates and teachers. Susan Juby was an inspiration as a person. Betsy Warland’s Autobiographical Writing series seemed like a ‘therapy class’ for the bright and wealthy.  I was learning so much from Dr. Philip Ney a truly great mind and seeing the rise in the ‘death’ culture and the ‘fear’ that was permeating the world. I was sailing and participating in his world with addicted youth taking them and their families sailing to increase the relationships which protected against addiction.  

I would join the board of the Drug Prevention Network and become close to these amazing researchers and shakers and makers who didn’t buy into the drunken drug addicted ‘give them cake’ model of criminal greed.  I’d also become friends with many of the leaders of the Treatment Centres in the community sitting in meeting with them and sharing visions  and ideals. 

I’d have season tickets to the Pacific Theater and Ballet BC, attend magnificent performances of the Vancouver Opera and Symphony. I’d have the most amazing experiences like sitting listening to Pete Seegers with a couple of others present. I’d be able to go to concerts of those like U2 and Fleetwood Mac. My friend Laura was always a delight to be with.

Tom was a great companion early days sailing, hunting and camping. Every fall I’d shoot a deer or a moose but it would take every weekend of the season to eventually find the animal that would grace my plate for the rest of the year.  Tom and I would discuss Christianity but as time went on he’d isolate in his cabin in the country and become caught up in the hysteria of internet fear mongering.  Hysteria generating machine.

My office would rise in paranoids. The whole the ‘world is coming to an end’ was broadcast with massive money and pseudoscience and vulnerble people caught up in the sense of doom. I’d reassure.  But really, “The skies falling. The skies falling. Give me money. Give me money’ seemed like worse than the oldest profession. I was indeed seeing the leading escorts in the city because they were recovering from drugs and alcohol and now were coming to heal the trauma of childhood sexual abuse mostly though some had been sex slaves and others child porn ‘stars’ who had been taken advantage of by leading citizens.

 I loved the Vancouver Police when I’d be able to work with them and have them see my patients and see justice done. It was comforting to see millionaires and multi millionaires were not above the law when the law really worked . I’d meet these amazing lawyers who would work with us pro bono to help women and men who weren’t part of the new breed of ‘liars and wannabes’ but had actually been the truest of victims. When the Vancouver Police and RCMP helped my patients we so often found that the men and women involved had dozens if not hundreds of other victims. I felt good like the times I worked with public health to follow up on gonorrhea and TB outbreaks.  It was a ‘disease’ and we were highly effective treating it but only when it was a part of therapy and not a way for lawyers or therapists to be stars on the coat tails of victims.  I was thankful for my training in psychodrama and remembering this was not my story and that I was only helping the patient tell his or her story.

I loved watching people ‘find’ recovery. I was so thankful with Motivational Psychotherpay. I’d done Strategic Therapy with the Ericksonian group and the ‘story telling’ ‘indirect therapies’ and ‘change therapy with the Palo Alto groups but now was having amazing success moving people from determination to action phases of change.

I had this great team of Aim and Joanne and Hannah doing all the administrative work and was for a time able to focus on patient care having so many years dealing with the administrative back stabbing and the whole ‘popularity medicine’ that was coming with ‘rate your doctor’ and all the College ideas of mediocrity and uniformity.  My colleague who worked with psychologists mostly said that they didn’t have the weight of stupidity to contend with and still could be creative but she felt that the psychologists were increasingly being reduced by the ‘political masters’. The joy was sucked out of the room when these personally terrified ‘police’ powers moved in.  There was a great description of ‘soul suckers’ that helped me appreciate these folk and how so many of my depressed patients were working in areas where this money fear and power need dominated the workplace.  Committee dictatorships.  Toxic workplaces.

I was however during this time having great chats with Red Robinson on my elevator and loving being in China Town where I admired the business owners and came to know neighbors.  The government ‘industry’ of the DTES was blooming. I ‘d be exposed to the utter corruption and greed that surrounded the Fentanyl Crisis. I’d been at ground zero in the Aids Epidemic, the VGH psychiatry emergency and here I was at Ground Zero of the Aids Epidemic. It was certainly a ‘restaurant at the end of the universe’ view. I’d love seeing the same marchers outside my window carrying different signs.

I’d routinely have patients who were the characters in national and international stories and I’d see how wrong the journalists were or how the ‘government propaganda’ put a twist. My friend was a lawyer in the Picton farms, my biker friends had been at the parties, and suddenly I’d have musicians from that experience and the sister of a missing girls. Now there’s an Opera. 

It would all be just day to day living. I’d yearly go to the International Doctors in AA and meet with psychiatrists from around the world, the true shakers and makers. I’d loved spending time with Dr. Valiant of Harvard after having corresponded with him for years but finally meeting him in person. I’d have this amazing friend Art, an Air Force colonel who was also a leading American forensic psychiatrist. He was the straightest shooter I knew and we both bow hunted. He’d shot elk with bow and I’d shot deer.  It was in those late night meetings of psychiatrists talking about our losses and trials that I’d invariably find the strength to carry on.  I’d love cyberdocs.

I’d go to international psychiatry meetings and learn over coffee from the head of the Moscow Psychiatry, Israeli Psychiatry and Australian and Scottish Psychiatry divisions all manner of things that just don’t show up in text books. I’d see that local problems were ‘international trends’ .  I’d learn that there  are solutions and breakthroughs which politics denied to my patients.  I’d be amazed at these conference, learning nothing much in the actual lectures but now having the most amazing dinners and lunches and coffee meetings with the authors of text books and Nobel prize winners and being humbled by their ‘service’ and ‘contributions’.  

I felt touched that they ‘liked’ me and that I’d done sufficient in life and my work to be ‘allowed in’ . Increasingly I saw that like my off shore sailing buddies who’d form a circle and keep juniors out when the adults wanted to talk and share this phenomena occured everywhere. I was privileged to be invited to ride with a group of combat veteran motorcyclists.  “We know you’ve not been in combat but you’ve listened to us and we want you to ride with us even if we know you’re trouble.”  They laughed and I struggled to keep up. The same for doctors. I’d had the ‘clinical experience’, I ‘smelt’ of knowledge. I was invited to dinner with my personal heroes in the field, the greatest of clinicians who also wrote and taught.  I truly have been blessed to  be in the right place at the right time. 

I love that the Haight Ashbury doctor who started the clinic remembers me and has coffee with me. I love that he’s a great man today and I remember the days when he was an outsider and we were all dirty for working with a dirty disease.  

I love being kibbitzed by the great Emergency doctor combat medic whose done tours of Afghanistan and is one of the purest men I’ve ever met. He calls me a hippy with a good heart. An American General calls me a Canadian Hippy.  I’m touched.  I’m loved and cared for and blessed by so many people I personally so admire.  It’s been hard to fight the good fight day in day out but on these occasions I get to be with others who have integrity and honor and still tell the truth when truth telling is becoming anathema to the state.  

My father’s death was sad.

“I’m tired Bill. I miss your mother. I want to be with her.” He said, blind and frail. I always wished I could be a better son, more like my brother who was the best of the best.

At the moment he died I saw a vision of my mother and father meeting and heard my mother’s voice saying “it’s okay Bill, we’re together again.’  I was catching the flight to Ottawa after my brother’s call.

“How did you know the exact time,’ he died.  “ I saw Mom welcoming him into heaven at that exact time.” I told my brother later.  

God,  it was good to be with my brother and sister in law Adell then. They are such great people. My father was such a giant and I just found him smarter and wiser and kinder the older I got.  It was sad to see him gone. I’m more and more alone.  He called my dog, Gilbert ‘monkey dog’. I’d fly down with Gilbert and like old friends they’d play.

Now so many of my mentors and favourite people are dying and retiring.  “I’m taking early retirement” a half dozen psychiatrists have told me.”I can’t stand this government.”  “I can’t stand the college’.   They’ve said. Canada now has the most beurocracy in the western world, greatest mismanagement, least doctors, longest waitlists and rising doctor suicides and greater than half the doctors are burnt out.  I keep trying to recruit doctors into the areas of greatest need and they just say ‘it’s too dangerous...I can’t work for how little you make.”

My dog’s life was threatened by a drug addicted sociopath. “I’ll kill your dog.”  He emailed me for a year.  Nothing was done.  Constant fear. Reminder of the loss of Stuart and how the drug addicts had murdered him and then this repeat performance. I protected Gilbert. I didn’t let him out of my sight for that whole year. I scanned everywhere I walked watching for the weasel always armed ,feeling way way too old to be on constant guard and fearing for my life and my dogs life.  I’d have nightmares and couldn’t sleep. The times my windows were shot out by the drunks came back. I’d wake with terror. I’donly find comfort knowing my dog was safe and then it stopped.

“Your patient threatened your life and your dogs life, “ the Mountie said.

“Yes, he still does. »

“Well he’s threatening Prime Minister Trudeau’s life’...so could you tell us all you know about him.”

And then the threats stopped. The emails stopped coming. 

7 years old: drunk judge and rock stars

It was 1959. It was a good year. I was living in Winnipeg, Fort Garry, on North Drive, a block from the Badminton Club and Golf Club.  The Red River ran along the end of our back lane.  We lived next to the Anglican Church Manse.

“Your father and the priest have been working on fixing his door for months,” Mom would say the year Dad and the priest would get together in his basement every weekend and spend hours ‘jawwing’.  Dad wasn’t a religious man.  He drove mom to the Baptist Church a half hour away in Fort Rouge every Sunday. Asked, he’d say, “I”m a member of the round church, the one where the devil can’t catch me in the corners.”  Another friend of his was a Catholic priest.  

Dad was a good man and a deep man.  He expressed his love with his hands. Mom was the church woman through and through.  Prudish by contemporary standards, judgemental for sure, highly moral, and a thoroughly good lady, but she did like her gossip.  She was Irish too and held onto resentments.  Red haired, she had a fiery temper.   

Years later, looking at the black and white photos of her and my father, before the children came, it’s so apparent the love and passion literally jump off the page.  My sister in law said, “Your mother loved her husband.”  Her sister said, “Jean and Johnny were the most in love couple we knew.”  They’d all been young at the end of the war.  Later, the love and friendship, youth and industry are so apparent with Dad and his cars and work and mom, her house and garden and babies.

Our other neighbour was out of work a lot of years.I think he’d managed a car dealership and had been laid off. He’d eventually get a government job. He read books and didn’t do much more. His wife was loved by all the children and could be seen always busy. The kids were our friends but out of sync by grades.  The daughter more my brother’s age. The son younger than me. We’d all play ball together though when the kids used the adjacent front lawns on North Drive for epic football games.  The dogs were always involved in those games.  Running to and fro to catch the ball meant dodging about masses of dog shit.  “Ahhhhh” would be a great cry with laughter following when someone slipped in the shit or ball landed in it.

The neighbour next over was a pilot. He’d been in the RCAF too. Dad and he had many a back lane conversation. He hunted ducks as did Dad. The mothers didn’t get along, friendly but nothing in common.  She was more a socialite and had two beautiful daughters she dolted on.  Mom had sons. When I was older but still not older enough to date I’d love to watch the neighbour  daughters all gussied up going on a their dates.  The neighbour’s daughters were hotties by today’s standard’s. The Guess Who would come by in a large white boat like convertible with lots of shouting and laughter.  The girls would out to jump in. Only a few years before these same three beauties had been slipping in dog shit with the rest of us.  

When years later the Monkeys came on television, a show about a band with guys mostly dancing and chasing girls, I’d grown up beside that scene vicariously living it with the neighbour girls who were the favourites of rock stars.  The Guess Who were just one of the bands that came by to pick up one of the three girls in the two houses next to us. Our immediate neighbour sexiest and the most fun with the two daughters of the pilot and his wife, more aloof sophisticated and stunning.  I watched them as a pre teen and dreamed.

The next house over was the judge. He was a drunk.  He and his wife didn’t have any children we knew of.  My greatest memory of him was his driving braille home Friday nights.  A weekly binger, most likely a black out. I remember more than one Saturday morning with a shouting match between him and someone’s whose car had been mauled by his passage. Dad and the other neighbours didn’t park on the front street on Fridays. The victims were mostly visitting th Badminton Club. 

“I never hit your car!” The red nosed judge would be shouting.

The other fellow would be saying,”It’s your car’s paint on my door.”  

“You’ll have to prove that in court,” the judge would say

Other’s knew better than to argue with the judge.  He had a fiery temper. His wife was a quiet mouse like creature who smiled weakly at us kids. Mom just said, “she has a hard life.”

The one time I remember my dad afraid was when I hit the baseball through the judges window. He took me over immediately after school,  

“Now apologize Billy,”

“I’m sorry sir for breaking the window.”

“Don’t worry Judge I’ll fix it myself and be sure it’s better than new. When could I do that for you?” My father grovelled.  I felt so bad I’d done this.  Dad took the window home and fixed it that night returning it later in the evening. 

The judge never gave me back my baseball.  He didn’t say anything but nodded.  

“That will be okay John.  Make sure your son learns his lesson.”

“Yes sir.”  He said as he dragged me home holding on to the sleeve of my shirt. I’d been spanked and then grounded for a week .

I think I got my first baseball glove when I was seven. I remember feeling and smelling the leather.  My brother already had his glove. We’d toss ball back and forth endlessly. Dad would join in weekends and holidays.  He was working installing Matthew Conveyor Systems in the city.  Blue prints would often be laid out on the kitchen table with Dad cursing the architects and engineers for sending parts that didnt fit or having to jury rig an extension around a wiring column which was conveniently left out of the blue print. As kids we did’t understand what he was saying but Mom would listen patiently and say, “you’re figure it out John, you always do.”  

Years later when I’d work for my Dad as a “millwright’s helper’ I’d hear all these greats stories about how smart my Dad was. He was in charge of hundreds of men on these large projects, always in coveralls, always hands on.  My brother was disappointed he never wore a suit at work. “He could have worn a suit and he should have, “ my brother maintained. Dad dint like suits except when he went out with Mom.“He always talks with pride about his boys,” we’d hear from others but he wasn’t one to praise us directly.  As a child,I just knew him as a man who came and went during the week, was really tired in the evening, often falling asleep after dinner and only able to play with us on the weekend.  On holidays camping and fishing he was the greatest father ever.  Adventures,  Stories.Laughter. 

I think we got Sonny that year. He was a liver coloured Springer Spaniel who loved my dad 100% and hung out with me because I was part of the pack. We were best of friends.  He comforted me a lot. Always keen to go on a walk or explore new places. A constant companion when Dad wasn’t around. I’d feed him and forget so Mom mostly cared for him. He loved Mom too.  He loved us all and was one of the family.  There were so many funny stories he was apart of over the years. Dad would later repeat these tales and we’d all laugh before he got half way started.  Stealing the drunken hunters game bag and bringing us a half dozen ducks. Diving in to catch the fish before we could get it into the boat.  Stealing mom’s home made apple pie.  He was a character, his own personality. When  I cried he sat close beside me.  Whenever I was jumping up and down he was jumping up and down with me.  A great hunting dog. A great family dog.  We all cried when he died so many years later.  We loved when Dad brought him home.

The Carters lived across the street.  Keith would become a friend in the YMCA going on to be an Olympic star. He competed in gymnastics as a Canadian champion and later on the Olympic team. His sisters were beautiful and one was a friend of my brother’s.  Keith figured in a lot of tales later but I didn’t really know him till I joined the YMCA.  Though he lived a few doors down and we went to the same school, it was only in the gym we all became friends.  

Kirk lived in the house across the back lane.  I think their street was Somerset.  Lyons street headed up the road running parallel to the river. Bill Giles, son of the famous and hilarious cartoonist lived up the street, his daughter a friend of my brother’s. Bill and I would become friends years later in Vancouver.  Garth whose father was a commercial pilot lived across Lyon street one over from Kirk.

Kirk’s immediate neighbours were the ‘maiden aunts’.  We’d later learn they were probably Lesbian.  The women’s voices usuaully became a whisper when they spoke of the two who kept much to themselves.  Further along Kirk’s street was the veterinarian. I can’t be sure about this. They had Siamese cats which were so exotic and their son became a doctor ahead of me. A studious quiet boy who’d later be a dissapointment when he left clinical medicine and the university to become a bureaucrat.  I’d always thought he’d be a scientist as he’d pass our house loaded down with books, always reading and talking about science. 

The Red River was there.  It began behind the badminton courts. Our lane ended there and the trail that ran through the woods along the river began.  As boys Kirk and Garth and I roamed up and down that trail.  We’d find golf balls from the golf course. We’d throw rocks in the river. We’d watch ducks and geese go by. We’d make spears and throw those. We’d walk all the way over to Wildwood where the Private Boys School was. It was a hike for us little tykes and of course our parents didn’t know we would go that far away. We weren’t supposed to play by the river.  

Once I looked up and a bob cat was in the tree overhanging the river trail. I stared at him eye to eye. He was  not more than three feet above my face before backing away. Dad had taught us young never to turn our back on wild animals.  He hissed. I backed away.  When I got home I told my parents about the bobcat as a curiosity. Mom phoned the police. There was a search but he wasn’t found. They did find the tracks so no one thought I made up the story. Mostly in those days adults thought all stories us kids told that were unusual were probably made up.  Obviously some were. Kids have a great fantasy life. I’d see the bobcat a couple of times after that but never so close.

Alaska joined the US that year. Fidel Castro and Che Quevara entered Havana Cuba.  The Soviets recognized Cuba.  De Gaulle was inaugurated president of French Fifth Republic. Musicians Buddy Holly,  Ritchie Valens and Gyles Perry died in a plane crash, ‘the day the music died.”.

 The Canadian government cancelled the Avro Interceptor jet contract.  Miles Davis recorded Kind of Blues. The Marx Brothers appeared on television. Martel put out its first Barbie doll. The Dalia Lama escaped to India from Tibet where the barbaric Chinese Imperialists were continuing to enslave,rape and murder.  Queen Elizabeth II and President Eisenhower opened the St. Lawrence Seaway.Two monkeys were launched into space from Cape Canaveral and recovered on return.  Lewis and Mary  Leakey found the first skull of Austhrolipicus in the Oldavai Gorge of Tanzania. Explorer 6 sent the first picture of earth from space. Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone premiered on TV.  In New York the Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Lloyd Wright opened. Luna 2 crashedon the moon. Rwanda “winds of destruction” begins. Martial law was declared in Laos.  MGM released Ben Hur with Carleton Heston. The Daytona International Speedway was completed.  Erving Goffman, sociologist, published the ‘The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life.”  Panty hose, or sheer tights were first sold.  Steven Harper, later Canadian Prime Minister was born. Sheena Easton Scottish singer wasborn.  Hugh Laurie, British Actor and Kevin Spacey American Actor were born. Bryan Adams, Canadian rock star was born  Cecile de Mille,American Film Director died. Raymond Chandler, novelist, died. Ethel Barrymore, actress and Errol Flynn, Australian actor died.  Billie Halliday, American singer, died. 

Being conservative

I met Pierre Trudeau in Ottawa when I was 20. I loved his red carnation.  I was an intellectual then, a revolutionary too.  Not a Marxist Communist like him, but rather a spiritual one.  I actually shook his hand.  Apparently that’s something most people can’t say because he didn’t like touching people.
I found his handshake cold, weak, withholding and lifeless.  Later I’d shake Mr. Chretien’s hand and note how exactly. opposite it was.   I actually thought Mr. Chretien’s handshake was like the “Hand” in the Munster’s, this animated strong thing.    I liked best Mr. Turner’s and Mr. Harper’s handshakes because they were  so warm and human.
But I digress.  Churchill said, “if you’re not a socialist at 20 you have no heart and if you are not a capitalist by 40 you have no brains.”
When I told my father I voted Liberal I remember him shaking his head. My father was a wise experienced man, a WWII veteran, an engineer and a man who had run major construction projects leading 150 men at a time.  “Son ," he said, "I don’t know how you’re going to survive in this world, you’re not living in Quebec.  The Liberals are the party of Quebec.  You ‘re English speaking and you live in western Canada.  Liberals don't like English speaking Canadians.  Frankly they don't care for anyone who doesn't speak  French . I don’t care whether you vote NDP or Conservative but the Liberals never did anything for the west and they don’t care much for anyone outside of Montreal."
I didn't agree when I was 20.  The Liberals offered change.  I didn't know then that Lennin and Hitler had campaigned for 'change' too.  I didn't even know that Communism was Socialism according to Stalin and that the Nazi's were the "national socialist' party.  Indeed I didn't know that the principle struggle of politics was between the monarchy and the people which caused the Magna Carta to be so important to western democracy just as the 'demos' of the Greek democracy had been between the 'tyrant' and the 'people'.  In modern terms this is the power of the 'STATE" or 'Government' and or Federal and State or the State and the Individuals. But it's really always simply 'Totalitarianism' versus 'freedom".  United Nations is totalitarian like the Saudi Arabian monarchy.  All of us today know "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose'. When the totalitarians have taken everything else and silenced or killed their opposition .  Me and Bobby McGee.
I thought my father was the smartest man until I was a teen ager then when I smoked dope in my 20’s  and became a legend in my own mind I thought he knew even less. I was reading Betrand Russel, Nietze, Marx, and all those other urbane people while he thought the sun rose and fell on the Winnipeg Free Press.
So I was a liberal for more than 20 years, campaigning for my local MP’s, going door to door and folding envelopes and distributing fliers.  I liked all the promise and yet despite all the claim of change and the high flying words, the poor got poorer, state control got greater, and government got bigger.   Finally the nepotism, cronyism and corruption got to me.  Being in the west we could see what the Quebec faction was doing. We could see it so clearly.  I don’t think people in the East could.
Meanwhile all over the world the lies of socialism and communism were becoming apparent.  Liberals were secretive. Communists hated ‘freedom of speech’.  Political correctness, the Frankfurt school of ‘social communism’ was spreading all over the ‘free world’ all the while that the 100’s of millions killed in Communist  countries were being exposed. Liberals don't like dissent. Mommy knows best.
Increasingly I became a “libertarian’.  This is a ‘right wing’ idea which says that the ‘least government’ is the ‘best government’. I’d seen the destruction of health care in Canada close up with increasing waitlists, layers and layers of incompetent arrogant bureaucracy and more and more government interference in anything that seemed meritorious.  Government and ‘mediocrity’ were the same word until proven otherwise.
So one day I walked away from the Liberals and joined the Conservatives.  I was in my 40’s then.  When I’d been a student and wasn’t making money I thought it was great that government took other peoples money and gave it to themselves and to street people doing drugs.  All the liberal words seemed great.  Like recently when they wanted to ‘legalize marijuana’. It all sounded like they cared about people but what it came down to was that their Chief Financial Officer had millions invested in BIG MARIJUANA and was in bed with BIG TOBACCO so they wanted money.
In politics ‘follow the money trails’.
Liberals say “trust me”.
Don’t.
I don’t trust Conservatives or NDP either. In fact I don’t particularly trust politicians.  I liked the joke that said politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often for the same reasons.
I couldn’t tell this joke among Liberals. They were so self righteous and knew what was best for everyone else.
But Conservatives were experienced and accepted people as they were with all their flaws.  I liked that my gay friends were Conservative and my Christian friends were conservative and my immigrant friends were conservative and my sober friends were conservative.  There was a ‘pragmatism’ in the conservative party.  “Show me’, don’t “tell me’ was  the bottom lime.
Now that I was working 80 hours a week and paying an obscene amount of taxes for the white collar welfare in government and the blue collar welfare ‘takers’, I really began to look at how Liberals preened themselves.  Like the communist leaders in China and Russia with their multi billion dollar abodes and their dachas and private armies I saw the liberals constantly taking care of themselves and only talking the talk.  I was appalled at the grandiose glamorous lives liberals lived while claiming to represent the people whereas in the conservatives I saw a whole lot of hard working people caring about themselves and others equally. They were moral as well.  They had a code.  They might be hypocrites but their hypocrisy was garden variety not like the huge lies of the left.
So I’m conservative today.  I like the conservative women I know today too.  They’re mostly working mothers.  I kind of miss the drunk and stoned liberal revolutionary women I knew who had daddy’s expense accounts and were limousine revolutionaries and lipstick feminists. The silk underwear and the designer gowns and fine beds with expensive perfumes linger in my memory. But maybe that’s just my youth.  The conservative women I know today are older like me and we laugh about our ‘coming of age’.  So many of them too were in San Francisco with flowers painted on their faces then one day they had bills to pay and families and stopped being liberals.  Like me they became conservative.  I really see a lot of silk underwear and perfume in their pasts but I suspect Daddy wasn't paying the bills as much as lovers and husbands or they themselves.
Sometimes we wish the conservatives who didn’t ‘drop out’ were not so successful.  These ‘steady eddies’, the ‘straight and narrow’ folk are pretty admirable. They’re the mainstream of the shakers and makers.  I know them as the most creative and innovative scientist and engineers and inventors. They don’t just talk about solutions and their creations are more in the way of solutions to ‘smog’ than new hair styles but they aren’t particularly deviant. Their idea of a good time is barbecues and camping or photography and world travel.  They really always have cared for their families and I just didn’t see them when I was partying.  They never liked the fatuous and always had better things to do with their valued time.
Conservatives are quieter than liberals. They’re not always hogging the spot line and claiming that they were the ones who invented something just because they had an idea while smoking stuff on the couch.  The hard work of invention takes years and an ability to get along with people. It’s the back bone of industry and even in the music and arts industry the conservatives are the backbone though the front stage is full of liberals galore.  Loud people. I was loud when I was young.
Now I’m quieter. I’m more experienced.  I’m probably less clever and more wise.  I understand reality more. I’m less caught up in lies and I see the deceit more clearly. My father was like that. He was a really good judge of people and made things that lasted.  I admire that now.  I’ve become conservative.  It surprises me sometimes.  I was always thought to be so radical.
One step a head of the crowd you’re a leader. Two steps ahead of the crowd you’re a martyr.
I’m finding myself among radicals in the conservatives.  Being conservative means being courageous. There was such a sheep like mentality to being liberal.  Group speak and political correctness and so much religious ideology.   Everyone had to be the same.  It’s not that way, ironically with the conservatives.  There’s real diversity.  There is real courage in conviction too.  There’s a celebration of life.  There’s also tremendous respect.  I guess when it comes down to it I think being conservative is being a young adult whereas being a liberal is early adolescent still sucking on the tit one day and biting the tit the next.  I guess with this analogy the NDP would be the older adolescents, ready to work together, form unions and really original in their thinking because they’re more independent.
I liked learning too that people with higher IQ’s were more likely to be conservative. While liberals had a lot of ‘theoretical’ people in their camp like the ‘academics’ in america who depend on the university tenure tract tit those who were most highly trained and advanced but also had a capacity to take their ideas and ‘apply’ them were more likely conservative.  Entrepreneurs and those who got down and dirty were more likely conservatives than those who liked to talk.  That was my impression really.
No one ever accused me of being stupid except my father.  Frankly I don’t know if he voted conservative or NDP. I suspect he voted Conservative though.  I know today he’d never vote liberal.  Justin Trudeau reminds me of what I was like when I was a teen ager.  I think my Dad would see the resemblance too.  At the time he was paying the bills like Canadians are paying for Justin Trudeau’s adolescence at our expense.   I just love the pictures of Sophie with her two nannies, her designer clothes and Justin in their multi million dollar home surrounded by all those armed and dangerous French speaking men with Glock 9 mm in holsters and AR15's close at hand.   All we need is love.

Gratitude, Resentment, Grief and Aging

I am thankful for my fingers, Lord.  The knife cut I did to my index finger did not severe a nerve.  The joint capsule may have been penetrated but there is no more infection.  Daily iodine  with hydrogen peroxides and bandaid changes has saved the finger.  How come I was not so careful initially when I was washing the knives.  But thank you Lord if there was any lesson I was to learn from my injured  ‘pointing finger’.  I have not had to at least have it removed. I’m grateful for that.  Help me always to see more my own faults than the faults of others, or the faults of the world.
Thank you Lord for the health of my dog.  I was so devastated when he was paralyzed that day. I was in fear all day as we drove back early from the north. Thank you for X-rays and Oak Animal Hospital and the lovely Indo Canadian veterinarian who did a thorough examination of him and found his nerves had not been injured, that he would walk again with medication. Thank you for his slow recovery. Thank you for science and medication.
Thank you for the end of elections. Help me to recover from all the hatred and shame I experienced again for standing up for what I believe in.  For years I have taught people ‘love the person’, don’t accept the behaviour.  I have taught that guilt was what we felt when we did something wrong but shame was what we felt when we felt we were wrong fundamentally as a person.  I have experienced so much shaming.  Throughout the election and even now I am told by so many that I am not a Canadian because I do not believe as the victors do.   Always shaming. Always ‘ad hominem’. I have never been ‘good enough’.  I have always been ridiculed and condemned.  Meanwhile I serve like an untouchable, treating unclean bodies and unclean minds.  Men and women get rich off the sales of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, heroin, cocaine, poor lifestyle, unsafe practices, yet I am there serving, healing and helping and I am told I am not worthy to live here.  I am unwanted.
I treat many old men like me.  Some old ladies too.  There is sadness in aging. There is sadness in a whole variety of poverties yet some poverty takes precedence.  The single mothers go to the front of the line while us men whose children were aborted are shunned.  We stand in lonely groups sometimes touched by the men and women whose children were killed in crime.  I huddle next to them.  Their sons and daughters murdered or killed in war or by accident Somehow we face dying together in the greatest of loneliness. I have no tie to this world, no illusion of immortality.
And so much I gave in taxes, taken from me, voluntarily though, I had no choice, to pay for education and children and I supported the children of others knowing my own were killed.  I am a laughing stock.  Worse than a cuckold.  The women jeer at us men whose lovers killed our being and say ‘you deserved it’. Man. I’d rather be a hammer than a nail.
I am shamed for being a man. And I’m not even a very good one.  The heterosexuals hate me because I’ve had sex with a man and the homosexuals hate me because I’ve had sex with a woman. I’m divorced and divorced men are the scourge of the earth.  Divorced women were obviously done wrong by men but divorced men get what they deserve.  They’re contemptible.  I was punished and condemned in the courts, laughed at by the judge whose eyes did not look at me but instead focused on the loosely covered breasts of the one who had once said she loved me.  As I once said I loved her.  In the end I paid her all I had financially. She was smug in profit.  The courts made their money too. The judge looked like he wanted to have a tryst with her.  He ogled her. She looked coy.   I was thrust aside. Loser. Fool.  Shame and humiliation.
50 shades of grey.  The billionaires are worshiped.  The women read with lust what girls are willing to do for the monetary winner. Eva Braun ruled all of Germany.  Only her man is condemned.


My mother is dead.  She didn’t do drugs or drink.  She insisted we go to school. She loved education.  She insisted we go to Sunday school and church. She loved the Lord.  She insisted we play hockey. She and my father loved hockey.  So I fished with Dad and hunted and fixed cars with my brother and my father. I learned cooking from mom and mixing cement from Dad and I helped him build buildings and boats.  My parents had lost so many friends in WWII.  Dad had served in the RCAF. A spitfire mechanic and a bombardier.  My parents met in the war.  Dad and Mom weren’t racists. I didn’t know racists till the government began dividing and conquering the people by calling everyone racists.  My black doctor didn’t even know he was black in those days like I didn’t know I was white.
Dad didn’t know that being a man and being white was wrong.  He didn’t think of himself as coloured.  My mother and her sister had black friends.  They were Baptist.  She didn’t have Catholic friends.  Dad had Catholic friends and Jewish friends and Buddhist friends and Hindu friends and secular friends.  Our family were as coloured as everyone. Mom joked about us having freckles.  My brother and her had red hair.  
Dad liked smart people, people who did things, ‘made something of themselves’.  Always growing up I heard my parents say, “It doesn’t matter where a person has been it’s where they’re going and are they building things up.”  Mom and dad most admired people who were working and taking care of their children.  They didn’t like people who were ‘living off of the government because they were too good to do a honest day’s labour’.  They didn’t like people who weren’t willing to ‘get their hands dirty’.  They especially didn’t like people who stole and criminals.
 “I didn’t fight for this country so I had to put a lock on my own doors,” my father told me.  The judge who lived a couple of houses over was a rip roaring falling down drunk and my parents didn’t have any time for drunks. They especially didn’t like drugs.  “Wasting their lives.  Caring for their own pleasures when they should be caring for others.  Not caring how much their behaviour hurt others. That’s their problem."
They both said, “You always were too smart for your britches.”  “I don’t care if the teacher is wrong, you’ve got to learn to not tell them that because they’re hurt you for it. The more wrong they are the more they hurt people who are right.” My aunt was Indian. My Baptist aunt was the executive assistant (we called her his ’secretary’ back then) to Canada’s ambassador in Washington DC during WWII. My grandfather arrived as a poor immigrant from Scotland and homesteaded northern Canada to become a great rancher and lumber man.  My other grandfather arrived from Ireland. Both poor, the “made something of themselves.’  They “didn’t take handouts’.
My aunts and mother told me the history of things.  The teachers told me lies. I was strapped by the principal for correcting them. The same occurred in chemistry when the teacher had the equations wrong.  But he didn’t have me strapped. He corrected his equation and thanked me.  That’s probably why I liked science.   We were caned in gym class, our buttocks bared.  I got my first ruler in kindergarten.  The female teacher undressed me in front of the class and held me across her knees smacking me hard over and over again on my naked bottom.
Much later I was punished for stopping men and women killing people. The people whose job it was to ensure the safety of the children hated and shamed me for stopping the killing. The provincial enquiry years later vindicated me but a half dozen babies more were killed before that occurred.  I never received an apology. I was never returned the money and time I lost for doing the right thing. I was suspect then. I didn’t keep quiet and mind my own business when I saw people being killed and raped.  I wasn’t a ‘team player’ they said in the government.  There is no “truth and reconciliation” for ‘whistleblowers’.
I’m surprised I don’t like S and M.  So many boys have come out of school spanked so many times like me that they at least got some pleasure sexually later from their twisted education.  I just got this twisted idea I’d stop people being abused. I try mostly to stop people from ‘turning anger inward’.  They continue to hurt themselves after being hurt so much by others.
Now the government tells me I can’t touch people.  Standing helpless in my office men and women cling to me and their tears run down my suit.  I cannot hug them.  All over the province men and women physicians are being publicly threatened fines and loss of license if they touch a patient, especially if they hug a patient.   I eventually push them away and tell them the government says that doctors can’t touch their patients even when they are grieving. There are so many laws today.  I am afraid of everyone and everything.

Thank you Lord for these moments of peace. Thank you Lord for bringing me safety this far. Thank you for the light. Thank you for the coffee and the cream and the porridge. Thank you for this computer. Thank you for letters and language. Thank you for the opportunity to learn. Thank you for the chances I’ve been given to make something of myself.  I am still walking upright. I’m still able to help others.  I am so thankful that my finger still works. I am always in pain, Lord.  I am just so thankful that it’s not as bad as it has been. I am so thankful that I can get out of bed and get to work and have some work.  I look back and remember the abject poverty of those years of being a student, giving blood for books, not having food because I paid the rent, eating at family and friends because I had no money. We were in love then. We lived so simply.  Years and years of hand me down clothing, hand me down furniture.  We pooled our resources for a party. I studied from 6 am to 12 pm and saw formulas in my sleep.  I lived in hospitals.  I went for years without sleep.  Plane crash. Polar bear chasing me.  Deadly diseases.  Old people dying in my arms alone in the night giving me their last words as gifts.  I thought I’d never get clean. The lice, the bacteria, the virus, the sickness. I was sick for so many many years.  Tuberculosis. I was treated for a year.  She condemned me for going where no one else would go. “You’re not a Christian, you’re a fool.” she told me when I wanted her nakedness and she was angry that I flew away to serve the aboriginals because, “no one else would’.  Now no one cares.  The government regulator sneered at me and said, “It’s just a job.”  I’ve never got my back pay. There never was a bonus.  Everyone said I had status but ever shopkeeper raised the price and stole from me.  All the while the government took in taxes and paid themselves fat salaries and froze my income.  Among ourselves we laugh if we make minimum wage.  7 days a week for how many years is it I worked and was on call. No overtime. No on call. No danger pay.  I fell asleep in an operation.  I wet myself too.  An adult man peeing dribbling unable to hold it. all night with an unforgettable bowel after a shot gun wound.  I wake with nightmares screaming lost in guts that are perforated seeing faces of suicides. It’s a good week when I don’t remember, when I get a full nights sleep.  This morning I woke at 5 am.  Now I know it’s just the rain.  It’s the darkness and the rain. It’s that season. I remember the rains coming and the palm trees flying over my car, my windows knocked out.  The rains and the darkness. I’ll get used to it again.

Thank you Lord for the memories. When I smoked pot and drank wine I forgot.  I don’t remember my holidays. Those brief weeks when we’d get away from the ‘front’ and escape to beaches.  I drank wine and smoked weed and now don’t much remember those days while the horrors of guns in offices and knives and the angry faces fresh from jail in withdrawal demanding valium and more valium or narcotics and more narcotics threatening shouting.
She said I ’sexually harassed her’ when I asked her to leave because she was stealing and smoking crack. She ‘d been raging and shouting at the Indo canadians in wheelchairs.  She hated Indo Canadians.  I didn’t know when I hired her. I didn’t even know she was a drug addict. I didn’t know she prostituted. I took others words. She lied. I didn’t know her johns had been her references. I didn’t know that her minister was her bisexual lover. I’ve never known anything when the shit hits the fan. I’ve been so focussed on saving a life that I didn’t know that I was being stolen from. Only when the bank balance didn’t match did I know something was wrong.  Only when I saw the receipts from the store did I realize that she was a thief.    Everything she said and wrote didn’t match. Lawyers showed that.  A hundred lies but it was never about truth.  I told the truth and was condemned for it.  Government’s don’t want the truth.
The government woman said, “Women don’t lie about sex.”
I learned there was no ‘justice’ and went to work pro bono with my friend who was killed when he said that only the rich could afford justice in Canada.  I still think it was a hit.
Thank you Lord for the lifting me up. These moments come and go. The set backs. Reflecting on people saying I’m not a Canadian.  People telling me to leave Canada and that I’m not wanted here.  It took me back to the time when I was getting death threats, when my windows were shot out by 22’s, when my cars was keyed over and over.  I had been diagnosing alcoholism and addiction and saying that people were unfit for work. The management thanked me for halving the accidents on the job. Men and women thanked me for making their workplaces safe but the cost was high. Drug addiction changes a person.  The pot heads were just as violent as the alcoholics and cokeheads when it came to wanting revenge.  Here there were having this good thing, the doctor before me saying they were depressed and giving them a week or two in hospital to dry out before they went back to work to wreck havoc on management and their fellow workers.  He was the loved doctor.
"The other psychiatrist  never asked about alcohol and drugs but this knew little shit doctor did and he fucked me up. The fuck cost me my job writing down what I told him I smoked and drank. It was supposed to be confidential. When the insurance company saw it they said that I had to go to treatment. I didn’t want to quit.  I just wanted the other psychiatrist to keep writing a note saying I was sick because of my bipolar disorder.  I didn’t want this fucking asshole to fuck me up.  I talked to everyone about him.  I didn’t think it was relevant to tell anyone how much weed I was smoking when I was working.  It’s medicine. It’s a herb.  It’s not like the pharmaceutical’s that little shit puts people on.  The boss is just like him. A fuckking shit. Keeps telling me I’m forgetting and not concentrating on the work.  Claimed I caused their multi million dollar machine to break down.  All the stress he was giving me made me do coke. I needed it to concentrate at work after I started the day with a few shots and a doozie or two.  Then I go to the hospital for my normal break, like we all did with the old doctor and this shit blows the whistle.  Of course I hate him.  Fucking boy scout.  Little do goober.  Of course my friends and I made his life miserable. After what he did to us he’s lucky he didn’t have an accident."

Now I’m just sad, now , alone.  Thinking how many lives I must have ruined drug testing.  If I’d just backed off, turned a blind eye like my colleague, these guys might have gone on to be Prime Minister or at very least headed the company. Instead they probably left regular work and went into growing dope full time and becoming part of the multi billion dollar BC industry that now has essentially been pardoned as well as getting to take the money and run.
I’ve never been “pardoned" in my work.  I’m just scrutinized, regulated, criticized,  shamed and threatened. They call the punishment different names like ‘re-education.’  It’s still punishment.  The hitters get paid and the victims get framed.  When I was doing so much pro bono work, about 20% of that years income, because the parents didn’t pay their premium they and their  kids couldn’t see private doctor and they were told to go to government clinics where they didn’t want to go because everyone their judged them and put them down, I saw them.  I didn’t get paid.  May e $20,000 loss of income a year. I thought like any business I should be able to declare it as a loss so I did.  Revenue Canada sent out three people to audit me. It wasn’t an audit. It was harassment. They went through all my books.  At the end of a week, this thug said, “No doctor sees patients for free. We haven’t caught you yet, but we’re watching you and we will.”  Every private doctor I know works for free but we’re not allowed to declare our ‘losses’.  Even today people miss appointments and I  don’t pay but I can’t declare my losses against my earnings like all other businesses can.  The reason is that psychopaths think others think like they do.  Lizards think other think like lizards.  So our government doesn’t do anything for free.  And they can’t understand a physician any more than an insect can understand a bird.
It’s not good to stew. It’s better to help someone. I am so thankful. When my mind wasn’t working I used my body to carry folk. When I couldn’t lead I followed. Today I know the people I’ll see are hurting more.  I have so many people with cancer and surgeries and all I do is provide relief.  The heroin addicts are far gone but here and there one awakes and wants to live.  I’m happy to provide solace. I love to see people cured. But now we’re all getting older and the only cure for life is death.
I think of that too much these days.  Kierkegaard, “Life is suffering unto death’. I think a lot about my buddhist days.  I’m praying and meditating.  I miss rejoicing.  I miss dancing.  I have to have a shower and get to work. Everyone is always angry that I’m late. Some days I’m afraid to leave my office. A day of my life has not gone by that someone hasn’t been angry with me. A year in my life has not gone by that some official hasn’t hated me and tried with all their power to destroy me.
 For so many years the friends of the man I stopped killing people haunted my life. They were in so many high places and their loyalty to their drunken dangerous friend was admirable.  They were more afraid than me.  I saw that but now a couple of them have died and the others are retired.  They’re rich and have young wives and their children visit them.  They tell war stories like we all do.  They’re victors.
I don’t think I ever wanted to be a victor. Maybe if I’d set my eyes higher. As long as I can remember I've just wanted to survive and help others survive.  .  Thank you God for letting me survive. Thank you for the easing up of my back pain and the healing of my finger and my dog. Thank you that I can type.  Please banish my anger, my self pity, my negativity, my comparison, my jealousy and envy and my resentments. Help me rid myself of these character flaws so I can better celebrate this new day and be grateful for all that you have given me.

Nebraska - the movie

My friend, Anil, told me I had to see the Nebraska movie.  I bought it today.  Black and white.  Could have been my brother and my dad. They had a trip like this the year before he died.  Dad wanted to see something. There was no lottery involved. Just Dad wanting to go somewhere and my brother, Ron, taking him. It was a cross country trip like such trips could be with Dad. I travelled with him.  Not a lot of words. He was military too, like this father. Didn’t waste words.  Didn’t waste anything really. They’d seen a lot of waste in the war and had a lot of want in the depression.
The movie told the story of people. Farming people.  Bruce Dern was great. But they all were. Acting parts we all grew up with. Anyone whose known farming people, that’s what they’re like. My friend, Anil’s farming folk are from half a globe away.  I don’t think it matters. The small towns and the womenfolk.  The minimalism of it all. And the big sky.  God the sky was big when I was growing up on the prairies.  The distances were immense. The spaces between people could be like that too. Especially when people had known war.
And history changes. The different memories. The lies and fantasies and the way the mind plays tricks. Old people. It was a movie of old people but young people too.  Different now.  Not the young people back then. Back then it was just about chasing somen and cars. Now it’s still cars but other stuff.
I loved the movie.  Like I’ve grown to love my relatives and family as I’ve grown older.  I really thank the folk who made Nebraska. They got a whole lot right about what I remember from my childhood.  The last days with Dad were like this. The scene with the brothers all in the living room watching tv.  I’ve been a kid in that room with Dad and his brothers. The women in the kitchen chattering away, a real contrast to the silences of the men.
I expect it will win the Oscars.  Otherwise a hat and some love would do.  All a man really needs is family, a place to call home and a new truck.
Watching this movie I missed my dad and mom, my farming grandparents and the uncles and their wives.  I’m big city folk now compared to the last time I visited the farm.  All the old folk are dead and us young folk are called old by another generation.

Dad and Sunny, the dog

Sunny was the first dog I remember.  He was a liver and white springer spaniel that Dad brought home in Toronto before we left for Winnipeg. I'd have been  4 or 5 at the time.
In Ontario it was legal to hunt deer with dogs.  Sunny had been trained to do this.  In Manitoba it was illegal to hunt deer thus.
Nobody ever told Sunny.
Throughout his life Sunny would chase deer and herd them by us, all set up for the perfect shot that would never happen.  Sunny never failed to have a look of bewilderment on his face that no one shot the deer that he'd chase within yards. Sometimes we could literally reach out and touch the deer because Sonny clearly figured that Dad never shot them because Sonny hadn't got them close enough. The consequence would be that we'd be nearly knocked over by deer running through or by where usually were waiting in silence for ducks to fly over.   Then  Dad would be shouting at Sunny to return.  Sonny would be ecstatic chasing behind a panting deer he'd brought to within yards of us whereever we were.  Mostly it happened when we were duck or chicken hunting but it could happen whenever we were out walking in the woods or fishing.  Sunny would be there beside us and then an instant later he'd be gone. Then 10 or 15 minutes later there'd be all this noise in the woods, great crashing sounds.  Then an exhausted panicked deer would appear followed by this great Spring Spaniel, ears flopping, and shit eating grin on his face, kind of like Goofy from Walt Disney. Dad would start shouting, Ron and I would join in and Sunny would turn off but more than once he'd just keep going and bring that deer around for another pass thinking he had to get the deer closer in for us to shoot.   It was an instinct he couldn't break. An overwhelming desire to please his master by bringing him game.  Dad never punished him for it.  But it was sure to disrupt a dawn hunt.  I just figured Sunny got bored waiting for game to be ambush.  He and I were alike that way.  Both of us more stalkers that waiters.  Dad and Ron were the patient ones.  Sunny and I were impatient.
If there were other hunters they'd all be disturbed by the mayhem.  They'd sometimes shout at Dad to be quiet and Dad would shout back at them.  Sunny would look confused and disappointed we didn't shoot the deer.  He never could figure us out that way.  In time  things would return to quiet and the ducks flights would start to come over like clockwork. When they did hundreds of guns it seemed opened up like anti aircraft guns. Thousands of shots would be fired and maybe one duck out of the hundreds would fall from the sky.

Sunny would sit with rapt attention by Dad's side when we'd hear a flight of ducks coming in overhead.  Dad and Ron would rise and so would he. They'd shoot, with Dad saying to Ron 'lead the bird, lead the bird' .  Almost miraculously a bird would occasionally fall out of the sky.  Sunny would see that and be off like a shot.  He'd bound through the brown  and green bullrushes, his great springer ears flapping every leap he took till he landed in the cold marsh waters. Then he was off like an olympic swimmer keeping his eye on the fallen bird till he could clamp his mouth on it's side. Then he'd turn around and swim back to us, walking through the bull rushes to give Dad the bird, one truly jubilant dog.  Just watching this dog at work was worth the trip and so much apart of the hunt all told.

Dad would be full of praise. Man and dog would marvel at the beauty of the bird, the mallard plummage in fall, bright green feathers on the drake.  "Good dog, Sunny,'  Dad would say over and over.  "Isn't that a lovely bird." Sonny's stump of a tail didn't stop shaking when Dad praised him. Then we'd get back in position waiting for the next flock to fly over.

Sunny's other skill was finding ducks that other hunters shot.  As a family we always bet that Sunny would get more ducks than Dad and usually he did.  One time though he brought back another hunter's game bag full of ducks.  Sunny was so pleased with himself and all ready for the praise he expected from Dad when behind him the hunter whose game bag he'd stolen came stumbling through the heavy marsh weeds and bush.
He was obviously drunk and very angry, cursing Sunny as he staggered and swayed up to where we were. Everyone wore hip waiters so it was heavy going at the best of times slogging through the marsh.  This fellow was obviously done in by the ordeal of the chase.

"Your dog stole my game bag." he shouted at Dad.
"You shouldn't  be so drunk hunting that a dog could steal your game bag." Dad shot back.

Sunny was real disappointed when Dad gave the game bag back but typical of Sunny he just found another wounded duck and brought it back to Dad. Since some of the ducks he retrieved we dead we suspected he might be stealing them from other hunters too and the whole game bag did tend to point to that. Dad took his gifts nonetheless praising him for contributing to the pot.  

This was Nettle Marsh close outside of Winnipeg.  Hundreds of hunters surrounded this little postage stamp of a swamp where thousands  of ducks flew in all fall.  Every 20 paces or so there'd be a nother hunter.

That's where I got shot too. I was a young boy and I screamed at Dad when the shot hit my thigh. It was bird shot and hardly ripped the jeans but it was horrifying nonetheless. Dad, the minute he saw this stood up, and started blasting across the marsh in the direction the fire had come from.  Some guys started shouting back.

"Hey mister you're shooting at us."
"I know I am, you just shot my son.  Watch where you're shooting."  Dad said spent shot couldn't do any harm except it still could blind you and guys should know what's beyond where they're shooting at all times. He used any opportunity to teach us lessons.

Everyone was packed in so close at Nettle.  The guys had obviously shot at a low flying bird and the pellets that sprayed me had just been falling out of the air without that much force. But around there everyone knew to shoot high because of the close proximity of other hunters all sides of the swamp.  That's why Dad gave the guy drinking heck too.  Dad took hunting seriously.  He didn't drink and he didn't like others drinking around guns either.

After that we didn't hunt Netle Marsh much.  Dad had a lot of explaining to do to Mom because of the shot pattern on my pants.  I think I was kept home from a few hunts after that too, till Mom simmered some.  All I wanted to do though was to go hunting with my Dad, my older brother Ron and our dog Sunny. Those were the best of times.

Dad was always pointing out things of nature and whispering to us kids in a conspiratory way.  "See there's the muskrat. That's his home he's built. The entrance will be under the water. See he's taking something in his mouth down to his home."  We'd watch the muskrat dive and disappear, not likely to have seen it at all were Dad not to point it out.  "Shsh, there's a coyote, see him there by the bull rushes. See him watching us,  Billy." Sure enough there'd be a coyote standing by the edge of the marsh but again I'd never have seen him had Dad not pointed him out first.

I remember the first time Dad let me shoot the 12 guage shot gun. I was begging and pouting and whining while Dad and Ron were laughing that I was too small for the big gun. I was allowed to shoot the 22 but the 12 guage shot gun was just too big for me, they'd say. I must have been 7 or 8 when this interchange occurred.  Dad let in and loaded the gun for me that one day.  He gave me all the instructions, like he always did. He really was a great teacher.  I did everything just as I was told but when I pulled the trigger I was literally lifted backwards in the air 10 feet to land on my butt in the swamp.

My shoulder was sore but mostly sitting there in the wet swamp water I was embarrassed.  Dad took the gun and helped me up.

"I guess you're not big enough for a shot gun yet , eh Billy? " Dad said. There was no more whining and begging after that. I was just glad to be along for the early morning duck hunts.  Mom would pack sandwiches, often cheese slices on bread, with hard boiled eggs and a thermos of hot chocolate. We'd sit in the cabin of the truck eating together watching the sun come up. In the afternoon we'd usually sit outside on the ground often with our backs against a hay stack in the autumn oranges, yellows and browns.  We'd eat and rest a bit and then we'd be off again, hiking about the marsh or fields. Mom always packed lots of food for us.  While there were lucky days it was not uncommon for us to come home with only one or two birds. Were it not for all the food mom packed we'd have gone hungry for sure. But the hunt wasn't about the game for Dad, though that was good, it was mostly about being out in nature with the boys and the dog.  We never had a bad hunt as far as Dad was concerned.

When we were prairie chicken hunting the dog would run ahead and raise the birds. Dad and Ron would shoot the birds on the fly, my brother Ron probably becoming a better shot than Dad as we grew older. When Dad and Ron and I were chicken hunting I'd sometimes get to shoot the 22 rifle.  Ron and Dad had the shot guns but I actually shot the occasional grouse and chicken too.  Dad was all praise when Sunny brought my bird back to me.  Sunny brought all the birds back to Dad but he'd shew Sunny over to whichever one of us had actually shot the bird.  Sunny was Dad's dog and they were inseparable.

Mom cooked all the ducks and chickens so we had great wild game meals in the fall.  Dad would take us to the Duck Hunting Club too for fowl suppers, all the hunters bringing in game and their wives volunteering to cook. Great feasts where the men and boys got together to tell over and over the hunting stories of the fall.  Dad was more  in his element here than at church suppers but Mom and Dad were both good sports. She'd accompany him to the gun club events and he accompanied her to the church events.  It was figured both were important for Ron and my upbringing.

The dog Sunny was at Dad's side whenever he could be and loved riding in Dad's truck with him. Dad was always one for feeding the dog under the table too so Sunny was always there from the beginning to the end of the meal waiting for treats from Dad.  Dad never ceased to enjoy playing with Sunny either. He'd suddenly shout "where is it,  Sunny!" and Sunny would be chasing all over the house looking for an imaginary bird with us kids running behind him and Mom trying not to get knocked down by the melee .

Just bringing a gun out of the gun case got Sunny howling. We'd do that and when the excitement settled because we really weren't going hunting, it was usually dead of winter with 10 feet of snow outside that Dad's pranks would be at their height, Dad would then grab Sunny and roll about with him, saying "You mutt, you mutt".  Us kids would pile on and the four of us would be rolling around on the living room floor, Dad roughhousing with the dog and Ron and I trying to pull Dad down to help Sunny.  Mom would look on with a smile, our tousles often ending because she'd bring on some ice cream or find us a little chocolate she'd been hiding somewhere.

After all the roughhousing with the dog and kids, Dad would often hug Mom in the hallways, the two of them laughing as Mom slipped away insisting she still had things to do.  "Not in front of the kids," was a phrase we heard at times like that but you could tell her heart wasn't into what she was saying.

Dad - 2

Mom had the most beautiful auburn hair that cascaded to her shoulders.  She is standing beside dad in the photo taken on their wedding day.  It's a black and white picture with the Dad and his best man in their air force blues, and Mom and her bridesmaid in suits. I'm sure there's a picture somewhere of her in a wedding dress but it's that one of the young women and young men smiling in black and white that comes to mind..  The blue of Dad's uniform and the red of Mom's hair is  not captured in the black and white picture that despite that was so colourful with promise of future.
Mom and Dad met at a serviceman's dance in Toronto.  Mom was Baptist, with two sisters, Sarah and Hannah.  She was closest to Sarah aka  Sally. Aunt Sally would be very much an integral part of our family's life as the years rolled on.  Sarah was working as the executive assistant to the Canadian Ambassador in Washington DC while Mom was a secretary in Toronto.
There's a joke that goes, "Why don't Baptists make love standing up?  Because they're afraid it might lead to dancing."  Despite or because of the taboo,  Mom and Dad fell in love on the dance floor and never stopped dancing or going to church.  Even in their 80's they would cut a fine figure on the dance floor, waltzing and fox trotting to the big band and country music of their era.
My Aunt Sally told me later that Dad and Mom were head over heals in love from the moment they met.  Dad was a fine country gentleman and Mom,  a true city lady.  When they married, they moved in with Mom's parents, to save money for a house.
Years later Dad would tell me, "Those were tough times, son.  All the men were mustering out of the forces and there just weren't enough jobs.  The men who hadn't gone into the service had the plum jobs and those of us who came out after the war had to take whatever we could find. Alot of good men were out of work and not too happy with the government either."
Dad did whatever he could for work until he got his position with Morris Crane Company. Somewhere along the line he'd got his  millwright papers,  along with some other 'tickets', always studying, and always excelling.   He'd complete his Engineering Diploma he'd started in the Air Force at night school in the early fifties.   My brother Ron, 4 years older than me came along not that long after the marriage.  I believe he was born when they were still living with mom's folks.  By the time they had me they had their own house,  though they kept a boarder upstairs to help pay for it.  Hannah married a dentist and had my cousin Ruth Anne.   Aunt Sally married a painter but never had children. The painter turned out to be a drunk and Aunt Sally separating to the horror of the church and community.  With the church and their friends, the girls had, their parents and the children, Dad had steady work  and fishing buddieshe liked.  Those early years were golden years to them both.
Dad spoke with pride of his work with the big cranes in those years.  Once when we were at Niagara Falls when he was in his 70's he'd tell me, "Morris Crane was hired to put a structure up over the falls one year.  I was asked if it could be done. I said it could even though I didn't know how at the time. That was quite a job, working over those falls with the big crane."   That's how we'd learn of things he'd done.  A nugget of his life would just drop like that when he was older.
When Mom died  and Dad was in his late 80's he shared with my brother and I that he'd been hang gliding with his cousin a few years before.  "Why didn't you ever tell us," we asked.  "I was afraid you tell your mother," he said and went on to tell about his motorcycle adventures in his late 70's and early 80's with the same cousin. Both the wives had thought the men were just getting together for coffee.
Mom and Dad were mostly modest people. They didn't think that anything they were doing was important or out of the ordinary. Big things were being done all over the country but the men who'd served for many years in the war were all just glad to be working together building a future.  Dad never saw his part as anything special.  Soon Mom would give up work and look after her babies.  That was all she'd wanted to do in those early years.  Canada was a country then where family really was important. Dad was proud when he said, "I made sure your mother didn't have to work unless she wanted to."  Mom never worked full time again but in later years worked part time as a journalist, glad she didn't have to leave her home to do her work.
As long back as I can remember Dad loved to fish.  In Ontario my earliest memories are Dad teaching me to catch sun fish off the dock.  The first dog  I remember was Sunny, an English Springer who'd be at Dad's side for all of my childhood.
I always thought my brother was my father's favourite because he was first and he was more useful. He was  able to keep up with Dad better and do things better. I remember clinging more to my Mom's skirts in those earliest years.  But then the memories shift to Mom staying in the house, tent or trailer and my brother, me and the dog ranging after dad on adventures and expeditions.  Fishing wasn't just casting a line off a shore. It was boats and motors and even with them it might involve further hikes and expeditions to higher more secluded lakes after motoring up rivers or crossing lakes.  In those summer fishing and hiking days with his sons,  Dad would have shorts and a white under shirt.  Maybe because of my height or the fact that it's no longer the fashion, I remember he wore garters that held up his socks.  When we got back home to Mom he'd always have something, a fish or two, wild berries, bull rushes or something. As kids we'd have our pocketsful of shells and shiny pebbles to show her too.  Sometimes we all brought flowers.  Mom and Dad would  hug and kiss.  Always Mom would l say something about 'as long as the boys are safe." Which made all the bear stories of those camping years even more poignant considering Dad's promises that everything would be okay. Then some big black bear with cubs would wander by and Dad would try as much to save face as to protect his family.
The family album shows pictures of a really happy family then. It's all I remember too. Those camping summers were the best starting as early as I can remember and going all the way into the early teen years.
When we were still in Toronto Dad moved from Morris Crane to Mathew Conveyor Company.  He said later it was because there was more room for advancement, higher pay, more opportunity.
Mathew Conveyors gave Dad work out west.  Winnipeg.  Dad had come from Manitoba and now when I was 5 years old we'd be moving back there as a family.  For Mom, being an  Eastern Canadian big city girl of Toronto, the news of going to hick town Winnipeg, leaving her mother and sisters, would be the same as being posted to the moon.  It would take her years to adapt to the change.  To here she'd left civilization.  In those days, Toronto was called, Toronto the good and Winnipeg, a western fronteir town was anything but good.  The fact remains that Winnipeg was and is the centre of Canada, a hub for communication and transportation, no longer just for the prairie "breadbasket of the world" but increasingly a cosmopolitan world of it's own.
We moved to Fort Rouge.  Mom joined Trinity Baptist Church like this was a life ring thrown to her by God.  Trinity Baptist Church for years to come would protect her from heathens, Indians,  westerners, Anglicans and Catholics. To my family Jews were fine, blacks were fine,  it was the papists who were most suspect.  I'm glad to say it didn't take many years before Mom's views mellowed with age. In their middle years Mom and Dad had friends of every walk of life, a judge for a friend and a collection of Asians whose food they both grew to love.  
In Fort Rouge, we had the whole second floor of a great old house which Mom hardly left those first months except to go to church down the street. Ron and I were enrolled in school on Osborne street, The school is no longer there but Osborne Village has become the funky centre of the city.  I remember school well because there was a huge shute we'd practice sliding down for fire drills. All us kids thought that was so cool we hoped for a fire just to be able to take that huge slide for real.
Mathew Conveyor Company had the contract for putting in all the conveyor belts that would move the mail about Winnipeg's new post office. I guess the job lasted a couple of years at least.  Later Dad would install the conveyor system for the new International Airport as well, Mathew Conveyors moving all the luggage to and from the jets.  I learned Dad was in charge of 150 men at a time in those days.  At home we'd hear how stupid the designers and architects were back east.  Dad was forever spreading out blue prints and cursing because machines were too big for the spaces alotted for them despite what the blue prints said.  He'd have to knock out walls or get new steel parts manufacturered locally to make up for the smozzle of the fanciful plans.  When he'd curse,  Mom would alwyas say, "Not in front of the kids."  This was when 'Darn' was the worst curse I heard Dad saying.  Ron and I were always hanging around Dad when ever we could, pretty much like a couple of puppies, getting in the way, or just watching in awe.  Dad was where the action was and we were always hoping to join in. As kids we really did appreciate what a great father we had, other kids not having Dad's that took them camping, fishing, or having homes where their parents were really there for them.
Years later as a teen ager, I'd get my millwright helpers papers so I could work one summer with Dad.  I'd work then with some of the men who'd worked on different projects with him over the previous decade.  It was something special for me, a teen ager, who was having his own troubles with his strict air force father, to learn, "Your Dad's the best man I've ever worked for."  "No boss like your Dad, kid".  "Alot of other guys in his position wear a suit and don't get their hands dirty but whenever there's something difficult needing being done, your Dad's right there first in his coveralls."  "Just don't swear around your old man. He doesn't go for that. Your Dad's a genius with machines.'
I was a thoroughly self centred little know-it- all teen ager so it was something else to work along side my father with dozens of men who looked up to and admired him.  I remember my brother telling me years later.  "The only time I remember Dad in suits was with mom at church.   I found out later that all the men with his seniority never wore coveralls whereas Dad pretty well lived in them."
One summer when he was doing a job in Saskatoon and I was 12, Mom sent me out to join him for a week or two.  That's when I saw a whole other side of him. The men he worked with would go riding after work so Dad took me along. Here he was with a bunch of cowboys and even some cowgirls all in their western element. We'd gallop all over that summer racing each other on horses. It's hard to imagine how I didn't know this but Dad could be a real wild cowboy with the best of them.  Here I was watching Bonanza and reading novels about cowboys and somehow I'd forgotten that here was Dad raised on horses and thoroughly at home in the saddle, all of us together forming a regular possee as we rode across the Saskatchewan farmlands.
We were only a couple of years in Winnipeg before it became pretty clear we were going to stay. Mathew's had put Dad in charge of their Western installations so over the next years he'd be doing major construction projects in Winnipeg, all over Manitoba, Saskatchewan and then as far west as Calgary.  Mom didn't like that he'd be away for weeks at a time then but when we moved to Fort Garry she settled into finally being a transplanted Eastern girl living in the wild west.  She loved her home and garden there with all her community club and school friends.  Reporting for the Fort Garry Lance newspaper she was into every aspect of the community, always up on anything that was happening till she was thoroughly and irrevocably immersed in Fort Garry affairs.  Once we were in school there I don't think she thought twice about Toronto. The first year or two there'd been doubt and indecision for her but then Winnipeg became her home. Dad loved his work and home there too.
I remember the day Dad bought 793 North Drive, Fort Garry. It was a red brick bungalo which had been owned by an elderly women with a couple of little British bulldogs.    It was a city block from Viscount Alexander Elementary and Junior High School, and maybe 4 blocks from Vincent Massey High school.  There was a community centre with outdoor hockey rink between us and the high school and the Red River, golf course and badminton club a block in the other direction.  A couple of blocks away was Pembina Highway, the main artery of the south side of the Winnipeg then, leading right out to the University where my brother would get his undergraduate degree. Dad was really proud of Ron getting that University Degree but he was happiest of all when Dad's son Graeme got his Engineering Degree decades later.
It was because the schools were the best closest to the university that Dad and Mom picked Fort Gary.   Dad put alot of emphasis on education.  My brother and I would end up doing a whole lot of university so I'd tell people I was a slow learning and had to have a whole lot of remedial education at University. Still, all I can remember Dad and Mom expecting of us was that we'd finish high school.  "I moved here so you boys would have the opportunity to go to good schools and I expect you to complete high school if you don't do anything else." Report cards and passing grades were really important in our family.  Ron usually got A's so he was a hard act to follow.  I don't know if my brother who was always the better student remember that message as strongly as I do but it was one of those things that probably helped me alot to get high school behind me despite being expelled and having to make up a course before I could go onto college. .
The big garden the house had was all for Mom.  Dad and Mom talked alot about growing things and us kids were incorporated into her plans each year for different crops but the garden was Mom's. There were three great spruce trees and a big back yard that Dad would build a massive two car garage on. He'd have a place for his truck and car.  As long as I could remember we always had an old pickup and a new car.  The car was mostly for taking Mom to church while the truck was for everything else.
The only thing the neighbourhood didn't have was a 'good' church .  Until I finished high school, Dad would drive Mom to the Trinity Baptist Church in Fort Rouge because Mom was Baptist No other Christian denomination would do. There was an Anglican, Catholic and Fort Garry United Church all a block from our house but Mom wouldn't have anything to do with them.    When as a young adult I returned to church at Fort Garry United where I taught Sunday School, Mom finally figured the United Church might have something if it could have influence on her heathen son.  Both Dad and Mom became members of Fort Garry United Church after that and for years enjoyed membership in that congregation.
Dad always went to church with Mom when we were young. The minister at Trinity Baptist was the haranguing sort, running on all about hell and damnation.  More often than not Dad would be nodding off. I remember squirming alot as a little boy. The best memories were when Aunt Sally joined us and the two sisters would  literally sing their lungs out.  Spring hats and gloves were a thing back then . But Sunday School was better as a kid..  Trinity Baptist had big suppers in the basement and fun picnics. Dad was really fond of the suppers and a whole lot of fun at a picnic.  He'd always participate and Mom who was shy could often been seen being tugged along by him to join in some game the minister and his wife proposed for the adults and children to play.  Murray Wade became Dad's good friend there.  Murray took  on the job of being in charge of the cubs and  boy scouts 'only if John's going to be there to help me with the outdoor stuff". Everyone knew Dad, with his northern origins, hunting and fishing, and time in the service was the 'outdoors man', who could be trusted.  So I've got memories of Boy Scout Snow Train and Boy Scout Camp with my Dad and Murray Wade, my brother and a whole lot of other boys whose fathers were mostly not involved as much in their lives as a few of the fathers, including Dad, were involved in ours.
Dad wasn't that much for sport except hockey.  He used to mock us kids for needing pads declaring "all we had when I was growing up was rolled up newspaper to protect our knees and shins." The best skating was the winter the Red River froze and we all skated forever. When I heard Sarah McLaughlin singing, Joni Mitchell's song, I wish I had a river, so I could skate away" I figured she must have been on the Red River when it froze solid and the wind blew the snow away for miles.  Dad took us toboganning on the banks of the river and even made me a wood bobsled that almost got my brother and I killed it went so fast.
Hockey Night in Canada on TV was as important to our house as anything I can remember.  We'd dress up in our hockey sweaters and the whole family would cheer for our respective teams. Mom would make pop corn. I remember Ed Sullivan too, as a favourite show of Dad's.
Dad  always watched the news on tv.  He  read the Winnipeg Free Press religiously, while Mom and Dad listened to CJOB every morning. They especially enjoyed "Beefs and Bouguets' when people would phone in and share what they liked or didn't like about Winnipeg  that day.
I remember Dad saying that "church people are good people but alot of them don't know how to do anything.  I had to fix the roof at Trinity Baptist and alot of the time they're good for a lot of talk but not for much else." In later years when I joined the Anglican church Mom and Dad did too simply because a local priest took an interest in them as old people, coming around to where they were staying and saving them the effort of getting out.
Church was important to Mom when we were young but became more important to Dad when he got older.  Gord Laidlaw and he would wax poetic in the back lane about all things philosophical and religious. The Anglican church manse was the house next door and Dad befriended the minister though Mom being "staunch" Baptist then shied from too close contact with his wife.
When we were older Dad told me he'd made friends with a catholic priest in the country too and they had lots of conversations together. Those were the years when Dad and I began duck hunting together. Lots of time driving around together in the truck with me a young man asking my father about all things.  Given how estranged we'd been when I was a teen ager I'd never have believed those fall conversations could have occurred. As many a young man has said, "My father grew up a whole lot when I got into my twenties.
When Dad was younger and anyone asked him about church or religion, he 'd always say, "I belong to the round church. That's so the devil can't catch me in the corners."
When we were young Dad joined the Fort Garry Game and Fish Association. That's where my brother and I got our first marksmanship awards with 22 long rifles. We also ate a whole lot of wild game there. Dad was also fond of the Fowl suppers the communities around Winnipeg would put on to celebrate harvest season in the falls. We'd climb in the car on a Saturday evening end up in some community hall or church out of town where there'd be wall to wall food prepared by the farmer's wives from their own farms. As boys we'd eat turkey and pumpkin pie till we could hardly walk while Mom and Dad enjoyed talking with all the folk about matters of farming and industry.
Hunting trips were Dad were a fine time for us boys and later I'd share more times hunting with Dad when I took up hunting again as a young man. I remember my friend Kirk sharing with friends years later how he'd go over to our house and a deer would be hanging from the rafters in the basement.  The year Dad shot a moose I remember eating so much moose meat I was trying to trade it for a peanut butter sandwich one lunch hour at school, something I'd never do today.  Dad shot that moose in winter, quartered it in the freezing cold and hauled it out for miles on a toboggan.  That and many hunting stories were told around our home.  Ron eventually went big game hunting with Dad but Mom only let me join my father and brother for the prairie chicken and duck hunting because she was fearful about her little boy getting shot during deer hunting season.  
Mom had her garden where she grew vegetables and gladiolas that won awards in the local horticultural show.  Ron really picked up her green thumb. I eventually got into raises cactus with some success. Dad built his garage and most of my childhood I remember handing sprockets and wrenches to my brother who either used them or handed them on to Dad who would be lying on his back  either under the truck or under the car.  It was never any surprise to me that when I finally got into Surgery all the surgeons sought me as an assistant. I'd been so well trained by my other brother and father from the age of 5 to 10 that I was a natch as a surgical assistant.
Dad fixed everything. If he couldn't fix a thing he'd build himself a new one. Where I'd in later years would read novels Dad's book shelves were full of 'how to" books.   And  long as I can remember every man in our neighbourhood all along the back lanes where the men congregated would come round to ask Dad for advice on their various home work projects. Our throw away generation hadn't come into being as yet.  Everyone was still making do and most spring, summer and fall weekends most of  the men would be working on their houses or or building something in their yards.  Dad put a space heater in the garage so he could work in there when it was downright cold. This was Winnipeg where a space heater didn't do much for getting rid of the chill but that didn't stop Dad from fixing changing the oil in his truck in the middle of winter if he had a mind to do that.
One summer he'd make a 16 foot boat from plywood and hard wood.  It sure was a sturdy thing.  "I didn't know it would be so heavy," he said when it was finished and my brother and I were helping him get it on a trailer for the first time.  When Dad made something it wad indestructible.  "Made to last" was a favourite saying in those days. Cementing the deck, the stairs and walk ways was another of Dad's bigger projects.
There were always projects going on around the house. He built an extra room in the front basement.  That was a heck of a big job especially trying to get around all the regulations that were coming in to employ people who couldn't do anything themselves but criticize other people's endeavours.  Dad couldn't put a door on the room he built or they'd raise his taxes so there was this room that passed as a 'bomb shelter' , served more for storage of mom's preserves than anything else, but had a curtain on because a door would have increased the tax. He couldn't put a window in it either or that would have affected some other regulation.  When such issues came up it was usually associated with my mom saying something like "Don't curse around your children".  Cursing for Dad was always something tame like "Dogoneit, Jean or 'heck' but that was always enough to bring on my mother's approbation.
Grandmother came to live with us in her old age. She had a bed in the sun room of the house. It was called the 'sun room' because there were windows all around the front and the sun shone in brightest there especially in winter months.  That's where Mom always had her typewriter and  Christmas cactus too.  When I got fish tanks for my siamese fighting fish thats' where they went too.     But first grand ma lived and died there, Dad taking care of her after her husband died in Toronto. She came out to live out her last years gnarled with arthritis cared for by Mom and Dad with her grandson's around to fetch things.  She died in the sun room passingly peacefully with her family around.  I was more curious than anything else with the old people. Mom's mom and Dad's dad were the oldest people I knew when we were little.
Dad's dad would come down most years late fall after the summer's ranch and farm harvest was done.  I remember he always drove one of those huge boats of a car which old men favoured. Alot of steel and guaranteed to survive any crash though the same couldn't be said for anything he would hit.  Usually one or two of Dad's brothers would come along with grandad and the whole lot would be put up in the house.  Sometimes cousins came as well.  These were serious family events with lots of food and adults talking and kids hanging back listening.  Grand dad would be there to see Dad.  He was glad to see his grandsons but mostly he wanted to talk to Dad.  They'd talk about cattle,  lumber prices and that sort of thing. Prime Minister John Diefenbaker figured into a lot of the conversations the men would have back then.  Diefenbacker being a western man, there was hope on the prairies that politically the country might get beyond Montreal and Toronto where all the money and politics in Canada seemed to get caught. Not much love for Quebec out west though Dad loved to join in the winter festivities of St. Boniface.
When my dad's favourite uncle arrived and played guitar singing like Johnny Cash those were good times too.   When Aunt Sally came it was mostly to see us boys and those were fun times indeed.  We didn't have family around in the city but several times a year someone would be visitting and staying over , the couch in the living room a roll away that converted to a bed.  After Grandma died her bed in the sun room would be another place for more to stay. And sometimes there would be sleeping bags on the floor. All the space of the house would be used up for sleeping room. Then card tables and folding chairs would be brought out to make up extra tables for meals.
Dad had made Mom a glass faced cabinet painted white that ran either side of the mantel piece over the electric fire place in the living room.  Mom had her fine china in that and maybe 2 or three times a year it would come out. Mostly when Aunt Sally or someone else in the family visitted.  On the mantel piece there was the wooden chiming clock which might get round up when guests came over.  A picture of Mom and dad when they were married, Dad in uniform, mom with that great head of hair and serenely happy face The  frame was one that dad had made. It was a little house shaped frame that hung between two 50 caliber shells he'd taken from a Spitfire that had crashed.
The heavy walnut gun cabinet that stood in the sun room was another cabinet Dad had built himself, with slots for several rifles to stand, a  glass door  and a drawer at the bottom to hold ammunition.  When the Kennedy Missile Crisis was on and we all figured the Russians were going to invade I'd have nightmares of soldiers on the lawn. That gun case comforted  me then because I always figured Dad with his 30 30 lever action and my older brother Ron with the bolt action 22 would be able to protect our home, my mom, the dog and me from the Russians if they ever invaded.
Those years of nuclear threat and fire drills in the schools with all us kids on our hands and knees ready to 'kiss our asses' good bye were terrible years.  But they were years of UFO's too. I remember a night all the men were on the back lane with binoculars looking at this cigar shaped light in the air that gave off spinning flying saucers that came down in the atmosphere and then returned to the mother ship all in the space of an hour.  Gord Laidlaw, Kirk's father, the University Alumni Chemist was there, with my Dad and Ed Yuzak, both Air Force, and then us kids. They were all convinced it was aliens because no one had seen anything like that.  "The Military doesn't have anything that moves like that." Ed said.  The saucers kind of flitted and when they rejoined the cigar shaped light that thing disappeared in a streak. "Nothing we know can go that fast." said Gord.
The next day similiar sightings had been made all over Winnipeg but the government was saying it was a freak weather phenomena. Being in the Air Force Dad took a keen interest in NASA. We all watched when there were rocket launches. No one was happy that the Russians had got into space first but we were sure glad when the US caught up.
When I was still a boy and Ron was not yet a teen Dad took Aunt Sally Mom and the two of us driving across the country.  He'd get two weeks vacation and it wasn't anything for him to drive to Vancouver or Toronto. We had a Morris Mini in the early years and later he'd have the American Motors Cars. He stayed with them because he had the tools for fixing them. He cursed when my brother brought home a European car to get help fixing it because it needed its own set of  metric tools.
It was Rambler with the fold down seat  that became a bed, that I remember most, followed by the Ambassador he was proudest of.  After he had the Ambassador car he bought Mom a mink coat and the two of them would drive about in that car like they'd finally arrived.  Ron and I were on our way out of the home by then, the child rearing part of Dad's life coming to a close. Not that it ever really ended  I certainly never stopped coming back and badgering the two of them for more parenting asking all manner of questions and getting my full share of answers to a host of adult questions.
Ron and Dad would do a lot over the years together just like Ron would do with his sons when they grew up.  I'd not say we were 'pals' when we were older but Dad and I certainly became friends.  He was of an era when men didn't open up much. So I think Mom was the only one who really got to know him really well.  She and his Canadian Veteran friends were the ones he was closest to. As we matured he began to realize with quite a struggle that we had become men and a whole new relationship developed among us.  For me it was with hunting and fishing, boating and travelling whereas with Ron it was around his family and houses.
When we were young Dad took us fishing and camping and that what we did as a family most every weekend. There was the centre poled pointy topped four man brown canvas tent when we were small. Two adults, 2 kids and a dog fit in that. Then there was the blue rectangular tent we grew into followed by the real cadillac of tents that mom liked, one with a mosquito net front room where she could put her folding picnic table. I remember her happy as a clam in that tent reading magazines in a folding camp chair safe from the mosquitoes while Dad and us boys took off in the motor boat to catch pickeral and pike or just explore the environs of Blue Lake or one of the other great outdoor spots of Manitoba.
When we asked Dad about having a cottage he'd say, "why have a cottage, you have a house, with a tent you can go anywhere."  And we did.
There was a short time that they had a tent trailer but then when we moved out of the house  they graduated into their first RV. Mom was really in heaven then and Dad could go anywhere. They joined Good Sam Club.  The RV was a Queen and they began touring all overCanada and  the northern and southern states spending summers travelling from campground to campground. In the winter every couple of years Dad would take mom on a cruise somewhere around the world.
"Your mother would love her cruises," he'd tell us in later years. "I'd just say, Jean, don't you think it's time for another cruise and she'd have all the brochures and atlases out and be planning weeks and months in advance."
Mom and Dad were never 'rich' and we always lived 'frugal'.  I had my brother's hand me down clothes and we lived by the sayings 'waste not want not' and 'save the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves."  But they invested shrewdly and Dad bought an Apartment Building he did all the maintenance on. After he retired from Mathew Conveyors he continued to work with his own building supply company that allowed him to travel to small towns all over Manitoba enjoying the socializing with country folk as much as anything else, working right up to his eighties when he wasn't off galavanting with mom or fishing from the canoe he got in later years with a 2 hp motor.
When I once as a teen ager, not my better years in retrospect, I compared our old Rambler with a neighbours flash new car, he said, "Bill, everything we have I own. Most of the neighbours here don't own anything. The bank owns it. I don't believe in buying things on credit unless I have to. So we're not going to get a new car just because you want one that's flashy."
There in lay a lot of the difference between my parents and me as a teen ager.  Mom would say,"We don't have to keep up with the Jones"  We never knew any Jones but as a teen ager I was mostly concerned with my image.  I got a job at a restaurant starting work as a bus boy at the Pancake House mostly so I could get the latest fashion in clothes. I got a portable phonograph too.  Dad liked to play country music. With my own phonograph I could play the Beatles and that 'goddawful Bob Dylan' I liked as a kid.  Dad thought Gordon Lightfoot was pretty good music but couldn't stand the rest of the 'junk' I listened too.  Fortunately for me my brother's taste in music, Elvis Presley, wasn't much better to my Dad's ears.  He liked Gene Autry and Johnnie Cash and my mom liked Gospel.  I regret today that my Dad after long days of work would come home to hear my music playing loudly and the fights of the teen years would be on.
When we were growing up the boys all had short hair and a trip to the barber was a regular bonding event that carried on till the Beattles and long hair came along.  Being a military man Dad never did get over my 'girlish' hair or all the girls I went out with.  Mom was equally dismayed by my penchant for girlfriends but as long as I kept up my grades they put up with me. My Aunt Sally was more more direct. She just said to my face one year. "You used to be such a nice boy and now you're impossible ".  I'd left the church where as my brother stayed.  Dad didn't know what to make of me.
To his credit Dad was there when I came home, welcoming me back after the months I'd been away, having 'moved out' in one of our fights. Home again 'as long as I acknolwedged it was his house and his rules."  That last year I lived at home after high school when I got my first regular job, I was home before midnight and there was no loud music to bother anyone else in the house after 12 pm.  For a year I'd thought my dad so unreasonable but when it came to being hungry and not having a place to stay I found his rules more than reasonable.
A few years later I'd begin to be his friend again.  Teen years can be a trial.  I'm ashamed to think of myself smoking in my dad's house with a whiskey drink from my pocket flask, one elbow on his mantel telling mom and dad about life like only the way a pretentious kid can.  My father deserves a medal in retrospect for not killing me then and there.  Mom and Dad didn't smoke and didn't drink and I didn't know everything there was about life when I was 18 years old either. I just thought I did.
Dad's 94 now and if you asked him, he'd probably say he's still learning. He was always that kind of man. Humble. Wise and Good to the core.  What his cowboy friends would call a 'straight shooter'.  He sure did love my Mom , his family, and his work.