Age 6 and Viscount Alexander School, Fort Garry

I attended Viscount Alexander School, Fort Garry from Gr 1 to Gr. 9.  It’s funny looking back now but I had to be accompanied that first day of school by my brother. I was afraid and yet excited to be going to school. It was only a block and a half away but as a little 6 years old kid that was miles.  Our world in those days revolved around an area a few blocks from my home. Outside of that vaguely defined perimeter ‘that be dragons!’.

I remember the Gr. 1 teacher being very pretty and kind. At one point she leaned over my little desk and to this day I remember her perfect freckled breasts.  I was entranced and called  her ‘Mommy” to the delight of all the other kids.  

Children ‘shamed’ each other with laughter and teasing into more ‘adult’ behaviour.  The whole politically correct, use a wrecking ball instead of fingers when ever possible, movement truly misses the point.  It’s emphasis on anti bullying, and the fallacy of the ‘ends against the middle, results in  protecting children from needed social education.   Most respond as I did to a ‘nudge’.  I never called another teacher ‘mommy’, that’s for sure. Now I’m sad as I don’t remember my Gr. 1 teacher’s name and she truly was a delight. All I wanted to do was please her because she was so sweet.  All us children loved her. Was she Mrs. Murray?

We all had ‘home rooms’.  There were several Gr 1 classrooms with kids having their own home rooms.  It was a big enough school, maybe capable of having 300 students. I know the later high school, Vincent Massey, had a thousand students.  I expect there was this many students because Vincent Massey was funnelled students from three or four other elementary and junior high schools.  

I liked to read. See Dick Run books were great then.  I loved learning the alphabet and writing letters.  I liked art and crafts. I liked recess best. We played “Red Rover Red Rover I call Billy over” . The student called would run to the other line breaking free of his own.  We played lots of tag and proto soccer. Proto soccer is kicking a ball around without rules or any other aspect of the game. In summer however we’d always have a baseball game going.  Baseball was big in Fort Gary in the late 50’s.  There was also lots of playing outside and milling about. Recess was a lot of milling about. The girls milled about most where as us guys ran around screaming like banshees a lot. In winter at recess if it wasn’t too cold that we had to stay inside we’d all mostly walk about and mill about looking at our our hot breath forming clouds in the cold air.

Kirk was my constant companion but there were lots of us kids who formed alliances for a year or two then drifted a part. Playing on sports teams would define a lot of our friendship patterns.  There was a lot of sports at Viscount Alexander but lots of other clubs as well. The science club guys made friendships like I did later with the kids who were on the Volleyball Team.

There was intramural indoor sports where we played one class against another class in the gym, usually at noon hour. Then there were school teams that played against other schools in the city championships and going onto provincial and national championship.

Murder Ball was my favourite game in the gym. It was the most fun with brawls and lots of shoving and running for the boys. It’s since been outlawed in  school. 

Volleyball became really important in Junior High , grade 7 to 9, for us. Kirk really liked volleyball and would drag me out to play with him in the back lane. Then we’d “try out’ for the team and we got accepted .That began years of volleyball competitions.

Wesley and I got on the Student Council so were involved in student politics and petitioning the ‘administration’ for changes.  But that was all later.

Gr. 1 to Gr 5 was pretty routine. I remember getting the strap from the  gr 2 and grade 3 teachers . Not just once but more than once. Because they were primitive  sadistic barbarians didn’t stop me liking them a lot. Most of the adults were primitive sadistic barbarians when I was growing up so as kids we just tried to stay out of their reach.  Mostly I figured too that I deserved what punishment I got because mostly I wasn’t paying attention because something else was more interesting..  

I remember the day the classroom strap was removed with great relief. The  ‘strap’ had hung on the wall like a cat o nine tails.  I was ceremonially  removed by the principal to the chagrin of the teachers.   Then only the school principal could give the strap.  It was a good day for me.  I’d then get the strap from the principal. This meant leaving the classroom and walking down the hall to his office.   He hit a whole lot harder but now it was less frequent. It was in his office behind closed doors. Discrete. Not a public spectacle.  Before it had been standing at the front of the class holding back tears as the teacher’s strap stung my palm.  I only remember once getting the strap from the principal, maybe twice.  I got it from the teachers three or four times. 

I also remember that several of the women would  gather and consult each other on new  ‘punishments’ for Billy.  I once stood outside the classroom with books on my head and holding books up with my hands and they’d pile more and more on watching me. The women teachers stood around together marvelling at my stubbornness and ability to take it.  They were less angry than curious and cat like torturing a mouse.  Eventually lunch hour saved me I’d lasted 30 minutes sweating and shaking.  

Most of my trouble was fighting another guy.  He and I just seemed to get at it whenever we played games.  Others goaded us. He was taller and tougher but I was Wiley and more sophisticated in my fighting. We wrestled with little hitting back in that Grade 1 to grade 5 time. Always at recess.  I remember in the snow rolling and flipping and being flipped half the length of the field with all the school out watching us day after day.  The male teachers would be running along shouting at us but not willing to get in the middle of us.   We were equally matched. Neither of us ever ‘won’ but we’d both get the strap from the teacher and later the principal for fighting.

I’d later learn that he was the youngest like me but whereas I had one 4 year older brother I tossled with he had something like a dozen.  They lived on the ‘other side of the tracks’. He and I became friends enough later that he showed me his house.  It was smaller than our own but with 12 children rather than 2 under the roof. I couldn’t imagine how that may people lived in that little space. .  He said he was always fighting with his older brothers.  I felt so badly because when he came to school at recess, instead of getting a break, he ended up fighting with me and getting the strap.  I’d never thought of him as a kid with a story. He was just another combatant .  I was going to win or survive or take you out with me..  I always liked and admired him too.  I don’t know what happened to him but I always thought he was a good guy.

I was just explaining to a woman friend that guys roughhouse and fight and then often become lifelong friends. With girls she explained that wasn’t normal but rather that they held resentments and got back at the other years later.  As guys we fight and rarely in my experience did we hold onto long resentments.  We didn’t like guys who did ‘dirty’ things but if it was a ‘fair’ fight, if any fight is fair, we accepted the outcome.  We also fought with our best friends. Kirk and I roughhoused as did our brothers and us.  We knew too when to call ‘uncle’ to finish the fight. It was years later when we were older that the damaged swarmed and then put the boots to the guy down, curbed or knifed or shot him.

We weren’t like that. All through childhood it was like a bunch of cowboys and we fought honourably.   I remember that about Viscount Alexander those first few years.  Elementary School.  Junior high was a whole different world.  Gr. 6 was the turning point too.  We were children and as children it was a pretty good time.

Except the Kennedy Missile Crisis.  I remember us being taught to get down on our knees inside beside the walls of the schools and literally kiss our ass good bye when the alarms sounded.  Winnipeg was in the flight path to the major American missile silos across the border.  The whole city had sirens and drills.  I remember this most because when this lady teacher told us to do this I asked ‘but what about radiation”.  This caused her to spin around with her face in her hands and run out of the room on her high heels. The big double breasted suited principal came back holding her by the shoulder beside him as she continued to weep.  In front of the class, he said , “Billy, stop upsetting the teacher. Just do as you’re told.”  It wasn’t like the first time I’d heard that.

Kirk and I had discussed radiation at length. His father was a chemist and mine an engineer and our neighbour had been a fighter pilot. As kids we listened in on their conversations outside in the back lane.  We looked things up at the library too. We sure upset a whole lot of folk asking them about radiation. It was like it was beyond their comprehension yet they’d known gas in the war and that was as close as they could get to considering it.  It turned out that our parents talked to the school then and Kirk and I had special dispensation to run home if the alarm went off rather than kissing our ass good bye beside a school wall. We lived only a block away.  

That was a really big event in my elementary school year.

The only other event of note was when Rusty someone’s big dog humped one of the girls and came on her.  She squealed and we all backed away seeing the gooey white substance on her pretty blue dress.  We collectively went  ‘ooooooo’.  Of course the girl cried because of the wet spill on her pretty dress and a teacher took her home.  Rusty was banished from the school yard. Naturally we blamed the girl and missed Rusty who everyone knew tried to hump everything and you just had to push him away before he got too excited.    

Red Square, Moscow

Red Square was once a place of executions and military parades. There is still a whiff of that stark history.  Early it began as a market and place of congregation.  Today the churches are much in evidence though security guards at a check point inside, pointed me and my camera towards St. Basil Basilica. I have no argument with automatic weapons.  Today I’m looking for photographs and places of prayer. Kremlin began as wood and the word meant ‘fortified stronghold”. It served as the headquarters of the Orthodox Church and seat of the medieval prince of Rus.   I have come too early for entrance into the many shrines, churches and museums. I’ve enjoyed the quiet, the early sunlight.  Outside the Kremlin there is the tomb of the unknown soldier.  I passed pictures in the nearby rich tourist district celebrating the victories of war and revolution.  In the light of so many Russian deaths in WWII Stalin for all his hardness is more understandable here.  I say ‘understandable’ and nothing more.
I am sitting in a MacDonalds looking at the Kremlin wall near the gate where the Marshall statue sits astride his horse.  There’s a powerful symbolic message in the Golden Arches  proximity to the Kremlin.  All around there is evidence that this area has once again become the ‘market’ , a place where tourists come to visit, shop and congregate.  Cosmopolitanism competes with the ancient and recent local history. France has influenced architecture while elsewhere there’s so much evidence of the original Roman empire.  How far flung are those contributions and perhaps Alexander’s before that.  Greek columns surround buildings. Gold eagles perch atop ironwork gates.
I remember the Kennedy Missile Crisis and my childhood fear of the Russian soldiers. I had nightmares they had landed and were coursing through my childhood Fort Garry neighbourhood.  I took comfort in my father keeping his 30:30 lever action cowboy rifle and ammunition in the sun room.  At school we were taught to kneel beside walls and kiss our asses good bye. Sirens were tested in preparation for nuclear attack.  Later the movie comedy, “The Russians are Coming”, would capture both sides of the insanity of those days.  Equally I remember in 1967 seeing the Russian Cosmonaut achievements at the World Fair in Montreal.  While I appreciated the ultimate ‘star wars’ considerations of President Reagan and how it lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall, I always saw the ‘space race’ more in light of “Star Trek’.  “To go where no one else has gone.”  I love the adventurer, the early explorers and the last frontiers of sea and space.
The summer weather here is glorious. Sun shine, short sleeved shirts and beautiful Russian women in skirts and short shorts.  In winter it is a cold climate like my own Canada. So much of construction and architecture reflects the harshness of this northern environment.  A young lady has sat to share the table. She wears a cross.  I like that the church is celebrated once again here.  The scientist in me appreciates the boundaries of faith and limits of science.  Conflicts are always with the stupid or fearful.  The smart  pray for peace and prepared for war. It was always thus.
As a young man I took more comfort in muscle, weapons and cleverness, older I appreciate prayer, churches and wisdom.  I feared death as a surprise foe then but now I look on it as a sly opponent and perhaps even, eventually, a friend.  Jesus taught “Love your Enemy”. What greater enemy has individual man than death.  He has conquered death.  But I, I faith, in the journey,  not that I wish to make love with Death.  Like Pushkin I’d much rather court the delightful Russian women.   Everywhere spring is welcomed, gardeners planting flowers.   I’m loving it here.   So much of that I know is the joy of holiday and break from  work routine.  

Armageddon and Canada Day

Just last week several people from disparate walks of life talked to me about the alpha and omega.  They were concerned about world catastrophe, market crashes and end of the world scenarios.  They're mainstream moderates.  The crazies are getting to them.
I've never been the same since the Kennedy Missile Crisis.  Having some crazy woman tell us to practice getting under our desks or lining up ass to nose with other grade school students curled in a ball against the hall walls took away my trust in the world.
Yet that was so many decades ago and we've not blown ourselves up.  Fact is we're doing pretty good.  I reassure people mostly. I am a survivalist. I'm prepared in so many ways for Armageddon, wilderness medicine doc, off shore sailor, hunter, fisher, homesteader, scientist, a whole collection of skills that don't help too much in the economic world today but would make me a much sought after somebody post apocalypse.
We just watched the tv series, post Terrorist nuclear bombing of American cities, Jericho. Great show of best case scenario, all the bad stuff, gangs, rape and cannibalism happening with Shakespearean delicassey off stage. It was a terrific show with great characters and really deep community and family relationship writing.  Now we're watching the Outcasts, an English series , post apocalyptic about a new home for the earthlings who escaped the troubles and now are trying to survive on the planet Carpathia.  Great story, great acting.
Good entertainment.
The Jihads were going on in the time of crusades. The Chinese have been a war threat as long but their inherrent capitalism goes against the waste of all out war.  We had the Cold War with Russia and the West and now we have gangsterism around the world and competing arms dealers among the world's leading countries. It's just franchises and business as usual. Nothing terribly noble in sales since 'Death of a Salesman'.  The company doesn't take care of the workers even as well as feudal times which we call the dark ages but were they.  There's aloneliness and fear today that probably wasn't present when everyone knew each other from childhood..
A time of strangers. People don't even want to know what they eat and it's not even Solyent Green yet.
I stood in the rubble of the Armageddon dig in Israel. I think all Christians and Jews should pilgrimage there. Armageddon was a town at one time before it became a symbol.  It lasted a long time as long as any town did in the days of war lords. Now we have cities that are beyond anything that went before.  It's hard to  destroy cities.  Look at London.  Berlin is rebuilt.. Jerusalem and Mecca still stand.  Even Athens is muddling along. I love Mexico City, New York and Tokyo, and Hong Kong
What concerns me is those who say that humans are the parasites on the planet and should be wiped out. These are the eco terrorist suicide bomber ideas.  Kill the humans to save the mosquitos and cockroaches.  That's the nihilism that worries me.
There's a self loathing today and a denigration of human life. it's like the Holocaust reductionism of prisoners as bar codes.  With all the reality tv we're plagued with superstitions about Ghaia some earth goddess who sacrifices herself on the cross till one day she dies.  Forgive me but the earth has withstood far more than a few hydro carbons.  Men and women, children, and the sick will die alot sooner.  I don't think the planet huggers even care for their own and people who don't care for their own can't be trusted to care for each other.
Maltheus said that starvation, war and disease were the great correctors to human advance.  Just when Europe seemed as bad as the west was today Columbus and Marco Polo opened trade globally.  North America was as far fetched an idea then as Mars expedition and sentient dolphins are today.
I believe. I have hope. If Armageddon were just around the corner I think we all would have gone down in the Kennedy Missile Crisis or what the heck, maybe even the Rwanda Massacres.  That's more of what we need to be afraid of.  The Vancouver Riots over a hockey game speak to the mentality of the sports page whereas hundreds of thousands of Canadians were well behaved on Canada day.  That's politics and community.  .
We've got to get beyond playing games and realize Armageddon has come and gone.  That said there's a spirituality to living and spirituality is all about growing love within and celebrating life.