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. 

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.