Adventure - Returning West -

What a wonderful time with family. My sister in law, Adell, is the most amazing woman,  She’s a PhD and was President of the Canadian Federation of University Women after a distinguished  educational career first as teacher then as Principal.  Mostly I love her for her life long love affair with my brother. I remember when she was the most beautiful girl in the church and sang soprano solo. My brilliant brother Ron was smitten.  The love affair of the century was as beautiful as Adell’s voice.   

Best of all she’s the grandmother to Finn and Elliott. I’m their great uncle and uncle to her three incredible sons, Graeme the nuclear physicist engineer movie maker writer, Andrew computer genus inventor and gamer, and Allan, the loving psychologist who gives the best hugs. Alan’s wife Meagan is due to deliver my neice in July, not that I ever focus on my perspective.

Adell loves politics and tries to be neutral in a polarized world with media that only reports what bleeds.  I think she’s swayed by the radical left like CBC and CNN while she thinks I’m swayed by the radical right like Tucker.  I enjoyed watching news and CBC commentary with her. We watched King Charles give the throne speech with PM Carney.   We even saw Trudeau standing beside Mr. Harper. Trudeau looked like a kid out of prison among adults . Really it was tremendous pageantry.  I liked watching it with Adell and Graeme remembering watching NFL games with my father , mother and brother.  Canadian moments.  I rather liked that CBC now that it longer sounded like the propaganda rag of Trudeau dumbed down for his low brow take on the world.  Something about PM Carney has made it really  try to be representative.  

I laughed when I read later Quebec vowed to ban the monarchy from that province. I actually thought the elite were pulling together to maintain power and wealth like the Royal family has for centuries. The Métis girl from Manitoba’s violin playing was sacred   I didn’t hear anything much for me but really I’m very blessed.  I’m able to make this trip and see my  eastern  family. I  truly enjoy my companion Madigan, the cockapoo.  Graeme’s cockapoo Pepper and Adell’s fur baby Eva all had  a barking good time together.  

Goslings and geese by the lake. Swans.  White tail deer, bunny rabbits,  Downy wood pecker, Blue Jay, Cardinal, wild turkeys.  So much wildlife.  So much life.  It was rainy and dreary most days but the sun came out and I really enjoyed the sheer beauty of the area.  We had wonderful tapas in Kingston and a couple of meals including Italian in Napanee.  Adell made me breakfast each morning and several great meals. Graeme barbecued steaks and frankly I felt at home. I felt the spirit of my brother and father and remembered all the good times I had at Hay Bay with family.  Alan and I caught a fish too. Ron and Adell had the home they dreamed.

Today I was ready to leave only to find the trailer lights didn’t work.  Adell, the researcher, found Canadian tire had temporary magnetic lights.  Graeme and I headed out.  We got the bulbs that had burnt out and back at the boat my Hay pit stop crew,  Graeme with Adell fetching tools, soon had the lights on the boat trailer  working.  

12 noon.  Hugs all round.  I really thanked Adell and Graeme.  I was off. I’d hardly made it down the street when Graeme was driving behind me, stopping me, because the lights weren’t working . I don’t know what engineering voodoo but they came on and stayed on. I was off again. 

It was a scenic drive on 41 north.  Addington.  Lakes everywhere.  Moose crossing signs.  And mosquitoes.  Feeling drowsy around 3 I pulled off only to get myself into the typical problem needing to back up with travellor. I’m impossible.  I over turned and broke the light wire cable.  It just snapped.  I finally turned around and stopped for a pee break for me and Madigan. The mosqutoes descended.  Adell had warned me. I was glad I had the Off handy  What pesky little beasts.  

At Pembroke I picked up the bits so I could strip andcrimp the wires. I had the tool and may have the bits but was bought some new connectors.  I found a sunny rest area just beyond Pembroke. I’d been hoping to find a mechanic and had the makings as back up. But the sunny rest stop was perfect. Mosquitoes don’t like the sun and breeze.  I restored Graeme’s great work, missed the Hay Pit Stop crew but remembered how to strip and crimp. I got the light flashing right. Hope the brake lights work.   It  felt good to be whole again.   

A thunderstorm and rainstorm hit after that.  For some reason I thought Petwawa was the provincial asylum but it’s the army base in stead. So now I’m wondering where the asylum is.  I saw Chalk River and filled up with gas.  In Deep River   Graeme had done nuclear energy research before the plasma research he does now , I took pictures and got Madigan and me Burger King.  Great burgers.  It was getting dark about seven with cloud so I looked on google search for “RV campgrounds near to me.”  Here I was 2.5 km from Lakeview Trailer Park.  

Lakeview Trailer Park is a gem. The manger, a delightful young woman, lead me to my spot with her 4x4. It is just perfect.  I set up and walked Madigan. Other campers sitting around fires. Terrific smell of woodsmoke.  Sound of friends enjoying the evening. Great beach and lake.  Lots of fishing boats.    Pretty full campground with some RV’s that look like they’re year round combination RV Cabins.   Just a wonderful place. I’m travelling and so thankful to find such a friendly well maintained  place.  Perfect.  I’ve electricty and water and the Star link is working despite the trees.  

It’s been another great day .  Despite the late start and technical issues I’ve still done 277 km.  I’m thankful for all the hospitality , love and inspiration I had with family.  The beauty of the country is breathtaking at times..  Canadian scenery is  second to none.  After a decade of low life Trudeau shit canning Canada I loved to see all the Canadian flags and feel like the spirit of the north is returning after the idiot child has gone.  

Thank you God. Thank you Jesus. 

 

Hay Bay Famiy

I woke to the quiet of the country.  The air was sweet.  A light rain fell as I walked Madigan, the cockapoo,to the water .  A slight mist rose from the still Hay Bay.  Madigan was uncertain about the slippery wood on the dock.  So much is new to the little guy. Honking Canada geese lifted from the water and headed towards Quinte on Lake Ontario. 

Yesterday he so enjoyed meeting his cockapoo aunties, Pepper and Eva.  They got on well with Adell sharing treats with all on their first walk. Then Pepper and Madigan were playing chase.

The pear tree my brother Ron planted the last year is ripe with pears.

Meaghan who is marrying Alan, Ron and Adell’s youngest, was up early this morning. I hugged her.  It’s been years and Covid since they returned from England for their wedding delayed till this fall. We all have vaccinations.  

I’m sitting in the fabulous sun room, this great lighted space we all love. The children, adults, play board games here. That was before Andrew and Tanya had Finn and Elliott. I’ve yet to meet Elliott. Graeme, Ron and Adell’s oldest, was exhausted when he arrived yesterday.  

“I’ve come from a day with Finn. He’s a regular energizer bunny,” he said.  We’ll be back in Ottawa at the end of the week for the wedding and to meet my latest great nephew.  

Mom and Dad must be watching from heaven. I remember their joy when Ron and Adell had Graeme and Andrew, little tikes, now grown men.  Alan came later. I loved getting to know him when he came for a week of sailing with me on the coast.  I loved meeting Meaghan when they began dating at the university.  Then Christmas with Ron and Adell and her mother in the Ottawa home.  Now they are both psychologists, grown. The cliches, time flies, and it was just yesterday, hold true.  

It surprises me, normally living alone,  feeling the  other family in this great spread of a house.  Graeme,upstairs at his computer,Alan and Meagan, in another room.  Laura is upstairs in the guest room on Facebook, last I saw, my adoring mutt, Madigan, lying on the bed at her sife.  Adell has gone back to the master bed room suite on the main floor after walking , Eva and Pepper.  The rain makes the forest by the lakeshore and the flowers on the deck happy.  It’s  cozy.  Inside, warm, watching the rain lightly falling on the deck and great lawn beyon.  

Graeme barbecued medallion steaks last night that melted in my mouth.  We sat on the on the deck around the glass table, the evening still warm but no mosquitoes,  under stars, a family meal.  Graeme told stories of playing in different bands, engineering school days.   Trumpets and drums.  I’d not been at a family meal since last I was here for Christmas, before Covid. It is comforting. 

I feels Ron’s presence, humour and love here.  I see Mom and Dad smiling and the grandparents, aunts and uncles peeking in. It’s all a blessing.  I’m so truly grateful.  

Vancouver to Hay Bay with Gilbert

Last year Gilbert and I didn’t fly because he’d had his eyes removed secondary to hereditary glaucoma with no medical cure.  He’d also hurt his back. Frankly  we are all getting older.

I traded my fabulous little 2 seater blackMiata sports car in for a British racing green Mini Cooper with room for Gilbert to stretch out in the spacious back seat cargo area. We drove down to San Diego. I even crossed into Mexico.  

The most joyous moment was when Laura and I took Gilbert out on the Oregon beaches. Until then he’d been quite depressed and anxious since having his second eye removed in the fall. He banged into things everywhere and felt really frightened in his blindness.

 Something about the sea air and surf and memory of beaches had him running full out between Laura and I calling him back and forth , the two of us strategically far apart. He regained his confidence and was chasing me, running full out with his new high stepping prance.  It was truly Christmas to see him so confident and happy again.

It’s been a good year for him and most don’t even know he is blind.  A special family reunion at Hay Bay for Christmas with Alan and Meagan returning from London for the occasion. Graeme was back at University of Toronto studying nuclear energy already having his chemical engineering degree.  

“When are you going to make me a nuclear reactor for my Harley Davidson that won’t castrate me?” I ask him.

“Not soon.”  But he does wax poetic about  energy.  A brilliant young man with the reasoned insight of my deceased older brother. I miss Ron so truly and  enjoy seeing his likeness in the fine men he and Adell have.

Andrew and Tanya have bought a new house in Kanata near where Ron and Adell raised the family. I’d known the babies in Winnipeg but Adell and Ron’s love affair beginning there had cemented  in Saskatchewan only to return to Winnipeg and fly east to Ottawa. 

Ron was in the Federal Government completing his MBA having already done a science degree.  Adell  proceeded from elementary school teacher much loved by little ones to obtaining a PHD and being a principal of the near by Kanata school, much loved by adults. 

I visited them a lot in the years after mom died at Deer Lodge Hospital and we convinced poor blind Dad that he needed asssitance despite his insistence he could live totally on his own. He’d developed glaucoma late in life and so missed his sight. Still,  he’d  spent the last year of my mother’s life  by bus commuting hours to and from the hospital.  Once there he help dress her , bundling her up in winter and pushing her in her wheel chair around the hospital all seasons.  Visiting them in winter I’d sat with him and Mom outside the hospital in the dreadful cold watching them feeding  the birds,remembering the ,always full in winter , bird feeder outside the Fort Garry kitchen window.  

Ron, my truly incredible brother, took on the task of caring for dad , doing by far the lion’s share of everything his last few years.  Hay men haven’t been known for our docility so convincing Dad to wear a coat outside in winter or to come for a drive was a challenge for poor Ron when Dad was blind,  smart, stubborn and ornery.  

With a large practice I flew out as often as I could and stayed with the family. I’ve always felt guilty juggling loyalties to family, patients, friends and colleagues.

The boys and Adell were all involved in caring for Dad too.  I feel guilty I wasn’t here more, so  thankful for family. 

Dad loved Gilbert. “Where’s my Monkey dog?” he’d call . “ Monkey dog” really was such a good description for Gilbert. Barking he’d bound  into Dad’s lap. Dad was his BFF and he just loved to lick Dad’s ears.

Now Dad and Mom are gone. My Aunt Sally, Mom’s sisters , my Toronto grandparents, the Northern Cowboy and Logger uncles ,  Dad’s parents, long gone while we keep in touch with cousins in the north, Scotland and the US. They’re still too far away.

Ron died only a couple of years after he and Adell bought this Hay Bay property. It reminded me in ways of their university riverside home in Winnipeg where the Boys were born. I loved theiR two setters, Tartan and Rainy the big dogs they had back then.  Now the boys are big and the dogs are small. 

Ron loved to garden and loved this property planting fruit trees and having a real garden the likes my mother had had in Fort Garry. He and she won awards each year at the Fort Garry Horticultural Society. I remember the year Ron’s gladiolas won big time.  Adell too has a green thumb. 

They were hockey and soccer family when the boys were young. Later Ron loved badminton which he’d taken up as a child when we lived down the street from the Badminton Club. . I think his love of badminton took off after his posting to Hong Kong. The Ottawa club he belonged to was full of Chinese friends. When he visited me in Vancouver he’d loved best our visits to  China Town.

Here Ron and Adell immediately joined the curling club for winter sports. I remember them curling in Winnipeg.  Ron kayacked all over Hay Bay and neighboring lake. Kayaking had been his passion. I got Allan to paddle the canoe for me, while I fished and caught a large pike who insisted against my plan to be ‘catch and release’ 

 I told Alan today, ‘That big pike is bigger and still out there waiting for us, Allan”

“Right, Uncle Bill.”he said.

Gilbert has flown a dozen flights and took to being lifted into his kennel for the flight.  He slept the whole way on the plane only becoming a bit anxious after we had landed and a jet traffic jam had us waiting in line for our spot for 15 minutes.  Once off the plane he was out of the kennel and happily prancing beside me on his ‘blind dog’ leash wearing his red ‘therapy dog’ vest.  I’d brought a big suitcase to accommodate gifts so waited for baggage.  

Then we were through. Graeme, looking young and robust, bearded and humorous as always swooped up Gilbert ho was delighted to be treated as the guest of honor.  Graeme has a cockapoo female, Gilbert’s canine cousin, Pepper, short for Peppermint.  Graeme is great with dogs.  Gilbert adores him.  Driving straight from Toronto to Napanee in the old Forester SUV we stopped on the way for Gilbert to have a pee and poop break.  Graeme got me coffee and us donuts.  

Next we were driving through Napanee with all the town’s Main Street Christmas  lights. Beautiful.  Night falling on the country roads. Snow.  Hay Bay covered in snow and ice. The lovely long driveway to the Hay Bay home.  Adell had done a truly remarkable Town and Country reno to the entrance making it so much more elegant than the former rustic entrance had been. I loved it. Gilbert was now the centre of attention for Adell.  Eva and Pepper surrounded their western cousin.  I felt home.

Andrew and Tanya arrived. Then followed The great announcement, she’s 5 months pregnant. I’m going to be a grand uncle.  Next Alan and Meagan arrived, Meagan shows off the sapphire engagement ring.

Adell and her cousin Melvine are cooking up a storm. We go to Christmas Mass leaving the guys and dogs at home.  In Napanee St. Mary Magdalene Anglican Christmas Eve service is inspired.Lovely church. Lovely people.  Adell’s a soloist so always a joy to hear her sing beside me.  

I miss my brother.  I’ve known such a depth of grief and sadness since his death. Not just his loss but all the losses. 　Friends and family, aging, dreams.  Fentanyl epidemic.. Now here I am with the announcement of children and engagement and family.  It’s a wonder. . I am uplifted and inspired. If I could I’d run in circles and bark like Gilbert. 

Christ is born. .The nativity. Bethlehem. Hallelujah.  The future unfolds.  I’m learning to let go.  Gilbert is having a wonderful time with his much bigger ‘pack’ .  We miss Ron. He’s here in spirit. Such monuments to his love and Adell’s. 

I’m truly blessed and thankful to have family.  Such a contrast to the Christmas I spent alone at sea sailing solo. 

  

Grace United Church and the Grace Ringers, Napanee

 “Do you want to go to church in the morning?” my sister in law, Adell,  asked me last night.  

“Of course, “ I replied then.    I wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic in the morning when Adell woke me.   

Church is the truly ancient Canadian social club..  The tribe always had a war club and a social club. Everyone believed in spirit and blood.  The warriors knew of both in the field  but in the community blood was a matter for women. Warriors were baptized in fire while all children were baptized in church.   Ultimately blood and bread, the war and agriculture of ancient empire became the covenant of Jesus, son of the Yahweh god of the great  agricultural age.  

Jesus was different, a servant king.  Nietzhe called him a peasant god and celebrated instead the Superman.   The baby Jesus,  a different kettle of fish altogether.  

At Grace United Church in Napanee, the minister, Rev. Elaine Kellogg gave a deeply moving  sermon titled, Blessed Brokeness.   She compared the facts of Jesus’s crucifixion supported as it was by the descriptions of 4 gospels to the controversy of the miracle of the resurrection. She laughed, saying, that women, whose word was questioned even then, were the ones who first said Jesus had left the tomb. There were those who said he’d revived and left of his own accord. There were even those who like Doubting Thomas  demanded proof of the resurrected  stranger insisting on inspecting the wounds of crucifixion. A difference of opinion. 

Rev. Elaine Kellog said that while the life and death of Jesus might be fact in the public sense as a public event with witnesses, history and precedents, the resurrection was miraculous and open ultimately to personal experience.  

Somehow she brought home from this that Christianity is not just a temple religion but as much  the personal experience of spirituality and quite frankly the miraculous. 

This wasn't new as Jesus himself had said that thinking of crime was itself criminal. He raised the bar of religious ethic to the behaviour of thought as opposed to only action behaviour.  God was no longer only in the public space but also in the private and secret spaces.  St. Theresa described this as the Inner Castle.  Evelyn Underhill would write at length about it. The God of Christianity was everywhere.  

The congregation, this collection of Christians was very well behaved.  They listened with respect and tolerance.  There were no activists trying to silence Elaine Kellogg despite the radicalness of the message.  A polite and pleasant group indeed.  Some even invited us to join them for coffee later.  They welcomed us as strangers  We’d just learned of the origins of this custom but it went beyond that.  They even offered to share cookies a grandmother had baked. Tempting indeed. 

The Grace Ringers were especially precious.  The meditative have always loved the bells.  Unfortunately a millennial might well associate bells with  Buddhist meditation.  So few today even study Thomas Merton.  They overlook the central role of the bell in Christian church architecture. They associate it merely with the call to worship.  It is much much more.  Here these amazing musicians recreated the most extraordinary sounds of peace and joy .  It was truly  a miraculous mystical performance. I was reminded of the cathedral music of bells I’d heard years before in London.  Here, indoors,  was the intimate and truly heavenly sounds of celestial spheres. 

I love too that we sing in church.  We participate in music together. There are organists and pianists and choirs who practice but then they let us all join in.  We’re an regular amateur garage band on a larger scale participating in the search for harmony. Not Selah or Pentonix but slouching in that direction.  

I even love that we read aloud together.  It’s an odd sort of behaviour for Canadians collectively devolving to the individualism and alienation of digital reductionism,  computer cell phone addiction and other consumer distraction.   

In Christianity we celebrate life, personhood, family and community rather than the isolation, individualism,  alienation and addiction of the mainstream mediocrity.  If  only for an hour we gather to catch a glimpse of the transcendent.  In this church I really was reminded of “My Utmost for His Highest.” 

The service closed with ‘Be Thou My Vision,” a favourite Celtic hymn of mine. It gave me a special sense of  God  as intimate and personal. Of course others love God and God loves others. But he really does love me too.  Suffer little children to come unto me, Jesus said.  That’s the message of belonging.  We are all God’s children.  For the briefest moment I felt special, sunshine.  Blessed in my brokenness, loved despite my arrogance, I knew Grace.

Then minister, closing the service,  sent us off back into the world. 

Adell drove us back to Hay Bay and we chatted together about our very positive experience of the church.  The water was high in the bay and the winds were churning up the waves .The dogs were certainly excited to have us return. The flowers my brother had planted last fall were in radiant bloom.  

I believe in the miracle of resurrection.  I know that I only see the surface of things here. 

SV GIRI - Boating with Alan - Kerr Bay

Alan insists that since we didn’t actually put the sails up, we were not ‘sailing’.  Hence, the title, ‘boating with Alan’.
I’d called Loyalist Cove Marina a couple of weeks earlier and asked if they could check my Autopilot.  The autopilot hadn’t been communicating with the compass.  I love my Autopilot and was so pleased that it had been repaired. Just some corrosion on the wire connections.  When I’d been there earlier in the summer we’d been out sailing with Ron and the nephews. Ron wasn’t up to boating this time but i still wanted to try out the anchor tackle.
Alan is good company. A psychologist finishing his masters he’s a bit impatient but otherwise sensitive and intuitive.  He has a thousand questions and his curiosity abounds.
It was a grey and overcast day. I’m not a particularly energetic sailor. I love my Volvo diesel motor and I love making stove top expresso coffee on my lovely three burner gambled propane stove.  Only 20 minutes from Loyalist Cove Marina is Kerr Bay across the channel.  We anchored in 25 foot of water after I untangled the anchor chain that had been shook about by shipping the boat across Canada.
With anchor hooked I made my coffee and had a peanut butter and jam sandwich reading a book in my own special Captain’s corner while Alan actually had a rather long nap.  This is heaven for me.
When i raised the anchor I hauled up half the seaweed on the bottom too.  A bit of a fiddle getting it off. Then Alan drove us back to Loyalist Cove Marina where I took over for the berthing.  One of the staff was on dock to catch the bow line Alan tossed him.
I cleaned up with the though this would be the last I’d see the GIRI till next year.  Then Alan and I went off to Paul’s in Napanee to collect the pizza Ron had mentioned he’d missed while he was in hospital.
A great day boating.  Even if I only used the iron jenny!

Patience

I am waiting a week now into my very precious, very special vacation. A year ago my brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and I made the decision that I’d ship my sailboat down to him with the plan that we’d sail together.  I wanted to have him have something to look forward too.
It wasn’t completely unselfish.  Having already sailed to Hawaii solo in winter my next sailing trip would have been to the Philippines, Hong Kong or Singapore.  But the pirates and the Muslim Jihadists made cruising anywhere in the region around Malaysia and Indochina unattractive.  Besides 25 years ago I had sailed GIRI, my 40 foot 13 ton cutter rigged steel sailboat to the Sea of Cortex with my ex wife.  The next plan had been to ship it overland to the Caribbean and come up the inside passage back to Canada.  So here I was positioning my sailboat for the trip down the east coast should I wish to continue. The fresh water sailing in the unknown islands and passages around Kingston.  Mostly it brought my brother and I closer in the project of boat shipping, costly as that was and storage at Loyalist Cove Marina.
Loyalist Cove Marina has been so helpful with the storage and with finding me a berth in the harbour.  I phoned a month or so ago and gave them the dates with the request and agreement for my boat to be restored for sailing for this week from work.  I had expected to find the boat in the water, rigged and ready to leave.  It wasn’t.  It still isn’t.  But my brother needed to begin a new chemotherapy and I accompanied him to Toronto where I met Dr. Aaron Hansen, the new researcher who has accepted Ron to this newest cancer therapy trial.   Ron was given 6-12 months untreated, 2-4 years with treatment. Ron’s past 12 months and happy to moving forward again with hope.
Each month he holds on there is greater hope for a cure as cancer, thanks to research centres like University of Toronto’s  Princess Margaret Hospital Cancer Research, and our west coast UBC cancer research teams are now focusing attention and resources on Gastroenterological Cancers.  Trials of new potentials therapies are occurring all around the world as a major push is being made to address this historic early killer.  The breakthroughs that have cured so many cancers these last few decades I”ve been in practice are now resulting in quicker and more significant advances in individual care. The miracle of scientific medicine that so quickly addressed the Ebola Virus epidemic and the terrifying HIV epidemic has been applied now to cancer and specifically Gastrointestinal Cancer.  Genetic studies that have shown us the building blocks of the human genome now show us the differentiation between cancer and non cancer cell lines.  Chemotherapies are increasingly developed with greater specificities and less side effects.  Ron’s not as optimistic as I am and his doctors are all those ‘modest’ sorts that work in cancer research, medically legally concerned, and "not making any promises’ but they know all the breakthroughs that I know. Since Ron’s first diagnosis I’ve scoured the literature, and increasingly enjoyed listening , as I commute to and from my psychosomatic and addiction psychiatric practice, to the leading symposium from around the world on cancer research, specifically Pancreatic Cancer.  It’s not just for my brother’s sake as I have several cancer patients in my practice with dozens more patients with gastrointestinal disease in addition to their psychiatric concerns.
The rigger who got the mast on Friday, said that he’d be back Monday to finish the re wiring and putting up the sails Monday. The hardware for the boom holder and the radar post are up but the mast wiring and sail rigging remains to be done.  My chemical engineer nephew, Graeme, drove in from Ontario’s Deep River nuclear power plant so we got to do a final check of all the systems on the boat, yesterday. He replaced one of the bilge pumps in record time while together then epoxied a loose stanchion while I expoxied a cockpit drain that was leaking.  The riggers said they’d be back in the afternoon so we waited about and they didn’t show.  Meanwhile my other geologist nephew, Andrew, was flying in that night from the North Pole on a Canadian military plane landing in Trenton Air Force Base.  So God didn’t intend for us to go sailing till he was able to join his brother and I on the boat.  Today, perhaps, the riggers will complete their work and we’ll be able to get the boat out while Ron is feeling good. Despite starting the new chemotherapy he had a really good day 2 and there weather has been perfect for sailing, sunny, light winds.
I’m feeling some anxiety which is disheartening because I’m going to have to fly back to Vancouver in a few days where I’ll be the object of scorn for I keep countless people waiting.  I had a 2 year waitlist to see me a couple of years ago. It had grown and most of my colleagues because of the extreme shortage of specialists have closed their practice or at very least run a year waitlist. If there’s an emergency it simply has to go to the hospital where there now, due to government waste and mismanagement, there is simply no follow through.  Duplication of services is an easily resolved problem which England addressed decades ago as a central feature of their cost saving health care system but the gloriously bloated and outrageously elite health care bureaucracy has had mangers saying, “we don’t need doctors and nurses”.  This is at variance with the whole idea of the ‘medicare system’ which has put government after government into power in Canada and is government’s principle claim to fame even as Obama Care is failing due to administrative abuse.  Canada’s health care system is now 20 to 40 times the administration of the relatively equivalent if not superior German health care system.  The percentage of doctors and nurses to patients has remains relatively constant for thirty years despite the aging practice, increasingly complex medical and psychiatric problems of the elderly and the encroachment on the health care field by the legal beaurocratic parasites which have caused perhaps 90 % of increased costs in health care to be ‘unnecessary waste’ from a strictly medical perspective.
The government is publishing the incomes of doctors so which to the ignorant looks good.  Except that income is not a ‘lifetime’ in come which by contrast shows that nurses who work full time actually make as much if not more than doctors.  Hospital administrators with often only a few years of education and a whole lot of despotism are making more than doctors in reality.  The trouble is that for 12 years I studied, and my study wasn’t ‘academic’. I was in an apprenticeship, from the second year of my training so for 10 years I did the major work of hospitals and institutional medicine.  Medicine is not like Arts PH’D programs. It’s more like trade school, with the academic demands expected by the full time job working at the bed side.  And yes, the requirement is straight A’s.  So while everyone academically wants to say their program is equal, it’s not.  I acknowledge that Colonel Hadfield’s astronaught training program was more strenuous than mine but I only slept one night in three for years and every single day of my internship and residency program I was doing 12 to eighteen hours of patient centred work.  With all the entitlement in Canada today, I hear secretaries from the military saying their jobs are as tough, ‘if not more tough’, than ‘the boys fighting on the front lines’.  We’re a ‘me’ generation so the kardasian want to be complains that her having to get her nails and hair done to look good is a terrible strain.
I have nightmares still about what I’ve seen and done.  Visiting the hospital with my brother I fought down a panic attack and was assailed by images of sliding and falling on blood coated floors in obstetrics, picking up bowels from a dehiscence, the terror of those days and years treating the AID’s dementia biters, being strangled by a patient, finding the dead on the ward, the violence and sickness and disease, the nights were the worst.  I was diagnosed with PTSD years ago.  I drank and smoked dope those first years of the AIDS epidemic, working with AIDS dementia ‘biters’ and seeing colleagues I knew personally die along with patients.  The dangerously insane wards were difficult as well as treating the prostitutes and forensic patients and working with the LBGT patients which others ‘avoided’.  That Christian service ‘calling’ kept putting me in the frontline while all around me others more reasonably chose not to take the risks.  Our Prime Minister drinks wine and smokes dope.  It’s fashionable today.  I haven’t drank or smoked anything in 19 years.  I’m thankful for International Doctors in AA for helping me remain sane and practicing medicine.  I did my addiction medicine sub specialization and continue to work with two types of practice, one I call ‘uptown’ and the other I call, “downtown’ . Some days I overhaul totally crashed Ferraris, Rolls Royces and  Cadillacs while other days I do tune ups on Ferrari’s, Rolls Royces, and Cadillacs.
I’m going to have another coffee and go to the Loyalist Cove Marina. Patience.

Patience

I am waiting a week now into my very precious, very special vacation. A year ago my brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and I made the decision that I’d ship my sailboat down to him with the plan that we’d sail together.  I wanted to have him have something to look forward too.
It wasn’t completely unselfish.  Having already sailed to Hawaii solo in winter my next sailing trip would have been to the Philippines, Hong Kong or Singapore.  But the pirates and the Muslim Jihadists made cruising anywhere in the region around Malaysia and Indochina unattractive.  Besides 25 years ago I had sailed GIRI, my 40 foot 13 ton cutter rigged steel sailboat to the Sea of Cortex with my ex wife.  The next plan had been to ship it overland to the Caribbean and come up the inside passage back to Canada.  So here I was positioning my sailboat for the trip down the east coast should I wish to continue. The fresh water sailing in the unknown islands and passages around Kingston.appeals for now  Mostly it brought my brother and I closer in the project of boat shipping, costly as that was and storage at Loyalist Cove Marina.
Loyalist Cove Marina has been so helpful with the storage and with finding me a berth in the harbour.  I phoned a month or so ago and gave them the dates with the request and agreement for my boat to be restored for sailing for this week from work.  I had expected to find the boat in the water, rigged and ready to leave.  It wasn’t.  It still isn’t.  It's a week waiting. I already miss Stuart at Protek in Vancouver. They prepared the boat in half a day for shipping and when they did the rigging for my offshore sailing to Mexico, it took them a day, a couple of guys ,a lift and supervisor. No rigging concerns till the boat was shipped back to from Mexico.
But my brother needed to begin a new chemotherapy and I accompanied him to Toronto where I met Dr. Aaron Hansen, the new researcher who has accepted Ron to this newest cancer therapy trial.   Ron was given 6-12 months untreated, 2-4 years with treatment. Ron’s past 12 months and happy to moving forward again with hope.
Each month he holds on there is greater hope for a cure as cancer, thanks to research centres like University of Toronto’s  Princess Margaret Hospital Cancer Research, and our west coast UBC cancer research teams, are now focusing attention and resources on Gastroenterological Cancers.  Trials of new potential therapies are occurring all around the world as a major push is being made to address this historic early killer.
The breakthroughs that have cured so many cancers these last few decades I”ve been in practice are now resulting in quicker and more significant advances in individual care. The miracle of scientific medicine that so quickly addressed the Ebola Virus epidemic and the terrifying HIV epidemic has been applied now to cancer and specifically Gastrointestinal Cancer.  Genetic studies that have shown us the building blocks of the human genome now show us the differentiation between cancer and non cancer cell lines.  Chemotherapies are increasingly developed with greater specificity and less side effects.  Ron’s not as optimistic as I am and his doctors are all those ‘modest’ sorts that work in cancer research, medically legally concerned, "not making any promises’ but they know all the breakthroughs that I know. Since Ron’s first diagnosis I’ve scoured the literature, and increasingly enjoyed listening , as I commute to and from my psychosomatic and addiction psychiatric practice, to the leading symposium podcasts from around the world on cancer research, specifically Pancreatic Cancer.  It’s not just for my brother’s sake as I have several cancer patients in my practice with dozens more patients with gastrointestinal disease in addition to their psychiatric concerns.
The rigger who got the mast on Friday, said that he’d be back Monday to finish the re wiring and putting up the sails Monday. The hardware for the boom holder and the radar post are up but the mast wiring and sail rigging remains to be done.  My chemical engineer nephew, Graeme, drove in from Ontario’s Deep River nuclear power plant so we got to do a final check of all the systems on the boat, yesterday. He replaced one of the bilge pumps in record time while together then epoxied a loose stanchion while I expoxied a cockpit drain that was leaking.  The riggers said they’d be back in the afternoon so we waited about and they didn’t show.  No communication. Meanwhile my other geologist nephew, Andrew, was flying in that night from the North Pole on a Canadian military plane landing in Trenton Air Force Base.  He's been regaling us with tales of Alert. Reminds me of my years with the Northern Medical Unit consulting to Northern Manitoba and Northern Ontario, the academic clinical assistant professor years.
Maybe God didn’t intend for us to go sailing till he was able to join his brother and I on the boat.  Today, perhaps, the riggers will complete their work and we’ll be able to get the boat out while Ron is feeling good. Despite starting the new chemotherapy he had a really good day 2 and there weather has been perfect for sailing, sunny, light winds.
I’m feeling some anxiety which is disheartening because I’m going to have to fly back to Vancouver in a few days where I’ll be the object of scorn for I keep countless people waiting.  I had a 2 year waitlist to see me a couple of years ago. It had grown and most of my colleagues because of the extreme shortage of specialists have closed their practice or at very least run a year waitlist. If there’s an emergency it simply has to go to the hospital where there now, due to government waste and mismanagement, there is simply no follow through.  Duplication of services is an easily resolved problem which England addressed decades ago as a central feature of their cost saving health care system but the gloriously bloated and outrageously elite health care bureaucracy has had mangers saying, “we don’t need doctors and nurses”.  This is at variance with the whole idea of the ‘medicare system’ which has put government after government into power in Canada and is government’s principle claim to fame even as Obama Care is failing due to administrative abuse.  Canada’s health care system is now 20 to 40 times the administration of the relatively equivalent if not superior German health care system.  The percentage of doctors and nurses to patients has remains relatively constant for thirty years despite the aging practice, increasingly complex medical and psychiatric problems of the elderly and the encroachment on the health care field by the legal beaurocratic parasites which have caused perhaps 90 % of increased costs in health care to be ‘unnecessary waste’ from a strictly medical perspective.
The government is publishing the incomes of doctors so which to the ignorant looks good.  Except that income is not a ‘lifetime’ in come which by contrast shows that nurses who work full time actually make as much if not more than doctors.  Hospital administrators with often only a few years of education and a whole lot of despotism are making more than doctors in reality.  The trouble is that for 12 years I studied, and my study wasn’t ‘academic’. I was in an apprenticeship, from the second year of my training so for 10 years I did the major work of hospitals and institutional medicine.  Medicine is not like Arts PH’D programs. It’s more like trade school, with the academic demands expected by the full time job working at the bed side.  And yes, the requirement is straight A’s.  So while everyone academically wants to say their program is equal, it’s not.  I acknowledge that Colonel Hadfield’s astronaught training program was more strenuous than mine but I only slept one night in three for years and every single day of my internship and residency program I was doing 12 to eighteen hours of patient centred work.  With all the entitlement in Canada today, I hear secretaries from the military saying their jobs are as tough, ‘if not more tough’, than ‘the boys fighting on the front lines’.  We’re a ‘me’ generation so the kardasian want to be complains that her having to get her nails and hair done to look good is a terrible strain.
I have nightmares still about what I’ve seen and done.  Visiting the hospital with my brother I fought down a panic attack and was assailed by images of sliding and falling on blood coated floors in obstetrics, picking up bowels from a dehiscence, the terror of those days and years treating the AID’s dementia biters, being strangled by a patient, finding the dead on the ward, the violence and sickness and disease, the nights were the worst.  I was diagnosed with PTSD years ago.  I drank and smoked dope those first years of the AIDS epidemic, working with AIDS dementia ‘biters’ and seeing colleagues I knew personally die along with patients.  The dangerously insane wards were difficult as well as treating the prostitutes and forensic patients and working with the LBGT patients which others ‘avoided’.  That Christian service ‘calling’ kept putting me in the frontline while all around me others more reasonably chose not to take the risks.  Our Prime Minister drinks wine and smokes dope.  It’s fashionable today.  I haven’t drank or smoked anything in 19 years.  I’m thankful for International Doctors in AA for helping me remain sane and practicing medicine.  I did my addiction medicine sub specialization and continue to work with two types of practice, one I call ‘uptown’ and the other I call, “downtown’ . Some days I overhaul totally crashed Ferraris, Rolls Royces and  Cadillacs while other days I do tune ups on Ferrari’s, Rolls Royces, and Cadillacs.
I’m going to have another coffee and go to the Loyalist Cove Marina.

(Addendum: Dave solved the problem, a kink in the track of the roller furling, but resolved with his expertise)

Napanee Vacation: Loyalist Cove and Toronto

I’m staying with my brother Ron and sister in law Adell, at their Hay Bay home near Napanee.  Gilbert is so enjoying romping about the acreage, sniffing everything, with his cousin cockapoo, Eva. They’re quite the team.  When one barks the other barks. Their capacity for excitement is unprecedented.
I shipped my sailboat to the Loyalist Cove Marina last fall so I’d be able to take my brother sailing this summer. With his pancreatic cancer stage 4 diagnosis I couldn’t expect him to come to the west coast to go sailing so I brought the boat to him. The SV Giri was stored through the winter in the Loyalist Cove Marina boat storage compound.  Now their rigging crew are restoring the SV Giri to good working order. Ron and I watched the mast being stepped after the boat itself was lowered into the fresh water of Lake Ontario.
My niece in law, Tanya, my nephew, Andrew and a couple of their friends had painted the bottom of the boat with the antifouling paint they use for Lake Ontario.  She also painted the topsides white which really makes the boat look presentable.
Ron’s cancer had stopped responding to the UBC chemotherapy protocol being provided by the Queen’s University, Department of Oncology at Kingston General Hospital.  Dr. Anna Tomiak , the medical oncologist in charge of Ron’s care is truly an amazing clinician.  Ron and my sister in law Adell, loved working with her residents as well.  
Now Ron has been transferred to Dr. Aaron Hansen, at Princess Margaret Hospital for a new clinical trial.  That’s what brings us to Toronto today.  We’re staying at the Chelsea Hotel which is so community conscious that it has special accommodation and reduced rate for patients like Ron attending weekly chemotherapy from out of town.
Ron rode a Yamaha 100 cc motorcycle across Canada until his wife and mother of his three children told him she didn’t think motorcycles were the safest vehicle for young father’s with babies.  Ron, who has always put his family first, sold his motorcycle.  I shipped down the Yamaha 250 I’d got for my friend who decided she didn’t want to ride it in Vancouver traffic preferring the Smart Car instead.  Ron’s not ridden it but it’s been there in his garage. He’s on the so called ‘blood thinner’ i.e. anticoagulant, Warfarin.  So far he’s not taken the motorcycle out even though Adell supports him doing anything that will help him overcome his cancer.
Since the motorcycle has been there I’ve been thoroughly enjoying myself riding it about the country roads of the Lennox and Addington county.
I rode to Belleville to attend a meeting one night and having been going back and forth from Hay Bay to Bath where the boat is now moored.
We attended Trinity United Church in Napaneee and witnessed confirmations and partook of communion.  A very uplifting community church with a real depth of spirituality present.
On the weekend Ron and I and Adell drove over to Picton and up to the Restaurant at the Inn on the Lake on the Mountain.  It was an incredible day of heat and family.  Brexit had just occurred so politics was a topic of conversation.  So much upheaval and so much confusion these days in the news with Canadian and American elections and now Brexit.
Meanwhile we were enjoying a lovely meal on a patio with blue skies.  After Ron and Adell pointed out to me the Adolpho Reach where I’d be sailing in a day or two.
While Adell take care of the dogs and house Ron and I drove to Toronto yesterday on the busy 401 freeway.  With some excitement and a few circles of the area we actually found the Chelsea Hotel and parked the car.  Checked in, we walked over to a favourite Dim Sum restaurant that Ron and Adell had found on previous excursions.  We had the best won ton and shrimp dim sum. I loved the sticky rice.
After we walked down Dundas and caught the subway at St. Patricks. I love the Toronto subway. So many good memories of riding it with my Aunt Sally and later with my first wife Baiba and then my second wife Maureen.
Ron and I were born in Toronto and when Aunt Sally was alive we both came to live with her for months at a time, lovely vacations with my mother’s extraordinary sister.  We reminisced about her riding the subway, having tea with her and our cousin Ruth Anne.
Ron wanted to see the new Tezla car which was on display in their store in Yorkdale.  I’d seen the Tezla car in Vancouver when it was first unveiled.  Ron talked with the lovely sales staff and enjoyed learning more about the ins and outs of this $85,000 car.  With his kayaking, bicycling and gardening my brother is very green. By comparison I was wearing my Harley Davidson t shirt and am not yet interested in electronic cars, not terribly impressed by the new electric harley either. I like the roar of the Harley engine and know ‘loud pipes save lives’.  Nothing beats playing Steppenwolf, “Born to be Wild”  on the stereo full blast heading down the freeway.  Meanwhile the little Yamaha is all I need for the flat rolling country roads around here.  Meanwhile Ron has the Tezla craze.
At the Bay I was able to get a sports jacket and slacks while Ron watched the soccer game.  Back at the hotel we were both exhausted by all the walking and glad to get in the hot tub on the top floor.
Now I’ve got to catch up to Ron at the Princess Margaret. He was off early this morning to have his blood taken and wanted me to meeting him on the 18th floor. Now having had a coffee, I’ll catch up to him and wait to learn the results.