42 years old: Sailing to Mexico, La Paz, Vancouver practice, Separation, Dr. Bernie,Dr.Willi, sobriety

Having just avoided a near death experience collision with a tanker (due to my wife’s lying, messing up the radar, not telling us and leaving tthe radar deceptively dysfunctional  entering coming into San Francisco )we were immensely relieved anchoring in San Francisco Bay.  All was forgiven in the ecstasy of safety the harbour gave us. Our crew departed.  My wife sold kittens on the Pier.  We continued on.

She and I did a fine job of sailing to San Diego.  The natural oil springs off Santa Barbara were amazing. When one thinks of oil spills its worth while to remember these natural oil slicks that covered miles of sea. We acquired a fine slick of black along the water line. 

In the Catalina islands off California we found an anchorage but the restrictions on spillage and discharge had ou outputs taped up for the over night stay.

San Diego was another great accomplishment. The most spectacular harbour and navy base.  We were early for travel south as the hurricane season persisted.  At dock a boat came round and removed our waste.  We had water and electricity and stayed several weeks. We were concerned this was the ‘last stop’ so spent ‘unnecessarily’ on boat supplies stocking up on spares and anything else we thought we might need.  There’d be other marine stores south but we didn’t know that then.

Given the marital problems and my wife’s fear of sailing further we had some serious discussions about our marriage life and future. Looking back she would say she was committed but it became apparent that she’d begun conspiring to hide money and make an independent life for herself. She was along for the ‘fun’ but no longer in it for the long haul. She’d learned she was wealthy beyond her wildest dreams after her mother’s death,as would become apparent in the later divorce. I was also unwilling to accept her dangerous behaviour. Without drugs she was not a happy camper. I wasn’t a ball of sunshine either.

Offshore sailing was said to truly make relationships or it could tear them asunder. 

Our crew wanted to continue with us to Cabot and was available. Despite his mutiny I truly felt that my serious talk and expression of grave concern had sunk in.  We would continue now as three.  There was only one night when he’d he’d pull his wing on wing sailing event thereafter. I’d literally give him shit and he’d act like a sulking teen aged. 

The trouble with ‘night racing’ in a foreign country at night is that if anything goes wrong night makes everything so much more difficult. We could hardly see in the water before us and racing we were at risk of high speed collision. I don’t even know why I’m explaining this. No sane person races wing on wing at night on watch with the rest of the boat asleep below.  

Other than that We really did enjoy the sail south.  

(Oops Except  I forgot her getting so drunk on tequila across the border she hit a couple of girls ,denied she did and then I, not sober myself, was told by their boyfriends to control my violent partner. She proceeded to hit them again trying to make it look like an accident and pay them back for them telling their boyfriends. I was furious and was all set to fight but took her back to the boat and returned ready to ‘defend my lady’s honor’.  Alcohol. Thankfully they’d left and I didn’t end up in a 3 against 2 fight as my crew had no experience in fights and Mexico is not tolerant of this sort of ‘gringo behaviour.  Killing each other is more acceptable. We all had horrible hangovers and blamed tequila (to kill ya)

Mexico really was spectacular. I love my memories of the sunsets and sun rises. I loved the sea.  We did amazing things and saw amazing things.

We rescued a couple of guys in a dinghy who’s boat had gone down after a fire. I’d publish the story of our lifesaving intervention in the Latitudes Magazine. I’d write stories for off shore sailing magazines that year. 

My wife and I would help rescue a baby whale caught in the mangroves. Others had pulled it out from getting caught and going aground.  My wife and I swam side by side touching it to keep it from turning back into the beach. We directed it by swimming on either side until it was beyond the point where the mother joined the many ton baby.  What an incredible experience. Swimming with whales, saving a life.

We’d been told to take old playboys for barter with the Mexico fishermen who caught lobster like crayfish. It was against the law for them to sell them but there was a great trade in ball caps, tshirts and playboys. Apparently the ball caps work earlier in the season, then the t shirt but later in the season the gold is playboys. We got a wealth of cray fish and feasted with butter and lemon to our hearts content. There’s never enough of these tasty morsels and we just kept trading all the way along the coast.

Rosa was a favourite harbour when I used my electronic translator to tell the gorgeous custom’s agent that it was ‘hot’ but the word ‘hot’ has two translations. She blushed when I called her very hot and the Mexicans present chuckled.  We had been learning spanish and trying it out as we travelled . Really wonderful days in the warm weather and kindly winds.  Spectacular sailing. 

Somewhere we got drunk and returned to find that the dinghy had been ‘holed’ trapped under a bit of dock by rising tide. We argued about direction and being an idiot I almost took us to Japan insisting this was the way all the while I was headed out to sea trying to keep inflating the leaking dinghy. Eventually she made me see reason, dark before us, lights behind us and despite my drunken superiority I humbly reversed direction and found our boat at anchor.  I repaired the dinghy next day on deck.

I think that was before the crew rejoined us.  

It was always exciting filling with diesel in Mexico as the hoses were usually meant for larger boats. There’s one memorable pump at a place called ‘Gordo’s” which meant ‘fat’s’. The hose dangled from a crane with no where for us to tie up so we maintained the position under this high speed hose by pushing off the piling.  

Great barbecued fish meals.  Wonderful sea birds.  Dolphins as far as the eye could see.  More grey whales. IT was a sailing wonder. Eventually we reached Cabot San Lucas.  What a rush to sail into that harbour!

I loved the Broken Surfboard. I was able to visit there with a dozen other captains and we had many a great discussions. I’m forever thankful for the afternoon when each captain told their tale of their crew mutinies. One wife had actually locked her husband on deck in a storm and refused to let him come in insisting he take them home.  There were story after story. The women on the women’s boat had locked their female skipper in the head and departed in the dinghy 4 of them leaving at the first anchorage. One of the skippers had heard the screams so came along side and let that female captain out of the head and took her ashore to regain her dinghy. She remained at anchor there till she could get another crew.  

With my wife in evening we joined other cruisers. I played my Martin 6 string guitar in the cafe’s at night. My crew played his violin. I mostly sang Leonard Cohen, Suzanne being especially loved.  It was good times. Well deserved. Well won.  

Our marriage seemed on the way to healing as we actually began to enjoy the joy of the south and the reward of the long journey.  Years of hard work and preparation.

One of the natives offered me a joint and here three months off weed I smoked one and took one back to my partner.  She was off on a Castanadas trip and in another world.  I just liked it.  The next many months in Baja would include regular marijuana and mostly Mexican beer.  

We discussed where to go, most boats going on to Puerto Vallarta. We figured we’d sail up to La Paz, the easiest destination and winter in the Sea of Cortez because we didn’t figure we’d come back this way. There was also a possibility of shipping our boat overland to the Gulf of Mexico rather than travelling south through the Canal.  

We sailed up to La Paz where we docked and loved it.  The marina was terrific. We had a fabulous home. We met the greatest folks. It was months of truly great times. We befriended a German sailor who survived by taking out Germans camping in the Baja or sailing on his trimaran.  His girlfriend was a Nashville Country Star who had hooked up with an incredible spanish guitarist. We settled into a routine.  

Shinto loved La Paz despite the heat. The winter months being moderate not at all like the tortuously hot summer months.  For a time we anchored off from La Paz and Shinto and I would go for his morning walk. We’d both jump off the boat and swim ashore. There were tiny rays but his churning up the water before me meant I never needed to worry. He wasn’t stung. After this morning swim I’d take him for a long run then swim back to the boat. I had to wear a light scuba jacket because of the stinging jelly fish.

Thursday night we’d play blues in the local pub. The rule was that we couldn’t drink more than the customers. That’s where I started with 5 cords blues and left when I couldn’t remember what to do after one chord. I also played bongos.  We had lots of fun with different folk singers, the amazing Oceanographer and his wife standing out. Things wnt south when a cocaine crew arrived and the atmosphere changed.  We stopped going there then.

We helped with the cleaning and raising funds for a handicapped riding school. Riding in the old west of Baja Mexico was out of this era. Riding up to a saloon in a town where no cars or trucks came only horses, tying up the horses and ordering a cerveza, this was the life. We did this for months. We’d eat out for $10 a person each night often with three courses and white table cloths.  We were now with the ‘locals’ and no longer going to the ‘tourist’ places.  We did go to Hotel California where the Eagles song was made only because our German friend knew the owner.  There was an artists commune there.

Feliz Navidad. We had all this food prepared but the coke boat won the toss and our friends left us for the coke and tequila night. It was a bit unsettling.  I loved getting the classical flautest to improvise in our Thursday night jam.  I’d practiced Buffet’s Teguila Ville with  Changes in Latitudes, Changes in attitudes. The payment for our playing was free tequila but we filled the place.

I loved the pelicans. Waking day after day to the gently rocking boat and looking out at the pelicans which would literally dive bomb for fish, great splashes,  then they’ d come up with a fish in their funny faces.  The Malecon was always worth a walk.  Huevos Rancheros breakfasts.

I thought we were in love. She was wonderful. Our costs once we were in Mexico plummeted.  Living is cheap in the third world.  I’d meet the local psychiatrist and dine out with him and his wife. Lovely people. I got my Single Side BAnd converted to include Hamm Radio Frequences by the former Navy communication expert. We did boat work and boat maintenance. We had our bottom sand blasted and painted

I guided a captain delivering a baby in the sea of Cortez and with the help of my psychiatrist colleague arranged for an obstetrician/pediatrician to go out with the coast guard to meet the returning guide boat hours half way hours from Le Paz.  I’d give talks on emergency and wilderness Medicien at sea. I’d write an article for off shore sailors with colleagues.  My radio operator friend would call me to assist several emergencies he’d get at sea. My partner did the same. We were really appreciated in the community. I saw a lot of cases mostly general practice. My first ever case of ‘chancre’ showed up when an American insisted I look at his penis.  The tell tale sign was there.

She had  beautiful legs and the cutest ass in short shorts.  I’d never wear anything but shorts ,sandals and  t shirt. At sea we’d be naked only keeping a sarong handy in case another boat came near.  

I’d be asked to see a Canadian ‘psychologist’ who was accused by two American girls of sexually harassing them. The consulate to Mexico asked me if I’d look into the matter because he’d been approached to get the release of the “Psychologist’.  I interviewed the two girls whose story was totally believable .  The community had split and the little girls and their family were somewhat ostracized at this point. I’d actually expected to be able to get a history that would allow me to say they were not telling the truth or that nothing had happened or there’d been a misunderstanding. But I’d listened to hundreds of children and recognized that this was not ‘factitious’ but true. 

I called the Consulate and recommended against him taking any action that weekend.  The man was to face trial on the Monday withthe judge. I typed up a formal forensic psychiatric consultation of my examination of the two little girls . It was in English but I had this Spanish Translation program that I ran it through really uncertain what it said. I gave both to the parents and embassy who had them seen by the judge, the translation being adequate. He kept the man in jail as a result.  

It turned out he wasn’t a ‘Canadian Psychologist’ but a pedophile wanted by the FBI in 5 states with hundreds of victims who’d fled to Ontario then Mexico. The Canadian embassy thanked me for assisting Canada the ambassador being delighted he’d not got between the Mexican justice system and a ‘norteamericano’ on this occasion.  The Mexicans don’t take kindly to pedophiles and apparently I saved the embassy a lot of embarrassment. It really was great to get such thanks. The whole tide changed in the ‘expat’ community and the girls were vindicated with the parents thanking me and literally everyone thinking I was some kind of great psychiatrist as no one had guessed.

I also was called to a hugely wealthy Nazis Yacht. A multi millionaire who was having chest pain. Once inside it was like being in the third Reich. Pictures of Hitler, memorabilia and this old man with chest pain. I was able to assist him and solve his problem. He’d been using the Mexican ‘generic’ digitalis which was half the potency of the ‘real’ drug. I increased his meds and his breathing improved with a little lasix and nitro. He had a veritable pharmacy on his incredibly huge luxury yacht.

We ate. We slept. We gathered for afternoon drinks. We made music. I wrote poetry. She painted .We read in the sun. We made love often. It was a truly idyllic time.

She flew home too. She said it was to manage her affairs.  She and the expoliceman had a grow op in the house the whole time we were away. During her trips back she moved all our money into her name and moved the money out of joint accounts into new accounts.  She was preparing for her future and I was or was not going to be apart of it. She didn’t care.

We sailed north to the top of the Sea of Cortez where there was a marina that would stow our boat on land and we could come back and holiday here or return and have it moved by land to the Gulf of Mexico so we could sail in the Caribbean, the ‘dream’.  We had even planned to sail back up to the Maritimes but that would have been stage 3, thus having circumnavigated Canada and the US. We had rethought the world circumnavigation because it turned out that it was harder to get work offshore. The dream had been to work half the year and sail in the south seas. We were feeling like we’d had enough fun in the sun and ready to return to work. A friend asked me if we could come to the Yukon for locus as he’d had a baby and his mother hadn’t seen the new grandchild because he could never get time off. Like most Northern doctors he had trouble recruiting locums.

I ‘d also want to do a locum in Tennessee. Make money and return for a year of sailing, Work sail.  She was so keen on this, it was such a great idea and life style and we met so many offshore couples doing similar lives.

In Guyamos we’d leave the boat on land and she’d play this game that we had no money .Big act.  I had a credit card so with my $5000 limit I bought a Toyota sport truck,  I loaded up the computers and electronics in the back we’d worried might be stolen and drove north. She was again without drugs and acting very strange.  I loved that truck. I loved the ride back to Vancouver. I loved Southern California desert and the Northern California forests. 

Back in our house in Shaughnassey the ex policeman was there with a bag of dope and she was happy again.  

She said we couldn’t take the job offered in Tennessee or leave VAncouver because we had no money.  I reviewed the accounts and we’d not spent more than a thousand or two a month. The cost of the year was less than $50,000. I had more than that in the bank myself even though she’d always used my income and we never saw hers.  A cute game.  Now we coiuldn’t leave because the money was gone.

My friend in the Yukon ha asked us if we could come north and cover his practice as he’d had a baby and couldn’t get anyone to cover his practice so he could take the 2 year old baby to see the grandparents. I was glad for the task. We’d both cover emergency and I’d do psychiatry. A bundle of money in 4 months. All the while we lived in his spectacular home. 

The hospital nurses and staff had worked with her and these superb nurses had seemed to ‘free’ her up so that she actually performed daily, getting into work and following through.There still were some terrible medical mishaps because of her inexperience and attitude. She’d only worked in the city university hospitals and simply refused to listen to those in the north who said there just wasn’t the same resources. A man died. It was an unnecessary death. He’d have eventually died 6 months later but her aggressiveness in his care, appropriate for a teaching hospital in the south was advised against by all in the north who knew there wasnt’ the means to handle complications. Sure enough he had complications. My friend returning immediately asked ‘why isn’t my patient alive, he had another 6 month in him”.  He was being kind but like a northern doctor he had a sense of prognosis and knew that something had hastened the death. I knew too. I didn’t like her attitude.  There was a callousness that I’d see more of and not appreciate. I’d increasingly face the moral dilemma of covering for her , the impaired physician.

Internal medicine has more life and death and detail than general psychiatry .  We’d drink and smoked dope in the evening but there was no errors I made. I had done DT’s that took more medication to settle than any of the worst cases I’d treated when I’d run the Winnipeg Detox.  Alcoholic DT’s in the Yukon were more common and the nurses and doctor were used to ‘industrial dosages.’  He settled but not before he damaged a room with angry delusional kicking.  

We’d save a life. She would do holy Medicine . When she was good she was very very good.It was a beautiful night. A thing to behold. I would write the story of that life saving event and get a variety of writing awards but really ,it was just three amazing clinicians all working at their best with a Christian nurse and a teenage girl being resuscitated.  She was dead and she came alive.  My wife was at her best. She really could shine in an emergency but she was unreliable and with all the drugs and alcohol simply would not go to work. Except here the nurses got the best out of her and she really did work well.

Based on that I gave her another chance and we opened a clinic together . Having never had a private practice she began countermanding my orders and suggestions and literally screwing up the computer system and the filing system and everything. A private practice is a ‘business’. There’s a successful way to do it. I hired several staff to ‘manage her’ because she simply wasn’t functioning. She didn’t get any of her consults back to the referring doctors so they didn’t send any more patients. The business of private practice is providing the family physicians with timely consults and getting the lab work and such done and making copies for the referring gps. She didn’t do any of that and tried to function like a resident with herself as the only doctor working in a bubble. She didn’t communicate with the patients and very soon she was back in bed not coming to work. I’d arrive and have the office full of my patients and her patients and shed’ gone to have her hair done or to buy new clothes without warning the staff. We had angry staff. I was angry. She was increasingly drugged.

The house was broken into so I had a top notch securty system put in. She kept changing the code and not telling me . All the gaslighting passive aggressive games we’d gone through in the country. My stethesecope would go missing and she’d put it in her room . My patients charts were misfiled. The staff were told I was coming in an hour early so they booked a patient and I wasn’t there. I was up each night charting and she wasn’t doing charting. There was no record keeping. A Ct Scan was necessary for a person who needed this scan to participate in her overseas team. She didn’t forward it and didn’t return calls. I came in one night to get this tearful voice begging me to know the results. It was normal.  Add the report which had come in weeks before and sat on her desk.  The woman’s could climb Everest.  That’s not something you don’t return calls on .It was bedlam.

She was screaming all night doing drugs and drinking and I couldn’t sleep. Twice I went to a motel to get sleep because I had a practice to do. I didn’t do coke. She was up all night. She was furious always.  When she wasn’t she was depressed.  

I had a full practice and 6 month waitlist and she had no patients. After she botched her initial consults there was no further patients. Her patients were angry and complained to her gps who didn’t send anymore patients.  I said we should have a wine and cheese party so that she could expand her referral base. We’d send out an open house statement have wine and lots of cheese and crackers. We had lists of local doctors and who’d be invited.  She failed to invite any of the gp’s who would refer to her but instead invited her drunken drug addicted friends. I had invited dozens of my colleagues who arrived and found dozens of bottles of wine and endless cheese and crackers and no one but them and the her low life drug addicted friends I’d said we were not going to invite.  It looked like we were a wine garden. Now we had dozens of bottles of wine. I was drinking a bottle of wine a night with her, maybe two together and getting marijuana.

 A fellow who dealt cocaine had had a manic or bad drug experience . He was my patient. Shed’ been getting cocaine again from her source and now began to approach my patients for cocaine in the office.That was it for me.

I’d had the alarms on the house go off. I had to work next day . The money I was making hand over fist was going into her accounts and not into the shared accounts. Suddenly $50,000 dollars was missing and our lawyer, who had befriended her said we needed a loan. I took out a personal loan at his suggestion $50,000 to keep the business afloat.  She simply took it. There was no cost. Just a standard mortgage and staff. She and no money coming in and was spending on cocaine.

I was seeing a psychiatrist and we were terribly concerned. He did’t think I had a problem I told him I was drinking a bottle of wine a day and smoking a joint but her cocaine use was terrifying because all this money was disappearing as well and she wasn’t showing up for work , was always angry and completely erratic. She kept breaking my things.  I broke a vase when she smashed my camera ‘accidentally ‘.  I told her I ddin’t believe her fucking ‘covert aggressive’ accident that only hurt me. So I broke a vase and said. “How does that feel’ That’s what you’re doing to me and your patients. Dont’ you feel . Haven’t you any empathy.!” 

And she go off and do more drugs.  

I asked her to go to San Diego . My consulting psychiatrist had told me to get away from town, away from the drug dealers. There was treament in San Diego . She had family. She agreed to fly out. She did but she didn’t go to a doctor. Her uncle phoned me and asked me to leave the house.

“Did she tell you about her cocaine and drug abuse and the alcoholism and her violence.”  

“No’.  

“Well, that’s why she’s in San Diego so she can get treatment for cocaine and drug abuse.”

I felt sorry for this old man who knew nothing about cocaine and the lies and splitting. . He was just concerned for his niece. 

I found that the carpet in t he basement concealed shake ....the electricity had been altered. I’d never have known there’d been a grow op if they cleaned it up. Now here I was a psychiatrist with addiction patients living in a house with all the evidence of a grow op.  It couldn’t get worse.

She’d lit up a joint with a cop car beside her when she was with a friend and he complained me,”It was my car. I would have lost it and everything. She just thought it was funny.”

It was raining the night I left. She was home and in a rage. I didn’t even trust leaving the dog with her. It was raining.  

She’d blown the head gasket on my truck and I’d been reduced to taking the bus to work. Without a vehicle for the first time in decades.

“My dad took the bus to work. You don’t need a car.’ She said. 

I couldn’t find a place where my dog and I could stay the night. I phoned my biker friends on the island knowing that I could take my dog there. There aren’t a whole lot of options when you have a dog and it’s a rainy night and you are trying to get taxies from hotel to hotel. This was before cell phones. 

 I took the ferry to the island. My friends met me.  They’d been doing a lot of cocaine. Cocaine was suddenly everywhere. The year we’d left sailing it had not been around, just marijuana but starting with the cocaine boat in La Paz cocaine just kept appearing everywhere. My former ‘biker hippy’ friends were now a different sort but they wanted me to stay and I was thankful to be out of the insaniety of that house and that crazy coke lady. We sat around and smoked dope and drank wine and watched tv.  We worked on motorcycles. My friend was a motorcycle mechanic. He had some famous clients.  

I told her I wasn’t coming back.  We separated. She dumped my files of my patients in the back of the truck and some of my personal possessions including my guns and ammo and fishing gear and left it unlocked parked on the street.  Friends brought it to the island.  I was so disappointed to see the lack of care and concern for peoples lives. I was talking to my psychiatrist and considering options. I didn’t know what to do.

I had $30,000 in RRSP’s and got $15000 back . I wanted to trade my truck for a car but the guy took the money and claimed it was rent and food but instead spent it on coke.  

It turned out that for a year they’re been inviting people to come stay and then kicking them out and keeping their stuff. He’d been married to a doctor who kicked him out because of the coke habit. My other doctor friend’s husband got into coke and she kicked him out. 

I would have liked coke but it gave me lock jaw, made me horny and all I could think of was sex, but I had ED. I ‘d taken to wearing my Rocky Horror Picture Show black lingerie and wandering around in the fields under the full moon. Things were pretty crazy.  Smoking lots of dope and drinking moonshine from their still.

Following the direction of my friend I backed up scratching my truck. He got furious screaming and threatening. I’d bought a wrecked boat and had been working on that. One of his friends sold it to me for $5000. It was worthless. Nothing got done. None of the motorcycles worked. His new girlfriend never left her bedroom. They did coke all night. I remember liking the morning waking and watching tv drinking coffee and smoking a joint.

I remember a moment of clarity, drinking beer with this hippy farmer friend and thinking he looked really old and sad.There were a lot of 20 year old girls about. Beyond him I saw myself in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw. I looked worse. 

I got a call from a Christian friend and crew. He asked if I wanted anything. Said he’d felt God telling him to call me. I asked him if he could come pick me up . He arrived with his station wagon. We loaded my valuables in the back. We left some stuff but a friend said my coke addicted friend was furious I’d left because he’d planned to take all my stuff and run me off.  I’d jumped the gun and escaped.  God is good all of the time.

Later these friends would threaten to kill me and try to extort money. My friends.  Cocaine does terrible things to people.

I’d prayed to God. I wanted to be alone in a cabin on a hill and stop all drugs and alcohol. My friend had a trailer . I stayed in that. It was exactly what I prayed for.

I had no money .  The money I’d got had been taken and now I was here without any assets. I went with my friend to his church and they gave me food. It was kind of them. Coffee and food. My friend shared his food that first week.  I was hungry and would walk Shinto for long walks on the mountain. He’d get me a futon.  I had a futon and an empty trailer .

I went to welfare and the woman there screamed at me saying ‘welfare isn’t  for doctor’s’.  She threw me out. 

I remember crying a lot.

My friend had asked me if I’d wanted to go home and I said I couldn’t go home because she was doing drugs and alcohol and I needed to get straight. I needed all my wits about me.

The ‘insurance’ I’d paid for for decades with the Doctors of BC had a proviso which said it was based on your previous year’s income. As I’d been sailing and not working for a year I never got any money from the BCMA.

I had all my working life starting in Manitoba paid into a private Great West Life disability  insurance fund. It paid out a thousand a month . I was able to get that going.

I’d gone to see Dr. Willi Gutowski. He was a Christian psychiatrist. I was going to go back to Manitoba where I had family and friends. He suggested I stay and get clean and sober and go to church. We prayed together. I found I only trusted Christians at this time and next I’d trust sober people.  I was detoxing from nicotine and marijuana mostly. I’d stopped drinking too.  I finally met with Dr. Graham a recovered doctor from Physician Help. He was a good man. 

Dr. Graham recommended I see Bernie. Dr. Bernie came to the trailer. I had a bible and a shot gun , a knife and an axe. I was beating a tambourine to keep the evil spirits out. I also was watching out for my biker ex friend who said he was coming to kill me to get the papers for the truck. I wasn’t giving him the papers as I’d never got the car in trade and I’d given them $15000 which I learned he’d put up his nose. I think I had less than10 lines drinking to stay awake at these drunken biker parties only to confirm that. I’d get Lock jaw erectile failure and be horny as hell.  

I joke and say I gave up drinking to give up smoking I was smoking 2 packs of cigarettes having gone from a pack a day a month before. I had a great green bag of marijuana shake from the grow operation and rolling drum tobacco and shake. I had industrial dosages of that on board. All the hiking was clearing my head and lungs. Shinto loved walking his dad.

Dr. Bernie came over in a new truck. The neighbours weren’t talking to me. I’d taken the axe and my tanto knife  and cut and a made a great chair to sit on  the deck. I was sitting on the deck like a hill billy.  Dr. Bernie was a mensch.  

I told him my story minimizing my drug and alcohol use the last month focussing on my previous use. Coming to the church going downstairs, he said .”Hearing your story I’d guess you’re the highest bottom ever to go to AA”. I didn't’ know about his wit and candour and capacity for irony.  I thought he was referring to my ass. I figured then and there that this whole church basement was full of homosexuals and AA was a group fuck and I was about to be group fucked up the ass. I had no where else to go.  

No one fucked me that night. I actually lectured them because I thought they wanted me to teach them about wine and marijuana so I gave an impromptu lecture. Then I sat back and listened. They talked about God and that was good because I’d stopped trusting people almost completely . I trusted God and knew that people who trusted God were maybe okay.  They talked a lot about a spiritual solution.  I liked that too because drugs and alcohol hadn’t helped and made things worse. I was ready for abstinence and not too long later applied for a monastery.  I had had it with the world.  I had had had it with psychiatry.  ‘

They said that it was a ‘one day at a time’ program and I’d not had drugs or alcohol or nicotine for weeks but I was keen on the present. I was back to praying and meditating and reading the Bible. 

They seemed like nice people.  They told me to ‘keep coming back’.  No one else was saying that.  

Orphaned from above 

(I had said fuck it and out of spite showed her that I could open a practice. That’s what I did. I could open a practice and have a full practice in months. I’d done it from a ‘cold start’ in Parksville and in Vancouver . I could do it again.. I work and I have a high success rate with doctors wanting to refer,  and patients wanting to come back. I’ve routinely had 2 year waitlists only paring them down to 3 months by selecting patients according to my interests, trauma and borderline personality disorder. No one wanted to see borderline personality disorder, mysubspecialty  and PTSD wasn’t very popular either. I didn’t have a lot of competition. The smart money doctors we’re seeing depressed middle or upper class housewives..  

She on the other hand had never had a practice. She’d totally failed to work in our Parksville clinic getting no clients and making no contact with colleagues.  She liked to socialize with rich people and drug addicts and alcoholics. I expressed deep concern about her coming into a private practice with me because not only had she failed to attend the clinic in Parksville when she’d worked several months in mental health she never left her office didn’t see patient and had a terrible clinicalreputation. We opened a practice again and she crashed. I could never forget the story of the horse about to swim to safety across a stream, asked by a scorpion but a ride.

 “You’ll sting me. “ 

“No I won’t, we’d both drown”

The horse swims with the scorpion on his head and the scorpion stings him in the middle of the river.

“Why did you do that,” the horse asked “we’ll now both drown »

« It’s my nature, » answered the scorpion.)

35 yo :Parksville, Marijuania, Homesteading, Chickens, Near death

We met on a boat.  A beautiful young Persian girl who was her friend invited me to a party on a large harbour boat.  I was delighted to go. A lot of the staff were there from the hospital, especially the young staff. In retrospect I believe that this beautiful young sophisticated woman had her eye on me. However the moment my future wife arrived she barged into the conversation and was monopolizing me. She’d definitely been partying before she arrived and some there. She was all lit up.  I liked this boat business bccause all the women were in bathing suits and bikini’s.  I was just in shorts and a T-shirt. I don’t even remember if the boat actually left the dock.  I was surrounded by truly beautiful young women and quite in heaven.  There were a few years there when I felt at times like I was steak and the dogs were circling. The women were mostly in their mid to late 30’s when the biological clock was ticking and there were only a couple of us single doctors left. We were obviously ‘left’ for a reason but there was that ‘beggars can’t be choosey’ element in the air with a lot of desperation as people searched for a bargain.  I considered myself a bad man then, damaged goods, and certainly not wanting to shit in the living room.  A little tipsy I decided to escape.  She was very drunk and followed me down the gangplank to my Vanagon.

I remember peeking to see she had breasts.  I’d mostly gone out with big breasted girls and voluptuous girls but she was rather flat and I remember being satisfied that she was sufficiently endowed. I was also thinking that after the nurse and the series of failed relationships on the island, all truly beautiful voluptuous women, perhaps I should date a more intelligent crazy lady who was less endowed.  She had great ass and legs. A real beauty in her own right. 

She climbed into the back of the Vanagoand proceeded to vomit on my shoes. She thought I was great to just clean up her mess and think nothing of it. I ‘ve always been efficient and practical.  I  didn’t see the metaphor or test at the time.

I had to clean up shoes and the floor and then offered her a joint. I was thinking I wanted one, hoped she shared, and generally thought it would help settle her stomach. She was ecstactic. Turned out she loved dope.  Always had it. Smoked it constantly. I was in heaven. Another woman who shared my vices.  

She was also interested in sex immediately and followed me to my bed. Frankly I can’t remember where we first had sex only that I thought this was really a good thing, a drunk doctor who liked dope and wanted to bed me immediately.  

She was very bright and when we were having coffee the next day  I loved her little girlishness. I’m a sucker for the girl next door. I put it down to not having a sister and having had friends who were girls I’d grown up playing with when I wasn’t doing sports and  brawling with the guys.  She really was sweet.

I met her father and loved him.  Her mother was insane.  A lady who spoke with an affected British accent and dressed like she was in a play. The father was ex military. He was a scientist and geologist and helped develop the Canadian flame thrower. We shared tales of the north as we’d both spent a lot of time flying up there. He’d developed mines in the Yukon and loved that I loved the outdoors.  His wife meanwhile was competing with her daughter for my attention dancing about the house like one of those 1930’ types, everyone drinking and the whole party having the quality of depression with a last fling.  

Her brother had committed suicide.  “No one ever got over it,” she said.  

She had a black friend who seemed more than a friend but was her drug dealer. I met him with her party girl friend. and I really liked that she had her own supply though I wondered about this fellow.  She had a party girl friend who did drugs with her, a shop girl who knew the black guy.  Odd situation. My dealer was a doctor and she liked that.  As with everything she was soon using and taking over my stuff and best relationships. 

We smoked dope, drank and screwed.  

Not a bad life. 

She wanted a family and children.  She told me she really wanted children.  I wanted children.  So I proposed.

We’d known each other a week but we’d been in the woods and she loved to hike and camp, She skied , cycled  and canoed.  She loved animals. Shinto my dog loved her. We smoked dope, drank and screwed. What more could one want in a wife. Admittedly I’d grown a bit jaded. Everyone seemed to be divorcing and no one I knew had a particularly good relationship. 

I also thought,  I’d spent a year courting my ex wife and that marriage had failed despite, doing it all ‘by the book’ and ‘with due diligence’ , so why not ‘just go for it.’  She was late 30’s , if we were going to have a child we’d have to get on with it.  I wanted to move back to the country. She’d lived a year or two in the country with the ex husband and said she loved it and wanted the same. I believed her. She was a doctor. Doctors told the truth.

It was a while before she told me “women just tell men what they want to hear while they making plans to do what they really want.”

She had her internal medicine exams to complete but had done all the courses so had no more clinical work, just the exam.  This gets hazy because it later became clear that she wasn’t quite truthful about her academic situation.  I’d suggested we could open a practice and she said she could too but it turned out that she’d failed a lot of her studies. Indeed her father had given an endowment to the university for her to continue and she’d had sex with her supervisors as well. She told me “ I gave him what he wanted and I got what I needed. We both had fun””.”

It bothered me that last bit. Her having sex with her staff men , given it became clear she not only wasn’t that good a student but she wasn’t that good a doctor. She had ‘academic’ knowledge but clinically she was really mostly internship level. I felt badly because the whole issue of my having been bedded by my supervisor and being at the time the golden boy of the university, whereas it seemed she’d not have got this far if she hadn’t had sex.  It really was what was going on in my mind. As well I was wondering why God had me mirrored this way and what was I to learn.

I truly believed in karma and the law of attraction blaming myself for all the bad that happened to me and being perplexed that things went awry. Life didn’t make sense. Here I was a psychiatrist and had been a yogi and intellectual but nothing seemed to make sense. 

When it became apparent she’d always say ‘I never said that” I’d write out our agreements and get her to sign them. She lied so much I’d not know if it was the drugs or intention. When I’d confront her with the written agreement she’d just say “so what”.

It came to a head when I helped her pass her written by setting up a study regimen and literally keeping her to it. I’d done the same with my ex , and felt ominously like I’d married two different girls who were the same, party girls who only needed me to Beth them through school. I was the tutor with extras. The ex though had a great intuitive sense, loved children and was a great doctor.  

I didn’t know with my present wife because she had these odd quirks of superiority and ‘status’ and ‘class’ and treated waitresses poorly. Nothing would have been a deal breaker but I’d invested all my money in a house and moved to the country near friends.  Her only friends were party girls at the time, she said, though I’d learn later she’d had more friends but burnt bridges. Indeed she had these great friends in Kelowna and we visitted there with the intention of moving there. One of those, if only we had ,  life would have been better.  These doctors from early days were salt of the earth but we were trapped for 6 hours in a freak blizzard on the way back to Vancouver so the idea of being so isolated despite the Coquahalla lost it’s appeal since she wanted to stay in touch with the university. The alternative was the island which I liked because my friend Marion was surrounded with women and children and everyone there was having children. We had to get on with this if she was going to make the biological cut off.  I though surrounded by small children and families would be the way to go since the city was singles and gay. 

There was this pressure.  Only she didn’t pass her exams. I set up  a clinic and had a full practice working daily with lots of money coming in. She by contrast had arranged to work for free with one of her previous lovers and while I was in the country working she was living with her mother and preparing for her oral exam having now passed her written once she actually studied. She failed her oral. I was shocked.  

The plan had been for her to be a consultant like me in the country but now she was a glorified GP .  We’d diverted my money to building her a consulting office.  Now we had this consulting office which she never saw one patient in.Beautiful office. I’d renovated a large 2 car garage  two offices with waiting room and a whole separate plumbing for her examining office with sinks etc. My psychotherapy office didn’t need any additional plumbing. The fellow had a washroom in this building already but we had to do the plumbing division of the building etc for her costly office.  Now she never used it.  

I was in the country alone weeks at a time. She was in the city with her ex lovers doing more internal medicine. It turned out when I met her she’d been at Riverview doing geriatrics but had been passed over by the geriatrics supervisor who she hated and was jealous of. Her competitor a down to earth girl who just did the work she thought lacked class.No drama. My ex and her mother were into drama.  

Ironically she could be a very good doctor when she applied herself. I saw this later. When was surrounded by really good staff and she was amazing. I saw her rise to the occasion and save lives. She was just not reliable. On her own she slid down but with other good people she rose and competed with the best.  She certainly had the skill set, had great teachers.  and under the right conditions shone.  The drugs in retrospect really were a problem because she was so intermittent.  She’d spend weeks in bed.  Nothing would get done. She’d read and stare.  She insisted she wasn’t depressed. I asked her to get help. She’d drink abottle of wine and smoke a joint and nex minute be flying a mile a minute.

With the failures and her not working and me having to work all the time to pay the expenses the whole having a baby thing seemed to be put back a year.  She also wasn’t changing her drug use pattern.  I wasn’t either. We were doing mushrooms and smoking dope and drinking daily when together. We were  a great ‘drug buddy’ team. When she was high she was flying.  When she was n’t high we both were irritable.  But we loved the dog and the country and had long walks. She failed her orals.

I was shocked because I’d been doing practice orals with her for weeks and knew she knew all the material. She said the examiner didn’t like her.  She told me the examiner was a family friend. It turned out that she’d approached this examiner on a first name basis reminding her of the party her father had thrown for her family. That explained clearly why that person failed her. Anxos she pulled the Who we both know card where that card brought failure, bit like offering a bribe to the wrong policeman. She certainly had her skills and knowledge but she had tried to pull ‘who we know’ card in a place where we all pride ourselves on ‘what we know’. 

The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in contrast to medical school at the time  was still above influence peddling . This was before University of Toronto sold medical degrees if you came with a lawyer. The leaders of the College of Physicians and Surgeons  in the field protected us from this. Meritocracy and excellence with the name of the game. This was before ‘inclusivity’ and ‘tokenism’ when the club was very much exclusive and elite.   If she’d just gone in and not done her ‘mother’s’ thing but rather trusted her knowledge and skills I’m convinced she would have passed.  I was upset. Here we were another a year, no baby, in the country, and her commuting back and forth and me alone weeks at a time, still principally my single income supporting  and always more and more patients and more and more work. I’d be the principle financial provider for those 2 years and most of the rest of the marriage. She was unable to work or didn’t work.  I always worked..  

She had to wait for another year to try her exams again. That was the system.  

She didn’t want to do general practice andeventually  instead got a gp job at the mental health through our mutual friend who was sincerely embarrassed because. “She refuses to see patients.’

It turned out that she sat in her office for 5 months and didn’t see any patients. That was my wife. She was amazing.  She had done this at our office. No patient. Didn’t contact the gp. Didn’t set up appointments just sat in the office reading books. She did the same here.  I learned she’d done the same at Riverview.

“She didn’t like seeing patients. She liked being in her office. Would be there for days. Never came out. Everyone wondered what she was doing.”

Weirdest thing.  I was a psychiatrist and wondered if it was a fugue state or something.  She would try to stay in bed but I’d simply not allow that. Get the dog to bounce on her until she laughed, bring her coffee and breakfast in bed , then get her walking. I was in my first year of marriage and felt like I had a patient, a dependent depressive patient, or a borderline. One bizarre behaviour after another. I can be weird but she  was way off the charts. 

I didn’t know. I did know. I went to work. I did my chores. I socialized and I was kind and generous to her but I did object to her ‘male friend’.  I just don’t like being cuckolded and it was obvious early that was an issue. I’d meet doctors at parties and they’d act strangely to me. I’d confront her and she’d say yes they’d been lovers. I insisted that she let me know first because it was a bit difficult when the other guy knows he’s fucked your wife and you don’t know but he’s doing all this dominance attitude stuff.  It was always bizarre.

 She’d move things too. Always moving my guns and computer. And my keys.   I’d have my gun at the door because the raccoons went after the chickens, a cougar attacked the neighbours and we had bears in the yard.  I’d follow the dog downstairs in the dark grab my shot gun from the hall closet and go out with a flash light to follow the dog who was chasing whatever off the homestead property.  I was really quite furious when the bear almost mauled my dog because I only had a broom because she’d moved the gun to the bedroom closet.

“I thought you wanted it there.”  

“I didn’t move it.” 

 Always denial and lies. 

We’d organized the kitchen cupboards. “Is this where ‘we’ want them. ‘. 

‘That’s where my mother liked them.’

“I don’t care. Is this where we want them. I just want to know where things are supposed to be so I don’t have to go looking for everything’.

“Okay the cups can go there.’

I’d come back from being out with the dogs and the whole cupboard was rearranged with out any discussion with me, back to the way her mom liked it. 

“ I thought you wanted it like this”.

“I didn’t move it.”

It was a daily thing.

I now know it’s ‘gaslighting’ . She’d eventually say she never wanted move to the country but wanted me tobecause it’s passive aggressive or just insane it may have been because she was just bizarre. 

I kept thinking she was dementand encouraged her to cut hack on smoking so much dope. That sure got her angry. We also didn’t know if it would affect a baby and she was doing a lot of other drugs with a neighbour fellow she liked. I had given up early. I really didn’t know what was going on. When she was good she was great but all these other times which increased over time were insane.  I had pretty much given up on babies now she’d told me about the abortions and her PMS was so severe because she had such bad endometriosis. I never knew who she was with. The neighbours complained. My female friends worried and spoked to me about her behaviour. 

This isn’t fair and reflects the bitterness with which I look back on my marriage and this divorce. When I heard Mila Cyrus sing her perverse song “wrecking ball” I thought of this woman who literally calculated the destruction of my life.

“I knew what yo wanted was to live in Shaughnassey like Daddy and yo’d go to work and come home and I’d be like Mommy and everything would be right then. I couldn’t have the country work. I never wanted to be there. Just till you got it out of your system and like Daddy did.” This was what she told me when her father was so depressed he was suicidal and her mother was physically abusive of the old guy just like the previous ex motherlaw was to her husband. That one had attacked her husband in the ICU being pulled off by other nurses screaming, “you’re not going to die before I kill you, the poor old boy taking a lot of hits to the head and chest before three or four nurses got her off. She was a big woman and he was a little guy. The nurses tried to hush it up but the gossip mill in hospitals was nuclear powered. My ex was so mortified. The old guy lived and the near death and his wife trying to kill him and his son dead all turned him around. He either stopped drinking or cut back and was very solicitous and kindly to his wife the two having this,loving relationship in the twilight years.

Meanwhile I’ve escaped the mother in law from purgatory and now have the mother in law from hell who also hates me. She kept referring to her families accomplishments as her own. ‘ I got my medical degree”. “Really “ I’d say. “Well, my daughter got it but I did all the work. Without me she’d never have got it.”

Here my poo wife had worked all these years and her mother just owned all her accomplishments, she spoke the same way about her husband. “I found the gold mines. I told him where to look “. 

Her husband’s brother was a psychiatrist and Minister of Health. “ My mother won’t mention his name. Called her psychotic. Said she was manic depressive and should be committed. Said she was going to kill brother.”

“My father loved her”. 

“She believed he had another family in South America. Insisted I had brothers and sisters but I think it was her jealousy. She was always in these jealous rages. She wasn’t supposed to drink because of her heart but that didn’t stop her,”

My wife had take a picture of me naked because her mother wanted it. I was shocked and appalled at her asking a picture of me naked and asleep and giving it to her mother who suddenly brought this out one night screaming “ I can have yo naked if I want” 

I assumed my wife and her mother were just freaky twisted but thought it karma when we were asked to view the mother dead and there she was starkers on a gurney the attendant not even thinking to put a cover over her. I was glad my wife saw her dead. She haunted her. 

When we went through the house after her death we found hundreds of notes her mother had written to her.

“You little whore”

“My daughter is a dirty whore”

 “My daughter is a stupid bitch”

Much worse.

My wife, wearily, said, “She did that. It was her game. Hiding dirty messages where I’d just find them.”

My wife had learned the craft from the best but she didn’t deserve it. It was so sad. The doctors had tried to get the mother on antipsychotics but she’d refuse treatment and fire them.

After she died my fiend and I search through the house finding a thousand of these little notes written in perfect hand writing saying the most scurrilous things about her daughter. We had to shake out every book, cook books, the bible magazines but didn’t know if we.d got them all. 

She and her mother did drugs together and drank together. She’d tell me these things and I just said, we didn’t do that in my family. But her mother thought she was superior to everyone because she’d come from Ontario and I thought that funny because my mother thought she was superior to the westerners because she came from Ontario. 

I loved my place in the country it really was a good time when she was home with me. I was sally involved in fixing up the place putting in a wonderful hardwood floor she came home to and loved. I love when my friend installed a bidet in the big bathroom. I’d shoot rabbits with my 22 pistol on the front lawn and cook up rabbit stew for the vending. I’d shoot deer and moose that year and we’d have these great barbecues and sit under the stars on the deck sipping wine after a feast and listening to the owls. We had three cats. I played guitar and sang Crosby Stills Nash and Young Our Hous. It really was idyllic. We had this great wood burning stove. We’d make love in a great bed and I’d get up and make her coffee. We’d bought both egg laying chickens and meat chickens. She,loved biology and was truly knowledgeable about the critters, studying up onmwhat we didn’t know. I loved having the ducklings in the bath with her. Cato the arthritic rooster terrorized guests. We had 4 geese guard birds. We raised turkeys and when everyone else turkeys in the valley died of disease our S live. One loved her displaying himself only for her. We’d have these wonderful times raising chickens, and ducks, geese and turkeys. 

We had the pond in back expanded and it was all just so much joy. The ducks and ducklings. I had this path around the 2 acres and ran it each day with the dog enjoy my property.  I was so fulfilled.. I lived for the chickens, enjoying cooking everything one could with eggs becoming adept at making every egg dish and even pickling eggs, 

But she was always back in the city with her mother.  I was mostly a single man for those years of our marriage.  Id wear a skirt when I was alone. I liked wearing  skirts. I’d be alone and she’d be away for weeks on end and I’d have the birds and the,dogs and cats and think it could have been idyllic and would be idyllic when she stayed. I dreamed of family and kids and yet I was alone and sad. 

The single women all younger would bring me  baking and pie. My friends were worried about me and said it wasn’t right for a woman to leave me especially since I went to work, saw patients, did good psychotherapy and saw some miraculous cures that cemented my reputation in the community. I made friends with some of the local doctors, getting together in passing, meeting in town and having real mutual admiration. Country men are competent and I was a successa as hunter and word got around I was good with a chainsaw and a wrench, I would go round and help other guys with their projects. I love when the mean old  dog in the community attacked young Shinto and Shinto came up and kicked ass chasing the brute back to his yard. He was friends with Marion’s half wolf half husky. They got up to mischief. It was a whole wonderful village world and it would have been perfect with a wife and children. It wasn’t to be. She had always had other plans and told me she didn’t want to live in the country. The incident just made it happen. She’d never been in the same book let alone on the same page.

I think the sadness skews my memory here. We’d visit with Marion and her family and friends and it was always a good time. All these kids.  I’d played guitar with these guys and sang silly children’s songs. It was a whole lot of fun.  She did’t like kids that much and spent her time talking with the husbands of the ladies. I’d be right into the melee.  It was good fun.  Marion was concerned.  Marion introduced me to Stan Rogers and Northwest Passage. We’d all sing along  acapello whenever she put the record on. 

My psychiatrist friend asked, “Is your wife schizophrenic?” 

No. I said.

It was the drugs. She was always not there. I wasn’t there myself but I was never not functional and went months without while she was always dependent, always on something.  She was older too and I’d learn she was called ‘Hoover’ when she was younger, being such a cocaine lover.  I thankfully didn’t like cocaine because I got coke jaw, everyone knew I was on coke, I couldn’t talk and all I thought about was sex but couldn’t get an erection. I tried it a few times and every time it was the same. Out with some millionaires in California when I was there I’d tried if for the first time and had that reaction. I tried it a couple of times after and always the same. Coke jaw, looked like a drooling idiot, superhorny, no erection. 

No I liked a glass of red wine, maybe a bottle over a night and a mixture of pot and tobacco. I didn’t even like the strong pot but liked to smoke so mixed the shake with tobacco and stayed in this mildly ‘buzzed’ state. I’d tried benzos when I was sent a sample and “ate the mail”, but they knocked out memory so I didn’t like them. By contrast with pot and red wine I was mellow. A joint and a glass of wine was just perfect. She liked cocaine. Frankly when she was on cocaine she was alive. Her chronic depression lifted. When she wasn’t on drugs she was kind of dead, always in bed a lot,  always depressed. I don’t know where she was getting her cocaine from. She’d come back from the city happy and I’d be the same old same old’. 

“You’re so boring.” She’d say. 

We’d watch movies, go for walks, drink coffee on the porch watching the wild horses. I loved it.  I really never got over being a hippy. “Our house” 

She never wanted it. Her place was Shaughnassey. I’d learn later she divorced her ex when he tried to take her away from her mother. Her mother hated him as much ash hated me. 

I had great patients. I loved working with them . A wonderful lovely practice. I just missed my wife. I worried we’d not have children.

She didn’t like the country.  She wanted to work in the city.  

I’d have some guys point guns in my face and the police believed them over us though they were criminals and we were doctors. I was also seeing police who were saying the police were corrupt in the north, everyone was corrupted by the billions in drug money. Whole subdivisions and all the immense real estate on Islands was funded by football field grow operations. Shewas frightened and nothing was good. My cat was killed too. I was feeling unsafe. Guys were phoning threatening to kill me after the incident in the country.

 I’d get a lawyer because they claimed I threatened them , three guys all lying and them pointing guns at me. A road block in the night and I’d taken the bullets out of their rifle in the cab.  Said if you’re not coming out so I can get by and turn around I’m taking your gun. One with a 12 guage tried to jump me. Other demanded his rifle back I gave it to him and he immediately pointed it in my face and pulled the trigger.  If I’d not taken his bullets I’d be dead. He was perpendicular to my Vanagon.   Not a nice man.  The law liked him. So I shot of my 357 mag with flame retardant off into the sky, shock and awe, It went cannon ‘kaboom’ lit up the sky, and being crazy as I am, “Let’s dance motherfuckers!” I’d actually the bullet out of the chamber now because I was about to use the rifle as a club knowing they were just idiots and killers but if I shot them I’d go to jail. It’s weird being Canadian and thinking like that, a guy just pulling a trigger with a gun in your eye, lethal intent, near death and I have to think how best to defend myself with hurting them. They backed down real fast and moved their truck. They had whiskey bottles all over the road, I drove by , turned the truck around , and left. They’d blockaded the road where I’d not been able to turn about at night and wasn’t going to back out a mile in the dark on a tiny logging road with a sheer drop off the side. 

I’ve written this story in detail elsewhere. 

A swat team surrounded me in the morning. The police took my rifle and never returned it. Treated us like criminals. My wife who’d been a long way back in the truck claimed the men had pointed the gun at her.She was in a truck. They didn’t even think there was anyone but me which is why the one guy was willing to kill me. No witnesses. 

  The lawyer said that ‘her testimony has destroyed any credibility for you because you discharged your rifle even if it was in the air and no one disagrees with that but they all say they didn’t point guns at you and didn’t pull the trigger or fire at you and your wife corroborates their story.  If she’d said they were pointing a gun at you they’d go to jail but as it is there’s nothing we can do but go to court”. 

“How could you think they pointed the gun at you.?”

It was always and would be always about her. She existed in a rarefied world of her. I was an accessory to the one woman show. The recurrent rages and her almost killing us repeatedly should have caught my attention. But I was twice divorced, thought I was a loser, and figured it was always my fault because that’s what women say. It’s always the man’s fault. So I just kept trying to do better. 

But when she was drunk and drove the car high speed into the wall smashing my side of the car the most I might have said it was more than the booze. I just kept thinking if I could get her away from the drugs and alcohol things would be better. I kept thinking it was my fault. 

Meanwhile I didn’t think I had a problem. I didn’t think wine and pot was a problem. She was failing and dysfunctional and crazy and I was I was working, was a success really, and doing ‘my part’. She was the one never showing up, having crazy attacks and nearly getting us killed and running around.  I was plodding along doing the same old same old. Young women were wanting sex and I was refusing saying. I was married. People were coming over to my place saying, “your wife is never here, maybe just once’ and I’d say no and take the dog for a walk.  I wasn’t interested in men or adultery but felt comforted wearing skirts, usually just sarongs. 

I can only wonder how I survived.  It just got worse. At sea I’ll never forget my sailboat going off the bow of a tanker when she’d altered the radar again in the fog so we couldn’t see coming into the channel. She wanted to die but she wanted to take us all with her. That night she almost did.

Days later I said we had to separate. She begged me to stay. We once again renegotiated.  We’d go on and she’d not drink and not do drugs.  But that was all alive because from then she was plotting the end. All the while I was thinking we were getting better she was flying back and forth to Vancouver where she was using her house, unbeknownst to me, as a grow op, getting lasers and accountants to hide money and generally set things up. 

Off the Washington Coast heading south I  had the Coast Guard coming down at us out of the sun and me screaming :

 “They’re going to board us , are you sure you have no drugs.” Before we left Victoria I believed we’d had our “last joint” because the Americans could confiscate a boat with pot on it. Because she always lied and I couldn’t trust her when I saw that Coast Guard Ship heading straight out of the Dawn sun at us announcing themselves and saying they were going to board us, I had that sinking sense she had done it again. She abotaged everything to get her way but when I said

 “You are going to jail if they find any pot on this boat and if there is any they’ll find it.”

 She didn’t like the idea of going to jail and like all amateur criminals thought the police were stupid. I knew and admired the Coast Guard and had been stupid crossing a border once in my life when I was 19. I knew they were serious. My wife was generally ignorant of anything outside Shaughnassey but her grandiosity and egomania would repeatedly get us into trouble and almost cost me my life repeatedly. Like the time she began taking pictures of Mexican drug dealers doing a crime like she was a CNN reporter and she wasn’t Eve a Miss Chatelaine Cub. I had a dozen guys with machetes surrounding us that time.

Another time drunk she punched another woman and I’m talking our way out of the bar with their three husbands pushing me, all men know about the drunk woman starting fights and suddenly us poor guys are ending them. She could never be trusted on teguilla. 

Just as they Coast aGuard was coming alongside  about to board us and I was in rage screaming at her , she produced a pound of pot she had hid pen in her clothes.

This trip south in the boat was my plan to get her straight. 

We’d be at sea and wed get away from drugs and alcohol. She clearly wasn’t on the same page. 

We were minutes from having our boat confiscated and the coast guard got an emergency call and decided not to board.

But to show my own insaniety. I’d just dumped the drugs in the toilet but not flushed. I’d figured I’d only flush when they actually came along side to board. I was actually happy to see the pot and couldn’t bring myself to “waste” it unless their boat actually made contact or they unloaded their dinghy. 

We’d smoke the pot for the next two days. Great pot with just a taste of head.  I said “all’s well that ends well” . Of course it was along way from ending and would get a whole lot worse. But that didn’t change the fact that there were these great times between the wars. 

The only way I’d agreed to return to Vancouver was that if we bought a boat and lived in the harbour. I didn’t like Vancouver as a city and loved the peace and quiet and serenity of the country. In the harbour the city traffic sounds were muted and boat life was a whole wonderful world of its own.

Leaving Parksville with all that trauma behind we moved onto a boat in False Creek, not the new coastal cruiser I wanted and could manage, but rather the offshore steel sailing vessel which would eventually become my life because it would be the full time job I now had in addition to working as a doctor. She could be with her mother and I became the offshore blue water sailor.