21 years

I remember looking forward to drinking legally. 21 years of age was being an adult. Celebrating being an adult was going into a pub and ordering a beer without fear.  Drinking legally was being a man.

Then the provinces of Canada between 1968 to 1970  dropped the legal age of drinking from 21 to 18 or 19.  I felt short changed. I had sneaked into bars mostly to hear bands and be with older friends in bands but somehow when the age changed it meant that the ‘rite of passage’ somehow changed with it.  I developed a resentment.  One day I was drinking illegally, next legally, but what I’d missed is that great 21 year old party bash.  Life wasn’t fair. 

Now I’m 21 again.  Old enough to drink in my own era of thought. Ironically 21 now is the number of years I’ve not drunk. I could drink today too but I choose not to. Today like most days I pray I won’t. 

It’s a long fast.  It’s a sacrifice of the first born most desired pleasure for greater joy here and in heaven. It’s not drinking really I feel this way about but smoking. I miss smoking.  I felt a man when I had a pipe or cigar in my mouth more than when I had a pint. Indeed I quit drinking as much to quit smoking as for any reason. I was addicted to smoking and had quit three times each time starting again while I was drinking.  In retrospect I saw that most of the really rotten things I had in my life were somehow related to the drinking and the way it effected my judgment at the time or for days after. 

The last time I quit both. Smoking was bad and even evil in my mind by then, drinking not so bad.  Man was never meant to inhale smoke of any kind. We were not born with chimneys. I kidded myself the menthol was good for me. I even thought pot was good, because it was a ‘herb’ but while I could have eaten cookies or made tea I instead smoked that too. I even hot knifed hash in the east.  Hash was an east coast thing. Marijuana was a west coast thing.  Crystal meth used to be a European thing while Cocaine and crack dominated the west. Now it’s all fentanyl. I consider myself lucky I got out before cocaine and crack and crystal meth and heroin and fentanyl became prevalent. 

I think with some humility and gratitude that if I’d not quit smoking I might well have smoked crack.  Today I’d smoke fentanyl.  So many dead There but for the grace of God go I. 

I don’t miss the feeling of swimming vision, spinning rooms, the ‘not caring’ how people perceived me as I was a happy fool drinking. I don’t miss brushing people off.  Smoking I was interested in the inhaling and exhaling like a pranayama guru would be with air. But I didn’t appreciate the air and I didn’t appreciate the water. I liked them corrupted then.  Today I’m thankful for breathing. I breathe some days like it’s the best thing in the world. I’ll catch myself not breathing or shallow breathing and take a great big breath smelling the scents and fragrances and thanking my lucky stars to be alive. I love clear spring water alone, love feeling the coolness in my throat, enlivened rather than depressed.  Alcohol is a depressant. 

We say luck is God acting anonymously. I really feel lucky or rather loved by God, just to be alive when I consider where it could have gone.  We’re to celebrate God with ‘praise and thanksgiving’.  We become closer to God with fasting.  Sacrifices were not of the throw away kind but of the best. Hence the story of the man who was going to give up his child and was told not to. By contrast to the Biblical tradition other religions of a more barbaric age were sacrificing their children for prosperity.  There’s a difference between giving old used socks or new socks as a gift to someone. I get that.  

A pastoral friend commented on my life and wondered if giving up alcohol would be good for him. I had to tell him that for him he’d have to give up money. I could tell he didn’t like smoking or drinking but he really got excited around money.  Getting sober didn’t mean I gained a whole lot of subtlety or sensitivity.  I felt for a moment after my reply my friend was going to hit me.  

There’s an idea of ‘attachment’.   What attaches us to the physical or lower plane versus the world of thought, love and soul. Fasting reminds me that I’m a ‘spiritual being living in a material body’ rather than a ‘material being in a spiritual body’.

It was also clear to me that while smoking was physically unhealthy alcohol and those I drank alcohol with were no longer  people who helped me be the best person I could be. That’s what true friends are. Increasingly my drinking buddies were just that.  It had begun as fun.  We were living a great life when we were teenagers and couldn’t drink.  I didn’t smoke as a teen either.  I loved the athletics and scholarship, the music, and fellowship. The coffeehouses really were a blast. I still love coffee. But alcohol creeped into the scene.  At first it was a little something that was added to the already great event, the champagne with the celebration. Then I remember not wanting to stay at a dance because there was no booze. I loved to dance but finally dancing without alcohol didn’t seem as much fun.  Then everything I was doing socially and recreationally was associated with alcohol.  I even stopped to get a pack of cigarettes for after sex.  

I wasn’t alone.  It was the society I lived in.  Teaching at the university I was just one of the gang. I didn’t drink more or less than the next guy yet I had this whole moral thing going on. I was meditating and praying. I’d been attending church since I was a kid. I really believed in this idea of choosing between walking upright or slithering on the ground.  Sometimes drinking I really was legless.  Smoking is simply a death cult thing. It’s not life giving or life enhancing but self destructive, slow suicide. 

It seemed to that so many of my friends who had children changed. I didn’t drink more than a couple of drinks on call. I was on call 24/7 for a decade in a row. So I was what was called the ‘binge drinker’.  I’d get drunk on holidays. Studying I’d hardly drink until after the exams when I’d get thoroughly gassed.  People would comment on my dancing on tables but I danced on tables more sober than I ever did drunk. I was a dancer.  I had drunken friends who never danced, academic Ichabod Cranes, who’d try to dance on tables when we were drinking, monkey see, monkey do but they’d fall and I wouldn’t. 

 Often I thought that I was giving other people a ‘handicap’ by being a little drunk and stoned.  Not blatto but definitely one kite to the wind.  I’d think then that you probably shouldn’t drink, being stupid, or whatever, but you should thank me for drinking and giving you a chance to appear intelligent or athletic.  Only when I was drinking would I perceive myself in ‘competition’ without others. Sober I saw myself in competition with myself and my last achievement but drinking I’d compare.  There’s a special kind of egotism with drinking. I identified. I really was an egomaniac with an inferiority complex when I drank.  Sober, no.  When I smoked dope I just sat in the corner and stared a lot.  I liked music more stoned.  I was a slow lover and even fell asleep and had a partner fall asleep. Not quite like the movies. 

I took up knotting to have something to do with my hands. Smoking a pipe had to be a whole lot about the rituals and stopped me from biting my fingernails. I bite my fingernails again now.  But smoking caused me to wheeze. I also lost some of my sense of smell and taste. It’s always amuses me to hear smokers and drinkers going on about palate and taste, like blind men talking about the movie. Drinking does a lot of tissue damage, of the liver for sure, but also the heart and eventually is a serious cause of dementia. 

Quitting smoking the first thing I noticed was all the smells. I coughed up a bunch of lung for weeks then I breathed like a child again. St. Francis called his body, Brother Ass or Brother Donkey. Well when you give up smoking your body is happy.  I remember the first time I booked a motel room and didn’t ask for not smoking and was literally assailed by the stink and reek of old tobacco.  I smelt like that.  I smell the old men and women who are homeless but have enough money to smoke. They smell like ash trays. But just like me, they don’t know it. And I was wearing a Brook Brothers suit and fine cotton shirt, reeking.

Drinking I was losing a lot of time.  One or two glasses of wine are fine but when I got to three or four I wasn’t really at the top of my game. It’s why we don’t want pilots to be drunk and why Frank Zappa didn’t want people drunk or stoned in the studio. It’s non productive time.  I found when I stopped drinking I suddenly had a whole bunch more creative and useful time on my hands. I also found that I really didn’t like hanging around the conversations that went on when people got to drinking. I hate to use the word boring but that pretty much sums up what I thought pretty soon after.  Suddenly I was taking courses at the university after work, working out and writing seriously again.  I was reading a whole level higher of books. I always read but once again I was reading scientific texts, ancient tombs and studying other languages to appreciate translations.  

It all could have gone the other way.  There but for the grace of God go I.  These years have been good, exciting, interesting, useful, good friendship, wonderful dogs and memorable. I don’t forget like I used to.  My memories have a crispness and colour where as I remember them diluted and blurry.  No wonder we joke if you remember the 60’s and 70’s you probably weren’t there.

I’m here today. 21 years later. I love the learning and the friends.  It’s been a journey. I don’t think I’ll drink or smoke today. It’s hard not to some days with the government pushers working overtime.  I liked when a guy asked what is the difference between the government and any other gang. The answer was they’re not into selling children for sex, yet. Small mercies. They’re head over heels into pushing cigarettes, alcohol, gambling and now drugs.  

I was vulnerable as a young man.  My family was good, really good. Hard working,  law abiding, church going. They didn’t drink or smoke. Nothing they taught me was anything but good when I look back. Wise and fun.  I just had this anti authority thing going.  I didn’t know it then but I was afraid.  Everyone said the world was going to end.  Nuclear war, Silent Spring, Ozone Layer, Millenial Computer Crash.  It was just constant and if the world was going to end then ‘shananananana live for today.’  Be happy.  Get drunk. Party.  Carpe Diem. That bar at the end of the universe. 

But the world didn’t end.  And all around people were making families and building lives and those that drank and did drugs weren’t. I was fortunate. I got off the downhill spiral real early.  I remember being called a ‘high bottom’ and thinking these guy inviting me to join them were gay.  But by then I’d figured out that the elevator only went up or down , live or die, and I had to get off the down elevator. My partner had got hooked on coke and wouldn’t get help.  I thought I just loved the wild ones and bad ones but later learned that I had come to prefer ‘lower companions’ because it was a cheap way of making myself look good.  I’d moved away from the stirling friends, those I admired most. I’d been blessed to have the finest associations but one day I looked up and was surrounded by people who might be academics but they were drinking academics, they might be sailors, but they were the drinking sailors.  Suddenly the commonality of association was no longer the ‘best’, a true ‘meritocracy’ but rather a ‘tribal’ association.  Today I like to think my associations are the best and some even smoke or drink but no more than moderately or occasionally.  

I stil have some friends from that era too.  I like the ones who got off the merry go round.  I regained friends from before and I’ve made such very good friends since.  I’ll forever miss George and his poetry and stories.  We often laughed going to churches, dinners and meetings together, how we’d never have met if we’d not gone to the ‘bad boys’ club.  

I really am blessed.  So much is perception.  I’ve been able to study the mind and help people whose lives were in knots and who were on the verge of killing themselves. I think of ‘straightening paths’.  I’ve been able to reduce suffering and comfort people and restore people to work and family with the help of my training, my teachers and God.  It’s been a wonderful journey. I’m situated where I’ve been able to to help hundreds of people get out of the hole they dug from themselves and go off to find a new direction.  I think a lot about my parents and family and feel that in their eyes and the eyes of friends and even my dog and the cat I’m okay today.  I didn’t feel good about myself back then even though to the external world I was riding high, outwardly a true success story. Inwardly it was a different story.  

I never imagined I’d be here this long. I didn’t think I’d live this long. I’m thankful I am.  Now I could have a drink especially at my age, but really I don’t think I will. It’s like the apple in the garden. I’ve tasted it.  But I don’t want any more.  I can have anything else in the garden, even the apple but not both.  I could have a smoke too but why.  It does no good.   Truthfully, now,  I just want to walk with my Father.    

Nakusp to Vancouver Return Road Trip,Thanksgiving Weekend

Laura and I were sad to leave Bear Ridge Cabins in Nakusp. We’d so enjoyed our stay.  My cockapoo, Gilbert had surgery planned for Thursday morning so we decided to give two days to the trip home just in case of any unforeseen developments.  I loaded the truck while Laura cleaned out the refrigerator and checked the cabins one last time. Little blind Gilbert was not leaving from beside the truck always afraid he’ll be left. But 8 am we were all in the front seat and heading out towards Nelson and Castlegar.  We passed through Nakusp one last time liking the little town and hoping for more returns with more time.
The highway #6 south along Lower Arrow Lake was picturesque with fall colours. We liked the little town of New Denver on lovely Slocan Lake remembering it from previous visits.  The highways were not very busy at all. It was overcast with some sunshine and blue sky breaking through.  Generally a great drive. I was relieved when we reached highway #3a and weren’t at risk of taking the wrong turn away to Nelson.  Laura liked the town name, “Thrums”.
Castlegar was a classic old fashioned Canadian town built up along each side of the main street with newer malls added. I knew a trucker who got his license there and liked the town folk a lot. It had that homey feel.  I actually saw some wild turkeys  in the town. The Columbia River running through town was magnificent.  For me this was a real river with depth and breadth whereas a lot of the rivers we see are shallow fast and more like creeks than what I think of as rivers.
I wanted an elk tag for hunting but they were sold out at Canadian Tire but we got a Macdonalds breakfast to go and headed on.  I loved the countryside beyond Castlegar, rolling hills, logging roads off the highway. We took one in hope of finding a  grouse but came to snow covered roads and decided against going further with the truck.  The Honda Pioneer 500 would have done well but I wasn’t that invested in a long hunt to unload the machine. More exploration orientation. Certainly a place to return to for hunting and camping.
I passed the turn off to the skiing town of Rossland and the town of Trail where I’d worked at the hospital so enjoying the doctors and patients but finding the administration so unappealing.
The vistas along the highway, pines and spruce, open green fields, reds and golds and oranges of autumn,  were all a visual delight.  Syringa Provincial Park was so inviting. I fantasized of returning for future RV trips to this beautiful countryside.
Grand Forks was our favourite find. What a splendid town. Laura and I thought we’d move here in a second it was so inviting with everything a country person could want.  I am definitely coming back. We’d loved Kelowna for it’s city charm but Grand Forks had everything of country elegance and character a body could desire. The Kettle River is a great little river and the fields and forest about were a mixed bag of possibilities for hiking and hunting. Everyone we met was pleasant and there were some fine old houses that hearkened back to another earlier very prosperous time.  Lots of building going on now suggested it was into another upswing of prosperity.
The Crowsnest Highway #3 took us on through pretty little Greenwood to Midway where to our surprise there was a border crossing and custom station. Beyond that was Osooyoos with all its development, summer vacation spots, speed boats and flourishing wineries.  We stopped at MacDonads for burgers and Gilbert was delighted as always with their paddies.
 We passed again through Keremeos.  We stocked up on fruit and apple juice at Guppal’s Produce (Paul and Sarbjit - momandpopsfarmmarket@gmail.com).  The peaches melted in my mouth. Laura loved the apple juice. The Ambrosia apples were ambrosia.  With out venison to share from this hunting trip I bought a huge bag of apples to bring home, not returning empty handed.  Gilbert slept and cuddled on the seat beside us.
Near Princeton at 5 pm I took a logging road in the backwoods.  A grouse stood on the side of road waiting patiently while I turned off the new truck, this time making sure it didn’t alarm,  loaded the 20 gauge and stepped outside to take one shot. This was all mostly for blind Gilbert’s benefit. Once I’d fired and the grouse had flopped to the side, I lifted Gilbert down from the truck. He stumbled onto his face in his haste then ran off the side of the road falling into the brush while I called and ran the other way  towards the bird. He eventually got back to the road and came running to my voice and the smell of his favourite bird dog bird.  He pounced on the grouse  with delight a d  was licking the bloody head and poopy bottom. What dog heaven! I was so happy for Gilbert and he was so gleeful.  He’s been a bit morose with blindness and the headache of glaucoma so it was great to give him this joy.  Laura and I were screaming “Good dog Gilbert’ and he was trying to get at the grouse.  It was all very exciting.
Back in the truck and further along the logging road a mule deer ran across the road. I took the 30:06 rifle from Laura and ran to where it was still standing not 50 yards off the road looking back at me. A female. I didn’t see any other deer around it so crossed the road to check it’s back trail. Males commonly herding the females follow. I glimpsed a flash of movement but no more.  Back in the truck we found our way off the logging road at dusk and headed on to Princeton and through the town west.
It was dark and raining as I headed through Manning Park onto Hope.I cleaned the grouse at a rest stop with a bear proof garbage bin for the waste. . I also walked Gilbert who finally had a big poop after all the cheese he’d eaten and the tramadol pain meds.  I certainly was glad to be out of the widing roads and on the highway back to Vancouver. Unlike returning on weekends, traffic wasn’t bad at all.
Soon we were home and unloading the truck thankful that Eric from Starfleet RV Repairs had fixed the heating problem  I was exhausted. “You drove for 12 hours,” Laura said.  Thankfully the 2017 Ford F350 Lariat Edition truck is a joy to drive.
George, her cat was ecstatic to see her and crawled right into lap upsetting her boyfriend Gilbert no small amount. We ate Kraft Dinner and watched an episode of Blue Bloods with Tom Select to wind down.  After that I sure liked crawling in bed.
 What a great drive. I love circle drives and this Vancouver, Kamloops, Lumby, Nakusp, Castlegar, Grand Forks, Princeton Vancouver is truly one of my all time favourites.  My mind is alive after seeing so much of God’s Country BC. So good for the soul.  Thank you Lord.

Alright ,I am happy older

Normally I’m searching for an excuse to be negative.  Dr. Paul O said he could find a problem with a blank wall and if you didn’t see the problem it was an even bigger problem.  Dr. Philip Ney, the brilliant pro life psychiatrist and blue water sailor said, “There’s only one choice a man makes when he gets older, whether to be a bitter old man or not.  Bitter old men are common as weeds.”
Well, I’m happy.  Thank you for all the birthday wishes. Dr. Gary Horvath and the DocSide crew gave me a cake yesterday because I was wasn’t going to be there today.  It really was sweet and I am very glad they didn’t sing Happy Birthday.  It’s all kind of embarrassing when you get older.  My sister in law Adell and the nephews Alan, Andrew and Graeme called me saying they had bought  two tickets to the U2 concert coming to Vancouver.  “Take binoculars,” Adell said , “The best seats sold out fast."
I have been more than annoyed by the Facebook politics but today it really was wonderful.  All the birthday wishes from all over Canada, even Alaska, Australian and Saipan.  I really like that we ‘check’ in and take count. I felt like I was on this life boat earth doing this lifetime and everyone was calling out names like we did in Kindergarten on trips.  The trips back then were only down the hall to the washroom.  Now we travel the globe and some people are actually getting to be the first tourists on the next moon shot.  If I live long enough maybe it will be me or someone I know.  I have to admit there’s been many a time when I’ve been dealing the Borg bureaucracy I’ve wanted to say “Beam me up, Scotty.”
Earlier this week I had ‘sole food’ at  Chez Michel’s with my good friend George before attending a meeting of good cheer.  Misery loves company and were it not for the willingness of all those who come together to share experience, strength and  hope I’d not be as hopeful today.  Whenever  I wear the purple scarf Anna knit for me I remember with joy her and Kevin and the God kids, little Bea, Alex and Izack.
Looking back I can’t imagine how blessed I’ve been. The adventures have been incredible and this thing called medicine is something precious. I have also been spoiled by the incredible brains and beauty of the women I have known even the ones who’ve long forgotten me and those who said they hated me.  Maybe the latter were the most passionate.  It’s all more and more a blur with the resentments falling alway like leaves and more and more the past simply populated by a truly remarkable cast of extraordinarily gifted characters.  I’ve even been privileged like Sherlock Holmes to have enemies the likes of Moriarty.  Perhaps more sordid but certainly as villanous.
Now Laura and I have driven down to Bellingham in the new white Ford truck,  gift to myself, with the greatest little dog Gilbert. It’s been a truly great day.   Really, a blessed day.  I’m thankful to be alive  and feeling rather guilty because  there were times when was younger I would have welcomed death. I love the expression “Don’t stop till the miracle happens”.  In the 60’s we just said , “Keep on trucking” and now I guess that’s what I’m doing.
Here I am.  I  really am happy to have another day above the grass.  Only the good die young.  I know the very best have gone that I’ve known and I survive if only for a little darkness I carry inside. I worry about becoming too saintly.  The history of Christian saints especially most of Jesus’ closest apostles isn’t inviting to the cowardly.
Dr. Willi Gutowski, the great Christian psychiatrist , was quite famous for saying, “ Jesus said, “Do not be afraid!  It wasn’t a suggestion.   It was a command.”   Willie and Anita, intrepid missionary doctor and nurse.  are the two of the happiest of couples today.  I also look forward to seeing Sam soon as he’s a mensch if ever there was one. I have been  blessed by so many chicken or lamb dinners, rich in conversation, with John and his fine sons.  There really is so much to look forward too wealthy in friendship as I have been.
Now I have this uptown problem. I have to order room service before the Hotel Bellweather Restaurant closes.  There’s a steak with my name on it.   I’m also  going to have to choose a movie we can watch while Laura and I eat and Gilbert begs and gets treats.  What a rough life this is:)
Thank you all for all the wonderful birthday wishes.  Thank you God for all your blessings.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll be grumpy again but today I will celebrate with praise and thanksgiving.  

Mule Deer Hunting - Princeton, BC - Thanksgiving

Some of my fondest memories of childhood are hunting in northern Manitoba with my father and my older brother, Ron.  Grandad was a rancher and all the uncles and cousins hunted. It was just natural and Canadian to be resourceful supplementing the stock foods of the farms with the bounty of the wilderness.  There was never a lot of effete sentimentalism in Canada.  Rural folk couldn’t afford to be slaves to corporate food chains and government promises.
Mom had a huge garden and raised our winter vegetables through the loving work of her hands.  By fall the basement storeroom was full of canning.  My mother was highly skilled.  While she loved her typewriter she was a master on her sewing machine and quilted, crocheted, and knitted when she wasn’t mending clothes,  cooking or baking.  We loved most her rhubarb pies.
In later years Dad and Mom rented plots of land so that they could raise all their vegetables.  They said the food from the grocery stores didn’t taste real.  It was true that the food we ate at home was natural succulent and fresh.  It did seem too that our rural family friends were all healthy and strong whereas increasingly our city friends were more and more sickly.
I remember Dad and Mom butchering a quarter of a cow on the kitchen table.  Dad would drive out to the country and return with fresh meat he’d acquired direct from a rancher or farmer.  He was always coming back with fresh killed poultry, Canadian bacon, honey hams, eggs and jams.
Our summer weekends were always camping and fishing trips with lots of pickerel and northern pike meals to remember. While pickerel was relatively boneless, jack was noted for it’sfish  bones. The Canadian joke was that kids learned to eat wisely on fish feeling with their tongues for bones so they would be prepared for fall when they ate ducks and geese gingerly making sure they didn’t chomp hard down on a shotgun pellets and break a tooth.
Every fall as long as I can remember after the V’s of geese filled the prairie skies we’d be headed out to a marsh, like Netley, or some farmers stubble fields to wait for ducks to land in the early morning. I’d be half asleep in a blind beside my father and brother startled awake by their pump actions shot guns blasting away at dawn. Our springer spaniel dog would then leap into the water or race cross the field to proudly prance back with a fat mallard in his mouth.  Later in the day we’d hunt for prairie chicken that amazingly delicious game hen that depended on it’s camouflage to hide it.  The dog would flush them and there’d be the characteristic exhilarating pounding of wings before the shotgun swung up tracked the bird and brought it down mid air. The dog on command would race off to retrieve the downed birds.
My father shot moose and deer.  I never hunted big game with him. My brother was old enough and he had the privilege of rank. Mom had strict rules about how old her babies had to be before they could bird hunt first then big game hunt next.  I missed hunting deer with my Dad though after medical school I’d get back to hunting birds with him.   The two of us would borrow  my brother’s red setter dog, Tartan.  My brother Ron had babies by then and Tartan was more than thankful to join us for a weekend reprieve.
I only shot my first deer on Vancouver Island.  That was thanks to my friend Bill Mewhort a mill foreman from Gold River I met one early morning north of Campbell River.  He’d had a minor heart attack hauling down  the deer he'd shot. I was a doctor and my service that day was dragging my older friend’s deer in for him while insisting he rest on the side of road.  He refused to go to hospital till the animals he’d shot were safely in the truck.
After that meeting we hunted off and on together for the next thirty years, sometimes with his young son Allan.  Bill had begun hunting as a child in Quebec and after losing his father, during the years of poverty in Quebec he kept his mother and young sister in wild meat. Later I’d meet his beautiful sister and she’d speak with such love and eloquence of her brother, the family provider. “Without Bill, I don’t know how we would have survived.” she told me,”  People were starving all over in Quebec."
Bill would go on to work as a fishing and hunting guide and support a half dozen children of his own with his knowledge of Canadian wilderness, hunting and fishing.   Having benefited from the years of education in wilderness lore I gained from my father, grandfather, brother and uncles I felt like I’d entered a university for hunting each time I headed out with Bill.  Sometimes when his son Alan and I were following Bill silently through the woods sneaking up on game so close we could reach out and touch them I thought of Bill as Yoda or some Canadian wilderness zen master.  Thanks to him I’ve slipped up so close to a deer I whispered ‘boo’ in it’s ear and watched the startled animal jump a dozen feet into the air before bounding off into the woods.  I’ve watched Bill call in deer and elk. We never came home empty handed when I hunted with Bill.
This weekend was Thanksgiving. Laura and I have enjoyed the Thanksgiving weekend hunts several years past. Our most memorable one was the Nakusp weekend I shot the bear and the turkey as well as enjoying the glorious Nakusp hot springs.  Laura is happy to stay in the hotel or motel I book while Gilbert and I head out into the woods.
I’d hoped to stay at the incredible Princeton Castle Resort or Teepee Cabins both out of town but when I phoned early in the weekend they were all booked. Thankfully the Ponderosa Motel in the centre of Princeton, where I’ve happily stayed several times before, had a really great room with a kitchen left.
After work, Laura, Gilbert and I headed out  in my Ford F350 Diesel Truck with my relatively new Honda 500 Side by Side Pioneer ATV in the back.  My hunting buddy Tom and I fondly named the Honda “Charles’ after it gave us so much joy earlier this fall.   No 3 road follows the rushing river pass through Manning Park.  We had the most spectacular views of autumn coloured leaves against the mountain back drops as we drove to historic Princeton.
We arrived early enough to register and unload our gear before heading across the road to our favourite restaurant, the Little Greek Grill. A gifted folk blues guitarist was playing and a couple of handsomely dressed RCMP officers were dining in a corner. It was a cozy atmosphere with young and old and that interesting mix of country charm and metro chic. If the food didn’t taste so home made and the waitress didn’t share that she and her brother had been quadding that weekend one might just think they were at a swank Yaletown Grill in Vancouver.  With the internet and globalization the country once isolated now has all the benefits of the city without the smog and bad attitudes. I had lamb and Laura had prime rib.  “This prime rib is huge!” Laura said. Personally I was mesmerized by the pumpkin pie.  Both of us however had taken bits of meat from our dishes to take back to Gilbert hard at work guarding the room and gear. When we arrived back he was ecstatic, bounding around in circles, yapping merrily like a nurse relieved from a 12 hour  shift
5:30 am the alarm on my iPhone woke me.  I geared up then carried guns and ammo out to the truck seeing that a couple of neighbours were groggily doing the same thing.  One had a couple of sleepy young boys all dressed in cammo with him while I had Gilbert. The famous Princeton A&W opened at 6 am.  Already it was half filled with early rising country folk when I arrived at 6:15 to pick up my sausage and egger and hash brown, grab a coffee and have my thermos filled with more.
It took me an hour to drive and then some to unload Charles the Honda Pioneer before I was actually hunting.  Skies were grey and rain was steadily pouring down and would all day. My old friend Bill would have complained I was doddling. He liked to be in ambush before the sun came up, sneaking through the woods in the dark of night.  I am terrified unloading my ATV from the back of the truck. I  think I’m going to die every time I reverse off the back and commit to trusting my life to two tiny ramp toothpicks. I haven’t done this in the dark so far and besides I’m not as focussed as Bill. Hunting for me is an escape from the frontlines of my work.  I am mentally exhausted after all week dealing with the  arrogance and unaccountable callousness of   swollen beaurocracies so that the principle purpose of my wilderness weekend is R&R.
Charles, the Honda 500 side by side Pioneer ATV has a roof and windshield. The hot engine is under the seat. After years of walking and years of riding off road motor bikes and quads the Pioneer is luxury.  Gilbert sits on the seat beside me and I drive about logging roads and trails feeling like motorcar riding in the 30’s must have been, before the speed and congestion.  My normal speed in 15 to 20 km hour, a little faster than walking but great for sightseeing and sure enough I saw deer.  They didn’t stay long enough for me to get acquainted and they were were doe.  The hunting regulations are usually convoluted  enough to require a lawyer consultant. This little  area I was hunting in was open for bucks for this month whereas last month it was only 4 points on the antler bucks.  Grouse were open which pleased Gilbert no end. He’s mostly a grouse dog. When I’ve shot big game I’ve told everyone I was really just out hunting for partridge and the big animal happened along.
Most weekends we get at least one grouse where as most hunters hunt many days and weeks before they’re fortunate enough to bag a big one. City folk who thanklessly get their meat cellophane wrapped for them at the supermarket mostly have  no idea about how it magically appears there each day. They are even more ignorant of hunting and sportsmen who account for more than 90% of the costs of conservation efforts in the country.  They are so urban propaganda conditioned that they actually believe the  activist industry does more good than harm, buying into their loud and attention seeking profit driven self important  claims about their relevance.  The low brow mainstream media maintains this idiocy whereas anyone with smarts can simply look to the sportsman magazines or rural magazines to find the truth about non urban reality.
After hours of driving alone in the glorious beauty of our pristine wilderness watching hawks and eagles soar, loving all the little birds, I generally rid myself of all the utterly offensive nonsense I’ve listened to on the news the weeks before.  No story was more poorly followed than that of the amazing javelin throwing champion who actually speared a black bear in Alberta only to be villified by the incompetent urban corporate slave class outraged by a man who demonstrated a skill that had for 60, 000 years kept our species alive.  As a bow hunter who has shot deer for food I thoroughly admired this incredibly courageous  hunter who brought down a big black bear up close and personal with only a spear. I was really thankful he filmed the event giving us personal insight into what made the Zulu great and the early hunter gatherers survive.  I’ve never had the courage to shoot a bear with my bow like a friend does. We both love bear ham but I’ve been especially thankful that my rifle is more than a single shot.   Once when I shot a bear with my high powered 30:06 rifle, the shot going through both lungs and heart,  it only  aggravated the bear  to charge me.   I was more than thankful to be able to fire off all my remaining shells to finally stop him.
Now the Leftist urban government minister in Alberta, a once great province, declares they are going to outlaw spears because they are ‘inhumane’.  This sentamentalist ignorant fool has no idea about humanity or hunting but as a modern politician vote whore he plays to the ignorant masses while making himself a laughing stock among those who have actually left their air conditioned office and driven beyond the concrete parking lot.
I pray a lot when I’m out in the woods.  At first there is the cacophony of thoughts like these and then the spirituality of nature slowly soothes my weary soul.  After a week of being positive and hopeful, herding the cats of optimism, I get covered in a fair amount of negativity especially when I hear everyone is apparently happy as cabbages that our new boyish prime minister is giving away millions to overseas tyrants and raising the tax blaming Canadians for breathing and heating their homes.  As a psychiatrist my ex wife used to quip that her husband ‘didn’t tolerate fools well unless they were his patients.’ The media, especially CBC news, these days,  make my worst dangerously insane heroin and crystal meth addicted psychotics sound safe and sane.
I parked the ATV somewhere off in the woods and then hiked slowly down willow overgrown paths with Gilbert at close heel. It’s then I spooked some doe.  I saw what looked like a ferret.  Lots of dicky birds.  Just a whole lot of peace. With the rain I didn’t sit for long like I usually do, meditating in the woods, communing with God and nature.  I was thankful to get back  to Charles and pour a fresh coffee from the thermos and watch the hillside.  It was sleeting and I was up in the snow, glad to have worn an extra layer but miffed that I’d forgotten my gloves.  Gilbert with his curly fur coat was in heaven.  I carry a towel to wipe him and the windshield off.
Sometime in the afternoon I loaded up the ATV and drove back into the Princeton linking up with Laura who had enjoyed walking about shopping in the little friendly town.  I stopped at the great Princeton Outdoor Supply. I bought my cammo gear from them some 15 years ago and it’s still the best. The Vortex binoculars I got here a year or two past have worked out extremely well.  I’ve always loved the advise I’ve received and have one of the most memorable rainbow fishing trips thanks to being told here of a fresh stocked lake when I was in buying fishing lures one summer.  This time all I needed was an elk tag for hunting as 6 point elk were open. The last thing I wanted was to come across a 6 point elk and be unable to shoot it because I didn’t have the tag.
Laura and I then stopped at the well stocked and helpful Home Hardware where I got a bolt for the ATV ramp. After risking my life loading Charles I saw that one of the ramp bolts had been lost so was more than thankful to have a replacement.
At Round the Corner cafe we had the best service and loved the unique atmosphere, one of those places with unusual antiques like a 50’s Betty Boop statue.  The home made fries were to die for, while Laura enjoyed her burger and I the cod.
I didn’t make it out for the evening hunt.  Laura and I cuddled up in bed with Gilbert and enjoyed listening to the storm outside eating pizza we’d picked up and  watching an old movie.  Gilbert insists on jumping in between us if we kiss.  So every non and then we’re smothered in sloppy dog kisses and laughingly shoving the squirming ball of fur away.
Next morning I was up at 530 am and headed out with Gilbert after stopping at the A&W for breakfast and a thermos of coffee.  When the darkness lifted there was actually patches of blue sky.  I was thankful for Charles because the roads were greasy and I’d literally slid my truck to a place where I was glad to unload.  The joy of Princeton is that while it’s three hours from Vancouver there are several distinctly different hunting terrains an hours distance from the town.  This day the views of rolling hills and open slash were exceptional. Again I just rode slowly about coming across a few other hunters in pick ups and quads. I maybe met a dozen others through the day remembering when I first came here 30 years ago I’d not see another soul for days.  I didn’t mind.  I’m old and am mostly a road hunter now because frankly I can’t see myself hauling a deer or elk any more than one or two hundred yards to a road.  When I was younger I carried a deer a mile on my shoulders and quartered moose and carried the quarters miles back to camp. I appreciated the old guys I saw on quads and in trucks but there were a number of young guys speeding about on their quads like they were at a raceway and really appearing to have missed that whole hiking and hunting part of the life. I felt sorry for them.  While I really love Charles I love it best when I shut off the engine and slink through the woods enjoying the quiet and seeing far more of nature than I can from any machine. The tiny sounds are orchestral too.
I saw a partridge that was smarter than me and Gilbert both, flying far away after Gilbert flushed it.  The stupid birds fly up to sit on the branch of a tree where I can then shoot the head off with my Ruger 22.   I have the new Ruger break down stainless steel model and love it.  I stopped on a hill to eat jerky ad chocolate bars and drink coffee and shoot targets with the 22.  I’d shot the Ruger stainless steel 30:06 the first day and hit the “C” in coca cola on a can at 50 yards so hadn’t wasted more ammo.  With the 22 I enjoyed shooting off a couple of boxes of shells till  my shots at 30 yards were all in a grouping the size of my thumb.  Gilbert finds this all very exciting but can’t figure out why there are no birds to retrieve.
Later it was fun to stand on the side of the road talking to a couple of elk hunters from Chilliwack who have a cabin in the region.  They come up each year and love the cabin life and actually have shot a bull elk or two over the last 20 years.  For all of us it’s mostly the wilderness, getting away from the city, self reliance in the out back, the occasional success, and camaraderie when there’s more on the hunt.  It’s so abusive and offensive to have leftist liberal urban media screaming that we must not identify muslim terrorists because Islam is a religion of peace yet the same ignorant pc folk smear all us hunters as ‘trophy hunters’ and malign us because we’re not vegetarians and don’t eat cosmetic designer foods from silly boutique grocers.  Trophy hunters kill old animals that will die the next winter.  No body leaves meat in the woods.  The first bear I shot I only wanted the prime meat and didn’t eat the organ meats but my Indian chief friend was more than thankful to have a green garbage bag full of wild game telling me he knew how to prepare it so it was safe from the parasite that infects bear.  Apparently it’s safe after you freeze and then cook it through and through. He did that then smoked it. I’ve enjoyed keeping the bear meat for myself after learning that trick of preparation.
There are the rare idiots out hunting but given that it takes a lot of regulations to own a gun in Canada, lots of training and  examinations to be able to get a hunting license and it’s really very expensive to maintain equipment for the rough conditions very few hunters one meets are anything as ignorant or sincerely twisted nutbars as the drug addicted drunken,  mothers basement living, googleresearcher set  that dominate the silly mainstream media, like tabloid CBC and chick lit Huffington Post.
It was late afternoon when Gilbert and I rejoined Laura.  She was beautiful as usual having enjoyed the morning lying in, reading and recuperating from the weeks stress of her demanding work as a medical office assistant to one of Canada’s foremost arthritis specialists, one of my most admired colleagues who has done so much for so many thousands of patients with this chronic debilitating illness.
It was Thanksgiving and Laura in her town walk that day had found out that just around the corner the Funky Monkey Cafe was serving a full coarse traditional turkey dinner. It was Laura’s treat and boy did I enjoy it reflecting back on all the great thanksgiving turkey meals that my mother, aunt and grandmother had had in our home when I was growing up.  I love Thanksgiving turkey. The meal  was delicious and service was terrific. It was also great because the place was full of old folk who were enjoying tradition as much as we were.
Back in the Ponderosa Motel I had thought to watch the second Trump - Clinton presidential debate that evening but after a short nap i decided to take Gilbert for an evening drive in the truck along a main forest service road in the back country. It was an hours drive on the highway but there was the really well maintained road that wouldn’t stress my truck and negated my need to unload Charles. .  I thought it better to be out hunting than watching a crazy name calling political debate.  Gilbert as comfort conscious as my friend Tom who loves hunting from the luxury of the truck loved sitting up straight watching for the grouse that often land on the road in the evening  fo eat gravel that helps their digestion.  I passed a couple of RV’s in the back woods with campfires going despite it still being really light out.
And there it was.  About a hundred yards from the woods in a field just on the edge of the forest a great mule deer buck stood grazing only looking up when I stopped the truck, shut off the engine and  opened the  door. I was buck fever all over. I was  thankful to have the trigger lock off and get a couple of shells into the rifle’s magazine without the deer spooking.  Raising the rifle to my shoulder and without doing that breathing bit Bill taught me but using the door as a rest I aimed with the scope crosshairs entering on the chest.  It was a tough head on shot and I fired just as the deer was bending down to graze more. Instead of hitting the chest the shot enterred the neck and the deer jumped straight up.
It came down and was standing wobbling and would have fallen over dead except it suddenly saw it’s kiler barrelling towards it.. Gilbert the cockapoo was hell bent to get the biggest grouse he had ever seen and the deer mustered what strength it had to take off before the terrifying cockapoo pounced upon it.  It’s a rule of hunting that you keep shooting till the game stops so I shot the running buck again hitting just behind the heart, getting the lungs diaphragm and top of the stomach.  The deer went down heavily. I shouted at Gilbert to stopped worried the silly dog would get kicked in the head before I put killing shot in the head of the deer.  Gilbert was obviously pleased with himself, certain that without him, we’d not have got this kill.  I was still shaking and trembling from the excitement and thanking God for his Bounty.
That’s when the work began.  I got rope, hatchet, saw and extra knives from the truck.  Field dressing takes time and while it was light I wanted to get the job done as darkness makes every task that much more difficult.  Gilbert was glad to supervise licking blood from the carcass whenever my back was turned.  He was one happy dog.
It was in the field dressing with tying one hind  leg to a log to open up the belly that I found where my bullets had gone tracing trajectory from  the tiny entrance wound  to  the large exit wounds.  I cleaned out the guts   as best I could. I got the bladder out without breaking it, a real delicate feat but central to fresh tasting meat. I  would later use water I kept in a blue container on the truck to rinse the cavity. .  I put the heart and large liver in separate bags before beginning the difficult task of hauling the hundreds of pounds of venison across the log strewn field. Downhill was easy enough but when I got to the valley and had to begin the slight incline to the road my desk job began to tell. Back at the truck I tried to get the winch working but the handle didn’t seem to fit so with night coming on I went back and used brute force to haul the deer to the side of the road. My back was not happy but beside the truck I could use the winch I’d had installed on Charles the Honda to haul the deer, now wrapped in a tarp  into the truck box.  I swung the other half in without too much effort then tied it in just as darkness fell.  I used a flashlight to check around ensuring I’d not left anything.  Then in the truck I got stuck in the ditch trying to turn. This came from gross stupidity and I was lucky and thankful to four wheel drive to get myself out of the ditch.
Driving back down the road I passed two other groups of hunters in trucks both of them having got flats.  I was so physically exhausted and mentally hooped so very thankful to have an uneventful drive back out of the wilderness to the highway and finally back to town. I was really thankful to park in front of the motel room.
“Would you come outside and see something, “ I said to Laura after Gilbert got over jumping up and down around his favourite friend.  ‘“You got one, “ she said with real shared pleasure.  A hoofed foot stuck out from the tarp, a rope from it to Charles holding the deer safely fixed inside the truck box.
“We did,” I said, Gilbert swaggering happily, accepting praise and treats from Laura.  I think I told the poor girl the story of us seeing and shooting the deer a number of times and she was excited each time I recounted the tale acting like she was hearing it the first time.  I could hardly sleep that night getting up to check the deer several times while Gilbert was pretty much dead to world after all the exercise he’d had. His little feet were twitching in his sleep as he no doubt relived the great chase.
Ideally a deer is hung but mostly it’s critical that it’s cooled as fast as possible. I couldn’t hang the deer but it was cold.
I phoned around to the several wild game meat cutters I’d used over the years.  All were full and told me the earliest they could take another animal was in a day or two. I laughed at how only a couple of days before I’d been talking to an unsuccessful hunter from the city and we’d both been bemoaning how little game we’d seen. Now I learned the real story with the game cutters telling me that this Thanksgiving weekend had produced more game than they’d all seen in years.  I phoned another half dozen butchers I hadn’t used but were recommended only  to not hear back from them as every one’s freezers were full.
Driving back I stopped short of Hope and in the back woods off a logging trail attended to the next phase of wild game preparation. I skinned the deer, beheaded it and sawed off the legs fitting the whole carcass into cheesecloth.  We hoped that when we got to the lower mainland into cell coverage we’d have a call back but none came. In Chilliwack I went round to the butchers I knew but no one was able to take the deer.
I’d butchered deer, bear and moose before myself but really do appreciate the professionals work, especially the ground beef and sausage they make which I don’t do any more.  There was no choice though as the deer had to be butcherd as I had no freezer I could hang it in.  It was a young two point and though hanging deer a few days to drain the blood better makes for more tenderized meat I’d butchered young deer fresh and appreciated them just as much as I mostly marinade and barbecue or make stews with venison.
Back home I was really thankful to get the deer off the truck and with Laura’s help lifted the dead weight onto the table.  2 or 3 hours later with Gilbert supervising and Laura labelling the double zip locked bags of meat I was thoroughly exhausted but the venison was all in the fridge and freezer. It was going to be another winter of great meals.
Ironically we ordered in a pizza from Me and Ed’s because it was already night and neither of us wanted to cook. Gilbert got some pieces which a butcher would have put in sausage but I put in a separate dog bag. I simply microwaved them and Gilbert , the great cockapoo hunter wolfed them down and wanted more.  He didn’t get any more because too much wild game, being so lean, can give one the runs.  Gilbert wouldn’t have cared but I would.
Laura took a bag of meat to her home and I’d take a bag to my other storage freezer, spreading the liability in case of power outages  or freezer break downs.
It would be the next night that I barbecued the strap muscle medallions and tasted heaven. Thank you Lord for sharing your bounty. Another year and another successful harvest.  Thank you Jesus.


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Thanksgiving Day and Dinner, Hay Family

I am blessed to be included in this Thanksgiving Day and Dinner, my brother, Ron, and sister - in - law, Adell, created in their Hay Bay home. They’ve been living here now a single year.
Canada’s thanksgiving has been a national holiday since 1879.  In 1957 a proclamation stated that Thanksgiving was to be “A Day of General Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest for which Canada has been blessed.”  Thank you Almighty God.  Thank you Canada.  Apparently the first celebration of thanksgiving in Canada was in 1579 by Martin Frobisher when searching for the Northwest Passage.
My nephew Allan was here. We’d gone for hair cuts in honour of the occasion.  But mostly because both of us seem so busy that we rarely have time for things like haircuts.  He’s a psychologist and I’m a psychiatrist.  We have a lot to talk about.
Velma and Melvin are Adell’s closest relatives here, both retired, one a former librarian and the other formerly with child protection services.  I like them a lot.  Educated intelligent ladies with lots of wisdom and that challenging Christian pleasant politeness and good manners. They remind me a lot of my beloved deceased Aunt Sally, my favourite Baptist Bible.
My nephew Graeme arrived with Elysse. Graeme is a chemical engineer now working in a nuclear energy plant.  He’s also a photographer, moving maker and astronomer. Thanks to his telescope I’d get to see a close up view of Andromeda.  Pretty exciting stuff for an old guy who grew up on Space flights, Star Trek, Dr. Who and NASA.  Ellysse is a teacher.  My sister in law Adell taught but retired a Principal.  Allan was marking psychology papers this weekend. There was considerable talk of school related topics.
My nephew Andrew arrived with his wife Tanya.  Andrew is now working on his masters and Tanya is doing advanced computer studies.  It only seems yesterday that I was at their wedding wearing a Hunting Hay Tartan Kilt.
Gilbert and Eva had a marvellously exciting little dog bark fest and jump up and down a lot time as each visitor arrived.
Ron played guitar some. The young people played a couple of card games.  Adell and the ladies ‘worked’ in the kitchen on an off.  Melvin and Velma and I had some good books on the go.  We discussed politics.  We had a lot of negative things to say collectively about the Niqab and face coverings in Canada.  No one liked the Troudeau pot smoking platform but some liked the Liberal Party. The NDP and Conservative pros and cons were laid out.  One of my nephews wasn’t too keen on Canadian military spending.  Quebec corruption was a topic. Aboriginal chiefs million and welfare fraud upset people.  Everyone in the family is hard working. Everyone is going to vote. Mostly people were voting in self defence.
Adell’s Thanksgiving dinner was magnificent. Velma’s grace was a great prayer of thanksgiving. With Ron well I was fairly ecstatic.  We had a close call earlier this year and every visit I find him healthier and well. It’s a miracle really. I’m so thankful tor the time we have together as a family. His children are so amazing. His wife is a joy.  He started learning guitar a short while ago.  Now with each visit he’s progresses light years.  That’s my brother. If he puts his mind to something he succeeds.  He had Allan and I digging dirt for him. Now that’s another miracle.  Both Allan and I are desk jockeys but there we were slinging dirt in the wheel barrel.
I love the turkey.  We had Elizabeth and Phil’s BC Cranberries too.  We’d been to the Bath Market and I got pickled beets which always remind me of my Mother who always made these. I didn’t particularly like them as a kid but because of her and my fond memories of her I’ve grown to love them today.

Thanksgiving Dinner with Graeme

Ron and Adell's oldest son, Graeme, just moved to a new townhouse. He's an engineer "but" offered to have the family Thanksgiving dinner this year. He'd just moved in and hadn't acquired a couch. Apparently he'd never used the oven so when he did it hadn't been cleaned properly. The place filled with smoke. Despite this when guests arrived this evening the food was all prepared and there was seating enough for everyone.
Ron and I had walked the dog in the nearby park enjoying the autumn colours, taking pictures along the trail. Gilbert had a great run.
When we returned Gilbert's arrival was a real ice breaker.
Dip and chips and living room conversation was followed by a call to the table. A truly lovely spread. Adell had helped at the last minute. Velma said grace and we all settled into the turkey.
Mel and Asha, Alan's roommates are attending university with him. Very bright young women they spoke about oceans, science and matters ecolological. Graeme and Andrew reminisced about science professors sharing several anecdotes. The conversation was fine despite the distraction of the great food, turkey, yam, devilled eggs, scallop potatoes, stuffing, gravy, salad, the works. After we had fruit and apple and pumpkin pies with tea and coffee. It was the whole shebang and Graeme did well. Andrew was present but we missed Tanya. Erica had come up from the US to visit with Alan
The guests were all a delight . I was a bit glum being controversial about matters of science, reporting and funding, realizing only too late I'd been less than 'thanksgiving'. The young people did play a game of pictograph to uproarious laughter while I discussed Christianity with Velma and sister, Melvine. Velma had been reading about the history of the Tyndale Bible and shared fascinating stuff about King Henry and Anne Bolyn. Earlier Ron and I had a chance to share stories about family.
I guess I missed Dad. Dad and Mom would have loved to have seen Graeme's place and been there for the fine dinner their grandson prepared. I'm grateful I was.

























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Dad - 3

I know Mom loved Dad. She loved him with all her heart.  They had arguments.  Sometimes they'd yell at each other. It wasn't very often.  Rarely indeed when you think of all the time they were in each others company.  I know too because I was at the center of many of their arguments. There'd be a frost in the house sometimes for a day but never more than a week that I can remember.  Possibly that was what church was for. Maybe then Mom and Dad would forgive each other. A new week would begin just as each day would begin anew.
I loved my Dad not like my older brother loved him. Ron loved Dad with his whole heart like Mom did.  With me Dad kind of grew on me.  I warmed up to him slowly.  He was the biggest and most important man in all my life but I didn't really like him near the end of my teens. We had a fight to end all fights and I walked out on him. Then he let me come home only because my mother and brother asked him.  And I went away again.  Forgetting him and regretting him only to one day need him again.  I phoned him then and he was there, as always.  That was the thing about my Dad, I always knew he would be there, that I could call on him and he'd come or welcome me. I was the prodigal son and he was the father.  It took me years to love my Dad like my Mom and brother did.  He grew on me that way.

I'd have serious inklings of what he meant to me by the way I behaved.  I heard his voice in mine at times. I had some of his gestures too. I even saw his face in mine. Mostly I lived by his principles. He taught me by example. I became in many ways the man he was, not as good by far, and not as successful in all the ways he was but in my own way something special.  I knew I was special to my Dad.  We had a love hate thing for a while there so very like the love hate he had for his own father and his brother.  He'd say I'd broken his trust when I was young but then when I was older he'd forgive me.
It was hard for him to forgive and it's the hardest thing for me too.  I didn't forgive him for years when I was young and then somehow one day I just let it go.  I realized then that I'd grown up. I remember too how he had talked harshly about his father when we were young. That was despite the good times they shared.  But then when his dad and my dad were older there was that dinner we all shared at the top of the hotel restaurant.  Grandad and dad were so close and loving that I could see a tear in my mothers eye as she watched them too.

My brother Ron visitted Dad's brothers and took pictures of them. There's a photograph of all the northern men, cowboys, loggers, businessmen, standing together.  It's something I cherish.  Family is important.  Yet when I was a teen ager I thought  I was all I needed.

Loving Dad has been a lifelong affair. It was the same with him and his Dad.  Mom loved unconditional from the start but I made the old man proove his love. I wasn't the kind of lover my family was.  They were generous with love whereas I only loved so much. Dad did the dance with me.  All the way.  Me saying that I love you, I don't.  I'd phone and he'd answer. I 'd visit and he'd be there. I thought alot it was on account of Mom but then one day he drove across Canada to be with me.  And then I got another inkling that I loved him.  Not only was he there when I went looking for him, he came and found me when he wanted to be with me. I realized when we were older he probably  wanted to be with me more but I was sometimes just too hard to be with.  My brother was more gracious that way though Mom told me they'd argued too.  Dad was the kind of man who you could argue with, slam the door on and come back to, and he'd be there, ready to take up where we left off, ready to see you through whatever.  My dad was reliable.

He also had a sense of humor. Boy did he have a sense of humor!  I can still see him tickling Mom in the morning, playing with the dog and laughing with us kids.
We were the only kids in Fort Garry who had a turkey in our garage too.

It was fall when Dad brought the big Tom home.  Years later I'd raise turkeys so it doesn't come as a surprise to me to figure where that idea came from.
"What are we going to do with a turkey?" my mother asked.  She had a way of inflecting her voice so a question could be an accusation or a challenge.  Mom put volumes into the tone of her voice but Dad was a fast reader.
"I know how you like turkey for Thanksgiving." he said. And Thanksgiving was a favourite time for Mom. One of the celebrations.  Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, these were the family times of the calendar. She never forgot birthdays or anniversaries but the Biblical times of the year had a special significance.  We always had a big turkey, mashed potatoes, yams and corn or pees.  Dad loved the mashed potatoes with gravy. As kids we loved the turkey.
But this was a real live big bird, a squawking big bird in the middle of suburbia.
"Thanksgiving's not for months."
"I know, I'm going to feed him and fatten him up."
"Where?!"
"In the garage."
"Well I'm not cleaning up after him."
"The boys will do that. They can keep him. It will be good for them. Like 4H. "  That's the first we heard about this.
Mom figured the turkey would last a week but Dad was adament he was going to raise the bird till Thanksgiving. Ron and I fed the bird. Mom never went to garage after that.  She'd hardly gone to that garage before and certainly didn't go when there was a great big turkey in there.
Turkey's poop alot.  A lot.  A real lot. Soon the garage was covered with white poop. Turkeys shed too , feathers every where. They chuck their seeds about as well and squawk more than they gobble.  They do gobble but it's the louder salutations that make them indiscrete.
The squawking and shreiking bothered Dad some.  The law said you couldn't keep fowl or livestock in city limits. Mom would tell Dad that the authorities would catch on to his keeping a big bird in the garage especially if it kept squawking. There was simply no way to convince the bird that 'calling for help' was likely to back fire as the more noise the bird made the more Dad was faced with slaughtering it sooner.
Every day and every week the turkey was near and nearer to death's door. Now all this was going on in a quaint little suburb of Winnipeg with all the genteel sensibility city folk have about being somehow superior to their antecedents. When later I'd work as a country doctor I'd realize the utter hypocricy of the city and know what difficulties Dad laboured with often. The turkey and his desire that his family should live healthy in reality was a time of great exasperation for him but he muddled on against rising odds.
I grew to like the turkey and considered him a rather tragic figure.   Ron and I even began to talk to Dad about killing him.
"I didn't get him so we could have a pet," Dad said.  But that didn't change the matter that we boys weren't looking forward to eating this bird that was fast becoming part of the family. As children we were encountering the limits of 'emotional reasoning' and how veritably this can cause a collective psychosis called the 'city'. Eating only truly okay if it was done in a dissociative trance, as a 'mechanical robotic' activity.  Dad was encouraging us to have a 'relationship with what we ate'.  Mom with her gardening had cured us of 'attitude' when it came to lettuce or carrots but Dad was doing his best to raise our consciousness regarding life in general.   Later I'd meet kids who couldn't eat carrots out of the ground even because they didn't come in a package.  I remember these city kids I took camping looking at me aghast when I ate raspberries off the vine.  I can't imagine what they would have thought of the big Tom that Dad kept in the garage, fattening up for Thanksgiving.
I 'd bring my friends  over after school.  Not many, because Dad didn't want anyone talking about the turkey. That made it the 'big secret".  But I had to tell Kirk and Kirk and then Garth and they had to see the turkey. And Scott had to too and maybe Keith. Frankly I don't remember how many other kids saw the Turkey.  I guess maybe a dozen kids were in on the "secret" just because of me. Ron showed the turkey to some of his friends too.  For all I know Mom even got in on showing the turkey. I know Dad showed the turkey to a couple of men.  The bird's squawking tended to make the neighbours curious.  Surprisingly, but reflective of the "community" of those days, no one called the 'authorities'.  People were respectful and neighbourly but the bigger the turkey, the louder it's squawks and the longer it was held captive in that garage the more eyebrows were raised.  Dad and Mom were talking more and more about the turkey the closer Thanksgiving came.
The garage was dark. When the door was opened the turkey sometimes tried to flee past to the outdoors and light.  It's not surprising without other turkeys about all it had to think about was plotting it's escape.   This caused me to have a turkey bash me in the chest more than once. The turkey was about three quarters of my size and the claws were fierce.  I almost lost the turkey outside one of the times I showed it to Kirk.  I took both of us kids all we had to keep the turkey from getting out in the yard.
In the garage it mostly just perched on the boat looking at us but sometimes it would get up in the rafters.  It was not a happy turkey by any means.  Since then having raised turkeys I can say they're not a particularly happy lot in general as birds go, dumber than most in fact, but this turkey as my memory goes was a particularly unhappy turkey.
I don't know how Dad killed it.  Maybe Ron was there.  I think it happened in the garage because there was an awful mess to clean up.  I can't remember if I was part of the plucking too. I did the plucking on the ducks we shot but this was different. I was attached to the turkey.  Dad was upset with me for all my sentimentality too.
Mom wasn't happy cooking that bird either. Thanksgiving that year was a very solemn affair.   Here was this big bird and all of us hungry but only Dad happy with eating his bird. He'd grown up on a farm and eating the family and neighbours was just what farming was all about.  City kids were aliens raised on cellophane and secrets they did to things in supermarkets and restaurants.  So my brother Ron and I just picked at the bird. Mom was fine with the bird, always having a healthy appetite and appreciating healthy food but unhappy now with us and blaming Dad for messing with her Thanksgiving.
Somehow we ate the turkey eventually. The cranberry sauce helped. Dad insisted. Mom was grim too.  The potatoes and gravy never tasted better. I was glad though I didn't throw up.
The next day when the turkey had been sanctified by refrigeration we had it in sandwiches.  Then it tasted so good. Mom was happy we were happy. Dad was redeemed.
"So you like the turkey, eh?" he said, more than once. We agreed at last.  Later I'd remember that was the best turkey I've ever tasted in my life. And today I can still savour the memory.