memoir-chapter III-continued

We went to the beach at Parrsboro that day too,behind Ottawa House.It was not peak season for the beach.Really,it was rather cold.My grandfather took a spade from the trunk of the car and dug some clams as we walked out on the sand.The tides there,at the head of the Minas Basin are very high and come in very quickly.When the tide is low,there is a huge expanse of sand,but when it turns,you have to pay close attention and get to higher ground without delay.

In the far distance,out across the sand,I could see a huge structure that looked something like a corral made out of upright poles and some kind of netting.It had a small opening on one side.The purpose of this device was to catch fish.When the tide is high,fish swim in,through the opening or,perhaps even over the top.When the tide recedes,they become trapped on the sand and the fisherman goes in and scoops up his catch.So,with fish still in mind,we set out across the sand.I have no idea if this structure belonged to my grandfather,but there is every possibility that it did not.He may have been raiding it,or it may be that he had permission to take the odd fish out of there.The later would seem most likely,as it would have been nearly impossible to raid one of those corrals without being noticed and confronted.

In the end,it mattered not,as we were not able to make it to the structure before the tide turned us back.I was wearing rubber boots,and,in my mind today,the way I remember it,I somehow lost a boot on the sand on the way back to the car.We visited a few more places on that trip,and I recall my grandfather telling everyone we visited how I had lost a boot.

At last we came to a place that must have been somewhere near Five Islands or Economy,but not up the mountain by the provincial park.It was on the side of the road away from the water too,and the driveway went in in a kind of a horse shoe shape with the house halfway between it's two ends.There was a lot of junk in the driveway.Old cars competed for space with some small boats and various nets and traps and bouys.

We got out of the car,and this time I accompanied the two men.At the door a man appeared and we inquired as to whether he had any fish for sale.Indeed he did.Within the house in a large galvanized washtub was a silver fish,a salmon.To my eyes it was big enough to have been a whale.The tub it came in was of the same sixe and sort that my mother would use to give us a bath when we visited her parents farm,so the fish must have been nearly as big as me.It filled up the entire tub,save for a bit of ice.And,I recall trying to lift the creature and finding that I could not.

By the days end we'd likely traversed fifty or sixty miles.I don't recall in the end what happened to the fish,that seemed so hard to come by.My grandfather likely took the most of it,but it was a very large fish for just one person.He may have given some of it away,but I don't recall that it was eaten at our table.

On that trip I got to see how,when either my father or grandfather wanted fish,nothing was going to stop them from finding it.Over the next few years,attempts to get fish,to coax or coerce them out of the water,would range from a pleasant afternoon by the side of a stream with poles in hand,to a trip to the fish market on the way home from an otherwise unsuccessful expedition,to some downright bizarre and nearly heroic efforts to bring home fish.Eventually I discovered who the best fisherman in our family was and it surprised me when I did.

But,when my father wanted fish he would not be denied.Nova Scotian to the bone!A creature wholly indigenous to a province where you cannot set foot on land that is any more than about thirty miles from the ocean.

memoir chapter III-continued

Sucess,as far as my father was concerned didn't stop with owning a house.By the time we'd been in Moncton a year or two,he must have already been thinking ahead to a time when he could afford a small plot of land with beachfront.That was to be a few years off,but it must have been on his mind even then.

Nova Scotia was the province my father called home.And that is where he had the appearance of being most at home.In fact,by imagining a stereotypical Nova Scotian,you would be imagining my father.He loved the sand and the sea,and claimed you would never starve if you lived by the ocean,as anything therein,including seaweed could be eaten.The only thing that came out of salt water that he ever conceded thatyou could not eat were jellyfish.

Fish was a favorite food of my father,and from early on it was served often in our home.My mother would prepare salt cod in a casserole dish with potatoes and onions in some kind of a white sauce.Later,the onions would disappear as they bothered my fathers stomach.High in the cupboard,there was a green and red box that contained dried salt cod.I once tasted it straight out of the box and it was the saltiest thing I've ever had in my mouth. This was mixed with mashed potatoes and formed into fish cakes which were fried in oil.

Once I recall,and in  fact,I believe it's the first time I recall being on a road trip with my father and grandfather.The trip would have taken us from Springhill,across country via the Lynn Road,to Five Islands and Parrsboro.The purpose of the trip was to get a fish for dinner,and,as we didn't have any fishing gear with us,I suppose the plan was to but it from a fisherman.Or,they may have had something a bit closer to theft in mind.

We stopped at a few different places on that trip.The first place that I recall must have been on the Lynn Road,and there must have been a purpose to that visit other than to get fish,as that streach of road is inland.But I recall the place rather well.It could only be thought of as a shack,though not a small one.I don't recall any boards on the outside of the house.It was mostly tar paper,as were a lot of old shacks inrural Nova Scotia and New Brunswick at the time.

It seemed that my father and grandfather were in the house a long time,and I did not go with them.Really,though,I don't suppose they were in there much more than an hour,but they told me to wait in the car,likely thinking I would fall asleep.

To a three or four year old,a few minutes seems like a long time,so I ended up out of the car and over by the front door of the shack.The shack only had one door,located on the narrow side of the building.It also had only one bathroom,which was located outside,to the right if you were sitting on the front step.It was a little wooden,unpainted house in a bit of a ravine,completely overgrown with weeds and brambles,and there were some hills and some woods behind it.

To this day, I have no idea who lived in that house.But,while I was sitting thereby the front step,playing in the dirt,which along with some thistles,seemed to be about all that the yard consisted of,a man I didn't know came outside with some kind of large black dog.He trotted over to the outhouse and disappeared inside while the dog sniffed around in the bushes.When he returned,I asked him where he went."just over to that little house."

I asked if I could go to the house too and he said"no,you shouldn't go there.When I asked why,he told me that it was because that is where the bogeyman lived.And he said there were wolves in the woods too,which was likely true.I didn't have to go to the bathroom,and,in fact,he never said that that house even was a bathroor.But what else could it have been?

Maybe I didn't have a proper sense of perspective,but I wasn't afraid.I'd heard of the bogeyman,and,of course the Big Bad Wolf,but I don't think I had any appreciation of what either really was.So I wonder,should I really have been concerned that I was sitting just a few feet from where the bogeyman lived?Maybe or maybe not.But I supposed he had to live somewhere,and if I just left him alone,he would return the favor.Nothing happened,except I've always though of that place as the bogeyman's home.

The big black dog was another story.Dogs I was not accustomed to at all.This one scented me with his big,wet nose,and I was neither afraid,nor exactly comfortable either.He got right up in my face,but the man told me the dog wouldn't bite,and he did not.

When I think back that was likely a very early experience with some of those people who would have required a kind of perhaps uncomfortable explanation.What's clear in my mind is that they,whoever they were,had a very different value system than what my parents were trying to encourage at home.We might read about the bogeyman in a storybook,but no one would ever tell you that he lived nearby,much less where.Somehow I think my mother would have been less than impressed with anyone telling such a thing to one of her children.

There is also the question as to just who those people were,and,of course,why my father and grandfather would visit there.The most likely answer is that it was just someone that they knew and hadn't seen in some time.My father knew a lot of people,and we visited a lot over the years.It was no at all unusual to stop by some place for a visit,then never see them again,nor ever have a clear idea as to who they were.Over the years I've done that many times.

It could be too,that we were visiting a bootlegger.I didn't know it at the time,but my grandfather had a fondness fot the bottle,especially rum.Yes,perhaps.Or maybe just an acquaintance withg a bottle of beer or a nip of dark rum.

It might well have been that my father just did not want me to see the living conditions of whoever lived inside.He always said he knew people who kept chickens and calves inside the house,but I'm not certain these were the people.Still,they were very poor,and a single glance of the outside of their house could evoke all those standard and stereotypical images of Appalachia.

Leaving a small child alone in a car would likely have concerned my mother as well.Today,of course,you don't do that.But in those days,both my mother and father would have done so for a few minutes at a time without concern.But an hour or more would likely not have sat well with my mother.Who knows,I might have put the car into gear and caused it to coast through that little monument to organic chemistry located at the side of the main house.My mother may not have known about all the places my father might take me to on a road trip,but I'm certain she never though that any of those visits would involve even the remotest possibility of pissing off the bogeyman.No doubt she would not have approved.

memoir interlude/The World Just Beyond.

By 1965 my parents had achieved a measure of success.Both had been born in the middle of the Gret Depression and must have known hard times.Both had come of age during the Second World War,and the relative prosperity that followed.They had worked and saved and lived within their means until they could afford a house.In short,they had a young family and had attained a level of security.And thus,having known a life with a downside,they were determined to protect their children and give them the possibility of a good life.

Our move to Moncton had a number of practical effects.To begin with,there was simply no comparing the infrastructure of northern New Brunswick with that in Moncton.Instead of driving for miles over bad roads,in all kinds of weather,everything a modern,medium sized city had to offer was within a few minutes from home.Our house was much newer,new streets were being finished,and there was even a new school being built only a couple of blocks away.By the time we were ready for school,we would be able to attend in a modern building,instead of the one room,rundown school with outdoor plumbing that my mother used to teach in.And,rather than a lengthy bus trip,school would be just a short walk from home.

Moving to the city also meant that both of my parents were closer to their childhood homes.Or,at least closer than they had been during the first few years of their working lives.My mother's family still lived about two hundred miles west,and Springhill,my fathers hometown was within about an hours drive.As much as they liked being nearer to family,I'm certain that they didn't want to live in the same town as either of their parents,so Moncton was a comfortable compromise.Maybe the only downside was that my father had a two hour drive to work,instead of the ten minute drive from Redmondville.

Once we were in Moncton,there was a lot of family around for a while.I can recall that my grandmother Graham was around,as was my mothers sister,Ruby.And ,of course Anna English was in River Glade,at the sanatorium,stricken with tuberculosis.Without a doubt,the fact that we lived in Moncton must have made that time a bit easier than it would otherwise have been.Still,it must have been a trying time for everyone including my mother.Even so,no one let on that it was.I don't recall anyone speaking a word of it,and I don't recall that our sense of comfort was ever in question.While my mother worked,other family members saw that we were well cared for.

My father was even closer to his hometown.His father still lived around Springhill,as did his sister,my Aunt Roseanna.So we visited quite frequently and every time we did I was amazed that my father seemed to know everyone in town..

My Grandmother Davis lived in Shubenacidie,deeper into Nova Scotia,but still reasonably close to Moncton,so we visited there too.

Southeast New Brunswick seemed the ideal place for my father,as it was about as close as you could get to Nova Scotia as you could get without actually being there.And my father was Nova Scotian to the bone.

But of course,there was the business of keeping children sheltered from some parts of reality.Our homecoming must have complicated that undertaking considerably,as there were situations and characters that would require some well thought out explanations.

out and about-calgary/november 17

memoir/interlude/The World Just Beyond

We played happily by day and went to our warm beds at night and our mother read us bible stories  for children.Of the world that lay somewhere outside our door,we had little idea.It was a world that lay just beyond and things would happen there that my mother never would speak of.

Bible storieswere selected for us out of two large,beautifully illustrated volumes.But not just any Bible stories.They were very carefully selected.Of course they included the story of Moses,who was discovered floating in a basket,had a close encounter with a burning bush and then went on to lead his people out of Egypt,before going up on a mountain and bringing down tencommandments on tablets made of stone.

They told of a shepard boy named David who killed a really big and a really bad man,a giant in fact.And they told of Samson,whose life seemed to hit the skids after a bad trip to the barber shop,and of Jonah,who got swallowed by a whale,then spit up on dry land because he disobeyed God..

Our Bible stories also told of Daniel who was thrown into a den of lions who were ,as it turned out,not hungry,and of three Hebrew boys who would not burn even though they were tossed into a firy furnace.

And of course,they told of Jesus.They told how he was born with animals in a barn and laid in a manager and how wise men came to visit.We were told of the time he fed a lot of hungry people with very little bread and a few fish,but no mention was ever made of turning water into wine.We were told how he healed sick people,but the words demon or madness were never mentioned.

Just as telling as the stories we were told were the ones we were not.We never heard of Tamar or Jezabel or Hagar or Haman,and it goes without saying that Sodom and Gommorah were never so much as whispered.

And John The Baptist?Well John was,how shall I say,peculiar,and there may have been some concern that we might meet someone like him.It simply wouldn't do to have children who took to eating grasshoppers just because they heard about it in a Bible story,and,moreoverJohn met with an unsightly end that I did not find out about for many years.And,while Jesus was nailed to a cross and stuck in the side,his story was somehow considered more wholesome,or at least more sanitary than the story of John The Baptist.Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he rose out of the tomb and went directly off to Heaven.In any event,there was just no way to send children off to their dreams by telling them about John The Baptist.

The story of Adam and Eve I found very strange indeed.Thats because it begs the question,so to speak.In fact it begs more than one question,even to a four year old.

Adam we were told was the first man andEve the first woman.They lived in a fine garden where they could eat anything,except,of course apples,because God told them not to,so,of course,they did.And this is why we are all bad.well,at least thats the uinderstanding I had of things when I first heard the story.But,of course,a finely tuned sense of the metaphorical is quite beyond a four year olds imagination.And that brings us back to The World Just Beyond.The idea of an apple setting into motion a whole series of events must be problematic when you want to keep The World Just Beyond,beyond.Because,you see,the whole point of the story of Adam and Eve is the selecting of knowledge over ignorance.And once selected,knowledge cannot be deselected.So,once you tell the story of The Fall,it cannot be untold,and you are faced with the immediate need to tell more and more things,which at first gently shake the World Just Beyond,then cause it to shudder and wobble,and,finally send it towards some inevitable apocolypse.But that does not mean that extraordinary attempts will not be made to save that world,The World Just Beyond.

By the time I turned four I had some sense that what I saw all day long was not everything.i knew,more or less that there were things I was deeply ignorant of,without knowing much about what these things were.But not knowing about them did not mean I could not see them.

So what of The World Just Beyond?What did it look like and how did it resonate in my ears and in my mind.How did I know it even existed,and,if I could conceive of it's existance,then why did it exist?

It turned out I think,throughout most of my childhood that there was a benevolent angel trying to create a world,the purpose of which was to deceive me.For if a malevolent diety could do such thing,the why not a benevolent angel to Hold The World Just Beyond at arms length?Why must we accept such things as being only malevolent?

memoir chapter III

On the second day of March,1965,I celebrated my fourth birthday.We did all the normal things like eating cake and ice cream.The cake had four candles,which seemed like more than I would ever be able to blow out by myself.But blow them out I did.

The clearest memory I have of that birthday is that I had a party.It was the first party of any kind I ever recall going to.There were a few other children there,but in fact I only really recall who two of those children were.One,of course was my sister,who still seemed really small to me and was not much of a conversationalist.A year and four months difference in age is still quite signifigant at that point in life.

The second party guest that I recall is a little girl who lived across the street and one house up from us,in the house the Carters live in now.When we first moved to Moncton,it seemed as though people moved in and out of that house a couple of times in what had to have been a very short period of time.I can recall that my father refered to a man they saw coming and going to that house as "Mr.Hale."But I'm uncertain as to whether or not that girl was his daughter.As far as I knew,and as far as I can recall today,her name was Marlene,and she lived there for only a short period of time.If I played with her at all,outside of the party,of course,I don't recall it.To the best of my mermory she was a chubby little girl with curly brown hair.

We played games at my party.There were prizes to,and my mother tried to make certain that no child left without a prize.I had little clue as to what a party was supposed to be like or how you played organized games.But for weeks before my father explained that a party is when your friends come to your house and help you to celebrate your birthday.I wasn't at all certain I wanted to have a party.My father also said we could play Pin The Tail On The Donkey.The object of this game was just what it's name implied.Inside the box that the game came in was a large poster of a donkey,complete with a bunch of pin on tails,each of which had a number.The object of the game was to pin the missing tail on the donkey,as close as possible to where a tail would actually be on a real donkey.But first,you were blindfolded and turned around in a circle three times,so you were a bit dizzy as well.Then my mother would lead the blindfolded person up to the donkey and they would place their tail on the unfortunate beast.By the time a half dozen or so of us had finished,the donkey had an abnormal number of tails and not one of them was placed in what could be called the appropriate place.It was a great game...tons of fun.I've only ever played that game once,but I've always remembered it fondly.Perhaps,though it's not fair to say I only ever played it once,as that experiance seemed to serve me well later in life,especially during the reign of Premier Ralph Klien in Alberta,and more recently during the time in Toronto when Rob Ford became mayor.By then of course,I'd started writing,so naturally,if you give a person a tail,everything starts to look like a donkey.That party I'm certain was my very first lesson in being an iconoclast,and if anyone had known that at the time,they would have been appaled.

On the night of my birthday,we all got into the family car and headed up the coast to visit my Uncle Bill,who worked for The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in a small town in Northern New Brunswick.I must have fallen asleep on the way there,because I was tired from the party and I don't recall that trip.I do recall getting there though.Uncle Bill lived in the police station,which included living quarters for the policemen and their famlies.Uncle Bills family,at that time would have included just him and his wife Doris and his two girls Janice and Shawna.Shawna must have been just a baby,and Janice,as I recall was using crutches for some reason.

Uncle Bills house was a very exciting place for a young boy,because ,well,it was a police station.There was a police car parked out front and in the garage there was a very fast looking boat and a snow mobile too,all painted uplike police cars.And of course,I got to sit in the police car and turn on the siren.

After we visited Uncle Bill,and I got to sleep in the police station,we headed back home.It was a long drive and we started at night.It's very dark in that part of New Brunswick as the towns are quite small and far apart.There is a lot of woods about and really not much to see at night,unless of course you are looking up.Our car had a radio too,and I remember that two songs seemed to play over and over as we drove home.One was "Counting Flowers On The Wall."by The Statler Brothers.The other was called "These Boots"by Nancy Sinatra.I never liked either of them,except on that particulr car trip.I guess commercial radio back then is pretty much like it is now.Total crap.

In any event,I was amazed at the fact thatthere were people in the radio who could speak and sing.But I couldnt really figure out how that worked.My mother explained that the people were at a radio station and they spoke into a machine which took their voice and threw it into the sky.The car had another machine in it that caught that voice and allowed us to hear it.This story fascinated me as I sat on the seat between my mother and father.If it were true there were wonderous things in the air.All the things that were ever on the radio.Singers and voices.Cowboys and Indians too.How could all those things be at the radio station and come flying out into our car.And,in addition to all that the sky just outside our car was filled with dancing lights of green and blue and more stars than I could count.I was beginning to get a sense of wonder about the world.

the kananaskis traveler: op/ed-integrity in journalism-update

the kananaskis traveler: op/ed-integrity in journalism-update: Time for an update on my ongoing issue with Newschasers of Moncton New Brunswick.I've finally heard from them on the matter of journalistic...