I SURVIVED

A fragment of writing found floating on the Internet Sea, from co-ordinates unknown, perhaps a Cyber Coast Guard rescue operation is in order:


"... am weak now but will continue writing as long as I can. It is quiet now, that almost eerie kind of quiet that follows the sound and fury. It is a silence of anticipation, as if the horrific events of the past weekend have not terminated but are merely in limbo and could erupt again at any moment.


I think the invaders have left, but I dare not depend on that thought. Sunday afternoon I heard the barbarian hordes start up their war chariots and scream away in fogs of carbon combustion and derision. I do not want to indulge in self delusion. They are crafty, these barbarians from the East. They are capable of the most insidious of deceptions. "We are not really hungry" they will tell you, "you don't need to cook much" and they will eat everything in your house, regardless of quality, like locusts in a wheat field, driving forward, devouring all ... oh, the dog was nervous and 24 hour grocery stores armed themselves.


Their weapons are devious. Beyond their truly terrifying ability to consume copious amounts of food and spirits apparently, they have powerful voodoo that can control the very weather itself. In order to placate them, we journeyed to the centre of our fair city to worship at our most sacred of institutions, known far and wide as the Beer Patio. Oh, a splendid day it was, with the sun shining and the bus exhausts blowing and goth girls gliding by on Queen St. West. Surely, the day ahead would be warm and sunny and filled with the froth of draft beer and the grease of chicken wings ..


Oh, but I underestimated the power of the horde. As we settled in against the iron rails of the Black Bull, with the sun shining upon the throng of Shoppers-With-Way-Too-Much-Money, the sky suddenly darkened and a strange kind of cold rain started to fall. I tried to brave out this ensorcelled storm but the power of the barbarians was too much for me. A sudden wind picked up, swirling amidst the colorful beer umbrellas and mini skirts on the patio. Finally we were forced inside this humble Church of Lager.


While worshiping my pint of India Pale Ale, I observed several members of the horde split off into small raiding parties, to sortie forth into my fair and vulnerable city. Two of the female members of the horde (amazons they are, the fiercest fighters of the army) returned with small colourful bags holding what elements of feminine sorcery I shudder to imagine. The youngest of the male warriors ventured into a local lair of wizardry and Geekdom known to all as the Comic Book Shop. He returned with a model of some dire weapon of destruction known as a "Ti Figher" Oh the horror .. surely he will return to his eastern domain with this model, no doubt to supply it to his Masters of War to replicate and use them to overtake our world ... of course, they are a literal people these barbarians and no doubt we will soon be assaulted by thousands of these Ti Fighters, all of them four inches long ...

Back at the abode, the restless horde satiated themselves on enormous piles or seared flesh and cold beer and mysterious concoctions known as Pickled Tinks ... don't ask. As the evening wore on and vegetarians everywhere trembled with dread, the barbarians erected a fire, like a funeral pyre that all that is decent and sacred and non alcoholic ...

So now here I sit in the eerie silence, relieved yet filled with dread. Relieved that the horde has moved on to their barbaric homeland and yet dreadful ... because next year I will have another birthday .... and my family will return.

I'M NOT GETTING OLDER, I'M GETTING HAIRIER

Yup, it is happening. I'm having a birthday this weekend. Again. It seems to happen every year. It is getting monotonous. The family is coming up so if you enjoy peace tranquility sanity and a sense of rightness with the universe I would avoid the Greater Toronto Area this weekend.

So, a few reflections on this whole getting older thing. Firstly, as I move further into my fifth decade, I don't know if I can consider myself middle aged anymore. For me, middle aged always implied a half way point. I may be beyond that now. Don't get me wrong, I feel fine and I ain't going anywhere but another fifty years? I was bad to myself when I was younger. I smoked so much pot that to this day I pee resin (Tapping the blog .. is this thing on?)

Seriously, looking ahead fifty years is a kind of weird exercise. Because you are not just looking ahead to the status of your life (career, relationship etc) but the quality of your life, your health. My health, my body is not the same now as it was at 25. I'm a bit heavier, a bit slower, and even hairier ... ok, I knew that as I aged I would grow hair in new places but why does it come in grey? And the new gadgets I looked forward to purchasing did not include a wider variety of hair clippers/trimmers. But, I am happy to report that my health, my body, has not really changed in a true dramatic fashion from twenty five years to fifty .. but fifty to seventy five? Seventy five to one hundred? Yikes is the word that comes to mind.


If I live to be one hundred I have this vision of myself: A long grey pony tail and big mouth attached to a walker. Um, scary thought, sorry.


Besides the physical changes I am not sure what my personality is going to be like in fifty years. I like to think that I've gotten wiser over the years; I have certainly gotten crankier. Frankly, I don't think I'm old enough now to be this cranky. Collette's father is crankier than me but he is 84 ... far as I'm concerned, you have a divine right to be cranky at that age. I think I have an early developing case of "codger's disease" or something.


Maybe I will have some kind of sea change in fifty years. At one hundred and one, Vic will be this gracious, generous, munificent entity who spreads waves of love and understanding across the universe; like the Dali Lhama of North York ...... but let's face it, the reality is I am more likely to become the Troll of Toronto; a long haired grey bearded beast with a bum ankle who lives under the Bloor Street Viaduct, scaring children, berating members of the Progressive Conservative party but easily placated by an ice cold bottle of lager. Mmmm lager ... sorry, wiping drewl from beard and continuing on.


I wonder what I will know if I live to be one hundred. I will have accumulated knowledge, that is certain, but will I remember any of it? I am already having memory issues. I keep forgetting what it is that I don't remember. So I have this vision of 98 year old Vic waking up one morning, energized by an epiphany that would create world peace, feed the planet and prevent people from wearing socks with sandals. Only, on the way to the bathroom for my fiftieth pee in 6 hours, I would not only forget the epiphany, I would forget why I had gone into the bathroom in the first place. And wonder what the hell the yellow liquid on my feet was. Wow, another ugly image in one post, thanks for tuning in.

Fifty years just seems way too far away. I have no idea what the world will be like in fifty years let alone my own life. Maybe I will dedicate the next twenty years to doing nothing but sustaining my existence, you know, eating well, exercising, drinking seaweed-and-tofu-and-pigeon-beak smoothies and forgo red meat, beer, and cream filled donuts (you know, the stuff that pretty much sustains me now) only to find that the corporeal world has been replaced by virtual reality anyway; a bunch of meat tubes plugged into a communal Hi Def computer system.

So what is the point of all this musing? Wait, you still didn't think there would be any point to this blog did you? Silly reader. The only point to this post: I will be around next year, musing about the future yet not doing much about it, drinking an ice cold lager and sucking the cream out of a donut.

And, just because the thought occurred to me, the title of this post is I'm Not Getting Older, I'm Getting Hairier but that is what Vic would right. If I was a military general celebrating his 5oth year of blowing shit up the title could be I'm Not Getting Older, I'm Getting A Harrier.

I kill me.

THINGS LEFT BEHIND

This weekend we had our first garage sale to raise money for Collette's 60 K walk to support breast cancer research at the Princess Margaret Hospital. Everything went pretty well, the weather co operated, a couple of Collette's co workers came by and were of tremendous help. We ended up making over 300 hundred dollars and were happy with that; we are doing it again in a couple of weeks and hope to improve on that number. At any rate Collette is now over the half way mark for the amount of money she is obligated to raise in order to do the walk.


One of the things that happened that we did not expect was the number of people who donated items to the cause. Our neighbour Jesse brought over an air hockey table and a wrought iron bed frame for us to sell, Collette's principal, Susan, brought an antique style phone and some other items. Very generous indeed but it left us with items at the end of the sale that we did not have at the beginning; isn't this contrary to the whole exercise? Well, that is why we are having a second sale.


Sorting through the house for things to sell was really a process of deciding what we were going to let go of, finding the things we were going to leave behind; as in, I no longer need/want/care for this, so I will put it behind me. We put out or VHS movies (long since moved on to DVDs) I put out a lot of books (read it, never read it in ten years, have three other copies) we don't need these portable CD players, we have an MP3 player now. It was not painful parting with these items, we had, I suppose, grown out of them.


That happens with certain aspects of our lives, too. As we go along, we put things behind us, we "outgrow" them, often without really being aware that we have.


When I was a kid I was an avid comic book reader. Supherheroes. My brother Ed used to read me the text while we looked at the pictures. It was how I learned to read. The first one I remember was Daredevil, when he still had the yellow and black suit. I can remember once a month being given a dollar and walking for miles, from store to store, collecting all the latest editions of my favorite titles, till the dollar was gone. In those days a comic was 8 cents so I would trudge back home with my dozen or so comics, locking myself in my room, and just going on an orgy of superheroes and super villains.


My love for comics continued right on through high school and into my early twenties. We were entering into "graphic novel" territory by then but I still gravitated towards the guys in the costumes with super powers. Though, the one "comic book" I still have is a one off graphic novel, story by Samuel Delaney, art by Howard Chaykin; not a superhero but a science fiction tale.


I haven't bought or even looked at a comic book since the early 80s. I watch some of the movies but most of them are shite, really. But my reading tastes have moved on and I have no regrets about that. I still pick up a graphic novel from time to time but I am no longer interested in the flying guys in the colorful tights.


Another thing I used to be passionate about was science fiction. I am talking literature here rather than movies, but I loved the films too. Science fiction spun out of the comic books. I was obsessed with the stuff, for a long time it was all that I read. I went to a few conventions, and went to readings whenever I could. While sorting through books to sell at the garage sale, I found a hardcover Harlan Ellison, signed by the author. I had forgotten all about it; needless to say I didn't sell it for two bucks.


Science fiction is what inspired me to write. Most of my early short stories were ripped off from Lovecraft or Bradbury, complete with the flowery prose. In high school I used to co author Heinlein style space epics with my friend, Tanya Huff. She, of course, has gone on to be a fulltime science fiction/fantasy author.


My love for science fiction continued well on into my forties. I began to get fussier, though. I tended to stick to a small group of authors like Robert Reed and William Gibson and CJ Cherryh and Tanith Lee, who could A: actually write B: had some clue of character development and C: had some originality. I re-read those books occasionally but when I peruse the science ficiton section of a bookstore now, there is very little to inspire me. My reading taste has become more eclectic, my time for reading more limited, and there just seems to be too many other literary options to pursue.


Having said that, I could not depart with any of my Phillip K Dick novels. If he was still alive, perhaps I'd still be reading "science fiction"

What happens to these great passions that, during the moment of experiencing them, seem so overwhelming and all consuming. If we outgrow them, how is that so, what does that mean? Did I become too mature for superheroes? Well, maybe. There was a time when the superhero comic books maintained, over a year of monthly issues, long and complex storylines that would include character development; the Avengers introduced a character called the Vision who may or not be human and their development of that concept was at least as complex as any Star Trek version. In the seventies, Denny Lane took two of DC's more lack lustre characters, Green Lantern and Green Arrow and sent them on a long road journey to "discover Amercia" It seems that in recent years (decades) the regular monthly superhero comics are long on graphic displays and short on story line.

But what about science fiction? I'm sure there are still as many relevant novels in that field today as there were back when I read two or three of them a week. But I look at the glossy covers now and it is always number two in a series of four that, in itself, is a subset of a series of twenty that was spun out of a series of ten .. and my interest wanes as I stand there. But really, it has nothing to do with content. I think it has more to do with me. Opening my eyes, discovering new authors, looking for works of art that have more relevance to my everyday life, looking for stories and characters with whom I connect.

Perhaps that is maturity, as much as I am loathe to admit it.

Comic books and space stories are not the only things I have left behind, and they are not the most important. As I've gotten older I left behind jealously, and anger and a lot of self doubt ... not that any of that does not still exist, they are just in manageable portions. Those are the important things we leave behind.

Gosh, that really does sound like growing up.

8 MILLION WAYS TO DIE

The title of this post is taken from a Jeff Bridges movie released in 1986. It is a run of the mill cops versus drug dealers movie that is not really worthy of reviewing. I just like the title.


There are lots of ways to die. Discount "natural causes" like age, disease, etc and you still have a few million I'm sure. What's significant is that we all have brushes with death, probably many such brushes, all through our life times. Many people live very long lives, dodging the karmic bullets and for some people, the bullet catches up with them on the very first go round.


Collette and I were watching some program that featured a guy who had become paralyzed when, as a teenager, he did a cliff jump into water. The day this happened to him all his friends were doing the same jump, all without incident. But that one jump, that one moment where his body did something different, damn near killed him.


Collette thought back to her teenage years in the Parry Sound area, the number of times she and her friends did "stupid things" in cars on the region's high ways and came out unscathed. Her niece Amanda, with her friends, was driving in the same area, not even doing "something stupid" and in a terrible tragedy, did not escape that karmic missile. Why is that? We all make mistakes, we all push the envelope just a little, some of us many times; some of us survive, some of us do not.


When I fell out of a tree and shattered my ankle, it was due to a series of small mistakes stitched together in such a fashion that I ended up with a permanent injury that, while not being so disabling, has certainly affected certain aspects of my life. That was not the first time I made mistakes, not the only day that I had potential to hurt myself but it was the one where it finally caught up with me. I don't why. I mean, I know why I fell out of the damn tree with a chainsaw in my hand, I just don't know why it had that end result; it could have happened so many other times in the past.


Here is my little countdown of the number of time Vic should have died and yet, did not:


1) 1978 - Northern Manitoba. An abandoned industrial water tank in an old mining camp deep in the bush, just west of Thompson. The oil tank in question was about 25 feet high and maybe 12 or 14 feet across. The former owners of the mine had sealed the tank, welding a larger medal lid across it, to make the ruin "safer". Myself, and my friends Norm and Michelle stumbled upon the site and of course, our first thought was "Let's climb it!" And it was nice, high up in the jack pines, above the bush, able to see down across the valley, the spring air crisp and redolent of the forest .. and naturally, that was not enough for us. Norm and I decided that the most sensible thing to do now, was, race around the edge of the lid. Hey, we were young, we were miles away from anything and there was a pretty girl there ... yup, we were guys. So around we went, running on the raised edge, all of about 13" wide, wearing steel toed work boots, the metal a little slick from a spring rain, nothing below us but muskeg and permafrost ...


And I slipped. I remember thinking "This is where you shift your body weight to fall onto the lid ..." but my boots were already leaving the metal. My next thought was "I wonder if the muskeg is soft enough to cushion me from 25 feet up ..." and then, I felt the air under my feet, my bare wrists felt the barb of the jack pine tree that was growing up right next to the tank, the branches overhanging it a bit. Then my body was turning, my arms were stretching out, and I had a hand full of tree limbs. I sort of flung myself into the tree; it was so thick and dense that my legs were going onto branches before I could even grab any. I slid down in the tree for a few feet till I finally got my arms around a good sized limb. And I just hung there for a few seconds while the reality of the situation sank in; death missed by a matter of inches.


When I fell out of my tree a few years ago, Collette tells me that she could see me trying to save myself; I grabbed at the tree but there were no limbs there, I tried grabbing the tree next to it, I was trying to position my body to land on my back instead of my feet... but I was unsuccessful. Why did it work in Manitoba? Well, 22 year old reflexes may have something to do with it. But those reflexes would have been useless without the proximity of that jack pine. .. Was it luck? Intervention? I really don't know.


2) 1979 - Prince Edward Island. I was working with a crew clearing brush as a prep for laying a new nature trail. This was a government sponsored training kind of program so naturally, we did not have a lot of the proper tools normally required for this kind of work. That day we were working with axes, bow saws and scythes. I was working with a group of people hacking small trees and dense brush with axes. That particular day I did not have my hair tied back, it was loose, but I was wearing a toque. I was standing at the edge of the clearing we had created, bent over a bit, using my axe to limb out this tree we had just felled when I felt something brush by me; it moved my hair. I looked up to see another worker, maybe six feet away from me, standing there with his mouth open, holding an axe handle. I wondered "Why the hell is he holding an axe handle?" Then it dawned on me. It was the head of his axe that I had felt brushing by my hair.


Now, in all reality, if the axe head had hit me, it probably would not have killed me. But it would have hurt. And I would have been pissed off. And the young man who had failed to properly secure his tool, would have been sent far too early to meet his maker. So a death would have occurred.


3) Lennox Island - 1979 Lennox Island lays just off the north coast of Prince Edward Island, connected by a short causeway. It is a Mi'kmaq community of some 400 people. Wood Island is a small uninhabited island off the coast of Lennox. That winter we were involved creating a "nature appreciation centre" on Wood Island to help promote eco tourism for the Lennox Island First Nation. Again, this was a very low tech endeavour. To get from Lennox to Wood, we simply hoofed it across the ice, carrying our supplies in a sledge. There was a small cabin over there and we would stay there for a few days at a time, constructing the structures and out buildings for the nature centre. There were two routes between the islands. Going straight our from A-frame on Lennox over to Wood was about a mile and half across the ice; but all of that was in Malpeque Bay and it was "good" ice, quite thick and solid. The other way was to go about three miles along the shore of Lennox and then make a passage of less than 1/4 of a mile, but here you were closer to open ocean with some serious currents so the ice was less stable, especially in the spring (you can see where this is going I'm sure)



As spring came in, we approached the time of thaw where travel between the two islands was impossible by either ice or boat. In our cabin on Lennox we realized that we had left some gear on the other island, in particular an expensive remote radio system that we did not want to sit over there for the duration of the thaw. So off we go, myself, Mark, Andre and Emmett, our crew chief.


We go the long way across the ice, across the bay; it is cold this morning and although Emmett knows that the ice has thinned, we still have a few feet of it under us. We go to the cabin and begin our cleaning up process. It takes longer than we had participated and, in the way of the Maratimes, the weather changed dramatically. Four hours later, when we stepped out of the cabin, we felt that the temp had increased and a sultry eastern wind was swirling. Storm clouds choked the skies and we could feel a few drops of stinging rain pelt our faces. Going back across that mile and a half of open ice, with the wind and the rain slapping us the whole way was not appealing. Maybe it was wiser to cross the short strait and have the longer part of the hike on land, were there was shelter. So we each hoisted up our packs, maybe 25 pounds a piece, and headed off.


To say we made a mistake in judgement is an understatement. By the time we got to the channel crossing the weather was growing evil. It was around 4 pm in the afternoon but the clouds made it dark as night and the wind was hard, you could feel its teeth, with rain on its back. The wind had shifted and ocean was blowing in across the channel; as we started to cross, there was water almost up to my knees. And the ice under the water was slippery. Twenty feet out, Andre lost his footing and it was only Emmett's reflexes (he was a competitive boxer) that save him from being blown out to sea. After that we tied ourselves to a long braid of rope. Walking was hard. We were moving into the wind now, doubled over, the 25 pound packs feeling like 40. We were wearing work boots but the ice under the water was so slick we could not get our footing. We had to use hand axes to hack foot holes in order to make our way.



It was exhausting. I felt almost as though I was in some kind of trance, aware of what my body was doing but not really in control of it. Everything that could ache, did so. I felt more machine than human, and it was only Emmett's encouragement that kept me moving. That quarter mile passage, which should have taken us 20 minutes, took us in excess of four hours. By the time we reached Lennox island we were in deep physical exhaustion and suffering from exposure and hypothermia. And we had a three mile hike ahead of us.


Luckily, our absence had been noted and search and rescue found us about a mile into the hike back home. We spent the night in the hospital. We all had some mild frostbite, but basically no serious injuries. Could we have died? Oh yeh, no doubt about it. If we had left an hour later when the temperature plummeted, if Emmett hand not caught Andre on the ice, if search and rescue had not found us ... there was real potential for kicking it. A series of small indiscretions led us to that experience. The kind you can commit every day. Some times you skate through it, sometimes you die.


4) Wrong Lake Manitoba - 1984 Back in my old stomping grounds of northern Manitoba. I was working as a cook in a fly in fishing lodge located on Wrong Lake (really, would I go to the right lake?) Pretty big place, half a dozen staff in the lodge, 8 Cree fishing guides who lived in their own camp, up to 20 guests at a time. Well maintained but where there are humans there is garbage and where there is garbage there will be bears. In particular, a young male black bear who had discovered the remote dump some half a klick from the lodge. He wasn't much bothering the lodge or the guests and the Native guides often had him around their camp.

Then the owners showed up. They were unhappy about the bear. Collette's family owns a fishing lodge and they are never happy about bears around their business and I can understand this, bears are bad for business. Dealing with garbage bears is a delicate situation and I seem to get myself there more than one sure. No matter where this story is going let me assure you: This was not my first bear.

On morning I was cleaning up after breakfast and starting the lunch prep when I heard a sound from outside: Pop, pop, pop ... I go flying out to the back deck and find the owner's wife taking pot shots at the bear .. with a .22 caliber rifle. She had hit him, at least one shallow flesh wound. I took the weapon from her hands and told her "Well now you pissed him off" The bear was indeed mad and not likely to return to the bush. A call was put in to the Ministry to come do a live trap but this is a fly in only lodge in summer, they could not come for at least a day.

As fate would have it, the lodge was over booked. Full of customers, full of the owners, and full of their special guests. Which means Vic had to give up his room. Which meant Vic had to sleep in the quarters usually given over to temp workers or visiting Ministry ecologists. This was a small trailer, way in the back of the property, supported on cinder blocks.

I'll cut to the chase here. Here is Vic, some 500 meters from the lodge building, in this little trailer, one flimsy door, two windows, no firearm, all by his lonesome. Oh, not so alone. I became aware of the bear around midnight. Very quiet and still back there in the bush. Everyone asleep in the lodge as well as the guide camp. I could hear him snuffling, right outside the door. I don't know if he was actively sniffing me, searching for food or just generally grumpy from the big hot hornet that had stung him. I tried to be quiet but maybe he heard him. He was not very happy with humans at this point in his life.

He brushed up against the trailer as if just testing it. It was a test for which he got an "A". The little building trembled. I trembled. And couldn't remember if I had locked the door. I flew out of my bunk and just as I turned the latch, something hit the door. I think it was his paw. The whole thing moved. I just stood there, frozen, trying to stay quiet, hoping he would go away. Normally he would have. But not tonight. Tonight he was hurt and scared. And definitely pissed.

He hit the trailer again and this time it was not with his paw. The whole thing rocked. I made a sound like a school girl. I went for the only weapons I had: A hatchet and a Buck knife with a 6 inch blade. I cursed; my Henckels were in the frigging lodge. Funny, the lodge was filled with hunting rifles of varying rifles but the weapon I most desired with which to fight off a 250 pound black bear were my chef knives. So there I was, all 165 pounds of me, in my shorts and bare feet, a hatchet in one hand and hunting knife in the other ... and he took another poke at the trailer. I thought for sure it was going right off the cinder blocks. Just as I was going to yell, his paw came through one of the windows. This was the second time in my life I've seen the paw of a bear come at me through a window and really, the sequel was no less scary than the original.

I did scream this time, in an octave higher than my normal range but I was too far away from the lodge for anyone to hear me. But it had an affect. Maybe the bear was confused why something that smelled human was sounding more like a chipmunk or maybe it was just tired from playing with the big Lego. At any rate, after a short time, he went on his way. Days later the bear was live trapped and taken deep into the bush and Vic flew back to civilization.

If the bear had gotten me (not really likely, there was not enough motivation for him to actually bust into the trailer) I would have been dead or terribly injured. Human versus black bear without a firearm is a one sided fight. The bear didn't really want to kill me, he was just hurt and scared and angry. But he could have. And the circumstances that put me in that situation were both predictable and complex: Shoot a bear with a 22 and you don't kill it, you just endanger other humans. But if the wife had not been there, if the lodge had not been full ... things would have been different.

So we all have our brushes with premature death. Usually they are more mundane. Like almost stepping into traffic or avoiding a 20 pound block of ice falling towards you from a four storey building in Quebec City. We avoid these situations all the time. Then we don't. Is it just the law of averages? Or is it something else?

As usual I am not trying to answer any questions here. I am just thinking out loud. If anyone wants to relate how they dodged the Big Bad Bullet of Fate, please feel free to comment.

If you have any clue why your number wasn't called that day, let me know.

THE PRIDE AND SHAME EQUATION

Don't let the title fool you, this is a post about skill sets. The skills I have, the skills I don't have, the ones I wish I had, and the ones I am almost proud not to possess.

There are certain skills I wish I possessed. I wish I could draw a straight line. I can't draw a straight line with a ruler. I wish I could do carpentry. Any kind of carpentry. I can't put a screw in a wall with a power screwdriver. And dancing. I would like to be able to dance. What I do now is a series of dry heaves accompanied by off key singing .. singing being liberally applied here ..

But there are skills that I do not have that I am proud not to possess. To whit:

1) I am proud that I have some basic bush skills. I've lived and worked in the Canadian north and I've had some basic survival training. I am by no means Survivorman but give me a compass, a knife, a good pair of boots, I could get myself out of a major jam.

I am not ashamed of the fact that if you dropped me into any large enclosed mall anywhere in the world I would become desperately lost before your footsteps faded. When looking at those mall maps, I see the You Are Here mark and never have a clue where "Here" actually is. I can't use stores as reference points because I have no idea what Aritiza and Aldo and Stockhomme are ... so they have no relevance to me. Even if I was able to say "Ok, this is the Gap" it does me no good, I don't where it is, so I can't reference it to anything else.


2) I am proud of the fact that I am a good cook. I used to do it for a living and over the years since then I have increased my knowledge base. I can make a decent roux or mirpois, I understand what the different cuts of meat are and what do to do with them and know what herbs to add to the pot.

I am not ashamed that I cannot make Kraft Dinner. For the first years of my relationship with Collette she dreaded when it was K-D night (we first lived together as students so Kraft Dinner night was not a rarity) because she knew she was going to be presented with some orange, gelatinous mass with no resemblance to fast food. Kraft Dinner is not food; I am firmly convinced that it is a discarded formula for a new chemical weapon delivery system. I am not a chemist. I am a cook.


3) I am proud of the fact that I can master fairly complex electronic technologies like digital camcorders and non linear editing systems. Give me a camera or an editing program and I can get the thing functioning in a relatively short period of time. Yes, this is my job, but part of the reason I do this is because I have an affinity for it.


I am not ashamed of the fact that I am baffled by cell phones. We have probably the most basic cell phone you can get, it does not even flip up. I can't pick up messages from it. I can take a camcorder, drill down into its menu and find the most obscure setting and change it; but I can't program a new number into my cell phone. This is probably an age thing. You keep phone numbers in some ragged, coffee-stained little notebook you can never find, not on the phone itself.


3B) Continuing with the electronic dichotomy, I am proud of the fact that I know the proper bandwidth of a video signal or what 0 db oscillating tone is used for in regards to video production.

I am not ashamed of the fact that home electronics, for me, hold all the relevance of sanskrit. Collette, myself and our friend Michele were housesitting one weekend and were going to avail ourselves of the house earners entertainment system. Between the three of us, we have enough academic paper to wallpaper a house. It literally took us over an hour to figure out how to get the image from the DVD player to appear on the TV. I'm sure an eight year old could have cracked the code in a few minutes. I was also baffled by a DVD player at family function. I had created a complex and artistically pleasing sideshow to be displayed but could not hook up the DVD player to the TV screen. In my studio I have computers, VTRs, TVs, monitors, audio amps, etc all hooked to together into a complex "video chain" but I could not get a DVD and TV to properly function in a church basement. Perhaps it is a consumer versus pro thing, I really don't know.

4) I am proud of the fact that I have fairly well developed skills when working with dogs. I am not a dog trainer but I have been around dogs my entire life and I am extremely comfortable with them. I understand dogs. I know how to communicate with them. When in the dog parks here I see people who clearly have no idea what their dogs are "telling" them. To me, it is a question of watching the body language. Recently Collette and I were on a bus with a guy who had his bull mastiff with him. Another passenger asked if she could pet the dog and the guy said Sure. As soon as that woman put her hand out to the dog we saw trouble. The dog's head went back, his ears went flat, and his jaw tightened. The dog's owner did not see it coming. We did. Snap ... the dog nipped the woman's fingers. I was amazed that the owner could not read his own dog.

I am not ashamed that, most of the time, that I have no idea what children are telling me. I mean the little ones, let's say under the age of 6. They can come up to me, look me dead in the eye, tell me a story and they may as well be speaking Esperanto. No clue. I can't understand the word, I can't read the body language; to me they sound like Charlie Brown's teacher. Lots of noise but little comprehension. Perhaps this should disturb me, after all, I have it on good authority that children really are human beings and I should be able to understand them. I'm reserving judgement on that. I like kids, I love my nieces and nephews but I am always searching for the pods in the basement.

5) I am proud of the fact that I have excellent reading comprehension. I can follow complex fictional story lines, I understand references, I get analogies, I can put the bits and pieces together. In high school I was usually the only kid in class who could actually interpret contemporary poetry. In a college lit class I was the only one who got that a character's father had died in the past; to me it was obvious but everyone else had to have it explained to them.

I am not ashamed that I cannot order food in a fast food restaurant. I want this to be simple. I like places that have pictures. I want to walk in, point at the picture and say "Two of those to go" but it sometimes does not work out that way. I order the combo meals to make it easy. But apparently the all included combo meal is rarely that. There is always something extra .. "Do you want .." or "do you not want ..." I get baffled. It's fast food. It's easy. Don't force me to make a decision. Really, fast food people, don't talk to me. Follow the finger that is pointing to the picture and get me my damn meal. If I have to explore options with you, the meal will not be a happy one.

6) I am proud of that fact that I have good written communication skills. I've been a writer my whole life and I have been paid for writing, in terms of script and copy. I can usually express myself clearly and, as mentioned above, I have good reading comprehension. If we communicate via mail, I am going to understand what you are telling me and let you know my point of view fairly clearly.

I am not ashamed of the fact that I cannot really communicate via telephone. I don't know why that is. It isn't just the lack of visual cues, because writing doesn't provide that either. I just know that a lot of the time, if we are talking on the phone, and you are presenting me with some complex story, chances are I am only catching bits and pieces of it. Probably this is an attention span issue; if you are not right there in front of me to hold my interest or if I am not forced to concentrate on a piece of paper, my brain is going to take a little side trip down the Lack of Focus Canal. Sorry, this is probably rude; I call it probable brain damage.

I'm not sure what any of this means, perhaps that as much as you know, as many thing as you can do, you can't know it all. We admire "renaissance" people because of their ability to excel in many different areas. Most people have their areas of expertise and they are expert at them because they have concentrated on that area, they have devoted time to it and in the course of that, they have to let other skills fall by the wayside.

I don't suppose I am alone in this, I am sure most people have skills they excel in and related areas of ineptitude. If you can think of any, please share. Let me know I'm not alone. Though if I am, then that is another skill I may .. or may not .. be proud of.

LIFE IS A BEACH

A hot, sunny day in Toronto. The second week of July and we have had few of these so some kind of primal impulse demands: Off to the beach!

Or, this being Toronto, off to the Beaches .. or is it the Beach? Let me explain. So Toronto sprawls along this puny body of water known as Lake Ontario, something like 7,000 square kilometers of water, smallest of the Great Lakes, separates us from the USA ... it's just a lot of water, ok? Toronto has something like 46 kilometers of waterfront but when people say the Beaches they are usually to referring to a stretch of public beaches, east of Yonge Street. For as long as I have lived in Toronto we have called this neighbourhood the Beaches but now, for some reason, they want us to call it the Beach ... Miss Hayley cocks her head and looks at me and says "Sand, water, the swimming dogs I refer to as Water Sheep .." and she begins trotting herself to the subway.

The Beaches have two "off leash" areas, where dogs are allowed to run at large. Dogs running at large is a big issue in Toronto. We have traffic jams, pollution, escalating gun crime, crumbling infrastructures, cops being busted as dope dealers, people who can't afford food and rent in the same month ... and the city government is obsessed with dogs running around without their leashes. In point of fact it is illegal for dogs to be on any beach in Ontario (unless designated leash free) even on leash. Something about maintaining some kind of environmental status. On hot days in Toronto your eyes tear and your lungs burn but dammit, we don't have dogs on the beach ... but I digress. This isn't about politics, it's about border collies on the beach.

So paranoia about dog poop aside, there are a few off leash areas in the Beaches. One is a large fenced in area at Kew Beach, where the shoreline is mostly gravel, there are a lot of weeds growing around, and the sand is more gravel ... all of which concerns Miss Hayley not a whit. There is water here. And rocks. And Water Sheep. Understand: Miss Hayley has never actually seen a sheep. This is a working dog that took a very early retirement .. like at birth. So, dogs are sheep, animals of lesser intelligence whose sole purpose is to be herded. Mind you, in Hayley's world, pretty much everything alive is an animal of lesser intelligence. Including me. But her food comes in bags, and I have thumbs and access to scissors, so she tolerates me.

If you have watched some of the other Miss Hayley videos on this blog you have seen several shots of her wading around in the water. Wading is the operative term. Hayley does not swim. Oh, Hayley can swim, and she swims quite well. If Collette or I are swimming she will go out with us as far as we go; you can grab her by the base of her tail and she will pull you through the water; she is a strong swimmer. She can swim but in true border collie fashion she just chooses not to. It may have something to do with not liking when her feet leave the earth. Border collies are swift, agile, nimble runners, if there is nothing solid under one's paws, you are not running ... that would not be logical. So, when the Water Sheep are foolishly venturing out into the deep water, our border collie's herding technique changes from gripping (a grip is when the border collie turns her head, opens her mouth, places it around the shins of the animal being chased, then swiftly closes her jaws, causing the sheep to lose its footing .. this is not biting .. oh no .. this is gripping ...) to loudly barking. Incessantly, loudly barking. I am not sure what Miss Hayley is saying when she does this, perhaps something like: "You do realize, I know you are coming back, so you can't lure me out there, and when you do get back, boy are you getting bitten .. er .. I mean gripped"

When one owns the world's only Water Sheep herding dog, it is refreshing to watch other dogs playing; yes, playing. Humans throw balls into the water, the dogs swim into the water, dogs fetch the balls, dogs return the balls to their humans. This is not Miss Hayley behaviour. Humans throw spherical objects into the water, Water Sheep think about swimming into the water, World's Smartest Dog lunges into the water and turns the Water Sheep back towards shore, leaving spherical object to bob in the water, forlorn and unfetched. World's Smartest Dog smugly lays on the beach, surveying her masterpiece of mayhem.

Though, it should be noted here for the record, Miss Hayley actually waded into water, put a ball in her jaws, brought it back up the beach and dropped it at my feet. But surely this was not fetching. This was tennis ball herding. With a very special grip. Um .. sure.

Miss Hayley is adept at herding all kinds of critters. Here she has just successfully herded a hairy video editor who, in turn, apparently just herded a runaway sandal.

After a long and arduous day of Water Sheep herding what is a border collie and her pack leaders to do? Well, obviously, they go have a beer. Well, the humans have beer. Miss Hayley has hand baked goodies from the Three Dog Bakery called Pup Tarts ... I know, I know, so please stop snickering.

Here is the little video I made to accompany Collette's photos. In the long shots you will see what we Torontoians refer to as "haze". Everyone else calls it smog. Ah, well, it was still a great day. Music is .. hell, you'll know it ...

Miss Hayley on the Beach from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

UP NORTH 3: THE WEDDING

Here we are at the event that took Collette and I up north last weekend in the first place. The wedding of her nephew Tim to Kate. Tim is the youngest child of Donna, Collette's older sister.

The day turned out beautiful, but did not begin that way. The wedding was on the Sunday. The two previous days had been marked by rain, sometimes torrential downpours, and cool winds. Sunday morning started as the exception; sunny and warm with a pleasant breeze. The problem was, the ceremony was going to be late in the afternoon ... and outside ... with much potential for disaster. I always see potential for disaster. Collette calls that pessimism. I call it hedging my bets.

Sure enough, as the day progressed, the sky began to darken. The wedding ceremony was being held at the site of an old one room school house in Humphrey (just south of Parry Sound) that had been converted into a museum. Due to the layout of the site, there was very little parking and Tim and Kate had arranged for buses to pick people up, take them to the site, then drive them to the hall in Parry Sound where the reception would take place. One thing about rural weddings: There is an awful lot of driving.

Taking the bus did not work for me. I was doing the video for the kids and I had a good amount of gear to ferry. Plus, I always like to have my own vehicle on a shoot, for purposes of flexibility. And I like to sing when I drive. And no one wants to be subjected to that. My first task of the day was to locate the school house museum in Humprhey. I was beginning to think that this was some kind of secret; Donna, the groom's mother, seemed unclear about the location. Was this a clandestine wedding? A black ops ceremony? I finally got directions from Dave, Tim's dad. They seemed clear ... but "clear" to a guy whose memory pretty much resembles said in a sieve, is a very suspect term.

So yeh, I got loss. Went down one long country road that looked like all the other long country roads and realized, when I hit a dead end defined by some gigantic earth moving equipment, that this was not the wedding site. Though I edited a wedding in Thunder Bay where the bridal party arrived at the church on a bunch of back hoes. But Kate has way too much class for that.

So back I go towards Highway 400, trying to figure out where I made the wrong turn. And turn I did. Three point turns on provincial highway, several times. I was once again south bound on the 400 when a car came blazing up beside me, lights flashing, horn blaring. It was Curtis, Tim's brother in law, with Collette's father in the car. He had seen me and swooped up at 170 kph to catch up with me. After declaring I was just returning to Toronto where we had real streets, Curtis led me to the school house. Ah, our saviour.

So I arrive at the ceremony location and feel the rain the moment I get out of the car. I find John, one of Kate's brothers, who is the man in charge. I say to him "Where is the tent? I heard there was a tent?" John informed me that, yes, there had been a tent but twenty minutes ago it had been cancelled ... by Kate. Cancelled. I was sheltering my camcorder from the rain. We were not allowed inside the schoolhouse museum and really, maybe ten people could have fit in there. They were a tiny people, the Canadian shield pioneers. But the powers of a bride on her wedding day are not to be questioned. By the time Kate arrived, the sun was shining.

The ceremony went on without any major issues. Some of the older people (no, not me, be nice) wondered about the lack of chairs .. and bathrooms. The one thing old people are always worry about .. bathrooms.

The day got nicer and nicer as time went on and we all went down to the Stockley Centre in Parry Sound to take some images. This is a lovely location, right on the water, though in true Parry Sound fashion it also houses the Bobby Orr museum. To see some exteriors of this location you can take a peek here, the shots of the hall at towards the end of the video.

The rest of the night went off very well. I took video, Collette took stills, people ate, family members made speeches, lots of really smart people danced really goofily and Tim and Kate looked genuinely happy. And the hall served my brand of my beer. And we all know how I feel about beer.

Hey, who let that hairy old guy into the wedding? Oh well, he has a cool camera, maybe he filmed something nice ...

Kate & Tim's Wedding Video Trailer from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

UP NORTH 2: THE LOST GRAVEYARD

Highway 529 is an old provincial highway that runs from the Parry Sound area (about two hours north of Toronto) to Sudbury. The highway was long ago supplanted by Highway 400 and is basically now used mostly by locals and the odd tourist. The stretch of this highway from Springhaven Lodge to Sudbury is not much of a highway; narrow, unmarked, stretching for kilometer after kilometer of dense bush broken by the Matewan River and the odd side road.

A couple of years ago we were headed along this highway to the small community of Byng Inlet for a Scale family function. Collette's brother Dennis was driving when he suddenly pulled over to the side of the road. There was nothing there. Just bush. And more bush. Turkey vultures circling overhead. Wind in the pines. Dusk creeping in, its crepuscular blush adding a smear of color to this grey and green world. I wondered, in this (to my city eyes) lonely place if this was it ... I had finally pushed Collette's family too far and I was going to be buried in a bog somewhere. Well, I was about to learn about some burying, but not my own.

Dennis wanted to show us an old graveyard, overgrown by the dense bush, dating back to the early or mid teens. We went wading through the mosquito infested thickets and were soon finding a small group of old gravestones and markers a place that had become so much a part of the landscape I would have had no idea that it was there at all.

Last weekend Collette and I decided to return to the graveyard, armed as we were with our "good" cameras for the family wedding. The site has changed in the interim. The area has been cleared back a bit and signs have been erected. You still have to pretty much know what you are looking for, but it was much easier for us to find.

There are about 16 graves in the cemetery, the oldest dating back to 1890, the most recent 1922. Dennis seemed to think that most of the deaths had resulted from a typhoid epidemic but we have been unable to confirm this.

There is a family tomb of some kind here, the family is McCaffery and there is at leas one infant buried here.

There is one soldier buried here, Private Ramesbottom, who "died of wounds received at Cameri" at the age of 26. His is the most recent grave but other members of his family are buried here.

Collette found this toppled stone surround by bits of extremely weathered and aged wood. Her research led her to the fact that this is the grave of a young child, and the wood is the remnants of a cradle that had been built around the marker.

Here is a picture, from a historical website, of what this grave looked like years ago, date uncertain, but the structure of the cradle is more evident.

Apparently there are more graves than we were able to find. This time of year the area is still quite dense with bush and even denser with mosquitoes. The day we went it had been raining for most of the morning and our little blood sucking friends were viewing the three of us (myself, Collette and Miss Hayley) as a movable feast so we were not really willing to push even further back into the bush.

This cemetery was abandoned when the logging industry in Byng Inlet, like many in this part of the province, folded to economic pressure.

Though many of the grave markers were in rough shape, you could still catch a glimpse of the stories, and the past lives that they represented.

There is more to this graveyard and to this story than we have been able to uncover thus far. And there are more "lost" cemeteries in this area. I suppose that is not unusual, especially in areas that have boom and bust economies, like lumber and fishing and even tourism.

So this may become our "off time" project, scouring this region of north central Ontario that is so important to Collette and her family, seeking out these lost and forgotten cemeteries, trying to trace the stories and lives of those who lived and died there so long ago. And, well, my family is from Kingston, an even older community, so we may have our work cut out for us ...

Of course, I made a video. Images are from the Sony PD 170 I brought up to do the wedding. Music is from a famous Hollywood movie.

Byng Inlet Cemetery from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

UP NORTH PART ONE

Collette, Miss Hayley and I have just returned from a few days off in north-central Ontario and pretty jammed packed those days were. First, we got to spend some time at Collette's family lodge at Nares Inlet, something we have not been able to do for more than a year. Then there was our quest for a "lost" graveyard deep in the bush. And, of course, there was a family wedding to attend. Being us, we have pics and videos of everything so I am going to split the adventures into three separate posts.



We will start with Springhaven Lodge. I have written about the lodge before and how important it is to us. This is Collette's home and the home away from home for Miss Hayley and myself. Now that Collette's father has moved into Parry Sound we haven't made the extra hour or so trip up to Nares Inlet but we made a point this past weekend, to visit her family that live there, to reconnect with this special place and, of course, to allow Collette to play with her new boyfriend (that being the Nikon D-80)















One of the things that has changed at the lodge since our last visit is the giant boulder that lives on the beach. When I first came to the lodge over twenty years ago this huge boulder was partially submerged but as the waters of the Georgian Bay have receded, the entire boulder has become exposed. Collette's brother Garry had a local artist do some carving on the boulder, transforming it from something prosaic, to a work of art.

Besides the beauty of the manufactured art, this part of north central Ontario offers a lot of natural beauty as well. The clarity of the water, the sharp barb images of the trees, the moss dappled rock that form the mass of this muscular land ... all of it gives a welcome reprieve to someone who lives in the middle of pervasive urban sprawl.

The weather was on and off the day and night we were there but the sun came out just enough for us to create some images.

This next one Collette took right around dusk, which as you can see is beautiful, but also prime mosquito/fly feeding time. This is called taking the good with the bad, or paying for your bliss. In this case, we paid with blood.

So here is my little video of our lodge visit. For the geeks, this video combines footage from my Samsung palmcorder and the Sony 3 chip camera I brought up for the wedding. The differences should be obvious. The last few shots of the video were taken in Parry Sound itself. Music is Collin James covering Van Morrison.

Springhaven Lodge, June 2008 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.