Being Canadian

Growing up in Newfoundland in the 60s and 70s I was always conscious of being a Newfoundlander. My whole world was bounded by a triangle from St. Georges to Stephenville to Corner Brook with the odd trip to Barachois Park and to Deer Lake to visit relatives. I didn't even visit the rest of the island much less Canada until I was 17. So I grew up steeped in ocean, trees, rocks, sand and Newfoundland folklore, family history and stories. My Dad was in the  Canadian Air Force when I was born so  I was born in Ontario travelled at the age of six weeks by car in a carry cot in the backseat of Dad's car as we moved "home". Being born Ontario always was the only piece of exotica about me. It was shrouded in mystery. My early experience being Canadian was that we had the maple leaf flag and that for those who had fallen on hard times there was social assistance, welfare, so that they didn't have to starve like my mother's family had when she was young. She spoke of regularly fainting from hunger, having no shoes, no uniform for school and being called "Christmas tree" by the other children and trying to scrape flour from the edges of the cupboards and picking out mouse poop to see if they could get enough for a loaf of bread. So early on for me Canada was an abstract idea with a positive association.
 As I reached my teen years I was in the era of Prime Minister Elliot Trudeau. I grew up believing in bilingualism. I grew up adjusting to the metric system. I grew up believing that Canada was a world leader in peace keeping because it was. I learned all the statistics about Canada's involvements in the two world wars and of Newfoundland's involvement in these same.  I grew up curious about Canada and eager to see something of it. In my final year of high school My knowledge of Canada grew from experiences that changed my life. There were two events: my participation in my high school's play The Miracle Worker and my participation in the Rotary Club's public speaking contest. Both of these were frightening and daunting for me. Chuck Furey, my grade 11 high school teacher, believed I could do these things and so I made the huge effort and succeeded with his help. With the play I traveled with my fellow students and saw more of Newfoundland. It was as exciting as going into space for me. I had to buy two towels at the Avalon Mall, never having traveled before I did not think to pack any, and I still have their remnants as rags and think of this when I use them. Incredibly I won the public speaking contest  and won a trip to Ottawa called "Adventure in Canadian Citizenship. I was so excited and overwhelmed at the same time. I met so many young people from all over the country. We were only five students from Newfoundland and how awe-struck I was to be one of them and to see and have a tour of the Parliament buildings, visit the Governor General's House ( Ed Shreyer himself greeted us), visit an embassy ( mine was Equador), eat dinner at the Chateau Laurier ( an true castle in my mind) and have something from each region of Canada. From NL we had petits fours (not a Newfoundland dish but I loved the name) and I think there were cloudberries involved, but we call them bakeapples so I was bewildered at the time. At any rate my life long interest in Canada and in politics was assured.

The five Newfoundlanders on our adventure in citizenship. I am the furthest to the right. 

At my high school graduation our local MP, a friend of my teacher Chuck Furey, Brian Tobin spoke as our guest speaker. For all of us this was somebody famous. That is my Canada where a small group of high school graduates are important enough for a local MP to come and speak to them about what the future might hold for them.

That is me giving the valedictory speech. Brian Tobin is immediately in front of me. 

At some point in my post secondary studies I visited Ottawa and saw Chuck, who was now the assistant to Brian Tobin, in his office there. I never got over the feeling of feeling important to be visiting someone on Parliament Hill. Just at the beginning of the month I was in Ottawa and took another tour of the Parliament buildings. That same feeling remained of being awed and proud at the same time to be a Canadian. In between these two visits I visited with my daughters and husband because I feel it is so important for each Canadian to see the seat of where so much of our country's history, present and future happened and will happen. This middle tour we did with a francophone  guide and the latest with an anglophone guide. I love that Canada is bilingual. I was ever so proud to be able to speak both official languages and to share this with my daughters and husband and most recently with my son-in-law ( and wee grandson :Canadian in training already).

We don't always get it right. Witness residential schools, the internment of Japanese Canadians during WWII, the exploitation of Chinese workers during the building of the Canadian Railway, the exploitation of indigenous workers at Great Bear Lake during the WWII, the ruling by the SCC in 1928 that women were not persons, the banning of Potlatches until 1951, many provisions of the Indian Act such as the one stripping women who married outside of their indigenous group of status, the deportation of the Acadians in pre-Confederation Canada between 1755 and 1763, decisions harming French language and culture for the early part of our history and the, until recently, lack of interest in the epidemic of murdered and missing indigenous women across the country. What we do extremely well, however, is learning from our mistakes. What we do equally well is continuing to implement needed changes and national programs to help all Canadians, not just those whose voices are loudest or most powerful. We can be proud of our country, while remaining on guard for freedom and for the eradication of all types of prejudice and injustice. We don't claim we are the greatest country on Earth because we carry the knowledge of our past accomplishments and our past injustices into our present and our future to continue to make this country better and better, It is not a contest with the world. It is a sacred pursuit of freedom, respect, justice and equity within the Canadian psyche and heart. It is a contest with ourselves to raise each member of each  generation to a better human condition than ever before in Canada and in the world where we can bring our pursuit of the humble and ever-unfolding Canadian dream to help. Our hands will not fail as we hold high the torch passed on to us by those who have given much and gone before us. We will not break faith.

Grief revealed

If we have lived long enough to live and to lose someone we have loved we are on intimate terms with grief. We say this and it is true, but "intimate terms" sounds almost too friendly as a way to describe it. It is too familiar for so many people and yet, even under old scars, the grief finds ways to be fresh. It keeps its strangeness, its power of shock, like a tidal wave coming in amongst the slapping waves which only hint at power and content themselves with the rubbing of stones in a hypnotic repetition of watery breaths. We know grief is always possible. We acknowledge its potential while putting it to one side in our thoughts, unless we have had too many shocks or have been born, like a shell-less  crab skittering in vulnerability, in which case the potential of grief is as palpable as an ever present shadow of looming rock.

Grief and the ocean seem to be immense, powerful,and relentless. They differ in that grief sends its intimate waves of loss and longing on our personal shores in unexpected chills to dull a sunny day more often. The ocean is a great smiter of life, but it can rock in its lullaby of hiss and seaweed a long time before it is stirred to turn its wave fingers into fists. Grief is a regular contributor to our loom of emotions. Sometimes you see it coming and sometimes it swamps you and sends you sputtering : an earthquake of cold fire coursing, almost drowning the soul. 

There is much imagery of grief and the ocean. In 5th grade we studied a poem by Shakespeare extracted from The Tempest. I have never forgotten the haunted way the poem made me feel. 

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:

                                             Ding-dong.

Hark! now I hear them,—ding-dong, bell.

In the same play Prospero eschewing his magic, in a gesture symbolizing Shakespeare's closing of his talent,says he will drown his book after burying his staff  "certain fathoms in the earth,. And deeper than did ever plummet sound." This is the quieter grief of aging and losing power and  remembering more than is yet to come.Even Macbeth waist deep in blood waxes poetical about the ocean saying, "Will all the water in the ocean wash this blood from my hands? No, instead my hands will stain the seas scarlet, turning the green waters red." There is a grieving for lost innocence simultaneous with his awareness that there is no undoing what he has done. Even the ocean in its immensity is unable to quench his guilt. Only those who are strong in the flush of youth, as Romeo and Juliet in whom blood runs quickly like rivers of red, are able to say “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, /My love as deep; the more I give to thee,/The more I have, for both are infinite.” For those who are not yet marked by grief's intimacy,  the infinite nature of the ocean's power is a kindred spirit in passion. Only those who are unbowed by the buffets of persevering grief like and confident in their power can say like Julius Caesar "There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures." Ironically, the grief of  betrayal, then death,  at the hands of a friend is soon to encompass him. 

Grief is strict, but it is an able teacher, a skilled pursuer. If we like Odysseus sometimes stop our ears to its sad dirge and haunting longing,  we can learn much from it. We can learn about love, about courage, about strength, about patience, about hope, about the power of despair and about resilience. We can learn about gratitude and kindness and choosing wisely how we spend spend time and how we treat others and ourselves. 

This past weekend I attended a beautiful celebration of love at a wedding of a young woman who grew up with my daughters. When they were all small her grandfather said they were like garden fairies by the pond and tall grasses and trees. Now he has rejoined the universe and his ancestors and we come again to loss and grief like dappled shade amongst the fairy beams of light. 

As I was walking back to the hotel having gone to buy diapers for my little grandson, I passed a funeral home where the hearses and somber cars were preparing for a final journey for someone. In just 15 steps I came to a road under repair with its cones like summer wasps warning of striations in pavement and of being stung by the front loader's  shovel mandible. I thought of new life, new marriage, busyness, change and the requiem of funerals and thought about how the whole of life's experiences can pass in a mundane minute like a drop of water reflecting the greater world. 

For every happiness, there is a grief in store. For every grief there are infinite layers of feeling packed like Matryoshka dolls. For each grief there is also hope and memory and love. While we live, we breathe the air of warmth and frost. We breathe. We live and, if we live, we are granted love or we else we are shells of air only. For the gifts of love, of shared experience and hope I am thankful, for I know loss, pain and despair cannot eclipse them.

 Simon and Garfunkel sang "Hello darkness my old friend" and The Proclaimers sang " I can't believe I ever doubted you: my old friend the blues." J.R.R. Tolkien wrote : “I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.” There is a loving in grief and a grieving in love just as there is a night for day and a spring in the winter and a winter in the spring. I look for the light in the darkness even if the illumination is feeble. It is always there in its subtle, gentle hope.