Category Archives: Random Musing

June 5, 2015 · 8:55 pm

Pledge for a Sustainable Community – Changing the world one business, one community at a time

This is a project I oversee, manage and helped to develop. It was recently shortlisted as a finalist in the category of CSR at the World Chamber Competition in Turin. This week we are off to present the project to an international audience and fingers crossed – we might win. Either way, it’s an honour.

Here’s a little bit about the program:

The Burnaby Board of Trade’s Pledge for a Sustainable Community program has been selected as a finalist in the category of “Best Corporate Social Responsibility Project” at the 2015 World Chambers Competition.

The Pledge program, which is a comprehensive online resource and planning tool with the goal of helping businesses large and small reduce their carbon footprint, was one of only four entries selected as a finalist out of a record number of submissions from across 39 countries. Finalists will present their projects to a panel of judges at the 9th World Chamber Congress in Torino, Italy in June.

Read more here!

Wish us luck:) Changing the world is possible. Believe it.

Leave a comment

Filed under Random Musing

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

May 31, 2015 · 7:27 pm

Postcard Fiction: Meyer Got the Fuzzies

Meyer reached over to the night table beside him. With his head on the pillow and one eye shut he struggled to find his half empty bottle. With that keen sense of awareness that always warned him when something would go terribly wrong, he knew the bottle would spill over before it did. And it did. Meyer groaned. Fuck. HIs head was pounding and the stench of stale cigarettes, booze and old furniture filled his nostrils. He thought he was going to be sick.

He lay back in bed fighting back the waves of nausea that overcame him. His shaking hands reached for the overturned bottle.  He sat up, tipped the bottle back and drank what was left. Ahh. He could feel the warm liquid travel down inside. Already he felt that small feeling of recovery. If he could have another drink he could make it , he thought. He wondered what day it was and reached back in his mind for anything that might anchor him somewhere in time.

It was just like Sharon said. “The booze is going to eat your mind.” she said. “It’ll kill you Meyer.” Christ.. The truth is he was too much of a coward to take his own life. Too squeamish. PiIlls. He had a hard time taking even baby aspirin. A gun. Too messy. Hanging. What if he miscalculated. The brain damage would be horrible for Sharon and Trish, never mind his mother. She’d never forgive him. Drinking himself to death seemed like the path of least resistance and somehow it seemed cleaner. At least that’s what he thought until he sat up and looked around his apartment. Fuck. What a stye. That’s what Sharon said last time she visited.

“You’re a pig Meyer. What the hell happened to you. Brilliant career. Great kid. Me. Now look at you. A dog wouldn’t even eat off this floor. And you stink like hell. When’s the last time you changed?”

He sat up. His single sorry bed reminded him of himself. A sorry mess, single and alone. His sister always told him he had no stamina. She was right.  No stamina for life much less anything else.

Suddenly he remembered out of nowhere what day it was. Saturday. Fucking christ in hell. It was Trish’s birthday party. He was supposed to pick up the cake and the balloons and come to the party by 4:00. What the hell time is it? There was one person in the world he was more afraid of then his wife Sharon and that was his 7 year old daughter Trish. She would look at him with those steely blue eyes and see right through him. He was sure she never blinked. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure if she was human. She had this ‘other’ kind of quality he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Then other times he would never feel so loved. She’d wrap her arms around his neck and he could feel the warmth of her little stringy body. He could feel tears welling in his eyes. He reached for his cigarette, lit it  and checked the time. 2:15. He hadn’t missed it but he couldn’t waste any time and wasting time was something Meyer knew how to do better than anybody else.

He ran is hand through his wavy black hair. What  the hell. His hand hit a bump. Warm, fuzzy, pulsing. Meyer wasn’t given to fights but occasionally he came home with bruises, broken glasses, war wounds. He had grown accustomed to them.It was the price of giving up.

He slowly sat up and wandered over to the mirror. Jesus Christ. He looked at himself in the dim light. He looked for his broken glasses. I’m getting’ old he thought to himself. Can’t see a fucking thing. He peered harder in the mirror and saw two distinct bumps on the top of his head. What the fuck?  If Meyer didn’t know better he’d say they were horns. As one of the former leading criminal defence lawyers in the country he’d been called many things including the devil and those times when he allowed himself to feel anything he sometimes felt like the devil but he didn’t actually think he was the devil. Sharon, who’s acute sense of social justice weighed like a dead cement block on his mind, was right. He had finally been won over completely by the dark forces.

He reached up and touched his right horn. Small, furry glowing, it felt warm to his touch. As he stroked his horn it rotated on his head while the left one bent over double like a limp weed. He reached up and stroked his left horn and it stood up straight like a soldier on duty. They stood about two inches on the top of his head. He pulled at them thinking it was some kind of bad joke. They didn’t budge. Every time he touched them he felt this warm glow inside. Like a fire. He wondered if it was Satan’t torch. It almost felt like the warm glow of scotch after his first sip.

Fuck. I gotta get to the birthday party or my kid will sue me. Like father like daughter ,he thought. He was panicked by the new additions to his head but he was more panicked at the emotional exile he would feel if he fucked this up. And oddly, the warm glow emanating from his horns soothed him in a way he hadn’t been soothed in a long time.He didn’t know what they meant but he knew he had to get his sorry ass over to his ex-wife’s or he’d be dead meat. Deader than he already was.

He grabbed the cleanest pair of kakis’ he could find which were wrinkled and stained but not smelly and an old   t-shirt. He didn’t know what to do with his head. Towel wrap? No. Ridiculous. Baseball cap? He set the cap on his head. The cap rested on top of his horns. Admittedly the slightly skewed cap gave him something of a jaunty look and it brought a slight smile to his face. He looked around his ashtray strewn apartment with crap everywhere. Piles of dirty plates, empty bottles,and clothes everywhere.  What the hell. His eyes finally came to rest on the red beret. Then he remembered Eizerman had been here one night. Eizerman was an artist but these days he was mainly a junky.A big mellow sad-eyed junky who wore a red beret.He came here one night and they sat up and talked and drank till dawn. They both passed out and when Meyer finally woke up he was gone. Never saw him again but he left his beret.

Meyer grabbed the beret and put it on his head. The hat fit over the top of his horns perfectly. He looked at himself in the mirror and he recognized something about himself from when he was younger. For a brief moment he saw that hopeful optimism of his youth  but it came and went in a flash and Meyer was left with nothing but himself, his horns and this god awful beret that stunk like bad beer and made him look like a transvestite.

Alright he said to himself. I gotta get the hell out of here and to my kids party.  Just the act of saying that brought him back to that world and place he occupied just a few short years ago. Accomplished lawyer, husband, father, member of the community and empty shell of a man. He thought of Sharon. A woman as hard as nails and uncompromising in her pursuit of justice.  But she was as hard on herself as she was on him. When sex was still something he was able to think about he thought about her. Her long legs, her long black hair her unruly sense of dress – often accompanied not unllke himself by some stain. Curry, mayo, mustard. Generally a condiment but not always. It was the one way in which they were alike. He loved her. Did he just think that? Was he crazy? He never let his mind go there anymore. t was over. Enough of that he thought as he lit another cigarette. He reminded himself to splash some aftershave and bring some chewing  gum before he arrived or his kid would give him the smell test and then give him hell. What were they teaching them in school these days anyways?

*****************************************************************************************

He arrived at the party at 4:27 exactly, just late enough to be given a mouthful of hell. “Meyer, what the hell?” Sharon said as he stood outside the door in the pouring rain.  He looked at the Frank Lloyd Wright rip-off house that he and Sharon bought together and which he had walked away from.  He couldn’t believe he had ever lived there.  Who was that person anyways?

“Where were you? This is a kid’s birthday party not some cocktail party you show up fashionably late to? Come in here. You look like hell by the way. What’s that on your head? Jeezus Meyer what’s going on?

“I don’t know what’s going on Sharon. I feel like I’m losing my mind.” ”

“Believe me Meyer, you lost your mind long ago.”

“Sharon, I know. But look at this. I woke up this morning and look I don’t know what the hell they are or where they came from.” Meyer removed his red beret and stood before Sharon his horns straight and at full alert.

“Jesus Meyer. What the hell. You’ve grown horns. Two of them!”. Sharon stepped closer to Meyer and reached up to touch his horns.

“They’re soft. Christ they’re moving. It’s like they’re looking at me.” Her voice softened in a way he hadn’t heard in years. They hadn’t’ stood this close since their divorce when she had pushed her finger in his chest and called him an asshole for giving up. This time her voice was soft.

“I can’t let Trish see them.”

“Meyer don’t be an idiot. The most forgiving person in your life is your daughter. Until she’s an adult of course and she’s realized how much you’ve screwed her over but until then she’s the most forgiving person in your life. Go show yourself Meyer. She’s a good girl.”

Suddenly Meyer felt like he was 5 years old again. Naked, young, uncynical, reborn. Standing as tall as he could he went upstairs to look for his daughter before  her guests were to arrive.

Post script:

I wrote this as a result of a challenge from a friend over wine and drinks one night. She gave me the topic and I had to write whatever I wanted. This isn’t my usual style of writing at all but I was reading the Yiddish Policeman’s Union at the time and I was heavily influenced by the voice of that author. I did this purely for the fun of it.

Leave a comment

Filed under Book Reviews, Random Musing

Tagged as ,

April 8, 2015 · 5:08 am

Minutiae #14 – Rice Paddies

We met in Tojo Park. She was sitting watching the ducks. I was sitting watching the ducks. We were on opposite sides of the pond. We eyed each other. “I will not let this one get away.” I told myself. I had been alone in Takaoka, Japan for well over a month by myself and I had yet to meet another person who spoke English. I had seen a girl at the train station a few weeks earlier and I had run after her.  But she started to run and then she ran harder so I gave up. I had become a stalker without realizing it.

images

This duck watching girl didn’t want me to go away any more than I wanted her to, so we walked towards each other somewhat hesitantly and greeted each other awkwardly. Then like two hysterical long lost friends we went off to the local western coffee shop where we listened to Elvis and Rock and Roll for the next two hours and we drank endless coffees with free refills and ate donuts with elaborate iced western scenarios on top of them. I loved her instantly. Her name was Kerry Robinson and she came from Australia. Our first date was at the Californian restaurant where we ate Japanese style tacos and drank cheap Japanese wine. We got very drunk and they had to ask us to leave when the restaurant closed for the night.

We spent one entire year together living in this little town which had been sold to me as the Switzerland of the Orient. It was kind of. Not really. It had mountains. But Kerry and I spent a year there together. She was trying to figure life out and so was I. She had a boyfriend in Australia who called a suitcase a ”port” and it made her crazy. We talked endlessly and sometimes she worried that she would lose her Australian accent. I assured her she wouldn’t and then for the next few days she had this crazy Oz accent and I was like WHAT THE HELL.

Often we would go to her house which was luxurious compared to mine. By luxurious I mean it was furnished and had a kotatsu, a heated table which helped keep us warm while we drank wine and smoked our brains out. She had asthma and kept her inhaler nearby. I don’t think it mattered because we were both young and didn’t realize we could die yet or that life had any real consequences.  And we didn’t care so we just kept on smoking and then taking deep puffs on the inhaler and we’d make plans for our next outings.

We were very different but we loved each other madly and she made a big dent on my life. She made me crazy though. I never met anyone who could walk so slowly. No matter how hard I tried to walk with her inevitably it was just all much too slow for me and before too long we were walking single file until I got a bike and then we would double ride and then she got a bike and we would single file on the bikes.

We always joked about the fact that neither of us had medical insurance. “Don’t worry”,  I would say to her smoking one of our millions of cigarettes. “I’ll throw you on the kotatsu and amputate your leg with the kitchen knife. Knock you out with the bottle of Japanese wine.”And then we would kill ourselves laughing because it was never anything else except her leg that we were going to amputate.

At one point we tried different things to become immersed in Japanese culture. I tried flower arranging which lasted two sessions and then I wanted to throw the vase across the room. Someone told us about a local karate teacher whose wife was willing to teach foreigners. So that’s what we did. We studied karate. And it was fun. We were both terrible but our teacher and her daughter ( a 12 year old black belt) were kind and patient with us. Then we decided we should learn Japanese so we started Japanese lessons. We found a teacher who would give us private lessons at her house.

Her house was a free standing modern house that was part of a new suburb that was built in an area surrounded by rice paddies. Kazuko our teacher was a wife and mother and  I guess she was also a part time teacher.  We went for lessons twice a week. We would ride our bikes there (single file) and park our bikes outside the house. The room where the lessons took place was upstairs and Kerry and I would sit in desks facing the wall where Kazuko would hold court teaching us katakana, then hiragana. We would go over dialogues and she would quizz us, encourage us, laugh with us but always gently guide us back to the important work at hand. There was a window in the classroom that faced the backyard and it was always open.

Although I’m sure Kerry and I went there in winter it seemed like it was always warm and bright in that room with the sweet smell of country air and rice paddies blowing gentle breezes our way. The curtain would lift and fall as the summer came and then went, with Kerry and I practicing and learning until we could manage respectable conversation. Kazuko was determined that we shine. And we did. And then we’d get back on our bikes, Kerry with her crazy hat and the two of us with our matching boots and off we ‘d go laughing the whole way back about how hard that damn language was and did you get how this worked – nope not at all – you. Nope.

But we knew the year was drawing to a close and every day felt more important than the last. And it’s a terrible feeling knowing that you have this short time together with someone and that this experience is going to end. Has to end. The richness of it all is related in some respect to it not being a forever thing.photo-11

We said goodbye at the train station. Matching jeans, matching shoes. As nervous saying goodbye as our first hello. We promised to stay in touch. I would come to Australia for a year. She would come to Canada.  And we did stay in touch for awhile. A long while. She got a job with Quantas and flew and met me in Amsterdam. And then she came to Toronto. But my life was broken for awhile and I found it hard to maintain the joy of our year away when everything seemed wrong with my current life. And then I heard she had had a baby.  Gracie she had called her. And I had hoped that I could overcome the wrongness of my life to embrace the goodness in hers but at that time I couldn’t do it. So we lost touch. And I have no idea where she is. And I look for her all the time. But I think of that year away with her a lot. Of riding our bikes in the rice paddies, eating crazy mile high donuts with icing this big, of sitting getting drunk in California restaurants millions of miles away from home, of reckless cigarette smoking listening to Air Supply, of sitting in the classroom with the wind blowing the sweetest smell of spring into our lives. That was Kerry Robinson. A girl from Sydney Australia. Still my very dear friend wherever she is.

3 Comments

Filed under Random Musing

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

March 24, 2015 · 5:44 am

Minutiae #13 Rascals and Angels – When your feet tell you to jump

If my hands and feet had characters, I would say my hands are the diplomats, the breakers of bread, the lovers of love, the do-gooders, my collaborators. My feet on the other hand are unpredictable rascals. Risk takers? Yes. The occasional mad dancers and the devils in my head? Absolutely. They are the ones that make me take mad flying leaps off cliffs.

As an entirely unpractical person it’s fair to say my feet, those devil may care vehicles of madness, frequently win the argument over the more practical hands and head. So when those feet tell me to jump, I jump.

DSC_0060_2The nature of the ‘flying leap’ isn’t an every day occurrence but it can be characterized by a disposition. For example, mail box keys aren’t for me, 1) I wouldn’t be able to find the key in any event, 2) if I could find the key, the mail would remain unopened possibly for years on end.

The thing about my feet though is this. They’ve taken me places. I have never regretted seemingly thoughtless responses to my heart. By that I mean – I never regret not planning, or not over thinking. For me over thinking leads me to inaction. And inaction leads me to never taking risks. And I realize I love the risk not for the risk itself but for what it brings. I love the feeling of unexplored and un-mapped territory – a place in my heart that is waiting to be etched by the newness of it all. I know now for certain that I have nothing to lose except the freshness of life.

My rascally feet brought me as a young girl to Vancouver – halfway across the country from my family; they helped me leave my first husband and move away to a foreign Asian country – the downside perhaps being that I barely knew where Japan was and I packed for tropical weather. They led me to interesting work experiences where I had no experience except the will to do it; it lead me to going on a date on Lavalife and meeting the love of my life; it lead me to a barn one day with a pocket full of money and coming home with a gorgeous sick little pup who changed my life; it led me to waking up one night and saying to Dave – I’m going to do something. I’m going to do something which launched my rage against a world that senselessly and mercilessly slaughters animals into something that echoes a battle cry against the growing horrors of injustice. A small committed group of people can change the world. I believe that. So what is next? Who knows I never know what is next. What is next is as unplanned as the vagaries of the heart. But I have my beautiful husband, adventurous feet and increasingly braver heart. I am open to the world.

So ‘thank you’ feet, you naughty rascals. I have no regrets. I can’t wait to find out what’s next.

1 Comment

Filed under Random Musing

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

March 2, 2015 · 6:11 am

Minutiae #12 It was the best of times

The best of times really were just hanging out doing nothing. But doing nothing in the end was something if you know what I mean. Get this. My mom had this red shag rug, a zebra skin on the wall and a fake leopard bar. A bar! Can you believe it? We lived in this tiny apartment but there was a bar. And her chair, the chair that nobody sat in except her, was this leather piece. Black leather that looked like this except black. She never said nobody could sit in it. We just knew we couldn’t. And sometimes if we wanted to check it out you would for a few uncomfortable minutes and then move. It was like she was always in it even if she wasn’t.

Unknown-1

Some days for no reason at all, I would decide to give her the performance of a lifetime. And I would stand in front of her, somewhere between the chair and the fake leopard bar and I would sing. There would be no holding back. No shyness, no thinking about the neighbours.Just pure unadulterated ‘out there-ness”.belting out Edith Piaf when I was going through my Edith phase, or Bowie or maybe a little cabaret. I liked to mix it up. I would strut and dance and sing like my life depended on it. And she would sit there in that chair, my only audience member. Afterwards I would bow and she would just look at me and say “Wow, that was so great. You are so great.” And I believed every single word and for those few short moments I would really feel super human as though I was a real star. And those words and that moment got me through some tough times later in my life. And I’ve always been thankful that I had somebody in my life who was kind enough, generous enough to say that. Because you can get a lot of mileage out of saying that kind of thing to a kid everyone once in a blue moon.

2 Comments

Filed under Random Musing

Tagged as , , , ,

January 4, 2015 · 9:23 pm

Minutiae #11 – The CBC – Why I love it and its relevance in today’s world

imagesThere are lots of people who love to hate the CBC starting with Stephen Harper and the Conservative party of Canada. For those of you who don’t know what the CBC is, it’s the Canadian Broadcasting Company. It has been our national broadcaster since 1936 and provides radio and television broadcasting to Canadians and to interested communities abroad.

It’s mandate is to tell, create and share Canadian stories from across this enormous country of ours, from the largest communities to its more remote hamlets. Over these many years the CBC has created a Canadian cultural community of practice by employing writers, thinkers, actors, producers, researchers – in other words, people who like to think, who like to explore ideas, who like to challenge the status quo, all the while telling and yes helping to create Canadian culture. Without the CBC many communities wouldn’t even appear on the media map because it wouldn’t make business sense. And increasingly, as we all know, the CBC has faced round after round of brutal budget cuts making it difficult to operate as is. And while I’m not saying the CBC management shouldn’t be held accountable for fiscal management, the very nature of why the CBC exists is very different from your average joe -blow radio station owned by corporate profit driven interests.

I am not a CBC expert, historian or even geek. I just like the CBC and I think it’s important to have it exist in a place that’s far above partisan hatred so it can be funded properly and continue to be host to important conversations not only about our country and its place in the world but about the world at large.  Rather than behaving as though the CBC (along with our environmental laws which Harper also gutted in his infamous omnibus bills) is a hindrance or completely irrelevant, why not consider it what it is – a cultural, intellectual and national platform that can continue to draw us together as Canadians.

Dragon’s Den and Q, now more famous for its infamous host Jian Gomeshi, are examples of excellence in broadcasting that have had successful uptake both inside and outside of Canada. While Canadians are known to be eternally self-effacing, it isn’t such a strange idea that we have the talent, ingenuity to provide relevant programming that reaches beyond our borders.

My own CBC tastes are simple. I love to listen to Rick Cluff on the way to work, on the way home it’s  Stephen Quinn, while cooking dinner I tune into  As It Happens, then I also listen or download the Current which brings the world and all of its hottest topics to me, Q offers cultural guests both large and small and great interviews, Writers and Company – long beautiful interviews with some of the world’s greatest writers, Ideas, explores complex and relevant ideas and on Saturday night I tune in to Vinyl Tap and then Cross Country Check up with Rex on Sunday’s. It goes on and on and I haven’t even touched on Radio 2. Is the CBC perfect? Good god, no. Their gross mismanagement of the Jian Gomeshi debacle was a joke from beginning to end and clearly their ‘star’ enjoyed immunity for bad behaviour for many years at the cost of others and it isn’t acceptable.

But the principle of a national broadcaster, independent from special interests including the current government is important to Canada for all of the reasons listed above. In a world of corporate media conglomerates and monopolies,we need an independent broadcaster that can tell our stories, share our ideas, and bring the world and its issues to us in a thoughtful and provocative way. And who knows, it’s not beyond impossible to think that what we produce here isn’t relevant to the world at large.

I am only familiar with a fraction of the CBC but would love to hear from others if they use other platforms, listen to other shows. I’m all ears!

way.

Leave a comment

Filed under Random Musing

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

January 1, 2015 · 10:02 pm

2014 – A Year in Highlights

I am definitely  one of those people…you know the kind who loves airplane food AND drafting New Year’s resolutions AND reviewing my year in highlights. I start thinking about highlights and goals in November, drafting lists, and generally yarning on about them before I start to badger Dave into undertaking same fun activity. While we have different styles of approaching it (mine is somewhat militaristic) we always enjoy an evening with a glass of wine going over our highlights of 2014 and sharing our goals for 2015.

So here are a few highlights and memorable moments:

1. Joining Dave in achieving his bucket list by visiting WW1 war memorials in Northern France and Belgium.

2. Meeting our good friends there, bicycling together, drinking wine and enjoying some good belly laughs.

3. Dave and I laughing our asses off in London looking at our broken feet in our hotel room after walking 18 km a day.

4. Buying an investment property with our good buddies.

5. Enjoying our World Cup Soccer and hiking series with the Westcoast Vanderkop’s and yoga with my sister.

6. Making a decision ‘to do’ something and actually doing it. And by this I mean helping elephants. It proved to me that one person can decide something, do something and meet a world of other doers who come together to make the world a better place.

7. Support from friends and family for the work I do with animals and elephants means the world to me so seeing them there on the day of, and having them pitch in (online) and help with petitions and sharing meant a lot and always will.

8. My sister Petra. I love her and I’m proud of her accomplishments in life and she is one of those people who has been self-less in her support of my cause.

9. Going home. At first I thought I would be traumatized by going back to Toronto because I hadn’t been back since my mom died. But I wasn’t. Going home really meant going home and seeing my sisters, brother and nieces and nephews.

10. My brother Johnny. Sometimes someone in your life touches your heart. He touches mine. Having the luxury of spending Christmas with his beautiful, warm family and my family makes me feel lucky and reminds me that life is short. A big part of home in Ontario is the family my mother helped to create. They are my home now too.

11. Walking with Dave in the mountains near our house watching our dog little Bean kick up her heels in happiness and I felt this beautiful, deep satisfaction with everything in my life. And I realized that I had grown to know my husband better and love him even more than I already do…… and I didn’t think that was actually possible but I guess it is.

2 Comments

Filed under Random Musing

Tagged as , ,

November 9, 2014 · 6:36 pm

Minutiae #7: Yari

UnknownI remember him as a child quite well. White blonde hair, small, determined young boy. He and his brother joined the skating club years ago. Yari took to skating differently than his brother. He was serious and focused and train-able as people like to say. His brother skated but not in the same way. And soon Yari rose through the ranks, competing, growing, focussing and then I blinked and he was off to Calgary to train. And in the summers he would come back to the club and run our dry land sessions. Even then he was tough and serious even though we were a rag tag group of skaters of all ages, including my partner who was well into her 70’s at that point. He ran dry land like we were real skaters.

And one summer he brought a girl who would become his wife. And she and I would hang around the back laughing and talking, and Yari would look up and smile and then tell us to get down and do our endless low walks across the grassy field under the hot summer sun. And while it was clear that I wasn’t going anywhere with my skating he always had the time of day for me. And sometimes he would say something that was just plain funny. And spot on. And that’s when you could see the funny guy behind the focused young man.

I remember he came back for a few seasons to coach and I always wanted to do better because in spite of my lack of natural ability and the numerous fears that held me back, he still gave me his all. But it wasn’t just me he gave his all to, it was everyone. He gave everyone his all.

I saw him this March at the BC Championships. He was the referee. We said a quick hello because he was busy. I heard that he and his wife had gone their separate ways. That he had become a lawyer and that he lived in Calgary. That he had spent a few difficult years but he was happy now.  I heard he had fallen in love with a woman and a little boy. That they were the centre of his universe and that he was a devoted step-father to this little boy. And I imagine Yari in all his generosity and kindness and capacity to give, being an amazing person to the little boy in his life. I heard that they were the apple of his eye and that they were to be married in July this year. I had heard that as a lawyer when things got tough he would lighten things up by wearing colourful socks or ties or jackets and that he had picked a spectacular jacket for his wedding.

And then I heard that one week before his wedding he suffered a terrible headache. It was blinding and relentless and like nothing he had felt before even though he was familiar with migraines. So he brought his little boy to his neighbour’s house and called an ambulance.

One day this summer the phone rang. It was my best friend  who had called to say she had something to tell me and that she wanted me to hear it from her and then she told me that Yari had passed away. And it shook me to my core. It shook me. Not because I knew him so well. I didn’t at all. He was a ship passing by in my life. I cried because he had given me something. I cried because he was so young – 37. I cried because his wedding, the happiest day of his life in the end became a celebration of the passing of his life. I cried because I didn’t know how to grieve for someone that wasn’t my immediate family but who had touched my life with his generosity and his passion for a crazy sport. A sport he believed in passionately, a sport he gave so generously of his time to. A sport that he helped young people and old people  and all kinds of people in between, excel in, taking each of us as seriously as though he were training us for the Canadian national team. He made me reach higher – try harder. Speed skating, a sport that gave me confidence when I had none. An ounce of the confidence that this sport has given me in life belongs to Yari who helped me get there.

I have only known three people in my life who left far too young. Sometimes when I’m out walking I say their names out loud – Lori Brown, Scott Wilson. I blow their names out to the wind hoping that those lives will be scattered to the earth, carried by the wind, embedded in the dirt, carried away to beautiful places. I say those names to confirm that they were indeed here. I say their names as an act of remembrance so I never forget. And now when I walk I say Yari’s name in the hope that a young person who left us far too early and who gave so many, so much, will always be remembered and embraced. Yari.

1 Comment

Filed under Random Musing

Tagged as , , , ,

July 6, 2014 · 6:56 pm

Minutiae #10 A Brother and Sister Go Bike Riding

I feel  as time goes on memory distills the details out and what is left are the pivotal moments, the things that stay deep in your heart, the memories that play like a small homemade movie in your mind. My brother and I and the rest of our sisters and brothers were thrown together and apart at different times during our early turbulent years. Our father was a high rolling crook with abundant charm and a strong mercurial streak. The rest of us, his family, his wife and children, tumbled in his slipstream, navigating our way over steep falls and crevices sometimes making mad leaps of faith into the unknown.

My brother and I had spent some time apart. He was left to live in Spain by himself at 14 and I was in Mississauga with my mother. The rest of my brothers and sisters were older and had scattered around the world.  My brother returned from Spain a different boy then I had known and when we came together as a family again in my mother’s small apartment we were almost strangers.

It’s not that I felt that we didn’t love each other. As kids you don’t think in terms of love. Life is more immediate than that. You think in terms of ‘what is he doing in my room?’ which I was now forced to share. You think in terms of ‘why has he turned my girl room into a Frank Zappa love den. You think about his smelly feet. You think about how he snores and how it makes you want to strangle him. I’m sure his thoughts were same same but different.

We rarely did anything together.Together was sharing the room and living life as a small broken family with my mother and my brother fighting . So I’m not sure how it happened that we went bicycling that day.  It was summer and somehow we decided we would go bicycling. And when I think back on it now it seemed like such an ordinary kid thing to do. Go biking. But for us that wasn’t normal.

But somehow we went. And it was sunny and we had some destination in mind, we were going somewhere for a reason I can no longer remember. And I remember feeling carefree and the worries of my young life fell away as we biked and biked down Lakeshore Road, over Port Credit River, down Stavebank Road under the shade of the beautiful summer trees. I remember feeling the sun on my arms and face, long before there were stern warnings of sun exposure.

I remember the smell of the fragrant summer air and I am sure in that moment neither of us had a care in the world. We just biked and biked with me chasing behind him over the roads, past houses and trees. And I remember biking up a road, now long paved, that was unfinished and I struggled up the hill with my bike. I remember feeling my tires spinning without moving and I could see my brother pull ahead of me as he made his way effortlessly up the hill. And before I knew it I had fallen on the gravel road. And I had the reaction that I still have to this day when I fall or hurt myself.

I started to cry as I looked at my bloodied knee. And I was upset because the moment was broken. And I worried my brother would leave me on the road. And I sat on the road and cried while summer carried on around me. And suddenly my brother was by my side asking me if I was okay. Are you okay? Are you okay? Yeah, I’m okay. And he helped me up. And we carried on to wherever it was we were going that day. And I still have that scar on my knee. And whenever I see that scar I remember that summer day and my brother and the feeling that whatever we had both been through we were going to be okay. And I’ll never forget it ever.

1 Comment

Filed under Random Musing

Tagged as , , ,

June 7, 2014 · 6:52 pm

Minutiae #9: Flanders Fields

They arrived from Calgary in Amsterdam. We arrived from Vancouver in London. Over the course of the next few days we travelled by trains and buses to find each other in Bruges, a beautiful small town in Belgium.

And when we met in the hotel courtyard for the picnic they had prepared, the year that had passed since we had last seen each other  melted away as it always does with the best of friends. We giggled about how thankful we were that someone other than me had booked the hotel because it was unexpectedly lavish and nice and so different from what we usually have when we travel. “And thank god you didn’t book it because we’d be in a tent with an outhouse for facilities.” And it’s true, I say. I can’t help it, I say. My mother is Dutch. You know the Dutch. We’re frugal. And we continue on the first of our many picnics in the hotel garden eating our own cheeses, drinking our own beers, feelingl a little illegal and sheepish but not enough to stop. We are having fun.

And over three days we walked kilometres and kilometres and sat in each other’s rooms like they were school dorms and giggled. So after a few days instead of going our own way again as we had planned we decided to go to the next town together, Ypres, or Ieper depending on who you are. Because Dave has been on a mission to fulfill his life goal of paying homage to those people who fell in The Great War, Vimy, The Somme, the Western front that at one time stretched 800 km and where unspeakable numbers of young men gave their lives.

We had already been to Ypres but wanted to go back. We had visited Menin Gate where a tribute to the men of that war has taken place every single day since 1918. And we went to that gate and we paid tribute. And it was hard to imagine the thousands who passed the gate to go into the fields beyond to fight an unspeakable war.

Bicycling Belgium

We decided to rent bikes because we wanted to bike to the fields and to the memorials. We rented our Euro bikes, so different from north American bikes, and we rode the cobble stone streets giggling having no clue where we were going in spite of the map the bike rental lady had given us. And we decided to do the full route backwards because we were short of time and so we did. And we rode to Flanders Fields and stopped at a memorial for Dr John McCrae who wrote a poem, a resounding eulogy to the dead and fallen, a beautiful sad poem that traverses the inevitable journey between life and death, a haunting tribute to those who gave their lives in Flanders Fields.

And we kept biking and biking in Flanders Fields even though the storm clouds threatened ahead. We biked with the wind in our faces, our voices falling behind us as we laughed and pedalled our way through farmers fields that were at one time host to a terrible war.

And we watched as the clouds gathered ahead and grew darker and more menacing and we lost our way again and then again. And we stopped at a field by accident where the Second Battle of Ypres took place and where a man was honoured with the Victoria Cross for saving lives, and taking Germans prisoner and then dying on the day his wife came to meet him for his first day of leave. She came to meet him and he died. This was his life.This was where we stood while the wind blew and we knew we were lost.

_DSC3406-2_tonemapped5 - Version 2 copy 3

Tyn Cot. We needed to get to Tyn Cot. So we rode caught somewhere between lighthearted giggles and the knowledge that we were passing here on sacred territory. That the rain clouds didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. We stopped again and I asked a woman in Dutch where we were. And I thought of my mother during the Second World War riding her bike in the countryside just like this, riding and riding to find food for her family.

And we biked again and suddenly there was a sign for Passendale. Terrible Passendale – the town that holds the grief of thousands of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, wives, uncles, friends and lovers. Passendale – Flanders Field. And it seems extraordinarily ordinary that there’s a cheese factory there now – a cheese factory built on the soil of blood, bravery, tears and sorrow.

_DSC3746-2_tonemapped

But we weren’t there yet so we continued on.  And there we saw it, uphill and behind a small wood, amidst kilometres of farmland there it was up on the hill. You couldn’t miss it. It is just one of many, many war memorials that dot the Belgium and Northern French countryside, The memorial contains the names of 33,783 soldiers of the UK forces.

And we stayed and paid tribute each of us wandering through the memorial lost in our own thoughts. The lightness of great friendship stood aside while we absorbed the enormity of what took place in these fields.

And when we were finished we got back on our bikes and we rode like the wind as fast as our legs could take us back to Ypres, and in some ways back to the present, away from these fields of sorrow.

_DSC3743_tonemapped9

And we giggled at how Deanna had the legs of an iron woman, leaving the rest of us behind in the dust. And we captured this moment in time, the four of us, we captured ourselves carefree, healthy, happy, at least for this moment. And I felt honoured to have taken this trip with Dave who has been reading and studying the Great War since I met him. I felt honoured to have visited this sacred place with our greatest of friends.

But I also felt and still feel enormously sad thinking about the scale of human loss during this war.

_DSC3749

And I think about the the personal message at the foot of the headstone of Second Lieutenant Arthur Conway Young which reads “Sacrificed to the fallacy/That war can end war”and I know that remembering and knowing won’t stop humanity from tumbling again. And sometimes in  spite of moments of great levity and beauty I sense that we as a species are  in many ways so broken.

Photographs by Dave Vanderkop

Leave a comment

Filed under Random Musing

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,