Major & Minor Notes

Joe Macdonald's Stories & Songs

Archives for June 2017

Ghosts of St. Laurent Boulevard

By

I had an appointment today on a street I’ve know all my life. On a part of the street where I don’t often walk because it’s not a nice walking street but it wasn’t a bad day so I thought I’d walk the two kilometres home and take in a few old sights up close, in a way you might miss when you scoot by in a car.

It was a walk down St. Laurent Boulevard and the things I saw mostly weren’t there any more except in my memory. The first such apparition I saw stood in the footprint of what is now a highly regarded South Indian restaurant named The Coconut Lagoon, at the corner of McArthur Road. In 1973, it was a diner called The Party Palace and I was seven years old and my babysitter, Suzie Paquette, took me along while she went there to hang out with her friends. She was probably 13. The Party Palace was one of those places that had booths with their own juke boxes that probably cost a nickel a song, whatever songs were the hits of the day. Dark Side of the Moon had just come out and she and her friends kept playing “Money” over and over again. For a seven year old, it was otherworldly. In retrospect, it was my first glimpse into the future of what being a teenager might be like.

Next stop was Rideau High School. I believe I was passing by it in the very last hours of its existence. There were older people in gowns, dressed like new graduates and there was media. It opened sixty years ago and looks like a half a dozen other schools in the city that were built around that time. But it closed today. I ran its track a few times, slowly, and I played a few basketball games there over the years but the inside of the school wasn’t as important to me as the outside. I must have passed by this school thousands and thousands of times over the years. It was as much a part of the landscape of my youth as any building in the area. Sixty years of students. There are great-grandparents today who went to Rideau. And I just happened to have been walking by at the very end. It almost seemed sacred and I felt privileged.

On the next block was Queen Elizabeth Public School, where I went for grade seven and eight. The public school in my genteel neighbourhood only went to grade six so a slew of us kids were funneled into this school in a rougher neighbourhood with markedly tougher kids. It’s the first time I saw real fights. The first time I saw kids smoking, the first time I realized there was more to sex than kissing, the first time I heard the word abortion. I don’t think I had any understanding of broken homes and under-privilege until I went to that school. But I also played hockey with a lot of the tough guys outside of school and though they would have scared the crap out of me under normal circumstances, I learned that finding our common ground, like sports, illuminated what we had in common more than it illustrated our differences. It was a good lesson.

Crossing Montreal Road now, heading north, there’s a car dealership across from the Notre Dame Cemetery. It’s housed in an oddly shaped building. This is because when I was going to school in the area it was a burger restaurant called The Red Barn. The building was red and it was shaped like a barn. But it was like McDonald’s or A&W and as eleven and twelve year olds, we loved it. I can still remember the prices. Burger 35 cents, cheeseburger 45 cents, fries 25 cents, coke 20 cents. Your whole meal cost less than a buck and it was often our Friday treat when our mums wanted to take a day off making our bag lunches. Though we did need a note that gave us parental permission to leave the school grounds.

I was nearly home now. My street was just about a block or so away. Forty years ago it was just forest though. An unspoiled piece of woodland between the two biggest cemeteries in town, where there remains a conservation area and a protected marsh. But now it’s home to some three or four hundred people. Many of them children, some of whom are of the age similar to my own in the times I’ve just recounted.

And I can’t help but wonder, if in forty years some of these children take a walk around their old stomping grounds, if it will all come back to them as vividly as it has to me. For their sake, I hope it does.

Patriotism

By

As Canadians celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the founding of this nation this week, I can’t help but contemplate the nature of patriotism. Personally, it comes down to the distinction between pride and gratitude and I’m a lot more grateful than I am proud to be a Canadian.

Being born here, with all its privileges and comforts, is like winning the lottery. But I had no more to do with being born a Canadian than I had influence on the colour of my eyes or the tone of my skin. There’s very little, if anything, that I’ve done that has made this country what it is. While I’ve voted my conscience with little regret, in reality I’m simply a lucky recipient of the hard work and sacrifice of those who came before me. And for that I am not proud. For that I am grateful.

The soldiers and nurses of both World Wars, the social activists, the legislators who envisioned an ethical nation and fought to help forge into reality that which was only once a vision. These are things for which I am grateful.

I’m not proud of Team Canada 1972. It was exciting at the time but in retrospect, they played dirty and played a less elegant game than the Russians. I’m not proud of Terry Fox. His was an individual accomplishment of historic courage and he deserves every ounce of admiration and his legacy is immeasurable. But I had nothing to do with his greatness.

If I were a member of a First Nations People, I might not be so enthusiastic about Canada’s 150th. If this were my ancestral homeland for millenia and an invading colonial power came here, committed genocide, put my family in Residential Schools and still treated my Peoples as second class citizens today, the celebrations might ring a little hollow. If I were a Japanese-Canadian whose family was put into camps in the Second World War because of my ancestry, I might not feel entirely proud of the Canadian legacy. If I were the victim of sexual abuse by the Catholic Church, a church which was so integrated with the government for decades that they were almost indistinguishable in some regions, I might not feel such un-conflicted positivity toward Canada.

History is complicated, without doubt. However, as a collective people, there are many things I feel pride in. That we didn’t fight in Vietnam or Iraq II. That we created the idea of peacekeepers before war mongers. That we have health care. That we welcome refugees. That our Prime Minister happily and enthusiastically marches in the biggest Pride parade. The list is longer than I could imagine.

This week, I was confronted with a major health crisis. It was life-threatening. So much so that as my wife and I were rushing to the hospital, I was giving her my banking information and telling her what she should try to sell my guitars for after I was gone.

When we got to the Emergency intake, I opened my wallet and along with my PetroCan card and my Subway card, was the green card with my picture on it. Within minutes of slapping it down, I was whisked away into the care of teams of dedicated medical professionals. Between the administrators, the nurses, the doctors, the orderlies, the technicians, the volunteers and the interns, in the space of twenty-four hours, there must have been at least twenty people who contributed to saving my life. All with great dedication. Each showing great care, sympathy and humanity.

Personally, this was the perfect confluence of feeling pride in and gratitude for being a Canadian. And if on the first of July, I’m watching Peter Mansbridge introduce some East Coast dance troop I’ve never heard of or some Northern singers whose language I don’t understand, and if I have the good fortune to crack a nice cold bottle of Molson, it will only be because of that little green card with my picture on it. And I will know exactly what patriotism means to me.

Happy Canada Day!

The Manor Park Shift

By

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a safe and family-friendly neighbourhood. There were two distinct sides to it. On one side of the school were the owned stand-alone three and four bedroom houses that had driveways and car ports and big yards. On the other side of the school were very modest rented garden homes with no yards and only shared parking. That’s where I lived. And I can’t pretend I didn’t feel stigmatized by it, though I never heard anyone say anything negative to me about it. But kids know.

However, between these two almost distinct neighbourhoods, all around the school, were our playgrounds and sports fields. In the winter, we had a great rink. Neighbourhood dads would volunteer to water the ice late into the cold winter evenings. And if it snowed one weekend afternoon or on a weekday night, we kids would grab our shovels to make it playable.

There were two ball diamonds for the summer, basketball courts, tennis courts and later a few soccer fields. Pierre Trudeau once signed the cast on my broken arm on the very field where I had broken it. He was watching one of his sons play soccer. And he was still Prime Minister at the time. Only in Canada.

Kids my age, our parents tended to start their families a little younger so it wasn’t uncommon for a dad who was still in his thirties to play tennis with us or shoot some hoops. Usually with a 1950’s style set-shot that made us chuckle. Especially because we wanted to play like Dr. J.

I remember one particular father/son softball game from when I was about eighteen. One of the neighbourhood dads was named Mr. Shoemaker. He was about fifty but he was still spry. And he took charge in the infield like any good shortstop should. However, because it was slow-pitch and we all pulled the ball as much as we could, any time a lefty hitter came to the plate, he’d yell, “Boudreau Shift” and the whole infield shifted to the other side of the diamond to play the defensive odds better. It was hilarious and effective.

The Boudreau Shift was invented in 1946 to counter-act the hitting tendencies of the great Ted Williams. It was ahead of its time and is an integral part of the game today. But no one calls it the Boudreau Shift anymore.

Over the years I’ve tried to help my wife fall asleep more easily by telling her old-timey baseball stories. If she happens to see a weirdly set-up infield defense in a game she has no interest in, she’ll still say. “The Boudreau Shift”.

Mr. Shoemaker died a short time ago. He lived a long and happy life with a family that loved him. And as a tribute, the next time I see a shortstop on the wrong side of second base, I’m going to shout out, “The Shoemaker Shift”.  Rest in Peace.

My Cousin

By

My cousin Dennis just died. I didn’t really know him but I kind of felt like I did. I have over sixty cousins and his family moved to Toronto before I was born so we may have only been in the same room a half a dozen times. But his brother lived with us for a while. And I’ve been friends with some of his siblings in one way or another over the years.

His mother was a nun who married a priest. His mother was my mother’s sister and his father, the priest, was my father’s teacher. And then future brother-in-law. Dennis was a twin. I can’t imagine what it is like to lose your twin brother.

He was only a few years older than me. My heart goes out to his siblings. And while I didn’t really know Dennis in any substantial way, his grandparents were my grandparents. His uncles and aunts were my uncles and aunts. His cousins were my cousins. His mother’s stories were my mother’s stories. His Christmas tortiere was my Christmas tortiere. His DNA was my DNA.

I wish I’d known him. Rest in Peace, cousin.

Lineage

By

I’m kind of old but not that old. But my grandfather was a foot soldier in the trench warfare of World War One.  One hundred years ago. He had joined when he was too young. He had to go to Hull to join because Ottawa was too small a town in 1916 and he would have been recognized as Herbie Clarke’s young son in Ottawa. But he went anyway. When the war was over, he left France for England and finished high school.

I used to watch Expos games with this guy. Charlie Clarke. Over the years I’d heard from different relatives that he’d been a Tigers fan or a Yankees fan or a Bruins fan or a Rangers fan. I think it came down to what radio station was coming in best.

But Charlie and I used to watch Warren Cromartie and Rodney Scott and Bill Lee together. A guy that fought in WWI, who heard Babe Ruth on the radio, who remarked that when John Lennon died, that he was always the peaceful one, he watched ball games with me. I don’t know whether to feel really old or almost eternal.

On Wisdom

By

I was eighteen years old when I took my first university philosophy course. I was no academic but there were a few ideas that triggered my brain and have stayed with me for thirty plus years. My favourite was the Socratic credo about wisdom. If any of you are philosophy majors, forgive my hackish interpretation. The way I understood it is that someone told Socrates that he was likely the wisest man in Greece. He thought, how could this be? I know nothing. And then he made a point of talking to the leaders in each industry, the most successful in every endeavor. Carpenters, politicians, shipbuilders, writers. Everyone. And almost to a person, they each expounded on why they were successful at what they did. Why they were the best. Every one of them. It was then that Socrates had the revelation that perhaps he was the wisest one in Greece. Not because he knew more than others but because he was the only one who knew he knew nothing.

Like so many, the president of the United States infuriates me. I really don’t think people understand that the damage he has done in four months will take generations to reverse. The Republican party will kill more Americans in the next five years than wars or terrorism have in the last fifty. But that’s what happens when you vote. Or don’t vote.

But I don’t know how the world works. I’m just a middle aged white guy in Canada, staring at a computer screen, hoping that people will come to their senses. I don’t understand banking, international diplomacy, the military industrial complex, Israel and the rest of the middle east. I might think I do but I don’t really.

I don’t know if Socrates felt helpless not knowing anything. It seemed to empower him. And then they killed him. But he still provided us with a valuable lesson. Just when you think you might know something, it’s likely you’ll be proven wrong in short order.

%d bloggers like this: