Archives for June 2018

In the nineteen-eighties in downtown Toronto, there was an old man who would sit on a concrete bench and play his old wooden cane. He was there every day, near the corner of Yonge and Bloor, and because he was situated at one of the busiest pedestrian corners in the country, and because he was the most unusual of buskers, I think he did pretty well.

His beaten up old hat sat on the sidewalk in front of him. If he had teeth, I didn’t see them. And as he pretended to strum his cane, he would make sounds with his toothless mouth that were suppose to replicate the sound of a guitar. Or maybe an old wash tub bass. I thought it was kind of sweet but I also felt sorry for him. I didn’t think anyone would ever aspire to be a toothless old man pretending to strum a weather-worn cane on the sidewalk for money.

Then I happened to get a job in a music club and one of my co-workers was also a busker in the Yonge Street area and he told me the real story of the old man. The cane strummer could actually play guitar and used to do so. But as his guitar strings would break, particularly in the cold weather, he found that he was making just as much or more money with a degenerating guitar and that it wasn’t really worth replacing them. As each string broke and he had to compensate with more and more vocal fakery, his hat began to fill a little more each day. Eventually there were no strings left and all he could do was sing his guitar.

After a while, he decided to forget the stringless guitar altogether and simply strummed his cane, while he kind of sang his music. That’s when I first saw him. I had a first impression of what I saw and then when given some more information, I had a completely different perception of this old man.

And I’ve never looked at a street busker the same way since.

I’m not thinking of the Cirque du Soleil type buskers who can command an audience of two hundred people. Or of the classically trained musicians who play expensive violins or who pluck  Pachabel on a harp. I’m thinking of liquor store guitar players who are playing for food or booze or rent.

I busked once. I was 23 years old and I had my guitar with me while I sat in a tavern with my friends. I was out of money and it was still early so I took my guitar out to the street in the Byward Market, opened up my guitar case, and started playing. I don’t remember what I played. An upbeat original, maybe Fulsom Prison, maybe My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It. I did well. I made ten bucks in about fifteen minutes and I had enough cash for two more quarts of beer that would last me the rest of the evening.

I was lucky though. I wasn’t hungry and I had a bed to go home to. I did it for fun. But most buskers don’t do it for fun. If it was fun, I’d have done it today. No, they do it to survive and they’re making an effort beyond pan-handling.

No one learns how to play guitar while they live on the streets. No one learns how to play guitar as an adult when they live in a homeless shelter. Every one of our liquor store guitar players likely learned to play guitar as kids because they loved music. That’s when they learned Neil Young and Eagles songs for the first time. And they probably didn’t imagine that twenty years down the road they’d be playing those same songs on the pavement in rough neighbourhoods because that seemed like their best option to make it until tomorrow.

So when I pass a busker who has an out of tune guitar, I think of the old man on Yonge Street. When I hear Heart of Gold or Take it Easy for the thousandth time, I think of the old man on Yonge Street. And when I sit down to play my guitar in my kitchen and strum an old Johnny Cash tune, I’m thankful that I’m still able to play because I want to. Not because I have to.

Every busker has a story.

A few weeks ago, I saw online that a band named Jr. Gone Wild was going to be coming to town, playing a tavern in Ottawa’s Byward Market. Junior, as they’re known to some fans, is an Edmonton band that started in the early eighties. They achieved some national success playing an early version of alt-country or cowpunk but they never became the stars some fans would have predicted.

I learned of them in the early nineties when one of my favourite local bands covered several of their songs. And an old bandmate of mine actually played with them for a time. When I heard of this show, I was excited. Not so much because I loved this band (I never owned any of their records but I did like a lot of their songs) but because I had a feeling that the gig would be akin to attending something of a reunion. In my head I could already picture some of the familiar faces.

When my wife moved to Ottawa from Toronto almost twenty-five years ago, we lived downtown, a block or so from a main street. When we would get groceries or go to a restaurant or pub, we would invariably cross paths with someone I knew. Someone from the neighbourhood. It always kind of surprised Valérie. She said she could walk the busy streets of downtown Toronto for weeks at a time and not run across someone she knew, let alone a friend. It was one of the first things she liked about Ottawa. And usually the people I said hello to were those I somehow knew through music. They may have been in bands I used to see regularly. They may have been fans of the same bands, who I would share tables or ashtrays with and we would nod to each other when our favourite songs were played. Maybe they were the bartenders or the waitresses or the doormen. Or the sound men or other musicians who just liked being around music and had an appreciation for how great and how hard live performance is.

I was kind of a performer for a while but I never really felt like I belonged. I was always more comfortable playing the role of the fan but being involved in the scene afforded me the opportunity to make friends with many talented people I may not have otherwise known.

But something funny happened when I turned forty and moved to the suburbs. I stopped  walking around downtown the way I used to. I stopped playing live music and don’t really go to see it anymore. And I certainly have lost connection to those who play it still.

And when this happened, I stopped seeing my old friends. Just as when the school year ends or the sports season is over or when you change jobs, people just naturally fall away. The people you saw every day or every week for years. There’s no conscious decision to stop being friends. You just don’t see each other anymore.

I stopped seeing the crowd and staff at Irene’s for the Lonesome Paul shows that I loved so much. I stopped seeing the Lucky Ron show that always inspired a grin wider than I knew possible. I miss hanging out with the guys from Jimmy George at the Duke. I miss the Manx and the Slowpoke and Shaft show. I miss taking a cab to the Pit to see the Hammerheads, knowing I could always get in and wouldn’t be late because their singer sat beside me in the taxi. Zaphod’s, Barrymore’s, Furnace Face, Songbird Music, the Pisces parties. A downtown laundromat where I watched Punchbuggy shoot a video while I did a weekly chore.

No, I don’t walk down the street any longer and run into friends the way I used to. For months at a time.

So when I see Junior Gone Wild tomorrow night, I won’t be there solely for the music. I’ll be smiling because I’ll be standing among some old friends who I haven’t seen in a while.

You can’t go home again. But sometimes you can visit for a few hours.

I was in a grocery store last Sunday morning. I didn’t really need anything particularly but it was a beautiful day and I thought I could use a little exercise so I biked over to a local place to pick up some fruit and coffee and maybe a little something sweet for that night’s dinner. It wasn’t all that early but it still felt distinctly like morning.

I like shopping on Sunday morning. I saw a family with two young children who were dressed in their Sunday best. Perhaps they were picking up a few things for the company they’d be hosting after church. And there’s something about watching seniors shop that I find endearing. I like seeing older ladies pick through piles of fruit, selecting just the right peach or orange because maybe they don’t eat very much anymore and they want to make their choices count. I find myself wanting to assist older men as they try to decode the complicated labels on packaging, figuring out what has the least amount of salt or what the difference is between diet, lite, and low cal. Sometimes it seems like grocery shopping for retirees is a challenging endeavour. Not a pleasure as much as a necessary evil that may present the week’s greatest obstacles.

It was a beautiful June day on that Sunday morning. Judging by the way people went about their business, you’d never know there’d just been a contentious election a few days earlier. You wouldn’t have any idea that millions had been saddened by a handful of celebrity suicides in the previous week. And there wasn’t any indication that political turmoil can be found everywhere you look.

No, it was just a Sunday morning and folks were going about their business, seeking out just the right food to put on their tables for their families and for their guests.

People were polite to one another, offering to let others in line at the cash. After you, I heard someone say at the deli counter when it was time for the next person to be served. This store had a take-a-ticket system but it wasn’t turned on. Instead, everyone just seemed to know who was next and if there was any doubt, there was an unspoken understanding that the words “after you” was the appropriate solution.

As I looked at the patrons walking up and down the aisles, I couldn’t tell who voted for whom and even if I could, I couldn’t tell you why they voted as they did. Standing in line to pay, within a fifteen foot radius, I saw seniors,  young children, university students, labourers, French Canadians, English Canadians, new Canadians, non-Canadians.

We all need to eat. We all feel hunger in the same way. We all need doctors. We all have the same coloured blood. We all love children and we all get old. Rich or poor, on either side of the political aisle, we all walk the grocery store aisle together. And the labels on the packaging are eventually going to become too damn small for every one of us.

But if we’re lucky, and if we stay true to our better nature, there should always be someone to stretch for that can of soup that’s out of our reach or help decipher the small print that may be beyond our capabilities. Because eventually, everyone needs the help of a neighbour.

 

 

There’s a really good Côte d‘Ivoire chicken place a few kilometres from where I live, in a neighbourhood where I spent a few of my early school years. A few months ago, when my wife and I were picking up our dinner there, we poked our heads into a food centre in the same little strip mall on McArthur Road to see what was on offer. It turns out my wife found tins of delicious Galician mussels and so today I decided to make a trip back to pick up some more.

En route, I passed the Notre Dame Cemetery, one of the two oldest big cemeteries in Ottawa. Traditionally,  it’s the Catholic and French cemetery, where a lot of my ancestors are interred. All of my grandparents, many of my uncles and aunts, even some cousins now. I’ve had trouble finding markers there in the past because I don’t have any maps and I’m relying on thirty and forty year old memories of funerals that always seemed to take place on dark and rainy days. But I recently spoke with a dear aunt of mine and she gave me some direction on how to find my grandmother’s stone, a place I’d not been in possibly forty years. And as my travels were unfolding today, it was becoming clear that it wasn’t so much where I was going to but when I was going to. And the time I was traveling to was 1974.

My grandmother, Lena Rose Macdonald, had a hard life. She had been adopted in a time when adoption usually involved an unwanted pregnancy by a young Catholic girl. She was often ill. She had epilepsy and was prone to seizures. Diagnoses and mental health treatments in those days were unevolved and I think my grandmother probably suffered more than she had to. Lena had eight children and they all loved her dearly, as did her daughters-in -law and her grandchildren, the ones who were old enough to remember her. I was one of the few and I was eight when she died. In 1974.

For my next stop, I cycled to McArthur Road to find my mussels. The store that carries them is called Mario’s Food Centre. Mario’s was the first corner store where I ever bought my own chips with my own money. I think they were probably BBQ and probably cost me a dime. The store was right next door to my school, R.E. Wilson Public school. The tiny school only went up to grade three at the time and I went there for grade one and two. My teachers were Mrs. Ash and Miss Partlow. My first crush was on a girl named Ann. I knew a kid named Stewart who said the word titties at my seventh birthday party, causing my mother to laugh so hard and involuntarily that her Tab came out her nose. And then there was a crew cut-headed kid named Gary who played Smoke on the Water, air guitar style, on his zipper. He also taught me the word fuck. My mother didn’t like him so much but she did laugh at his batting stance when we played fastball because it was so goofy looking. Hands straight above his head, low crouch, knees touching each other. It’s 45 years later and I still remember the batting stance of a seven year old whose older brother liked Deep Purple.

I was the only customer at Mario’s today and I asked the forty-something year old man behind the counter if he was the owner. He was, he said, and I began to tell him about my BBQ chip purchase and it turns out that his uncle was Mario, the Mario who opened the store in 1964. Two generations have owned this little place for well over fifty years. I can’t begin to imagine how those six hundred square feet nurtured three or four generations of one family over more than half a century. All the while feeding the neighbourhood kids all the treats they could hope for. I’m glad I asked him about himself and I could tell he was glad I asked him about himself. Two strangers in an almost empty store shared a hundred words on a quiet Monday afternoon and we both walked away from the experience a little richer. He was born in 1974.

Next, I visited the apartment building where I lived in those days, when I was six and seven years old. I don’t necessarily have great memories of that time because my mother, brother and I moved there only  because that’s when my parents finally separated for good. I was old enough to know what was happening but not old enough to understand it. It’s a strange place for a six year old to be. It wasn’t all bad of course because my aunt Judy (who gave me the cemetery directions) lived across the street and she made the best grilled cheese sandwiches. It’s also where I began to play hockey (Les Plombiers!!!), and it’s where I began to play baseball. It’s where I discovered I was good at math and it’s where I was the Little Drummer Boy in the Christmas Pageant. All in 1974.

I’ve decided I’ll return to Mario’s any time my wife gets a craving for those mussels (I don’t eat them myself) and I’ll think about the days when I could get a Coke and a bag of chips for a quarter and still get a nickel back. And I’ll recall little profane Gary playing that Deep Purple riff on his zipper. And I’ll think of my aunt’s grilled cheese sandwiches.

Nineteen seventy-four might be forty-four years ago, but in reality, it’s only a short bike ride away.

When I woke up this morning and checked my phone for email and messages, the first thing I learned of the outside world was that Anthony Bourdain had died. I didn’t believe it. I checked another source, and then a third. Then I turned on the television. Nope. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t find a source that reassured me it was a hoax.

There are bigger fans of Anthony Bourdain than I am. There might even be a million of them. But I’ve read one of his books and I’ve seen nearly every episode of his TV shows and I felt almost sick to my stomach when I saw his face and I heard his voice. Knowing that he killed himself. A person whose sensibilities I so admired, who told such terrific stories. Someone who made me, an untraveled person, feel a little more like a citizen of the world. God damn. And then to know that depression got him. Something I know a little about. And that he wasn’t that much older than me.

I was already destined to feel a little grumpy this morning because of some election results last night. My horse didn’t win and while I wasn’t necessarily devastated by it all, I was cranky. So I changed the channel to escape the terrible Bourdain news and saw Donald Trump taking questions from reporters just before he was about to board a plane to come to Canada. To Quebec. A place Anthony Bourdain loved. Everything is just so wrong this morning, I thought. The Triple Crown of Shit.

But I showered, got dressed, ate some fruit, and headed to school for the first time in thirty years. I don’t really go to school yet but I’m investigating the possibility. When I got to campus and was a little lost, I asked a young woman for directions. She asked me if I was a new teacher. I said no, I was looking into a class for my son. And then I felt a little embarrassed that I might have begun my new academic career with a lie.

I didn’t know what to expect when I got there. I thought I might feel really old around college age kids, that I would stick out and be much more conspicuous than I would prefer. But I was wrong. It turns out that once you pass a certain age, you don’t look old anymore. You become invisible.

While I awaited my appointment, I had to kill some time and so I walked up and down the hall, alternately looking at bulletin boards and sipping from the water fountain. Of the posters I came across, the one that caught my eye was promoting an upcoming triple bill of cover bands re-creating the music of 1994. The bands were Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Soundgarden. I was twenty-eight in 1994 and was only months away from meeting my wife.

My meeting, which was supposed to last for about forty-five minutes, took twice that amount of time and when I finally left the building, at three o’clock on a Friday afternoon, it was the first time since Ronald Reagan was president that I was excited to be freed from school. But instead of running to a pub or hopping on a Greyhound Bus for Montreal as I may have done the last time I was a student, I headed downtown to meet my wife so that we could get some groceries. I have a feeling that if I do eventually go back to school, it’s going to be a little different than I remember.

When I returned home, I saw that Anthony Bourdain had been on television all day. But so had Doug Ford and so had Donald Trump. And as I returned to watching the coverage, it became clear that Bourdain was the only one of the three who brought people together. And he did it with intelligence, with passion, with humour, with curiosity, and with humility. And with all the sadness that his departure brings, that’s what I’m going to try to remember. His understanding of inclusion.

And tonight, when I looked through our PVR and saw that there was only one episode of Parts Unknown left in the bank, the Berlin one, the one with the Bowie music, I felt a little lonely. But then I smiled. And I knew exactly why.