Author: mckillop_vfr@yahoo.ca

October 25: Autumn is for me at once the most beautiful and the most discouraging time of year. Where Spring can be timid and tentative, a watercolour portrait of the Summer yet to come, Autumn is a full-throated blast of colour that marks the transition to a darker, colder season. It is a reminder that time waits for no man.

We have always prided ourselves as being “the city in a forest”. We had the great fortune of locating a city on a plain crossed by major rivers and the ravines they carved. Our ravines have been a part of our consciousness as the city grew. They provided parks and natural  areas in the heart of the city, while forcing some of our most ambitious engineering projects.

I think many people forget that the city they see every day has not existed for long. As recently as 50 years ago, many of our most prosperous neighbourhoods were farmer’s fields. Those leafy streets that we so admire now, were once muddy croplands with scattered homes and barns. Cities grow and mature, rejuvenate, and, on occasion, become less than healthy.

Raised as I was in central Toronto, I grew up accustomed to the tranquility, security and beauty that surrounded me. The tree canopy that lined the streets and parks of my neighbourhood stood in the background. I recall chatting with my Dad in front of the house many years ago. It was after dark and a “cathedral of trees” lit by the streetlights, stretched down to St Clair Avenue where cars whispered by. This wondrous backdrop disappeared some years later as the “first growth” trees, planted when the subdivision was built in the early 1900’s, all started to die off at the same time. Like humans, trees have a survival cohort – they are planted, grow large and die off at roughly the same time.

I grew up climbing in the steel girders under the St Clair Avenue bridge, which spans the Vale of Avoca ravine about a block from our house. I went back there last week with my camera to shoot some pictures of the autumn foliage and discovered a discouraging scene. Many of our ravines have suffered from overuse and lack of maintenance. Although they are resplendent with large mature trees, there do not seem to be many young trees coming long to take their place. As well, invasive species such as the Emerald Ash Borer are taking a toll, leading to the destruction of large areas of tree growth.

Just as people tend to assume that “the city has always been here”, I think that many assume that large parts of it – like the ravines – will go forward into the future largely unchanged (thousands of new condominiums in some areas to the contrary). I think we have now reached a point where many of our downtown neighbourhoods will lose the majority of their current tree cover and with it, a good deal of their identity. Think of Rosedale without trees ….. nothing lasts forever.

October 25: On my run this morning, I overheard two younger mothers talking about Hallowe’en:

Mother 1: “…and she knows intellectually that they’re not real but she reacts emotionally and she’s so scared…”

Mother 2: “Well, you will have to help her find closure…”

Closure. Really ? It’s probably my spotty memory, but I barely remember my parents walking with me on Hallowe’en, never mind finding closure over some terrorist clown. I thought that the point was to be a bit scared of things and confront them in a safe environment – and to get some candy. There was always candy.

Of course, as I got a bit older, Hallowe’en was also about blowing up pumpkins with firecrackers, soaping windows, putting stink bombs through neighbourhood mail slots, and the old “invisible rope trick”. (Two people stand on either side of the street and mime holding a rope stretched across the road. It’s amazing the number of people who stop…). Mind you, I never actually did any of those things, it was Chris and Harvey, the troublemakers.

Point is: we had some mostly harmless fun at a time when people expected kids to get a bit rambunctious. I’m sure some smaller kids may have been a bit more frightened than I ever was, and perhaps they went on to be serial killers, but isn’t this how we learn how to confront the other – the things we may not be comfortable with or really understand ?

Closure ? Not for me. Send in the clowns, there must be clowns…..

October 1: Who is this guy ? When this car turned up on my street, I immediately wanted to meet the owner to chat about his car. It takes a certain moxie, usually reserved for Subaru WRX STi and Plymouth Superbird drivers, to put an enormous and utterly useless wing (at legal speeds anyway) on a road-going car. And this one has a number too – shades of  “The General Lee” from The Dukes of Hazzard. What’s that all about ?

The graphics package and the wing emulate a car built by an Australian named Paul Henshaw. If the license ( 260 GTR) is to be believed, this is a mid-70’s Nissan 260 with a much-newer GTR motor, neatly upping the horsepower from 150 to somewhere around 400.  Add the Corbeau seats, alloy wheels, tires, and the aerodynamics package, and this guy has spent a huge pile of money to build what is effectively someone else’ car. I understand the whole imitation is flattery thing, but this seems a bit extreme.

Or perhaps not. I recently visited the Guild of Automotive Restorers in Bradford. In 2012, the Guild completed construction of this reproduction 1935 Bugatti Aerolithe. The original car was shown once, at the Earl’s Court Motor Show in 1935, and never seen again. To build this reproduction, the Guild had to digitize and scale off only a dozen or so pictures know to have been taken at the show. The body is entirely magnesium which has the great benefit of being extremely light. However, it’s prone to breaking when bent, and bursting into flames if overheated when welded, so the technicians at the Guild built the curvaceous body by carefully welding longer strips of metal together on wooden jigs. The attention to detail, and the effort devoted to producing the finished car, are astounding. Even the tires are custom made reproductions. It’s worth tens of millions of dollars.

And I understand why someone would spend that kind of insane money on what is to most people just a car. But to see it as a car is to miss the point; it’s a work of art. Beyond the shapes, beyond the colour and the appearance of it, there’s the craftsmanship that turned mechanical pieces and bare metal into something that evokes an emotional response. That’s what art does: it takes you to a different perspective, a different understanding for how things can be.

The Nissan is not a great work of art, but it is one man’s creation that expresses his view of what is desirable and exciting. I too have spent ludicrous money on wheels and tires and bits and pieces to make some of my ( pre-mortgage ) cars more reflective of my taste and values. I may not have the dough to build a Bugatti, but I do know how it would feel to try. After all – I am that guy.

http://autoweek.com/article/car-life/1935-bugatti-aerolithe-re-creation-completed-lost-magnesium-bodied-coupe-replicated

September 29: I titled this piece Human Nature, but the more I thought about what I was writing, the more I realized that it was not human nature but rather ignorance, stupidity, self-centredness or arrogance. These are things that people do; things that bother me enormously. A rant from an aging curmudgeon follows:

My apartment sits in a lovely landscaped court, and is surrounded by the leafy properties of Leaside. Not surprisingly, there are more than a few dogs – usually very big dogs, which I assume connote status of some sort, or very small dogs, which must be aiming for the “cute factor”. In any case, I am astonished at the number of times I see sacks of dog shit left on someone’s lawn. The dog owner has gone to the now politically correct extent of bagging the turds, but then leaves them behind precisely where the dog dropped them in the first place, neatly transferring the responsibility of dog ownership to the homeowner.

I detest timid drivers. The current bane of my existence is the flock of drivers who seem unable to move off the stop bar into the intersection when they are making a left turn at a signal. Everyone behind them is forced to sit and wait until they can complete their turn – usually at the end of the green cycle. If only they would pull into the centre of the intersection, as they are allowed and I was taught to do, others could pass on the right and we ( OK, I ) would all be much happier.

Similarly, there’s the driver in the left lane resolutely going precisely 2 KM/H over or under the speed limit. Much has been written about these idiots, so I won’t say any more. An interesting variant I have encountered is the guy (it seems always to be a guy) who enters the expressway and then aggressively switches lanes across to the left. I’ve been cut off many times by these bozos, who seem to be in a huge rush that only access to the left lane can satisfy. But no. Once there, like others mentioned above, they dawdle along at or under the limit forcing everyone else to pass to the right. Please, just stay to the right. It makes our roads safer and much more efficient.

My Sunday morning running clan meets for a coffee at Starbucks after whatever torture the instructor prescribes for the day. Usually the café is busy. For some reason, it seems to take an inordinate amount of time to get a simple cup of coffee, so there’s always a long line. On several occasions I’ve watched couples standing chatting in the line right up to the point where the server asks them for their order. Then – and only then – do they start to consider what they might have. We’ve all been waiting for many minutes and they could have been thinking through their options like the rest of us, but no. Now we all wait while they hem and haw about what to have. All I want is a damn coffee….

I could go on. And perhaps in another post, I will. Thanks for indulging my self-centred, arrogant, self-indulgent rant. I feel better.

September 27:

Mothers give sons permission to be a prince but the father must show him how…Fathers give daughters permission to be princesses. And mothers must show them how. Otherwise, both boys and girls will grow up and always see themselves as frogs.

Eric Berne

Relationships with our fathers have been central in shaping our characters. We catch ourselves saying what we heard our fathers say, or doing something that we know they did. Many of us have had pain and resentments in these relationships. We wanted more than they gave us, or we longed for praise but got criticism, or we were never sure we measured up to them.

Some of us can change our relationships with our fathers. We can do it not by asking them to be different, but by being our full adult selves with them. This new experience is the doorway to a new aspect of our selves. Many of us can not change our relationships with our fathers, but being with our sons and daughters in ways that nurture their growth is another chance to redo for ourselves, what we missed.

My fathers importance to me is a fact I must surrender to. I will take what he has given me and grow with it. (1)

_____________________________________________________

My father was in Alcoholics Anonymous for more than 40 years. I deeply regret that I was not more supportive of his recovery, and more aware of the work it required. After some exposure to his program I did understand that members conducted an inventory to determine who they had hurt, and then made amends to those people, unless doing so would cause additional harm.

I had always imagined it as a time when my father spoke of what had happened, why it had happened, and how sorry he was about that, but I don’t recall him ever making a specific statement of amends. It was never a huge issue for me, yet I felt that the impacts of his drinking on my childhood were vaguely unacknowledged.

It took me many years to understand that he was making a “living amends”; he was demonstrating to our family and his friends how he could live his life to try and mitigate the damage he had done. He was calm and reassuring; he was warm and funny; attentive, open and expressive;  committed and supportive. He demonstrated how to behave like a man, a parent and a partner.

It could not have been easy for him, and I say that because I know that it’s not easy for any of us to always behave in an exemplary fashion. He started later in life than many, but I thank God that he tried, and that he ultimately showed me how to be more of a prince and less of a frog.

(1) Touchstones; Hazelden Meditations; Hazelden Foundation; 1986

September 24:  I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable with our image of our nation as “hewers of wood and drawers of water” for reasons set out in this interesting piece by Naomi Klein.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canadas-founding-myths-hold-us-back-from-addressing-climate-change/article32022126/

 

September 3: It’s that time of year again: back to school time. Although many people I know were happy to get back to school, I was not. While I recall elementary school as being enjoyable, secondary school was an unhappy time in my life.

This might have been due to the fact that elementary school classes didn’t change much year over year. Everyone pretty much knew everyone else, and there were no surprises. There was a natural order after a while and everyone knew where they belonged. This suited my need for predictability and consistency and I was happy. This changed a bit in Grade 7 when we were joined by kids from two other schools, but there were only 3 rooms of Grade 7 students, so it was not a huge change. Besides, my demented and soon-to-be life-long friends Chris and Harvey came to the school at that time, so there was an off-setting benefit.

Everything changed with high school. I went from one of the oldest kids to one of the youngest, and smallest. Suddenly I was surrounded by 17 and 18 year olds whom I perceived as being “adults”. While there was the promise of growing maturity for me, raging hormones made it an uncertain process. The natural order of elementary school was replaced with new classes full of kids who I perceived as being smarter than I.

This was exacerbated by the strange decision to stream me into the music program. I had never expressed a desire to be there, nor had I ever played any sort of instrument. Yet there I was trying (at least initially) to learn the baritone trombone. As a kid who never wanted to be seen making a mistake, the daily music class was torture. The vast majority of the class was musical and had experience, so they went ahead at a great rate. I found practicing hard and the repetition of mistakes was dispiriting, so ultimately, I pretty much gave up. When the school concert was held at year-end, I was asked to sit quietly and not play.

Things didn’t get much better in later years. Although I was on the swim team and had a bright red City Champions jacket to wear around, swimming didn’t have the social status of football or track, and I was that skinny little kid on the end of the second row not one of the stars. Academically I was middle of the field or worse, with the occasional effort to stick my hand up to answer a question often met with failure and further derision. I learned that it was better not to do that ….

And so it went until Grade 13, which my parents decided should be spent at the Canadian Junior College in Lausanne, Switzerland. Needless to say, this was a complete change and not one that I really wanted to make. I had a girlfriend and a gang of friends in Toronto, but thankfully, the decision was not mine to make. That year was a complete about-face. I was slightly better academically, which was surprising given all the potential distractions and cheap beer. Perhaps because of the cheap beer, I broke out of my little shell and took part in the school newspaper and yearbook. I was in a band and asking girls I barely knew to dance. I’ve written about that period elsewhere (see April 29, 2015) and it was truly a year that changed my life irrevocably for the better.

As Labour Day approaches though, I think not of the excitement of leaving for Lausanne, but of the dread of going to North Toronto. I was so intimidated and unsure of myself that I undermined who I might have been. Had I found the freedom to let myself make mistakes and grow during those years, my life would have been far more fulfilling and enjoyable.

August 22: Like almost half the country (a CBC report said that 12 million people watched or listened to the show ), I watched the Tragically Hip concert from Kingston. Truthfully, I am not a huge fan of the Hip; I have some of their CD’s and many of their bigger hits on my playlist. But it felt like the concert would be one of those  quintessentially Canadian moments – “where were you when Henderson scored” – and that I should be part of it.

Like many people I spoke with, I found it to be an exceedingly odd event. Here’s a guy with a terminal disease giving what might be his last public concert. There was a strange mix of the celebratory – that we had known and enjoyed the band for so long – and the sorrowful – we are losing a talented artist “before his time”. I use quotation marks because none of us knows when the time is up. The difference here is that we know Downie’s time is close, and that there’s an opportunity to express our emotion before he is gone. And it was emotional. Bittersweet seems to be an appropriate word. That mixture of enjoying the moment together while being aware of the sadness and anger at his impending death.

I don’t honestly know how to judge the concert itself; I have never seen them perform live. It was clear that the set list had been picked for this specific event and many of the lyrics were ironic, or seemed to have been chosen to convey a message. At least, it was hard not to conclude that. The first song, Fifty Mission Cap, tells the story of Bill Barilko, who drowned unexpectedly on a fishing trip, gone too soon. Courage followed with one verse saying “There’s no simple Explanation  For anything important Any of us do.  And, yeah, the human
Tragedy Consists in The necessity  Of living with The consequences Under pressure Under pressure.” I thought that it was a solid and workmanlike performance, and Downie was obviously exhausted by the end. Overall though, it seemed to be lacking something; it felt a bit hollow to me.

So we are losing an iconic artist and performer. Like David Bowie, Gord Downie is aware of his fate. Bowie wrote about death in the last few months of his life. Like any artist, creativity flows through Downie. It’s not something that he can shut off. He clearly remains passionate about specific issues. If the Hip is truly finished as a band, it will be interesting to see what route Downie’s artistic expression takes now that time is short and there is nothing to lose.

August 15: I’ve had the great good fortune to have been able to hang out at various cottages since my first Birthday. Although I don’t remember it, I’m told that was the year when I almost drowned. My Mum put me in an inner-tube to float in the lake and turned around for an instant to retrieve something from the dock. When she turned back, I was on the bottom of the lake looking around quite happily. I’ve spend a lot of time peacefully submerged in various lakes in the intervening years.

I spent last week submerged in Stoney Lake at my Sister’s cottage. It’s comforting to see that some of the traditions around cottaging persist over time. The traffic was really horrible – nose to tail in some places. And the honking and jockeying for position along the way was un-nerving.

When we finally arrived, we discovered that the neighbours were creating a huge din that went on at all hours of the day. Calling across the water to the kids as they dove into the lake was a constant racket. Shrieking across the water to announce lunch, dinner and the inevitable snacks was a soundtrack to our days.

Indeed, food is really important to the cottaging experience. I’ve found that the warmer weather and more relaxed pace means that meals are smaller and usually more frequent. Getting the right fuel is important to a happy and active day and eating together is a great way to renew friendships.

 

And finally there’s the opportunity to see friends that you may not have seen for some time. Different schedules or a relocation may mean that they rarely come to the cottage, so it’s good to renew their acquaintance.

 

Cottaging is a frame of mind. Time alone affords peace, tranquility and perspective on whatever else may be happening in your life. It’s also a vehicle for renewing and strengthening bonds with friends and family, and of sharing views and plans and aspirations in a quiet moment. I’ve not had a cottage of my own for some time, so I am indeed fortunate to have had the opportunity of some time away among friends – especially during the hottest week of the Summer (so far).

August 4: Daffodils are a harbinger of Spring. For that reason, they are one of my favourite flowers. When a neighbour cleared dozens of bulbs from his garden I happily absconded with them and planted bunches around my garden. Every Spring I was greeted with waving yellow faces smiling at the warmer weather and sunnier days.

Spring emerges from Winter with blossoms, new greenery, and returning birds. Everything fresh and new, it’s a colourful season full of the promise of good things yet to come. It’s a time to be enjoyed and celebrated after the colder dark period that is our Winter.

Summer emerges slowly; incremental change brings the trees and gardens into full bloom.  Days grow long and fat and comfortable as sunlight extends into the evening. This is a time to be savoured and every year I promise myself that I will wring every moment from this wonderful season. Yet June 21 arrives as the longest day of the year and I begin to feel like the best days are behind us. Summer always sneaks up on me, perhaps because there’s no “landmark” harbinger to alert me to it’s arrival.

I was reminded that we are indeed in the midst of another Summer by the call of the Cicadas. Not one of nature’s more attractive insects, Cicadas lie dormant in the soil for up to 17 years. They feed on tree sap from the root system before emerging and climbing into the tree in search of a mate. It is their raspy, metallic mating call that is the sound track to so many events during the hot and sticky days of mid-Summer.

The Cicadas remind me that Summer is fleeting and now in the dog-days of August, I am in a frenzy of trying to make up for lost time. There are cottages to visit, motorcycle trips to be planned, and patios to be visited. Just in case I needed a reminder that time is passing, several leaves on the Maple in the courtyard have already begun to change colour – a harbinger if ever there was one….