2024 A Year of Challenge and Patience

January 8: Now that the “holidays” are over, I feel a bit like the cat in the picture. This would be understandable if I had actually had a busy agenda over Christmas, but that was not really the case. The extended family has an understanding that we don’t buy gifts for the adults, so the extent of my shopping was a 15 minute trip to get a toy for each of the three grandchildren. One store, in and out. I never went near a mall, and had a hard time understanding why anyone would when I saw the cars lined up on the 401 waiting to get into the parking lot for Yorkdale. It must have taken the better part of an hour just to get to the lot.

Parties, such as they were, included a family Christmas dinner with my Sister’s family and mine – always a highlight for me  – and pot luck dinners with the runners, the artists and the musicians ( I use the term loosely ). There was also time with my cousin Christmas Eve and New Years Eve – which I partly remember – and a couple of lunches with friends. Not a huge agenda, yet I feel like hibernating for the rest of the Winter.

This has been helped by the fact that the temperature has been abnormally cold. It was -24C for the run on Sunday morning and consistently so cold that it is unpleasant just to go outside. It’s also made the basement cooler, so I have noticed several spiders have migrated up and are lurking in the corners trying to stay warm. I think spiders are fairly benign, so I leave them alone unless they are really being a nuisance. Then I will move them to a more appropriate spot, or outdoors if the weather is warm. It did my heart good to see that a guy in Australia burned his house down when he tried to kill a spider with a blowtorch.

Of course, it’s also the season of resolutions to exercise and diet. I am not immune. I’ve not had alcohol for the last few days, and I’m shooting to complete the month of January without it, as I have done for the last 2 years. More exercise is on the radar too, but I know from personal experience that I need to have a slot in my schedule that I can commit to working out or it will ultimately fail. With the painting class, a new sketching class, and the band all starting next week, I’m waiting a bit to see how it will all work out before I commit to heaving the weights around, or swimming.

Frankly, the thought of all these things makes me tired. I think, for now, the cat has the right idea. I’m going to sneak away and take a nap. Exercise and creative things can wait.

December 17:  After a relatively balmy autumn, the weather has turned frigid. The overnight temperatures are in the low minus-teens and the day-time highs not much warmer. It was -10C for my run this morning and, given these extremes of climate, I often wonder what possessed people to emigrate to this country in the first place. Thoughts turn to my paternal grandparents who emigrated from Scotland in the early 1900’s.

We really only have a very sketchy outline of how that came to pass. Grandma(Mary) and Grandpa (James) were both born in Scotland in 1881. As a young woman, Grandma  emigrated to South Africa. I believe that she may have been married there, and perhaps even have had a child. From there, she emigrated to Canada. Grandpa was trained as a machinist. He worked for a time with the Scottish railway and then left that country for Jamaica. My Dad suggested that this may have been due to his involvement with the union movement.

While in Jamaica, he was in touch with his 2 brothers, some of whom may also have been there. At that time, the sole method of semi-reliable communication would have been the mail, and the brothers were using the address of a rooming house as an informal post office. In time, the mail dwindled and contacts were lost. Now all we have left is the knowledge that there are several other branches to the McKillop family, but no way of knowing who they might be. (Many years ago my Dad told this story to an acquaintance from Jamaica and asked him if he knew anyone named McKillop. “I do indeed”, he said. “Of course, they’re all black….”)

Grandma and Grandpa were married in Toronto in 1909; they were both 18.  My Father was the youngest of 5 children by a considerable margin, and he was born in 1922. Grandpa was a machinist with the CNR and I have an abiding memory of visiting the roundhouse and climbing aboard steam locomotives with him and my Dad. Strangely though, while I remember specific sayings or events related to all of my other grandparents, I don’t remember much more about him. I don’t remember him ever actually saying anything to me.

The family lived in a small house on Sackville Street, north of Wellesley Street, in what is now Cabbagetown. It can’t have been easy for them, yet each of the children went on to have families and a successful life. Many of my relatives from that side of the family are now in Prince Edward County and I have not seen them for many years. It seems that we can lose touch without the help of Her Majesty’s Post.

And so the McKillop clan established itself in Ontario. As snowflakes drift by the window, I wonder what they must have felt as they arrived and spent their first winter here. Perhaps, had things been different, we all might have found ourselves on a beach in Jamaica and permanently avoided Ontario winters.

December 3: It was on this date in 1992 that the first SMS (Short Message Service) was sent by Neil Papworth, a 22-year old engineer. It was sent from a bar in Milan to a cell phone owned by the then-director of Vodaphone Richard Jarvis. Papworth used a computer since phones of the day were not able to send text messages. CBC News (quoting SKY News) reports that 151 billion SMS and MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) were sent in 2012 alone. Since that year, traffic has generally declined. “When you send someone a text message you often lose a lot of the context that you might get when you are speaking face to face,” social media expert Toby Beresford told CBC News. “And that’s a real challenge for us in the new era.” Who knew ?

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A friend e-mailed to say that this site had disappeared and been replaced by a page from Bluehost, my provider. I had my computer cleaned last week, and told the tech that the one thing I was really concerned about was losing the site and all of the work that it represents, and apparently that had happened. I stumbled around the Bluehost site for a while in a fruitless attempt to understand what had happened and how to fix it. Most of these computer-based sites are written by people and for people with a level of computer literacy. I frequently find them baffling, and in this case, I finally logged in to their chat room seeking a fix.

I was connected with Smithla, who was likely in south Asia, and we set about fixing the problem. I provided login and password identification for the account that I had miraculously managed to keep at hand during the 3 years the site has been up. After a few moments, there was a response that the connection seemed to be pointing to the wrong IP. At this point, we could have been speaking Swahili. In any event, a further moment and the site was back, fixed remotely by a stranger likely half-way around the world manipulating a system completely foreign to me, and, I suspect, most people.

At risk of sounding like a latter-day Luddite, I am often alarmed by the many ways we put our trust in technology, and specifically the Internet. Where would we be without it ? I use it to access e-mail, do research, follow the news and do virtually all of my banking and investing. It’s all there and I seldom keep a paper copy of transactions because I have been told to think of the Internet as “secure”.

Thing is: The Internet was established to share information; it is inherently an open network that anyone can access and use for their own purposes. This is all fine if you are a Pollyanna and believe that bad people will not do bad things to us through the Internet. Yet who among us has not had e-mail hacked, or worse ?  What’s going to happen when “terrorists” seize all or part of the on-line monetary system and all of our on-line records vanish ? This seems to me to be only a matter of time. My only hope is that there are enough Smithlas in south Asia to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

November 9:  

11:15 PM:

Hi Mum:

Just a quick note to share some pictures of your great-granddaughters. You may not remember them too clearly – you were forgetting quite a lot there at the end – but that’s Jaia on the left and Naomi on the right. I went to their second birthday party this weekend and, of course, they got a pile of stuff. It’s fascinating to see them grow up: they are now walking and talking in phrases, some of which I understand.

Here’s a picture of your new great-grandson Elias. He was born August 12. This is an unusual picture of him since he is usually nursing or sleeping. Or screaming. He does that a bit too. The girls adore him and are very protective of their little brother. It may not always be so …

This coming weekend is Remembrance Day, and I am hoping to visit Mount Pleasant cemetery for the Air Force service. I went last year – which may have been a special anniversary of some sort – and it was very moving. After that, I will probably swing by the family plot to say hello to you and all the other Air Force types in the family. When I think of the sacrifices you and Dad made – that so many people have made – I might even have a little cry like I did last year…

I miss you, and think of you a lot. Much love.

David

PS. I was a bit late getting out of the apartment and decided not to go to the service but instead went straight to the family plot. As I was arriving there, a Canadian Forces C130 transport came through just above the tree tops. It was there for the service, but it really felt like a private fly-past for all the Kent air force types.

November 2: Here’s a lovely little house on Balliol Street that won’t be with us much longer. I’ve done no research to confirm this, but I believe this to be the farmhouse that stood on these lands prior to their subdivision. It was left on a large lot while new homes – mostly semi’s – were built around it. Now there’s an application at the Committee of Adjustment to allow its’ demolition, severance of the lot, and construction of two new “3-storey dwellings with front integral garages”. I am very sure that the applicants will point to the adjacent new-ish houses, which are an anomaly in the neighbourhood, as justification for the project. Mediocrity justifying schlock.

I have written about this process before, because I really don’t understand the thought process behind demolishing something with significant physical, monetary, or sentimental value only to replace it with something less valuable. This case is different since this is not “just another house”, but a house with historical value to the community and the city. I don’t understand how someone can look at it and decide that it’s just an old house that’s getting in the way of making a profit. Buildings like this have an intrinsic value that is greater than their monetary value. At what point do we decide that this sort of application is simply not acceptable ?

I indulge the guilty pleasure of watching BBC programs that show homeowners renovating and restoring heritage buildings in the British Isles. Inevitably, they are heritage listed, and “the Planners dictate what must be done” throughout the renovation. There seems to be little negotiation or appeal, and, even as a former Planner who would love to have the draconian power to dictate outcomes, this regime seems incredibly restrictive.* It wouldn’t be acceptable here, but surely there has to be a more efficient and effective way of preserving what little heritage we have remaining in our cities. As one consulting architect said to me many years ago: “If we don’t start protecting buildings from the 50’s and 60’s – never mind the 1800’s – there won’t be any left to get old…”

Well, here’s one building that truly is old and we are about to lose it. This situation, and the many others like it, leave me feeling sad and frustrated that there is not more public pressure to resist this sort of churlish destruction of our heritage. We are losing our past and accepting a mediocre future in return.

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* One large commercial project involving many millions of pounds of investment encountered a brown bat – one bat – in the roof, and all work was halted for several days while the bat was appropriately re-housed within the building.

October 23: There has been a huge outpouring of emotion following the death of Gord Downie almost a week ago. He was a public figure, a musical icon and a man of apparent warmth and integrity. More than 10 million of us watched the Tragically Hip concert in August of last year, and, at the time, I wrote that it would be interesting to see what he did during what little time remained for him.

He has been busy:  he finalized an album with the Hip; he conceived, wrote and produced an album, a graphic novel and performed a concert telling the story of  Chanie Wenjack ( “Secret Path” ); he released a book of his own poetry. He visited the north and used his reputation to highlight issues facing the First Nations community. Any of these would be a signature achievement. That he achieved them all under such dire circumstances is remarkable and a true measure of his determination.

So we are left again to consider what might have been. What more might he have accomplished had he lived longer ? But I think that approach misses an important point: what he achieved was inspirational. We shouldn’t think about what he might have done, but rather about what we might do ourselves if we gather even a small amount of  inspiration from his example. What more appropriate way to remember Gord Downie than to use his untimely end as motivation to accomplish meaningful things in what little time remains for us

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October 25: On last night’s show, Rick Mercer did a segment on Gord Downie which nicely captured what I think Downie was about. Love him or hate him, here’s Rick:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utSEoGFh1tI

October 6: He’s the kind of guy that you encounter on the TTC and hope that he will not be interested in having a conversation. You know the type: he seems slightly sweaty and his clothes are all a bit outdated and a size too large; his hair is too long and obviously hasn’t been washed in a while; he moves like a man who has been mainlining caffeine for days and his eyes dart around the bus like an animal looking for a quick exit.

He sat opposite me on the Davisville bus last week as I returned home from the second week of practice with the New Horizon Band. Frequent reader(s) may recall that I played with them 2 years ago and, although I enjoyed making music, I put my electric bass aside in favour of other things. During the Summer, I decided that the band deserved another chance with more commitment to practicing and learning on my part. So it was with some quiet happiness that I sat on the bus with my bass in it’s gig bag, standing on the floor in front of me. I will admit that I had positioned it to partly block my view to Mr. Java Brain, who was now sitting directly opposite. Didn’t work.

“So you play bass” he says, loud enough for the folks in the back of the bus to hear. “I do” says I, “but it’s just my second week”. I hoped that my lack of experience would put him off some how. “So do I” he says, and then proceeds with a monologue outlining the type of bass he plays, the strings he uses and the way he can figure out tunes by playing a recording from YouTube through a tuning machine. “Of course, I have to have it restrung backwards because of my fingers.”

Only then do I notice that he is missing all four fingers on his right hand, along with the top joint of his thumb. His left wrist, obviously smashed at some point, is frozen straight out and can’t be bent into a position that would allow easier access to the frets.

At that I moment I was shocked and a bit ashamed. I had been so quick to judge this guy on the basis of his appearance and behaviour, that I had nearly missed the opportunity to connect with someone who was truly passionate about making music. When I saw past the appearances, I came face-to-face with a man who had figured out how to overcome the obstacles in his life and was trying to express himself in a creative way through music. He was, in fact, just like me.

This little vignette replays in my mind from time to time. It is a not-so-gentle reminder to not be so quick to judge others. It also reminds me that I live a relatively privileged life, with many comforts and opportunities that are not available to everyone. It also shows me that passion and commitment can take you places many would think to be unachievable. Musicians come in all shapes and sizes, and perhaps with enough commitment and practice, some day I will play as well as this strange man on the bus.

http://newhorizonsbandtoronto.ca/index.html

September 20: The French have a well deserved reputation for loving their dogs. While pooches are pampered and taken everywhere, sadly, cats don’t seem to enjoy the same privilege.

Many of the small towns I visited had groups of feral cats. I am sure that for every cat I saw on the street, there are many more safely at home behind closed doors, yet it was surprising to me that there were so many strays. Some, like this guy, seemed to have figured out how to live reasonably comfortably. They seemed to be fed (if not well-fed), but they would mostly scramble away if I tried to approach them.

I stayed in a small hotel in Entraygues.  There was a small grey and white male in the lobby when I entered. He was very scrawny and had obviously suffered some sort of injury to his hind quarters, yet he hung around the fringes of the action, never far from the owner. She told me that he had been “her first customer every day for three years”. He was at the door every morning expecting breakfast – which he got –  and then he wandered around for the day. She then said to me that, in all that time, she had never been able to pat him or touch him in any way. In spite of her care and attention, here was an animal so damaged that he could not bring himself to trust someone who obviously loved him.

Like humans, cats are social animals. They need to interact with other cats to have a full and rewarding life. It broke my heart to think of this poor guy being so alone and isolated because he could not overcome the fear created by circumstances that were, in all likelihood, not of his making. And it was not lost on me that I too lived alone. Like many others of my demographic, I ran the risk of diminishing  personal support and contact with others. It was something of which I was mindful, but had pretty much accepted as being part of my future.

And so it is somewhat ironic that I am now paterfamilias and chief caretaker of my Mum’s cat Duster. To be honest, before my Mum died, I had often thought that I would wind up with her; everyone else had kids, cats or allergies, so I was the logical recipient.

There has been a period of acclimation. Places have been found for feeding, sleeping and the litter box. The 3 AM yowling has (mostly) subsided, and we have settled into a routine of feedings and pettings and cleaning up that seems to work for us. I am perhaps less lonely, but that benefit has to be balanced against the commitment of having an animal in my care. An invite to my Sister’s cottage is now followed with a question of what to do with Duster. Still, she has wormed her way into my affections, and I may just have to accept that this small animal will make my life richer and more fulfilling. And hopefully, I hers.