2024 A Year of Challenge and Patience

July 27: Attentive reader(s) may recall a post in November that mentioned finding a real estate ad for Regatta Island in Lake Muskoka. Even though it was “eye-wateringly expensive” and an inappropriate expense for someone of my vintage, my “interest” in buying the island has evolved into something closer to an obsession over the last few months.

There were many issues to be overcome. Firstly, there was a constant struggle to figure out the financing of something that I clearly couldn’t afford. This became more problematic as the apparent sale price increased, lenders vanished at the last moment and other bidders appeared. Secondly, there was the more pleasant focus on what I might actually do with the island once I had somehow magically acquired it. How to lay-out the kitchen and bathroom ? What kind of roof would be best ? What process should I use to get building materials on and off the island ?  Really, an endless procession of mind-games that may ultimately bear little relationship to reality.

My obsession began more than 20 years ago when we owned a cottage on the adjacent Browning Island. I would sit on the deck and look across to Regatta as it sat vacant and unused for most of the summer. Occasionally, an elderly woman would arrive and spend a week or two, and then the place would be shut down again for the rest of the season. It seemed such a waste of a valuable resource, and I couldn’t help imagining how wonderful it would be to have that island, or something very like it, for my own.

My heart literally skipped a beat when the real estate listing appeared last year. The price was set a level designed to create multiple offers and it seemed a foregone conclusion that someone with very deep pockets would simply buy it for what it represented – a private island with the opportunity to demolish the old cottage and build a new monstrosity. It was the end of the season; the marinas were closing and the market went quiet. In a fit of unnecessary panic I made a low-ball offer that was written back at a level I might have been able to afford.  I was ill-prepared for this eventuality, and the cottage was delisted for the winter.

When it returned to the listings in April, it was at a price more than 40% higher than the previous listing. This seemed to me to be naked greed, and I couldn’t understand the approach as a strategy to sell the place. There was a brief flurry of interest and then things went very quiet. I played chicken hoping that no serious offers would arise. None did, and in time there was a price reduction which brought one or two low-ball offers. Finally, two weeks ago, I went in with what I believed to be a reasonable offer and it has been accepted.

Certainly, patience and determination brought the cottage to me, and I am thrilled to have it.  At times the pursuit of the cottage felt like an exercise in trying to prove to others that I could actually figure out the financing to buy it, and overcome other problems as they arose (septic service, for example). It was less about the cottage, and more about proving myself to others who were interested in the process, so I am left with some mixed emotions. Having bought the place, I now have to do the work to prove that the vision I had many years ago is real. And that’s something that will undoubtedly be found in following posts. For now, I’m off to the island….

May 21: I sold my beloved Honda VFR motorcycle this morning. I’ve been riding bikes for 45 years and owned her for 18 of them.  She was the last in a long line of machines that extends back to the 1967 Yamaha 100 Twin that was my first bike. In the interim there have been larger Yamahas, Hondas, a BMW and a Moto Guzzi. I’ve enjoyed them all – some more than others – but the time has come to step back from riding.

I was extremely fortunate to spend the last three pre-COVID summers riding in Europe. Those days are unforgettable, but with the on-going pandemic, it is not something I will be doing again any time soon. In the absence of those protracted adventures, I’ve been riding less and less here at home. I know that my riding skills have significantly diminished.

There is an axiom which says that a motorcycle is a rolling physics experiment. The wheels are essentially two large gyroscopes linked by a motor and chassis. Like any gyroscope, when in motion a motorcycle wants to do nothing more than remain upright and go in a straight line. Even a simple action like turning a bike requires a special skill set or the physics experiment will end badly. Turn into a right hand highway on-ramp by pushing the handlebar to the left. If you turn too sharply, open the throttle. This increases speed and expands the radius of the turn. If you find you are not turning sharply enough, roll off the gas and the bike will fall into the corner and the radius of the turn will diminish.

These skills, and many others, have to be ingrained. In an emergency, a rider can’t be trying to recall whether to push or pull the handlebar to swerve. This brings us to another axiom: There are two types of motorcyclists: those who have crashed, and those that are about to crash.

At some point, whether through our own foolishness or lack of skill, the laws of physics assert themselves. The crash you encounter may not be of your own making.  Roughly 65% of motorcycle crashes are caused by another vehicle failing to yield right of way to the motorcycle – typically by turning left directly in front of a bike passing through an intersection –  and about 30% of crashes are the fault of the rider. These include causes like failing to negotiate a turn (through too much speed or too little skill).

In the last four decades of riding, I’ve had several low speed tip-overs that did little damage to anything other than my ego. My one bad crash involved hitting a patch of gasoline or anti-freeze on Highway 11 and leaving the road at about 100 KM/H. I felt the front wheel tuck under the bike, and after that, not much else. I emerged with a broken collarbone and a wad of parts that resembled a Yamaha FJ1100. It might have been so much worse, so I count myself as very fortunate.

It’s certainly been emotionally difficult to sell the VFR and not ride “for one more year”. Motorcycling will always be a part of me. But I know in my heart that I do not ride with the skill I once did. The thought of a serious injury at this point in my life is alarming, and, to a certain extent, I feel like I have beaten the odds. I would prefer to hang up my helmet now and enjoy my memories of two-wheeled adventures rather than look back with regret in a year. Or two.

May 7: Determined reader(s) will recall that I have “declared Spring” since starting this site in 2015. The date for Spring’s arrival has fluctuated with the change in weather but is usually around the third week in May. This year, we had a nice warm and dry April which seemed to encourage early bud growth on many plants. Unfortunately that was followed by a period of cooler and wetter weather which feels distinctly un-Spring-like to me.

In spite of all that, many of the early plants are have blossomed or are well underway. Among them is the Saucer Magnolia at the end of the street that I use to gauge the arrival of Spring. It’s now in full bloom, so notwithstanding the cool and damp conditions, I think we can conclude that Spring has arrived.

At this time last year, I was concerned that the suddenly warmer and more welcoming weather would encourage people to abandon their self-isolation against COVID. As it turned out, there was a solid decline in the pandemic through the later part of Spring and into Summer. Unfortunately, after that lull, things got deadly serious and the third wave descended on us all.

I’ve been pretty much locked in since that time. So I find it difficult to truly appreciate the hopefulness and rebirth that characterizes Spring. Sure it’s warm and pretty and welcome. But the pandemic is far from over, and Spring feels tenuous and tentative this year. So many of the gains we’ve made can be undone by people who are careless or unthinking.  I hope that I am wrong and that we will all have that spectacular Summer we all deserve after so long in isolation. Only time will tell.

April 23: I am a child of privilege. In the great coin-toss of conception, I was granted perhaps the greatest privilege of all: I was born male. I was raised in a solid family in a quiet neighbourhood. I went to good schools and was surrounded by classmates and friends who were positive roll-models. I got a post-secondary education and got a job in the public sector. It gave me job security, a good wage, health-care benefits and a pension. My parents provided me with financial security and a mortgage to buy my first house. When they died, an inheritance provided the wherewithal to live an extremely comfortable life with many benefits I would not otherwise afford. Now retired, I live in a 2 bedroom apartment in central Toronto. It’s been renovated and gives me more space than I really need. The neighbourhood is extremely well-off and full of people just like me.

Across the street is a Valu-Mart supermarket. It’s part of the Loblaw empire and it provides most of the convenience shopping for the neighbourhood. I worked my first full-time job in that store, putting cans on the shelf for $86 a week take-home (about $650 in 2021 dollars). It didn’t take long for me to figure out that unless I got motivated to improve the situation, this job would become a dead-end. With the privilege of my background, I had options. Others were not so fortunate and today, front-line grocery workers bear the brunt of COVID infections with minimal protections in place.

Of all the impacts arising from the pandemic, surely one of the most corrosive is the continued entrenchment of privilege at the disadvantage of those who are less fortunate.  This has been aided and abetted by governments and corporations that are run by and for those of us with privilege. In spite of recent improvements, the vast majority of those in public office continue to be white, middle-class males. They govern for people just like them: well-connected, well-off men who are mostly well-insulated from the sort of difficulties many families face every day.

Doug Ford comes from a “political dynasty” begun by his Father. Like me, I don’t think he’s ever missed a meal unless by choice, and I doubt he has much experience schlepping kids to the daycare. His government has consistently made “political” decisions, choosing to placate citizens and corporations rather than implementing stronger measures that have consistently been recommended by health-care professionals. The clear effect of his confused and inept response has been to benefit those like himself, at the expense of those less well-off and able to protect themselves because they work indoors, in crowded environments, and live in large, multi-generational families. Most of these folks await a vaccination to protect themselves while I live alone, shop once a week, and have had vaccination for 2 weeks.

Justin Trudeau – a child of privilege if there ever was one – hasn’t done much better. Faced with a staggering economy at the outset of the pandemic, his government provided income supports for those affected by the shutdown. This was perhaps laudable at the time, but the benefit targeted the wrong people. The outcome was that personal savings in Canada, which averaged 7.74 percent from 1961 until 2020, reached an all time high of 28.20 percent in the second quarter of 2020. Families that clearly didn’t need any help benefitted, while others continue to struggle to make ends meet.

A benefit widely recommended by health care advisors is a wage supplement that would pay workers for time off to get tested, to isolate, or to recover from COVID infections. This appears to be  shared responsibility of the Provinces and the Federal government yet neither is in any rush to fix it because those most affected live in racialized communities and have little political power. They are not like us.

Privileged members of Canada’s Corporate sector have also fared very well during the pandemic. Last week we learned that executives at Chartwell Homes voted themselves significant pay hikes. To quote the Globe and Mail: “The company said it responded effectively to the COVID-19 pandemic and gave itself perfect scores for employee engagement, customer satisfaction and its reputation with the public. The corporate scorecard meant Chartwell paid out bonuses a higher level of its target goals than it did in 2019. Chartwell paid all four of its top executives in excess of $1-million, and each of the four received bigger bonuses than in 2019, when they served in lesser roles.”

A report by Press Progress (January 21,2021) noted that “in December, CBC News reported Chartwell Homes had 4.6 deaths per 100 beds, among the highest average death rates in Canada. While that was lower than some other for-profit LTC companies, it’s significantly above the municipally-owned average of 1.4. The Ontario government’s Science Advisory Table acknowledges “ownership” is a factor driving the conditions that increase deaths. Other experts note the drive for profits in private healthcare can push companies to understaff and crowd facilities, increasing profits at the risk of health. In the case of Chartwell’s 23 Ontario for-profit homes, only three managed to clear 2020 without any non-compliance orders. The remainder averaged 4.3 orders per home, with some accounting for significantly more.”

As a reminder, former-Premier Mike Harris is a member of the Chartwell board. As Premier, he facilitated the transfer of Long Term Care homes to private entities on a for-profit basis. He reportedly holds almost $6 million in company shares and was granted $223,000 in fees last year for attending corporate meetings. At one of those meetings, the Chartwell board rejected a shareholder initiative to explore creating a “living wage” for employees calling it an “inefficient use of resources” and an “over-simplification”. A wage that would provide sufficient funds to support a family in the community would “oversimplify the process used to set compensation and restrict its competitive flexibility.” So the company has the flexibility to pay only a minimum wage to its’ employees, provided the Board members get 100% of their bonus.

Unfortunately, where all of this takes us is to a society increasingly separated by race and wealth. Communities like mine are doing remarkably well while others  are less well-off.  Neighbourhoods where front-line and essential workers reside have been increasingly marginalized in dense communities that have become hot-spots for the virus. They don’t have the privilege of political power and friends in high places and they are paying a huge price for our comfortable and convenient lifestyle. If there was one thing that “growing back better” from this horrible pandemic might have accomplished it should have been acknowledging the contributions of all sectors of our society and establishing mechanisms to ensure that nobody is diminished and left behind. Sadly, it seems that this will not be the case. Privilege has triumphed once again .

April 21: I have a standing joke with myself that says snow can’t be far behind the date when I take my motorcycle out of storage. As temperatures soared earlier in the month, it seemed like this year would be different. Apparently not.

April 4: Last Thursday I had my first Pfizer vaccine shot at Sunnybrook Hospital. When I arrived there were 5 or 6 people lined up outside the door to the clinic. I joined them and, after a few moments of glancing around, I felt a huge upwelling of emotion.

Both Mum and Dad died in the building adjacent to the clinic. They were both Veterans and therefore spent a short amount of time in “K” and “L” Wings before they died. I still miss them both. So a large part of the emotion I felt was surely sadness triggered by the surroundings. But there was more as well.

I was also feeling relief at being vaccinated. After the better part of a year dealing with lockdowns of various sorts, social distancing, and the isolation of living alone, it felt in some small way as though there was hope that it might all be ending. That thought made me briefly happy, but the emotion was soon overwhelmed by sadness at the thought of the many lives lost and disrupted by the virus; the on-going struggle of so many people who are forced to work at precarious jobs because they have no alternative; the kids who have lost an important year of socialization; health-care workers struggling to keep up with the viral tidal wave; the communities that were still without vaccine so that I could get a shot and then go home to sit safely in my apartment.

At this point I will simply say that I believe with all my heart that the vaccine strategy in Ontario has been a complete disaster. I’m certainly grateful for the protection it offers, but as I have just said, there are so many other more needy groups that should have been vaccinated before me. They are necessary to keep our society moving forward toward a resolution of the pandemic. I am not. And while I isolate yet again (still ?), the Ford government has decreed a “lockdown” that does little more than delay my future haircut for a month. Schools remain open, we can gather in groups of 5, and businesses are free to welcome limited numbers of customers. Meanwhile ICU beds fill up; our medical system is pushed to the point of collapse.

So there was the emotion of anger as I thought about the circumstances around my vaccination, and sadness at the realization that it surely didn’t have to be this way. That left a feeling of helplessness. We are where we are in large part because of the actions of other people – primarily our Provincial government.

If there had been an earlier, much harder lock-down, I believe we would have had far fewer infections. If the government had strengthened the lock-down provisions 3 weeks ago instead of opening up, it would have reduced the impact of the third wave. In my view, if the Ford government had focused on inoculating seniors and front-line workers first, the vaccination strategy would have been more effective. It would have saved lives and protected our health care system.

So I left the hospital after getting my shot feeling gratitude and a degree of relief. But there was also a real sense sadness and disappointment as I thought about the circumstances that allow a healthy if somewhat over-the-hill privileged white male a shot while so many other more deserving citizens wait their turn.

March 8: Today is Mum’s Birthday. Had she lived this long, she would have been 99 years old. And she was just about stubborn enough to do it. In celebration of the day, I went to the store and bought a small pot of Hyacinth.

These are wonderful little flowers that fill the room with their scent. When she lived with Dad at Briton House, I would take them a little pot of spring flowers including Tulips, Hyacinth and Daffodils on her birthday. Whether she knew it or not, it was a bit of a tradition for me as a way to celebrate her day, to brighten the apartment for them, and hopefully as a harbinger of Spring being right around the corner. There was the added selfish benefit of being able to take the bulbs home when the blossoms were done, and put them in the garden for next year.

Indeed there are harbingers of Spring everywhere these days. I saw a Robin on the ground this morning looking for worms – popsicle worms for the next little while – and while I know that they stay around all Winter, it’s nice to see them back on the grass as opposed to shivering in the trees. Cardinals have been singing for a week or more, and the Crows have been carrying on their long-distance conversations for some time. This time last year, we saw a pair of rabbits in the courtyard, but with construction underway, that seems pretty unlikely this year.

And it has been a strange year for certain. I’ve spent the better part of the last 3 months indoors except for trips to the grocery store and runs around the neighbourhood. Some of those got put on hold when the weather got into the minus-teens, and I felt worse for that. Face-to-face contacts have been limited to people I know that I can trust to have isolated over the last while. But as difficult as it has been for me, I think of how difficult it might have been for Mum.

She enjoyed singing with her choir, and was very determined to have her hair set / cut / permed every week. She was quite mobile and didn’t take kindly to people telling her what she could and couldn’t do. Being a resident of a senior’s home, she would have been under a severe lock-down, and  wearing a mask would have undoubtedly been a test of wills at some point. Chin thrust forward I can almost hear her muttering about how stupid it is to wear this thing ….

So for the next few days at least, I’ll have a small pot of flowers to remind me of her and those days when things seemed to be a little more comfortable and enjoyable. Hopefully, we will soon return to more normal circumstances. Fingers crossed.

February 14: Today is Valentine’s Day* and I find myself alone. There’s an assumed conjunction between being alone, being unhappy and being unwell. I don’t agree.

I’ve been living on my own since last September. Obviously, the first few weeks and months of this change in circumstances was made somewhat more exciting by the need to move and then get settled into new surroundings. I found it very rewarding to have imagined how the new apartment could be set up, and then to actually work through the process of making it happen. There were issues which became opportunities for creativity. A few weeks ago, I finally finished hanging a few pictures and the place now feels like “mine”.

Because of the pandemic, I’ve been alone throughout this time. As I’ve recently written, it often felt that time was without limit and this made actually getting motivated to do things more difficult. Yet there have been relatively few times when I’ve actually felt bored, distressed or unhappy about being alone. A recent article in the Globe and Mail quoted John Eastwood, a clinical psychologist at York University as saying:

“…”doing nothing” means a lack of constraint or pressure. There are no external forces placing demands on how we spend our time, which means we have the opportunity to be fully present with what is happening. It means being time-rich. Being bored on the other hand means having an unfilled desire to be engaged in satisfying activity. It is associated with the feeling that time is dragging. Bored people are restless and looking for something they can’t find. It is very possible, and arguably desirable, to be “doing nothing” but not be bored. The prime example of this would be looking out the window and getting lost in daydreams, which can have great value.”

He makes an important distinction that I have found to be true in my own experience. Frequent reader(s) will know that I became interested in buying a cottage just before Christmas. I made a couple of offers but the cottage was ultimately withdrawn from the market until the Spring. As I wait for it to reappear, I have been daydreaming / scheming about ways to conclude the deal. Once I own the place (at least in my imagination), I imagine all of the problems that might arise and their possible solutions. There’s much work to be done, and many, many issues to be overcome. I’ve spent hours lost in thought analyzing each of these and then marveling at how wonderful my solution will be when realized.

To an outside observer, I would be “doing nothing”. And arguably I should be focusing on problems that actually exist and working toward their solution rather than “wasting time” imaginary and potentially non-existent scenarios. Still, that effort ultimately takes me to a happy place full of realized potential that might exist after this lockdown has finally ended. I imagine a fully-fledged cottage: a glass of rose in a Muskoka chair watching Segwun cruise by at dusk. In that sense I may be a dreamer. But I’m never bored.

* The truth is that we have all been locked down for so long that it feels more like Groundhog Day than Valentine’s Day, but that is a story for another time.

January 18: For several years I wrote New Years Objectives. I was reluctant to call them resolutions because that seemed to imply that you could resolve to do something but then never actually follow through on doing it. My city planning background told me that to be meaningful, these sorts of things had to be explicit, they had to be measurable, and they had to be on a timetable. So for example, one year I set the objective of running a 10 km race in under an hour before my birthday. I accomplished that; box checked. Personal satisfaction ensues.

In setting these objectives, I identified different areas where I felt the need for improvement or growth. These have changed over the years but have included physical well-being; personal creativity; spiritual and emotional growth; and, financial security. Some of these objectives are really a continuation of what has been in place for the previous year: continue running and try to develop a stretching and strength-building routine. The running part is easy; the stretching and strength part, not so much.

I like to think of myself as a creative person and “being more creative” has been an objective for many years. Obviously, you can’t measure creativity. Simply churning out endless numbers of useless paintings to meet a deadline is not very creative. While I attend classes (now virtually) during the school year, I gradually lapse into not painting at all when the classes are not active. My objective in the past has been to develop a routine that provides an opportunity to do something creative as often as possible. Even an hour a day sketching, painting or writing would be a huge improvement and probably a benefit to my mental well-being.

And there’s the problem: with the COVID lockdown in place, time has become infinite. Every day is the same as the last. There’s no rush to do anything because there is always another day. I find this immensely discouraging. I’m not motivated to do anything significant because it can always be done tomorrow. I’m wasting precious time by not making better use of this period of enforced introspection and unlimited opportunity.

So for now I have not really written any objectives for 2021 (although simply avoiding the virus might be worthwhile). Instead, I’m starting small: for the next while I’m going to try to be more purposeful and present in my life. Take more opportunities as they come and focus on actually doing some new things to distract from the day-to-day sameness we all face. A step in the right direction. And who knows ? In time I might actually find the time to write some objectives for the rest of the year. You know: that time when we can go outside again.