BringChange2Mind.org
More than a few tears of understanding, and being understood, came to my eyes tonight as I watched NBC Nightly News.
Brian Williams featured a report on an initiative of Glenn Close called Bring Change 2 mind. Ms. Close and her sister Jessie, who is bipolar, were part of an amazing public service announcement shot at Grand Central Station in New York.
I was diagnosed with bipolar II in late 2006 after being untreated – or should I say treated for depression only – for years. It was an “Ah-ha!” moment that I will never forget. Accustomed to what depression felt like, having only been officially diagnosed with that shortly after my positive HIV test in 1989, for years I rationalized manic behaviour as merely the absence of depression. But it really caught up with me, spending money hand over fist, then spending money I no longer had, seriously considering running for national office despite being on long-term disability due to AIDS and, oh yes, drinking even though I had long ago concluded this was a problem for me that required complete abstinence.
Some well-meaning friends have tried to persuade me to do without psychiatric help. One in particular has severe biases, based on her own experiences related directly to the treatment she received and the host of medications she was prescribed. Recalling how she was in those days, I understand her bias. So as conscious as I am of stigma with people who know little about mental health I also feel it with those who have had some experience in treatment.
However that “Ah-ha!” moment came with my diagnosis. It was such a relief to know that there was something to explain some of my untreated feelings and behaviours. I felt freedom. The combination of a tried-and-true medication I am on, along with “talk therapy”, has worked for me so far.
This first clip explains how the PSA project came about. (I’ll follow that with the actual public service announcement.)
I’ve always been grateful when celebrities have lent their names in the fight against HIV/AIDS issues. I am now also very thankful that Glenn Close and her sister have put themselves out there in such a personal way to help fight the stigma of mental illness.
Unelected Mike Duffy’s shameful disrespect for NDP’s elected MP Peter Stoffer
Pearson
London-area Liberal MP Glen Pearson rightly calls out Mike Duffy in his blog for Duff’s disrespectful and mean-spirited views on NDP Member of Parliament Peter Stoffer.
Duffy
I say shame on you Duff you flabby, blabby embarrassing symbol of everything that is wrong with the Senate. (Glen Pearson uses parliamentary tact. I choose not to do so.)
Stoffer
A milestone
On my facebook page this morning I wrote, “Kenn Chaplin is very grateful for all the 50th birthday greetings and to have reached such a milestone without doing myself too much irreparable harm.”
It could have been much different.
As a teenager I thought I wouldn’t live to see forty, nor would I want to.
When diagnosed with HIV in 1989, and AIDS a few years later, it was suggested that I probably had a maximum of ten years to live. In fact I did nearly die of cryptospoidiosis which my doctor still talks about with a sense of marvel. It only seemed logical that I should accept the reality, with countless friends dying around me, and try to live into death with as much grace as I could muster. What I asserted was realism some friends took to be pessimism. One I think of in particular eventually drifted away as, it seems to me, she could neither tolerate what I believed to be reasonable thoughts of dying nor the fact that my health was, to her, no longer of imminent concern.
However when my brother Craig, who also had HIV/AIDS, celebrated his fortieth birthday in 1995 this friend organized a beautiful, catered party for my thirty-sixth birthday. The message seemed to be to celebrate now, the fortieth is a long distance away.
Even the advent of a host of new medications, the so-called “cocktail” of drugs, in 1995-6 seemed to me to be too little, too late considering the long list of side effects.
So far, however, none of those side effects have been fatal to me. The fortieth birthday arrived and was celebrated by a great mix of friends at the Mandarin.
The ten years since have had a few disappointments and the tragic death of Craig after a bad fall. Dad died in his garden in May of 2002 and the following spring I was involved in a smack-down with a cab and spent five weeks in hospital during SARS. I had a couple of short relapses with alcohol and other drugs, but got back on my feet after Craig’s death in May of 2007. When it comes to sobriety I need to count my milestones in days. At nearly two-and-a-half years, today marks 860 days. I have been sober far more days since my HIV/AIDS diagnosis than I have been drunk. That’s a life-affirming fact for me.
Craig’s death tore me apart and I wished that I could have died instead of him – the usual Kubler-Ross sort of bargaining. That’s not how life works. It’s just too unpredictable and random to be bartered like that.
At Thanksgiving we had the biggest family gathering at home in Perth since Craig’s death. We also used the occasion to celebrate my birthday.
My passion for writing, as evidenced in my blog, keeps me going now. The writing group, which I had been thinking about starting for a while, only came about when I was introduced to Linda Dawn who shared a vision. The workshops last summer, and the group now, are the latest milestones which culminated yesterday with my fiftieth birthday.
On Sunday, friends presented me with a beautiful birthday cake and Linda Dawn and I spent some time driving around, looking at the glorious leaves. After she had dropped me off I grabbed my camera (the link is to a facebook photo album) and went for an insanely long walk, about five hours, from the Rosedale Valley to Corktown, along King Street, over to Union Station, up Bay Street, across Yonge-Dundas Square to Ryerson and finally home. Maybe it was the effects of the cake and a lemon tart but it was only the last push home when I was tempted to hail a cab.
Craig was fifty-one when he died, just four days shy of fifty-two. Rather than assume I know when I am going to die, such arrogance could not sustain itself, I am going to try to live fully as if I have no idea when my time is up – because I know now that I truly have no idea and I am fine with that.
Old pictures tell only a fraction of the stories
1909 - Great-great-grandparents Thomas Butler and Dorcas Radford
Thomas Butler was born in Bathurst, Lanark County, Ontario in 1826, one of nine children of 1819-1820 Irish immigrants John Butler and Alice Warren. While six of his siblings married Warren cousins, in 1852 Thomas Butler married Dorcas Radford, born in 1835, also in Bathurst Township. That’s their picture, taken in 1909! According to a 1974 family history Barker and Warren Families from Ireland** , compiled by Grace Hildy Croft, my great-great grandmother Dorcas Radford was a daughter of William Radford of Ireland, while the Butlers can also trace roots there as far back as 1185 to when a Theobald Butler accompanied King John into Ireland.
Their second child of Thomas and Dorcas, Jane, married James Chaplin but she died at the 1873 birth of their first child, Sarah Jane Chaplin, at eighteen years of age. (This was the first recorded marriage between a Butler and a Chaplin but would not be the last.)
Thomas and Dorcas Butler, who raised their orphaned grand-daughter and a niece as well while parenting ten children of their own (born between 1854 and 1875), were the grandparents of my paternal grandmother Pearl Butler who married Henry Burton “Bert” Chaplin in 1922. Grandma’s brother, Thomas, Jr., died on the First World War battlefields of France on March 1, 1917 sixteen days shy of his twenty-first birthday. I wish I had been more curious about his young life, when I had the chance to talk about him with my grandmother, but it was the war story which caught my attention. More about that, including photos and newspaper clippings, here.
Only a couple of Grandma Chaplin’s five siblings were familiar to me in my early years, great-aunts Bea (notorious for her home-made fudge) and Ruby (who lived in LaSalle, Québec with her husband, family and a very articulate Mynah bird.)
The Chaplin family, which settled within easy courting distance of the Butlers, has an interesting part in the pioneer history of Lanark County, too, parts of which can be found in another family genealogy project McKay Family History: Walking in their Footsteps.
I remember my grandmother Chaplin telling me a story, which I in turn used in an elementary school project, of how the second child, Henry, of English immigrants John Chaplain and Sarah Jones was born in 1835 on board the Pomona Freight ship at St. Helen’s Island in Montréal harbour. (That was one of the islands used for Expo 67 and continues as a park today. It’s also home to a fort, now a museum, where John Chaplain’s assigned station quarters were located. He had served in the Royal Regiment of Artillery in Woolwich, County Kent, England. In the regimental book it listed his date and place of birth as Foxfield, Hampshire in 1806.)
As was common with retiring English army personnel John Chaplain purchased land, in his case in Bathurst Township, west of Perth. The McKay book records that in 1840 he bought a 100 acre parcel of land from Richard Lewis for 130 pounds. His children’s registered surnames dropped the second “a”, a change of spelling not uncommon in those times as a new generation in a new land. There have been dozens of Chaplins in the Perth and Glen Tay area for generations, a name synonymous for many years with a large dairy and related delivery business, no longer in operation. Others made their name in a variety of ways, both locally and further afield.
Grandma and Grandpa had five children – my Aunt Eileen, Uncle Ken, my Dad, and then twins Iris and Lois. Eileen died a couple of years ago. Ken, for whom I was named, died on his thirty-fourth birthday, about five months before I was born. He was married and the father of two girls aged twelve and eight. Having entered hospital for a hernia operation, he died of a blood clot on the day he was supposed to have been released. There seems little doubt that today’s routine blood-thinners would have saved his life. In any case there was an almost-immediate understanding between my mother and her mother-in-law that, should I be a boy, I would be named after Ken. (My middle name, George, I owe to my maternal grandfather.)
1927 - Ross Chaplin, brother Bert (my grandfather) and Pearl (my grandmother) holding my Dad, Arnold, with Ken and Eileen in front
Not too far away from Glen Tay, to the south and west of Perth, is the Scotch Line (County Road 10) where my mother and her little brother spent their toddler years before George Henry McGinnis, Sr. and Lillian Thelma MacPherson moved into town, relocating to a Drummond Street home where my mother still lives today.
1932 - Lillian (MacPherson) McGinnis with Madeline, George Henry McGinnis with George, Jr.
Grandpa McGinnis, born in 1887 in Sharbot Lake, was a widower cheesemaker, having worked at various cheese factories in the area (Fallbrook, Prestonvale and others) before going to the Scotch Line Union Cheese Factory on the Upper Scotch Line and eventually marrying my grandmother, the new school teacher. They were married in St. Paul’s United Church in Perth on June 26, 1925, one of the first, if not the first, marriage in that congregation of the newly-formed United Church of Canada. Lillian MacPherson, born in 1904 in Green Valley, Charlottenburg Township, was a school teacher who had come to the Perth area from Glengarry County, east of Cornwall and, among the many schools she eventually taught at, was Scotch Line School.
Grandpa McGinnis, believed to have been taken at Prestonvale Cheese Factory
The former Upper Scotch Line School
During the Great Depression, when both my mother (Madeline) and George, Jr. were born, there was a great deal of bartering that went on – cheese for milk, cheese curds for produce, and so on. Nevertheless cheese was a staple in the family and has remained so. Mom jokes that she’ll never have problems with her bones because of the great amount of calcium she ingested as a child.
Grandpa and Grandma were also very musical and would go to house parties always prepared to provide some of the entertainment, Grandpa on the violin and Grandma “chording” accompaniment on the piano.
Grandma (my siblings and I actually called her “Gammy” until she died at age 95 in March of 2000), never stopped being a teacher even though she had retired by the time I was half-way through elementary school. One of the stories she talked about was the still-legendary Judge John Matheson, who presided at the Lanark County Court House right across the street. Talk about six times six degrees of separation but Judge Matheson, known for his role in the crafting of our Maple Leaf flag, is related:
My grandmother’s grandmother, my great-great-grandmother Margery McIntosh-MacDonald, was a sister of Judge Matheson’s grandmother Catherine McIntosh.
As mentioned Grandpa was a widower married first to Edith Jackson. They provided his second family, along with his many descendants, with step-sister Dorothy (“Auntie Dot”) and step-brothers Mervyn and Fred, which the blended family simply claimed as aunts, uncles and cousins – whether or not all felt warm and fuzzy at the same time! Dot and Homer gave us sons Jack and Donnie and daughter Nancy.
A character known as “Grandma McGinnis”, she would actually be my great-grandmother, was named Eliza Ann Bertram and having lived until 1953, to the age of nearly 104, stories about her will be passed on for many years. When I was growing up, particularly when I was doing so literally hitting 6′3″ in my teens, I had a habit of clicking my feet on the dining room floor at dinner. That, my mother (and others in the family if they were visiting) told me, reminded them of Grandma McGinnis who seemed to have the same kick in her step.
Great-Grandma McGinnis (Eliza Ann Bertram) 1849-1953
Dancing had a lot to do with Mom and Dad getting together. A friend of Mom was dancing with him one night and Mom inquired as to who he was. They would dance together through nearly fifty years of marriage which began on July 26, 1952. Their first child, Arnold Craig Chaplin, was born May 13, 1955.
Dad was working at a textiles plant in Perth called Springdale Mills, owned by a company based in Montréal, and which presently closed up in Perth and transferred anyone who wished to go to Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Québec. Mom, Dad and Craig moved despite misapprehensions from family and friends, who seemed to see Québec as a nearly foreign, dangerous place. We, on the other hand, feel that the experience of living there enriched us immensely. Craig stayed in Montréal the rest of his life, dying in 2007, and we remain close with his partner of seventeen years, Claude, so maintain a connection with the city and province.
I was born in Ormstown, Québec, a short drive from Valleyfield. It was October 26, 1959. Lynn followed on March 2, 1961 and then Janice was born on September 30, 1968.
First Valleyfield home of Mom, Dad, Craig and Kenneth Chaplin at 100 Nicholson Street
22 Maden Street was the second place we called home in Valleyfield, and where sister Lynn joined us, with memories of this place much clearer than the apartment on Nicholson St.
Craig with Mom and me
Craig with Dad and me
- In 1964 the family moved to 38 Simpson Street, a home which Mom and Dad designed and which managed to meet the needs of a family of six, with Janice
**The full name of the book, as noted on the title page, is The Barker and Warren Families from Ireland – And Allied Families: Butler, Burke, Crawford, Dodson, Doxey, Hildy, Kinch, Rath, Singleton, Smith, Tompkins, Webster et al.
On the late David Dewees and trial by sensationalist media
Anyone who knows me, and my story, knows that I have no tolerance for child abuse – with very compelling reasons why. Nothing so horrible was alleged in the case of the late David Dewees. While no doubt serious the charges, which led to him taking his own life long before they would go to court, seemed to have more to do with the question of intent and yet something else about all this has been bothering me. It turns out it was a memory, stuck like food between my teeth. The sudden, widely-publicized nature of his death (usually treated with anonymity in the media) was starkly seen for what it was, at least in part – a direct result of the media’s over-the-top coverage of his arrest.
Back in 1985, when I was a radio reporter in St. Catharines, thirty-two men were charged in a bust of the Fairview Mall washroom. One of the men, a Sunday school teacher, married with two kids, committed suicide when his name was released to the public. What also upset me, however, and the feelings have returned with the coverage of this case involving the Jarvis Collegiate teacher, was that the local St. Catharines newspaper, The Standard, was the only major media outlet in the region not to release all the names to the public – including the man who, on the morning the charges were announced, burned himself alive when he torched his car out in farm country to the west.
Our newsroom had a very vigorous discussion as to whether the names should be released – I was dumbfounded but tried to make my case for the feelings of those involved, their families, and the minor-unless-sensationalized charges involved. I lost and, although I was never compelled to read the names myself, I was deeply ashamed of my boss and his it’s-all-about-the-ratings excuses. I don’t remember much about the follow-up other than most of the accused pleaded out and were given non-custodial sentences.
Back to the now deceased Jarvis teacher – the Sunday evening edition of Global News included a reporter going up to the front door of David Dewees’ parents in west-end Toronto for a reaction to their loved one’s suicide that morning. I don’t know how the person who answered the door maintained her composure long enough to say that, under the circumstances, there would be no public statements. That reporter, Lama Nicolas, probably would have asked next when they might begin to feel a sense of closure – a phrase that should be lobotomized from every reporter’s vocabulary. Such is the calibre of journalism in its ugliest, sensationalist form – television.
Late addition: CTV Toronto reporter John Musselman also knocked (very loudly) on the door of the family home Monday. No one responded and Mr. Musselman is now on my list of media cake-holes, speaking of which The Star’s Rosie DiManno – who I will not dignify with a link (but who is properly handled here) – should be ridden out of town along with the idiot there who incorrectly overstated the charges against Mr. Dewees, which may or may not have influenced his final decision.
Suicide column sparks reader fury – thestar.com
Here’s a link to the shallow, intrusive Global report.
Regardless of how upsetting the now-forever-unproven charges against David Dewees may have been to Global viewers – and the same home visit likely would have been made whether or not Mr. Dewees had ended his life – I fail to see any need to get a comment from a family member in such circumstances. Were “journalists”, whether they be beat or “spot” reporters, to have consciences that they might examine they would know that any thinking viewer, which admittedly might not be among theirs, has no need for first-hand evidence that the accused had a family, much less what they have to say. Getting their refusal to talk on the record merely satisfies the reporter’s ego, cementing the already unsettling report in tabloid form, as if the refusal to answer questions is beneath the morally-bereft urge to ask them.
CTV quoted Jarvis Collegiate teacher Mary Jane Purcell on Monday, speaking of her colleague, “He was an extremely good man and a brilliant teacher — and he was driven to his death. And I’m very sad about this.”
Now I only hope that his family doesn’t have to run a media gauntlet during the next few days of such acute mourning. I found it particularly ironic that the Star was selected to carry the notice of his death but the words are dignified and loving:
David James Redington Dewees February 16, 1977-October 3, 2009 Born Toronto, February 16, 1977, died October 3, 2009, in Toronto. Beloved son of Don and Ann Dewees; brother of Jonathan (Sarah); grandson of Margaret Taylor; nephew of Don (Lynn), Nancy (deceased) (Greg), Mary Kay (John), Richard (deceased); cousin of Christy (Steve), Katie (Mike), Jamie, Daniel (Karen) and Robert (Shannon). David showed an early love for both language and music, passions he pursued throughout his life. He attended Pioneer Camp as a camper, then served as a leader in various capacities. He graduated from Royal St. George’s College in Toronto and Queen’s University where he majored in English and Classics. He taught English and Classics, first at Etobicoke Collegiate Institute and then at Jarvis Collegiate in Toronto. He was beloved and respected by students and teachers. He sang in choirs throughout school and was a member of the tenor section of the Mendelssohn Choir in Toronto. He devoted his life to teaching and mentoring. His sudden death is a great sorrow to his family, friends and students, both past and present. Friends may call at the Turner & Porter Yorke Chapel, 2357 Bloor St. W., at Windermere, east of Jane subway from 3-5 and 7-9 p.m. Thursday. Funeral Service will be held at Runnymede United Church, 432 Runnymede Rd., on Friday, October 9 at 11 a.m. If desired, donations may be made in David’s memory to Ontario Pioneer Camp staff bursaries or Toronto Mendelssohn Choirs.
Ice cream (it melts out in the open!)
With the encouragement of Eileen (see her comment after the original “Ice Cream” post) I have edited the story down to the following:
Ice cream
Two of my favorite places for ice cream were about one hundred-fifty miles apart – one in Valleyfield, Québec, the other in Glen Tay, Ontario where Dad came from and not far from Mom’s home-town of Perth.
In Valleyfield the place to go was Stewart’s, a store in a row of factory houses. The shop filled much of the ground floor space with a small kitchen, bathroom and a bedroom where Margaret slept at the back. Margaret was one of the Stewart’s daughters. She lived in a wheelchair due to a serious case of childhood polio.
Margaret’s Mom and Dad were elderly and they lived upstairs. Mr. Stewart liked to help out in the store once in awhile, even though Margaret thought he counted change too slowly. I think it was mainly so he could eat humbugs without Grandma Stewart catching him.
The store always seemed dark because the walls were dark brown wood with only two windows up high but down at kids’ level there were all sorts of colors to see. There was a blue rack just inside the door with the Montreal Star, The Gazette and some French-language newspapers on it. The glass counter, where the cash register sat, went almost to the back. Inside were cigars, cigarettes, pipes, tobacco, Swiss army knives, pipe cleaners, lighters and golf balls and all sorts of other stuff. On the other wall were narrow racks where chips and cheese sticks and fresh bread was stashed.
When Margaret found out we were there for ice cream she would wheel herself backwards to the freezer. Sometimes she let me open the sliding glass windows that went back all the way into the freezer again.
Margaret pretended she didn’t know what flavor I liked and she would ask me if I was going to have my usual butterscotch cone. I would laugh and say, “No, silly” and she’d giggle and her belly would shake in her chair. “Oh, then it must be chocolate then,” she’d say. “Noooo”, I would squeal.
I needed to take a deep breath for this long word for the flavor I wanted.
“Neapolitan, please”, I said.
“Oh, of course Neapolitan – and remind me again why you like this kind?”
“Because,” I’d say, “there’s three flavors so even though Mom and Dad only let me have one scoop it’s almost like having three!”
Dad grew up on a small farm in Glen Tay on Christie Lake Road, also known as the Third Line. His house was made of wood and covered with an artificial brick.
Straight across the road was the only store. (Glen Tay is so small they don’t even call it a village.)
Dad liked to tell stories about the store from when he was little. In those days people who lived in the house attached to the store had to connect anybody from all around who wanted to phone someone. So you’d call Nick’s mother (he’s my Dad’s cousin and he lives in the house with the store and the phones. It was the Perth and Christie’s Lake Telephone Company, he said.)
Nick was usually working out the side door. He had a Super-test gas pump on the lawn and he stayed there and pumped gas and talked about boring stuff while his mother was inside helping people talk on the phone. People say that’s why she knows so much.
One or the other of them would sell stuff in the store near the phone machinery. They didn’t have as many flavors of ice cream as Stewart’s but it was in great big barrels from Chaplin’s Dairy. Yes Chaplin’s Dairy, my last name. Past Grandpa’s garage and past the big white house close to the road there was a road that goes up a hill towards the Tay River. That’s where Chaplin’s Dairy was. Big vans went out every morning to deliver milk to houses (both my grandmothers bought from them). They also sold chocolate milk which Aunt Iris still likes a lot but Mom says it will rot my teeth.
I don’t need three-flavored ice cream when I’m at Grandma’s. You know why? When I order a vanilla ice cream cone and Daddy buys a big tub of vanilla ice cream for Grandma it’s so we can help her eat the raspberries growing outside the back kitchen door. She says she can’t eat them all and Grandpa doesn’t want the crows to have them.
No problem Grandma. I’ll handle the berries with this ice cream.
Ice cream
(second draft)
Ice cream
There didn’t need to be a special occasion for us to go for ice cream when I was a kid. The very act of going was a special occasion. Two shops stand out in my memory, one in Valleyfield, Québec where we lived, the other in Glen Tay, Ontario where Dad was born, near Perth where Mom came from and where two grandmothers and a grand-dad still lived.
In Valleyfield the place to go was Stewart’s store up on ‘the Boulevard’. Stewart’s was a store at the end of a row of nearly identical homes, factory houses, and the store filled much of the ground floor space. At the rear of the store was a small kitchen and a bathroom and bedroom where Margaret slept. Margaret was one of the Stewart’s daughters. She lived in a wheelchair because she got really sick when she was a kid. Mom says we don’t have to worry so much about polio anymore.
Margaret was often in the store because she lived so close. Her Mom and Dad were old, like my grandma and grandpa, and they lived upstairs. Mr. Stewart liked to help out in the store once in awhile, even though Margaret thought he counted change too slow. I think it was mainly so he could eat humbugs without Grandma Stewart catching him.
The store always seemed dark up high because the walls were dark brown wood. But down where people were there were all sorts of colours to see. There was a blue rack just inside the door with the Montreal Star, The Gazette and some French papers on it. The counter where the cash register sat went all the way to the back – well almost, to the freezer anyway. Inside the counter were cigars and cigarettes and pipes and tobacco and Swiss army knives and pipe cleaners and lighters and golf balls and other stuff I can’t remember.
On the other wall were narrow racks where chips and cheezies and fresh bread was stashed.
As I hinted, the freezer was at the back and when Margaret found out that we were there for ice cream she would wheel herself backwards to the freezer. Sometimes she let me open the freezer which had sliding glass windows that went back all the way into the freezer again.
Margaret pretended she didn’t know what flavour I liked and she would ask me if I was going to have my usual butterscotch cone. I would laugh and say, “No, silly” and she would laugh and her belly would shake in her chair. “Oh, then it must chocolate then,” she’d say. “Noooo”, I would squeal.
I needed to take a deep breath for this long word for the flavour I wanted.
“Neopolitan, please”, I said.
“Oh, of course Neopolitan,” Margaret. (Sometimes she pretended it was too big a word for her.) “And remind me again why you like this flavour?”
“Because,” I’d reply, “there’s three flavours so even though Mom and Dad only let me have one scoop it’s almost like having three!”
Daddy grew up on a small farm outside Perth on Christie Lake Road, also known as the Third Line. The place was called Glen Tay. Dad’s house was wood with pretend brick over it but it was big. There was a staircase near the front door that went up to the bedrooms. I always thought it was spooky up there if I went alone because it was dark even in the daytime. Downstairs there were two living-rooms and two kitchens because when my Uncle Ken died his wife and two girls lived there. Grandma had the bigger kitchen and we ate a lot there. I remember at Christmas there would be so many people we had to eat in both kitchens and the dining room. I always had to sit with the other kids which bugged me.
Outside the little kitchen there were very tall trees and when the wind blew they whistled. One of my favourite pictures of me was taken by my aunt. I was wearing a red, white and blue striped shirt and white pants that didn’t quite touch my ankles. Around the front, past the whistling trees, was the front yard and it had a fence with green posts and wire that was in the shape of horseshoes along the top.
Straight across the road was the only store. (Glen Tay’s so small they don’t even call it a village.)
Daddy likes to tell me stories about the store from when he was little. In those days people who lived in the house attached to the store had to connect anybody who wanted to phone someone. So you’d call Nick’s mother (he’s my Dad’s cousin and he lives in the house with the store and the phones. It was the Perth and Christie’s Lake Telephone Company, he said.)
Nick was usually working out the side door. He had a Super-test gas pump on the lawn and he stayed there and pumped gas and talked about boring stuff while his mother was inside helping people talk on the phone. People say that’s why she knows so much.
One or the other of them would sell stuff in the store near the phone machinery. They didn’t have as many flavours of ice cream as Stewart’s but the ice cream was in great big barrels from Chaplin’s Dairy. Yes Chaplin’s Dairy. Past Grandpa’s garage and past the big white house close to the road there’s a road that goes up a hill towards the Tay River. That’s where Chaplin’s Dairy is. They have big vans that go out every morning to deliver milk to houses (both my grandmothers buy from them). They also sell chocolate milk which Aunt Iris likes a lot but Mom says it will rot my teeth.
I don’t need three-flavoured ice cream when I’m at Grandma’s. You know why? When I order a vanilla ice cream cone and Daddy buys a big tub of vanilla ice cream for Grandma it’s so we can help her eat the raspberries growing outside the back kitchen door. She says she can’t eat them all and Grandpa doesn’t want the crows to have them.
No problem Grandma. I’ll handle the berries with this ice cream.
Details are subject to the weaknesses of memory and are subject to change by family members.
What makes a good teacher?
Another victim of my elementary school teacher-as-nemesis, Carl Glenn, has been in contact with me and I can’t describe the sense of validation I feel. It’s like having a friend in my corner, even if we were years apart. (I am also hoping he can jog a few memories about some of the other sorts of sadistic methods of child development that Carl Glenn employed. One came to mind as I was expressing that – he would hit me, and others I’m sure, on the head with the backs of chalkboard erasers.)
I spent a bit of time on this in therapy today, trying to break through to some of the emotions this monster both evoked and stifled in me. It seems to me that so much of my life which followed was influenced by a fear he instilled.
Having said that I was blessed to have other good teachers, both in Mr. Glenn’s school (Mrs. McClintock, Mrs. Duckworth) and when I went on to Chateauguay Valley Regional High School.
Mrs. Erskine taught English in my first year of secondary school and really nurtured my joy of writing. (I even won a two dollar bill for a story I wrote!) She also called me Ken, not Kenneth, so a shorter version/variation has been my preference ever since.
A memorable French teacher, despite his English name, was Mr. Dawson – memorable because he was much more interested in us learning conversational French than being tied to text-books from Paris (or even Montreal). What little ease I have with the language now I still credit to him.
The late Bob Walker, who directed me and a cast of 12-16 year olds in a production of “Oliver!”, gave me an appreciation for some of the classics and was instrumental in a school trip to London which I was part of but, due to his accidental death the previous Christmas, he was unable to see it to its conclusion.
Lindsay Cullen taught me that there’s more to music than a piano (Mom’s niche) and ably coached me as I learned trombone, tuba and baritone sax in successive years (and recruited me for the town band each summer).
History, another passion of mine (hence my interest in politics), was brought to life by a teacher named Harley Bye (and Mrs. Blake before him). They were great for telling us stories of our local history, of which there were plenty, from the abundance of settlers from the southern colonies (now the U.S.A.) loyal to the Crown, to nearby battles in the War of 1812. They also managed to corral our adolescent (read hyper) bodies into a bus more than once for a trip to our nation’s capital, Ottawa.
It was another English teacher in my senior year, Vernon Pope, who encouraged me to pursue journalism. He was former Editor of The International Herald-Tribune and this quiet-spoken (nearly inaudible) man groomed some of my writing abilities.
So, gratefully, my entire education experience was not a loss and I had teachers in elementary school who eclipsed Carl Glenn, but I think he made it very difficult for me to want to learn. All I can do about it now is, figuratively speaking, piss on his grave – but piss I do and, if my therapist can help me unlock my emotions better, I may do other things to just be authentic with my feelings and stop censoring them through this sieve of fear that I use. Actually that’s being generous because I am not always aware of my filtering; often not even connecting my thoughts with my feelings.
Probably more than six degrees of separation
In a precedent-setting case,a Quebec judge has sentenced a serial drunk driver to life in prison.
Aside from the obvious ‘but for the grace of God, there go I’ the court house in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Quebec – where sentencing took place on Wednesday – faces the east side of a park which my very first place of residence after my birth in 1959, at 100 Nicholson Street (pictured), faced from the west. In other words, only the park was between my building and the court house where Wednesday’s drama unfolded.
The tragic incident this case involved took place along a rural road in an area just outside of town where I used to cycle on my way to Hudson, near Oka on the Ottawa River, to visit friends who had moved away while we were in high school.
Valleyfield used to be well known (on bottle labels at least) for its Schenley distillery, among other unrelated industrial enterprises, but it’s not all that often that the town makes it into national news. Why, even international news like China Daily!
To: Bipolar Beat
Re: Which Came First – Substance Abuse or Bipolar Disorder?
I’m so happy to have come across this site, particularly this article, as I checked out different areas of my news reader.
I’ve been in and out of recovery (from alcohol abuse mostly) for about 20 years, now just two-and-a-quarter years sober again. Not too long before I got back to recovery in 2007 I was diagnosed with bipolar II. The description fit me perfectly, particularly as I went over a long list of incidents and periods of uncharacteristic behaviour during hypomanic periods. In fact the diagnosis of bipolar II was an ‘A-ha!’ moment for me and made so much sense of the preceding years and years when, at best, I was treated for episodes of depression only – leaving me to conclude that hypomanic periods were merely un-depressed.
Having seen others in recovery roll their eyes when they’ve heard about members speak of being bipolar I have been careful about choosing who I talk to about it, other than my psychiatrist.
I cannot deny that my symptoms have improved since getting sober again, but they have not been completely eliminated despite faithfully taking my prescribed medications. (This does not surprise my p.doc. who assures me that substance abuse, and recovery from it, and bipolar disorder(s) can and do occur at the same time.)
So my doc is more than okay with me being both in recovery and bipolar. So am I. It’s mainly, it seems to me, some untrained minds who are prejudiced about psychiatric care and diagnoses of different kinds over and above substance abuse.
Autumn Writing Group
Following three successful summer workshops seventeen participants, including facilitators Linda Dawn and me, have signed up for the fall writing group starting 15 September and continuing most Tuesdays thereafter through 8 December from 7:30 – 9:00 p.m. You do not need to have attended the workshops to join us nor are you required to commit to coming every week. Writing is focused in the memoir genre, beginning with the theme Identity on the topic of Place.
At our first meeting we will begin to get to know one another better, discuss the group’s guidelines, fall dates and topics. (There is a sink and kettle in the room so we can make tea or you could grab a coffee from plentiful shops in the area.) Generally, we’ll sit in a circle, first focusing on the evening’s topic, then writing on it using clipboards donated by one of the workshop participants. At the second meeting on 29 September approx. six writers will take turns reading what they wrote about Place, the first week’s topic. (Please note there is no meeting 22 September.) Reading of a previous week’s writing will begin at about 7:40.
We work on the premise that all writing is good writing. The goal is to get stories of our life on these topics on paper in our own words from week to week at home then bring them to the group to share at the next meeting. This group is not about grammar or spelling or punctuation (those mechanics come way down the road). We all have stories to tell. This is just the beginning, so come on out and be part of it!
Where: Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre, 427 Bloor St. W., Toronto (just west of Spadina)
When: Most Tuesdays, beginning September 15, from 7:30 – 9:00 pm
Flickr Photos
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