Walking to Meadowbrook Golf Course, 14 March 2025

This was a week ago. Fresh spring air, +3C, and the imminent arrival of the first day of spring. Birds singing.

Snow on 20 March 2013

 

"We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1872-1906

Paul Laurence Dunbar

 

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,--
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
            We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
            We wear the mask!

Think like an Immigrant

 

Newly arrived immigrants at Pier 21, Halifax, Canada, mid-1950s

                                        

             

The strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialisation. If a nation’s spiritual energies have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure or by any industrial development. A tree with a rotten core cannot stand.

                     --Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

There is something unsettling about seeing the happy, laughing, vacuous faces of the wealthy and their happy, vacuous children; privilege doesn't evoke empathy. For some, the parents or grandparents of the wealthy were born here, for others their parents or grandparents were immigrants to Canada. In either case, people had to work for what they had, they put in long hours of  work to make money and to build a legacy for their children, to make a good life for their families, they didn't want their children and grandchildren to go without as they had. And they succeeded; see the expensive cars in the driveway, the big houses, the mansions, the fine clothes, the Patek Philippe watches, Rolex, Louis Vuitton, and other brands indicating status. It's from rags and being poor to riches and wealth and back to rags and poverty in three or four generations. Material stuff doesn't last forever, eventually it ends up in the landfill, the dumpster, or dust.

So now I suggest that we think like immigrants. These are people who arrived here with nothing but a suitcase and five dollars; they were willing to live in small apartments, several generations living together and being frugal, working several jobs. I am not suggesting that we all live exactly this way but at least we could reduce our level of acquiring stuff we don't need, stuff that we just want, we could be frugal and careful with money. We could remember what it was like in the past. We could prepare for the hard times ahead of us.

It is with this in mind that I wrote a memoir of my grandmother, Edith Morrissey; it is a memoir of her Girouard Avenue flat. I wanted to remember her--she whom we all loved--and so I wrote Remembering Girouard Avenue. My grandmother had little money but she lived in a large flat and family members who needed a home were welcome to live there, her door was open; she always had family members living with her: her Aunt Lib, her father, one of her sisters, and then, later, another sister lived with her and also her daughter, my Auntie Mabel, who never left home; and in the early 1950s my parents, my brother and I, lived with my grandmother for several years. The irony of this is that when my grandmother's husband died in 1932 my father told her to move to a smaller place, that family would want to live with her, he knew her generosity and what do you know, almost twenty years later, we were also living with her.

In the past few people were homeless, now there are homeless people everywhere. Now homelessness is a possibility for all of us; indeed, many Canadians are one pay cheque from being homeless, one rent increase from being homeless, one visit to a food bank from being hungry and eventually homeless. Homeless people live on the street, in a tent, in a bus shelter, they have no home to return to, they have no home to return to, no bedroom with a comforter on the bed, a night table and a book to read, food to eat, the heat turned up in our cold northern climate. There were always a few homeless people, they were usually older men who were often alcoholics; and they were taken care of by mission halls or the Salvation Army that fed them and put them up for the night or as long as they needed; it was not an easy life but it was not as widespread as it is now. Now, the homeless are everywhere and they include young people. What family did in the past is being replaced by government services, and while there are well-meaning people in government we can't rely on government to provide for everything people need. 

I remember two elderly women in Vancouver, they lived a few blocks from where the billionaires now live in West Point Grey in their $45M homes, 15K square feet for two people, indoor swimming pools and a helicopter pad on the roof, a view of the water, and these two old women had a large house but it was getting old and looked a bit run down. It would eventually be sold for the land it sat on, that's how it works when a city lot costs $5M and higher, you don't live in the old house on the lot, you tear it down and build something new. These two old women drove identical cars parked in their driveway, cars maybe forty years old. Here's the point: prepare for an uncertain future, be anonymous, don't draw attention to yourself, don't forget where you come from. Think like an immigrant. 

Driving home on the 13 March 2015

 

"Euclid Alone Has Looked On Beauty Bare" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.

Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,

And lay them prone upon the earth and cease

To ponder on themselves, the while they stare

At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere

In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese

Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release

From dusty bondage into luminous air.

O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,

When first the shaft into his vision shone

Of light anatomized! Euclid alone

Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they

Who, though once only and then but far away,

Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

A walk on 09 March 2016

 

Loyola Campus, 07 March 2012

 

What they did

Downtown Montreal, 1964

Our progressive leaders herded us into some completely ridiculous causes—for instance, that what you identify with is the equivalent of being that thing—this defied common sense; or they implemented policies that were against our accepted collective beliefs and traditions, and they made any disagreement with their progressive causes an opportunity to cancel offenders, to silence us, to ridicule  us, to deny free speech, and howled with anger and derision if religion was mentioned; they turned contemporary art into something not based on a foundation of hundreds of years of artistic expression but on fashion, sexual politics, and turned art into an expression of Wokeness; Wokeness, for them, was the real content of art. They attempted to make us into a society without any moral values; they were always out for an opportunity to impose their ideology on average people. The progressives promoted the worst people in universities, encouraged violent protests, denied free speech, and destroyed the humanities with pseudo disciplines like gender studies, and it’s still going on. They allowed unlimited immigration, a free-for-all of unrestricted and unvetted population growth, and instead of listening to the electorate, managing the country's economy, being frugal with our tax dollars, not spending us into debt, they didn’t care because their ideology came first; they didn't represent the citizenry but promoted their social justice warrior causes. This was a time of darkness and now that time is coming to an end new bullies are taking power; democracy and good government was not promoted or protected by the Woke, and to their shame that is the Woke legacy. 

"Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1872-1906

 

Paul Laurence Dunbar

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
      When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
      When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass
And the river flows like a stream of glass
      When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals--
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
      Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
      For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
      And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And the pulse again with a keener sting--
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
      When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,
      When he beats his bars and would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
      But a prayer he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea that upward to Heaven he flings--
I know why the caged bird sings!

Remembering my grandfather

My grandfather, John R. Parker, with his dog Dean in his backyard on Hampton Avenue 

Considering how seldom I saw my grandfather I seem to have more memories of him than of other family members. One day he told me that when he was growing up in Blackburn, Lancashire, England, he had killed a chicken and roasted it on a fire in a lane; I took this to refer to his growing up in poverty. One day he told me that if you wrap a box and use string, tie it on one of the edges of the box and it will hold better. He was trying to teach me something and now, so many years later, I appreciate his effort. Who tries to teach anyone anything anymore? My mother had many memories of her father, one recurring theme was him fighting, who does this anymore? There were only two incidents of this fighting that I know of; for instance, when he arrived in New York City around 1912 and lived with his Uncle William Parker, he drove a streetcar and one day someone tried to rob his streetcar, he chased the man down the street and beat him up; my grandfather was also a boxer in New York City but I know nothing about this. One day I was driving my mother to Central Train Station in Montreal, I remember exactly where this happened, she said "that corner is where a man was harassing a woman" and my grandfather had seen this and chased after the man, again fighting with him. In the 1920s my grandfather worked at the Central Fire Station in Old Montreal, that was after being fired from another job on the railway, something about having a gun. As a child or young person my mother would walk down the street to the fire station, from Mountain Street where they lived in an apartment and where my grandfather was also the janitor, and she would bring him his lunch or supper. One of the few stories I remember my grandfather telling me is that when he began working at the Central Fire Station they still had horses and the captain told him to polish the metal buttons on the harness; later he was told that he hadn't done a good job, there were buttons to polish even though they couldn't be seen on the underbelly of the horse. He remembered this and told me this story; was there a moral to the story or was it just a story from when he came to Canada.

In 1913 my grandparents' first born child, Willie, died of some illness; it was always said that the doctor never showed up, that the doctor had been drunk. We still have photographs of Willie, he was a beautiful child with longish blonde hair and he was much loved. Was this when my grandmother's depression became more evident? There are very few photographs of her and, at some point, she cut herself out of most of the photographs. Then, in 1916, my mother was born and her parents were very protective of her. When still a child a man followed my mother home, she had gone on an errand to the local dairy, and he followed her to where she lived on Richmond Street, hearing of this my grandmother ran out into the street with a milk bottom and chased the man ready to hit him with the bottle. 

It is only now that I am old that I truly appreciate my grandfather. He had married my grandmother in Blackburn, Lancashire, England. She was two years his senior, she was a Chew and there was a whole family of people behind her, none of them wealthy, but they were people who had accomplished something in life. They were builders, landlords, plasterers, plumbers, or they worked in the mills, that's how they made their living. My grandfather was a Parker, he had three brothers and the brothers, and their mother, moved to Montreal to join my grandfather and grandmother; one brother was also a fireman in Montreal. There was another brother about whom I know very little; he had a girlfriend but his mother broke up their relationship, and the woman he married was worse in some way than the original girlfriend. My grandfather was the only son who had children. My grandfather also had a younger brother, Victor, who had some kind of mental illness and was not able to hold a job. One day in 1969 my mother said to me that her Uncle Victor had died, this was the first I had heard of Victor; he had been living at the Douglas Mental Hospital in Verdun, adjacent to Montreal, and he'd been there since his mother died in 1949. Victor's mother wanted her other three sons to look after Victor after she died but that didn't happen and he ended up in an institution. My mother and I went to William Wray, undertakers, on University Street and spoke to someone there; the casket was kept closed, they said he was in no shape to be seen. My Uncle John, my mother's younger brother, had avoided the whole situation of Victor's death because he was afraid someone would try to make him pay Victor's expenses. That's how things worked.

After my grandparents married my grandfather moved, by himself, to New York City, my grandmother would follow. In New York City my grandfather lived with his paternal uncle, William Parker, who worked a few blocks from where he lived, at the Bronx Zoo. When I was a child I would drive somewhere with my mother and if someone tried to cut her off she would say "I'd like to punch him in the nose", and then recount that this is what her father would say. I guess road rage has existed since people first started to drive. My mother would always recount how her father jacked up and levelled the floors in their flat, or how he built the front porch on their property; she, too, was handy, she could reupholster furniture, paint walls, pay bills, do her own banking and invest in the stock market; she had only contempt for women who were helpless and had always let their husbands do everything, women who can't even look after money so they were helpless when they were widowed. I am not sure my mother even liked other women. She rarely spoke of her mother but she had many memories of her father. One day she said to me, "Did you ever get the better of someone, get a good deal, break them down?" She was gleeful when she said this and it was the only time I heard her say something like this. She was excited and happy at getting a good deal. It was rough being a woman in the old days, a woman couldn't even have a bank account without her husband's approval and my mother was contemptuous of any rules or laws that held women back. 

And now, these many years after my grandfather died, I, who never liked my grandfather, have come to appreciate him and what he did in life. He was not weak, he was strong, he looked after his family, they came first; his first child died and his wife was a depressive, but he got on with life. One day I was meeting my mother, maybe it was in the early 2000s just before she moved to Toronto. Seeing me standing on the street she called me, only this one time, "Dad", maybe I was beginning to look like her father or maybe her mind slipped for a second, slipped into the past.

These are some of the memories that I wanted to remember and have remembered about my grandfather, otherwise they will disappear into the ether of nothingness.

Note: maybe one day I'll edit this, rewrite parts of it, or delete it. 

Rear view of 2217 Hampton Avenue

His upstairs tenant, Mrs. Erskine

After my grandmother died in 1957, my grandfather visited
one of his wife's sisters (pictured) in Bercy, Saskatchewan

I believe this was also taken in Bercy, Sask., and my grandfather is with his niece