Prolonged Drudgery

My first year of work seemed to take forever. A new employee at Kidd received one week’s holidays, regardless when he began. Had I begun in December, I’d have received one week’s vacation, but as I began my employment in January, one week’s holiday was all I got, and that single week was hardly enough. That year seemed interminable.

There was much to learn, as well; when I was working the construction end of Backfill, erecting walls and constructing conveyors. But I didn’t do that often. I spent the lion’s share of my time tending conveyors and cleaning up under said conveyors. There was a lot of clean-up too. I was used to that, having spent years in Oreflow, where ore and waste was moved from bin to bin by conveyors, and conveyors invariably left piles of fines beneath them in need of a shovel. Backfill wasn’t that different, in that regard.

For the most part, I worked with Jim Imoff, Norm Cheff, and Danut Ungureanu (Donut, for short; a Romanian immigrant who was hired the same day I was, who completed his common-core alongside mine, who landed on the same crew as me). That first year, there was Dan Zanchetta, too; but Dan quit before the year was done, moving back to Sudbury, eventually landing in sales. I don’t blame him, knowing what I know now. But before he left, he told me, “What do I have to put on a resume? I watched conveyors and I shovelled under conveyors. I can’t see myself doing that for the next thirty years.”

Neither could I. But back then, I believed that there was a need for technologists, and that within a couple years I’d be in the engineering office and away from underground labour, once and for all.
Little did I know then what the future had in store for me.

What did I do when I wasn’t shovelling? I transferred waste rock from bin to bin, and I filled enormous holes, so that the stopes adjacent to those empty holes could be mined. One thing I can say about it: there was a rhythm to my work. Each week, I would man a different conveyor, working from top to bottom, week after week, until my turn came to backfill a stope. There were a number of transfer conveyors, so it took a few weeks to get to the bottom: 8-2A, 8-1A, 8-1B, 1200, and 16-2-19. Below them were the fill levels. Fill levels were the top of empty stopes. When filling, I’d sit at the head-end of the conveyor system, adjusting the amount of cement added to the aggregate, the next I’d sit in the control booth, operating the conveyors, and ordering the batches of cement from surface.

Sound boring? You’ve no idea. It did allot a lot of time to reading. I burned through hundreds of books tending those conveyors, waiting for something to happen, for anything to happen. Sometimes it did. Sometimes I’d have to pick some scrap out of the muck, or out of a transfer chute, sometimes I’d have to reset a pull-cord or breaker. A few times I’d have to clean up a spill. But mostly I read. Feet up, eyes snapping up and down from book to monitor to monitor. Waiting for something to happen.

What it didn’t allot a lot of time to was companionship. There were some weeks I didn’t see a soul for the entire shift except for when my shift boss came to call. I was sequestered to an isolation booth for so long that it was a pleasure to be released into the company of others, even if it meant weeks of shovelling.

Don’t get me wrong. Boredom and routine are good underground. So is company. Excitement is something to be avoided at all costs.

You don’t believe me?

Donut and I were filling on 1600. I was Operator that week, comfortable in the isolation booth, whereas Donut was at the headend, freezing his ass off. 1600 was always cold; briskly air-conditioned in the summer, frigid in the winter, owing to it being exposed to the bottom of the pit. I did not witness what occurred, but I was a party to its aftermath.

There was a block-hole driller across the stope from the headend. Donut caught sight of him once or twice early on, but the block-holer was drilling oversized muck for blasting, and was retreating backwards, around a bend. Before long, all Donut could see of him was a flicker of light on the walls. Then nothing at all. The flickering began again, this time faster than before, a frantic scintillating flash. Donut took note of it, but thought nothing of it. Donut thought that someone was welding over there. Time passed. We had lunch. But we didn’t go to the lunchroom, opting to eat in the booth, instead. It had all the fixin’s a refuge station had, and the refuge station was further on, and we were too lazy to walk all the way there. Lunch complete, Donut went back to the headend. There was no more flashing, so he thought the welding complete.

About an hour later, a few lamps appeared across the stope, their beams dancing here and there, finally settling on Donut, across the stope. They left.

And appeared again on our side of the open hole. White hats. A production shifter, his crew rep and a Captain (general foreman).

“What did you see?” they asked.

“Why didn’t you call for help?”

“Why didn’t you go see what was going on?”

Donut was beaten with dozens of questions and angry accusations.

“What?” was all he could think to ask of each of them.

An investigation was called for. Our shift boss arrived, our crew rep in tow. Donut was questioned again. So was I, for that matter, but not for long, as I was not a witness or a party to the proceedings.
In case you’re wondering, Donut was completely exonerated from blame after the heat of the moment was spent. He was neither found stupid, or negligent. He was found ignorant, for lack of experience.
What happened, you ask?

Slimer, the production block-holer, had set up across the stope from our headend (where we come up with these nicknames is beyond me). He saw Donut across the stope, waved hello. Donut waved back. The Slimer retreated to the extent of Donut’s rang of sight and began drilling short holes in the oversize muck. With each rock drilled, he was a little more out of view, until neither could see the other at all.
Slimer’s drill steel jammed, so he reached across the chuck to hammer it some. His hammering did the trick, but the drill had snagged the tattered cuff of Slimer’s parka. It caught it, twisted it, drew it in, and began to pull and wrap Slimer’s sleeve round the action. Slimer pulled hard on his sleeve, but it was stuck fast. He reached for the controls, but they were just out of reach. He tried to take off his coat, but the zipper had stuck.

Slimer felt his arm twist and then bend and then snap. His arm snapped again, and again, and again, and again, his bones crackling until his arm was a link of sausages.

Slimer screamed, but the drill’s exhaust drowned him out. He screamed and screamed until his voice too cracked, rasping to a harsh whisper.

Slimer began to shake his headlamp against the wall, begging Donut to see and to help. But Donut didn’t see the cap lamp’s frantic flickering for what it was. So, no help came. And Slimer surrendered to the agony that must have driven out conscious thought before it had consciousness.

Thankfully, the drill stalled. The parka twisted so tight that the drill could twist no more, and it stalled. Had it not, the drill would have torn his arm off.

Slimer’s shifter arrived and found him in that state. He shut the drill off and released him. 8111 (our emergence number) was called, and the wheels of rescue began to turn. They saved the arm, but it was reduced to a construction of pins and rods.

Slimer never worked a day underground ever again.

I’ll take boring over excitement, any day.

The Working Man

My life had taken a turn. I was no longer a student. I was a working man. That first year would be a long one. Until then, life had a certain rhythm. I’d move to where I was attending school, I would attend classes from Monday to Friday, and party Friday and Saturday nights. Recover Sundays. There was homework, there were essays, midterms and winter Finals. Then Christmas Break. There was an altogether new course load after Christmas Break, there was Reading Week, and more long weekends. And of course, there was homework, essays, mid-terms and Finals. Then summer employment. The next year the cycle began anew. Now, there were workweeks and weekends, with little variation. Each workweek varied, but after a month, I’d look back and not see any markers that set one week apart from another. And that first year I had only one week’s holiday, the other paid out. I would not see four weeks’ holiday for another five years. That year seemed especially long for that.

I look back on it and see little.

I remember those first six weeks of common-core training. I remember its completion and my joining my crew on a night shift. I was attached to George Miller’s crew, and although George was no longer shifting it, he set me up in a car pool.

Rick Croussette picked me up at 11pm, and owing to its being graveyard, the guys weren’t especially talkative. There was a faint smell of the weekend spent much as mine was, in a bar. Hi’s, were exchanged, and not much more. Almost everyone slept. A couple muffled conversations were whispered, lost beneath the drone of snores.

We spilled out, I found my wicket, and Fern Carriere welcomed me to the crew. He introduced me to Big Jim Imoff, an old salt in his early 50s, my partner for the shift, and for the next little while. Jim was big, hence the nickname. He wasn’t tall, no more than an inch or two taller than me, but Jim had more than a couple pounds on him. Jim was not a particularly talkative sort with strangers. Not particularly good at planning out his shift. Not particularly communitive as to what we were about, either. It wasn’t until we were a couple hours into our eight-hour shift that I knew what we were doing and why. Jim had to collect his tools, and Jim, being a curious sort, had to stop off at almost every job in-between where he’d pack-ratted his tools and where we were working. I stood around while he chatted my crewmates up, no clue what they were doing, too exhausted to absorb much, somewhat lost as I’d never worked in 1 Mine yet, and was still gaining my bearings. When we finally got to our worksite, Jim remained seated on the tractor, contemplating a pitted, cracked half-wall leading into a doored chamber, next to a conveyor system. He sat still for a while massaging his chin with a dirty glove, deliberated with himself for some time as to how to carry out our task. I watched. I waited for instructions. None were forthcoming.

“Jim,” I asked, “what are we doing?”

We were there to take down the inconvenient concrete half wall. I looked at the wall. It was a sturdy one by the look of it, about a foot and a half thick, reinforced with rebar. The prior shift had been at it before us. There were drill holes and collar-marks peppering the broad side, numerous sledge impacts scarring its now rounded edge. There was a ring of bit-sized holes punched through it, most following the rock wall it was boarded on, and more than a few following the floor, half stopped short by the rebar reinforcing it. At the open end, there were a couple more small holes through it, only one large enough to pass a chain through, the other blocked by a partially exposed rebar.

I asked Jim what he thought we should do. He rambled on about drilling more holes, and then how it would break apart when we hit it with a sledgehammer. Considering how it had held up to the assault thus far, I had my doubts as to what our chances of success were. I asked him if it needed to be in pieces. He shrugged, not committing to it, either way. He didn’t know. He’d been told to demolish the wall, not how to go about it.

We dismounted and Jim set about setting up and drilling. I watched him for a while. Each attempted hole was stopped short by yet another rebar. After each attempt, we took turns battering the wall with the sledge. More chips and bruises joined those already there, but not one new crack formed. But with each new blow, the wall shivered and shook. I noticed hairline cracks along the floor. We beat on the wall some more, to no effect other than to tire ourselves out.

After an hour of this, exhausted by our repeated and ineffectual blows, and dead tired from lack of sleep, I’d had enough. Jim had not, apparently, but Jim was a lot stronger than I was.

I smoked, he didn’t, but he was open to taking as many breaks as I needed. I asked him how the wall was built. He told me with concrete and rebar. That much was obvious.

“Is it anchored to the floor?” I asked, pointing out the cracks at the floor. He didn’t remember, but he didn’t think so.

“Do you think it’ll break apart if we pulled on it with the tractor?”

We weren’t going to bust the wall up anytime soon, so Jim agreed. He backed the tractor up to the wall, we tied the chain up to it, and taking up the slack gently, the tractor then snapped the wall off the wall and floor in one piece, all the holes in it undisturbed. Not one rebar had been anchored in the wall or floor.

“Good idea, partner,” Jim beamed.

I worked with Jim for about a month before Fern passed me onto another. Jim was a nice guy. I liked Jim, but I would never accuse Jim of being bright. I wouldn’t call him stupid, either. Bull-headed? Yes. Open to suggestion after a time? That too. Before long, I was expressing my opinion earlier on than I had, and somehow, the Code 2 mine-helper began to direct and, as time passed, lead my Code 6 partner. I never liked bull-work.

Three months after starting work at Kidd, my probation period over, I was Code 3. Four months later, I was Code 4.

Where I would remain for another 12 years.

A Beginning

January 1989

I discovered upon leaving school that a recession was in full swing. The economy was improving, but it was slow going, 1980’s 21% interest rates relaxing to 12% by the time I left school. Luckily, I had a job. The commodity markets were set to tank. Hard times were ahead.

Was it the job I wanted? Not particularly. Was it a job that I’d prepared for in school? Not at all. Was this what I wanted out of life? Not a chance. I was hired as an underground labourer, a position I’d find a lot of my former college classmates had been forced to settle for after leaving school. It turns out that Technology courses were not what they were cracked up to be; we were sold a bill that declared that technologists were essential to the engineering process, the hands-on, go-to data collectors of the industrial world, but the world had moved on, opting for Engineers and only Engineers. If you think on it, I could have applied to the mine five years before and saved myself the fuss. But had I, I would have missed out on an awakening, one I would never have experienced had I not gone to post-secondary education.

How’d I feel about my working as a labourer? Resigned, I suppose. I expected that I’d have to work a couple years before a better, more suitable position arose, one where I’d get to exercise my education; until then, I’d work, I’d save, I’d buy a car and get an apartment, and life would be as life was, rising for work, collecting a paycheck, getting on with getting on. I had no clue what that all was, but I was sure I’d find out in the course of time. But with the prime lending rate at 10.5%, and the interest rate at 12%, I didn’t expect that to happen in the coming year. Until then, there was getting on to get on about.

This is not to say that I didn’t have ideas and aspirations. This is not to say that in the long run techs didn’t have a leg up on the competition. Most of us did finally settle into tech or supervisory or safety positions. But not to start with.

I began my career in training, as everyone in mining does. Six weeks of common core in 2 Mine, my old stomping ground, where I would learn to scale, to muck, to blast, and do perform all variety of mine service.

I paid scant attention to the early introduction to mining. I’d been through this before and had it all down to memory. We got our orders at the wicket, collected our lamps, and settled into the waiting room for the cage. A cloud of cigarette smoke pressed against the walls. Spitz cracked underfoot. The din echoed off the poured concrete, the bare metal bit racks. Sweat, diesel and oxides rose from the men. The newest of the newbies caught their breath at its sharp reek. I didn’t recoil from it. I’d grown used to it over the years. It smelled of Mine.

A cackle from a mine pager announced our destination and we rose with those others headed for the bottom of the mine. I shuffled along with the rest, hanging back with Don Johnson, our trainer, while the top deck was loaded, the decks were changed and we final 60 were herded in. The cage door crashed down through its guides, landing hard with a rattle. Bells were rung and we dropped down into the cooler depths of the lower floors, then through the bone-chilling icy blast of the fresh air rushing into the shaft. When I say dropped, I mean dropped. Butterflies took hold of my gut and lifted it up.

The light failed, plunging the cage into an inky black broken by the beams of a cap lamp here and there, their lights writhing and dancing across the walls. The deep freeze faded after 800 feet, became a coolness at 1600, and then began to heat up, becoming hot by 4000. It caught in my throat as we slowed and then inched to 4600.

2 Mine had changed a lot since I’d been there last. 4600 Level had been a circle loop for ore pass blasting above the 4700 crusher when I’d been there last. It was a hot, stagnant, dusty place. It was now an access level, connected to the ramp, a hive of activity, overflowing with workers. And it was hot. Sauna hot, hotter than it had ever been, were that possible. I was overdressed. It was January, after all. I had worn long-johns and a flannel shirt under my coveralls, and had already sweat through them by the time I reached the refuge station. Twenty guys piled into that tiny space that was designed to fit six.

Instant coffee was prepped and tossed back. I began to chafe. “Where are we working?” I asked Don. “Are we staying here?” meaning in that stagnant heat, or were we to work in a highly ventilated area. I knew the difference, if the other newbies didn’t. Let’s not forget, I’d actually been in this gig for five years, already.  He said it was going to be hot everywhere we worked over the next couple weeks. Although that was helpful, it wasn’t exactly what I was fishing for, so I asked, “Are we having lunch here?” When he said yes, I began to peel off my sodden layers.

The old salts laughed when they saw the long johns left after all that undressing.

“What the fuck,” I said, taking their humour in stride. “I dressed in layers. I had no clue where we were working.” Had we been in 1 Mine, I’d have frozen my ass off in some headings.

Those first two shifts, I was to bolt the first rounds of the 4600 mechanical shop, and the 4700 down-ramp. Equipment rushed past us throughout, belching suffocating exhaust and smothering heat into our already deathly hot stub.

My throat closed off to it, refusing to inhale when they did.

I drank about six liters of water each day. I didn’t piss once.

It was like being thrown into a furnace.

The End, Prompting a Beginning

I was fraught with indecision upon leaving UWO for the summer. What was I to do? Was I to return and complete a degree? I wanted to, but I wondered what I would gain by that degree. Teaching seemed the logical end to a degree in social sciences. There were other options, I suppose; but I couldn’t imagine what they were, then.

The question as I saw it was: what did I want to do with my life? It was a stupid question to be asking myself at 23 years of age; but there I was, asking myself just that. Were I to continue, my life would have been very different, I imagine. Would I have been happier? That’s the million-dollar question. There are no guarantees, either way, so, asking myself those questions now is pointless. Regrets are pointless. Had I really wanted to continue, I would have.

The truth is, I was tired, tired of being a student. And I had a lot of regrets weighing me down, even back then: leaving high school after grade 12; entering the Mining Engineering Tech. program in HSM; Roxanne; Debbie; leaving Sudbury; taking so long discovering where my interests lay. Were I to stay, I was looking down a path that would take me to 29 or 30 before I was at its end. And then what? I didn’t want to be a teacher. I didn’t want to be a professional student, either.

Had I paid placed attention, I’d have noticed that the commodity markets were in the toilet, that interest rates were still sky high, that the economy was in a tailspin, despite the decade of greed and trickledown economics we’d just run amok through. We were on the verge of the ‘90s. Recession loomed, and economic disparity and jobless recoveries would become the order of the day. I was oblivious to it all. I was still a kid, still a student, and the real world was as much an illusion as it was something that happened to others.

So, all that summer a debate raged within me. Should I stay or should I go? Luckily, I was debt free. I had that at least for which to be thankful. Months dragged on without my having made a decision, which, in itself, was rather telling. I was aware that my high school friends were graduating, where I was contemplating beginning anew. My high school friends were getting jobs and moving away. My college friends, too. I was floundering with indecision. Finally, in the spur of the moment, without even much cognitive thought, I decided that I was not going back, that I would get a job and begin my life, such as it was.

The only problem with that, as far as I could see, was that the mines in Timmins were not hiring. And that I was terrified of the prospect of moving away. No safety nets. Starting over again from scratch. Apartment hunting. Furniture buying. Moving expenses. Learning to navigate another community, this time without anyone there that I knew. I suppose my father exerted a little moral suasion in the job market again. I suppose he wasn’t enthused about the prospect for my moving away, either.

When I applied for full-time employment at Kidd, I was informed that I’d have to wait six months before returning, as I’d been hired on as a summer student, on the pretense that I’d be returning to school. If I weren’t, I had taken a job from a “real” student and that there was a penalty to pay for that. The Dome, and the other mines I’d applied to hadn’t responded to my applications at all.

So, I settled in for a wait, telling myself that I could apply for part-time positions and see what would happen with Kidd in six months; if they didn’t hire me I could always head back to school, or steal my daddy’s cure and make a living out of playing pool, etc. There was always that in my back pocket. I was secretly hoping then that exactly that would happen; school, that is. The prospect of working for the rest of my life was horrifying, now that I’d committed to it.

I found a job. Not a full-time job; a part-time labour job with ERG Resources, a division of Giant Resources, reclaiming tailings. Less mill work than field work, I was to man water cannons and pumps away from the mill, cutting away at old mine tailings for reprocessing. We’d left a lot of gold in the tailings in the old days, fully 40% of it unrecovered, and with gold prices surging in the ongoing recession, it was worth the cost of a mill to do just that.

It was boring work. I thought it pointless at the time. Okay, it was not pointless. It did serve a purpose. But it did not engage my mind much. I worked in a heated booth, recording a limited pattern into the unit for replay, and watched it cut away at the tailings for about 15 minutes, and then I reprogrammed the unit again. I read a lot in between. I could have operated the unit manually continuously, but I’d have rather cut my wrists.

There was more to the job than that. I did perform other jobs on occasion, like manning the screens, pulling off the scrap that was exposed on a shaker feeder. At other times, I helped out at the mill. My shift boss was adamant that I not waste the company’s time sitting with the operator, so he instructed me to wipe down the handrails. I was also told not to stray too far from the mill operator, either, in case he had need of me. He did one time. He told me to climb a certain ladder already in place and open a gate valve, wait 20 minutes, and then close it. Why? I had no idea, but that’s what he asked me to do, so I was off to do just that. The ladder was leaning against the pipe the valve fed, fully 20 feet above the floor. It took me 20 minutes to open, all the while expecting to fall off the ladder to the floor. Once I did open it fully, I began to close it without waiting the extra 20 minutes; it had taken me so long to open, I was sure it didn’t need to be open much longer. My task complete, I returned to the operator’s booth, where I was told that was good enough, and to put my feet up and not to bother with cleaning handrails anymore, because that was stupid. So I slept, instead.

The worse shift, the most pointless shift, was when we (myself and another part-timer and a contractor) were instructed to hose a thick spill of gold-bearing carbon into a pump leading to the “carbon-in-leach” cycle. Someone had already begun to do just that the shift before us, but there were three of us and only one hose. We set about getting more hoses and connecting them, and as each was, we began. Every 20 minutes the surge tank exceeded its capacity and overflowed, much like a geyser. The walled-in retaining area began to fill and we were forced to race for higher ground, a high rung on a ladder, in this case. We noticed that there were a lot of ladders about, each propped up against a tank. We tried using one hose less after each spill. Finally, we ceased using any hoses at all and waited out the expected 20 minutes. The tank overflowed yet again, without our having contributed to its capacity.
“This is stupid,” I declared.

I set about looking for a comfortable perch. I collected burlap and created a nest just above the high-water mark. I set my now unused hose next to me and nestled in with a book, keeping an eye out for my foreman. The others tried to work for a couple more spills, until they too were convinced of the futility of our task. So long as too many water cannons were operating in the field, there would be a spill every 20 minutes, regardless what we did.

Kidd called a couple months later, offering me employment in January. I accepted. Days later, ERG served me my layoff notice, about two weeks before Christmas.

The question of whether I’d be returning to university had been made.

I was 24-years-old. I didn’t know it just then, but the beginning of the rest of my life had been laid out before me.

The End of the Beginning

If there’s one thing everyone learns, it’s that all things end, nothing lasts forever. This includes school. There is a progression, suggesting that there will always be more: grade school leads to middle-school, middle-school to high school, high school to postsecondary, be that trade school, college, or university. It’s a dizzying succession that leads on forever, or so it seems at the time. So many years, so many people.

I’d been fortunate in my companions along the way, both domestic and foreign.

I’m surprised at the number of “foreign” people in my life, the first being Tony Siball. I don’t know if Tony could be categorized as “foreign,” but he was from Jamaica, or at least his father was. Tony never had an accent, so he was probably from Toronto, and not Jamaica at all. But he was black, so he was certainly foreign to these parts. He was the first black person I’d ever met. He was curious insomuch as his skin was a different colour, but he was just a kid, and I was a kid, and we were in the same grade. He liked to play, and I liked to play, and that’s about as far as my thoughts went at that time. Tony was Tony. His skin colour didn’t matter a whit.

Once I left Pinecrest and began attending St. Theresa, there were Natives, specifically John. John was shy. John was quiet. Aside from that, I liked John. He smiled a lot. But John went back up the coast before the year was up, and I never saw him again.

I met Renato Romey in high school. Renato began life in the Philippines, and never lost his accent so long as I knew him.

In college, both in Haileybury and in Cambrian, there were a number of African students. I only knew them in passing; they hung out with one another, generally, keeping to themselves, speaking their mother tongue often, English when needed. I recall our having to make presentations (it didn’t matter on what, so long as we were able to speak in front of the class for about 15 minutes), so one of the Africans chose to lecture us on the life of Bob Marley, his revolutionary music, and his love of the sacred Rastafarian herb. Naïve as I was, I had no idea that they’d heard of Bob Marley in Africa; obviously they had. But love of Bob’s music broke the ice, and allowed we Canadians and they Africans to begin to bridge what had been until then, a fairly wide gap. They never became friends, but from that point on we never shied away from sharing a lunch table.

And finally, there was Jak Yassar Ninio. Turkish and Jewish, Jak was quiet, and a bit effeminate by North American standards. But Jak was not North American, and as I had no reference as to how Turkish men acted, I thought Jak was gay. I could not be further from the mark. Jak’s girlfriend was gorgeous, so beautiful she might have been a supermodel. And Jak’s girlfriend slept over, and slept over often.

And then there was Matt Hait. Even though Matt was from Toronto, he was in many ways as foreign to me as any of those others. Until I met Matt, I had little exposure to Torontonians. To be clear, I know, and knew, people are people and you’d be hard pressed to find two who are completely alike, regardless how close or far apart they may have grown up, but for the most part, I thought Ontarians were Ontarians, and thought little of it. But Matt’s Torontonian perspective, and my Northern one, were rather different. His level of urban maturity dwarfed mine. And though he never belittled my naivety, he did chuckle about my being from the sticks, on occasion.

Matt was wilder than me. When he was drinking. Sober, he was a diligent student, achieving far better marks than I usually did. He was far less constrained by perceived responsibility and duty, and really didn’t think much about decorum. In his world view, it didn’t matter what people saw, heard or thought; because you were likely to never see them ever again. That could lead to rather startling behavior. One might say destructive, evil behavior. And anarchy. Surprising for an Economics major. I’d have expected him to be buttoned dawn and straight laced.

Matt liked punk music. Not like I liked punk. I liked punk that bordered on New Wave. Matt liked his with an edge, nihilistic. Matt liked the violence of a mosh pit. Matt would pop Ecstasy. Matt could then party until the sun came up, writhing to the beat at an afterhours rave.

I was invited to a party by an acquaintance in 1^st year Economics. He introduced himself to me early on, noting my thinning hair. He swept his hat off and said, “Hey man, you’re bald, too!” That really didn’t win him any points with me then. But he was persistent. He’d park himself beside me in the Spoke (the cafeteria) when he’d spot me, insist we pair up in study groups and such. He was a Frat boy. Older than his roommates, so he was eager for a friend his own age. But he was angry and bitter. That annoyed me. I had a lot of anger in me, but I wasn’t that negative. At least I thought I wasn’t then, but I probably was. When Matt heard I was invited to a party at a Frat house, he lobbied me to accept, and he wanted to come. I did. We did.

Their house was older, and more opulent than ours. They had a full-sized billiards table in their rumpus room. We didn’t have a rumpus room. We had a 13-inch colour TV in our living room. I didn’t know anyone there except the one, so I never actually relaxed. We’d also only arrived with a limited amount of beer, owing to our having to carry it on the bus.

We stuck around for a couple hours, largely ignored by the Frat boys and Sorority girls. That pissed Matt off, so we left, drinking our last couple beers on the walk home under the heat of the starlit canopy. That’s when Matt revealed that he’d pocketed four billiard balls on the way out. We pitched them down the street, watching them bounce and roll and roll until they faded from site.

End Run

It was an eventful year. I had become a good student. Attentive. Retentive. I’d found subjects I liked, courses that interested me. But I wasn’t sure where following that road would lead me, except as a teacher. I never really liked being an instructor at the pool. I wasn’t sure I had the knack for it.

There was also an age thing. I was 22, going on 23, and I was losing my hair, making me look older than I was, I suppose. I tried meeting other students, other people in my classes, those people I habitually ran into, but nothing really took.

Matt Hait and I went to a few parties, but there were a lot of Frats and Sororities in attendance. It would have been easier to breach a phalanx than break through those closed ranks, boys and girls alike. This is not to say that I didn’t try. There was a cute blonde at one, and I did make a whole-hearted attempt to get her name, to break the ice, and hopefully get her number; but she begged off, tossed off some feeble excuse about needed to go grocery shopping, and fled with her girlfriends. I wanted to leave. Matt wanted to stay.

“Seriously, man,” I said, “what IS the point? You’re not doing any better than I am.”

He had to agree. We polished off our beers, went downtown, double-fisted Souvlaki street meat, and prowled attic punk bars.

I’d made a feeble attempt at wooing Sharon Martin, Garry’s sister. I’d always thought she was cute, and as we were both in London, I thought I might give her a shot. I asked her out a few times, and though she always accepted, it always turned into a “group” date. It turned out that her friend had a crush on me. I was less attracted to her friend than I was to her.

I made a similar tentative attempt with Alison Tilly, a former Pinecrest classmate. I asked her out a few times, but she kept saying that she was dating a guy in Timmins. I reminded her that we were not in Timmins. We continued to “chum” around, and once or twice I believed myself encouraged. Once, she agreed to come up to my room, she sat on my bed with me, leafing through the LPs I’d brought down with me; and although I did lean in once or twice, gazing intently at her lips, her seating stance was enough to ward me off. I gave up. I moved on. There just wasn’t anywhere to move on to. I was beginning to discover that it was easy to find girls when in a large group, not so easy when one was trawling alone.

Needless to say, there weren’t many girls in my life. I did get a blast from some other David Leonard’s conquests, from time to time. Every so often some girl would call in the late hours to give him shit for not calling. I’d direct them to the UWO phone book listings, and there he was, his name and number right under mine. Some apologised, others hung up in a huff. One was insistent that I was lying. I told her that if she didn’t believe me, she could meet me in the pub, tomorrow after my classes. I went so far as to describe what I would wear. She thought I was blowing her off. I looked at my clock. 11:30 pm. I asked her if she was pretty. She said I ought to know. I told her that if she was that insistent, I’d meet her in the pub in 30 minutes. She paused. I asked, “Well? Are you going to meet me or not?” She was hesitant, then. “Look,” I said, “if you’re not going to meet me, I’m going back to bed.” I repeated the other David’s phone number, and said if it didn’t work out, I’d be in the pub at 3:00 pm, the next day. I was. I brought a book. She didn’t show. If she did, she didn’t grace me with her presence at my table. I mused on how Chris Cooper had suffered the same experience the year before. I, at least, was able to get some sleep.

There was a promising friendship with one of Jamie’s “friends.” He was the very embodiment of urban cool to a Northern hick from the sticks. He was gregarious. He owned porkpie hats, so maybe he’s where I got that from. He didn’t own a car, but he rented one every couple weekends, citing that renting was far cheaper than owning, admitting that he really couldn’t afford one, anyways. One weekend, we were on a beer run. We were stopped at a red light, windows down, Glass Tiger’s “Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone)” vibrating the panels. We were singing along. Jamie’s friend spotted a couple of girls in the car across the intersection, and began serenading them, chair dancing, pointing directly at them. He nudged me, so I accompanied him, lagging a little behind his dance moves. The girls noticed, pointed towards us, and laughed, loving the show. I couldn’t keep it up; I tried to, but I melted with laughter. The light turned green, and as we crossed, they waved, they called out to us, and we waved back. He called out to them too as we passed by, “Don’t you forget about us, you hear?” Sadly, that friendship didn’t last long. Jamie screwed him over, borrowed money, didn’t pay it back, slept with a girl he liked. He and Jamie had a row. They exchanged blows. “You use people,” he bellowed at Jamie when it was over. “You don’t give a shit about anybody but yourself!”

“See ya, kid,” he said to me as he left (stupid really; we were the same age). But I never did see him again, and that was that.

So, no girlfriend, not many friends but my housemates, Jeff and Walter, I took to myself most days. This is not to say that I didn’t have acquaintances. I did. Chris Loreto, for one (an O’Gorman friend who was studying medicine at UWO); a fellow in my Economics class; a few others; but not many. I hung out at the Wave, the cafeteria; at the Spoke, the pub; and at the bars with them on occasion. But as I said, I took to myself most days. Sometimes I hung out at the Spoke, sometimes at the Wave. Sometimes I hung out at the Encore café in Talbot Hall. It was a sleepy lounge, facing west, the afternoon sun cooking all in it. I liked it there. It was hot, cozy and quiet, so many days I’d crash there with a book.

So, I was especially pleased when Garry Martin called in the early spring, announcing his intention to visit. He was officially visiting his sister, but she lived in an all-girl dorm, so he asked to stay at my place. I was thrilled. I made tentative plans, and we did go out, once with Sharon, once Stag. Garry was open to anything, so we hung out for a long time talking before hitting a dance club. Surprisingly, Garry didn’t dance much; I suppose he didn’t want to leave me at the bannister by myself. We left early, and spent the rest of the night catching up.

Exams loomed. The house grew deathly quiet. But unlike college, there could be some time between finals. There was one final outing with Matt and his classmates.

One gent, a few years older than me, began to roughhouse with another of Matt’s buddies, to impress a girl. It did not go well. He was easily bested. The other guy even took care not to hurt him. That made it worse. His wrestling became more than just roughhousing, but he did no better; that made his feeble fight even more frantic. He was losing face, and he knew it. The other guy told him to stop it, that he’d had enough of his bullshit. He didn’t, and the bested boy was laid flat. Exhausted, he turned away. He may have cried. He saw what little hope he’d had with his unrequited love die a quick, painful death.
I felt sorry for him. We all did, even the guy who’d laid him out. He saw our sympathy in all of our eyes. I saw humiliation in his.

He need not have been. Even though he had failed, he had at least fought for his love, hopeless though it was.

I had seen mine slip through my fingers.

Jamie

Jamie was an idiot. Just an opinion.

Jamie was also my landlord that year in London.

I first met Jamie when I moved into the house on Richmond Street. 1500 Richmond Street, or thereabouts. You can’t miss it: red brick ground floor, with attached garage, broad white siding wrapped around the 2^nd floor. My room was at the end of the hall on the 2^nd, in the back, windows to the south and west; Matt Hait had the front bedroom, both his windows facing front, to the east; Jak Yassar Ninio (Turkish and Jewish, if you’re interested), at the top of the stairs and over the garage. Jamie had the basement to himself. Waterbed, black lights, hanging wicker chair, altogether unkempt and tacky. A stereo that rivalled my own. Far bigger speakers. Jamie was a distracted sort, most definitely A.D.D. He spoke quickly. He cut everyone off. Nothing he ever said showed much forethought or wisdom.

I’d discover over time (from his mother) that Jamie has always been an excitable person, always running, never able to concentrate, always up to his elbows in trouble. He’d had a stint in juvenile, only to get in trouble again the moment he was released. The judge took pity on him and didn’t send him to prison, sending him to a mental health hospital for evaluation and a rest instead. I think that might have saved Jamie. He learned the basics of cooking while there, found a liking for it, and upon release asked his mother if she’d pay to send him to cooking school. She was grateful of his taking any interest, so she agreed. He graduated. His mother also thought it would be good for him to be out on his own, co-signing the loan on the house we were living in. I see no ulterior motive here (supressing sarcasm, and failing). He’d never have been able to afford it by himself, not on his salary, so he needed boarders, which was where Matt, Jak, and I came in.

Jamie gave me the tour. He showed me the woodpile alongside the house, saying that we were all free to use the fireplace in the living room, but we were all responsible for splitting the wood and making kindling.

I found he spoke without thinking. He leapt from subject to subject mid-sentence. He was agreeable to everything, promising all, vague about specifics. I soon found out that he lied, that he stole, that he was consistently unreliable. How he managed to commit to work, I’ll never know. He must have loved it, because he committed to nothing else, not even his friends. He was shallow, self-centered, and selfish. Life was a party. All else was irrelevant.

When I mentioned that ROCK and HYDE were playing on the campus, he said he wanted to go, that he’d “show” me around campus (as if he’d know his way around, having never gone), he even went as far as to extract a promise from me to wait for him to get off work. He’d be back in plenty of time, he said. I waited, crashed out on the couch with a book. Time grew short. He did not show. I found my way there myself. No big thing, by itself; but I’d discover that Jamie was never one for follow-through.

A chef, he promised to teach me how to cook when I expressed interest. I was only a functional cook back then. He never once showed interest.

One day I noticed an inexplicable long-distance charge on my phone bill. My parents had always instructed me to call them collect, so it certainly wasn’t mine. I may have made three the whole year through. I was the only one with a phone, and everyone was free to use it. All long-distance was logged by the user, that way we could sort out the bill, but here was one call not written in our log. I asked around, mistakes are made, after all, but no one owned up to it. I already knew who’d made it; it wasn’t too hard to figure out. All of Jak’s calls were to his girlfriend in Toronto, or to Turkey; all of Matt’s were to family in Toronto; and after a few months I could recognize the numbers, they never wavered. That left Jamie. I bought a phone lock. You may have never seen one before, but they existed. It was a keyed lock that you fit in the “1” finger-hole. Once it was in there, no one could dial out. I explained why I was locking the phone to Matt and Jak, and told them that any time they wanted to use the phone, all they had to do was ask. They understood and agreed. Problem solved. I only supervised Jamie’s calls.

One night Jamie tried to break into my room. I know it was him, because I heard him muttering to himself. He must have known I was in there. The chain lock was in place. He inched the door open and tried to release the chain. Have you ever tried to release a chain lock from the outside? Not possible. But he tried, repeatedly. I got up, and sat at my desk, where I was better able to see through the hall-lit gap, so I’d be able to watch him grow more frustrated by the moment. I could have answered him. I could have opened the door for him, and asked him what he wanted, but he’d already borrowed small amounts of money from each of us, never paying any of us back. I was disinclined to. He cursed me under his breath and closed the door lightly again.

Exam time, I was trying to study. I was trying to sleep. Jamie would come in at all hours and crank his stereo. He was fond of electronic dance music and used to practice his dance moves at deafening volumes. It would shake the foundation, it would fill the house with throbbing bass. I’d descend to the ground floor and ask him to turn it down from the top of the basement stairs. Sometimes he did. Sometimes he didn’t. When he didn’t, I’d yell down. He yelled back once that it was his house and he’d do a he pleased. So, I told him that if he didn’t turn the stereo down I would call his mother. The volume dropped to almost nothing moments later.

I heard him say, “Bitch!” He must have thought he was saying it under his breath, but Jamie had no clue how to be quiet.

I yelled back down again. “What did you call me?”

He said nothing at all.

Jamie was a child. If it wasn’t fun, he very likely didn’t want to do it.

Oddly, I became the adult in the house. Me, of all people. I had no idea how that happened. That said, my sphere of control was limited.

Jamie forgot to pay his bills. One day we arrived back from school to a frigid house. We tried the thermostat. Nothing. We checked the furnace. The blower worked, but there was no heat, no matter the setting. We checked the gas valve outside, and found it locked. We phoned the gas company, found out that the gas had not been paid for months, and that they would not turn the gas back on until it was paid; so, we called Jamie’s mother.

She paid the bill, but informed us that as she co-signed on the purchase in the hope that Jamie would grow up and accept responsibly—and since he hadn’t, much to her chagrin—she’d be selling the house when we vacated, and that we needed to find a new place to live the following year.