Henri

Henri and I have been friends for more than forty years. Those years have not been continuous, though. There are gaps. There was a gap towards the end of high school. There was a gap after college. There was a gap shortly after he left contracting at Kidd for contracting at Kinross Gold. He got married. He had children. He bought a trailer and then a cottage. Our interests diverged, as interests sometimes do. That said, fortyish years of acquaintance is unparalleled in my life.

We met at the Schumacher pool, that gross, smelly old beautiful concrete and cinderblock building. We were enrolled in Beginners together, otherwise we’d probably have never met. He was French, fated for Theriault, I was English, ordained for O’Gorman. He lived spitting distance from the city core, I lived out on the northern edge of town, such as it was then. It was unlikely we’d have ever met had it not been for swimming lessons. Beginners became Intermediates, then Juniors, and then Seniors. Most people stopped talking lessons there. We continued, enrolled in Bronze Cross and Bronze Medallion ad Instructors. Our older sisters were helpers and guards and instructors, so I suppose we were both destined to follow along in our sisters’ wake. Such is the way of hero worship. The elder forges a path, the younger following in their footsteps.

In many ways we grew up together. He introduced Dungeons and dragons to me, we shared a few of our first beers together. We paced one another on ten-speeds, haunted arcades, crossed paths on the steps of McDonalds, and reeled drunk together at the Mattagami.

I recall his having collected me after Afternoon shift, closing bars, pooling together our small change for cigarettes, pooling together for cab fare to get us as close as that loose change allowed and still left enough for poutine at La Chaumiere. Some of those rides were torture, the centre lines diverging wildly from the hood of the cab, my mind unsure which lane the cab should follow.

He was the only person I wanted to accompany me on the Casey’s Blue Jays trip to Detroit and Toronto. He endured my browsing far too many leather shops on Yonge Street in search of the perfect leather jacket that refused to present itself, until it did, and I wrestled with whether I ought to spend that much for it.

And then there was the night at the Legion. Henri wanted to do something different. “Let’s go to the Legion,” he said.

I was unconvinced. I wanted to go someplace where girls were. But Henri was driving and I bowed to the prospect of a few games of pool over a like number of beers before moving on.

We parked and shuffled across the icy lot to the rear entrance to the basement pub below the hall. The leather jacket I’d bought was unequal to the task of warding off the bitter cold that lay across the night, pressing the smoke issued from the buildings back to the ground.

“Take your hat off,” he said as we descended the steep stairs into the pub proper.

“Why?” I asked, never having been in a legion before.

“To show respect to the soldiers who died in the War,” he said, “and if you don’t, you have to buy everyone in the place a round.”

I pulled the cap off as we passed through the door into a dry warmth of silence.

I didn’t like not wearing a hat when out of the house then. I was already tired of the less than well-meaning jokes about my failure to hang onto my hair. But I had visions of having to empty my wallet in the early hours of our evening, so off it came.

I took a good look around as we crossed the floor to the bar. A full sized snooker table dominated the space to the right, columns of brass plates etched with the names of members and the fallen behind it. A single television hung from the corner north of the table, dark then. Two ancient vets nursed a beer mid pub; otherwise the place was empty.

A pretty girl manned the bar, brunette, curvaceous. I liked her straight off. Marbled glass behind her, a wide and deep expanse of polished stainless steel before her.

We ordered glasses of draft and began to play a few games. I hate playing on a snooker table. It’s so long. I lose sight of the far pockets when I lean over the cue, and what looked straight and true is invariable off by a mile by the time the cue ball crosses its length, a humbling display of a lack of skill not apparent on the smaller billiard table.

We asked for music, but the girl said that the old guys didn’t like it, preferring the quiet for whispered conversations. We accepted that, although I was far from pleased. It was a Friday night and I wanted to listen to some music. Before long our presence filled the pub. The balls clacked together. We tried to keep our voices down out of respect for the vets and their quiet conversation and their memories and the ghosts of their long passed comrades, but boys will be boys, youth will be young. Our voices notched up a peg or two, and then a peg or two more. We were having fun.

Our pretty barmaid hushed us when delivering our next round, smiling at us while she did it. “The old guys are complaining,” she said.

“Jesus,” I whispered, casting my annoyance at the two old guys, wishing them on their way.

I got my wish an hour later after the vets shrugged on their coats and wound their scarves around their necks. And I got my music too. There wasn’t a proper sound system, but there was that little TV overlooking the pool table. She turned on Much Music and turned it up as loud as its speakers allowed before buzzing and crackling. We asked her to join us. She said she shouldn’t but she did after a while. She brought us our beer. We bused our own tables. She flirted and we flirted back. She kicked our asses at pool.

It was last call before I knew it and we had to go. We helped her clean up and waited for her halfway up the stairs as she locked up.

She hugged me out in the lot. She kissed me too.

And she kissed Henri too. He kissed her for far longer than I had, as long as I wish I had.

I thought about her from time to time, but I was not a member at the Legion so I didn’t go back. The Legion is not a place to linger in alone. Not to my mind, anyway.

Stepping Out, Part 2

Toronto was a veritable haven of order and cleanliness compared to Detroit.

And the accommodations were far better, as well. We pulled into the Royal York, my first time there. My head was filled with the tales I’d heard of Kings and Queens and Presidents, of Grey Cups and horses that ran up and down its long vaulting lobby, and of Prospector Conventions where swindlers were shot down upon leaving the elevator for having done their partners wrong. It was beautiful. It was opulent. It was home for the next few days and Henri and I were staying on for the weekend after the games.

Our arriving in Toronto had split that now newly tight group of ball fans. The Torontonians went home. The others had split into disparate groups. The girls wanted to shop. Their guys were in tow.
So, Henri and I were on our own. I was disappointed at first, but we were eager to explore the city. I’d been there with Matt a few times, so I knew my way around a bit, but that was years ago and Matt had navigated the whole time, with me along for the ride, so its geography was a little hazy. My mind had been preoccupied by the city’s overwhelming immensity at the time. The booze didn’t help much, either.

Thankfully, there wasn’t much need to navigate. The Skydome being within walking distance of the hotel, so that sense of group was lost. We all made our own way to the games individually and found ourselves funnelled up a concrete ramp up into it furthest heights, exiting behind home plate in the high 500s, only to discover our climb incomplete. Stairs steeper than ladders led to our seats, two rows down from the gulls. I looked them up while there: $4. I could see why. We were of an altitude that the workers under the dome were eye level with us. They at least were wrapped in parkas. We were not. We felt the full force of the wind blowing off the lake. It was cold. It was brisk. It had the bite of winter despite its early September’s howling.

Stories below us, those lucky patrons in the 300s were sweltering in the high sun. We spied shorts, tank tops and sandals. I was envious.

We shooed venders away when they hawked ice cream bars. One tapped an offending bar against a railing, its ring carried brightly on the icy air. He changed up his bright happy hawking calls thereafter to, “Something hard; something frozen!”

“Bring coffee!” I yelled back to him. We all did. He did, much to our surprise and delight.

Those seats were crap! We couldn’t tell where the ball was headed unless it was coming straight at us. We saw a few people below us reach out a little in preparation of its arrival, but there was never a hope of its ever reaching us. Not even Hercules could have batted a ball that high up.

I’d had enough after my first ineffectual coffee, caving in to my first impulse buy of the trip, a black Skydome knit sweater. Henri bought a Jay’s sweatshirt, team blue. Both were quite fetching. Both lasted us for years.

The second game was no warmer. By the 4^th inning we retreated to the bar two stories below us where we found two of our group’s number, the two eldest who’d had the sense not to freeze their tender bits off for the sake of $4 tickets. Where we’d thought to duck out of the cold for a cold one before braving the winds again amongst the gulls, we changed our minds when we saw them there and they invited us to join them, rekindling our earlier Detroit comradery. A half beer later, a third of the others joined us. By the 7^th inning stretch we were all there, watching the game on the surrounding TVs, comfortably basking in the heat streaming through the long wall of reclined windows that surrounded us.

The game over, we scattered to the four winds, and Henri and I were wondering what to do. Henri was all for cruising Yonge Street, but I wanted to head back to the Skydome Hard Rock Café; there was a stunning woman behind the bar the night before and I’d taken to her. I ought to have gone with Henri, but the call of a pretty face had overwhelmed my disdain for overpriced beer; besides, I’d done Yonge Street before, I said to myself. There were a few good bars there, but most of the better entertainment had moved on to Queen and Bathurst and Ossington years before. Henri went without me, probably pissed at me for my obvious foolishness.

Stupid of me, really. Girls in Timmins didn’t have much to do with me, so why did I think a sexy bartender in Toronto would take an interest and show me her world. But hope abounds.

Two beer later, seated in a much depleted Hard Rock café, owing to their not being a game played that night, I saw the error of my ways, but Yonge was a ways walk away, and I had no doubt that I’d ever find Henri in all those bars, so I headed up to John Street to Queen Street W and the Horseshoe, making a pit stop at a couple pubs along the way.

Later, back at the hotel, Henri told me that he’d had much the same night as I did, hopping from bar to bar. He told me about the ones he’d been in, and the ones he’d almost gone in but hadn’t. They looked too seedy, too rough, too scary. Had I been with him he’d had gone in, he said, though how having me in tow accounted for strength in numbers was beyond my ken. My rough and tumble side had never scared anyone, let alone the seasoned toughs that would have hung out in dives like those Henri had seen, but I’d always had a reckless streak. I’d probably have gone in without a second thought. I was always oblivious to the possible dangers around me when in the big city. It may have been all those dives Matt and I crawled through while in university. I must have made Henri nervous more than once when I decided to take a short cut through some alleyway.

Keith knew we were in town, so we made plans. He and Laura met us in the lobby.

“Where do you want to go,” they asked.

We’re in your hands, we said. Where’s good, we asked.

He suggested The Big Bop.

I’d never seen anything like it. Three bars in one, and black as pitch. Red pin lights and glow strips marked the walls and stairs, just bright enough to say, “Whoa, there!” STOP WALKING! WATCH YOUR STEP!

I loved the ambiance. I couldn’t see shit, only silhouettes, cigarettes glowing, the undulating sea of hats and heads, and those hellishly insignificant lights and strips. Waitresses carried little flashlights to match faces to drinks.

The band played Petty and Mellencamp covers on the first floor. The second-floor blared electronic dance, the third beat urban rap. Little alcoves lined the stairs, the sweet reek of cannabis rising from one level to the next. A ratty old wingback chair and a table lamp might fill one, where couple necked and groped, where couples congregated to smoke their weed. One music or another was piped into those narrow spaces from one bar or another. I was hopelessly lost in no time. Okay, I wasn’t that lost, but it’s fun to think so.

Keith and Laura left early by our reckoning. They were dependent on the TTC to get them home and had a ways to get there and no desire to pay a cab the fare for the distance they had to go.

Henri and I watched them go and discovered that we were exhausted. We decided to retreat to the Library Bar at the Royal York for one last drink on our last night away from home.

I promptly took a short cut and was already deep into another alley without him.

“What are you doing?” he said, whispering loudly and harshly, unable to keep the exasperation from his voice.

I shrugged his concern off. “Taking a short cut,” I said. “Look, you can see the end of it. Who could possibly be hiding in here?”

I didn’t bother to mention the puke at my feet. Like I said, reckless, oblivious.

Stepping Out

It took some doing to get me off that barstool, despite my appetite being whetted by that small step to Sudbury. Not that I was idle, even though I was. My days and weeks were full, or so it seemed. I was not bored. New people entered and exited my life with increasing regularity. But inertia is a powerful thing. There’s comfort in familiarity, regardless its nature.

I began to feel a void in my life. Incomplete. I flirted some, first with Holly Barkwell, then with Janice Milton. Janice Kaufman and Cathy Walli, but sparks never flew. What seemed like interest was likely only curiosity. My sister begged to differ, telling me on those rare occasions that she was out with me, after my future ex-brother-in-law had become just that, that once or twice she’d caught one or another of them checking me out with more than just curiosity. Or so she said. I didn’t believe her, or more accurately, I wouldn’t let myself believe her; but her words were seductive. They seduced me with hope. So, I decided to try. But when I did pursue them there was always reluctance, an excuse, a sudden illness when time came for me to pick them up for a movie.

That led to more time spent on that barstool, a spectator to all that unfolded around me.

I suppose spending time on the barstool paid off, in time. I won some tickets to see the Blue Jays play in Detroit and in Toronto, plane fare and hotels included. I really didn’t know a thing about baseball. I’d stare up at the screen while at Casey’s, belly to the bar and beer in hand for more than a few games, but I didn’t care if I watched or not. I listened to some of those sad lonely souls argue and debate this play and that, how this player was “due” and that one not, but I was more of a movie guy, a bookish sort far more interested in story and character than the clichés spewed by the fan boys. I didn’t want to spend a week with any of them, so I asked Henri if he wanted to go

Henri didn’t know much about baseball back then, either, but he accepted, and began to watch games while he wiled away the hours at the city’s fresh water plant, where he was summering.

We flew to Windsor for the first games and met the other winners at the meet and greet. We were all Ontarians, but it was remarked to us that we were from the “super-Casey’s.” Apparently, even those from Sudbury weren’t aware how few “poplar” bars there were in Timmins where we Gen-X could gather to listen and dance to the only music we were interested in. Dinner was had, then we were on the bus to Detroit for the first game in the venerable Tiger Stadium. I was of mixed loyalty at those first games. I’d won Jays tickets, but I had been introduced to baseball while in London at Joe Kool’s, the unofficial Detroit Tigers foreign headquarters. But for that trip, I bought a Jays cap, and rooted for our “home” team while away.

Detroit was an awakening. We left Windsor in its manicured glory and spotted the burned husk of a thousand and one Devil’s Nights, as burnt and broken as Beirut at the time. Shattered glass caught the low light, a blackened and windowless church standing lonely vigil in its empty grounds.

I loved Tiger Stadium! It was like an open-air cathedral. We gained entry at field level, the green stretching out before us before climbing back up to our seats in all their obstructed glory.

I bought hot dogs and beer for Henri and me, mistakenly resting them on the head of the guy seated in front of me. His quick anger fled upon hearing my largely Canadian “sorry!” I offered him a hot dog or beer for his trouble but he declined, now laughing with the rest of us.

The Jays won. The Jays were great that year, making a run for the pennant. The bus lost. One of its windows was smashed, but shatterproof, the glass remained fixed in place. We left. There were cops on every corner, baring arms I’d only seen in movies.

We were halfway across the Ambassador Bridge when someone declared that we were missing someone. How the hell could we be missing someone, I wondered. Didn’t we do roll call? I thought we had. We turned around. In the middle of the Ambassador bridge! Alone at first, I watched as the big bus inched back and forth in its graceless U-turn, the distant traffic bearing down on us.

“Any time now,” we yelled as that distant traffic resolved into cars.

We were missing more than one. Fully four people decided to cross the street to watch the game from an authentic Irish American pub down the street. The game over, they walked back, only to see their ride gone when they got back to the stadium.

Back at the hotel we convened to drink and get to know one another better and relive our American adventure. What was the pub like? How was the crowd? Mainly Black, we were told. Were they nervous, we wondered, our heads filled with Hill Street Blues and the like. No, they said, they were baseball fans.

We still had another game to see in Detroit before moving on to Toronto.

I drank Molson Ex, much to the other’s amusement. It was a Labatt sponsored event, after all.

Barstool Prophets

I spent the remainder of my 20s adrift, carried by listless currents that were more eddies than tides. Years passed with little to show for them. I worked, I spent weekends in bars, on the pretense that I was looking for someone. That’s the lie I told myself, that I was looking for someone. I suppose I was, if you can call being visible and available and waiting for some other soul’s current to bump them into mine. None did.

I began to wonder what it was all about, this listlessness. I began to wonder how aging singles actually met one another outside of school, without the luxury of been matched up by friends. I browsed the want ads in the paper. I browsed wallboards in what community spaces I found them in. I found no succor there.

I asked those few single souls I knew and brushed shoulders with at Casey’s, both before and behind the bar. The attractive ones looked at me like I was an idiot. Potential lovers resolved out of thin air in their world; all they had to do was flirt with those desperate supplicants drawn in by their presumably irresistible magnetism. It helped that they worked in a public space. No help there.

The others lived in a cliquey co-ed world. They didn’t have to look too far to meet the opposite sex. They worked with them, and barring that, met their co-workers friends through them

Relegated to hangers-on status, I found no help there, either.

We were customers, not clique members. We were kept at a bar’s width from admission.

The question, as one of our sad and lonely number raised, was how to break the ice with a single woman when she was invariably protected by a phalanx of critical peers. Did we, single men, approach individually and brave their collective scrutiny, in hopes that the one we’d set our eyes on would take a chance and allow herself to be even momentarily separated from her pack? That was unlikely. In our experience, girls did not abandon their friends. But what did we know? Our level of experience had left of marooned at a bar.

And nice girls didn’t meet nice boys in bars. If that were so, what the hell were they doing there, then? Wasn’t I a nice boy? Those who knew me seemed to think so. But by that inscrutable logic, I was anything but while met in the bar, yet miraculously worthy were I to be introduced by a mutual friend. The rules of courtship were dizzying in their complexity.

We sad lonely hearts declared those rules utter bullshit. We were not so daft as to not realize that they were iron clad and we had to play by them, regardless what we thought of them. But how to get beyond them?

One day, one of our sad lonely number resolved to do something about our sad lonely state. He declared that we should wake up and change the course of our lives. We would meet a couple girls that night. How hard could it be? He asked me if I was in. Of course I was in. But how were we to go about it, I asked, waiting. We’d been down this road of deliberation before.

Girls travelled in packs of two or more, he declared. I agreed. Thus, he and I would venture out together once we spied a suitable pair of females, that way neither girl would feel that her chatting up one of us was a betrayal of her friend. That was reasonable logic, in my view.

We ought not to wait too long, either, he reasoned. To wait too long invited others to sneak in ahead of us. To wait too long would only invite inebriation, too. Girls do not like drooping drunks

I couldn’t argue with either point. But as there were few people in attendance as yet, I did not see the need to rush, either.

We panned the room. We critiqued what pairs we did see. And finally settled on a pair that we both found attractive. It all seemed too quick and easy, in my reckoning. But he was adamant. We would strike out. I shrugged, and gestured, after you.

We grabbed our beers, slid off our barstools, and crossed the room. We introduced ourselves.

I could see right off that we were on a fool’s errand. The girls were polite, but not particularly welcoming. Their response to our attempts at breaking the ice were terse, at best. Not once did either of them smile. I felt stupid. In my limited experience, men did not approach women unless they received signals. Smiles cast across the room. A head toss that set her mane in motion, reeling our undivided attention in. A twirl, a dance. The siren’s call. Come her, big boy! We hadn’t received any of those signals from these girls prior to our invasion. In fact, they hadn’t noticed us at all, hidden behind the bar, as we were. No wonder they brushed our attentions aside. Had we introduced ourselves from afar first, say with drinks sent their way, giving them time to look us over for a moment or two, things might have been different. But we hadn’t. They weren’t.

My friend kept up a brave face. He persisted. I did not. I nudged him, trying to gather his intention. It’s no good, my eyes screamed at him. Either he didn’t understand what I was trying to project or he chose to ignore my psychic insistence. He turned away, his attention back on the girl of his choosing.
I nudged him again. Now, he too brushed me off.

“Jesus,” I said, rolling my head in exasperation. “This is pointless.” I leaned closer to the ladies and apologized for our intrusion. And left.

My friend persisted a few moments more before beating his own retreat.

“You abandon me,” he said, once he was back on his stool, somewhat red of face.

“Only because a good general knows when to cut his losses,” I said. “We never stood a chance.”

I didn’t venture too far off that stool again until I met Manon.

What’s In a Name?

What's your name? Simple question. For some, there’s no simple answer. I just happen to be one of those people.

I was adopted. I’ve always known I was adopted. My parents never made a secret of it; they’d told me so, and declared how lucky I’d been to have been loved enough to have been chosen. After Dean was born, they wanted more children, but didn’t want a repeat of what had happened, so they looked to adoption for an answer.

Karen came first. I followed 23 months later. Not exactly; my parents collected me at 3 months, after all the paperwork had been finalized. My Great Aunt went along for the ride. Once she heard what my parents were about, when passing through North Bay, she dropped everything, told Frank where she was going, and tagged along. She was one of the first in my family to hold me, and always doted on me, evermore, always a wonderful sensation, that sort of embracing love. Everyone in my greater family knew, knows, and it had never been an issue for anyone, so far as I knew. I’m David: son, brother, grandchild, nephew, cousin, and now uncle and husband.

So, I’ve always known, and never thought twice about it. I had a home, parents, family. I never once felt the need to go in search of my birth parents

One day my parents, my mother specifically, came to the conclusion that the house on Hart Street was too big for them. It had served them well for years, and had even been added to, constructing a sizable living room out back, replete with an almost wall width stone fireplace. I loved that fireplace.

Especially at Christmastime, logs crackling, before cable TV had made real fires irrelevant.

But Karen had long since moved on, and although I was still in residence, waiting year by year for the axe of the economic downturn that never seemed to fall, my father had not been so lucky. Dad had been laid off from Caterpillar Equipment while I was still at school and it had taken him some time to find further suitable employment, before finding it with Cambrian Welding Supplies. The years of economic disparity had taken its toll, and Mom said that they were getting older, the house was too big for three people, too big for her to clean, and it was costing them too much. It was time to move somewhere smaller and more affordable.

House hunting began. Packing began, as well, not terrible quickly, at first. There were yard sales, open houses.

I mentioned that it was probably time for me to move out and get my own place now that they too were making a change, but they convinced me that it would be good for me to move with them, to continue to save my money, that I might lose everything were I to be laid off, that they still had need of my rent, and a host of other reasons. Inertia took hold and I didn’t leave. I ought to have, but I didn’t. I’d grown too comfortable, and too complacent since moving back in with my parents. Food prepared for me, laundry done for me; a few chores here and there. Aside from arrested development, it seemed a sweet deal at the time.

There wasn’t any rush at first. But once the new house was found, and an offer tendered, packing began in earnest. I found my parents in quiet, but intense discussion over a large brown business envelope on the dining room table.

“They’re his,” my father was saying. “He should have them.”

My mother was not as convinced as he was of that fact.

My father called me over. He pointed to the envelope on the table. “These are yours,” he said.
My adoption papers. I gazed at the old envelope for what seemed ages but was actually only mere seconds.

My father opened the envelope for me and began to spread the papers out on the table.
I sat and leafed through them, noting specific points, names, and dates, here and there.
Birth records: born Grace Hospital in Ottawa, December 19, 1964 to a young woman, age 21, single, a girl, actually. No father given.

I was stunned. I really didn’t know what to say. 

The rest was important and inconsequential. Baptismal records, medical history, church records. I leafed through them again, and carefully set them back in the envelope when I was done.
I saw trepidation in my parent’s faces.

“Well,” was all I could think of to say at first.

They told me what I’d heard hundreds of times before, that I was loved, that I was lucky, and that I’d been chosen, that I had parents. All true.

I told them not to worry, that I knew all that.

But it was the first time I’d actually seen the birth records, and adoption records. It was the first time I’d ever seen my birth name, and my birth mother’s name. Those new old names had somehow unsettled my identity. Who was I? Where did I come from? How did I come to be? Was I missed? Did anyone wonder about me? Had anyone tried to find me? Was it worth my trying to find them? Would they want me to? Those unvoiced questioned rose up and were immediately pushed aside by the next in sequence. I was trying to process; not successfully, I might add.

I was still in a bit of a funk when I entered Casey’s that Friday night. I must have looked distracted and vacant, because Janice Kauffman and Cathy Walli asked me what was wrong, so I told them.

“I just saw my ‘real’ name,” I said. “My mother’s name was Gloria.”

I paused for a moment. They didn’t interrupt me.

“Apparently, I’m David Gary Kilmartin.”

I had no idea what that meant. Was it supposed to mean anything at all?

Buckle Me In On A Highway of Sin

 

All my life I’d been looking for a place, a harbour, a friend, a mentor, guidance. Sometimes I found one. Most times I did not. After a time, I stopped looking. Bleak outlook. Yes. But by my early working years I’d begun stumbling through life, slipping into a shell, not really giving a shit about anything.

I’d received little guidance in high school, not sure what I wanted to do, not really planning for or on much of anything, living in the moment. By grade 12, the realization that I’d have to make a decision about my future was impressed on me by my mother. I was taken aback, looked to the horizon of possibilities, and discovered a blank. My father was a salesman, a precarious way to make a living, in my view, considering the economic winds that had blown him hither and thither. I looked to those surrounding my upbringing and saw teachers and lawyers, construction workers and plumbers, cab drivers and miners. I did not see myself as particularly bright, so the law and teaching were out of the question, to my reckoning. I hated home construction, did not want to drive a cab. George Miller was a miner, a shift boss; Marc, my future ex-brother-in-law was attending the Haileybury School of Mines. I was from a mining town, there’d always be a need for metals and mines, so I made up my mind without much forethought. I hated mining, then just grew apathetic to it.

I thought about a business degree and applied to university. I didn’t care for business much once I was exposed to it, preferring my electives in anthropology, sociology, and history. That brought me back to teacher, something I’d never considered and didn’t call to me, either.

I had a thought while in London. What about the military? Why did that cross my mind? I don’t know. There were commercials on TV. I thought I might be educated enough to be an officer. I looked into it, saw that they would train me in a technical trade. So, I actually applied, God help me. I passed the fitness test, barely. That’s what they told me. They also told me that my marks weren’t good enough to be an officer. They wanted to recruit straight ‘A’ students with an athletic bent, who were leaders in clubs, extracurricular activities, and the captain of the football team, all rolled into one. Would I be interested in the enlisted ranks?

I was not. And seeing how the next decade unfolded, I can thank my lucky stars that I did not fall into that path. Rwanda, Bosnia, ethnic cleansing. I’d have been PTSD had I accepted their offer.

I left school. I did not find a suitable engineering position. Instead I found myself within the enlisted ranks of the mining industry, on a French crew, invested with little training, seeing no possibility of advancement, altogether ignored and passed over.

But I was loaned out. I found myself trained on haulage trucks for the purpose of backfilling in 2 Mine, the same job I was doing in 1 Mine, but sans conveyors. At least there were new guys to work with: Tim Gignac, Frank Chiera, and James Patrick. New people, new sights, new job, of a sort. And driving haulage trucks was fun for a time. Until it wasn’t.

In time I’d saved enough to buy a car, a 4 cylinder Pontiac Sunbird. It was sporty looking, if a little gutless. It was a bit of a lemon, at first as well, always in the shop for one thing or another for a few months, for a faulty dash, for two faulty CD players, for a sunroof and windows that leaked, for a misaligned driver’s door. But it was MINE! And soon, the wrinkles ironed out, it was my passport to freedom. I became a chauffeur for my friend Garry Martin, and his sister Sharon.

That taste of freedom awakened an old wish in me. I wanted to go places and see things. We’d never gone anywhere while I was growing up, so there was lots to see. But where to go? I recalled watching friends head off to the Caribbean for spring breaks, and listening with envy as they told their tales of what they’d seen and what they’d done, tales of beach parties, and bonfires, and of blue seas and Sea-dos. I asked Garry and Henri if they were interested. “Let’s go to Cuba!” I said. Yeah, let’s go to Cuba, they said. I got my first passport. But when the time came, we didn’t. No money, no holidays, no passports.

Years passed. Let’s go to Cuba, I said. Then, let’s go to Jamaica, I said. We didn’t. For one reason or another, usually the same reasons, time and again.

So, I decided to take a small step on my own. I would go to Sudbury. I knew Sudbury, so I would know my way around. And I had a yearning to see some of my old haunts.

I arrived, I booked into the Ramada Hotel downtown. I went to the malls and did some shopping. I kept my eye open for a face I might recognize (secretly hoping to bump into Debbie while there), thinking that one or two of my old Res Rat friends might have landed there, but I didn’t recognize a soul. Before long, I grew bored.

I found myself in a bar in the afternoon. After two beers, I asked myself, what are you doing? I left and wandered the streets downtown, and spied a placard outside the Cambrian Community Centre, advertising a concert that evening. The Watchmen! I had their CDs! I tried the door, found it unlocked, and was pleased to see someone at the box office.

Did they have tickets? Yes, they did. Did I have to be a student to buy one? No, I didn’t. So, I did.

I was flattered when they asked for my ID, but they said they had to card everybody. I was informed that there was no booze on the concert floor, only in the licensed lobby. The band would hit the stage in about an hour, they said. I’d never been in the building before, so, I checked it out. It was a converted theatre, the floor still sloping somewhat to a raised floor before the stage. I retreated, had a beer, struck up a conversation with a couple people who were curious about the old guy in their midst. Then I made my way back to the stage. A couple of the curious stayed with me, wanting to hear more about Cambrian in the “old days.”

The band came out, they cranked their amps, the smallish, yet fullish crowd roared their appreciation, me among them. We surged forward and I found myself mid crowd, mid mosh pit. We flowed back and forth, leapt and crashed together. And before long the first bodies were hoisted up to surf. The curious asked me if we’d done that “back then?” No, I yelled back. They took hold of me and raised me up, their hands gathered in to stretch me out and lay me flat, drawing my forward and back, sweeping to and from the stage.

It was like floating on a precarious bed of flat fleshy needles. It was beautiful.

Life in a Northern Town

It’s not easy living in a cliquey town outside of one. Cliques are close knit. Cliques have stood the test of time. They close ranks. They do not accept new members. So, being friends with a member of one is like pitching a tent outside a walled city. You can hang out with them, but you’ll never be closer than arms-length.

I had yet to realize this, but upon returning home I’d lost my clique. Garry Martin had returned ever so briefly after graduating from math and accounting at Waterloo, only to discover that he hated accounting. He much preferred teaching, so he accepted a temp position doing just that in Moosonee and having done that was accepted into teaching college. He and his sister Sharon and I hung out for the duration, until they too found their way. Sharon found the love of her life and drifted away personally if not geographically. And then Garry too was gone. The next time he returned, he had an older woman in tow. He’d met her in teacher’s college. He was co-habituating. He was all but married. And then he was. And once married, he almost never returned. It seems she hated Timmins. Two visits were enough for her. So left the boy who’d been as much a brother to me as any. I’ve never seen him again.

Henri Guenette and Neil Petersen filled the void.

But Henri was busy much of the time. Henri worked weekends. Henri had little desire to remain a security guard after dropping out of college, and had strived for better, for more money, for what opportunities he could root out. He left security at Aquarius Mine for the mill, then underground, then the hoist. And before long, he left there for Redpath and even longer hours. In time, he too met the girl that was to be his wife, and he too began to slip away.

And soon that left only Neil. And Neil’s clique. And that’s when I realized that I could have friends that were not actually my friends but someone else’s friends.

I looked around at work. There’d been quite a few of us who’d been hired before the gates crashed down at Kidd. We were of a similar age, so I began to try to spend more time with some of them. But time passes quickly with the young; and if you’re not in through the gate early on, you might have not come at all. Those others were in production crews. They saw a lot of each other. I was sequestered behind vent doors bearing signs that read “Authorized Personnel Only.” When I did see them out, they were already a closed group, and my being a year or two older than them didn’t help much either. Nor my having spent 5 years in postsecondary. One’s personal view of the world can be remarkably different from those who’d gone straight to work after high school.

So, Neil and Neil’s friends were where I lingered for a time. Where I was definitely the old man in the midst. Four years older. Out of school. A miner. A Man. Hair noticeably thinning. I must have seemed quite a catch for the girls within their circle.

I shouldn’t complain. They were good years. Lots of new music. Some local bands, Babelfish, Authority, Skinny and the Beer Guts, among others. Large gatherings at Parello’s farm. Day in the Parking Lot at Casey’s. Some newer acquaintances met at Casey’s.

Generation X began to kick in, in earnest. I evolved from the pre-grunge punk Plaid-Lad kid, fading to black. Trainers were traded for Docs. They blended nicely with my Ray Bans, my Levi’s jacket and Donegal tweed. A cigarette hung from my lips most of the time. Self-conscious of my ever so shiny top, I took to ball caps. Detroit Tigers. Why? Shades of Joe Kools, and D for David. My subtext rose. The angry young man rose up with it. The ready smile I’d always worn fled. If most people didn’t want me, what did I care? Fuck ‘em, I thought. I might meet up with them at Casey’s, but I went out alone, most often. I could keep others at arm’s length, too.

That said, I was still very close to Neil and Henri. I spent a great deal of time with each of them. But never together.

Henri and I decided we were sick of smoking and that it was time to quit. We made a bet on it. There had to be a lot of trust between us since we weren’t hanging out a lot then. Henri was spending more and more time with Sylvie by then.

But not always. The bet was still on, we were bar hopping, talking a lot about smoking, and how hard it was to quit. We noticed every cigarette lit, our eyes instantly drawn to the flash of a lighter. We decided to put a pause on the quitting and the bet, for the span of one smoke. I approached two girls seated at the table next to us, both of which had just lit up.

“Excuse me,” I said. I told them our sad little tale about our quitting and how we were both craving it so bad that we were willing to put our bet on hold. The girls gave us each a smoke, and then slid over to join us.

We were a little drunk by then. Me, more so than Henri, I think. We bought a round to thank them for saving us. Then they bought us one. Then the girls had the idea of doing Sambuca shots. I decided to make mine a Flaming Sambuca. I lit it. But as it was a very tall and narrow shot glass I inhaled it through a straw. When I say inhaled, I mean inhaled. The liqueur disappeared from the glass, up the straw, the flame following it. I don’t actually think that the flame followed the booze up the straw, but the fire certainly did.

The Sambuca hit my stomach, and the colour drained from my face.

Henri asked, “Are you okay?”

I swallowed hard. But the nausea wouldn’t be kept down.

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I’m leaving now.” I threw on my coat and was out the door.
I’d broken one of the important rules of drinking taught to me long years prior. Don’t drink shots and shooters; they’re only puke in a glass. When Henri had caught up with me I was power puking out on the street.

After I’d walked it off, Henri told me, “Too bad you took off like a bat out of hell; that girl wanted to rip you clothes off.”

No matter. I was not going back in there smelling of sick.

Slipping away

I was settled, somewhat. School was done. I was a working man, working shiftwork underground in the mines. I suppose I was a man by then. A young boy had referred to me as such to his mother soon afterwards, taking me by surprise. I’d never actually been called that before.

But I was still living at home under my parent’s roof. I’d returned from school as usual, no money in pocket, worked my summer, abandoned the prospect of returning to school, gotten a part-time job, was laid off, and had begun to work full-time at Kidd. Life was proceeding; life was in progress. I was drifting through it, but I couldn’t see that then.

I had plans, so maybe I wasn’t drifting, just yet. I was saving up, prepared to get my own place, an apartment first, a house in due course. I was going to buy a car. I would have my own stuff. Or so I had planned.

Cracks were starting to show. My first shift, a miner leaned into me and asked if I’d just started with Kidd. I said I had, rather proud of the accomplishment of becoming an adult. He told me that I was lucky I’d been hired at all. There were rumours of lay-offs, he said. My stomach dropped. That could not be true! Why would they have hired me just then, only to lay me off a couple months later? I brushed his doom-faring off as just that, but the sinking sensation stayed with me.

I postponed the prospect of getting my own place, just so long as the rumours subsided. They didn’t. Six months later, Kidd declared a hiring freeze. Just until the market improved, they said. I began to wonder whether coming home had been such a bright idea.

Life became a waiting game. I worked. I went out on the weekends, always with the intention of meeting someone, being introduced to someone. But I never did, and never was. Most of my friends were still at school or moved on, there were few introductions, and those girls I did meet seemed disinterested, at best. Even with my poor track record, I think I’d have noticed had someone been.
I don’t blame those girls, my self-esteem was not great; I didn’t believe girls were interested in a balding boy in his mid-20s, so I wasn’t particularly aggressive in what courtships I did attempt. When I did venture out, I was soon introduced to their “friend,” (note the presence of the boyfriend) and I found myself belly to the bar, drinking too much, and staggering home. Not what I imagine most girls were looking for in a man.

There were still a few friends living in Timmins. There was Henri, for one. There were others too, but they were largely other people’s friends, friends of those people I’d worked with at the pool. What of my high school friends? I discovered that most of my high school friends were just that, high school friends. I never saw them anymore. I suppose a good many of them had moved away. I’d never actually hung out with them back in school, so it’s not surprising that I’d lost touch with them.

For a time, there were my old pool friends, and their friends. But where once we were all just visiting, I was now the one being visited. Those visits were fun, but they would always come to an end, and were coming to an end forevermore. And I knew it. I just didn’t want to think about it. The “final” winter break was coming to a close, the last before the last ones graduated and were themselves off into their own brave new world of inevitability. Jeff and Fiona and Peter and Fran and Cathy and Sean and I and a host of others had gathered for one last outing before a good many of them were to be on their way back “home,” home being where they hung their hat, just then.

It was New Year’s Eve. Casey’s was packed. Drinks flowed. We danced, we talked, we dreaded the end of the night. At least I did. I could see the writing on the wall. Jeff was leaving, soon never to return. The night came to an end, as all nights do. Jeff and Fiona gave me a ride home. We were parked in my driveway for some time, delaying their inevitable departure. But that moment finally came, and I stepped out into the bitter cold. Jeff told me to wait. He got out of the car with me. He approached me, pulled me into a rough hug and said, “I’m going to miss you, man.”

There. He said it. It was out in the open. I clung to him for a moment, fighting back the tears that were rising, not wanting to appear a child before him.

“Me too,” I managed, patting his back hard.

I turned away and mounted the stairs without looking back. I’m lying. I risked a look back as I unlocked the door. He waved. I waved back. I all but choked. I rushed downstairs, threw off my coat at the base of the stairs and threw myself into the huge plush pillows that spilled across the cushioned storage bench that lined the wall of the rec room. I buried my face within them and wept.

That sounds childish. Maybe it was. But my childhood friends were leaving me. They were finding their way in the world, moving away, and beginning the lives they had prepared themselves for.
Without me.

I felt abandoned, lonely, and desperately alone.

Tunnel Vision

I had no clue about the passage of time until I’d begun to work for a living. Time was neatly compartmentalized up till then, giving time set markers to place my memories: the start of a school year, Christmas vacations, winter breaks, and later, the start of summer jobs. There was grade school, middle school, high school and post-secondary. Years had titles: grade 1, grade 12, first year, third year, freshman year. Once I began work, these neat compartments fell away. Days became weeks, weeks became months, and months became years. There’s little to differentiate a 5^th year of work from a 10th or 20th year of work. It's almost like having tunnel vision. I’d changed jobs on occasion, crews, and departments, so there were a few markers here and there, but for the most part, one year’s memories bleed into another.

I’d also measured the time by a span of years’ end, as well. Grade school ended, high school ended, college ended. Work would not; until it did; but that would be decades away. Decades! I came to that realization early on. Black Paul Guenette (there are those nicknames again) and Rick Picotte had been working at Kidd for 8 years and 5 years respectively when I joined their crew. They were relatively young by my reckoning, so I was shocked to hear how long they’d already been working. “Holy crap,” I thought, “you’ve been here forever!” Not so, but I hadn’t had to count higher than 4 years for some time before something ended and another something began.

That’s when it hit me. I’d be working for a decades to come.

I didn’t know how monotonous work would be, then. But I soon discovered that work was endless repetition. One task led to another, then to another, and once that cycle of work was done, a new cycle of almost identical tasks began until they too were done.

I was always pleased when the cycle of repletion was broken. Any break, regardless how short, was a reprieve from monotony, a blessing. Most reprieves were broken with clean-up. On rare occasions I helped construct conveyors and build bulkheads. I had little experience with that work so I always had to wait for instructions. The others knew what they were about; and they knew what their partners were about as well. Good thing, because it was all a mystery to me.

It didn’t help that the construction guys on my crew were all French. Being French, they spoke French. I did not. They must have known that, but I don’t think I ever crossed their minds at first. So when the “team” planning was wrapped up, I’d still be in the dark (that was a double entendre, by the way, a little mining pun). As they were set to begin work, I’d have to ask, “What are we doing?” That’s when they would be reminded of my existence.

It was mainly a question of experience. I had none to start. When we were building a bulkhead at the base of a stope, they were working, but they were also listening. They may have been talking, but they were listening, too. They were also attuned to air currents. The slightest noise, the slightest shift in air might warn of a fall of ground within the stope, and of the danger they were in, just then.

One shift, I was building a wall with Lorne Blais and Jim Imhoff. Lorne was hammering boards, I was helping Jim measure and cut. Jim didn’t really need any help, but as I’d never framed a cement wall bulkhead before, I was as useful as expected. There was a clatter of rocks within the stope, not very loud, but a waft of air blew into us along with it. Lorne leapt from the staging and he and Jim were off like a shot. I was left holding a board, watching them race back up the draw-point.

Lorne stuck his head back around the corner, and yelled, “What are you doing?! Get out of there!”
I was confused. I was stuck in place. Lorne had to yell at me again before I joined them around the corner. My continued confusion was apparent, so it was explained to me that if a lot of rock fell, the wall could be reduced to splinters and matchsticks, us with it.

We do not build walls like that anymore. If someone was ever to wander that close to the brow of an open stope today, he’d be handed his walking papers.

I was of even less use at constructing conveyors. I spent a great deal of time holding pieces in place, or with my back to the flash of a welding bead, watching the arc dance across the wall.

I discovered soon on that I’d been labeled a dog-fucker. I could not believe my ears. Those I worked with on a daily basis knew differently, but I didn’t need to prove myself to them if I ever wished to get off the belts. Nothing I did seemed to matter, though; so I gave up trying. It was a waste of energy.
Others saw the truth. On occasion.

One day I overfilled a waste pass. The muck filled the pass, and the chute, and had spilled out overtop, some of it falling to the floor. This could happen if an oversized chunk jammed in the chute, but that was not the case, then. Had I looked more carefully I’d have seen the truth of it, but I did a stupid. I opened the inspection hatch. The rocks within shifted, and try as I might, I could not close that door again. There was nothing to be done but to open it fully, let the contents spill out, and clean it up.
I was mad. A rage boiled up at my stupidity. I grabbed a bar and screamed as I hammered the shit out of the transfer chute. I didn’t damage anything, I didn’t even scratch it. I did tire myself out. And my hands stung from the bar’s vibrations.

When my rage was spent, Black Paul wandered past.

“So,” he asked, without stopping, “did it learn its lesson? Is it going to do what you want, now?”
I took his meaning. My fit was stupid. My fit was pointless. I'd had my little tantrum, and I was right back where I’d begun, with a job to do. Just as Bob Saumur had taught me years before, you fucked it, you fix it.

I began to clean it up, walking each shovelful to where I could hoist it onto the conveyor belt. It took a long time, but I kept at it, wanting to get it done before my shift boss could see my fuck-up. I was hoping that the raise would drop; that would have made my task easier, but it didn’t, so, I kept keeping on. Until it was clean. Then I collapsed in my booth to rest.

The millwrights noticed my extended labour. They didn’t help; I didn’t expect them to. It wasn’t their job to help. But they noticed.

“Holy shit,” they said to Black Paul, later, “that Leonard; he’s a machine! He never stops!” I felt vindicated.

Did it help my reputation? It might have. But I never did join our construction crew.
And I was stuck at code 4 for years to come.