The Honeymoon

We didn’t go on a honeymoon straight off. We’d sunk all our finances into the house so we opted to wait until our saving rebounded a little.

I wanted it to be special. I also wanted the honeymoon I wanted, not just a bake-on-the-beach holiday. They bored me. What I wanted was to break out my backpack again. But I was pretty sure that Bev was never going to be of the backpack and Doc Martens sort. So, I compromised.

I thought, what do you think of when you think romantic destinations? I thought Venice. I thought Paris. I asked Bev what she thought about those destinations. She said they sounded romantic. She did not voice a preference for either. So, I booked both.

I didn’t go through a travel agent at first. I searched travel magazines. I searched maps. I asked Hemingway. Hemingway told me to book a hotel near the Piazza San Marco in Venice, someplace close to Harry’s bar. He also told me that Paris was a Movable Feast, and that most of the ex-pats had hung their hats in the Latin Quarter. If those spots were good enough for Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Joyce, they were good enough for me.

Then I went to a travel agent. This is what I want, I said: I do not want to stay at a major chain hotel, I do not want to stay in a place that could just as well be in Toronto or Spokane. I wanted ambiance. A balcony would be a plus, but not essential. Proximity to the Metro was essential in Paris, though.

We found a wonderful privately-owned little hotel in Venice. Marbled interior, a little terrace alongside, a cistern in the courtyard before the entrance. We found a less than ideal hotel in Paris. It looked better on its website, but truth be told it was fine. More than that, it was good. It served our needs well. The room was comfortable, the Metro was down the block and there was a restaurant/pub/café a block away. We were even able to change rooms when upon checking in we thought the first room too small for the length of time we were staying there. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Once the hotels and flights were booked, all we had to do was wait. We made sure our passports were in order. Bev packed for a week, choosing, sorting, changing her mind, repacking, contemplating. I packed the night before.

We went to the airport. Obviously excited. This was our first big trip together. Prior to this we’d been to Manitoulin. Manitoulin is great. If you’ve never been you should go; but having been there for a few consecutive years, I’d had my fill of driving around, going to the same towns, browsing the same shops, going to the same beaches, eating at the same places. Had my back not been injured we might have gone on some of the nature hikes thereabouts, but chronic pain had put such excursions on the backburner. So, I was due for a change. I wanted a return to backpacks and Doc Martens, even if the backpack was a suitcase on casters and the Docs were dress shoes and sandals.

We packed notebooks too. I’d always meant to take one on my other trips but it somehow always slipped my mind. Why a notebook? Because even though a picture is worth a thousand words, pictures are no substitute for words. That building, that person, becomes a hazy memory in the course of time. Thoughts, recollections and anecdotes give depth to those pictures. They can also jog the memory. And capture your thoughts. Impressions. Mood. Ambiance.

The flight from Timmins to Toronto was as it usually is, full, loud, prone to turbulence. The flight to Rome was better. Larger. Smoother. But it was also a red eye. I’m not complaining; red eyes are great; they get you in country at the dawn of a new day, ensuring your first day of holiday isn’t a loss spent in the air. The only problem with a red eye is jetlag. You need to realize that you will be crossing time zones and that the time for sleep is limited, at best. I’m lying. You will not get enough sleep on a red eye to Europe no matter how much sleep you get.

Bev did not get enough sleep. Once we were in the air, I waited just long enough to finish my meal, which is always served early on such flights, before pulling out my mask and earplugs from my carry-on.

“Time to go to sleep,” I told Bev.

“But I’m not tired,” she said.

I sympathised, but I tried to explain that she had best try to sleep whether she was tired or not (I realized that it was only about 9 pm by EDST, way too early for bed at the best of times, even more so considering the excitement brought on by expectation), telling her my tale of my first red eye and the resulting sleep deprivation that followed, but she said that she’d watch a little bit of the movie until she got a tired and then she would try.

I didn’t think that watching “Kingdom of Heaven” was worth the sleep deprivation sure to follow. I wouldn’t know if it was. I didn’t watch it then. I still haven’t. What I did do was put my mask on and squeeze the earplugs into my ears.

“You really need to try to sleep now,” I said before sliding the mask over my eyes, my voice muffled and watery through the plugs.

“I will in a bit,” she said.

I closed my eyes, set my mask and tried to relax. I was asleep in no time.

When I woke at about 4:30 am Rome time, Bev was a mess. Her hair was awry, her eyes close to closing, red as though irritated by a beach of salt water and sand. She was obviously, painfully, tired, much as I had been after my first red eye to Amsterdam.

“I didn’t sleep at all,” she said.

What could I say? I’m sorry? I was. I said so.

“You need to get some morning sunlight to reset your clock,” I said. I did not say that she would feel like shit for the rest of the day.

There was a little confusion as to what was happening with our bags. Our luggage was not in Rome. We watched as everyone from our flight collected their bags and filtered out the door, leaving us and an empty carousel behind. “Where is our luggage?” I thought. “Was it lost? Were we going to spend a few days waiting for it to catch up with us?” I asked a terminal employee. He looked at out baggage stubs and said, “You collect them in Venice.” That was new to me. When returning to Canada, I always had to collect my luggage and clear customs before continuing on to a domestic flight.

We returned to departures and boarded our flight to Venice.

Final flight. Bags collected. Customs. Cab. River shuttle between buoys marking the dredged route. Venice.

Our honeymoon had begun.

Hitched

I got engaged. Who’d have figured that? We set a date which should have been impossible to meet, but as it was in October, safely outside the traditional wedding season, every wedding planner, decorator, baker, priest, church, organist, and hall was free. Go figure. Business must be especially slow then because they even gave us out-of-season discounts.

I hired my neighbor, Luc Chalifoux (Midnight Express), to be our disk-jockey. We hadn’t negotiated a price at first, but when we did, he dropped what probably should have been about a thousand or so dollar bill to four hundred. Call it my wedding gift to you, he said. I was grateful. He asked us for a list of songs for the evening. He laughed when I provided a more exhaustive list than he was accustomed to. I guess most people give him about three or four songs, just those for the father-daughter dance and the like. I gave him a list of about thirty songs Bev and I liked and said that if he could fit them in that would be great, but if he couldn’t, then the top five or six would be fine, pointing out the father-daughter song and the like. Closer to the date, Luc said that he wouldn’t be able to spin my reception after all. He was busy and surprisingly double-booked. Would it be okay if he sent over one of his employees, instead? I said that would be fine. I reminded him that he still hadn’t sent me an invoice. He mulled it over and shrugged it off, telling me that the music was free, again saying, “It’ll be my wedding gift to you.”

It was a small affair, only thirty people, everyone local except for Neil and Sharon Petersen, who travelled up from Barrie. On my side there were my parents, my sister and her husband, their children, my parents’ long-time neighbours, the Millers and the Durochers, my best friends Neil and Henri and their spouses. On Bev’s were her parents, her brother and his wife, her two aunts, her cousin Ellard and his wife, her friends Barb and Christine and spouses. Like I said, small.

Ever pragmatic, I bought a three-piece suit, eschewing the tux. White silk tie. All in all, it looked tux-ish and formal, exactly the look I was striving for. I was never one for renting when I could buy and I doubted that I’d ever have need of a tux again, so, new suit it was, despite my having more suits than I actually needed. That might negate the earlier pragmatic boast, but there you have it; I’ve always been vain.

The day arrived. It was cold. I expected that; it was late October, after all. Luckily, we weren’t treated to snow or icy rain. The rehearsal was uneventful the night before. I paid attention, but most of what happened that evening was soon forgotten. I was pretty sure that someone, everyone, would herd me through the process when the time came. And they did. There was someone there to make sure I was dressed on time, that I made it to the church on time, that I stood where I was meant to, and walked up the aisle when I was supposed to.

Bev arrived when we were still at the back of the church. She was not dressed how I expected her to be, not in what she had originally showed me, anyway. She hadn’t been satisfied with her original outfit as the months wore on, so she ordered another. It was an actual dress, laced and embellished with costume pearls. She looked lovely. Her hair was up and curled, her make-up just so.

Then someone nudged me to be on my way to the Alter to await my bride.

The rest is a little hazy. I wonder how many people actually really remember their weddings. I think most people don’t, not really. Most people are too busy being worried that things will go wrong, but from my experience, someone always takes charge and makes sure things move along at their expected pace and that things happen when they’re supposed to. My sister was that person. I was largely oblivious, just swept along by the tide.

The organist told me afterwards how calm we looked. We didn’t sweat and fidget and fuss like younger couples do, she said. We didn’t. I sat with one leg crossed over the other, waiting for someone to tell me to stand, then to “repeat after me,” then to come over here to sign the legal documents.

Pictures were taken. Most are studio shots. Outdoors really wasn’t an option: autumn colours were long since a memory, trees were stark and bare, clouds were grey. And yes, it rained. I know this because I have one of us outside in coats, with me holding an umbrella over us. Black and white. It looks vintage. I like that one a lot.

Then it was off to Cedar Meadows for the dinner and the cutting of the cake.

The cake was missing. My sister told me so, also telling me to not freak out, that something was being worked out. I was not freaked out. So what, I thought at the time, it’s just a cake. We had lots of food. We’d purchased the Thanksgiving Buffet from the Resort and it came with two deserts.

A call to the bakery told us that the cake had been delivered that morning, so the staff began to search for it. They found it minutes later. It was in the fridge. Who’d have thought to look in the fridge?

There were few speeches made. We were a small group, but there were a few. There were congratulations within them, well-wishes, and expectations of our long and happy life together.
The cake was brought out. We posed for the usual pictures. We danced, we mingled, we (meaning I, but not excluding Bev) kept our drinking to a minimum. No one, I thought, ought to get drunk on their wedding day, although I’m sure it happens all the time, but I have my doubts that those who do are fast approaching forty. I likely spent too much time mingling with Neil and Henri, but they were my closest friends, so sue me.

Did we crush slices of cake into each other’s face? No. Neither of us liked that new tradition. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re not fun. So be it. That might have been fun had we been twenty, but like I’ve said more than once over the course of the last memories, we weren’t twenty anymore. And I’ve always been the serious sort.

Expectations might be different.

We did bow to some expectations and traditions.

The garter was removed and flung into the very small gathering of bachelors.

The bouquet made its way into the very small but otherwise shacked-up group of women who just happened to not be married

As I’ve said, we weren’t twenty anymore.

Engaged

My road to matrimony was a longer one than most. I met Bev at thirty-five and we were married just before I turned forty. This was my first long-term relationship. Prior to this, I was a long-suffering bachelor.

We did not have a lavish, expensive wedding. We’d bought a house instead and had sunk most of our money into it and its trappings and furnishings. We invited very few people, just immediate family and a few of our closest friends, thirty people all told. Had we begun to open up the guest list, there would have been no end to it and we would have been up to three-hundred people in no time, something we could not afford. But we could afford thirty people. We only needed to rent the glassed-in rear room at Cedar Meadows. It was small, intimate. But that’s getting ahead of myself.

Bev and I had been dating for about a year before we bought the house. Then we set about setting it up. I must say it was very much an empty building at first. We’d purchased a fair amount of the prior owners’ furnishings with the house, so that helped. We bought a lot of stuff on sale. We bought a lot of what we thought of as starter stuff from Canadian Tire, saying we’d upgrade once we were able.
Throughout all this I shopped rings, all the while listening to my future father-in-law talking about my putting the cart before the house and such things. I didn’t buy the first ring that I saw; I shopped around. I calculated what I could afford and when. I was under the thumb of weekly house payments, my savings erased and only inching back up since the purchase. In short, I waited. I didn’t want to buy a cheap ring. And I wanted to buy a set, you know, engagement and wedding.

Meanwhile, Bev and I had discussions about what the future held. We discussed actual marriage (with me listening very carefully for clues as to whether she’d accept should I pop the question), and we talked about children (I talked about children all the time; I wanted them; just about everyone I knew had them and I always thought that having them was the logical progression of any relationship—and I was getting on in years, thinking that were we to have them, we ought to have them soon or risk putting off retirement until death). Bev usually said the same thing during these discussions, about tying the knot, about having kids: “It’s a big step.”

A Big Step? I spent a great deal of time trying to decipher that statement. We’d been living together for more than three months, so as far as I was concerned, that “big” step had already come and gone. It had as far as the courts were concerned. That “big” step was only a piece of paper by then. Whenever Bev brought up her parents and what they thought, I told her that I wouldn’t be marrying her parents.

In time I thought I had it all figured out (that shows you how naïve I was) and bought the engagement ring. I’d even made a few payments.

But where to pop the question? And how? Traditionally, on one knee? Romantically, over champagne? I thought not. Champagne was not in the budget then; and ordering champagne would have spoiled the surprise, wouldn’t it? And what if she said no?

In the end, I proposed while we were out for dinner. I asked her where she’d like to go; she said East Side Mario’s. I fumbled with the box in my pocket, my palms clammy. I’d been fumbling with it almost continuously, fearing that I’d lose it, forever touching it to reassure myself that it was still there. I wondered if I should wait until she left the table and have it presented before her when she returned. But she usually never left the table until after the meal was done and I didn’t think that displaying the ring amid dirty dishes and the bill made for romantic presentation. In the end, I decided to get on with it after we’d ordered.

The restaurant was loud, clashing, clanging, the volume flowing here and there, the gaggle of conversation bouncing about, an undulating roar punctuated by the clatter of cutlery. I brought the box out in a fist, then offering it up between both hands in hope that neither would betray my nervousness. They did not tremble. Or at least I think they did not tremble.

I popped the question. Maybe I mumbled the question. Bev smiled when she received the box. The smile grew broader after opening the box and seeing the stones catch what meager light there was to catch.

I’m not sure if she said yes just then. I’ll admit that my memory is a little sketchy on the moment. I might have been in a mild state of shock. Fight or flight may have risen up as I waited for a response.
She did say yes, though.

I know. Not terribly romantic. But what do you expect from an old bachelor with limited experience in such endeavours? I suppose most proposals are fumbled affairs, fraught with trepidation, if not panic and terror. Hollywood has set the bar higher than most of us mere mortals can aspire to.

Her acceptance prompted more shopping. The wedding rings had to be chosen. The plans made. We set the date for later that same year. What was the point in waiting?

I proposed September 19th. Bev’s and my birthdays were on a 19th, so I thought I would never forget the date if it too were on a 19th. We were not married on a 19th, or September. Father Pat told us we had to compete a Catholic ritual of a Retreat first, to learn about what it was like to live together, on how to budget, on how to bring Christ into our lives and marriage. That was well and good for the twenty-year-olds, I said; they hadn’t had our years of experience, and they (some of them, anyway) hadn’t already been living together for years. I also told Father Pat I planned to be married that year, before I turned forty, whether I was married by the Church or by the Justice of the Peace. Father Pat said he would talk to the Bishop. The Bishop waived our need to do the Couple’s retreat, owing to our age and circumstance.

In the end, Father Pat agreed to a series of meetings at his house to accommodate us. We’d already set a tentative date in October, after all. We booked the church and discovered that we were to be the final couple married in Nativity before it closed.

Father Pat forgot about our first meeting. We were waiting at his residence when he pulled into his driveway, a puzzled look on his face when he saw us waiting there. Then he discovered that McDonalds had given him the wrong meal. He was conflicted. He wanted to return to get what he had ordered. But he was already late for our first meeting, with barely enough time to complete the curriculum as laid out by the Church. He stayed. We began the course.

I asked my sister to be my “best man,” and Bev asked her brother to be her “matron of honour.”
We booked the “hall” and the decorator; we ordered the cake. It was easy. No waiting. The wedding season had passed and everyone was free. We even got discounts on almost every service rendered. We finalized what needed finalizing.

I, we, were getting married.

Not Entirely Unscathed

We made a few trips to Manitoulin while our finances recovered. Bev and I are both savers, for the most part, so it wasn’t long before we were out from under what we thought was financial destitution. The mine did not close, despite the endless predictions of doom and gloom. I was making more money, I was climbing the ranks, I was looking forward to what the future brought.

It brought Hunter.

We returned to Manitoulin a couple more times, driving round and round, discovering back roads and short cuts, checking out souvenir shops and craft stores, and checking out the Island’s natural beauty. Bridal Veil Falls, Providence Bay, the North Shore. We enjoyed ice cream in Little Current. We ate fish and chips while watching the Chi-Cheemaun come in at South Baymouth. I say we, but I mean me. Bev had already experienced these things from years of her own circle tours and nosing around.

Hunter loved it there. We taught her to swim (that sounds silly, but she had to learn in stages). She could be free and run with abandon. She ran and swam so much that she fell asleep sitting up, her eyes inching closed, her head stiffly upright.

One day a bat made its way into the camp bedroom. It flew round and round, banking inches from my face. Hunter lay on the floor next to me, her nose tracking the bat’s circuits. I thought about what my chances of knocking the bat down were, then decided that they weren’t good, so I slipped of bed, crawling on all fours to the back door. I felt the bat’s draft waft across my scalp while I did. The bat must have done ten more circuits before I got there. I opened it, hoping that other bats wouldn’t join him while it gapped open. He finally found his way out, Hunter still watching him, having never moved once during the whole affair.

“A lot of help you were,” I told her when I slid back in bed.

She wagged her tail and flopped her head back onto the floor.

The next day we heard more bats in the walls, so we hunted down and closed as many holes in the walls as possible.

And in time, the future brought a car accident. Yes, another one.

I hadn’t slept well in years. Shiftwork can do that to people. I’d have a hard time falling asleep and then I had a hard time staying asleep. Lawnmowers and snowblowers blared at all hours during the day. Sun found its way into my bedroom despite the room darkening blinds. Birds chirped and cawed. Dogs barked. Neighbours called out to one another over distances. And there were errands to do. I’d get up early to do them. And when they were done, I’d be awake for the duration whether I tried to nap or not. I’m not a napper. Whatever the reasons, I was averaging five hours a “night.” Transitions from Days to Nights and then Nights to Days were worse, with my being awake for twenty-four or even thirty-six hours at a time.

So it comes as no surprise that I fell asleep at the wheel driving home after my final Night shift, only five blocks from home, drifting into the snowbank at speed. What speed? I don’t know; I was asleep. But it was fast enough because when I woke it was to a loud and hollow rumble and a dark rush of white cascading over my windshield. The snowbank slowed my speed, thank god. It almost kicked me back out onto the road, but sadly, it did not. The telephone pole did. I saw a dark shape resolve in the rushing snow, and then when I crashed into it, I saw it flung and spun as it whirled into the sky. The passenger headlight shattered, the chrome bumper collapsed and the Jimmy’s rear end swung wide, back out into the street. It continued that arc, sliding wide and around, the rear bumper plunging back into the snowbank again, far forward of where I’d cleaved off the pole.

I remained in the vehicle for a moment, a little stunned, yet remarkably unhurt. I looked around, saw the gouge that I’d left in the snowbank far to the left of me, back where I’d come from.

What I did next was stupid. I opened the door and got out. I had no idea if there were powerlines over my vehicle. I could have been electrocuted. Once I was out, I saw them scattered and overlapping one another across the street, but until that time, I was oblivious to their existence, let alone their potential danger.

A car approached. The driver asked if I wanted him to call the police. I thought it a stupid question, but what he was really asking was if I’d already called them. Cell phones were everywhere by then.
The cop arrived, asked me what happened and I stupidly admitted to falling asleep at the wheel. That automatically landed me a Careless Driving charge. He did not cut me a break. He wanted to charge me with speeding too, but he probably thought that he couldn’t make it stick.

When he asked me how fast I was going? I said, “How do I know? I was asleep.”

“How fast were you going before you went asleep?”

“I don’t know. I was falling asleep.”

Long story short, I was fined, I had to buy a new car, I had to pay for the Hydro pole, and my insurance went through the roof for years to come.

That was an expensive snooze.

Mining Games, Part 5

I’ve probably never been happier than when I was in Oreflow. Granted, that doesn’t mean that I was always happy with what boss we had, that I did not have rough patches; it means that I was more content and enjoyed what I was doing more than I ever had before. There was advancement. There were code increases, there was more money. There were twelve-hour shifts, as well. I could have done without them.

It did take a couple years to get over the anger I harboured from past years. Those of us on Capital Development suspected that we were being harassed out of a job; that takes some getting over. And for years prior, I had been chasing the unattainable carrot of Code 5, even though I was doing the expectations of that Code, and more.

Things changed when I approached one of my shifters.

“Joe,” I said, a little nervous, “what can I do to help you help me get my code?”

Joe paused, and then said, “What do you got and what do you need?”

That set the wheels in motion. I needed to get my cage and crusher licenses, for 2 Mine specifically. I already had the 3 Mine equivalents. My shifts were busy after that, first with training, then with gaining the hours I needed to “prove” that I was a competent operator. All that remained was for me to get my cutting license, and I got that in short order. I discovered there was a proper way to refuse work that sped up the process of getting what training I needed. I would never say that I couldn’t do the job because I wasn’t trained; I said that I’d love to do that for them, but I didn’t have the license, and could you line me up for the training, please? Mutual back scratching required follow-up, though. Once I had the training, I didn’t have a reason to not to get the job done. So, I got the job done; and in time I began to be a “go-to” man. “I need you to do something for me.” “Sure thing,” I’d say, so long as it wasn’t against the law or company policy.

Then Joe left, and so did my superintendent, Wayne. And I had to start the process all over again. And unfortunately, my supervisor while in Capital Development was my new Captain, and he “lost” my code application. Months past.

Long story short, I went to see HR and they made it happen. My Captain was running by the end of the day to get my “new” application signed. He left, much like many of our bosses did, and for a while, we had a continuous turnover of shift bosses.

We never seemed to have enough crew mates, though. When I was a student, four people were required to operate the crusher: the Leader (who operated the system), the Spare (who was supposedly in training to replace the leader, but usually kept the muck flowing through the chains), the ore pass man (who kept the muck flowing through the passes, transferring the required ore types from C and A passes to the crusher feed), and the picking belt man (who moved the shuttle from bin to bin, and pilled scrap metal from the muck before it fell into the bins), code 6,5,4,and 3, respectively. When I worked there, there was only three, one of us acting as both the ore pass man and the spare. He could be gone a lot, necessitating the operator to bound up and down the steps from the pass to the operator’s booth, keeping a close eye on bin levels and pass levels, ensuring that there were few, if any, delays for either the Kiruna Pass, that fed the crusher passes, or the skips below. Delays cost no less than ten thousand dollars an hour. It was quite a balancing act.

We’d begin. I’d note what the skip ore bin levels were at, start the conveyor belts and the crusher, then open the gate for the pass we were pulling. If the ore did not hang up, life was good. If it did, the spare undercut the ore with either a blowpipe or a water hose. If neither worked, we had to blast. If he had to leave to take care of a hang up on 4600, I was alone for as long as he was gone. I’d open the gate, rush up the flight of stairs to the pass and wash the hang-up down, then slide back down the hand rails to the crusher to close the gate before the crusher bin was over full and hung it up. Repeat with each bowl full.
If the spare could not get the hang-up down on 4600, we’d have to shut down, take the cage up and blast. Repeat. Be quick. The Kiruna ramp had best not be idle. Therein lay the potential loss of ten thousand dollars an hour.

When our bins were full, we cleaned up. When we’d pulled the Kiruna ramp low, we cleaned up. We cut up scrap, placed it in rail cars, and pushed them to the station, calling the cage tender to come get them and bring us empty ones if we needed them.

The cage tender had to do two jobs, too. There was no yard man, anymore, not on night shift or weekends, so the cage tender had to collect the materials for transport underground and keep an ear out for shaft bells, in case there was an emergency. He had to troubleshoot the skips, he had to pick up full scrap bins and bring them to surface, returning the empty ones. All this had to be done between advertised cage times. You were never excused from doing those. Should you miss one, warning slips awaited.

It sounds busy, and it was; but keeping busy made long shifts short. And keeping busy and getting the job done made me a go-to man, and before long I was asked to be a hoist man, and in time, the spare shift boss.

Twelve-hour shifts were rough, though. I found it impossible to get enough sleep on night shift; and that began to creep into day shift, too.

But all in all, things were good; things were looking up.

At least until I feel asleep at the wheel and wrapped my Jimmy around a telephone pole.

Hunter

I’ve almost always had a dog. Cookie, a corgi, was in my life when I was born. Piper, a Westie, arrived shortly after Cookie passed on, unexpectedly adopted while visiting my uncle in London. Years later, my parents rescued a seven-year-old Sassy, a poodle mutt. Then Hunter came into Bev’s and my life.

When Albert went ice fishing with Greg one frigid February weekend, he never expecting that the biggest catch of the day would be a dog. He found Hunter hanging about their shack, desperate for rescue and attention. She was hungry. She was emaciated. You could see her ribs in stark relief against her flank. Her spine was plainly visible down the length of her back. Albert’s heart melted. How could anyone abandon a dog out on Nighthawk in the middle of the winter? What could they have been thinking? The truth is that whoever had left her out there probably expected that she’d be picked up by one of the plentiful ice fishers scattered about the lake. There were a lot of them, after all. I don’t think that they expected that Hunter would spend the next week fending for herself, scraping up what crumbs and minnows she could find by the camps to survive. At least I hope they didn’t leave her out on the lake to die. She was only a puppy, only five months old.

Albert fed her. That in itself would have kept her hanging about, however skittish she may have been at first; in fact, were I her, I’d have never left his side once he fed me. And she didn’t. When they left her in the fishing shack by herself to warm up, they were surprised to find her sitting beside them again after she managed to escape by squeezing between the floor and the ice. She could have slipped into the hole. She might have been caught up in the lines.

Albert decided to bring her home and find her owner. He propped her up on the skidoo before him. It was difficult to steer with her there, so much so that he and she spilled off the sled before reaching the shore. He placed an ad in the paper. He asked Bev to place an ad on the local community TV channel. There was no response to either.

Then one day, Bev said, “I want her,” to me. Prior to that, she’d always said that we should never get a dog. We could never devote enough time to it, she said. It would have to spend long hours alone while we worked. All that changed when she saw Hunter. Doe eyes, red, blonde coat, patched and socked with white. And she was smart, smarter than any dog I’ve ever known. She’d had to be to escape a fishing hut with such ease. Smart enough to escape a latched kennel. Smart enough to be furious at being left alone. And willful too. She was suffering from separation anxiety and did a world of mischief while we were gone. She targeted my stuff when she had a fit. I took that to mean that she had imprinted on me more than she had on Bev. And she needed to be house trained. So, we kennelled her by day.

I returned from work one day to find her happy as a lark, her tail wagging, her nose pressed up against the window. But she’d been placed in her kennel before Bev had left for work. I inspected the kennel. It was still latched. How had she escaped from there, I wondered? I thought I knew how; there was only one way she could have done it, as far as I could tell. The next day, I was faced with the same sight, only this time there was a long gouge in the drywall where she’d escaped from the cage. She’d obviously thrown her weight against the kennel wall until the hooks detached the wall from the roof, and then she nosed her head and body through.

I fix, I thought. I bought some zip ties and fastened the joins in place. She looked none too pleased when I returned home from work the next day. She dashed from the cage when I released her.
I had to do something about her pent-up energy. She was still in her first year, after all. She needed exercise and lots of it. So, I took her out on the nature trail behind our house. It was painful at first. My spine ached terribly each and every walk, so much so that there were days when I thought I might have to call for help using my cell phone. Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up! Luckily, I never had to; I always made it home, even if I had to lay on the couch for a couple hours afterwards until the throbbing subsided and I could support myself again. I walked her off leash back there, hoping she wouldn’t take off or get eaten by a bear. I needn’t have worried. I think she could have easily outrun a bear, but she would have probably run right back to me for me to protect her and I could barely walk then, let alone run. And as for her taking off and running away, she appeared at regular intervals to see if the slowpoke was still following her; and she grew to know where we turned around, always finding her way to that exact spot the moment I reached it. Otherwise she swept past me time and again, racing far forward and retracing our path in search of whatever, or maybe she was just revelling in her freedom to run wherever. I’d find her covered in mud to half-way up her flanks and always had to bathe her when we arrived back home. There was no way I was letting her back in the house like that. I’d tell her so, time and again, as I first worked the shampoo into her two coats and then back out again, saying, “I told you so, but do you listen? No. So here you are, having a bath again.” She’d just look at me and shiver. The water from the hose was that cold.

We free fed her from the start, first to put the weight back on her bones, later because she was accustomed to it being there and never overate. That did not stop her from eating her poop, though. It was gross. People said, put some pepper on it; dogs hate spice. That will cure her of it, they said. But how was I to stop her when she ate it right after producing it? When would I put the pepper on it? So that solution was impractical. I watched her like a hawk, instead, staying with her while she did her business, nudging her head aside when she sniffed it, saying, “No,” when she did.

Then she ate a tropical plant. It made her violently ill. I couldn’t believe that a dog could puke so much. I couldn’t believe that a dog could shit so much. On the bright side, we got a new couch and chairs.
She was work that first year. But she calmed down. I loved her. I love her still, even though she’s gone now.

She was never a touchy-feely dog. She hated to be lifted or carried. She was a four on the floor sort of dog. But she lavished us with kisses. She was always in the window when she knew we were coming home. So, I’m pretty sure that she loved us too.

Chris

Chris Cooper was one of my best friends through high school. We rekindled that friendship over the years, first when I was in my last year of college, and then whenever we crossed paths.

We all had pimples in puberty. No matter how carefully we washed, no matter how much deep cleaning astringent used, they found a way to make their presence known, usually within twenty-four hours of a school dance.

Chris was not so lucky. Chris had acne. Chronic acne. I discovered through him that acne was a curse and that one stricken with it was not dirty, not unwashed, and that those afflicted sometimes took medication to combat the condition. Chris had medicated cream. It was rarely effective. I’m sure the acne took its toll on his self-esteem. It must have. Luckily for Chris he had friends that saw beyond those abscesses and pustules. There were days we might be taken aback by them after seeing that day’s fresh batch, but those spots faded rapidly to nothing in our eyes because we had our own fresh batches too, didn’t we.

What we saw was Chris. Smart Chris. Clever Chris. Chris, who breezed through high school while we studied and studied and studied to keep up with what seemed to come naturally to him. Yet Chris was not the pocket protector sort, either. He was one of the first to drive, he fished, he had a phenomenal album collection, far better than mine, far more inclusive, far more diverse. I give thanks and praise to Chris for unknowingly guiding me in my evolution of choice.

Chris participated in track, too. He wasn’t fast. He knew that. But he could go the distance, able to run distances that had me laid out like a gasping corpse. He was a complex, diverse, interesting person. As we all were. But he was likely as unsure of himself as we all were, too. John Lavric and Marc Charette would know far better than I would though. As close as I was to Chris, I spent more and more time at the pool and we drifted apart some, even if I didn’t realize it then. I can’t say that I knew what was going on in his life in those latter high school years. I don’t recall Chris dating much, if at all. That may have been due to the acne. That may have been due to Chris’s inner response to that acne. He began to date some in university. He married some time afterwards. I suppose Chris and I were much alike in that aspect.

But where I seemed to slowly gain steam as a student, Chris was faltering when we reconnected in Sudbury, he at Laurentian and me at Cambrian, if you can call his still getting higher GPAs than me faltering. But I didn’t want to be a doctor. Chris did. His father was a doctor and he wanted to follow in his footsteps. But no matter how hard he studied in pre-med he couldn’t make the cut. Competition was fierce and the bell curve defeated him, so he changed course and focused on bio-chem and life labs. He did well at it. He always did well in chemistry, but then again, Chris always did well at every subject, as I recall.

Then I left Sudbury for London and Chris disappeared from my life for a while.

Then one day I was hanging out in the humidor room in Finn McCool’s when I saw what I thought was a familiar face walk in and toss a backpack into the space between the coffee table and comfy couch he flopped into.

He took a pull from his beer before I said, “Chris?”

He seemed startled, as one does when not expecting to hear one’s name in a strange place, because this was a strange place in a way. He’d been away for years and when you’ve been away for years you don’t expect to run into someone you know; indeed, you expect that everyone you knew had moved on, much as you had.

He spun. He recognized me. We both beamed. He shook hands but that wasn’t good enough because we drew one another in and hugged like brothers. He was up to visit his parents for the long weekend, he said, and had just stepped off the bus, he said, and was waiting for his old man to finish work, so he thought he’d have a beer while he waited.

We caught up. I told him about Kidd and what I’d been up to, my travels, a little about my off and on stumbles at I called a love-life, because he asked, and Chris told me a little of his. He never became a doctor. He finished bio-chem and life sciences and landed in Ottawa, working for the government. He had a girlfriend. I was jealous and very happy for him, what with the misery he’d endured back in school.

I asked him what his plans were for the weekend. There was a concert in Hollinger Park the next day. I asked him if he was interested and wanted to go, if he wasn’t that busy with family throughout the weekend. He thought on it, said that it sounded great. We decided to meet at Finn’s again the next day before heading over.

I bought two tickets that next morning. I was already going to go, but if he were going too, I thought I’d save the time and him the money and not have to wait in line when the time came. Then I got a call at noon.

“Dave,” Chris said. I heard an apology in his tone. “You’ll never guess where I am; I’m in Gore Bay and it’s beautiful.” His parents had decided that since Chris was up, it would be great for the family to head down to their cottage just off the Island.

I told him that sounded great, feeling my stomach drop a little, realizing that he was probably not going to go to the concert with me.

I had no idea where Gore Bay was. I looked at a map. It was six hours away. Needless to say, Chris did not make it. I didn’t see Chris again for years.

When I did, Bev and I were together. We had made our second trip to Manitoulin and decided to stop into the Little Current Beer Store to drop off our empties after our week at her family’s camp. We were just leaving when we spotted Chris pulling in. He got out of his vehicle and hailed me. We shook hands and hugged like brothers again.

We introduced our wives and asked the usual questions. They’d just arrived and were stocking up. We had another five hours ahead of us. We spoke for no more than ten minutes. The clouds were gathering overhead, ominously indigo as though night was falling. The wind was picking up. We shook and hugged again and were on our way. That was the last time I ever saw Chris.

A few years later, Bev brought me the paper and handed it to me.

“Isn’t that your friend?” she asked.

I stared in disbelief at Chris’s obituary. He’d died after a courageous but brief battle with lung cancer.

He was only forty years old.

I felt tears well up. My throat closed off. I had to leave the room for a while and be alone with my grief.

I miss him still.

Chronic

I was happy to be back in Oreflow, but I was angry. I’d just spent eight months in Hell, never having been so ill-treated in my whole life. I’d almost quit. But I didn’t. And I was back.

I was also injured. I was in a lot of pain. I was taking pills to get through the day. And since the accident I’d done nothing but go to work and lie on the couch at home, unable to do much more than that. Even sleeping was agony: any pressure on my lower back burned; it also raised the urge to pee, waking me, making me toss and turn before I fell back asleep, if I did at all. I couldn’t walk the length of the Timmins Square (a quarter mile) without having to sit at least twice. Standing on concrete killed me. After standing or walking on concrete for twenty minutes I’d inevitably be laid up on the couch for two hours of more, my back burning and throbbing, my legs numb. I hid that fact at work, always telling myself that I was getting better, and popping a couple T3s and anti-inflammatories to prove it.

Luckily, the work was light, well, light-ish, and so long as I worked upright, I was fine. Should I have to bend forward slightly, I had about twenty minutes of work in me before I was useless. I probably should have gone to the appointment with the surgeon my GP had made for me, but I didn’t; I ignored it, telling myself that spinal surgeons rarely did anything for chronic pain sufferers and that spinal surgery risked even greater pain, or a fused spine. So, I did nothing. I lay on my back and wished the pain away. Light work was okay. I found that continuous light work strengthened my spine and the chronic pain receded. So too light exercise. All I did for the first year was man the 3 Mine cage and operate the slurry plant. Both jobs required some pre-starts and a little clean-up, but for the most part, both jobs required sitting. I was okay with sitting.

This went on for the better part of two years. And still I wasn’t getting any better.

Nothing changed until we got Hunter. Hunter was part Lab, part hound (maybe boxer). She loved to run, and if she didn’t get enough exercise, she’d get bored and get in trouble, chewing up shoes, digging up strands of carpet fiber, clawing at furniture. I had to do something about that, regardless how painful walking might be. I began to walk the nature trail behind my street, the one that crossed McLean and wound its way around rock and creek and beaver dam until rising up behind Timmins District Hospital and crossing Ross to connect with the Gillies Lake circuit.

One day I took her out on leash until we gained the trail. I detached her and gestured for her to run. She looked at me with disbelief or misunderstanding, but after a few more sweeping gestures and a few more meters gained, she got the picture and took off like the wind. I followed at a meager pace, pleased at how soft my footfalls were on the granular “A” bed, even more so when walking on duff.

I’d call out to her on occasion and she’s return as far as the next bend in the trail, her tail and ears high and at the ready, her eyes bright with excitement. Once she spied me, she’d either disappear up the trail again or bound towards me, leaping high like a gazelle as she passed.

Those first walks were short, no more than a third of the trail’s length before I stopped, rested, and waited for Hunter’s return. Luckily, the Mattagami Conservation Society placed picnic tables along the trail. Then we’d head back and I’d attach the leash when we were getting closer to McLean. I’d have to bear the pain on some walks, sitting at each stop, my gait slowing to a crawl when all I wanted to do was get on all fours and do just that. The walks got longer as the summer progressed, extending into the fall, and then into the winter as I noted that the trail remained open and accessible, fully packed down by passage of MRC sleds and hundreds of footfalls. My back loosened up. The pain lessoning with each and every month. And soon, within the year, I was walking the full length of the trail, at least as far as topping the hill just behind TDH.

And before I knew it, I could actually jog down that hill and not feel like someone was impaling me with a red-hot poker. I was still on the pills, though.

Hunter and I kept up those walks even after I decided to take a gym membership. I did so with a degree of trepidation. Pumping iron was not what I’d call light work. Running on a treadmill seemed tedious at best. But I took it slow. I was assessed by a fitness employee, I raised my concern about my back, taking care to be clear about my injury and my level of pain. He started me on light weight, instructing me to never lift more than I was comfortable with, and how often and in what increments to increase the weight I was working with. He also showed me proper stretching techniques and ways to support my back while exercising.

And in time my back began to get better. I say that, but that’s not true. I feel the pain still, even all these years after, but my body has adjusted to it. My spine has strengthened because it had to. It supports the ruptured disk. And I did not feel pain in my spine the same way. I am desensitized to it. I can experience pain that would probably drop you to the floor.

Because it used to drop me.

Mining Games, Part 4

Two years after the Mine had broken up my crew, dividing it between Upper Mine and Lower Mine Production, I was ready for a change.

I was stuck at Code 4 and nothing I did seemed to change that. I had to chase after my boss to get the temporary codes due me paid to me; without them, I could not prove that I was worthy of the code increase and the raise that came with it. I found myself working side by side with people who were less trained than I was, who made more money than I did. And I was leading them. I’d had enough.
I saw a posting for people to apply to Oreflow. I knew people who’d already transferred to Oreflow years before and they were Code 6 now while I was still the same code I was when they had transferred. I filled out the transfer application. I even approached my partner, James, and said, “Come with me. We’re stuck. We’ll never get a raise if we stay where we are.”

“Why?” he asked. “I love backfill. You always get a vehicle; and no one ever bothers you.” (Untrue, we were always harassed about our inability to keep up with mucking, a physical impossibility, if you understand what the jobs entailed.)

James did not apply, no matter how much I reasoned with him. James was content where he was. James was never the ambitious sort.

But I applied. And I was accepted. And I began my training, doing some of the same jobs I did as a student, picking belt and clean-up. I began training as cage tender for 3 Shaft.

Things were good. Things were looking up. I bought a house.

Then the bottom fell out from under me. The commodity market was in the toilet, copper and zinc prices plummeted, and there was serious discussion about layoffs. The Mine decided to lay off contractors instead, opting to transfer those employees with the lowest seniority on each crew to Capital Development. I’d only been in Oreflow for three months, so that would be me. We were informed once we got there that we were lucky, that the mine had seriously considered laying us off but had decided on this course of action instead; but they also said that if the market did not improve that we would probably be the first to be let go.

My first shift on my new crew I discovered a note that Bev had put in my lunch pail: “I love you very much," It said, "I hope you have a good day on your new crew.” I almost wept.

I found myself driving a 30-ton truck up and down the ramp, hauling waste from capital development headings to fill stopes, essentially doing what I’d been doing for years, except not having to order slurry cement from surface. What was different was that we were driven like slaves, called the one-foot-out-the-door-crew, harassed by our supervisors and captains who had until recently been contract bosses. We were subjected to countless time-studies to prove that we were slacking, informed that we were not to use travel time and any other reasonable delays, like fuelling, as proper delays in a shift. Their expectations were unreasonable, if not impossible.

I could not believe my ears. My crewmates and I discussed our predicament and came to the conclusion that the Mine was trying to kill us or force us to quit, whichever came first. I dubbed my department “Capital Punishment.” I still call it that, even after all these years.

I got mad. We all did. We rebelled. We called the Ministry of Labour to complain that there was not enough ventilation in the down ramp, that the air was blue, that it burned our eyes and that we were suffocating. Our bosses threatened us. Had we been contractors they would have fired us on the spot; so said the contractors who worked with us. The Ministry investigated and found that there was about 80 cubic meters of equipment trying to inhale 2 cubic meters of airflow and it shut the down ramp down until the airflow could be rectified. That’s when the time studies began, people gathering data on how long it took to load us, how long it took for us to travel a length of ramp. We began noting all company policy delays we incurred. Our supervisors and captains told us that those delays did not apply to us. We complained to the Ministry. They agreed that we were to follow company policy and the Mining Act in the pursuit of our work. I could go on.

Then I had an injury. The ramp was rough. We all knew it. We’d complained about the lack of roadbed material many times, but the much-needed crushed rock failed to materialize. It was so rough in spots that I had to stand up when driving down ramp. But one can be distracted. One can lose one’s bearings as to where one might be from time to time. Boredom can do that. I drove over a rough patch while driving through a blind bend. The truck bounced, the truck leaped, my seat tossed me out of it and when I fell back into it, I landed so hard that I bottomed out. I blast of pain hit me, sending sparks from my pelvis to my teeth and toes. I saw stars. Tears rushed from my tightly pressed lids.

I was careful after that. I stood up from my seat, my knees bent to absorb the impact of each and every bump and hole. And I went up early to report the back pain to the nurse.

A month later, I was driving the same 30-ton truck down ramp again when I was forced to exit the ramp into a re-muck (a side alcove) to allow a Toyota pick-up to pass. My back had just begun to heal. It was still tender, but the daily chronic pain was subsiding. I drove over a piece of loose (rock on the ground). When the truck slipped off it my seat bottomed out again. The prior pain was dwarfed by what followed. I nearly passed out. I reported the incident again, and found that I could not move the next day. I made it to my doctor, who assessed me, prescribed Tylenol 3s and anti-inflammatory, suggesting that if my back did not improve, I might require surgery.

The Mine challenged my injury. The Ministry denied their challenge.

Bev had her own injury at exactly the same time. She fell down the stairs at work, giving herself a bruise from hip to knee. Her office did not challenge her injury. But we both did hobble about like arthritic octogenarians for a couple weeks, neither able to care for the other.

Seven months after I began with Capital Punishment, I had enough. I was angry. I was furious. I was depressed. I decided to quit. But I was going to make my bosses lives a living hell first. I complained daily to the Safety Department about infractions. I brought a list of complaints about a meter long to the next crew meeting. I called the Ministry to enquire about harassment charges and what I needed to do to pursue them.

A month later, my prior superintendent in Oreflow, Wayne David, approached me at my wicket and asked me if I’d like to come back to Oreflow. Coincidence? I don’t know. I didn’t care.

I could have dropped to my knees and kissed his feet.