Stratford

The Festival Theater

I’ve mentioned Stratford more than a few times in this narrative. I love it there. I’ve no idea why. It just resonated with me from the first time I lay eyes on it. The plays, the parks, the statuary, the attention to detail. The food. The hotels and B&Bs. The Bookstores. Ontario Street. Its attention to the Arts.

Herein lies a list of plays I’ve attended. I may have missed one or two. I may have misplaced the year when I saw one or two. No matter. I’ve no doubt I’ll be back for more.

1996: Sweet Bird of Youth, Waiting for Godot 

1997: Oedipus Rex, Equus, Corolianus

1998: A Man for All Seasons, The Night of the Iguana

1999: Dracula, West Side Story, Macbeth, Glenn

2000: Hamlet, Fiddler on the Roof, Elizabeth Rex

2004: Guys and Dolls, Anything Goes

2006: Corolianus, The Glass Menagerie, South Pacific

2007: Of Mice and Men, Othello

2010: As You Like It, The Two Gentleman of Verona

2011: The Grapes of Wrath, Jesus Christ Superstar

2012: Cymbeline, The Pirates of Penzance

2013: Tommy, Blythe Spirit, Waiting for Godot

2016: A Chorus Line, The Aeneid

2017: Timon of Athens, HSM Pinafore, The Changeling

Gramma

Blanche Valarie Blondeau was born in 1908 in Fillhilla, Saskatchewan. Years later she met and married Jules Leonard. They moved to Ontario, settling in Timmins, where Jules worked at the Macintyre Mine. Years later, having already giving birth to Lorraine and Laverne and Ronnie and Jerry, she gave birth to Edgar, my father. Blanche gave birth to my uncle Derek nine years later, and the family was complete until her children married and had children of their own. All this happened long years before I came along, the second last of my generation of Leonards.

Blanche had some rocky years before then. Times were tight. There was a Depression to weather. There was another World War to weather, too. They were blessed to have been spared the later, if not the former. Too young for the Great War, too old for the second. Her children were spared too. I think she thanked her lucky stars for that.

They moved to Cochrane and Jules began to work for the railroad, much as he had in times before, when he met Blanche and took her hand in Holy Matrimony. She got involved with the Church, spending many years in service of the Catholic Woman’s League.

Blanche and Jules

You’d think that would have been enough drama for one life, but life is rarely smooth. Blanche became ill shortly before my mother met my father. Deathly ill. She almost died. My mother tells tales of how Blanche received the last rights in her mid-forties, and how her father made it possible for Jules and Blanche to move out of the home that sat alongside an open sewer into something better. And how her father gave Jules preferential billing for all the medications Blanche needed.

Blanche recovered, but she was plagued with migraines, thereafter. They plagued her still when I was a child. I remember her shut up in a darkened bedroom on a few occasions when we came to visit. She always rose to greet us, though, despite her pain. She would. Family had come to call, don’t you know, and Blanche was all about family. Family was everything to her.

And she had a large family to dote over. It’s probably all she ever wanted. She insisted her entire family be in attendance at holidays, cooking for fifty people at a time. And they came because Blanche ruled her family as only a strong-willed matriarch can.

Blanche and Jules

I learned all these things afterwards. What I remembered was the much-loved and loving woman who enveloped me in hugs and smothered me in kisses. The woman who sang Christmas carols and watched Lawrence Welk and always had cookies and date squares and jelly rolls (once she learned of my allergies to dates and oats) at hand when we arrived.

She weathered tragedies, too. Her son Ronnie’s passing, decades before what ought to have been his appointed time. The passing of her children’s spouses: Hazel at far too young an age and Pauline many years later. My Uncle Derek’s partner, Larry, too. She buried her husband too, outliving him by more than thirty years.

When Blanche was eighty, she became too infirm to take care of herself. Not that she didn’t try. She was a proud woman, not inclined to complain, not wanting to be a burden. She couldn’t possibly take care of herself anymore though. She suffered a severe stroke, even if she rebounded from it without any noticeable effects. She suffered micro-strokes too, after that, if not before, and was just as apt to collapse to the floor as not when she had them. Those micro-strokes never left her after that, always lurking, always striking unexpectedly. My Uncle Derek would have none of her pride. He collected her and brought her home to London with him, an act that very likely made it possible for her to live for almost twenty more years.

Blanche at 80

When Blanche was about to celebrate her 99^th birthday, my uncle decided that the milestone needed marking. Not everyone makes it to 99, after all. We called it a dress rehearsal for her centennial. There was a party planned for that, too.

We came from all points of the compass. From Cochrane, from Timmins, from Thorold and St. Catherines. Fredrickhouse and Innisfill and Toronto. The Tishlers flew in from Detroit and points further south, from Ohio and Indiana and California.

I drove my father down, arriving well in advance of the festivities, having made a pit stop in Barrie to visit my friend Neil the day before. We made the last dash to London and checked into a hotel inundated with Leonards.

Blanche and family at 80

There was a wine and cheese meet and greet, lengthy conversations in the hall as we came upon one another, an evening at the Keg, and drinks in Uncle Jerry’s room, well into the night.

Tables at the reunion were by clan. Aunt Lorraine’s Tishlers here, Uncle Laverne’s brood there. Dearly departed Uncle Ronnie’s family tables here, Uncle Jerry’s there. My sister’s husband and I sat with Keith and his children. Where was my sister? At the head table with my grandmother and her surviving children. The eldest child of each family branch joined them, mostly women, all of them matriarchs now in their own right.

Sadly, that was the final happy gathering of my greater family. Blanche was ailing. We all saw it, none of us wanting to say so.

Blanche at 99

My Uncle Don, Lorraine’s husband, did, though. He made his presence known when he entered the hall, calling out “Hello, Gramma,” when he did. Big man, bigger personality. He retreated shortly afterwards, telling me, “She didn’t know me,” and “I don’t think she’s going to maker it to her 100th.”
She did not. Two months after arriving to celebrate the commencement of her 100^th year, we were called back to mark her passing.

I could not watch as they lowered her into the ground. Tears welled up. My composure faltered. I turned away and walked a short distance up the hill from the black hole she was ever so gently being slipped into. Bev followed me but kept her distance as I waved her off and broke into tears. I choked them back a few moments later and rejoined her and my family. Bev slipped her arm around me as I once again faced the grave.

Uncle Don followed soon after. Then Uncle Jerry.

My father suffered a heart attack and a couple strokes. He suffered a near fatal rectal hemorrhage due to diverticulitis. He never came home after being admitted to the hospital. He was admitted to a care facility, instead, and has been there ever since.

I’m watching the passing of the generation that raised me. It was only a matter of time. As they say, it comes to us all.

I’m no different.

My time will come, too.

Algonquin Park

I decided that Bev needed to keep her feet on the ground for a while after the accident. She was still recovering, easily confused, apt to forget circumstances and words from time to time. She’d had a head injury, after all, and it was going to take years to come back from that.

Her doctor told her that it was safe for her to fly, but I begged to differ. A co-worker had suffered a severe head injury and the surgeon had told him that he was not cleared to either go underground or fly for twelve months after the incident, owing to the fact that he’d bled between his skull and brain. There was a serious concern of blood clots dislodging and causing a stroke, so he had to take the time for the clot to dissipate and be reabsorbed by the body. Bev had the same issue, an intercranial hemorrhage and resulting scab inside the skull. Highly precautionary, but what’s good for the gander happens to be good for the goose, too.

We’d always discussed taking some sort of resort vacation within Ontario for a while by then, so this seemed the year for it. I searched the internet for such a resort. There were more of them than I’d expected. Yes, more than a few of them were little more than cabins in the woods, but there were a lot of actual resorts, where meals were included. Most of the posh ones were in and around Wasaga and the Muskokas.

One in particular caught my eye. No wi-fi, no cell service. Each cabin had a dedicated canoe. There were boxed lunches for lengthy hikes available upon request. And their “off season” was the first two weeks of September, a slightly lower period of patronage between Labour Day and the expected peak period of leaf colour change. Killarney Lodge in Algonquin Park. There was a cabin available for the period I checked for, our usual vacation slot that happened to coincide with their “cheaper” off season. Sold. I booked it.

We drove to North Bay the night before to ensure that we’d make the most of our first day in the Park, where we, or more specifically I, had a scare. I had a beet and kale salad with my meal that did not agree with me. It gave me the runs and I was shocked to see the toilet bowl filled with what looked like blood. I was a little weak, too. Maybe more than a little weak. I was instantly terrified. I thought I was going to begin my holiday in a hospital in North Bay, having emergency rectal surgery. I informed Bev of my impending medical emergency.

“You had a beet salad,” she reminded me.

“Okay,” I said, somewhat put at ease. That would explain the red. I decided to wait a couple minutes to see if it was indeed diarrhea and not a fatal rectal hemorrhage. We gave me the all clear a half hour later, the red reduced to a more natural colour, the cramps reduced to only slight discomfort, and then nothing at all.

The next day was less panic ridden. It was a pleasant morning. Cool. Morning dew. A very thin coating of shad flies. The heat of the day gathered as the sun rose and we were on our way. We turned onto scenic Highway 60, leaving the monotonous speed of the divided highway behind, stopping in Huntsville for a couple hours to stroll its streets and picking up some Christmas ornaments in the Christmas Store there. I was especially pleased to find the place. We’d been buying intricate glass ornaments that are evocative of the trips we’ve been on. Nothing as kitschy or crass as those with “Ottawa 2012,” or some moose sitting in an outhouse with “Muskoka” written over the open door. More like a lighthouse for New Brunswick, a lobster for Halifax, the Bonhomme for Quebec City. I’d also begun buying glass Christmas ornaments for my nephews, much as my Uncle Derek had been buying ornaments for his nephews and nieces for years. One ought to pick up such wonderful traditions.
The road to Killarny Lodge is a beautiful drive. It rolls and weaves over hills and around lakes and rock cliffs and through little holiday towns, until it leaves almost all trace of humanity behind, with only the rolling hills and lakes and the occasional campground or visitor centre along its length.

We came upon the lodge at lunch. Signs informed us of its impending approach. Then we saw it, a little peninsula jutting out into the Lake of Two Rivers. We thread our way down its length, parking outside the reception and dining cabin. All cabins were of a sort, the logs painted black, the cement between them brightly white. Conifers reached out over the roofs and road, alike. Needles lay about everywhere. Piles of them were gathered in small mounds for collecting. Squirrels chittered. Birds darted here and there. Branches and needles and leaves rustled. We checked in, informed that we were a little early to take possession of our cabin, but were welcome to sit for lunch and use their facilities as we saw fit until we did.

We ate too much. We always ate too much. In our defense, they seduced us with gloriously good food. We didn’t hike too much, Bev tired quickly then, but we did a couple of the short and easy trails along the length of Highway 60. If you go, and if you opt to choose to hike the self-guided tour trails, pick up a pamphlet at the head of the trail. There are numbered posts along the way, each a marker for a passage in the pamphlet. We did take our canoe out each and every day, where we honed our paddling skills and were able to finally steer the craft right, that in itself making the trip worthwhile. We also went for a swim. Or I did. Bev dunked and waded. We mostly hung out at our cabin after a short drive in one direction of the other, where we stopped in here and there along the way at portage and trading post stores and art galleries and the Park Visitor’s Centre. Hours were spent at the cabin, reading or feeding the chipmunks and squirrels and blue jays peanuts. More hours were spent in the Activity Cabin, where teas and coffees and puzzles and books were always in abundance. Bev spent the latter afternoon puzzling over a puzzle, completing it on our last full day.

Bev declared the vacation perfect. Just what she needed. So did I.

Bev also told me she saw a British guy who looked like Doctor Who. I’d seen a British gent too, an older man, tall and a little stooped and looking decidedly unlike Doctor Who. I told her I didn’t think it was anyone who’d played Doctor Who, or looked anything like any of the gents who’d played the gent. And then, as we sat for an early lunch, I looked over at the gent sitting across the space. And there he was. Matt Smith. In the flesh. I was momentarily starstruck. There he was! Doctor Who! I looked again. I almost stood. I settled my ass back down. Only to lift it off my seat again a little. I told Bev I had to go over. And I did.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Are you Matt Smith?”

He smiled indulgently. “Yes, I am,” he said. This must happen to him a lot.

I told him that I’d watched the show since 1975 and I loved what he’d done with the character. I also told him that my favourite episode of his was “Vincent and the Doctor,” and why. It’s a tale about the time traveler meeting Vincent van Gogh, and coming face to face with Van Gogh’s demons, one literal, the other psychological, and how the Doctor tries to save him by bringing him to our present to show him how beloved he and his paintings are, how important he is. It’s an emotionally charged scene that moved me. The Doctor failed to save Vincent. Vincent still committed suicide.

I discovered that Matt had been in Toronto for the film festival, to present his directorial debut. He and his girlfriend were spending a couple days in Algonquin to enjoy the Canadian landscape. I begged his forgiveness for bothering him and left them in peace, a mild fantasy of he and I striking up a friendship rolling cinematically in my head. A silly, childish wish. It was not to be. They left that day, less than an hour later.

His girlfriend was oddly familiar, too. I kept looking at her, trying to place her, telling myself how silly that exercise was as I did it. She was English. From England. How could I possibly know her? But I did. She was Lily James. Lady Rose on Downton Abbey.

Albert

My father-in-law and I did not have an easy relationship. I can’t even say that we liked each other because I don’t believe we did. That’s odd, considering how alike we were in so many ways.

This is not to say that we liked the same things. We did not. There was very little overlap of interests. Albert liked to hunt and fish and watch sports. I do not hunt or fish. I never have. It’s not that I dislike sports, I don’t; I just don’t watch them often. Watching sports on TV takes a lot of time. Talking about sports takes even longer. About two hours for every hour watched, if observation of those people I work with serves as a measure.

But Albert and I both liked a good party. Maybe too much so. That goes for both of us.
We’d both been bachelors a long time, and neither of us had been what I’d call a stay at home kind of guy. We both liked our social outings, we both liked to chew the fat into the night.

I’m not sure why he disliked me. Maybe it’s because I stole his daughter away from him. Maybe it’s because I was not a hunter or a fisherman. I doubt that, though. He never once invited me to either. Maybe that’s because he knew that I didn’t do either, so he never asked, sure I would decline. I probably would have, too, but I would have appreciated the offer. Either way, he never asked.
We didn’t get off on the right foot. The first day I met Albert, he barely said two words to me. He was too busy repairing a broken lamp with a length of PVC pipe. When he did speak to me, it was to ask me what I thought of his fix. I thought it ugly. I thought he ought to just throw it out and buy a new one. What I thought is not what I said. “Does it work?” I asked. He didn’t know. He hadn’t plugged it in yet to find out. I was ignored after that, for the most part. I suppose he thought I was just a temporary presence and that I’d go away, after a time. I was just a boyfriend, after all. No need to pay me much mind.

I was confused. I was being introduced by his daughter. You’d think that would have meant something. It didn’t, apparently. I didn’t feel that welcome, and said as much to Bev, so I didn’t go back for quite a while.

Albert and I did not have much cause to cross paths much for some time, after that; not until Bev and I decided to buy a house together.

I was treated with what might have been fury. There was a barrage of questions, none of them friendly. “What are you doing? Aren’t you putting the cart before the horse?” In his mind, we should have got engaged first, then married, then bought a house. That was the time-honoured tradition. And I was breaking that tradition. I couldn’t see how it was any of his business. It wasn’t the ‘50s, after all. I didn’t need his permission to ask Bev anything. I needed hers. And I was getting on in years, years I didn’t have to waste on time-honoured tradition if I wanted to have children. And I did.

Things did not really improve, not really. His anger cooled. But he never really warmed up to me. We came to an understanding, though. He really didn’t have much choice, after all. I’d become a fixture in his daughter’s life. Albert and Alma spent a few weekends with us on Manitoulin. But I was new to the place and wanted to explore, so we were up and about and not there all day, where Albert wanted me to be, so I could pitch in on maintenance. Albert apparently forgot that I’d had a back injury. Fetch and carry and working at height wasn’t my forte, anymore. I did my bit. I cleaned gutters and mowed the lawn and fetched water from the well, replenishing the kitchen and sauna supply. I was less inclined to participate in the physical maintenance of the place so the “boys” wouldn’t have to do anything when they showed up to hunt deer in November, something I was never invited to participate in. The fact that I was on holiday was less important than their being on holiday.

When I popped the question (a moot point, considering we’d been living together for years at that point), I sat Albert and Alma down, and with Bev sat my side, I asked for their permission to marry their daughter, Alma was thrilled. Albert did not say a word. So, I married his daughter without his permission. Like I said, it wasn’t the ‘50s, anymore.

Time passed. Bev and I did not have children. Albert brought that point up once or twice, especially after his son began to have his. “Don’t you think it’s high time you had kids,” he asked. I did. But I wasn’t physically capable of having them. I didn’t have the ovaries for it. I wanted kids, but we were getting on and when it didn’t happen, I considered adoption, and then as more time passed, that ceased to be an option, too.

Then Alma passed. Albert sunk into a funk. It’s hard losing a spouse. I don’t know how hard it can be, but I can imagine how devastating it can be. I suppose it’s like having your entire world pulled out from under you. Even more so when you’ve been together for many decades. He grew morose. He fell into depression.

We’d always spent Sundays with Albert and Alma. We carried on after her passing. I cooked dinner. I was hell bent to make sure he ate, too. I almost never cooked the same thing, either, thinking that he needed variety in taste and diet. Albert told me that I’d make some woman a good wife someday. I let that pass. I let a lot of things pass.

Sadly, Albert never really recovered from Alma’s death. His health suffered. He became diabetic. His hearing, never good for as long as I knew him, grew progressively worse, until we were forever raising our voices in his presence. His knees failed him and he took to a motorized chair. When that happened, his muscle mass faded away. He grew weak. His breathing became laboured.

He put himself on a list for assisted living, but passed when his name came up. His name never came up again.

He rarely left the house in his final years. He became timid. He became ever so lonely. He demanded that we spend more time with him than we already were. He argued when I said that would be difficult. So then it was my fault that his daughter had been taken away from him in his hour of need. I could have been more patient. He was in his 90s, after all. His life was coming to an end and I think he knew it, even if we couldn’t see it at the time.

But I was dealing with my own shit at the time. Not terribly well, I might add.
Before long, he became sick. Pneumonia settled in, and he was hospitalized.
Then he too passed.
I’m sorry to say that his passing was solitary. We did not have the same warning we had for Alma. There was no gathering of the family.
There was only a phone call to tell us that he’d passed away in the night.

A Slow Recovery

Bev almost died. There’s no doubt about that.

She spent three days in ICU, doing little more than laying still and suffering excruciating pain (that’s an understatement; that’s all she did), while I sat on, leaving only long enough to take care of our dogs and get a bit to eat every now and again. And to sleep.

I didn’t call in to work for a few days, only reminded to do so when I heard the message from my boss, enquiring as to Bev’s status. When I did, he wasn’t at his desk, so I left a message on his machine: “Yeah, as you know, Bev had an accident. She hit her head and bled in her skull. She’s in ICU. So, I won’t be in for a while. Put me down for Emergency Leave, or Sick, or Holidays or AWOL. Whatever. I won’t be calling you every day to tell you that I won’t be in. I’ll probably be back once Bev’s out of ICU. I don’t know when that will be. Maybe Thursday. Maybe not then… I don’t know. I’ll have to see how things go. I have to go.” And I hung up and went back to the hospital.

It was a quiet few days. I read a novel, started another. I whispered to her when answering her whispered queries. I kept her abreast of well-wishers well-wishing.

She was not allowed food. She didn’t want it, anyway. Her skull was cracked and chewing was a misery. She did sip a little water from time to time. I directed the straw to her lips and kept it nearby until she said she was done. That was never for more than a sip or two, though. Otherwise, nothing passed her lips. She was allowed food her last evening in ICU. They brought up a sandwich and a fruit cup and some juice. Chewing was still a chore, so she attempted no more than a nibble before waving it off. She did eat the fruit cup. She declared it the best fruit cup she’d ever had.

ICU is a good place to recover from a head injury. Very quiet. But she couldn’t stay in ICU forever. After a few days they moved her to “gen pop,” as I called it, took her off the narcotics and from then on only managed her pain with Tylenol. Not even Tylenol 3s. Just Tylenol. It was noisy in gen pop. And she was light sensitive. Her head throbbed with each dropped pin and each shaft of light.

When I found out that they were only managing her pain with Tylenol, I asked her how often the nurse popped her head in to see her. Not often; she had a floor full of patients to care for, after all. Well, I thought, if all they’re going to do is give you Tylenol, I can do that at home. I asked the doctor if I could I could do just that, so she could recuperate there. He asked if I would be there. I would, I said. Then she can go, he said. But he extracted a promise from me that if she expressed any discomfort whatsoever, I was to bring her back without delay. I promised to do just that.

I packed her up that day and brought her home. It was torturously bright, even for me. I tried to give her the smoothest ride she’d ever had. Not an easy feat, but I did my best.

I set her up in the bedroom and closed the room-darkening-blinds (a blessing from my shiftwork days). I turned on the TV and set it to a classical radio station and turned the volume down as low as it would go without being off, altogether. Did it bother her? I asked. No, it was okay, she said. White noise, if you get my drift.

I became head cook and chief bottle washer for the next while. I was always the cook (I was home two hours before Bev, and unless I wanted to eat at 7 or 8 pm, I had to take it up, or be resigned to eating an hour or so before bed; besides, I like to cook, so no complaints), but now I did all the washing and all the dishes and all the fetch and carry, too, without help. I walked the dogs. And I was at her beck and call, bringing her all she desired: water, ginger ale, whatever. And I tried to anticipate her needs, too. There was always a bowl of grapes near at hand. There’s not a lot of chewing required when it comes to grapes. All as silently as could be.

I went back to work after another week. She agreed that I should. She lay about most days, not requiring much, so she gave me her blessing, so to speak.

I came home to find her crying. She’d tried to read her Get-Well cards, and suffered a migraine after reading only a few words. “I’ll never be able to work again,” she wept.

“Yes, you will,” I said. “You can’t see how far you’ve come in the past couple weeks.”

She had. Her recovery was rapid. She just couldn’t see it. The time was long for her. The improvements incremental. But I could see the difference.

And after a time, so could she. She’d get up to change rooms for a little while, at first. Then she began to watch a little TV. Then she began to watch a lot of TV. She still couldn’t read, reading still gave her migraines, but she could watch twelve hours of TV without interruption or ill effects. That may inform you how much you use your brain when watching TV. She couldn’t watch just anything. The pace of modern movies hurt her head, too loud, too flashy, too much rapid editing. Turner Classic Movies was perfect, though. Slow editing. Long cuts. Not too loud, not too much flash. Black and White helped, too. Before long, she was running out of patience, though. There’s only so long you can remain in bed, only so long you can stay in a darkened room, and you can only watch so much TV before you’re chomping at the bit to do something.

And then, after a time, she could read a little without pain, then a bit more, then more still.
She went back to work after three months. A couple hours here, a few hours there. “You’re sure you’re ready,” I asked her before she went back. She was, she said.

She probably wasn’t. She probably ought to have taken a couple more months, but she was bored.
Can you blame her?