The Res

 

After vacating the Haileybury School of Mines, I was next schooled at Cambrian College in Sudbury. Same course, Mining Engineering Technology, just different school. Should I have changed schools? Yes. Should I have found a different path to pursue? Even then that should have been obvious to me, but I was still oblivious to that. Even in regards to all things Engineering. My neighbour, George Miller, had worked in labour and supervision in the Timmins mining industry his whole life, and George had tried to give me some sage career advice that summer, but George was too cryptic in his delivery; George should not have just said, “Get the ring, David,” referring to the iron ring all engineers wear on their right pinky, George ought to have been bolder in his advice, telling me that the industry (largely engineers in management) does not respect technologists, only engineers, and that my career advancement would be severely limited because of it. Of course, no school that teaches technology courses would ever enlighten their students with that tidbit of wisdom, would they? That said, I was too full of myself back then to heed George’s advice, brushing it aside, as though I knew my choice of career better than a man in his 50s who’d already spent his life in it.
Essentials packed again, we arrived in Sudbury, found the college residence, found my room (1B10), and dropped my stuff off. That took a while. The residence entrance was on the 3^rd floor, my room on the 1^st. You’d think that my having worked underground and used to a three-dimensional world, that I’d have been able to figure out that the 1^st floor was not the ground entrance, that should have been a piece of cake, but it took a few tries before it sunk in. My parents took me to lunch, and were on their way back home in the early afternoon. I was less devastated this time than the last. There was more excitement this time. Bigger school, more people, more to do.
My stuff arranged, I crashed out in the common room, no more than five feet from my room, and flipped channels. I found football, and left it there. I didn’t actually want to watch anything, I wanted to get on with meeting new friends, but I needed something to fill the time with something, was too excited to concentrate on a book, and I didn’t want to appear too introverted or closed off. I kept glancing through the common room windows at the halls for activity, and shortly, Evan Macdonald was seen, and having just seen me, came in to introduce himself. I said, “Hey, I’m Dave,” and he answered with “Hey,” and whatever else he said. Evan spoke in such a thick Cape Breton accent that it took me about a month before I could really decipher what he said, and by then I’d already begun to pick up bits and pieces of his accent, too (so said my friends when I returned home for Thanksgiving). But within about a half hour, I’d begun to pick out most of what I thought he said, or enough to figure out what I thought he said, anyway. We began with easy words. Evan had beer, so we started with that one. I had beer too. We were best friends. We settled in, introduced bits about ourselves. Evan was in Audio Visual, a drummer, a soundman for his band out East. He wanted to learn more about the electronic end of music.

More people arrive, people from Timmins, Cochrane, North Bay, people from the North and people from the South. And there were girls, the Res being co-op. Everywhere I looked there were girls. And one in particular who caught my eye, a girl from Elliot Lake. Enter Debbie Wursluk. Polish ancestry, my height, good figure, a blonde mullet Mohawk that rivaled Robert Smith’s for height. We begin to mix in the common room, in the halls, chatting each other up in doorways.
Then we had our residence induction from our floor deans. Each floor had a male and female dean. Our male dean looked like he stepped out of Platinum Blonde. Our female dean looked like Patty Smythe from Scandal. Rules were laid out involving guests and such, the usual fire drill. Then we were told that there was a meet and greet at Cortina Café later. No one knew where Cortina Café was. They didn’t tell us. But I knew where Cortina Pizzeria was, my parents had just treated me to lunch there. And Cortina Pizzeria was only about a half mile away, just up Regent Street, the same Regent the Res was, on so I assumed that was what they were talking about. So, I said, I knew where Cortina’s was. Word spread, and that’s where first floor Res went. As a group, everyone, B section, G section, Y section. We filed in, and Cortina’s, seeing all those greenbacks roll in, set up an enormous table down the centre of the restaurant. We dominated the restaurant. We wondered where our deans were, as they weren’t in Cortina’s when we arrived. We shrugged, and settled in, Evan to one side of me, Debbie to the other, the three of us already fast friends. We ordered drinks, then more while we waited a while for our deans to arrive. They did not. It was suggested by Evan that maybe we were in the wrong place. I countered with, “well, this is the only Cortina’s I know about, and we’re here now. If there’s another, I’m not going to go traipsing all over town to find it.” We ordered, we ate, we drank some more, paid our bills, and once we got back to the Res, we piled into cabs for the nearest Beer Store.
By the time the deans returned from the actual Cortina Café, downtown and quite some distance away, we were back with our now much depleted cases, the party in full swing.
“Where the fuck were you,” they asked me.
“At Cortina’s, “I said, “just down the road,” pointing up Regent Street through the windowless hall (my 3D senses fully aware by now where everything was in relation to one another), “Where were you?”
They explained where the “real” Cortina Café was. I shrugged. “Oh,” I said before taking a pull on my beer, not really caring. I may have been a little tipsy by then.
The night progressed, the party surged from hall to rooms, to the common room, spilling out to other floors to meet newer new people.
Debbie and I found ourselves alone in Evan’s room, close, her on his bed, me on a chair facing her, the chair abut the bed, our legs resting alongside one another, touching. She was surveying me with what I believe now was smoldering sensuality. I was responding like I never had before. Breath deeper, a bull urge rising up. Looking back, I think Evan concocted a reason to leave us alone, figuring out rather quickly and easily what I was too daft to see for myself.
We are taking each other in, feeling each other out, chatting about everything and nothing at that moment. Deb was in Audio Visual, as well. Loved music, loved movies, chatted endlessly (I was entranced with her voice, her laugh), but also hung on my every word when I did speak.
After a pause, she asked me, “Have you ever wanted to go to bed, but weren’t sure you wanted to go to bed?” She said. My heart lurched, skipped a beat.
I was pretty naïve then, and I’d just come from a largely all male college, so such conversations were pretty much unheard of, so I was not entirely sure what she was getting at. Was she tired? Did she want to take me to bed? I was really beginning to like this girl, even after so short an acquaintance, so I was really hoping for the later, and was really hoping that she would decide to do just that. But I was a gentleman, raised to respect women and their choices. And we were drunk, so I really didn’t want my first time to be a drunken tumble, soon to be regretted by her in the morning. Regretted by me were she to reject me on that count.
“Yeah,” was all I could think of to say, hoping that she’d read manly worldliness into so short a response.
I did not turn out how I’d hoped.
I think she decided that she was too drunk to continue, and that I was too drunk to continue. And maybe she didn’t really want to mess things up with me, either. Her mind made up, she slinked and hopped from the bed, she whisked past, but not without grazing her fingertips along my pant leg as she passed.
Good night, she said, and laid a kiss on my cheek. She must have heard my breath catch in my throat, because she smiled more broadly than she had already. “Loved meeting you. It was a good night.”
It was.

The Summer Student

When I returned home from school for the summer, I did so with less than twenty dollars in the bank. It was the same every year, so it’s no surprise that my first was no exception. My working at Kidd Creek during the summer made no difference, either. No matter how much money I made, I was always in need of a loan from my parents come March, and upon arriving home for the summer. I always paid them back, usually with my income tax return, but sometimes with a portion of my first couple pays, as well. You’d think I’d have learned restraint in the following years, but back then I can’t say I was much of a long-term planner.
That first summer back from college was a big one for me. There was money to be made (my first well-paying job), savings to be stowed for the coming year, Roxanne to exorcise from my soul, my sister’s wedding, and my near fatal car accident (see prior early memories if you haven’t been keeping abreast of these ongoing missives).
I arrived home, having already made up my mind to leave Haileybury and continue my scholastic career in Sudbury at Cambrian. I’d applied and was accepted. Now, all I needed to do was make and save some money. I didn’t even need to make arrangements for a car pool. My neighbor, George Miller, asked around and set me up. But first, I had to celebrate my homecoming…not that I’d actually ever really left. Like I said, I wasn’t much of a long-term planner back then.
My first day of work, I was out on my curb waiting for my ride. The car pool pulled up, the Econoline’s side panel slid open, and I was ushered in by a van full of strangers. Shy at first, I kept to myself, observing these grown men I would be travelling to work with for the coming months. They were a grizzled bunch, not one of them taking the time to shave that morning. They were gruff, loud, eager to make the smallest of talk. Half an hour later, I spilled out with the rest of them, and made my way to training, following the arrows penned on sheets of paper taped to the wall to guide me. I sat through induction, was given a locker, a payroll number, sheets to sign. I was introduced to my Captain (General Foreman) and my Shifter (Front Line Foreman). And then I was told that I’d be working in the field, away from my crew for a week, scaling and bolting the back (the ceiling) of a newly fired round on 40-1. Too much mining talk? Confused? So was I.
The next morning, suited up in coveralls, boots, belt and hard hat, we were taught how to collect the cap lamps allotted us, and where to wait for the cage. New to this, we were herded together like the inexperienced sheep we were. The pager squawked inexplicable instructions (I, personally, could not make out a word that was said), and those in the know stood up and headed to the shaft. We waited like sensible sheep for our turn. And when it came, we too inched our way to the shaft, onto the cage, jammed in as tight as can be, lunch pails held tightly between our legs. The door crashed down, bells were rung to the hoistman, and we descended into the black depths. Silence descended too, quiet mutterings here and there. Over those, the cage rattled and scraped the guides. Our breath steamed from us, illuminated by already affixed headlamps, their beams sweeping about. Never in another’s eyes; to do so risked having the lamp rapped and smashed by an irate wrench. The cold of the upper mine escaped the cracks, replaced with a heavy heat as each level rushed past in a piston pressed cushion of air. The cage shuddered and shook with each passing, then slowed, then inched, then stopped as the cagetender indicated: one bell, stop, then three, men in motion.
2 Mine was hot; deeply humid, not as well ventilated as 1 Mine. The heading was quiet, stifling. At least until the scaling and bolting began. Then, rocks crashed to our feet after prying, drills blared the loudest roar I’d ever heard. The air smelled of oil and nitrates and resin and sweat. And cigarettes. Fog enveloped us, we each silhouetted in backlight. Eerie. Beautiful. You’d have to see it to understand.
I joined my crew the next week. Bob Semour, Charlie Trampanier, Rod Skinner, Brian Wilson, among others. I was to man the picking belt for the summer, part of the crusher crew. But I was also to work with the construction gang on occasion, when needed. Building walls, pumping cement. On the belts, there was shoveling to do, every day there was shoveling, scrap to be picked up, and dumped in rail cars, and pushed by hand to the station. Lean into it, shove hard to get it going, pick up speed or we’d never get it through the S turn and it would grind to a halt, and we’d have to pry it on, or push it halfway back to try again. I learned important lessons. You fucked it, you fix it, being the most important. Always wear your safety glasses when the boss is around. Sit on your gloves or you’ll get piles. Lift this way. Watch out, that’s dangerous. Don’t touch that. I learned the thrill of setting off a blast. The boredom of guarding. Always bring a book.
And I learned that you can earn the nickname Crash when you’ve been in a car accident that caused you to miss a week’s work. And how happy they are to see you after that accident too, if stiff and limping. And how your boss says, you’re light duty this week, Crash. I want you to drive that pick-up. I was terrified at the prospect, but he said, better get back on that horse, or it’ll scare you the rest of your life. I did. It didn’t.
Paychecks, parties.
And that summer I started smoking. At 19. What was I thinking? I wasn’t. Idiot! You’d think I’d have been immune to beginning after 19 years of having not. You’ll note a theme that runs through these early years, these early memories. Thinking was not foremost in my mind, then. I was at the Empire Hotel, in early enough that the sunlight still found its way into its narrow smoky twilight. I found Astra and Alma Senkus already there. They called me over. They had a couple beers before them, smokes lit. I watched. I wondered what it would be like to take a drag, to inhale and blow that long steam of smoke across the table. And I wanted to impress the twins. Secretly, I wondered what it would be like to lose my virginity to twins. So, I asked for one. They were reticent, joked with me about how addictive smoking was. But I was a man, under the spell of wanting to impress attractive women. I insisted. They gave me one. I inhaled, coughed as expected, inhaled again, coughed less. And grew somewhat lightheaded. On my second beer, I asked for another.
As you can imagine, this was another one of those worst decisions of my life.
And in case you’re wondering, no, I did not lose my virginity to the Senkus twins that night.

Funk and Daze, My Lost Year

My first year of college was a blur, an alcoholic blur. I do remember it, though, somewhat, but I’ve blocked most of it out. Too much emotional stimulus, too little emotional investment, too much unbroken routine. In short, it all runs together, with precious little to set anything apart from the drone that filled my head.
Was it all bad? Of course not. I remember hanging out in the cafeteria. I remember much laughter. I remember hanging out with the guys in the library. I recall one guy in particular, a few years older, every shirt he owned had a company logo on it (I vowed then that I’d never be a billboard for anyone after that). I remember a mature student, about mid-40s, that I was stuck with for survey; he was a walking wounded, bad back, suffering from even worse theodolite skills than most. I remember the school “committee” arriving, we students cornering those mining engineering professionals for details of what our prospects were and what our future careers might look like, testing the waters for future employment, so to speak. I remember them being rather vague, being especially non-committal. The markets were slumping, soon to tank, and they knew it. We saw it in their composure. It was worrisome. We all should have bailed, right then and pursued other careers. To paraphrase, the future’s so bleak, I gotta wear shades. And it was.
But until that bleak future rose up to envelope us, there were classes; there was surveying the back grounds, chem labs, mineralogy, basic geology and geo mapping, mining methods, milling, and of course, math classes to wade through.
School weeks were always full. There were no electives, each day jammed with courses. And on Mondays, right after school, beginning at 4 pm, there was happy hour at the Matabanick. If there was a band that week, Monday was when they began to play, so we had to check them out. We always got to know them. How could we not? We were there when they arrived, when they set up and began their sound checks. In between, they’d have a beer with us. If they were good, we’d be in all week; if not, we’d potentially only be in on Wednesday, or Thursday, sometimes Tuesday. On Friday, I’d hoist a few before climbing onto the bus to Timmins. The in-betweens were spent on homework and later studying for exams.
Throughout this, I was juggling home, new not-friends, my real friends, and Roxanne. Marc, my future ex-brother-in-law had quit and gone home, and I was stuck living with a bunch of guys who I barely tolerated, and they me. There were some “buddies” at school, but I’d never be able to remember their names or pick them out of a line-up, if my life depended on it. I was too transitory then, and when not inhaling beer at the Matabanick, I found myself hibernating in my room, paperbacks piling up, escapist stuff, lots of science fiction and fantasy then.
Exams were the worst, the winter exams the most torturous. They were four hours long. Four hours! I’d never written a four-hour exam in my life until then. Two of them per day for a week, none shorter. I had little time that week for anything else, even food. Wake to dry toast and study, climb the hill to the school, re-review notes for the upcoming exam, herd in with the rest of the sheep to write the damn thing, and then, once that was over, head home for lunch, usually a can of ready-made soup while reviewing my notes for the afternoon marathon. Cold soup, hot soup? Sure, I was all in for variety. I didn’t, couldn’t, stay at the school and eat at the cafeteria, way too noisy, too many distractions, too many guys wanting to know how I answered Question 4 of the last exam, as if I cared, or as if that mattered anymore. Fuck that, I’d tell them. Who cares? That’s last exam. Done is done, don’t mean a thing, not at all. Move on to the next. Thank you. So, there I was at 680 Lakeshore, in the kitchen, reviewing notes while ladling untasted soup into me, then climbing the hill again, re-reviewing notes outside the gym again while crashed out on the hallway floor, then transplanting what facts I’d crammed into my head onto the page, then get my ass home to review for the next couple exams the next day. Kraft dinner. KD, every day for a week. No booze. There were a few who took a pint during the marathon, but it was unlikely we’d see them the next semester, and we knew it. And we didn’t. Casualties were high that first year. I had a couple once I’d stumbled across the finish line, reveling in my sense of release.
Christmas. Roxanne. Dumped. Despair.
I returned from Christmas holiday in a funk. I lived for the weekends. At school I immersed myself in those subjects I had little to no interest in, and gained better knowledge of my chosen future profession. Not that my marks reflected it. Beer, bands, late nights, generally self-destructive behavior ruled my world. I neglected study often, opting for those escapist paperbacks instead. And I began my days backing up Georgina Street on my way up the hill to a school I loathed, each morning, waiting to catch a glimpse of the northbound Northlander. Wishing I was anywhere but there. Pathetic, really.
It wasn’t just the school. That semester I loathed everything. But I persisted. More classes, more labs, more surveying.
February came. Time to apply for summer employment. I applied to the mines at home, Kidd, the Dome, the Mac. I thought that might be enough. Ultimately, Kidd was the only one to respond, accepting my request for employment. So, I too accepted them.
More importantly, once a month, Keith was on the train, heading back to school in North Bay. He was taking Hotel Management, and was as uninspired by his choice of course and school as I was with mine. He’d only taken it because his dad had told him that he was going to college, no argument. So Keith took the course he thought was the easiest one that they offered. Keith and I spotted each other on the train one day, headed to the bar car, caught up, shared our disillusionment, and bitched a lot. Laughed a lot. Laughed at our lot. Repeat once a month. I’d spill out of the train, stumble down the hill, and then suffer through my physics lab the next morning, incapable of taking notes. Once, we met a couple of girls on the train. There were two of them, two of us, good math, all around, and before we knew it, they were in the same seats as us. They were going further than us, in more ways than one. I found one in my lap before too long, the curvaceous blonde, curly hair. Keith had the sprightly brunette. Necking, petting, more than a little groping. Did Keith do the same? I can’t say, I was too busy to notice. She wanted me to remain on the train and to go to Toronto with her, she wanted us to get a sleeper bunk (I don’t believe the Northlander actually had sleepers anymore, by then). The state I was in, I was sorely tempted. But in the end, I extracted myself from her, climbed down from the car to the Haileybury station, and regretfully prolonged my mining school obligations.
Think what you will of that curvaceous blonde, but I owe a debt of gratitude to her. She taught me that I was not unattractive, and helped drag me out of my funk. Roxanne did not fall out of my thoughts, but she did recede some. And in the end, she’d eventually become a ghost that haunted my past. That would take years, though.
Something else happened shortly after the curvaceous blonde. Our dean addressed the school body, informing us that Cambrian College was a horrible school, and that their curriculum was vastly inferior to the School of Mines. That perked my interest. Why, in God’s name, did he do that, I wondered? I looked into it, and ultimately decided that if the dean was so scared of Cambrian College’s mining program, that it must actually be good. And I thought, Cambrian College; there’d be girls there. That alone was reason enough for me to bail on Haileybury.
Final exams followed. One four-hour exam per day for two weeks. The entire years study was fair game. I passed, barely. It was shocking how poorly I’d done. Okay, maybe not all that shocking. It was certainly understandable. My major had not been mining engineering that year, after all; it had been depression and alcohol abuse. I aced those courses.

Roxanne

Roxanne was my first girlfriend. I’d been on a couple of dates prior to meeting her, but nothing that prepared me for this. There were problems with the relationship from the start, the most notable being age difference. I was in my first year of college, she was in high school. Not just high school, grade nine. Four years difference. At my age now, four years would be no difference at all, but back then? She was a child, and I should never have gone down that road. What was I thinking? The answer: I wasn’t, not at all. In my defense, there were extenuating circumstances that, had they not been in place, there would have been no introduction, and no possibility of what followed. Nothing would have happened. The first was, for whatever reason, she was hanging out with my friends, who were in grade 13. She was mature for her age, and all things considered, my mind did not actually trigger on the fact that she was in grade 9. She was hanging out with my friends, after all. Should my mind have? You bet your ass it should have. But, sadly, it did not.

My first year of college was spent travelling back and forth, to and from home. Every Friday, I’d pack up, and hop on the bus at 7:30, arriving home at 11:30 in Timmins. Every weekend. In retrospect, that was not the best atmosphere for making lasting friends, but I was 18, a young 18, and most my classmates were 19 or 20, although there were a number of mature students, as well. That may not seem a big difference, but it was to me, then. I suppose my mind was still in high school; there was a divide between grades, a divide between ages. If only that sense of divide had reared its head in Roxanne’s case.

One weekend in early winter, I arrived home and hung out with Garry Martin and Deb Huisson, who’d become an item in the past year. I had already been given an absentee introduction to Roxanne in the prior weeks, but had yet to meet her. They’d talked her up some, told me how mature she was for her age, how fun she was. I was dubious. What the hell were they doing hanging out with a grade 9, I thought. I still subscribed to that age divide we’d known and loved since kindergarten, although in the past months, living with and hanging out with guys a year or two older than me, performing lab experiments with 30-year-olds, that old divide was beginning to shake off its bonds.

Then the introduction happened. At first, she was just some hangers-on, and then, after a couple weeks, we were together more, always finding ourselves seated side by each, apparently, inexplicably, attracted to one another. I felt it, and was beginning to recognize those signs I had never before seen (or recognized) directed towards me. I was flattered, elated. And I was responding in kind.

She teasingly called me “The Plaid Lad.” Everyone laughed at that. Me, too. Because it was true. But I wasn’t the only one in plaid then. I was grunge before my time. I’d thrown off the cords, was into 501s, plaid shirt and t-shirt, parkas, then leather jackets, (sky blue, HSM school jacket, yes, but leather jacket just the same). Longish hair. Edgy, and not. I was called Smilin’ Dave by some. A bit of a fuck you attitude was still to come…shortly after Christmas, in fact.

I’d never considered myself particularly attractive. Skinny, some moles, gap between my front teeth; a co-worker at the pool had once pointed out to me at 17 that my hair had begun to thin on my scalp (not the thing ANY teen wants to hear from an attractive girl). I was shy with girls, unsure how to act around them, certainly inexperienced when it came to relations beyond study groups, and the occasional chatting up over pop at Top Hats or the show. In short, girls were friends, and goddesses on pedestals. What interest I had in them wasn’t particularly reciprocated throughout high school that I was aware of. I had one real instance of being perused. Carla Colarossi had when I was in Grade 12, she in grade 11. She asked me to go to the Valentines Dance, and had made a rather heavy broach (badge? whatever) that I was to wear, and did, even though it pulled my shirt out of shape. I liked Carla, but she did not make my heart race, so nothing came of it. Aside from that, and a couple other isolated instances, I had very little experience as to how to cope with this new attention.

My relationship with Roxanne began in earnest shortly before Christmas. I did not last long. She and I would meet Saturday afternoons, and evenings, sometimes Sundays. She once came to the bus stop to see me off back to school. But I was older, I suppose faster, most definitely needier. I was ready for an actual serious relationship, despite my lack of experience. She was probably even more unprepared for me than I was for her. So she backed off, and there was a distance during the Christmas Holidays. I asked her about it. She stammered out that she had family obligations, not enough time, other concerns that I thought a bit thin. We were going out, weren’t we? I asked my friends for guidance. I asked this other guy who was hanging out with my friends, with Roxanne; where he came from, I had no clue. He was older than me, I remember that. Aside from that, I didn’t know a thing about him. I’d never seen him before that year; I’d never see him again after that year. I thought he was a wedge, between me and my friends, between me and Roxanne. But I was desperate and asked him for advice too, just the same. I remember they gave me the usual advice, give her space. I said that I was gone for a week at a time; how much space did she need?

And then, shortly after Christmas Day, she broke it off. I was devastated. I was depressed for a month, drank even more heavily than I was accustomed to do. I wanted to quit school, run away. I didn’t know what I wanted to do.

There was a moment that passed quickly. I was in a car with John Lavric. We were headed out to South End, to go to his girlfriend’s party. I discovered that I had my hand on the door handle. Gripping it hard. I stared at it for a moment, and then consciously, delicately, released it.

How did I do scholastically that year in the wake of my leaving home for the first time, drinking to excess every week and then every weekend, in the wake of such a disastrous reconnoiter into love and relationships? I passed with a 2.15, not low enough to have to take a year off, just enough to continue. Had I failed, things might have turned out differently. I think I hated what I was doing. My future ex-brother-in-law had quit school and returned home. I had few friends. The guys I lived with were assholes, as far as I could see. Every morning, I’d see the Northlander bus pass my house on its way to Timmins. I wanted to be on it. I wanted to be on the train heading south to Toronto. The one saving grace, was my monthly shared train trip back to Haileybury with Keith. Keith was going to college in North Bay, and he and I saw each other every month for 4 hours on that train. I never failed to exit those meetings so hammered that I didn’t feel that I was going to die; but I don’t think I could have survived Roxanne without Keith. He was my littermate. I’ve never once felt that I wasn’t where I belonged when by his side. I still don’t.

That summer John and I were hanging out in his basement. It was about a week before my near fatal car accident (see automatic escapades). My sister’s wedding was a couple weeks behind us. John was experiencing a bumpy patch with his girlfriend, Tracy, and I was just beginning to actually get a grip on myself. I said just beginning. As I said, he and I were in his basement, mixing rye and cokes. John sipped his, commenting on how his foot hurt (he had actually broken it, as I recall, having leapt a guardrail that evening, and landing poorly, spilled to the ground); I was pulling harder on my drinks. The evening progressed, we complained about women, and then I went home as dawn was beginning to give hint of its arrival, having polished off way too many inches of that bottle (it was decades before I could abide the smell of whiskey). I staggered and stumbled home, taking easily three times as long to arrive home as needed. John listened to me all night. He nodded sagely. He listened patiently, something only he and Keith had done in those six months as I clawed my way back to sanity. Others didn’t, but those two did. I will love them both till my dying day for that.

Did I love Roxanne? Probably not. Maybe I did. I thought I did. Did my brief relationship with her cast a shadow on how I approached women for years to come? Most definitely. I wish it hadn’t. Because the following school year, I met Debbie Wursluk. And I most certainly loved her.

The Girl

A snowstorm was raging one night I rode the bus back to Timmins from Haileybury. Marc had quit, taking my steady ride back and forth from home with him. It was close to Christmas, so the bus was fuller than usual. A classmate was riding home with me, sitting next to me in the last seat at the back of the bus. I was not impressed. I smelled back there whenever the bathroom door opened. When it wasn’t, the upholstery smelled of caustic chemicals, of cigarettes and of melted snow and sweat. I watched the snow rush past the high window, half hidden by the beads and streaks of condensation.
We pulled into New Liskeard, a few people disembarked, pulling up their hoods of their parks before braving that wind. More than a few climbed up and inched down the aisle, scanning the seats as they shuffled to the rear. Before long there were no more and a girl even younger than I was left surveying the already full three-seater me and my classmate were on.
“Can I sit with you guys?” she asked.
We, each of us, looked at the already full seat, and at the occupied seats ahead of us all the way to the front. At the scruffy guy who shared our seat. She was pretty. We made room and she slid in between us.
She was talkative, going on about her trip to Timmins, how this was the first time she’d been on the bus, asking us where we were from. Where we were going. The fourth in our seat moved up when a seat came open at the next stop. She could have, but she didn’t. The ice broken, she opted to remain with us. She got up to use the bathroom. Asked us to watch her things. The door closed behind her, my classmate rolled his eyes and commented on how she never shut up. I shrugged. She was not hard to look at, and she helped pass the time, I said. You can have her, then, he said, curing up in the corner and pretending to nap, leaving ample room for her between us once she returned.
“I bet you like to travel,” she said to me when she returned.
I smiled. “Me? I’ve never been anywhere,” I said.
“But you like to, don’t you?” she said.
I nodded, not sure what else to do.
“I thought so,” she said. “I can always tell.” Then she said, “I’m psychic, that way.”
I thought the statement ludicrous, then. But even then I was beginning to wonder what was over the horizon. I hated where I was, that was sure.
She settled in closer to me, leaning into me, beginning to talk herself out. Her voice went soft after a while, only she and I witness to our now quiet concentration. She told me about how crappy her family was, how she wished she too could get up and go, and how lucky I was to travel, to be independent and out on my own, and how she only wished she could be as adventuresome.
After a while, she said she was tired, and asked if she could lay her head on my shoulder. I felt her nuzzle into me. I felt her fall asleep.
I think she was more adventuresome than she imagined herself to be. I’d never met a girl like her till then, and wouldn’t again until Debbie.

Freshman on Campus

Mining school. What was I thinking? I wasn’t, apparently.

The facts as I knew them. Timmins was/is a mining town. So, I was very aware of mining as an employable industry, with thousands of jobs in the district. My neighbour, George Miller, worked for Texas Gulf (the anomalous copper mine in a gold camp) for as long as I knew him, so did his brother, so did most of his friends. Marc Aube, my future ex-brother-in-law, had gone off to the college to take Mining Engineering Technology at Northern College’s Haileybury School of Mines campus. Aside from that, I was utterly clueless about mining. I had never been particularly good at math or physics, so why did I choose that as a career path? I have no idea, not a one. But I had enrolled, was accepted, they took my money, and I was on my way. Glory be.

College began in the usual way, as I’d learn in the coming years. I packed the essentials, not knowing what said essentials might actually be. Dishes, cutlery, clothing. Most everything I owned was still at home, only two and a half hours away, so all was not lost should I discover I’d forgotten that crucial this or that. But I did pack what I thought I would need for the year, including winter gear.

I need not have packed winter gear yet. I was a young 18 and travelled home every weekend that first year, regardless what might be happening in Haileybury. All my friends were still in Timmins, still in high school, where, I believe now, I should still have been, too. Water under the bridge.

Did I enjoy that first year? Yeah, I suppose I did. I’m of mixed opinion about that. Did I really enjoy where I was, what I was doing, who I was living with, who I was meeting and hanging around with that first year. No, I did not, not particularly. There were some guys I liked or I wouldn’t have stuck it out, I suppose. But I was persistent. I was tenacious. I was stubborn.

I packed everything I/we thought I needed into the trunk of my parent’s car and we drove the two and a half hours to Haileybury in a talkative state. I was nervous, new chapter in life and all that, the knot in my gut tighter with every kilometer. We arrived, piled out of the car, and were greeted by my landlady, Shirley. I’d opted to live in the same rooming house as Marc, the same place he’d lived in the year before, 680(?) Lakeshore Rd. S, on the corner of Georgina Street (Georgina is little more than a laneway).

Shirley’s rooming house was a two-story house, with a converted attic. We students were crowded in, five to the 2^nd floor, with the potential for four more on the 3^rd. Marc said the rooming house was full the year before, but I don’t recall there being boarders on the 3^rd that year. My room was a long, narrow closet overtop the porch roof, hanging off the front of the house and exposed to Lake Temiskaming. Its floor sloped away from the center of the house in two directions. I would discover it cold and drafty in the coming months, the space heater within running 24-7 just to keep the icy winds that blew off the lake at bay. Winds howled off its walls, traffic sounds rattling them as clear as day, despite its paper-thin insulation. Dan Seguin shared my precarious perch across the hall to the north. He had the worst of it; he awoke one morning to discover a snow drift laid over his scalp. The one phone available to all tenants was set between us. Cream coloured, rotary dial, as heavy as a brick; remember that? My mother was probably horrified of the prospect of leaving me there for a year, but she handed over the postdated cheques, all the same. We left the house, drove up to the school at the top of the hill, went inside, and looked around for a few minutes. There wasn’t much to take in. It was an old school, two stories, two hallways, one stacked atop the other, and no more. The expected graduating class photos lined the halls, between classroom doors. Peering through windows revealed an amphitheater, labs, classes, much like any school, but with higher ceilings than most. Lots of aged oak. There was a gym, a library. With that, the tour was complete. We found a restaurant, ate, and then there were hugs and kisses all around, and with me holding back my tears and fear of abandonment, I watched my parents drive away.

That’s when the drinking began. Marc took me in hand, so to speak, and the house dragged me to the Matabanick Hotel to initiate me.

The Matabanick was a dilapidated, somewhat tumbledown, hole in the wall, even then. God knows what it looks like now, if it still exists (I’ve seen its exterior on Google Maps, so I suppose it still does). We tumbled in and I saw tables wrapped around its thrust bar, a stage near the entrance on its north wall, washrooms and jukebox on the west, pool tables to the east, beyond which, I remember, was an enclosed porch where the shuffleboard table lived. There were fellow students already in attendance when we arrived, some already three sheets to the wind.

Rounds were bought, and I immediately fell behind. I didn’t have the year or more of their future 12 step program under my belt. The night flew by, and then dragged by. Towards its end, there were five opened, untouched blurry beers floating on the table awaiting me. But I could not drink anymore. I was so drunk that my body refused to swallow more than a drop at a time before my throat closed to it. I heard coaxing from some distant fuzzy voices, and what I suspect mockery from others. There was mockery. Given time, given proximity, exposure, and familiarity with these people, I began to recognize from which voices each came. I began to wonder if I’d made a mistake coming there.

We stumbled back to the house, and I was introduced to the 680 Lakeshore 1 am tradition: after-hour’s spaghetti and Bravo sauce and about a litre of choked back water.

School began the next day under the cloud of the worst hangover of my life. No classes, thankfully, just the expected hazing. We wore togas for the occasion, much as I did for O’Gorman’s now distant prep rally induction.

There were activities the whole week, usually scavenger hunts and the like, usually involving more beer and rye and vodka and shots. Sign-ups for clubs, to which I chose archery, thinking that might be the coolest club I’d ever heard of, or imagined. And classes. I met new people, those who I’d be spending the next year with. Hangovers every morning. Comas interrupted by the incessant blare of the fire engine red Big Ben wind-up alarm clock that would accompany my entire post-secondary career.

Then came Friday, the first weekend of college. I bought a ticket on the Northlander bus to Timmins, to get home and dry out for two days before beginning the process all over again.

I was so happy to see my friends. They missed me. They pounced on me. They buried me with questions. I filled their heads with stories and expectations of what for them was yet to come.

Thus ended my first week of college. I’m surprised that I remember anything at all.

Fracturing Friendships

Jerry, Roger, John, Mark, Chris, Me, Rene, Sean (Garry & Dan MIA)

Nothing lasts forever, not high school, not friendships, not anything. That’s a part of life. I’d already learned that, and was prepared for the eventuality of the end. Ready for it? No. Prepared for it? Yes.

I’ve had many restarts in my life. I moved from Cochrane to Timmins. Restart. I began Grade 1 in a new school, in a new town. Restart. I was held back in Grade 2 and had to repeat the year, with new classmates. Restart. When I left Pinecrest, I went to St. Theresa when all my school friends went to R. Ross Beattie. Restart. Half my friends left St. Theresa for the public-school system at the end of Grade 7. Reshuffle. Commencing high school, we were combined and amalgamated with the other Separate schools. Reshuffle. Throughout the ensuing years, I see from leafing through yearbooks, that our numbers dwindled as more and more kids transferred to TH&VS and RMSS. So, as Grade 12 began to come to its expected conclusion, I knew the writing was on the wall. All things must pass.

I was drifting through high school. I had no clue what I liked, no guidance on what I might be good at, what I might excel at in postsecondary school, or in life. Or what options were open to me, for that matter. I didn’t think I was especially bright. I’d never done that well at math or physics. I was largely disinterested in most of the subjects offered. I was especially good at English and History. We had next to no exposure to the Arts, no Music at all, so I had no insight into that world. I suspect now what I ought to have done, but hindsight is 20-20 and all that.

Butch MacMillian was our guidance counselor. I believe he was hopeless at it then. But I don’t think he had much choice as to whether or not he would fill that role, either. I think it was thrust upon him. Regardless, he sucked at it when we were there.

Butch told my sister that she wasn’t bright enough to become a nurse. She enrolled in Northern College’s Nursing program despite his advice, maybe even in spite of it; and when she graduated she told me to give him a copy of her graduation picture. Grad photos of nurses are/were different from others; they wore white uniforms and the now defunct, time honoured caps of old. She had obviously graduated from the Nursing program, something Butch told her she could never do. So her wanting me to give him her grad photo was a big fat fuck you. I don’t blame her. I’ve some of that lurking inside me, too, so I know it when I see it.

Butch didn’t just err when it came to guiding Karen. Butch told Dan Loreto that he did not require physics to get into teacher’s college. It turns out that Danny did need physics to get into the teacher’s program at the university he was attending. Danny had to go to summer school and pass physics or he would not be able to enter his program. He did.

As for me, Butch was silent as to my prospects of anything. That left me floundering with indecision. I actually travelled to Brock University to check out their campus the summer after Grade 11, but after poring through their course loads and curriculum, the degrees they offered, I wasn’t sure if they had anything to offer me. Nothing interested me, I couldn’t imagine what sort of jobs I might get from their degrees. And truth be told, I didn’t think I was bright enough to attend university. And I was terrified of the prospect of leaving home.

Then, my sister’s boyfriend, my future ex-brother-in-law, enrolled in the Haileybury School of Mines. I pondered HSM. Mining? I came from a mining town. I was informed by Marc (said future ex-brother-in-law) that there would always be mining. There was always a need for metal production, ergo, mining, and so there would always be jobs in mining. Clueless kid that I was, I did not think that mining engineering was in fact, a fistful of engineering, and that meant math and physics. There was also the security of knowing someone already in attendance. After mulling the prospect over for most of the coming year, I somehow convinced myself that I should go to Haileybury. And that meant leaving high school.

In many ways, I’d already begun the process. High school friendships are fleeting, temporary relationships, destined to fracture once the participants have moved on. As we grow up, we develop new interests, foster new friendships, and those older ones begin to fade away. Or so I found. Maybe others have forged long lasting relationships with those friends they had then. I didn’t. I wanted to, but for some reason, they all slipped out of my life, one by one.

John Lavric began telling stories about Lance, a new friend, someone we’d never met. Of weekend snowmobile adventures, of accidents and harrowing rides for help. He began talking about Tracy, this red-head he had his eye on, and who would ultimately become his girlfriend, and when that happened, we saw less and less of John.

Chris Cooper and Mark Charette began hanging out more, and Chris who’d been a presence in my life for the past five years became someone I usually just saw in class and bumped into in the hallways. And although I hung out with Mark, as well, and Roger Rheault, too, I didn’t have a car, I didn’t have a girlfriend, and I and they didn’t seem to share as many of the same interests anymore. Drifting began. They tried to set me up with a girl who had absolutely no interest I me, but that was as short lived an affair as you’d imagine. Mark and Roger and I drifted even further apart.

Renato Romey seemed destined to move to Toronto, where most of his family was.

And Garry Martin and I were spending more time at the pool, what with training and guarding and teaching swim lessons. And playing D&D. But we saw time marching on there, too. Alma and Astra Senkus left, Christine Rasicot, Lisa Leone, the list goes on. But there were also new friend cropping up within the Sportsplex’s walls, and then outside them too. There was Jeff O'Reilly, Jeff Chevrier, and there was Peter Cassidy, and Fran Cassidy, and then Cathy Walli, and then…. You know the drill. At that age, as some friends slip through your fingers, others slip in.

And then, abruptly, high school was over. We had our graduation ceremony at Nativity Church, we were Catholic, after all. We had our graduation dance, three-piece navy-blue pin stripes all around, complete with pocket watches. Throughout that weekend, we had our after-grad parties. We crisscrossed town, then out to Kamiscotia where one of the popular girls had opened her house to the masses, probably in hopes of her’s being remembered as the most popular grad party EVER! We geeks and freaks were welcomed to lackluster fanfare, we drank our beer, and piled back into our cars in search of better company. And then it was over. There are faces I’ve never seen again, whether I’d have liked to or not.

That summer, I quit my job at the pool. I’d had enough of it. My father wanted me to help with his on again, off again renovation of the addition basement. I guess my mother put her foot down, so there was an effort to complete the sauna, the shower, and what would become my burnt orange den. Construction was off and on, even then, so I had a lot of free time. I probably shouldn’t have quit. Lord knows I needed the money. But I did.

I went to summer school too. I’d passed math, but I took it again to get my marks up.

My mother told me to get out and get a job, so I went around some, and asked for applications, but by that time, all summer placements were filled, mainly by college and university students, back in February.

That too passed, then the summer.

And in the fall, I entered the Mining Engineering program at the Haileybury School of Mines.

It was the first big mistake of my life.

It would not be the last.