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

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.

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.

The Falling Man

Where were you on 9/11? That’s my generation’s “Where were you when JFK was shot?”

We were preparing to go to Manitoulin. We were excited. We were packing. We were hauling coolers and bags to the Jimmy (my SUV). This would be our first trip after having just bought our house. We had no money, all of it sunk into what was truly a money pit of new needs. If you’ve never bought a house, you have no idea how much crap you need to make a home. We needed to get away for a little while. But it couldn’t cost anything, either. So, we were going to Manitoulin. All we needed was food, and we would have had to buy that, anyways.

We did not want to return to a fridge full of rot, so I made a quick trip with the perishables to my parents’ while Bev took stock checked off the packing list. My mother met me at the door.
“Have you heard what happened?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I’ve been packing.”

“The World Trade Center is on fire,” she said. “It was hit by a plane.”

My mind was on the six-hour trip ahead of us. “That’s horrible,” I said. Then I said, “Well, it’s happened before,” latching onto a bit of trivia buried deep in the detritus scattered throughout my memory. “A B-29 crashed into the Empire State Building during the War.” (It was actually a B-25.)
I went home, thinking that I had to stop for gas on the way out of town.

We jammed everything into the Jimmy and were almost out the door when my father called. “A plane hit the other World trade Center.”

“Mom told me,” I said.

“No,” he said, “another one!”

That was weird, I thought. You’d think it was impossible that two buildings could possibly be hit in the span of 24 hours. Besides, how could anyone hit one, let alone two? They were huge. They were in plain sight. Hundreds of movies and television shows told me so.

“They’re saying it’s a terrorist strike.”

Wow, I thought. But we had to get on our way if we were going to make it to Manitoulin by supper.
We jumped in the Jimmy and were on our way. We thought we ought to listen to the radio for a while instead of CDs, at least until we heard the news; surely they’d report on what was going on. We were just passing out of town, lumber mills to either side when the music on the music was interrupted.
“The World Trade Center is gone,” they said.

“Gone?” I said. “Where could it possibly have gone?” There were seven buildings, after all. They were enormous. The Twin Towers were about 415 meters tall. They were 110 stories, both of them.

The radio station cut away to a television broadcast. We heard too many references to the visual footage and had no clue what they were talking about so we turned to CBC radio for their continuing coverage; they, at least, knew we couldn’t see what was going on. We remained rooted to CBC until we lost transmission, barely speaking as we tried to process the fact that at least two planes and possibly a third airliner had been hijacked and driven into the World Trade Center, the third narrowly missing the Pentagon, only then listening to CDs, checking to see if we could pick up Sudbury CBC after a half hour, and every ten minutes or so after that until we picked up the broadcast again.

What was going on? A state of emergency had been declared. All air traffic had been forced to the ground. Borders were closed. Were we at war?

Reports were still a mass of confusion when we resumed listening as reporters asked questions that few people had answers to, relying on eyewitness reports, invariably focusing on the human tragedy, the loss of those within, the sacrifice of law and fire personnel. We kept hearing mention of “The Falling Man.”

We pulled into Espanola, fueled up, picked up a meal-to-go and other essentials from the Independent grocery store there, overhearing the one and only conversation of the day, The Discussion.

When we arrived at Bev’s family’s camp on Silver Lake, just five minutes beyond Silver Water, we turned on the TV. Of course we did. We’re a visual culture now. We turn to the TV when things happen. Nowadays people would probably turn to Twitter, but it was 2001, not 2006.

The reception was crap, more snow than picture. There was a great deal of rabbit ear and knob adjustment—it was an old tube TV, perched on top the fridge and prone to fuzz when the fridge pump kicked on.

I finally got a clear picture. Clear-ish, anyways. It was still grainy.

The first thing I saw was a vision of the eponymous Falling Man, plunging headfirst past the rush of vertically stacked windows behind him, his clothing whipped and rustling about his body, one knee drawn up to his waist, the other trailing. His head was thrown back, his eyes downcast, as though watching the ground’s rapid approach.

My heart lurched. My breath caught in my throat. My knees grew weak. I had to sit down. Tears welled up, further reducing the clarity of the man’s tragic, terrible, terrified panic and courage, and his desperate decision to have chosen such a horrific end rather than to be incinerated in the hell that must surely have raged around him.

Tobermory

I had to explain to my travel agent there was more to life than scuba diving. I wanted to experience more of the world than just an isolated panoramic view of the ocean. It’s not that I didn’t like dive vacations. I did. What I liked most about them was the new friends made, the guaranteed camaraderie. There’s just so much more to see and do in the world, and I wanted to see and do some of it.

I didn’t stop diving. Henri and I still dove. But there was precious little variety in diving Northern Ontario kettle lakes. They’re cold, they’re deep, they’re black. We even went so far as to do a few road trips to Tobermory to dive Fathom Five National Park.

The first year we went, we did so without making any plans. That was stupid of us, but we were young and hadn’t really travelled about Ontario much then. We had no idea that Tobermory was a popular tourist destination.

We drove right round Georgian Bay, coasting through Wasaga, Collingwood and the Blue Mountains in the dead of night, booking into the Pinecrest Motel in Owen Sound around midnight. It wasn’t much to look at, but at that hour we weren’t much concerned with ambiance. We ought to have been. It was in need of restoration. It was in need of beds without sheets of plywood under its mattresses. I survived. This is not to say that I slept. I was so tired when we rose that Henri drove the final leg up the Bruce Peninsula.

We rolled into Tobermory without a reservation, without even a clue as to its layout. We drove straight through town, finally pulling into the Bruce Anchor Motel, right on Lake Huron. We were lucky to have found a room. We registered, threw our bags into our room, and drove back to the harbour, finding ourselves in front of GS Watersports, reading their plank of upcoming dives, finally inquiring within. We were in luck. There was a boat available. We could go right then if we liked. We signed up for a two-wreck cruise, the first dive deep, rated advanced, the second shallow and easy. We took advanced to mean requiring our having taken the advanced diver’s certification. We were wrong.

The first dive was way too difficult, considering the state I was in. Firstly, the conditions were not ideal. It was windy out on the lake, the water choppy. Secondly, the dive was way too difficult for my experience at the time (I hadn’t dove the Great Barrier Reef as of yet). The first wreck was deep, sunk in a narrow channel ripping with current. And we had no idea how cold the Great Lakes were.

We dropped over the gunnel, fought our way to the anchor line. As I said, the current was strong. We dropped below the surface, following the line. We should have gripped the line and repelled down it, but we wanted to impress ourselves with our skill, so we didn’t. We followed it. Or tried to. I never saw the line, not once. Sediment flowed past my mask, dimming the already darkened, overcast depths. Already exhausted from lack of sleep, I grew even more so fighting the current. I was cooking in my wetsuit, despite the water’s icy embrace.

I nudged Henri. I shrugged. Where the hell are we, I was asking. I gestured that I was heading for surface. Just as I was ascending, Henri spotted the silhouette of the wreck. He kicked hard, harder than he originally thought necessary to gain the wreck, and barely laid fingers on it before being torn off it. Then he too ascended.

I looked for Henri when I broke surface. I grew anxious when I didn’t see him right away.
Where the hell was he? I wondered. Did the current carry him off? I ducked my head below the surface and still couldn’t see him, but by that time, I really didn’t know where the wreck was anymore, or where to look. When he did surface, he asked me what happened.

“I lost all strength,” I said. “I couldn’t do it anymore.

I still had to fight my way back along the hull of the boat to the ladder. Henri climbed aboard first. Then me.

I was so wiped out I puked over the side of the boat. I told Henri I couldn’t do the second dive. Then I told the Captain. We spent the rest of the day getting the lay of the land, finally settling into the Crow’s Nest Pub.

I fared better the next day. It was sunny. The wind had died down. We asked about and booked dives that had a far lesser difficulty rating. There were more divers. It turns out that most divers stayed away the day before, owing to the conditions. We also noted that most wore dry suits. Thankfully it was the last weekend of August, when the water is “warmer” than usual; had it not been, our “arctic” wetsuits would have been unequal to the task and we’d have locked up with the cold down there. As it was, we came off alright, looked cool, gained some much-needed experience. We considered investing in dry suits. We never did, but we considered it.

The lake had calmed to glass after our second dive on our second cruise. Our voices echoed off the high rocky escarpment. We felt great. It was the first moment I thought Lake Huron looked beautiful.
We vowed to return, and we did.

We were better prepared for our second trip. We returned in September when the water was “warmer” still. We were there even longer, that time, granting us the time to explore the town a little more, the luxury of leisure. We stayed up the peninsula at the Tobermory Inn and Suites, actually booking ahead that time. It looked alright when we booked it. It looked a little worse for wear when he booked in. Every nook and cranny grew spider webs. It was a little damp. But once we aired it out, it was fine. It also reminded us of residence: someone pulled the fire alarm on our first night there. I woke to its fire bell clamber, having fully travelled back in time: it was the weekend; Res; someone got drunk and pulled the alarm for shits and giggles again.

“Who the hell pulled the alarm this time?” I wondered before realizing where and when I was.
When I mentioned that to Henri, waiting out the fire department in the parking lot, he laughed. “Me too!” he said. Funny, we thought aloud, nobody looked drunk.

We took the time to relax on terraces, soaking up the sun, soaking up a beer of two with baskets of fish and chips. We marvelled at the yachts moored in the marina, some declaring as far as Florida as their port of registry. Some were sailed, some even sorting a couple masts. Once or twice we spied yachts that dwarfed our houses, big enough to sport crew and security, Mrs. Evinrude’s, for instance. We weren’t allowed anywhere near those.

We finished up our second trip in Tubby’s Lounge, playing pool with a local dude. He was a sight to see, cowboy hat, starched white shirt and jeans, trim beard, hair cascading over his shoulders. He had a foot-long Bowie knife and a carnation sticking out of his back pocket. He claimed to have been born on Flowerpot Island, as though that made any difference to us.

Flowerpot treated us with contempt at first, tourists having invaded his homeland. Which we were. He kicked our asses at pool, kicking us off the table. But despite his obvious contempt, he hung around. And around. And around. He warmed up to us over time, even asking Henri to partner up with him on the pool table against all-comers.

I lost interest in him and in playing pool after a few beers, preferring to hang out with the other divers who shuffled in shortly after us

But Flowerpot wanted to play pool. With everyone. Henri finally threw a game, hammering an easy 8-ball so hard it flew off the table. “Enough pool,” he told Flowerpot after that, “I’m too drunk to play anymore.”

Henri’s having hung out with Flowerpot panned out, though.

Flowerpot manned the ticket booth for the MS Chi-Cheemaun, and he only billed us the minimum allowable. For one crossing we were two seniors in a compact.