World’s End

Remember Y2K? It was supposed to be the end of the world despite its predicted imminent Mayan demise twelve years in the future. There always seems to be some reason why the world was/is coming to an end. I’ve been living in the end of days my whole life, it seems. My Great Aunt once showed me some prediction written back in the 1700s that the world was going to end in 1986. It didn’t. Obviously. Nostradamus became all the rage and there was abundant proof that Hissler was Hitler and that the apocalypse was nigh. Was Reagan supposed to be the Antichrist? I don’t know. But the Nostradamus specials were on TV for years and probably still are.

Y2K was only the next and most recent (then) prediction of doom. The computers were going to fail and the bombs would launch and we were all going to die. The sky was falling. Cats living with dogs. Mass hysteria!

Total pandemonium!

Corporations and governments spent billions looking into the possibility of failure and what that might mean. They spent billions on patches and upgrades and new systems. Were the banks going to collapse? Were savings safe? What was to become of all those financial records? We were told not to worry, everything was going to be fine. That set people to worrying even more.

The moment was fast approaching and the world braced itself for the end of days. I prepared to go out to a party. Andrew Marks had rented the Moneta Rec, a little private men’s club, to throw an End of the World Party, and if that failed to happen, then just a New Year’s Party.

I woke on the 31^st and turned on the TV. I watched footage of Auckland taking in the New Year, then Sydney. And Tokyo. Nothing seemed amiss. When Beijing brought in the New Year, I was convinced that mothing was going to happen. The world was not coming to an end. Everything was business as usual. When Moscow failed to cease to exist and launch its missiles, I knew we were safe. If all of the Pacific and the East could weather Y2K without a hitch, we, the West, who’d spent far more on preparing for the inevitable would be fine.

That did not stop Hydro from sending operators out to each and every power plant, just to be on the safe side.

The night fell, I put on my coat, and I walked over to Dawson and Lena’s house to share a cab to the Moneta Rec. It was cold. New Years was always cold. The temperature always plunged from fifteen below to thirty below between Christmas and New Year’s. I flipped my collar, put on my ear muffs and pressed my gloved fists deep into my pockets. The pre-party was in full swing when I arrived. It can be a challenge to decide just when to call for a cab when people are drinking. No one drinks at the same pace. Some open another bottle when they discover that the person beside them still has half a beer before them. God forbid someone should forgo drinking for thirty minutes. When we finally got everyone mobile, the gathered piled into the waiting cabs and before long we were plunging into the heat and music escaping for the Moneta Rec’s atrium.

“Coats downstairs,” Andrew told us, directing us to the stairs right next to us. “The bar is downstairs. No drinks upstairs,” he said, duty bound to inform us of the rules of the club. We all ignored them, taking our drinks with us wherever we went, taking care not to spill like teenagers.

The Rec is small, just a small house no more than 1000 square feet. Hardwood floors on ground floor, aged tile in the basement where the bar is. Paneling gave it a warm, homey, 1980s feel. We piled our coats atop the others, got our drinks from the cooler bar set up before the actual bar and made our way upstairs with beverages in hand. I didn’t dance much. I didn’t have a date. Bev and I had only just begun to see one another and we were still early days, so to speak. She had already made plans, and so had I. But I was not lonely. I had most of my friends and acquaintances around me. Drinks flowed. Stories were told. We set one another at ease, telling tales of the survival of Auckland and Sydney and Moscow, telling tales of trips and hopes and dreams and parties past. I didn’t know it then, but that would be the last rowdy New Year’s Eve party I’d ever attend.

Champagne made its rounds before the time. We held them ready. The music stopped. Andrew told us all to be quiet. He said that there was less than a minute to go until it was the year 2000. Did we all have champagne? We did. Those who didn’t rushed to get theirs. Couples drew close, some getting a head start on their kisses.

Someone cried out “Ten!” We picked up the count from there. Nine. Eight. Seven. Insert crowd noises, people talking, people laughing, people crying out, “Six!” Five. Four. Three. Two. One. “Z…..”
The lights went out. It was pitch black. There was a pause as ZERO became a faltering zed, drifting into the eerie silence.

And then we laughed.

The lights came back on. The music began again, the volume rising. Guy Lombardo’s orchestra played their time-honoured “Auld Lang Syne.”

There were kisses and hugs and slow dancing. And the collective voice of the crowd resumed its undulating gaggle.

Bev was celebration across the downtown core at Amigos with her friend Barb.

Their countdown was as enthusiastic as ours. But when they reached the count of zero, the bright lights above the raised dancefloor declared the coming year: 200. The final zero had refused to light, itself a big fat zero.

Black Water Diving

I’d always wanted to try scuba diving, having grown up watching Jacques Cousteau specials on TV. I finally had an opportunity while on holiday in Jamaica at the Hedonism resort. I was hooked straight off and wanted more but was unsure how to be fully and permanently certified. I was under no illusion that the one hour training I’d received at the resort was of any use, regardless how difficult it was. One of the things I had to do was to tread water while holding two five-pound weights above water for a full minute, otherwise it was a no-go. I passed. It wasn’t easy, and I was a strong swimmer. FYI: that treading water was a totally useless exercise.

I was pleased to discover “Blue Water Diving,” a PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) certified company, had returned to town that summer to further train all comers, and there were a lot of us, about 20 all told who signed up for the week-long course, the last of two sessions offered. I had to take a week’s vacation to do it, in the summer. I was lucky to get it, too. I was unable to sign up for the first session (the one Henri had signed up for), two others on my crew had booked it off, the max allowed off at any given time. So, if I were to fail, I’d have to wait until the next year to try again.

The first few days of instruction were held at the Sportsplex, fairly basic stuff, mainly classroom material and tests and a few introductory dives to get used to breathing through our regulators, clearing one’s mask, use of buoyance compensators and weights, regulator care and such. Once were had the basic theory down, and once we proved that we wouldn’t panic when underwater and could use our gear reasonably well, we moved on to the Lake, the Aunor Lake, specifically. It had a lot to recommend it. It was close to town. There was a road alongside it. It had an easy grade to begin with, and it was deep enough, yet still within 33 feet. Anything beyond that depth was reserved for the “advanced” class the next weekend at Greenwater Provincial Park in Cochrane.

Long story short, I passed the PADI diver and Open Water certifications and enrolled in the advanced course. If I were to dive in the Caribbean again I’d have to have my advanced or I’d have to take their course or not dive. And their courses were a joke. They took time otherwise spent diving, and were just a cash grab as far as I was concerned.

Advanced consisted of learning navigation skills, deep water decompression times, night diving, boat diving and rudimentary rescue. It was a packed weekend. I didn’t own a camper so I booked into a room at the Westway Motel. A lot of us did. There was a bar next door, so a few of us ended up there, none of us drinking much, none of us wanting to risk a hangover. Alcohol and diving don’t mix, unless you like narcosis and the bends.

What I recall most vividly of that weekend was the deep dive. There was a particularly deep hole in Blue Lake. It was over 100 feet deep and icy cold past the thermocline. I was waiting my turn to descend into the depths, floating on the surface above it, breathing through my snorkel to conserve my tank, gazing at the weighted line plunging into the black depth. Spotters hung suspended along its length in case we got in trouble.

Once the diver before me broke the surface I was given my cue. I approached the buoy, bled my BC dry and dropped like a stone down the line, my fingers lightly tracing its length. At first the water shimmered about me, the light still strong and dancing across my mask, my jet-black neoprene glove and the bright yellow of the nylon rope, but once I broke through the thermocline the light all but failed, the depths now a rusty tea, easily twenty degrees colder than the comparably tepid shallows. My face stung as I continued to the bottom.

I had a simple task to perform when I reached the bottom. I was to inflate my BC to correct my buoyancy and float weightless above the bottom, fish out the three stones I’d tucked up my thigh between my top and trousers, display the certain dexterity required to place them in a neat triangle, proof that I wasn’t narcing out. Once my task was complete, I was to give the thumbs up and repel back up the line at a rate slower than my exhaled bubbles could rise.

I dropped one of my stones. It’s not easy doing precision work with neoprene gloves on. Not able to complete my triangle of stones, I placed two, and then pointed three times at where the third ought to have been. The instructor nodded twice and gave me the thumbs up. I returned it, and inflated my BC a little to begin my accent. I wasn’t rising fast enough to my taste, so I added another burp of air, one that proved too much. I struggled to control my assent for a few moments, finally coming to a stop opposite one of the spotters.

Cold water invaded my suit, its ice invading one of my ear canals.

Vertigo took hold and spun me like a top. I felt like I was sitting on the edge of a propeller, going round and round. I reached out and held fast to the line, fighting the black out rushing down on me. I kept a steady eye on the spotter, telling myself that the world was not spinning. The spotter was stable, in one place, and so that meant that I too was upright and stable. The blackness closed in, I focused on my hands that were clamped on the yellow line. The black circle at the edge of my eyesight slowly backed off as the spotter inched forward to check me out.

He shrugged and made a made a circle of index and thumb, pointing at me. Are you okay, he was asking.

By then, the spinning propeller had come to a stop and I was. I gave him the okay signal back, then the thumbs up. Thumbs up does not mean okay, it means ascending to the surface.

My final ascent was slow and measured.

Vertigo and narcosis kept its distance.

I broke the surface, never so happy to see the glitter of sunlight dancing on the water’s surface.

Life in a Northern Town

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

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

Henri Guenette and Neil Petersen filled the void.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Henri asked, “Are you okay?”

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

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

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

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

Days of Empire

When I was about 15, my father took me on his booster rounds one summer day. I’d never been in a bar and I was fascinated by the Empire’s empty space. I’d only seen a disco in movies and I wondered how a night out in one would compare with our school dances. It seems inevitable now that I’d I spend my weekends at the Empire Hotel in those early years. It was the place to be. It was two bars in one. Adjoined, Charlie’s was the disco, Bogie’s was the music hall; both were loud, both were teeming with people, both were filled with women. And if you weren’t in either by 8:30 or 9:00, you were in for a long wait outside, because every weekend there was a long line to get in. But which one to choose? Word of mouth usually carried the day. If there was a good band, we went to Bogie’s; if not, we went to Charlie’s.

Early on, Charlie’s usually won out. Back then, dancing with girls and spending eight minutes in the arms of one at the end of the night would always beat out sitting still and having ones’ ears rung, any day.

They were an enormous step up from my watering holes in Haileybury, an enormous step down from my haunts in Sudbury. But I was always comfortable there, especially in those days. They were home. Everyone I knew went there. Okay, maybe not everybody. There were those who didn’t waste their time and money in bars, there were those who watered themselves in South End at Jakes and the Zoo (the Central House Hotel), and then there was the Mattog, across the river (otherwise known as the Mattagami, the May-Tag, to some). We never went to the Mattog; it was too far to go, too expensive a cab ride back, and rumour had it, too French, and that we Anglaise were not welcome, that there would be fights. There were others, but it was the Empire my crowd happened to settle into. Lucky for me, because it was also the bar I could walk home from in my sleep (see much earlier memory).

I can’t say that I had a favourite side. I loved to dance, and had ever since I’d begun to feel comfortable putting myself out there at those monthly high school events, and Charlie’s was a place where that could happen every weekend. And I loved live music, the way the bass would hammer my chest cavity, watching and hearing how each musician knit their sound in with their mates, magically recreating all those songs we loved, and Bogie’s was a place where that could happen every weekend!

Charlie’s was a place of wonder. Aged oak, gleaming brass. Marbled glass wall, a disco ball. A bottom-lit, coloured Plexiglas dance floor. Strobe lights. New wave and rock and roll. Everything that could make a night exciting. Mostly the crush of bodies and the uncertainty of whether she’d accept. The dance floor was huge for a small bar, but tiny in comparison to all those who wanted to press onto it. We’d be jostled, thrust into on another, and once, Danny Loreto inadvertently punched a girl in the face who strayed too close to his moves. She was laid flat, the dance floor parted, allowing her to crumble smoothly. It was the one time I’d ever seen such a strip of unoccupied space so close to the centre of the dance floor.

When we first began to go to Bogie’s, we wondered why no one sat in the disused raised stage. We were told that was Carriere country. I thought on how far Carriere country was from the stage, the bar, and the washrooms and said, let the Carrieres have it. I wanted to be closer to the stage, I wanted to see and meet the musicians. I did sometimes. It cost a few rounds to get them to sit with us, but we thought it was worth it, seeing the envy on the faces surrounding us. But we also learned how poverty-stricken most musicians actually were upon getting to know some of them. The vision of glamour I held departed with familiarity and scrutiny. Up close I saw the sometimes-tattered clothes, I heard about the crappy food, the crappy accommodations, the life crammed into a VW van for hours and weeks on end.

Summers passed and I gained some perks when Henri Guenette became a bouncer at Bogie’s. I got to know the staff, and I could skip between both halves of the bar without getting bounced. But I also saw some guys take sucker shots at Henri, I also saw Henri take down a guy who was going after another bouncer from behind with an ashtray. I wondered why Henri did it. Perks were fine. But I didn’t want to see him laid out on the floor, bleeding, either.

In time, my high school friends were elsewhere. Maybe they found other distractions. Maybe they were more in tune with budgeting for the upcoming year. Maybe the polished brass and aged oak had tarnished and cracked in their eyes. Maybe it was as simple as they had girlfriends and weren’t up to catting around any longer. Aubrey Bergin filled the gap they left. Aubrey and I became wingmen. One needed a wingman in a rough joint.

One Christmas holiday, Aubrey and I were coming up on the Empire. I’d dutifully gone to Saturday Mass with my mother, and promptly proceeded to stain my cleansed soul at the Downtown, a strip club round the corner from the Empire, waiting for Aubrey. Well met, we headed out before the Empire was filled and we were shut out. It was a windswept night, a little cold. As we came on to the doors, an old man (late 30s, early 40s, but he seemed ancient to me then) and his friend exited. He hailed Aubrey. Aubrey waved hello to the man, but we were chilled and were set on the heat. The man gripped Aubrey and spun him around. Aubrey laughed it off, but was still held firm.

I turned around and asked, “Is there a problem here?”

The man’s attention snapped to me, but he still held Aubrey firm.

“No problem,” he said.

“Great,” I said. “Let him go.” Those were the only words I said. I just stared at him. At first I was just waiting, then I must have looked angry, because the man pulled Aubrey closer and held him like a shield. He looked nervous. So did Aubrey. But Aubrey wasn’t my concern just then. I’d locked eyes with the man, expecting trouble from him and his friend. I needn’t have worried. He kept insisting that I shake his hand.

“No,” I said. “Why would I shake the hand of someone who’s holding my friend against his will?”

A couple minutes had passed. He finally released Aubrey, and Aubrey began stammering apologies to the man.

“Don’t apologize to him,” I said. Then to the man, “Are we done here?”

Apparently, we were because he walked off. I don’t really know where that FUCK YOU attitude came from. Had we got into a fight, Aubrey and I probably would have had the shit kicked out of us.

Haileybury, The Scene of the Crime

Why did I return to Haileybury? I suppose I’d forgotten how miserable I’d been there. I may have thought it a symptom of homesickness, which it was in part. I suppose it was mainly my putting distance between Deb and I. Either way, my return was imminent. Where Cambrian took my year at Haileybury into account and afforded me credit, Haileybury was arrogant enough to believe that no other school could meet its high standards, so I was to “repeat” 2^nd year. Like I said, I wasn’t thinking too clearly when I decided to return to the Old Boy. But before I did, I needed to make some money.

I returned home, with the usual twenty dollars to my name, took a loan from my parents to tide me over, and went back to work at Kidd. There was a slight change from the prior year. I spent the summer on surface, not underground, working in the load-out. The load-out is where the muck (ore) is loaded onto the met site train. It was a quiet summer at work. There were sunny days, a few moments of tanning on breaks, tons of clean-up, and one minor accident. I fell from a ladder into a bin of scrap metal, no more than three for four feet, but far enough to earn some scrapes, some bruises. Within the hour I was relatively pain free, so I didn’t report it. Was that stupid? Maybe. Probably. But, it was more a blow to my pride than my body.

I met Aubrey Bergin in the Empire Hotel, that summer, Charlie’s specifically (although we’d spend time in both Charlie’s and Bogie’s; those were the two sides, dance and live music, respectively). A couple years older, he was as adrift as I was, so we hit it off right away. New friends, love to meet people! Of course, I hung out with my old friends too, returning from their first year of university. Most were slipping through my fingers, by then, soon to be just faces recognized in the mall. They, at least, seemed on the road to wherever they were going. True, they were only just finishing their first year, with loads of time to regret their decisions, but those are their stories to tell. There was Garry Martin, and Jodie Russell, still at the pool, and Chris Cooper, John Lavric, and Danny Loreto still out and about, seen mainly on weekends. D&D with Garry and Jodie on weekend afternoons, with Jeff Chevrier and Sharron Martin by then. And then the summer was over. Uneventful? Not really. Vague in my memory? Yes. Who remembers uneventful routine? I was settling in to a routine of work, and weekend indulgence, one that I coasted on until it was time to return to school.

Haileybury was exactly as I remembered it, no surprise there. I even stayed at Shirley’s rooming house again, although that year I upgraded to Marc’s old room, hereby known as the purple palace. Purple wall-to-wall carpet, violet wallpaper. It was by far the largest of all the rooms, and as I was already in the know, I reserved it. But this time, there was a whole new bunch of tenants, guys far more amiable than those I’d slummed with last time. Two of whom were to be classmates, owing to my year’s absence, Brian and Jeff. Brian was quiet, studious, travelled home often to see his girlfriend. Jeff had a Hog. There was a young guy there, Neil (not to be mistaken with Neil Petersen, who’s live large in further memories), one with a guitar. And a native, John Star. A few others.

What was different? I did not return home weekends like I had last time I was there. I’d grown accustomed to my freedom and independence at Cambrian, and was learning to spread my wings a little. I didn’t fly far. We wasted our weekends at the Matabanick Hotel, and at another (an un-named strip club; unnamed because I can’t remember what it was called), down by the Curling Hall (gone now, owing to the new lakeside development throughout), but mainly at a new bar on the corner of Ferguson and Broadway, Roy’s Restaurant (what I remembered as the old defunct theatre). The Matabanick still got the occasional band, but the focus had shifted to Roy’s, because Roy was determined to gain ad keep the college business. Which he did. He certainly gained mine, and my friends, Jeff, and Joe Clark, and Ronald MacDonald.

Yes, those were their names. I am not making that up. Most people wouldn’t believe it, either, at first. Not even the QPP. One weekend we were all headed out to Notre Dame du Nord to drink and meet French women, Jeff and I in one vehicle, Joe and Ronald in another. They were running late, promising to catch us up. Joe and Ronald didn’t make it. The cops pulled them over, asked them what their names were and when they replied, the cops thought they were just being smart-assed Anglaise students making fun of them, so they arrested them. Joe and Ronald tried to show their IDs, but the cops didn’t bother looking at them, they told them to get out of the car, cuffed them and threw them in jail. They released them in the morning when they finally got around to looking at their photo IDs and driver’s licenses, but the night was lost.

I had an experience while waiting for them to arrive. I bought a litre beer from a corner store, and drank it out on the street, talking with an old Quebecoise who sat with me and Jeff while we waited for the bar to open (he was probably the ripe old age of 54, looking back). It was so weird. I’d never met an old guy like him before; pony tail, sideburns, pencil moustaches, gold teeth, grizzled countenance. All decked out in denim and cowboy boots, he looked like something that stepped out of the ‘60s. All the men I ever met that were his age looked like my father, blazers, dress shoes, dress shirts. How’d Jeff and I do, you ask? We drank on Ontario time, meaning we were a couple sheets to the wind by midnight when all the Quebecoise came out. We had no idea bars were open till 3 am in Quebec. We gave up and went home.

But it was D&D that made that year bearable. I met a quiet guy early on in the cafeteria. He was smart, a little terse and condescending most of the time to most of the guys myself included, so he was usually in there alone, lounging in the alcoves along the long wall of windows that overlooked Lake Temiskaming, basking in the heat with a book. I usually ignored him, but I was always curious about what people were reading, even then. One day I sat beside him and asked what he was reading. He angled the cover my way without responding. It was a fantasy book I’d burned through that summer. “Not bad,” I said, not meaning it (I thought it was dull and poorly written, actually; I remember that, not what the book was), “have you read…” That got us to talking, mainly about the books we liked, which turned out to be too long a list, many of which overlapped. D&D was referenced, we discovered we both played, and then like little kids, we were best friends. Not best friends forever, though. My friendship with Greg lasted the year, no more. We’ve never crossed paths since. But I recall him vividly: short, a bit on the stalky side, red hair, receding hairline, and sporting a Van Dyke with a chin strap. I’m horrific with names, always have been.

Thus began my return to the scene of the crime, the crime being the beginning of my life in mining.

The Route Downtown

I’d walked to and from the downtown core so many times over the years while growing up on Hart Street, I could walk it in my sleep. And have.

The route I took passed through much of the “old town,” so there were a lot of back lanes, and I put them to good use. I probably shaved about 5 minutes off my time, considering the wide arcs I’d have had to walk round were they not there. Before I’d make the trek, either to or from, I’d check the time. The Howard-Lee bus departed from the depot every half hour back then, not like now, when the bus departs every hour (no wonder no one takes it anymore, given the inconvenience of the service, nowadays; I could rant on this for a while, but I doubt the town would waver from its tired old use-it-or-lose-it arguments). If the bus was due to leave downtown, or arrive at my bus stop within 10 minutes, I would take it; otherwise, I would begin walking. I walked fairly fast, back then (I suppose most adolescents do, having litres of adrenaline and hormones to burn off), and if I had a head start on the bus, I would usually beat it to my destination, or arrive at about the same time. That was a fare saved, a huge deal when existing on a limited allowance, or working for less than minimum wage, later on (more on that in memories to come). One had to count one’s pennies if they were to add up to quarters, the currency of choice for the arcade generation.

Here was the route. Follow on Google Maps, if you’ve a mind to. I’d leave my house (560 Hart), mount the hill up to Howard, where I would enter the first laneway. That back lane crossed Leone, and continued on until it exited back onto Hart Street, go figure (many steps saved). Hart merged onto Patricia. Where Patricia merged/ended at 8th Ave, I followed another back lane to Cherry Street, rounded the corner onto 7th, just in view of Toke (you know that intersection; it’s the one with the Art Deco house on the inside corner), followed 7th to Hemlock, then Hemlock to 5^th, past St. Matthews Anglican, past Spruce, cutting across the 101 Mall’s parking lot to Algonquin, and then onto Pine, and there was Downtown and Top Hats. The bus stop, on Cedar, was just a short alley’s walk away.

There was a blue-eyed husky along the way. I named him Blue, because of the blue kerchief tied around his neck. Not terribly imaginative, I know, but he wasn’t my dog (Piper was my dog then, a feisty West Highland White). I’d always stop to greet Blue, crouch down and scratch him behind his ears, accept the expected licks, and if I were leaving from home, I’d always pocket a couple of treats for him. He was a lonely dog, I think, tied up in a back alley, with little foot traffic to keep his interest. And sadly, one day he was gone. His dog house remained, the rope that held him too, but he was no longer alongside there to greet me, having faded to a memory I still cherish.

One day, after Blue had left this world, I was walking home, lost in my thoughts. A moment passed. And when I looked up, I found I was spilling out of the lane at the top of Hart Street. The last thing I was conscious of was rounding the Art Deco corner at 7th and Cherry. I’d walked almost half way home on autopilot. So, yes, I’d walked home in my sleep.

The Schumacher Pool

Almost all of my swimming lessons took place at the Schumacher Lions Club Swimming Pool. I loved that old building, despite its faults. Built by the MacIntyre Mine, it was originally intended as an open-air pool, the metal frame building that rose above it was an afterthought. I will always remember the almost deafening drumming on the roof whenever there was a storm. And I seem to recall our having to clear the pool whenever there was lightning. Whistle blows echoed off those corrugated metal walls, sounding shriller, by far.
It was poured concrete (rumour had it that after all the mining underfoot, 10,000 gallons poured through the cracks in the floor every day; I doubt that, but we all said it and we were all convinced of the fact then), the change rooms, showers and offices cinderblock shells. There were always pools of water scattered about the floor where there was poor drainage, and we all hated the feel of them, believing them to not only be slimy to the touch (they were), but toxic. They smelled of must and mildew so why wouldn’t they not be toxic to the touch. It afforded neither heat nor air conditioning, and was never intended to operate year-round. And it didn’t, so all swimming lessons then were held only in the summer. It goes without saying, the Schumacher Pool was always humid, always a little musty.

Karen and I used to ride our bikes to it for public swims when the weather was good, lock them up to the rows of bike racks out front. Sometimes we went with neighbours, mostly by ourselves. We always knew we’d meet up with kids we knew, we and they having spent years of lessons there. And that was why we swam there, despite Gilles Lake being half the distance from our house. Then again, you couldn’t swim in Gilles in August unless you brought an extra suit or a change of clothes with you or else you'd get swimmers’ itch, cercarial dermatitis, inflicting hive-like welts wherever the damp cloth rested on your skin (there were nasty little parasites in the water back then, at least until the city dredged the lake). I didn’t want to get swimmer’s itch. Not ever. Every welt raised was automatically assumed to be another bout of hives. Panic inevitably arose from the sight of them.

Another reason to go to the pool: we never had to pay, free admission was the perk of taking lessons there. We’d show our lesson card and be waved within. We’d collect our change baskets, jam out street clothes into them, and pin our stainless-steel tag to our suit, then return the baskets to their racks for the duration. I can't say I ever lost anything from the baskets, and they never misplaced one, not ever; the kids working at the pool kept a keen eye on our stuff while we were having our fun.

We’d wait at the change room doors, piled up against each other from the door back into the showers waiting for the swim bell. Swim caps were the rule. We all had to wear them for the sake of the filters. And most fetching they were! Sleek speedos, loud floral frescos, a riot of colours that always clashed with the loudly coloured suits of the day. The bell always took forever to ring. Those lucky enough to be at the door would watch the seconds tick by on the clock. Loud, it rang like a fire bell klaxon.

The guards would yell at us every swim to slow down and walk. We would, we did, but in the most comical quick half-run shuffle.

Swimming Lessons

The Schumacher Pool before the walls went up.

My first swimming lessons were held at the Schumacher pool, the only pool we had in Timmins at the time. It had once been an open-air pool that had been covered years later with a metal shell, good enough for shelter from rain, but not good enough to insulate us from the dead of winter, so we only had lessons in the summer.

Judy Miller was always at the cash when we climbed the stairs at the entrance. I was scared of her at first, a big lady with fiery red hair and the temper to match, always a little shrill and cross (she was actually only raising her voice to be heard through the glass, but I didn’t know that, then), but as the years passed I grew to love her. We all did. She became our mother hen.

Anyway, back to the pool: It was a deep pool, with only a very small area beyond the buoy line where one could stand up, whatever one’s age. As only Novice was held in the shallow area, we were expected to be able to swim the width of the pool by the time we began Beginners, quite a leap of skill from Novice to Beginners. We had better be able to, as no one our age could touch the bottom anywhere where Beginners was taught. As you might expect, there was a lot of hanging off the water spout pipe along the edge. Swimming one width was not enough, though. We were also expected to swim at least two, as we were expected to return to where we began, after all. Back to where the class was held. And we were expected to repeat that, too, making the expected laps four and not two.

I was not a particularly strong swimmer then, not like the fish I was to become. So, those laps were exhausting.

Point in case: I was swimming widths, getting more tired with each in turn; then on the fourth, I got half way across and found that I could barely lift my arms above water. Then I couldn’t. I slipped below the surface, crawled up for air, and then slipped under further still the next time, then barely back up again to gasp for air. Not surprisingly, I was rather panicked.

There was hope on the horizon, so to speak. With each surfaced gasp for air, I first saw the instructor being flagged down by a fellow swimmer, then the instructor diving into the pool in my direction. It was a clean dive. A rapid dive. A dive I could never pull off, not then, anyways.

He’s coming, I thought. I’m saved. I’m not going to drown.

He reached me in only a few strokes. He took hold of me, lifted me to the surface, and then hauled me back to the edge. All in all, it was much the same sort of experience as when I was trapped in the inner tube at Rancourt.

I shook for some time after that. But I always shivered back then. The water was cold and I was a skinny kid with precious little thermal protection. But I was probably in shock, too. I was embarrassed, too. No one else had to be rescued, after all.

“What happened,” they asked.

“I just got tired,” I said. “I couldn’t make it across.” What else was there to say?

I wasn’t the only one panicked. My mother almost broke the glass of the observation deck when she saw me struggling to stay on top of the water and failing. She hammered it, yelling, “Hey!” repeatedly, trying in vain to get the instructor’s attention. She didn’t, though. Not on deck, anyways. She most assuredly got the attention of everyone on the observation deck, though.

Rest assured, I became a strong swimmer as the years passed, becoming a lifeguard and instructor myself.

Early TV

A television show from my childhood popped into my head the other day, the Hilarious House of Frightenstein, a Canadian children’s show that aired in 1971, hosted by Vincent Price and starring Billy Van, Billy Van, Billy Van, and Billy Van. I looked it up on Wikipedia and was surprised to see that it only lasted one season, but aired 130 episodes! Vincent Price introduced the skits from a dark and stormy balcony, lightning flashing on the stone wall behind him. He’d recite bad poetry in that voice we all remember so fondly to set them up. Or should I say, that I remember so fondly. Billy played most characters, including Count Frightenstein, the Wolfman, Grizelda the Witch, the Ghastly Gourmet, and most others, but it was the Librarian that I remember most vividly. And wrongly. My memory is more in tune with “Tales from the Crypt” than what was.

We’d creep into his library for story time, where the wizened, ancient librarian was sleeping and had to be awakened. He sputtered. He was gruff. But then he would welcome us, ask us to sit and he’d begin to read children’s stories like Humpty Dumpty to us. He thought were horror stories, he thought they would terrify us. When he saw that we weren’t frightened, he would admit that he wasn’t actually frightened either, and that maybe the story wasn’t that scary, after all. But he promised that next time he would truly terrify us with another gruesome tale. Truth was, HE and his library terrified me! There were cobwebs everywhere, skulls on tables, moldering furniture; but mostly it was him, ancient, wizened, curmudgeonly, and covered in cobwebs, that creeped me out. I wanted to race from the room and hide every time I heard the Librarian theme music.

There were others that come to mind from that period in my life, shows far less terrifying: The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, The Magic Roundabout, H.R. Pufnstuf, Do Not Adjust Your Set!, Davey and Goliath, and of course, The Friendly Giant and Mr. Dressup.
Did I make you remember those special TV shows from your childhood? I hope so. They were magical!

Timmins, First Impressions

We moved to Timmins in the summer of 1970, just after I had completed kindergarten. My father actually preceded us by a year, beginning work there in 1969 and commuting. I suspect we waited a year so that my sister and I could finish our school year.

Timmins was huge by my reckoning, boasting about 26,000 residents (about 40,000 after amalgamation), compared with Cochrane’s 5,000. Most of it had been built in the ‘20s and ‘30s, the newest bits in the ‘50s. And it towered above Cochrane, its downtown core reaching up three stories. (I always referred to the downtown core as uptown, as we had to travel uphill to get there.)

I found the core to be a riot of activity whenever my mother brought me there. There were streetlights, traffic was dense and continuous. People bustled here and there, the sidewalks thick with them. Buildings crowded one another, with barely a hand span between them, unlike in Cochrane where you could usually drive a truck between them. It was all spectacular to me, but the most spectacular place downtown was Bucovetsky’s. It was the only building in town with an elevator. Enormous by even today’s reckoning, it was most definitely a service elevator fitted for public use, its walls draped with canvas. I would insist we use it whenever we went there. Although the stairwell was fascinating, too. There were photographs lining the walls, most black and white (most photographs were black and white, then), all chronicling the history of the store: there were pictures of car give-a-ways, fur coats, bridal dresses, pictures of Christmas displays, Christmas windows, Christmas floats, ribbon cuttings. There were newspaper clippings, and a few sales advertisements thrown in for good measure. But what always caught the eye in the stairwell was the huge painting of 3^rd Ave between the 1^st and 2^nd floor, painted when Timmins was still just a bush camp mining town, its few permanent buildings just log cabins.

The 101 Mall was still to come, with its elevator and its central gallery, its artificial Christmas tree hung from the ceiling and spanning three stories.

Woolworths’ hadn’t opened yet, either, but when it did, it had an escalator. That revolving staircase frightened me when I first saw it. I was terrified that my foot or my clothing would be caught in its teeth whenever I stepped on or off of it.

Like I said, I was quite young when we first came to Timmins.

Moving Day

We moved from Cochrane to Timmins in the summer of 1970. It was the most important day of my life, up to then.

I was four and a half, so moving from the only place I’d ever known to some place I'd never heard of seemed like moving to another planet. I was concerned, unsure what to expect. I’d no idea what was going to happen. I was also profoundly sad when the day came. I recall wanting to linger, to play with my friends for just five minutes more when my parents called for me to come, telling me it was time to leave. I kicked stones. I ran. I can’t say for certain what I did because I remember doing both, and both can’t be true. I had nightmares of similar leavings for years afterwards. I’d be told it was time to leave in my dream, and I’d pull at dandelion heads and kick at stones to delay the even. I’d wake in a cold sweat upon the completion of a countdown in my head (probably a side-effect of years of NASA countdowns), just as the moment arrived.

I climbed into the car. I cried a little, chocking back what I could. We were leaving my home, my grandparents, my uncles, aunts, my cousins, my whole life behind forever, as far as I could tell.

The hour it took to travel to Timmins felt like an eternity. The furthest I’d ever travelled was to the cottage, and that was only ten minutes from our house on 16^th Ave. The eternity passed. Probably not well, either. I was prone to car sickness and was usually doped up on Gravol so that I wouldn’t get car sick. They tried rubber strips, too, the theory being that it grounded the static electricity from the car. None of that worked. I’d almost always get sick. Sometimes we’d stop in time and I’d throw up into the ditch. Sometimes I threw up in the car. I have no memory of getting car sick on that ride, even though I probably did.

We arrived.

We pulled onto Hart Street and rolled down the hill towards Brouseau Avenue. There it was, 560 Hart, the new house, a yellow brick split level, two lots up from the Avenue. An empty lot separated us from the tall two-story on the corner. An undeveloped field lay across the street, the brush higher than my head.

Our new home was bigger than our house in Cochrane. Stairs up to the bath and beds. I ran up and down them, then downstairs, discovering that the basement was a work in progress, then back outside.

The movers followed shortly, and that inevitably brought every kid in the neighborhood out to watch. I discovered our new neighborhood was flush with kids my age. We were shy at first, me especially. But we were kids, and I was NEW, so we were playing in no time, before the furniture was even fully unloaded. It was like I’d lived there my whole life. I doubt that Cochrane crossed my mind at all.

That’s what kids do, they meet someone their own age and they’re best friends within ten minutes.

Kids adapt.

It’s so cool how they do that with so little effort.

It can leave a mark, though.