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.

The End, Prompting a Beginning

I was fraught with indecision upon leaving UWO for the summer. What was I to do? Was I to return and complete a degree? I wanted to, but I wondered what I would gain by that degree. Teaching seemed the logical end to a degree in social sciences. There were other options, I suppose; but I couldn’t imagine what they were, then.

The question as I saw it was: what did I want to do with my life? It was a stupid question to be asking myself at 23 years of age; but there I was, asking myself just that. Were I to continue, my life would have been very different, I imagine. Would I have been happier? That’s the million-dollar question. There are no guarantees, either way, so, asking myself those questions now is pointless. Regrets are pointless. Had I really wanted to continue, I would have.

The truth is, I was tired, tired of being a student. And I had a lot of regrets weighing me down, even back then: leaving high school after grade 12; entering the Mining Engineering Tech. program in HSM; Roxanne; Debbie; leaving Sudbury; taking so long discovering where my interests lay. Were I to stay, I was looking down a path that would take me to 29 or 30 before I was at its end. And then what? I didn’t want to be a teacher. I didn’t want to be a professional student, either.

Had I paid placed attention, I’d have noticed that the commodity markets were in the toilet, that interest rates were still sky high, that the economy was in a tailspin, despite the decade of greed and trickledown economics we’d just run amok through. We were on the verge of the ‘90s. Recession loomed, and economic disparity and jobless recoveries would become the order of the day. I was oblivious to it all. I was still a kid, still a student, and the real world was as much an illusion as it was something that happened to others.

So, all that summer a debate raged within me. Should I stay or should I go? Luckily, I was debt free. I had that at least for which to be thankful. Months dragged on without my having made a decision, which, in itself, was rather telling. I was aware that my high school friends were graduating, where I was contemplating beginning anew. My high school friends were getting jobs and moving away. My college friends, too. I was floundering with indecision. Finally, in the spur of the moment, without even much cognitive thought, I decided that I was not going back, that I would get a job and begin my life, such as it was.

The only problem with that, as far as I could see, was that the mines in Timmins were not hiring. And that I was terrified of the prospect of moving away. No safety nets. Starting over again from scratch. Apartment hunting. Furniture buying. Moving expenses. Learning to navigate another community, this time without anyone there that I knew. I suppose my father exerted a little moral suasion in the job market again. I suppose he wasn’t enthused about the prospect for my moving away, either.

When I applied for full-time employment at Kidd, I was informed that I’d have to wait six months before returning, as I’d been hired on as a summer student, on the pretense that I’d be returning to school. If I weren’t, I had taken a job from a “real” student and that there was a penalty to pay for that. The Dome, and the other mines I’d applied to hadn’t responded to my applications at all.

So, I settled in for a wait, telling myself that I could apply for part-time positions and see what would happen with Kidd in six months; if they didn’t hire me I could always head back to school, or steal my daddy’s cure and make a living out of playing pool, etc. There was always that in my back pocket. I was secretly hoping then that exactly that would happen; school, that is. The prospect of working for the rest of my life was horrifying, now that I’d committed to it.

I found a job. Not a full-time job; a part-time labour job with ERG Resources, a division of Giant Resources, reclaiming tailings. Less mill work than field work, I was to man water cannons and pumps away from the mill, cutting away at old mine tailings for reprocessing. We’d left a lot of gold in the tailings in the old days, fully 40% of it unrecovered, and with gold prices surging in the ongoing recession, it was worth the cost of a mill to do just that.

It was boring work. I thought it pointless at the time. Okay, it was not pointless. It did serve a purpose. But it did not engage my mind much. I worked in a heated booth, recording a limited pattern into the unit for replay, and watched it cut away at the tailings for about 15 minutes, and then I reprogrammed the unit again. I read a lot in between. I could have operated the unit manually continuously, but I’d have rather cut my wrists.

There was more to the job than that. I did perform other jobs on occasion, like manning the screens, pulling off the scrap that was exposed on a shaker feeder. At other times, I helped out at the mill. My shift boss was adamant that I not waste the company’s time sitting with the operator, so he instructed me to wipe down the handrails. I was also told not to stray too far from the mill operator, either, in case he had need of me. He did one time. He told me to climb a certain ladder already in place and open a gate valve, wait 20 minutes, and then close it. Why? I had no idea, but that’s what he asked me to do, so I was off to do just that. The ladder was leaning against the pipe the valve fed, fully 20 feet above the floor. It took me 20 minutes to open, all the while expecting to fall off the ladder to the floor. Once I did open it fully, I began to close it without waiting the extra 20 minutes; it had taken me so long to open, I was sure it didn’t need to be open much longer. My task complete, I returned to the operator’s booth, where I was told that was good enough, and to put my feet up and not to bother with cleaning handrails anymore, because that was stupid. So I slept, instead.

The worse shift, the most pointless shift, was when we (myself and another part-timer and a contractor) were instructed to hose a thick spill of gold-bearing carbon into a pump leading to the “carbon-in-leach” cycle. Someone had already begun to do just that the shift before us, but there were three of us and only one hose. We set about getting more hoses and connecting them, and as each was, we began. Every 20 minutes the surge tank exceeded its capacity and overflowed, much like a geyser. The walled-in retaining area began to fill and we were forced to race for higher ground, a high rung on a ladder, in this case. We noticed that there were a lot of ladders about, each propped up against a tank. We tried using one hose less after each spill. Finally, we ceased using any hoses at all and waited out the expected 20 minutes. The tank overflowed yet again, without our having contributed to its capacity.
“This is stupid,” I declared.

I set about looking for a comfortable perch. I collected burlap and created a nest just above the high-water mark. I set my now unused hose next to me and nestled in with a book, keeping an eye out for my foreman. The others tried to work for a couple more spills, until they too were convinced of the futility of our task. So long as too many water cannons were operating in the field, there would be a spill every 20 minutes, regardless what we did.

Kidd called a couple months later, offering me employment in January. I accepted. Days later, ERG served me my layoff notice, about two weeks before Christmas.

The question of whether I’d be returning to university had been made.

I was 24-years-old. I didn’t know it just then, but the beginning of the rest of my life had been laid out before me.

The End of the Beginning

If there’s one thing everyone learns, it’s that all things end, nothing lasts forever. This includes school. There is a progression, suggesting that there will always be more: grade school leads to middle-school, middle-school to high school, high school to postsecondary, be that trade school, college, or university. It’s a dizzying succession that leads on forever, or so it seems at the time. So many years, so many people.

I’d been fortunate in my companions along the way, both domestic and foreign.

I’m surprised at the number of “foreign” people in my life, the first being Tony Siball. I don’t know if Tony could be categorized as “foreign,” but he was from Jamaica, or at least his father was. Tony never had an accent, so he was probably from Toronto, and not Jamaica at all. But he was black, so he was certainly foreign to these parts. He was the first black person I’d ever met. He was curious insomuch as his skin was a different colour, but he was just a kid, and I was a kid, and we were in the same grade. He liked to play, and I liked to play, and that’s about as far as my thoughts went at that time. Tony was Tony. His skin colour didn’t matter a whit.

Once I left Pinecrest and began attending St. Theresa, there were Natives, specifically John. John was shy. John was quiet. Aside from that, I liked John. He smiled a lot. But John went back up the coast before the year was up, and I never saw him again.

I met Renato Romey in high school. Renato began life in the Philippines, and never lost his accent so long as I knew him.

In college, both in Haileybury and in Cambrian, there were a number of African students. I only knew them in passing; they hung out with one another, generally, keeping to themselves, speaking their mother tongue often, English when needed. I recall our having to make presentations (it didn’t matter on what, so long as we were able to speak in front of the class for about 15 minutes), so one of the Africans chose to lecture us on the life of Bob Marley, his revolutionary music, and his love of the sacred Rastafarian herb. Naïve as I was, I had no idea that they’d heard of Bob Marley in Africa; obviously they had. But love of Bob’s music broke the ice, and allowed we Canadians and they Africans to begin to bridge what had been until then, a fairly wide gap. They never became friends, but from that point on we never shied away from sharing a lunch table.

And finally, there was Jak Yassar Ninio. Turkish and Jewish, Jak was quiet, and a bit effeminate by North American standards. But Jak was not North American, and as I had no reference as to how Turkish men acted, I thought Jak was gay. I could not be further from the mark. Jak’s girlfriend was gorgeous, so beautiful she might have been a supermodel. And Jak’s girlfriend slept over, and slept over often.

And then there was Matt Hait. Even though Matt was from Toronto, he was in many ways as foreign to me as any of those others. Until I met Matt, I had little exposure to Torontonians. To be clear, I know, and knew, people are people and you’d be hard pressed to find two who are completely alike, regardless how close or far apart they may have grown up, but for the most part, I thought Ontarians were Ontarians, and thought little of it. But Matt’s Torontonian perspective, and my Northern one, were rather different. His level of urban maturity dwarfed mine. And though he never belittled my naivety, he did chuckle about my being from the sticks, on occasion.

Matt was wilder than me. When he was drinking. Sober, he was a diligent student, achieving far better marks than I usually did. He was far less constrained by perceived responsibility and duty, and really didn’t think much about decorum. In his world view, it didn’t matter what people saw, heard or thought; because you were likely to never see them ever again. That could lead to rather startling behavior. One might say destructive, evil behavior. And anarchy. Surprising for an Economics major. I’d have expected him to be buttoned dawn and straight laced.

Matt liked punk music. Not like I liked punk. I liked punk that bordered on New Wave. Matt liked his with an edge, nihilistic. Matt liked the violence of a mosh pit. Matt would pop Ecstasy. Matt could then party until the sun came up, writhing to the beat at an afterhours rave.

I was invited to a party by an acquaintance in 1^st year Economics. He introduced himself to me early on, noting my thinning hair. He swept his hat off and said, “Hey man, you’re bald, too!” That really didn’t win him any points with me then. But he was persistent. He’d park himself beside me in the Spoke (the cafeteria) when he’d spot me, insist we pair up in study groups and such. He was a Frat boy. Older than his roommates, so he was eager for a friend his own age. But he was angry and bitter. That annoyed me. I had a lot of anger in me, but I wasn’t that negative. At least I thought I wasn’t then, but I probably was. When Matt heard I was invited to a party at a Frat house, he lobbied me to accept, and he wanted to come. I did. We did.

Their house was older, and more opulent than ours. They had a full-sized billiards table in their rumpus room. We didn’t have a rumpus room. We had a 13-inch colour TV in our living room. I didn’t know anyone there except the one, so I never actually relaxed. We’d also only arrived with a limited amount of beer, owing to our having to carry it on the bus.

We stuck around for a couple hours, largely ignored by the Frat boys and Sorority girls. That pissed Matt off, so we left, drinking our last couple beers on the walk home under the heat of the starlit canopy. That’s when Matt revealed that he’d pocketed four billiard balls on the way out. We pitched them down the street, watching them bounce and roll and roll until they faded from site.

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.

A Pause Before a Return

 

Haileybury behind me, I set my site on 3^rd year at Cambrian.

I’d weathered my summer layoff, made my money at the Dome. Bonus had filled in the loss of a week’s pay, and then some. It was not so different at the Dome. There was far more security, I’d had to endure periodic searches, but by and large, underground was underground. Cap lamps and coveralls. I had to prove myself, though. The Dome had so many students that year, I had to compete with all the others to gain the better bonus jobs.

My first shifts were as ditch cleaner, then ditch digger. Then I was trained as a “valve man.” I had to fill ore cars for a battery locomotive trolley. A week later, I was the locomotive operator. A month later, I was hauling ore for a better bonus stope. I finished my summer as a block-holer in a scram. That means I drilled holes in oversize muck that would not fit down the stope shoot, and blasted them. I filled in on occasion with the long-hole blasters, mainly man hauling explosives up a raise to a stope being loaded. Paychecks were good. Bonus checks were better. They were the crème that topped the cake.

Allergies were not. I had a bad outbreak of hives that summer. This is not to say that I had not been plagued by them every year since grade 5, because I had; this is to say that this may have been the worst case I’d had since grade 5. I blame stress. There were days that the hives were so bad that I could not stand to have my helmet sit atop my head. They itched horribly, my scalp crawling under its light pressure, so badly that on one break, I whipped it off and hurled it across the stope. It was a stupid thing to do, more a reaction than a thought, as I had to walk over to retrieve the damn thing. But they passed, as did the summer.

I was adamant that I would not stay in residence again. I was just beginning to grow up and get my act together, so, the last thing I needed was that level of regression again. Would it have been fun? Yes, it would have been fun, but I had no desire to see my GPA regain casualty status again. My first year at HSM had been a near disaster, my average a lofty 2.15; my year in Cambrian had been little better, about 2.25, an improvement, but still a disaster; the past year had been better, far better: 2.7. I was getting somewhere, where, I had no clue, but at least I was beginning to feel less of a failure than I had presumed myself to be. I was older and a far more experienced student. I could just about rhyme off what would be on any given test or exam by the abundance of detail in my notes. I just had little interest in what I was studying. I was far more interested in history and literature, archeology, sociology and the like. People interested me. The march of time interested me. Movies and novels, Vietnam, the Great War, and the War of the Rings.

This is not to say I was any more mature. I was still an adolescent in an aging body. I still haunted the bars on weekends. I still went to parties with my old friends. At one such, Deb Huisson must have taken it upon herself to sober me up some, so she insisted we talk a walk. I’d developed some feelings for Deb that summer, so I agreed without much coaxing. Halfway through, I had to pee. The urge became insistent. So, I told Deb to keep watch. She whispered, “Don’t!” But I was in such need that I told her not to worry, that it was the middle of the night, so who would know? I nestled up to a hedge, and began to relieve myself. I heard a rapping at a window. I looked up, and saw a middle-aged woman beating on her picture window. God knows why she was up at that hour, but there she was, looking down on me up against her bushes. Deb rasped a curse and hid. But there was nothing to be done but finish. If she called the cops, we’d be long gone by the time they arrived. So, I waved the woman off, zipped up, and got on my merry way. Deb kept looking over her shoulder. I did not. “Come on,” I said, reaching out for her hand. She took it, and we ran a little, mainly because it made her feel better to put some distance between us and that bush.

I was even less mature when in Aubrey Bergin’s company. I’d met Aubrey a couple years prior in the Empire. We ogled women on the dancefloor. We giggled like schoolboys at the most childish things. I was still only 18 when we met, already a regular at the Empire. One day, a waitress met us at the door with a stamp in hand, and told us to proffer our fists. “Why?” we asked.

“Because we were busted for underage drinking, and we need to be sure that everyone in here is of age.” She did not ask me for ID. Good thing, as I was just the sort they were trying to keep out.
Later, still in my childish ignorance, I began to call a rather attractive Asian woman Jizzum. Why? Because that’s what Aubrey and his friends called her, and Aubrey and his friends were her friends. At first, she took it in stride, shrugged it off. Then, when I called her that the next weekend, she lashed out, said I was a horrible person, and stormed off. I was shocked! I was confused! “What did I do?” I asked Aubrey.

“You called her, Jizzum,” he said.

I must have looked like a vacant kid, because he laughed. “Don’t you know what jizzum is?”

I didn’t want to profess ignorance, so I remained silent.

“It’s cum,” he said, and almost collapsed with laughter.

I still had a lot of growing up to do.

Uncertainty, and My Father

I returned from Haileybury to a terrifying uncertainty. Kidd Creek phoned to rescind their offer of employment. No student starting after a certain date was to be retained. I, and all other college students, were now unemployed. I had no idea what I was going to do. How could I go back to school without summer employment? Where was I to make money? All summer positions had been filled in March. I was in a panic.

That’s when my father stepped in. What could he do in the wake of my summer employment disaster? Maybe nothing. Maybe a lot. You'd have to know my father and the shadow he cast across Timmins, much as my Poppa had, in his town, in his day. Now, my father's shadow was not nearly as long as my Poppa's, but he cast one. Yes he did, indeed.

You don't believe me? What do you know of my father, Ed Leonard? 

Nothing, obviously. Maybe I should fill you in a little.

Hockey is the first thing that comes to mind for most people when they think of him. He was good at it too. He lived it day and night, growing up. He’d rise, pack a lunch, and be down at the rink, regardless the temperature, until he could no longer see the puck. It was all he thought about. He might have made something of it too, had he not taken a stick to the face when he was 18 years old, detaching his retina.

There was no miracle eye surgery back then, in the ‘50s. He was sequestered to a bed in hospital for months, his head held immobile by sandbags. A mask covered his eyes. He had strict instructions to not move his head, to not, if possible, even shift his eyes. He remained that way for three months, blind and immobile, with only a radio to pass the time, until the retina settled to the bottom and knit itself in place. Were this procedure unsuccessful, he’d have had vision problems for the rest of his life. Either way, he had ample time to develop an uncanny ability to remember song lyrics. Luckily, his retina did as instructed, his only concern healing bed sores. But no scout would touch him after that, not after an eye injury.

Anger does not begin to describe how he felt about that, I imagine. His love had been stolen from him, his chosen goal, forever out of reach. He continued to play hockey, despite the risk, and did so until his late 30s without any further injuries, without the retina ever causing him further problems, as was suggested could happen. He had no choice but to get on with his life.

He’d worked as a parts boy as a kid, so he'd taken a job as such after leaving school after grade 10, a common thing in the North in those days. Without hockey, time passed as it was destined to, and in time my parents married and moved to Don Mills, and in time had Dean.

And it was because of Dean they could no longer afford to live in the South. Dean was what we would call Developmentally Challenged, these days. Severely so; in fact, he'd have been the postcard for developmentally challenged. Dean’s needs were costly. And those medical bills made it impossible for my parents to remain in Toronto. The stress was unbearable. My mother required the support of family, so they moved back to Cochrane.

My Poppa stepped in, pulled lofty strings and Dean was placed in a long-term care facility. Had he not, my mother would surely have suffered a breakdown, and my parents might have split, Catholic or not. Or so I believe.

My Poppa helped out a lot, allowing my father set up his own business in Cochrane, again, in parts. He was grateful, but he was not satisfied with mere parts, anymore. So, Dad sold the business after Karen and I entered the picture, and began working for Husky Ltd (my parents opting for guaranteed security), and then shifted employment again to Molson’s.

We moved to Timmins. More money. Not the best move, for more reasons than I wish to dwell on. Maybe it was for me and Karen, we would discover, but not my parents. Not really.

Dad was always on the road, gone from Monday morning to Friday evening. Time passed. Karen and I grew up. He brought me on his rounds on rare occasions during the summer when I was older (about 15, maybe), I recall wandering between tables and peeking behind bars, inhaling the aura of cigarettes and alcohol imbedded in the gaudy carpets, each a riot of pattern and colour to mask the stains and burns. I recall the Empire Hotel most vividly, my being fascinated by the coloured Plexiglas squares of Charlie’s dancefloor, the tangle of electronics crowding the disk jockey’s booth, taking in the dark oak pillars and bannisters, the finger-smudged brass. The room seemed an empty void without patrons. Both Charlie’s and Bogie’s were poorly lit in light of day, hazy with dust, the motes caught drifting on slow currents by the surprisingly alien sunlight that invaded them. I climbed up on the stage and surveyed the terrain before it while my father wrapped up his business with the owner.

My father had been a salesman for most of his adult life, first as a self-employed parts man, then fuel products for Husky Ltd., then as a booster rep for Molson’s Brewery, and then he sold heavy equipment for Crothers (after my mother had had her fill of Molson’s); that would be Caterpillar Equip., by the way. He was a member of social and business clubs; not the Shriners, or the Masons, or the Kinsman, or any of the sort, but ethnic clubs and social clubs and the sort. He knew a lot of people. I mean he knew a lot of people. So, when I lost my job at Kidd, he made some phone calls. He asked around, he pulled some strings. And a few days later I got a call from the manager of the Dome Mine. A personal phone call from the manager of the Dome.

He’d decided to hire all of the mining students, and only the mining students, laid off by Kidd. All of us. He was under no obligation; he’d already hired all the students he needed for the summer. But he made an exception that summer. I find it hard to believe that my father had little to do with that. I was saved. I’d lost a week’s wages, but I was saved. I wouldn’t have to apply for a loan. I wouldn’t have to scrape by that summer on a pauper’s allowance. But I did have to wait out a strike vote.

The Dome was in negotiation with its Union that summer, with little progress made as the weeks dragged on. I was informed that I ought to bring all my gear home the weekend leading up to the deadline. My stomach tied itself in knots. I still had a month to go before school, and not enough money to make it through the year. I packed my gear, tossed it in the boot, and waited out the news reports.

The Union voted to accept the hastily prepared counteroffer in the eleventh hour. And I was saved, yet again.

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 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.