TheBlueLife.net

I now step backwards in time to fill in some of the gaps of my story by talking about my early life with my parents and grandparents.

My father was born in 1924 in Toronto, Canada. He rarely speaks of his past, so I know little of his early life. I do know, however, that his mother, Mary, died when she was in her thirties. She left three young children: two sons and a daughter. My father was the middle child. Both the older brother and younger sister are now dead. My paternal grandfather was named Francis. After the passing of his first wife, Mary, he married a lady named Able. I have no memory of Able, but I do have a photo of Francis and Able together. The only memory I have of Grandfather Francis is riding with him on a bus in Toronto. Other than he produced my father, grandfather Francis had no direct influence on my life.

My father was a passionate outdoors man, which is where I get my love for the wilderness. He would take the family camping every summer, way up in Northern Ontario. It was never good enough to go to the regular camping areas. Oh no, we had to go to wilderness camp sites, old mining, logging and hunting camps. We even carried heavy planks in our trailer just in case we had to them lay down over the road to pass. I can remember my mother’s voice, “Oh! Oh! Oh”! as we attempted to cross some impassible piece of road to reach some God forsaken destination! I have photos of those wilderness camps. My mother is smiling, but you should have seen her face as we struggled to reach these places!

My father quit high school prematurely in order to join World War II. Consequently, he never completed his education in his youth. He spent three years in England during the war working as an aircraft mechanic and bomb loader. One day I discovered a German Luger, a kind of pistol, and a German belt buckle hidden away in the attic of our house. I was fascinated to read the inscription on the buckle: Gott mit uns, God with us. As a boy I thought it was strange that both armies called upon God to bless their effort. I guess these two remnants of the war were my father’s mementos.

To my father’s credit I remember him sitting at the dinning room table every night struggling to finish his high school diploma. Twice a week for years he attended night school. In this way he gradually completed both grade twelve and thirteen. Calculus was his most difficult subject and I remember that he failed twice before he finally passed. He just would not give up until he accomplished his goal. In the end he successfully completed his high school diploma. Today this is the equivalent of high school plus one year of university. It was a big achievement for my father and I am sure that I learned determination and tenacity as a result of watching his struggle. There was no practical reason for him to take the time to finish his education, but he valued learning above all things. I remember him insisting that I complete my education to the fullest. He did not care what I studied so long as I studied. Most fathers would not have tolerated their sons spending the most important years of their life studying a subject as obscure as Sanskrit. But from my father’s perspective, so long as I was in college and studying something that I enjoyed and doing it well, he was satisfied. I remember him saying that even if I wanted to be a bank robber I would be a better one if I had a college education. So he insisted on a college education for me, but what I studied was my business. My father allowed me to follow my passion. He never interfered and always supported me to the fullest. I love him for this single aspect alone.

After the war my father took a job with the local telephone utility. The year was 1946. He stayed with this company until he retired in 1997. That is over 50 years with the same company! Similarly, he lived in the same house at that he purchased along with my mother after they married. We never moved. My parents still own and live in that house today. They paid $11,000 in 1951 and today it is worth a small forture. My parents acquired wealth, not because they were aggressive business people or shrewd stock investors, but because they saved and saved and saved. From the day my father started work and received his first paycheck he bought stock every month without fail. My parents never bought new cars and always lived a frugle lifestyle. They are both the product of the great depression and what they have accomplished in life is the result of steady work.

The most important influence my father had on my life was his personal example of stability and hard work, his passion for the rural life, and above all, his love of learning. Thank you, dad!

I remember lying in bed late one evening listening to FM radio. I was 16. In those days FM radio was new and many stations were experimenting with different formats. I was listening to an “underground” FM rock station. This was considered avante guard. A lady was being interviewed who was talking about Bhagavad Gita. I was immediately captivated. “My book, she was talking about my book”! This girl was a member of the Hare Krishna movement. The Krishna devotees had just come to Toronto and they were chanting and dancing in the streets. Little did I know that my life was about to change dramatically.

Anna, I have absolutely no India or Hinduism in my family upbringing. I had no friends who knew anything about India or even yoga. Now here, for the first time, someone was talking about Krishna and the Bhagavad Gita! I had to meet these people, but as fate would have it, I was scheduled to leave for the Northern Ontario bush for a summer of work with the Canadian government. My summer job was with the department of Lands and Forest. My meeting with Krishna had to wait.

My father was a great lover of the outdoors. He had arranged for me to spend the summer working in the “great” Canadian wilderness, so I was being shipped off for a summer of government service developing portage trails and cleaning latrines for the park’s department. I was to be paid $5 dollars a day plus food and board in a government labor camp. The place was called Sultan. I have no idea where that name came from, but it was so far out in the Canadian wilderness that there were no roads to reach it, ice remained in the ground all year (permafrost) and the mosquitos where as big as sparrows. And for added measure, there was the curse of the black fly! Black-flies are horrid creatures that make life intolerable in the Canadian north country.

To reach Sultan I had to take a train 1000 kms north from Toronto. This was my first trip away from home. I was a shy and quiet boy and I remember boarding a train at Union Station in downtown Toronto and then being dropped off at the rail station in Sultan at about 4 AM some 36 hours later. I was alone and afraid. I waited alone by the tracks in the fading night darkness and waited.

In a few hours I was picked up and shuttled off to the camp in the back of a garbage truck. I found myself living with a hundred other 16 year old city boys. The camp was an old lumber camp. We lived in barracks that each housed about 35 beds and as you can imagine there was a lot of youthful testosterone flowing through this camp.

Our days consisted of rising at 6 AM followed by 7 AM breakfast. We were on the trails working by 8:00 AM. Lunch was at 12 noon sharp after-which we were back at work by 1:30 PM. We finished by 4:30 PM and then allowed to swim or relax in some other way. The final meal of the day was served at 6:30 PM. Stationed squarely at the front of the dinning hall was a sign that read, “Talking during meals prohibited”! This was a standard rule followed throughout the Canadian north to discourage loggers and miners from getting into fights during meal time.

We were constructing a national park so our work largely consisted of cutting trails, developing beachs, digging toilets and swatting flies. Those damn black flies. They would crawl into your socks, up your sleeves, in your ears, down your neck and gnaw away at your skin until they reached your blood. They would feast on you. And you ended up with bleeding infected soars. Horrible. At night the mosquitoes took over where the black flies left off. To this day I am traumatized by the sound of the female mosquito hunting for my blood in the dark. In order to survive we slept under mosquito nets. During the day we worked with head nets. The screen of my head net blurred my vision and I developed a tremendous headache that seemed to last all summer. I went through a daily spray of DDT, a powerful insecticide that is now banned. It was a matter of survival from these torturous insects.

This is one of the reasons that I love the Southern California desert. There are no black-flies or mosquitos! But I do miss the color green. Anna, here everything is dull brown except for a few weeks in the year when the mountains and deserts burst into a dazzling display of glorious green. The colour green is intoxicating. And then even more beautiful the desert explodes into bloom. Nothing can compare to the desert in bloom. But it only happens every few years, not every year. If there is a lot of rain in the summer and fall, the desert dresses itself up in flowers. It is a glorious sight!

I remember I kept one shirt and one pair of pants just for working. I wore this shirt and pants for the whole summer without washing them even once. These clothes soaked up all the insecticide along with my sweat and became permanently insect repellant. When I returned to Toronto after 10 weeks I remember putting them through the wash. When I went to retrieve them no shirt and no pants could be found. They had totally dissolved in the wash!

Another feature of this summer in the northern bush was the Friday night drunk. Each Friday for the 10 weeks, the camp commander drove whoever wanted to go, which was mostly everyone, into Sultan for a night on the town. This included a rendezvous with a dozen cases of Canadian beer (24 bottles to the case). This cache had been strategically deposited in a field just outside of town. You can imagine this motley crew of boys descending on this brew. This ritual would begin about 6 PM and last until midnight at which time we would be promptly rounded up and herded back into our garbage trucks for the 40 km drive back to camp.

Out of the ten possible treks into town I went on one. Mostly I liked to stay back for peace and quiet. I needed time alone, I did not fit into this group, so the Friday night drunk was a welcome opportunity for some private time. But on the one occasion that I did go on the town-run, I became drunk and made a complete fool of myself. I remember singing loudly while I urinated in the middle of Sultan. This was my first experience with alcohol so it took only 3 beers to cause my undoing. I had a good time.

One of the great things about life in the logging camp was the Playboy magazine. I distinctly remember an interview with George Harrison, one of the Beetles. He was describing Hindu spirituality. If you know the history of the Beetles, you will know that they went through a period in India with a guru. I particularly remember George Harrison reciting the Hindu prayer:

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare/ Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.

At the time I knew nothing of this prayer. I had never heard it before, nor did I know its meaning. But somehow I inscribed it onto a piece of birch-bark and carried it in my glass case for the rest of the summer. Though I could not go to Krishna back in Toronto, Krishna had come for me in Sultan through the pages of a Playboy magazine.