Christmas

I don't like Christmas very much.... in fact I don't think I like Christmas at all. I don’t mean to go all Scrooge on everyone, but Christmas is just one of those days/seasons that drives me ever closer to that edge of insanity that I so carefully try to avoid.

My dislikes starts the day after Halloween. That is when the music, or at least what is called music, starts to be blasted over every speaker in every mall and store in the country. It is bad music played by poor musicians over lousy speakers. I once heard someone say that there was some very good Christmas music but that it never gets played. I believe that perhaps with the exception of Handel’s Messiah good Christmas music may be an oxymoron.

Along with the music come the decorations (I have always wondered when the stores hide the decorations from January to October- but perhaps it is better that I don’t know - if I did, I might be tempted to destroy them). I know they are put up to get me into the mood to buy presents and therefore do my bit to sustain the economy but seeing Christmas decorations up the first week of November does not put me in the buying mood. By the time that I force myself into a mall to look for a present, I am so sick and tired of seeing the silly things that I want to run out of the store before I buy anything.

I have always been curious who the marking genius was who decided that playing Christmas music in a food stores was a good thing? Does someone, anyone think that I am going to buy more romaine lettuce in mid November if I hear Christmas music?

The closer it gets to Christmas the more likely it is that I will have to walk an extra 10 minutes from where I parked the car to get to the bank at the mall, the more likely it will be that it will take me 15 minutes longer to get home because the traffic is suddenly worse (where do all these people come from?) and the less likely that I will wait in line to buy something that I thought I needed. (Today I was going to buy a pair of warm socks for my trip to Sudbury – but the line up at Marks was so long – I didn’t bother).

Along with the music and all of the other in-house hype to buy comes the expectation and the promise that this is the season of love and joy, of families being together and of sharing. Everywhere one turns one is reminded what a wonderful time of year this is. However, for countless thousands of people in this country that is simply not true. For so many this is the season to despair, to be desperately lonely or to, at least for another year, realize that you and the people you care about will have to do without. For so many it is a time when they feel they have to accumulate even more debt so that they can compete with others around them. Get rid of the damn music and all of the ads and TV programs that are trying to sell a lie of mythological proportions. Family and good food and being together are important. But they are important every day and we don’t need (or at least we should not need) bad music to tell us so.

I like being with my grandkids; but I like being with them anytime. It is fun to watch them open their stockings; but it is just as much fun playing with them in the park. Hell just give me the 10 days off work and I will visit them. I don’t need a reason and I am reasonably sure that both I and everyone else would be a lot less tired and probably in a better, more relaxed mood if we didn’t have the music in our ears for seven weeks.  Bah humbug!!!

Market Boards

In the next 12-18 months there will be a lot of talk about why Canada needs to get rid of the various marketing boards such as the Milk Marketing Board or the Egg Marketing Board. The conversation is already starting to pop up here and there on various news and current affair programs. It is being raised by “pundits” who argue that they are just neutral observers. They are in fact highly biased reporters, some of whom have an almost evangelical belief in the neo-liberal agenda.

Their argument is quite simple (and quite misleading). The market boards control the price of milk and therefore milk is costing the consumer more than it should. They compare the price of milk in the USA which is according to the Globe and Mail (Waldie Globe and Mail, Nov. 23, 2010) is sixty cents less for a litre than it is in Canada. Those same commentators don’t mention that milk is cheaper here than in New Zealand which has gotten rid of their managed marketing system. They don’t talk about what the other advantages of market boards are.

 

Marketing boards (or supply management boards) were set up approximately 40 years ago to ensure that farmers would have a consistent access to the markets, to ensure that the market was not flooded with too much product and to ensure that consumers had access to affordable product that would be consistent in price.

 

The argument for us to change the rules is that some other countries don’t like our rules. They (right now it is the Pacific Rim Countries) are saying that if we don’t get rid of these “unfair” rules, then we will “not be allowed” to join some of the trade negations that are presently underway. In other words if we don’t play by their rules, we don’t get to play in their sand box. And that is a fair point. The question that begs to be asked is why do we want to play in their sandbox or perhaps even more importantly, who wants to play it. The answer for those who are opposed to marketing boards is quite clear. The manufacturing sector wants access to larger markets. Because there are more people employed in this sector their needs should supersede those of the farmers.

 

I remain unconvinced that the needs of 20,000 people (who may get a manufacturing job) are more important than 4,000 people (approximate number of Dairy Farmers in Ontario). I don’t think that kind of math is useful. The job of the government to recognize conflicting needs and then to work on ways of both groups getting the maximum benefit out of any negotiations.  I fail to see how making it harder for dairy farmers to make a living helps them. Getting rid of supply management systems will only help those who want to produce milk on factory farms and those who want to import milk from the USA. It will hurt the small dairy farmers.

Of course the practical argument is powerful – we all want to save money. It is pretty hard to argue with the concept that international borders should be open to all who want to travel or trade. But that is not the way the world works. All countries have trade restrictions. We need to be careful that we don’t give up something important (family farms) for the possibility that some international company (and their Canadian workers, if they company decides to stay in Canada) may benefit at some point. Marketing boards will disappear unless we accept that there is a cost to living in Canada. Supporting small, perhaps slightly inefficient family farms is part of that price.

On the Road Again 2011 #47

Of course my trip was not quite over. The train did not leave until after 11:00 pm and therefore I had ten or so hours to kill. So I bought my ticket, changed my shirt and shoes, gave my pack to the luggage folks at Via and went out to explore the city.

I don't know Winnipeg that well. I can get through it quickly and once spent a day or so there a few years ago but it has never felt as if I have found the centre of the city. In spite of walking around for four or five hours, I still don't feel as if I know it well. I found the downtown mall, which of course did not excite me that much; I walked around the university area a bit which was pleasant but not exciting; and I looked for places to eat. Winnipeg may be the most unfriendly city to vegetarians I have visited in my travels. There were lots of places to eat but I could not find a vegetarian restaurant or even a Chinese one. I am sure they are there. I just didn't walk down the right streets.

I did spend a lot of time down by the Forks. The Forks are where the Assiniboine and Red Rivers join. It is an impressive gathering area with lots of little shops and restaurants. On the other side of the street there is a nice little park by the river. I think the whole thing would have been more attractive if they were still not dealing with the damages caused by the spring floods. The water was still high and parts of the boardwalk were still closed. However nice Winnipeg may be, I was glad when it was time to get on the train.

While waiting for train to be loaded, it looked as if it was going to be really crowded and I had resigned myself to sharing the seat with someone else. But much to my surprise and pleasure I had both seats to myself. I was tired and so slept well the first night. I didn’t talk to very many people all of the next day. I even ate breakfast alone. I was still tired and feeling quite emotionally drained. It had been a long summer and I had done more than I thought I would be able to do. I had gotten to two Gatherings, a folk festival, seen my friends in Victoria and been to a wedding. A pretty good summer, but a tiring one. I was glad that I had decided not to take the extra days and hitch all the way to Sudbury. I clearly was running out of energy. I was also starting to focus on the fall and on teaching.

The one bit of excitement occurred in Hornepayne when I met one of my professors from Trent. Jim was travelling with his son from Jasper where they had been hiking in the mountains. It was the second time I had met someone at the stop at Hornepayne who was travelling on the train. One has to wonder what the odds are?
The train, of course, was late getting into Sudbury Junction. While I was prepared to call for a taxi, I was delighted to see my daughter waiting for me. The trip was truly over.

I have written about the drivers that so generously gave me rides across Canada. I am truly grateful to them all. But there are an equally number of drivers who gave me a ride and who I have not mentioned. I hitched to and from Victoria and a number of times from Sally’s on Salt Spring Island. While these rides were very short, the fact that I got them, generally quite quickly, made a huge difference in my life. I also saved a fair amount of money by not using Greyhound. But more importantly every drive, no matter how short, added to my sense of the region and of Canada. Every story gets added to that mental filing cabinet that I dip into on the cold and lonely days of winter.

In my travels I learned countless little bits of trivia (such as what the various combinations of “stoplights” mean on the train tracks), I heard jokes that were so funny I couldn’t stop chuckling, I heard personal tales and statements that made me want to weep, and I saw more majestic beauty than any one person could ever dream of.  I could not possible record it all. But the images and the people are filed away There was a time when I could list in sequence all of my drivers without hesitation. That is no longer true. They start to blend into each other and I find myself sometimes forgetting where I was when I met this person or that.  Maybe I am getting old.

Canada is an extraordinary county with cities and lakes and mountains and grasslands that defy description. In spite of the garbage and the pollution that is visible throughout much of Canada, in spite of the crowded cities full of honking cars and trucks and in spite of the masses of human that occasionally need to compete against each other for resources, there is still an aura of simplicity and pureness throughout much of this land. It is a wonderful and delightful place to call home.  I suppose there are other ways of seeing all of this. But I can’t imagine any other way for me.  

It is the beginning of December and already my whole being cries out to be on the road again. I wake up dreaming of rides, of familiar corners that I want to be standing on with my thumb out. Almost every time I see a transport truck I look to see if there is room for me. And I wonder if they would stop for me if they saw me on the side of the road.  I dream of travelling across the Prairies, or through the mountains, or of sitting in a Husky restaurant listening to the truckers chatter and watching them flirt with the tired waitress. I remember what it is like to lay down ten feet from the road and listen to the trucks rumble by and to see the stars overhead. And I want to be there – right now.

If I don’t count this month there are only five months left until I start getting ready go. I have lived in four provinces and slept in all of them, but I have never been north. Perhaps next season I will go north to the Yukon, just for a week or so, just because I can.

On the Road Again 2011 #45

I think one of the reasons that it has taken me so long to get to this part of my  trip is that I have been anxious (in the sense of having some anxiety) about writing the next installment. Not because I can’t remember it or because it was so terrible I don’t want to remember it, but because I am worried about not being good enough to describe my next driver. I don’t know how many drivers I have had in the past 12 or so years, but John may have been the most amazing one of them all.

I have noticed these past few years that there is a certain rhythm to my travels. There are a handful of spots that no matter how well the rides are coming or how far each ride takes me, I usually end up standing at each year. The last stoplight on the east end of Medicine Hat is one of those spots. It is a busy location with two streams of traffic. There are those cars who appear to be passing straight through town and those that are turning onto the highway, coming out of the shopping malls. I have noted in other years that while it looks as if there are lots of cars heading east, in fact most of them are only going a few miles to the suburbs and therefore are not going to stop. There is a lot of room to stand on the side of the road. If I get bored I can watch the hundreds of grasshoppers play in the grass verge that separates the highway from the Holiday Inn and one of the many malls. If it gets dark, there is lots of room to sleep. I like being there but this time I don’t think I waited very long.

 John’s car was a reasonably new car that was surprisingly clean inside considering how much time he spent in it. He was a good driver, not as fast as some I have travelled with, but consistent in his speed. I certainly felt safe with him. Ah but I am stalling  again because I don’t know where to begin.

Some of John’s story I didn’t quite get. His English was not always clear, but I think he was coming back from a few days working with heavy machinery somewhere west of Medicine Hat. He was going as far as Brandon and that was just fine to me. I am also not too sure how old John was. I would guess he was somewhere in his early 30s. He had been in Canada for just over five years (I think) having immigrated from Kenya. But John had been born in the Sudan.

When he was around nine, some soldiers had come into his village and taken away his father and killed him. John joined the opposing army to fight those who had done this terrible and un-understandable deed.  While he recognized that it had been terribly wrong to be have been recruited to kill others, I don’t think he felt bad or abused about having been a child solider. As he said, “what would you have done if someone had taken your father away and killed him?” John clearly didn’t want to talk about those experiences and I while I was desperately curious, I couldn’t ask him to relive those days. After spending what remained of his limited childhood in this army he moved to Kenya. I think it was some time later that his mother along with his two brothers and a sister followed him. I can’t imagine the courage it would take to start off life as a nine year old in some ragged guerilla  army and then as an adolescent to wander to the next country and start life all over again without family or friends. I can’t imagine the moral fiber it would take to not be angry all of the time. But John wasn’t angry, as he told his story he smiled and laughed and was excited about his new life.

While in Kenya he started a business selling mango juice. Somehow he got a small press and a few cups and started to sell fresh mango juice to the people on the streets. One of the people who bought his juice was a little white girl, who with her friends, passed his little stall to and from the embassy school. But she frequently did not have any money so he kept a running tab. And this, if there can every be just one defining characteristic, was John’s. He is trusting and giving. He believes that people are good. Eventually the young girl’s father came by to find out why his daughter said she owed this stranger so much money. I suspect he assumed there was some sort of scam going on. When he heard the story he paid the bill.

Sometime later the father who was a Canadian working at the embassy suggested that he might want to think about immigrating to Canada. With his help, John made the application and was accepted as a refugee. If John had done nothing else in his life that was remarkable it would have been enough, but there is more.

John was presently working for a company in Medicine Hat working on large machines. He was supporting his mother and his youngest brother who was still in school in Kenya. He was also sending money to two other siblings who had somehow managed to get to Australia. He was also going to school so that he could get his grade 12. He needed high school diploma so that he could become an apprentice mechanic. I don’t know where he found the time, the energy or the commitment to do all of it. On top of the responsibilities he had assumed for his family he also acted as some sort of informal community facilitator for recent immigrants from the Sudan.

When we were approaching Regina he asked if I minded if he stopped and saw a friend “just for a few minutes”. Of course I said no. I appreciated the courtesy but after all it was his car. We stopped at an apartment where his two friends were living. They were gracious gentlemen who offered me a seat and something to drink. It was one of the strangest experiences of my life to sit there for 20 minutes listening to John and his friends talk in a language completely foreign to my ears. I was clearly the outsider. I was uncomfortable but I don’t think they were. In fact they ignored me completely. John told me that he dropped in on them whenever he could to make sure that they were doing all right and that they had both enough money and access to the services that they needed.

As we got back into the car he told me that he also wanted to see his cousin while he was in town. When I tried to find out how they were related, I got the sense that his definition of a cousin was much broader than mine would be. His cousin and her five year old daughter were as charming as the first two guys; offering me a comfortable seat and something to drink and then ignoring me.  As they talked the little girl was getting her hair done in corn rows, ready for her first day at school. It was an interesting process to watch. I can’t imagine either of my kids or grandkids ever sitting down long enough for it to get done. I think the mother said that it would take four days to complete the whole process. Again virtually all of the conversation was in their native language and again I felt like the outsider.  We stayed for about 20 minutes. As we were leaving the little girl reached up to touch my beard. I don’t think she had ever seen one before.

It is not often that people of my age, my colour, my sex and my height feel like an outsider. I am a tall white educated male. I am part of the elite.  The people John visited that day did not intentionally isolate me or push me away. I certainly was not offended in any way. But it was a remarkable feeling to be in a room and know that not only did I not belong there, I was in almost every conceivable way superfluous to the situation.  

As we were walking back to the car, John said he was hungry. We talked about food and diet. I would have loved to try some of his ethnic food. There was a restaurant that had good food from the Sudan but it would take hours for them to prepare a meal. So we went to a Chinese buffet instead. I was happy mainly because it felt as if I had not eaten for days, but also because I wanted to buy John supper. It wasn’t a great restaurant but it did the trick. My belly was full again. But John would not let me pay for supper. He insisted that he do it. The man was just one of those folks who feel compulsed to give.

For the rest of the trip our conversation ranged over all of the standard things. School (how hard it was to juggle work life and school work), finding bosses (he had a good one who he liked), and relationships (he had wife who did not live with him but did call him on his cell phone as we were driving). But we also talked about the languages he spoke, his dreams for the future and the pressures of being responsible for all of these people. It was a lovely journey across the Prairies. As we got close to Brandon I was sad that it was going to end. He offered me a bed in his motel room where he stayed but it was a warm night and I wanted to sleep outside. There is a great spot to sleep at the edge of town, and I wanted to be outside one more night.  So we said good bye in the dark.

My life is enriched by all of my drivers. Almost without exception they share part of themselves with me through their stories and through their generosity. But John gave something else.  I don’t think I will ever be able to put into words how much I admire him, how much I respect his courage, his humanity, his sense of responsibility for others, his capacity to find joy and perhaps most of all his capacity to forgive and to move forward. He could teach us all a few lessons about how to live.