Category Archives: Stories

My Best Friend

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OK, so You’ve got a guy nicknamed “Skid” who has just transferred from the Catholic boys’ High School, at De La Salle Oaklands in Toronto, to York Mills Collegiate in North York. His goal: to study science, which wasn’t taught in Grade Thirteen at his former school.

Enter a guy nicknamed “Fritz” who arrives from the USA with his Dad. He happens to settle, with his Collie Rex, in North York’s first dog friendly apartment towers at the York Mills and Sheppard area of North York. Skid, with his Border Collie Chips, and his family  have just sold their home in North York and happen to move into the same Carluke Crescent apartments.

They meet dog walking, and then at school, and then discover they are much wanted fresh faces at the York Mills C.I. social scene. Needless to say, Skid’s exemplary top of class marks from De La Salle plummeted in the face of so much mixed school female attention. Likewise, Fritz, under so much demand for his exotic American background and basic good looks, suffered a similar loss of academic success.

Sports were fine – football and skiing and wrestling teams and drama clubs – we won championships and standing ovations! The downside was that I had to repeat Grade Thirteen and Fritz was given a choice –  pick up your marks or enlist. In a supreme act of teenage rebellion, he enlisted to join the Paratroopers training at Fort Bragg before heading off to Vietnam.

I fast forward – he survives the darkest and most deadly times of the Vietnam wars, marries, has children, establishes a chiropractic practice in California, his wife passes, and we continue to be the best of friends. I have only visited him once in California and he has only visited me once in Ontario, but he is in my heart and soul forever. We took our Dad’s golfing once on the St. Andrew’s golf course attached to our apartment complex. Then we went as a family to Dad’s fishing haven at Deep Bay on Lake Huron.

We made a famous spoof teen age movie together, “Whatever Shape Your Agent’s In” to celebrate our love of Sean Connery as 007. We had every “”Bond Girl” at York Mills auditioning for a role in the movie. A lot of bath bubbles went into the mix.. Fritz later dubbed the 007 theme music into the sound track. Steven Spielberg, eat your Super Seven heart out!

My best friend is now relaxing in California, celebrating with his longtime American hiking friends at his outpost on a river that flows into the Pacific. I will be there in spirit!

Yours outdoors,
Skid

Prolonging the Pandemic

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We are nearing the end of the second year of the Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. COVID-19 is the disease that is caused by this coronavirus. First identified in December of 2019, it has swept around the globe, leaving death and disruption in its wake.

In order to protect our communities from overwhelming COVID-19 infections we initiated protocols for individual isolation and quarantine; we asked our populations to wear masks, stay 2m apart, and wash up with hand sanitizer before and after we went out for groceries;  as communities we had slowdowns, partial shut-downs and total lockdowns. We waited for the CDC and Health Canada to issue emergency approval for newly developed vaccines.

Our national and local Medical Officers of Health, and politicians, kept us apprised of the necessary health measures and coronavirus case counts. The choice was simple: follow the guidelines and get the pandemic under control, or don’t and suffer the consequences. Politicians played Russian roulette with our public schools as stressed parents coped with online learning at home. Businesses began to shut down and frustrated owners and staff put pressure on their local elected officials to get things re-opened. So we rushed into “shopping mall therapy” as soon as infections hit a low point.

Every time we get a drop in infections we “open up the economy” again. In Doug Ford’s Ontario that means strip clubs, bars, restaurants, and packed sports stadiums. We do it “for the people” and inevitably see a spike in infections shortly thereafter. We call them “waves” but they are really just indicators of our collective consumptive stupidity.

Medical science told us that if we stayed masked, distanced, hand-washed and fully vaccinated that we would have a chance to hold this pandemic at bay. But we just couldn’t wait to get “back to normal” and now there is no normal. Once again we re-opened and our case count is rising. Thanks to the number of people now vaccinated this bump is not as severe as April of this year when we peaked at 4500 cases.

The rise to 711 cases on Thursday, November 18, 2021 pushed Ontario’s seven day average to 600 cases and talk of modifying the re-opening guidelines bubbled up from the Science Advisory Table cauldron once again. Dear Doug and friends, please try to get it right for once. 10,000 Ontarians have already died from this coronavirus, including 4,000 from Long Term Care facilities. You are acting like immediate gratification “one marshmallow” children. In 1972, Stanford University psychology professor Walter Mischel conducted a study on delayed gratification. In this study, a child was offered a choice between one small but immediate reward (either a marshmallow or a pretzel stick), or two small rewards if they waited for a period of time. During this time, the researcher left the room for about 15 minutes and then returned.

Some of the children had immediately gone for the one small reward, but a smaller group had waited to double their pleasure. In follow-up studies, the researchers found that the children who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes in everything from educational attainment to healthy body mass index. Our politicians and their advisers are playing to the immediate gratification crew.  I would prefer to wait until we have this pandemic under control before asking for my second small reward. I suspect most Ontarians who prefer a healthy life over death from COVID-19 would want the same.

The way I see it.

***

Skid Crease, Caledon

UPDATE Friday, November 19,2021 – Ontario’s COVID-19 case count 793 : “Today’s case count comes after officials logged 711 new cases on Thursday, 512 new cases on Wednesday and 481 new cases on Tuesday. Ontario’s rolling seven-day average now stands at 625, up from 537 at this point last week.”  You do the graph.

Reported by Abby Neufeld, multi platform writer for CTV News Toronto

@abbyjneufeld

 

Playing Moral Poker with Politics

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 Picture two political junkies sitting around a table playing high stakes moral poker with holier-than-thou passion. The Canadian looks across the table at her American challenger. The pot is filled with votes and the fate of democracy is on the line.

The Canadian speaks carefully, “I’ll see your Marjorie Taylor Greene and raise you a Lynn Beyak, eh?”

The American looks up over her cards and without hesitation replies, “Then I’ll raise you a Matt Gaetz!”

“I’ll see your Matt Gaetz and raise you a Derek Sloane … and a Pierre Poilievre!”

Silence. The American carefully studies her hand. “I’ll see you with a Josh Hawley!”

The two players glare at each other across the table. The theme music from “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” begins…. The pot grows bigger and the stakes get higher and the game goes on as McConnell and McCarthy cards are played against Ford and Kenney.

The Canadian discards her O’Toole card and draws … a Trudeau – the American folds!

Later in the game, the table will be filled with players from Mexico, Central and South America, Europe, Russia, the -stans, the Middle East, Africa, South and East Asia, and Oceania. Everywhere. But always the availability of the same checks and balances.

Russia says, “I’ll raise you a Stalin,” and Cambodia replies with, “I’ll see you a Pol Pot.”

Iran says, “We’ll raise you an Allah,” and Israel replies with, “We’ll see you with a Yahweh.”

There are no winners at the political moral poker table, just a pot full of tax monies and bodies and egos and extremist evangelical myths that keep on growing.

Into the room walks a young child. Her eyes sweep through the souls of all the players and they grow quiet. She calmly claims the pot, and then knocks over the poker table. The politico immoralists at the table are banished to their bedrooms for a lifetime Stay At Home Lockdown. She donates all of the proceeds to Women’s Shelters, after first deducting enough to cover her university education. That’s another way to play the game.

The way I see it.

***

Skid Crease, Caledon

*image from pokernews.com

 

 

Act Locally

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The old adage still holds true for me, and like in The Polar Express, the silver bell still rings for all those who believe:

Think Globally, Act Locally, Care Personally

During this time of global pandemic and local lockdowns it is particularly important to keep that saying in mind. Supporting our local health care workers by wearing a mask, and staying socially distant and washing our hands is not too much to ask of us. Shopping locally to support our small businesses and staying home to protect our family bubbles is simple enough to do. Staying connected to local and global political events online still allows us to express our voice.

This morning, December 17, 2020, the Region of Peel is meeting to discuss a Motion to reduce Caledon’s seats at Peel to 3 and increase Brampton’s voice by 2. In my humble opinion, this would be disastrous for Caledon. The Motion was rushed in at a time of lockdown during a global pandemic and stretched the credibility of due democratic process. We were given short time as citizens to respond, but by staying tuned in to local events we were able to get our concerns on record through the Peel Clerk.That’s about the only action we could take legally.

The desire of angry townsfolk to tar and feather the Regional Councillor who betrayed Caledon, and ride her out of town on a rail would probably result in our concerned citizens getting arrested, so we may have to wait for Karma. And Karma knows.

As for local business – I continue to support Forster’s Book Garden as my pet project. Donna and Paul and Stirling continue to be able to find me any book I need, whether it be a global exploration of “Dark Money” or a local book on “Caledon Hikes” or going second-hand for “The Wolf King” -a long lost childhood favourite – Donna and Paul can find it all.

When we act with respect locally, it has a global impact. We only really change the world by one random act of kindness at a time through which we change ourselves. It’s like the old story my Dad told me about the little boy who wanted to play ball with his very busy dad. The father gave the boy a torn up map of the world and said “when you put it back together, I’ll take a break and we can play,” Within minutes the boy was back with the map all taped together. The father was astonished. “How did you do that so quickly, son?”

The boy smiled and tossed his dad the ball. “It was easy, on the other side of the map there was a big picture of a man. When I put the man back together, the whole world fell into place.”

The way I see it.

***

Skid Crease, Caledon

 

* images from silvercity.com and dreamscapes.com

The Sherman’s Death Photo

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I was up early on the morning of December 15, 2017. I had gone through my normal routine of brewing a Buffalo Soldier coffee and toasting some Amazing Grains Raisin Bread before turning on the early TV news.

The first image that came up on the screen is burned into my memory. It was a photo of two bodies dressed in white robes, at the edge of a luxurious swimming pool in what appeared to be a Dan Brownesque ritual death.

 

The bodies were beside each other, almost posed in a surreal state of eerie calm in the midst of their apparent wealth. It turned out the bodies found in a that wealthy Toronto neighbourhood belonged to billionaire couple Barry and Honey Sherman. The theories surrounding their bizarre deaths circulated as quickly as that photo disappeared from the TV screens.

For anyone who saw the photo that day, the immediate reaction was of a ritual murder or suicide pact. It was too posed, too staged. There was a message being sent in the way the bodies were arranged so calmly beside each other in their final rest. There was no blood or gore, no house smashing struggle, no dragging of battered victims across the pool deck. No.

There was only this photo of two bodies symbolically seated beside each other gazing out over their swimming pool as if in final contemplation of their wealth. The initial judgement of the police was that the Shermans had died either in a suicide pact or a murder-suicide.

Enter the Sherman family lawyers, and a private autopsy, Extreme wealth has its privileges. Also, suicide has a deleterious effect on the settlement of estates and insurance policies. Especially when one of the parties wills seems to be missing. After much high profile back and forth, the police declared that the Shermans were murdered, by perpetrator or perpetrators unknown, and still unknown to this day.

Today, two years later, the police will be updating their report on the mysterious Sherman case. One of the missing pieces of the puzzle appears to be that Honey Sherman revised her will only two days before her death. My mind flashes back two years to that photo that is imprinted indelibly in my memory. Maybe I have read too many Dan Brown novels about symbols and ritualistic deaths, but I stand by my first impression. Someone was sending a message. Who?