Benjibopper

-
You, your prized stories foretell
of crystalline reborn uprisings
ambiguous revolutions
revolt or repetition

Your doctorate language opaque
as you mount the charismatic healer,
lay us low with scorched-earth smiling

Our leader, you implore
with your brow's Utopian promise
All we're to do is sign

Labels: 2011, Canada, Poetry, politics

Hi folks, I have been swamped, working on a nonfiction book called Green Souls (coming out Fall 2011). Thought I'd share a little teaser from the first chapter, see what you all think:

Michel Desjardins' first major life lesson was about excess. "My father has never liked excess," he tells me. "To be excessive is to waste, and therefore to abuse the resource."

The way to avoid that abuse, according to Dr. Desjardins the senior, is to take care of the resource yourself. Despite being a busy professional, the good doctor has always taken the time to tend his own garden and cut his own wood.

"That had a tremendous influence on me," Michel says, "though it took me a long time to appreciate the lesson."

His second major life lesson, passed down from his grandparents, was this: get ahead, find a better life than this tough one we toiling farmers have. Be a skilled professional, not an unskilled labourer. Make your fortune in the knowledge industries and take the world, not just the good earth, into your hands. Buy a bigger house and a better car.

These were the contradictory lessons that were eventually passed on to young Michel, so it is no surprise that his midlife crisis, brought on by the political defeat of his employer, left him soul-searching. Even though his father was a simple man, Michel Desjardins was raised thinking he had to do better, to carry forward the legacy of an optometrist. To get the letters of a legal professional, and to shape his city’s and then his province’s destiny in the new economy. He hadn’t taken the time to look back.

Labels: 2010, Canada, non-fiction, philosophy, publishing

Exciting news all - Drive-by Saviours made the Canada Reads longlist of "Top 40 Essential Canadian Novels of the Decade."

And we the people will decide which books make the top 10 list. You only get one vote.

If you want to vote Drive-by Saviours, just go to Canada Reads and click the circle next to Drive-by Saviours by Chris Benjamin, scroll down and click the vote button. You have until Nov 7 - but really why wait until Nov 7 what you could do right now?

Btw, here is the Top 40 list, and there are some damn fine books there. What say you, dear reader? What books should have made the list but didn't. Any on the list that you don't think are so hot?

A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews

Bottle Rocket Hearts by Zoe Whittall

Clara Callan by Richard B. Wright

Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant

Conceit by Mary Novik

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

Drive-by Saviours by Chris Benjamin

Elle by Douglas Glover

Essex County by Jeff Lemire

Far to Go by Alison Pick

February by Lisa Moore

Galore by Michael Crummey

Heave by Christy Ann Conlin

Inside by Kenneth J. Harvey

Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill

Moody Food by Ray Robertson

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

Room by Emma Donoghue

Shelf Monkey by Corey Redekop

Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki

Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb

The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis

The Birth House by Ami McKay

The Bishop's Man by Linden MacIntyre

The Bone Cage by Angie Abdou

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan

The Fallen by Stephen Finucan

The Girls Who Saw Everything by Sean Dixon

The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe

The Stone Carvers by Jane Urquhart

The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden

Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden

Twenty-Six by Leo McKay Jr.

Unless by Carol Shields

Thanks,
Chris Benjamin

Labels: 2010, Canada, publishing

We left Lachutes in what we thought was plenty of time. But we hit Friday afternoon rush-hour traffic at the outskirts of Montreal. "City squirrels go to the cottage and their kids come back from school," Jeff said, his fingers tapping frantic rhythm on the wheel.

We crawled another hour-and-a-half to our turnoff, then bolted through downtown as the rain hammered everything. We drove by the Canadian Pacific sign and scanned the streetscape with stretched eyes until Jeff pulled the truck into the drop off. We fist bumped; I grabbed my bags and ran, glancing at the gates I passed until I found Campbellton and flashed my ticket. "Moncton?"

"Yep. Hurry down and just say 'Moncton' at the foot of the stairs."

From my seat I texted Jeff. "Made it."

Seventeen hours later, the red-headed Hertz guy picked me up at the train station and drove me 20 minutes to the airport for paperwork. He's a Moncton lifer, spent time in the states but after 9/11 things got too weird there and he came to the small town he knows and loves.

We were all set to go until I gave them my wife's credit card - no can do. And mine was in Halifax. No cash deposit. I was stuck at Moncton airport, two hours until my reading in Fredericton. The Hertz guy (another one) asked the Budget girl if they cioiuld rent me a car on cash deposit. Nope, but Delta could, back downtown.

Tristan needed to get some fresh air anyway, he said. He's a Nova Scotia boy, north shore, stuck in Moncton too long. "I hate it," he said. "It's a giant industrial park that people happen to live in. It's ugly and there's nothing to do." I found the outskirts pretty anyway, with the fall colours, but he hopes to move to Halifax as soon as he can.

Delta was empty. I knocked on the glass and a guy came out with a broom and dustpan. "You the one who called?"

It was an all paper, no computer business, with a mandatory vehicle walk-around, and several spots to initial on the long form. He put my cash deposit in an envelope, sealed and signed it, had me check to make sure the tank was full, pointed me to the highway and I was gone, red-lined to Fredericton, only 10 minutes late for the reading.

It was a small group but I sold a few books and met a women who'd already red Drive-by Saviours and is recommending it to her book club. And I met Corey Redekop, author of Shelf Monkey - soon to be on Canada Reads top 40 must-read list. We bantered on canlit and the mneed for authors to embrace our inner pimps - be self promoters that is.

I nabbed a few hours sleep at an old friend's place, a suburban household of 11 - her stepdaughter, several international billets, a visiting German family of five, and me. "I'll take the ISBN and get it back in Germany," the mister told me. "They'll order in anything for me!" And that's how the book tour pays off, I think, the face-to-face that gets your book in a German store before it's even translated.

Labels: 2010, Canada, non-fiction, Travel

I'm writing from Lachutes, Quebec, about 40 km northwest of Montreal. A good friend of mine is Superintendent of a golf course here and he's putting me up. Tonight, (Thurs Oct 14), I read at 8:00pm in Montreal, at Argo Bookshop, 1915 Ste Catherine W. There will be three writers reading tonight, starting at 7:30 pm. Also up will be Susan Gillis, author of Volta, and Claudia Coutu Radmore, author of A Minute or Two/Without Remembering. Hopefully more authors means more people, more energy.

Labels: 2010, Canada, non-fiction, Travel

"I ain't a communist necessarily, but I have been in the red all my life."
--Woody Guthrie


I’m sorry.
On behalf of the world
I apologize.

I don’t blame the sweat-soaked man
who pulled the black market trigger.
His scar was constant danger,
bloated by a leaden bulge
and an itch
to be the man society demands,
a drive-by saviour.

I don't blame you.
You wanted a mother to shield you
from the ones who have it all
and the others like you
who have nothing,
your competition
for the trickle-down leftovers.

I don’t blame your mother,
who escaped on her own,
left you alone.
It's hard to blame a Third-World woman.
Blame is a masculine fist,
another uninvited seed.
What choice did your mother have?
No more than you.

Where can I, a faraway foreigner
place my scuffed steel-toes?
Whose ass do I kick here?
Where shall I stand for you
with all this money?
It’s available now;
you are already fallen.

I’m sorry
on behalf of my world.
We feared your lyrical science,
stole your books and bricks,
gave you machetes and guns and glue,
and a place in the ground.
The only shield left for you
is the mother of us all.



ps. I made the news! This time not as a journalist but as a subject, in the Books section, for my contest win. Click here to read it.

Labels: 2005, Canada, Poetry, politics

You feel like Dante's innermost circles have risen around me
shown themselves to be playgrounds and creatively wacky theme parks,
pogo sticks on trampolines

You give me vertigo and soothe that fear with targeted foot rubs
slow my heart rate to a post sauna tingle, when the skin is crystal clean,
and satin smooth

It's a bizarro anticipation for what has already been, because spinning
old is new again, same old conversations make us sweat again, solitude scary
as birth again

Same sense of separation, don't fear; though fear is natural as conflict
In death, chaos, and survival know that you are adored, treasured, wanted
because

You feel like Satan's fall was never intended, that it never mattered
just a joy-ride, a bare bones pleasure cruise, under low hanging candy
and whipped cream

where there is no entertainment but what we create together
This is how you feel when I remember you here, when my mind is ready
and my body can be put at ease.

Labels: 2008, Canada, love junk, Poetry

The lighthouse of the cousin who once dubbed me a 'Long Tall Drink of Silence' is out of commission now.

Labels: 2007, Canada, non-fiction, photography, Travel

Off to Prince Edward Island for the weekend, showing Big Bro's girlfriend Anne of Green Gables, a dream of hers. I leave you with some recent thoughts; catch ya on the flipside...



‘Good times with old friends’ is what I wrote. In the documentary of our lives there is so much that goes unrecorded and unspoken that is so difficult to articulate, like that sadness that is missing someone wherever I go. This is the price the global citizen pays for mobility.

Every summer I fall in love in a new city. I fall in love again with old friends, fall in love anew with new ones.

There’s a goodbye party because meeting all these splendid lovers individually is physically impossible on a chronically tight schedule. So in one night they flash before me in a parade where every float carries the significance of the fact that I won’t see it again, at least not for a while.

As evening ticks into morning, I collect the hugs of the ones I just got to know and the ones I thought would never end. And I feel so heavy, weighted by the sadness of the ones who dare to cry, to say that it’s a sad day. I love them the most in this moment of departure.

The party is organic and free range, dynamic and boisterous. At one point a bunch of 30-something white folks are dancing to Billy Jean (but who else would these days?) and they all want to moonwalk. Some flow out onto the deck to stargaze – supposed to be a meteor shower tonight. The conversations are fleeting and soft despite the gravity pulling us together this last time.

I hug everyone goodbye including the ones I barely spoke with because there were just too many competing interests among us. So many good people assembled here.

It was a brief summer of brief encounters, squeezing too much into too little time and too much space. It felt much like Christmases of the past decade, in and around that cottage by the shore in the East. Over the years the numbers there have diminished but not the quality.

It is inevitable now that the same will happen at the centre of the universe I’ve inhabited, built up, settled, where I’ve connected, lived and loved. It is the price I pay for my homecoming, to return to the place where I belong.

Labels: Canada, friends, love junk, non-fiction, nova scotia

When I arrived at Halifax International Airport it was strange because for the first time in many flight arrivals she wasn't there to greet me. I spent the next day or two hanging around BB, a sleepy little hometown that winds its way through the middle of nowhere, disturbed only by the hundreds of cars that use the main road as a throughway between Halifax and somewhere else.

This homecoming gave me a chance to check up on my old friend Brown, who plays basketball like they did in the NBA before black people were allowed to play, like you see sometimes in those old video clips, with underhanded granny moves. He was uncannily effective with that stuff. We’d been friends about 15 years by then, ever since grade three when we got into a fight over which Beatles album was the greatest. (Abby Road, obviously.) After that we started calling ourselves the 2 Stooges and built a relationship by going around school and making fun of everyone we knew.

Brown had recently graduated from Golf Course Management School in PEI and was back working for a golf course in Dartmouth for the summer. He was gladder to see me than I expected; I guess he was preparing himself for a somewhat dull summer with no one too exciting around to hang with. We always got along really well because we have the same sense of humour, which consists of acting like fools around each other and making each other laugh in the most mundane of circumstances. His presence made up for what I’d just left behind.

After a day or two of sitting around with Brown, doing not much of anything, I went to the second of many orientations that were to prepare me for hosting a St. Lucian forestry officer in my parents’ home. There I met Nigel, who would be my counterpart for the duration of the program, meaning he would live and work in BB with me for 2 1/2 months, then I would live with him in St. Lucia for the next 3 months.

By the time the Nova Scotian posse met the St. Lucians, the latter group of Nigel, MC, Li and Zany, had already spent the week together in an apartment in Halifax and were pretty close.

The one on one conversation that weekend was a little awkward between Canadians and Lucians, I guess because of the cultural differences, and the accents. But as a group conversation flowed well, and everybody laughed a lot. The initial conversation between Nigel and myself was no exception, and we kind of stared at each other for a bit, then nodded at each other, said, "Hey, how's it going?" then the ever so timid barrage of questions began. What do you eat? What's your weather like this time of year? What music do you like? Brothers? Sisters? How old are you? What do you do for fun? and so on. I was surprised to learn that he, at the age of 24, had two kids aged 4 and 1, with two different mothers, to neither of whom he was married.

During the first orientation with just the Canadians, we were told that Lucians are not heavy drinkers, but Nigel's biggest interest turned out to be "drinking beer," which he pronounced be-yare. He didn't play sports, didn't really play an instrument, but just enjoyed his beer. We had also been told that Lucians don't swear, but I could tell right away that wasn't true, especially in Nigel's case. We'd been told that Lucians are very religious, but Nigel hadn't set foot in a church for 14 years.

The conversation was slow and awkward, and we kind of just took each other in and sized each other up. He was about six feet tall, maybe 170 pounds, had a huge toothy white smile, and a mischievous look in his eyes. I soon learned that he liked to say funny things, like when he bought a 'push-up' ice cream that used a plastic stick to push orange sherbet to the surface, he broke the stick in the process and grinning a ridiculous child-like grin said in his heavy Caribbean accent, "I broke my poosh-up." He spent money at a ridiculous rate, ate a lot of food, drank almost every day, and ate, drank and lived forestry, for which he worked as a conservationist in St. Lucia. I liked him right away.

Labels: 1998, Canada, non-fiction, nova scotia, Travel

I wrote this one in 1999, and it sort of reminds me of some current life-changes, but this time there's a lot less heartache:


The first seven weeks of the summer of 1998 were some of the best and simplest times of my life. My girlfriend and I were back together and were living together for the first time in almost a year. We also worked together and that went better than I'd hoped because we managed to keep our distance at work.

I can't say much about that time except that we had fun, simple vegetarian fun, and rarely had conflict. Work was hard but interesting, money was plentiful enough, our home was good other than the roommates who spent too much time fighting over trivial things.

We had each other, and were deeply in love and as close as we ever could be. We spent a mid-June night in a 2 1/2 star hotel near Pearson Airport just West of Toronto. It was half-price because it was under renovation, but it was nice enough. That night we had a stupid fight that I think was caused by the painful feeling that I was leaving behind the only thing that would ever really matter in my life.

We got over it and cried a lot of tears but when the morning came I held her in my arms and hoped for some kind of future forever. And then I went to the airport and nothing in my life has been quite so typical since.

Labels: 1998, Canada, love junk, Travel

1. northern ontario rock












2. paper in fire












3. northern ontario falls
















4 condo cats
























6. lake ontario canada goose
















7. chutes












8. lake ontario gull











9. selves












10. Jazz singer

Labels: 2007, Canada, doodles, photography

It was one of those great still crazy after all...weekends, lots of reminiscances, digging up the dirt, catching up, bringing out all the old stories, laughing like old times. And, experimenting with the new camera:

Along the pier, in front of all these rusted out factories, we saw this beautiful little community garden, my wife and I did, as we strolled along, buzzing on coffee, on our way to meet my best buddy GB and his new old flame.

Next to those rusted out factories we saw this tugboat, the second oldest in the world, now out of commission.


Here we see the power of zoom. We spent a couple hours just soaking in the sun along the canal, me reading Tolstoy and M reading Canadian social policy. Nearby is a little market where we bought some sake to go with the evening's sushi. In Japan M fell in love witht the sake.








The midwife in the middle is a good friend who drove us to Montreal - she was headed to a midwifery conference there, and to her right is her friend, a trained psychologist who wants to work with the 'criminally insane' in med-security prisons.




Just a little waterfall along the canal.



Allergies were on overdrive - this is ragweed in the canal. Imagine what our lungs look like.






Pretty water.




GB and his new old flame (NOF) with the merry intrepids, a few coronas and a bunch of sushi in. NOF also made a fantastic Asian noodle salad for the occasion. In return she wanted dirt on GB and I didn't disappoint.


This is the family of a woman who my wife met at a course on refugee issues. They live in Montreal; we rang in 2006 with them and they are enormous fun; the little boy made it all the way to midnight for the first time in his life.







GB took us to his favourite Vietnamese joint, where I had a fantastic chicken noodle soup.










GB also gave us a little tour of the town. Here we see an underwater wishing plant counting its money.








There was a fire in Chinatown that left this burnt out beauty.









Back along the pier, lots of action in sunny weather, kids playing football (soccer), rich couples sipping martinis in their boats, tourists like us strolling along in the sunlight.

Labels: 2007, Canada, non-fiction, photography, Travel

I got offered two jobs and a promotion in one week and to boot saw my Montreal Canadiens play the Toronto Maple Leafs at the Garden in Toronto, one of the last times they played there, with my world's best friend.

It was just as I was negotiating the terms of my promotion that McC called me to say "you're in kid," or something of that nature. To celebrate we hit the Hockey Hall of Fame, Wayne Gretzky's bar, and of course the game, on which I wasted (well) $125 for the sake of the scalper's kid's college fund and my own personal pleasure.

So life became pretty good for a while, I had a better job, which although still not socially productive at least was more interesting, paid better. Still I could feel the call of something bigger and better, and I felt that somehow, someway I was to be rewarded by my travels, that I would be "handed a pearl" as Kerouac said. That pearl would not only be the thrill of travel, the joy of freedom and wildness of life, the adventure, the reality of it all, but it would be the chance to learn, to educate, save the world and whatnot.

Labels: 1998, Canada, non-fiction, St. Lucia, Travel

A few weeks later I flew to Hali for my interview, and saw J. Her and I had been in a long distance relationship for about six months by then, and it would be several more months before we were to reside in the same province again. It had put a terrible strain on our relationship, which although strong in love, and been tumultuous over our entire two years together.

I guess our first breakup that Christmas had been inevitable, though I didn't see it coming, and it hit me like a freight train. We were still best friends, and it was so good to see her that weekend.

The interview itself was an experience, and it allowed me to meet Morning, Frent, KK and Dudi, who would soon become a big part of my life, especially Dudi and KK. There was a one-on-one interview in the morning, which went well because I'm so used to interviews from my co-op experience in school, that I was relaxed and laid back. The afternoon interview was with a group of six other applicants. I hate those things because although they are supposed to be relaxed, it's phony because really everyone is competing with each other, but they are trying to be nice. I was told by a friend of mine that the purpose of those things is to eliminate ridiculously quiet and ridiculously loud individuals. There weren't any of either there though.

At the end they asked us each for our thoughts. "It's been fun," I offered, "it's too bad we can't all be accepted." How easily that line of bullshit flowed from my mouth. The truth was though that the afternoon had not been the total hell I expected, and some of the activities were actually quite interesting. To me at the time that is, I won't trouble the reader with such superfluous nonsense. I'll just say that I knew that four of the six of us would be accepted, and I knew which one of us would not be. There was a young girl (about 18 years) from the Cape here with a heavy accent who was clearly nervous and not very well spoken. She seemed like a sweet girl, and let me assure you that Capers are generally speaking the nicest group of people you could ever hope to encounter, but I had a feeling she was not going to be chosen. That left the other five of us on equal ground from my perspective, so I figured I had an 80% chance.

The interview had taken place on Monday, February the 23rd, 1998. That afternoon I was left with quite a high, having had a good time and having liked all the other potential participants and thinking I had a good chance. I danced into J's apartment that evening to spin her round the room like a ballerina with her hair and dress all sparkling in the spotlight, sending light waves dancing with equal brilliance across the crowd which was to make the singular cheering noise that can only be heard at spectacular events, and in the middle would be the two of us, flowing like a river round the room.

In fact I danced into an empty apartment; she was still at work. At the time she was working at a fast food joint selling delicious stuffed pitas. She hated her job because so many drunks harassed her at night, and she had to prepare meat and was and still is a vegetarian like myself. The two of us in fact quit red meat together in 96 and then chicken in 97. The chicken we quit simultaneously without even consulting each other; we were in different cities. Despite her temporary absence that evening my high stayed high and I flowed around that room myself until she got home. "Get dressed I'm taking you to dinner!" I said when she got home. She was captured by my bliss and the fact that I looked pretty good in my suit and soon we were paintin' the town red, in our more laid back vegetarian style.

Labels: 1998, Canada, love junk, non-fiction, nova scotia, St. Lucia, Travel

The more I considered it, the more I realized that the trees were right. The Marketing of products that we think we need but really do not is ultimately what is causing the destruction of the planet. And you can't be an effective player if you play for two opposing teams. What I finally saw was that Marketers and Environmentalists are on opposing teams, and to play for both is counterproductive.

So, there was me looking for something new, something different, and something that helped the world, really helped the world, rather than just making life a little more convenient for a chosen few. And there was J, telling me about a chance to do so, and how! In a manner that would take me to a part of the world I couldn't even fathom, to a place so new I wouldn't recognize a soul, and none would recognize me, a place where everything was new, dazzling and breathtaking, simply because I would be seeing it through a child's eyes, for the very first time. It was a lifelong dream, to travel, explore, and there had always been something in me that craved adventure, action, newness. A calling from someplace else, not the netherworld, but this one, so big and yet so small, and yet so unexplored by me. I had to learn more about this program.

I called the Department of Affiliations (DOA), and spoke with McC for the first time. She seemed a very pleasant woman, and answered my questions well. I had to get back to work, my productivity was already slipping as my boredom and disdain for my work increased. But when the deadline for application came, I wrote the best covering letter of my life and applied.

Labels: 1998, Canada, non-fiction, Workplace Boredom

It all began I guess in Waterloo, when my girlfriend J told me about this exchange program she read about on the Internet between St. Lucia and Nova Scotia. I was living in Ontario at the time but having grown up in Nova Scotia she figured I'd qualify. It was for youth aged 17-23, lasted five-and-a-half months, three in St. Lucia, and was called the EYE Program.

I was immediately interested because I was getting sick of my current job, which involved doing research for a bunch of would-be Thomas Edisons trying to push more pooper scoopers and other equally useless products onto our already saturated marketplace, thus wasting numerous resources and further destroying our preciously vulnerable planet. The crazy thing is I actually liked, even loved, this job at first, and had gone so far as to spend four years in school training for such work, which seemed interesting at first, then like a waste of time, and finally, worst of all, dangerous and damaging. I somehow had failed to make the connection between Marketing and the destruction of the environment. Here I was, a vegetarian, a reuser and recycler, hell, even a reducer, and I was doing research for yahoos so that I could help them help further bludgeon our poor planet to death.

But I didn't realize it. I didn't stop to think that by Marketing more and more products onto the marketplace, I was in effect neutralizing every effort I made as an individual to avoid taking part in the destruction of this planet. Worse, I was also neutralizing the effects of hundreds, thousands of other people like me, because I was helping to convince their cousins, neighbors, kids, even their dogs that they needed shit such as, well, pooper scoopers. A better example is fire extinguisher cabinets.

The fire extinguisher cabinet was an idea of a client of mine which he called his "brain-child". After I did research on the idea and found that there already exist many such products, and that they are somewhat popular, he wrote me a letter thanking me for my efforts and helping him solve some key "marketing problems", thus bettering his entire concept and helping him fulfill a dream. I was happy of course, who wouldn't be? I'd helped someone, and it was one of the most gratifying things to occur during my 11 months on the job.

And according to my client, his product would help save lives, because: it would beautify the fire extinguisher, thus causing people to place it in a more visible, and thus more accessible area. Therefore, in the event of a fire, precious seconds are saved. It could mean the difference between a blazing inferno enveloping entire neighborhoods, eventually forests, wildlife, taking the lives of brave firefighters and the innocent campers and rangers therein! and a little black mark in your carpet.

And this of course is the logical mindset of Marketers, especially advertisers. How can we make Mr. and Mrs. Schmoe feel the need to buy this product, when the need does not yet exist?

Of course, they don't teach you that in business school. They teach you that the goal of the Marketer is to identify an unfulfilled need, and fulfill it. However, they also teach you that to build a better mousetrap is not enough, you have to set the right price, you have to get the right distributors, and above all else, you have to $$$ell it! So if you see a nice looking frame for your fire extinguisher, you might say, "nice", and move forward to the next item on the auction block. But if you see the difference between that blazing inferno and that little black mark on your carpet, you say, "how much?" and then you say, "is that all? for peace of mind? Sold!" And everybody is happy.

Except for the trees who gave their lives for the building of the millions of cabinets sold now that everyone needs one, and those without are scorned publicly for their lack of responsibility, for keeping their extinguishers under the cupboard, and for the danger they pose to society. The trees are not happy. But why the hell not? A few dead to protect the rest from the ravages of fire, you'd think they'd be satisfied, those selfish bastards!

But the trees are not susceptible to Marketing, they are more savvy than the average consumer. They are logical creatures because they have no emotions, and they do not fear for their families’ safety, they can see the situation clearly, and they know that in reality, the Fire Extinguisher Cabinet will not save nearly as many trees as it took to make them. They even see that in the long run, the damage done by unnecessary resource-using products such as the Fire Extinguisher Cabinet will even take more human lives than it will save, because without trees, there is no hope for humans.

Labels: 1998, Canada, St. Lucia, Travel

Port Hardy is the Twilight Zone, the same caravans passed us 6 times each, with the same nursing home attendants waving and pointing excuses for not picking us up.

Big bearly man saved us on only his second pass, after getting gas. Covered pickup man, slicked grey-white hair, big deer belly under plaid shirt - cannon voice - a logger. "Oh I don't cut trees, I build logging roards. But I'm semi-retired now - only work 6 months a year. Not as much work these days anyway. So I have more time to visit my daughter. She just dropped out of school. She's a receptionist now. I guess she's happy. I'm on my way to see her - first time in 6 months. Thanks to the US boycott on softwood. I'm a yank myself - from Louisiana, not far from Baton Rouge. Wife makes the best jumbalaya you ever tasted! Yessir.

"But I love Canada. Came to this island 30 years ago and never wanted to leave. I rarely go back to Louisiana now - been 5 years.

"I like the land here. I like the animals, especially the bears. See them all the time. We had one at work got into the whipped cream. We warned the chef not to leave anything out, but he didn't listen. Sure was funny to see that bear into the whipped cream - ate a whole barrel! Oh yeah - seen one carry my neighbour's garbage can 100 yards one time, into the woods. I wished I had a camera - funniest thing. He carried that thing, walkin' on hind legs, hundred yards. Ha! It was so funny.

"Only thing about Vancouver Island is all the Indians." I zoned out on that broken white man record. Nice friendly white bigots coast to coast.

Labels: 2001, Canada, non-fiction, Travel

And so we agreed to be married in Lawrencetown in my aunt’s beautiful garden by the Juan-swept remnants of forest, in a circle of friends and family, after a windswept week of last minutes and paperwork swirling around familiar family functions for stress induced heavy drinking. We gathered at the Dooley’s and there was Calder and Kenny, Scooter and Lee, Jeff and Mike, Sweet Skanes, and even Krazy Kim’s long-time ex. Everyone had stories of macromanagement projects on microislands, children brewing and other wedding announcements, young men getting older and drinking less, except me but even I was more mature in my way. And all these young men tilting boozily toward racier things were enamored with you in different ways than I, especially Kenny who was brought to another time place girl by your audacious drive to be free in Scarborough of all places.

The photos flashed relentlessly all week in all errands we shopped and said “we only get married once” was the excuse the line of convenience that hailed forth the plastic money the disposable product that ensured we celebrated in a certain style the fact that this was a journey we hope goes beyond Bob Hunter’s 2030 apocalyptic predictions and even ensures that the children we produce in a few years will enjoy it as much if not more as we did have and are, and we’re just warming up here. I don’t remember much from that week except the burning in my guts – I just wanted the payoff and not the work and I wanted it to work out right for me, to accede and flow with the mild currents of Barrett Lake instead of fighting tsunami’s of regret and uncertainty about things better left in the past, if one is being reasonable which is only one small part of what we are anyway. You were the rock upon which family is built in that you weathered my storm with serenity granted to very old – I mean 10-digit old rocks – things, that is until your own band of merry lunatics arrived and jumped into the foray. But it was amazing how well they all got along together, I guess matter/anti-matter isn’t such a bad combination in some ways, regardless of what my cousin the physicist might have to say about that.

I do remember decorating madly with you spraying orange dollar store paper hither and flat, playing with malfunctioning audio at the hands of my feline brother the chords came undone, reversed, out of synch, and mistracked but we cut the chord and powered down while the women went shopping and the other men put their minds to bigger questions of solitude and love, and we enjoyed the greatest sandwiches anywhere and relaxed, in a manner of hours all would be awed giving themselves the pleasure of watching us that night, but not before our final fight as a couple living in sin because you didn’t want a poetry reading and I felt like being a brat with my last minute demands for alterations but of course, cooler heads prevailed outside the Downsview Motel, and we had our moment alone in starlit water and submerged skin, we were determined to be free in Beaver Bank of all places.

And everybody cried: reminiscences of ancestry, those not there that showed a certain something we hope is in us, my great great great grandparents celebrating 60th in ’37 when most people didn’t even live that long – the importance here of forging and maintaining familial relationships and community that give us strength as a team and partnership and married couple, thanks Grandma for profound articulation you do brilliantly - and those we wish made it like Lauri and Steve, Tommy and Aunty Peg. Prayers put forth for ecology (by my Dad) and second chances, honesty, safe surefooted journeys, and Remembrances: getting lost and finding the way back home (Grandma again), making things real by loving them and always believing them beautiful (and saying so), and that fateful day I told Leah: “I feel so alive” and you told Leah: “Imagine if we got married” because that’s what we wanted almost from the very start and nothing much has changed, except the very important thing that we made it velveteen rabbit real, and now we can burn with the germs and it’ll still be real, and things can change and so they say it’s up and then you know where down yes that way but it’s still real and our families no matter how disparate far away and such are one united under gifts exchanged tartan and poetry, hand-woven rugs and precious blankets and better still even all those beloved joyful ones surrounding us, closing in closer, touching us all at once with words and hands, the pastor’s hellfire and brimstone voice but more importantly the beloved made it so for us by sharing in it and toasting it with father talk, advice from Dylan, and 1969 red wine, among other really fine selections.

And the party was much more than that though Aunt Judy felt the ceremony to be the main event I’m glad we could make the party more than fiesta and I’m glad we made them all cry again, and laugh as well when we created our husband-wife goofy dance in response to any utterance of such powerful words. A mother’s son worth committing to come together with someone who managed to share more than material possessions with those in need (which is after all all of us) something of herself and when they so came together there was apparently pleasure in just watching them, and I felt so honoured and alive in that this mostly my community had made it special for me and you even thanked them for it.

Jeff my best buddy from home noted my integrity and everyone spoke of writing and your support for and how did they know that truth of your supportive energy and strength and unfaltering belief and best of all unbelievable that hardest thing of all is inspiration that is yours that you give me like an unselfish muse and it is consistent and certain and best of all: true. And so it is true when I toast you: the best thing that ever happened to me. And can it be true what you said about me while tears left slug-trails on cheeks: I’m the best lover of life you know. You are the best complimenter I know. Through stories of crazy dancing through internet portals from Central American intermittent connections came this unbelievable collision of all these folks from afar in this little (not even a town really) road with subdivisions sporadically spewed from the sides to say nice things about us and make it all so real in a way even music (the sound not the bear) never even could, not alone anyway, and play cheesy-fun games and watch us dance dance as we always have we started this party right quickly and such with dancing and could finally stop crying joy and joyously jump kick hoola-hoop (but in a way which was really quite pathetic compared to my father’s generation and my parents in particular whom I had no idea had such a hidden obscure talent but that bedazzled all 70 guests in a way that would make even a pogo stick jealous I’m certain) shake twist boogie dip kick shout move and smile and laugh relieved oh but what a feeling of joy and Kevin’s making jokes on the mic and me and red rapping the only Irish rap song we know but it’s for a second there almost like we’re cool but the best thing is it’s you and me and it’s just the beginning – I’ve always wondered why so much effort for a day and a party but it’s just the beginning and now here’s why: it’s the big Push-Off, there you go you crazy kids you’re sort of on your own but of course we’re here and you’ll have your you know ups and not-ups (okay downs) and it’s a long trip but we have faith in you and you’re not the first ones and we did it surely you can and we love you and here’s hugs and words from everyone you wouldn’t normally get and maybe it’s partly the booze hugging but more so it’s the high of this event’s enormous magnitude that the Richter scale can’t accommodate. And with all that we were stripped of our fancy suits you your nymph of the mist me my top gangster in the big city looks both gone back to grunge and gone for the hotel (baggage gone oh well) and ready for phase II.

which was a large (shall I say it? It’s kind of private in a way some might not expect so no. But I’ve told everything else even the fight so) (no) (well, what the hell I’m into it now) uneventful 2 days of recuperation, albeit blissfully in a big big bigger than Queen I’ll be your King bed, and educational television programs on feral children and animal-men fighting for ultimate supremacy in a cage, greasy greasy food, swimming in the pool playing dodge the middle monkey at the expense of the kids (and their less than amused parents) standing poolside fetching shanked balls for the giant-sized tykes four of whom managed to hog the whole thing (this when Conor and Leah visited), and much lazing around Halifax. Maybe…but who knows…when big C bounded in early Monday morning and we met cousin Julie to break our fast over a barrel of apples before reuniting with another high school chum on the way to almost paradise in a car that would have matched my gangster suit had it not already hitched its way back to Toronto. Swapping songs all the way we made our goodbyes with Big Brother, who everyone loved immensely for his charm, humour, and enlightenment, and drove a long long way past fast food chains, into Acadia and out again, past even inaccessible to Israelis registration camping, through a near-hurricane that turned me into a tent sandwich, through raging lightning storms of axe-grinding anger and the making of a “passionate love” in which your body was revealed to me in spastic flashes of light and believe me, lighting suited you too, to the end of civilization (then take a left and go over a bridge) another 10 kilometres where the road turns dirt and another 10 k still, where it’s just hardcore hikers, and us, with our 3-week food supply on my back and everything else on yours and the Viking Mule’s, and we hike hike hike north north north along the coast, and this is where all those up and downs come in and it seems since we did that trail 4 times we’ve had enough to last and it’s all flat from here but knock my head and 2 hours later we reached a mirage where a stream flowed and a fire smoldered. We rested there, and then kept going. Mooses and eagles marked our trail, and more streams to cross, and the occasional cows and bull blocking the path just to keep it interesting until the final descent when your knees our knees all jello with a vibrator jammed in the middle jugjugjugjugjugjug all the way down a 90 degree slope a thousand miles long until O the glory it’s where three mountains converge and a stream hits the ocean and wild horses graze but remain tame enough to take your carrots and demand more and pilot whales follow seals toward a giant school of mackerels, over which circle clumsy graceful cormorants (otherwise an oxymoron but only cormorants and maybe herons can pull that off). And there we stayed in the rain for two days, escorted our pack mule friend back to the car and drove him to where he might hitch a ride to the airport, and chowed like fat munchies in Acadia on lobster sandwiches, fried haddock and smelt, and sweet salted poutine.

Then one soft night in a BnB overseen by the German-Swiss couple, one of whom told us “food is the only pleasure that isn’t forbidden” and the other who told us “running a small business in Canada means working for the government.” And we read.

Then back to paradise where we met the Ethio-Indian Caper Paul Schwartz, whose family borrowed its name from colonialist refugees in Africa before he himself immigrated to New Waterford as a teenager. Paul was the man who’d showed me paradise in the first place and built a poorly functioning Canadian tire sweat lodge from beach debris tarp and duct tape where I’d purged a virus I’d hosted too long and he’d told me that his mother was with him in this paradise for the first time – that was 6 years ago now, and here I was again with you, my wife (insert goofydance here) with me in the formidable flesh for the first time after all those years of circulating through my nebulose desires, and we sweat lodged again but it worked well this time and became the metaphor for my life and six-year healing process, climaxing in a nirvanous naked nude where-the-sun-shines roll on the shore to show the horses how it’s done, so that we could return first to Halifax for a day of wandering where even I felt like it was the discovery of something newly scientific: the North End, where houses are affordable for now (until the oil barrens have their way according to Uncle Winnie) and the traveler’s hostel provides a cheap (but not too cheap) source of fair trade coffee and books, but we’d already found a whole box of freebies on the road side and were later directed to a bioregional organic restaurant made of wood naturally felled by none other than hurricane Juan – then to Barrett Lake to find a strange euphoria ventilating my childhood home as we dined delicately in the backyard and finished the rest of the beer there before my father drove us across the county line, then another one, and left us in Milford Nova Scotia by the Tim Hortons, where within 25 minutes (as predicted) we received our first of many short rides from a cab driver and an off-duty RCMP officer who informed us hitching is legal in those parts but walking against traffic is not, naturally. They were a jovial pair joking their way to the wildlife park near Stewiacke (home of the woolly mammoth from which my friend David Cribbs had once hung for a photo when he and MikeyZ visited me in 1998) to chase animals with golf clubs. Douglas Adams’ ghost smiled on us in Stewiacke in the guise of a trucker who was already pulled over getting coffee and hailed us to hop in. He loved our ‘Just Married’ sign because he himself was celebrating the second anniversary of his second marriage, so he drove us to Truro chatting happily (mainly just him) the whole way, and dropped us in a bit of a rough spot but compensated by sharing with us two apples – easily spared from the thousands he was hauling in the back of his rig.

After an hour of fearing the highway’s split we lunched PB&J style half-assed hitching a side-road route through no where, the kind where you meet locals, in this case the retirement village crowd, Yogi Bera’s ghost shouted at us from his pickup truck to take the damn fork, and pointed out an easy way to cross one lane of highway to get where we wanted. 175 vehicles later (almost half of them Cape Breton-bound) we met Chris the Electrical Technician on his way to Parsborough to fix a cement paver, dreaming about being a rocknroll star the whole way and regaling with tales of his groupie-like trips from city to city, “just poking around” learning all the local acts and sometimes following the biggies halfway to nowhere before finding an alternate route back to his home province, where he’d stay until Montreal. Chris left us just before Amherst for another long wait short ride as the rain started up again and a PEI bound man brought us all of five kilometers up the road where we resumed our game of throwing rocks at street signs until a child anthropologist drove us across the New Brunswick border and gave us a big bottle of Propeller beer as a souvenir. Of all those short rides we agreed we liked this kid best but we weren’t sure why, just the type you’d want to share an adventure with on a chance wind, if you could.

But it was a trucker who listened to loud rock and roll, loved his family more than god or science or money, and hoped to buy his own truck soon even though his employer was the best one he knew of for good wages and fair hours, who drove us into the outskirts of Fredericton (more town than city) as the sun rose on the world’s flipside. That was when you finally rested your heavy-hike sore back in his back bunk and took a slightly embarrassed nap while I made sporadic small-shout over the blaring radio – he wasn’t much of a talker but straight driving son of another trucker who’d never wanted to drive for a living and even got certified as a welder and landscaper before he figured out where the money was that he needed for the fam and that he could somehow strike a better balance than his old man, and the man who offered us an unprompted ride into Fred-town was a younger more tattooed version of the same, dry smart-faced humor about his military stint saying “you learn to tow the line on the job and say yay military, cheeva! But what’s scary is how many guys get brainwashed and don’t know how to leave that stuff behind and still have a real life outside of the work.” He was a universal soldier who knew that “around here you either cut trees or join the military, and I got tired of cutting trees.” The best he could hope for was Haiti; he got Afghanistan.

The Fred-town hostel was nice and you instantly charmed the place as usual and somehow gave Israeli tourists a topofyourhead guide to the Maritimes, your new home-to-be, so they souped us up in return and won the lifelong love of some west coast Mike who you saved with a 20 dollar loan, and the whole place sang our praises as we headed into the next morning’s drizzle, but first a lingering breakfast with Aunt Nikki, and coffee coffee coffee though we try to stop exploiting the third world with cash crops it is heavenly and it’s double rich and it’s a ceremony of birth every morning when your blood picks up its pace with a caffeine kick in the pants. Nikki drank decaf and we caught up while she offered insight on certain challenges that are mine and more so hers, but that can circulate in a family and she felt were more nature than nurture, but regardless health problems can cause depression and depression can make you damn sick and with a medication medical system of the diagnose medicate formula it’s damn hard to find proper healing these days and it was only by sheer luck (and maybe time and average laws) that saw me through to find the likes of Paul Schwartz and the love of Toronto’s prisoners happy inhabitants (and the Big Great Big Celebration with those bunch is still to come!) and ultimately you my Wife (goofydance) that I’ve recovered from the ills of Canada’s socialism – not to focus too much on such things as there was more to it than that anyway and it was great to see Nikki and we had a championship breakfast before she drove us to the highway and wished us good luck, which was granted licketysplitly by Fatima and Brenda, two wondrous Mali-Canadian women who floated us to Montreal on waves of French African songs, while you got to practice your French when not entertaining me with 3-guess games. Also we slept and read waited and waited and waited to pee and eat – in all a 12-hour ride with only one pee and eat break during which we made our Montreal accommodations at Kylikki and Michael’s – those Finnish connections boys they always come in handy and what’s more is that Kylikki was so warm and their condo in the castle so beautiful and the guest room so thoughtfully prepared, how could we not accept their offer to stay for three nights while they went to the cottage and we watched sports desk and ate everything we could find that seemed French even Burger King after the Alouettes game (first down – Mon-ray-al!), and Sushi-Thai-Chinese after that Brazilian movie about upper-class musicians inspired by barroom bandits and other folk heroes, with English subtitles that was so enchanting with its rhythms and family mythology. But the best were the baguette sandwiches, chausson aux pommes, chocolate mousse and café au lait times café au lait, O that high French life and the Gazette and John Wyndham’s sweet short 1960’s novels that we could both read in a two-day span because we had finished all our reading material what with all this unexpected free time but it finally did come to an end but not before, my Wife (goofydance), “now THIS is honeymooning!” and VIA carried us all the way home, me cranky from too much Wyndham (not to mention that Pearl S. Buck crap) not enough sleep and losing badly at Hearts, you sweet and comforting and feeding each other cheese and sandwiches, sculpting a thousand year old man from well aged cheese-wax who made all our electronic images, until it felt surprisingly good to be home, on our bikes feeling breeze, our kittens now cats practically running to us mewing purring they do still know us, roommates warm and receiving, bed firm and inviting, Toronto multiculturalism on the palate plate that we missed in the East, and our lives really are different now somehow, even though quite the same: we’re married. Married.

Labels: 2005, Canada, non-fiction, Travel

"We met in Montreal
far from the rain
running in circles
moving with so little time"
--one of the blue rodeo guys, can't remember which

Here's the library where we are in Montreal today:



Though it looks a little different now.

We lucked out with a ride from Fredericton all the way here through the remnants of Katrina with two wonderful Mali-Canadian women, the only women who have picked us up on our whole journey. We were certainly due a long ride after a series of shorts. Had a lovely breakfast with Aunt Nikki at Cora's in Fred-town, a nice little 'city' on the river.

Being ahead of schedule we're luxuriating here, and have both finished the books we brought, borrowed and started another, and in Miia's case finished another and started a Finnish one, if you follow. We're at the library to geek out and then buy some used books for our train-ride home - we decided not to hitch the 400's through Ontario, too nightmarish the traffic be.

To my peeps in tdot, seeya very soonly.

--Bopper

Labels: 2005, Canada, non-fiction, Travel