Now, some twenty-five years later, I walk close to the earth, and like her, I listen to the stories the plants have to tell. They teach me their medicine, and I pass it on to those who want to learn. Before she died, Standing Woman asked me to carry on her work. I cannot replace her, but I can walk with people to help them find the medicine they are seeking.
Some want to walk this way and some do not. For those who do, I am here in the meadow.
Kahlee Keane, Root Woman
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Three Words
The only limits are, as always, those of vision.
James Broughton
As I stood outside the arena on that bitter February day, I had no idea of the warmth that I would find inside. Before entering the building to join 5,000 people, I slipped a three-word sign on my baby’s stroller. I very much wanted to connect with the people inside. I hoped that someone would read my sign and welcome us into their community.
Nine months earlier, I had given birth to my third child, Jimmy. He was a beautiful baby in every way. On his second day of life, I was told he had Down syndrome. I read everything I could get my hands on about Down syndrome and received encouragement from other parents. Jimmy was nine months old when I read that Toronto and Collingwood, Ontario, were hosting the Special Olympic World Winter Games. I wanted to go with my baby and get a peek into our future. Before leaving the house, I raced down to the basement and made a three-word sign out of white felt and red marker.
When Jimmy and I entered the arena, we took a seat alongside the boards. Within minutes, my sign was being noticed. Parents squeezed my hand and told me of the challenges and unbelievable joys I would know. Athletes came over to meet my baby and wish him luck. Volunteers who travelled thousands of miles to be a part of the games attached their country’s pins to the little square of felt. It was also noticed by a crew member from The Sports Network (TSN), and by Frank Hayden, the founder of the Special Olympics movement worldwide.
It was Frank Hayden who put my little, three-word sign into a context I never imagined. He told the Canadian Parliament and the news media that it was the “defining moment” of the games and of his thirty-year career as a sports scientist. He said, “Thirty years ago, even ten years ago, would a mother have walked into a public place and proudly announced that her child had a mental disability? She was looking toward the future, not with fear and trepidation, but with great expectations.”
Last July I received a beautiful letter from an artist in Ottawa. He had been commissioned to create a logo for the ninth Special Olympic Canadian Summer Games in Sudbury, Ontario. Bernard Poulin wrote, “You and your child have been my creative muses. The ‘challenge sign’ on your baby’s chest said it all.” Poulin created a circular logo that he says “reminds us of the hearts and souls of the parents who fuel the dreams of the athletes, who are supported and encouraged by the organisation.” Poulin added, “It exists because in a crowd at the Centennial Arena in North York, Ontario, a proud mother and a beautiful child challenged the world with their daring.”
The impact of the three words on that makeshift sign continues to amaze me. It said only, “Future Special Olympian.”
Jo-Ann Hartford Jaques
Etobicoke, Ontario
The Orange Tabletop
Who needs a gag writer? Life itself is funny enough!
Honest Ed Mirvish
Brent’s Hill was without doubt the best sledding hill imaginable—incredibly high at the top, a long, steep run in the middle and a flat stretch at the bottom. Today the conditions were perfect for sledding. We had watched all day from the windows of our Presteign Heights Public School classrooms. Good, outdoorsy, Canadian kids, we knew our snow and what weather conditions were needed to create the fastest runs: bitter cold; enough sun to melt the top layer so it would freeze over as the sun dropped; and no wind to set the snow drifting.
The thought of our tobogganing plans was almost too much. I couldn’t keep my mind on my studies at all. The fluorescent orange tabletop consumed my thoughts. It was ready to go!
It was an idea that had hit us just yesterday. We had been playing hide-and-seek when we noticed the round patio tabletop leaning against the wall of our house. The rest of the table had long since rusted out and disappeared; who knows why my dad had kept the top. It was about four feet across, weighed an unbelievable number of pounds, and more importantly, it was fluorescent orange. My father had sprayed it the previous summer with orange surveying paint in the hopes of preserving it for one more year. Who came up with the idea to use the tabletop as a toboggan? I can’t remember, but we all knew it was brilliant.
History would be made. I could see it now: we would fly down the hill, easily passing everyone else. Whether we would take the safer route to the left, or the narrow, more challenging one to the right was the decision we pondered. There were, of course, advantages and disadvantages to both.
“Billy, you’re daydreaming again,” chided Mr. Kenniger. “You are never going to get through grade six if you continue like this.”
I put my head back down and pretended to be studying. I could not afford to get a detention that night! Eventually it was 3:30 and the class was dismissed. I was free! The plan was set. We would race home and meet in my backyard to get the tabletop.
It was 1960. We lived on Northdale Boulevard in East York, Toronto. It was a dead-end street on the edge of the Don Valley, but the slopes there were thickly wooded, so we had to go elsewhere to toboggan. Several blocks into the neighbourhood took us to Brent’s Hill. We called it that because you had to walk through Brent’s backyard to get there.
The tabletop was way too heavy to carry, so we took turns rolling it to Brent’s. On the way, we discussed which route we would take, how we would steer it, and most importantly, who would have the first turn. Would it be my younger brother, Tom, my next door neighbour, Janet Patterson, also several years younger, or me? We all wanted to be first. At the hill, conditions were excellent— a thin veneer of ice over a thick base of snow, no noticeable wind and no drifts. The snow looked flat, smooth and incredibly fast. We stood at the top looking down, digging in our boots to keep our balance and holding fiercely onto the tabletop.
A change came over us as we stared down the hill. It seemed steeper than usual—and for some strange reason, there was no one else there. Perhaps it was the freezing temperatures or the late-afternoon hour, but whatever the reason, the total absence of other kids created a dark, eerie feeling. Suddenly, the urge to be the first one down the hill lost its appeal—but someone had to go.
“Janet, you’re a girl, I guess it’s only fair that you go first,” I said gallantly.
“What about you being the oldest and the most experienced, and what about the fact that it’s your tabletop from your backyard?” she inquired innocently.
“That’s alright,” I said, “I’ll have lots of turns after you. Go ahead.”
“But what about Tom, shouldn’t he go first? He loves sledding more than anyone and he’s the best at steering.”
“No, I really think we should stick to the ‘girls first’ rule here,” I said.
“Well, if you really think so. Thanks.”
Tom and I held onto the tabletop, while Janet settled into the middle of it. She suddenly looked very small— and not very confident. I had a funny feeling in my stomach, a feeling I couldn’t identify at the time but I now recognize as guilt. We planned her descent. The hill split into a kind of broad Y near the bottom, and Janet would stay to the left, which was the longer, but safer, route. If the sled went so fast that it reached the Don River, Janet would bail out. Separating the route on the left from the one on the right was a ridge that rose and dropped off over a cliff. The cliff was steep and covered with tall evergreen trees, fallen branches and bushes. This did not concern us because, even without steering, you automatically veered to the left or right of the ridge. We knew there was no sledding device fast enough to carry you up and over the top of the
ridge.
“One! Two! Three!” we hollered, and released the tabletop. The thing took off like a rocket, and we knew immediately it was going way too fast—faster than anything we had ever seen. The heavy metal against the icy surface was a lethal combination: Janet was heading straight for the ridge at breakneck speed. But then, you always headed straight for the ridge at first. The veering-off point was coming up soon. We held our breath. To the left! To the left! We said repeatedly to ourselves, willing it to happen. She reached the critical veering-off point, but her direction did not alter one iota. She was a goner.
“Bail! Bail!” we screamed.
Janet was clutching the rim of the tabletop for dear life; there would be no bailing. Up the ridge she raced, and then—she took flight. The scraping sound of the table against the ice vanished and there was silence. For several seconds, Tom and I just stood there stunned. We were stuck. We were as much a part of the landscape as the trees, the boulders or the ice sculptures formed by the rushing waters of the Don River.
Then we were all arms and legs as we raced down the hill, tripping over our own feet, sliding on our hands and knees, gripped with absolute terror. We had killed our next-door neighbour. We as good as threw her over the cliff. What would our parents say? What would Janet’s parents say? Life would never be the same on our quiet little street in Parkview Hills. We would be the despised Gorman brothers, boys with no moral fibre, boys without souls.
“Please, God,” I remember saying over and over again, “badly injured maybe, broken limbs and battle scars to show her friends, but please—not dead!”
We reached the ridge, gasping for air, shaking with fear.
“Janet, Janet!” we screamed.
Nothing.
“Janet, are you alright?” we wailed wishfully.
Nothing.
Then, on the very edge of collapsing from anguish, we heard a sound, almost a squeak, come from above.
“I’m up here, up in the trees. I’m okay! It was great!” She began to ramble on about the speed, the sensation, the excitement.
We looked up in disbelief. Janet was wedged in a tree, between two branches. She had flown up into a tree and was not only unhurt, she was exuberant. Then, as though released from a spell, Tom and I started screaming and laughing. We laughed so hard we fell on the ground, rolling around, holding our stomachs. When we finally caught our breath, we stared up at the night sky and felt that incredible sense of peace you feel not often enough in life. Janet clambered down the tree and joined us, totally oblivious to our anxiety and her near death.
Our reputations were intact. Our lives would be allowed to return to normal. We might even give the orange tabletop another try—but not today, not today.
Bill Gorman
Toronto, Ontario
For Better or For Worse®
by Lynn Johnston
FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE. ©United Feature Syndicate. Reprinted by permission.
Peacekeeper’s Coffee
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It was a long drive to Okachani. Over two-and-a-half hours in a convoy of the Canadian M113 APCs (armoured personnel carriers), which rattled and shook as they kicked up clouds of dust along the dirt roads of the former Yugoslavia.
The 4:30 A.M. start was no big deal. Neither was the long drive and diet of road dust. Those came with the job. No, it was the attitude of the locals that was starting to wear on our sense of humour.
When we got to Okachani, we passed by the usual war-torn, roofless brick houses with their weed-infested yards. Some of the intact houses had Serbian villagers still living in them, determined to stay. As our carriers rumbled past, they would either give us a curious look, a scowl, or simply ignore us altogether while they tended their gardens and eked out their existence. We would wave or just act like they weren’t there, both sides engaging in mutual tolerance.
Today our job was maintenance patrol—a nice name for cleaning up after someone else. It was a never-ending routine of repairing damages or replacing materials stolen by the desperate local population. The men kept grumbling about the constant cleanup. I kept hearing, “Just let the two sides go at it and sort it out. Isn’t that what they want?”
I was a sergeant in charge of an eight-man section responsible for a defensive area in the corner of the village. This defensive area was a couple of houses that we had previously cleared of glass and other debris born of conflict. We had then fortified the buildings with sandbags, chicken wire and lumber. We would routinely check on its sturdiness, then grudgingly clean up more debris and replace stolen corrugated iron, wire, plywood and sandbags.
“Look at the bloody mess,” someone cursed. “Let’s just . . .”
I cut him off.
“Let’s just get the job done,” I snapped. “The day’s not getting any cooler.”
I had left Canada months ago, full of high ideals about helping Second- or Third-World countries, protecting the downtrodden and saving all the homeless children. We were going to set everything right and make the world a better place. Now, I was not so sure. I was no longer the noble liberator I had first envisioned myself. Every report I heard of torture, infanticide or execution was starting to wear on me. Every time some drunken villager pointed an assault rifle or pistol at us, or told us to “Get out of my country,” I thought how pointless this was getting to be. To top it off, our own Canadian media back home was relentlessly criticising us every step of the way. I wondered if there was anyone benefiting from this misery.
I was numb to the loud griping I was hearing today as the soldiers hauled the sheets of corrugated iron. Other days I would tell them to keep it down. But today, between the constant cleanups, restacking sandbags and make-work projects from headquarters (such as making flowerbeds), I really no longer cared.
I turned my attention back to the unloading of the APC. The men were starting to get careless and were flinging off the supplies. There was so much flying metal, dust, spit and swearing, I was about to shout something. Then suddenly this young woman appeared. I had never seen her before, and I had no clue from which shell-ridden house she had come. But there she was, carrying a tray of small ceramic cups.
Right here, amongst the crumbling buildings, bullet-holed walls and broken glass, was this young Serbian villager with a tray of what smelled like coffee. She approached us just like she was serving up some friends at a tea party.
She was a slim woman with well-kept dark hair, but the lines on her worry-etched face, along with her missing teeth, made her look older than her probable late twenties. Despite the sadness in her dark eyes, she spoke cheerfully, in Serbo-Croatian, as she offered the tray to me, hostess-style. It was a curious sight. Well, my mother had always taught me that it was rude to refuse hospitality. The “show no favouritism” rule could bend some.
“Over here,” I hollered at my section. “C’mon for a coffee break.”
“Hvallah (thank you),” I said, gratefully accepting one of the small cups full of floating coffee grounds. I sipped it carefully as, one by one, the soldiers in my section each grabbed a cup, like kids after candy. The stuff was warm and bitter, and I don’t even like coffee, but I drank it just the same.
I replaced my cup on the tray with another hvallah, followed by some theatrics to describe “delicious.” Some of the guys gave a humourous performance of “mmmmmm, coffeeeee” that rivalled Homer Simpson with a doughnut.
She cheerfully said something, flashing that sweet, missing-tooth grin, and then she walked away, amongst the rubble. Her head was held high and her walk was proud. I wondered how she could be like that when she had likely lost everything.
For all we knew, that might have been the last of her coffee—something that she normally reserved for her own family’s meagre meals. And there we were, six healthy, fit Canadian soldiers, with food in our bellies, money in the bank and
a few thousand dollars of dentistry in our mouths. Back home in Canada we had our homes and our families—safe and waiting for our return.
We all must have been thinking the same thing. For the next few hours, sweat poured off us like running water as we worked hard into the late afternoon. Only now, there wasn’t a single gripe coming from anyone.
Doug Setter
Winnipeg, Manitoba
9
SPECIAL
CONNECTIONS
Any relationship of love and respect is to be cherished in a dark world where only such things give meaning and warmth, understanding and hope.
The Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson
Governor-General of Canada
Granny’s Rosary
Miracles do not happen in contradiction with nature, but in contradiction with what we know about nature.
Saint Augustine
When I was a young boy back in Italy, I used to love to sit on my granny’s lap while she recited her nightly rosary. I would snuggle up in her arms as she sat rocking in an old wicker chair by the fireplace counting beads and whispering prayers in a soothing foreign language (Latin, I later learned). Sometimes she’d let me hold the rosary and keep count for her until I fell asleep. And although by age eight I felt a little silly about this awkward nightly routine, I continued because I knew how much it meant to her. She was old and frail, and so it was that in 1966, when my father, brother and sister immigrated to Canada, my mother and I stayed behind in Italy to care for Granny, who was too old to make the trip.