Chicken Soup for the Soul

  Back at the dock, the young couple declared they’d had a blast. And the three French teachers — well they never thought their trip to Canada would include paddling into the middle of a historic naval battle. Later that evening, as I tied my canoe up for the night, I saw the Commodore and his party walking along the docks towards me. I thought I was going to get “raked over the coals” for what I’d done, and be banned from all future re-enactments.

  As they approached I prepared myself for the words I knew I deserved. But the Commodore grabbed my hand and shook it, and with a big grin said, “That was excellent! Nice show!” Boy was I relieved. At that moment I realized I was a true voyageur! In my own lack of discipline I had won my own battle, just by sheer instinct combined with a bit of acting and pageantry.

  The next day I headed back up the river to Kingston under full sail. This time I was alone, so I loaded big rocks into the canoe to act as ballast. As the summer breeze filled my sail I imagined I was steering a Viking ship between Greenland and Vineland. Then I remembered that meeting I had attended years ago, where everyone laughed at me because I wanted a Viking ship. But I had the last laugh because I had achieved my dream Viking ship after all — just with a Canadian twist!

  ~Peter G. Elliott

  Mount Pearl, Newfoundland and Labrador

  Sampo Girl

  Feel the flame forever burn, teaching lessons we must learn, to bring us closer to the power of the dream.

  ~David Foster, The Power of the Dream

  I glanced behind me at the sea of red and white jackets. Excited chatter filled the air. As we strode around the oval track in the stadium, I searched the stands for our coaches. There they were, small red and white dots madly waving small flags and cheering us on. This is what it must feel like to be an Olympic athlete, I thought. Suddenly, I was filled with pride. I had, after all, never expected that something like this could happen to someone like me.

  “You’ll love it,” my mom had said after enrolling me in a class at the Sampo Rhythmic Gymnastics Club in Sudbury, Ontario. At the age of five I was a little overweight and a lot shy, and my mother not only wanted to get me moving, but also to help me interact more with kids my own age.

  I had entered the first class with trepidation. “Come and sit in the circle,” the coach said, motioning for me join the group. I tugged at my scratchy royal blue leotard and crossed my plump legs, glancing at the eager faces of the girls around me. Before long we were up and moving, twirling and spinning in front of the wall-to-wall mirror in the basement of the Finnish Hall on Antwerp Street. I soon forgot about how awkward I felt and how afraid I was to talk to anyone. I just let the movement and the music take me into another world.

  A few years later, I graduated to the upstairs class with the “big girls.” The hall was surrounded by long tables and stacks of chairs and even had a small stage with curtains. On weekends the hall was used for dances, weddings and concerts. Now, our coach used the stage as a barre for ballet practice. We leapt and turned diagonally across the dance floor to her counts. “Point those toes,” she called. “Opposite hand to foot.” I can still hear the creak of the wooden floor under our bare feet and the “dum-de-de-dum-dum” of her hand-held drum as she struck the beat.

  Year after year, my mother drove me to and from classes. I worked hard to master the carefully choreographed routines and manipulate the balls, ropes, ribbons, clubs and hoops, like the older girls. I loved the smooth texture of the ball as it rolled along my fingers and the weight of the ribbon-stick in my palm as the fabric spiralled and snaked through the air. Although by now I towered over the other gymnasts in my class, in my imagination I was as graceful as a ballerina.

  By the time I was thirteen, however, everything had changed. One day I pulled an oversized T-shirt over my leotard and hoped my coach would let me wear it in class. Any confidence I had gained seemed to have vanished into the floorboards. I still loved my sport, but maybe it was time to leave.

  “I want to quit gymnastics,” I told my mom as we drove home after class one evening. The fall season had only just begun, but I didn’t want to go back. I had the same coach as the year before, but most of the gymnasts were new.

  “Well, I’ve already registered you, so you’ll just have to finish the year,” she said. “If you don’t want to return next season, that’s fine with me.” I nodded and held back my tears. It wasn’t the first time my mom had told me to finish what I’d started. She wasn’t going to let me quit.

  My coach must have realized I was unhappy, so she kept finding me tasks to do, like helping someone learn a new technique with the ribbon or demonstrating a body wave. With her encouragement, I started enjoying the classes again and pushing myself to get better. One day near the end of the year, the coach pulled me aside. Was I in some kind of trouble? I wondered. Instead, she asked, “Would you like to join the competitive team next year?” I was astounded. I had felt like there was really nowhere else to go for someone like me. The gymnasts in the competitive stream were tall and thin, and moved with such grace and flexibility.

  “Of course I’d be interested,” I said. I couldn’t wait to tell my mom on the way home. Unfortunately, the competitive coach retired and, with no replacement, the competitive stream ended before I could join. Instead, the club created a performing group with the most promising gymnasts in the club, and I was included in that, too! Still shy and introverted, I began to blossom. I loved being on stage and performing with my teammates. We began travelling and performing all over Ontario and Canada. My coaches started giving me more responsibilities; I assisted with warm-ups and even helped with choreography. Eventually, I took my coaching qualifications and started teaching the little gymnasts, seeing myself in their eager young faces. Like my coaches before me, I tried to encourage their participation and bring out the best in each of them.

  When I was nineteen, along with gymnasts from all over the country, my performing group was chosen to represent Canada in Amsterdam at the World Gymnaestrada, the largest non-competitive gymnastics event in the world. I was thrilled to be travelling overseas to perform and watch innovative artistic and rhythmic gymnastics routines.

  “Who do you think they will choose to be the flag bearer?” my teammate asked a few days before the Opening Ceremonies. We’d arrived early in order to recover from our jet lag before the event. I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Probably someone from one of the big Toronto clubs,” I said. Ours was a small club from Northern Ontario. Who would even notice us? The Sampo girls were just thrilled to be there.

  The next day, our coach arrived to announce the flag bearer. We all waited, but with no real hope. We crowded into our assigned classroom, trying not to trip on the mattresses and blankets spread out on the makeshift bedroom floor.

  Turning to me, my coach beamed and said, “Congratulations Liisa. You will be our team’s flag bearer!” I was truly floored. Soon after, I was ready to enter the stadium, holding our flag, with my teammates anxiously lined up behind me. I took a deep breath — this was our moment! Stepping out I waved the huge Canadian flag and smiled at my coaches. Even a Sampo girl from Northern Ontario could feel like a Canadian Olympic athlete, if only for a day. It wasn’t until that moment that I really understood what it meant to have pride in one’s country, one’s team and oneself.

  ~Liisa Kovala

  Sudbury, Ontario

  The Best Play He Never Saw

  The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.

  ~Oprah Winfrey

  When I was twenty and dreaming of becoming an actress, my father and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Shaw Festival. At sixteen I had stumbled upon a tiny ad for the fledgling festival, and the following summer we rode out to the historic border town that had repelled an American invasion in 1812. When we first discovered it, the old Upper Canada fort of Niagara-on-the-Lake, situated on the shore of Lake Ontario twenty-six kilometres from Niagara Falls, was noted more for its prettiness and histo
rical significance than for its cultural life. But when a local wit posted a sign in front of his cottage that read, “Shaw’s House,” the old fort town hosting the festival came to be referred to, in our house, by the name my father gave it: “Niagara-Falls-on-the-Lake, where Shaw lives.”

  When I discovered the Festival, the main stage productions were held in the renovated courthouse; lunchtime theatre was housed in the town’s original theatre, the Royal George. The large, modern Festival Theatre was about to be constructed, and that’s where we saw Kate Reid play the title role in Mrs. Warren’s Profession. At her first entrance, the audience gasped. A character actress known for her cello-toned voice, alcoholic binges, swollen body and out-sized talent, Reid had whittled down to a shadow of herself. Her large dark eyes, always luminous, seemed to bulge out of her head now. For the moment she was on the wagon, channelling her demons into a performance so searing that it left the festival audience sitting in stunned silence.

  A passionate twenty-year-old, I needed no prompting. I leapt to my feet and began to applaud. My father, embarrassed, tugged at the hem of my skirt. Too late. Granted permission, the audience followed my lead. The Festival Theatre audience was on its feet for Kate Reid.

  We left the theatre and got into the car. We were staying in Toronto, two hours away. On the steering wheel, my father’s hands were trembling. He drove no further than the outskirts of town when he stopped, overcome by what he had witnessed on stage.

  “I can’t drive that far. I won’t make it.” Daddy turned the car around, and we rode back to Niagara. It was late September, and nearing midnight. The wind was howling, and mustard-coloured leaves rained to the ground. Queen Street, the main street, was empty and quiet, except for the after-theatre cabaret performing upstairs at The Buttery, and table lamps that glowed through the window of a bistro called Captain Brassbound’s. We were the only patrons at Captain Brassbound’s. My father ordered a bowl of vegetable soup. When it arrived, he cupped his hands around the bowl to warm and steady them. My loquacious dad had been struck dumb. He lowered his head in contemplation. Steam rose from the bowl. Across the bare wooden table I reached out my hands to his.

  “Now do you understand, Daddy? This is what I want to be able to do. It’s my dream.”

  * * *

  I loved not only the theatre productions at the Shaw Festival, but also the laid-back ambience of the unhurried town. Though, initially, my dad attended the Festival in order to be with me, he soon grew to love it as much as I did. Still, Dad wasn’t a hard-core fan. If I had arranged to see two productions on the same day, he’d attend the evening performance with me, but pass on the matinee. Instead, he would stretch out under a tree at the edge of the lake. I imagine Dad would interrupt his reverie to regularly check his wristwatch. As the time drew near, he would rise and saunter down an increasingly touristy Queen Street in order to meet me at the theatre when the show let out.

  One shimmering Saturday in mid-summer, Dad’s choice cost him. He missed the most rollickingly mirthful production I can recall of any season, ever. The actors set off a three-hour laugh fest that had a full house screaming with glee. At five o’clock, as the sun broke through a cluster of clouds, the audience floated through the theatre exits as if on a cloud. Emerging with the throng I could see Dad standing near the main entrance, waiting for me. As I inched my way toward him through the crowd, I saw Dad alert and receptive to the radiant expressions on the faces of audience members. Laughter still rippled through our ranks, and it was impossible not to overhear the glowing remarks.

  By the time I reached Dad, he was tsk-tsking with his teeth and vigorously shaking his head. “That’s the best play I never saw.” Caught off-guard, I took the bait.

  “But Daddy, you didn’t see it.”

  “Well that’s what I said!” Dad beamed, surprised and delighted to have fooled the one person he felt he couldn’t fool. Then he reiterated, rubbing in the punch line, not only for me, but for all who cared to hear: “That’s the best play I never saw!

  * * *

  We had already purchased our tickets for the season of 1983 when Dad died suddenly, in early spring. My mother and I decided to honour him by honouring the tickets. It was a bad idea. It was too painful for us to have Mum sitting in the seat we both knew had been intended for Dad. We never went back.

  After my father’s death I went to work in the family business with my mother to ensure that my younger brother would finish medical school. I was thirty-five when I finally returned to the pursuit of my youthful dream: working in the theatre.

  My range had broadened and deepened. Soon I was playing large parts in small venues. At age thirty-eight I was offered a one-woman show. At forty, I played the lead in a play presented in a local auditorium. At the end of the performance the audience sat in stunned silence before leaping to its feet to offer me an ovation. As I was leaving, a woman ran over and grabbed me by the wrists. “Oh my dear!” she cried. “What a powerful performance! Look at me! I’m shaking! You don’t belong here! You should be performing at Stratford! You should be playing at the Shaw Festival! Oh my dear, I’m going to dream about you all night. Look at me! I’m shaking so hard, I don’t know how I’ll be able to drive home!”

  I trembled too, hearing an echo from that autumn when I was twenty. I returned to my apartment by bus, alone. Collapsing onto my bed, I flung my arms over my eyes, yet tears filled them, anyway. In the stillness and the silence I whispered, “Daddy. I did it. That was for you.”

  ~S. Nadja Zajdman

  Montreal, Quebec

  The Red Mittens

  Everyone had them as a kid. Red mittens with strings. We all had them. That’s why they were designed into the uniform. One to give them a colour pop, and two because it’s an iconic Canadian piece.

  ~Mark Kinnin

  “I’m on a quest for a pair of those red mittens,” I said to Chris. We had travelled to Vancouver from Michigan for a conference of Meeting Professionals International. By nature, I’m pretty simple. I don’t require trendy clothes, certainly not outerwear. But I had to have a pair of those mittens, even though it was July. They represented all that was wonderful about Vancouver and the recent 2010 Winter Olympics. I had been so moved by the event, from the opening ceremonies to the closing ceremonies, and how people bonded through trials and triumph.

  I had seen those happy Canadians on TV — all wearing those mittens, smiling and celebrating. I remember the huge excitement — and I felt it myself, marvelling at the simple red mittens that came to symbolize the spirit of the Vancouver winter games.

  As we boarded the sightseeing trolley in Vancouver I hoped to learn more about those red mittens and find out how I might get a pair. My dream became real as the tour guide spoke. “If you look to your left, you will see the Hudson’s Bay Company. This is the place those famous 2010 Winter Olympic mittens came from — right here in Vancouver!” Exactly what I had been waiting for! Now I knew where to go. My heart did a little dance — I was actually going to get a pair! Then the guide continued. “Though you can still buy a pair of similar mittens, the first run of those 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic mittens sold out many months ago.”

  What? I’m thousands of miles from home, as close as I’ll ever get to purchasing those mittens in the very city they’re from — and they’re sold out? My heart sank. Knock-off replicas, no matter how nice, would not do. I wanted mine to be from the first run of mittens from the Hudson’s Bay Company.

  A meeting planner is also a creative thinker, so while I was sorely disappointed, I wasn’t giving up. I had one more opportunity. I signed up to attend a session presented by the marketing people of the Olympic Planning Committee. During that session, the OPC members shared with us their intense but incredibly organized planning for the event. At the question and answer period, they passed around the Olympic torch, which was amazing and awe-inspiring. This was the actual torch that was lit in Olympia in October 2009, travelled to Canada over the North Pole, and then carried by
about 12,000 Canadians, many of them celebrities, reaching over 1,000 communities before arriving at Olympic Stadium. Each runner, I learned, wore a pair of those coveted red mittens while carrying the torch, including the one that lit the Olympic flame that illuminated those Winter Olympics! I was thrilled!

  As the torch made its way around, Chris and I admired its sleek and unique design. Of course we had our pictures taken with this special icon.

  But even so, for me it was all about those red mittens. I had to try once more. The timing was finally right for me to ask my important question of the very people who might have the answer. I stood and asked, “Are there any mittens left?” And then I held my breath.

  “Well, yes, there are,” said the committee chair, “I have a pair.”

  A pair! All I needed was one pair, and I was willing to buy them. “Sir, what would be the cost of one pair of red mittens from the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics?” I realized the original $10 mittens would likely cost a bit more several months later, but I was willing to pay a little extra.

  “About three thousand dollars,” said the man. Then he smiled and asked me to meet him after the session.

  Three thousand dollars? Really? Well, I didn’t have three thousand dollars, and if I did, as much as I wanted those mittens, I didn’t think I was prepared to invest that much. I anxiously waited for the session to end, and hoped the marketing committee chair would remember he had asked me to meet with him. He did, and when I approached him later he asked, “Would you like to see the mittens?”

  Would I like to see the mittens? The elusive, famous, sold-out red mittens? You bet! As he handed me the mittens, I felt my heart race. They were beautiful — knitted in the red of the Canadian flag with the 2010 Olympic logo embroidered in white on the backs, and a white maple leaf stitched into the palms. As I slipped them on I saw they were still connected, with the tag on them. Those red mittens were warm and soft against my face, and I imagined what it must have been like to stand among the thousands of people who had been there, experiencing history being made, cheering, applauding, and waving with their Canadian red mittens!