What a sensual experience! I feel the magical world in every ripple, every wave and every rustle of a leaf. Cathy and I look at each other wide-eyed and agree, “That was Jimmy McOuat. He just wanted to say hello.”
* * *
The trip back to Ignace was uneventful. Back in Toronto I finished my film, hopeful that not only had I captured the physical remains of the castle, but something of the magical spirit of the place, and the legend. It was shown on television networks, in libraries, government offices, classrooms and a film festival. White Otter Castle became known.
Years later I was pleased to learn the castle had been restored, and apparently my film had played a big role in that happening. It turned out that not only did Jimmy not die in a shack, but his castle became his legacy and a testimony to his creativity and hard work. Maybe that magical waterspout was actually Jimmy saying thanks in advance!
~Peter G. Elliott
Mount Pearl, Newfoundland and Labrador
Temporary Town
Every new friend is a new adventure… the start of more memories.
~Patrick Lindsay
I packed up my car and headed north — alone on the open road. I was both terrified and excited about leaving the safety of the familiar to explore a new region of Canada. Two hours into the drive I realized I’d neglected to pack a map. But it seemed simple enough: go north until you hit the Trans-Canada Highway and then turn west; enter Northern Ontario and enjoy new adventures.
I drove into the small town nestled on the shore of Lake Huron, and decided this was as a good a place as any to start. I would stay for maybe six months, and then move on. I rented one of the few brick houses in town, a rambling two-and-a-half story building on Main Street. The house was huge. It had no shower — just an old claw-foot tub — no TV, a rustic kitchen, and ancient wiring. But I thought it was beautiful.
I explored my temporary surroundings. A river divided the town in two, the few shops were closed by 5:30 p.m., and the closest movie theatre was an hour away. Children roamed the street and played outside.
Searching on the Internet for things to do was fruitless. I learned to read the local paper to find out what was going on. The community events section acted as a built-in social calendar. The locals were busy with a litany of things — wing nights, fish fry nights, concerts, book clubs, hunting, ATV rides, and everything else under the sun. But I needed to talk to people to become involved — word of mouth ruled the streets.
The first month was humbling. Everyone knew everyone else. And it seemed like everyone knew me. Strangers would start conversations. “Oh, you’re the new girl working at the library,” or “You’re the one who runs, right?” Some days it seemed like everyone in town knew more about me than I knew about myself.
Yet this place was oddly endearing. There was a sense of community I had never experienced. When summer arrived and my grass grew long, there were offers of help to mow the lawn, offers of trips to nearby lakes, advice on where the best fishing could be found. Even mail hand-delivered to my workplace although the package only listed my home address. Moments of small-town kindness and enthusiasm. A small-town adventure.
I learned how to curl at the curling club on Main Street. I “hurried hard,” played in bonspiels, and shared many a laugh after slipping on the ice. It became a winter home. A cozy place to share and to build memories. I discovered and learned to play the dulcimer in that town. A local woman volunteered her time to teach me and lent me her instrument. No questions asked. No money wanted. Just the pleasure of sharing a passion with a like-minded friend.
I gained a new appreciation of the word “camp.” Growing up it had always meant summer camp. No longer. Now it means: a place in the woods or a place on a lake, all for enjoying the outdoors. “Camp” became hours near the water taking in the splendour of the Canadian wilderness. Watching kids learn to fish and catch a giant bass right off the dock. Laughter, bonfires, and starry nights. “Camp” is the North. Friendly, full of nature and amazing.
This small town nestled on the shore of Lake Huron surprised me. I expected to be here for six months. It was supposed to be one of many Canadian towns I passed through. A blip on a bigger journey. But years later I’m still here. That temporary town became my adopted community and… my home. That small, seemingly insignificant town stole my heart.
~Krista McCracken
Thessalon, Ontario
Our Canadian Heroes
A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.
~Christopher Reeve
Terry’s Legacy
It was a journey that defied all logic, a three-thousand-mile journey run by a boy who had lost one leg to cancer. In the end, it was a journey that carried Terry Fox into the hearts of an entire nation.
~Leslie Scrivener, Terry Fox: His Story
I was still in high school when Terry Fox began his Marathon of Hope to raise both awareness and funding for cancer research. I remember watching the progress of his cross-Canada run on the TV news: a small figure in athletic shorts and T-shirt, jogging slowly and seemingly painfully along the highway with his prosthetic leg, grim determination on his face. With his curly brown hair, youth and athletic build, Terry could have been the boy next door. It made him and his campaign feel more real and poignant than the usual news. Even in the early days of his run, he seemed like a real-life hero.
I didn’t realize at the time the significance his heroism would have for my family. Although he was a stranger to us, the more we watched and learned about Terry, the more we felt we knew him. As a teenager, Terry loved sports — especially basketball. He wasn’t the greatest player, but what he lacked in natural skill he made up with hard work. He eventually made his high school basketball team and even his university team. He never gave up.
But at age eighteen Terry was diagnosed with bone cancer and forced to have his right leg amputated fifteen centimetres above the knee. That was 1977. Moved by the other cancer patients he met in the hospital, Terry was inspired to do something to raise money for cancer research. He decided that with his one good leg and one prosthetic leg, he would run across Canada. The next year he began training and making other preparations, applying his trademark dedication and determination.
On April 12, 1980, after eighteen months of training, which included running over 5,000 kilometres, Terry began his run in St. John’s, Newfoundland with little fanfare. As his run progressed, the attention and donations grew. Through the Maritime Provinces, Quebec and Ontario, he ran close to forty-two kilometres a day. He went from being a lonely figure on an often-empty highway, sometimes running in cold, rain and darkness, to being cheered on by enthusiastic roadside crowds. By the summer of 1980 the whole country was watching and rooting for Terry.
But despite Terry’s commitment and determination, after 143 days and 5,373 kilometres, he was forced to stop running on September 1st outside Thunder Bay, Ontario. Cancer had appeared in his lungs. As my family and I watched the news on TV, we could see the pain in Terry’s face and we were deeply saddened. The following summer, on June 28, 1981, Terry Fox died at the age of twenty-two.
Although the Marathon of Hope and Terry’s life were both cut short, his inspiration continued. In the thirty-six years since Terry began his run, over $650 million has been raised for cancer research in Terry’s name through the annual Terry Fox Run, held across Canada and around the world.
Terry’s run gained a special meaning for my family when, less than two years later, my seventeen-year-old brother was diagnosed with stage III Hodgkin’s disease — a particularly aggressive form of cancer. Doctors removed a grapefruit-sized malignant growth from his chest, and also removed his spleen before beginning chemotherapy. They told him that if the treatment didn’t work, he would be dead within the year. His odds were 50/50.
Back at school, my brother had difficulty concentrating. He walked home, thinking about the doctor’s words and flipping a coin bac
k and forth in his fingers. Heads or tails. Live or die. My brother’s diagnosis was devastating to my parents, and they perhaps carried more of its weight than even my brother did. He was a teenage boy, after all, and didn’t really believe he could die. Without the awareness raised by Terry’s run, the cancer and its treatment would have been even more frightening and isolating than it was for my brother and the rest of our family.
Before the Marathon of Hope, cancer wasn’t talked about. It was a word that tended to be whispered behind closed doors. No one knew much about it, except that it killed people. Terry’s campaign lifted the stigma and superstition associated with cancer. We could talk about what was happening, and other people wouldn’t shy away as if they were afraid to catch it.
Terry also taught us about fighting cancer. And despite the tragic end to Terry’s own life, Terry gave us hope. After gruelling weeks of chemotherapy, sickness, weakness and many missed days of school, my brother attended his high school graduation ceremony and walked up to receive his diploma to a standing ovation. Despite everything, he had finished. And he was cancer-free. Two years later, the cancer had not returned.
My brother and I took a month off from work and university, bought VIA Rail youth passes and rode the train across Canada. When we reached Thunder Bay, we got off the train, and friends drove us out to the spot where Terry Fox was forced to end his run. There, on the edge of the highway, overlooking Lake Superior, stands a bronze statue of Terry, caught mid-run, the expression of determination and perseverance still on his face, forever heading west toward his goal. We stood silently gazing at the statue of this real-life Canadian hero who had inspired and touched our lives, and the lives of so many others around the world. Terry, we will never forget you.
~Jacqueline Pearce
Vancouver, British Columbia
Our P.E.T.
We have been touched by greatness. Today we say au revoir to Pierre and we bury the body. But the vision continues. The vision lives.
~Roy Heenan, at the State Funeral of Pierre Elliott Trudeau
It was August 1968. My mother had made me an offer. “You can have a month at camp or spend a week with me at Stratford.” For me this was a no-brainer. I was twelve years old and obsessed with the theatre. I hated camp.
We lived in Montreal, and this would be my first trip outside Quebec. My mother and I travelled to Stratford by train and spent the week attending Stratford Festival productions. We took a side trip to Niagara Falls, and then returned to Toronto to visit family friends. Now it was Friday, the end of our precious time together, and we were returning by train to Stratford for the evening performance of The Seagull, presented at the Avon Theatre.
Mum and I disembarked to find a crowd lining the depot of Stratford’s tiny train station. We knew they weren’t waiting for us, and actors in Stratford are as ubiquitous as squirrels in the park. “Maybe the Prime Minister is coming!” Mum jested. But even Mum was startled when she turned out to be right.
That summer was the height of “Trudeaumania,” though not so much in Stratford, Ontario, which was conservative country. When we entered the Avon Theatre we saw Trudeau, Marchand and Pelletier, recently dubbed “The Three Wise Men,” sitting in the centre of the ground floor flanked by plainclothes RCMP officers.
“Look at this!” Mum marvelled. “He isn’t sitting in the front row, and he isn’t sitting in a private box! Anyone could take a pot shot at him! He’s a sitting duck for any crazy person. From where we are, I could shoot him right now! But here nobody does! Oh, I’m so grateful the Americans didn’t want me! What a wonderful country this is!”
My beautiful young mother, brimming with joie de vivre, was a Holocaust survivor. She adored her adopted country, which had opened its gates to refugees from war-torn Europe in 1948. She knew none of the words to “O Canada” except for the first two, and thought the lyrics, our “native land” referred to the Indians. But Mum would tear up whenever she saw the Canadian flag. No matter how tough her lot she would tell my dad, “Here in Canada, nobody’s trying to kill us, we have the children, and we have each other.” Particularly in 1968, after the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy south of the border, Mum was grateful to have been transplanted to Canada.
At intermission, pen and theatre program in hand, Mum marched up as close as she could to the Prime Minister of Canada. Pierre Trudeau’s political seat was in our Montreal riding, and Mum had proudly voted for him. A bodyguard stopped her. “I want to get his autograph!” Mum explained, stating her rights as a citizen. She was allowed to pass.
“Oh, Mr. Trudeau! I live in your riding, in Montreal! I voted for you!” Flashing his famous grin, the Prime Minister graciously signed Mum’s program.
“Oh, Sharon,” she cried, “you should see! I got so close I could see his pockmarks!” Like Richard Burton, acne scars did nothing to diminish Trudeau’s appeal.
I was mildly interested in the Prime Minister’s presence, but as a twelve-year-old I was more fascinated by a short and round young man I spied standing alone at the far end of the lobby. “Mummy, look! It’s Charlie Brown!” Only two months before, Mum and I had seen a Canadian touring production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. The young man who played the lead was now in the lobby of the Avon Theatre, just a few feet away. “So it is!” Mum confirmed. “You wanna get his autograph?”
“Sure!”
Mum marched up to Charlie Brown while I tagged shyly behind. The young actor was surprised and delighted to be recognized. He was also mystified. “But Trudeau is here!” he said. “Why would you be interested in me?”
For me, however, any actor was a demi-god. Knowing this, Mum took charge and soon she had Charlie Brown under her wing, as well as me. So it came to pass that Mum, Charlie Brown and I kept company in the lobby of the Avon Theatre on a sweet summer evening when our new Prime Minister came to town to see a play.
* * *
Pierre Elliott Trudeau died on September 28, 2000 and from then until the day of his funeral, Canadian society skidded to a halt. For five days, tributes and reminiscences poured into radio stations across the country. There were broadcasts of Trudeau’s speeches. During that five-day period I finally heard and saw a bit of what my mother had experienced over thirty years before. Now I was hearing them for what felt like the first time.
Breaking away from the broadcasts, I stepped into the streets. Teenage boys were razzing each other in English and French, switching languages so swiftly and deftly that one couldn’t tell what their mother tongues were. There it was. Trudeau’s legacy in action: bilingualism had become so firmly entrenched it wasn’t even an issue anymore.
On the streets I noticed predominately black, brown and yellow faces, and heard the sounds of Spanish. This, I recognized, was the legacy of the open-door immigration policy initiated by Trudeau in the early 1970s. The acceptance of official bilingualism had paved the way for an acceptance of multiculturalism.
In Parliament, a political opponent laid a rose beneath Trudeau’s portrait. In Montreal, at the entrance to Trudeau’s mansion on Pine Avenue, political opponents as well as supporters laid roses at the foot of his door.
The train tracks along the Montreal-Ottawa route were lined with crowds of Canadians paying homage to their former and fallen leader. In Ottawa, Trudeau’s body was taken to Parliament where he lay in state before being returned to Montreal. It would be his last journey home.
In the wee hours of the morning Canadians stood by the railroad tracks, weeping. When the car bearing Trudeau’s sons Justin and Sacha came into view, people spontaneously burst into cries of loving support, as well as applause.
In Montreal, the day of Trudeau’s funeral was marked by the colour red: the red of the Canadian flag draped over his coffin, the red of the RCMP officers’ jackets, the red of autumn leaves at their peak, and most of all, the velvety red of the roses being sold by street vendors and in florists’ shops, and affixed to citizens’ lapels. Trudeau was known for
the red roses he routinely sported in the lapels of his dapper suits. On the day of his funeral, in early October, Montreal bloomed into a rose garden in honour and in memory of its beloved and lost P.E.T. — Pierre Elliot Trudeau.
~S. Nadja Zajdman
Montreal, Quebec
Sid, Please Sign My Jersey
They say the game has changed. But it’s still four corners, three zones, two legs, and a puck.
~Ron MacLean
I was forty years old when I played my first game of ice hockey. I had been inspired by three people, two of whom I had never met — Wayne Gretzky and Sidney Crosby. The third was my good friend Andy Vautour. Andy and I would often talk about hockey and our hockey heroes, Sid and Wayne. Sidney was still in his junior career with Rimouski Océanic of the QMJHL. We were so excited for Sid to break into the NHL, to see what amazing things he would do with the best hockey players in the world. I had always admired him for his ability to play a game that I loved, but could never play since I had never learned to skate.
With a lot of encouragement from Andy I thought, why not just get out there and do it? What a mess! I could barely stand up, and I couldn’t stop properly. But I was hooked. I loved every minute of it. As time passed I eventually learned how to skate, stop and shoot a puck (none of it very well) but I could do it. No wonder I admired the guys who made it seem so simple, who were not only good at it, but excelled.
In 2009 when Sidney won his first Stanley Cup while Captain of the Pittsburgh Penguins, I was beyond happy for him. I also knew he’d be bringing the cup back to his hometown of Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, not far from where I lived. I looked forward to cheering him on during his parade, with all the thousands of other fans, excited to share in this celebration of our “Sid the Kid.”