Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in our Hearts When I was in Grade 12 at Oakridge Secondary School in 1968, a friend passed on a cassette featuring all the songs of the musical “Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Brel_is_Alive_and_Well_and_Living_in_Paris At that open and vulnerable age, I..
Tutoring French in London, Ontario, 1967 I was good in French; in fact, I was good at school, the academic part anyway. In phys ed or manual training, I was what my father kindly referred to as a dead loss. Back in the day, being an honours student was a catastrophic blow to any..
Wrestling with being a caregiver My two sons are paragons of physical fitness, deservedly, if ordinately, proud of their rippling muscles, attained by countless hours of training and body building. I, on the other hand, have always been a flabby wimp. When I was a boy of about six, back in Georgetown in around 1958,..
Summer Job 1969: A Red Cap My father had to pull a lot of strings to get me a “real” summer job in 1969. His employer, CN Express, offered very few openings for inexperienced 17-year-old whipper snappers, but Dad managed to call in his chips with a golfing buddy/ stationmaster, a Mr. Don Gutteridge,..
School field trips, 1958-1969, Chapel Street Public School, Georgetown, Ontario, Oakridge High School, London, Ontario When I was a child and an adolescent attending Ontario elementary and secondary institutions of higher learning, school trips were a primary source of pleasure and intellectual stimulation, starting as early as first grade. When students see the real-world..
Curling and cancer: a palliative sweep My wife Anne has been stricken by terminal brain cancer, and the treatments have caused her to lose much of her hair. Not surprisingly this has led her to become obsessed with what’s left of her locks and to spend hours in front of the bathroom mirror obsessing..
Blackbird: A song of flight from illness and sorrow “Blackbird,” written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon–McCartney, is one of the enduring gems of The Beatles’ 1968 “White Album.” The year my wife Anne, who is succumbing to brain cancer, arrived in Canada. McCartney’s “Blackbird” is an acoustic piece, featuring only his..
Tongue tied: Brain cancer as a stealthy thief A striking characteristic of growing up in southern Ontario, more specifically in Georgetown and London, in the 1950s and 1960s, was exposure to how my father handled the English language, especially idioms and expressions. Clearly Dad mimicked the movie actors and radio talk of his day,..
Mellow Yellow Anne: Brain Cancer and Strangely Chilling Out My wife Anne is currently undergoing three weeks of intensive radiation and chemotherapy treatments. The treatments are leaving her extremely nauseous and totally exhausted. But for lengthy periods, she is preternaturally mellow, chilled out, totally detached from the trials and tribulations of everyday..
A Hotline To Treatment: Getting Through and Feeling Blue In the summer of 1964, when I was 12 years old, our family move to London, Ontario, coinciding in my case with the sudden onslaught of puberty, a ferocious hormonal maelstrom that transformed me into an obsessive pop music listener. My favourite DJ in those days..