US Election First Reactions

Obama – The Sound of Shattering Glass

Sometimes when you put your thoughts on paper you are not sure if they are conveying what you really want to say. In this case I find myself having trouble putting it all together. Do I start with my family moving to Canada, my own experiences in school, stories of Jackie Robinson, Rosa Parks? I could start with John Kennedy and my mother’s tears.

Indeed that really is where the story starts for me. I had never seen my mother cry and I really didn’t understand it then but the first time I saw it was the day John Kennedy was shot. Even then it seemed distant, and I knew nothing about geography, it just didn’t seem to have anything to do with me. Frankly, I only barely know I was black and had no idea what that meant.

Over time I would come to know what being black meant. Of course back then we weren’t black yet, it was the early sixties and to many, sometimes even our teachers, we were still niggers. To the intelligencia we were Negros and to the ultra liberal we were coloured. Don’t let me five you the impression that there were a lot of we, in my case it was my mom, dad and older brother. In the entire separate school board in our town my brother and I were the first.

Being first made me truly appreciate what it is for the first person to break any barriers, although it is only now as I am older that I can really understand. And when your differences can be seen at huge distances, and when your differences have been denigrated for generations each breaking barrier is greeted with both cheers and jeers. It is the jeers that sounded so resoundingly for so many years because not matter how high we flew there were places we could not go.

And here I find myself, shocked by not knowing which should surprise me more, the fact that it is happened, the fact that it took so long or the fact that I find myself explaining to people what it means for black people. The strange looks as if to say, what do you mean prejudice, I’ve never seen it. Their surprise, almost as if to say; “Well it has never happened to me” and the clear implication that it could not be true. Of course not, you are white, how would you know what I mean by prejudice against blacks, it is not your experience. That does not make it any less real.

Still, there is a part of me that is happy to hear the very colour-blindness of the youth. Yes they should know the history, but hopefully only as history and not as their own truth.

I feel a little like a former overweight person who upon having lost the weight still has the same body image. How long before the scars can heal, will the ripple in the pond echo in our lifetimes and will we, the older generation be able to move beyond our pain and be part of the new order.

Wow, Am I Still Blogging

So, now I have read my last blog. It has been an interesting time, 10 months can provide for a lot of living. Seems some of that old stuff was pretty down. These damn blogs provide to fine an insight into where we were at different times. Anyway, another year has come and gone and we are about to have our second Christmas without my dad, not a bad time all in all, circle of life and all that.

I have spent a rather indolent year perfecting my golf game. Always a perfectionist, I am sure I have driven my friends nuts with the stupid game. Regardless, it is an activity that forces a person to be continually trying to improve and I like that sort of thing.

My training has been at a standstill for the past few months as I try to figure out what the hell is wrong with my body but we seem to be getting closer, we'll see. My goal for 2008 is to go back to Japan for a couple of weeks, take Nathan with me and if possible make a side trip to Beijing so I can be my little friends Godfather, as I promised so long ago. If I can also send my mother to see her last cousin, well the last one she wants to see, one last time that would be good too.

It is quite probably well past time I started doing this on a regular basis. The year, 2008 must be the year I take my training to the next level. It has now been 22 years of training, I have spawned 4 schools and spent thousands of dollars traveling and building up my club. At this point I should either start traveling and doing seminars or at the very least commit myself to regular annual trips to Japan.

Naturally, that brings some other things to the fore. when I was in Japan the last time I was asked if I could teach Jazz singing. That was one of many indications that at some time I should look seriously at developing my voice. I know, I'm old and I have no interest whatsoever in finding myself back on a stage, but... So I have decided to take up another hobby, singing lessons. This is what comes of not having children way too much time on my hands. Fortunately, there is a guy in the building who teaches for much less that going to Grant McEwan.

Anyway the year is about to end so this is a good time to look forward and see what the heck is up. I shall try to chronicle this year more acutely than this past year.

An Interesting Year

When I think back on this year in the future it will be known as a year of both great loss and gain. It all started with the loss of my friend Robin, continued with the loss of my father. In recent days I lost a friend who actually taught me quite a lot about life in general. Chuck was a drag queen who lived life like it was a game. Not in the way that he wasn't serious about life, more like the plan was to have fun playing and he made sure he did. Of course, having grown up in Saskatoon I was all about doing what the mob said was the right thing. Not always the wrong choice but not the best way to live a life of meaning and depth. Too often instead of doing those things that we know we can or would like to we chicken out because of what we think others might think of us. Chuck, by the way he was known as Lulu and should be remembered that way, anyway he was one of the first people I knew who really didn't seem to give a shit what others thought of him. Standing 6'3" before he put on heels he cut a wide swath through Edmonton's Gay Community. One of those people who everyone knew and some knew well. Can't say that I was one of the priviledged few, just one of the peripherals who got to watch the show. I did once have the opportunity to travel to Vancouver in a car with him and a few others. That had to be one of the stranger weekends I have ever had. I don't bowl often but doing it with a bunch of drag queens is probably the most fun you can have with your clothes on. Its loud, obnoxious and in many ways barely legal I am sure but that still didn't get us kicked out. I don't think I was ever in a louder group before in my life, always too scared, thinking that maybe I should do the right thing, do what is expected of me. Heck it even took me a half dozen frames just to start having fun, the limits we put on ourselves. Lulu did not have those restrictions, he seemed to figure that as long as he wasn't hurting anyone else he could do what he wanted, and he did. That more than anything else is what he taught me, "In living life to the fullest you must be your own judge".
That lesson helped the most when I decided to go back to university, there were enough people thinking it was a waste of time, that if I had listened to them I would not be where I am today. Lulu was one of those people, like Lee who basically said that if I really wanted to do it I should just go for it.
No amount of religion, belief or law will make a bad person good, and no amount of acting out will make a good person bad. Lulu was a good person, I'll miss him, both as Lulu and as Chuck, more important, I'll miss him as my friend.

I Think I'm Ready

As I sit down to write this my hands have started shaking. This is the first post since the eulogy and for some reason I am nervous. So let's catch up, I have not blogged in a year and it is only now that I am ready to start writing again. This last year has been the most interesting one of my life. After the passing of my father, I found myself able to accept being called Mr. C, a moniker I had always left for him. Anyway I continued to work at my regular job and take the odd contract on the side as winter moved towards spring and life was again renewed.

Because of the loss of my friend Robin I had become friends with her brother. When he moved back to New Brunswick with her son, he invited me to come and visit him. I had never been to the East Coast and it certainly seemed like a good idea to me. I was at first going to drive out there with my friend T but he had a bit of a meltdown in early spring and wasn't talking to me for a while. Instead her son's best friend decided he wanted to go out as well so we decided to travel together. So the plan was that when my contract ended we would go, as it turned out we went from Aug 5 to Aug 21 and I had one of the best trips of my life.


I have always been a big fan of Canada and the opportunity to actually see it as an adult seemed like too good an opportunity to miss. The plan was to drive out quickly and to take our time coming back, naturally there would be some places on the way out that we could not miss, just in case. For example, how many opportunities do you have to see the world's largest tomahawk?





Or the world's largest nickel? These are important landmarks on the Canadian scenery, and seem to be almost more Canadian than anything else we saw.



A brief stop at the monument to Terry Fox.











Some 8 foot carvings in Mattawa and the next thing you know, we were past the far extremes of where I had gotten to in my previous Eastward forays.







We finally ended up in New Brunswick, as planned, and had a great time there. Which for me included playing golf every full day I was there. We also managed to get out to PEI, to see Anne of Green Gables house and saw Halifax where we toured the maritime Museum of the Atlantic and I was able to reconnect with an old friend.

Our return trip saw us stopping in Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Niagara Falls before taking a 20 hour non-stop from Thunder Bay home.

I returned home and prepared for a trip to Vancouver to celebrate the wedding of a friend and fellow searcher. Fun trip, more golf even in the rain and a wedding where the bridesmaids were in flip flops, way too much fun. With that trip I was able to golf on both coasts within 30 days of each other, cool if nothing else.

Interestingly, shortly after I got back from Vancouver I was invited back to where I used to work, new contract, more money who could say no. In the end I have probably had the best year of my life in many ways, I wish my dad had been here to see it but I know he would have been very happy for me, so that works.

So what am I really doing now? Well I have a friend with a school on the other side of town and he needs some help. Actually he is in the hospital and I just want to keep his school open in case he is able to come back to it. This may seem odd given that I have just officially given up my own school. The reality is that I wouldn't even be doing this except that he is sick and I really don't feel that I have much choice but to help out.

There is no question that this is a different group. First off, they are a lot younger than I am used to teaching. I have never taken students under the age of 18 except in very rare cases. These guys have a kids and a youth class, talk about a wake up call. These guys have to work on focus but how do you teach that at that age? Not that it really matters, they are learning even if I don't feel I am having much effect.

Aside from that my muscles are not working the way they should, that's why I stopped teaching really. It would be really nice if at the very least I knew what the heck the problem is. I should be in really great shape as I start the second half century, I certainly spent enough time working out. Did all the things they tell you you ought to do to stay healthy into a comfortable middle and old age, and yet the old bod is letting me down.

Regardless, this is shaping up to be one of my best years ever financially and personally. With a trip to Palm Springs in a couple of weeks and seminars in BC and Edmonton it should be a lot of fun. Won't bore the one reader with all the details but I will be back at this soon.

My Dad's Eulogy

To anyone who actually read this, I hope you never have to do this for your parent. I was lucky we had no more issues and nothing really left to say. We had already said "I love you", when you can say that and mean it, the rest is mere window dressing.

Eulogy for My Father
Some of you called him Canute

Some of you called him bumpa

It doesn’t really matter what you called him, he called all of you family and family was very important to him

I just called him dad so that’s how I’ll talk about him this afternoon. We will never each see any person the same way but sometimes if you hear enough about them from several different people you can get a really clear picture, this is my piece of the puzzle.

My dad was born in Trinidad West Indies in 1931 and by the time he was 11 he had survived Diphtheria, Malaria and Typhoid. Graduating high school in his teens he went to teacher’s college where he started his first career as a teacher. He met and married his first wife my Mom Yvonne and they moved with my brother Canute and me to Canada in 1958.

Dad studied to become a psychiatric nurse at the Moose Jaw Technical School and later studied engineering at Queens and the University of Saskatchewan. Fortunately for hundreds of students and many friends engineering was not really his thing. Instead he returned to his first love teaching. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Education in 1969 and taught for a time in rural Saskatchewan. By then his family had expanded to five children with the addition of Stephanie, Craig and Allison.

As time passed my mom and he went in separate directions and he found himself teaching in …. Here he met and was I am told, immediately smitten with his loving wife Gail. Over the next four years their love grew and finally they married adding an untold number to his family group but most especially adding Gail, Holly and Rae Lea. He connected strongly with the quiet strength of his father-in-law Glen and always felt welcome at Bertha’s table, even when he said things were “Quite nice” when he meant “Very Nice”.

It was during this period in his life that most of you got the opportunity to meet and get to know my dad; it was the beginning of a very special phase in my dad’s life. He continued to teach for the … Public School Board for 23 years and became very active in his church. I am sure I cannot look at this crowd without knowing that in many ways he touched each and every one of you.

All of you know of his intense love of children and how he could get any child’s trust in an instant. What some of you may not know is of his love of poetry – you knew he could recite large portions of the Bible but he could also recall many of the poems he learned in his youth.

My brothers and sisters and I will always remember him reading, wherever he could, whenever he could. When I was a teenager he discovered the used book store and he started bringing home westerns – 12 at a time. Canute and I initially struggled to hide our current book two weeks later before he swept them up and went back to the store for 12 more. That is how I ended up being such a fast reader; I was just trying to keep up. In the last few years I think every clerk in a Chapters in this city has seen him haunting their store and sitting in for a read.

From his work in marriage counselling to singing with the choir we just had the pleasure of listening to, he involved himself in living and loving and doing both with all his heart and doing both well. When he retired he was able to complete his dream of getting a Master’s degree in Divinity which he immediately put to work doing palliative care at the Royal Alex hospital.

My dad got sick last April as many of you know but he did not let it stop him from living his life to the fullest. He had just returned from a trip to Hawaii on Saturday and you should know that he had the chance to see many of the fruits and vegetables from his youth on a drive he took the day before he returned, he also managed to read a paper and be a pain to the nurses.

That all tells you a bit about who he was and what he did but I think I would like to tell you a bit about how he taught us lessons.

How many of you grandchildren can remember seeing your mom or dad with a gift from Santa that looked like this. I never really asked him why but we all got them every year; let me tell you what I finally figured out. When we were very young Canute and I our family did not have a lot of money, we had recently immigrated and our parents were just getting set up. Every year for Christmas as a very special treat we would buy a few cans of oysters, some years only two cans. We would share one can on Christmas eve and the other some time before New Years. That was really Christmas for him, we get those cans to remember how very lucky we are today.

Lately the cans of oysters have been replaced with the New Years Day supper. Some of you may even remember the instructions “Okay I made three kinds of meat one is chicken, one is goat and one is beef. There is roti over there also, take what you want but eat what you take.”

That is a good motto for the way he lived his life, “take what you want but eat what you take”. He may not have always agreed with us for how we followed that motto but he was always there for us as we did; thanks for the lessons dad

My Dad's Obituary

Canute Andrew Sr.
On february 4, 2006 Canute .... of ..., Canada was called home to Glory at the age of 75.

Darling husband and best friend of Gail and much loved father of (large list of children, step children, in-laws etc., and those who went before him).

Canute was born in Trinidad, W.I., January 19, 1931 to Jeremiah and Isabella. He immigrated to Canada in 1957 and was joined by his family a year later. Cnaute continued his pursuit of eductation in Saskatchewan and Kingston, ON. Throughout the years he was a nurse, a teacher and an educational counselor with the Department of Indaina Affairs. In the early 70's he moved to Edmonton where he was a dedicated counselor and teacher with ... Public Schools for 23 years. After retiring at age 65 he returned to his first love (education), earning a Master of Divinity degree from .... Baptist Seminary. Canute and Gail served as counselors in .... Church for over twenty years, up to the time of his passing.

Echoes of the Past

So far dad has responded to the treatment and is currently at home although very weak.

As I go through the process of watching my dad's chemotherapy I am forced to examine my own life in relation to what he would have hoped for me to accomplish. It is only through an exercise like that that a person can really decide if it is okay to look at yourself in the mirror or if you should just hang your head in shame. Fortunately, shame is one of those feelings to which I am not particularly prone.

Visiting dad in the hospital has been fairly interesting really, although I have to admit that when I first showed up and spent some time he gave me one of those looks that I interpreted as surprise. Surprise that I would be there or something I thought but I found that it didn't really matter to me what he thought, at that point I knew I had made it to where I had always wanted to be. That may sound bad but I don't mean I disliked him or didn't care, more that I realized I had become exactly what he wanted of me in spite of both of us.

Come on now, what does any parent really want for their children? I would guess that they want their children to be happy, to be healthy, to be internally strong, to be their own person and most of all to be a good person. And I realized I had achieved all of that - not quite the way he would have liked but what the heck what about that be your own person thing.

So anyway, I went to the hospital and spent a fair amount of time there. His wife was there everyday and I have to say I admire her strength. I did manage a couple of long days of up to 8 hours but that was it, none of the 24 hours straight stuff. You are never really prepared for the reality of your parents poor health and the myriad of things that need to be done to help them. Helping them to the bathroom, keeping their sheets straight, holding the water cup; things that we don't even think twice about when we are dealing with babies but with older people it is so much more freighted. I guess we have the hope of the future with a baby, echoed by the fear of the future with a parent.

But what did he really teach me through all those years. I had the opportunity to think about that a lot over the last couple of weeks. There were little things like how to modulate your voice to inspire confidence - my dad has a great voice. And big things like always be there when you are needed, not necessarily there for the little things but for the really important stuff make sure you are there. Dad was not one of those people who told you how he felt, instead he implied with his actions - rubbing your feet when you came home frozen from hockey, didn't go to the game but was there for you when you came home. He once even threatened to kill a dog that was barking at the two of us when I was only 10. More the silent support type than the demonstrative, I still don't know if he came to a play I gave him tickets to.

So now I am content, relaxed even as he has started to actually learn who I am. The same silent support, still always there when needed. My dad belongs to one of those churches, the type that sets my teeth on edge more than any other, the type that feels the more times they can say the Lord's name in a sentence the better they are. This makes sitting through one of their hospital visits quite painful really. And, of course they have to mention that they have not seen me in their church. I actually resisted telling one person that it was to ensure they did not get struck by lightening, my normal response to that kind of nonsense. Instead I managed, in a very civil tongue to let the person know that I did not believe in churches and had no intention of being found there. Naturally this led to the story of how that person had been found - still patient I informed them I was there for my father's health and not my soul and would not have that conversation, so maybe he taught me how to mellow as well.

At any rate I made my peace with myself and hopefully also with him. If not we now have at least a little more time to make any amends that are missing but for me, I have no regrets and frankly I don't think he does either. That for me is the best possible result to be able to say goodbye if you have t, with no regrets, with nothing left unsaid, no anger, no unresolved issues. For that, whatever happens, thanks Dad.

My Dad is Dying

My dad is dying of Acute Myelongenous Leukemia. We just found out two days ago and really got the full diagnosis yesterday. The family sat down to discuss the possible treatment options and it has been decided that he will start chemotherapy, tomorrow. This will be a very aggressive course of chemo actually; partly because things are really bad and partly because his heart is in terrible condition. I may as well add some details here, my dad is 74 years old and is grossly overweight; that along with the fact that he has had no exercise forever, virtually and we know his health was already precarious. The leukemia, however, came right out of left field. He had blood tests in October and his white cell count was great 4.5, two days ago it had shot up to 80. We actually have no idea how long this has been coming at him.

But that is just the medical side; I realize that there are a whole bunch of things that go with this not the least of which is making sense of his life for me and its impact on me. That may sound pretty self-centered but the reality is that my dad and I never really seemed to get along and in many ways I now see that he allowed me to use him as my enemy almost as a spur to me. I don’t for a second think it started out that way but over the years a number of the things I accomplished had a slightly added flavour of ‘in your face dad’. Not in a rebellious way so much more like ‘see I did get my degree’, ‘see I did become a recognized martial artist’, ‘see I am a professional writer’. I have to recognize that there were a few times on the way to here that it was that attitude that got me through some of the tough times.

So what was my dad like? Some times I am not actually sure of the answer to that question. When I was a child he was the authority that I hardly ever saw. He was in university or working most of the time and with a schedule like that he also spent some time trying to get some sleep. It never really occurred to me that most people’s parents weren’t doing that, heck mom was doing much the same thing – I was in university working full time and going to school at the age of 22 and couldn’t understand why my friends thought it was a lot.

I never really understood why most of my parent’s friends were black and there were no black kids at my school. Of course in the early sixties there were very few black families anywhere in Canada but I didn’t know that. I never really understood that they had left virtually all the friends and family so that my brothers and sisters and I could have a better life. I did understand that when a person decided they were going to do something they did not let anything stand in their way. That was a very important lesson that has kept me going at other times as well.

There is a lot more but I am not ready with it yet, but I will revisit this in the months to come. They say he can have a good quality of life for at least another two years and as long as he is not in pain I say lets go for the best treatment we can find but we are setting up the personal directive because he does not want to be a long term care patient if it takes heroic measures to save him; I am okay with that it is the same choice I would have made. Time alone will tell.