Dirt, Sushi, Guitar, and Lilacs

October 4, 2016

Shakespeare "yokes by violence together" images that do not belong together, mid-1700s English writer Samuel Johnson complained in his Preface to Shakespeare.  Below, I yoke together dirt, sushi, a guitar, llilacs, and other images.  I invite your complaints.

I have dirt from a graveyard in Brookeborough, Northern Ireland.  My sister mailed it to me from Ireland soon after she acquired Irish citizenship due to our dad's mom's Irish birth, and went to Ireland.  In 1916, 100 years ago, Granny Mary Irvine left Ireland for Canada.  About two years after her arrival in Central Canada, Granny married Grandpa, Harry Wynne, born in Quebec to Irish immigrants.  They soon migrated thousands of kilometres west.

In 1919, Granny bore our dad in Quesnel, in the Cariboo Region, a region I have lived in since 1991.  Doctor G.R. Baker delivered Dad.  Quesnel now boasts G.R. Baker Hospital.  Years ago, I found and photocopied, from a Quesnel newspaper in the archives, Dad's birth announcement.

My next relative born in the Cariboo would be my daughter Chelsea, born in 1992 here in Williams Lake, about 120 kilometres south of Quesnel.

GENOCIDE IN CANADA

Perhaps you know that, in 1864, closer to 1919 than 1919 is to 1992, Quesnel was where Judge Matthew Begbie tried and hanged five Tsilhqot'in leaders.  They had defended their land against disease intentionally brought by settlers from Victoria, the colonial capital city of British Columbia.  British Columbia is one of ten provinces and three territories that comprise Canada, the settler-colonial country where I was born and raised, and where I still live. 

In 1864, the Cariboo Gold Rush was in progress.  In 1867, the country Canada was created on Indigenous land.  Many leading settlers along the Pacific Coast soon threatened to invite annexation by the United States if Canada did not extend a railway to the Pacific.  In 1846, the United States had wrested the lower Columbia River valley from English control, resulting in the states of Washington and Oregon.  In the 1850s, a Fraser River gold rush inspired many USians to agitate to annex all of the Pacific Coast; the US took a large northern section of that coast, from Alaska to Prince Rupert, near the Skeena River Delta.    The new province of British Columbia joined Canada in 1871.  Rails reached the Pacific in 1885.

Remember that the entire New World, the Americas, are lands stolen from Indigenous people.  In the early 1860s, the Tsilhqot'in resisted efforts to dispossess them of their land by exterminating them.  Quesnel lawyer and author Tom Swanky has detailed this genocidal history in The True Story of Canada's War of Extermination on the Pacific:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMiyMxhfFEs

I met Swanky many times.  The first time, when he presented his research to a packed concert hall here, I wrote an article about his presentation.  I sent the article to my friend who taught at Grande  Prairie Regional College.  He added it to his curriculum.  I bought Swanky's book.  I lent the book to a relative of my daughter's, on her Tsilhqot'in mother's side.  That relative's last name is Lee, the maiden name of my granny's mother.   Perhaps my spouse and I are distant relatives; there is only one race, the human race.

The Cariboo Lees are descendants of Norman Lee, who came from the British Isles to the Cariboo in the 1890s, bound for the Klondike Gold Rush, in Yukon, almost 2000 kilometres to the north.  Lee tried to herd cattle north from the Cariboo to feed the miners, but weather and terrain stopped him and his cows.  The cows, and some of the cowboys, died before reaching Yukon.  Lee returned to the Cariboo, ranched for awhile, and had children by a Tsilhqot'in woman.  He brought some children back to the British Isles and left one in the Cariboo.  He later returned to the Cariboo, with a spouse from England.   Lee's Corner, 90 km west of Williams Lake, is named after Lee.

The child whom Norman Lee left in the Cariboo is the ancestor of many, including the Lee to whom I lent the Swanky book.  That Lee child is my spouse's paternal grandmother.  Mabel Lee was an old woman when Carla and I got together.  She lived until our daughter was four; our daughter remembers her "?etsu cho." 

The attempted genocide of the Tsilhqot'in people, which claimed more than 75% of them, was more recent, and relatively deadlier than the English-induced famine that killed or caused the exile of half of the people of Ireland in the 1840s.  I have heard of Irish psychologists who say that effects of "The Hunger" endure in Irish people to this day.  Imagine what effects endure in Tsilhqot'in people, not to mention in other Indigenous people of the Americas.  Rather than throw guilt at one another, or ignore such liberating history, may we all come to know and respect the other, to reduce racism, and increase dignity and respect and the equality that can flow from them.  

TRAVEL TROUBLES AND DISCOVERIES

My spouse and I each have a dad who each had an interesting mom, each woman worth more words than I gave them; but there is still sushi, a guitar, and lilacs to discuss.

There is also someone to discover:  Mary Irvine, whom we met this summer, not the Mary Irvine, our late grandmother from Ireland.  We were on our way to Liverpool for my 55th birthday.  We were fresh off the streetcar in downtown Manchester, and walking to the train that would take us to Liverpool, 60 kilometres down the Mersey River.  We met two Irish women, one over 60, the other in her 30s.  They were mother and daughter.  They asked us how to reach the Manchester airport.

Someone mentioned Enniskillen, the Irish town near our granny's home village.  My sister or I said that Granny was an Irvine.  "I'm an Irvine, too," the mother said.  "My name is Mary."  "Our granny was Mary Irvine,"  my sister or I replied, agog at the coincidence.  "There are lots of Irvines in Enniskillen," the mother said before she and her daughter left us.

This summer, my sister bought me a plane ticket from Edmonton to Hamburg, to visit her.  She was house sitting near there in August.  She had house sat in Europe since July, 2014.  I joined her in suburban Neugraben  until late August.  We migrated to September house sits in Brighton and Manchester, England.  On September 26, we flew from London to Edmonton.  Having paid most of my European expenses, she also bought my plane ticket back to Edmonton.  I have giving siblings.

The plane was four hours late leaving London's Gatwick Airport.  The airline offered passengers gift certificates worth ten English pounds, about 17 Canadian dollars, to spend in the airport.  We spent ours in a sushi restaurant.

We were to leave London at around 11:00 A.M. local time and reach Edmonton at around 1:00 P.M. local time.  Instead, we left London near 4:00 P.M. and reached Edmonton near 5:30 PM.  We rode a the city bus that plies the 30-kilometre route from the airport to the south end of the light rail transit system in Edmonton.  We rode a train  a couple stops, to a station from which a bus brought us north, through the University of Alberta, and east a couple kilometres.  From there, we walked, four wheeled bags in tow, three blocks to Royal Pizza.  We were to meet  and eat with our older brother and sister and their spouses at 7:00 P.M., after dropping my younger sister's bags at the MacEwan University residence room she booked, and my bag at the Greyhound bus station.  Instead, we got there with our bags at 7:30 P.M. 

The day was long and tiring but not over yet.

Sitting down across from my older sister, I happily drank the glass of draft beer she poured me.  Between us, over the next two hours, she and I drank two pitchers of beer.  When our brother and his spouse packed my younger sister and our four bags into their sports utility vehicle, I carried a full box of leftover pizza. My brother had brought the larger bag from his place near Calmar, where it spent my vacation.  Each of my two bags was on wheels.  I had brought the smaller, Europe-bound bag inside the larger bag, gifts for Alberta kin and friends in Alberta packed between the bags.  Greyhound riders get to check one bag, weighing up to 75 pounds, for free:  my bag within a bag weighed about 72 pounds when I left home.  Outside the pizza restaurant, as the sun went down, I put the smaller in the larger bag, and stuffed both back into his truck.  

By 9:30 P.M., we reached MacEwan University, where we dropped off our younger sister and her three bags.  By 10:05 P.M.,we reached Southgate shopping mall, where I and my bags got out. 

DEATH AND A SPEEDING TICKET

I mentioned that I had brought, from home, gifts for Alberta kin and friends.  Among those kin were our mom's sister, 87 the last survivor of our parents' generation, who lived in Beiseker with her husband of 67years,age 91, their younger son, and a couple grandsons.

That is, she lived with her husband of 67 years, until his death in late September.  That sad event makes me happier than I was at the time to rent a car to visit them overnight, August 2-3.  I got the car in Edmonton, drove it to meet my brother and his spouse near Calmar, where they live, about 40 kilometres southwest of Edmonton, left them gifts and picked up a credit card for our European sister.  My brother gave me $100 toward the car rental; my siblings are so generous with me.  

Driving 300 kilometres south southeast from Edmonton to Beiseker under cloudy skies, I wished my spouse and daughter were with me.  My Beiseker relatives always give them a warm welcome.  I thought about going to Beiseker months later with them, and wondered why I made this rushed trip alone.  That my uncle died within two months of my visit made me very thankful that I made this trip.  I liked my uncle, and I hope my aunt bears widowhood well.  I'm glad my cousin, their youngest child, lives there to help.   It was very nice to see them and stay overnight in their house.  A flashing, rumbling thunderstorm helped put me to sleep that night.

I commended my cousin for staying near his aging parents.  My spouse, the second-youngest in her family, the youngest by 10 minutes being her twin brother, was the main caregiver for their parents during their declining years.  Their mom died in November, 2011, their dad in November, 2014.

Last but not least in the death theme is my own dad.  He died on September 29, 1989, the night before he would have turned 70.  He might snicker at my speeding ticket, due 27 years later to the day.  I paid it by credit card.

What speeding ticket, you ask?

A $158 speeding ticket I got via photo radar in Edmonton the next day, while I drove the car back to the rental place. waited at home during my European vacation.  I was doing 66 in a 50 zone, northbound on 106 Street near 34 Avenue.  That ticket came by mail before I got home.  Payment was due September 29, two days after I got home.    

GLORIOUS GUITAR

Return to the lively challenge of getting from London to Williams Lake.  I found myself, and found my friend Doug, in the Southgate shopping centre parking lot when my brother and sister-in-law dropped me there at 10:05 P.M. on Monday, September 26.  I had to get to the Greyhound bus station, several kilometres to the north, at least an hour before my 12:15 A.M. bus, to get my reserved ticket. 

With Doug, however, there is always time for what Catholic Worker activist Dorothy Day called "the corporal works of mercy."  We loaded my bag-in-bag into the trunk of his Buick, and I climbed into the front seat, the leftover pizza on my lap.  Doug gave me another edible, a foot-long ham and cheese submarine sandwich.  Then we drove, under the speed limit, to his daughter's place nearby, for he had something for her, as had I.

She is a recent university graduate who shares a basement suite.  Students and former students like pizza.  I therefore added the pizza to the European souvenirs I gave her.  She gave me a boxed drink and a disposable plastic container of grapes.   Doug gave her what he had to give.

We then drove north in the Edmonton night to the bus station, and reached it by 10:55 P.M., an hour and 20 minutes before the scheduled bus departure.  I had made the hour deadline for ticket pickup with 20 minutes to spare.  Many times that day I did not think I would be on time for this last leg of a many-legged day. 

At 10:55 P.M. on Thursday, December 24, 1992, my daughter arrived at British Columbia Children's Hospital, after a traumatic birth in Williams Lake, evacuation by medical jet to Vancouver, and short flight by helicopter from the Vancouver airport to the hospital.  Her admission form said 10:55 P.M., a little more than an hour before Christmas Day began.  I remembered that when I looked at my watch, at 10:55 P.M., in the bus station, so many years later.   

I showed the bus ticket agent my identification and booking number.  Within seconds she printed my ticket.  I excavated, from my bag within a bag, some European gifts for Doug.  I thanked him for all his help during my time going through Edmonton toward Europe, and back through Edmonton toward home.

I then waited for the bus, in this busy new station which is also a VIA Rail train station.

I heard an accoustic guitar, such a welcome, relaxing sound after what had been a very long day.  Was a passenger playing?  No.  A VIA Rail ticket agent was strumming.  The crowd in the station visibly relaxed/  I certainly relaxed.

DIRT, DISTANCE, AND LILACS

A series of four buses, with me enjoying a double seat on each bus, and sleeping for several hours until Valemount, brought me 900 kilomtres from Edmonton, through Kamloops, to Williams Lake.  This is much longer than distances we traveled within Europe.

Imagine Norman Lee, coming from the British Isles to Canada, going several thousand  kilometres by train to Ashcroft, and several hundred north from Ashcroft, more than 100 years ago.

Imagine Granny coming from Ireland to Canada 100 years ago, going several thousand kilometres by train to the Cariboo, and bearing Dad.

Dad liked lilacs.  He grew a lilac bushes on the acreage where he and Mom raised their five children near Edson, a couple hundred kilometres west of Edmonton.

More than 10 years ago, I planted a lilac bush in the yard behind the apartment building where I live with my spouse and our daughter.

More than a year ago, my sister sent dirt from the Enniskillen Catholic church yard.    Remember the dirt from the start of this story?  I will put that dirt around the base of that lilac bush I planted.  It was less than a metre tall when I planted it.  Now it is about four metres tall.

My granny bore my dad in the Cariboo almost 100 years ago.  My Tsilhqot'in spouse bore our daughter in the Cariboo almost 25 years ago.  I consider our daughter to have the strongest roots in this land of anyone in my family.  The Irish dirt on the lilac bush completes a circle that began in Ireland and passed through Canada, and joined diverse people, as Shakespeare joined diverse images.