Posted on January 2, 2020 under Thursday Tidbits with no comments yet

Len and Tareq Hadhad

Twenty years ago, we were all sitting on the edges of our seats wondering if the world was going to grind to a halt as we entered a new millennium. Y2K was the shorthand term for “the year 2000” and became the moniker for the end of civilization as we knew it. Many computer programmers and doomsday soothsayers predicted that computers around the world would crash as the year changed from 1999 to 2000. I remember clearly being at a house party out in the countryside which looked down over our small town. We all stood by a large window and wondered if everything would go black. It didn’t. One suspects that many companies got rich on the backs of our angst as businesses and individuals were scurrying to do major upgrades prior to the predicted cataclysm.

It used to be that the years flew by. As I creep ever closer to 70, I now watch the decades go by with alarming speed. The more we try and slow things down, the faster things seem to go.

I will forego a rundown of historic events of the past twenty years. I’ll leave that to the media folks who will deliver up an orgy of information on 911, the first black president of the United States and climate change.

The world remains a troubled place. Some things never change. Man’s inhumanity to man has been a constant theme in world history. These days, it seems that the world has gone to hell in a hand basket but is it really any worse than it was five, ten, twenty or fifty years ago? The internet and the advent of social media have completely changed the landscape and now almost anybody in the world can find out what is happening anywhere in the world instantly. The media and many individual people seem to thrive on a steady diet of bad news.

I know my faithful readers are breathlessly waiting for me to weigh in on my best “feel good” story of the past 20 years. Actually, my guess is that you are trying to recover from Christmas and New Year’s celebrations and couldn’t give a damn what I think.

According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), an unprecedented 70.8 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes and that 37,000 people are forced to flee their homes every day. This may possibly be one of the greatest humanitarian crisis in history and it only seems to be getting worse.

In my tiny corner of the world in rural Nova Scotia, Canada, the Syrian refugee crisis caught the attention of a handful of local people five years ago. Like many people at the time, I was completely unaware of what was happening in Syria and would have been hard pressed to find it on a map of the world. A committee was formed called SAFE – Syria Antigonish Families Embrace with the goal of trying to bring a Syrian family to Canada.

The first person to arrive in our town was Tareq Hadhad (pictured above). Tareq was studying to become a doctor when his country exploded. The family home and chocolate business were destroyed, forcing them to spend several years in a refugee camp. I met Tareq a few days after his arrival when he joined our family on Boxing Day for his first street hockey game. The Hadhad story has been well documented. His parents and several siblings arrived shortly after. They started making chocolate in their home which they sold at the Farmer’s Market. Since then, their company “Peace by Chocolate” has become an international success story and over the past four years, Antigonish has welcomed more than ten families from Syria.

There are many marginalized people living in the world maybe none more so than aboriginals. The travesty of the treatment of indigenous people is not restricted to Canada. It is a global phenomenon. I have been interested in Canada’s north for a long time and like so many Canadians, have scratched my head (to the point of baldness!) trying to make sense of the persistent problems. Many of you feel exasperated knowing that billions of taxpayers dollars have been spent trying to address the problems in the north with little or no apparent success. It is a perplexing and frustrating situation.

I have read extensively about the north. I have attended numerous lectures by indigenous speakers and watched scores of documentaries. One of the best depictions of the north (and a true story) is the movie “The Grizzlies”.

It would take me too long to explain in this space how I found myself flying to the northern Quebec town of Kangiqsujuaq on November 6, 2019. You’ll have to wait for the book! I am teaching school in an Inuit community. I am witnessing first hand the challenges faced by these beautiful people. I will continue to observe, learn and write. I am not going to solve the problems of the north but maybe in some small way, I can help inform and educate people.

My sincerest hope for the next decade is that we all try to show more tolerance for newcomers to Canada and that we demonstrate empathy for our indigenous people.

 

Posted on December 19, 2019 under Thursday Tidbits with no comments yet

Hoping for a “touchdown” in Halifax on Friday

 

It’s a wrap.

Act 1 of my real life drama in the North draws to a close today… until January! By the time many of you read this post, I hope to be flying to Kuujjuaq and then to Montreal. If the weather gods and the airlines cooperate, I hope to make it to Halifax on Friday. One thing I’ve learned from this experience is to expect the unexpected. There have been quite a few flight interruptions here over the past two weeks. I tried to avoid looking at the weather forecast for today earlier in the week.

Many Christmas activities at school had to be amended or scrapped due to bad weather this week. The school Christmas concert was originally scheduled for Monday evening past but something came up necessitating a change to 2:00 p.m. This would have been challenging enough but when school was cancelled Monday morning because of inclement weather, I didn’t think it was physically possible to pull this off. But this is the north and making changes on the fly is the norm.

There was a mad scramble for the two hours leading up to the concert. The sound system was the big issue but through some creativity, sound equipment magically appeared and I found myself on stage an hour before the concert doing a sound check for my guitar.

I had my class primed to perform two numbers. Less than 30 minutes before show time, one of the grade 3 teachers asked me to accompany her children. She trotted them down to my classroom and, for the first time, I heard Silent Night sung in Inuktitut.

Despite having set up hundreds of chairs, at 1:55, a mere five minutes before the starting time, only a handful of chairs were occupied. It was still snowing and blowing outside and with the change of time from 7:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. I figured the gymnasium would remain empty. Wrong. The concert didn’t start quite on time but when it did, there was a standing room only crowd.

All of the children performed admirably. As with most elementary school Christmas concerts, there was a lot of pent up energy in the room and trying to keep the young ones seated for any length of times was like herding cats.

Last Sunday, I was walking back from the airport. No. I wasn’t checking my flight for today. It was my regular weekend walk. I hailed an RCMP vehicle that was heading towards town. Two young officers had received a month long placement in Kangiqsujuaq and I had been meaning to have them over for supper. I met them back on the day that the belugas were in the bay. Unfortunately, they were expecting to leave that very day.

I’m not certain how the topic came up but Patsy (not her real name) mentioned something about a senior’s home in the town. Maybe she thought I had wandered off! As it turns out, this facility is next door to the Coop and no more than 200 yards from my apartment. I popped in on my way home and spoke with the weekend manager. I asked if I could come over in the afternoon to sing a few Christmas songs. She told me I was welcome any time.

This assisted living facility is quite small. I think there are only 4 residents. It was quite stormy as I walked across the barren expanse to the home. I couldn’t find the staff person so I just opened up my guitar case and started playing for my audience of one. This lovely man welcomed me in and turned down the volume on the television. I asked him if he spoke English. He nodded in the negative. He watched intently, if expressionless, as I sang a few spiritual songs. His attention was shared between me and the soap opera on the t.v.

There were several other younger people who wandered in and out of the room. They were visiting their grandmother who was in her room.

I began to play Jingle Bells and my adoring fan (?) looked up. “O’er the fields we go, laughing all the way.” A 1000 megawatt smile came over his face as he chimed in “Ha, ha, ha, ha.” For the remainder of the song, he couldn’t stop smiling. Neither could I. Trust me when I tell you that I don’t need any Christmas presents. In this small care facility, far from my friends and loved ones, on a stormy winter afternoon, this man gave me the greatest gift possible… a smile.

I don’t expect this to be my last visit to the home. My students are going to teach me some songs in Inuktitut in the New Year. I need some new material in my repertoire!

Hope to see some of you when I get home.

Have a great weekend.

 

Posted on December 12, 2019 under Thursday Tidbits with no comments yet

Early morning sunrise special

 

The early bird gets the worm… most of the time.

I am a notoriously early riser. My internal alarm clock, which has been working efficiently for some 68 years, has me on the go most days at 5:30 a.m. It has always been a special time of the day for me. You nighthawks out there probably feel the same way. You like to stay up late into the night reading or catching a late sporting event or one of the numerous late night talk shows. I’m afraid I missed the Johnny Carson, David Letterman and Jay Leno era.  Colbert, Fallon and Kimmel might as well be a law firm. The only time I can remember being up that late was sitting in outpatients at the hospital.

I think it is the tranquility of the early morning that most attracts me. The hustle and bustle of life is still buried in the blankets for most of the population. I particularly like to be outdoors at the crack of dawn to greet a new day. For the better part of seven months of the year, the chatter of birds in the trees is a welcome sound. Walking or running the back roads puts you in touch with nature and every sunrise is a spiritual experience.

This is all well and good unless you’re heading off to school at 7:00 a.m. when the temperature is -40 and the wind speed is a nifty 97 km an hour. If there were birds chattering, I couldn’t hear them over the din and roar of a winter storm.

Such was the case this past Monday. My apartment was shaking when I got out of bed that morning. I went through my usual routine of coffee and journal writing at 5:30 and then bundled up for the short ten minute trek to school. The school is down by the bay and the wind was coming off the water. In other words, I was walking straight into the teeth of a gale. A light snow was falling creating whiteouts. Visibility was very poor. The roads are well maintained but because of the snow and cold, the surfaces are hard packed. You could literally skate on them.

I was buffeted by the high winds but had no trouble getting to the school. With my Michelin man attire, I wasn’t the least bit cold upon arrival.

I started working on my lesson plans for the day. At 7:30 the familiar sound of a Messenger ping alerted me. Because of the cold temperatures and extremely high winds, school had been cancelled for the morning. I was both surprised and not surprised. I had been led to believe that only a furnace breakdown or a polar bear sighting was grounds for calling off school. I didn’t notice any polar bears on my way to school but mind you, I had my head down the entire way. It was simply too dangerous to have young children (and old farts!) walking in these conditions. At noon, with sustained winds nearing 100 km an hour at the airport, the decision was made to cancel the rest of the day.

Here is the existential question of the day:  On a storm day, who is happier, the students or the teachers? After four and a half months of school, the answer should be obvious!

Most of us are spiritual beings which doesn’t necessarily mean we’re religious. My halo is dented and quite tarnished. I am interested in the worship practices of different cultures and religions and often take the opportunity to attend a service. When traveling in a foreign country, I don’t expect to understand what is being said at a church service. I go to observe and see if I can pick up the vibe.

So it was that I decided to attend Sunday service at one of the two churches here in Kangiqsujuaq. It was bitterly cold last Sunday. It’s always cold here so I guess this statement is now officially redundant. I entered a rather non-descript building with a simple cross adorning the door. The building was L-shaped. I was met by a husband and wife team who run the service. They greeted me warmly. At this point, I was just in the hallway leading to the main worship room. When I turned the corner of the L, I stood in amazement.

The room had several rows of chairs and an elevated stage. It was beautifully decorated for the Christmas season. I blinked twice. Besides the podium for the preacher and a small electric piano in the corner, the remainder of the stage was full of musical equipment. I expected Mick Jagger to magically appear from the rafters. There were several acoustic guitars, a bass guitar and a drum kit befitting Charlie Watts. (The drummer for the Rolling Stones). There were numerous microphones, monitors and a handful of Peavey amps that could light up the Air Canada Centre. Sadly, on this day, neither the Stones nor the house band were in attendance. I casually mentioned that I played guitar and sang in a church choir for 40 years. I have been invited to play at next Sunday’s service. They didn’t ask me to preach!

The service started with a handful of hymns sung in Inuktitut. The soloist used some old fashioned but practical technology. He employed an old overhead projector and all the music was on those big plastic slides similar to the ones we used back in the 60s.

The preacher of the duo was the female. I just had a hunch that I could be in for a long session. I remember a service in India where the preacher talked for 2 full hours. The only word I understood was “hallelujah” which he repeated at least 150 times. She was just getting a head of steam going when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Someone handed me a headset and a power pack. Presto! I now had simultaneous translation.

Mick Jagger AND simultaneous translation. Who would have thunk? When the service ended, I went to the back of the room to meet the translator who spoke flawless English. I was once again astounded to see a sound mixing board that rivalled anything I had ever seen. It looked like a recording studio.

As I was leaving, the conveners met me to thank me for coming. The preacher mentioned a musical night they were planning later in December… the day before I was planning to fly home. She “suggested” that I come and perform. I took it as more than a suggestion.

This non-descript building provided many surprises.

Never judge a book by its cover.

Have a great weekend.

P.S. There aren’t a lot of worm sightings in the Arctic in mid- December!