I WAS FIVE THOUSAND MILES away from home, in the middle of the mountains of British Columbia, in the middle of winter. On a reading tour, in 1989, I was going from town to town while the snow fell, covering up the small roads along the mountain passes.
I was billeted at different houses, and would often find myself in a strange little village, at a stranger’s house at midnight. And since I’m a night person I found myself sitting in uncomfortable positions reading cookbooks at one o’clock in the morning.
One of the people who billeted me, I did become quite fond of. He was a man who had moved here with his wife from the United States a number of years before, during the “back to the land” movement. He was very kind to me, although I disagreed with him on the back to the land movement itself. And nothing he told me did anything but reinforce my bias.
But I gave him the greatest compliment I could. I told him he
reminded me of my friend Stafford Foley — a boy I grew up with, way back in the Maritimes. Both of them were quite small men, with a great kind-heartedness.
I left his house on a Thursday morning to go to another village, some 40 miles away where I had a reading.
It had been snowing for four days. The snowflakes were as big as sugar cookies.
By Thursday night I found myself in an untenable position. It was one of those nights when I wanted to be anywhere but where I was. I had been with my new host fifteen minutes, and already a tense discussion had taken place.
I was honour bred. I knew I could no longer stay in his house. But where would I go? It was after ten at night. The roads were all blocked.
Snowstorms were different in this part of Canada. But it was still Canada, dark and gloomy.
It had all started because of a thought I shared that evening. I had thought at supper, that from this part of the world — at this very time of year, in 1961 the Trail Smoke Eaters had left for their long and famous journey. This is what I had told my host. I had happened to mention that journey. The trip to Europe. The idea of hockey versus the dratted ice hockey.
After an hour I saw the headlights of my friend’s compact car coming down the street.
My heart leaped with joy. And in I got. We turned about and started back into the gloomy night, the windshield wipers on high and visibility almost zero. And besides that my ears popping off every time we went up and down a hill.
(I know when people finally address me as “David” I am about to make a fool of myself. That I have once again crossed the line from rational human being to something else. So I knew I had to answer him as impassioned and as sincerely as possible. So he would know he had
not risked his life for nothing.)
I began to think then that I would go back home, to my childhood home, and see the place again where we went sliding. Where we played hockey on the river. I would make the pilgrimage, for it had to be made.
I would smell the flat ice and the smoke over the dark, stunted trees again. I would visit the place where Michael grew up, and poor Tobias, and see the old lanes we all played road hockey on. Paul and Stafford and Darren and all of us.
But they would be ghosts to me now. Almost everyone was gone. The laughter against the frigid, blue skies would have all disappeared, evaporated like the slush under our boots in 1961
I found myself somewhere in Northern Ontario, later in the month. I forget the name of the town. It was one of those reading tours where somehow you no longer know where you are.
Again I was billeted. The woman kept a bed-and-breakfast of some kind. I was given a small room at the back of the house. There was a hockey game that night. I don’t remember who was playing — it may have been Montreal. It may have been Edmonton. It may have been anyone.
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