2020 was an uncertain, terrifying moment in history, especially if you had cancer.

Since these tests began four years ago, the days before and the days after my scheduled CT scan for cancer recurrence always unfold the same. The wind drops in my determination to get things done, and I float listlessly in a stagnant sea of anxiety. I push on, but the effort feels as burdensome as Scott’s ill-fated return from Antarctica's South Pole. There’s a non-specific sense of doubt- which occupies all the space between my waking and sleeping.

I understand having these CT scans saves and prolongs lives, mine included. But it also puts you on notice that your best-before date either approaches or has already been exceeded. It is a concrete reminder of being finite. So each time they occur, I am like the dog overburdened with an instinctive apprehension being taken to the vet and resisting the car trip.

Trains between my city and Toronto are few and far between because intercity public transit isn't a high priority for a neoliberal economy geared toward Big Oil and Automobile manufacturers.

To get where I needed to be last Wednesday, I was up before sunrise to make the only morning train destined for Toronto.

Naturally, it was late to arrive at my station and inside my compartment, maskless passengers coughed like a symphony warming up before a performance. I still wear a mask in enclosed settings because my lungs are fibrotic, and I can’t risk even a mild bout of covid, as the repercussions could leave me so permanently breathless that I’d be a candidate for state-sponsored assisted suicide. Besides, I don’t find wearing a mask inconvenient or a restriction of my autonomy, but I don’t find sock-wearing an inconvenience either.

I spent my first 24 years living in Toronto. So, I am familiar with all the subway stops which took me to the hospital. Each stop along the way, elicited a memory, and a longing to encounter again the dead who once inhabited my living life when I was young in this city. My first time travelling by subway in Toronto was when I was four, and because there was no childcare, I accompanied my mother as she tended to her best friend, who lived in Toronto’s West End and was dying from leukaemia. It was the spring of 1967, and I remember each trip to her dying friend made my 38-year-old mother seem older and more frail to me.

Each time, I always see when I enter this hospital, the bench where- in 2020, I sat alone for a few minutes and gathered courage before I went below and was processed for my cancer operation. Now, other people with emergencies, grief and fears sit on the bench pondering what happens next for them.

Last week, when I went through the CT Scan, the contrast dye warmed my insides to the point of nausea. In between AI commands to hold or exhale breath, my mind got stuck on the people I met during those days I was in this hospital recovering from my cancer surgery. 2020 was an uncertain, terrifying moment in history. Covid was a plague, and many cities had run out of morgue space for the dead. I was in this hospital vulnerable from cancer and then the surgery that weakened me. Covid patients were on my ward and dying from the virus. At one point I was isolated from other patients because doctors thought I had got the virus. But as there was no room for proper isolation a curtain was drawn around my bed and nurses in full PPI scurried around me taking blood and my temperature as if I was ground zero at Chernobyl. .

After my tests were over, I had hours to kill before my train departed for home. I decided the best use of my time because I didn't have much money was to walk from the hospital to the train station.

It's a 21 km trek from the wealthy northern Toronto enclave where my hospital is located to the southern end of the city where the train station stands. During the hours I walked on that Wednesday, other pedestrians brushed against me, hurried and dismayed by the crushing pressures to make a living that kept their family above the breadline.

When a train returned me to my city that evening, I walked another 4 kilometres to my apartment in light rain. Before I reached home, a young couple who were rough sleepers stopped me because they complemented me on my Panama hat. The young woman asked, what decade would I live in if I had the chance?

I thought for a while and then responded, "The 1980s, but only to try to fix the shit us boomers made of it afterwards."

For the last 18 months, I've been piecing together my Dad's Green and Pleasant Land, which was unfinished at the time of his death. It covers his life from 1923 to July 1945 concluding with Labour winning the General election. The final chapter excerpt which is about that election, I will post this weekend.

The book at least in its beta form is now ready. Let me know if you want a copy and it will be sent out shortly.

Your subscriptions are so important to my personal survival because like so many others who struggle to keep afloat, my survival is a precarious daily undertaking. The fight to keep going was made worse- thanks to getting cancer along with lung disease and other comorbidities, which makes life more difficult to combat in these cost-of-living, tariff war crisis times. So, if you can, join with a paid subscription, which is just 3.50 a month, or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. But if you can’t it is all good too because I appreciate we are in the same boat. Take Care, John