Canada Day & Summer in the Before Times- When Moments of Leisure Were Permitted by Capitalism.

I still haven't disposed of my dad's ashes, along with my mother's, and a share of my brother's dust. Covid and having to deal with cancer surgery as well as treatment for it- blew my plans for them off course.  

So, their earthly remains lay in different locations in my apartment Dad's rest in a cardboard box wrapped in a carrier bag on the floor of the living room. Mum’s are on the tops shelf of my bedroom cupboard and Peter’s sit in a drawer.

Hopefully, if my life finds a measure of financial stability and before I follow the path they already took from this mortal coil; there will be a small farewell for them.

Canada Day is soon. It doesn't stir in me any patriotism outside of nostalgia for summers of long ago and the place where I want the ashes of my family and me to be put to rest. It's a lake near Bancroft, Ontario, where my family rented a cottage for a few weeks each summer during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The basis of the essay below was a trip I took with my father in 2013 after Peter died from a dry cough that turned out to be interstitial pulmonary fibrosis. My brother pretended it was- “Nothing”- until it killed him at the age of 50.

I share many similar character traits with Peter, including the disease that finished him off because recently, I acquired a diagnosis of interstitial lung disease.

Currently, the fibrosis hasn't made up its mind if it wants to kill me quick like it did to Peter or draw it out like with my father.

Below is a glimpse of my dad reflecting on the wonder of summer during a time when the Welfare State was vibrant and progressive. It’s been a hard month because a torn rotator cuff is a painful thing especially when physiotherapy is doing exercises online because public healthcare doesn’t cover rehabilitation services. So if you can and only if you can consider upgrading to being a paid member because literally these subscriptions keep me housed. It will get better for me once The Green & Pleasant Land is published along with some other projects in the works. But time is not on my side.

It happens most afternoons: Just before I nod into the haze of a geriatric nap, my mind teases me with recollections from a former life.

With my eyes closed, the images develop in my imagination, like photos taken by an instant camera. They are from 40 years ago, but they remain as vivid as the aroma of my morning coffee.

My subconscious leads me safely, by the hand, past many unhappy thoughts toward a two-bedroom cottage overlooking a narrow lake in the middle reaches of Ontario. There, I am young and still have a continent of experiences to discover. Life is ahead of me and not something I glance at in the rear-view mirror of old age.

From these memories, I smell the morning mist trailing gently above the lake. I hear a loon calling to its mate. Turning around, I see my wife and three young sons emerge from the woods. My boys rush toward me and, with excited voices- recount their walk and plans for the day.

Between sunrise and sunset, their expectations for adventure are boundless and seemingly as eternal as the noise the water makes lapping between the dock and motor boat. The rhythm of their time spent on the lake is the joyful march of boyhood exploration and self-discovery.

They will fish from a canoe until a cicada cry pierces the midday quiet and announces it is time to swim. After innumerable cannonballs and belly flops off a diving platform anchored far from shore and parental rebuke, they will tire of the water and each other. One by one, they will desert the platform and make furious, lonely strokes and flutter kicks toward land. The afternoon will end with them loafing in hammocks strung between silver birch trees.

I leave them sleeping and awake to my present life.

My hands reach out for them, but the cottage, my young family and our endless possibilities for happiness are gone. They are just specks of memory floating before me like dragonflies skimming for insects.

I open my eyes and look at my hands, wrapped in skin as rough and brittle as parchment paper. I sigh because I know I am old. I have outlived all my childhood friends, my wife and one of my sons.

I am aware that I am past my third act. Behind me, the curtain is quickly closing, but I will remain on this stage as long as life has meaning to me. I am straddled between two universes: one of light and hope, the other of eternal darkness. Yet, I still marvel at the bounty this world offers each of us during the miracle of being alive.

That is why I retraced my steps, making a pilgrimage to that cottage far north of the city: That lake is the source, a headwater, for my cascading river of midlife memories. I wanted to offer thanks to a place that gave me and my family so much joy.

So, with an old map of Ontario’s highways and byways, a well-serviced car, a working cell phone and lunch packed in a cooler, I travelled to the backwoods of holidays past.

The journey was not as long as I remembered it. The highway cut through rock rich in uranium was a less tortuous drive than when I last drove it, at the height of the Bill Davis era, in a giant Rideau 500.

The stores that once dotted the roadside and sold ice-cold, seven-ounce glass bottles of Pepsi-Cola, flip-flops and sunglasses without UV protection were gone. It was replaced by air-conditioned corporate outlets. I zoomed past them and their specials on DVDs, firewood and sunscreen.

The map, sitting folded on the passenger seat, directed me to the shores of the lake with more efficiency than any GPS. I parked my car beside a public boat landing, which was situated across the water from the cottage where we spent our summers in the 1970s.

It pleased me to find the landing deserted. I didn’t want to be disturbed while I set up my lawn chair, ate my lunch and stared back at my past.

I could see the cottage across the waves and remembered how the screen door slammed whenever someone was angry or sad or just in a rush to go out and play.

I sipped on my iced tea and heard the voices of children swimming in the distance. From a diving platform, they jumped and made loud splashes into the crystal-clear lake water.

I closed my eyes and could hear my three sons preparing for a fishing expedition on the lake. I remembered my warnings to them about respect for the water, the boat and their lives.

While I ate and watched, I felt less lonely. I sensed the lake was still alive, brimming with hope and possibility.

My lunch finished, I cleaned my hands and packed my cooler and chair back into the trunk. I took one final look at the lake.

Suddenly, before me, a canoe glided across the water. A father sat at the stern and propelled the craft with a paddle while two small children sat at the bow.

The children saw me on shore and waved.

I raised my hand in thanks. I was grateful to know the cycle of life continues. As for me, whether my remaining days are long or short, they are still filled with endless possibilities.

Thanks for reading and supporting my Substack. Your support keeps me housed and also allows me to preserve the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith. A yearly subscriptions will cover much of next month’s rent because all I need is 8 to make July’s payment. 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 co- morbidities which makes life more difficult to combat in these cost of living 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 all good too because I appreciate we are in the same boat. Take Care, John