January 5, 2025.

Dear Reader: What follows is a copy of an email exchange between me and my erstwhile physician who, as he so often does while languishing on a Sunday morning after having taken his dog for a walk on the winding country trail, thoughtfully shared with me a link to an article he had read in his subscription to The Times of London. It was (putatively at least) an article about British history.  It does however tell me a broader and more formidable tale. As it happens my erstwhile physician, like I, is from a country bred in good part by British colonialism.

As you will also discover if you care to read the remainder of this entry, I am cautious about preserving myself when I already have the notable advantage;  otherwise, anything goes.  In short it is a complicated matter because, on the one hand we’re so obviously attracted to what we know (or what, in this instance, we inherited); while on the other hand we are aware of the value and incontrovertibility of changing one’s perspective.

My apologies for maybe reading too much into this.  One more thing: The latest fashion is to dismiss the value of the former “woke” conversations, societal complaints about which the public is exhausted.

More recently the word (woke) has been used in a more derogatory way, by people who oppose progressive reforms or feel that their advocates are unrealistic or interfering.

Getting back to normal, or making things great again, is not always the best or even the easiest task.  Axiomatically of course, nothing repeats.  And even if one were inclined to forego the dryness of logic, the unforgivable reality is that it will never be the same again.  And we all know it.  So why the fear about change?  The other reality naturally is that there will always be change. Fighting it doesn’t seem to me to be the answer.  For others only conflict will succeed (as it does, in a manner of speaking, in war).

Billy (Chapman)

Email
January 5, 2025

Franz – Whew!  Didn’t see that coming!  This guy Rod Liddle is part of the problem. Apart from imagining (the unfounded fear) that Shakespeare is going to become less relevant, this:

It also occurs to me that if we want to make a success of our multiracial society, rather than encouraging each minority group to wallow in its own ghetto, one of the best ways of doing so is to impart the history and literature of our country to each and every child, regardless of where they hail from, and to enjoin them to celebrate its brilliance and relevance to where they live now.

Wow!  This fellow is sadly lacking! Even historians agree that each writer puts a “popular”spin on the historical accounts they render.  Nor is the observation guaranteed without its venom for doing or having done so. But this particular writer appears to have fallen off the cliff at MAGA without knowing the company he keeps. The keys to commercial success are uniformity and dissection. A 1950’s “Father Knows Best” (black & white) television series similarity. Just like the good ‘ole days!

And “ghetto”? Has he seen where some of these rich “foreigners” live? The article is certainly a reminder of the compromised logic unwittingly adopted (or inhabited) by some people. He screams membership in hoi polloi! I am however more persuaded that the narrative is foremost designed to appeal to the vast majority of the readership. I rather doubt our insightful author would compose the same words were he in the company of a totalitarian government of a different persuasion for example.  Ultimately I believe the strength of the article lies in the support it received from the CEO (or whoever controls the purse strings of the publication).  I don’t imagine the writers are “on staff”; rather, that they are independent contractors (subject for employment to the whim of the Upper Level Censors). And money always talks.

Partly because I can never remember the word whenever I have infrequent occasion to use it, the word “vicarious” has always interested me extraordinarily.  Another – and perhaps more cogent – explanation of the attraction is that the word was the source of one of my earliest legal lessons after law school when I undertook Articles with Macdonald, Affleck Barrs. & c., 100 Sparks St, Ottawa in 1973.

Continue reading →

I got up late today. I’ve accepted that prolonged sleep is incontrovertible evidence of my impending dissolution and ultimate evaporation. Or, as my late father so amorphously characterized it, “Going into space!” It was noon before I was spooning my ineffable steel cut oats and nibbling on superb pieces of extra thick bacon. But astonishingly time was no impediment. The sun was shining brightly; the air was dry and clear. An ideal day for a drive to nowhere and back.  So after I brushed my teeth, then crawled on my stick to the basement garage, I was soon motoring into the clear wintry sky along the Appleton Side Road.

Continue reading →

At 8:20 am this morning – on the first workday of the New Year 2025 – and while still dreaming in bed I suddenly threw back the duvet and sat upright. There was a noise. It was a noise I am unaccustomed to hear so early in the day. I soon realized the disturtance emitted from my iPhone resting on the charger beside the bed. I answered.

Continue reading →

Sitting, staring at the wintry storm, I wonder where and when
The gift of life first fell like snow and flattened and what then?
I wonder how and where the sky at first began to call?
Was the grey above and white below a token or a treasure of it all?

The New Year’s Day is calm and staid, its unadventurous tick overt
There’s nothing more compelling than my thoughts to keep alert.
Instead the shadowy sky and emerald freezing water of the river flow
Upon the horizon and upriver to Appleton as they did so long ago.

Do we dare to take a chance, to start anew and freshen all we were?
Does time remain to rewrite the image upon the ground that’s left to spare?
Or will we like it dampen and dissolve then evaporate and disappear?
I sit and watch, and nod asleep, regarding the view from here.

Granted, nothing’s perfect.  But Almonte is damn close to being so! While contemplating the upcoming new year and the reminiscences provoked by such idle occupation, it occurred to me that Almonte is one of the best things to have happened to me in my lifetime. And it happened almost 50 years ago.  So I’ve had the liberty to evaluate the matter in some detail. I won’t say that Almonte is the best thing to have happened to me in my lifetime. That distinction is the indubitable preserve of my partner without whom I am lost. And that alliance happened almost 30 years ago. But if one were to choose a matter of broad significance and of general application, Almonte would be right up there with whatever else constitutes one of the best things to have happened to me in my lifetime. Almonte far surpasses memorability or merit as a mere place of residence and employment and retirement.  It has signalled so much more than that.

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

I feel certain the medical community would support me in the uneducated opinion that dying is as much a process as living, though obviously the motives are reversed.  Living is awakening to possibilities; dying is succumbing to limitations. Both are perfectly, infinitely and incomparably real. There is no doubt whatsoever about their separate manifestations particularly when it comes to dying which hasn’t normally the attraction of living.  Nonetheless we’ll all admit that mortification (by any composition whether discomposure or subjugation) is indisputable and universal. Or, more poetically from Masonic ritual (as I am frequently wont to observe), “Nature teaches us how to die.”

Well, the idea of death in religions and spiritual traditions is founded on their dogmas; hence all dogma, by presenting its idea about death as an unquestionable truth, leads to obscurantism and ignorance about an inevitable process and natural as death is.

Reason by observing nature teaches us that the universal order – hitherto known – is cyclical; everything in life is cyclical from birth to death.

Things and phenomena have always existed and only the way of looking at them, interpreting and understanding them is changing, according to the endless succession of the evolution of human thought.

The human being biologically destroys himself when he dies and his death is part of an evolutionary cycle, of multiple and varied vital transformations, with loss of form and transformation of energy.

From what I have randomly read it is not uncommon for those of us approaching death (whether merely because we are elderly or because we feel less enthusiastic) to weigh in upon the subject with evident curiosity or intrigue. It is at least moderately excusable as a burgeoning preoccupation because it affords a degree of understanding (even mollification) of the impending decomposition. There are admittedly those of identical milestones who violently persist to ignore limitation of any description and continue metaphorically careering their hot air balloon over the vast countryside, seemingly unperturbed by the inevitability of whatever. While I haven’t the buoyancy to sustain such a posture, I nonetheless admire those who do.

Biologically however I am uncertain whether such metaphoric gusto will succeed or not to alter life’s odd pathway. I find it peculiar that we convince ourselves we have greater dominion over death than we have over life. For what it is worth, the two in my opinion are axiomatic; that is, unquestionable.  Yet mankind is forever disposed to clarify the subsequent as being an improvement of the precedent. The only foreseeable improvement is to quell the vitality of death, to remove its critical nature and replace it with unimportance.

I have no truck with birth, living or dying because they are all stations in the equation I have endured (and by design I employed that tone of survival because neither was experienced without challenges). As for the peerless nature of death, I can only speculate. I am not about to engage in useless arrangements of thought surrounding the meaning of death; that is, apart from asserting in the strongest of terms that any of the popular models of religion on the subject are rubbish. I would find it to be far more complimentary to adopt a proclamation of ignorance upon the subject than otherwise. We encourage our children to be unafraid of the dark, not to imagine ghosts in the darkened hallways, to overcome the false obstructions of ignorance and idle speculation. By contrast I haven’t a clue where certain people obtain their capital for the creation of imaginary circumstances either a thousand years before or into the unfathomable ether of the universe. This is merely replacing one ignorance with another while continuing to sidestep the more favourable acknowledgment of incomprehensibility. Why one should be embarrassed to confess subordination to what is impossible to understand I shall never know.

In fact I would think it more effusive and palatable to confront the imperceptible with the humiliation it deserves (not the preposterous trappings we have manufactured to satisfy the currency of appetites of one particular nomadic tribe or another).  Really!  Who were these fiction writers!  By what account or authority did they presume to alter my vision of the inconceivable! Nor, by the way, have I any intention of tolerating these convenient rearrangements of truth.  They amount to little more than a day at the circus; that is, a singular, intentional representation for purpose of entertainment only.  And, just in the event that you are so inclined, be careful not to contradict what I have said by importing deductive distortions.  To be specific, the contamination of the core does not of necessity contaminate the outlying spheres. It remains equally reliable that there are communal advantages to be acquired within the context of these otherwise questionable terms. Mine is not a dispute of social networks; rather, my objection is to the formalized clarity of what is an impenetrable proposition.

On a snowy, bitterly cold Saturday morning mid-winter 1977, I drove into the city from Almonte to go for a skate on the frozen Rideau Canal. I parked my automobile south of the National Arts Centre and north of Patterson Creek along Queen Elizabeth Drive stationed safely within the quiet residential neighbourhood not far from the Canal. Removing my backpack with my ice skates inside and opening the car door to allow Lanny my Yellow Labrador to jump into the snow, we trudged to the wooden change hut erected on sleds at the edge of the Canal. With an effort which today would exhaust me to perform, I doffed my winter boots then put on and laced up my hockey skates.  Lanny waited patiently by the heater.

Continue reading →

December 27th – a Friday – and a warmer day to boot is oddly serene given the manic nature of the past several days surrounding the traditional Christmas holiday. There is missing an element of both need and urgency.  The tranquillity lends an air of abandonment and secretive absent preparation. It is maybe best described as a lull before the recurring storm on New Year’s Eve. I hear in the distance a child’s voice proclaiming some pursuit or entitlement on this bright chilly day nearing the end of 2024. Perhaps the youngster is yet enthused by a gift from Santa Claus, the annual exuberance and product of months of hope and fear.

Continue reading →