Month: March 2017

March 20: For the last 16 years I have been riding a Honda VFR Interceptor. From the moment I saw it in a magazine those many years ago I knew I wanted one, and I did finally buy her from the late, not-lamented Cycle World on Dundas Street West. On my very first ride home I thought I had made a mistake because she felt tall and top-heavy, but in time I adapted and we had many happy years together.

In a little more than 103,000 km we have been on any road worth riding in southern Ontario; we have been to Maine at least 3 times; we have ridden the Cabot Trail after visiting Halifax; and we have been to Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio several times. About the only “bucket list” item remaining for her would be the Tail of the Dragon in North Carolina. I have many happy memories of our adventures together.

But now there is this: a 2014 Honda VFR Interceptor. Although there have been several model changes at Honda over the intervening 17 years, it’s very close to being the same bike. I’ve not ridden her yet – when will the snow stop ? – but an initial impression is that she’s lower and carries weight lower in the frame. Time will tell.

My plan (for now at least) is to ship her to Frankfurt and then to spend 2 months travelling Europe. If I can, I would like to leave her there for the following year. Options for the trip are just starting to take shape, and I am beyond excited about the prospects for this summer. I found so many places in 2015 I want to explore this time around. It will be a huge bonus to travel with a new bike and have her along for all those new adventures. Yet it is a bit disappointing not to be taking the old bike because we have done so much, and have gone so many miles together, that this trip would be like the “last hurrah” for us both. Still, I’ll keep her for another couple of years, and she will be patiently waiting when I come home. We are not done yet and perhaps we will even make it to the Dragon one day.

www.tailofthedragon.com

March 8: Today is my Mother’s birthday. Born in 1923, she turns 94 today. She has outlived all of her siblings and all of her High School friends save one. She is literally the “last one standing”.

She was the eldest daughter in a family with 5 kids. They were raised on Roxborough Street East and must have enjoyed a life with a certain amount of privilege. Unlike her younger sisters, she finished High School and had no inclination to go further with her education. Instead, as mentioned in the previous post, she opted for enlisting in the RCAF as a way to assert her independence. After training she was assigned to a unit that tracked aircraft off the east coast and served some time in Newfoundland. At that point, it had not yet joined Canada, so she was awarded the “Foreign Service Medal”. She is very proud of that, if slightly amused.

After the war she returned home and was married in 1946. She told me once that she knew she was going to marry Dad  when he turned around and winked at her in Grade 9. They spent 66 years together.

She was a stay-at-home wife and mother. She was very proud to call herself a “housewife”, especially in later years when that was not fashionable. But there were years when it could not have been easy. When Dad was drinking, she struggled to get him sober and to shield Nancy and I from his behaviour. Whether that was the right thing to do can be debated; she did what she thought was the right thing at the time. Ultimately, Dad did get sober and they enjoyed more than 30 years of apparent happiness before the sad betrayal of his Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

She struggled mightily with that for more than 4 years before he moved to Sunnybrook. The fact that she did so – in her late 80’s – is a sign of a central characteristic of her personality. She can be incredibly determined. Put less charitably: she can be irrationally stubborn. While it’s very possible that we need to be stubborn to survive as long as she has, there were times when Nancy and I were young when her insistence that something happen in a certain way clearly made no sense. Circumstances had changed and I was often unsure of why she was insisting, yet arguing would not change her mind.

Sadly, she now has early stage Alzheimer’s disease. She has become unfamiliar with the building where she has lived for almost 10 years and continues to go for walks on Mt. Pleasant “to explore the neighbourhood”. While I admire her determination / stubbornness to continue to be active, she has physical limitations and her wandering has become unsafe. Polite suggestions that she stop, or at least use a walker have yielded outright refusal.

Reflecting on what is to come brings very mixed emotions. We have seen the progression of the disease before and it is a slow-motion agony for everyone involved. She remains very determined to continue living her own life and I truly admire her for that. Ultimately, of course, Nancy and I will have to make decisions to force her to do things she does not wish to do. And perhaps this is a lesson we learned from her: you make the best decision that you can make in the circumstances, and then you follow through. Something she has been doing since 1923….

March 6: On Remembrance Day I attended the Air Force ceremony in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery. I then visited the Kent family plot to say hello to my Dad and aunts and uncles, all of whom were in the RCAF or RAF during the Second World War. My Mother says she joined the RCAF as an act of rebellion – to assert independence from her parents – and to be different from her younger sisters whom she perceived to be following her in everything she did. Although she was sure her Father would never stand for it, her sisters ultimately also followed her into the service and they all played a role in supporting those who flew.

Her brother – my uncle Martin (who was called Bussie for no reason that anyone could remember) – was a Mosquito pilot. He was credited with downing two aircraft and two flying bombs, and damaging another aircraft. As I have written elsewhere, my Dad was a navigator on a Halifax bomber. He flew 33 missions during late 1944 and early 1945. My uncle Doug was in the RAF, and uncle James was in the Navy, although I don’t know much of their stories. Remarkably, everyone escaped unscathed.

All of this got me thinking about my Grandfather who I had been told was a pilot in World War One. For some reason, that seemed unlikely to me and I never followed up on that story until after my visit to his grave on Remembrance Day. A Google search yielded a link to an entry at the Canadian Great War Project, which showed that he enlisted in September, 1916 at 19 years of age and, as Flight Lieutenant Harry Gowans Kent, was assigned to 11 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps.

Wikipedia – a paragon of truth – says: “No. 11 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps was formed at Netheravon in Wiltshire on 14 February 1915 for “fighting duties” … Since all previous squadrons (Royal Flying Corps or other nations) were reconnaissance or army co-operation units, 11 can make a claim to be the oldest dedicated fighter squadron in the world.” It goes on to say that the squadron flew Bristol Fighters and was deployed to the Western Front (1915–1918), Loos in the  Somme (1916), Arras and Cambrai (1917), and the Somme (1918). Since the Squadron was based at Fienvillers, France, he likely saw action over the Somme.

All of this history makes me wonder about the mind-set of these men (for it was only men in combat). My Dad said that he had finished high school and thought that the Air Force might be a good experience going forward. He seemed to think that he had few other options at the time. Many of his friends had also enlisted but surely all of them must have thought of the consequences at some point. It was well known that men – thousands of men – were getting killed, and to willingly accept that prospect takes tremendous courage.

It’s a shame that we didn’t hear more of this history when these brave men and women were alive. For whatever reason, they spoke little about their experiences and, perhaps more accurately, we were not overly inquisitive or actively listening. As a child, both wars seemed like ancient history to me, although my Father’s experience in the Second World War was barely 20 years past when I was in my teens.  I now wish that I had been more interested in, and receptive to my family history. The remarkable stories these men carried are now lost forever.

http://canadiangreatwarproject.com