My dad was a ship's Captain on the Great Lakes. After I was born, he got his pilot's licence and would pilot foreign ships through the Welland Canal. In the winter he taught Marine Engineering at Georgian College in Owen Sound. I remember my dad as being a huge man, with lots of freckles. So many freckles that he won a freckle contest and his picture was in the paper. He was a jolly man, and liked to laugh with people. He fished, golfed, skidooed, drank beer, and smoked cigars. My Uncle Wink recently told me that on my Dad's Latin exam during his graduating year from high school he wrote "audios Huarache's, the steamboats are calling". I don't know if he translated it into Latin or not. My Dad's cousin Ray said that it was his impression that my dad was very intelligent and could have done anything. It might have upset my grandfather who was a Doctor in Wiarton Ontario, that his eldest son did not follow in his medical footsteps. A sailor? Honestly, I think the water called his name. Apparently my Grandmother's family came from Island Magee in Northern Ireland; and that our ancestors were sea-faring people. Perhaps sailing was in his blood more than we realized.
When my mom and dad were engaged some guy started an awful rumour about my dad. Said he was swept overboard by a cable. My mother said it was horrible waiting to get confirmation about it as my grandfather dealt with trying to locate the ship. Grandpa gave Mom a tranquilizer which she said didn't work at all--it just made her more upset. When they discovered it was a rumour, my mom's brothers had a few "words" with the jerk who started it all. I wonder what he had against my Dad? Didn't everybody love him? As a kid, I just couldn't imagine that.
In the early '90s I worked as a waitress for a few months in a little artsy cafe in Owen Sound. I was a terrible waitress, but I do remember very clearly hearing a Stan Rogers song while wiping tables called "White Squall", and there is a line in it that went "a red-eyed Wiarton girl lies staring at the wall, 'cause her lover's gone into the white squall." It was one of those moments when I could have dropped a tray of dishes. It froze me inside. Could Stan Rogers have been in Wiarton during the time of the rumour? Did he hear about it?But Mom said Wiarton had a lot of sailors back then. They were a dime a dozen.
In 1972 I was 4 years old, my sister was 8. Dad was felled by a mosquito that left him with a brain injury. The virus he contracted was called "Encephalitis", and I hated that rogue mosquito ever since. Dad's symptoms were high fever and headaches. The story goes that when my mom and dad's friend Maryann was having her third child, he told her he was simply experiencing sympathy pains. My mother looked after Dad at home for a couple of years, then sent him to the long-term ward at the old General and Marine Hospital. He was only 36 when he "took sick".
I'll write more later, this is enough for now.
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