Vimy Ridge & Iraq - This article appeared on April 9, 2003, in the Calgary Herald

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VIMY RIDGE: CANADA’S FORGOTTEN HISTORY LESSON

 The last surviving Canadian infantry veteran of the battle of Vimy Ridge, Charles Reaper, died in Winnipeg at the age of 103 on March 1^st of this year.  With his death we have lost our last living link to that battle.  What meaning should we draw from his passing?

On Easter Monday, April 9, 1917, Reaper was among the 100,000 troops of the Canadian Army Corps that captured Vimy Ridge against a well-entrenched garrison of German defenders.  The battle turned out to be a minor action within the larger Battle of Arras, led by the British.  Like the Somme, Passchendaele and Verdun, Arras and Vimy were battles in that litany of horrific carnage that used to be known as the Great War.  Today we call it World War I.

The French had launched three unsuccessful campaigns against the ridge between 1914 and 1916 with a combined loss of 150,000 casualties.  The British tried next with no success, losing over 40,000.  Then it was Canada’s turn.  The Canadians achieved that rarest of outcomes in trench warfare: a breakthrough of all enemy lines.  Soldiers like Reaper, standing on top of the ridge at sunset 3 days later, could have kept on slogging all the way to Berlin – if only they had been backed up with sufficient reinforcements.  The war could have ended over a year earlier had the British and French High Command not thought that a breakthrough at Vimy to be a delusional impossibility. 

Generations of school children learned that April 9, 1917 was the day that Canada supposedly came of age as a nation.  For decades following the battle, the date was marked by ceremonies to honour the survivors and the fallen. 

3,598 men were killed in the assault.  7,004 were wounded.   This means 1 in 10 were either killed or wounded during the 3 day-assault. Another 9,553 casualties were sustained at Vimy in the months of preparation leading up to the attack.   German casualties were even more staggering.  Pierre Berton, at the conclusion of his book Vimy, asks “Was it worth it?  The answer, of course, is no”.  The victory at Vimy, albeit impressive at the time and utterly unanticipated, in the end had little impact on the outcome of the war.  

So what should we think of this battle, given the imperfect hindsight of history?   Should it be a source of national pride?  Did this country indeed come of age as a result of the terror and agony its young soldiers endured on a hummock of mud 86 years ago in northern France?  Charles Reaper was at most 17 when he was slogging through the trenches and then up the ridge at Vimy.  What do we owe him?  What do we own those names of the fallen that are fading in the acid rain on cenotaphs across the country? 

It is said that the victory at Vimy, along with the rest of the country’s contribution to the war effort, undoubtedly enhanced Canada’s stature as an independent nation.  For the first time Canada fought not so much for Britain as with Britain.  Now we refuse to fight not so much with the United States as for the United States. 

Pride?  But at what price?   Did the country come of age?  What does ‘coming of age’ mean and how can it be measured?  In an era of globalization and increased economic and political interdependency what is the place of independence and national sovereignty? 

Our government has decided not to send Canadian troops to war in Iraq.  How does this decision to opt for neutrality resonate with our history at Vimy Ridge?  

When we go back to Vimy and read the lists of names of those men, when we learn how they suffered, how they were wounded, how they died, our debt to them stings like salt on an open cut.  They are more than names in stone.  They were like us.  They were sons, they were lovers, husbands, brothers, fathers, uncles, friends.  Then they were gone.  

What is the value of understanding this history?  What use are these stories, these casualty figures?  Do they help us to avoid repeating the errors of the past?  The history of the 20^th century after World War I suggests an opposite conclusion.  Some feel that young people raised without these history lessons hold fewer prejudices towards their peers from other countries.    

Yet the sacrifices in blood made at Vimy remain indelibly scrawled on our consciousness for the unassailable fact that they happened to people like us.   Families can trace the stains of Vimy in their own histories.  Communities remember the losses.  With the death of Charles Reaper our national memory of that battle is gone.

This is what we owe those distant thousands at Vimy Ridge: When the anthems are over, the flags put away, the medals tarnished and lost and the graves overgrown, war must forever more be seen as only an option of absolute last resort. Those soldiers who fought at Vimy still cry out to us: Only speak the word ‘war’ when no other word can be spoken.

But what would they make of our decision not to fight in Iraq were they to come back to us today? Would they say we failed our friends?  Or would they commend us for not feeding troops and civilians to the cannons of this new war?  The dead cannot speak.  No one can presume to speak for them.  We can only work with all our might to ensure that the world will never again have to endure their horror.

Fathers and Domestic Chores - This article appeared in the May/June 2007 edition of Glow Magazine

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HOW TO GET MORE CHORES OUT OF YOUR MAN WITHOUT GOING TO WAR

 A plan for peaceful negotiations with the enemy

HOUSEWORK

As you take off your coat the acrid stench of burnt spaghetti stings your nostrils, lingering like toxic smog in the hallway.   Your living room is littered with toys, clothing, pizza boxes, juice boxes and beer cans.  A bacteriologist could find innumerable rare micro-organisms in the layers of greasy dishes and encrusted cutlery that conceal every flat surface of your kitchen.  Has a biker gang moved in?  No. You’ve left your partner in charge for a few days.  Now you want revenge. 

Time stops.  Your world is flash-frozen.  An violent eruption seethes inside you.  Your angry trance is broken by your firstborn, hurtling towards you, tiny arms outstretched for a hug, face unsullied by soap and water.  Hugging your smelly child, you default to an instant divorce.  Your partner smiles warmly from the couch, where he is sprawled in front of a hockey game.  You inhale to scream.

Wait.  Before you fire all your missiles at once, consider this:

• Your kids are obviously happy
• They have been well fed, as evidenced by the ketchup stains on their t-shirts and the disastrous condition of the kitchen

 This leads us to Rule #1 for getting more domestic labour out of your man:  No matter how bad it is, it can always be a lot worse. Whatever you do now should make it better.

Having avoided pre-emptive war, you are now ready for Rule #2:  Work from where he is, not from where you want him to be.  Where you want him to be, while a worthy destination, is of little use to you right now as a measurement criterion.   Dwelling on this gap between current performance and desired outcome will only damage your relationship.

Rule #3:  Strike while the iron is cool.  Now is not the time for a confrontation.  Believe it or not, he has done more domestic labour while you were gone than usual.   Acknowledge that fact, thank him for it, then ask him to do a small chore while you begin to undo the carnage.  Bring paper, pencils and a calculator to dinner.  Install the kids in front of a new DVD.  

Now you are ready for Rule #4. Appeal to his sense of rationality.   Ask him to list all the chores, including commuting and working for a living, that must happen on regular basis in order for your family to survive.  Get agreement on what should be on both your lists.  Leave gender aside for the moment.  Think team.  Compare lists.  Negotiate agreement. 

Rule #5: Let go of perfectionism.  Be ready to lower your standards for task performance and task frequency.  Your standards should not necessarily become his standards.  After my wife cleans up the kitchen, surgery could be performed on the counters.  Everything is in its place.  Spotless.  When I do the same job, I usually overlook something. Maybe a dirty pot lingers on the stove.  Maybe the floor doesn’t get swept.  It wouldn’t take a forensics expert to determine what we ate for dinner.  

Remember Rule #6:  Your partner is not a continuous improvement project. Your relationship is not a vocational-school class in life skills.   Use positive reinforcement.  Acknowledge effort and small improvements.  Above all, do not nag.  State your suggestion once, make sure it is heard, then drop it.  I will never clean up our kitchen with the same thoroughness my wife brings to this chore.  Perhaps I will only ever get 90% of the job done according to her standards.  Do I care about improving?  No.  But does the kitchen get cleaned up, at least to the point at which Children’s Aid will not take away our kids?  Yes.  Is it worth going to war for the last 10%?

CHILD CARE

 You have been looking after your two children plus holding down a full-time job for the last 4 years.  Your pre-school kids are either in day care or with you.  Your mate shows no signs of taking over any of child-care routines.  He’s an avid runner; this hobby takes up all his free time.  You can no longer work full-time, maintain the home, run the kitchen and raise the kids while he improves his marathon times.  You are burning out.   

His lack involvement may have nothing to do with you.  Or you may be an unwitting contributor to his avoidance behaviour?  This means you need Rule #7: Give up your sole control over child-care tasks as soon as possible.  Give him the basic training he needs then get out of the way.  . If you want him to become more involved with your kids, then let him develop those relationships without your mediation.  Except for breastfeeding, he can really do everything you can do.  As with Rule #5, all you need do is let go of your own performance standards. 

Assume he is capable of learning basic child-care skills --toileting, feeding, first-aid for choking, CPR, etc.  If he can maintain an open airway, feed and toilet, what is preventing you from leaving him alone with your kids?  The net result will be that the kids get to know him on his own terms, his child-care skills will rapidly improve and he will gain a new appreciation for what you do everyday.

All of which is not to say he will not stumble occasionally.  After 10 months of staying home with our daughter, my wife decided she needed a break.  Finally, I thought, it was my turn.  Though I had never looked after an infant on my own, I felt ready to take charge. As instructed, I carefully administered bottles on time.  She gurgled sweetly for me. Before long I had her tucked into her crib, with the baby monitor turned on. 

Then she started to whimper. I rushed upstairs, remembering she had a gluten allergy. This must be another bout of gas, I thought. So I held her. Talked to her.  Her crying only became more intense.  Desperate, I called a neighbour. No ideas. Next I called the hospital. A nurse suggested taking her temperature.  I had never taken a baby’s temperature before. She squirmed and wept uncontrollably. I couldn’t keep the thermometer in her armpit without pining her down in her crib like a Sumo wrestler grappling with an agitated hobbit.

Then I remember the Tempera. That’s it!  Why didn’t I think of that before? She’s teething!  Measuring the dosage into an eyedropper, I squirted it into her mouth but she sputtered it out—still screaming.  Relief washed over me as my wife walked in, scooped up our daughter and checked her pulse and temperature.  “When was the last time you changed her?”  Dumbfounded, I couldn’t remember.  Minutes later mom and baby emerged from the bathroom, baby gurgling happily once again.  Handing me a soiled diaper, my wife smirked. “Take this to the laundry.”

All of which leaves us at Rule #8: Many men do not realize that the relationships they establish with their children could become the most significant relationships they will ever have in their lives. Too many men grow up not understanding the richness that can be theirs within the role of being a dad.  You can help your man understand this.  Men cannot do this alone.

Courage & Entrepreneurship - This is another chapter from my book "Leadership Basaics for Frontline Managers" available from CRC Press (Taylor & Francis)


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Chapter 12 -- RECESSION SURVIVAL STRATEGIES: COURAGE & ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Whether you are a business owner, an employee or a solo entrepreneur, you will need to be at your best to survive this recession.  Victim behavior, blaming others, the bunker mentality and obsessive cynicism are all strategies for failure. Regardless of your own financial predicaments, the best person to get things moving is patiently waiting for you in the mirror. 

There is more than enough gloomy news to discourage everyone.  We all know the script: Bank failures, stock market crashes, credit crunches, job losses and an unprecedented collapse of consumer confidence.  Not that you should hide from bad news.  Instead, you need to confront it and try to understand it.  But you should not wallow in this bad news.  You need to move beyond passive news consumption and take action.  Now perhaps more than any time in the past, you need to arouse your own inner entrepreneur.

The way of the entrepreneur is not easy.  At a time when circumstances cry out for bold action, employees often shrink into a self-preserving shell of hyper-cautiousness.  Business owners who need their staff to come up with new ways to compete and succeed instead are confronted with apathy, fear and hopelessness.  How can you turn the corner?

What does it take to work like an entrepreneur? 

KNOW YOURSELF:  First you have to know your own strengths, be willing to believe in your own dreams, have faith in your ability to create the results you want, know what is most important in your life and know what you want to achieve.

KNOW YOUR BRAND:  What is your brand?  Where do you stand?  If you had 20 seconds in an elevator to describe your brand, what would you say?  What stories of your life and accomplishments will you want people to talk about at your funeral?

DRIVE:  Whether you are a leader or an employee, successful entrepreneurship requires great energy and drive.  You have to get in touch with what you really want and why that is so important to you.  You need to be able to paint a picture of your own success in your mind then be ready to put all of your energy behind the goal of converting your dream into a reality.  You have to be hungry for success.

VALUES:  You have to know what your core values are and what is most important to you.  Why?  Because these core values will leave their mark on everything you do.  These values have to be aligned with whom you really are and what you really want to create.  And others will have to find your values compelling.

PEOPLE:  Entrepreneurs need to attract and convince others.  They have to understand how to motivate employees, attract investors, satisfy clients, sustain mutual trust and treat everyone with respect.  Other people must want to get on your bus and want to travel with you.  So you have to know how to listen and how to motivate others.

HONESTY:  Successful entrepreneurs start from where they really are, not from where they would like to be.  They are brutally honest with themselves and invite honest feedback from partners, employees and clients.  An entrepreneur with a bad idea wants to know what is wrong.

INITIATIVE:  Great achievements in business do not happen without a strong willingness to get started and to take action, even if the action is not precisely the best action possible.  We have all read the stories of legendary entrepreneurs who started as taxi drivers, bought their own cab, borrowed more money, bought a share in a small business then leveraged their success into a significant business empire.  Are those entrepreneurs really all that different from the rest of us?

COURAGE:  Can courage be learned, or is it something we are born with?  Dr. Merom Klein of The Courage Institute (http://www.courageinstitute.org/) maintains that courage is a choice we can all make about how we deal with the adversity around us.  All of us face fears, but we need to learn what we should and should not be afraid of, then how we can face those fears constructively.  Successful entrepreneurs are very skilled at separating useless fears from those they need to confront and overcome.  Fear of bankruptcy is real; all entrepreneurs need to confront this fear and deal with it.   Fear of market rejection in launching a new business can, on the other hand, keep a potentially successful entrepreneur frozen in a stultifying career that leads nowhere.

TAKING RISKS:  Along with confronting fear, entrepreneurs need to know how to take the big risk: the risk that will either launch them on the road to success or cause them to fail and have to start all over again.  Successful risk takers, whether in business or any other field, need to know how to manage risks and take control of as many of the variables as they can.  Successful entrepreneurs who take risks are sometimes very cautious individuals.  They leave as little as possible to chance.  They conduct detailed risk-assessments, weigh all their options, do their research and design backup systems in case of trouble.  But in the end they stand up and move forward.  They take the risk. 

If you are a business owner or a manager, you can help your people become more entrepreneurial.  Entrepreneurship may or may not be teachable, but it can be encouraged.

HOW TO HELP YOUR PEOPLE BECOME MORE ENTREPRENEURIAL:

• MODEL ALL THE ENTREPRENEURIAL ATTITUDES and behaviors you want to see in your people
• BE RADICALLY HONEST with them
• HELP YOUR PEOPLE TO GET IN TOUCH with their own higher purposes for coming to work
• IF YOU EXPECT THEM TO SHARE YOUR RISKS, be prepared to also share your rewards
• FOSTER a sense of rigorous discipline
• DEMONSTRATE TRUST in others; for many, this is the biggest risk of all

Inter-generational Conflict - This is another chapter from my book, "Leadership Basics for Frontline Managers" available from CRC Press (Taylor & Francis)

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Chapter 20 -- ARE INTER-GENERATIONAL CONFLICTS HURTING YOUR BUSINESS?

This past winter I was asked to go into a mid-sized technology firm and deliver a conference presentation on intergenerational communication.  When I started asking questions to find out exactly what they meant and what they wanted from me, a familiar pattern emerged: Employees of different generations, working together but not understanding each other and assuming the worst about each other’s intentions. 

The business impact of this lack of trust and poor communication was that the firm’s external clients were experiencing delays in product delivery and poor customer service.  Some senior managers were defaulting to very authoritarian leadership styles with a predictable outcome:  A steady trickle of young, promising employees were quitting, taking their knowledge and skill sets elsewhere.

Suspicion and mistrust between the generations have been facts of life at work at least since ancient Athens.  Why are these issues such a big deal today? What makes the current situation absolutely unprecedented in history is the explosive development of new technology, the rapid expansion of the globalized economy, both combined with a highly unusual demographic pattern in the workforce. 

Simply the presence of 4 generations in the workplace at the same time creates tension. The Veterans, born before 1946, are still around, although in diminishing numbers as they retire; many of the Boomers, born between ’46 and ’64, are now in senior leadership roles. Generation X, born between ’65 and ’79 are taking over from the Boomers and Veterans while Generation Y, born since 1980, is beginning to move into the workforce in large numbers.  Demographers disagree about exactly which years represent the specific generations and their labels, but the consensus seems to be that prevailing generational characteristics shift roughly every 20 years.

Interesting stuff, but I knew my audience would not respond well to a lecture on demographics and economics.  They had a real-time business problem that would not be improved by a dry, academic presentation on theories and trends.

My client’s employees needed to understand the basic differences in how the generations see the world, so I put together a slide presentation that covered the origins of the differences between each generation (different historical contexts and extremely different child-rearing norms), the impact of these differences on lifestyle and most importantly on work style.  This presentation concluded with a module on how to communicate with each generation and how to manage Gen Y.

But I knew I couldn’t get away with just subjecting my audience two hours of PowerPoint.  They needed much more than my research and my imagined –and certainly limited- expertise.  So I asked for two volunteers from each of the generations to join a panel at the front of the room for a discussion.  I worked this panel through a number of discussion questions such as “What don’t you understand about other generations who work with you and how they communicate?”, “What do other generations need to understand about your generation?” and “If you could fix only two things about other generations and how they communicate, what would those two things be?”

Out of this discussion the group came up with the following points to remember when dealing with each of the generations:

WHEN MANAGING BOOMERS:

• GIVE them the big picture
• TELL them they can make an important contribution to the success of the team
• RECOGNIZE them by providing recognition and increased profile
• INDIVIDUAL Boomers may prefer phone or face-to-face over e-mail
• ACKNOWLEDGE their experience and recognize that they have ‘paid their dues’

WHEN MANAGING GEN X’S:

• APPEAL to their sense of personal loyalty, not loyalty to the organization
• GIVE them a way to ‘buy into’ a project rather than bark orders at them
• THEY respond better to short-term objectives rather than long-term goals
• TELL them what needs to be done, but not how
• GIVE them multiple tasks but allow them to set priorities
• REMEMBER that they respond best to informal recognition rather than formal acknowledgement such as a plaque on the wall

WHEN MANAGING GEN Y’S:

• GIVE them opportunities for continuous learning and building skills
• FIND OUT their goals then explain how these goals fit into your organization’s big picture
• BE more of a coach, less of a boss
• COMMUNICATE with them via informal hallway conversations & e-mail
• GIVE lots of feedback and recognition
• DO not rant or humiliate when giving constructive feedback
• REMEMBER that they will not tolerate inauthentic leadership.  Instead they will leave
• ASK rather than tell
• REMEMBER that for them, the teambuilding rituals so important to Boomers are simply a waste of time
• KEEP IN MIND that they work to support their lifestyles outside of work, not out of any sense of loyalty to a larger entity such as their employer
• ANTICIPATE their needs for work/life balance, authentic leadership and continuous learning
• GIVE them a clear picture of their career future and how they can advance
• ASK them for input on decisions that will affect them
• AVOID criticisms and reprimands; instead point out errors, remain emotionally neutral, offer positive alternative approaches and make immediately create plans for improvement

At the end of the discussion I invited the audience to respond to a few of the questions put to the panel by writing their answers on Post-It Notes without their names then sticking these notes up on the wall for all to read.  Apart from one snarling remark (“Send Gen Y off to Boot Camp”), the overwhelming tone of the answers was of tolerance and a need to accept people of all ages for who they are and appreciate what they can bring to their work.

The job of today’s managers, business owners and entrepreneurs is to find ways to leverage each generation’s distinctive talents.

Tough on Crime - This article appeared on Rabble.ca on August 26, 2010
http://rabble.ca/news/2010/08/wishfulness-yesmanship-and-harper-conservatives

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'Wishfulness,' 'yesmanship' and the Harper Conservatives

At the end of World War II, John Godfrey, the former Director of Britain's Naval Intelligence Division, identified two major weaknesses of the Nazi espionage bureaucracy: ‘wishfulness' and ‘yesmanship'. Wishfulness and yesmanship are not real words; they are strictly Godfrey's concoctions. Yet the behaviours behind these terms have changed history. And they are still with us today.

As wishfulness and yesmanship do not appear in any dictionary, I'll make up my own definitions. Wishfulness seems to be the tendency to believe information that supports preferred views of reality while simultaneously rejecting all contradictory information. Godfrey believed that the Nazi high command, when presented with two pieces of contradictory information, was inclined to believe the option that best fit with their own preconceptions.

A modern-day example: During the buildup to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration maintained that the eponymous weapons of mass destruction should have existed, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. The fact that these weapons could not be found was viewed as an annoying but trivial inconvenience. Those who presented contradictory information like Hans Blix, former head of the UN Inspection Commission, were dismissed as dupes. Journalists around the world bought into this wishfulness.

Yesmanship is the tendency of those with less positional power to agree with those who have greater power, mainly out of fear. Yesmanship feeds on fear of authority; the greater the fear, the stronger the tendency toward blind yesmanship. Yesmanship is an enabling behaviour for wishfulness. Wishfulness, particularly in organizations in which there are dire consequences for insubordination, can give rise to deadly levels of yesmanship.

Yesmanship appears at family tables and corporate boardrooms. Fearful children learn to deliver the news their harried parents want to hear. Wishing to avoid an argument, husbands and wives will spin information for each other by hiding in yesmanship. Ambitious employees learn to support an executive's favoured opinions. "Don't make waves" or "Tell her what she wants to hear and you'll be fine."

In the Nazi hierarchy that Godfrey analyzed, lower ranks would deliberately distort information in order to crawl higher in Hitler's estimation. Yesmanship became integrated into strategic decision making at the highest levels of the Third Reich. Few dared say "no" to the man directly above.

This phenomenon is not proprietary to the military. Yesmanship appears in many civilian organizations around the world, be they non-profit, public or private sector. Or political parties.

During the past few weeks wishfulness and yesmanship have surfaced in the debate over the Conservatives' platform on crime. Stockwell Day infamously proclaimed that his party would spend $2 billion to build more prisons in order to fight "unreported" crime. Given that Statistics Canada had just announced that crime rates in Canada were continuing to drop, Mr. Day's remarks were met with astonished incredulity. According to Mia Dauvergne, co-author of the StatsCan report, the rate of crimes reported to police in Canada for 2009 is down three per cent from 2008 and has dropped 17 per cent since 1999. The Crime Severity Index (CSI), which measures the seriousness of reported crimes, went down four per cent last year compared to 2008. The CSI has fallen 22 per cent since 1999.

Critics charged that Mr. Day was spinning Conservative ideology in order to appeal to his party's base. This is wishfulness in action.

When faced with contradictory evidence from a credible source, Mr. Day reframed the debate by repeating his "unreported crime" canard. Don't let facts get in the way of manufactured truth.

Being seen to be "tough on crime" has been a foundational value of the Conservative Party from its inception. The Harper Conservatives cannot accept that crime is going down. Hence Day's wishfulness.

Day believes that by being tough on current offenders that the rate of crime in the future will go down. Why? What about future offenders? The existence of new prisons will not diminish the levels of crime committed by future offenders. The American experience has been that 30 years of prison construction and longer sentences has had little effect on crime rates and has proven to be far too costly for taxpayers. Can we not learn a few valuable lessons here from our neighbours?

Wishfulness and yesmanship keep a political party on message. From sea-to-sea-to-sea Conservative MPs know what to say about crime. But will more prisons reduce our crime rate further? Or should we instead be investing more in the preventive measures that have lead to the successful diminution of crime in Canada?

Crime is a systemic problem. We have to be willing to address the root causes and be prepared for time lags if we want to create effective change. Unless we do something about the homes, neighbourhoods and the economic system in which future criminals grow up, we cannot keep on building more prisons and locking more doors, then expect the problem to miraculously go away.

For example, research from Washington state has shown that every dollar spent on community-based drug treatment saves $18 in taxpayer costs, including prison expenses. In that jurisdiction, community-based drug treatment provides better crime reduction results than prison. But such a long-term approach obviously has little political sex appeal in Ottawa. 

The Conservatives are wrong. Throwing more money at prison construction by itself will not make the crime rate go down. Building more prisons will not make future offenders less likely to commit crimes. Investing in education, communities and the social safety net is the smarter and far more fiscally prudent way to go.

Bill Templeman is a writer, facilitator, consultant and former closed-custody youth worker based in Peterborough, Ontario.

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Canoe Tripping with Kids -- This article first appeared in the July, 2004 issue of Canadian Living, a general interest magazine

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CALL OF THE WILD: HOW 4 COUPLES AND 8 KIDS SURVIVED A 6- DAY TRIP ON GEORGIAN BAY IN A 10-METER CANOE AND WHY THEY ALL WANT TO DO IT AGAIN

Mix 4 couples, each with 2 kids under 11, one dog and over 400 kilos of supplies in a10-meter freighter canoe. Take away all toilets.  Jettison all computers, TVs, VCRs, DVDs and other electronic childcare appliances.  Pack tightly into the canoe.  Isolate on Georgian Bay for 6 days.  Add a few rain squalls.  Toss with large waves.  Whip with strong wind.  Grill beyond the point of painful sunburn.  Garnish generously with mosquitoes.  Then wait and see what happens....  

Most Primal Scream therapists would see this scenario as an immense new business opportunity.  Most marriage counselors would be extending their hours to handle new client bookings.  Most childcare workers would be dialing their abuse-alert hotlines.  Most of our friends, especially those with children under 11, thought we were indisputably insane. 

The trip started as a whim in an old-boy’s e-mail chat group.  What could we do together with our families this summer?  The Answer: Rent a big Montreal Canoe, a fiberglass replica of the type used by the Hudson Bay Company to haul furs from Thunder Bay to Montreal in the 18^th century.   Then re-trace the voyageurs’ homeward journey along the coastline of Georgian Bay from Killarney past the estuary of the French River to the hamlet of Britt. 

My wife Trudi at first practiced sensible denial, hoping that the topic would wither on the vine.  For that matter, so did I.   I have done lots of canoe trips, perhaps too many.  But a trip with kids, all our kids, 7 girls and a boy ranging from almost 11 to just past 4, all in one huge canoe?

The project was not so demented as it sounds.  The coastline in that part of Georgian Bay is a convoluted labyrinth of islands, shoals, inlets and sheltered channels.  Lots of places to hide from nasty weather.  Very easy to get off the water in a hurry. 

We were a seasoned crew: Dave and I had worked together at Outward Bound instructing canoe courses.  We had paddled two long rivers in the Arctic.  Peter, our intrepid leader, was an accomplished white water paddler.  Tina was a strong triathlete.  Hazel was an emergency physician.  Trudi was a rehabilitation therapist.  The only newbie adult canoeists were Pam, a physiotherapist therapist and her husband Jeff, an emergency-room-specialist.   At least for those 6 days we had superb health care!

My initial reluctance about hauling our kids out on the Bay soon faded once we got on the water.  There is still an ineffable sense of joy for me in casting off into real wilderness.  This experience is becoming tragically dated as our cities sprawl and real wilderness becomes an anachronism.

The poet Gary Synder maintains that we need to go back into wilderness to find sacred space.  We need to get in touch with the archetypal forces that shaped our species.  I want my two kids to stand in these places and feel the wind in their hair.  They need to know that dramatic landscapes are not only to be found in the Lord of the Rings on a wide screen.  Special effects are fine, but children deserve to experience the real thing while there is still some wild land left.

The surprise heroes of this trip were the kids.  As we planned and packed the adults exchanged many e-mail notes over what to do with a boatload of bored children who might be experiencing early on-set technology withdrawal – no Barbie software, no TV kid shows, no Disney DVDs.   

Each family brought along a stash of books and games.  I planned a treasure hunt that would involve learning a few Ojibway words in order to claim the stash of Smarties at the end of the trail.  My wife Trudi packed a handicraft kit including fabric paints for decorating t-shirts.  In the end only the fabric paints saw active duty.   

One we were on the water the kids sang camp songs with endless repeating verses.  In an enclosed car this singing would have swiftly driven me to road rage.  On the open water their voices became another fine thread in the tapestry of wind, water, bird song, cloud and sunlight through which we paddled.  Astonishingly, Oh Canada en francais, led by the French-immersed in the pack was the top hit.  

Imagine paddling past exquisite archipelagoes dotted by wind-bent pines with the open expanse of an inland sea on your right, under a clear blue sky with a steady breeze at your back and a chorus of elementary school voices softly butchering our national anthem in French.  Rene Levesque might have winced but my guess is that Pierre Trudeau would have smiled.  If only we had applied for a Heritage Canada grant!

The kids organized themselves by creating a series of plays with specific roles for everyone. On shore they acted out these plays, gathered wild flowers and searched for unusual stones.  Their crowning achievement was the construction of a stone corral for 5 tiny leopard frogs in a rainwater pond.

In this mini-culture traditional hunting behaviours were quickly modified to fit in with the particular princess play being developed at the moment.  Each leopard frog was given a name and cherished by all.

All of their activities, except for the painting of the T-shirts, happened without any adult intervention.  So much for under-estimating the resourcefulness of children.

There were a few tense moments.  On the first evening we had to make camp in a cold rainstorm.  Some of the kids were beginning to shiver.  Lips were beginning to take on a bluish hue.  Peter quickly put up a tent and we were able stuff all the kids in together with a few parents.  Within minutes everyone was snug in the damp body heat of the small tent. 

A few days later a cold rain squall hit us just as we were scouting for a campsite.  We ran aground at precisely the wrong moment.  We were stuck in the open as chill horizontal rain whipped in from the open bay.  This time we threw a tarp over the kids as they huddled together in the middle of the canoe.  When the squall passed we were able to lift the huge canoe free and paddle to a fine campsite.

What about the adult experience on this trip?  Before becoming a father I looked forward to evenings around the fire on canoe trips.  As it turned out we had little free time.  Apart from an intermittent conversation about the dwindling moral of American troops in Iraq, we did not have time for the external world.

There seemed to be broad consensus that next time we should schedule a few days on which we do not move camp.  At least we would have a chance to do what ostensibly vacationing middle-aged adults do best in pristine natural surroundings: chat, drink coffee, swim, sunbathe, read, quaff some wine, look around and avoid exertion. 

For me there is still a melancholy sense of parting at the end of even a brief wilderness journey.  Is it because I learn once again that I cannot live in these hauntingly serene places, that I must go back to the rest of my life?  As we approached the harbour at Britt and a return to the extravagant luxuries of indoor plumbing I noticed a tinge of sadness among our kids.  This magical tribe of instant friends was about to be broken apart and scattered across the country. 

For the adults there were sighs of relief.  Now we were returning to our familiar routines.  We would soon no longer be subject to the rhythms of weather, waves, fatigue and daylight.  We could rest in the illusion of total control once again.

What started out as a chance to spend some time with old friends on a canoe trip wound up being something less and something much more.  None of the adults had a chance to spend very much undistracted time together.  The days were too full.  

But did we give something to our kids that they will remember? A few weeks before the trip I lost an old friend in his mid-fifties to lymph cancer.  In telling another friend about this death, we soon found ourselves talking about a canoe trip we had done together 20 years ago. 

In the end it is not our career achievements or the money we earned that we will remember.  It is those moments when we stood utterly alive, outside of time with those we loved as we took risks and traveled through wild country, unsure of our route but certain of our destination. 

By the end of the trip, what I saw in my daughters’ eyes gave me hope that in some small way we provided them with an indelible set of cherished life-long memories.  What else can we really give our kids?