Sunday, June 16, 2013

For My Dad.

AllTheGamesThatFit
SportsDadVille


When I was a kid my brothers and I played all manner of sports.

Everywhere.

And we often did the playing with our Dad.

And the playing of said sports, some real, some made-up, was often on beaches, in lacrosse boxes, on fields and in ice-rinks.

And sometimes those fields and, more than once, those ice-rinks were in the backyard of the house where we all grew up.

So...

First up is a song about houses and Dads and such that you can listen to while you read, if you like, something that has become a bit of a tradition around here down below....




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My old man was a Union man.

And the folks in the Union fought like bastards...And they fought constantly, usually for the tiniest of things in each successive contract...things like an extra quarter percent on a COLA clause, or one little add-on like an extra free filling per year on the dental plan.

And when I was a kid, especially during that time when I was a barely no-longer-a-teenager-aged kid, I thought the folks from the Union were just a little bit off their nut....All that energy going into what, exactly?

After all, it was the 80's, and Dave Barrett and the Socialist Hordes were long gone, and the Wild Kelowna boys were rolling along, and Unions were bad, and Expo was coming, and Trudeau was going, and John Turner was hiccupping, and Mulroney was lurking, somewhere off in the distance....

....And if you were a half-bright, apolitical science-geek kind of kid like me, breezing your way through college and thinking about graduate school, you laughed when you saw the boy wonder from Burnaby, Michael J. Fox, shirk his Family Ties and ape the young Republicans while making fun of his willfully neutered Leftie of a Dad on the TV screen...

....And if you were that kid, you thought that you were living in a golden age that was tied, not to the social democratic reforms of the past, but to the coming of Free Trade and the promises of the Reaganites from the South...

...And from that perspective you sure as heck didn't always get the irony of Bruce Springsteen singing about the plight of the working class in 'Born in the USA'.

But now that I have spent a good chunk of time in USA where I started a family of my own before coming home, I do get it.

I understand that my Dad spent his entire adult life hauling logs up and down the West Coast, working his guts out to help keep the robber baron families rich because he had to make a living to support his own family....

....And I get the fact that, because of the Unions, my family's standard of living gradually improved, bit by bit, over the years so that by the time I had grown up to be that callow young man described above my parents had saved enough to help me go to University....

....And I get the fact that I was the first one in my family who got to go to University....Ever.....And it wasn't because I was so damned smart....

....And I get the fact that, while my parents' limited financial help and support was important, it would never have been enough to get me into the same good schools if I had arrived on the scene a single generation earlier or, perhaps, later....

....And I get the fact that those Wild Kelowna Boys, and all the other neo-conlibcorp types that have come and gone since, have been doing their damndest to destroy the dream of a University education for all, and instead have instituted an elitist education for some and one-trick-pony Technical training for everybody else.....

....And I get the fact that, if it wasn't for folks like my Dad and the other lefties of his time, my current world, one in which I make a living with my eyes and my mind wide open, would not be what it is today.....

....And most of all, I now get the fact that my Dad was, and is, my hero.



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One of the sports we rarely played as kids was baseball....It was not our Dad's best game...It also had a very low 'cream-'em' quotient which was high on our list back then...Weird then how much fun I've always had playing the game with my own kids...Sometimes at the beach, sometime not (please note our most excellent non-human guys behind the plate...
And the backyard ice-rink thing was not easy growing up in Victoria...

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9 comments:

James King said...

Just read your piece aloud to my wife...and I have to admit there was a tiny hint of a tear at the corner of my eye by the time I finished it.

Don't know if that's so much a consequence of what we both thought was the sad but essential truth of where we also came from or a reflection of the sad but essential fact that - after May 14 - I'm not at all sure where we're going any more.

Although so very much has changed, I'm pretty sure those two lovely daughters of yours will be saying something equally true, heartfelt and profound about their father too.

Thank you.

James King said...

I should have mentioned that reading your thoughts about your Dad and reflecting upon the 'values' of unions and the fading concept of progress brought to mind an article by Andrew O'Hagen in the May 23/2013 issue of the New York Review of Books...
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/may/23/maggie/

It's called 'Maggie' and it's not a love story!

RossK said...

Thanks James--

And not to worry too much.

I'm pretty sure that we'll get things righted down the road.

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Glen Clark said...

Great little entry for fathers day!I totally relate the older I get!
Glen

cherylb said...

Amen to that brother....

e.a.f. said...

Great article. what many take today for granted was fought for by Unions. In 1981 when we were on strike over maternity leave/pay, on of the guys said he remembered his Dad going on strike at G.M. to increase their coffee break time. In 1981, we thought that had always been a right. No, someone had to fight for it. Most baby boomers benefited from the fight our parents in Unions conducted, to give us the life we had/have. Unions were the ones who fought for over time, medical benefits, health and safety, an 8 hr day.

Upp a lot of Dads did us a lot of favours by working and fighting.

RossK said...

GC--

Relate as the old, no-longer kid or the Dad?

(come to think of it, guess they're not mutually exclusive

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cherylb!

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e.a.f.

Someone had to fight for it all, indeed.

That's the thing, isn't it....We seem to be so willing to just give up all the things that somebody else had to fight for...Things we all benefit from...That's why I never understand the thinking of so many folks that those things fought for are bad for them and theirs (although I very much understand the 'strategy' that leads them to it).

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Anonymous said...

I read this piece every year.It never fails to move me.
I spent close to four months working on a tug that sank with all the crew just weeks after I got off.This loss of life and of others on similar vessels plus the conditions and bad wages made many of us Union Men.We fought and won gains in wages,accomodation[below federal prison standards],leave ,health and welfare and pensions .To live like human beings we did fight like bastards for each and every scrap.
Looking back I realize just how nervy and determined we were .We really had no idea of ever backing down.
Now all those gains stand to be washed away in the race to the bottom

RossK said...

Thanks Anon.

The folks who have been bamboozled into voting and/or working against their own interests is bad enough.

But, thanks to the fantastic public education I received (in addition to all the support of my parents) I'm really lucky to be reasonably upwardly mobile, and I am constantly surprised by the folks I run into with a similar background and station who have become vehement ladder puller-uppers. It's really distressing.

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