During the days immediately following this minor schoolyard showdown, a few of my black friends invited me to their neighbourhood, located on the hill at the south end of Young Street. I had heard some white folks refer to the area as “Nigger Hill,” and I was told by the same people that no white kid ever went there. You can appreciate my surprise when I discovered the friendliest neighbourhood in town: there was an open space at the top of the hill, and in the winter the residents created a natural skating pond where I was told I would be welcome come first freeze-up. It was always a source of pride to me that I was welcomed there.
I made a lot of friends at school after that ridiculous fight, so I was more than a little disappointed when my mother told me that Dad had called and we were to join him in Vedder Crossing, British Columbia, as soon as my school year was finished. But I have to admit that the thought of a train trip of some three thousand miles from one coast to the other was enticing, to say the least.
During the glory days of Canadian rail travel, you could board a train on one side of the continent and not get off until you arrived at the other side. In between, you were coddled by a dedicated and efficient staff while being treated to a moving panorama of the second-largest country in the world and geographically one of the most diverse. Long stretches of wilderness were interrupted by tiny settlements where it seemed everyone, regardless of age, waved at the passing train. Since they’d taken the trouble to do so, I felt an obligation to wave back at every one of them. As a result, I spent most of my time glued to the window, awaiting the next sign of civilization and the next friendly greeting. My mother and sister merely watched the unfolding canvas of colours and shapes, oblivious to my higher calling as the train’s designated waver.
When the trans-Canada trains reached the West, there were two routes available through the Rocky Mountains. As a rule, Canadian National took the northern option, which entered the mountains at Jasper, while Canadian Pacific opted for the southern route, which had Banff as its entry point. I presume we were on Canadian National, because just before experiencing one of the most traumatic moments of my young life I remember seeing a sign on the railway station announcing “Jasper, Alberta.”
My mother loved ice cream, particularly in a cone. It was not available in that form on the train, so when she saw a sign above one of the doors on the train station that exclaimed “Double scoop 5 cents!” the temptation was overwhelming. Our conductor had told us there would be a ten-minute stop and that we were welcome to get off and stretch our legs if we were so inclined. I was given fifteen cents and told to bring back cones for the three of us, and not to dawdle as I only had a short time. I rushed into the station. There was only one person in front of me, and he was being served. So far, so good. Within no more than five minutes, I had my three cones and rushed out the door—to an empty siding. Our train was gone!
I looked up the track, expecting to see a trail of smoke disappearing into the mountains. Nothing. I looked back down the track. Empty! It didn’t take me long to conclude that I’d been abandoned, perhaps intentionally. A quick check of my surroundings was not encouraging. In 1952, Jasper was, to put it mildly, isolated. The train station was tiny and there was no living body in sight, though I presumed the ice cream man was still inside. I knew I was in Alberta, but that didn’t do me a lot of good because I was not sure where Alberta was in relation to where I was headed. And I was completely broke. So I started to eat the ice cream cones as fast as I could, before they melted, assuming that this might be my last meal—ever.
As I was finishing the third cone, I heard a noise to my left, coming from down the track. Lo and behold, a train was slowly approaching. As it pulled into the station, I desperately scanned the windows, looking for a familiar face, but I was not convinced that it was in fact “my” train. Then, to my considerable relief, I saw two females frantically gesturing from the other side of their window. Both my mother and my sister looked panic-stricken— until they saw my pitiful face, covered with ice cream, and they started to laugh. I was not amused.
My mother told me that moments after I jumped off the train, it had started to back down the track. Mum had accosted the poor conductor, reminding him that he’d said we would be stopped for ten minutes and advising him in no uncertain terms that her son was still in the station. He reassured her that they were merely going to a siding for a few minutes to change tracks and that they would soon return to the station. Mum never let me off the train again until we reached our destination of Chilliwack the next day.
Military housing was, and continues to be, a problem for the Canadian Forces. Today it is generally inferior to equivalent civilian homes, which should come as no surprise, considering that most of them were constructed in the 1940s and ’50s. Since that time, a conservative estimate would suggest that the rent collected from their military occupants has paid for each and every building at least fifteen times over. Not one cent of that rent has gone back into maintenance; rather, it has found its way into successive governments’ general revenues, with the predictable result that military housing has not kept pace with that in the surrounding civilian communities.
In the 1950s, the problem was somewhat different. Permanent married quarters (PMQs) were allocated geographically by rank. Senior officers—that is, all ranks of major and above—were in one area, while junior officers were in another. Non-commissioned ranks were segregated as well, with privates (sappers, in the case of the military engineers) and corporals in one area, sergeants and staff sergeants in another, and warrant officers first and second class in yet another. It was expected that each rank group would socialize only among themselves, and that unofficial rule applied to families as well. Consequently, promotion caused a good deal of friction, particularly for the kids, as they were expected to change their friends when their father was elevated in rank.
The military also dictated the maintenance of these temporary homes. For example, they mandated when the grass had to be cut and what type of fence could be erected. This was all too much for my father, so we rented a small cottage in the beautiful summer resort settlement of Cultus Lake, a few miles from my dad’s military base at Vedder Crossing and inside a B.C. provincial park. The village’s population was about four hundred during the winter, but as soon as the good weather arrived, the number exploded to five times that. Every year, folks from Vancouver and smaller urban areas swarmed to their summer homes beside one of the most beautiful lakes in Canada. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
Starting with junior high school, kids from Cultus Lake and the other settlements in the area had to take a bus to one of two schools in Chilliwack. Since we had arrived three weeks after the school year had begun, I was more than a little intimidated on my first day of classes. On the positive side, I was taller than most of the other grade seven students—most of the grade eights, too, for that matter—and this gave me a degree of false self-confidence.
On my very first day at school, I dug myself a hole that would take me months to get out of. Halfway through my class, a plane flew over our school at a very low altitude. It sounded like it was going to come through the building, and at the peak of its engine roar, and thinking of Miss Bruce-Payne and the Blitz, I yelled: “Everyone down! The Germans are bombing!” I thought it was funny, but absolutely no one joined me in my laughter. Then I felt a sharp pain in my ear as the teacher, Miss Shaver, grabbed me by the lobe and marched me to the principal’s office. Miss Shaver went inside and spent a few short minutes with the principal. The door opened, and I was gestured inside.
What ensued was a one-way conversation that enlightened me to the fact that the majority of the farming population in the Chilliwack area were immigrants from Germany, some of whom had arrived before the war and others after. They were hard-working, dedicated new Canadian citizens, and I had just insulted them and at least half of my classmates. Today I might be quick enough to say that I meant to yell, that “the Nazis ” rather than “the Germans” were bo
mbing us, but back then all I could do was live with the mortification.
Being the new guy, and naive as well, I fell into the trap of confusing popularity with success. I quickly became the class clown and played to an audience of my peers. Miss Shaver was very perceptive, and at the end of our first term, to the horror of my parents, she probably described me better than any other teacher did during the next four years: “Lewis is a disrupting influence in the classroom. With his capabilities of leadership, he should be setting a much better example. He has a keen mind and an enthusiastic attitude, but he does not realize that for success in the future he must build a good foundation today. He wastes time. Lewis must also develop self-control. He allows his enthusiasm to control his actions. Certain formalities are required in a classroom, and until Lewis realizes this and settles down to work, of which he is capable, he will not achieve the results of which he is capable. Perhaps because he started school late this term and came from a different province he has felt that popularity is most important. However, next term I expect much better from Lewis.” Miss Shaver didn’t pull her punches.
If anything can be credited with dragging me off the path of self-destruction in school, it was team sports. In Princeport, the closest thing to organized sport was the annual egg-and-spoon race at the school picnic. Truro was not much better, except for the foot races to and from the bullies at school. Chilliwack, though, was different. The area was known for its sports teams, with soccer, basketball, volleyball and baseball at the head of the list. Hockey was on the horizon, too: the civic motto “Let’s skate in ’58” optimistically predicted the construction of an ice arena. When I left Chilliwack in 1956, the cry had changed to “Let’s try again in ’67,” so I never did get a chance to engage in the national pastime.
The second week into my stint at Chilliwack Junior High, all the students were gathered together in the gym to be selected for the various intramural sports teams. I had never played any of the sports then being organized, but since I was one of the tallest students in the crowd I was chosen in the first round for one of the basketball teams. When I explained to the team captain that I had never held a basketball, let alone played the game, he replied: “Look, Lewis, you see that key-shaped area painted on the floor in front of each basket? Just park yourself in there for three seconds at a time, and when we get the ball to you, put it in the basket. That’s all there is to it!” I took his advice, and during our first game I scored all our points— and we won! Almost immediately it began to dawn on me that, rightly or wrongly, popularity was somehow linked to athletic ability. Fellow students treated you differently; even teachers were friendlier, and your group in the schoolyard during breaks was bigger. Unfortunately, this increased attention had its downside as well: there was a tendency for the jocks to rule the roost, and many people must have thought we were a royal pain in the butt. At the time, though, it was a great way to fit in. I ended up playing all the major sports and became the captain of most of our teams. If anything, athletic success came too easily for me. Without trying too hard, I could perform well enough to be on the school teams. It would take a few years before the game would become more important to me than the hype and attention it brought my way.
Even at that early age, it seemed to me that there was an obvious link between athletic ability and leadership. This is not to say that every good athlete is a good leader, or that every good leader must have athletic ability. However, if the leader is good at team sports in particular, this gives him or her an advantage in motivating subordinates. This is particularly true in the military, where the Profession of Arms is a form of extreme competition with potentially deadly results when played for real. Recent research has shown a direct correlation between effective leadership and two disparate activities: the study of philosophy and team-sport athletic ability. I can’t say I’m surprised.
My four years in Cultus Lake, when I was between the ages of twelve and sixteen, were memorable, to say the least. But I wouldn’t be surprised if every older adult thinks of that period as something really special. What made Cultus Lake different from the other places I’d lived in were its summers, when all that decadence arrived from the big city of Vancouver—at least I thought it was decadence, and revelled in the thought.
There was no shortage of summertime employment there, and I worked during the daylight hours as an assistant lifeguard and at night as a skate cop at the local roller-skating rink. Both jobs brought me into daily contact with the 1950s version of the rich (anyone with a car) and famous (anyone we recognized who did not live in our community). Both jobs paid a dollar an hour, plus tips at the roller rink, which probably provided me with my lifetime-high discretionary purchasing power. I spent it on all the right things—girls, movies, junk food, bootleg liquor and gas for my older friends’ cars.
The only machine I’d operated before moving west was a neighbour’s tractor in Princeport, when I must have been no more than ten years old. I enjoyed the sensation of covering relatively long distances without any physical effort. Since I had to walk at least a mile to see any of my friends in the village, the idea of driving from point A to point B was particularly appealing. Thanks to the tutelage of my new brother-in-law, Donnie Chisholm—who’d left Old Barns outside of Truro, joined us in Cultus Lake and married my sister shortly after his arrival—I was a pretty good baseball pitcher. Following a couple of no-hitters in the Chilliwack’s under-sixteen league, I was invited to play for an under-twenty-one team in which virtually all my teammates had their own cars or drove their father’s. A couple of the more adventurous players let me drive their cars away from the main roads. It was not long before I was bitten by the automobile bug.
In 1954, we had a tiny 1949 four-cylinder Ford Anglia for family transport. Today that car’s body is a popular choice for motor-sport enthusiasts to wrap around a 1,000-horsepower engine on their way to the drag strip. Unfortunately, ours had 975 fewer horses and struggled up some of the hills between Chilliwack and Cultus Lake. To me, however, this represented a learning opportunity—as long as I was prepared to accept some risk. My father always attended happy hour on Friday nights and usually got home around 8 PM. He would have a quick nap and then, once a month, my mother would accompany him back to the Sergeants’ Mess at the military camp in Vedder Crossing, some three miles away. They would go with a friend or by taxi because my mother didn’t like to operate any car with a manual transmission and Dad knew he would be in no condition to drive later that night.
One day, as soon as they had left, I found the keys to the Anglia and eased it onto one of the many dirt trails that ran through the woods just behind Cultus Lake’s built-up area. This first attempt was a disaster: every friend’s car I had driven so far had an automatic transmission, and I obviously had not paid enough attention to what my father had done behind the wheel with a manual gearbox. I attempted to sneak out of the neighbourhood without being seen or heard, keeping the car lights turned off, but the crashing and grinding of gears foiled my clandestine efforts. Our neighbours peered from their windows to see where the hellish grinding noise was coming from, but fortunately, the back alley where Dad had parked the car was pitch black, so no one recognized me. Not that it would have made any difference; I was overcome with the euphoria of “flying solo” and was committed to making it to the trail through the woods, a mere hundred yards and multiple missed shifts away.
I was not deterred by this first solo fight, and at least once a month thereafter I’d head out to the woods. After an hour or so of negotiating the forest trails, I would make my way back to our lane. Because it was slightly downhill, I’d push the car to our back door. Usually the temptation to venture out in the car again would get the best of me, and I would repeat the process two or three more times the same evening. The Anglia didn’t use much gas, but with all the miles I was putting on it I started to hide a container in the woods adjacent to the soccer field, directly opposite the only gas station in the village. I would park the car
at the far end of the field, in the dark, and top up the tank to its original level after each foray. I guess Dad didn’t keep a close eye on the mileage because he never seemed to notice that once a month there was a significant increase in the Anglia’s odometer reading.
On my sixteenth birthday I was standing in front of the Chilliwack Driver’s Licence Bureau—a good hour before opening time. And an hour after opening time, a written and driving test later, I was on my way to a life of increased mobility.
A few weeks later my father was assigned to Fort Belvoir, south of Washington, D.C., for a one-month course with the United States Army Corps of Engineers, and he left the Anglia in my hands for safekeeping(!). Whenever bad weather closed down the swimming dock and the roller rink, I would take off in the car and cruise the main highway outside of Chilliwack for hitchhikers. I would pick up the first person or couple with their thumb out. They would ask, “Where are you going?” and I would respond, “Where are you going?” The reply was invariably “Vancouver,” some sixty miles away, and I would say, to the hiker’s delight: “I’ll take you!” Frequently I made the return trip without a passenger, but fortunately for my dad, when I did pick up someone leaving the city, no one ever said “Winnipeg” or “Toronto”!
At the age of thirteen I had lied about my age and joined the Air Cadets, primarily because quite a few of my friends were already members of the local squadron in Chilliwack. Each summer we went off to camp at the Abbotsford air base, just twenty miles down the road towards Vancouver. The highlight of the month was a flight in a twin-engine Expeditor on a flight plan that always took us over Cultus Lake. By the time my third camp rolled around, I was appointed the NCO in charge of the British Columbia contingent—an appointment I held for about six hours. An overly keen staff officer did some quick calculations and determined that if I was fifteen then, for me to have two previous camps under my belt I must have lied about my age when joining the cadets two years earlier. I was immediately relieved of my first command.
Soldiers Made Me Look Good Page 3
