October 26, 1990: I picked up my final cheque for $475 and ended my career as a landscaper

Thirty years ago today 

            I got up at 6:14 and rushed to pick up my final paycheque, hoping that Henry would still be there when I arrived. I decided to catch the eastbound car since there was none in view on its way west. As I rode I looked ahead at intersections to see if there were any northbound buses to take me up to the subway, but there weren't and so I stayed on until Yonge. I made pretty good time. 

            I got there just in time to get my cheque. It included vacation pay and so it was for $475. 

            I went to the muffin place, had coffee and read the papers. 

            I thought that since I was already almost at Finch I might continue north to Richmond Hill to go to Moulinex and buy the missing part from the blender I'd found. But when I called the transit companies that could take me there I learned that they didn't have a service that would take me to that address after rush hour. So I skipped it and headed home. 

            Nancy was still there when I arrived. I went to bed and got up in the afternoon. 

            I called the post office to find out about working there during the Christmas rush and found out their hours for Tuesday.

Dreams

            On Sunday morning I had about half of “A la pêche des coeurs" (Fishing for Hearts) by Boris Vian translated. 

            I continued editing “Tennisman” by Serge Gainsbourg on Christian’s Translations to place the chords in their proper places. 

            For lunch I had four year old Canadian cheddar with crackers.

            I took a siesta in the afternoon and ended up sleeping for an extra half an hour. 

            I read half of The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline. White people have lost the ability to dream but Indigenous people haven’t. Somehow the white people have learned that they can retrieve this ability at least temporarily by extracting the marrow from Native people. The Indigenous people who aren’t in league with the white people are on the run and they have to return to the old ways to survive. The narrator is a Métis teenager named Frenchie and he has joined a diverse family of other Native fugitives who are heading north. Their leader is Miig, who knows many of the old ways. The elder is wise but senile old woman. There are three other young men, two women and two children, all unrelated. As they travel and face experiences along the way we hear their individual and often horrible stories that led them into running. At this point in the story they’ve come across a camp of two Indigenous men but they don’t know yet if they are friends or foes. 

            Everything about this story except for the dreams and the marrow is fairly plausible. There are people without bone marrow who need regular blood transfusions to replenish their white blood cells in order to survive, but if they didn't dream I'm pretty sure that would be front page news. Also the idea that global warming causes earthquakes is a little shaky but not totally without scientific backup. Changes in moisture under the Earth may affect tectonic plates. But I think that promoting the idea that Indigenous people are physically and mentally different from everyone else is a racist and dangerous way to go. 

            My landlord called to say he’d come by but I hadn't heard him knock. He said he'd come the next day. I reminded him to turn on the heat. He asked, “Why? Is it cold?" I said it has been cold and I told him that the city bylaw says that he’s supposed to turn on the heat by September 21, no matter what. He said, “I don't know about any law!" Then he argued that if the heat were turned on people would be too warm. It's so nice of him to be concerned that his tenants aren’t too warm in the autumn. It's also great for him that his consideration is rewarded by saving money on heat. 

            I decided to make burgers out of the tube of ground chicken I’d gotten from the food bank in the summer. But when I opened it up after thawing the meat inside was too semi-liquid to form into patties. I had to improvise by adding stuffing mix to the meat until it was manageable. I made two burgers and had one with chili sauce, mustard and scotch bonnet sauce on dark rye while watching Interpol Calling.

            In Paris, Zita McGrath is watching her race car driver husband, Cliff McGrath on television as he races in the long two-man Mille Miglia car race in Italy. But suddenly Cliff appears with a gun and kills her. In the race a surrogate is sitting beside Cliff’s brother Mike. Cliff heads for the airport to get back to the race before the finish. Meanwhile Duval is brought in to help investigate the murder. The suspect is Zita’s lover, who says he saw the killer drive off in Zita’s car. Duval believes him. The gun is traced to a man who says he sold it to an Irishman. Cliff makes it to Zurich. Zita’s car is found near Orly airport and Duval learns that someone meeting the gun seller’s description bought a ticket for Zurich. The police are waiting there but Cliff slips out and steals a sports car. Roadblocks are set up but he gets through several. Duval begins to consider the impossible notion that Cliff somehow murdered his wife and he heads for the finish line of the race. Cliff stows away on top of a truck and then boards a train, which he jumps near the rendezvous point with his brother. He stops the car, exchanges clothes with the surrogate, they kill the surrogate, drag him in the bushes and rejoin the race. The McGrath brothers win the race but they are called to the control room. Duval tells Cliff that he couldn’t have been driving all day because the lucky medallion he wears is not even soiled with mud like his brother’s. They are both arrested. 

            Zita was played by Margaret Diamond, who had bit part in British movies and TV series.

Nina Simone

            On Saturday morning I translated the second verse of “A la pêche des coeurs" (Fishing for Hearts) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished working out the chords for “Tennisman” by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through it in French and English. Then I uploaded it to Christian’s Translations and began the editing process. 

            In the late morning I went to No Frills where I bought two bags of green grapes, one of red, a pint of strawberries, a half pint of raspberries, a strawberry-rhubarb pie (Why doesn’t anyone sell just rhubarb pies?), mouthwash (It took a while to find it because they switched the aisle so everything that was previously at the front is now at the back, except I guess for everything in the middle), and a jug of orange juice. When I got home all the raspberries had spilled in my bag. 

            I had crackers and old cheddar for lunch. 

            After a siesta I spent almost four hours finishing reading Brother by David Chariandi. At times it’s quite well written and he tells the story well. It has a few funny scenes and some interesting cultural references, such as the descriptions of West Indian food being cooked and eaten and an interesting description of the art that goes into being a Hip Hop DJ. But it’s a very sad story for the most part about a poor family falling apart and a brother being murdered by a cop. There were some interesting musical references such as Otis Clay’s "Lasting Love" and two songs that Nina Simone recorded: "I'm Feeling Good" by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse; and "Ne me quitte pas" by Jacques Brel, which I’ve translated and sing regularly in French and English. 

            I made pizza for dinner with another lengthwise slice of the round loaf of fruit nut bread as crust topped with sauce and old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching Interpol Calling. 

            In this story a very clever extortionist signing his name only as “George” firebombs a warehouse in Germany insured by a large company in London. He threatens to do even worse damage if he is not given 100,000 pounds. Duval tells the company to follow his instructions because Interpol can track someone with that amount. But the police think it’s an opportunity to catch him with the goods. Duval advises against it but come along. The money is left in a briefcase on a park bench. A boy on a bicycle puts it in his basket. They follow him but the boy rides down an alley that won't fit a police car and a few blocks afterward hands it to George who is wearing a hat and sunglasses. The boy Johnny is picked up but didn’t know it he was doing something criminal. Duval says something like I told you so. Duval knows that George knows that the serial numbers of the bills have been recorded by Interpol and so he would go to a non-Interpol participating country to exchange the bills. The two nearest are Iceland and Iraq and George and his girlfriend Carol go to Iceland. The plan is for Carol to split the money among all the banks in Reykjavik and then in two days draw it out in smaller notes. But Duval anticipates this and asks the International Banking Association to block the deposits. George is forced to try to sell the money on the black market in Tangiers but Duval; anticipates that as well. He coordinates with the police in Tangiers where Captain Ahmed informs him that there are five people that would buy George’s money. What they have done is issue warnings to four of them so that George will be steered towards the one that works out of a certain café where Duval and Ahmed wait. Several people come in over the next several hours until George enters and is shocked to see Johnny sitting at a table. By his surprise, Duval knows this is George and he is arrested. 

            I answered next week’s Canadian Literature tutorial question: 

            The ghosts of memory and mourning in David Chariandy’s Brother exist in a different context than the ghosts to which Al Birney refers in his poem “Canlit”. Canada did not lose 2.5% of its population in an internal conflict that ripped the nation apart in more ways than one. It is to the ghosts of an entire country that Birney refers when he says that "it is only by our lack of ghosts we are haunted" and he means that Canada did not have the deaths from such a cataclysmic event as the US Civil War to haunt us, nor a poet like Walt Whitman to convey that haunting and to thereby become a haunting ghost in himself. Birney did not mean that Canadian communities, families and individuals are not haunted by ghosts. He means that there is less of a national literature in Canada because there was not such a devastating national event as the Civil War to inspire it. 

  

            I also wrote my weekly question in response to the British Literature readings: 

            In Spenser’s The Faerie Queen the narrator personifies Chastity and identifies her with Queen Elizabeth I. Is all of this praise of chastity simply a way of flattering Queen Elizabeth and would the story take a different form if she'd been married? 

            I started reading The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline. I didn’t get very far but according to the summary it’s a science fiction story in which, after the global warming apocalypse, white people have lost the ability to dream and so they must drain the bone marrow of Indigenous people in order to be able to do that. It could happen!

October 25, 1990: Susan paid me the $30 we'd arranged for helping her cheat, plus an extra $10 for the high mark she got

Thirty years ago today

            I worked until about 2:00 on Susan's school project and considered it finished. Nancy took it with her when she left for work in the morning. 

            I got up around 11:30 and went out to get the papers so I could start looking for a new job. I bought some stuff at the supermarket and a coffee and then went home for breakfast. 

            I read the papers and then called the CKLN radio station. I wrote a discography for my DJ demo tape and a paragraph describing the theme of my project. I put it all into an envelope and took it downtown to the station at Ryerson. The production manager told me that he'd be able to listen to it next Thursday and then he'd give me some feedback. 

            When I got home Nancy was there. 

           Susan came over to pay me the $30 we'd arranged for helping her cheat, plus an extra $10 for the high mark she got.

Leigh Madison

            On Friday morning I worked out most of the chords for “Tennisman” by Serge Gainsbourg. There are just a couple of changes near the end to figure out. 

            A little before noon I went to do my laundry. The usual middle aged Korean couple weren’t minding the place this time but the much friendlier and more enthusiastic who looks Chinese was there instead. He came around after I’d put my laundry in the machines to ask if everything was okay and then to tell me it would be half an hour. 

            I went home for a while, then back to put my stuff in the dryer, then home and then pack to pick it up. It was just after 13:00 when I was finished. 

            I had chips, salsa and yogourt for lunch. 

            My body’s been feeling stiff lately because of very little bike riding. 

            I finished reading the required selections from books one and three of Spenser’s The Faerie Queen. Britomart is a female knight who is the embodiment of chastity. She is the fictional ancestor of Queen Elizabeth I and may actually be her. She travels in faerie land posing as a male knight with the knight Artegall, who I thought was Arthur but I guess he isn’t. There’s a funny scene where a woman tries to seduce Britomart and slip into bed with her, not realizing she is a lady. 

            I read more than a quarter of Brother by David Chariandi, about two sons of a Trinidadian mother growing up in the rough neighbourhood around Lawrence and the Rouge River in Scarborough. The story is told by the younger brother about his elder sibling Francis, who got into some trouble and it seems he died, though it hasn’t been revealed how yet. The mother is shattered with grief and has lost some of her mind. I don’t know the specific neighbourhood but I have ridden my bike in similar areas not far from there. I think he made the area up because there’s no Lawrence Avenue Bridge over the Rouge Valley. Lawrence ends just at the Rouge River. He might mean Highland Creek. The roughest neighbourhood along Lawrence is around there, I think at Kingston Rd. 

            I had two small potatoes a slice of roast beef and gravy while watching Interpol Calling. 

            A young Dutch woman named Emmy Van Veer is helping a journalist named Slater research the circumstances that had led to her brother Onno’s death fifteen years before. He was a member of the Dutch resistance and was shot. She gives Slater a photo of Onno and a hundred gilder note that had been among the money that Onno was trying to deliver to the resistance before he was killed. What Emmy doesn’t realize is that Onno is still alive. Slater is killed by Onno and his research notes are stolen. Onno’s death was faked, he changed his name and he and a Nazi named Esler took the 300,000 gilders to go into an export business together. Esler tells Onno that Emmy is a liability. Duval learns that a wartime issue 100 gilder note was found on Slater. He also discovers that Esler was the German officer who had ordered Onno’s execution. Duval questions Esler but he reveals nothing. Esler decides to go to Amsterdam. When Onno hears of this he realizes that Esler plans to kill his sister. When Duval goes to check the office of Esler’s partner in Amsterdam he realizes that he is Onno. He thinks Emmy might be in danger. When Esler comes to kill Emmy Onno surprises his sister by revealing himself to be still alive. He steps in front of the bullet meant for Emmy just before Duval arrives. They follow Esler to a boat on one of the canals and capture him in the hold. 

            Emmy was played by Leigh Madison, who co-starred in the British TV series “Our House" and the movie “Behemoth the Sea Monster”.

October 24, 1990: It seemed appropriate to be tearing at barbecued chicken in the dark while watch Quest for Fire

Thirty years ago today

            It was my last day working at DeBoer's Landscaping. I told Henry I'd pick up my cheque on Friday morning as usual. 

            We finished at 15:45 and so I had a chance to go home, change and work on Susan's school project before meeting Nancy at the Bloor to see "Quest for Fire". 

            Nancy bought Swiss Chalet and it seemed appropriate to be tearing off pieces of chicken in the dark while watching a cave man movie. 

            Nancy loved the film. 

           I worked on Susan's assignment as soon as I got home. 

           Susan called to ask when it would be ready. We arranged to have Nancy bring it up to Finch station the next morning as I would be labouring over it past midnight.

Sandra Dorne

            On Thursday morning I translated the first verse of “A la pêche des coeurs" (Fishing for Hearts) by Boris Vian. 

            I worked out the chords for the verses and the chorus of “Tennisman” by Serge Gainsbourg. All that’s left should be the bridge and maybe the ending. 

            My guitar is still giving me tuning trouble but I can’t take it to Remenyi until December after my final exam has been written. 

            At around 11:00 I logged on for this week’s Canadian Literature tutorial. 

            Our essay outline is due on November 3. It needs to be one to two pages in point form and no more than 2.5 pages. The essay itself will be six to eight pages or 1800-2500 words. A topic is not a thesis. The topics are listed on Quercus. It is a research essay that requires two to four academic sources, which could include, journal articles, chapters from edited book collections, reviews, interviews with the author, or newspaper articles. Limit research so that it doesn’t get too cumbersome. A narrow topic explored in depth is better than several shallowly explored topics. One can go incredibly narrow, even exploring one word. Focus on key terms like a specific theme from this course. Present a short paragraph explaining your rationale for choosing your thesis to approach this topic and how your thesis will argue the point. Present two to four main points to develop your thesis and give textual evidence for each point. Research and analysis need to build on your points. List your research sources and explain how they will help with your thesis. Analysis should explain how you plan to approach your textual evidence and what kind of interpretation you plan to develop. Present one to two lines to explain what your conclusion will be. Connect the textual evidence with your thesis. Focus on analysis rather than paraphrasing. 

            The Ask the Author assignment is due in twenty four days but my partner has not responded yet to my reach out. 

            Our short essays have been graded but the feedback needs to be reviewed by the professor before we get them back. 

            As I suspected, Professor Kamboureli is supervising Kelly’s dissertation. I wonder if that's a conflict of interest. Supervising a PHD candidate is a nurturing role and so if a student had a dispute with a TA the professor is supervising then the professor might defend the TA like a bear protecting her cub. 

            Some of the books in this course are so recent that not many books will reference them. 

            I asked if this whole thing about submitting an essay outline is new, since I made it to fourth year and only first had to submit an essay outline last year. She said it depends on the professor. 

            One doesn’t have to fit the thesis of the final essay exactly with the essay statement of the outline, but it should be roughly on the same topic. 

            The average marks for our short essays were 73-74. That seems pretty low. 

            She referenced something called “The Hamburger Essay" which some people remembered from high school. Looking it up I see that it's just a layered essay with five paragraphs: introduction, three body paragraphs and a conclusion. 

            The tutorial runs from 11:10 to 12:00 and at 11:40 we were still talking about the final essay.

            For the remainder we discussed Rohinton Mistry's "Squatter". I said poop is always a good metaphor. Some students found that part of the story disgusting. 

            I said the character of Savakshaw is extremely successful in an unrealistic way while Sarosh is an unrealistic spectacular failure. 

            I pointed out that Wonder Bread has come up in two stories so far and presented as something which is typically Canadian and yet Wonder Bread isn't Canadian. It's from the States. I guess it's possible that mentioning it references Canada’s tendency to borrow from the States and referring to white culture as “white bread" has been a common trope for decades. 

            I said the doctor that Sarosh visits seems to be a nod to James Bond's "Dr No", with the name “Dr No-Ilaaz” and with the sinister sounding radio controlled device that he suggested that Sarosh could have implanted. She argued that the doctor wasn’t sinister in this story and so she thought his name was more about discouragement. I found out that Ilaaz means either "treatment” or “cure” and so he’s a doctor named "No Cure". But he wouldn't have to be a villain to be a nod to Dr No. It could be an ironic reference. Dr No’s device for blocking missiles was also radio controlled and he had a guano mine. Guano is of course bat shit and so it would tie in with the scatological theme of the story.

            I had chips, salsa and yogourt for lunch. 

            In the afternoon I went to Freshco where I bought two bags of black grapes, one bag of green grapes, a pack of chicken drumsticks, a box of spoon size shredded wheat, old Canadian cheddar, margarine, canned peaches, hot salsa and Miss Vicky’s chips. 

            When I got home I caught up on my journal. I read the first canto of Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queen. Sir George the Knight, who doesn’t know he’s human because he was raised an elf in fairyland, is on a quest on behalf of a lady who is travelling with him along with a dwarf. They take shelter from the storm but wind up in a maze where he has to slay a dragon that is part woman and apparently represents the Catholic Church. After that they meet a wise old man who offers them shelter but while they are sleeping it turns out that he is an evil magician who weaves a spell to make George believe the lady is cavorting in bed with several lovers. He leaves with the dwarf in anger and rides away, leaving her behind. When she wakes up she rides after him but he is too far away. Meanwhile the magician disguises himself as George.

            I had a potato, a slice of roast beef and gravy for dinner. I’ve been using my oven so much to heat my place that I might have blown a fuse and so only the top coils work now. The roast beef was a bit rare but I ate it anyway while watching Interpol Calling. 

            This story begins with a woman named my meeting two men by the river. She hands a gun to one of the men and the other asks, “Where's mine?" She says. “You won't be needing one." He runs and is shot by the other man. The police find him in the Seine with no legitimate identification and his fingerprints showing nothing. Since his coat is from London the cops call Interpol. There are letters found in the coat pocket, mostly fake like his ID but one of them is faded and the lab fixes it to make it clearer. It’s a list of the initials of people that need to be kept quiet. The last one “MT” is dated for tomorrow. It says “MT is a sniff …” but the rest has been erased by water damage. The initials are murder victims and the dates fit with when they were killed. That means they have to find MT and prevent his death. Before each set of initials is another. Duval figures that the first set are those of the killers. He thinks that they are dealing with an organization of paid killers similar to Murder Incorporated twenty years before in the United States. They learn that the dead man was Thomas Mills, one of the killers. Mills’s letter was addressed to someone named Harry. Duval goes to London to look for him and Scotland Yard introduces him to Steve Taylor who helped round up Murder Incorporated in New York. He says in ten years the organization committed one thousand murders. Duval goes to see Helen, the wife of Thomas Mills in prison. She doesn’t seem to care that he's dead but as they are leaving she tells him that the man he wants is Harry Walters. When they find Harry all he knows is where Tom lived. They go there but the landlord says he knows nothing. After they leave the woman and the gunman from the beginning emerge from a back hallway. Duval is still trying figure out “MT is a sniff" and a police officer tells him it could be Cockney rhyming slang, as in “Apples and pears" meaning stairs; “Rosie Lee” meaning tea, but they often drop the second part and just say “Up the apples" or "Cup a Rosie". He says "Sniff" might be short for "Sniff and snorter" meaning “reporter”, who sniffs in the news and snorts it out again. Duval says to look for any London reporters with initials MT. They find a crime reporter named Mike Tinton and his address. Meanwhile Amy and her men head for that address to kill him. Duval gets there just in time to stop the shooter but after they arrest him they don’t notice Amy. While Duval is talking with Tinton Amy comes in with a gun. Tinton recognizes her as Amy Barnetti, the wife of Murder Incorporated's top gunman. Duval surprises and disarms her.

            Amy was played by Annabel Maule who co-starred in the TV movie “Wuthering Heights" and in the TV series "Time of Day". She is British and had a very bad US accent. 

            Helen was played by Sandra Dorne, who had lead blonde bombshell roles in British suspense and horror B films in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but the work dwindled out when producers didn’t think she was sexy anymore.