Wartime Flash

"It was so sad, because the men were all yelling and happy and you knew in another couple of weeks they wouldn't be so happy. Some would be under ground and I would be taking pictures of their funerals."

Irene Ogilvie, right, during the Second World War

"(The photographs) were so awful ... (they) had these bodies lined up like matchsticks. I remember looking at them and thinking it was just terrible. I never dreamed Belsen was as bad as it was."
Irene Ogilvie, 94, Perley and Rideau Veteran's Health Centre, Ottawa

Back then, during the Second World War, the Royal Canadian Air Force offered the young woman living in London, originally from the Canadian prairies, a job as a war photographer. With her Speed Graphic camera, courtesy of the Air Force, she became one of a group of other young women tasked to chronicle the lives of Canadian troops in film.

They were never dispatched to Europe, to the war zones. London itself became a war zone, blitzed from constant German fighter raids meant to demoralize the civilian population and destroy the government's will to resist Nazi Germany's determination to make of Britain what it had already managed in most of the rest of Europe on its way to establishing its thousand-year Reich.

She took photographs of the arrivals of Canadian troops off ships, she ventured out to hospitals and special war-time events, to funerals and weddings, wherever her presence and her camera could take photographic mementos of events later to be recalled with pride, nostalgia and regret. Some of her photographs remain with the Air Force, and some of them accompanied her to her room at the Perley.

There is another elderly woman with memories, Squibs Mercier, 89, married and widowed during the war years. Squibs Mercier was married at 18 and the war gave her widowhood by the age of 19. Her first husband was shot down in action. She met another pilot after the war, and outlived him, another resident of the Perley and Rideau Health Centre who predeceased her.

Irene Ogilvie on the other hand met a Canadian airman through an acquaintance. "It was love at first sight", she said. This was the man destined to become her husband. She and he planned a night out at the American Eagle Club in London. She dressed herself to the nines, but he simply didn't show up. And then she heard from his commander he had been shot down and presumed dead.

Eventually they learned he was in a POW camp. They met again, in Canada after the war and in 1946 they married, began a life together and had two children. Of life, says Squibs Mercier: "I don't know about staying calm, but you carried on or you sank. Whatever happens in life, you have to deal with it and carry on."

 A wartime portrait of Irene Ogilvie.  Photograph by: Chris Mikula , Ottawa Citizen

Remembering A Life

"She made a mean beef Stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. 'The world's best mom', her son Matthew said".
Obituary, The New York Times -- Yvonne Brill, rocket scientist

No, really, this woman was incredibly extraordinary, exceptional before her time. Her time dated from working in rocket science in the mid-1940s, that's how much ahead of the times this woman was. Her fine scientific mind had another component; that of a wife and a mother sensitive to the needs of her family.

She has died at the age of eighty-eight, in Princeton, New Jersey. Celebrated for her development of a thruster used for positioning satellites in orbit above Earth. Celebrated otherwise as a mother whose passing is mourned by her children. In her time she was the only woman involved in rocket science when she was involved with the initial designs for an American satellite.

In her extremely important role as a mother, however, she chose to step away from the mind-bending brilliance of rocket science to devote her undivided time to raising her family of three children. When she was satisfied that she had performed that maternal obligation fully, she returned after a decade-and-a-half to formulate plans for her greatest achievement.

She worked for NASA in the 1980s, and was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 2011 by President Barack Obama during a White House ceremony acknowledging the design of her rocket system. The New York Times obituary which dwelled on her domestic accomplishments as much as her scientific prowess, unleashed a storm of controversy on social media.

People wrote of their outrage that this extraordinary woman, an accomplished and decorated scientist in a discipline that celebrates those rare minds of genius, would have her obituary pay tribute to her role as wife and above all, mother. Far too fundamental, a mere veneer over her far greater accomplishments as a scientist. Outrageously sexist.

Her son Matthew, celebrating The world's best mom", must surely be sighing, thinking of his mother's choice deliberation in surrendering herself to motherhood in all its complexities of nurturance, laying aside temporarily the scientist in herself, giving more than ample indication of which role she gave priority to.

Knowing that, when she felt she had accomplished what she had set out to do in that starring role, she would be prepared to resume her fruitfully rewarding life as a rocket scientist. The obituary critics are dead wrong.

Muhammad Idrees: Abandoned by India and Pakistan

By Rupa Jha BBC Hindi, Kanpur and Delhi  BBC News online

Muhammad Idrees just wants to go back to his family

What price can a man end up paying up for the crime of overstaying in a foreign land for three days?

Thirteen years, in the case of Muhammad Idrees.

In 1999, Mr Idrees left his wife and four young sons in Pakistan's port city of Karachi to attend to his sick father in the Indian city of Kanpur. He was born in India, and had moved to Pakistan and become its citizen after he married a cousin in Karachi.

His father died soon after he reached Kanpur. In the chaos and grief that followed this personal loss, Mr Idrees overstayed for three days and his visa ran out.

So did his luck.

When he went to the authorities in Kanpur to seek a visa extension, they suspected him of spying for Pakistan and put him behind the bars. It took 10 years for a court to exonerate him of the charge, fine him 500 rupees ($9.17; £5.68) for overstaying and order his repatriation.

Justice delayed is justice denied, and in the case of Mr Idrees, even justice delivered did not turn out to be liberating.

For 13 years in all, he has been trying to return home without success.

According to India's Ministry of External Affairs, Mr Idrees travelled to India on a Pakistani passport (number G057703), issued in Karachi, on 10 May 1999. To add to his woes, his passport expired in 2003.

Mr Idrees says this is his Indian visa application document

But Pakistan denies he is a citizen, and believes he has separated from his wife and has been disowned by his family.

"Our interior ministry told us that he's not a Pakistani citizen. To our knowledge he's separated from his wife and his in-laws. They disown him. We have communicated this to Indian authorities," Manzoor Ali Memon, spokesperson of Pakistan's High Commission in India, told me.

Today, at 40, Muhammad Idrees is a nowhere man, a victim of unkind fate and hostile borders.
I met him in Kanpur, a fume-choked industrial city in Uttar Pradesh, on a balmy morning recently to listen to his heart-rending story.

Mr Idrees is a frail man with a gaunt face and intense eyes. He's dressed in white shirt and trousers and his only possession, a cloth bag, is slung around his neck. It contains some fraying papers, a comb, a tooth brush, a tube of tooth paste, a towel and some fading family pictures.

We walk to the relative solitude of the banks of the Ganges and sit down. Mr Idrees catches his breath, looks into the distance and begins talking in a clear, low voice.

He says he spends his waking hours clinging onto memories of time spent with his family back home in Karachi, where he ran a small business selling leather goods. It feels like an eternity, he says.
"I would take my wife and our four children on my motorbike for a drive down the windswept seaside in Karachi. We would laugh and chat. We would stop to have ice creams. Just like any other family."

This was before his world turned black.

It was before, he says, two nations and their strange, intractable ways, conspired to deny him from returning home.

"India should have sorted out my case in time and not wasted my precious years. Pakistan should have given me a fresh passport. I wasted 10 years in a court and three years chasing officials. Why are they ruining my life?"

'Give me back my life'
 
He tells me stories of his life spent as a castaway, denied his citizenship and stripped of his livelihood and dignity.

They are stories of a time when he began making small leather bags after being bailed out of prison to pay for his legal fees. Of a time when his parents died and his relatives, including his brothers, in Kanpur, broke off all contact and denied him a room in his father's home. Of a time when he moved into a shelter home where, he says, he "began to lose it" after having an accident.

"I felt like taking my life. I behaved like a mad man. But I received no treatment. Instead, they kicked me out of the home," he says calmly.

Since then he has wandered the streets alone, begging and living off the charity of kind-hearted citizens. At night, he has has slept in government hospitals, abandoned buildings, empty offices - cold, impersonal public buildings that are the last refuge of a hopeless vagrant.

Mr Idrees says he wants to return home to see his children growing up

 

"It's been a painful journey. If I have lived through such hellish experiences, it's all because I want to return home and meet my children," says Mr Idrees.
"Just give me back my life."

To find out why nobody's listening to him, I spent three days with him trying to meet officials and find out why his countless trips to them had yielded no results.

Eventually, I manage to meet Manoj Aggarwal, the senior-most official of Kanpur city, in his office.
"It's not an easy case. We are in touch with the Pakistani embassy [to issue Mr Idrees a passport]," he tells me.

But how can there be no solution in sight after 13 years?

"We are waiting for a response from Pakistan. But it's Idrees's fault as well. He shouldn't have overstayed," says Mr Aggarwal.

Until he is repatriated, I ask, should the state not be taking care of Mr Idrees, giving him food, shelter and work?

"He was given shelter," says Mr Aggarwal. "But he keeps running away."

But hasn't Mr Idrees been thrown out of a shelter home, which refuses to take him back?
"He has been helped by charity."
 
What about ensuring him a permanent shelter at least until he is returned home? I ask.
"Yes," says Mr Agarwal bluntly.

What happens if Pakistan refuses to issue him a fresh passport?
"Let's see."

The conversation ends, and we leave his office. We return to the banks of Ganges.

"I love to come here and spend the day. Nobody bothers you. I have felt suicidal so many times, but when I sit here the water calms me down," he says.

He takes out the family pictures, his wedding card, his nationality papers from his bag.

Mr Idrees is homeless in Kanpur

 

"See, these are my four children and this is my wife," he says, showing me a picture of what looks like a glowing, contented family. A wide smile runs across his face.

"I know my wife is angry with me. I know she remembers our fights. But then all couples fight, don't they? Once I am back everything will be fine.

"My sons must have grown up so much. I will have to treat them as grown-ups when we meet again," he says.

I keep quiet and manage a faint smile.

I don't have the heart to tell him that we got in touch with Shabana, his wife, in Karachi.
"Idrees does not exist for us any more," she told our reporter.
She did not elaborate.

Mr Idrees has promised to call me and give me the good news when he gets to return home. I am still waiting.

"Life is short," he told me before we parted. "I don't think I have many years left. I just want to spend my time left with my children, my wife.

"It is not asking for too much, is it?"

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Doctors shocked as neuroscientist ‘talks’ with man in vegetative state

Tom Blackwell | Nov 13, 2012 9:21 PM ET
More from Tom Blackwell | @tomblackwellNP

bbc.co.uk/Panorama/Handout For more than a decade, 39-year-old Scott Routley of London, Ont., has been living in a vegetative state. He can't talk. He can't move. And although his eyes are open, no one is sure whether he can see.

 

For more than a decade, Scott Routley remained in what doctors considered a vegetative state, awake but unable to move a muscle and seemingly unaware of life around him after the car crash that severely damaged his brain.

Then this spring a British neuroscientist conducted a remarkable experiment during which he says he was able to communicate with the London, Ont., resident, asking if Mr. Routley was feeling any pain. The answer, conveyed through brain activity detected on sophisticated MRI scans, was a reassuring “No.”

The just-revealed research, touted as a world first, not only shocked the patient’s long-time neurologist — who assumed his patient’s mind was all but blank — but could further alter scientists’ understanding of people likened, even by medicine, to vegetables.

The latest advance by Dr. Adrian Owen opens the door to numerous possibilities, from stimulating seemingly vegetative patients with talking books, to asking their dining preferences or finding out how aggressively they want to be treated, experts say.

“We now have very clear examples of patients who appeared to everybody, to any form of clinical investigation, to be in a vegetative state, yet with fMRI we’re able to show there’s much more going on,” said Dr. Owen in an interview from his office at the University of Western Ontario.

“It’s not the case that all vegetative patients are conscious, by any means. Most of them probably are what they appear to be. But there are some who we are failing to detect. … What you see is not always what you get.”

Handout files  Neuroscientist Dr. Adrian Owen says he asked the patient to imagine that he was playing tennis if he wasn’t in pain or imagine that he was walking around his house if he was in pain.

 

Patients in a vegetative state are awake — their eyes open — but are considered unaware, incapable of responding to stimuli or thinking. Some emerge eventually from the state to higher levels of consciousness, while others remain unchanged for years in a permanent vegetative state.

The British scientist, recruited from Cambridge University by Western last year with the help of federal-government funding, has developed techniques for testing whether, in fact, permanent vegetative patients have cognitive abilities and can answer questions. Previous research on small groups of patients suggests as many as one-fifth of them do possess that level of consciousness.

Patients are instructed to imagine moving their arm as if swinging at a tennis ball to answer No, and visualize walking through their homes to answer Yes. Those thoughts cause different regions of the brain to “light up” on functional MRI (fMRI) machines, which capture brain activity over time.
They are first asked yes-and-no questions to which the researchers know the answers — such as whether they have brothers and sisters — to verify the process is working. Mr. Routley, 39, was the first patient to whom Dr. Owen and colleagues were able to successfully pose a clinically relevant question: Are you in pain?

Responses from another Canadian vegetative patient, Steven Graham, suggested some can even gain memories. He was able to correctly answer Yes when asked if his sister had a daughter, though his niece was born after his brain injury five years ago.

It’s not the case that all vegetative patients are conscious, by any means. Most of them probably are what they appear to be

Dr. Bryan Young had cared for Mr. Routley for a decade at London’s Parkwood chronic-care hospital and said he was absolutely convinced, based on standard behavioural tests, that his patient had no intellectual awareness. The results of the MRI scans “changes our understanding” of the condition, said the neurologist.

Mr. Routley’s parents had always been convinced he was cognizant behind the immovable facade, and acted accordingly, but not all vegetative patients are treated that way, said Dr. Young.

“It would be nice to know if there are abandoned people out there who are really aware, who could benefit from some stimulation,” he said. “We probably owe it to people.”

The latest work by Dr. Owen has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but was revealed in a documentary aired Tuesday by the BBC Television program Panorama, whose crew tracked the research for two years.

His work on cognition in vegetative patients, which first came to prominence with a highly publicized 2010 study, is “very intriguing,” said Dr. Abraham Snaiderman, head of the neuropsychiatry clinic at the Toronto Rehab Institute. But he cautioned against assuming too much about the patients’ level of awareness, given the small sample Dr. Owen has studied and the limitations of his methods.

“Philosophically and ethically, there are serious implications that need to be considered,” said Dr. Snaiderman in an email response to questions. “Is a patient competent to decide about self care if he/she shows fMRI responses to a series of questions? I know many cases where there is recovery of awareness and full consciousness after a severe brain injury, yet the patient remains incompetent to self care and decide about issues related to it.”

National Post

Amanda Todd tribute pages haunted by bullies amid police probe

Canadian Press | Oct 14, 2012 11:01 AM ET | Last Updated: Oct 14, 2012 2:31 PM ET
More from Canadian Press

Facebook A Facebook memorial page set up for B.C. teen Amanda Todd has received 518,000 "likes", but some people have posted hateful comments. 

 

VANCOUVER — In life, Amanda Todd feared she was all alone; in death, she has captured the attention of people from around the world, focusing a spotlight on the plight of those who continue to face down the torments of bullies. Meanwhile, the bullying that the B.C. teen said drove her to suicide, has continued online even after her death.

The RCMP announced Saturday that more than 400 tips from around the globe have poured into an email account, set up after the apparent suicide of the 15-year-old Port Coquitlam, B.C. teen.

Meantime, media from around the world, including online publications in England, the United States, Australia and Asia, have picked up the tragic tale.

“At this point, we’ve got upwards of 20 to 25 full-time investigators that are working on this to try to gain enough information and enough evidence to potentially lay charges against any individual or individuals that may have played a role here in some way,” said Sgt. Peter Thiessen.
At the beginning of September, Todd posted a nine-minute video on YouTube, and through hand-written notes, she explained what happened after she exposed her breasts on a webcam to an unidentified man.

YouTube

 

The images ended up being sent to family and friends, and she described how she suffered anxiety, major depression and turned to drugs and alcohol and even tried to kill herself twice.
The video ends with her note: “I have nobody. I need someone.”

In the video she is seen holding up cards narrating her story, with one towards the end saying, “Every day I think why am I still here.” Kids at her school were well aware of her despair, and yet many of them teased her further, egging her on to suicide.

Even after her death, people continue to torment the teen. More than 15 online memorials have been set up for Todd on Facebook, one with more than 500,000 “likes”. But along with messages offering condolences for Todd’s family, former classmates and strangers have posted hateful comments and offensive images.

One Facebook user uploaded a photo of Todd that had been made to look like a Zombie holding a bottle of bleach with the message: “I hope they sell Clorox in Hell.”
Others said Todd should not be getting positive or negative attention.


“It’s bad that people commit suicide, but I don’t see what makes this girl special…. She seems like the kind of person that committed suicide because she was lazy,” another user wrote.
The BC Coroners Service has said preliminary indications suggest Todd took her own life last Wednesday.

On Friday, the RCMP set up an email account so people could submit tips — amandaTODDinfo@rcmp-grc.gc.ca

Thiessen said by Saturday investigators had received more than 400 tips from around the globe, and police are encouraging the public to provide even more information.
Investigators are prioritizing those tips and are trying to determine which ones need to be acted on first, said Thiessen.

He said police are also asking individuals to stop posting inappropriate and hurtful comments and images online that continue to re-victimize the Todd family and others.

He said police are even getting complaints from young girls and adults because of those images.
“They’re being impacted by it and they’re quite emotional discussions that we’re having from these people that are calling us,” he said.

 Just One Minute

There, almost time for the greatest show on Earth to commence.  London is prepared.  Or not.  Security is not assured.  Despite which the show will go on, must go on.  Thoughts should not linger overmuch on the potential of leaving themselves open for some kind of atrocious attack simply because they choose, all those prospective visitors to London for the Summer Olympics 2012, to be present, and not victims of some grisly plot.

London is rife with the presence of the country's military, called in to do their duty in the unfortunate absence of an expensive, but failed security apparatus.  The world's elite athletes are present and accounted for.  They are set to do their utmost on behalf of their country's pride in the athletic abilities of their young, talented athletes, reflecting glory in the achievement of their athletic prowess.

The Olympic Games is a venue for coming together and celebrating the precise and the perfect, the selection of outstanding, world-class athletes for recognition in gold, silver and bronze - and the playing of national anthems, and wrapping oneself in flags.  Nightmare scenarios of terrorists importing their hatred and bile into an atmosphere of general excitement and applause merely represent the caution of fear and suspicion.

Of course the slaughter that occurred during the 1972 Munich Olympics was an unfortunate aberration.

The conflict between countries, religions, ideologies and territorial imperatives that precipitated that dreadful act of infamy is still resonant, to be sure, but the world is prepared, Britain is prepared to counter any such possible plans to repeat such an atrocity.  Never fear.  We hope.

Jewish community in Munich protesting after the murders of the Israeli athletes, demanding the Games be halted, 1972. Photo by AP

The International Olympic Committee remained adamant.  It could not see its way clear to responding to the appeal of 100,000 signatures requesting an official 'minute of silence' in honour of the eleven Israeli athletes who were murdered by members of Palestinian Black September.  It just wasn't the right thing to do, they declared.  Some heads of state thought otherwise.  Many sports groups did, as well.

All the appeals from various sources for the IOC to remember the event with an official minute of silence was to no avail.  The 40 years that have passed saw the wives of the dead athletes approaching the IOC every four years to have them reconsider their refusal to observe a minute of silence.  It never seemed like too much to ask.  But it might prove embarrassing for example, to the Palestinian athletes present.

It's doubtful that any Arab country ever recommended that a minute of silence be observed in a display of neutral humanity.  In any event, although everyone had given up hope that anything would make a difference in changing their mind, the IOC did in fact, do a turnabout.  There was a minute of silence observed after all, following the comments of Jacques Rogge:

"I would like to start today's ceremony by honouring the memory of 11 Israeli Olympians who shared the ideals and have brought us together in this beautiful Olympic Village.  The 11 victims of the Munich tragedy believed in that vision.  They came to Munich in the spirit of peace and solidarity.  We owe it to them to keep that spirit alive and to remember them."

Well said, and gratefully accepted.  And we hope there will never be another occasion to mourn the death of fine young athletes wherever they emerge from, whichever country they represent.  Even though, as Mr. Rogge added, sport could unite, but not solve the problems of the world.

Memory

All those years ago when I was a child, the oldest of my immigrant family's children. Realizing that something was not quite right. Hearing my father speak of dreadful dark things happening somewhere else, across the world, in Europe. Something dread having to do with Jews. I was already aware that Jews were not held in great esteem in some elements of the society in which I lived. I knew, vaguely, that some children considered me to be an outcast of some sort, a representative killer of Christ.

I knew because I'd been called "Christ-killer" often enough. Certainly that disturbed me, and I found it more than a little offensive, and frightening. But I was also proud that I was a Jew. I can't say completely what it was that so filled me with pride, but it was a fact of my existence. My impoverished family somehow, somewhere found enough funds to send me to an after-school parochial school.

I dimly recall my father walking the route with me from the house we lived in to the location of the school. After that I was on my own, expected to walk the route myself each late afternoon after school for several hours of instruction in Jewish history, tradition, culture. I learned to write and to read Yiddish, and my existing vocabulary was built upon. History was fascinating and revealing; and no little bit romantic.

Jewish songs and literature were equally interesting, and although I didn't at the time appreciate that I was expected to attend two schools on a daily basis, and on week-ends as well, it was part of my life. Several of the songs I was taught while attending this secular, humanist, socialist-oriented Jewish school remain with me yet. One of them brings tears to my eyes, reminding me as it does of the Holocaust.

It's the song of the Vilna Partisans. Written by a Jewish man who fought with the Partisans, using an old Russian folk melody. I had remembered the Jewish words and sung them often, but the English version had escaped me. Until I looked it up on an Internet site. Strangely enough, inputting the first five words in Yiddish brought me all the information I looked for.

The Partisan Song - Hersh Glick

Zog nit keyn mol az du geyst dem letstn veg,
Khotsh himeln blayene farshtein bloye teg,
Kumen vet nokh undzer oysgebenkte sho,
S'vet a poyk ton undzer trot -- mir zaynen do!

Never say that there is only death for you
Though leaden clouds may be concealing skies of blue
Because the hour that we have hungered for is near;
Beneath our tread the earth shall tremble: We are here!

Fun grinem palmenland biz vaysn land fun shney,
Mir kumen on mit undzer payn, mit undzer vey,
Un vu gefain s'iz a shprits fun undzer blut,
Shprotsn vet dort undzer gvure, undzer mut.

From land of palm tree to the far-off land of snow
We shall be coming with our torment and our woe,
And everywhere our blood has sunk into the earth
Shall our bravery, our vigour blossom forth!

S'vet di morgnzun bagildn undz dem haynt,
Un der nekhtn vet farshvindn mitn faynd,
Nor oyb farzamen vet di zun in dem kayor --
Vi a parol zol geyn dos lid fun dor tsu dor.

We'll have the morning sun to set our day aglow,
And all our yesterdays shall vanish with the foe,
And if the time is long before the sun appears,
Then let this song go like a signal through the years.

Dos lid geshribn iz mit blut un nit mit blay,
S'iz not keyn lidl fun a foygl af der fray,
Dos hot a fold tsvishn faindike vent
Dos lid gezungen mit naganes in di hent!

This song was written with our blood and not with lead;
It's not a song that birds sing overhead.
It was a people, among toppling barricades,
That sang this song of ours with pistols and grenades.

To zog nit keyn mol az du geyst dem letstn veg,

Khotsh kimlen blayene farshtein bloye teg,
Kumen vet nokh undzer oysgebenkte sho --
S'vet a poyk ton undzer trot -- mir zaynen do!

The Fascination That Is Japan

It's quite the culture. Organized, self-aware, and extremely self-possessed. The sultry southern tip, (Kyushu) the main island of Honshu and the winter-bound northern island of Hokkaido. In a very small geographic area in the Pacific one can experience, in three tight little island-groups that make up Japan, exoticism, moderation and excess. Which, in a way, encapsulates the living formative society itself in its absorption with its colourful past, its passive presence and its passion for all things natural.

The prevailing religions are low on the horizon, but everywhere one looks shrines and temples are commonly part of both the heritage and the architecture, permeating everyday life as a key to the value of life and life's values. Within a small geographic area of which only a middling portion is truly habitable, with its forests and mountains, a large population of proudly monocultural ethnic Japanese mingle in crowded conditions, with perfect courtesy toward others. The kind of casual crime prevalent in most other societies, absent here.

Unnumbered and narrow abodes jostle comfortably against one another on unnamed streets, some so narrow that vehicles cannot pass one another. Necessitating, with their sometimes narrow laneways, that fire vehicles in no way resembling those of the West, are pulled by quaintly garbed firemen to the action at hand. Commercial and industrial and domestic buildings sit comfortably next to each other, with no interfering zoning by-laws. Construction workers in their body-covering white garb, white fabric boots, camel-hoofed.

Temple grounds become the quiet and green refuge of strollers, as much as city parks. It is within the temple grounds that one sees the fabled Japanese gardens, the koi ponds with the huge silver-gold-orange flashing bodies twisting energetically to the surface of the water to catch the daily tossed offerings. It is in the parks, and sometimes the downtown cemeteries with their own plum and cherry trees that one strolls in spring under a confetti of falling blossoms. The public museums offering tribute to the arts, religious and archaeological artifacts housed in bone-numbing exposure.

Feral cats and kittens roam the streets, the alleyways, the ubiquitous garbage-day repositories for specific neighbourhoods, to exact their due before collection. Above, clattering on the water-towers, the metal-clad roofs, the jungle crows abound. And occasionally the two meet; the denizens of the sewers and those of the air as the latter sweep down on occasion to make a dinner of the former - or, alternately, the city pigeons.

But this too is part of nature and it is as should be, with no interference as nature plays out her role, the hunter and the hunted. On the main thoroughfares, named and named again, in both Chinese/Japanese script, and phonetic English, the night-time sky is kaleidoscopically lit with neon. For a crowded city there is not that much ambient sound, as car drivers habitually do not use their horns. Occasionally the low-sound-barrier is abruptly shattered in daytime from electronic loudspeakers perched on buses with political message writ large and "right".

Even the urban landscape is beautified with camellia bushes in ravishing bloom, and azaleas and rhododendrons in the spring; with ornamental cabbage planted along city streets in late fall. There are archaic-looking pine trees and beautiful large ginkgo trees planted on city avenues. People living in cramped apartments all air their futons, hanging them out their apartment windows through the day, festooning an apartment facade with thousands of 'white ribbons'.

There is public respect in abundance. It is rare to see a small plot of grass, since room to grow anything within the confines of Tokyo is rare. But people will place, in utter confidence for their safety, their familiar treasures; twisted bonsai of wonderful grace and elderly provenance alongside the street, beside their front doors. And too, koi pots, treasured pets allowed to be placed out in public where no one would think of interfering with them.

A multitude of cars - mostly white - which is to say a variety of colours emulating white; pearl, ivory, cream, chalk, latte. Black is reserved for the Yakuzi, and perhaps also on occasion for the diplomatic corps who know no better or don't care. By their cars thee shall know them. Taxi drivers are courteous, their vehicles immaculate, interiors carefully dusted countless times throughout the day. When drivers stop at a red light, many still shut off their engines; consigned to unthinking memory war-time conservation of energy.

You may respond to a telephone call by answering with an enquiring, "Hello?", but the Japanese enquire "Mushi-mushi?" and don't quite know why. Social customs are as ingrained in Japan as they are anywhere else. The Japanese appear to be particularly enamoured of the English language; will practise their language skills on strangers walking by, but only if they're obviously Gaijun, capable of responding or correcting.

This was a culture of birth-to-death security in lifetime employment, now hobbling into another reality. Of respectful adherence to uniformity where social rebels tended to be brought into line through, other measures lacking, relative economic deprivation. Opportunities for advancement, through the education system, employment opportunities advanced to those who conform, albeit brightly.

A culture respectful of their heritage, culture, antecedents; elders. Where the elders are themselves respectful of the promise inherent in their spoiled little grandchildren, where bent and wrinkled grandmothers will hoist a fat little, adored boy-child on their backs and trundle along. In this population of porcelain-skinned women with raven tresses and elegant carriage, style is abundant and beauty beyond the eyes of the observer.

Yet it is the foreign observer who looks mouth agape in appreciation at the loveliness of Japanese women, not their Japanese male counterparts, who appear to feel that Western women, blond and blue-eyed represent the fount of feminine beauty. In this country women are designated as second-to-men and their prospects for the future lie in housewifely duties and raising children. While their salarymen husbands work late, and drink hard and vomit in late-night alleyways before trending home.

Pachinko parlours, karaoke bars, night life, television interactive game-shows, manga, haut couture, elegantly marbled hotel interiors, royal palaces and gardens, No and Kabuki theatres, and pre-teen uniformed schoolchildren crowding afternoon streets, along with 'notice-me' teens garbed in amusingly outre outfits in Harajuku. Sumo wrestling, katydids, grasshopper cages - this is Japan.

There's a Summer Place

When I was a little girl, my immigrant parents took me, along with my younger siblings, to a group cottage area off Lake Ontario, where they spent a week with us, in the company of their landsmen. My father stayed only for the week-end, leaving my mother with us through the working week. I was four years older than my sister, six years older than my brother. My mother's attention was with the younger children. I was left free to wander about on my own. There were times that I spent in the company of other peoples' children, but more often I was left to my own devices.

The experience of being near a lake was a new one for me. I quickly acclimated to the new environment. I imagine I was 7 years old at the time. I can recall that at night when we children we put to bed, our parents left the tiny cottage to go out and spend time with their friends. This made me feel insecure, and there were times when I felt unable to sleep. And for the first time something made me aware of my mortality. Unbidden, the thought came to me that I could die there, and I was all alone, and my body would be placed into a cavity in the earth. I visualized the dark, the moist dirt surrounding me, the cold, and I wept.

Why such morbid thoughts would come to me is beyond my understanding. I'm not given to such morbidity at any time. But I can still recall how frightened, how frozen with fear and grief and regret I was. I don't believe I ever mentioned it to my mother or my father. I do sometimes think of that place on Lake Ontario, what it was like for me to be there, unhindered by a need to remain close to my mother. She was too busy, and seemed happy enough to have me go about on my own.

In retrospect, remembering what it was like to clamber about on huge rocks sitting at the edge of the lake, it might have been dangerous for a little girl to be out there all on her own. I certainly do know I'd never have permitted my own children, even much older, to be out on their own in like circumstances. We knew, because we experienced it, how the lake could throw up huge whitecaps during a storm, that would wash onto the beach, as though enticing us to follow them into the lake. The experience doesn't appear to have done me much harm, however.

There's a Summer Place

There's a summer place
in my memory and a small girl
warming herself on a boulder
overlooking Lake Ontario
face reflecting the sun, dreaming.

Seagulls rode updrafts -
she watched them and they her
as she clambered barefoot
over huge granite outcroppings
lining the lake - each day

venturing a little further
than the day before. She
explored the vastness of the
landscape, her fantasies
separating the waters and the

melting sky. The smells of
fish scales shining, baking,
drying. Birds swooping each
cresting wave. A jungle of
drifting fronds under the blue

the green of the water. Her
probing hands explored each crack
of the granite walkway
where one incautious move could
drop her into a watery dream
deeper than she could wake from.

Yet it was as much her element
as it was the dragonflies'
filtering about her as she lay
immovable, creating her future.
Once, I drove back that way

knowing the summer place was
still there; knew if I looked
I'd see the birds, the grey rocks
that blue vault still scudding
forms resembling clouds.

And the lake, those wild and
quiet waters, they too.
Only the child is absent.

1980

Reflection

After a long, busy day, a period of rest, of relaxation. We sat together companionably, restfully, blissfully, on the glider on the deck behind our house. A wonderfully warm day. A brisk breeze, perfectly clear sky. We've been together a long time, he and I. In several weeks' time we'll be celebrating our 52nd wedding anniversary. Celebrating not in the popular term, since we have no plans to go out on the town, gift one another with costly presents, but just a quiet acknowledgement of all that time together.

All what time together? Where did it all go? Why, it wasn't all that long ago that we were kids, walking together, talking together, dancing together, planning our futures. When did all that future happen? Where did the past go? We sat on the deck, on the glider, a slender collection of poetry between us, and we read. He's a faster reader than me, so I knew that when I was finished reading a poem he would have finished and it was all right for me to turn the page to the next poem.

I wasn't prepared for the poem on page 21. Couldn't recall writing it, although I could recall, sometimes fairly clearly, the circumstances that led me to write many of the other poems, the actual day and experiences we shared that encouraged a particular poem to write itself. This one was different.

Reflection

We fondle our past
with fingers of fond memory
echoing regret
at swift passing.

You recall me
soft and round
waiting and eager
that element of danger
of quick discovery
and swift withdrawal
but always there
waiting

and you
see in me still
that other
the one who
lingers back there
dark-haired and nubile
and you smile

here
I am, Love
don't you see me?
This pale reflection
refracting the
purity of youth
is only time
wrinkling the present.

Amazing. I wrote that poem 27 years ago.

Watercolour Sketch

Watercolour sketch? No, not really. It's a poem, a sketch surely, but then of course, a watercolour sketch, why not? It's what I meant when I wrote it so long ago, and it's what I mean now.

Watercolour Sketch: An Autumn Day on Lac La Peche

Our red canoe slices the water
like an arrow splicing air
its colour echoing the squadrons
of leaves tumbling to the lake
as the maples surrounding this place
repeat old patterns - bleeding fall.

A far-off mist rises over the hills
and the lake is a slate mirroring the
surrounding shore, the islands populated
with maple, alder and ash splendid in
chartreuses and crimson. Not a breeze
to freshen the water which breathes a

torrid fishy presence encouraging the
seagulls squawking and screeching at our
intrusion - climbing stray breezes or
themselves like white canoes bobbing in
the lake. Although the water appears to
swell beneath us the level is low and

waterweeds skirl under our paddles
churning sand. Rocks of the Canadian Shield
protrude on the shoreline, in the water,
painted like flags by the guano of years'
roosts. A brace of Mergansers watch
unblinkingly as our canoe nudges their rock
then lift in a panic of wings beating air.

Fish-hunting kingfishers splat the lake
from the shore's edge and a surfacing/
submerging loon ripples the water as we
skirt shoreline and island outcropping.
The perfect line of the water bisects a
double world of glorious colour and we

cannot discern which one is real; the one
we inhabit or the symmetrical other-half;
a faithful reflection and truly obverse
yet as real as the other. In that double
world is twinned beauty with beauty

objects become other than what they are
and we, like insects, skim the surface
middling this strange new otherworld.

1980

A Passion for Poetry

When I was young - that is not young, but younger, I had a passion for writing poetry. Each time I experienced something that had an inner meaning for me I mentally composed an ode to that moment. I was continually writing in my head, an exercise that I found compelling, pleasing, satisfying and needful to me. I wrote of many things, of experiences and perceptions, using descriptives as they occurred to me that would fairly and poetically represent my inner self.

And although it has been almost three decades since I last succumbed to the need to divest myself of these emotional literary outpourings, I recently felt curious about what it was that had so moved me, then left me, so I took up a few published collections and poked about in their contents. What I read surprised me, and gratified me. And reminded me quite clearly of the events which inspired what it was I had written.

A recovery of memory. Not so distant, yet not so present, either.

Early Harvest

The sun edges past clouds
gleaming like a silver dollar
and we dip our paddles
the lake reflecting
darkness of oncoming rain.

There looses a kingfisher's
mad taunt from pinetops
circling the lake.

Water pearls in our wake
the wind gusts and
our canoe darts sleek as an otter
to a rock-littered inlet
where we beach.

As we thrust sharp sticks
the dark soil yields garlic
blossoming the air
with its heavy headiness.

Strawberries hide
their insufficiency under weeds.
We carefully pick what's there
for late afternoon jam.

Gulls scream overhead
and whitecaps scatter on
the lake. the clean feather-edge
of swallows slice the turgid air.

Primeval Fears /Re-Visited

Irrational fears that appear to have no real substance in the reality of our everyday lives. They linger deep within us. Holdovers from days long gone. As though we inherit ancient memories inspiring fear deep within us unrecognized until we dream them. Homeless, bereft of familial, group or social support. Speechless, unable to communicate. The familiarity and comfort of our everyday life eluding us.

For me it's variations on a recurring dream cycle. That I am wandering in a city I know fairly well, but everything looks slightly different. I seek out the streets familiar to me searching for the one that leads to my home. I may find the street, but my home is no longer there. Fear, panic set in. That's my particular and not well understood nightmare. I have no idea why my psyche should be obsessed by fear of losing my way, an inability to connect with my home, my loved ones.

Alternative of that dream is someone whom I love whose life is inextricably woven into mine is absent; here one moment, gone the next. And I search and search, endlessly, fruitlessly. Then wake up, force myself actually to wake up in my subconscious realization that this is fear, not reality, and I need not endure it. But why does this fear visit itself upon me time and again?

For my husband there is a similar experience, but his has its genesis in experience lived and deplored. His nightmares revolve around his memories of too many business trips taking him often and far from home. He is by nature an adventurous soul, curious about the world around him, the kind of person who goes out of his way to snatch experiences out of life. Yet his dreams reflect a deep frustration and worry that evolved from his experiences and worries of missing flights and connections and the deep distress of postponing arrivals home.

Is there an ancient, deep-seated and unconscious vestigial memory that we inherit with our genetic make-up? Might that be partially responsible in explaining why people cling passionately to the ideals of their ethnic or clan groups? Is that the deep and abidingly-real meaning of cultural tribalism? The fear of loss, of separation, of aloneness? We are a communal animal by nature. In aeons gone by survival was contingent on being part of a group, fending with adversities communally.

This is quite separate and apart, quite different from the nightmares which haunt people who have survived actual physical and mental trauma on a very personal scale during the course of their lifetimes. People who have somehow surmounted sure death through war, internment, torture, or through any of nature's many natural disasters inflicted and visited upon human areas of habitation.

One hears of people who have been missing for decades suddenly reappearing. Some having temporarily lost their memory, perhaps regained it and returned home. There's that old French story about Martin Guerre; a cautionary tale of a man who goes away to war, is presumed dead, then returns decades later to resume his life but his identity is denied by family and neighbours. There are the stories that come to light occasionally of WWII Japanese servicemen living in isolation and fear as hermits in foreign countries, finally revealed.

And then there's the dreadfully touching and frightening revelation of a woman named Jaeyana Beuraheng, mother of eight children who left on a casual bus trip to conduct a normal shopping expedition crossing the border into Malaya from her home in southern Thailand. Unschooled, unable to read or write, having no knowledge of the Thai language, speaking only a dialect spoken by Muslims in southern Thailand, she was incapable of communicating her dilemma to effectively find assistance.

Meaning to board a bus travelling back to her home in Narathiwat, she instead boarded one travelling to Bangkok, about 1,300 kilometres north. Upon arrival there, and the frightening realization she was nowhere near home, the noise and traffic of the capital city further disoriented her and she boarded another bus in the hopes it might take her home. Instead she ended up in Chiang Mai, close to the Burmese border, another 640 kilometres further from her home.

She was lost. Unable to explain her dire predicament, she spent 5 years begging on the streets of Chiang Mai where her dark skin was taken as indication she was a member of a hill tribe. In 1987 police rounded up beggars and she was arrested on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant. Officials forwarded her to a social services hostel where she remained ever since. The director of the hostel thought, like everyone else there, that she was incapable of speech; functionally mute.

This illiterate peasant, mother of eight children became irretrievably lost. I cannot imagine the panic that must have overtaken her as she eventually realized she would not be returning home to her children and her life in her smalll community. Irrespective of her dislocation and fears for herself, she must have been consumed with worry and fear over the plight of her children left motherless and uncared for. A living nightmare, fulfilling amply all the instinctive fears we harbour deep within ourselves. Unable to communicate, she must have withdrawn into an unrevealing shell.

A month ago three students from her home province speaking her language arrived at the hostel on a training mission. They met the woman and she was able to finally recount to them the tragedy of separation that had beset her 25 years earlier. The students, on their return, made their own enquiries and contacted her youngest son, now 35, sending him her photograph by cell-phone. Her children, making their own frantic enquiries in an effort to find their mother, had been informed she had been run over by a train in Yala.

What a Kafkaesque tale of confusion, loss and a wasted lifetime.

Rescat in Pace, Juliette

Hardly to be believed. I'd lost touch with her. Shouldn't have, but did. I should have made an effort over the years to get in touch. On the other hand, I knew how busy and involved she was, and I was only a little chapter in her life. She had five children, her first grandchild, a close and extended family, many friends. Our friendship was that of working colleagues. And I had been out of the country for half a decade and more. That was that.

I did think of her from time to time. But one tends, sometimes to do just that, and then nothing more. I've been busy too, with my own life. Still, I feel quite badly about not having at least made an initial effort to get in touch. And then, only a few days ago, in the week-end newspaper my husband saw the lovely public notice. Juliette Chatterjee and her husband Kam celebrating 50 years of marriage.

Quite the milestone that; fifty years of marriage. I can remember, years ago, when Juliette was facing the prospect of her fiftieth birthday with some trepidation, that I gave her a birthday card emphasizing the half-century of her life and inside it had tucked a photocopied $50-bill, with the invitation to go out and spend it recklessly. That was 22 years ago. Two years later I celebrated that same birth milestone myself, in a foreign country.

Juliette had become my second-in-command at the office we operated in assistance of people living with diabetes. We maintained a growing membership, we operated a "store" where we sold supplies for the maintenance and control of diabetes. We held regular meetings both for members and for the executive committee of the group, inviting guest speakers to hold forth on new promises in medical advances.

We busied ourselves with fund-raising initiatives. We taught newly-diagnosed and also long-term diabetics how to look after themselves, to regain perspective, to once again embark on their lives, controlling the symptoms of diabetes, and maintaining their health overall with the aid of medical testing devices. We were busy and more than a little engaged in the work we shared.

Juliette was a wonderful person to work beside, to spend time with, to converse with, to plan with. She was good natured, big hearted, practical. She loved a good joke, and could take one that poked fun at her own condition. There was never a mean bone in her body. She was spirited, happy and a doting, loving mother of five children; completely bonded to her husband.

She told me she never had any doubts when she first met him, that this was the man she would marry. Raised a Catholic in a close community of French-Canadians she had the courage of her need in defying public opinion a half-century ago when she determined that this beautiful, intelligent dark-skinned man would share her life. She never looked back, had never any reason to regret her decision.

I saw her confidence shaken only once, when the first of her daughters to marry gave birth to her first grandchild. It was a little girl. Juliette's daughter was a beautiful young woman, possessing the grace and beauty so commonly seen in women whose genetic diversity combined East and West. Only in her mid 20s, she gave birth to a child with Down Syndrome. To say that this was a blow to the entire family's equilibrium would be putting it mildly.

But soon Juliette recaptured her exuberant view of life and realized that her grandchild was there to be raised and loved and cossetted just like any other child. She told innumerable stories about all of her children, taking immense pleasure in their life skills and accomplishments. Tales of her grandchild's growing awareness of the world around her abounded.

On those few occasions when my husband and I met socially with Juliette and her husband we were impressed with his calm and generous demeanor, his obvious pride in his wife. Fifty years together resulting in much love and emotional support, and five children. Bringing matters more up to date, they have between them produced, through their five offspring, ten grandchildren.

Two days after we saw the happy notice in the paper celebrating fifty years of marriage between Juliette and her Kam, there was another notice. An obituary. Juliette had been stricken with brain cancer. It seems she fought a long and hard battle. Expert medical advice and various options must always have been available, since both her husband and several of her children were respected members of the medical community.

The obituary ends with a little notation from her children: "Au-revoir, maman"