Having been raised in a family of divorced parents, I didn't spend nearly as much time with my dad as I would have had we all grown up in the same house. (And just for the record, I am very grateful that my folks split. I've mentioned before that staying together 'for the sake of the kids' is a horrible thing to do... to the kids.) Up until our late teen years, my brother and I would spend every second weekend with the old man, every other Christmas, that sort of thing.
My parents split up when I was 7-ish, my brother 5-ish, just a few years after our family moved West from Ontari-ari-ario in 1978. But I do have some very fond and firmly ingrained memories of Dad.
Just after we arrived in Edmonton, we lived in a condo complex a few short blocks from what would eventually grow into the monstrosity that is now West Edmonton Mall. At that time in the late '70s, it was nothing but about 30 square blocks of empty field. Dad had a green Kawasaki motorcycle for a time and would take my brother and me for rides over the fields and dirt hills that comprised that section of land. I don't think I've ridden on a motorcycle since then. I've certainly never driven one.
I also vividly recall the fact that I've only ever seen my dad both cry once and get really red-faced mad once. My paternal grandfather passed away just shortly after my folks split up. (His nickname to all who knew him even marginally well was 'Bus'. This stems from the fact that, just after he was born, one of the presiding nurses took one look at him and proclaimed, "My, isn't he a big buster!" It stuck.) Well, Dad came by unexpectedly one day, walked in the front door (or I guess was let in the front door at that time), came to see my brother and me sitting in the living room, knelt down in front of us and, with tears in his eyes, told us that his own dad had just passed away.
And I have no recollection what it was that my brother did to make him so mad that one time (for it could not possibly have been ME!), I just remember standing halfway up the staircase in his condo with Dad looming at the top of the stairs and a completely unrecognisable expression of anger on his face. Unrecognisable for the fact that emotional extremes were not usually so vividly displayed with him. A trait that was passed along to his first-born son in spades.
NO!! Really!?!?
But above all else, my most vivid, and fond, memories of me and Dad stem from a long series of fishing trips.
For a good number of years, every August long weekend would see the old man pack up his two boys VERY early on a Friday morning and start the drive up north to Ft. McMurray. I loved stopping in Grassland, a bump on the road of highway 63, for breakfast with the sunrise at the Husky gas station two hours into the drive. Mid-morning would then see us arrive in Ft. McMurray which, given the three years its oilsands industry has sucked out of me, I have since, sadly, disassociated solely with fishing.
We would drive down to the Snye, a small tributary off the main Clearwater River, where was berthed the float plane that would fly us a half-hour east, close to the Saskatchewan border, and the fishing lodge that was tucked into a cove of Gypsy Lake.
I could spend hours recounting all the wonderful times that were had there. I have never in my life seen the Northern Lights so brilliant as there where the brightest visible light is a propane lantern. I have never enjoyed a meal so much as a couple fillets of fresh-caught pike fried over an open fire with a side of macaroni and cheese. Watching my brother lose the bet that he'd be able to go the whole weekend without using the 'gross' outhouse; he chose consternation over constipation. Marvelling at the love-in the resident Black Lab named 'Smokey' (doesn't every second Black Lab seem to be named Smokey?) was enjoying with the few turkeys kept at the lodge. Shouts of, "Smoke!! Get away from those f--kin' birds!!" were common.
More than anything else though, summer long weekends at Gypsy Lake Lodge were a wonderful rare opportunity for a father to spend time away from Mundania with his two boys. The special bond that developed between the three of us, which is indelibly associated with that place, started to grow the very first day we took a boat out on the lake.
We typically arrived early in the afternoon (the flight in the small, loud plane was always one of the highlights of the weekend), quickly unpacked our gear, threw rods and tackle into a boat and took off fishing for a few hours before dinner. The very first year I remember Dad brought a small net that he'd previously used bass and perch fishing. Our host, helping unload the plane, took one look at it and laughed. We never brought a net in the future. 30 pounds of slimy, sharp-toothed flailing fish made short work of it.
That very first afternoon, after chucking our superfluous gear in one of the cabins, we untied a boat and were off to engage in battle with a lake full of Northern Pike. Each boat had to have a matching number of people and life vests. They always only made excellent seat cushions. I recall it being a beautiful day. Dad cut the engine, showed Aaron and me how to tie the fishing line to our leaders and we were happily casting into the water. During a quiet moment in the boat, of which there were many, Dad posed the unexpected question to his two sons, "Boys, you know what they say about times like this in Alberta?" We both looked at him with inquisitively blank expressions on our faces. His reply: "F--kin' A!"
We stood there, fishing rods limp in our hands, dumbfounded.
For two young boys to hear their father make such a proclamation was, aside from being wildly unexpected, a wonderful opportunity for all of us to remove certain elements of urbane restraint, at least for the duration of three days away from home and the city. Testing the waters of our new-found freedom of vocabulary, my brother and I, over the course of the weekend, would take it in turns to bravely pipe up to our father, "Hey Dad, you know what they say about times like this in Alberta?"
Underneath his battered red baseball cap with the heavily creased and folded brim, his wide brown moustache would frame a toothy grin. "What's that, Son?"
"F--kin' A!" A young boy being encouraged to curse in front of his dad was a heady freedom.
Other strange happenings seemed to associate themselves with our time at Gypsy Lake. A subsequent year found just me and Dad in one of the boats, casting our lines, still within sight of the dock. A pike had just broken my line and I was seated in concentration, tying on a new steel leader so I could attach a replacement lure to hunt the bastard down. As I was making my knot, my dad was casting from the other side of the boat. He swung his rod behind him and then snapped it forward in the fluid motion we'd all become well-versed in. My own rod instantly disappeared from my lap, yanked from my hands, and I was left with a dangling lure and no rod to attach it to. My fishing companion had snagged part of my rod and inadvertently flung it into the water.
The momentary confusion rapidly abating, Dad quickly reeled his line in and kept an eye on the receding ripples and tell-tale bubbles that gave evidence of the last known resting place of my rod. He gently lobbed his lure a very short way past that resting place and slowly reeled in his line. The lure came back up dripping and bare.
He cast it in again, gave it slightly more time to sink to the bottom, and with agonising patience re-spooled the line on his reel. Just before we saw the flash of the returning lure under water, the dripping tip of a fishing rod broke the surface and we both stared at it in amazement as Dad swung the prize to my side of the boat so I could retrieve it. We spent the next five minutes doubled over in laughter at what had just happened. It became the great, grand tale of the weekend. The one that didn't get away.
I seem to think of these sorts of events more and more these days as I now have a son of my own with whom I am greatly looking forward to making similar memories in the years to come.
A slightly more morbid part of my brain hides the hope that my son's grandfather will be able to contribute to those memories for many years to come. I lost both my grandfathers to heart disease: one when I was less than ten, and the other in my early teens. My son's grandfather has already survived one heart attack and my stepmum a bout of breast cancer. Both continue to smoke.
A few years from now, I'd really love to take my young son up to the Gypsy Lake fly-in fishing lodge with his grandfather to teach him the proper context in which to say 'F--kin' A!'
