Stories Best Left Untold: Tales from a Manitoba legislator

By Gordon Mackintosh

Gord Mackintosh was not your typical politician and this book is not your typical political memoir. Mackintosh steps out of his familiar role as the Manitoba NDP’s go-to guy, foot soldier and law reformer to provide a unique take on the quirky places and people behind his long and varied career. From secret passages, archaisms, and funny business at Manitoba’s Legislature, to door-knocking surprises, crime-fighting and “saving Mother Earth,” Mackintosh weaves warm-hearted anecdotes of his many years in public life. Hooey, hijinks, and embarrassment that humanize our political system are interspersed with major political events of the last thirty years, for which he had suspiciously differing roles. Whether Manitoba’s French Language Crisis, the Meech Lake Crisis, the MTS Debate, the Flood of the Century, the Auto Theft Capital of North America, or the internal rebellion against Premier Greg Selinger, he still urges, “It wasn’t me.” Calling it “more sunshine sketches than social science”, Mackintosh exposes what it’s really like in politics, with seasoned political advice, strong opinion -- including an “unbiased view” of opponents, and a celebration of leadership. He also offers a self-deprecating backstory to many government decisions –- required reading for Manitoba citizens of any political stripe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Great Plains Publications
• Release date: May 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781927855751

Book preview

Stories

Best

Left

Untold

Gord Mackintosh

Tales from a Manitoba legislator

Copyright © 2017 Gordon Mackintosh

Great Plains Publications

233 Garfield Street

Winnipeg, MB R3G 2M1

www.greatplains.mb.ca

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or in any means, or stored in a database and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Great Plains Publications, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5E 1E5.

Great Plains Publications gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided for its publishing program by the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund; the Canada Council for the Arts; the Province of Manitoba through the Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Book Publisher Marketing Assistance Program; and the Manitoba Arts Council.

Design & Typography by Relish New Brand Experience

Printed in Canada by Friesens

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Mackintosh, Gordon, author

Stories best left untold : tales from a Manitoba legislator / Gordon Mackintosh.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-927855-74-4 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-927855-75-1 (EPUB).—

ISBN 978-1-927855-76-8 (Kindle)

1. Mackintosh, Gordon. 2. Manitoba—Politics and government—

1988-1999. 3. Manitoba—Politics and government—1999-2016. 4. Manitoba.

Legislative Assembly—Biography. 5. Legislators—Manitoba—Biography.

6. New Democratic Party of Manitoba—Biography. 7. Manitoba—

Biography. I. Title.

FC3378.1.M33A3 2017 971.27’03092 C2017-900628-2

C2017-900629-0

Dedicated to

my parents – Gordon and Dorothy Mackintosh

credit: Andrew Sikorsky

and to my hugely supportive family – Margaret, Cotelle, Gordie, and Dorothy

credit: Andrew Sikorsky

Just like my pamphlets, most of this is true.

Table of Contents

Part I: But First I Was Born

1. My Fort

2. Exile on the Red

3. Rock ‘n Roll is a Vicious Game

4. Away

5. Sleeping on the Job

6. Having to Get Married

7. At the Bar

8. The Elijah Factor

Part II: Back to Broadway

9. Knock Knock

10. Windbag

11. My Really Unbiased View

12. Premier Potboiler

Part III: Laws and Guffaws

13. Mr. Minister

14. Piss ‘n Vinegar

15. Tail, Nail, and Jail

16. Headlines and Head Lines

17. Anyone Want to Buy a Courthouse?

18. 4,000-pound Bullets

19. Northern Rights

20. Redux

Part IV: Family Guy

21. Little Miracles

22. The Highest Calling

23. All Aboard!

24. Let’s Make a Deal

Part V: Conversation Minister

25. Machines Again!

26. My Wild Life

27. Polar Bear Alert

28. H2O HQ

29. Get Out!

Part VI: Foot Soldier

30. PST Off

31. Rrrrip!

32. Closing Time

33. Glad that I Ran Into You

34. Footprints

Index

Preface

---

credit: Andrew Sikorsky

…skinny, dark-haired guy

My first election victory speech began with sombre delivery and pause between each phrase. I told the assembled, Over the course of this campaign, never, yes never, not once, not so much as even once, after all the doors I’ve been to…was I bitten by a dog. The campaign team worked awfully hard and invested a lot of personal time in the election effort. There were high expectations about my incumbency and serious issues to tackle. At this moment, they surely asked themselves, Who the heck did we just send to the Legislature?

Immediately after the speech, a supporter said, "Gord, just don’t screw up." That’s a send-off. But I admit I have screwed up, every day, and that’s taught me a lot. The guy on the Number 18 bus said I should share those lessons, the ones that make me look like a loser.

There are also shocking or embarrassing incidents that have now strangely ripened into humour. While it wasn’t funny then, that’s changed with time. It’s a universal metamorphosis. The Boss sings about it in Rosalita: Someday we’ll look back on this and it will all seem funny. Why this happens, I don’t know. Maybe it’s called perspective. Events like that should be shared too. Therapists agree.

I was happier and therefore more effective with lots of humour. While risking cheap shots from detractors who say you don’t take serious issues seriously, and for sure at one of those sombre NDP gatherings where a procedural point of order is what picks them up, it’s worth it. It can make a point in the strongest way. It balances out the drama and relieves the pressure. I thrived during difficult times with a chuckle. No matter how bleak a day may seem, a laugh is lurking if you seek it. Like listening for the birds or looking for the flowers.

Not every Member has a sense of humour of course and that’s too bad. Jerry Storie recalls that during a lengthy meeting of a standing committee, he asked for a ten-minute break. He explained, There’s something I just gotta do. The earnest Charlie Birt chimed in, Yeah, I have to do the same thing. Jerry asked, You have to call my wife? Charlie’s eyes bulged, he gasped and said, "Oh, no, not, I meant, you know. No!"

Dave Chomiak, one of the greatest MLAs to have served and the conscience of the NDP caucus, embraced levity. We were in the small caucus laugh-wing. When times were tough he told a bad joke or stuck something on his nose. Another shtick of Dave’s is revealed by his special assistant’s plea when he was Health Minister: It’s really hard having a conversation, Dave, with you under the desk like that. I had to use this phrase myself in November 2015 when Dave disappeared before my eyes during a conversation about the future of the Selinger government. Another time, staff arrived at Dave’s office for a meeting and seeing the office was empty, an advisor announced, Oh, the Minister’s not here yet. From the direction of Dave’s desk, a voice said, Over here. I’ve got stories.

Labour and Immigration Minister Erna Braun said to me, You are the most mischievous person I know. To a dignified deacon like Erna, that might mean I once wore my glasses upside down. But I confess to misplaced mischief, playful funny business. Some of the incidents with no measurable damage should also be shared. My lawyer friend said I should focus on lessons in parliamentary democracy.

I was certainly there for the big lessons in parliamentary democracy. I was behind the scenes and wearing different hats as Deputy Clerk of the Legislature, lawyer, MLA and minister during The Wilson Affair – Manitoba’s only expulsion of an MLA, The French Language Crisis – the ugly battle that killed both negotiations for French language services and the province’s longest session, The Meech Lake Crisis – the Indigenous political strategy that nixed a national effort to gain Quebec support for the constitution, the ill-fated Charlottetown Accord, The MTS Debate – the fight against the privatization of Manitoba’s telephone system, The Vote-Rigging Scandal – the Filmon government’s conspiracy to split the vote and win election by organizing an Indigenous splinter campaign, The Flood of the Century, The Auto Theft Epidemic – and the partnership that defeated North America’s worst auto theft rate, The Murder Capital of Canada – and the difficult effort to counter Canada’s highest violent crime rate, the historic struggle for same-sex equality rights, the plan to combat a heart-breaking Crisis in Child Welfare, Manitoba’s comprehensive environment strategy, work to improve The World’s Most Threatened Lake, and Rrrip! – the divisive end to Canada’s second-longest running NDP government.

And no, it wasn’t me. I was just the Forrest Gump of Manitoba politics.

This book reflects on the unique influences, lessons, ripened surprises and hooey that conspired to shape recent public policy and political drama in the hope it entertains and informs. I also hope that it attracts greater interest and involvement in public affairs by gently exposing its inelegance and its noble purpose. It is more sunshine sketches than social science. More humour than history, more mirthful moments than memoirs. It celebrates places and people unique if not odd, and inspiring if not intriguing, although the guy on the Number 18 isn’t in here.

If readers are looking for a list of my accomplishments, that’s up to someone with a vivid imagination. Don’t toot your own horn! Be humble! Nothing worse than a braggart! That’s what I say. Except for the accomplishments noted. Humility is really important for politicians as long as they get full credit for it.

The six thematic sections of this book comprise a tapestry of anecdotes and observations. It begins with But First I Was Born about the places and people I hold dear, including those who unwittingly conspired to give me tools for a life of public service. Back to Broadway encompasses my entry into politics and a Legislative Assembly primer. It’s also a litigation wellspring. Laws and Guffaws, Family Guy, and Conversation Minister highlight the more peculiar and fruitful experiences during my years as Attorney General; Family Services, Housing and Consumer Affairs Minister; and then Conservation Minister. The sixth section, Foot Soldier, exposes mischief and mayhem in my final years as a Minister including the rebellion against Premier Selinger, and offers reflections to change you forever, or let you toss the Zzzquil.

Peter Bjornson, the big, big-hearted MLA for Gimli, says that when speaking with voters at a door, their dog peed on him. I said the alluring area he represented was also home to some interesting people and there should be a book. He replied there are books but warned, Some stories are best left untold.

Ta Da! I found a title for this book. It’s Gimli Sounds Funny. But Wabigoon sounds funnier, even Flin Flon. So that’s a different book.

There are many stories best left untold, so here they are.

— Gord Mackintosh

Winnipeg, April 2017

Part I

But First I Was Born

---

Here comes mischief … and good legislation

1

My Fort

---

The envy of kids with a dad – my fort in the Fort

Surprising to some, I’m from my hometown.

I was born and raised in Fort Frances, Ontario, or the Fort, the greatest place of its kind, on the biggest lake of its size, with the longest bridge of its length. The Fort is located smack dab, right there where it is. Outdoor types know it’s where the waters are wet and the forests are wood. It’s the fishiest. The gamiest. To ward off an influx, I use that line, You can’t get there from here.

The Fort was a big place in my young eyes. It offered great memories and lessons – both enduring and endearing. I brag that, like other hubs, the Fort’s transportation network includes a subway; we’ve always called it that, where Portage Avenue goes under the railway. When the town built its first overpass across that busy railway to the east, drivers stopped on top for the view.

The Fort taught me you have to promote what you’re proud of. There’s an apartment building. It’s three stories high. It has an elevator. It’s called Shevlin Towers. Not to be outdone, there’s the two-storey Sky View Apartments downtown.

I moved four hours down the highway to Winnipeg in the 1970s, but the Fort remains special. Dad died when I was two and I feel the community chipped in to help raise me, along with my Mom, Gramma Mack, older sisters Charlotte and Elizabeth, and The Andy Griffith Show. It does take a village to raise an MLA.

Dad was from a town in northern Scotland called Helmsdale in the parish of Kildonan. He was named Gordon for his fish curer-enterprising grandfather who died upstairs in the family home on the North Sea the day Dad was born downstairs. Dad immigrated to Winnipeg with his parents in the early 1900s. Scots came to Winnipeg as Selkirk Settlers from the same parish a century earlier so Winnipeg was known to highlanders. And that was before discount outlets.

The McIntosh family, as they spelled the name, settled in booming St. James where Dad’s father built homes before moving downtown to Vaughan Street and then to Selkirk where he taught trades to support their family of six. Dad was hard-working and determined. He got what was then a plum, white-collar job as a Winnipeg bank teller at Selkirk Avenue and Main Street. We still have the brass pot he selflessly bought Gramma with his first paycheque. He attracted the attention of a bank inspector, Art Chipman, who recruited him to become a collection manager for his finance company. But Dad took ill with aggressive TB. At age twenty-two, with great suffering he began almost ten years of fresh air and rest at the Ninette Sanatorium. Gramma Mack wondered if he got it one horrible winter driving an unheated, repossessed car from Regina. Genealogy now suggests Gramma herself may have been a latent carrier; when she was young in Scotland, her mom suffered fourteen months at home from TB before she died. And two of Gramma’s other children got TB.

The hillside setting for the Sanatorium is beautiful, yet it’s a sad place on Pelican Lake in southwestern Manitoba. Too many Manitobans have a painful family story about the San. But for me, it’s more complicated. That’s where Dad met my mom, Dorothy Cumming. She was also of Scottish immigrant stock. One of four girls, she studied nursing. Along with teaching and secretarial work, this was one of few jobs for a woman of that time. However, her hopes and plans went off the rails when she got TB in nurse training at age twenty-one and was admitted for four years before going on staff as a nurse. Things happen.

Dad wasn’t expected to ever leave the San. After eight years he did. But he was soon re-admitted for a year and that’s when Dad proposed to Mom. Decades later, I drove Mom there and she pointed to the window where the big event happened. Marriages among patients and staff were common. After a kidney removal and Dad’s second discharge – with hope of a life ahead – they married in 1943 and lived on McMillan Avenue in Winnipeg where Gramma ran a boarding house after my grandfather’s death at Selkirk. Despite doctors’ advice and two more re-admissions to the San for Dad – which must have been so discouraging – they had a family beginning with my oldest sister, Charlotte.

Mr. Chipman offered Dad work at the Fort managing a peat moss harvesting operation. Chipman and Henry Borger had bravely invested in what they called, with considerable poetic geographic licence, the Arctic Peat Moss Company. My other sister, Elizabeth, was then born after which Mom and Dad bought a house at 606 Portage Avenue – perhaps unwisely under a blanket of mill smoke. As a surprise, I mean umm, a gift, I popped out on a warm summer day eight years after Elizabeth, thank you. That was July 7, 1955, the day Charlotte lost a piece of her finger in the electric fan. Mom would say, You were born on the seventh day of the seventh month at seven in the morning! She’d also say, I thought it was menopause! By then Dad’s health worsened again and he’d taken a less stressful job as an agent with Manufacturer’s Life Insurance.

Dad passed away in 1957 at forty-eight when I was two. Mom explained it was like a strained thread giving out. I have little memory of Dad except for how thrilled he and Mom were when I took apart – and put together – a flashlight on their bed. Or when he left for the Winnipeg General Hospital for the last time. And I recall sometime after, I asked Mom, What happened to that man who lived here? I suspect I had questions because the matter was never spoken of. I can’t remember how she answered, but it must have been heart-breaking for her.

After he died, the family’s former United Church minister wrote that Dad was the most Christ-like person he’d ever met. One of Dad’s employees at the peat moss company told the local paper Dad was the best boss he ever knew. Dad left a legacy of respect that I heard about from good folks who understood what to say to a boy.

Mom, of strong CCF roots, told me Dad, of strong Liberal roots, was the campaign manager for a local Liberal in the forties. It was actually for a Liberal-Labour candidate, Mel Newman. The party label was a concoction of the Labour-Progressive Party, which were really the Communists, the United Auto Workers and the Ontario Liberal Party trying to co-opt union support that would otherwise go to the CCF. Mel and two other Lib-Lab MPPs sat of course with the Liberals in the Ontario legislature. If there was one point of division between my parents, it was their political views. Many years later when Mom herself was dying, she astonishingly confided that she wondered if their union would survive this. She confessed that she surprised and surely embarrassed Dad, when at a social gathering of local Liberals, she said, Well, you know us CCFers! If their love prevailed over their illness, it would surely prevail over their politics. Perhaps being weary brings too much focus on what makes us different.

I had no father in an era when all the kids I knew in town, except for two or three, had dads. Others felt really bad about it. Mrs. McLennan couldn’t come over at Christmas without crying. I felt agonizingly bad for Mom but not for myself. Family doted on me. Some pals told me I had it made. For example, I’d learned where all the wood was available to build my own irregular backyard fort and Donnie down the alley said he wished he didn’t have a dad too, so he could build one just like it in his backyard.

The Fort was the learning ground that offered me life lessons, many helping in public office. When my friend Johnny ran into our yard with a peashooter in his mouth, tripped and fell on his face, staggered to the back door with blood gushing from his mouth saying, Awgg, gurgle, gurgle, and Mom said "Oh my gosh! and for years said, I was never so beside myself," I learned something for sure. While I have your attention: Stop running with a peashooter in your mouth.

And when Johnny and I smashed onto the sidewalk every milk bottle that cluttered the Tibbetts’ porch, those witnesses turned us in so we could learn. And I also learned to never open cereal boxes for the great prizes, at least before Mom had a chance to buy a box. I retrieved the whole set of The Sword in the Stone plastic rings. I bet they’d be worth over four bucks today. Why were those valuable things at the bottom under all the crunchy crap? I was a cereal killer. Look up punitive justice.

As Mom slaved away in the house on the TB Christmas seal campaign, Chuckie and I, out front with our snowballs hardening into ice balls, tossed one at old lady Nelson as she trudged by, still with her original teeth. I learned from that too – really well because it was not easy saying Sorry looking into her face with her tooth missing like that. Look up restorative justice.

But honestly, I wasn’t a big troublemaker. A teacher told Mom at the Grade 6 parent night that he’d never heard of me.

And I learned I’m maybe not so smart. After all, I used logs washed up on the shore of Rainy Lake to build a raft. They were deadheads – logs that sink. I narrowly avoided a nickname from that.

I learned that Fay Hay, from near Ray, was a funny name. And the names of the Bank of Commerce managers on Scott Street who helped Mom: Hal and Cal. More so the President of the Horticultural Society, Rose Busch. My pal Jim showed me the jewellery store called Garton’s was snot rag backwards. Watch what you name things.

In the early grades, I learned it was an absolute joy to run to the front of the class when the teacher left the room, squat on the wastebasket and mouth fart. "Now where were we? Class!"

I learned from the library’s Enid Blyton Secret Seven and Famous Five books the skill of shadowing people with Jim. We were wise to their sinister motives, which were not innocent daily activities. We took photos of them which might still be somewhere. This was perfect training to be in a shadow cabinet in politics. A girl I grew up with recently told me there’s a different name for this behaviour now: stalking or something.

Elusive men hung out north of the subway around a fire in the bush. We spied on them to save the town from trouble. All they did was sit there with their bottles. One day, we slipped into their camp and filled one with pee. We later found it empty. I wonder what they said. Hey Scabs, this whiskey tastes like little kids’ pee. Here, don’t cha think? I learned the joy of mischief.

At nine-thirty each night, the paper mill’s whistle told kids the boogie man was out and it was time to get home. The curfew was never enforced, so our first lesson about the law as youngsters was how it’s all bark and no bite. The boogie man was real though; we knew that. I saw the child-thirsty menace myself many times, with his ominous long brown coat. He lived on Third Street I think. I heard there was also a witch in the McIrvine area of town and I later figured out it was my own child-loving Gramma. Kids are so mean. I learned to watch who you label.

Jim brought over a good hammer to work on the fort. We needed nails and found some in our back fence. I was pulling a stubborn one. Jim directed me, right behind. With a good yank and a bit of a slip-up, the claw went straight to his skull. It was so bad, there was no blood until after Mom answered the back door. Whether it was a mere flesh wound remains in contention. Two years later, I gave him a heavy Christmas present, a large wrapped box. When he opened it Christmas morning he found a bag of kitty litter, because I thought he still had a cat, and his hammer. Jim said he’d sue because the assault ended his certain destiny to get the Nobel Peace Prize. I’m sure I have a counterclaim; he negligently stood eighteen inches behind a nine-year-old with a live hammer. And he benefitted from me knocking some sense into his head; after all, he became a well-paid, successful corporate leader. I learned to always seek a counter-argument.

The Fort was nurturing. Mom couldn’t afford a cabin up the lake as it’s called. So in addition to hanging out at Pither’s Point Park, or The Point as it’s called, friends’ parents made me part of their lake life. I spent fantastic days at their cabins. And Mr. Johnson brought me to Kiwanis’s Father and Son nights. He let me drive his car near the dump when I was nine. Oops, I mean fifteen.

I wonder how many other kids got Jersey Milk bars from Mike at the Esquire Shop or if Joe the carpenter asked other ten-year-olds to hold his nails and keep a few in case. Or how many customers Leslie the barber told, You’d better go out the back door so the girls don’t get you.

Folks took Mom and me on Sunday drives to the country and for treats. As thanks, I exuberantly threw a handful of gravel at Mr. Lund’s shiny new car as he was pulling out, but others stepped up to take us for rides. Boyfriends of my sisters and our boarders were generous too, taking me for ice cream and to hockey games, nothing to do with my sisters.

While swimming at Sunny Cove Camp with my church group after Grade 10, I got a bad headache. It just got worse and then I threw up. They put me on a bunk bed and called Mom and an ambulance. At the hospital, Dr. Brian Johnstone did a spinal tap and discovered I had a ruptured cerebral aneurysm – essentially a stroke. I was in and out of consciousness. But I was lucky. Aneurysms are often fatal. I was immediately flown on a special flight to Winnipeg. In the neurology ward of the General Hospital, they told me no surgery was necessary but I would have to heal in hospital for a month and then for another month at home, in bed. I felt terrible for Mom. I couldn’t feel sorry for myself because next to me in the hospital room was a guy my age struggling with intellectual disabilities. To make the days pass, before going back home to bed for the rest of the summer, I knew about every Winnipeg D.J. and song on CKY and CKRC. I had already been a follower of each week’s Young at Heart Chart, but this extended time with my radio solidified a love of rock and pop that would stay with me all of my life.

At an early point during this ordeal, it struck me that when I die, I’m just gone. There’s not much use just helping myself because that all goes away. While briefly here, I was a being to others, for others. And helpful actions stay around. This changed my personality. I figured life was too short to dwell on myself, remain on the sidelines, and let time pass. So I wrote a letter to the editor of the Fort Frances Times demanding the reinstatement of teen dances at the Arena.

I feel Dr. Johnstone is the man. He saved my life. Whenever I’ve seen him, I say, Hey, You’re the guy who saved my life! He was the Fort’s Citizen of the Year for 2014. For me, that should have been 1970.

When someone asks if I have any lasting condition, I nick a David Steinberg routine. I say, Nope, then pull my shirt out at the neck and call down inside, Be right there!

Folks helped me get work. Mr. Howarth asked me to deliver and dust furniture –no application required. I did that until I was hospitalized for a painful collapsed lung, I think from pushing Flinders’s milk truck out of the ditch. The ambulance came to the house. While they loaded me on the stretcher inside, about twenty people gathered out front. As they took me out, I was so sore below the shoulder I couldn’t even wave. My poor Mom.

When I was back on my feet, I shifted to flower delivery. I got good at floral arranging. When you hit a snowbank or sharply turn a corner, arrangements fly and you do what you can. The shop owners, the wonderful Wickstroms, must have wondered about the backseat mold and the complaints they got about no water in the flower containers. I’d bet they knew.

When I sought work in the paper mill a few years later, Ernie Brunetta, the great human resources guy, didn’t like how I answered the application form’s question, Have you had any major health issue? I forthrightly wrote, BRAIN HEMORRHAGE. He said he didn’t know I had one, a brain. But Ernie wondered if my answer didn’t sound so good. He said, Sometimes people look at these things. We figured it out and it was handed in saying broken blood vessel. Ernie gave me the job, saying my application was very good.

The mill supported hundreds of families and me through university. I was proud to join the union and I still have my first card. You quickly learn the difference between a pike pole, a pickeroon, and a pickerel. You get to know about booms, broke, and black liquor. In summers, I was posted at noon in the international bridge toll booth and told to respond to angry complaints from Americans about the toll with, It’s cheaper than swimming. I learned public relations were sometimes helped by stretching it just a bit. And how to stretch it a bit; after all, everyone knows swimming there is free.

I got off easy in the mill because I avoided the pranks that often befell new workers. One of the new hires, a naive kind of guy, was given a jar filled with pulp and sticks. He was told, Bring this to Ernie in human resources, and be quick, he’s waiting. Another trick was nailing lunch baskets down when the rookie was out.

So outside the mill office, I snuck up behind a lady and scared her so bad she screamed and threw her purse in the air. I was glad she died in 2015. Because I figured she’d die in 1975.

Because the Fort is on the US border, the area is called Borderland, suggesting we were mentally on the edge. The adjoining American community is International Falls, or The Falls. We called it across the river. Folks say they’re crossing over. Ooo.

The original international waterfalls were defeated by a dam a long time ago but the water still moves dark and fast. At an early age, I was told a mother threw her baby off the international bridge into the Rainy River. She was never charged; no one could prove in what country she committed the crime. I thought about that most times I walked over the bridge. And it made me think about that law.

I learned about Minnesotans and then I developed a real connection. In later years this gave me more confidence to break the ice for good relations for cross-border agreements and copying progressive programs.

There’s a lot in common. If you think Canadians nail hockey, watch your back at a Fort v. Falls High School match. If you think Canadians nail fishing, count ice fishing shacks on a Minnesota lake. If you think Canadians nail the Kenora Dinner Jacket (a.k.a. red plaid), step inside a northern Minnesota bar and grill. And across the street they buy shirts that say "CANADA."

But here’s how we differ: as soon as you go across, it’s obvious. It jumps right out at you: there’s a lot of Minnesota license plates. Plus we make casserole, they make hot dish, but with Tater Tots. We have runners, they have sneakers. We use the washroom, they use the bathroom. At church we say Ah-men, they, counterintuitively, say Eh-men.

And we’ve got the Queen. She owned or operated the Royal Restaurant, Royal Theatre, Royal Bank, Royal Taxi, Royal Shoe Repair, Royal Beverages, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Royal Canadian Legion, and our hockey team, the Royals. Americans are envious. So I like the Queen. At functions I sing that tune about her and toast her with glasses of goof.

But here’s the biggest difference: how could they utterly screw up health care, yet nail high school marching bands and shredded hash browns? Families with any trace of Canadian citizenship tried to have babies or get sick on our side. I know a few Canadians went to Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic but if there’s ever a phony miracle cure, it’s mayonnaise.

They’ve made improvements. The Falls’ clinic now has an ad: This clinic offers discounted services to low-income patients. But it can collect outstanding bills by causing an individual’s arrest, and subjecting an individual to a writ of body attachment. So as for my birthright, Ah-men.

And I learned from a donut shop the Fort has unique weather. Tim Hortons chose the Fort for its Warm Wishes woolen yarn bombing promotional video. The spot appeared during the 2015 Super Bowl no less. Restaurant seats and some town assets were covered in woolen knitwear. According to Tims’ Vice President, the Fort was chosen …partly because the town typically sees colder temperatures than a lot of other communities in Canada…We found a cold place. That’s special for Canada. But the reason was because the town is tight knit to start with.

As a resident recognized in the Fort Frances Times, Fort Frances is back on the map. So if you can get there from here and have the urge to fit right in, ask someone on Scott Street, You goin’ up the lake, across, or to the Point? Whoosh, you’re in like that.

I haven’t lived there for a long time now but I never really left the Fort and it never left me. And I would never put it behind me.

2

Exile On the Red

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Mom scrounged to send me to the toughest school for Grade 9. On the Red River and far from the Fort, its extreme regimen – with swats – gave me an idea: I wanna go home!

I asked my aging Auntie Gwen to tell me about my parents. All she said was, When your dad was dying, they were dirt poor. That fall, your mother didn’t have a coat. But the house in the Fort on Portage Avenue was ours, an enlarged gardener’s cottage once part of a lumber baron’s sprawling property next door. It may have had humble beginnings, but our home had a verandah, a fireplace, a piano, and a big yard. And a wet basement. With a wringer washer. And the coal bin. I thought we had it all.

After my dad died, Mom creatively made ends meet. She saved everything. She made us clothes, which at least was cool at Hallowe’en. She learned the how to from her upbringing. Her frugal mom immigrated to Winnipeg in the early 1900s from the overcrowded tenements of the Gorbals of Glasgow, sometimes finding paid work as a telephone operator. Her dad, a carpenter from the Scottish fishing village of Fraserburgh, returned from World War I with a disabled hand. They intermittently rented apartments and houses in Winnipeg’s North End and St. James, and on Morley Avenue where Mom was born in 1916. To the chagrin of my grandmother from Glasgow’s bustle, the longest they settled in one place before moving to BC was their Manitoba homestead near a place called Abbotshall. It’s near Magnet, near East Bay, near Million, ahh, Rorketon you’d know. The remote, rocky, aspen-packed soils of such a place ensure subsistence living for highly skilled survivors.

Gramma Mack moved to a small log home in the Fort in the late 1940s and helped out where she could as Mom got jobs nursing, then with the TB Association, and as the receptionist at the Health Unit. As her health worsened from a rare lung condition called aspergillosis, she worked as evening clerk at the Voyageur Motel, kitty-corner from our house.

One Christmas she dragged home a largely unbranched and disfigured tree, likely the last one on the lot and it maybe cost a quarter or two buttons. I complained. I later heard her cry in her room. This traumatic moment suggested to me that the whole big deal here on earth wasn’t about me. I felt really bad.

While this may have tuned me up, it didn’t smarten me up all the way. What little money I was allotted or scraped together, I squandered foolishly. I did little to help the family get back onto its feet. After standing for hours in summers watching construction crews on each street put down curb and gutter, I threw pennies onto the smooth gravel just as the paving machine rolled by.

And I became a regular at a half-dozen establishments. I rotated my patronage to avoid them catching on. Among them were Kelly’s, Olynyck’s, and Del Zotto’s. They’d ask, The usual, Gordie? I traded empties from the streets, Stubby bottles usually, and if that didn’t cover it, there’d be cold, hard cash. I tried to get credit with foil wrappers from the packs of cigarettes also from the streets. But here’s news for you: they didn’t redeem them in that town. It always came down to three or four green leaves with a jujube chaser. A licorice shoestring to drag things out. Maybe a cold one – a Stubby Honey Cream. But you knew when times were good. It would be a Friday when Mom would say, Here’s some money. Get a Rum and Butter bar and one for yourself

Many years after Dad died, Mom was able to buy a portable black and white TV to watch any one of the three channels, CBC from Winnipeg and two from Duluth with new episodes and mid-morning reruns of The Andy Griffith Show. Those episodes were worth missing school for, particularly when I had one of my mysterious stomach aches. I was later allowed to buy Corgi Toys! I still have them, although I don’t play with them as much. Uncle Ian generously found Mom an old green 1957 Pontiac by the time I was in the middle grades. It conked out at stop signs when girls from class were watching, but it had fins. Within weeks of its sale, I felt violated hearing it was in the Emo stock car races.

With Mom’s encouragement, I started collecting stamps. Although another financial drain, I learned about Lundy and San Marino, and that peering at 3,900 teeny-weeny pieces of perforated paper makes you stooped and bug-eyed.

When Mom was disabled from working full-time, there was government help. It’s struck me how critical the disability pension, orphan’s benefits, Ontario health insurance and student aid was to our family’s opportunities. The benefits allowed me to move through life with my friends and Mom was able to maintain her dignity. Hot dogs and round steak at best, second-hand Christmas toys or those handmade clothes also helped. I rarely speak of our situation because we never suffered the abject poverty and disabling despair I’ve now seen in other families. And it was a safe, loving and nurturing home. But it helped shape my politics. I’d measure government policies against how they’d impact Mom.

But money isn’t what worried Mom most. She repeatedly said I shouldn’t be a homebody when I got older and I had to stop lazing around. Beyond the yard work that I came to enjoy, she pleaded for more help with the dishes. She preached I should be more active and, as I got older, to help the community. She showed me by her work for a Meals on Wheels program, services at LaVerendrye Hospital and a Public Health Unit for which she was awarded the town’s Woman of the Year in 1967. She was a hero to many. The Fort Frances Times wrote, Mrs. Mackintosh moves quietly but successfully through her many spheres of activity in Fort Frances, nominating her home, raising two daughters and a son after the death of her husband in the best traditions of a Christian family, and still finding time to serve her fellow citizens. But most of all, she fretted whether I had a normal upbringing, no dad and all. There weren’t other single moms around to help her gain confidence but she had it right.

My sisters always had my best interests at heart, but they were moving on, being eleven and eight years older. Aside from my friends and the super cousins from Winnipeg, our home was largely enlivened by visits from industrious Gramma, my warm-hearted aunts, Mom’s watchful widow friends, and of course my sisters’ gregarious friends. Uncle Ian was great and fun, got me a blue CCM bike with whitewalls and found a detailed model Texaco freighter ship with batteries to propel it. He lifted me high in the air and, on the way down, rubbed my tender face against his scratchy cheek stubble. Uncle Henry regularly wrote me encouraging letters from Florida stuffed with used stamps and shark teeth off the beach.

But I lived in a women’s house, except for The Andy Griffith Show, and that bothered Mom. She decided I needed a greater male influence. For Grade 9, I was sent to St. John’s Cathedral Boys’ School on the Red River north of Selkirk, Manitoba. I was to get an overdose.

The only time I’d been away from home was a week in summers at Sunny Cove Camp, visits to family in Fort William and to Expo ’67 with my lenient aunt and cousins. Although walking for hours on my own through Montreal’s aromas, sounds and bustle assured me it was okay if not alluring to step out of the Fort, I didn’t think the boys’ school thing was a good idea. What about my Globe and Mail paper route? You can’t disrupt small business like that. And we lived right