The Long Way Home

A hapless journey across Canada in search of a friend.

A Long Way Home


Part 1 Halifax
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I had been at the university, I mean as a student, but I was too easily distracted. Well, I was still at the university, but on my own terms. We listened to The Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane. We gathered in excitement when the young Leonard Cohen came by the student union to give an impromptu performance. We hung out in the large student cafeteria, day or night, high or sober, and discussed things deep or foolish. I think it is fair to say that my ambition, then as now, and can best be described as idle curiosity.


Just to be clear, I was not some poor aspiring student, the government had offered to pay for all my university education on the condition that I would work for them when I graduated. Well I tried it, I walked away. My high school English teacher told me he thought I was a rebel. He meant it kindly. Perhaps he was right, but it was possibly the best decision I ever made.


After work on the waterfront I would walk up to the university and sit in on some evening course or the other. My favorite was one given by a young Quebecois prof on the lyrical essays of Albert Camus. After class we would walk several blocks to one of the commercial areas close to the university and settle in a small cafe to talk into the wee small hours. Then, I would walk across town, jump into bed, and get up for work a few hours later. Those were the days.


When I was not working, I would spend my time in the university library reading philosophy, sometimes writing, having adopted a strategy best suited to a mind that flitted from one thing to another, which was later embodied electronically as hypertext, spinning off new thoughts and ideas to subtexts. It was really just a way of writing voluminous "footnotes" in another place.


People who know me these days will not be surprised that I cultivated a style which attempted to put as much meaning into as few words as possible. A few years later I shared my writing with friends and a prof I was close to. They had no idea what I was talking about. I took it all and burnt it, and veered off in another direction.


Perhaps the best thing that came out of those times in the library was my discovery of the great Taoist, Chuang Tzu, he of "Am I a man dreaming I am a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming I am a man." Now there was a man after my own liking! I was most impressed by his story of the useless tree, a discussion on the side of the road during which one of them scorns this large old tree as being useless, and the other pointing out that uselessness was its virtue, it is what allowed it to become this grand old tree instead of being cut down for some purpose or another.


I admit to less honourable pursuits, occasionally I wrote papers for lazy students with ten dollars to spare. In one case, I wrote about the uncanny similarities between Nietzsche and the early Wittgenstein. It was pure fantasy and it earned my client an A. In another I attempted to show that Kierkegaard would not have agreed with himself. Yes, I was cheeky and irresponsible. The paper that ended my short career was one on R. D. Laing the eminent Brit psychiatrist who proposed some radical and interesting ideas about schizophrenia. Well I had at least read the book. Some weeks later I was passing in the halls of the student union when I overheard someone refer to me as an expert on this author. I immediately went home and shaved my, by then rather large, beard. Clandestine ghost writing was one thing, but being presumed to have an expertise in something which I most assuredly did not was definitely quite another!


At times I could be found sitting in the cafeteria trying to fathom a book on phenomenology by Edmund Husserl. I progressed at the rate of about a page a day, writing notes all over the margins. After about 30 days of this, I noticed that for the first time in my life, my mind was absolutely still, empty. I chucked the Husserl, and went over to chat and joke with my friends.


At about this time I was living in a one room bedsitter not far from the university. A friend would sometimes come by and sleep with me, and even moved in for a while. We had gotten quite close, but the boy I really wanted had gone out west. And so, I decided to go out west to find him. My room mate gave me a belt in exchange for the tie I was currently using, and with $1.29 in my pocket, off I went. It was the biggest mistake of my life I think, to walk away from someone who really cared for me, for someone I wanted, but who didn't.


Part 2 The Road West
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So I set out with my belongings on my back, the most cherished of which was my old army sleeping bag which felt like it must have weighed 40 pounds.


Setting out involved walking to the edge of town and standing by the side of the road, thumb extended, waiting for some generous driver to stop for me. In such manner I made it, after many hours out of Nova Scotia, and into the neighbouring province of New Brunswick. Not bad for a first day. I remember walking up a hill surrounded by fresh greenery and thinking it was soon time to find a place for the night. A place for the night generally meant a quiet spot out of the way where I could sleep without concern.


And so I somehow made it into Quebec, navigating the complex and frenzied traffic around the great city of Montreal, speaking broken French with broken English, which somehow worked just fine. Then the hectic lanes through southern Ontario, the great city of Toronto, and north of the Great Lakes into the wilderness.


Now at this point the highway was blasted through the Great Canadian Shield, through great granite ridges, which presented excellent opportunities for sleeping when darkness began to fall. And so it was one night, I lay out my ground sheet and sleeping bag on a ridge overlooking the highway, crawled into my sleeping bag, and slept deeply till dawn. At which point I discovered, on awakening and beginning to make my way off the ridge, large cat tracks in the soft ground about 10 feet or so from my sleeping spot. I thought that was pretty cool.


Later that day an RCMP, that is to say, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, cruiser stopped by the side of the road, to talk to me. We had a short but pleasant conversation.. who are you? where are you going?, and to my surprise, would you like a ride? And thus I found myself at Sioux St Marie, at the top of Lake Superior.


Later, in Vancouver, someone told me that the police had shot at him while traveling this same road. I found that hard to believe and it didn't do anything to make me want to know this person.


Somewhere down the road, as I moved into the prairies I remember being picked up a native American, we had a nice chat, and when it was time for him to turn off north to his village, invited me along. I refused politely, and went on my way. My memories of the prairies consist mostly of being quietly stoned from lack of sleep and possibly food, sitting in the back seat of a car and marveling at the beauty of the prairie sky. Then somehow finding myself in a campsite in the Rockies with a kindly family. And off over the great mountains, highway running between great mountain peaks and ridges and along rushing rivers as we made it into Surrey and then Vancouver.


By happenstance perhaps I found myself hosted by a family of nudists. For me that was a bridge too far, but they were nice people and I enjoyed their company. One of their children asked her mother why I didn't talk about peace to which she responded, "he has his own peace". A generous remark and alas untrue.


As luck would have it, and looking back I realize there was a great deal of luck and even more good will on this trip. And, as it happened, there was to be a great festival at Stanley Park, in downtown Vancouver. I said goodbye to my naked hosts, with much gratitude, and headed to the park, to look for my friend. And so I found him.


After the festival we went to the the University of British Columbia where a great many of us were to be found sleeping in our sleeping bags. I remember waking up at some point, and still seeing mountains and forests, until after a few moments my vision resolved itself to the walls of the gymnasium.



Part 3 The Rock Festival
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1970 was the year that rock festivals toured across Canada and we had already, some time previously, attended one in Toronto, far to the east. And then we heard of one upcoming soon in Calgary, a mere mountain range away. So we worked at odd jobs, cleaning people's garages, and such like, and earned some money, which money I promptly lost much to my friend's disgust. In truth, money and I have always had a casual relationship. I was never much interested in it.


Not to be deterred, we packed our backpacks and hitched our way to Calgary, and settled down, like many hundreds of others, on the hillsides overlooking the stadium. I remember seeing bears on the other side of the highway as we walked along waiting for the next car to speed on by. We camped overnight in Banff, a prestigious mountain resort area, with camping grounds, wandered some of the trails, packed up our kit, and resumed our trek in search of rock and roll or whatever it was.


We arrived, and encamped along with all the other penniless fans on the hills outside the stadium as the concert began. Someone realized that there were hundreds of hippies encamped outside the stadium and food lines were hastily set up, for which we were very grateful. I remember standing on tip toes at the top of one such hill to get a glimpse of Janis Joplin belt out one of her songs, unaware that she would die of an overdose a few months later.


The reason the concert had attracted so many of us is that the concert promoters had promised the mayor of Calgary to open the doors and allow everyone in. They reneged. There was a riot! But it was a very Canadian riot. People jostled and moved about, and I found myself caught in a press of bodies, moved here and there without intention or resistance. The RCMP showed up in their cars with their very aggressive dogs. The police got out to try to control the crowd, but the dogs remained interested bystanders, barking excitedly from inside the cars. As far as I could tell, there was no overt violence, no one was hurt, and no damage was done. And eventually we settled back on the hillside and watched the rest of the concert.


And so in due time we returned to Vancouver.


Part 4. Howling at the Moon
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As time passed my friend found himself a girlfriend, and I grew restless. An opportunity arose for me to take a bus ride to the Okanagan Valley some distance inland from Vancouver, a fruit growing area. There were four of us, setting up our little encampment by a lake. Just behind us was a train track, and behind that an orchard full of green apricots. We lazed about and did hippie things. In the heat of the day we would go swimming in the lake. At night we would zip all our sleeping bags together and sleep as one. It was a comfortable interlude but of course, unsustainable.


Two young teenagers came by and joined our little troupe by the lake. They had a car, which made us wonder. At night as we slept, a train went by, making a horrific sound, we were perhaps 15 feet from the tracks down a small embankment. One of the boys jumped in my arms frightened by the passing train, and was content to sleep there. In the morning he said he was going to return to Vancouver and his "sugar daddy", the term he used, and so he left us. One kid remained, and the car.


After some interrogation it turned out that they had no papers for the car and that they had bought it from this shady guy for $600. We did not ask where they got the money. So we had this apparently clueless teenager, and a his possibly stolen car on our hands.


After some discussion it was decided that we needed to find the man from which they had bought the car, and so we set out. Now it was thought this shady character was in the Northwest Territories, and so the five us piled into the car, and drove from southern British Columbia, to Yellowknife. Sightseeing along the way. Some detective work revealed that the man we sought was indeed in Yellowknife, but in jail, and no we could not see him. We went to a campground to spent the night, and figure out what to do. We played cards until about 3 am, when we realized that, oh yeah, the sun doesn't set this far north. Meanwhile we had decided to return to the south but abandon the car somewhere along the way.


The idea is that each of us would be dropped off to find our way south, until the last one would ditch the car. I was the first to leave as I did not drive, and was perfectly capable of finding my way south on my own. So I found myself hitchhiking down this lonely highway in northern Alberta, as the light started to die. Fortunately I was picked up by this young couple who lived in a trailer in High Level. High Level was an oil town, I think, and as far as I could see, consisted of mobile homes.


My generous hosts invited me in where we chatted and dropped some acid, LSD. When it was time to sleep, I lay my sleeping bag outside next to their two magnificent huskies. The moon was full, the sky was clear, it was an amazing night, with a profound beauty of intense clarity. And it was in this state of bliss that I slowly started to drift off to sleep! Only to leap from my sleeping bag with a great fright at the sound of one of the dogs howling at the moon. And again, and again. But morning came, I thanked my hosts, and followed my route south.


Part 5 The Way Home
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If you hitchhike south long enough you come to the Trans Canada Highway. It was I suppose about 5.30 in the afternoon as I started hitchhiking east, and soon arrived at the outskirts of Calgary. It was clear that I could not hitchhike through this busy metropolis, so I walked. And walked. And walked the empty streets until, at dawn, I left the city behind me, relieved to see open fields again. From there I continued my journey east, deciding to detour a bit north through a parallel highway through Saskatchewan and Manitoba. I remember one night being impressed by a brilliant display of Aurora Borealis.


At some point in Manitoba I thought it best to return south and rejoin the Trans Canada Highway. I remember being driven by a priest through the largely French speaking and Catholic communities, as he pointed to this property or that, as we wended our way to Winnipeg. "This is ours" he would say, "and that is ours as well". He was proud of his parish, and I was quietly amused.


And so in such manner I retraced my steps through northern Ontario, and into Toronto, where I walked north endless blocks until I was able to hitch a ride to New Market, a satellite town, where my friend had somehow been spending time with an old fling of mine. It was only much later that I realized that my best friend was quite the ladies man, as they say, in the glory of his youth, and was as it turned out not as much a friend as I had thought.


On the way back, somewhere in New Brunswick, he told me in so many words that I was cramping his style, and we separated. I returned to Halifax, as I had left, alone, a little sadder, but no wiser I suspect. Thereafter I spent 3 days alone in my room, determined not to leave it until I determined what was worth living for. On the third day the answer came to me, and it was one I could not argue with "reverence for life", which is to say, it took me three days to get over feeling sorry for myself.