The dark waters of the mid Atlantic were heavy, cold and eerily calm. Stories of icebergs had circulated and memories of the Titanic were still fresh. A light fog lay wrath-like on the waters.

It was a day out of Liverpool, in late May 1946, on the North Atlantic run and the huge grey ghost sliced the waters with calm assurance. The Queen Mary was still painted her wartime colors, was still stripped of most of her finery but her decks held a precious cargo.

For years now she had carried men, grim soldiers in battle gear, over 8,000,000 of them, 16,000 at a time, many going to their deaths on the bloody battlefields of Europe. But today she was on a return journey, her decks alive with women and their very young children. War brides on their way to a new future on a new continent. Hope and joy replaced fear and determination as emotional cargo.

My mother and I were among them. I was three years old and had just had my first train ride, from Mitcham to Southhampton, and was now settling into life on board the second largest ship in the world.

There were children everywhere and every woman had a story of romance to tell, swept off their feet by brave young men in uniform on their way to an uncertain fate. The men these women had chosen had survived the nightmare of battle and had returned to North American to prepare homes for them in a new world.

For every woman on board, this was the adventure of a life time and no small testimony to their own courage.

It came out of the fog, a towering island of ice far to starboard. Women grabbed their children and ran, anxious not to miss seeing the fleeting drama of an iceberg at sea. My mother lifted me onto the rail for a better glimpse as other mothers were doing, her strong arms holding me tight.

Many of these young women had been children themselves when a berg such as this had sent the Titanic to bottom of the ocean and the memory sent a delicious chill through the crowd.

Suddenly, the ships fog horn sent an ear-splitting blast of noise into the air.

Women screamed and lost their tight clutches on their children and we tottered on the rail three stores over the icy waters of the North Atlantic. There was an instant of panic before grips were reestablished and terrified women hauled their children off the ships rails.

And then everyone laughed with relief.

Someone noticed the iceberg had already drifted out of sight as the great engines of the Queen Mary drove the ship toward the distant shore.

My closest encounters with death were all before I was three years of age. The first when illness led the doctors to contemplate an abortion to save my mother's life, the second when shrapnel from an exploding V1 rocket ripped the hood of my carriage apart. The third when I was almost dropped into the dark frigid waters of the North Atlantic.

Life has been pretty good since then.

When we moved to Powassan we didn't know the town's undertaker lived across the road. It wasn't one of the selling features of the town the real estate agent thought to mention. We also didn't know the ivy clinging to the wall of his two story house was home to a colony of bats that would rise out of the vines at dusk every evening, alive with a ravenous hunger.

We also didn't know that those who died in the winter could not be buried in the frozen ground until the spring, and that the bodies were stored in the windowless building at the back of his yard. That would have given a whole new meaning to the phrase, the dead of winter.

Of course Max didn't exactly look like the scary picture at the top of this blog. He was a small town funeral director who couldn't get away with putting on a false air of solemnity. He was a large fun loving man who knew more jokes than Jay Leno.

If we were sitting on our front porch on a warm summer weekend when a funeral procession would pass on the way to the cemetery, Max would always lean out the window of the hearse, wave and say something like, "I've got room in the back if you're interested."

I'd yell back, "Sorry, can't afford it right now."

He would get in the last word as the hearse drifted at a dignified pace up the street, "That's alright, we take credit!"

Sadly Max passed away himself in his early 40's. And his funeral parlor burned to the ground a few months later.

Not long after my wife and our little family had moved back to Toronto, we received an engraved invitation to the opening of the new funeral parlor. Max eldest son had taken over the family business, had rebuilt and was holding an open house with a tour of the new facilities.

Who could resist?

It was certainly the strangest wine and cheese party I ever attended. People standing and casually chatting throughout the facility including the embalming room with its large drain in the floor under the embalming table for all the bodily fluids.

The trouble is, I've never been able to look at red wine the same way since.

Canada has its own version of the Grammy Awards. They're called the Junos. The award ceremony was recently held in Calgary (it's held in a different Canadian city every year) and the results this year were remarkable.

Leslie Feist, from Amhurst Nova Scotia, won nearly the whole thing.

I guess it isn't surprising. Her music is popping up in commercials all over the place. Her hit single, 1234 has been downloaded from YouTube an astounding 8,000,000 times.



Feist scooped up 5 Juno awards for the 5 categories in which she was nominated. On Saturday's un-televised Juno ceremony, Feist won Junos for Songwriter of the Year and Artist of the Year, while during Sunday's CTV broadcast, she picked up the trophies for Singer of the Year, Album and Pop Album of the Year for The Reminder.

For those who can't get too much of a good thing, her performance of 1234 on the David letterman show was brilliant.



Feist's third solo album, The Reminder, was released on April 23, 2007 in Europe, and on May 1, 2007 in Canada, the USA, and the rest of the world. She toured worldwide to promote the album. The album features "1234", a song co-written by New Buffalo's Sally Seltmann, that became a surprise hit after being featured in a commercial for the iPod nano, hitting #8 in the US, a rare feat for indie rock musicians and even more notable since it hit the Top Ten on the strength of downloads alone. She has been lauded in the press and was featured on the cover of the New York Times arts section in June 2007. The Reminder had sold worldwide over 1,000,000 copies and is certified gold in the U.S.

Here's her second hit from that album, My Moon My Man.



We're proud of you Leslie!

As with most things in life, the ending was anti-climatic.

I returned to the doctor's office on Friday for my test results and they were all normal.

My doctor was humbled into defeat. There were no new medicines he could prescribe, no foul and odious tasks he could insist I perform. No specialists he could refer me to, where I'd have to take half a day off work and arrive to find ten other people all booked at the same time.

He looked the test results through a second time, desperately searching for something.

"How is your diet going?" he asked, knowing he was defeated but still seeking some way to humiliate me.

"No problem at all," I told him (I haven't started yet).

"Good, good" he mumbled.



Then he began writing on a note pad. I watched his pen scratch across the paper with horrified suspicion. I had won. He had lost. There was no wriggle room left for him. What was he up to?

"Here is the name of a blood pressure monitor I'd like you to purchase. They're very simple to use and very accurate."

I looked his note over, curse him.

"I want you to start checking your blood pressure in the morning and at night and record your results on this table. As you loose weight, we should see your blood pressure beginning to come down."

"Every morning and night? For how long?"

"Well until we start to see those readings consistently in the lower range."

"Potentially forever, then."

The gleam of triumph was in his eye, "Only if your dieting isn't successful. But don't worry, there are some excellent medications we can put you on in that case."

Arrrrruuugh!

"And we better have you book another appointment in three months to see how things are going."

Double Arrrrruuugh!

Tricked into a return to his lair another time.

I left a broken man.

On a diet.

Whose own blood pressure would be used against him. Betrayed by his own body. And with another appointment in three month's time.

Arrrrrrruuuuugh!!

I have an early appointment at work, so I have asked Lindsay to write today's blog. Any complaints about the contents of the blog will have to be taken up with her.


I am quivering with excitement but stand still despite the overwhelming urge to run. I feel Anexplorer's hands on my collar and hear the click of my leash being removed.

Freedom!

I leap forward into a wondrous world of exotic smells and tiny scurrying creatures. For a while I just run for the sheer pleasure of it. But within moments I feel the prideful leash of the pack and return to my pack leader who lumbers down the path toward me.

He is a strange pack leader, huge in size and with a quiet bark. He seldom runs, although lately he has been racing for short distances. His running thrills me. I am so happy for him and excited to be running beside him. But it doesn't last long before he returns to his slow gait.

I come to a fork in the path ahead of us. To the right takes us along the top of the bluffs, to the left the beach at the bottom. I head left, loving the water, drawn by the seductive sound of the waves.

Looking back to check with the pack leader that I have made the correct choice, I see from a wave of Anexplorer's hand that we are going right today. So I spin about and fly up the path that leads to the meadow at the top of the bluffs.

I love hand gestures, they are so much easier to understand than the various barks Anexplorer prefers for communication. "Sit", "lie down" and "roll over" were child's play of my youth, useful only as keys to recognizing that our pack uses barking as speech. Why we don't just use body language is beyond me and has made life in the pack difficult.

I am a dog in a human pack and have to learn its ways. So I listen. Laying on the floor of the livingroom, I listen to all that is being said. I have learned all their names and the names of each area of the house. An obedient pack member, I will go to sleep if asked. No matter how excited I am, if told to be patient, I will go away and give them ten minutes. I know the word "No".

My pack leader often boasts to friends about how much he has taught me, but he stopped teaching me with "sit". The rest I have learned on my own. I have not just learned a foreign language, I have learned the language of a foreign species. But he gets all the praise which, as pack leader, he should.

I catch the faint scent of mouse in passing and wheel back to investigate. Anexplorer passes me by. He seldom chases the spoor of animals, preferring a steady gait down the trail. I head off the pathway into the deep brush, nose to the ground, following the scent.

Eventually I loose the spoor. It was hours old anyway, and I return to the path and find Anexplorer sitting on a log overlooking the bluffs, taking in the view and thinking.

I seldom think. Using language is hard work and I don't really see the benefit. For example, I'm puzzled that whenever we come here to hunt, we never catch anything. Yet Anexplorer is a great provider, as a pack leader has to be. He hunts on his own and comes home laden with foods of all kinds. But where's the benefit to my worrying about it?

A squirrel darts across the path and I am off after it, barking furiously. It reaches a tree, its tail inches from my jaws. Frustrated I dance around the base of the tree, barking and barking with frustration.

The sound of my name being called eventually penetrates my rage and I look up to find Anexplorer already moving off back down the trail. I give a few parting barks and then run to catch up.

I know we're heading home but I love it here and don't know why we can't just live here, find a den that's closer. it would be much more fun.

Ah well, I'm not the pack leader and, although this is a very small and strange pack, its a good life.