None of This Was Planned Read online

  She said yes.

  And she sang, so beautifully. Thank you.

  And what about the department-store dummy in the side ­window that scared the socks off me?

  “She is my friend who tells the future,” said Michelle.

  Then she had to go to work. She is a chauffeur for a limo ­company. She drives a conservative car looking professional with her lipstick and incredibly good driving skills. If they only knew.

  But we know. And so do you. All because we stopped someone to ask if we could take a picture. You should try it—but not in traffic.

  Now the ps.

  We are all human. We all make mistakes. The editor, Vinh Nguyen, was listening to me record the words that go with the story: “Michelle decorated the truck herself,” I said.

  “Are you sure that’s her name?” he asked.

  Whoops. How can I, with more years of experience than he’s been alive, say, “I think so”?

  Double whoops, because there is no way I can check. I don’t have a phone number, I don’t have the place she works except it is a limo company. I could start calling all of them and ask if they have a woman who drives a strange truck working for them. And even if they didn’t say they can’t release private information it would still be seven or eight p.m. before I got through.

  Vinh said he remembered another story about the woman and her truck done several years ago. How did he remember? I don’t know. And how did it stick in his mind that her name might not be Michelle.

  He did a good deal of searching to find the other story then said: “It might be Marilyn.”

  “Oh, God, yes, of course. That is what she said,” I said in my excited, humble, suddenly-brought-back-to-reality voice.

  I changed the name in the story to Marilyn.

  Vinh is a nice guy who knows computers inside out, and editing and being friendly, and obviously he has a wonderful memory.

  How did he happen to come to this job?

  This is where the story takes a dramatic change of direction from funny and happy to serious and important.

  His father was one of the boat people who escaped from Vietnam. He paid someone a hefty price to get on an old, crowded ship and hope some other country would take him in.

  He left a home ripped apart by war for the sake of the future of his son and wife, who stayed behind.

  Canada took him in. In that, he was lucky, but easy was not part of his life. It took six years for him to get permits to have his family join him.

  I wasn’t there, but at Vinh’s wedding a year ago he gave a toast to his parents, in Vietnamese, that made them cry, along with everyone else, most of whom did not understand his words but knew what he was saying.

  In a roundabout way his father escaping and being taken in by a new country resulted in a woman’s name being correct on the air. That is a minor thing—except, of course, for the woman—but in a major way Vinh’s father, with the help of Canada, gave him a good life and made this country better.

  Now Canada is taking refugees from other wars. Some people are opposed to this because they say we have trouble finding housing for people already living here. And why should they be helped with government money when so many others need it? And why can’t they go somewhere else? And, although no one actually says it, they are different from us.

  It’s not unlike the sorry tale of the SS Komagata Maru, a ship that reached these shores a hundred years ago only to be turned away.

  You know the story, I’m sure. I told it in my last book, Haunting Vancouver: A Nearly True History, so you must know it. The ship was carrying 376 men from Punjab in India, men who were citizens of the British Commonwealth and had a legal right to live in Canada, but when it tried to dock in Vancouver it was refused permission. The city’s white folks, who outnumbered everyone else here, said they did not want brown-skinned people with turbans moving in.

  The white folks had already made up a crazy law that said immigrants had to come here directly from their country of origin without stopping anywhere else. Passengers on ships coming from Europe could do this, but it was impossible for a ship coming from India. It had to stop for coal.

  “Sorry folks, you did not come directly so you can’t dock,” the men were told.

  One of the white men who would not let them dock was a former national hero, hockey star Cyclone Taylor. When the ship arrived here he was an immigration officer who later became the Immigration Commissioner for BC and the Yukon and received the Order of the British Empire for his services. “You know the rules,” he said. “We have to go by the rules.”

  Those on the ship were not expecting a band to greet them when they arrived, but what they got was a fleet of men in small boats surrounding them singing “White Canada Forever,” a popular song back then. They had almost no food and no water, but, “Sorry folks, you can’t get it from us.”

  For two months they pleaded to be allowed to land. In the end they were forced to return to Calcutta, but now they were seen as traitors and a threat to British rule in India. When they landed, the police tried to arrest several of them, and in the riot that followed, nineteen of them were shot before they could leave the dock, and many others were imprisoned.

  It was a shameful chapter in Canada’s history, but it took the government almost a century to apologize.

  ● ● ●

  These are not happy stories, but they are important and they have to be included.

  Another story about refugees has nothing to do with bc or Canada, but it I found it so sad and so important I felt you should know about it.

  It was in an obituary in the New York Times that I read on January 24, 2016, and it was about the death of a man two years earlier. The New York Times had only just learned about it, but it was important enough to still run the obituary two years late.

  The man was David Stoliar. He died in Oregon and there was only a small notice in a local paper when he died. His story almost vanished but someone, somehow, in the Times newsroom recognized his name and the paper published the story.

  In 1942 David Stoliar was a refugee, a boat person. He was one of 790 mostly Romanian Jews trying to escape the death sentence imposed on them by the Nazis.

  They each begged and borrowed $1,000, a gigantic amount, to pay a rip-off artist for a place on an old ship, very much as refugees are doing today. As the Times story said, they were “crowded into a squalid, leaky former cattle boat with bunks stacked 10 high, little food or fresh water, no kitchen and only eight toilets.” There were no life preservers.

  They, like all refugees, were desperate.

  They wanted to get to Palestine, a safe place for Jews. Shortly after leaving Romania the engine on the ship died. A passing tug boat captain offered to fix it but only in exchange for the wedding rings of all the passengers.

  He repaired the engine but three days later as the ship neared Turkey it broke down again. The Turks, who were neutral in the war, towed it close to the shore, but would not allow anyone off and would not fix it for fear of offending either Britain or Germany.

  Then Britain, which had control of Palestine, refused to allow the scared, hungry refugees to go to Palestine for fear of offending the Arabs.

  For seventy-one days the passengers were kept waiting, tied in one spot in the ocean while the Turks deliberated on what to do. Finally the Turks cut the anchor chain, towed the ship out into the open ocean and left it to drift.

  The next day a Soviet submarine saw it and, following their orders to sink all neutral ships so they would not aid Germany, fired a torpedo into the side of this ship filled with refugees.

  In an instant the ship exploded. Those who were not killed outright were left screaming in a freezing ocean with no life preservers. One by one they sank below the water, too tired and cold to go on.

  David Stoliar, who was young and strong and was able to hold o
nto a piece of wooden decking, was the only survivor. When he was picked up by a passing ship and returned to Turkey the Turkish authorities held him in prison for six weeks, apparently to keep him from telling any possible reporter what had happened.

  He eventually made it to Palestine and joined the British Army’s Jewish Brigade. Later he moved to the us.

  For decades he said nothing about it. No one cared.

  In 2001 a Canadian filmmaker did a documentary about the ship. That was when the New York Times first heard about David Stoliar and prepared his obituary. David Stoliar died in 2014. The obituary ran in 2016.

  The importance of the story is not the two-year delay. The importance is in knowing that refugees are like you, and me, and when we need help, “No!” is not a good thing to hear.

  Because Vinh’s father heard “Welcome to Canada,” Vinh and his father and mother and family have made this a better Canada. And that is an even better story than the wishing well on the truck.

  Period.

  God—in a Hard Hat

  Back to religion. Now there’s a taboo subject, but I started talking about it at the beginning so let’s go back to it.

  Religion is big in my life. God is big. Of course God is big. Look at all those cathedrals and Sunday morning television shows where we are told God lives. Many of them are bigger than the great outdoors, which is a far better place for chatting with the Force, which is a really good Star Wars way of describing God.

  As I told you, when I was young I had heavy duty religion. Then I read the Bible. Reading is not a big thing in my life. It is hard to concentrate on piles of words (you can read about that in my free book—remember, just ask and it’s yours) but I struggled through much of the holy book and said to myself, “Wait a minute. Just wait. It looks like someone is blaming women for most of men’s problems. Don’t ask me to justify that.” That was the way it looked to me—and that was just in the first couple of chapters.

  Eve was not guilty, and when I figured out what the serpent was I didn’t think it was even Eve getting tempted by him. It was him doing what he does naturally and then blaming it on Eve.

  It was like saying, “She’s only a teenager and she got herself pregnant. Shame on her.”

  Huh?

  And then I read more of the Old Testament and I found endless stories of smiting and slaying, and then endless stories of multiplying and begetting.

  So we have lots of smiting and multiplying and slaying and begetting. Sex and violence, just like the newspapers.

  The way I saw it—and this has nothing to do with the Church or theology or basic beliefs, it is just the way I saw it—a couple of monks were ordered to write the history of the world, from the beginning.

  One monk says to the other monk, “Sex is bad. We are not supposed to have it so it must be bad.”

  The other monk says, “You’re right. We only need praying and oatmeal. Although I think about it sometimes.”

  The first one says, “That’s a sin. Thinking about it is a sin. And without women we would not have the thinking and we would not have the sin. So it must be her fault.”

  The other says, “Eve started it all, blame her.”

  “But it was Adam who did that sinful thing with her.”

  “Well we can’t blame him. Guys have to stick together.”

  “We could say she started it after she was tempted by something. That would make her weak, unlike guys, who are strong.”

  “Tempted with what?”

  “You know what.”

  “But we can’t say that.”

  “So call it a snake. It looks like a snake.”

  “But snakes aren’t bad. They eat the mice that eat our oatmeal.”

  “So call it a serpent.”

  “What’s that?’

  “A snake with a bad name.”

  “Good idea. We will have Eve tempted by a serpent.”

  “What does she do when she’s tempted?”

  “Well, you know. She gives in.”

  “But we can’t say that, we’re monks. And besides, the chief monk would have us in itchy shirts for a month if we wrote that.”

  “Okay, have her offer an apple to Adam.”

  “What’s an apple?”

  This is Palestine, Israel, the desert, long ago. There were no apples.

  “I read about them in Dr. Oz’s book on health. You should eat one every day.”

  “Isn’t Dr. Oz coming much later in time.”

  “No, every age has one.”

  “So according to him we should we have lunch with Eve and eat apples?”

  “Don’t go there. That’s a sin.”

  Remember, this is my interpretation of how I read Genesis. It has nothing to do with theological schools.

  “We’ll have Eve offer Adam a bite of her apple. And that will start the world in eternal decline.”

  “But I thought apples were good for you!”

  “Now they are but then they weren’t. It’s like everything—good one year, bad the next. Like wine. Last year it was good for you, this year it’s not.”

  “Is that true? About wine?”

  “Don’t worry. This is still last year, when it was good.”

  And so religions multiplied, and soon Protestants and Catholics were killing each other. Sunnis and Shiites did the same. Christians killed atheists. Buddhists in Mongolia, who kill nothing, killed Muslims. And the poor Jews were on everyone’s hit list.

  In my view, this is not good.

  With the help of newspapers I got to seeing that everyone killed everyone else. Whites and blacks in America did it. Germans and Americans did it. Russians and Americans, Vietnamese and Americans, Afghans and Americans . . . Wait a minute. Is there is a pattern here?

  In my world God likes everyone, and I like that.

  I personally get my connection through holes in the clouds. I’ve told you this before, but when I need help I look for a break in the cloudy sky and ask. If it’s raining I forget about holes and just hammer right through the clouds.

  It works just as well, and since I believe things will be okay after that, they are okay.

  Simple. Undeniable.

  Please don’t argue with me. Don’t criticize. Don’t say I am crazy or naïve or unbalanced or desperately looking for something impossible. Okay, say it if you want, but it works, and that is all I need.

  I think God is everything. The sky, the worms, the past, the future, evolution, us, all creation and that metaphysical stuff we don’t know about. I don’t think God cares if god is written with a capital G or not. I think God wears coveralls and a hard hat and work boots, and carries a pencil and a notebook for recording recipes for chocolate chip cookies and taking notes on what’s going on.

  Someday he will write a real Divine Comedy and maybe Harbour will publish it.

  And there is only one rule in my religion, not ten. No sermons, no rituals, just one rule: be nice, especially when it is hard to be nice.

  That’s it. Do that and everything will be okay.

  Remember that “Desiderata” thing? If you don’t, please Google it. Everyone should read it.

  “You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.”

  And remember Joni Mitchell’s epoch-defining song “Wood­stock,” in which she tells us we are stardust?

  That’s it. Nothing more, except that for a while we stir up the dust and then we go back to being it. So really there is not much worth worrying about.

  When you are looking for something wonderful look for a hole in the clouds. After that you will get what you believe, if you believe it.

  Go back to one of my earlier books and read about Reilly. If you know who I am talking about, well then, you know. I don’t have to explain it.

  If you d
on’t, he was an autistic ten-year-old who believed he would catch a fish where there were no fish.

  “You can do anything you want to do, if you believe it,” he said.

  He changed my life.

  I’ll tell you about him again a little later.

  One Pond, One Word

  We could find nothing, as happens so often, but it’s like life or prospecting for gold or hunting for a recipe. You have to keep looking until you find it. If you find it right away you are lucky, but then you think you can always find things right away and you stop trying if you don’t. Then you don’t get what you want—and that’s a well-known fact. The rule if you want something is don’t quit. Simple.

  We could find nothing. Cameraman Todd Gilchrist and I had done the Stanley Park–Main Street–East Hastings route and nothing was jumping up saying, “Put me on television.”

  We had done side streets, alleys and alcoves off alleys. Then Todd started heading east. The pne. There is always something there.

  “After we find something I’ll show you the fishing pond,” I said.

  “What pond?”

  Ahhh, I think. Another person who does not know.

  This was one of the fiercest of civic battles about twenty years ago. A group of enthusiastic environmentalists wanted the historic Pacific National Exhibition bulldozed into oblivion.

  “We want a park for our neighbourhood, not a bunch of rides and hot dog stands for others that is used only two weeks a year and that brings all those people who pay to park in other people’s backyards, which is a source of annoyance.”

  That was one heck of a protest chant.

  Hundreds of thousands of others wanted to keep the pne because it is one of the last remaining real country fairs with rides and hot dog stands and they wouldn’t know it was the end of summer without it.

  In the end, compromise.

  Half the pne was bulldozed and turned into a park, and if you have never seen it (as most people haven’t), it is beautiful. It was designed to look the way it looked before any folks with white skin and sharp axes showed up.