tribute to my father...

i have decided to post about my father for a spell, to celebrate his life and in turn celebrate my own, since he helped shape the person i am today.

i was never really a 'daddy's girl' by any stretch of the imagination but i do know that i shared similar traits with him and this allowed us an understanding of each other-- we would wax philosophic together about a wide range of topics...

my father and i are both mavericks.

after surviving the second world war; leaving the old world and all his family behind, he traveled across the ocean in quest of the 'american dream'-- canadian style. although the canadian version differs from the america in some subtle ways they both share the dream of 'freedom' and for most immigrants that has a powerful draw. i think what most immigrants do not realize, is that they will have to break their backs working very hard to make this dream come true, and perhaps never in the end obtain the things they ever dreamt of.

my father landed in montreal--enrolled in university as an engineer and basically survived by selling his blood to the red cross. he even saved enough money to buy an underwood typewriter.

he came to canada during a time when a man could work for a company and be pretty much guaranteed to be employed with the same company for his whole life. how times have changed.

i remember the day my father retired. i went to his office with him to pick up his stuff. dusty framed photos of the family, paperclips, old notes--while we were packing up his boss came in, a fast-talking greasy-haired young whippersnapper. he rattled on about how the company would miss my father and what a great job he had done. he seemed so insincere and trite but perhaps that is because he had only been hired on a few months before my father decided to retire, so he really did not know the man. the man who crossed the ocean wearing wooden shoes.

i think he felt that he had to say something and so he pulled his old salesman speech out from underneath his slippery tongue. i remember thinking that this was a clash of cultures--a generational shift--and a profound moment that was lost on this younger man. it was there and then that i understood his need to retire early and after working hard all his life to feed and clothed his family--he was finally free!

now he could begin
to really live
the 'canadian dream'...