by Ron MacLean
Mom’s name was Catherine Sarah MacDonald. Her mother was only twenty-seven years old when she died of tuberculosis. Her father was an alcoholic, so Mom’s Grandmother MacDonald raised her, along with a younger girl who was the child of another family alcoholic. This little sister couldn’t say “Sarah.” It came out sounding like “Lila,” and that was the name that stuck with Mom for the rest of her life.
Mom had a wonderful sense of humour. She spoke Gaelic, like her grandmother. And she would use her extended vocabulary to tell Scottish jokes and stories.
Dad is probably one of the sweetest guys you will ever meet, but he had a childhood right out of a Dickens novel. Despite all his childhood hardships, he will be ninety years old this May (2012). I’m Ronald Joseph Corbett MacLean, he is Ronald Francis MacLean.
Dad was born Ronald Jacues Moulton. Moulton was his biological mother’s last name. She was a housemaid in North Sydney. Dad’s mother, Minnie, was twenty years old when she became pregnant by a very high-ranking military man. Grandmother Moulton forbade her daughter to keep the child. So Minnie gave Dad to an individual who grossly neglected him. He was five months old when the Children’s Aid Society intervened. The court records show that Dad was “in a terribly wasted condition because of neglect” and his body “a mere skeleton.” Under the Children’s Protection Act, the court handed him over to the newly opened Bairncroft Orphanage on Kings Road in Sydney River, Nova Scotia.
Meanwhile, Mary “Esther” and Frank Corbett MacLean, a couple from Point Aconi, a little fishing village on the tip of the northeastern coast of Cape Breton, were having bad luck getting a family started. Their baby twins had died that year within three months of each other. Broken-hearted, the couple arrived at Bairncroft Orphanage and found my father, who was by then one and a half years old. The MacLeans didn’t adopt him, but instead became his foster parents. Later, they went back to the same orphanage and adopted a daughter. Not long after, they were surprised when Mrs. MacLean became pregnant with a little girl. Baby Nina immediately became the darling of the family.
Dad wasn’t very happy in Point Aconi. He felt like an outcast. Maybe it was because he was never legally related, but he was the child assigned most of the chores. The family treated him like a hired man. He’d wash the supper dishes, fill the bucket with coal for the night and work in the orchard, picking apples.
If he questioned why he did all this while his five cousins and two sisters played in the yard, he was spanked or given a hard whack across the side of the jaw. He would lie in bed at night wondering, “Why did they take me? I’m obviously not what they wanted.”
When Dad was fifteen, he hopped a train and got as far as Edmundston, New Brunswick. But because he was a ward of the court, the police hunted him down. When he was caught, they brought him back to Sydney, where he was given a very strong lecture from an official who told him he was an ingrate and that he’d better do a better job of living with the MacLeans. As soon as he turned eighteen, Dad joined the army.
Mom and Dad went together for about three months, and then had a major falling-out over a simple disagreement. They were both so stubborn, they quit talking. Two months later, Dad broke the ice, and they were married right after, on July 18, 1959, in France. Dad was thirty-seven, and Mom was thirty-three.
At the ceremony, Mom was wearing a white suit, and her maid of honour, Ann Boucher, was dressed in pink. Dad’s best man was Ann’s husband, George. None of them could speak French except George and the priest. He recognized that Mom was the bride, but for some reason he figured that George was the groom. They all lined up in front of the altar, and the ceremony began. Partway through, George realized he was being married to Mom. He clapped his hands and said, “Father, you’ve got the wrong man!”
Mom found out she was pregnant with me at the end of November 1959, and when she told Dad, they were both excited. Dad figured I was a girl, but Mom said, “Oh, no, no. We are having a boy.” Dad said, “Why are you sure it’s going to be a boy?” Mom said, “Because all my aunts had a male child first, and I’m going to do the same.”
Although they were stationed in France, I was born on April 12, 1960, in Unterm, Germany, on Zweibrücken Air Base, which is about thirty minutes by car to the French border. While Mom was in labour, they discovered I was breach, so they transported her over to the bigger hospital. Mom was in labour for forty-eight hours, until finally they tonged me out.
We lived in France for fourteen months before Dad was transferred back to the RCAF Station Gorsebrook in Halifax. While we were there, Mom and Dad decided to investigate adopting a baby girl so that I would have a playmate. They went to a Catholic orphanage, but were advised against it. The administrator told them, “If you are doing this only to please your son, we don’t think that is a good idea.” And so I grew up an only child.
In 1969, we were living in Hubbards, Nova Scotia, which is less than an hour west of Halifax. There were very few kids around, so I was alone a lot. Dad was driving home from Halifax one day and spotted a sign that said “Dogs for sale.” My mom wasn’t too keen on dogs, but my dad had convinced her a boy should have one. He stopped the car and went into the house and discovered they were selling dachshunds, complete with papers. He chose a male pup for me, a cute little scoundrel with long, floppy ears and a sausage body. He brought the dog home and I named him Snoopy. Snoopy and I hit it off really well. He was a funny dog, very high-strung. He piddled on the floor every time we came in the house. Snoopy loved to sit beside me in the bathtub and sleep on my bed. We were inseparable.
A week or two after we got him, he and I were outside playing. Dad was dozing, because he was working shift at the time, and Mom was busy in the kitchen. Snoopy started acting funny, walking around in circles on the grass. Then he squatted down and started pooping out live worms. The ghastly things were lifting their heads and squirming all over each other in a nasty pile. I ran screaming into the house, “Mom! Dad! Come see the awful thing that Snoopy’s doing!”
That was the end of that. I never went near the dog again. I couldn’t. I was convinced that there were more of those worms still inside of Snoopy, and I sure as hell didn’t want them dropping all over me. Mom and Dad were very understanding. They didn’t yell at me or try to force me to take care of the dog. They put an ad in the paper to find him a good home. We got a phone call from a lady in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. She had three daughters and asked if she could bring the girls out to see the dog. Mom and Dad said, “Anytime, anytime.” The girls loved the dog, and of course the dog loved them. Mom had taken me out to the store while they were there, because she felt so bad that we were giving up Snoopy. She’d grown attached to the little guy. We never had another dog while I lived at home, but we always had a cat.
When I was four years old, Dad was transferred to Victoria, British Columbia. We stayed there a year and a half, and then we were sent to Whitehorse, in the Yukon. Mom and Dad and I flew aboard a turboprop to our new home. I recall the wing lights strobing on the clouds as we flew through the turbulent night air. We moved into public married quarters called Steelox, which consisted of Quonset huts with two apartments per unit. In wintertime, frost built up on the inside walls wherever there were bolts or metal struts behind the drywall. In 1964, Dad was stationed in Alert on Ellesmere Island—83 degrees north, practically at the North Pole. He went up alone. It was a supply station, part of the Distant Early Warning or DEW line. Both Canada and the United States had a series of radar stations across the North that protected us from Russia.
I was a little bit fragile. I repeatedly fractured my collarbone. Whether it was a lack of calcium in my system or what, I don’t know. I was a picky eater and didn’t like much. I had a list of things I would eat: wieners, Kraft Dinner, peanut butter and honey sandwiches, or bologna. No veggies and fruit. Maybe that’s why I was so hyper.
The first time I broke my collarbone, I was four years old. A friend and I were taking turns at a goofy stunt. One at a time, we would lie flat on o
ur backs at the bottom of a hill near our house. The idea was not to flinch while the other came roaring down on a bike. He rode over my shoulder. I knew I was hurt, but didn’t want to be grounded from playing on the hill again. I came into the house and didn’t say anything about the accident. Three days later, Mom came in to wake me for school and I was crying quietly into the pillow. She said, “Ronnie, Ronnie, what is the matter?” and I ‘fessed up. A couple of years later, I was skating backward at the public rink and I tripped over an Oh Henry! chocolate bar wrapper and dislocated my clavicle. I had a third shoulder injury in Mill Cove, Nova Scotia. We were playing Red Rover, with locked arms. Somebody ran between me and the next guy, and snap!
I got into hockey in Whitehorse in 1965. Dwight Riendeau, who was a few years older than I was, was my next-door neighbour. His dad, Ed, was a real outdoorsman and a hockey player too. Ed taught me everything—how to skate and how to use my stick and how to drive the puck down the ice.
We used to play across the street at the Clementses’ backyard rink, which had short boards and floodlights. We played shinny every day. It was a modest, small-town postcard rink surrounded by big, beautiful pine trees. The locals tapped the trees with tubes that ran into buckets collecting sap. On our breaks from shovelling the snow off the ice, we would chip the frozen sap from the bark and chomp on it, like gum.
But the real treat for me was the hard pink bubble gum that you got with hockey cards. I’d walk for miles to pick up a pack. I remember the excitement of carefully unfolding the wax cover and inhaling the sweet aroma, and then licking the powder off my fingertips. Trying to preserve the treat, I’d snap off the corners and soften them between my front teeth. And then, unable to control myself, I’d jam all the gum into my mouth at once. I loved the sugar burn at the back of my throat when I swallowed after the first good, long chew. After a quick look through the pack, I’d take the cards back home and sort them into my deck. Shuffling through them again and again made me feel so prosperous.
I always liked winning. I mean, that’s why you play the game. But when I was very young, I learned that it isn’t the ultimate experience. A feeling of effort and appreciation is enough. While we were in the Yukon, my folks, who loved the arts, explained to me that writers Pierre Berton and Robert Service were Yukoners. In “Spell of the Yukon,” Service wrote, “I wanted the gold, and I got it—/ Came out with a fortune last fall, / Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it, / and somehow the gold isn’t all.” That one verse still sums up my take on life. In Grade 2, I bet my teacher, Miss McKenzie, that the Habs would win the Stanley Cup. I wanted the Leafs to do it, but I followed hockey closely and had made up my mind, based on everything I’d heard from Sunday night radio broadcasts (from 1965 until 1976, CBC Radio aired Sunday Night NHL Hockey) that Montreal was the better team. When the Habs won, I took the gold, but felt awful. I would have been happier as a loser.
In 1966, I asked Santa for the new Coleco table hockey game. On Christmas Eve, after we turned down the heat and went to bed, I lay there, overexcited, running my fingers over the frost heaves on the wall next to my mattress and peering out the window for a glimpse of Santa’s sleigh. A few hours later, I heard footsteps coming down the hall. I squeezed my eyes shut, fearing that if Santa saw that I was up late, I would be stricken from the Good Boys List and risk losing that table hockey game. When I woke up Christmas morning, there was a miniature replica of the Stanley Cup on my nightstand. I knew right away what was under the tree. My parents never disappointed.
In 1967, the Anik satellites were not yet up, so the CBC’s live television broadcasts didn’t reach the Canadian North. I watched the Leafs win their last Cup on videotape, one week after they had won it. The game was still really exciting.
When you are military, you move a lot. So you are forced to make new friends over and over. It seemed I was always on my own again. When I think about those times, I didn’t get a heartsick feeling until we left Whitehorse when I was eight. They closed the base and we were shipped back to Halifax. It was the first time I had to leave a pack of friends I’d known for a few years.
In Halifax, I signed up for a hockey division called squirt. I was quite a good skater because we had so much outdoor ice in Whitehorse. I loved goaltending, but I hated the pressure. When I played goal and we lost, I felt it too much. Playing out was a lot more fun.
The toughest move was after Dad’s last transfer, to Edmonton. We left there for Red Deer when I was eleven years old, going into Grade 7. He was forty-nine and, like all military personnel at the time, he had to retire by fifty. Alberta was the land of opportunity. Dad retired as a sergeant after thirty-two years and found a good job in Red Deer as an RCMP dispatcher.
That first summer was a lonely one. I met nobody. Our street had no kids. I held a pity party for myself every day. Mom kept a poem I wrote that summer, and I ran across it in her things after she died. I called it “Lonely Boy.”
Trying to make this city my home,
Is not an easy task.
There are many things I’d like to do,
But I’m kinda afraid to ask.
I’d like more friends to come to call,
And ask me over sometime,
To play some games or just gab a bit,
Or toss around a ball.
When winter comes and hockey’s the thing,
I’d like to have friends for a game.
Most guys in organized hockey,
They don’t even know my name.
Of course, once school started, I made a ton of friends and forgot all about being the Lonely Boy.
3
JUST SHUT UP
I was always the class clown. I couldn’t help myself. Numerous times, I would have self-talks. “Take it easy, Ron, settle down. You don’t have to be the class clown this year. You could just be a good student.” Never happened.
I could be disruptive and hyper, and I loved to argue. I would challenge the teacher for the fun of it. Nova Scotia had the toughest disciplinary measures. When I was little, I would get the strap on my hand with a piece of fire hose. But from Whitehorse on, I spent a lot of time kneeling in the corner, which was the main punishment in the Catholic school system. Once in a while I was sent home for acting up. This would rile Mom up and she would chase me down the hall with a broom. There would be no television for a week, groundings, lots of different punishments. I didn’t mind. I knew they cared.
Mom was mischievous, and funny as hell. When the occasion called for solemnity, she had a way of stirring it up. One time up in Whitehorse, Mom and Dad were getting ready for a dinner dance at the Sergeant’s Mess. Dad had just got a new upper plate, but he left it in a drawer because it wasn’t comfortable. Mom was in a fancy black cocktail dress. She wanted to accessorize, so she was rooting around, looking for something to pin to her shoulder. She grabbed Dad’s dentures and shoved a safety pin through the gum, and away they went to the dance. When they were seated, Dad saw the other women at the table staring at Mom and looking confused. Finally, one said, “Lila, is your pin made of … teeth?” And Mom said, “Why, yes it is. I was waiting for someone to notice.” And the whole table collapsed in laughter.
Two of the things that defined her were her humour and her ability to be a confidant. People really opened up with Mom. She was very compassionate, but God, did she have a wild temper. I loved her spit. Mom had a good job in Red Deer, but she felt she was being disrespected due to her gender. The last straw came when she was overlooked for a promotion that should have been hers, so she stormed out. Just up and left for good. Pride goes before the fall.
Sometimes when I am with Grapes and he loses it, it reminds me of her. When you crossed Mom and she got hot, it was funny. Later, she’d reel it in and then apologize. Mom could say, “I’m sorry.” She would explode at me for something I probably deserved, and then she would say, “Look, Ronnie, I had a long day, you struck a nerve and I didn’t mean that.” She would never let me go to bed if she was cross with me
. She would always come in and sit on the edge of the bed to make sure I felt good before I went to sleep. Where do you get that confidence to acknowledge that it’s okay to be wrong?
Grapes can apologize in his own way, but in his household, “sorry” did not hold water. Don told me this story very early in our relationship. I think it was his way of letting me know where he was coming from. His brother, Richard, was playing midget baseball in Kingston. Don and Del, his father, went to watch. They were short a first-base ump and the home plate umpire asked Don to sub in. Del told him to do it, but Don said, “Well, geez, Dad, I don’t know the rules.” And Del said, “Donald, if the ball gets there first, then the guy is out. You know what to do, now get out there.” Sure enough, in the first inning Don had to make a ruling at second base. He made it in favour of his brother’s team. Well, the opposing manager fired out of the dugout onto the field and started tearing a strip off Don. He kicked dirt on him and called him all sorts of names. Don was mad. At the end of the game, as Don was walking off, he looked around for the manager so he could retaliate. Suddenly, the guilty manager popped up out of the dugout. Don came at him and brushed him with his shoulder. The manager stepped back into the dugout, fell, hit his head on the bench and was knocked unconscious. Don was kind of pleased with himself. It wasn’t really a punch, but he was happy he’d done some damage.
Del and Richard headed home. Don followed behind with a stick he had picked up. He was running it along the picket fences. Suddenly, a car pulled up and four big guys, including the manager, jumped out. This was Kingston in the 1950s, a tough place to be. The manager walked toward Don and said, “Don, I just have to say I was a jerk back there. You were good enough to help us out at first base, and to tell you the truth, the call was right. I just wanted to set the tone for our team. You did a great job—I was a prick. Put ‘er there.” And they shook hands. Then the manager and his friends got back into the car and drove off.