John and I were having lunch when he told me that story. He put down his sandwich.
“Even when I was there I couldn’t explain the fear to anyone.
“We were told to throw down our weapons. Then take off our uniforms. The soldiers turned us over to a gang of kids. They were twelve or maybe fourteen years old.
“They were wearing rags. They put on our uniforms and then started shooting in the air all around us with our rifles.”
You cannot eat while you think of that.
It was long and hard. Excuse me for using those words but I have no others, just as he had none. What am I saying, of course, is that it was a long, hard road from the prison camp he was sent to through a destroyed Europe and through applying to move here to Canada. Those are cliché words, long and hard. It was unimaginable.
But he ended up in Vancouver and a year later brought his wife whom he had met after the war ended but before the cleanup was started.
She was walking to a village to hunt for her family. John saw her walking alone and he offered her a ride on the crossbar of his bicycle.
This was one of those old bicycles with a brake that was a piece of rubber that you could press on the front wheel by pulling up a lever on the handlebar. This was not like impressing a girl with your fancy car.
In North Vancouver they flourished with a family and happiness.
Back to Gerry, about whom I know much less. I only met him when a couple I have known for decades told me I should see a special garden. George and Freda Ellis took me there. They were bubbling about how amazing the garden was and how even more amazing the gardener was.
“You won’t believe it,” said Freda.
“Even better than that, we don’t believe it,” said George who makes a hobby out of meeting people and learning about them and then telling me, which makes him always fascinating to listen to.
I like hard-to-believe things, and I like special gardens.
It was beautiful, just like they said—flowers and a couple of gravel paths and a bench.
“Very nice,” I said, but I didn’t see what was special about it.
Then George took me a few steps past the garden into a mess of tangled blackberries and broken bushes and some garbage.
“That’s what the whole area looked like before Gerry started cleaning it,” he said.
It was amazing, truly beyond what you or I could believe. It was a transformation from uncontrolled disaster to comfortable beauty.
“And it is all on city land,” George added.
Then he said, “You know why he did this?”
“He likes destroying his hands on the brambles?” was my wise-guy answer.
“His son died. Cancer. And Gerry did this in his memory,” said George.
A lesson: don’t ever give a flippant answer unless you know for sure it won’t hurt someone, which is never.
A few days later I met Gerry. He came on a warm morning as he almost always does, to pull weeds and straighten flowers as all good gardeners do. He had started the garden when he was in his late eighties.
He was more than friendly. He was happy. He showed me a bench that had a plaque on it with his son’s name. It was then that his face lost its joy, but just for a moment.
“It’s all for him,” Gerry said.
Because my friend George had told me about him I was there to put it on television.
Pete Cline, the cameraman, started to take pictures. He had flowers and Gerry, and then something truly amazing happened.
Into one of his shots, walking with his dog through the brush behind the garden was John the barber. He was surprised to see me. This was more than two years before we started occasionally meeting for lunch, and in truth I hadn’t seen him for years.
He told me his wife had died a few months ago. They had been together sixty-three years and he was still in shock from losing her.
He had occasionally seen Gerry working on his garden and nodded but that was all. This time, because it was time, because we were there, he started talking to Gerry. They sat on the bench and the German ex-army soldier and the Canadian ex-army soldier who had been in the same war on opposite sides talked.
They each turned a bit to face one another and in doing so Gerry had his left elbow on the back of the bench and John had his right elbow on the back.
That left their hands so close they could have touched. Pete was taking video of the hands while the two ex-soldiers who had each lost someone so dear talked about things that we could not hear.
As they talked their hands made gestures. One went up, then fell down, then the other’s hand did the same. It was a poem of silent conversation.
Much later the story was given an award by the news directors of British Columbia. That was nice but all we had done was watch two broken hearts in two strong men sharing pain. At the end we heard laughter and we saw their hands just for a second jump up at the same time.
I didn’t know what they had said but sometimes laughter is as good as ducking under a bullet.
● ● ●
How did George meet Gerry?
“By accident. I was walking my dog on the trail and he was clearing the ground and we started talking.”
Since then he and Freda have visited Gerry and his wife, Molly, many times. It’s the way things happen, just by walking down a trail and saying hello. Imagine the stories we could all have if we just said hello.
And only because of that was I there on the day that John walked down that trail. And only because of that John and Gerry got to share things only they could understand.
All because George said hello to a fellow pulling up weeds—and none of this was planned.
The Smile
First we saw a woman sitting alone on a bench in the middle of the park. That was a sad but also lovely sight. It was lovely in the way that a photographer’s image of a tree by itself can be, but a really good photographer would have something else in the picture, something that you can barely see but once you’ve seen it you can never not see it again.
I have a picture of a tree, alone, on my wall. There is nothing else in the picture except a vast, empty field. I paid more for the frame than the picture. I wish I had looked for a picture with something else in it.
And then I saw that the little old lady did have something else. She was smoking. Ugh! It is not my right to pass judgment on anyone but the cigarette didn’t do much to raise the value of the picture.
Still, she might be wonderful. We would just wait until she finished the smoke.
“Hello.”
Grunt.
“How are you?”
A quizzical look meaning, who the heck are you?
“Have a good day.” And we left.
Next a woman on a cellphone. As we get closer she is arguing, loudly.
Following her comes a woman walking on the sidewalk of Comox Street, alongside the park. The park is wonderful. It is right behind St. Paul’s Hospital, and Steve Saunders, the cameraman, suggested this park to find something interesting. Also, it was close to the television station and we had little time.
Many people who live in the West End walk through or alongside the park. Many of them are elderly and many elderly people are more patient than younger people. That is why I like them.
There is one coming this way. She has a shopping cart. She doesn’t look happy but then again how many of us walk around with a smile? She is tiny and her cart is half her height and what more could I ask for? Steve takes her picture.
“Why are you taking my picture? Who gave you the right to do that? You better erase that picture or there will be trouble.”
Not all older people are patient.
Then, like the sun breaking through the clouds, came the smile from far down the street. You could see it half a block away, all contagious happiness.
The woman carrying it was using a walker, one of those with wheels, and while she moved slowly along she was watching some kids who were playing while they were walking with their parents. Kids can make games out of putting one foot in front of the other.
Their mother had her face covered. The man did not. It is not mine to judge.
The kids started running circles around their parents. The woman with the smile almost laughed.
“Hello.” That’s us to the woman with the smile.
“Oh, hello. What can I do for you?” That was the smile speaking.
Anyone who asks that after the first hello is an angel, which is another way of saying smiles have pleasant ways of talking.
I told her we were looking for someone with a smile. She said she always smiled because life was so good.
She had just come from the Wesley United Church, a long block and a half away.
“I was with toddlers and their parents. There were more than forty of them. They were so noisy, but it was wonderful.”
She kept talking. It was not a brief “I just came from church,” or “I’m in a hurry to get home.” It was an explanation of what she had been doing with a location and a punchline. Not bad for letting us know why she was smiling.
I asked her name. Margaret. I asked if she walked on this street often.
When you are young you go to a bar and ask a pretty young woman: “Do you come here often?” At the other end of life you ask a beautiful woman with a walker on a sidewalk the same question. The bar can lead to a good time. The sidewalk can lead to a good life.
“Every day for twenty years,” she said. “I go to the church to volunteer. The last woman to do it quit when she was ninety. I’m eighty-five so I still have some time.” She laughed at her joke.
Then she leaned forward and hid her mouth behind a mitten-covered hand and whispered, “I had a stroke, so I try to walk a lot.”
There was no bitterness or even self-pity in her voice. She just had to get out and walk and that was that.
I thought, “Good for you.” I didn’t say it. I thought it would be condescending.
Then I asked why was she smiling when she was walking here?
“I feel good about life. No fooling. I think you can feel bad or good. The choice is yours. So I feel good.”
So simple. So real.
Still trying to make something good for television, I asked, “Has anything incredible happened to you, or anything bad?” Then I quickly added, “I don’t mean to pry and I hope nothing bad.”
She smiled again and she tilted her head as I have seen many do when they have something to tell you that you might not believe.
“My husband died when he was thirty-seven. My oldest daughter was killed in a car crash. I raised three children on my own.”
“Oh, I am so sorry.”
“It’s okay, that was a long time ago.”
I have now added up one stroke, one dead husband and one dead daughter. Even in modern math that does not equal one smiling face.
“What’s this?” I asked, looking down at her walker, which was carrying a large empty plastic container.
“I make cookies for the church. I bring them every Sunday and take back the empty box in the middle of the week. Then I make more. That’s why I walk so much on this street.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Did you get a scratch on your face?” I asked. There was a Band-Aid on her cheek near her nose.
“Skin cancer,” she said.
“What?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter. I’ve had it since I was sixteen. A doctor used laser treatment to get rid of my acne and I’ve had skin cancer ever since. When the patches get big enough they cut them out.”
Ouch. That means she has had skin cancer for sixty-nine years, and all that time wearing bandages on her face to cover it up and then having someone use a sharp piece of steel to take a slice out. Ouch again.
“There was a little girl in the church this morning. She pointed to my bandage. I said ‘Grandma has an ouchie.’ She said, ‘I’m sorry. I hope it doesn’t hurt too much.’ She was three years old.”
Then she said, “Isn’t that wonderful. It just makes you happy.”
Then Margaret said she was almost home. She pointed to the next apartment block on Bute Street.
“Goodbye,” we said, and I watched her walk away. If you have a bad day, try thinking of Margaret. She never has one.
Horse and Cat
The important thing about this is you could do it yourself. You really don’t need a television station or newspaper standing behind you. I know I keep saying that but that’s because I mean it.
You can just go out and find stories on your own. No union problems, no layoffs and no scheduling problems. No bosses complaining you didn’t get what they thought you would get, and you can take a coffee break whenever you want.
Be your own story-gathering enterprise and tell the stories to whomsoever you like. As for compensation, you get it in the thrill and excitement you give to others. No taxes on that.
It was raining, very hard.
“Can it get any harder than this?” asked cameraman Steve Murray. He’s the same Steve who was getting the pictures of the balloons released for the teacher who was killed.
“You know the answer to that,” I said.
We were driving around Stanley Park just in case we saw some people standing under a tree. That would be bad for them but good for us.
There were no people under a tree, but then I saw a group walking across the meadow near Lumberman’s Arch, which is no longer a real arch. It once was. Look up the pictures on Google. It was something to be proud of. That was when the forests created most of the economy for the province. Now there is worry that the forest canopy in and around the city is so devastated it is in an urban hospice. Sad.
One idea is to plant trees on top of the high-rise condos. Just make sure they are trees that don’t grow too big or have long roots or attract squirrels.
Anyway, the people by the arch, which they ignored as they passed by because it is now so forgettable, were walking one way and we were driving the other. Steve stopped and I scrambled out with my umbrella and tried to catch up with the walkers.
I tried. But then I thought, Don’t be silly. They were far away and I would have to run along the path, which is okay except I have on a black jacket, black pants and black leather shoes and I am holding an umbrella over myself.
And no doubt I would meet a biker on his two-thousand-dollar racing machine with his skin-tight bicycle clothes and his form-fitting helmet who would shout at me, “You’re going the wrong way, idiot.”
And then I would have to say, “It’s none of your business, fella.”
And he would say, “You have to follow the rules,” but by this time he would be so far away I wouldn’t be sure what he was saying.
But in case he had said that I would have to shout, “You are riding in the jogging lane, so there.”
You know how it goes. Someone honks, which is impolite, at someone else because they didn’t turn fast enough at the traffic light and then the one getting honked at has to raise one of his hands and do something with one of his fingers, which is also impolite.
More honking and more fingers and before you know it you are hearing about it on the news because it has ended in some impolite way.
So I stopped chasing them.
Steve already had his camera out and I got back to him just as a horse-drawn wagon with three tourists was passing by.
I once saw a wagon with one passenger just at this same spot in the same kind of rain. The cameraman and I jumped on the wagon thinking we could do something nice with one person. Wrong. The person had nothing to say.
But as the horses clipped and clopped along, the driver with a leather cowbo
y hat that was dripping with rain began to sing. She was beautiful, her voice was beautiful and so were her songs.
She had written funny things about salmon and rain and Vancouver and the park and put them into the tunes of songs we knew. I’ve forgotten them now, but basically “Tennessee Waltz” was now “Fishing for Salmon” and “Singin’ in the Rain” was “Crossing the Street in Vancouver.” She was so good.
We listened and took pictures and had a wonderful story. We got off where the horse ride starts at the beginning of the park and asked when she would be going around again.
“Nope. That’s the last for the day.”
Our van was at the other side of the park where we had got on, and it was raining even harder. We had to walk back and believe it or not when we got there a half-hour later the battery in the van was dead. Things like that do happen.
We were saved by another camera truck that was not too far away. The story was good and we were wet and I think of it whenever I pass by that spot and a wagon and horses are passing by at the same time.
I said you can do any of this, and yes, you can, but unlike us, use your common sense.
You’d think we’d learn to keep an eye on the weather, but on this occasion several years later Steve was putting his camera back into the suv when the sky literally opened up. We weren’t just standing in the rain, we were drowning. You know what it’s like. You’ve been there. But we still had a story to get.
Go to the police horse barn, I suggested. It is dry.
Now here is where you actually could do the same thing. You could call them, ask to visit and believe it or not they will say yes. You can’t get into the place where the undercover cops hang out, which is a scary place. I was in there once and even though I had been around police much of my life I could not believe what I saw in that room.
In there were the kind of seedy people you would send to prison without a trial just because you knew they were guilty. You can’t go in there, but the mounted squad is different, especially if you want to bring kids.
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