Family

Last night was the annual Samba Ottawa event at the park at the end of our street. Samba has its origins in Brazil, and of course Wikipedia can tell you far more about that than I can. My first experience with Samba was when I was living in Cologne, Germany in the early 90s. Cologne has a massive Karneval prior to Catholic Lent, just like Brazil does, so I would suppose this is the connection which brings Samba to Cologne. During the week of Karneval Samba bands roam the streets thumping their drums, playing their music, and competing to try to get the most number of people following them. At our annual even in Hintonburg, the Samba band plays stationary for a good while, then keeps the tradition alive by parading around the park once or twice, and then a short distance up the street.

Leo F. McKay spent most of his working life fighting for the rights of other people - mainly the little guy. He passed away last night in his sleep, in his comfy chair at home. He was born in the late 1920s, and left school in his teens in the early 40s, when he went directly into the workforce as a labourer. I cannot say with certainty what his first job was, but I do know that he spent a great deal of time at the Car Works in Trenton, where he helped make rail cars. It was here where he first got involved in the labour movement which would consume his entire life. In fact, a few weeks ago after he found out he had terminal cancer that would soon take his life, Ken Georgetti, President of the Canadian Labour Congress, had heard about my father’s condition and phoned him in the hospital to thank him for a lifetime of hard work fighting for the rights of regular working people. That call meant a great deal to my father.

Even though I think a lot of my rebellion as a teenager was against my father for various reasons, I still held the utmost respect for him, and consider it his influence that has molded me into the person I am today. When we found out 5 or 6 weeks ago that he did not have much time left, I called him up on the phone to tell him something that was very important to me. I asked him if he remembered an incident way back when I was about 12 years old. He took me aside one time and said something like “Pal, I want to ask something of you. I want to ask that when you are out chumming around with your friends, that you never refer to me as ‘The Old Man’”. He did remember that, and when I called him that day I told him that not once in my life did I ever call him “The Old Man”. I always remembered that and never once did it. Even when I was rebelling against him, I had the utmost respect for him, and always honoured that wish of his.

It was a very unseasonably warm 10C today with the sun shining brightly, so with the wife at work I decided I wanted to take the boys out for something special - some late lunch at a local restaurant, and then some fishing down at the river. It almost turned into a disaster when we were out at the Bagel Shop and I had to whisk them away before ordering, because of their tomfoolery. But a 10 minute drive and a good talking-to calmed them down enough to go back for another try, and sure enough they were good as gold.