Show Biz

One Friday afternoon I found myself sharing a few pints with Ron Bond and some other friends at a downtown Toronto watering hole called the Coal Bin. We went there frequently, especially at the end of the week, and we liked to arrive fairly early so we would be ready when the offices in the huge high rises, directly across the road, closed down and all the secretaries hit the bar for a quick “Thank God it’s Friday” cocktail.

We knew that, as good as their intentions might be, when the band started playing their resolve would fly out the window and hurrying home would be forgotten. It was almost impossible to get out of that place alone when the lights began flashing at closing time.

It was the era of free love and it was almost as if gratuitous sex had replaced the handshake as a form of greeting.

On this particular Friday we made an unusually early start, getting to the bar for lunch. Ron wanted to have a little extra time to build up some liquid courage before the lovelies started arriving. He hadn’t been having much luck lately and was determined, as he put it, to cut a weak one out of the herd that evening.

For my part, I was feeling down in the dumps I think I was getting tired of the whole sordid lifestyle. It was just one meaningless encounter after the other. Don’t get me wrong they were all wonderful women but there was so many of them and so little time. There had to be something else.

When the bar started to fill up and the band arrived Ron and my other friends started getting up periodically to chat up some girl and thrash around on the dance floor. I wasn’t in the mood so I kept to myself and just sat frequently refilling my mug from the large pitchers of draft that kept appearing on the table. I guess my mood was infectious because as the afternoon wore on the boys were spending less and less time on the dance floor and more and more time seated around the huge barrel that served as our table.

We had all gone to the same technical high school together and one of the guys happened to mention that he thought it strange that none of us was actually working in the field we had trained for. He made it sound as if we were all failures for not becoming the Draftsmen and Machinists we had planned to be.

I had tried to work as mechanical draftsman for a while but the only job I could find was drawing sewers for the city and I figured that that was about as low as I could go so I quit and finally ended up on the police force before starting a business of my own.  The guys pointed out that my riding school was no small achievement but I was not to be consoled, I knew something was missing in my life and the more I drank the larger the void became.

The other guys started talking about their current occupations and what they would rather be doing and it was truly surprising to listen to their previously undisclosed aspirations.

Ron Bond claimed he wanted to become an author. When I brought it to his attention that I had never seen him with a book in his hand he got all huffy and slurred “I don’t read books, I write books!”

Braving the ridicule, one by one, the rest of the guys divulged their secret hopes. When it became my turn to share, for no apparent reason, I heard myself saying, “ I have always wanted to be an actor!” I just blurted it out. For the life of me I don’t know where it came from. It wasn’t even close to being true, maybe a playbill that had been left lying on the table by a previous customer was influencing me subliminally or maybe it was pure one-upmanship. Whatever the reason I did say it and now was compelled to stick to my story.

Of course my old friend Ron led the attack on me saying, “ I’ve known you for years and you’ve never mention anything like this before, you must be drunk or crazy. I hit him with my favorite W.C. Fields quote. “I may be drunk but you’re the one who is crazy, tomorrow I’ll be sober and you’ll still be crazy!” The other guys laughed but Ron had heard me use that line too often in the past and continued his interrogation undeterred.

He could be pretty relentless when criticizing me and for the next twenty minutes or so he pulled out all the stops drawing all my shortcomings to my attention. He was getting my Irish dander up and I was just about to offer him a knuckle sandwich when he delivered a final salvo that stopped me in my tracks.

“If you were really serious about this you’d go and apply for a job as an actor right now!"
“Maybe I will, you asshole! “ I shot back at him, turning away dismissively and hoping that would be the end of the discussion.  No such luck, one of the other guys, trying to be helpful mentioned that the CBC casting office was just around the corner and that maybe that would be a good place for me to start my career. 

This was just the fresh ammunition that Ron needed and he renewed his attack on me daring me to put my money where my mouth was. I countered with an offer to go up to the casting office as soon as he finished the first chapter of the book he was planning to write but he wasn’t to be put off and I found myself swearing in front of all present that I would go for an interview that very afternoon.

The boys were not a trusting lot and shortly afterwards escorted me around the corner and watched while I entered the main foyer of the CBC building. They were still watching me through the glass doors as I inquired at the receptionists' counter then headed for the elevators.

The receptionist had informed me that the woman I needed to see was located on the third floor. Her name was Olwyne Millington and she was in charge of casting.

I could tell that the receptionist had been reluctant to admit someone in my advanced state of inebriation but I think her sense of humor had kicked in; my appearance at the casting office just might have been preceded by a warning phone call.

 The elevator doors opened to expose a large reception area where a stern looking older woman sat behind a large desk going through a pile of black and white photos. As the doors swished closed behind me she raised her head and looked at me as if I was something that had gotten stuck to the bottom of her shoe.

The elevator had been stuffy and I was feeling a bit groggy so when she asked in a haughty tone, “What can I do for you?",  I simply blurted out; “I want to be an actor” then pursing my lips in a “so there!"  fashion took a step backwards, lost my balance and almost fell down.

It was certainly stuffy in that old office and it was making me dizzy, the secretary was starting to look blurry but I found that if I closed one eye her face cleared up and I could concentrate on what she was saying.

“Do you have a portfolio and head shots?” she asked.  I didn’t know what she was talking about but I told her I didn’t have any of that at the moment but that I was sure that I could get some in the near future. She rattled on for some time about other requirements necessary for applicants and then finished by scolding me and telling me to come back when I was sober and serious.

I found her attitude offensive and was just about to tell her so when her intercom buzzed and she was summoned into the next room. By the time she returned I had already pushed the down button on the elevator consol and was preparing to leave. I was a bit hurt by the reception I had been given and was consoling myself with the knowledge that I had been thrown out of better joints than this.

Then I heard a voice behind me. “One moment Sir!” she said, ” Ms. Millington would like to speak with you.”

I gave her my “Of course she wants to see me!” look while she escorted me into the inner office where a small woman in her early forties sat smoking behind a large desk littered with dog eared scripts. She nodded in my direction and in a lovely soothing British accent said "Sit, please.”

She said that she had overheard what was occurring in the reception area and was curious to know more. After quizzing me about what I did for a living she asked me if I had much acting experience. I thought that a little humor was in order so I told her that, once, I had been a tree in a school play. She was not amused but neither was she deterred because she handed me one of the scripts, indicated a character and a page and ask me to read the lines saying she would cue me. I wasn’t adverse to kinky stuff but this cueing put me off a bit and I told her so, she just laughed and said get on with it.

I closed one eye so that I could read then gave it my best effort. When we finished a couple of pages she asked me to stop and then lit a fresh cigarette and sat and stared at me for what seemed like a long time.

I broke the silence, “So how did I do?" I asked. She threw her head back, inhaled deeply on her cigarette then launched a perfect smoke ring and said, “You were fucking terrible!” Then after a short pause she said, “However that’s just what I need. Are you available tomorrow morning?"

I was a little surprised by her proposal and not wanting to appear anxious or easy I slurred, “Let me check my schedule,” then began fumbling in my in my pockets for a little calendar notebook I sometimes carried to keep track of my mares' gestation periods.

I think she realized that I was bluffing because by the time I finished digging through my pockets and looked up she was standing in front of me and tucking a piece of paper in the breast pocket of my shirt.

“That’s the address, the time and the contact person. Don’t be late.”  She said in a stern motherly tone.

“So that’s it?" I said, stalling and eyeing the big leather couch against the back wall of her office. I guess she had seen some of the same movies about the Hollywood star system that I had because she gave me that ‘You are a naughty boy’ look and spun me around and gently shoved me out her office door saying “I mean it. Don’t be late!”

And so began my acting career.

I wasn’t feeling all that robust when I woke up the next morning. I’d been having nightmares and strange dreams. At least I thought they were dreams until I found the slip of paper Ms. Millington had given me on my bedside table and realized what I had done.

I read the instructions and checked my watch. If I hurried I could still make the appointment on time. But God, my head hurt, and what if it was just a practical joke?  They might be trying to get even with me for showing up at the casting office in the condition I was in. "Maybe I shouldn’t go",  I thought.  It would serve her right for doing business with drunks. Who was I kidding, I had to find out if it was real or not, so I had a quick shower and shave and headed for the downtown location I had been given.

           As it turned out Ms. Millington was pretty good at her job.  She had type cast me as a dumb cop. The wardrobe people got me suited up in a winter motorcycle uniform, slapped some makeup on my face and showed me the couple of lines I would be required to say. The TV series they were shooting was called Wojeck. It starred an actor called John Vernon and was based loosely on the true-life exploits of a Toronto coroner called Morton Schulman. Of course I was too hungover to appreciate what was going on and I wouldn’t have known John Vernon from Adam.

Before we started shooting Vernon asked me to cue him his lines. I was nervous and after I messed up several times he accused me of being flippant and stormed off to the other side of the set. “Screw him,” I thought to myself. "Who needs him anyway".

Then I found out who he was and that the couple of lines I had to say were to be delivered to him. As I shared the shot with him I felt cowed, humble and unsure of myself. As it turned out my tentative approach was just what the director was looking for. The scene called for the overbearing Wojeck to give hell to a dozy incompetent cop at a crime scene. I was perfect for the part.   

Magner and Me (as published in Small Farmers Journal)

I was seventeen years old when I got my first copy of Magner’s Standard Horse and Stock Book.  I found it hidden at the bottom of a box of old books at a farm auction and as I dusted it off and started leafing through the pages I realized that I had struck gold. Every other page seemed to be adorned with beautiful woodcut prints of horses and other livestock: over two thousand illustrations in all. More importantly I could see at a glance that the text was addressing many of the problems that horsemen and farmers encountered when handling and raising various classes of livestock.

I bought the box of books for a song, discarded all but the one I wanted and then found myself a shady spot under a tree and got my nose into it. It was the beginning of a long and, for the most part, rewarding relationship between Mr. Magner and me.

I had spent the previous two summers breaking and training saddle horses for the summer camps in northern Ontario and had had many of the problems that go along with the job of handling young and sometimes difficult horses. During that period I worked in isolation and was forced to improvise with my own solutions when a colt was uncooperative or an older horse presented a problem.  Reading through the horse section of my newly acquired book I realized that I had been trying to reinvent the wheel.  I found page after page of clearly explained, age-old remedies for everything I had struggled with on my own and, in addition, tons of invaluable advice for the future.

Over the ensuing years the book became my Bible and the ghost of Mr. Magner, my mentor. Of course I realized that he was not infallible, particularly when it came to some of the dated equine medical procedures and cures he advocated, but when it came to horse training and dealing with problem animals, his advice was as good as ever.

D. Magner lived in the gilded age of the horse whisperers when men like Prof. Jesse Beery toured the US demonstrating their art to the thousands of farmers and teamsters that required quiet well broken horses to earn their livings. Some of the methods they advocated were harsh by today’s standards and would offend contemporary training theorists like Monty Roberts but I found that I could separate the good techniques from the bad and use only those that suited me. I’ve probably tried most of his training and corrective techniques over the years and some of them have produced some pretty strange results

In 1965, I was working as a police officer on the Metropolitan Toronto Police Mounted Unit and was serving as breaker and trainer for the divisions remounts. The first horse I was assigned to finish training had already had a saddle on him a time or two. He was a big jug headed bay gelding named Monte. I inherited him from my training partner Merle Smith because he claimed the two of them did not get along. That was putting it mildly. Whenever Merle attempted to work with him the big horse would stand quietly while he mounted him but once he was aboard and seated, the brute would refuse to move. That’s not totally accurate because after a while the horse would shake his head defiantly, then suddenly rear, snort and paw the air, standing so tall and erect that my partner would lose his seat, slide backwards off the saddle and continue down over the horse’s rump until he landed in a heap on the ground. Merle was quite a bit older than I was and after several these episodes he figured that my youthful, less brittle bones were more suited to the task so he turned the brute over to me.

I wasn’t too excited about this assignment; I was new at the training job and still looking to prove myself.  Unless I could pull something out of the hat I would be the one to take the rap for our failure. I was also troubled by the knowledge that the horse was on trial with us and the dealer, who technically still owned him, had said that if we couldn’t do anything with him the horse would probably end up in the meat horse pen at the stockyards. I didn’t want that to happen so when I returned to my apartment in the east end of the city that night I dug out my trusty 1907 edition of Mr. Magner’s book and did some careful reading.

The first thing that caught my eye was on page 35- a section where the author attempts to classify the various characteristics of horses using a series of crude sketches of their heads. Figure number 24 suited Monte to a T.

If Mr. Magner’s assessment of Monte was correct what I had on my hands was one big self-willed son-of-a-gun who figured he was the boss and could do anything he wanted. It would be my job to let him know in no uncertain terms that from now on I was calling the shots.

Magner’s method of correcting horses with this sort of attitude problem was fairly straightforward. He called the technique: ‘Subjection’. I would be required to get the horse into a situation where he started to display one of his contrary moods and then, using the type of harness described in the book, throw him and hold him down until he stopped struggling and calmed down. The diagrams that describe the throwing technique appear kind of severe but if the procedure is done somewhere on a soft surface it’s not really that drastic and the horse is not harmed in any way. The result of my first treatment on Monte was immediate and astonishing. He got to his feet a new horse and within minutes I had him saddled and was riding him around the training ring. I had just seen the movie ‘Cool Hand Luke’ and I couldn’t help drawing some comparisons. What we had had was a failure to communicate and as we rode around the ring with Monte responding to my every wish, I could almost hear him saying, “I got my mind right, Boss”.

Unfortunately the cure was not permanent and occasionally, after I turned him over to another officer for regular duty on the street, he would take another bad spell and I would be called to go to the Police Station where he was stabled and give him a tune-up, as it came to be known.  Over the next couple of years I did this so often that I didn’t require any special harness to get him to lie down. I would just lift his near fore and put some pressure on his withers and down he would go. I’d sit on his neck and talk to him for while and after I let him up, he would be good for another week or two.

After I left the Police Force this arrangement became too complicated to maintain so I purchased old Monte and put him to work in my riding school where he performed faithfully for several years only occasionally requiring one of his tune-ups.  Watching Monte trot placidly around in my riding class, often with small inexperienced children on his back, I knew that if he was up there somewhere, the ghost of Mr. Magnum would be looking down on us with a satisfied look on his face.

Mr. Hill's Opus

Back left: Bud Hill, Back Centre: Ron Bond, Back right: Garry Leeson, Extreme Right: Gus ___ Front: Charlie Sullivan

I guess everybody who ever attended school has had one special teacher who stood out from all the others, someone who really affected their lives in a positive way.  I doubt, however, that many could claim that that special person might well have saved their life. There’s an old movie about a wonderful high school music teacher titled Mr. Holland’s Opus.  Richard Dreyfuss plays the part of Mr. Holland but whenever I watch it, and I’ve seen it several times, I always see my old music teacher, Charles Bud Hill, in his place.

Toronto’s Central Technical School was a rough and ready inner city institution that until 1959, the year I started to attend, didn’t have a music program. The word was that they had contemplated starting one for some time but had hesitated because they couldn’t find anyone strong enough to deal with the predominately male, streetwise toughs who formed the better part of the student body.

The first time I encountered Bud, as he insisted everybody, students and faculty alike, call him, he was busy breaking up a brawl in the hallway outside his music room.  I watched with my fellow classmates as he bent over and separated two fist flailing opponents sprawled on the floor, lifted them by the scruffs of their necks, banged their heads together and then sent them on their way. No trips to the office or detentions for him, just instant cursory justice.  We were all impressed; clearly he was the man for the job. There was no messing with the man. He ruled his band rehearsals with an iron hand, beating out time on his music stand with a baton that was more like a thick cudgel and symbolic of the discipline he demanded. We endured his frequent violent outburst when we couldn’t get a tune quite right and the odd swat on the back of our heads gladly because for some strange reason we really admired and respected the guy.

Maybe it was because we knew he was a real working musician who supplemented his meager teaching salary by playing trombone in a Dixie Land Band. I’m not sure that the school managers were all that happy that he was working to all hours at various sleazy joints around the city but for us it just added to his mystique.  He was the personification of “Cool” and it wasn’t long before, if not playing like musicians, we were talking like them. A whole host of new words and phrases had entered our vocabulary. How could you not admire a teacher who called you “Man” and said “fuck” whenever he wanted to.  In fact he was probably the first and maybe the only person to shout the F word out on the hallowed stage of Toronto’s Massey Hall. He had written a beautiful composition he called Overture to Mr. Carter and instead of getting the Toronto Symphony to play it, he trusted it to our high school band. We were understandably very nervous to be performing in front of such a large and august audience and when we screwed up during the first movement of the piece, he slammed his baton down and shouted out at the top of his lungs, “Stop, you fucking idiots!” The acoustics are excellent in the Hall so no one missed his outburst.  He took a moment to regain his composure then smiled at us and turned to the audience and in a more relaxed tone announced “We shall begin again.”  

There was however a down side to our relationship with Bud.  His Svengali-like influence was wont to lure us away from our regular courses of study. Who wanted to endure all those boring academic classes when, with impunity, you could slip down to a welcoming music room anytime you felt like it? I guess we all wanted to be musicians like him. “Money for nothing and the chicks are free!”

Playing my trumpet in one of his bands, to my delight, got me out of serving my time in the school’s mandatory Army Cadet program. I think Bud endured quite a bit of flak from the powers that be for encouraging this sort of exemption to military duty for his students but he felt strongly about the matter and stood his ground.  I don’t see him as being involved in the peace movement at the time but something he later did for me suggests that he had some strong opinions on the matter.

In 1961, during my third year, an awkward set of circumstances developed. In addition to the fact that, other than my music mark, my grades had plummeted to an embarrassing low, my girlfriend at the time informed me that the rabbit had died. It seemed like the time honored tradition of getting out of town was in order. The first thing that came to mind was the Foreign Legion but I was reconciled to the fact that a shotgun wedding might be in the offing and the Legion didn’t accept married men.

I guess I watched too many John Wayne movies; it’s the only reason I can think of that made me decide to join the United States Marines. In any event shortly after receiving the earth shattering news of the impending blessed event I found my eighteen year old self on a bus headed for a recruitment center in Buffalo New York. I arrived late in the evening and my appointment was for the following morning so I spent the night in a cockroach ridden excuse for a hotel in the worst part of town. I didn’t get much sleep; I just lay staring at the naked light bulb that hung from a long strand over my bed thinking that at any moment one of the hookers or Johns who seemed to be conducting a night long sparing match in the hallway might burst into my room.

The next morning, tired and itchy, I made my way over to the recruitment center. I joined about fifty other hopefuls, mostly black and Hispanic, waiting on the street outside the building. When the doors finally swung open we were greeted by a tall manikin of a man in a crisp full dress Marine uniform:  light blue trousers with a narrow red stripe, a navy colored box necked tunic with red piping and polished brass buttons, a wide white belt with an honest to goodness real sword and it was all topped with a white cap with an impossibly shiny black visor. My God, he looked good towering over us.  I was sold and found myself humming the Marine hymn as we followed him through the entrance and down a long dark hall. We wrote short multiple choice tests in a room full of school desks but from then on it was off with the clothes to be poked, prodded and made to cough by a series of guys in white coats.  Later in the day while standing in a vast circle of multicolored naked bodies, each of us holding a glass with our urine sample in it, some smart ass proposed a toast.

I was only back home a few days when I received my letter of acceptance. Because I was Canadian it was required that I return to the States and swear an oath of allegiance. This I did forthwith and two weeks later I was notified that I would be going to Parris Island, South Carolina, for basic training. My bags were packed and I was ready to go when I remembered that I had left a few important items in my locker at school. I decided to head over and pick them up before heading over to the bus terminal. I thought I was being sufficiently discrete as I slipped down the hallway. Classes were in session and I hoped no one would notice me. My locker was situated in the hall next to the music room. I had just retrieved my things and was closing the locker door when I turned around to see Bud emerging from the music room. As soon as he recognized me he almost flew in my direction and pinned me against the locker. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he spat in my face.  Thinking he was referring to my infraction of the “No access to lockers during class rule” I quickly answered “Just getting my stuff.” “Never mind your fucking stuff, you dolt. What’s this I hear about you joining the Marines?” Obviously my blabber mouth friend, Ron, albeit with the best intentions, had ratted me out. What ensued was an hour long lecture that commenced with the question. “Have you ever heard of a place called Vietnam?” He regaled me with information about the horrors of what was going on over there and what a hopeless cause it was - finishing with, “If you hadn’t been so busy in the backseat of your parent’s car lately, you might have read a paper or listened to the news and already know this.”  Apparently my friend Ron had felt that a full and complete disclosure of my situation had been in order.

I didn’t reply. I just slipped away pondering what he had said. I knew he was right. The TV news was full of clips of the young men of America marching down city streets chanting “Hell no, we won’t go!” and here I was foolishly offering myself as a lamb for the slaughter.

So I didn’t report to Parris Island. I didn’t get sent to Vietnam. I didn’t die face down in a stinking rice paddy and get my name etched on the somber sunken black memorial wall in Washington. Who’s to say what might really have happened? Maybe I would have simply lost a limb or two and ended up in a substandard veteran’s ward; or become a dope addict; or suffered the indignity of returning home to a country who couldn’t give a damn.  Thanks to Bud Hill, none of these things were allowed to happen and at the ripe old age of seventy I am alive and still playing my trumpet and singing with a swing band.  He could be vulgar and profane and was no Mr. Chips but I sure held, and still hold, him in the highest regard. He gave me the gift of music and far, far more.

The Girl from Chicoutimi

               

They claim that if you can remember the nineteen sixties and seventies you really weren’t there. Well, I was there and, although the memories aren’t all happy ones, I still remember most of it. I suppose the fact that I chose alcohol over LSD, magic mushrooms and the host of other drugs being introduced and bandied about accounts for the stuff that is still floating around in the deep recesses of my aging brain. Most of my friends, at the time, were into smoking pot and hash. I don’t even smoke tobacco so it made for some uncomfortable moments at parties when joints would come out and every one was expected to sit in a circle and share the disgusting little spit soaked bundles. I didn’t want to be a party pooper so I developed a ruse that made everyone think I was taking part. The success of the deception had a lot to do with what I would say. I always tried to appear anxious for a turn, reaching out and saying things like, “Don’t Bogart that joint” or “C’mon, gimme some.”  When I got it into my hand I would pretend to inhale heavily on it, hold my breath for an extended period of time then turn away so no one could see me exhale, fake a couple coughs then turn around and say “Good shit man!” It worked every time. What the hell ,it was the age of Aquarius, the world was changing, the streets were full of bead draped long haired hippies dressed in fringed leather vests and tie dyed moomoos. They played their banjos and auto harps and sang about world peace and free love, demonstrated at every opportunity and looked like they were having a hell of a good time.

I considered myself situated on the periphery of their movement. I wasn’t really typical, my hair was merely longish and I had a full time job. I also didn’t buy into everything they were advocating.  I wasn’t naive enough to think that a bunch of kids with flowers in their hair would ever be able to slow down the enormous American war machine;  however, the free love aspect of the thing did have a certain appeal and it seems that I was not the only one who took the pledge on that basis because suddenly the once staid, conservative City of Toronto seemed to be turning into a modern day Sodom and Gomorra with gratuitous sex rapidly replacing the hand shake as a form of greeting.

It was during the first few months of that growing revolution that my wife at the time decided to take off to parts unknown with our infant son in hand.  I supplied the reason- I had been a bit of a rascal. I’d been roped into marriage at the age of nineteen when the rabbit died and I guess I felt that I had somehow been robbed of my formative roving years and that that afforded me a certain license. Anyway, as a result, I found myself single, footloose and on the surface, fancy free. I was not alone in my situation: several male friends had coincidently also separated or divorced around the same time. We formed an alliance of sorts, meeting regularly at local bars and drowning our sorrows in booze and allowing an all too willing cadre of free spirited women to cheer us up.

Believe it or not it’s true:  you can get too much of a good thing and that was the way I was feeling one Friday night in late summer as I sat with my friends around a large barrel-shaped bar at a downtown water hole called the Coal Bin. We were on our third jug of beer and, with the arrival of the off-duty secretaries from the surrounding office complexes, the place had started to liven up. There had already been a bit of excitement, a university jock had lost all of his front teeth to a single punch from a diminutive philosophy major during a dispute over one of the local lovelies and for similar reasons a man at the next table had taken out his lighter and ignited the tie of the man seated next to him. Just another night at The Coal Bin and although my friends were still into the madness and were out on the dance floor hoping to cut a weak one out of the herd, I had had enough. I got to my feet and waded through a sea of come hither glances on my way to the back door. I pushed the metal bar under the sign that read Emergency Exit Only and stepped out into the cool night air. The door slammed closed behind me and that was that, there was no going back. There would be no more easy women for me; I was hanging it up for good I stopped to urinate in the dark alley behind the club before walking out to the first well lit street then headed south toward the lake. In my inebriated condition I was thinking of making my way to Sunnyside Beach where I could get some sand between my toes and clear my head. I made it to Front Street and was about to turn west when the huge granite façade of Union Station loomed up in front of me. I stared at it for a while before it dawned on me that a train trip might add some real substance to my hasty escape plan.

I groped in my pocket for the huge wad of bills I had cadged from the till at the stables before I left for the evening. It had only been partially depleted by my freeloading friends at the bar so I was solvent and ready for anything. I entered the enormous marble hall and made my way to a ticket booth. There were a couple of people ahead of me and while I waited my turn I had momentary second thoughts about my plan. I was starting to sober up and thinking maybe I should just go home and sleep it off, but I dismissed the idea, it wasn’t that simple. Since I had become single, my little house beside the stable had become  party central. Lots of nights I would return home to find the place in full swing and have to fight my way to my bedroom through throngs of people I hardly knew. I stepped up to the wicket determined and ready to go. I was slowed down a bit when the clerk asked me where I was headed. I had to pause a moment- I hadn’t thought that one out. “Oh anywhere,” I blurted out, “Where’s the next train heading?”  He looked at me strangely for what seemed like a long time then said, “You look like you should go to Montreal but you better hurry, the train’s about to leave.“ I pealed a few bills off my wad, grabbed my ticket and took off running for platform # 5. Twenty minutes later I found myself lounging in a reclining chair peering out of a smoky train window watching the lights of Toronto disappear. I dozed for a while then woke up with a taste in my mouth like the bottom of a canary cage so got to my feet and staggered down to the bar car. Hair of the dog seemed to be in order. I was on my second Comfort and Collins when she appeared.

I turned from staring at my own reflection in a darkened window to discover a pretty black haired twentyish looking woman sitting by herself at a table at the opposite end of the bar. I hadn’t noticed her arriving. She had her hair pinned in a tight roll at the back of her head and was wearing a pair of those heavy horned rimmed glasses that were fashionable at the time. I found myself staring at her and caught her briefly return a glance over the top of the dog eared paperback novel she was reading. In keeping with my recent vow of celibacy I turned away and stared out into the darkness trying to figure out how far I had travelled.  

When I finally looked up to catch the eye of the bartender to order another drink, it seemed to be just him and me in the bar now, the girl had gone.  He knew what I was drinking and while he was putting it together the door to the ladies room swung open and the mysterious dark haired lady reappeared but now the glasses were gone and she had let her hair down.  As she sat down we exchanged smiles  and then she opened her book, pretending to read.  As I sat nursing my drink and exchanging furtive glances with her, I realized that she would have no way of knowing why I was being so standoffish- maybe she would think I was gay or maybe more importantly, because when I heard her speaking to the bartender they conversed strictly in French, she might think me a snobby Anglo.  My new attitude toward women aside, I felt it important to clear the matter up. I called the bartender over and asked him to invite the lady over to my table for a drink and some clarifying conversation. I didn’t want any misunderstanding about my sexual preferences and maybe I would ,in a small way, be able to bridge the gap between the two solitudes. The bartender cautioned me that the young lady spoke almost no English but as I looked up at him and he now appeared to have two heads, I figured that his caution was academic because after a couple of more drinks I wouldn’t be able to understand her in either official language.  After a bit of feigned reluctance, the girl allowed herself to be escorted to my table. After I got unsteadily to my feet to greet them, the bar tender took it upon himself to conduct an elaborate introduction.

I jabbered away at her in English for a few minutes while she nodded and smiled then we reversed the procedure and I nodded and smiled at the beautiful French she was lisping in my direction. Clearly the conversation, however enjoyable on my part , was going nowhere. That’s when the bartender decided to intervene; he took a seat in the booth next to us and with nothing else to do, decided to become our interpreter. He seemed to be taken with one of us and I wasn’t sure if it was me or the girl. Thereafter as we sped our way toward Montreal he was our constant companion facilitating our conversation while I plied him with drinks that he quaffed surreptitiously after checking the aisle for roving conductors. In what seemed like a matter of minutes we were pulling into Central Station with plans for the future becoming imperative. Since I had become a little unsteady on my feet I had to impose on my two new friends to get me off the train and find me some suitable lodgings.

I don’t remember much about our arrival and my departure from the train, just hazy snatches of being assisted by the girl and the bartender through what seemed like a long tunnel until we reached the check-in booth of a hotel.  From that point until the following day I can’t remember anything that happened.  I woke up naked in a huge bed in a luxury suite.  Later I discovered I was in the Queen Elisabeth Hotel. Before opening my eyes completely I groped around under the covers to see if I was alone. I felt a little disappointed that the girl from the train wasn’t there but greatly relieved that neither was the bartender. Then the alarm bells in my head went off and in a panic I dragged myself off the bed and started looking frantically around the room for my clothing. I found my jeans hanging over a chair and, praise be to God, my wallet and money were still in my pockets. Apparently my two new friends had been good Samaritans, getting me to my room then leaving me to my own devices.

I wasn’t  feeling very well so I decided to take my aching head down to the restaurant that the brochures on the desk said were located downstairs just off the lobby. I needed liquid and lots of it but there would be no more hair of the dog for me. As I examined my pale face and bloodshot eyes in the bathroom mirror I swore my second oath in less than twenty-four hours, no more drinking - I was done with it – it was over with- I would never touch the stuff again. I took the elevator to the main floor and headed for the restaurant. The place was crowded and there seemed to be only one small table available at the back of the room. To get there I had to walk past the breakfast buffet.  The sickening, greasy smells of overcooked bacon, ham and eggs wafting out of the heated counter were almost too much to bear.  Somehow I managed to get to my table without puking then hailed a waiter and ordered a large glass of ginger ale. The first glass was followed by several more and then something happened that I have never been able to explain. It seemed that the ginger ale was reactivating whatever alcoholic residue that remained in my stomach from the night before - my headache was gone and I found myself drunk as a skunk again. Over the years I have shared the story of this phenomenon with many learned people but they always say things like, “It couldn’t have happened, there is nothing in the literature to support it, etc.” I always reply, “Well, if I wasn’t drunk again, why did I stagger out of the restaurant and, noticing a horse drawn carriage parked outside the hotel entrance, immediately go out and engage it, bribe the driver to sit in the passenger seat then take reins and the whip myself and set off on a wild two hour tour of downtown Montreal?”

Having explored most of the inner core of the city, much to the relief of a traumatized coachman, I decided to go back to my room for an afternoon nap. The neon lights of a darkened city were casting a dim glow through the hotel window when I was startled out of my slumber by someone tapping me on my shoulder. It was the girl from the train; she must have kept a room key for herself.  “Get up. C’mon; you get up we must go.” “Go where?” I inquired. “You gave money, I got tickets, we must go now.”  Not wanting to seem overly inquisitive but conscious of the fact that I did not have a passport and my funds were not inexhaustible, I ask once more, “Where are we going?”  “You know,” she said purring, “Chicoutimi!” Before I was really fully awake, I found myself being assisted, almost dragged, out of my room,  ushered down to the lobby where I settled up for my stay then taken back to Central Station, all the while wondering, “Where the hell is Chicoutimi?”

I was still numb as we boarded the train and the conductor escorted us to a small private compartment where the fold down bed was already made up. “A bit presumptuous,” I thought to myself. I was about to comment on it when the train suddenly lurched ahead so instead, I pushed a crumpled two dollar bill into the conductor’s hand and sat back on the bed. As he closed the door he gave me a sly wink.  I knew I was going to have to do a lot of explaining to my little French mademoiselle and it wasn’t going to easy considering the language barrier. I had to make it clear to her that I was not up for any hanky panky. I was fairly confident that I had not forsaken my vows the previous evening at the hotel and was not about to be tricked into anything now. I was just launching into an explanation that involved more gesture than sound when she put up her hand and stopped me short. Then reaching into a bulky cloth bag she had been carrying with her, she pulled out a bottle of wine and two plastic glasses. I could have simply said no at that point and put a stop to the whole thing but what appeared out of that bag sort of astonished me and gave me pause. She was gripping the neck of a stubby little green Mateusz bottle. How could she have known that that cheap bubbly had been my choice of vino for several years? In fact, I had been collecting the spent bottles for some time in the hopes of one day gluing them together to replicate a fancy screen I had seen made out them at a U of T frat house.  Not wishing to hurt her feelings I accepted a glass of the pink sparkling pop-like stuff and we toasted each other, she whispering a lengthy phrase in sexy French and me with a “Here’s mud in your eye.” I guess the girl was anticipating a long trip because as we drained that bottle, another appeared out of her bag. As the train chugged on through the night and the hours passed we amused ourselves laughing at stories we told each other even though neither of us understood a word the other was saying. She seemed to be eyeing me expectantly but I was more concerned with how I was going to get those empty bottles back to Toronto to add to my collection.

I finally started to nod off; I had a headache and a tremendous bout of heartburn so I thought I better lie down.  Somehow I had to explain to her that I was feeling ill and wanted to be left alone. I resorted to gesture again and that was a fatal mistake.  I cupped her face in my hands and looked directly into her eyes for a moment then released her and with an anguished look on my face touched my aching head then pulled both hands up against my chest maintaining the same distressed look. I’m not familiar with American Sign Language but it seems I might have inadvertently conveyed a message of undying love. She responded instantly with some unseemly advances and before I realized what was happening, she had me on my back on the bed and was having her way with me.  She was very strong for a girl and there was no way I could fight her off. I was compromised but there was no way I was going to give her the satisfaction of my active participation, a gesture that went largely unnoticed since the violent rocking of the train seemed to be doing all the work anyway.

When I woke up the following morning, the train was creeping to a halt at a mist shrouded station in the heart of a town I presumed was our destination. My companion was seated on the side of the narrow bed we shared already partially clothed. She was crying and when I put my arm around her in a forced effort to comfort her she pushed me back roughly and mumbled something about going to confession. That explained the cross that had been dangling in my face during her recent relentless, unwanted assault.  “Maybe this standoffishness is a blessing,” I thought to myself as I retrieved the clothing that had been ripped off me and tossed around with careless abandon. “Typical,” I thought,  “All that abuse and now I’m the bad guy?”  She continued to avoid me for several minutes- not easy in the small confined area we shared.   Secretly, I was looking forward to the inevitable slap in the face that would end our tryst and set me free. Unfortunately that didn’t happen. Her conscience must have taken hold of her because, still weeping, she suddenly threw herself in my arms and started uttering what I assumed was an apology. What could I do? I let her lead me from the train and down a few blocks through the center of town to an old but well-kept white clapboard three story house. She took a key from under a brick by the door and let us in.  I don’t know how it was accomplished but somehow she made me understand that we were in her parents’ house and that they were both away at work somewhere. She didn’t need to spend much time making me understand what she was about when she went to another room and then reappeared with a rosary in one hand and a hat in the other. “You stay, I go confession.”

I didn’t feel very comfortable being left alone in a strange house but she wasn’t gone long, apparently the church being close by. In retrospect, that would have been the ideal time to make my escape but I still wasn’t thinking very clearly and didn’t really know where I was, so I stayed. In fact I stayed for three days. During that time, with the help of the few people we met that spoke a little English, I was able to piece together some background on the strange lady from Chicoutimi. Several months earlier, seeking fame and fortune as a model, she had responded to a bogus advertisement promising work in Toronto.  There was no work and she found herself alone and stranded in a strange city. Somehow, just as the last of her scant money had run out, she met a young bilingual photographer who hired her as a model. They developed a relationship and shortly after she moved in with him. They lived together for several weeks and during that time she wrote home to her parents saying she was engaged and looking forward to bringing her fiancé home to meet the family. She showed me several photos he had taken of her during that time, mostly in the nude and quite fetching. When, at some point, she received an invitation to her cousin’s wedding back home, she suggested to her photographer friend that they both attend but he had seemed reluctant. On the eve of what she thought was to be her triumphant return home he had unceremoniously dumped her. She took the train home alone and that was when we met.  After leaving me at the hotel in Montreal and going to stay at an aunt’s house for the night she came up with a plan that would save her the embarrassment of showing up at home empty-handed. If I was still to be found willing, I was to be her photographer’s replacement. I guess not knowing that I was a reformed man she thought she had better throw in a few fringe benefits as an inducement. I played along, met her parents and was invited to use a small bedroom on the first floor off the kitchen. There I slept alone, during my entire stay, under the watchful eye of her father. I only had the clothes on my back when I arrived. The weather was getting a little nippy so I was forced to buy some warmer duds plus I needed a suit for the wedding. I played my part at the nuptials and things went off without a hitch except when the man taking the pictures asked my advice concerning, lighting, depth of field etc., I had to fake a coughing fit to get away from him.

It was at the reception after the ceremony that things began to be a little uncomfortable. For the last day or so my presumed paramour, for the life of me I can’t remember her name, had been floating meaningful glances in my direction. Now as we sat at the head table she was all over me playfully grabbing my leg or nudging me when I was supposed to clap or laugh at the French only speakers. We sat beside the parish priest who had presided at the wedding and he kept giving me knowing winks. The confessional obviously was not as sacred and confidential as I had been led to believe. The realization that something more than I had bargained for was afoot occurred when the bride tossed her bouquet.  My girl made a leap worthy of a professional basketball player, snatched the flowers out of the air, pulled me into her arms and, at length, redefined the meaning of a French kiss for me. Later that evening, back at her house, just as everyone was heading to bed she took me aside and whispered. “I come to you in morning, they still sleep.” That’s when I knew I was in real trouble.  The lady was getting serious. She had heard the wedding bells and set her cap. Of course, even if I had been receptive, this would have been awkward for me; technically I was still married to someone else. And so it was, with the Girl from Chicoutimi’s best interest at heart, I waited until, in the wee hours of the morning, I heard the whistle of the departing milk train in the distance then slid the window open, gathered my few belongings and took a French leave.