This exhibit was recently at the Ottawa School of Art gallery. Local artist Karen Bailey has created a powerful set of images depicting the personnel and patients at a Canadian military hospital in Kandahar during a short period in 2007. She was hired by the Canadian military to document the work of the hospital and its patients. The pictures took two years to complete. The result is a stunning collection of images of life in a war zone.
Ms. Bailey is a graduate of Reigate Art School in England, and is known locally for painting pictures of ordinary people such as hairdressers and ladies preparing a church supper, at their work.
The Ottawa School of Art showcases various exhibits in its gallery, but this is the best I have seen. If you get a chance to view the pieces, don't miss it. The artist would like the pictures to become part of the collection of the Canadian War Museum, which is where I think they belong.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Why February is the Cruellest Month
This post was first written in February, but I am posting it now.
Most people, quoting T.S. Eliot, claim that April is the cruellest month. This is because April is now income tax time. I concede that April is always very stressful, but, to me, February has been the worst.
I remember the February of 1985. Back then I was married and living in Toronto. I was lying on the living room couch half asleep, and waiting for my husband to finish in the shower. It was around 11:00 on a Friday night in mid February. Suddenly, I was experiencing a heart attack. No, it wasn’t my heart attack, it was someone else’s. The voice in my head said “My aunt is dying.” I ran through the names of my English aunts “Auntie Phyl?” “Auntie Lily?”, “Auntie Eileen?” To each, the voice replied “No”. I couldn’t figure it out. On Sunday my mother called and told me that my Auntie Edith had died of a heart attack on the Friday night. She had picked up her grandson at school as was usual, served dinner to her husband, also as usual, gone to bed at her usual hour. Her husband had discovered her death in the morning. The cause was determined to be a massive heart attack. She was only 70. I hadn’t thought of Auntie Edith’s having a heart attack, because she wasn’t a blood aunt, but very much an honourary one.
I hadn’t seen Auntie Edith for years, but my annual summer week or two spent with her, Uncle Les, and their two children, Gill and Bernard were wonderful oases in my childhood. Their house was always cheerful and quiet. They had a lovely rambunctious Samoyed, Queenie, whose tail frequently got uncomfortably close to the contents of the tea table – that is, when she wasn’t trying to get underneath it! I wasn’t allowed to have a dog, so Queenie was a welcome novelty to me. Uncle Les had given Auntie Edith a spinning wheel so she could spin Queenie’s fur.
Auntie Edith did many crafts. I remember her showing me how to do Jacobean embroidery. She also was a very religious lady, the sort who practises the best tenets of her faith – kindness and patience. Although my family didn’t attend church, I always went with this family. I remember the sunlight streaming in through the windows of St. Mark’s church in Niagara on the Lake and the choir singing my favourite hymn “This is My Father’s World”. Auntie Edith was kind, patient, and knew how to do a number of interesting things. I never recall her losing her temper while I was there.
Gill and I used to roam around Niagara on the Lake. We would explore the gravestones in St. Mark’s churchyard, which still bore the contours of trenches from the 1812 war. We found a spring of water behind Fort George, and walnuts from the trees growing on the slopes of its embankment. There was an old stone horse trough, almost hidden by weeds and grasses.
The best fun was at Niagara Dock. We used to jump into the wake of the Cayuga, a ship which used to transport pleasure seekers from Toronto across the lake to the sights of the Niagara area. We would jump into the swirls behind the boat and allow the current to carry us either to the nearby beach, or all the way to the beach beside the golf course where fortifications from the same war with the ‘States could still be seen. When the ship wasn’t there, we would dive off the diving tower into the river and its current. I never had the courage to go above the middle level of the tower, but the bravest jumped off the top into the currents that the mighty Niagara had even near its mouth. Of course, we never told our parents about these adventures!
After Auntie Edith’s death, I was delegated to represent the family at the visitation. I was going anyway. The services were to be in Stouffville, where the family had now lived for some years. I remember Uncle Les and Gill being just devastated. Bernard, back from the west, was also very upset. They had an open casket, a beautiful metal one, and had spared no expense to lay her out. They asked me about Michael, my brother, who had had some difficulties, and I said, as I believed, that he was doing much better. That was what I had been told, but somehow, even as I said it, I questioned what I was saying. I left with an uneasy feeling, which I tried to dismiss.
That weekend, hubby was away visiting his mother, who was not well, and doing a little skiing. My mother and stepfather went to Guelph to see my brother. They all went out to lunch together, and my mother reported that he seemed to be doing much better. On the following Wednesday, I was working late at night on my report card marks, which were due in a day or two, when the same inner voice said ”Call your brother.” I thought, “All right, I will just finish these marks and comments, and then I will call.” By the time I finished it was after eleven o’clock, too late, as I thought, to call, so I decided to wait and call the next day. The next day, after work, I stopped in at Yorkdale Mall, as I often did when the traffic was heavy, and shopped the sales. Aside from the traffic, I had had a headache all day, and didn’t feel like going home. When I got home, my mother called and told me that they had found my brother’s body, that he had committed suicide late the night before. I had talked him out of it once previously. Sadly, he hadn’t been home the previous night until after eleven o’clock. I will always wonder if I would have made a difference this time if I had called.
Michael’s troubles had begun long before. Aside from sharing many of the elements of my horrible childhood, Michael had received additional blows from heredity. He didn’t learn to read until grade 4, at which point it was discovered that he was amazingly myopic. After that, he subscribed to Hansard, and used to entertain us at dinner with Diefenbaker-Pearson exchanges. Once he acquired his thick glasses, he got way better marks at school than I did with seemingly little effort.
At the age of twelve, he shattered his leg in a fall on a school ice slide. The tibia and fibula (bones of the lower leg) were each broken in three places. One of the fractures was a greenstick, but the leg was shattered, and had to be opened up and pinned together in a massive five hour operation. Subsequently he was at home and in a cast for months. It was whispered at the time that he had brittle bones, and must avoid all contact sports. He could swim, but not dive. Hockey would have killed him. I know now that the disease was a form of osteogenesis imperfecta, but around our house it was swept under the rug, forcing Michael to pretend that he didn’t like sports. Only his closest friends knew the truth. A Medic-Alert bracelet would have made his life in high school so much easier, but he wasn’t given that. Later, five or six months after his death I remarked to my mother that it was a pity that Mike had gotten such a rotten deal from heredity. She replied that there was nothing wrong with my brother, that he was just weak, as if weakness were some kind of moral failing. I had to go home and telephone his former girlfriend who was a medical records technician to confirm that he indeed had the bone problems. As a child, I was the one with the rotten teeth and the many fillings. His teeth were always perfect. When he was in his twenties, this changed and they all went bad at once. He had to go into hospital to have them extracted. Apparently they were very abnormal. One tooth even had seven roots!
Later, Michael, the kid genius, dropped out of high school, worked his way up in various banks and then went back to college as a mature student. He was on scholarship from his second term. He won the Falconbridge entrance scholarship to Osgoode Hall Law School, and graduated in law. Along the way he got married, but that was a foolish, doomed choice. The marriage subsequently broke up and the wife pulled the plug from their business. Michael tried to carry on for a while, but developed bipolar affective disorder, and after another suicide attempt was hospitalized for several months. He came out of hospital, and worked for a while doing accounting, but it seemed he could never get it together again. There were three suicide attempts that I knew about. At the funeral, his friends told me there had been more.
Even when Michael was alive, I used to think about the things he couldn’t do. I used to think about him when I went skiing in the Rockies. I felt so lucky to be able to try to overcome my fear of heights in this way. I felt sad that he would always miss seeing the gorgeous scenery from this viewpoint. I hope that he is at peace wherever he is now.
This post was first written in February, but I am posting it now.
Most people, quoting T.S. Eliot, claim that April is the cruellest month. This is because April is now income tax time. I concede that April is always very stressful, but, to me, February has been the worst.
I remember the February of 1985. Back then I was married and living in Toronto. I was lying on the living room couch half asleep, and waiting for my husband to finish in the shower. It was around 11:00 on a Friday night in mid February. Suddenly, I was experiencing a heart attack. No, it wasn’t my heart attack, it was someone else’s. The voice in my head said “My aunt is dying.” I ran through the names of my English aunts “Auntie Phyl?” “Auntie Lily?”, “Auntie Eileen?” To each, the voice replied “No”. I couldn’t figure it out. On Sunday my mother called and told me that my Auntie Edith had died of a heart attack on the Friday night. She had picked up her grandson at school as was usual, served dinner to her husband, also as usual, gone to bed at her usual hour. Her husband had discovered her death in the morning. The cause was determined to be a massive heart attack. She was only 70. I hadn’t thought of Auntie Edith’s having a heart attack, because she wasn’t a blood aunt, but very much an honourary one.
I hadn’t seen Auntie Edith for years, but my annual summer week or two spent with her, Uncle Les, and their two children, Gill and Bernard were wonderful oases in my childhood. Their house was always cheerful and quiet. They had a lovely rambunctious Samoyed, Queenie, whose tail frequently got uncomfortably close to the contents of the tea table – that is, when she wasn’t trying to get underneath it! I wasn’t allowed to have a dog, so Queenie was a welcome novelty to me. Uncle Les had given Auntie Edith a spinning wheel so she could spin Queenie’s fur.
Auntie Edith did many crafts. I remember her showing me how to do Jacobean embroidery. She also was a very religious lady, the sort who practises the best tenets of her faith – kindness and patience. Although my family didn’t attend church, I always went with this family. I remember the sunlight streaming in through the windows of St. Mark’s church in Niagara on the Lake and the choir singing my favourite hymn “This is My Father’s World”. Auntie Edith was kind, patient, and knew how to do a number of interesting things. I never recall her losing her temper while I was there.
Gill and I used to roam around Niagara on the Lake. We would explore the gravestones in St. Mark’s churchyard, which still bore the contours of trenches from the 1812 war. We found a spring of water behind Fort George, and walnuts from the trees growing on the slopes of its embankment. There was an old stone horse trough, almost hidden by weeds and grasses.
The best fun was at Niagara Dock. We used to jump into the wake of the Cayuga, a ship which used to transport pleasure seekers from Toronto across the lake to the sights of the Niagara area. We would jump into the swirls behind the boat and allow the current to carry us either to the nearby beach, or all the way to the beach beside the golf course where fortifications from the same war with the ‘States could still be seen. When the ship wasn’t there, we would dive off the diving tower into the river and its current. I never had the courage to go above the middle level of the tower, but the bravest jumped off the top into the currents that the mighty Niagara had even near its mouth. Of course, we never told our parents about these adventures!
After Auntie Edith’s death, I was delegated to represent the family at the visitation. I was going anyway. The services were to be in Stouffville, where the family had now lived for some years. I remember Uncle Les and Gill being just devastated. Bernard, back from the west, was also very upset. They had an open casket, a beautiful metal one, and had spared no expense to lay her out. They asked me about Michael, my brother, who had had some difficulties, and I said, as I believed, that he was doing much better. That was what I had been told, but somehow, even as I said it, I questioned what I was saying. I left with an uneasy feeling, which I tried to dismiss.
That weekend, hubby was away visiting his mother, who was not well, and doing a little skiing. My mother and stepfather went to Guelph to see my brother. They all went out to lunch together, and my mother reported that he seemed to be doing much better. On the following Wednesday, I was working late at night on my report card marks, which were due in a day or two, when the same inner voice said ”Call your brother.” I thought, “All right, I will just finish these marks and comments, and then I will call.” By the time I finished it was after eleven o’clock, too late, as I thought, to call, so I decided to wait and call the next day. The next day, after work, I stopped in at Yorkdale Mall, as I often did when the traffic was heavy, and shopped the sales. Aside from the traffic, I had had a headache all day, and didn’t feel like going home. When I got home, my mother called and told me that they had found my brother’s body, that he had committed suicide late the night before. I had talked him out of it once previously. Sadly, he hadn’t been home the previous night until after eleven o’clock. I will always wonder if I would have made a difference this time if I had called.
Michael’s troubles had begun long before. Aside from sharing many of the elements of my horrible childhood, Michael had received additional blows from heredity. He didn’t learn to read until grade 4, at which point it was discovered that he was amazingly myopic. After that, he subscribed to Hansard, and used to entertain us at dinner with Diefenbaker-Pearson exchanges. Once he acquired his thick glasses, he got way better marks at school than I did with seemingly little effort.
At the age of twelve, he shattered his leg in a fall on a school ice slide. The tibia and fibula (bones of the lower leg) were each broken in three places. One of the fractures was a greenstick, but the leg was shattered, and had to be opened up and pinned together in a massive five hour operation. Subsequently he was at home and in a cast for months. It was whispered at the time that he had brittle bones, and must avoid all contact sports. He could swim, but not dive. Hockey would have killed him. I know now that the disease was a form of osteogenesis imperfecta, but around our house it was swept under the rug, forcing Michael to pretend that he didn’t like sports. Only his closest friends knew the truth. A Medic-Alert bracelet would have made his life in high school so much easier, but he wasn’t given that. Later, five or six months after his death I remarked to my mother that it was a pity that Mike had gotten such a rotten deal from heredity. She replied that there was nothing wrong with my brother, that he was just weak, as if weakness were some kind of moral failing. I had to go home and telephone his former girlfriend who was a medical records technician to confirm that he indeed had the bone problems. As a child, I was the one with the rotten teeth and the many fillings. His teeth were always perfect. When he was in his twenties, this changed and they all went bad at once. He had to go into hospital to have them extracted. Apparently they were very abnormal. One tooth even had seven roots!
Later, Michael, the kid genius, dropped out of high school, worked his way up in various banks and then went back to college as a mature student. He was on scholarship from his second term. He won the Falconbridge entrance scholarship to Osgoode Hall Law School, and graduated in law. Along the way he got married, but that was a foolish, doomed choice. The marriage subsequently broke up and the wife pulled the plug from their business. Michael tried to carry on for a while, but developed bipolar affective disorder, and after another suicide attempt was hospitalized for several months. He came out of hospital, and worked for a while doing accounting, but it seemed he could never get it together again. There were three suicide attempts that I knew about. At the funeral, his friends told me there had been more.
Even when Michael was alive, I used to think about the things he couldn’t do. I used to think about him when I went skiing in the Rockies. I felt so lucky to be able to try to overcome my fear of heights in this way. I felt sad that he would always miss seeing the gorgeous scenery from this viewpoint. I hope that he is at peace wherever he is now.
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