Today, Father, is Father's Day

I know what the calendar says, but for me today is Father's Day.

For more than 2 decades, mid-November can be counted on for two things:  cold, biting rain and a flood of memories about the complicated man who was my father.  Like the bracing sting of a cold rain that makes you put your head down and your collar up, memories of my father give me chills and remind me that I should have been better prepared.

Now before anyone jumps ahead and makes any assumptions, I use the word chills because his quick death from cancer abruptly punctuated our relationship and left me with lots of unresolved questions and feelings.  I can't think of him without wondering how he would think about what's happened to me, my brother and sister and the world in general.  I keep thinking that he and my wife's father would have liked one another and wish I could be certain.  I want to ask his advice about all manner of things and I can't,  I would like to take one more trip with him.

My father was a funny man.  He liked to laugh.  He liked to make people laugh.  And yet my clearest memories were of a quiet man who seemed to be happiest in his workshop or in the woods with his chainsaw.

He had an astonishing social network in the days when that was measured by handshakes and first names and not numbers on a monitor.  Whatever the issue, it seemed that he always knew who to call and if he didn't, he would find out.

One of the traits my father had in spades was that he was genuinely interested in people.

When I was in high school, my dad took me to England.  After spending a few days in London, he rented a car and we drove south toward Brighton.  We stopped for lunch at a place called the Ship Inn.  I will never forget my father's advice upon entering this pub.  He said you should always sit at the bar because then you'll really find out what's going on.

On this occasion, he broke that rule--I think it may have had something to do with me being under age--and we sat at a table next to the window.  As we were eating our lunch, my father became distracted.  There was something going on at the bar.  As it would turn out, the previous Saturday, the pub had run out of lager and had had to borrow a keg from a pub down the street.  We had arrived on their regular delivery day and now they were trying to figure out how to get the replacement keg delivered to the other establishment.

My father left me at the table to finish my sandwich and fizzy lemon and he went to the bar.  In no time at all he had volunteered to wedge the keg into the back of our car and deliver it himself.

And like that, he had transformed himself from a tourist to a local.  Suddenly he was a celebrated customer and surely he would have another glass to celebrate his new celebrity.

After the toasting, came the packing, or rather the repacking of the car.  Suitcases had to be moved into the back seat so that the keg could be loaded into the trunk.  A guide was assigned to ride with us to the other pub and see that the keg was safely delivered.

At the new pub--I don't remember the name, but I do recall it had something to do with birds--my father was again a celebrity:  the great problem solver from Canada who had volunteered to deliver the beer.  Such a noble act had to be toasted and so we spent another hour at another pub.

The barman took us on a tour and we were shown the owl that was the pub's mascot.  It lived in a cage in the courtyard behind the building.  I don't know much about owls, but to my eye it seemed like a pretty big bird.

While we were sitting there, celebrating the completion of our mission, my father's ears again perked up.  A group of French schoolgirls had come into the bar and were engaged in an animated conversation.  Always ready to be helpful, my father, in his absolutely fearless French, volunteered that there was an owl in the back of the bar.

Perhaps it was a question of cultural competency, perhaps it was because he had had one too many celebratory toasts, but whatever the reason, the schoolgirls were not at all interested in what my father was trying to tell them.  There was a brief pause and then they went back to talking amongst themselves as though nothing had happened.

Like that story, there were episodes in my father's life where he experienced tremendous success and others where communication was a barrier to understanding.  But also like that story, which he told for a long time after we got home, the takeaway is the story.  Dad loved to tell stories.  He liked best the ones in which he was the hero, but so long as it was funny, that didn't always matter.

That's what I have are stories, many of which I was present for and some where I was not, but that have been elevated in the retelling to the level of myth.  They are a comfort and a guide, like the fractured fairy tales from the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show:  they have a lesson, but perhaps not always a helpful one.

And then there is the story that began in the summer of 1989 when he learned he was sick and ended on November 16th at a pay phone in Toronto's Pearson Airport when I learned I had waited too long to make the trip home.

My father was not always an easy man to love, but, as I grow older, neither am I.

I miss him and have felt his loss more keenly as the years have passed.

Happy Fathers Day

Graham Campbell
--Associate Director