Nicola vs Chair: Part Two

Just before we moved I started restoring an old platform rocker. You might have read about it. If not, here's the link.

I did not complete this job before we moved. The chair sat in the garage in the new house for almost another year before I got back to it. Another coat of paint.  Still a little pink bleeding though on one arm. Len installed the high quality seat made by our friends Bruce and Kelly. It fit like a glove and is rock solid. I bought upholstery fabric, didn't like it, sold it and bought something else. I ordered foam, made a cushion and reupholstered the back using a staple gun. Then added the trim. 

When it was all done,  I sat down. And I smiled. It is a comfortable chair.

But I won't say I was 100% satisfied. There were drips on the paint. There's still a pinky undertone. I did not paint the underside which is still rough and reddish brown. I did a pretty amateurish job on the upholstery. But it was serviceable. The biggest problem was that it felt like you were going to topple over backwards when you sat in it.

Our friends Glenn and Sheila came for a visit. We made sure they didn't sit in the chair. But Len did. As we were enjoying our cocktails on the veranda, there was a popping sound followed by a crash as Len went straight over backwards, narrowly avoiding punching a hole through the screen door. Somehow he managed to keep his drink aloft like a pro.

Closer investigation revealed that one of the springs had snapped. Back the chair went to the garage. New springs were ordered. In the meantime, I found almost the identical chair- in a much better state of repair- in Calgary for $90. We could have bought it, but we didn't. Stubbornly, I wanted to fix the chair. I needed to fix the chair. It had become a symbol to me. But a symbol of what?

The springs arrived, costing almost the same as a better version of the chair. And they weren't the same as the old springs.  Len discovered the old screws holding the springs to the chair did not match. And they were painted to the chair. With some mineral spirits and elbow grease, they were removed. After a few missteps, the new springs were attached- two per side, much less bendy than the originals and with six screws per side.  Much better than one loose rusty spring and two mismatched screws.

Looking more closely at the underside of the chair, we could see evidence of previous repairs. Blocks of plywood had been screwed in to hold the bits together. A couple dozen rusty old tacks had held down the two layers of upholstery. A mysterious wire seemed to be holding one leg in place although it seemed unnecessary. We left it where it was.

I continue to ponder what the chair means to me. I know it has something to do with preserving the past in a new place and something to do with creating a home.

In many countries people don't move far from where they were born. Their memories and their history surrounds them. Their sense of place and where they belong is set. For better or worse, their history is inescapable. In Canada though? Most of us have come from somewhere else.  We carry our history and geography inside us-invisible to the world- although the result may bleed through. The stories of our ancestors, their successes and joys, their tragedies and injustices- both endured and inflicted-are known only to them. Our sense of who we are and where we belong is something we make for ourselves. This fact of our existence may be freeing, but it's also sad. 

I imagine when the chair was new. I imagine a family bringing it to a pioneer home in the Peace Country. I think about the first person who sat on it, perhaps smiling as I did. I imagine the woman of the house standing back and admiring her new furniture with a sense of completion, maybe feeling that now, she had arrived.  

Since that first family owned the chair, generations of people have seen something in it worth preserving. With its mismatched screws and bits of plywood and mysterious wire, it has survived many transitions. It is part of the past yet it continues on into the future. Just as we humans move forward, carrying our past with its secrets and joys and broken bits held tenuously together. Knowing what we know, we try to be our best selves wherever we are.

My great-grandparents' farm near Brantford

Our Dawson Creek house

Our Slave Lake house

So here we are in our new home, in a town with dozens of temporary residents in fancy vacation homes. We are making friends in this place where every day is a holiday and who you are in another place and time doesn't count for much. What counts is who you are now and what you're going to do today. 

Winter came. We moved the chair from the veranda to the bedroom where our new grandson would sleep. The house-now fully furnished with bits and pieces cobbled together - is home. 

I am home.

nicola vs chair

The chair wants to be pink.

I want it to be white.

For the past three weeks we have been engaged in a battle of wills- me as the aggressor and the chair as the passive-aggressive “victim”.

 

In the middle of moving, for some reason, I decided to refinish this chair. I tell myself that I do not want to move it if it isn’t worth fixing.  But I don’t think that’s the real reason. As I dismantle so much of the life I have spent the past thirty years building, part of me wants to hold on.

 

My parents bought the chair- a decrepit platform rocker- along with a matching loveseat, at an estate auction near Beaverlodge in the early 70s. At the same time, they bought the oak table that currently sits in my dining room, the 6 chairs now owned by my middle child, and a spool bed now owned by my sister. While every other item has been refinished, reupholstered and put to use, the chair has languished in basements, garages and storage sheds for the past 50 years. The upholstery has faded to an ugly green-gray. Pieces have fallen off. The wood seat, replaced at one time with plywood, is mildewed and rotting.  My dad tried refinishing it once and could not get past the red stain that someone, long ago, had applied. A stain that permeated the wood.

My friend Kelly volunteered her husband Bruce to rebuild the seat, so that problem was solved. He is a master at fixing things.

I decided to paint it white to go for a shabby chic look. 

I should have talked to people first but instead I gave it a good wash with mineral spirits and sanded it down lightly before I started painting. The stain immediately bled through. I painted it again. And again. My friend Sheila said to use Bull’s Eye primer so it covered it over with that. Again and again. Still pink. Whatever stain was applied is resistant to change. The chair wants to be pink. My English teacher friends said try shellac primer. So I used that. Better.  But still a little pink.

 

The painting gives me time to think. I think about our upcoming move. We have lived in our current town for 30 years and in our present house for 14 years. Why are we moving? Moving away from our dearly beloved house and a community where we have great friends? A place where we can go to the local brewery and always find people to visit with over a pint? But our kids have moved far away and we want to be just a little bit closer to at least one of them. I do not like the politics of this place and I know I can’t change it. I don’t like the long winters. After the fire, I thought I could help remake the town into something new and better. But it will always be what it is. Part of me feels that if we stay, I will become like this chair, gradually fading away to nothing. 

I need something to restore me.

 

When I move, what will change? Will a different life be a better life? After 30 years here, how much of me has been imbued with the culture and landscape of this place? How much of me will be resistant to change? We would like to move to the Columbia Valley. An acquaintance said, “Oh, then you’ll be mountain people.” We also thought of Vancouver Island, to which my brother’s partner said, “Oh, then you’ll be island people.” Are we mountain people? Are we island people? What would either of those identities entail? The only true geographic identity I have ever had is being a northerner. A northerner, with all the stubbornness, resiliency, “can-do” attitude, creativity, and self-sufficiency that entails.

Can I be something else?

 

I think I am winning my battle with the chair.

 

It’s almost white. But I’m not done yet.

 

I know that when I am finished, I will always see a little pink. I will always know that under the paint, there is a stain embedded deep in the wood. A stain that cannot be removed. Like the chair, for good or for ill, I will always be stained by my history and geography and all those who have impacted me. Whatever replaces the north as home will only ever be a layer over my true self. Underneath, I will be a northerner wherever I go.

Textbooks Suck. Why do we keep using them?

Why are textbooks so terrible?

It's like they beat out anything interesting or fun about a subject. The drama and the injustices and the personalities and the emotions that shaped history. 

Sure, the modern day books are filled with pictures and sidebar notes and links to web content, but the actual material makes you want to poke a fork in your eye. The new ones are no more captivating than the old ones, as I discovered reading through this old textbook published by MacMillan of Toronto in 1920. It might even be less interesting. At least "The Story of the Canadian People" had colourful tales of derring-do like this little description of the fall of the Huron: 

"When the end came, it was before the onset of seven hundred, yelling, bloodthirsty savages that the walls of the fort went down. The gallant defenders, scorning to accept quarter, were cut to pieces"

Today's history books are more about explaining the past than telling its story. Even most online content is desperately dull. You can't just take some crappy content from a book and put it online and say it's good, even if you throw in a few 2 minute videos and an online quiz.

It's like the people who wrote these materials didn't understand what makes kids tick. Or even what makes their subject interesting. And yet they are usually written by teachers who I assume love their area of specialization and are excited about learning and teaching. For my own course writing- maybe it is not filled with drama and excitement, but at least I try to make the characters come alive and point out some of the atrocities of the past and the inequalities of the present. Why sweep that under the carpet?  As a teacher I met in Grande Prairie said the other day, "That pile is getting too big. We can't even walk on it any more."

Bill Bigelow, in his article "The Real Irish-American Story Not Taught in Schools",talks about the dull and lifeless way the stories of the past are told, describing "a curriculum bound for boredom".

The crazy thing is, history is NOT boring. Including Canadian history. It's alive! It's full of things that make you say "Whoa, what?" or "Are you kidding me?" or "Why didn't I ever hear that before?" or "That is just plain wrong, how did people let that happen?"

Imagine a party of inexperienced Northwest Mounted Police towing huge York boats up a powerful river, taking instruction from a captured Blackfoot slave. Imagine that same party, on its way to Willow Point to sign Treaty Eight, caught in a huge storm on Lesser Slave Lake, followed by an amazing sunset. 

Imagine One Arrow, stripped down to nothing but a loin cloth, announcing to the Treaty Six Party "I came into the world naked, but the Great Spirit provided for me. And now you are taking our living from us!"  

Imagine the drama of a fully uniformed regimental band marching into Blackfoot Crossing in a show of strength to announce Treaty 7 negotiations, only to find almost no one there. And a couple of days later, warriors in full war paint, charging through the same land, performing amazing feats on their ponies, countering with their own display of bravery.

Why don't we read that in the books?

Could it be because history is written by the victor so there are stories we don't tell? Are we afraid of getting some details wrong? Or do publishers feel they must remove the messy, uncomfortable and unpleasant bits? Why must we sanitize the hell out of our stories so their truths don't even matter? Could it be that publishers try hard to not offend? Do they fear backlash from politicians and community groups? Is that why they whitewash everything? At the risk of being political or controversial, our textbooks are nothing at all. No wonder kids find our history so dull. We haven't told them what it is.

Detail from Kanata by Robert Houle, an interesting take on the classic "Death of Wolfe"

Or is part of the problem the publishers themselves? Generally our publishers are huge multinational corporations like Pearson whose goal is not education, but turning a profit. Why would a multinational be interested in promoting anything other than the status quo? Why would such a corporation encourage critical thinking about political systems that invest power in the elite or economic systems that value profit before justice or a history that is sometimes painful to think about? 

Keep flogging old ways of thinking and it doesn't matter what colour of font you use or how many cool photos you incorporate. You will never touch the hearts and minds of kids unless you tell real stories that appeal to their innate sense of justice and curiosity.

And so far, I haven't seen a textbook that does that.

The Presence of the Past

Lessons for Kenney Part 2

Photos of my ancestors look down from my walls.  My paternal great grandfather, Samuel Hartford, who came from Vermont to open a general store in Neepawa. My maternal great grandparents Charles and Eliza McNaught who moved from Brantford to pioneer in the Beaverlodge area. My paternal grandmother Muriel Fryer, a nurse of possibly uncertain parentage. My maternal grandfather who was sent to Canada as an orphan. My parents who chose to start a new life in a brand new town. 

Their faces look down on me every day.

The impact of my ancestors of my life is immeasurable. I carry their DNA and their actions and their life stories and the secrets they never told. I carry their sense of adventure. Their curiosity and openness and willingness to make changes in their lives. I'm influenced by the sacrifices they made when they left their own land to find a better lives with more opportunities and religious freedoms. Their quests to find and make communities where they belonged and where their descendants could thrive.

I carry my own past wherever I go. Who I am is the sum of all my life's experiences as well as the experiences of those who went before. My aching ankle, the voices of my children, the man I married, the job I have, the place I live. Voices I listened to. Voices I ignored. Choices I made, for good or for ill.  I am 58 years old. My past looms large behind me as my future shrinks.

I also carry my mistakes and the mistakes of those who went before and the indignities we have suffered as well as the indignities we inflicted, knowingly or unknowingly, on others. Financial risks that didn't pay off. Options not available due to class and gender and world events. Misunderstandings of culture. Misappropriation of lands. Part of my heritage. A legacy I carry forward. 

The past is all around me.

It cloaks me and protects me.

It gives me hope for tomorrow.

It is a burden I bear.

Just as my past led me to my present, so has our shared Canadian history led us to the nation we celebrate today. Knowing that history illuminates a way forward.  Hiding it blinds us. For generations we as a country suppressed the ugly parts of our past as we focused on the present. A present that was only fully open to some of us. Understanding our story and knowing our truths is important. Otherwise how do we navigate our way into the future? 

The Germans have a word. "Vergangenheitsbewältigung". The attempt to come to terms with the actions of the past. Acknowledging the truth and its attending shame and guilt. Here in Canada, coming to an understanding of our own history is something we are just beginning. Here, we call it reconciliation. How do we, as Canadians, work towards reconciling the actions of our respected ancestors with the indignities offered to our first peoples?  How do we come to terms with that?  

History is not only what happened in the past. It's not just a list of dates and events. It's with us in our institutions and our laws and ideologies. It's with us in the faces of the homeless and the silence of the marginalized. As I understand the impact of my past on my future, so too do I hope my students understand that their histories and the history of this land matter. All of their histories. The good history and the bad history. The history of privilege and the history of oppression. All of their stories make up the story of Canada. We need to know these stories and know how they shape us in order to move forward together.

The past is with us always. 

A Piece of History

Here stands the sideboard that once graced my grandmother's living room and then the series of homes in which my parents lived in Dawson Creek and Tumbler Ridge and Victoria. 

An imposing piece, research indicates its design was inspired by British architect and writer Charles Eastlake whose book Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery, and Other Details led to a movement known as "American Gothic". 

Eastlake believed household items should be attractive and well made by people who took pride in their work. A close look at the sideboard shows this to be true. Furniture in the Eastlake style is known for low relief carvings, moldings, geometric ornamentation and flat surfaces that were easy to clean. My sideboard includes all of these features. A recent article in the Ottawa Citizen indicates that a similar sideboard was listed in the 1895 Eaton's catalogue for $15, back in the day when a large house could be rented for $6 a month.

At my grandmother's house

I do not know the origin of this particular piece. It has no markings that indicate when or where it was made. Did the sideboard come west with my great grandparents when they ventured into the Alberta wilderness from Paris Ontario, eventually arriving at their homestead over the Edson Trail in 1911? More likely my grandmother picked it up at one of the many auctions she attended as she and my grandfather moved from Lake Saskatoon, to Delia, to Monitor and finally Edmonton during the Great Depression. Perhaps it once belonged to a wealthy family down on their luck in the Dirty Thirties.

Aunty Peggy and Mom

I know the sideboard has been well loved over the 100 and some years of its life. It's been moved taken apart and put back together and polished and dusted thousands of times. A few times the carving on top has been removed so it will fit into a room with a low ceiling. It serves as a backdrop to many family photos. My mom told me that when she was a child, the dining room table faced the sideboard and for many years a piece of cardboard covered the mirror as my aunt Peggy could not resist making faces at herself during supper.

When I was young, we opened the sideboard at Christmas when we needed to find the special rooster shaped salt and pepper or the red glass dish for the hard sauce for Christmas pudding. For the rest of the year, the sideboard served as centre-piece to display family photos, fancy crystal bowls and other decorative items such as the ornate candy dish that stands there today which my kids believe still contains its original candy.

Family photo from the late 1980s.

One thing I know about the sideboard is that wherever it lives, it fits in. Despite its ornamentation,  it seems to suit its home, wherever it is planted. From the living room in my grandmother's renovated log home outside Beaverlodge, to my mother's custom-built Viceroy house in the mountains of Tumbler Ridge, to my own 70s style bungalow, the sideboard belongs. A few months after we moved it to our house, my daughter visited for the first time."What do you think of where I put Grandmother's sideboard?" I asked. "I didn't even notice it," she said. "It looks like it has always been there."

My home is filled with objects, like the Eastlake sideboard, each with their own story, evoking memories and emotions. When wildfires destroyed a good portion of my community in 2011, I felt deeply for those who lost irreplaceable pieces of their own past. The suggestion that these are just "things" infuriated me. Certainly,the loss of possessions cannot be equated to the loss of life, but they are have meaning. They are worth more than their monetary value. 

Antique furniture is worth next to nothing on the market today. Unlike in the days of Charles Eastlake, people now seem to prefer furniture that is poorly made, cheaply manufactured and easily discarded. Perhaps we no longer believe in celebrating our history or recognizing our collective memory. In these times of disposable everything, our past is also easily thrown away. We tend to forget that history shapes us. 

Where do we belong when we let go of our roots and the forces that have made us who we are? 

Cropped

Sitting Bull with his mother, Her Holy Door, his daughter Many Horses
and his grandson in 1885. William Cody Archives.

Look for pictures of “Sitting Bull” and you’ll find dozens of images of the iconic Lakota holy man, known for uniting the contentious aboriginal tribes of the northern United States into a doomed resistance against the U.S. government in the late 1800s. Renowned as a martyr who lost his life in the battle against U.S. colonialism, Sitting Bull was a holy man and a leader, a singer, dancer and artist- and a man renowned for his wisdom. Sitting Bull is a hero not only to the first peoples of the United States, but also to those who seek inspiration from those who stand up for what they believe in against impossible odds. His story has been featured in books and movies. His place in history is secure.

But look at the original photo from which the well-known image of Sitting Bull was cropped. An image of a family man, seated with his mother, daughter and grandson. Not much is known about Her Holy Door and Many Horses. What role did his mother play in raising her son to fight for his people? Why is there no wife in the picture? What happened to the beautiful Many Horses and her son? What is their place in history? Aside from one or two speculative references in Sitting Bull's story, a few genealogical records and a handful of photos, their story is unknown. Like hundreds of aboriginal women today, they are invisible and voiceless.

What do we choose to know about the past? How much is chosen for us? Who decides what matters in the sweeping narrative of history? Historians and archivists and politicians and the croppers of photographs have their own story to tell. They have their own narratives in which characters such as the brave and proud Sitting Bull figure prominently while women like his fierce, noble, nurturing mother disappear into nothingness.

My parents both passed away recently and I find myself the bearer of their history. As I sift

through their photos and letters and documents, I find myself wondering why certain things were saved while others were discarded. I have my dad’s love letters to my mom, but not her letters to him. I have all the letters my grandfather wrote to my grandmother- from the Front during World War One, from far flung northern outposts where he relieved for bank managers on holiday-yet I have not a single letter written by my grandmother. The narratives are told by the men in my family's past, secured by their female counterparts, their archivists. These primary source documents tell the story of their lives, but is only part of the story. Like the photo of Sitting Bull, part of their story stands out while the rest has been cropped away, leaving me with only one perspective on their shared story, an unclear version of the past. 

As a Social Studies teacher, I wonder what part of history we share with our students and how much we leave out. Adam Smith is known for the concept of the invisible hand, yet do we teach our students he was an absent minded fellow who lived with his mother, a woman whose own invisible hand fed him and cared for him when he sometimes forgot to eat? We know Karl Marx was one of the most influential thinkers in modern history, but what do we know of his wife Jenny and their housekeeper Helen? Do we teach our children that Jenny was an educated and political woman in her own right who gave up an aristocratic lifestyle to pursue the rights of the underclass, living in poverty and witnessing the death of most of her children? Or that Helen, after most probably fathering Marx's child, continued to live with the Marx family for her entire life and now lies buried in their family plot? Or that two of his three daughters committed suicide? How does that knowledge colour our understanding of Marx's statement "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"? We teach our students that Jean Jacques Rousseau was one of the most influential of the Enlightenment philosophers, but what do they learn of Francoise-Louise de Warens, his mistress and benefactor? Would his ideas have seen the light of day without her financial support and commitment? And did Rousseau's own dependence on an older woman at an early age lead him to his belief that "man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains"?

I think about my own daughters. Who will tell their story? Will they be the archivist or the narrator? Will they have the right to choose the role they will play? 

Without a History

Me and my mom in Trail B.C.

I've lost some things in the last little while.  My dad passed away; my kids moved on; my dogs died; a third of my town burned down and friends moved away. I miss what I've lost. But more than those- I miss my mom.

My mom has dementia. When I visit, she often does not know who I am. On some days, she doesn't remember who she is. She doesn't know her name. She asks whether she had ever been married and wonders if she had kids.

To help her with her memory loss, I have been working on a book about her life. As I scan photos and read old letters and news clippings and report cards, I wonder what to include and what to leave out. What really matters? What picture will strike a chord? What does she want to remember? What might she rather forget? And think about fact and fiction and memory and the area that lies in between-history.

One of a long line of independent women, second daughter of a Peace Country pioneer and an English banker, mom was an excellent student.  In her grade three report card from Monitor, Alberta, her teacher wrote "One of the best students I have ever seen." She graduated from high school in Edmonton at age 15 but her parents thought she was too young for university. She took a one year secretarial programme, then received a Bachelor of Commerce from the U of A, worked for the American Army during WW II, completed teaching stints in Grande Prairie and Athabasca, got her M Ed and then became girls counselor in Dawson Creek. She married my dad late in life and they raised four kids.

Family Camping Trip, 1967.

My mom was a dynamo when I was growing up. She kept herself busy not just with being a mom and the wife of the high school principal, but also with a myriad of community projects, mostly related to things we were involved with. Masterminding the costumes of the figure skating carnival, running the marshaling area at swim meets, organizing the hospital auxiliary's candystripers, hosting Dad's staff parties and grad breakfasts and countless church events.  She went back to work when I was 16, first teaching ESL, then sewing, law and math.

Dad and Mom

After her move to Tumbler Ridge, she was the school and community librarian. Retirement was embraced with the energy only a teacher could bring to the job, fundraising for a swimming pool, involvement in the arts, horticulture, a new museum, the annual craft fair and whatever else she could think of. She was awarded the Queen Elizabeth Golden Jubilee Medal. Today Tumbler Ridge boasts Hartford Gardens, Hartford Court senior's housing, and the Hartford Citizenship Award. The Vancouver Province called her a "sprightly octogenarian" -a description that appalled her-when she organized what was then the world's largest potluck dinner.  Shortly after that event, she developed in short order breast cancer, an autoimmune response leading to permanent nerve damage in her hands and feet, pneumonia, and finally had a stroke, accompanied by creeping memory loss. Throughout it all my dad was by her side. When he got sick, they moved to Victoria to be closer to a hospital. Then my dad died. Mom now lives with a caregiver in a house a few blocks from my brother.

These are the facts of my mom's life.  But history is more than facts. History can only ever be a version of the truth, reliant on the perspective of memory. In the absence of my mom's memories, I substitute my own. In that version of my mother's story, she was a brilliant, driven and creative woman. Her exhausting schemes were accomplished through her skills of organization and the ability to delegate- and compensate when delegation failed. We would fend for ourselves when one of her projects was underway, scrambling when we heard the dreaded call "all hands on deck!" She was and is not an affectionate woman. I can't remember being hugged. I know she loved me but she never once told me so. Neither was she sentimental, nor was she introspective. Despite her great talents, she lacked self confidence. She was shy yet frequently pushed my brother and me into situations that made us uncomfortable. My dad used to joke that after retirement people called him "George" while she was still "Mrs. Hartford." Fiercely possessive of her own family, she did not willingly share us with anyone. She never warmed to any of my dad's charming siblings. When one of her children brought home a potential spouse it was never easy.  My husband and I were married for two years before we were given a room with a double bed. Two months after our marriage Mom announced that she'd had a dream in which I had married Stalin.

I miss my mom.  I miss her amazing talents as well as her exasperating qualities. I miss the woman who would switch positions in an argument just to keep things interesting.  The lady who read everything in sight, including cereal boxes and the newspapers meant to light the campfire. The woman who organized spectacular parties for me as a child, but forgot my birthday when I was grown up; the lady who hosted dinners for 60, often leaving the cleanup to others; the lady who sewed me a gorgeous wedding gown, but did not finish it until the guests began to arrive; the lady who would have laid down her life for her grandchild but could never have loved her son-in-law no matter what. As I am driven by the currents of my own history and genetics, I see some of those traits in myself. I am powerless to stop them.

What version of you remains after your memories go? Without your history, who are you? Is it your truest self that is left behind? Or is it some pale imitation of the you that used to be? Is that why we, as humans, strive to preserve our memories in photos, art, literature, film and storytelling? I know, in part, that is why I am creating this book.  My own memories, as well as my mom's, are contained on its pages.

My mom and my sister looking at the book. Christmas 2013.