Chapter 7

Chapter Seven
Off the Rails

January 2021 - Can't believe another 5 years has flown by since my last chapter. It seems I think of these pages around the start of the year or at major milestones in my life. I started writing these thoughts as I was approaching 50 years old. Now that the golden age of 65 is just around the corner, actually right in front of me, it seems I am doing more pondering. Although you are welcome to these musings, they are really just a diary of my thoughts that I can look back on fondly. The energy I save by not making new year's resolutions, is expended in these pages. Warning - this one is way longer than planned.

As you may have read elsewhere, December 31st, 2020 was a historic date in our lives as we saw the last ride on our commuter line, a life blood to many of us who have travelled into town for school, work or play. I was happy to take that last 2 minute ride on the bullet and document its last few minutes before being put out to pasture, the train that is, not me. The video can be seen by clicking on the right play button below. Since I was busy recording and eventually editing the event, I had not thought of an important milestone in my own life. Exactly 11 years earlier (minus 2 hours), I ceremoniously shut off my work phone as I was no longer on call and was fully retired. That's the other thing I can't believe, that it's been 11 years. In those 11 years I have played 1095 golf games, about 960 hockey games and been on around 35 trips to different locations around the world. All of that (except the golf) came to a grinding halt in this, the year from hell.

The original video From December 22nd / The Final Voyage from New Year's Eve

There is a funny story about recording the video of the last train ride and COVID-19 played a major role in it. First of all, let me say that videoing this event for posterity was quite a nerve racking experience. There was no do over or take 2 of any part of it. At one point I panicked as I thought I had not pressed record and thought I had missed an entire scene. Doing this was kind of a last minute idea. Two days before, I went out to record the train coming into the Grand-Moulin station. When I got there, there was no train as the schedule had been reduced considerably in November because of low ridership due to the pandemic. I looked at the schedule and there was one leaving the Deux-Montagnes station in 30 minutes. It was bitingly cold so I wasn't going to wait at Grand-Moulin. Long story short, I posted an edited video of that and got a lot of good comments about documenting the train while it was still going. Seeing the popularity of this post, I thought it would be a great idea to record the actual last ride. That video is on the left play button above.

My original plan was to take the train into Bois-Franc (as the train stopped going all the way to Montreal back in May) and ride it back into Two Mo. The only problem, is that you had to disembark at Bois-Franc and wait over an hour in the cold to get back on for the return. Everything is closed near the Bois-Franc station so there went that plan. Only on New Year's Eve morning did I think of boarding at Grand-Moulin and taking the final 2.25 kilometre ride into the DM station. I devised a plan that would save me having to walk back from DM to Grand-Moulin after the ride with the added bonus that I could get video of the train pulling into both stations. So, Myrna drops me off at Grand-Moulin a few minutes before arrival. That way I get to shoot the platform and eventually the train coming in. Myrna drives up to the Deux-Montagnes station and gets a few shots of the platform there and the train doing its final stop. I hop on the train, take some inside shots and a first person PoV (point of view) of getting off the train for one last time. That last part almost didn't happen and it's part of the video that had to be cut out since it was very jittery. Once the train had hit the crossing at blvd du Lac, I had to run to make sure I got on it. The problem is that it stopped a few cars more ahead than usual so I had to run further than expected. I made it. I just looked at my Garmin watch activity for that date, my heart rate at 10:06pm that night hit 127 BPM that would be around the time the train rolled in and I was running after it. Someone posted a video today of their view of the train at Grand-Moulin and you see me boarding in the last train car.

I haven't got to the funny part yet. Once I got on the train, there was only a few people that had the same idea as I did. There was a group that serendipitously was the highlight of my video. I had seen them earlier on the Grand-Moulin platform and recognized one of the people was Eric Clark, a long time Two Mo firefighter. He graciously offered me a shot of Sortilege (a Canadian whiskey/maple syrup concoction). We toasted the event and the soon to arrive 2021. Once on board, the Sortilege kept going and the group (Eric) offered me another chance to toast the ride. I did recognize someone else in the group but because everyone was very respectful of COVID rules they were all wearing masks. After a 3 minute ride, we all got off the train and I kept videoing as to not miss any action. As I got to the end of the platform and met up with Myrna filming from the other angle, I recognized another person in the group, our very good friend Lynne Fougere. And guess who was standing right beside her; her husband Rick who was the best man at my wedding some 41 years ago. It's not really 'it's a small world' thing but to not realize that you have been with your best friend without recognizing him is pretty funny. Well, funny to me anyway.

Getting back to why after 5 years I am back writing yet another chapter in this series. Seeing the end of the era of the train has made me reflect on my own life. I am within 6 months of collecting my first OAS (Old Age Security or federal pension) cheque. That won't make a difference in my life because my private pension will be reduced by the equivalent amount. The only real difference is the fact that I will be 'entitled' to all senior citizen discounts. Up to now, senior discounts are sometimes for 55 and over, sometimes 60 and even 62 in some parts of the U.S. like the National Parks service.

The other reason I am writing at this point in time is finally leaving 2020 behind. Not that we don't have a lot more to go before we can breathe easy again. The hole we are in will take a while to dig out of. In my previous chapter, I mentioned that the years were flying by. My bother Bernie, who has been retired for over 20 years has a theory that life is like a roll toilet paper. Not that it sees a lot of crap but that as the roll gets nearer the end, it seems to go down faster. If that's the case, I want the double roll and I will only use one square each time.

To be completely honest, I could not have written this a year ago. Not sure what was happening but I was not my usual self. I was struggling to sleep well. Things that normally don't bother me were weighing heavy on my mind. It was a strange feeling not being in full control of my emotions. Of course, with lack of sleep, those negative feelings just snowball and it's not something you can just snap out of. There were feelings of claustrophobia which I have had all my life but had dealt with very well. As a matter of fact, in 2014 while visiting Vietnam, I faced my fear head on and managed to crawl through the famous Ci Chu Tunnels used in the war. I probably could not have done that a year ago but today I would relish going back.

For some strange reason, I started feeling better as the world was shutting down in March. It was a slow recovery but I was sleeping better and even when I would wake in the middle of the night, the world was no longer collapsing around me. It's a place I don't want to go back to. I am not sure if people around me could feel what I was going through. Fortunately, my rock, Myrna stood by me. She felt helpless but saw me through it all.

I had experienced this kind of anxiety at another stage in my life. It was in the fall of 1992. My then 83 year old father, who had never been sick a day in his life, had to return early from his Florida snow bird nest. He was then diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in March. He eventually succumbed to the disease on October 22nd. During that time, knowing his days were numbered and seeing the toilet paper roll dwindle, he wanted to write his memoirs. He had a trusty typewriter but I knew that it wasn't going to cut the mustard for what my father was about to endeavour. At work, I was doing a lot of formatting for technical documentation using a software called Ventura Publishing. I could make someone's bad procedures look really good even if the content was questionable. I knew the content would not be a problem with my father's digressions as he called them. But had he used a type writer, I would have had a tough time piecing together the various pages into a presentable format. Since I had been using a computer at work for years, I knew that invaluable backspace key was way better at erasing a typo then what my father could do on his trusty Royal. Also, since I knew I would be responsible for the final product, I convinced dad to use a computer to compile his memories. Part of my justification was on how much paper we would save on draft pages, not to mention whiteout.

Fortunately, I was able to borrow a Compaq 386 from work for an indefinite amount of time as I didn't know how much my father was ready to offload onto virtual paper. The Compaq 386 was one of the first truly portable PC's of the time. The laptop was years away from being developed. By today's standard, its portability is laughable at a whopping 25 pounds. At work, we called it the sewing machine as when it was closed it resembled a Singer portable sewing machine. It obviously ran an early version of DOS. It might even have been the first release of Windows. It had a monochrome 10 inch amber colored gas-plasma display. It came out in 1987 at the low price of around $10,000USD and had a hard drive of 100MB if you got the 'bigger' configuration. To put the storage size into perspective, your 64GB phone has 640 times more storage. We didn't really care about the size of storage since we were going to store the documents on the 5¼ floppy disks that would hold a whopping 1.2MB, enough to store about one third of one picture you are currently taking with your phone. Nevertheless, this was the storage of choice so I could bring some of my dad's output to work to show him that what he was typing on the screen would actually end up on real paper.

Oh, did I tell you that teaching an ailing 83 year old man how to use something he has never seen was easy. I think he even questioned why the software he was using was called WordPerfect. What was perfect about it? Fortunately, I lived three houses away as there was no way technical support could have been done on the phone. For the first few days, when our phone rang, I would start walking to my parents house to 'fix' whatever wasn't working. After a few days of apprenticeship, it started going more smoothly and the pages started to come to life. In the end, it became a fifty page, nicely bound book that was completed a year after his passing and a copy made for each family member. The last page is an epilogue written by me since I ended putting all the pieces together. I pick it up every once in a while and get lost in the stories of the past. At left is a picture of the prologue written by my dad. Enlarging this image will show you the prologue he wrote.

Well that was quite a detour from three paragraphs ago. During the final months of my father's life, I was having panic attacks for no obvious reasons. They would come on at inopportune times. One time at a meeting I was attending at work, I had one. My heart started beating fast and started to sweat. The meeting was at a point where I couldn't just get up and leave but I was sure that everyone around me could see how bad I was feeling. Somehow it went undetected and I managed to make it to end without drawing attention. I started to question my own sanity and I knew that I had to do something about it. Of course, I put off getting any help until another event triggered an action plan.

This time it was in September, about 6 weeks before my father passed. We had a 3 or 4 day meeting at our company's conference center in the Laurentains. Even though there was serious business goings on during the day, once meetings were over, we would retire to the lounge area and take turns being bartenders. The Inn could accommodate about 20 people to stay overnight so, needless to say, if you were lucky enough not to have to travel back home every night, there was no worry about drinking and driving. Let's say, that the staff would have to refill the bar fridges every morning. So on the second night there (I think), after a few digestives and a couple of chasers and maybe a nightcap, I retired to the sleeping quarters. Since we had a lot of people there that time, I was relegated to the overflow cabin a short walk away. Only men would be assigned a room in the overflow as next door was a well known detox/rehab center and some of their tenants had a propensity for night time travel. Again, I digress. That night I woke up in the middle of the night in complete darkness as the cabin was away from any ambient lights. In complete darkness and deafening silence I woke up in full on panic attack mode. The after effect of the alcohol probably magnified everything 10 fold and the total lack of sensory input squared that feeling.

I had to get out of the cabin but the main lodge was locked due to the wanderlust of the neighbours, so the only area of refuge was my car. So now I get in my car and finally know the time as I turn it on to see the clock and put on the radio. It's 4am. Finally some sensory input but not enough to quell my panic. I can't just stay in the parked car. What if someone else walks by which was very unlikely. So I decide to go for a little drive around to distract my attention and try to calm down. I am not worried about my alcohol levels as I feel more sober than ever but at 4 in the morning driving around in the darkness does not provide enough distraction to eliminate my panic. Did I say that since I got in the car, it is raining and the humidity in the air is so high that I had to use the defog setting before even moving the car. Actually, that is what actually saved me. You see, my car didn't run well in the cold and damp. So as I am driving around aimlessly through who knows where, the car starts to sputter and I can feel fewer cylinders firing. Eventually it can't even make it up a small hill. I have to stop to see what is going on. All of a sudden all my fake problems that resulted in my panic attack are replaced by a real problem. If I don't get back in time for the group breakfast, how will I explain my absence? Now, I can panic because of a real problem. Life is great, except for the car. I do have a solution though. Since this problem has occurred before albeit in a less severe manner, I know that the root of the problem is the wiring to the distributor cap. Once those wires get wet, they ground on the engine block and the spark plugs don't fire properly. Silicone boot protector spray not only stops water from getting in but is supposed to draw water out. I just happen to have a can in the car. It doesn't really work but the heat of the engine once the hood is closed for a while dries out the wires enough to get the car going and back to the inn for breakfast. The next day or two were a little rough from lack of sleep but I survived.

As I sat in the meeting on the final day, I knew that I had to do something about my situation. I couldn't go through another night (or day) like I had. So I searched for a psychologist. I don't really remember how I found one. Google was 6 years away. It might have been through the Yellow Pages under the insanity heading. I really don't remember how I found her but I made my first appointment, probably in late September. I don't remember her name. The one thing I do remember is she had really bad breath. We were never that close except to shake hands (that was a thing back then). You could smell her clear across the room. One of the techniques she taught was breathing exercises but the last thing I wanted to do in there was inhale. It's 28 years ago so it's a little foggy but I seem to remember a really long evaluation test before starting the sessions or maybe after the first one. There were a lot questions, some a little strange. I think a few of them were asking if I thought I was being followed and if I was hearing voices. I guess they were good questions because I thought I was maybe losing my mind.

We had three sessions although our original plan was to get to at least 10. 10 was my max target as my medical plan only covered 10 sessions a year. BTW, they never even paid for the first 3. They said I was ineligible but didn't explain why. Here is the reason I stopped at 3. I had to cancel my 4th appointment for the 23rd of October as my father had passed on the 22nd if you were paying attention. I told Ms. Ally Tosis (the shrink) that I would reschedule the rest in a few weeks when 'things' got better.

Well things got better without that 4th visit. Almost instantly my panic attacks seemed like a mile away. I slept through the night and even if I woke in the middle of the night, it wasn't like the world was collapsing on me. I was back in control of my thoughts. My self diagnosis was that my dad's health demise and seeing him dwindle away was really weighing heavy on my mind. When he passed, there was a lot of grief and sadness that lasted for years. There was also great relief of not seeing him decay from the man I had revered for the first 36 years of my life. Realistically, I knew that my days of having dad around were less than the average person. I was born when he was 47 years old and mom was 39. I was their last ditch effort at adding a girl to the family after a slew of 4 boys. They failed miserably and got me, a child that didn't match the others. Rumours of a milkman or postman visit still run rampant in our family. The first four boys were odd as they were born in 41, 43, 47 and 51. I would be the even keeled one born in 1956.

Other than with Myrna, I have never shared any of these feelings with anyone, so why now? For one thing, I am not sure anyone will have gotten past the third paragraph of this chapter. Secondly, actually writing about it has some therapeutic value. Lastly, the stigma around mental illness seems to be slowly fading. Actually I lied about not sharing my feelings with anyone. One night at the local pub, I bumped into someone had had not seen in a while. As we talked about mundane subjects, suddenly we got on more serious issues and eventually we both figured out that we were having the same personal struggles. Just talking about it, started a healing process. I was not alone. If you are lucky enough to never have gone through this, you cannot understand how debilitating it can become. It's a mystery to me on why I seem to have recovered from my funk of last year. I am lucky to have come out of it without drugs or sustained outside counselling. If the pandemic has an up side, it might be that it slowed life down enough for me to re-evaluate things. Whatever did it, I am thankful. Now, back to the personal history lesson.

1956 was also the year that my family moved from Kenogami to a bigger house in Jonquiere less than a mile away as the crow flies. I guess, they thought that I would need more room to grow plus it was closer to the hospital in case they tried to make me a younger sister. That's me in front of our house in 2004. The current street view in Google maps shows the brick has been covered, new windows and a new roof (not red).

Correction of prior paragraph. According to reliable source, my brother Bernie, our move to Jonquiere was in 1952 That is probably why I have very little recollection of it. The move I remember must from from the maternity ward to house you see in the picture which was a stone's throw away. I was therefore conceived in the house you see sometime in the summer of 1955 during the 'off' season.

We left Jonquiere for Two-Mountains in 1964 and I've only been back a few times as my only real connection there is my childhood playmate and neighbour, Gaby. We still connect on Facebook but haven't seen each other since 2006. It's a shame but we are worlds apart now as my life has evolved in a more 'urban' and Anglophone environment. When I came to Two-Mountains at 8 years old, I could barely speak a word of English. It was cruel, but I was tossed cold into an English grade 3 in St-Jude school and Miss Brennan was my teacher. I think I was very nervous and it was probably very traumatic but I survived. I have a recording from the early 60's somewhere of my father trying to teach me English. If I can dig it up I will digitize it and make it available here. If I remember correctly it's pretty funny. Sending me to English school was probably the best possible thing that could happen to me and it was just at the right age. I wonder now if St Jude was where Sauvé school is now and visa-versa would I have have been sent to Sauvé as to not have to cross Oka road.

The only real problem that I remember growing up is being treated as the French guy from the English perspective and when I learned more English I was the English guy from the French viewpoint. That often put me in the middle of confrontations as I had friends on both sides of the fence. My neighbour friends were mostly French and my school friends were all English. When there were rock fights, I didn't know if I was part of Les Blokes or the Pepsi's. I tried to avoid those disputes and to this day it's probably still part of my being. I sometimes feel like I have led my life in a Switzerland kind of way. It has helped in looking at both sides of many situations and coming to some sort of a compromise. Growing up more or less fluently bilingual has been a godsend and it was almost a seamless effort as I remember it now. I am sure my teachers in St-Jude had a lot to do with helping me adjust to this brave new world. In particular, my grade 4 teacher Miss Lefebvre (now Blanchard), who was fluently bilingual, probably realized my struggle with the new language. She helped me quite a bit on my journey. I didn't struggle much with English after grade 4. I was slowly becoming a naturalized Tête Carré. I still bump in to 'Miss Lefebvre' every now and then and she still remembers me some 56 years later, a wonderful lady.

Boy that was another tangent. I was trying to get to the point of why I decided to write Chapter 7. With 65 knocking at the door it seemed like a good incentive to start this diatribe. There's nothing on TV except for Trump still trying to overturn the election and how the vaccination effort is running way short of projected numbers, who knew?. The one thing to watch is the IIHF Canadian Juniors trying for gold again. By the time I finish this we'll probably know the outcome. It seems by the time I finish this we'll all be vaccinated.

Reaching the golden age of 65 has another incentive for me. About 6 years ago, our company was trying to buy back our medical and life insurance benefits. They were offering $32,000 to cancel our health plan and $6,400 to buy back the life insurance. Since we are both on the health plan that was good until our deaths, we didn't even consider that. Also, it was taxable so it was really only in the low 20's after taxes. The life insurance plan was different. It was a flat $200,000 death benefit until I was 65 and then it would go from $20,000 to $10,000 by age 70. Using the bird in hand approach I signed away the life coverage meaning that if I died before 65, Myrna would be deprived of a great windfall. My aim now is to make sure that I live to see May 19th of this year. If not, there will be a lot of crying on my grave but not from grief. I remember being quite hesitant in signing that protection away but I was betting on the odds that I could make it. Finger crossed, 136 days from now, the move will have proven to be the correct decision.

I seriously doubt anyone has read this far, so it really doesn't matter what I write. So for the sake of brevity, which is way too late to think about now, I will sign off until another chapter. Perhaps it will be after taking a ride on the new REM line, I will be inspired to start Chapter 8. If that's the case, see you in 4 or probably 5 years. I don't know if another event or milestone will inspire me to spill my guts again. Until then, stay well and keep your distance until we are all immune.