The Citizen, 2010-06-24, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JUNE 24, 2010. PAGE 5.
Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.
– Dylan Thomas
Getting old ain’t for pussies.
– Anon
Indeed it ain’t. Getting old is a curious
journey and the trail signs are sometimes
confusing and hard to read.
The writer Robert Thomas Allen said “You
don’t grow old gradually, or on purpose, the
way you go downtown on a subway. It’s more
like finding yourself standing in the last station
and wondering how you got there.”
And the stations aren’t well marked. I never
realized I was ‘getting on’ until people started
telling me how good I looked. Nobody
commented on my vitality when I was
seventeen, twenty-five or even forty-five, but
now that I’m a greybeard, the air is full of
“Hey, you’re looking great!” and “Wow! Did
you lose some weight?”
I’m pretty sure what they mean is: “Hmm, I
see you’re not dead yet.”
You bet I’m not. And I’ve got no plans to ‘go
gentle’ either. I’ve long admired the poem
Dylan Thomas wrote for his dying father – and
especially his advice to ‘rage, rage, against the
dying of the light’.
Not that the Welshman knew what he was
talking about.
Dylan Thomas boozed his way into oblivion
long before he became eligible to receive his
old age pension. The man’s last words before
he passed out in a heap on the floor of a New
York City gin joint were: “I’ve had 18 straight
whiskies. I believe that’s a record”.
Dylan Thomas was just 39, still decades
away from any first-hand knowledge of the
dirty tricks advancing age dispenses – the stiff
joints, the bad sleeps, the, as Leonard Cohen
put it, “aches in the places where I used to
play”.
I believe there’s another well-known
consequence of aging but I can’t recall it
offhand.
But I do recall a report from the Canadian
Institute for Health Information that came out
last month. It indicates almost half – 45
percent – of residents in nursing homes and
similar residences show symptoms of
depression.
Imagine that. You take old folks out of their
homes, away from their families, their pets,
their routines and ensconce them in unfamiliar
surroundings among strangers and caregivers
serving institutional food prepared by other
strangers – and they tend to get a little down in
the mouth? Who could possibly have foreseen
that?
What’s worse, according to the report, is that
the depressive symptoms are frequently
undiagnosed and hence left untreated.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Dr. Marie-
France Rivard, an Ottawa psychiatrist who
specializes in geriatrics, says it’s crucial to get
our elders’ caregivers onside because
“depression is a very treatable illness and with
appropriate identification and treatment, the
quality of life of people can be much
improved.”
Of course one must always be alert to the
danger of too much attentiveness. Take my pal
Steve. He’s a well-respected elder with lots of
good friends, but alas, no living family. He
finally got a little too old and frail to look after
his farm so he sold it and moved into an
extended care facility.
And it’s a high-end joint. The rooms are
warm and roomy, the food is great and the staff
is incredibly helpful and devoted. On his first
day there, a nurse sat Steve on his bed and
began to explain the facilities. As she talked
she noticed that Steve was slowly beginning to
lean to one side. The nurse sprang up and
gently pushed him upright. As she was
leaving the room she happened to look back
and there was Steve, sitting on the bed but
definitely teetering to starboard again. She
rushed back and straightened him up. Just to
be on the safe side she called a nurse’s aide
and asked her to stay with Steve in case he
started to fall over once more.
Sure enough, five times Steve started to
lean; five times the nurse’s aide got him
vertical again.
I went in to visit Steve that night and asked
him how he liked the place.
“It’s not too bad,” Steve allowed, “except
they won’t let you fart”.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Old age: thinking outside the box
It’s been called the passion that unites us all
and it’s commonly referred to as this
planet’s largest sporting event: World Cup.
Unity, however, isn’t really what I felt was
going on when I watched one of the early stage
matches in the U.S.A.
This could have, and I’m sure, has been,
happening everywhere, so nothing personal
against our neighbours to the south, who I
love, but when watching U.S.A. versus
England at a pub on a recent trip to Boston,
Massachusetts, the borders between us actually
felt stronger than ever.
Having been familiar with the pub – as it is
one of my three regular stops in Boston,
including the home of the Red Sox, Fenway
Park, and whatever hotel I happen to be staying
in that weekend – it seemed significantly
smaller than usual. Upon further investigation,
the whole back half of the pub was fenced off
by an English flag, while American supporters
occupied the front half of the bar.
Soccer fight songs and national anthems
drifted from the back to the front, but were
quickly muted by chants of “U-S-A, U-S-A!”
As most fans know, the match ended in a
draw, after a very questionable goaltending
error by England’s keeper. The draw, however,
was looked upon as a loss by a strong English
squad and held in slightly higher regard by the
Americans (the next day’s front page of the
New York Post read “U.S.A. Wins 1-1”).
However, it was the decision I was faced
with when entering the bar that struck me as
odd, as I had never really had to make such a
decision before. I had to decide where to sit
and who to support in a bar that stood nearly
empty the previous day as Shepherd’s Pies and
Guinesses were enjoyed in preparation for a
contest between the Red Sox and the hated
Philadelphia Phillies.
However, it was at Fenway Park that fans of
clam chowder and cheesesteaks alike sat side
by side, cheering on their squads, calling each
other names, yet high-fiving and tipping hats to
one another at the conclusion of a rain-soaked
blowout for the Red Sox.
This banter and the calling of names that
cannot be repeated in The Citizen is something
that I have grown up with in bleachers
throughout my life. It is the inalienable right to
heckle and call someone a bum.
In playing baseball for decades, I yelled at
umpires and when I umpired, I expected to be
yelled at. However, in the world sport of
soccer, when buying tickets, the question is
almost always raised as to where your support
lies. Sections are (literally) fenced off to ensure
no contact between rival supporters, you buy a
ticket and pick a side, as your seat might
depend on it.
I love soccer, I love going to games and I
love the World Cup, but as I sat in that pub, I
sat next to an Englishman who took me for an
American supporter, it seemed more divisive
than usual to me. There was no room in the
back for him, so once I established myself as a
friendly, he and I discussed the game, in muted
tones, as he quietly cheered on his beloved
English national team, keeping his English
accent to himself.
It hardly seemed like unity as I talked to the
young man and his girlfriend, helping them get
a bartender’s attention so they could join the
rest of the bar in drink and eventually offering
them our seats when we left for Fenway to
catch the afternoon start of the Red Sox game.
So we strapped our Red Sox jerseys to our
backs and walked in the rain to Fenway Park,
where we cheered for the home team, but
didn’t have to do so to be allowed in our seats.
Ontario forgetting history
The world stage
Ontarians are in danger of losing some
of their their history, including parts
that would help them better
understand those who ran the province.
There was a good example when the
legislature, before adjourning for the summer,
paid tribute to Len Reilly, a Progressive
Conservative MPP from 1962 to 1975.
An MPP from each party, as is the tradition,
took turns praising the former MPP and, as
also happens often, said they had never met
him personally.
This is understandable, because the longest-
serving current members, Liberal Jim Bradley
and Conservative Norm Sterling, were not
elected until 1977.
The MPPs said Reilly was hardworking,
served well on committees, had been been a
chief whip and Deputy-Speaker and sacrificed
a lot of his family life to be an MPP.
The latter is what they say of all MPPs
who died and gives themselves and their
profession a pat on the back and mostly
is true.
One noted Reilly seemed to have had no
difficulty getting elected, which is germane to
this story.
But none mentioned his special place in
Ontario politics, which started taking shape in
the early 1970s, when Conservative premier
William Davis was looking for a seat in the
legislature for a close friend, with whom he
played football at University of Toronto, Roy
McMurtry.
McMurtry had worked on Davis’s campaign
for leader and premier in 1971 and soon was
seen hovering around the new premier’s media
conferences and obviously had his ear.
Davis appeared to have located a safe seat in
1973 in a by-election in downtown Toronto,
where McMurtry lived, which had voted
Conservative for 40 years.
But the Liberals chose Margaret Campbell
as candidate, a feisty prominent municipal
politician, who had left the Conservative party,
saying it had become complacent after 30
years in government and it was time for a
change.
Campbell did not mind taking on odds. She
told this writer when she was a young lawyer,
a judge refused to recognize her when she
stood to speak for her client, but she kept
rising until he did.
She wiped the floor with the premier’s
buddy in one of the most memorable by-
election upsets in Ontario history.
But Davis was determined to get McMurtry
in the legislature and when a general
election was held in 1975, privately ordered
Reilly to step aside so McMurtry could
run in his adjoining, even safer Conservative
riding.
Reilly, although popular and comfortable in
his riding, felt his future would be bleak if he
ignored the premier and gave up his seat and
McMurtry ran and won.
Davis tried to make it look as if he was
rewarding Reilly by appointing him chair of
the Ontario Science Centre, a sinecure in
which he tried to throw himself
enthusiastically. He never said publicly Davis
forced him out, but he told this reporter.
McMurtry went on to have a mostly
valuable career as attorney general and, after
Davis left, high commissioner to the U.K. and
enlightened chief justice of Ontario,
particularly in pointing to how poverty and
racism contribute to crime.
Reilly was given a testimonial dinner by the
Conservative party and without
embarrassment McMurtry hosted it and Davis
led the parade of speakers testifying what a
useful MPP he had been.
Davis became the longest serving premier of
recent decades and has become an icon, on a
pedestal particularly because he was more
politically moderate than some of his
successors and is seen as having governed
with less controversy and more concern for
others.
The MPPs who paid the recent tribute to
Reilly would have obtained their information
about him from biographies written by parties,
clippings from newspapers filed in the
legislature library and books written,
unfortunately infrequently, on Ontario politics,
but often these do not contain the full stories.
One is that political leaders can be ruthless
and without shame and this is something that
should not be forgotten.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
Shawn
Loughlin
SShhaawwnn’’ss SSeennssee
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Final Thought