Part IV: Mortality

I’ve been reading a lot of biographies lately. In fact the majority of the books I read are either biographies or memoirs. Also, the majority of the people I read about are either dead or retired. One such memoir led me into a ‘quarter life crisis.’ Well, I don’t know that I would call it a ‘crisis’ but apparently that’s what they refer to it online. This book is called ‘The Thing About Life is That One Day You’ll be Dead’ by David Shields. Well, listening almost exclusively to Warren Zevon while reading the book probably did not help things.

I found this book at Chapters in Victoria. I’ve always had a fascination with death so this situation was no doubt inevitable. When I saw the book’s title I could not resist, plus the price wasn’t bad either. The book is full of statistics and lessons on biology, anatomy, psychology and the whole aging process. The author wrote the book about both himself and his 97 year old father. Their relationship is pretty interesting. In the prologue he describes his father as “He’s strong and he’s weak and I love him and I hate him and I want him to live forever and I want him to die tomorrow.” He is trying to face both his own mortality and that of his father. Only problem is his father is in good health and by the looks of things may live for quite some time. Most sons would be happy about this, but not David Shields. I read through the roughly 240 page book within two days. I actually left the book at the hostel in Victoria as I already had a lot to carry. I wonder if anyone has picked it up since I left.

Anyway, back to the ‘crisis.’ I enjoyed the book and went on with the trip while still thinking about the book. I found myself having to face my own mortality, something I had thought I had already done successfully. Everyone knows they are mortal and for most of them there comes a time that they must think about it. Others are either don’t care or die suddenly without being able to go through such a ‘crisis’. Through my teens I was quite comfortable with the idea of mortality as death seemed like something that is far off in the future. Death is something that is inevitable, so why waste any time thinking about it? That is the argument I gave to myself during my teen years, it’s also an argument I’ve heard from several other people when the subject has come up. I do not know what bothers me more: the fact that it is inevitable or that it could happen at any time. I could die in some accident within the next 12 hours, or I could live for another 90 years if I’m really lucky. In facing my own mortality I am forced to face that of everyone around me. At the beginning of this little crisis I found myself wondering about who will out-live who, things like that. Thankfully I am past that stage as it was a really boring and depressing one.

The next stage was more interesting. What is the meaning of life? Surely everyone asks themselves this one. I don’t expect an answer, nor do I really want one. For the majority of my life I’ve hovered between atheism and agnosticism. I’m still there and don’t see it changing anytime soon. At one time I was deeply religious but I found that religion was not my thing. At least Catholicism wasn’t. I’ve since explored other religions but have found none that I particularly like. I’m simply not a person who can go along with the idea of faith. I imagine religious people find facing their mortality to be a bit easier than I would. Many of them have an afterlife to look forward to. I do not. I am not closed off to the idea of a God or afterlife. So far I have found no reason to believe there is one. I am quite certain that no human being will ever be able to convince me that there is a God or afterlife. After all such a person is clearly alive and mortal. In absence of religion I found myself turning to science. Species come and go. If humanity follows the trends of other species we will likely die out as a species long before the sun dies out. Knowing that at some point the species and the planet itself will cease to exist was another part of this crisis. Ah, but luckily I shall not have to live through that one. Well, not the end of the planet anyway. I can potentially see some great human disasters in my lifetime what with global warming and all.

While on the trip I was listening to a lot of Warren Zevon. In particular I was listening to his last three albums. “Life’ll Kill Ya”, “My Ride’s Here” and “The Wind”. The first album is basically just as the title implies. It’s about aging, mortality and death. The second is irrelevant to this discussion so I will not say what it is about. Shortly after that album came out Zevon was diagnosed with lung cancer and given three months to live. Ultimately he lived well over a year and completed “The Wind”. In these two albums one can listen to a person come to terms with his own mortality which was interesting to me at the time, and now as well. Shortly after the diagnosis he appeared on the David Letterman show for the last time. That appearance was quite interesting. In it he jokes about his illness and the fact that he will die soon. When you get down to it we are in the same boat as those who are terminally ill. The only real difference is that they have a time line which at times is just as unpredictable as that of someone who is not terminally ill.

I found myself going through those five stages of grief that terminal patients usually go through. I did it in a different order though. I started out at acceptance and ended at acceptance. The life expectancy has been gradually going up for a long time. Ultimately it will still end the same way. I’ve had many discussions with people on the subject of dying and am constantly surprised. Most of them want die in their sleep. Not me. Death is too important to sleep through in my opinion. You only get to do it once after all.

"Democracy is not a Spectator Sport"

The earliest political memory I have is of an add with Stockwell Day talking about the national debt and the share of it belonging to a child. I believe the figure was somewhere around $30,000.00 if my memory serves me well. This was around the time of the federal election in 2000. I watched one of the debates and was hooked. I've been following the political news ever since. Elections always excited me. I was not pleased that I was not allowed to vote though. What particularly annoyed me about that was that I knew more about the issues than both of my parents and actually had an opinion on issues. Neither of them have ever voted in any election. My grandmothers on the other hand never missed a vote. I enjoyed having discussions with them about politics many times. At times they were surprised that I knew as much as they did about issues from 30-50 years ago. I was full of questions for them about their views and how they have changed over the years. My paternal grandmother said she voted for the first time at 18 because her mother told her to and if she voted conservative she better not come home. She then told me that she has never voted conservative in her life as a result. Given that she was 18 at the time that would have been the election that gave Liberal Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent a second term. The 2006 election took place a little more than three weeks before my 18th birthday. Once again I was not pleased, both for the fact that I could not vote and the election results themselves. Only a few months later at long last I was able to vote in a local election. I remember that moment very well. In the weeks before the election I read profiles of every candidate for city counsel and decided which one I liked the most. I don't remember the fellows name but I do remember that he did not win. In fact I have never voted for anyone who has won an election. In the 2007 Ontario General Election I was one of the 52.8% of eligible voters who did vote. Along with that election there was a referendum on mix-member proportional representation. I voted against it and now regret that decision. I made that decision based on television and radio adds which was a mistake. A little over a year later I read more about the issue and found that I actually do like the idea compared to our current first-past-the-post system. I then voted in the federal election of October 2008. The majority of my friends did as well. I don't particularly care who a person votes for so long as they do make an informed decision. I wish more would. In both the federal election of 2008 and the provincial election of 2007 I voted for the Green Party. At the time that was the equivalent of spoiling a ballet. However their popularity is rising rapidly. I'm hoping they manage to get at least one seat in the next federal election. Sooner or later I'm sure they will.
Now to the book. I heard an interview of Elizabeth May through Jian Gomeshi's radio talk show Q which intrigued me. I picked up her book "Losing Confidence: Power, Politics and the Crisis in Canadian Democracy" last week and read it within two days. Its a very slim book and I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in the current political climate in Canada. In it there's a brief overview of how a parliamentary democracy functions, or rather is supposed to function and then a list of some of the problems currently facing Canadian democracy.
One of the main points is low voter turnout. This trend has been going on for years now. As a minor it annoyed me considerably. Here I was with an opinion I wanted to express but couldn't meanwhile people who could were apathetic. In the last federal election only 59.1% of eligible voters voted. It might have been a bit higher but for the new rules put in place for that election. These new rules required both photo I.D. and proof of address. I had my health card and was covered but was not aware of the requirements. Apparently I was not alone as many were turned away for having one but not the other. At the time I did not know the rules were new, apparently they were put in place shortly before the election by the Harper Conservatives. The remaining issues are apathy and disillusionment. Most people I have spoken to who don't vote either believe that their vote wont make a difference or that nothing good will come regardless of who wins. I disagree with both-for the most part. Had Stephane Dion's Liberals won in October of '08 I doubt he would have tried to pull the financial plug on opposition parties or blatantly ignored Kyoto. Political attack adds no doubt add to this image that all politicians are up to no good. I've always hated attack adds regardless of which party used them. I'd prefer that adds promote their own platform rather than attack their opponents. I've read many articles on this subject and watched debates about it and apparently attack adds do work but not the way they are intended to. According to the information I've come across and May's book attack adds generally convince voters not to vote at all. What annoys me more is their use outside of an election cycle. I don't think I ever saw one used outside of an election cycle until around the time of the sponsorship "scandal". Then only weeks after Dion won the liberal leadership race the "Not a Leader" adds came out. Their most recent use outside of an election cycle where the recycled "Michael Ignatieff: Just Visiting" adds. Notice how they stopped airing when Ignatieff stopped trying to bring down the government.
The attack adds are a microcosm of the way politicians act with each other. Watching question period on CPAC brings back memories of kindergarten. It was not so long ago that MP's respected each other enough to stay relatively quiet while one of them spoke. Technically that is the way things are supposed to work. In the past MP's have been silenced for months by the Speaker for heckling. In lieu of co-operating with each other it would be nice if our elected representatives would at least respect each other. Small clips of these acts are shown on the news fairly often and no doubt contribute to voter disillusionment. Perhaps a single vote will not make much of a difference but if another 10% of eligible voters voted it would.
I'm sure everyone remembers last December when the Harper Government nearly fell. That was without a doubt the most exciting week I have ever seen in Canadian politics. It seemed to come out of the blue, was controversial and the most exciting aspect was the prospect of a coalition government between the Liberals and NDP. I had many debates around this time with people I knew about the situation. Many thought that this coalition government was anti-democratic as Harper was trying to play it. It's not. I knew it was possible but didn't think it would happen. I actually worried that Harper was going to try and form a coalition rather than take down the Martin Government. Apparently he did consider it an option at the time but didn't do it. One of several signs of Harper's hypocrisy.
"Losing Confidence" made me confident that my decision to vote Green was the right one. The main issue I care about is the environment. At 21 I can potentially live long enough to see an environmental catastrophe brought on by global warming. I would rather not. Until another party takes the environment seriously they will not get my vote, and I know I am not alone in this. The main issue among the youth is the environment. This book has shown me that the Green Party stands for far more than just environmental issues. I have no illusions. I know they will not form a government anytime soon. But one does not have to form a government to influence policy. Jack Layton has shown that many times over the past four years.

I could go on and on but I shall not. Instead I shall once again recommend that you read "Losing Confidence".

Part III-Arrival.

After Winnipeg I spent most of my time on the bus reading and sleeping. Normally I have trouble sleeping at all but I brought a supply of nyquil and an energy drink to end any groginess should I have to wake unexpectedly. The nyquil worked so well that the vietnam vet said that he thought I might be dead at one point. I slept through the Saskatchewan border. We arrived in Regina shortly before the sun went down. There we would stay for about an hour or so.

I awoke the next morning as we were approaching Calgary. The city kind of looked odd. Well, not the city itself just its location, it seemed random. There seemed to be a lot of construction going on there. In fact if I remember correctly a young girl was actually killed at a construction site in Calgary only a few days later. I remember reading about that while I was in Vancouver. Construction seemed to be a constant in all the larger cities I visited. By this point I had been without a shower in nearly three days but I felt more or less all right. I wasnt the only one though. I was quite surprised at how many people had made the trip from Ontario and were going all the way to the coast. In Calgary as in Winnipeg we transferred onto another bus with another driver. The final stretch to Vancouver would take about twelve hours.

This was the first time I saw mountains. I still clearly remember the first peaks I saw and the feeling I had as we went between them. It was awe inspiring. Though at times it was scary, for me anyway. I have an intense fear of heights and had to look at the seat in front of me as we went up these mountains. Looking down was not an option for me. At a few points in this final stretch there was smoke visible in the distance from the forrest fires which were still raging at this time. Oddly enough that did not scare me at all compared to the height issue.

We arrived in Vancouver shortly after dark. Ended up taking the sky train to the part of town the hostel was in. I didnt want to walk for multiple reasons. Mostly because I would have to walk by a venue which was having a Rod Steward concert. That would have been difficult to navigate with my giant bag. The sky train was quite nice, it took less than a minute to travel the 2 km to the terminal where I was to get off. The streets were quite busy, then I remembered it was Friday night. Makes sense. I checked into the hostel and showered. That was quite refreshing. The only room mate who I actually met in Vancouver was an Australian just passing through on his way to Toronto. I didnt speak to the others. I picked up some maps and brochures in the lobby and began planning the next days activities with someone I met on the bus. I went to bed shortly before midnight. A bed had never felt better to me than on this night.