Remembering

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

I remember Remembrance Day ceremonies as a child, not  yet fully understanding a world where on occasion war was necessary and the sacrifices made were ones that had allowed the freedom I enjoyed.
           
Between the crosses, row on row,          

I remember learning my father had tried to volunteer for service during WW II, a young German-Canadian farm boy who was underage for the military and rejected due to his flat feet. I only learned of his attempt to join after his death as he never spoke of it when he was alive.

That mark our place: and in the sky

I remember the first time I heard her recite the famous poem about poppies when she was in elementary school and realizing that she too was at the age where she did not yet understand the true meaning of those poppies and that day.

The larks still bravely singing fly

I remember visiting London and seeing centuries old buildings pockmarked by bits of shrapnel from bombs, a stark reminder of a time when the world shivered in fear at the sound of airplanes.

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

I remember running my hands across those buildings and watching her small white hands do the same, watching as understanding dawned in that young mind as she began to see the physical remnants of war.

We are the dead: Short days ago,

Instead of the usual annual Remembrance Day ceremony I find myself instead on a bus looking out over a wide snowy white expanse dotted with farm houses and small towns, each and every one of them the beneficiary of acts of sacrifice few of us can imagine and even fewer can now recall. There are no poppies in sight on the fields outside, but the poppies are vibrant and bright in my mind.

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

I find an image of ceramic poppies spilling out of the Tower of London, a place I visited and that resonated deeply with me in ways I have yet to fully comprehend. The expanse of red poppies ceases to be individual poppies and instead begins to resemble a sea of blood, shed to preserve freedom.

Loved and were loved: and now we lie

At 11 am on November 11 I close my eyes and the words of a poem dance in my head, surrounded by bright red poppies flowing in waves.

In Flanders fields!  

I remember.

 

Honouring Morgan

When I first began writing this blog almost four years ago I cried a lot.

I often found myself in tears at events with people staring at me, and on occasion I realized people were actually waiting to see if I cried as my habit of wearing my emotions on my sleeve (and my face) was becoming quite well known. Almost 1000 blog posts and almost four years later I don’t cry nearly as often, at least not in public. I learned to keep those feelings in another place, still present but a bit more tucked away for private reflection.

Yesterday, for the first time in a long time, I cried again.

I had heard the story already but had been reluctant to write about it, unwilling to do anything that could add to the suffering of a family already experiencing a searing kind of pain and loss. I feared anything I wrote would simply magnify their pain and I was so hesitant to do so, but yesterday I saw they opened their hearts to the public so we could all learn from their tragedy.

This year in June a very young woman in our community, not much younger than the Intrepid Junior Blogger, took her own life. She was only thirteen.

I remember being thirteen and being in Grade 6, because that was the year I was bullied by a group of other young adults who took great pleasure in tormenting me. The abuse went on until I finished Grade 8 and began high school, where I was able to disappear into a much larger crowd of students and my bullies moved on to new targets. It was the late 70’s and bullying was not talked about much back then – in fact I never told my parents or siblings or anyone else about the bullying, because I felt I had no recourse. I had changed schools for Grade 6 as we had moved to a new neighbourhood and while the kids in my old school were still very much kids the ones at the new school were far more sophisticated – they were dating and kissing and way further along in their development to young adulthood, and I simply didn’t fit in. In those pre-internet days, though, I was able to escape my bullies every night and weekend by going home and closing my door, because it was my refuge from them. In this era of social media there is no such refuge, and the bullying continues unabated as the bullies move their activity online and right into the homes and hearts of their victims.

We talk a great deal about bullying now, a far cry from what we did decades ago when I was thirteen. In some ways I think we have diluted the discussion as far too often people claim “bullying” when dealing with conflicts between adults, diminishing the true nature and impact of bullying on our children. The reality is adults have resources, experience and skills our young adults and children simply don’t have. We need to ensure we do not dilute or diminish the true nature and impact of bullying, and part of that may be ensuring we are not using the term too easily or too freely when doing so could lessen our understanding of what true bullying is – and what it can lead to.

Perhaps the most troubling part of this story is that Morgan ‘s parents sought help for her and were unable to find it. It is an indictment of our health care system that she was unable to access the assistance she needed in a timely manner and that she carried her pain alone for so very long.

In fact I feel this story is a story of our collective failure. We failed to help a young woman in need. We failed her and her family. This family came to Fort McMurray – my community – to call it home and build a life. And in this new home they lost their child, in a way that could have – and should have – been prevented.

I extend my deepest sympathies and condolences to the Dunbar family as they are living an experience beyond what I can imagine. This loss, though, goes far beyond their family and right into the heart of our community as when a young adult chooses to end their life we have all lost something profoundly special and unique. This is the kind of loss that rips at the fabric of our community and that speaks to our need to not only have open and frank conversations about bullying but about the lack of mental health care services for young adults and our own role in allowing these situations to occur. It is tragic that it takes the loss of a beautiful young woman to start that dialogue, but it would be even more tragic if we neglected this dialogue for a moment longer.

As the parent of a young woman I know what a long journey it is to raise a child. You get them through the childhood diseases, high fevers and visits to the ER. By the time they hit young adulthood you think you have managed to get them through all the major threats, never truly understanding that the biggest threat to them may not be physical diseases but the trials and tribulations of navigating a world that can be harsh and unkind, especially to gentle souls who are young and fragile.

You never, ever want to believe that your child could take their own life. That this occurred recently in our own community should be our clarion call to action: to a stronger stance on bullying in our schools and online, to a stronger health care system to provide support to young adults who can fall through the cracks and to speaking to the young adults in our lives about bullying, mental health and suicide.

I don’t cry very often anymore, but last night I went to sleep in tears thinking about a young woman gone far too soon and in a way that should have never happened. I am so very sorry that we as a society failed Morgan and her family. There is no way to bring her back or to lessen their pain – but perhaps we can each pledge to never allow ourselves or our community to fail another young person again. Maybe that is the pledge we can each make to honour her legacy and keep her memory alive. Too little perhaps, and too late for Morgan – but maybe just in time and just enough to save the life of another.

Stop Staring

When I suffered a spontaneous corneal perforation two months ago, a rare event, I truly didn’t understand what a learning journey this would be. A week in Edmonton, a trip to the OR, some crazy glue in my eye and eight weeks later and I have some tales to tell about this experience. The most fascinating aspect, though, has been what happens when you suffer an incident that causes a visible change in your appearance, and how people react to it.

There is no denying that for some time the appearance of my eye was less than normal. The dot of glue sealing the perforation is quite visible, but it was the accompanying inflammation that really affected the appearance of my eye. It went from looking fairly normal to looking zombie legit in a matter of hours, and the reactions of others have been intriguing. One of the most common reactions, though, has led me to share one simple rule of etiquette and behaviour:

Stop staring.

Staring is rarely good etiquette, but I am stunned at how people seem to have forgotten this social nicety and when seeing something unusual have a tendency to stare (often open mouthed, which doesn’t help). After two months of having strangers stare at my eye I have realized how prevalent this behaviour is. Now, children might stare but they do so with such open curiosity that it is forgivable. They often follow it with a question, too, like “Does that hurt?” or “What is wrong with your eye?” which I answer with good humour and honesty.

It is the adults who simply stare, though. It is a rare and refreshing person who simply asks what is going on and if I am ok, and those are the ones I commend for their bravery and decency. But the ones who just stare drive me a bit bonkers, because they know they are staring and I know they are staring and neither of us says anything (ok, on occasion I do say something, and it usually isn’t nice and references exposure to strange viruses, but honestly I can’t help myself).

I have spoken to friends who have children with some sort of visible difference in their appearance and they too share tales of having their children stared at and the pain it causes them and the child. It might not seem like a big deal, but it is and I know this because when my eye was at its worst I was already terribly self-conscious about its appearance and the staring simply made it that much worse.

I recognize that it may be a natural human reaction, but part of etiquette is about dealing with those natural human reactions which may be less than polite. I can’t think of many instances where staring is appropriate, so if you find yourself staring it might be a good time to check yourself and consider the feelings of the one being stared at. As someone on the receiving end of countless stares due to an eye disease that is beyond my control I can safely say it is at best an uncomfortable experience, and at worst an infuriating one.

So that’s my public service announcement for the week. Stop staring, people. Just trust me on this one.

The Genovese Syndrome - Or "The Bystanders on the Bus" - in Fort McMurray

On occasion I read stories about incidents in our community that trouble me deeply, as a resident, woman and parent. This story from yesterday, detailing an incident that occurred on one of our municipal buses, is just such a story. It disturbs me on many levels, but particularly as the parent of a young woman almost the same age as the victim of this assault. And it disturbs me most because it appears this incident did not occur on an empty bus, but on one which contained other passengers who did not intervene, leaving the victim to not only fend for herself but to obtain evidence of the identity of the man who assaulted her. All I could think on reading this story is that we are better than this.

There are many questions to be asked, like where the bus driver was when this incident occurred. It only takes minutes for a sexual assault to occur – or a stabbing, or another act of violence - and the absence of the bus driver troubles me deeply. But I am also troubled by the lack of intervention by the other passengers on the bus.

There are those who may argue that perhaps the other passengers were unaware of what was happening, but if we are honest I think most of us have been in situations where we knew something was not quite right, even if we were not entirely certain why. I am the kind of person who calls for help even in those uncertain times, because I would rather be wrong and have intervened unnecessarily than be right and have done nothing. And I don’t mean one has to intervene in a way that risks harm to yourself, as you can dial 911 or even just call for the help of others as a crowd of individuals has a collective strength.

There is a recognized phenomenon in human psychology that is dubbed the “Genovese syndrome”. It refers to the sad case of Kitty Genovese, a young woman who was murdered in New York in 1964. Dozens of bystanders did little to intervene, and the case entered history as an example of the tendency of witnesses to such assaults being reluctant to intervene, and the myriad reasons behind such reluctance. At the end of the day, though, a young woman was dead and it appeared no one had truly done anything to try to save her life.

I don’t want to be too harsh on the individuals on this bus who appear to have done nothing to help a young woman in distress, although as a mother of a young woman I must admit that harshness is a reaction close to the surface for me in this instance. Instead of indicting them, though, I think this story should serve as a catalyst for all of us to consider what we would do should we witness this kind of incident. Part of preparedness is thinking through various scenarios and determining how you would react, so that when and if you are faced with a situation you have already thought through your reactions. When we are caught unawares in situations we have not considered our tendency is far too often to do nothing, as we find ourselves immobilized not out of lack of compassion but out of fear and not knowing how to respond in an appropriate way.

This story is, to me, particularly poignant given the recent media attention about sexual assault. It shows that we still don’t always know how to respond or react even when it occurs right in front of us, let alone behind closed doors and involving a celebrity. We struggle with what to do, how to react and even if we should intervene.

I have tremendous respect for this young woman who had the strength and intelligence to capture a photo of her assailant leading to his arrest and conviction. I also hope every person on that bus has taken a good, long hard look at themselves and their actions – or lack thereof – and considered what they would do should it ever happen again. And I hope this story, as sad as it is, causes all of us to look at ourselves and think about what we would do and how we would react, because the reality is none of us wants to be the bystander on the bus who did nothing when someone needed our help. And none of us wants ourselves – or someone we love – to be Kitty Genovese.

A Cracking Good Story

The first thing that catches me is the headline, of course, the hyperbole front and centre and indicative of the tone of the piece: “Fort McMurray cracks under oil boom’s strain” it trumpets, implying that somehow this community – MY community – is broken.

I want to make something clear off the top: Fort McMurray is not perfect. We are no utopia, and we have issues with which to contend. Some of those issues are the same ones every community faces and some are more unique. I am no wearer of rose-coloured glasses, I see the challenges facing our community quite clearly and have written about them often. I also know, however, that this community has not cracked and is not broken.

The recent story in the Globe and Mail Report on Business is an odd piece, a mish-mash about a condo development that went horribly wrong, some shiny new buildings, a road that links us to the world and the struggles of our local homeless population (which are not much different than the challenges faced by the homeless anywhere). What little commentary there is about the residents of this community paints a fairly bleak picture juxtaposed against the chatter of new buildings and airports. It is far too short a piece to speak in any detail to any of the true issues facing this community, but of course that’s not the point of the piece. It has painted my community with broad brushstrokes, failing to note the fine details that shade every facet of the place I call home.

The words in the piece are telling: gaudy, petro-mansions, overstuffed, crumbling, “glorified mining camp” and similar phrasing, all designed to tell a very specific tale of Fort McMurray. And there are some words notably absent, too.

Words like generous. Philanthropic. Naturally beautiful. Potential. Opportunity. And, perhaps most of all, resilient, a word that describes this place, this community and these people who are far from cracking and who instead rise to meet the challenges that face us.

Fort McMurray has not cracked under the oil boom’s strain, no matter what the headline says, and anyone who calls this place home knows the headline is far, far from accurate.

Fort McMurray is facing the kinds of challenges boomtowns face, and yes, we have encountered some problems along the way, like the Penhorwood condos. But as someone who has lived here for thirteen years I have not seen Fort McMurray break or crack. I have instead seen problems arise and then people come forward to address them. In fact it seems a great deal like the other communities I have lived in that face problems and issues and has to work to address them. Fort McMurray is really not so different in this regard from the other places I have lived, although in one respect we are quite different. Unlike the other places I have lived this place attracts media attention, which often focuses on the problems and not the potential, the challenges and not the triumphs.

Recently my sister visited Fort McMurray for the first time. I think she went away with a far different understanding of this place than the one she had formed through national media. She saw not just the problems, although we drove by the Penhorwood condos and we saw some of our local homeless. She saw the problems and the potential, the strength and the resiliency. She saw the life I have built here, the life the Intrepid Junior Blogger leads here and the lives of tens of thousands of people who have chosen to call this place home. I don’t think the headline she took home was that Fort McMurray is cracked. I think she left with a headline about a place of opportunity and potential, and with great opportunity and potential comes equally great challenges. I think her headline, though, reflects the nature of the people in Fort McMurray who welcome such challenges and who will do everything they can to ensure our community does not crack under any strain.

There are so many headlines that reflect this community – but this is not one of them. This is just another in a long string of headlines that fail to capture the entirety of the Fort McMurray story, just as the piece has done. But that’s okay, you see. Perhaps the only way to capture that story is to live it, and I am so grateful that I am one of the people who have the chance to do so, because it is, as the British say, a "cracking" good story, and one that far too often goes untold.

We Need to Talk About Jian

When I mention the name I can see the beginning of an eyeroll forming on her face. She thinks a lecture is coming and at 15 the Intrepid Junior Blogger most likely feels she has been inundated with those over the course of her life on this planet. I detect the eyeroll and say: "Look, whatever you think, we need to talk about Jian."

The story has of course captivated and appalled the entire country over the last few days. The tale of a famous - now infamous - radio host and his fall from grace has appeared everywhere, a story that is sordid and sad and in almost every way frightening. The IJB has heard the story too, discussed it at school and read about it online. She thinks she has heard and seen enough, but I don't agree, because she and I need to talk about Jian, and about men who abuse women, and about being a young woman in this world.

I shared with the IJB a personal story, encounters from over twenty years ago in a city that seems far away and a time that seems to be from another life, and yet the city and that time felt far closer this past week than it has in a very, very long time. I won't share the details of the personal story here as they add little to the dialogue taking place across this country and the dozens of stories others have written except to say that like other women friends in Toronto in the late 80's and early 90's I have a tale to tell of such encounters. This week I have received messages from some of those women, ones I have not heard from in years (in one case decades) as we recounted to each other a time when we visited the same nightclubs, lived in the same neighbourhoods and encountered the same man. We moved on from that time and that place, leaving Toronto for the most part, having children and building careers, but the story that broke these past few days awoke memories long tucked away.

But those memories are not what worry me now. What worries me now is that I have in my house a young woman who will soon tackle the world on her own, and I recall all too well being her age and thinking you had the tiger by the tail, right until the tiger showed it's flexibility and turned on you, clutching you in it's ferocious teeth. I recall going out into the world and not understanding men who enjoy degrading and beating women, and I remember the slow process of learning this, of learning to trust my instincts and listen to the inner voice. And I learned compassion for other women who were victimized by those they had begun to trust, because that fragile trust is easily destroyed just as are young bodies, minds and hearts.

This week I read so many troubling things, perhaps none more so than some who claimed that their daughters were too strong to be victims, far too tough to ever be abused or assaulted and it stung me to the core, because that attitude meant that those who were victims were clearly not strong or tough enough. It was the new version of "assault doesn't happen to nice girls", a "strong girls aren't the victims of assault" mentality that hurts us all because sexual and physical assault can and does happen to all girls and women, regardless of their strength and character.

The IJB is strong and tough, but I am not naive enough to believe she is immune from those who prey on women. I know that young women can be awed by fame and power and influence and can be destroyed by those they idolize and believe in when their trust is abused. I remember what is was like to be young and just naive enough to think I knew everything when in reality I knew so very little.

So this week in my house we talked about Jian. It wasn't an easy discussion in many ways, but if you are the parent of a young woman - or a young man - I think it is a vital conversation to have. If this week showed me anything it was that far from filing away these stories and, in some cases, memories, we need to share them with our children, because it is perhaps the silence over these decades that troubles me the most. Maybe if we talked about these experiences and stories - if we had REALLY talked about it sooner - there would be far fewer women coming forward today because they would not have been victims.

This week I told my daughter we needed to talk about Jian. And so we did, because I hope in some small way it may help her to navigate this world armed with new knowledge and a clearer picture of some harsh realities she may encounter. I don't know if it will protect her, although I hope it will. Perhaps the only good thing to come from this entire experience is those conversations and the opening of a dialogue that we so desperately need to have. And that is why we need to talk about Jian.

Reach: Telling Our Story of Fort McMurray

A few weeks ago Doug Roxburgh, one of the creative minds behind our local Shaw TV outlet, contacted me to ask if I would participate in a series he was crafting about the oil sands and our community. I was hesitant at first - I had just come off some time away from work and was still struggling to recover from my recent corneal perforation, a traumatic episode in my life that had impacted me more than I anticipated. I agreed, though, because I can never resist the opportunity to talk about our community and our region, and because I have always felt that if I can contribute in some way to changing the dialogue and narrative about my home city that I have a responsibility to do it.

The resulting video, the first in a series, is a piece of which I am quite proud because I appear with some other notable locals. One of the things I talk about in the video is the concept of "reach", or the ability one has to reach or influence people through traditional and social media as well as simple everyday interactions.

Celebrities who visit our region tend to have a lot of reach. A single tweet from Leonardo Dicaprio can reach millions of people around the planet within moments, and there is no denying the power of that kind of reach and influence. I think at times we become disheartened because we feel we do not have the same reach or ability to share what we feel is the true narrative of Fort McMurray - the story of our home and our community, the place we have chosen to raise our families. I think we forget, though, the power of our collective reach.

At the beginning of this year I posted a photo in this blog and coined a very simple hashtag for Facebook and Twitter: #myhiroshima. It was born of frustration at the comments of Neil Young and his audacity in comparing Fort McMurray to Hiroshima, and it was quite truly a spur of the moment idea. There was no grand masterplan, no calculated communications strategy behind it. There was no way I could have foreseen that others would pick up on that hashtag and begin tweeting beautiful photos of our region with it, sharing a different narrative of Fort McMurray than the one Neil told.

Those photos and that narrative ended up being covered by news outlets across the country, a provocative hashtag and some amazing photos that showed a side of our region that had rarely been shown and was little understood. It was a moment of revelation for me, because it was not my reach that had inspired it but rather the collective reach of all of our community members who shared their photos and their story of life here. I knew we had hit the mark when others began insisting it was a campaign from an oil company or pro-development PR firm, because the reach was so significant they felt the desperate need to discredit it. How incredible it was to explain to them that it was a simple grassroots movement from the very people of the place the photos depicted, and that no big oil or big money had been required for them to come together to tell a new narrative of life in Fort McMurray. It was a stunning moment of triumph, not for me but for all of us because it showed a collective strength and flexing of our muscle to reach audiences across the country and world. I received messages from Europe and Asia as the photos made their way there, clear evidence of the impact we had together.

A couple of weeks after filming my video piece with Doug I had the opportunity to meet with a small film crew from the Globe and Mail. This one was different as it was focused on my professional work and not my personal, but it was still an opportunity to share in the telling of a different narrative of our community, including the place where I happen to be so very proud to work. It might have been a part of my everyday workday, but it became part of a new narrative of Fort McMurray rarely before seen on a national scale.

If you watch my face in the videos I think you see one thing: a sense of pride. Pride in my role both personally and professionally, pride in where I am employed and pride in our home community. You see while others decry our industry and even our community I am so proud to be from a place with such tremendous resiliency, generosity, spirit and energy. I have lived in other places and while I have called them "home" no home has ever felt like this and no other home has ever inspired me in the way this place does. Why? I suppose it is because I am a part of this narrative and the opportunity to tell it, both personally and professionally, feels like the kind of experience that only comes along once in your life.

Today I share both videos with you and hope you enjoy them, because they both tell a narrative of Fort McMurray. It isn't the only narrative, of course, as there are others, but it is the narrative of my life here and I hope of others, and for that reason alone it is worthy of telling. Share the videos on your social media, email them to family and friends, and tell your story of life in this community, because while we may not have the reach of a superstar celebrity we should never, ever underestimate our collective reach when we work together - a lesson I have learned right here in Fort McMurray, a place where we have achieved so much simply by believing we could do it - together.

Shaw TV: Go Wood Buffalo, Fort McMurray and the Oil Sands

Globe Now: Layover Fort McMurray