I wish I had one thousandth of the descriptive ability of Somerset Maugham so that I could do real justice to some of the teachers I had during grade school (1-7) and high school (8-11).

If only Willie could get his hands on Miss Chesnie (Mildred) for example, who taught history in grade 9. It is hard to decide what was her most salient characteristic: her Scottish accent or her dyed red hair.  Often only a few people understood what Miss Chesnie was actually talking about; after class was dismissed, we would try to understand what was our homework lesson. “Make notes on the Cro-Magnon man” was what she said, explained Howard.

In an attempt to knock French into our dumb skulls, we all had so many French lessons that we all should have turned out fluent Francophones. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Monsieur Langlois was sure that the best way of teaching French was to talk only French in class-and as a result, we often understood next to zero. As new technology crept in, we were all put in a French lab, where ¾ of the time, the equipment malfunctioned or we wasted time conjugating verbs. Our French teachers were supposed to monitor us in the lab, but I remember seeing one of them outside in the snow, smoking. Luckily, an affair with Denise T (whom I met skiing) taught me all the French I ever needed.

Now one of our English teachers threatened us that if we did not do our reading assignment, “I will cut off your arms and beat your over the head with the wet end”. Later this poor chap had a nervous breakdown-and I will not, out of respect, mention his name.

For some reason, all the boys were taught metal work. My Dad assured me it would come in handy. The only thing I remember about Mr. Alcock, the metal work teacher, was that he claimed that the “Beverly Shears” is a “great piece of equipment”. Alcock also insisted we call him “sir”.

On the other hand, Mr. Snow, the woodwork teacher, focused on quality.  “Do you call that smooth?”, he said as he passed around checking the ashtrays we were making. My Dad told me that “for a kid with two left hands, that’s not bad” when I finally brought something home.

Grade 6 was probably the first year that I was introduced into what is called today Diversity. Our home room teacher was a born-again Christian named Ms. Pert, who insisted that we sing “we are climbing Jacob’s ladder, soldiers of the cross”. Now some of the Jewish kids in the class felt uncomfortable with that, although I didn’t. However, I did not feel ok with any prayer with ended with “thru Jesus Christ our Lord”. Pert would watch like a hawk to see who avoided these words.

During high school, Don Coolbrooke taught us Latin, English and History. Apparently, he was a jack-of-all trades. It is impossible to invent a more boring teacher than Mr. Coolbrooke. In retrospect, he could have been a great anesthesiologist. He had more quirks than Mr. Monk. After school, Wifey would pick him up in a green Pontiac-with a huge dog in the back seat. I remember hearing her say, “hurry up and get in; I’m freezing my ass off”. I shared that information the next day.

Of all the useless things I learnt in school, “technical drawing” beat it all, hands down. Mr. Stacey, a tall, cool, calm and collected guy tried to inculcate us with how to draw and use a slide ruler. I was never very good at that, and I asked my Dad for help. “We did not have that shit in my day”, said Dad smoking away at his Export A and doing his crossword puzzle.

Miss Williamson, the grand librarian of Winston Churchill High, knew me very well. When I walked into the library, she would say “I have something for you”. And she always did.

It was only in McGill when I started to love learning, and as I aged, I loved to learn more and more. However, I am grateful to all those who taught me. They must have done something right.

During the month of May, most of the soldiers who are recruited came from technical schools, the street, a jail and/or from lower socio-economic groups.

Matriculation exams are in May and June, so it’s obvious that kids doing the “matrix” will not be called up till August.

There are some exceptions however to who gets enlisted in May: returning citizens, new immigrants, people who have studied abroad, people enlisted due to human error which can arbitrarily change an enlistment date, and other bureaucratic mishaps.

With an MA in hand from an elite university in Canada, I was enlisted in May. Yes, I was one of two “demographic exceptions”, the second being Freji Buabi, who had just immigrated from Lebanon with a PhD.

Freji had a very pronounced Arabic accent, and said that if things get rougher than they already were, he would volunteer to be shot as a terrorist in an exercise.

Recently, I have come to remember a few of the people and incidents that made Basic Training as interesting as it was difficult.

I did night guard duty with Mizrahi between 3 am and 6 am three times a week. Mizrahi had been the slammer twice for drug dealing and car theft. He came from a small town in the dessert.  Although he was native born, his Hebrew was awful, all masculine and feminine forms mixed up. He could not write one word without a mistake.

Mizrahi hated me; he told me that he has pissed in my canteen “to sweeten up” the time I had to spend “with a low life like me”.

Mizrahi had a girlfriend and let’s put it this way: he had not yet entered the promised land. Using a flashlight one night, I wrote his girlfriend a love letter for him and, two weeks later, my status with Mizrahi and his toughs changed. I got big portions at lunch, and I was no longer harassed.

Mizrahi eventually returned to jail where I imagine he resides till today, if he is still alive.

Shimon Drori was from Beer Sheva. Drori had been enlisted in May due a sports injury he had incurred at the time he was supposed to have enlisted.

We had a lot in common: he read a lot; loved to speak English & French, secular and suffered from minor asthma. But more than anything else, Drori was a kind sort.

When someone fell, he helped them get up. When his mom sent him a package, he shared the goods. When we boarded a truck to go home for the weekend, he would always ask where I would be staying, as I had no “home”.

I looked for Drori many times after the army, but apparently the Earth swallowed him up. Or he lives in San Francisco or Berlin.

Piko was the son of a famous General in the Israeli Defense Forces, a fact he half tried to conceal; I stress the “half”.

Nasty, evil and snide, he picked up on everyone’s weakness and harped them.  I am clumsy (understatement); I certainly gave him material for him at which to poke fun. Luckily Piko was caught drunk and went off to kalaboosh (jail) in the middle of Basic Training.

Then of course, there was Shmulvater who probably was the most stupid soldier I ever met. He used to brag that he could get the Base Commander’s car to drive him home. He did so by faking his mother’s death. Shmulvater of course never returned to finish basic training with us, as he served 60 days in military prison.

I also remember the clothes and the smells. I am very tall, and nothing fit me. Buabi told me, ”Fuck off Shevat and stop complaining, this isn’t a fashion show. We are prisoners of war”. And everything smelt of gun oil.

There are interesting borders that I have passed thru in my lifetime. The Taba Gate border crossing from Eilat, Israel to Sinai Egypt is a line in the sand which separates two different worlds. The border between Singapore and Malaysia being another such border.

But nothing for me is more differentiating than the border between Montreal’s McGill University and IDF basic training, which I crossed 53 days ago today.

I had to take four buses to get from my home in Ville St Laurent to McGill University. 25 cents for the whole trip. Payment was made in cash into a simple receptacle, where the driver could see the quarter that you dropped in. The driver would take a look, flip a button, and the quarter would be swallowed up below the receptacle.

The 90 minute voyage started with a short walk to the rue St Louis stop, where I waited for the 116. The bus came once every 20 minutes; there were never many passengers. The driver, in a uniform of the Montreal Transportation Corporation, generally said “bonjour; I always said bonjour. “Two solitudes” meet.

Next to the driver was a sign en francais and English: “Safe Driving Requires Full Attention. Please do not talk to me”. Some drivers & passengers talked; most did not.

The 116 passed Alexis Nihon and weaved its way past Parc Houde (where Fat Guy* cleaned the ice)  and Aubin, until Decarie Boulevard, opposite the Post Office, where I got off and crossed over to wait for the 17, with my crumpled paper transfer in my glove.

Make no mistake, it was often cold. The stop for the 17 (also known as Cartierville) was opposite a Woolworth’s and on the bitterest of days (20 below), I would step inside Woolworth’s, along with other passengers. The ladies of Woolworth’s (in those days, it was ok to say that) had absolutely no problem with that; the adversity of the bitter cold was a common enemy.

For many years, the 17 Cartierville was a street car. The first step up onto the 17 was steep, even for me albeit I have always been very tall. It was especially hard for Lillian, who had had a back operation and was in a cast. We never discussed that, or the fact that she had no mother. Trudy also never had a mother, but she never took the 17. Maxine and Fay also had lost their mother. They were never on line 17 either. Showing my transfer to the driver, I never looked for a seat as it was always standing room only until Garland Terminal; the 17 was packed. French and English speakers; students and lower middle class heading downtown. At Garland, the driver cried out: “terminus, tout le monde descend s’il vous plait”.

Then there was a hot chocolate inside Garland Terminal, and off to the 65. The 65 started at Garland, so I always got a seat. However, it quickly filled up and more often than not; I gave up my seat to a senior citizen, who was probably much younger than I am today. But those were different days.

The 65, also called Cote des Neiges, passed thru Snowdon, turning left on Queen Mary Road and headed downtown. It passed my late grandmother Sadie’s apartment building on Victoria; she has died a few years earlier and my heart was still broken. I often looked her apartment building as the 65 roared by, uphill passing by L’Oratoire St-Joseph/St Joseph Church. Then we passed Pinkerton’s Flower Shop, the graveyard on Mount Royal, and plunged down Cote des Neiges to rue Sherbrooke. There I waited for the 4, also called Sherbrooke, right outside the Medical Arts building where my grandfather Harry had had a gym where he trained boxers, including my Uncle Al.

Sherbrooke at Cote des Neiges was real Montreal: classy, clean, and the wind plus cold smacked me into my then pimpled face. I had real bad acne until I started taking tetracycline during year 2 at McGill. Oh yes, on Sherbrooke was the Academic Bookshop, which had every book under the sun, all in one huge pile, sky high. And the owner, who smoked, did not speak one word of English: just French with a Parisien accent.

It was a short drive to McGill on the 4 and in the summer I walked; as a matter of fact when I wore my Air Canada mechanics coat which Phil (my Dad) got for me from his partner Hank, I also walked to McGill along rue Sherbrooke  in the winter. What a coat!  When I took line 4, it dropped me off at McGill at the Ritz Carlton Stop.

I then threw away my transfer.

4 buses to cross thru three worlds: Ville St Laurent; Montreal; academia.

When I finished McGill at age 19, I took a much longer trip from which I was never to return. 

• pronounced gee

Dorit and I would go to adult education/open university lectures in the early evening. She always carried a thick notebook, and after the lecture ended, she wrote copious notes about the main points  as well as  things she “needed to think about.” Everyone had left the lecture room-as I waited patiently until Dorit finished her detailed notes. If you ask me why  she took notes in an adult education class, then you don’t know Dorit. She was as studious and diligent as they come.

Dorit was a very smart lady, actually probably the smartest person I ever knew. She had a larger than average forehead, and I used to ask her if she stored all her brilliance in her forehead. She had no sense of humour,  but she loved mine.

True, she was only truly interested in clinical psychology-but whatever issue she addressed, she did so with depth and brilliance. I used to love just listening to her analyse people and situations. I could listen to her talk for hours…and I am not a patient person.

Yet she was so serious all the time. At least that is what I thought.

One night, she suggested that we go to Florentine and (one of us) can get drunk. She was the “one”. Three tequilas, and that was both the source of her new nickname as well as the beginning of our romance.

Every Thursday night, we would take either my car or hers, depending on who was driving, and go to an Indian restaurant cum bar in Florentine. Once in a while, Tequila  would ask her friend, an artist, to join us. On the way to Florentine, she was Dorit, and after the first drink-she was Tequila.

We were in Paphos, Cyprus, Tequila and I, on an evening cruise and we saw a couple who must have been in their eighties. They were holding hands and drinking wine. Tequila asked me where I think they were from and I told her that I had heard them speaking Hebrew. Her observation was that they were so “serene and at peace with themselves.” One week after we returned from Paphos, we read in the paper that the couple we had seen on board had committed suicide, as they were both terminally ill. Their trip to Paphos was a farewell cruise.

Dorit had lost her only brother in one of Israel’s wars.

One day, Dorit  asked me to help her mother move out of her home and into an old age home. When everything was in the truck and ready to go, Dorit and her mother asked me to take her brother’s military cap to the moving van. The cap he had worn during service was neatly folded in a sealed plastic bag. My knees shook and my hands trembled as I took Dany’s cap and brought it down into the moving van. Dorit almost never talked about her brother. But she let me carry his cap.

Things eventually turned sour between Tequila and I and we parted.

I had been invited to the university to critique a certain cirruculum in order to provide an “external’s view” of what should be taught. In the hallway, after the meeting, a professor who apparently knew who I was approached me and asked “aren’t you the late Dorit L’s ex boyfriend.”

That is how I learnt that Tequila was dead. I was devastated. It had been 9 years after her death.

I can hear what she is saying to me now, “we had a great time in Florentine, didn’t we my Shevaty”. (שבטי שלי)

The artist and I are still friends, and we often remember the boundless wisdom of Tequila.

My Dad had a really interested array of friends.  Some were close, some golfing buddies, some neighbours, and one very special friend from the RCAF, who served with him in Iceland on bombing raids at sea.

Uncle Billy was the special friend. After the war, he lived in Vancouver; Billy  came to visit his mom and my Dad  in Montreal once or twice a year. Dad always told me that “Uncle Billy is too smart to get married”. On another occasion, he told me that Uncle Billy lives “the life of Riley”; he assumed, correctly, that I knew what he meant. Billy called my Dad “Moose” because Dad was tall and had a large frame. When Uncle Billy came over, he and Dad would sit at the dining room table, smoking a lot, laughing even more, and drinking albeit never too much. Uncle Billy would always ask my Dad “what type of fertiliser are you feeding him, Phil, for Christ sake? He’ll become a big Moose like you!” Uncle Billy Cohen died of cancer. And I am even taller than was Dad.

At the golf club, the locker next to my Dad’s was occupied by a guy called Puggy. My Dad always referred to Puggy as “poor old Puggy”. The reasons changed but the nickname didn’t. Puggy was an ex-boxer-hence the name. My Dad claimed that getting hit is “no fucking way to make a living”. Puggy lost many a golf game to my Dad. Poor old Puggy. Then, Puggy died, departing the world with the same nickname. Dad and Puggy were not good friends, but they always greeted one another cordially when they met at the locker-“how the fuck are you, Phil?”

Dad worked with a guy named Martin. Martin weighed about 400 pounds and always had a bag of muffins with him, or even, believe it or not, a squished muffin in his pocket. His worst sin was making long distance phone calls from my Dad’s desk to his ex-wives. Dad would scowl at him and Martin would offer Dad a muffin. Dad was a straight-in-your face guy-he would tell Martin that “I don’t eat muffins, nor should you, adding his “for Christ’s sake, what’s wrong with you Martin.”

Mildred did a lot of business with my Dad. While she had a Jewish last name, she was a Roman Catholic. Every year, Mildred would invite my Dad to bring me and my siblings to her home on Queen Mary Road (av de Reine Marie) to celebrate Christmas. We always got a lovely gift. Mildred and Dad would laugh a whole lot and smoke as well as cough. Mildred had a really mean cough. Upon arriving home, Dad would insist that I write a thank you note and mail it “now”. “Address her as Auntie Mildred”.

On the way home, Dad would always explain that ones’ last name does not indicate religion. “We have a Henderson in our synagogue and Weiss (Mildred’s name) is as Jewish as they come”, another one of Dad’s expressions.  Funny about this Henderson guy, by the way. Dad rarely went to synagogue.

We shared back yards with Uncle Sonny, the two back yards separated by shrubs. He was a butcher and a skier. A man of few words with a beautiful wife (Auntie Rozie) and a winter home in St-Jerome, where we would often spend weekends. It’s funny that Uncle Sonny never talked too much, but I still think of him, and all of my Dad’s friends, more and more.

Dad and his friends lived in the world so well documented by Mordechai Richler. Dad and his cronies, Leonard Cohen and William Shatner are, for me, real characters. I miss them all. Yet at age 16, my life changed and I would never be one of them.

On Tuesday, I will be 95-98% immune to Corona.

However, were I a better listener, I would not believe this to be the case. My friends have warned me not to take down my guard “because we can never be sure if  this vaccine works.” And it does not matter if I am watching France 24, BBC, Israel TV 11 or Germany’s English language broadcasts, there is always someone warning me that the new mutations may slip by the new vaccine. 

If you ask me, there is a reason for concern, but not about corona. The concern is about the lingering fear that still hangs over our heads albeit the reason for this fear is soon to be gone. The thing we need to fear most is fear itself, and the whole system that has been built up to feed our fear, enhance it and at times cripple our judgement.

Eisenhower was the first to warn us of the military/industrial complex, whose overlapping interests are continuing the conflicts needed to ensure power and profitability.

Once enough people get the vaccine which will probably happen by the summer, the plague will be over.  However, there are interest groups that will try to convince us that “extreme vigilance should last for another few years” or that the “English or Brazilian or South African mutation” will penetrate the layer of protection provided by the vaccine.

This is not to say that we may be unlucky. At age 55, I had flown to Asia, Australia and the US 40 times in one year and  I caught a  very bad case of  pneumonia. I recovered, got a pneumonia shot, yet once again caught pneumonia. The doctor said, “Shevat, it happens. Rare but it happens. Get on with life”.

I have recently read about how 1945 was such a wretched year.  Rebuilding was far more daunting than war. The war was over, the maimed returned home, no one had a pot to piss in, there were no jobs and the hype was gone.

The real issue on the table now is picking up the pieces, making sense of what has happened, and mitigating the fear that has taken over our decimated lives.

Here is how I am going to start. On Tuesday, I am going to hug my daughter and grandchildren for the first time in 10 months.  And plan a few trips to Vienna, Florence, Jordan and the UAR. That’s just the beginning.

Free at last.

On January 19th, I get my second Corona vaccine; two weeks later I am out of the woods. The phenomenal success of mass vaccination has made me proud again of how some things are done in this country.

I add to this list the Mossad, the high-tech sector, the resilience of the people to maintain a good life under impossible conditions, and that pretty much exhausts my patriotism.

The country is now in its third lockdown, and enforcement is feeble, and that is an understatement. On my daily 9 km walk, I tell the first 20 or so people to put on their mask, and then desist because at 71, I realize I will not change the circumstances surrounding me. Which is the very same reason that in our upcoming election, I do not plan to vote either.

Am I withdrawing from society? Hardly-I just cannot find anyone who represents my views: hawkish on defense, social justice, anti-settlement expansion, anti annexation, anti Palestinian state at this point in  time, and totally secular. Each and every party in some way deviates from what I believe it, generally by caving into the religious rhetoric, kissing some senile rabbi’s ass (ring to be exact), or too much flag waving.

Zionism, which simply means support the existence  of a  nation state for the Jews , was basically a rejection of the Jewish way of life in exile by negating the predominance of faith as a core pillar of Jewish existence. The present political landscape in Israel is anti-Zionist because it force feeds faith and tradition into what was a rebellious, revolutionary movement. That is the only reason I will abstain- and no other. And I do hope that my family members who have lived in Palestine since Turkish rule from 1917 and are buried a few kilometers from my home, would support me. I know they would.

Trump has been banished by Twitter. Good news. There are polluted rivers that need to be cleaned, polluted air that needs to be treated and polluted ways of communication that transmit poison which need to be policed. What about freedom of speech? There is a time and a place for everything. A time to free up and a time to repress. And yes, Marcuse had and has an effect on me.

Those who follow my blogs know that I am a history buff. So I was thinking about how Trump will be remembered. My guess is that his foreign policy achievements will get him high marks a hundred or so years from now, and everything else will severely “drag down” his average making him a less than average but certainly not the worst US president. He will join Kennedy, Truman, Nixon and Bush (dad)  as presidents whose ratings change drastically as decades go by. Kennedy’s do-nothing for civil rights; Truman’s decisiveness in Berlin and Korea; Nixon’s China policy and Papa Bush’s sanity and pragmatism have all become more salient as years go by.

To wrap up my ranting, I think that I have been lucky enough to witness several earth shattering events in my lifetime: the polio vaccine, the Cuban missile crisis where we learned to dive under our desks,  the six-day war, 9/11; the fall of the USSR, the assassination of Kennedy and Rabin, the irrelevance of truth and factuality ,  and now, the beginning of the end of the corona virus by dint of scientific excellence.

These are the best of times, and the worst of times.