* It is relevant to note that on February 10, 2010, Pope Benedict was forced to hold special sessions with the Irish bishops to discuss the huge sex abuse scandal there. At the moment of writing, the Vatican and even the Pope himself are being dogged by emerging stories of cover-up in the highest echelons of the Church.
9
LIVING MY
OWN DREAM
WHAT HAS BEEN most remarkable about my particular journey to this moment is that the second half of my life has been much more productive and creative, more fulfilling in so many different ways, than the beginning. What came before certainly contained many wonderful moments and was a time of great activity also, but from this vantage point it all seems to have been preparation and prologue for what was to come. Central to this is the fact that somebody new came into my life. Susan, now my wife of thirty years, was working at the Star when in 1971 we had first met very fleetingly while I was submitting travelling expense reports from a trip. We remained polite, distant acquaintances until quite suddenly at the beginning of 1980 we were thrown together once more by circumstance and fell deeply in love. Some things are too profound and personal to be the subject of pedestrian description. But, like Robert Frost’s traveller in the woods who took “the road less travelled by,” I can truly say that knowing and being with Susan “has made all the difference” in my life. My life has been infinitely blessed by her love and companionship.
On Valentine’s Day 1981, Susan called to tell me she had just made an offer for us on a small cottage on Lake Wilcox, a kettle lake that was part of a chain of such waters sparkling in the midst of the suburban sprawl surrounding Richmond Hill, a town about twenty-five kilometres north of downtown Toronto. We were both very excited when we heard that the small lot was actually a waterfront property. We would be able to swim, canoe and fish in summer and then skate on it in winter. In fact in winter, once the snow came and the lake was frozen, I could actually ski at times from our front door, alongside a frozen creek bed, out to the highway to the post office for mail. It was like living in a cabin up north.
Wilcox Lake itself had a somewhat dubious reputation because of an earlier period when it was known for wild partying by motorcycle gangs and all the other disreputable activities generally associated with the poorly policed, more remote regions of any vast and growing modern city. Rumour had it that the infamous Boyd gang of bank robbers had once dumped a collection of revolvers and other guns out in the middle of the lake. Somebody from the “old days” later told me that the reason there was so little policing then was that “the cops were afraid to go in there.” But that was more or less apocryphal. The price was right, and with about nine hundred square feet of room, it was all we needed. It would remain our home for the next eighteen years. We could reach the Star building on Toronto’s waterfront at the foot of Yonge Street (“the longest street in the world”) either by car fairly quickly or, later, by GO train from the station in Richmond Hill.
We soon grew to love it by the lake. We could work in the city by day and then return to what was really a cottage retreat at night. There were rolling fields, woodlands and parks on every side of the community and always the presence of the changing waters. Wildlife of all sorts made it seem at times as though the city was many miles away instead of gradually reaching up to our front door. There were plenty of muskrats, the occasional beaver, great blue herons and many other species of waterfowl, especially during the migration seasons of spring and fall. You could sit at times on a bench by the lake and watch an osprey hover, dive and then emerge shaking the water from its wings as it took off with a fish in its talons. On our many walks there often were deer and coyotes in full view. The house was simplicity itself even after we eventually enlarged it somewhat, making a spacious study where I could write overlooking the view to the east, with its beach and conservation area. Over the years from 1981 to 1999 it was to be the place where several of my books were written. It gave one a real sense of perspective to know that this lake and others nearby had been here for over ten thousand years. They dated to the end of the last ice age, before any holy scriptures of any kind were written down. As the geologian the late Thomas Berry was fond of saying, “The very first holy book is the creation and the cosmos itself.” He also said he thought the Church should put the Bible on a shelf for a few years and read the “Book of Nature” for a while instead.
Having lived in the very heart of the city for so many years, I found it literally a breath of fresh air to be in the country. As soon as I did not have to travel to the Star every day, my normal working day began with a seven-kilometre walk, usually on country roads or trails in the “mink and manure” belt in King Township. I was sometimes asked if I found it boring, but I knew what a privilege it was. Most of my best ideas for both columns and books over this highly productive time were born of these walks; on most days I could scarcely wait to get home and start writing. I found the setting helped keep me connected with the deeper rhythms of life. Cows in the meadows stared at me as though I were the first human they’d ever seen; horses nickered softly as they grazed; everything was redolent of earthy, growing things. Yet in the very far distance I could at times see clearly the CN Tower, near to the Star building. On more than one occasion there were deer grazing in the immediate foreground with the tower as a distant, almost surreal backdrop.
As Easter 1981 approached, my editors began putting some pressure on me to come up with a special feature of some kind as I had done a few times before, including a visit to a Canadian-run project for orphans in Costa Rica. By coincidence, I had mentioned this in passing to my very good friend Father Tom McKillop, who was the director of youth work for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto. He was an important contact and had become a firm friend. It was because of him that I was able to meet and interview, among others, Victor Frankel, who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, a book of great significance in my own life and the lives of so many hundreds of thousands of people around the world. You knew in meeting Frankel that his message of our deep need to find meaning even through suffering was one he had authenticated in his own life.
A few days later McKillop called me and invited me to meet him for coffee to discuss an idea. When we met, he told me that in his regular visits to Catholic high schools over the past several months he had been struck by the amount of apprehension and concern there was among the students over the dangers and possibility of nuclear war. “There is a terrible weight of worry and fear out there just now because of some recent news stories and the general geopolitical tensions currently in the headlines,” he said. He went on, “Have you ever thought of going to Japan and writing about Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the bomb? Maybe there’s something really important there.”
I pondered his suggestion all afternoon. Later that night I decided to put the concept to the managing editor the next day. It turned out that Martin Goodman was away, and so I went to the next in command, Ray Timson, a long-time colleague and friend, and suggested that I go to Hiroshima and write a major feature on the 1945 dropping of the bomb, its horrors, its overall meaning for humanity and all the options still confronting us today in the wake of that awesome event. Timson, in his typical fashion, greeted the idea with real enthusiasm and told me to go ahead. He added that he would alert the publicity department and give the story major play.
So, on the Monday before Easter, I caught a plane to Vancouver, where there was an hour stopover before a non-stop flight to Tokyo. Because of my height, and because Star staff—except for upper management—always flew in economy class, I was stiff and sore after the four or five hours from Toronto to Vancouver. However, that was as nothing beside the nine-or ten-hour lap over the rim of the Pacific to Narita Airport. After what seemed a near eternity, including an almost hour-long taxi ride to my hotel in downtown Tokyo, I finally arrived, exhausted but also ravenously hungry. It was the Tokyo Hilton Hotel and I’m sure the meal was terrific, with a view out over the lovely gardens and pool, but it was wasted; I was just too tired. Once in my room, I fell into the luxurious bed and was almost instantly asleep.
Unfortunately, it was not to last. It seemed only minutes later, although it was in fact a couple of hours, when the phone beside the bed began