A Writer on Vacation, Part II

Last week I introduced you to a few characters met on our Canadian trip. We’re still on the road and had some more interesting encounters.

Jan and I walked “old Montreal” on our first day in the city and saw a movie shoot. Like moths to bright lights we wandered over to see what was happening. The crew was on break and we stopped next to a guy in his late fifties dressed in buckskin. He’s Mohawk and one of the actors. In profile his nose was a chiseled tomahawk. Looking directly at us he had the most piercing light blue eyes I have met in a long time. They’re courtesy of a Scottish father; his mother is pureblood Mohawk.

We chatted about the Iroquois confederacy and the wars between the Iroquois and the Europeans, first against the French and later against the American revolutionaries. Through his mother, he had an ancestor, John Norton, who was involved in the battles in upstate New York when the Americans sent armies to attempt to conquer Montreal. My great-great-great-great grandfather also fought in the War of 1812. He was the surgeon at Sackets Harbor. Although our two ancestors probably never met, they most likely had acquaintances who did.

Our chance meeting once again emphasized the small, interconnected nature of our world.

That got me to thinking about the six-degrees of separation that purports to bind us all together. According to a Wikipedia article Frigyes Karinthy postulated that a link between any two humans can be constructed using at most six steps. Statisticians have predicted that for residents of the US, only three links are needed – in part because of blogs such as this.

The first time I was in Montreal was 1967 as part of a school trip to the Exposition, most of which was located on the Ile Sainte-Hélène and Ile Notre-Dame. The US pavilion—the Biosphere—was inspired by Buckminster Fuller and now contains a museum dedicated to sustainable living, which was our reason for now being on the Ile Sainte-Hélène. The image that most caught my eye occurred as were waiting on the Metro platform for our return to the city proper. A group of children had been swimming and under watchful eyes going through the turnstiles and lining the platform for the next train. The kids were grouped in twos or threes, chatting, giggling, making jokes. Trailing at the end of the group was the child [picture] his dragging towel a metaphor. What was his story?

In the fitness room at the hotel, I slogged my five miles on the treadmill and watched in the mirror a guy using the weight equipment. He looked like a guy in his mid-thirties who had let his strength go to flab. At each piece of equipment he went through a routine of puffing himself up like a blowfish before doing the exercise and then shaking out his muscles afterwards. I noticed, however, his neck muscles never strained at the exertion. After each exercise, he would look to see if anyone was watching, and then, only noticed by my sidelong glance in the mirror, he would reach down and change the position of the pin in the weights several positions lower. After this charade he moved on to the next piece of equipment. What was the purpose of that? Was he was trying to impress the rest of us in the room with the total performance and hoped we might check to see what weights he was using? Was the weight change to impress whoever came next to use the equipment?

Your story if you want it. I will say it is ofttimes amazing what we do to lie to ourselves while we think we are fooling the world.

I’m starting to get a bit antsy with these cities. We preceded the madness of the G8 and G20 meetings in Toronto by a few days, met 35,000 Rotarians overwhelming the city of Montreal and now in Halifax, the Canadian fleet is in port and the Queen will be coming to town next week.

About time for us to get out into the country, which is what most of next week should entail.

~ Jim