Heritage

   I was born in Calgary, Alberta. For most of my first 11 years, I lived out west, as well, in places like Edmonton and North Vancouver. My grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins all lived out there and I was able to see them reasonably often, usually on holidays. In 1964, however, we moved to London, Ontario, the result of my Dad accepting a transfer. We were only supposed to be in London for two years and then move back to North Van. Well, that was 47 years ago....
   In the meantime, I have been faced with hearing about my relatives' lives mostly from a distance. In later years, unfortunately, this mostly meant news of grandparents, aunts and uncles passing away, without me realistically being able to be there at those times. I have regretted this many times. As an adult, I have had more opportunities to go back and visit and these have been wonderful and memorable times, just way too few. I have often wondered at fate, and why it was that I ended up here in London, so far removed from relatives.
   Fairly recently I started to become more aware of my family history. As a child, I imagine that I would occasionally hear snippets of conversation amongst my elders pertaining to the great aunts and their antics and the places they came from and the lives they led. It was only as an adult, though, that these stories became something I was totally intrigued by!

   Many of these stories came from my father and pertained principally to his mother's side of the family. Her grandfather was Lewis Nunn Agassiz, a pioneer settler who arrived in B.C. back in the mid-1800's, looking for gold. He didn't find any but settled in the Fraser Valley with his young family and founded what is now the town of Agassiz, B.C. I found all these details fascinating as an adult and went about doing a little research, mainly on the internet. What I discovered was that Lewis Agassiz' story really began in London, Ontario! He had been a member of the British military and his regiment, the 23rd Royal Welch Fusiliers, had been garrisoned here in London. He married a local girl, Mary Caroline Schram, and had several children here in London before he headed for B.C. They eventually were able to follow him, they settled there, and had more children.
   This whole story amazed me! For the past thirty years or so I have been working in downtown London, only about 200 yards away from Victoria Park. Where Victoria Park is now, right in the heart of London, used to be the British garrison. I have been that close to land my great-great grandfather used to walk on! I have known this for several years now. Recently, though, I started doing a little research on the Schram side of the family in the London area. What I then found out was that my great-great-great-great grandfather, Jeremiah Schram, was one of the first settlers in Lambeth, a village that used to be just west of London but which now has been incorporated. Indeed, at one point he owned the 200 acres of land at the southwest corner of the main intersection. He bequeathed two acres of it right at the corner to be designated as a church and cemetery and is, in fact, buried there along with several relatives. In the past twenty years or so, I have driven past this church and cemetery many times and not even realised I was passing by dead relatives!!

Headstone of Jeremiah Schram

   As I have discovered all of this, it now almost seems to make sense somehow that we ended up in London, after all. I no longer feel quite the same sense of detachment from my relatives as I once did. For certain, I have missed many of the living ones I could have had a better relationship with, while growing up so far away. Spirit-wise, however, there is some comfort in  knowing that I am more grounded here in London than I had imagined!

Losing

Joe Kapp, with the B.C. Lions

   I became a football fan while living in North Vancouver, as a child. I would have been nine or so and, being a North Van resident, was a fan of the B.C. Lions. Soccer had always been the preferred schoolyard game but then, by Grade 5 or so, the boys all turned to football. At the time, the B.C. Lions were one of the best teams in the CFL and it was not hard to be a rabid fan.
   Their quarterback at the time was a guy named Joe Kapp. He led them to the Grey Cup game in 1963 but they lost to the Hamilton Ti-Cats. The following year, he led them once again to the Grey Cup  game and this time they were victorious, against the same Ti-Cats. At the time I remember living or dying around the results of these games and felt hugely vindicated when they won. A couple of years later, however, Kapp left the Lions and headed south, for the NFL.

Fran Tarkenton, of the Vikings

   And my heart kind of went with him. He joined the Minnesota Vikings and I quickly became a huge fan of theirs. Under his leadership they quickly progressed from being a new franchise to becoming one of the powerhouses in the league. I watched this progression with just a little bit of awe as I was now aligned with a sports winner. At this time, the NFL was beginning to make huge inroads as far as media coverage went (although nothing to compared to what goes on these days) and much was made of glamourizing sports teams and this was what I was witness to with the Vikings. There was a show called NFL Action which came on weekly and was a somewhat documentary-style show, showing highlights from the week's action and doing special profiles. It seemed to me at the time that much of what I saw on this show centred on the Vikings. The whole tone of the show, from the ominous timbre of its narrator, John Facenda, and the rousing background music seemed to dramatize and glorify the subject matter. This had the effect of elevating the importance of the games and, indeed, almost mysticized them in my young and impressionable mind.
   So, over the late sixties, my Vikings marched on and eventually found themselves playing in Super Bowl IV, against the Kansas City Chiefs. I was never so sure that a team would win a game as I was the Vikings that day. Nothing I'd seen or heard over the previous couple of years had convinced me that Minnesota was anything other than a sure thing to win that game--all the hype, all the drama, all the glorification of them.

Minnesota Vikings defence

   They lost, convincingly. I was in a state of shock, to put it mildly. I threw a temper tantrum of mild proportions. I honestly felt completely lost and despondent simply because they had not won the big game. It actually took me a couple of days to fully get over it.
   This had a profound effect on me. In analyzing it in later years, I realized that what I had done was invest every little bit of self-worth I had solely on the outcome of one sporting event. It didn't seem to matter what kind of marks I was getting in school, what my circle of friends was like, or how I was regarded in the community--my team had lost and I was now worthless!
   I became then, and am still, a wary sports fan. I no longer invest myself totally with one team or another. My favourite hockey team, the Boston Bruins, recently won the Stanley Cup. Throughout the long playoff run preceding this, I enjoyed their success from a distance, never getting my hopes up too high. Even as they ended up playing in a seventh game for the Cup, I prepared myself for a loss and even the possible good that might come from it. As it turned out, we won! And because of this I was quietly happy and somewhat self-satisfied but the outcome of the game had absolutely no bearing on my self-worth. And nor should it! 

Collisions

   I totalled my car once, making a left-hand turn in front of oncoming traffic. I thought that I had clearly looked to see if I had enough time to make the turn safely but, in the middle of  it, there was suddenly a car bearing down on me that had  come out of nowhere. I can remember hearing the sound of screeching tires and thinking to myself, "They're not going to be able to stop in time" and then the impact.

Could really have used THIS...

   The force of the collision activated the passenger side airbags and drove the passenger door into the dashboard. Apart from that there was not a lot of damage to the rest of the car. After a lengthy time to consider, my insurance company finally decided that it was not worth repairing and therefore was a total write-off. There was much less damage to the other car and none of its occupants were hurt.
   Well, not physically hurt anyway. Nor was I physically hurt or suffered any real financial damage but that was not where everything ended.

...to avoid what looked like THIS!

   The collision is now inside of me and I think of it almost every single time I need to make a similar left-hand turn. I still hear the sound of it and remember the feeling of being knocked almost parallel to the seats. I can remember the sound of the female driver of the other car crying and her husband yelling. Me being unable to explain my actions to them. It is a haunting kind of thing and I can't even begin to think of how things would be for me now if anyone had been seriously hurt or, worse yet, killed.
   A collision opens up new possibilities. It is one of those things that is so foreign to almost any other of your life experiences that, when it happens, you are forever altered. Prior, it was a bad thing that happened to someone on T.V., or in the paper. You are not naive enough to think it could never happen to you but you manage to tuck it away in a corner dark enough to never have to consider it as a possibility. Post-collision and it is something that now defines you, almost indelibly. You are a person with blue eyes and an accident. Grey-haired with a hint of shattered glass.
   I drove past an accident scene the other day. There was a young lady in one of the cars, her bumper was almost on the road, and she was crying. She did not appear to be hurt and the accident appeared to be less serious than even the one I had been in. But she had obviously been overwhelmed by it all. I have noticed this from time to time, that if someone is distraught at the scene of an accident it is generally a woman. I've never really thought about it too much until the other day. What occurred to me that day was that, for the most part, collisions of any magnitude are not something that women have as a life experience to relate back to. As much as my accident was an awful experience, it was at least tempered by every other collision I've easily lived through. Primarily, I'm thinking of sports-related collisions, I guess. All the times I was running full speed in one direction and intersected someone running full-speed in the opposite direction. Collisions I knew were coming and ones that completely blindsided me. Head-over-heels stuff, the occasional broken bone. Every single one of those prepares you for the one when you're driving. My feeling after my accident was similar to other times--"Holy crap, that was hard!" and then, a few seconds later, "But I'm still standing!"
   The difference, though, was what could have been. I could have had a passenger that night. And if I had, he or she would have been seriously hurt. It could have been my wife, a son, someone I work with. This is how it got into my head.

Of course, it's best of all to avoid THIS!

   Since my accident, I have had to make that left-hand turn on a weekly basis. If I can, I avoid it. I take a whole different route so, that when I get to that intersection, I am travelling straight through it and not having to turn. But this does not rule out every other turn a driver needs to make against two lanes of oncoming traffic. When I find myself in that situation, having to carefully gauge traffic speed, I invariably think of that collision. There are the occasional close calls and everything is re-inforced all over again in a very intimate sort of way. Things happen for a reason, though, and I do believe this. I believe that a better understanding of the possibilities involved have kept future passengers (not to mention myself) just that much safer.