Risk

Bro-in-law Rob and his wife Sabrina

   My brother-in-law, Rob, became a paraplegic in October of 2008. This happened a a result of a mountain biking accident near his home in Oakville, Ontario. He'd been biking with a friend in a wooded park set up especially for mountain bikers and at one point the two of them came across a new ramp that had been installed. They briefly pondered jumping the ramp, then decided against it and rode around it. Rob then decided 'what the heck, why not give it a go', went back and jumped the ramp. Catastrophically, he landed on his front tire, his body pitched over the bike, and he landed in such a way that his back was broken. Now he is paralyzed from the waist down.

   Since that day, his has been an amazing story. His indomitable spirit has enabled him to overcome many obstacles, both the physical and the emotional, and his support circle has been utterly astounding. When he became healthy enough, he threw himself back into the sporting world he'd always loved--he hand-biked, motorbiked, skied, and raced. He has accomplished so much, in such a short period of time.
   Obviously, unless you've been in the same situation yourself, it is almost impossible to know how it feels to have your life so dramatically altered, so suddenly. Rob has said that, even as he was lying in the forest immediately after the accident, the question ran through his head, "How am I going to dance with my daughters at their weddings?" He knows now that he will, by hook or by crook, but at the time every single hope, dream and aspiration must have seemed to have totally vanished. He reacted well. Not all of us would have.

   I think of Rob often, hard not to. And as I do so, I agonizingly go back to the moment he decided to jump that ramp. By his own telling, his initial reaction was to simply avoid the unknown and go around it, which he did. But then he decided to go back. At this point, he made some decision around risk. He knew what his riding capabilities were, he was familiar with the terrain, and he'd done all sorts of ramps before. I assume he assessed the risk and decided to proceed. The unthinkable followed. Had he incorrectly made the risk assessment? Hard to tell. He said that the thought ran through his head that if somehow or other this jump is not successful than some broken bones might be in order (given his active lifestyle, broken body parts were not unusual) but that did not sway him from his decision. In assessing the risk, I don't know if I could be paralyzed or I could be killed entered the equation. If even one nagging little suspicion of this fluttered about in the back of his consciousness. If it did, it was discounted. And rightly so...? Perhaps. And now, what about all the "what if's" and the "if only's". We who know Rob I'm sure drive ourselves crazy with these questions. His life could have stayed the same if he'd just kept on riding past the ramp! If we are haunted by this then how much more so must he be?
   How many of us actually consider the worst-case scenario when assessing risk? Not many of us, I suspect. If we did we would constantly be at least emotionally paralyzed, if nothing else. How big of a risk is it to set off in your car each morning, after all? Think of it, you're doing 60 km/h in one direction, the driver coming at you is doing 60 km/h, that means you're passing within about five feet of  a two-ton steel vehicle at 120 km/h probably thousands of times a day! And those drivers passing by you are prone to distraction, disease, old age, carelessness, and weather considerations. How safe does that sound, from a risk standpoint? Because we get up every morning, go to work and return home safely and have been doing this for years the risk seems minimal. And then the accident happens and the procedure you go about to assess risk changes, sometimes monumentally. In an earlier blog I touched on this, the process of being involved in an accident and how it affects subsequent driving decisions. I'm not sure, though, that my driving then gets better; suddenly I am more tentative, and this for, a driver, is not always a good thing either. My risk assessment skills are skewed and the longer they stay skewed, the more likely I am to be involved with poor risk decisions.
   Back to Rob for a moment. As I mentioned before, he is a paraplegic. He does, however, continue to live a very full life. He is probably one of the most active and adventurous people I know. He never shrinks from challenges. Occasionally, this involves different forms of "risky" sports eg. the afore-mentioned motorbiking, skiing, etc. I find myself wondering what type of risk assessment he uses now. Currently, he depends almost solely on his upper body strength (and his upper body has become a thing of amazement) but what happens if he breaks an arm? This would be bad enough for any able-bodied person but when your mobility depends on your arms where does a broken one put you? I asked him this once. To paraphrase somewhat, he had decided that he was not going to allow the paraplegia to alter the essential person he'd always been. He would not allow himself to become hostage to his physical condition. I find this scary and admirable at the same time. How many of us refuse to "get back on the horse"? And then, how many of us force ourselves to?
   Horrible news today. I've been working on this blog in bits and pieces for over two days now. This morning, reading the paper, I learned that one of the young friends of my sons was killed in a cycling accident. All of this at the same time I've been going on and on about risk. I know none of the details of the accident but how far away from actually dying could this young man's thoughts have been as he set out on his bike that day? I'm sure it never entered his mind as a possible eventuality and I'm just as sure that it shouldn't have.
   I tell my wife I love her several times a day. Saying hello, saying goodbye and many times in between. We are almost fanatical about waving to each other and flashing the "I love you" sign as we part company. In some small way, to me at least (and very subconsciously), this a form of risk management. In such an uncertain world I will have wanted "I love you" to have been one of the things she remembered the most. I would not want to risk it otherwise.
   We do risky things. I play a lot of ball hockey and there is risk. I drive a lot and there is risk. The bottom step of my porch is risky. The tap water seems safe. As does the food from the grocery store. I assume that I have at least, deep in my mind's recesses, made a risk assessment around most things in my life and have avoided what seem to be the riskiest. Perhaps I've missed out on some things. Perhaps skydiving might have changed my whole outlook on life, or maybe bungee-jumping, hang-gliding, the stock market. I may never know.
   I just sat back and tried to determine what the riskiest thing I'd ever done was. Actually, it wasn't hard. Telling my wife I loved her the first time was by far the riskiest thing I've ever done. I guess I have to say my risk management skills are fine!
  

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!