3’s a Breeze – Truth be Told

Downstairs

Dear Readers,

You may have noticed a new format to some recent blogs – a he said/she said type of banter – and maybe wondered what the heck is going on. I know I’ve been wondering – this format seems to have appeared out of nowhere. I moved into a house with my daughter and son-in-law and suddenly when I write about the goings on within the house other people want to add their two cents. This has added a new dimension to my storytelling.

Stories generally have a ring of truth to them which isn’t to say they are always truthful – there is this thing called poetic license (I got my license years ago). With the license comes permission to take liberties with the truth. If a license holder is crafty enough they can stretch a truth from here to Tuesday and almost get away with it. Comedians are blatant truth stretchers – so are liars.

Truth stretching runs rampant in my family – my genetic pool has been infected with it for as far back as far back goes. My forbearers, on both sides of the family, were predisposed to storytelling and to my knowledge not one them ever landed in jail – this leads me to believe they were not truth stretchers of the lying variety.

There is always another side to a story, a different point of view, another storyteller’s version- and if that other storyteller has been part of the story just told he might be inclined to spin his own version.

My son-in-law is a natural storyteller. I have no idea if his ancestors were blessed with the actual storytelling gene – I do know both my son-in-law and his father can entertain a room full of people for hours. (I have no clue if their sense of humor is inherited or if either of them have a poetic license). Given what a stand up guy my son-in-law is I would be surprised to learn any of his forbearers landed in jail but you never know, story tellers are frequently tempted to lie in search of a laugh. (I can’t vouch for forebarers I’ve never met but I do trust my son-in-law (mostly)).

Which brings me to this new format – this she said/he said banter. I have outed my son-in-law for the character he is and he, in turn, seems to be outing me as the truth stretcher I am. So I am writing to you, dear readers, to warn you wise-crackery could be right around the corner and wise-crackery should always be taken with a grain of salt. Remember – you were my dear readers first.

Upstairs

“I come by it naturally”

Now, you need to understand; the portion of my family that I identify with the strongest is Irish, but that’s not where the story begins. Back in the early 1990’s my dad got the idea of doing some research on the family name and went through one of the mail-order, pre-internet versions of Ancestry-tree.com. The results arrived six weeks later through Canada-post in a large brown envelope covered in stamps, and there was some surprising background to add to the family lore.

My family arrived in Canada in 1925 at the port of Halifax, Nova Scotia. During a recent conference I attended in the beautiful port city, I visited Pier 21, the Canadian version of Ellis Island, and the gateway to much of Canadian immigration from Europe. The pier is now a historical centre staffed by helpful Summer interns from local universities that helped me look through the now digitized archives to find images of the customs declarations of my great grandmother and great uncle who had travelled there by ship; Charlotte, aged 41 and Samuel, aged 2. There was even a picture of the ship they had travelled on, black and white, and somewhat out of focus, its paint showed that it had been used in the war effort only seven years before. After paying their fare, she had travelled across the ocean to a new life with a two year old, and five pounds in her pocket on her way to meet her husband in the middle of the Canadian prairies.

The most recent version of my Irish family comes from Belfast, Ireland, where brothers worked in the Harlan Shipyards, home of the Olympic and Titanic. According to the family oral history, great grandpa worked on the boilers of the Titanic and many other ships until World War I broke out and he joined the military, fighting on the continent in the trenches identified with that era of warfare, and coming home with “shell-shock,” what we would call PTSD today. Prior to Belfast, the clan had apparently resided in the small seaside vacation town of Portrush and nearby Ballycastle, with Bushmills located almost midway between them for the last 400-ish years. This may explain some things; Bushmills Distillery was founded in 1608, otherwise we may have ruled the world. The new information was the revelation that our clan may have arrived in Ireland as part of a Scottish diaspora starting around 1600, whether they left Scotland due to political unrest, or some troubles involving sheep, is lost to the mists of history.

My grandfather John was a storyteller as well. Born in Winnipeg to some pretty horrible fiscal circumstances and naturally athletic, he joined the Navy during World War II after lying about his age. Our family often jokes about the prairie boy who had never seen the ocean who joined the navy. When asked he would often say that he joined the navy knowing it would get him the furthest possible distance from Winnipeg. He would share stories of his pet monkey, opium bars in Hong Kong, being thrown in the brig for a time, and the dear friends he made along the way. Those stories fostered a desire for adventure, friendship, and to lead a life less ordinary.

Following the war, he met my grandmother when they were working in a cardboard factory, they had kids, and he had a series of fascinating careers ranging from commercial fishing, to forestry, working in a mill, working for the city, and finally as the iceman at the local ice-rink. He drove the Zamboni and maintained the rink; my brother and I learned to skate in the early hours of the morning when no one was on the ice. I can still remember the smell of the cool air, the smooth reflection of the freshly cleaned ice, and the only sound being our skate blades and breathing as we did lap after lap on our own private ice.

Storytelling requires a great imagination, or a life full of experiences to draw upon. I’m privileged to say that I’ve had my fair share of both. I guess you could say that I come by storytelling naturally.