Bob
LaFrance, world traveller
by
Robert LaFrance
As I write this, my younger daughter
has been back in Canada for a total of 27 hours after visiting South America, my older
daughter is on a camping trip to the far-flung wilderness of Fundy National
Park (after recently returning from trips to Montreal and Toronto, my son has
been, in the past few years, to Dallas, Texas, Ottawa and who knows where, and
my wife is about to head out on a 3-day road trip all around New Brunswick.
I dream of exotic places like Minto, New Brunswick.
I am not joking. The only places I
have travelled to in the past six months has been Blue Mountain Bend and
Gillespie Settlement. My wife has been in Scotland so many times they have
named a hotel after her. Meanwhile I’m here slaving away, hearing about their
travels. One daughter worked in Manchester, England for several months, the
other one spent three weeks or so last year in France and Belgium.
My dog Kezman travels more than I
do.
It wasn’t always like this. In
February 1967, having shown UNB what I thought of their courses, I rode with
friends to Campbell River, BC, then back to NB in May, then to Hamilton,
Ontario where I stayed almost five years. In June 1972 I quit my job at
Canadian Canners and headed for Australia, but in Vancouver they wouldn’t let
me on the ship unless I had $500 cash and I only had $350. So I tarried in
Vancouver for almost two years, after which I went to the Northwest Territories
for four years (after training courses in Ottawa and Toronto) as a weatherman.
Then back to NB where I fetched up in Tilley.
If you hear of some Star Trek-like
device that will ‘beam me up Scotty’ I might do some travelling, but that’s
about it. I’m too lazy to drive and too cheap to pay for a public conveyance.
Tell me all about your trip to Greece, but don’t expect me to go.
*****************************
This afternoon, a Sunday, I spent a
couple of hours reading about the Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1852 and thought
of my late friend Mike MacAfee of Plaster Rock and sometimes Wales.
He died young, like other friends
(Donnie Hathaway, Jim Mowbray, Arthur Rossignol and too many more) but he was
always interesting. When I visited him in Plaster Rock he would (1) try and
persuade me to cross country ski, even if it were July, (2) talk about people
he had no chance of ever understanding, and (3) bring up the subject of the
Irish Potato Famine.
He was not a great fan of the
English, whose fault he considered the whole situation to be. He said that
England, which came into possession of Ireland in 1801, deliberately let tens
of thousands of poor people starve to death as a means of keeping the
population down. I suppose that would make sense to some; after all people
don’t have the SPCA to protect them.
While thinking at the time that a
nation of people who were so kind to animals couldn’t possibly have
deliberately starved humans, I told him more or once that it was Male Cow
Manure (BS is its acronym), but it turned out that the English parliament did
indeed – at least for a decade or more – follow a policy pushed by an economist
named Malthus. That policy did say let a goodly number starve to keep down the
population.
After a while humans took over I
guess, and the English did try to help during those years when over half the
Irish potato crop was lost to late blight. It turned out, according to this
book called ‘This Great Calamity’ by Christine Kinealy, that the worst villains
were the Irish landlords, not the English, whose most heinous crime was
stupidity.
I have four great-grandparents who
were born in Ireland, so I am wondering: How close did my gang come to starving
to death?
*****************************
I shall leave the faithful and
long-suffering reader with these words of wisdom gleaned from the Internet. I
am certainly not smart enough to think of them.
“To be sure of hitting the target,
shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.”
“Going to church doesn't make you a
Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.”
“You're never too old to learn something stupid.”
“Women will never be equal to men until they can
walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are
sexy.”
This last one is a quote from my grandfather,
Narcisse (Nelson) LaFrance (1881-1976), known as Muff, and I have used it in this column many
times: “If you see a chance to keep your mouth shut, take it.”
-end-
