Canada Day, 2020

Happy Canada Day! It's complicated.

I am descended from an Abenaki, an Azorean, an English child captured from the Massachusetts Bay colony, a couple of German-speaking people, and a few hundred people from French provinces from Picardie in the northeast to Aquitaine in the southwest.

Most of my ancestors came to farm the land along the St. Lawrence River below Québec, where Haudenosaunee people had lived but no longer did as the result of a previous war with neighbouring Indigenous people. The Haudenosaunee had not forgotten and were never happy with settlers on their land. The settlers did make treaties with the Algonquin, Abenaki, and other peoples with whom they traded goods for furs. Some of my ancestors settled in Acadia among the peoples of the Wabenaki Confederacy until they were driven out by the British and went to join the French settlers along the St. Lawrence.

The colonists lived along the river between Montréal and the Gaspé for about 140 years.  Then British troops, which had fought for control of that land for many years, finally made their conquest. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 made it official: the French-speaking settlers were now subject to the English Crown, and the lands they had controlled and the lands of the Indigenous people around them became part of British America.

Generations of my French-speaking family lived as British subjects. My great-grandparents were born in Canada East, British America. In 1867, the Canadas East and West joined New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to form the Dominion of Canada. The official date of proclamation was July 1, originally called Dominion Day and now called Canada Day.

Confederation did not alleviate rural poverty in the new province of Quebec. Within the next few decades, my great-grandparents left for New England. Two great-grandfathers started their own businesses. Two worked in the mills, as did many of their children. I was born in New England and grew up speaking English. French-Canadians in New England mostly assimilated, but our names and culture kept us somewhat apart.

Twenty-six years ago, I was allowed to return to Canada, although much farther west than Quebec. I  became a permanent resident and later a citizen. My great-grandparents and grandparents and parents had done well in the United States, but for me Canada always felt like home.

Now I know much more about the history of my own family and of the land than I did when I moved here. I learned about the Indigenous peoples with whom my ancestors had traded and fought. I learned that among the settlers had been Indigenous servants and enslaved Africans. I learned about the Indigenous people of the Pacific coast that I moved to and of early settlement by people of colour, including a colonial governor of Barbadian descent. I know far more now than I did when I innocently "returned" to the country whence my ancestors had come.

Knowing what I know, I can't celebrate Canada Day quite as I once did. It's still a day to commemorate, but it's also a day to remember my ancestors who fled from British conquest and poverty and oppression. It's a day to remember the people who have lived on these lands for more than 10,000 years. It's a day to remember the enslaved and oppressed people who built the country for others to enjoy. It's even a day when I remember my land and people from "only" four hundred years ago in Europe, a blink of an eye relative to the time before my people came to this part of the world.

I am thankful for the privilege of living here and doing well, staying healthy (so far) in the midst of a global pandemic. I am thankful to have learned so much about the land I call my country. I am thankful for everything that has brought me here and looking forward to what this uncertain world might bring. There is always more to learn.

What you leave behind

"All the time in the world turns out not to be that much." (Exene Cervenka, "All the Time in the World")

"All you are is what you leave behind." (Me, lyric fragment scribbled on a notepad)

For a species to survive, there needs to be a sufficient level of reproduction. Life, for species that reproduce sexually anyway, is about getting enough food to reach reproductive age and then to mate with a partner and procreate the next generation.

There will be no next generation of me crossed with a mate. I mated, but produced no offspring. So in evolutionary terms, I'm a failure. The closest thing to my DNA continuing in the world is via my siblings. My personal DNA will go when I go.

One reason I have no children is that I spent my reproductive years doing immature things like playing in rock bands. Or maybe the flip side is true—that one reason I have made music all my life is because I was not planning to reproduce and never did. With no genes to pass on, I have to pass on memes, in the original Dawkinsian sense—units of culture (of a sort).

I'm not famous. No one will write a biography of me. I haven't held any positions of political or economic power. I have never been a person of influence. The only thing I am leaving behind is my art. For whatever reason or reasons, I have a passion to create music, and music is meant to be shared.

I don't have a bucket list of personal things to do. Anything I do strictly for myself will be of no consequence when I no longer exist.

So that's why I'm gathering releases old and new on Bandcamp. That's why I keep my Soundcloud going. There are bits of my musical DNA scattered across the interwebs as well as some old vinyl out there somewhere. I'm still figuring out how to make more of it available.

I continue to make new memes as well, slowly and sometimes painfully in my home "studio" and, gods willing, is a real studio again. Even if we were not currently distanced (due to COVID-19), I haven't had a band in years. I miss creating with others, but I keep at it because it's all I have to offer.

Well, not all. I hope that I have had a positive effect on some people in the world. I know that I've had a negative effect at times, which I regret and wish I could undo. But I hope that by the time I go, my life will have had a net positive effect, even if a small one.

I rely mostly on what I have created, good, bad, and ugly, for my legacy. And when it all disappears, as no doubt it will, there will be nothing left of me. But anyone who creates does what they can to beat the odds. I can't (and don't want to) live forever, but maybe I can make something that outlasts me.

Your generation don't mean a thing to me*

The generational labels that demographers saddle us with and that the media blather about ad nauseam are too small. The media know it, because they keep subdividing. And even then, there are further differences having to do with nationality, race, class, mobility and more. How can anyone be characterized even by the smaller but still broad spans of years?

If we share generational characteristics with anyone, it's those we were with when we went to school, and by extrapolation others of the same age. People who listened to the same music, watched the same movies and TV, did a lot of the same activities, lived through the same events in the outside world at roughly the same age.

I was not quite 10 when JFK was assassinated and had just turned 10 when I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. The year I was 14, Dr. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were both murdered, Chicago exploded all around the Democratic National Convention, Pierre Trudeau became Prime Minister of Canada, and Richard Nixon won the U.S. presidential election.

I was 15 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, 16 when National Guard troops killed students at Kent State and Jackson State and when the October Crisis happened, 17 when I first programmed a computer, 18 when I graduated from high school, and 20 when Nixon resigned. That period is accompanied by an incredible soundtrack.

I had a second formative period from roughly 25 to 35 because I was a musician and I hadn't grown up. The Iran hostage crisis happened when I was 25. Ronald Reagan was elected when I was 26, the same year I got a job at a publishing company, my first "real" job. In 1981, at 27, I helped form an original band, began a relationship that continues to thrive 39 years later, and lost my father. At 29 I got a job at another publishing company, this time as an editor, thus officially putting my English degree to use.

Reagan was re-elected in 1984. I was 32 when that third band put out an album (including an anti-Reagan song), 33 when the next band issued a single. I stayed at the same publishing company but slid sideways into software development, learned mostly on the job. And then around 1989, the acting period began, which led to my migration to Canada in 1994 at the advanced age of 40 and a few years of being a film and TV extra and a few more of working as a technical writer on contract.

There's a definite cutoff time for certain things. I grew up on pinball and played Pong and PacMan in bars and arcades, but I never took up video games. The IBM PC did not arrive until 1981, and I didn't use a desktop computer until that editorial job I got in 1983—which was all about desktop computing. I think humour might be something that gets set pretty early, because there's a point after which there are a lot of things that youngers find funny that I do not. There are a whole mess of Gen X cultural touch points that I am either unaware of or don't know much about.

Because I was born in 1954, I am called a Boomer (from "post-war baby boom," in case you've forgotten or never knew—originally we were called Baby Boomers). Someone came up with Generation Jones for late Boomers (I am not much like my sister, who was born in 1950). But do I look like a stereotype to you? For much of my adult life I tried (usually not competently and thus never successfully) to make my living in the arts. I never had children, and thus have no grandchildren. My spouse and I did not buy our first house until we were in our late 40s. And we're still weird and only as mature as we have to be.

I do not subscribe to a culture of busy and overwork. I'm not terribly competitive. I'm not stuck on the music I listened to when I was young (though I still love the music).

I'm a better match with things considered Generation Jones traits. We arrived too late for the cool stuff, like the Summer of Love and Woodstock, but got the benefit of changes pushed by earlier Boomers. On one website I saw Generation Jones described as "practical idealists," and that's pretty much me. But in so many other ways, neither Boomer nor Generation Jones says any more about who I am than than my so-called zodiac sign.

And I do not look down on Millennials! Or Gen Xers or Gen Zers or any other generational label you can think of. I'm quite fond of each generation or sub-generation that has come after me. They missed experiences I had but have had so many that I missed. They think about things in ways that I never did. I learn from younger people precisely because their window into reality is different than mine.

Media love to set things in opposition. It gives them a hook on which to hang an article. And I know there are Millennials dissing Boomers, and Boomers dissing Millennials, but I'm not one of them. Y'all love our music and reboot our fashion anyway. Our parents and grandparents could never say that about us!

*From the Generation X song "Your Generation," a sneering response to The Who's "My Generation." Ironically, Pete Townshend was born in 1945, making him technically an early Boomer (or just before), and Billy Idol was born in 1955, putting him solidly in late Boomer/Generation Jones territory (like me). Intra-Boomer sneering? Really I think it just illustrates that 10-year spans are more useful than 20.

The band's name (before it was shortened to Gen X) was taken from the name of a book published in 1965 about mod culture in the U.K. Douglas Coupland's novel Generation X was published in 1991.

Visitor from a small planet

I'm good at going about disguised as a normal person. I've practised it all my life. It's been a strategy for making life less difficult, and it works well. Few perceive what lies beneath. I don't like not being real. I'm always ready to bring the real, but only one person has ever put up with that for long (and for that I am supremely grateful).

I have always been somewhere between liking that I'm weird and wishing that I weren't. Judging by my relationships with others, it's not a particularly appealing or endearing weirdness. It's a lonely weirdness. I have a lot of acquaintances, but deep friendships are another story.

I don't know why I am the way I am. I am the product of many things—my genes, my French-Canadian-New-England culture, my peculiar parents, my peculiar siblings, my peers, my small town upbringing, and the numerous experiences I've had since I left home. Now I know there was also attention deficit and the ways I coped with it. Everyone has their own combination of ingredients. Some recipes are successful. Some not so much.

It would be nice to be able to fully embrace my weirdness. Why be normal? Without the weirdness, I wouldn't be me. Even though not being me sometimes seems like an appealing prospect, I am and shall remain me. I can change a lot of things about myself, but plenty of it is baked in. So I have to go with my weirdness, for better or worse, even though most people will only ever see the normal person disguise.

Playing at work

Guess this must be the SARS-CoV-2 edition. And nowadays it's always the attention deficit edition. Are we blogging again?

Our back deck is fibreglass because the carport is below. Every spring I have to power-wash tree crud and mould away because I no longer have the strength to scrub it away. I believe this is the earliest I've ever cleaned off the "winterfilth." If we ever have to go into full isolation, we're going to want that deck and the hammock and table and chairs that sit on it.

Power-washing the deck is a slow, boring task. Yesterday, I finally figured out how to turn it into a game. Instead of doing repeated straight lines, I swirled the nozzle around, like you would to erase something on a screen. A few swirls and I would see a clean chunk. A few more, another clean chunk. And the curved lines were somehow more satisfying than straight ones. I made the task artistic!

This is what happens when your brain needs a dopamine hit more often than most. I need stimulation to be able to get through a boring task. So I turn tasks into games.

All my most successful jobs were things I turned into games. After university, I worked in a circuit board factory using a digitizer. A digitizer is a device use to program for a numerically controlled drill to precisely drill holes in the specified places with the specified sizes. Mil-spec boards (from government contractors) had especially tight tolerances. The job consisted of drawing a series of coloured lines between holes of the same size, and then using the digitizer to follow the lines and set the coordinates of each hole to be drilled.

I quit after a couple of years, the only time I have ever voluntarily resigned from a job. Digitizing was a fun game, but it wasn't stimulating enough. I set out to find a job related to my English degree.

When I got my first job with a publishing company, it was not in editorial but rather in advertising production. I was an advertising production manager at two different technical trade publications. Every month I was responsible for creating a page imposition, which involves placing ads throughout an edition among the editorial content. I had to balance many different requirements, including keeping all of the advertisers happy with their positions in the magazine. It was like doing a giant crossword puzzle once a month, and I derived great satisfaction from it.

I was almost sorry to take a job as an assistant editor, a job I had (more or less) studied for. I could probably have done page impositions for a long time. I enjoyed my time as an editor and writer. But I couldn't turn it into a game quite as much. It's fortunate that it was a computer publication. There's plenty of stimulation in getting to know new software. The first graphical information system (GIS) I ever saw in the mid-1980s was already amazing, and particularly appealing. But after five years, I felt stuck.

A jump to a different part of the same company took me into software development. Writing software always has game elements to it. For me, "winning" was creating code that not only worked but did so as efficiently and elegantly as possible. Nobody wanted to build a kludge tower. I spent much of my career maintaining and extending a search server, constantly refactoring it to make the code easier to change when necessary.

By 1994 I was bored to tears, and I was fine with having to quit when I moved to Vancouver. But I ended up staying as a contractor. I did technical writing (mostly help text) for many years until I had been away from software for long enough to respond affirmatively to an offer to return to full time software employment.

That last couple of decades was a long stretch. When my talent for and tolerance of software development both started to reach their limit, I managed to stay useful and stimulated during my last few years before retirement by taking on a task no one else wanted: second-line technical customer service using Jira to track customer-reported bugs and feature requests. I evaluated the tickets that came from the front-line people and made sure they went through the system properly. It's the kind of job that you need an over-qualified person to do.

When the company first reformed its ticketing system, everything was late, and it was difficult to track issues correctly. But I was spurred on by a colleague who knew a lot about how Jira worked. I took his knowledge and went further until we had a solid tracking system that allowed us to stay ahead of deadlines, not constantly behind them. My part of the company went from one of the worst at customer service to the best. I found that using colour coding to track how soon a ticket was due to be especially appealing.

As illustrated by the deck cleaning, I turn most things I do into a game. Such is my life of attention deficit. It has its limitations. I can only imagine what life might have been life without this constant need for stimulation. But I made it to retirement, and I think I did good work. But even now, I can't escape the need for stimulation.