Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul (34 page)

We got along so well that he and his wife said, “If you’re ever in California, please drop by and visit.” How often do you get an invitation like that from one of your heroes? When my husband and I did go out to California, we called, and to my total amazement, they invited us to stay at their home.

It was a lovely, quiet place on a hillside, with a beautiful view of meadows and rolling hills. Charles Schulz wanted to take us for a walk around his property, but I had arrived with only good clothes, and didn’t have any shoes suitable for hiking around the woods and trails.

He said, “Your feet aren’t very big, let me give you a pair of my shoes.” He looked through his closet, pulled out a pair of his own running shoes and stuffed some tissue in the toes. When I put them on, they fit just fine! We then went for a walk around his property, and had a great visit. Later it occurred to me that something truly amazing had happened. “Good grief,” I said with a laugh. “I’ve just walked a mile in your shoes!” From then on, we had a “running gag” between us. He’s someone I’ll never, ever forget.

Lynn Johnston, creator of
For Better or For Worse
North Bay, Ontario

A Street Kid Named Mike

T
he greatest good we can do for others is not
to share our riches, but to assist in revealing
their own.

Benjamin Disraeli

Mike was a street kid. He never knew his father, his mother was a “lady of the night” and he lived with a feeble and indifferent grandmother. His clothing was in constant need of repair, as ripped pants were not yet the thing. He was ten years old, undernourished and unkempt. Compared to the other kids around him, he was at a distinct disadvantage.

It was September 1966, and I was twenty years old, facing my first class of kids as a new teacher. Like most new, young teachers, I was full of enthusiasm and determined to make a difference. My grade 4/5 class in an elementary school in downtown Toronto was made up of thirty-eight angels, and one street kid named Mike. Being so young, I knew very little about parenting. I did however recognize a child in need, and decided that this was as good a place as any to reach out and see if I could make a difference. And so it was that early in September, my special “foster father” relationship with Mike began. Astonishing as it may seem, I became the only parent figure he ever had.

Each day as I arrived at school around 7:30 A.M., Mike would already be in the parking lot waiting for me. Because he was usually hungry, I’d take him out for breakfast. I showed him how to sew, and together we began mending his ripped and torn clothes.

Each noon hour as I shared my lunch with him, I taught him a host of new skills—for a while we worked on the proper method of using a microscope. On another day we constructed a pinhole camera, then we classified rocks and minerals. Still later, we did some archaeology. Mike would then “help” me teach these skills to the rest of the class. We all had a lot of fun, and a kind of unspoken trust began to build up between us. Surprisingly, he appeared eager, perhaps even hungry, to participate in this new father-son relationship.

One day near the end of September, on a Monday, I taught Mike to play chess. By Friday of that same week, he was giving me a really good game. That year, and for several years thereafter, Mike was the chess champion of the Toronto Board of Education.

Early in our special relationship, Mike told me of his dream. Most of the kids in the class wanted to be doctors, musicians, teachers or some such thing, but not Mike! His ultimate desire in life was to be a gangster! This was no joke—this was his wish, and he was most serious about it.

I believed then, and after thirty-four years of teaching I still believe, that all children have a gift. Everyone has the same opportunity to be the best person they can be. I realized this boy was brilliant, and that with a little love, attention, understanding, guidance and encouragement, he could probably accomplish whatever he put his mind to. I figured if he wanted to be a gangster, I would do all I could to help him become the very best gangster he could be.

I got permission from his grandmother to call on him every Saturday morning. You see, I had a plan. First, I took him for breakfast. Afterwards (after making special arrangements through a friend), I took him to the Osgoode Law Library, attached to the University of Toronto.

He was awed by its impressiveness. I explained to him that a good gangster had to know something about criminal law, and reading up on law was the only way to learn. His young mind was eager and interested, and he dove right in.

That was how we spent each Saturday morning that year. I’d drop him off at the law library, and three hours later, I would return and pick him up and we’d go get a burger at Harvey’s. After lunch together, and a recap of his morning’s work, I’d take him home. He wasn’t my son, but I sure felt like a father. There were numerous Saturdays I felt like sleeping in, but a commitment had been forged between us, and I was not going to let him, or myself, down.

The following year I was transferred to another school some distance away. Sadly, this prevented me from continuing to participate physically with him on those Saturday mornings. But I was determined to follow through with what I had begun, so I continued to provide him with public transportation tickets so he could keep up his regular study at the law library. Every so often I’d get together with him and take him out for lunch, so I was able to keep up with his life.

Some time after that, I met a wonderful young woman named Carol. Soon afterwards we were married, and we started a new life together in London—about two hours west of Toronto. The unfortunate part of this love story is that somehow, sadly and to my great regret, I lost contact with Mike.

The years passed, and I often thought of him, wondering how his life turned out and what had become of him. Then, one day in 1995, I was in Toronto on business and decided to look up the number of a former colleague. I flipped open the telephone directory, and there on the page, as if it were in twinkling neon lights and lit up just for me, I saw Mike’s surname as part of a title of “Barristers and Solicitors!”

I wondered,
Could it be? Naw!—What are the odds?

On a whim, I dialed the number, gave my name to a secretary and was put on hold. A very long fifteen seconds later, I was talking with a husky voiced gentleman. His opening statement was, “Mr. Kowalchuk, I’ve really . . . missed you.” Then there was silence.

Somehow I managed to answer. “Mike, I’m really proud of you. I only wish that I had managed to keep in touch with you all these years.” My eyes welled up with tears, and I blurted out again (between sobs), “Mike, I’m really proud of you.”

In a quivering voice on the other side, Mike answered, “I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for you.”

I was so very proud of him! If he had been my own son, I couldn’t have been more proud of him.

When we were able to get together, I learned that Mike had risen to be one of the most successful criminal lawyers in Canada! A far cry from the street kid I once knew, who dreamed of becoming a gangster. He repeated that I was the only parent figure he had ever had, and that he owed it all to me. Had it not been for me, he said, he wouldn’t be where he was today.

Ernest Kowalchuk
Ailsa Craig, Ontario

War, in Peace

O
ne of the most valuable things we can do to
heal another is to listen to other’s stories.

Rebecca Falls

I first met Percy Hopkins of Calgary in April 1977, as he was getting off an Air Canada jet in Paris’s Orly Airport. He was tired, as were the other twenty-four Canadian veterans of the Battle of Vimy Ridge who were setting foot, once more, on French soil. This return visit to France was a federal government–sponsored pilgrimage to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of that famous World War I engagement.

I felt lucky to be chosen by the Department of Veterans Affairs to accompany this group of “reluctant heroes,” since they did indeed require assistance throughout this visit. Their average age was eighty-two.

Once safely aboard a hired tour bus, Percy Hopkins and I shared the front seat. Our group of bemedaled Canadians was transported north from Paris to our hotel in the town of Arras, some ten to twelve kilometres from the site of the famous Canadian battle at Vimy Ridge.

Percy Hopkins was using crutches. He had only one leg.

It didn’t take too long before curiosity got the best of me and I asked him if this was the result of “his” war. It was.

Percy insisted I call him Hoppy, the nickname all his friends used; the name he had worn ever since his wartime service.

It wasn’t long before Hoppy told me the whole story about the day in which he gave so much and lost so much. He vividly described how the infantry tactic employed by the British Army using three waves of attack was taught to the Canadians. This included his unit—the Tenth Battalion of the Second Canadian Infantry Brigade.

“Which wave were you assigned to Hoppy?” I asked.

“The first,” he replied.

As he continued his recollections, I felt I was becoming privy to a part of his life that even his own family was not aware of.

“One of the nurses in the field hospital where I was treated,” he said, “told me I lost my leg in a battle that took place in a valley outside a village which she called, of all things, ‘Peace.’”

Hoppy asked me if I knew where this village was, but I didn’t. He really wanted to go back there. He thought his final pilgrimage to France would be complete if, one more time, he could see the spot where he had lost his leg and his war had ended.

As he talked, Hoppy recalled the sleepless night before the engagement, the early issue of the rum tot and the last-minute instructions from platoon corporals and company sergeants.

He recalled how when the whistles blew at 5:05 A.M., he went “over the top” with his Lee Enfield rifle, firing in the general direction of the enemy. He told me he was crying, laughing, praying and firing his gun all at the same time. The world was exploding around him, and heavy artillery barrages took out many of his friends. Machine gun bullets whistled past close to his ears. Hoppy continued running forward, closer and closer to the centre of a narrow valley where there was no cover and in which he and his comrades were exposed to a horrendous bombardment from an unseen enemy. This was the first wave.

Then it happened. He was hit.

Momentum caused him to fall forward, face down in the weeds and mud. He tried to get up and continue. But he couldn’t.

He soon realized his leg had been blown off between the knee and the hip. As he slowly drifted into merciful unconsciousness, Hoppy Hopkins’s last vision was that of an odd-shaped steeple of a village church just over the top of the sloping hill in front of him.

The sounds of war, the flashes of artillery fire and the pungent smell of cordite all disappeared from the senses of young Hoppy Hopkins.

Some long hours later, he awoke in a field hospital, tended by a surgeon and a nurse. It was then that the nurse told him she thought the location of the battle was just outside the French village of Peace.

Three days after our long chat, the entire Canadian delegation breakfasted together. While preparing to board the bus for a scheduled visit to Beaumont Hamel, the memorial to the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, Hoppy felt a bit under the weather. After examining him, our doctor suggested he remain behind and not participate in the scheduled events for that day. As a conducting officer, I was detailed to stay with Hoppy in case he needed help— or, if he later felt better, to drive him to rejoin the tour.

Within a couple of hours, Hoppy felt better—and guilty about missing the day’s events. At his insistence, we climbed into our rented car, and with a Michelin map of Northern France set off like a pair of Canadian tourists in an attempt to catch up to the rest of the group.

No sooner had we agreed upon the best route to the memorial at Beaumont Hamel than we arrived at a construction detour in the highway. Not knowing which alternate route our tour bus had taken earlier, we made our choice and headed east. The numbers of sheep, cows and livestock we encountered along the way attested to the fact that this was definitely not a major highway.

As we travelled through the picturesque countryside of France, we were silent as we enjoyed the sights. Besides, driving this twisting, winding highway was taking all of my attention.