The Obits

If you are of a certain age there is probably nothing that questions our mortality more than reading obituaries. A lot of us older folks read them. My guess is that many wonder when that fickle finger of fate will be selecting us. The whole subject can be a bit macabre but as humans we are curious creatures.

I first started reading obits in the newspapers years ago on the 2 hour ferry ride between Vancouver and Vancouver Island. This would have been after I had scanned the news and sports and before I took a stab at the crossword puzzle.

I would often read obits of people who were total strangers, particularly if there was some content on how they lived their lives. A lot of folks are lasting until their late 80s and 90s these days. I found in Vancouver newspaper obits that many had moved to the west coast from many different small prairie towns once they were out of school or newly married. Moving and leaving their friends and families behind must have been a big decision.

Some who got divorced or had a wife or husband die spent their final years with “companions” or “partners”. I’ve sometimes wondered which family member gets to submit the obit. Is it necessary to list every obscure relative? They are only making one submission so why not put a bit of time and effort into it? Perhaps a few funny reminiscences? What did the deceased do with their lives? If it costs 20 more bucks to have a few more paragraphs printed, who cares at this point?

The obits are all on-line these days. I try and stick to the Montreal Gazette (I grew up in Montreal) and the Vancouver Province (I spent most of my adult life in the Vancouver area.) In a way, looking for a familiar name (or last name) is kind of like gold panning. A lot more misses than hits. In a way it is kind of like looking for some unique discovery. This isn’t to say that there isn’t any empathy when a familiar name is found. There always is.

We have all seen relationships come and go in our lives. People we once knew disappear in the rear view mirror. We may be able to reconnect briefly on the net but the experiences we shared when we were younger are all in the past which can be a bit hazy for some. That’s just the way life works.

I don’t know if it can be called “trolling” but every now and then I’ll check out Facebook or just Google a name from the past to see if they are still around and what they are up to these days. Sometimes it is just a dead end (no pun intended) and rarely have I initiated contact when I have found the person.

A week or so ago I Googled the name of a guy I hung out with sometimes over 50 years ago in Montreal. I found him with just one “click”. It turns out that he died in 2015 at the age of 69 in Alberta. He was several months older than me.

Gilbert Adrian Bushe (Gil)

October 5, 1946-February 6, 2015

 

 

The year was 1968. The Viet Nam War was raging and the US was split between the anti-war and pro war types. The Hippy culture was nearing it’s peak. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were both assassinated in 68’.

I travelled out to Vancouver that year with the hope of making my way to Australia. It didn’t work out and I ended up hitchhiking across the US and back to Montreal. My parents lived in the Montreal lakeshore community of Valois and I stayed at their place for a few months while I worked out my next move.

I needed some kind of job and got one at the nearby Fairview Shopping Centre working at the Simpson’s Department Store in Pointe Claire as a clerk. Simpson’s had a long history in Montreal and a large store on Ste Catherine Street in downtown Montreal. The company was partly owned by the American retailer Sears and the Canadian stores changed their name to Simpsons-Sears in 1972. The last Sears Canada store closed its doors in January of this year.

 

I was assigned to work in the hardware department at Simpson’s. The guy who was going to show me the ropes was Gil Bushe. I can still picture him today from our first meeting. Bell bottom pants, slip on Hush Puppy kind of shoes, and a wide tie that was the style at the time. Gil had black hair that was combed back and came almost to his shoulders. He also had a droopy mustache. His complexion was kind of olive and I think I guessed that he must have come from another country. It turned out that his parents were from India and I believe Gil’s mom and dad owned a beauty parlor (as they used to call those places) in the mall just a doorway or 2 away from Simpson’s.

I was immediately impressed with Gil’s confidence and casual manner. He didn’t seem like someone who could be rattled easily. Gil made it fun to come to work. We became friends right away. Gil and a few other employees organized a fishing trip on nearby Lac St. Louis that I participated in. I remember talk about how polluted the water was at the time and nobody wanting to eat whatever fish we caught. At the end of that day on the water I found that I had baked myself too much in the hot sun. My mother applied most of a jar of Noxema which eased the pain somewhat.

The reality is that I wasn’t at Simpson’s very long, at most a month. I do recall the turtles in the pet department and some kind of devise in the storeroom that added different colours to paint.

One day I was notified that the store manager wanted to see me. He told me that they were going to have to let me go. About 6 years previously I had stolen a red ascot from the downtown Eaton’s store and my name was recorded and shared with other department stores. I was a dead duck and by their rules I guess I was beyond redemption. For some odd reason the store manager thought my dismissal was an appropriate time to comment on the state of young people. He showed me a Life Magazine that had a piece, including a number of photos, on hippies doing their thing. None of them appeared to be wearing red ascots! What an ass!

Not long after losing my job I moved back into Montreal. Over the next 2 years I would give Gil a call every now and then and we would get together for a beer or two. The beers were always somewhere on the Lakeshore. Gil never seemed to have any interest in coming into town. Pointe Claire seemed to be his turf. One week night we ended up in the near empty Pointe Claire haunt The Edgewater. I ran into an old girlfriend I wasn’t fussy about and her and her girlfriend invited us back to her girlfriend’s apartment along with two other guys they had met that night. It didn’t take long to realize that this was kind of a stupid idea. I pulled the fire alarm on the way out of the building. Kind of a dumb thing to have done I guess.

In the summer of 69’ I spent about a week with a gal who was visiting from Philadelphia with a girlfriend. They were staying at The Holiday Inn on Sherbrooke near University St. The gal I was with told me that her girlfriend wanted to get laid pretty badly and asked if I could set her up with someone I knew. I phoned Gil but he was committed to other plans. Or so he said.

There was a period of time when I was living in a frat house in downtown Montreal where I didn’t have a phone. Gil was still living at home then and I can still remember his mom’s accent and politeness when I called. “I’m very sorry. Gil is not at home right now.”

I spent the first half of 1970 working as a purchasing agent for a company in Ville St. Laurent. It took a long time to get there each day from downtown Montreal. I worked out a deal with some Greeks who worked at the plant who would give me  a lift back and forth each day for a price. I can still remember gold teeth shining in the dark in the mornings when they picked me up.

I gave Gil a call as the summer was approaching and he asked me if I would be interested in going on a road trip with him down to the US. It took me only a few seconds to decide I was in on the plan. I believe we left on our trip in late June.

We were gone for about a week and I can’t remember chronologically where we went. I know we spent some time in the state of Maine and visited Boston.

At the time, Gil owned a Mustang fastback sports car. I think it was dark green in colour. It also had a big crack in the front window which made me a bit nervous. Gil was a bit of a speed freak and at times would be doing 120 mph. I pictured in my mind that window crack caving in at that fast a speed.

Mustang like Gil's

I hadn’t been to Maine since I was a kid when our family visited places like Old Orchard Beach and Kennebunk Port by the Atlantic Ocean. Strangely, one thing I remember seeing back then was a  trailer made out of a California redwood tree. Unbeknownst to me Gil had a plan to visit his ex girlfriend who was vacationing at Old Orchard Beach. If I remember correctly she had a new boyfriend who wasn’t with her at the time. Gil’s ex was Jewish and I remember thinking the two of them were an interesting combination considering Gils’s East Indian heritage.

Redwood trailer....something like this.

I’m pretty sure we brought out golf clubs with us because we played a round at Webhannett Golf Club in Kennebunk. I still have the scorecard.

 

We also visited Mount Desert Island and Cadillac Mountain in Maine. I remember both of us sleeping in the car one night and washing up and brushing our teeth in a nearby brook in the morning.

One night we were on a two lane blacktop highway winding our way through the mountains of western Massachusetts. A car behind us was using us as a guide and their headlights were glowing in our rear view mirror. This went on for some time until Gil decided to shake them. He accelerated and drove around a few curves before turning his headlights off. Once the car behind us caught up Gil turned his headlights back on. It must have freaked them out because they disappeared into the night.

I don’t recall much about our time in Boston other than spending part of a night in a sailor’s bar in the harbour area. The joint was a real dive with lots of US navy guys. A rock band was playing. Some drunk guy kept yelling for the band to play Sinatra’s New York, New York. That wasn’t going to happen.

When we got back to Montreal and I went back to work I was told that I was going to be laid off. I was really pissed off. I was good at my job. On top of that I had spent every last penny I had saved on the vacation.

I was living at a fraternity house at the top of University Street at the time and somehow ended up with the keys to the house that summer. I rented rooms to tourists for 10 bucks a night and pocketed the cash. It was a fun summer. In late August I took off to the West Coast. On the way back I stopped off in Toronto….. for close to 2 years. After that I only visited Montreal and spent most of my adult years in BC.

I guess the last time I talked to Gil was the time when I tried to set him up on a blind date. We drifted apart.

I remember Gil as a “sweet” guy….. a matter of fact sort of person….. very easy to get along with…..not a lot of pretenses.

In reading Gil’s obit I was a bit surprised to learn that he ended up in the Calgary area. Gil always seemed to like living in Pointe Claire so my guess is that the language issue in Quebec may have had something to do with his move. It appears that his family moved with him to Alberta or maybe he followed them.

I remember Gil as an outdoorsy kind of guy and Alberta may have been just his cup of tea.

Glad I met Gil. Still love road trips and fondly remember the one Gil and I shared.