Some years ago a noted senior surgeon in Lotus City often sang during his surgical procedure as he toiled away freeing up the gall bladder or small bowel, or whatever. He appeared to know only one tune; sang it softly , or hummed, but always audibly. I think it relaxed him in his work and he was often unaware that he was singing. Sometimes he would catch himself, as if he was always in command, and look fixedly at his scrub. He had a commanding presence and could fix you with his eye and say something like "Fresh Fish" and you might think an important message was delivered since his phrases always had a certain sonority.
     Though singing is not that uncommon in routine surgical procedures, it is usually during the closure and when the mood lightens. Most surgeons that sing have a very modest repertoire to draw on and will drone on tonelessly, but it is relaxing to the staff to know that the operator is at least content with the progress of their case. The senior one of whom I speak apparently knew only the hymn, Nearer My God to Thee, which he sang at occurring intervals during the procedure, not always at the most relaxed time. Thankfully the patients, at least the pessimists, in those days were almost always asleep, not overhearing the hymn as a premonition of some trip they were unwilling to take. On the other hand the more optimistic of the patients may well have considered that they were simply being operated on by a saintly man whose connection with God was immediate and proximate. Since, however, they all lay blissfully ignorant of the heavenly melody that was mercilessly massacred by the operator, they could be reassured that their organ, which he had in his hands was treated with more skill and care than any organ with which he may have attempted to accompany his hymn.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons forbids intimate relations with patients on pain of loss of one's licence to practice Medicine. This was stressed in our training for years. At the time of my testing I was a junior intern working  that night on my rotation in the Emergency department of the Vancouver General Hospital. Things had settled down by one am when a cab driver suddenly broke into the room in a panic.
   "I have a woman having a baby in my cab."
   "Well take her to Obstetrics , not here ," said the nurse.
   "She's having it in my cab."
   "Let's go look." I said.
He and I ran down the hall and out to the cab which was still running with the rear door wide open. There she was in the dark, half sitting and half lying on the back seat, panting frantically,wet and sticky from the waist down, dressed in a nighty with one slipper on, looking fearful.
    I said to her," I'm going to feel where the baby is," and crawled into the cab beside her.
    I yelled at the cab driver, " Go to Obstetrics."
The Obstetrical building was across the quadrangle from the Emergency. As I felt the oncoming head under the nighty it was crowning and she had stopped panting.
    "Pant" I said, "Pant and don't push; don't push, just open your mouth and pant."
    "Go to Obstetrics," I said as the cab driver still looked at us.
    "Where?"
     "That building in front of you with the light on that says Obstetrics. Just go straight across."
    "Where do I park?"
    "Don't park. Head for the door."
He started with a lurch and as I looked up, my hand still under the nighty, I saw two small children about two or three ,standing on the seat by their mother, wide eyed and silent, watching me. Then the head started to descend.
    "Pant, stop pushing. Pant"
He  stopped at the door and thank goodness Emergency had called ahead and three people and a gurney were at the door.
    "Keep panting." I said as she carefully slid off the back seat.
    "You can let go now." said the Resident in Obstetrics, "We usually use gloves for that.
    "Resident prick", I thought, "any occasion useful to pontificate.
    As she lay on the gurney I said to her, "Don't worry about your kids."
She put both arms around my neck and gave me a big wet kiss on the mouth and then disappeared into the hall and up the elevator. We had never talked but the connection was real.
     The cab driver said to me, "What about my fare?"
     "What about it? Don't you know how important you were? That seems good enough. And, you can't keep the kids"
I guess I was feeling euphoric about the turn of events and had found an acceptable definition of intimacy in medical practice and it was good.

!A beautiful allusion of a psychiatric nature manifest in the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Though most deconstructions have centered on the political, the psychological lessons are masterful and fully developed only if you read Frank Baum"s book. Like most authors, Baum's book is a reflection of aspects of himself.
   Dorothy is the psychologically integrated self and therefore the least interesting. The Wizard is a chameleon and therefore a disintegrated self. The trio of Dorothy's co-adventurers are the more easily understandable and have the more interesting pathology. Even though the trio eventually recognized the Wizard was a humbug they clung to the crutch he offered. Or was he a humbug? The analyst returns to you a little of your own juices and calls it treatment. He can't give you what you already have. He just puts a knob on the door to yourself.
      Did the Lion recognize his courage other than by the faith in a placebo, a draft of courage he was given, fished up by the Wizard? He didn't know he always had courage. He found it had always been there when it was apparent to him the Wizard was not a whiz. Did the Scarecrow suddenly get his brains from a magical source in Oz? He didn't twig to the fact that he was always smart until the Wizard took his head off and inserted pins and needles mixed in bran. Being sharp with a bit more bran new brain he realized he was always that way. That's when we realize what we seek was already there in spades and we just needed a topping up of the same stuff. Did the Tinman get a heart other than a silk valentine from the Cardiowizard inserting it with a can opener into the chest? Nonsense! The Tinman always had a heart , but his heart was in the right place, his head. He just didn't recognize it. None of this trio realized their gifts till they combined their brains ,courage and love with helping Dorothy to get home.
    Who knows what is below the topsoil of Frank Baum's masterpiece. On the surface it seems an exploration of the human condition. There are two bookends to every story, the author and the intent, the reader and the understanding. What he said and what I heard. They may not be the same. It may not be important that they are the same! Just look where the roots live.

In December of 2009 our little Anglican Church bells were tolled three hundred and fifty times in support of the Copenhagen Conference of the world on climate change. It was acknowledged then, that global warming pollution and wildlife extinction were the defining issue of our lifetimes. Other churches chimed in but we had the only bell tower so bell ringers from near and far in the community at large including children came to ring with us. All participated. This was a World Council of Churches initiative.
 When one thinks of John Donne (1572-1631) , his poem tells us we are all one.
    No man is an island,
    Entire of itself,
    Every man is a piece of the continent,
    A part of the main.
    If a clod be washed away by the sea,
    Europe is the less.
     As well as if a promontory were,
     As well a if a manor of thy friend's
     Or of thine own were:
     Any man's death diminishes me,
     Because I am involved in mankind,
     And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
     It tolls for thee.
The meditation is as gripping now as it was then. That reflection makes me think of the exchange between Scrooge and the ghost of Jacob Marley.  (Scrooge)---"But you were always a good man of business Jacob!" (Marley)--"-Business, Mankind was my business! The common welfare was my business: charity.
, mercy, forbearance and benevolence. "  It's no accident that the awakening  of Scrooge was occasioned by the striking of the heavy bells. He remained awake. The pianist observed to me that the bell is the archetypal marker that always has and always will signal us to awake.

Though not as well known as the Cypress Hills, the Touchwood Hills are another height of land left by the glacier as it receded. The Touchwood Hills are the point of land where Henry Kelsey, the great overland explorer, turned back east after his epic travel ( 1690- 1692), a century before any other recorded white man traveled the area. A cairn marks the area and I grew up there. Our little town became sequestered from the Muskowekwan Reserve when the Grand Trunk Railway was built and a depot was needed.The original treaty was signed by the Cree chief Muscowequan in 1874 at Fort Qu'Appelle with the other chiefs of Little and Big Touchwood Hills.
     My friend and I, living in the town that evolved from the depot, played organized midget hockey with the Indian team from the Oblate Fathers Mission School .The Cree Nation boys from the Muskowekwan welcomed the two of us and we always felt part of things. We never felt white when we were there. There is nothing like sport to unite young men. The outdoor rink we practised on in the winter time was at the Mission. and the roads there were bad and never ploughed. A batchelor farmer who liked to watch hockey always took the two of us out to the Mission on the back of his tractor in the winter. He always went to the "coast" later. He told us it didn't snow in Burnaby. I remember thinking a lot about Burnaby as we bucked through the drifts. As we stood behind him on the tractor, wind with driving snow whistled by our cheek, holding onto the seat of the tractor for dear life as the tractor bucked the drifts, not much to stand on, I said to myself, "One day I will go to Burnaby!"

My young Irish Setter was still younger than a year old. He was across the tracks at the Pool elevator since he liked the smell of rats.He was not supposed to be there.He was still young enough that he lacked savvy and had separation anxiety in new situations.I first noticed him when I was standing on the platform, the freight train was standing waiting for orders. Then I heard the freight  start to move with that characteristic squeal of axels mobilizing and as I looked under the boxcar, as it was moving with a very low pace, I could see Rusty trying to crawl over the tracks under the boxcar. He made several tentative passes. I yelled at him to no avail. As he tried to slip under the moving boxcar to the platform where I was standing a rear wheel caught him in the midsection. I watched in horror as long freight train wheels passed repeatedly over his body. I ran into the kitchen where my mother comforted me. Bill, the Pool elevator operator and my dad stayed outside after the freight  pulled away. Then my dad came into the station and said, " You have to pick up your dog and bury him." My mother and Bill said, "He can't do that." My dad said I had to do that: it was the only way. So I picked up the two parts of my dog and put him in the wheelbarrow and went about 500 yards down the right-of-way and buried him near the tracks.
    I'm not sure what my dad was thinking, or why, but then I'm not sure he was wrong. I guess  no matter what, we have to face our grief head on. We cannot sanitize the events of our lives. Sorrow and joy are always present in life and  serve to make us whole.Doing what I did probably allowed me to participate in the life and death of something I loved. At fifteen I suddenly took a further step into becoming a big boy. Living on the tracks of the CNR mainline with ten to fifteen trains a day is really no place for a dog. Paradoxically he died trying to get to me for safety. I buried him in the right-of-way where he belonged. It was my turn for him.

Over a hundred high school students on weekdays make a journey of an hour or so each way to and from the high school back to their island homes by water. We are island people and water is our highway.We live in a Southern Gulf Island area with four outer islands and a larger Lotus island with the high school  serving the entire area. These gulf islands lie, or more properly bask, in what is now called the Salish Sea. Every weekday the pianist and I watch the two large water buses, The Scholar and The Graduate, transporting their precious cargo to and fro, passing our harbour side window leaving for the outer islands at 6:45 am, returning at 8:15 am and transporting the students home later in the afternoon. The commitment of society on these islands to education and scholarship is enormous. The commitment of the youth is exemplified by the sacrifice of time due to the travel required. The winter in northern waters, while largely inshore water. is periodically rough and cold and dark at the times of coming and going! If you are prepared to put that much time and effort into getting an education, it follows that you take yourself seriously. You have the right to be taken seriously by everyone else as well.
    The curious thing about it all  is this trip through the islands is one of the country's, nay, one of the world's major beauty spots, even from time to time in the winter, but the students, so take it for granted, that it's old hat. As they get older and depart the islands they will come to realize I am sure, the incredible nature of their school journeys. In the meantime, as they travel, they have fun, talk a lot, text a lot, do their homework, and never bother much looking out of the window.

!Wallace Stegner was a professor of literature at Stanford and lived his early life in the dry land of the Palliser Triangle of Saskatchewan. His book Wolf Willow is a Canadian Classic. He describes going to the ice house to provide meat for the family, chopping it off the side of beef. My mother often sent me to the ice house to saw off a chunk of beef from our rock hard carcass. By then I was stronger than her and could return with a chunk but had no idea if it was steak or roast or whatever. She was okay with that. I guess I thought if it was okay for Stegner, a guy from California, it was okay for us. I thought they must know stuff !  However I avoided discussing my butchery when I started to go out with the pianist. Her father was "a dollar a year" man for the rationing board of the Federal government and responsible for implementing rationing by way of the meat charts and strict adherence to the requisite cutting and selling  by meat cutters. It was his volunteer role during the war and for him meat rationing was the holy grail.I imagined the scorn he would have applied to me had he known of my butchery when I was applying for his daughter's hand. It wouldn't have helped if I told him a Californian professor of literature did it too. He may have concluded Orthopedic Surgery would be equally too demanding for me, as identifying meat cuts apparently were!

 In 1943 I was nine years old, at home in Kindersley Saskatchewan. The war was on and food was scarce and choices limited. My mother was a quick cook with no frills but it was always good. With one exception!  She made tomato soup with milk and canned tomatoes and never bothered to remove the tomato cores. I hated that soup. I hated the soft, sloppy, slimy, tomato gobs attached to the cores that floated in the soup. I would sit and gag for hours over it but got no relief. My parents would not bail me out no matter how long I sat. I said to my dad after a particularly long session, just to give him an idea about the seriousness of my situation, "I'd sooner eat shit." I remember this as vividly as if it was yesterday. It was in the dead of winter then. He went out to the roadway and picked up three frozen road apples. He brought them in the house, arranged them on a plate, put ketchup on them and said, "Take your choice." I ate the soup.
   Frozen road apples  were usually piled up to act as goal posts for road shinny and also to be a puck. I never in the past considered them useful to encourage eating in childhood. In the meantime, in Saskatchewan, when a contrived and non deft argument is made to a parent, the apt metaphor is , "Don't eat that Elmer, that's horse shit." I now have two great grandchildren and have learned to never give  food advice.

As I was coiling up my hoses I heard the little green tree frog with his mighty voice summoning all or any females to his side. Telus uses them in their ads along with lambs and lizards gamboling about. My friend, a greenhouse man, keeps a little green tree frog in his greenhouse ostensibly to eat insects. Certainly this and other species are not interested in food when  in a state of unrequited love. When I tried my friend's tactic I found my prisoner quiet and withered away on the vine. I think there was pining and wasting away because of unfulfillment. To employ a frog to do your dirty work eating your insects in the guise of being organic is no excuse. Think of his feelings. He is a brief enough candle a it is, working for Telus, living in the great big world, singing, seeking, procreating, and just surviving the environmental degradation to which he is so vulnerable. A you know he is the canary in the coal mine. He won't live beyond his allotted life span outside the greenhouse but toiling in the workhouse is probably worse. Slavery! Too little to fight back. There isn't anything wrong with a short but happy life of freedom.  We need to stop harnessing every single  living thing in nature for our own use. Listen to the little green frog sing!  Sing, ---"-Let it be----Let it be----Let it be----Let it be, Whisper words of wisdom, let it be."