Guys, I don’t know what to write about.
Not that I have too little to opine about, but too much.
I mean, not only are there things like the passing of Clay or the return of Makena Lloyd Howe to town, this time as a star player with the U18 BC Women’s Hockey Team (she scored two of the four goals during their first game as Team BC beat Ontario Blue 4-2).
For those of you who don’t know, the BC team came to Tumbler to practice on Saturday, Nov 4 before their first game.
After practice, the team took some time to skate around with a couple of the TR teams, playing Asteroids (that’s where you skate from one side of the ice to the other while other players stand against the boards and shoot pucks at your skates; if you get hit, you have to join the shooters) and just visiting and having fun with the smaller players.
I’ve seen meet and greets before where it’s … pro forma. Where the stars are just there because they have to be there. But the U18 was out there genuinely having a good time hanging out with the Tumbler players.
But I’ve been also wanting to talk about the whole Gaza/Israel thing, too. I see so many people siding with one side or the other, when really, both sides are doing atrocious things to each other. The whole thing is a series of bad behaviours. Yes, Hamas kidnapped 242 Israelis and killed 1400 people, most of them civilians. But Israel has now killed at least 10,000 people, more than 4000 of them children.
At least, if you believe any of those numbers. People are lying and spinning the news into whatever pretzel-shaped messaging that paints themselves in the best light.
But on both sides, people have died. Are still dying. For king and country and whatever other reason that motivates one person to want to take another person’s life, or sacrifice their own.
I’m not saying don’t have political views. But when those views push over into praising killing children in the name of whatever ideology you subscribe to, it’s not something that I can get behind.
Instead of using civilians as shields or hostages or whatever, I think we should set aside an island up in the arctic—say, the Royal Geographical Society Island, which has an area of 458 square kilometres—and just send anybody who wants to fight over a territory or country up there with baseball bats and they can either slug it out or play best four games out of nine. Whichever they want to do, winner gets the land back home.
Actually, maybe it would be better to pick a tropical island. Send them to Bora Bora. Set up a wrestling match after a few mai-tais, snorkling with the sting rays, maybe a massage on the beach. Then tell them that the winner of their little battle gets to go back to their desert homes, while the losers are stuck in a tropical paradise for the rest of their lives and see if that changes their perspective. How much they’d want to fight for that 30 square feet of desert if the alternative was hanging out on the beach for the rest of their lives….
But it’s hard. Express sympathy for either side and you’re either anti-semitic or anti-Muslim. It’s tough when you say things like “I don’t like when innocent people get killed,” and people interpret it as “I hate Jews.” Or Muslims. Or Palestinians. Or Israelis. Especially when sometimes, some people are saying exactly that.
It’s okay to say what Hamas did was wrong. And Israel’s response? Also wrong. You can choose the side that yearns for peace.
Okay. So that was a little heavy. Don’t worry. It gets worse. Because yesterday, I learned that Wayne died. Wayne is the first person from my graduating class to pass, and it’s got me in one of those moods.
We weren’t close. Indeed, when I saw the post from one of my classmates, I blew past it at first, not recognizing the name.
But then the combination of the name and the fact that it was Joey who had posted it made me stop and scroll back. Then look at the pictures in Wayne’s feed. Then send a note off to a couple people—more social than I—asking them “is this our Wayne?”
In school, Wayne was a wiry, scrawny metalhead. You probably know the type. Had more attitude than sense. Used to always punch me in the arm, I never knew if it was an act of affection or if he was picking on me.
He wasn’t a bad guy, just not someone that I would have considered a Friend. Not that there’s a lot of people I consider capital F Friend.
But after he graduated (the last time I saw him) he got married. Had kids. Heck, he was a grandpa. Grandpa Wayne. There’s pictures on Facebook of him with his grandkids, and he looks so happy. Like someone I should have got to know better when I had the chance, and now I no longer have the chance.
Life is short. I still have plans to write a book about Tumbler Ridge, as told through the eyes of the people who live here. I was going to talk to Clay about it, but I can’t do that anymore.
It seems like just yesterday I was moving here, back when it was all shiny and new, but it has been longer since the town just about died in 2000 to now than the 16 years Quintette mine was operating.
So many people from then have come and gone. Some have moved. Fred Banham, who Harry references, is alive and well and living in the Okanagan. Others have died. Perry Giles survived being caught in a blast out at Quintette, only to pass away of natural causes a couple years ago, again, before I could talk to him for this (still highly theoretical) book.
People come, people go. Some make a dent in the world. Others leave fingerprints on our souls. Some simply vanish.
We do the same to others. Will we help shape who they are for the better, building them up? Or will we leave scars, our words cutting deep into their soul, our actions leaving them bleeding?
I will fail—have failed so. many. times. already—but I choose to at least try to build up rather than tear down.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
