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bjarvisA community's culture is a mélange of a number of different factors: language, customs, religion, education, personal interconnections, social hierarchy and such. I have frequently said I don't understand much about the local culture around me here in the suburbs of Washington DC. The more I think about the past however, the less I think I ever had a clue what the hell was going on in the very community in which I was raised.
My religious upbringing was relatively confused. Dad almost never stepped foot in a church in his life but Mom was persuaded that she needed her children to get some form of religion. I still haven't figured out if it was because she thought we needed it, because she thought she was obliged as a parent and community member to do this or because she just wanted to dress up and get out of the house from time to time.
Charlton (pop 160) had no fewer than five churches: Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Anglican and United Church of Canada. Dad's family was nominally Anglican while Mom's was nominally UCC but we began our religious life in the local Pentecostal church. Go figure.
I suspect it was largely because Mom's closest friend was Roberta Booker, wife of the Pentecostal minister, Bob Booker. I also have a strong suspicion that the Pentecostals were simply more welcoming to relatively new arrivals: St. Paul's, the United Church which one might think the more obvious choice, was dominated by large and long established families. It's not that they were disparaging of new members, but new arrivals tend to be chased back south again after the first bad winter. One can save a lot of time & energy by waiting 5-10 years to welcome folks to the neighbourhood. Some religions deny darwinism, some accept it, but St. Paul's embraced it an unofficial membership policy.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were other explanations for Mom's choices but Mom's decisions frequently defy logic. The moment I recognized and simply accepted her peculiar brand of irrationality was the moment my migraines stopped.
We attended that small Pentecostal church for at least three years, until I was about 7. Eventually, the congregation merged with the vastly larger one in neighbouring Englehart with their relatively huge new mega-church building. It wasn't much of a mega-church by today's standards of 50,000+ congregants, but the new building with seating for several hundred was larger than any other in town except for the schools, hockey arena and curling rink. It was prominently located along the nearby highway, angled for maximum visibility to the passers-by. I don't recall them having any social or charity programs but no expense was spared on the exterior building lighting, billboards and landscaping. Bob & Roberta briefly attended the new facility as congregants but moved away shortly thereafter. We never went.
If there was a golden age in my religious life, this was it: I think there were nearly seven solid years in which I had my Sundays to myself. After all, what was the point of a day of rest when one had to work harder than the other six days getting dressed and made presentable just to make an appearance for a 60-90 minute community service?
It didn't help that I harbored a dark secret: I didn't believe any of it.
Creating a universe in seven days? Creating a woman out of a rib? Spontaneously creating enough water to destroy a planet with floods but then conveniently zapping the same water out of existence again? A deity who loves us unconditionally but routinely commits genocide? A deity and his virgin-born son who are actually three entities? And it's all going to end in a planetary deity-endorsed catastrophe?
It might have been easier to accept in small sips but I gulped it down in my usual all-in fashion: unfortunately, the entire package, inconsistencies and all, struck me as too much to swallow. It didn't help that so much was accompanied by "don't ask such questions," "because I said so" and "because it is." A child's embryonic cynicism is watered and fertilized on such statements. In my mind, both the message and the messengers were tainted and I soon developed my own personal, most horrific insult: the sources were unreliable.
Reliable sources are able to say "I don't know," "let's think this through," and "let's look it up together." Reliable sources know there is a difference between questioning the material & conclusions and questioning the character of the person offering it. Unreliable sources conflate the message and their personal role, dismiss the question or the questioner, use intellectual hand-waving to distract attention from the issue and use their authority to avoid dealing directly with the problem. In the fairy tale, it was a child who declared the emperor had no clothes. I wasn't brave enough to say it --all actions have consequences-- but it was clear to my young eyes the emperor was buck naked.
And ultimately, my next lesson in religion was that it didn't really matter what I believed so long as I went through the motions of the public ceremony and didn't rock the metaphoric boat. The effect this revelation had my escalating cynicism is left as an exercise to the reader.
Religion also didn't matter in other ways in our tiny little rural world. Sure, some families said grace before meals. A few went to evening services beyond their usual Sunday morning service. Religion and prayer, however, were not going to put food on the table or keep a roof over one's head: practical matters had to be dealt with by real-world effort, not hymns and sermons.
Each local denomination worked well with the others. On occasion, services for one denomination would be held at the church of another while their own was undergoing renovation or repair. I often wondered why they bothered having separate churches and services at all since they all appeared to believe the same thing. Children miss the subtle nuances of different slivers of the same general faith although I still am amazed how such minute details have been allowed to create such intense and long-standing fissures.
The most devout lot in our general community were the Jehovah Witnesses. I knew they were radically different in their religious views: the two or three JW kids would leave the classroom during the morning prayer and national anthem. Where did they go? Did they just hang out in the hallway for a few minutes or did they have some special but brief class elsewhere in the building? What earned them the special status? A child's mind incessantly toils on such grave matters.
If there was any sort of societal split, it was linguistic but even that wasn't much of a barrier.
About one third of the District of Temiskaming, our regional association of 17 townships, spoke french as their primary language, the rest english. This isn't an even distribution, however: languages tended to clump by towns. Englehart and Charlton were nearly exclusively english; Earlton and Belle Vallee were nearly exclusively french. Hailebury and Cobalt were english but New Liskeard and Thornloe were mixed.
Still, the language variations didn't really matter. English was effectively the primary language of business because of the larger numbers although smart businesses ensured they could do commerce in each. Government publications and services were available in both, although some offices employed a three-way telephone call to bring a government interpreter into the conversation.
My parents spoke only english but I learned french in elementary school from grade one onwards. Being ever the nerd, I also took french immersion in grade six --all courses except english & music taught in french-- and had intensive french courses from grades seven through 13 rather than the usual french-lite classes most others took. My brother and I were occasionally used as interpreters by our parents but it was a mercifully rare event: while I can speak the language, I'm still all too aware of my imperfect understanding and stumbling speaking ability. My english skills are above average and is unfortunately a constant reminder that my abilities in french aren't of the same proficiency, nor are ever likely to be. I don't deal well with intellectual failure.
Social outlets were few. By the time we were in elementary school, my brother and I could have joined the township's 4H club but after a couple of meetings, we let it go. Again, it was populated and maintained by the established families who hadn't yet warmed up to the new arrivals. I overheard at least one mother tell her children not to bother with us because we'd be move away soon... After all, we had only just moved in five years previous.
The ultimate reason for not continuing with 4H was simply that I hated farming with the white-hot fury of a thousand suns: farming brought us to this isolated place, farming brought us to poverty, farming make us the daily playthings of banks and markets. The idea of discussing the joy of farming during our spare time away from actually doing it made me nauseous.
The Englehart kids had a boy scout troop but we laughed that off immediately: they went into the wilderness for weekend adventures but we lived in that same wilderness every day. I already knew a thousand ways to die out there; intentionally wandering into the hunting ranges of wolf packs and bears just didn't strike me as a fun time. Here's a tip, however: if you don't know who the group has singled out to be left behind as a distraction while the others escape, it's probably you.
Mom had her monthly Women's Institute meetings. Honestly, I have no idea what the WI was about or what they did. As near as I could tell, it was a regular get-together at a member's house of the area women, away from their husbands, children and responsibilities, to simply chat and bond over tea and sandwiches. And that alone seems sensible and practical enough to justify the practice in my ever-so-humble opinion.
There were two WI groups in our township. The Dack Women's Institute group met in the northern part of the township; Mom's group, the Sunday Creek Women's Institute, was in our immediate neighbourhood. As near as I know, each had 25-30 members. I wish I could say more as they dominated my mother's social life and fostered her social connections but that's all I have. Some day, I'll ask Mom for more details but if she starts talking about conspiracies, secret ceremonies and special handshakes, I'll probably just have her committed.
Dad's social life? Good question. Dad has always been a relatively quiet, private individual; I still know very little about him. He had a couple of friends in the general area whom he would visit for a few beers. He also went to the Commercial Tavern in Englehart to meet with the guys. I wasn't privy to any of this. Even after reaching the legal drinking age (19 in Ontario), I never stepped foot in the local tavern or accompanied Dad on any his bonding visits. It just wasn't his way, or mine. I didn't pry and we both intuitively knew that his idea of a night on the town and mine --as well as that of his friends-- were almost entirely mutually exclusive.
Let's summarize: realistic social bonds take nearly a decade to form, my parents had their periodic distractions and I didn't really fit in anywhere. Sounds like a great time, doesn't it?
My religious upbringing was relatively confused. Dad almost never stepped foot in a church in his life but Mom was persuaded that she needed her children to get some form of religion. I still haven't figured out if it was because she thought we needed it, because she thought she was obliged as a parent and community member to do this or because she just wanted to dress up and get out of the house from time to time.
Charlton (pop 160) had no fewer than five churches: Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Anglican and United Church of Canada. Dad's family was nominally Anglican while Mom's was nominally UCC but we began our religious life in the local Pentecostal church. Go figure.
I suspect it was largely because Mom's closest friend was Roberta Booker, wife of the Pentecostal minister, Bob Booker. I also have a strong suspicion that the Pentecostals were simply more welcoming to relatively new arrivals: St. Paul's, the United Church which one might think the more obvious choice, was dominated by large and long established families. It's not that they were disparaging of new members, but new arrivals tend to be chased back south again after the first bad winter. One can save a lot of time & energy by waiting 5-10 years to welcome folks to the neighbourhood. Some religions deny darwinism, some accept it, but St. Paul's embraced it an unofficial membership policy.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were other explanations for Mom's choices but Mom's decisions frequently defy logic. The moment I recognized and simply accepted her peculiar brand of irrationality was the moment my migraines stopped.
We attended that small Pentecostal church for at least three years, until I was about 7. Eventually, the congregation merged with the vastly larger one in neighbouring Englehart with their relatively huge new mega-church building. It wasn't much of a mega-church by today's standards of 50,000+ congregants, but the new building with seating for several hundred was larger than any other in town except for the schools, hockey arena and curling rink. It was prominently located along the nearby highway, angled for maximum visibility to the passers-by. I don't recall them having any social or charity programs but no expense was spared on the exterior building lighting, billboards and landscaping. Bob & Roberta briefly attended the new facility as congregants but moved away shortly thereafter. We never went.
If there was a golden age in my religious life, this was it: I think there were nearly seven solid years in which I had my Sundays to myself. After all, what was the point of a day of rest when one had to work harder than the other six days getting dressed and made presentable just to make an appearance for a 60-90 minute community service?
It didn't help that I harbored a dark secret: I didn't believe any of it.
Creating a universe in seven days? Creating a woman out of a rib? Spontaneously creating enough water to destroy a planet with floods but then conveniently zapping the same water out of existence again? A deity who loves us unconditionally but routinely commits genocide? A deity and his virgin-born son who are actually three entities? And it's all going to end in a planetary deity-endorsed catastrophe?
It might have been easier to accept in small sips but I gulped it down in my usual all-in fashion: unfortunately, the entire package, inconsistencies and all, struck me as too much to swallow. It didn't help that so much was accompanied by "don't ask such questions," "because I said so" and "because it is." A child's embryonic cynicism is watered and fertilized on such statements. In my mind, both the message and the messengers were tainted and I soon developed my own personal, most horrific insult: the sources were unreliable.
Reliable sources are able to say "I don't know," "let's think this through," and "let's look it up together." Reliable sources know there is a difference between questioning the material & conclusions and questioning the character of the person offering it. Unreliable sources conflate the message and their personal role, dismiss the question or the questioner, use intellectual hand-waving to distract attention from the issue and use their authority to avoid dealing directly with the problem. In the fairy tale, it was a child who declared the emperor had no clothes. I wasn't brave enough to say it --all actions have consequences-- but it was clear to my young eyes the emperor was buck naked.
And ultimately, my next lesson in religion was that it didn't really matter what I believed so long as I went through the motions of the public ceremony and didn't rock the metaphoric boat. The effect this revelation had my escalating cynicism is left as an exercise to the reader.
Religion also didn't matter in other ways in our tiny little rural world. Sure, some families said grace before meals. A few went to evening services beyond their usual Sunday morning service. Religion and prayer, however, were not going to put food on the table or keep a roof over one's head: practical matters had to be dealt with by real-world effort, not hymns and sermons.
Each local denomination worked well with the others. On occasion, services for one denomination would be held at the church of another while their own was undergoing renovation or repair. I often wondered why they bothered having separate churches and services at all since they all appeared to believe the same thing. Children miss the subtle nuances of different slivers of the same general faith although I still am amazed how such minute details have been allowed to create such intense and long-standing fissures.
The most devout lot in our general community were the Jehovah Witnesses. I knew they were radically different in their religious views: the two or three JW kids would leave the classroom during the morning prayer and national anthem. Where did they go? Did they just hang out in the hallway for a few minutes or did they have some special but brief class elsewhere in the building? What earned them the special status? A child's mind incessantly toils on such grave matters.
If there was any sort of societal split, it was linguistic but even that wasn't much of a barrier.
About one third of the District of Temiskaming, our regional association of 17 townships, spoke french as their primary language, the rest english. This isn't an even distribution, however: languages tended to clump by towns. Englehart and Charlton were nearly exclusively english; Earlton and Belle Vallee were nearly exclusively french. Hailebury and Cobalt were english but New Liskeard and Thornloe were mixed.
Still, the language variations didn't really matter. English was effectively the primary language of business because of the larger numbers although smart businesses ensured they could do commerce in each. Government publications and services were available in both, although some offices employed a three-way telephone call to bring a government interpreter into the conversation.
My parents spoke only english but I learned french in elementary school from grade one onwards. Being ever the nerd, I also took french immersion in grade six --all courses except english & music taught in french-- and had intensive french courses from grades seven through 13 rather than the usual french-lite classes most others took. My brother and I were occasionally used as interpreters by our parents but it was a mercifully rare event: while I can speak the language, I'm still all too aware of my imperfect understanding and stumbling speaking ability. My english skills are above average and is unfortunately a constant reminder that my abilities in french aren't of the same proficiency, nor are ever likely to be. I don't deal well with intellectual failure.
Social outlets were few. By the time we were in elementary school, my brother and I could have joined the township's 4H club but after a couple of meetings, we let it go. Again, it was populated and maintained by the established families who hadn't yet warmed up to the new arrivals. I overheard at least one mother tell her children not to bother with us because we'd be move away soon... After all, we had only just moved in five years previous.
The ultimate reason for not continuing with 4H was simply that I hated farming with the white-hot fury of a thousand suns: farming brought us to this isolated place, farming brought us to poverty, farming make us the daily playthings of banks and markets. The idea of discussing the joy of farming during our spare time away from actually doing it made me nauseous.
The Englehart kids had a boy scout troop but we laughed that off immediately: they went into the wilderness for weekend adventures but we lived in that same wilderness every day. I already knew a thousand ways to die out there; intentionally wandering into the hunting ranges of wolf packs and bears just didn't strike me as a fun time. Here's a tip, however: if you don't know who the group has singled out to be left behind as a distraction while the others escape, it's probably you.
Mom had her monthly Women's Institute meetings. Honestly, I have no idea what the WI was about or what they did. As near as I could tell, it was a regular get-together at a member's house of the area women, away from their husbands, children and responsibilities, to simply chat and bond over tea and sandwiches. And that alone seems sensible and practical enough to justify the practice in my ever-so-humble opinion.
There were two WI groups in our township. The Dack Women's Institute group met in the northern part of the township; Mom's group, the Sunday Creek Women's Institute, was in our immediate neighbourhood. As near as I know, each had 25-30 members. I wish I could say more as they dominated my mother's social life and fostered her social connections but that's all I have. Some day, I'll ask Mom for more details but if she starts talking about conspiracies, secret ceremonies and special handshakes, I'll probably just have her committed.
Dad's social life? Good question. Dad has always been a relatively quiet, private individual; I still know very little about him. He had a couple of friends in the general area whom he would visit for a few beers. He also went to the Commercial Tavern in Englehart to meet with the guys. I wasn't privy to any of this. Even after reaching the legal drinking age (19 in Ontario), I never stepped foot in the local tavern or accompanied Dad on any his bonding visits. It just wasn't his way, or mine. I didn't pry and we both intuitively knew that his idea of a night on the town and mine --as well as that of his friends-- were almost entirely mutually exclusive.
Let's summarize: realistic social bonds take nearly a decade to form, my parents had their periodic distractions and I didn't really fit in anywhere. Sounds like a great time, doesn't it?
