Conrad Boyce is the editor and publisher of the Cosmos. He has a BA in English from the University of Alberta and a diploma in journalism from Grant Macewan Community College in Edmonton. He lived and worked in the Yukon and Vancouver Island before arriving in Ontario in 1995. Beyond these pages, he is the Artistic Director of OnStage Uxbridge, and the technical manager of the Uxbridge Music Hall.
Enugh breakage, please
It was the long cool summer of 1969, cool only because I spent most of it way up in the foothills of the Rockies just outside of Jasper National Park. I was to turn 19 that summer, and I was looking forward to making a whole lot of money planting trees for the pulp mill in Hinton. Three friends and I had gotten hired on together, determined to be the fastest darn tree-planting crew in the Dominion. And since we got paid by the tree, speed was of the essence (not that we didn’t plant well, mind you - spot inspections could trim your paycheque substantially if they found you were being sloppy).
Now ordinarily, the foresters were pretty careful about sending us out during, or too soon after, any kind of rain, no matter how intense. After all, we were planting in fields of “slash”, timber left over after the clear-cutters were done. Logs and branches lay every which way, creating a continuous obstacle course on our route across the cut block. And because we were in a hurry, our focus was on the next planting, not on what lay between here and there. Because of the danger, we wore hard hats and steel-toed boots, and injuries were few and far between.
If you’re not familiar with tree planting 60s-style - and why would you? - the crew consisted of three “dibblers”, who pounded the holes in the ground and inserted the seedlings, and the “tree man”, who ran back and forth among the others, ensuring they had a continual supply of spruce or pine. Although I was occasionally spelled off, the “tree man”’s lot usually fell to me, and I don’t remember why, because physical coordination and grace is not usually my strong suit. At any rate, I’m sure my colleagues thought I was an accident waiting to happen. And sure enough, one late August morning when the dew was still pretty heavy up on the ridge, I didn’t quite make it over one very large log that somehow got missed by the cutters.
Down I went, and the seedlings went flying. Thanks to the hard hat, there was no concussion. But I wasn’t wearing a bullet-proof vest, and my chest slammed very hard into the log, knocking the wind out of me for what seemed like minutes. When I could finally breathe again, it wasn’t fun. We took the rest of the day off and went into the small hospital in Jasper, and we discovered that the “tree-man” had some hairline fractures in three of his ribs. Nothing I could do to fix it, just rest. Thank goodness the summer was just about over, so I just went home to Edmonton and waited for university to start.
Now despite my self-perception as a fairly ungainly individual, I really hadn’t proven to be accident-prone throughout my youth. But I was certain that the tide had now turned, that my barely-cracked ribs were just the beginning of a long and slippery slope toward broken collarbones, smashed kneecaps and an endless parade of crutches and wheelchairs. Didn’t happen. Despite inviting disaster on a continual basis, I have not (knock wood) sustained a single fracture from that day to this. Forty-three years without a cast, a sling or a walker. And I even skied for many of those years.
My good fortune, unhappily, has not rubbed off on my poor wife. A couple of winters back, while we were waiting to meet an actress friend in Stratford, she slipped in the snow on the banks of the Avon, and went down hard. Unconvinced it was broken, perhaps just a sprain, she waited until we got back to Uxbridge to check it out (“They do have a hospital in Stratford,” the emergency nurse told her), but it was indeed broken. More than two months in a succession of casts, and for Lisa, who customarily operates on only one speed - full bore - it was torture. But she got through it, and because it was the left ankle, she could even drive for most of the recovery period.
The ankle was frail, though, and two years later, this past January, she slipped on the ice and broke it again. It was a quicker recovery, though. But then, on the Monday of this past long weekend, going down the stone steps to the dock at her sister’s cottage, she turned to caution her grandson to be careful, and missed a step herself. This time, it was the right ankle, and it required an operation, and an assortment of plates and screws. This time, there’ll be no driving for weeks, maybe months.
My girl’s pretty tough, but she’s also claustrophobic, and not only does her ankle feel trapped, she feels a bit helpless herself. I try to ease things as best I can, but I can only empathize so much, because I’ve never been there. A friend over on Feasby Road recently went through the whole thing herself (a fall in her garden was the culprit), so she’s been able to be a guide. And when we’re looking on the bright side, we say at least this gives her a bit of a breather.
Trouble is, my lady isn’t much for breathers. The last person she ever thinks of is herself, and it’s ironic, but typical, that she fell telling her grandson to be careful. But really, as many of her friends have told her, enough is enough. Three broken ankles in less than three years... stop, already.
Just to break the string, I’m gonna find a hard-hat, and a dibble, and go out in some forest, and take one for the team. It’s the least a spouse can do.
