The Misfits

I’m a boomer, and I’m old enough that the teachers at my boarding school were not so much rigourously screened for their suitability as they were sieved out of the available teaching (and non-teaching) pool. Boarding schools didn’t pay much in the 60s because they didn’t have to. Artists, retired linebackers, remittance men, all were welcome, for a pittance of coin and room and board.

My boarding school was well thought of, we had some rich and distinguished students. But the teaching staff was decidedly off-centre and eclectic. Math and history teacher and commander of the Naval Cadet Corps was Ticker, so-called because he was as precise as a watch. He was single (a married man couldn’t live on boarding school pay unless his wife worked) and out of the Navy a number of years. He walked with the straightest back and the tightest clenched buns imaginable and he barked, rather than talked.

Blotto, so known because of a portwine birthmark on his cheek, was chaplain. He was Ichabod Crane tall and thin, and wore flapping tweeds over his clerical collar. When frustrated, he visibly fought with himself not to take the Lord’s name in vain, and would utter a strangled “Gar!”.

Gerry was the grammar teacher (I don’t think they teach grammar as a subject anymore which is a big shame). I spoke well, but never knew why or what the rules were and this bugged Gerry no end. He was that rarity, a local on the teaching staff, with a farm one county over. He would hold cross country skiing parties at the farm and serve hot cross buns and cocoa.

The physics and geometry teacher was our one true prize. The rumour eagerly traded by students was that he was forbidden to leave the country because of his secret work at the reactor at Chalk River. He was an elderly, crusty man whose sleeves covered his hands and was truly brilliant. The only time I had him as a math teacher, I scored an A+, after failing math for years. He had a saying I still can’t figure out: “I have never met an obstreperous turnip”. He smoked a foul pipe, which he often put in his jacket pocket, still lit. Pocket fires were common.

Our choirmasters were a succession of affable homosexuals (it’s a position reserved in the boarding school community, it seems). They all had fake doctorates, for some reason, and the best of them was also our first team rugby coach, because he claimed to have been a referee for the New Zealand All Blacks. He had his favourites among the older boys, and he bought a pair of matched Norton Commandos and leathers for himself and one Ganymede. No one thought this odd at the time.

One of the history teachers had been an NHL defenseman with the Bruins in the 50s. He was bald, so naturally we called him Bush. He was a very friendly man with an underlying streak of professional violence. He, naturally, coached the first hockey team and we, naturally, won a lot. In a previous entry I have described how, in those days of routine corporal punishment, he beat a 12 year old with a goalie stick so badly he raised welts that bled. He wasn’t prosecuted, jailed or cashiered. He was taken off study hall for a week (but only after our photos of the welts surfaced).

Finally, our headmaster. I respected him more than any other adult I knew, yet I never measured up to his expectations. He was absurdly handsome, like a more rugged Paul Newman. Crowned heads had entrusted him with the education of their sons. He was a patriot, religious, right thinking and honourable, and I pissed him off no end. He expelled me from the school twice (but ensured I was accepted at a university). The first time was for blasphemy (of which I was guilty) and the second time for drinking (of which I was not).

I take the mickey out of my five years in that drafty school, but I had a lot of fun. The teachers, though odd, were all interesting, and more important, interested. They lived (most of them) at the school, and were available all day and most of the nights for chats and advice. There were no girls, which meant our social development suffered somewhat, but we were that much more delighted and less jaded as a result, when we broke out into the real world.

My brother and I each attended for 5 years at a cost which practically beggared our father. What he spent a year in the mid 60s, though, wouldn’t buy textbooks there today, and  now they have a multistory gym, a state-of-the-art theatre, rink and field house and, most of all, girls. I visited for a 40^th reunion recently, and was astounded at the modern palace of learning the creaky old dump had become. It sure looked slick, but I bet they screened their teachers a lot more closely now, and didn’t have nearly the shady, eccentric fascinating mix of misfits who taught me.

Getting Schooled

I’m a boomer, and I’m old enough that my boarding school was still enthusiastically beating children when I attended. Male children only, of course, who slept 8 to a room. This was one of Ontario’s best private schools, and the choice of the crowned heads of Europe when they needed their spawn toughened up. I had a hand in picking it as my home for 5 years, so I can’t complain.

We spent a summer weekend touring Ontario private schools when I was 11. We lived in the US at the time, and I was about to move from primary school (quite good in our little New England town) to the middle school (junior high then) which was not so good. This was the early 60s, and the active culture at the high school was hoodlum noir. Buckled leather jackets, skinny jeans and boots we called winkle pickers were de rigeur. My parents didn’t know when they’d be returning to Canada, but they knew they didn’t want me at Hoodlum High.

We saw them all, the top 5 or 6 Ontario private schools (Ontario was my parent’s native province). My great uncles had been to three of them, so I had a legacy advantage, but mostly these places were eager for the money any parent of any misfit could come up with. They were all very nice leafy places, and they all gave us tea, but at the school I chose, the headmaster emeritus took us all out sailing on the lake in his leaky sloop, the Happy Return. He gave youngest sister and I mints he told my parents were “seasickness pills”. He won my heart.

That summer, we bought an island in a lake to the north of the school and built a rudimentary cottage on it. I never went back to New England. My parents dropped me off at the school on their way home, and picked me up again when school ended for the summer. I’d live at the cottage all summer, swimming , driving fast motorboats, doing nothing until Labour Day, when I’d be dropped off at school again.

Anyway, this fall I got a letter from the Chairman of the school’s Board (I’m not active in the Old Boy’s association but I get the mail). They had discovered, to their horror, that the music teacher at the school during my attendance had been a homosexual and had made inappropriate advances to students.

We all knew the teacher in question was gay, he made no attempt to hide it, and we all accepted it as his right. He wasn't the first and wouldn't be the last. He had his favourites, for sure, but they were all fully aware of what they were getting into. The most inappropriate thing he did was buy one kid a motorcycle (well, a Norton Commando, actually, and a set of leathers). Have you ever seen the film “If…” by Lindsay Anderson, starring Malcolm McDowell? Well, my school was a lot like that, minus the Sten Guns.

I mentioned the beatings. The headmaster used a collection of whippy canes, which left red striations for weeks. Our fastidious math teacher would turn his Princeton ring around stone inward on his finger and slap you across the back of the head. The grammar teacher used a metal ruler, which he deployed in a downward motion, edge on.

One teacher, a former NHL defenseman, use a sawed off goalie stick. One night, during an unruly argument in the aforementioned 8 bed dorm, he beat an unpopular boy, about 12 years old, so badly he raised welts which bled. Mostly we thought this was awesome, and someone took pictures with their Instamatic.

The photos came back about 2 weeks later, and were circulated while we were in study hall. The teacher in question just happened to be supervising, and seeing the interest, good-naturedly asked to see the photos. We froze. He picked one up and looked at it, turned white, gathered them up and left the room.

The next time we saw him, that evening, when he was supervising study hall before bed, he was stumbling drunk. He kept saying to each of us in turn “I’m not that bad, am I? Do you like me?” He was a shadow of himself.

We heard no more about it, he didn’t supervise dorms at night anymore and the photos were never seen again. The boy he beat left at the end of the year and didn’t return. I looked him up on Google. He still lives in his home town in Michigan.

I wrote to the Chair after receiving his letter. I told him we all knew the music teacher was gay and that he had enriched our lives anyway. As both he and the complainant were dead, there seemed very little need to pursue the case. I did think, and told him so, that the school might, after all these years, reach out to the boy who had been so savagely beaten while in their care. I thought an apology might be in order, as he was still alive.

The Chair took the time to reply to me, saying that corporal discipline was an accepted part of the private school pedagogy at the time, and that, while it may have been practiced too eagerly, wasn’t subject to sanction. Being gay and doing a bit of kiddie-diddling , however, was never permissible (despite being an ever present part of private school life, then and now) and had to be pursued beyond the grave to satisfy the parents whose children they cared for.

I don’t know, I somehow think beating a child until he bleeds is several times more terrible a sin than being a chicken hawk, especially when you're giving away fast motorcycles.

Turning Over The Odometer

Turning Over The Odometer

This is the year that everyone I know turned 60. I remember the year everybody got married, 1985, and now, 30 years later, we’re all marking our three score.

At my little celebration, we hit a bistro, and I had steak tartare and foie gras. On my wife’s 60^th, we hit a bistro. I just had brunch at a bistro for my next door neighbour’s three score. It’s true, a lot of us come from the theatre, we fancy ourselves latter day de Beauvoirs and Camus’, sitting in the corner booth drinking café express and smoking Gauloises. We celebrate in bistros. I haven’t birthdayed at every bistro in Toronto, but I’m sure I will before the year is out.

Then the presents. What do you get someone who is 60? Drinkers are easy, just spend a lot. But wives? I got my wife a bracelet, and one for me, but 60 is probably the last birthday you want to publicly celebrate and memorialize until you’re at least 95, maybe 100. I used to buy my wife Lalique cats on significant anniversaries, but the cats kept knocking them over and chipping them. Cats are cute.

One of the important things that happens at 60 is you get your life’s earning and CPP contribution statement from Service Canada, so you can calculate your pension and when to take it. My earnings and contributions report was enlightening - it reminded me of jobs I’d forgotten I had, and of years I’d spent off the grid.

I made the choice to take my CPP early, at 60. I would get $200 more a month were I to wait five more years to 65, but, what will $700 buy then that $500 can’t buy now? A terabyte of data for the roaming package on my wristwatch? A quarter pound of legal marijuana? No, better collect now, I might get run over by a bus.

When I mention early CPP to my friends who are turning over the odometer, most are puzzled. Boomers do not see themselves as pensioners. Yet. My friends are starting to get tired of working, and some are winding down, buying boats or vacation homes, but none has retired yet.

My broker has handed off his key accounts, and his wife, the banker, is doing largely post career work now, but they haven’t moved to Florida full time yet. My neighbor, manager of a sprawling restaurant empire, is taking fewer shifts, and spending more weekends up north, but he’s still working. My friend the TV director is still busy as long as there are Olympics and hockey playoffs, but he’s getting awfully fond of his yacht.

The point is, we’re not retiring, per se, we’re easing out. No “gold watch, clean out your desk, have a farewell lunch”. No, when our working lives end it’ll be with a whimper, not a bang. We probably won’t notice when it really happens, just awake one day to realize we aren’t working that day, or the next.