Forensics

Forensics

Flaming hoops,

irrefutable proof 

my best defense,

forensic love

the things I said

of what I did,

I run down corridors

all alone

with my finger prints

on public places

caught...

its a crying shame,

such a vicious world,

what can you tell

from my emotional 

blood splatter

I am blind and

really can’t see,

do I take the door

to the right or the one

to the left?

Who do you really trust

and listen to?

Be cautiously faithful

with an ear to the

wine glass.

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Sex Museum Amsterdam, Marilyn Monroe,Cambodia, Amsterdam, Madrid et al (pics)

Cambodia Ankor Wat

Dubai

Egypt

Amsterdam, Sex Museum

Don Quixote, Spain

Fort Chip, Northern Alberta

Dancers in Jinhua, China

Prague

lady/boys in Bangkok

Thailand

Dubai

Made in China

Exporting Our Economy

Currently our economy has experienced off shore expansion at an exponential rate, that fact almost sounds impressive, almost positive in fact.  Ironically, it means that we are shipping our jobs to Asia and other areas of the world where cheap labour abounds  and raising our own unemployment at an alarming rate.  Corporations through their efforts to be profitable in the short run are in reality shooting themselves in the proverbial foot and hobbling themselves and the economy in the process.  They are charging the cliff like lemmings to produce their products in China and elsewhere.  Look at the labels on your clothing for a lesson in place name geography.

The sad state of affairs concerning economic growth and harnessing the elements of production is that CEO’s, CFO’s and Boards elect to seek out cheap sources of resources, transportation and especially labour with the ultimate aim of reducing production costs and maximizing profits.  Makes total sense, sounds efficient even commendable and in so doing the movers and shakers of the economic world reap disproportionate bonuses for their efforts.  In Fortune 500 companies last year alone 10 top earning CEO's collected approximately 450 million dollars in bonus pay in addition to their regular, generous salaries. The regular American worker would take about 1000 years to earn the equivalent.  Just a little imbalance perhaps.

These Chief executive officers are hard working men and women for sure who also need to stroke their egos, drive a Beamer and live in a gated community to prove their self worth, achieve ego gratification and be on the apex of the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs.  Another similar example, The Bank of Nova Scotia had near record profits this year and are still cutting 1500 jobs and closing hundreds of branches so they can be even more profitable.  In terms of corporate profit when is enough enough.  The answer is never and that is the problem in our economic system, at least one of many problems.  It is based on short term objectives designed to please boards, and investors who are simply greedy for short term gain.  Little thought is given for environmental impact, social realities and off shore transfer of jobs. 

 Our government is off little help in slowing down foreign ownership of our country, in fact they seem to encourage it, as democracies are generally incapable of long range planning.  We as citizens, along with the corporate world, also cherish short term gain and gratification, so sadly in a sense we are also to blame for our situation.  Maybe we should all just watch what we buy and where it comes from, or we may have to resort to my solution.  

Nothing is sacred.  In Canada I think of Canadian icons such as Tim Hortons, now owned  by a hedge fund, a group of anonymous investors in Brazil and elsewhere who own and control a symbol Canadians hold dear.  The Bay probably the oldest retail icon in Canada is now American.  The Toronto Maple Leafs is still Canadian but really what’s the point if they can’t win.  Recently, I read that a major pork producer in the United States has been bought out by a Chinese firm meaning that food supplies will be going to China for processing and then being resold here in North America.  That is disturbing on so many levels.  The Ritz Carleton Hotel in New York, another American icon, is owned by a Chinese insurance company and the list goes on and on.

Once we have transferred the last job, icon, company, pig or grain farm, and tar sands to foreign ownership even the wealthy in this country might realize, too late, that they went too far.  There will be such a gap between rich and poor with a huge hole in the social fabric, with the absence of the middle class, that we will be left with only the really rich and the really poor and nothing to bridge the gap but anger and resentment. I don’t like using the R word but that does sound like the seeds of social destruction.

But before we get to the violence in the street, Tea Party solutions, a gun in every hand bag and terrorism around every corner I do have a solution.  I have lived in China, scouted out the territory and know we can get through this.  This is not ideal but now that the corporate world has made us into beggars and we all buy Chinese anyway, we can not be choosy.  

I call it the Elliot Lake Solution for obvious reasons that you will see in a moment.  Elliot Lake is in Northern Ontario, a former mining town whose economy collapsed.  Think of it as a mini analogy for North America.  The leaders there had to have a plan to re invent themselves or die. To survive they attracted people from Toronto and other southern Ontario urban areas where real estate prices were high and the economy was healthy.  These people could retire from the South, sell there costly properties and buy cheap in Elliot Lake and have money to spare to go South and be Snow Birds.  It was a win win situation and Elliot Lake is still on the map.

I propose that while we still can, we should sell our properties here in Canada before the last jobs, icons, farms and food supplies etc are sold and while the price is still good and buy cheap in the new “Elliot Lake” which of course is China.  Our jobs are already there; so it only make sense that we sell out completely to the Chinese.  They have everything else, or soon will have, now we just have sell our properties, our homes and buy cheap in China to complete the economic cycle.  They move here. We move there.  Not a shot is fired.  Everyone is happy.  

Who knows we may even find employment over there, the odds are good because our jobs are already there.

Marty Rempel

Shanghai from the Marriot


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Texting while driving et al

The Wireless Monkey

The wireless monkey plunged to his death

on a Thursday morning. I put down my Chardonnay 

to grieve.  He was seen texting while swinging, hit

a tree and imploded on the information highway.  It happens

with regularity.  Ironic.  But maybe the other jungle animals

will learn a lesson and cover themselves with solitary remorse 

for I know they can not see the complexities.  My heart has a

tender hook and circles back behind the clouds on stormy nights.

I live my life in insecurity.  The blessings come and go, I give my

love on Sun-Down Street in the black of night, on sleepless nights

the lights go on.  The rooster on my coffee cup stares at me in

glaring sunlight. What is my strategy I dare not swing and text for

communication can be death. 

Legacies Along a Continuum

Legacies Along a Continuum

My father never finished high school.  There were wars, famine and revolution as intervening factors, a different world.  He didn’t seem to need a formal education or even miss it.  It was never part of his reality.  I do believe he wanted more for his own children, yet something in him, or lacking in him, prevented him from telling us so.  I knew my father cared, that he loved me. He played on occasion with me in the backyard on our Vine Street home hitting a ball with my little kid sized bat.  He built, with care and diligence, like an artisan, wooden toys in his basement shop.  Was that to escape the world, or to show he cared, maybe a bit of both.

I can’t say that I understood my father’s  attitude in regard to education.  I do know he never directly encouraged or discouraged me from doing one thing or the other.  It was an emotional equilibrium, a void with no direction and one that I just happened to tumble from in the right direction.  I think.  He never went to my school teacher meetings, rarely even glanced at my report cards seemed indifferent to whether I went to university or even if it was in or out of town.  It didn’t seem to matter.  He just seemed to think that I knew what I was doing and that I would get it right.  I had no direction.

Likely, my father observed me from an emotional distance having been hobbled through his own childhood experiences with his own father and surrounded my death. As a child he told me stories of playing in battle fields near his village, of smashing artillery shells with a hammer to see what would happen and keeping a cache of battle found weapons hidden from his Mennonite pacifist parents. It was a wonder I was even born.  

One way or another I do know that the man that I eventually became is simply part of a continuum, a legacy from the men before me, for better and for worse.  I have no control over what happened before.  I have control now and I have made mistakes.  I know that and my children know that too.

My father was at best a lonely man even when he was with his family.  His diary from the Depression era reveals an unspeakable emptiness and an immeasurable loneliness.  The diary fell into my hands after his death.  It took me years before I could bring myself to read it. I regret I ever did.  It is now destroyed, but not the indelible images etched in my brain.  His marriage to my mother filled part of his emotional abyss that was his soul, but it was never enough to ease his personal demons, whatever they were.  My mother suffered and I think she was relieved on many levels when my dad passed before she did.  she did not have an easy life either.

In his retirement years, long before we had grown and left home, my dad would, without notice board a greyhound bus and travel wherever it took him.  Aimlessly.  We, as kids, would get a postcard from exotic California with a coloured picture of an endlessly white beach with beautiful full surf.  In cryptic script he would tell us in three phrases about his trip as if it were a normal event.  Next, weeks later, a card from equally exotic Florida, now on the opposite coast, a picture of an orange grove.  Another brief message. One morning, eight or nine days later, without comment he would be at the breakfast table slurping his coffee from his favourite Coffee Hound mug and saucer as if nothing had happen.  Nothing had changed.

Even then, as a child, I thought my father’s travel plans, if that is what you could call them, were nothing short of bizarre.  I have no idea what my mother thought of all of this.   Her husband abandons her for a month or more at a time.  My guess is she may have been relieved.  My father’s generation was a chauvinistic one, also made possible through engrained socially induced female complacency and some biblical references stating that the man was the head of the household. Perhaps, slavery was justified in the same way.

My father, and I loved the man dearly, was ever an enigma.  He was a product of his times and of the men who came before him.  I am simply part of that continuum.  Hopefully, I have made some improvements along the way. But I am not the judge in this matter.

Teaching in China

Soon The Dancers Arrive:  Living and Working in China

There are no stars in China

or blue skies.

I feel sorry for the children

heavy haze constantly

shrouds the mountains

hillsides, the urban-scapes

obscured

China the abused country

every river,

stream and creek, every inch of sky

each piece of land, corrupted.

There are no stars in China

or blue skies…

just progress.

While in China my wife and I attended a New Year’s Eve celebration put on by the Jinhua High School Students and staff in their massive gym.  I think the venue is large enough to seat about 3000 students.  The Chinese have a propensity to build in monolithic proportions.  It was a cold night and the thing about public buildings south of Shanghai is that they have no central heating.  Think of a rural hockey arena in Canada.  

We took our seats as two third year students appeared beside us to serve as our translators for the evening and to guide us through the performance.  The gym was darkened, except for the neon like plastic lights that all students were waving and throwing high into the air.  We didn’t really need a translator for many of the numbers because many were English songs. 

My school, where I served as principal, had a population of about 250, but was really a school within a school.  Trillium College was like as English Department housed within the Jinhua walled complex.  Students from here were the elite of the province and graduated with both a Chinese diploma and an Ontario Secondary School Diploma.  Most of the graduating class proceed to universities in Southern Ontario and register mainly in Math, Science and Business programs, a liberal arts education has not as yet found traction.

This is a wet climate (monsoon) and everyone owns several umbrellas, even when it snows, so to have the song, “Singing in the Rain” preformed in English was no big surprise.  There was a song originally done by an American singer, Britney Spears.  Other classes did themes relating to traditional Chinese opera meeting modern dance.  There was a range of talent  and although we sat in the cold, dark gym we were enjoying ourselves.

What we enjoyed most was the presentation by the Chinese teachers.  The students went wild.  The teachers teamed as couples, each dressed in formal wear and couple by couple male to female in turn sang romantic songs and in a scandalous show of affection held hands.  Our student translators told us this would be great cause for gossip.  What I appreciated about this was the fact that the student response was overwhelming and innocent.  They were thrilled at the sight of their teachers showing affection.  Our translators were quick to add that Chinese love romance.   I thought how this same act in Canada would not resonant well with a student population in the same way, as it would likely be seen as corny and outdated and open to ridicule as a result.  I’m thankful that these Chinese students are still socially and culturally back in the fifties.  

One theme that the school likes to drill into the students here is patriotism.  I can remember a day in my own youth in Canada when I sang, with hand over heart, “God Save the Queen” and in later years “Oh Canada”.  We did a rendition of the “Lord’s Prayer”. Political correctness had not yet been coined. Today, in China, there is no public religious observance, but love of country remains a priority, almost a religion.  At my school and  others slogans are written on bright red banners around the school and in all of the classrooms proclaiming themes of love of country, “Love is in the heart and that is where you find country.”

Many of the songs presented that night spoke to patriotism and so I asked our youthful translators how they felt about that.  With some thought and hesitation they said that they get too much of it.  They hear it ever day and while they believe it to be true they don’t have to hear it all the time.  I said, “I think you will enjoy Canada after graduation.”

 I have taught in Alberta for 21 years and am also very familiar with the BC and Ontario curriculums as I am also certified in those provinces.  I am very proud to say that I think Canadian provincial curriculums more than hold their own when compared to the Chinese. The Chinese depend on rote learning, have large classrooms and are glued to standardized testing and curriculum solidarity.

 In fact, contrary to stereotypes on the topic I place Canadian curriculum in math and science over the Chinese.  I think we may have the edge not only for content but primarily because  of our teaching style and methodologies  Chinese students begin some mathematical and scientific concepts at a much earlier age and by so doing may give Westerners a sense of precociousness.  As Canadians we tend to see Chinese students in Canada who happen to be the elite of their country.  We do in fact lose sight of the fact that academic achievement of the Chinese student population also follows a bell curve.  Their numbers are just larger.

I have found that my Chinese students lack the spontaneity and the mental freedom to be curious about the world around them.  If it is not on the curriculum it is of no consequence to them.  They are driven and highly motivated in many ways, also consider that there is much pressure on them to succeed.  Due to the “One Child Policy” a single child in the family must carry the academic- torch and make parents and grandparents proud and in some cases support them in an economic sense as well.  

On a few occasions I have given my students some unscheduled “free time” and to my initial surprise they have actually become anxious and did not know what to do as there was no structure or direction to guide them.  They seem to need to be told what to do in every situation. They are accustomed to regimentation and hard work with long hours, freedom is somewhat of an alien concept.

When it comes to problem solving Chinese students are fearful of failure and are therefore not risk takers.  Their Chinese classes are guided by rote learning and definitely inside the proverbial box, while classes on the English side encouraged individual thought and creativity, concepts many students are not as yet comfortable, or even familiar with, at this point in their academic evolution. 

My primary job as principal was to direct my staff in creating analytical thinkers and problem solvers who could view the world in terms of solvable issues in both a group and individual context.  At times this got me into trouble with the Chinese side of the school as some Chinese teachers wanted desperately to learn our ways, discuss “issues” and be introduced to new teaching methods.  However,  I also had to act with prudence in regards to what I could say or discuss with Chinese staff members as an official of the communist party also had an office on campus.  My contract did not allow me to talk about many topics such as Tiananmen Square, Democracy, Falun Gong, Tibet, and  the Deli Lama to name a few.  I had my limits despite my curriculum and inclinations.  

As I sat in on a grade 12 University level prep course in Physics on the topic of acceleration presented by one of my staff members I was taken by the presentation and found myself asking questions.  Like my students, I had to hold myself back.  But there were other topics, such as quantum mechanics in which the students had no background from their Chinese curriculum.  When this situation arises they get into a swarming panic, hiring tutors and “go to mattresses” until they have mastered the topic. If nothing else they take studies seriously, something sometimes lacking when it comes to their Canadian counterparts.

Chinese students in the upper level schools, are hard working, but as I watch them I see that they are very narrow in their focus.  They do not do extra curricular.  The curriculum is all there is.  The curriculum is life.  Now we may wish for students like that in a “perfect world” and admittedly it is wonderful, but outside the curriculum the Chinese students are largely ignorant. Their general knowledge is lacking. They don’t play games, our school of 2700 has no teams, there are no clubs, they are not allowed to date.  “Love is not allowed” is actually a school rule here, although I suspect something got lost in translation.  

While I admire their many accomplishments in the academic arena I also feel sorry for my students.  They know little of current events and the larger world.  In an issue recently in the news concerning territoriality concerns with Japan students are literally taught to hate. Anti Japanese banners were in abundance on campus and around the city. 

Our school celebrated its 110th anniversary while I was there.  I had the honour of editing the English edition of their anniversary publication.  It contained a proud history outlining the genesis of the first anti-Japanese League  which was established at the school following the expulsion of the Japanese imperialists after World War ll.  This type of content and way of perceiving the world is current, accepted and engrained in our Chinese students who tend to be xenophobic, they lack a sense of tolerance to other ethic groups and nationalities.  

Sadly the Chinese do do not always know the facts because that is how their world is orchestrated and filtered.  Ironically, in a way, my Chinese students hope to come to Canada, specifically Southern Ontario, and they all want to get into U of T.  Toronto is likely the most multicultural city in the world.  These students are in for a real culture shock because they do not understand multiculturalism and especially the tolerance and understanding of minorities that goes with it.  

I am proud to say that in so many ways Canada has done “it” right.  Our curriculums and cultural sensitivities are incredibly reasonable.  Our system has, for the most part, created a generation of more tolerant and more holistic students.  And don’t be fooled there is an abundance of special education students in China too.  In fact by numbers I would wager they have more special needs students than we have students in total.  The thing is not one of them is recognized and none of them are assessed, as there is no special education in Jinhua as it brings shame to the family.  China has a long way to go in terms of educational excellence. 

I once tried to remove one of my Chinese students from the English Program because of her mental health issues.  Her parents were furious with me and found a doctor who gave her a clean bill of health.  The Chinese Ministry forced my hand and I could not get the girl out of her stressful educational situation. Parents in an elite school have significant influence and high expectations of their children.

Living and working in China has many challenges outside of the classroom as well. Naturally, the cultural, economic, political and linguistic differences are immense. I lived on a new campus beautifully landscaped with a charming meandering creek stocked with fish running through it.  Despite the Chinese love of nature and beauty one serious problem in China, which is not adequately being addressed is the wide spread pollution.  Rarely could we see stars at night nor despite the fact that we lived only ten minutes from a mountain range could we see them as there were so few pollution few days. Blue skies were a rare treat. The locals kept insisting that the smog was not pollution just mist.

I enjoyed my work with my industrious students but I also enjoyed my time away from campus when my wife and I travelled or just escaped on our e-bike.  I have never felt more part of the Chinese cultural fabric, or closer to road kill as I have while driving my scooter through the congested streets of Jinhua.

Chinese streets are generally wide and often have special lanes for e-bikes because there are so many of them.  In some places cars, trucks, people, dogs, kids, more trucks, bikes, taxis all have to merge into one chaotic mixture and that’s where the challenge begins.  There are rules of the road, because I was told there are 1700 questions on the Chinese drivers license test of which at any one time the new driver has to answer a random selection of 100.  However, the rules are more like “guidelines” and car mirrors as useful as an appendix.  From chaos theory to the reality of the conditions on the road comes a curvilinear flow of traffic that no simple algorithmic function could describe.  There is motion. It is constant, often random, but it seems to work if one is bold decisive and goes with the flow.  

I keep my thumb on the horn to resonant with the cacophony of the urban symphony.  One must yield to the driver making the turn, red lights are discretionary, if they work, cars go in bike lanes, bikes go in car lanes, parked cars have open doors, everyone who has a cell phone at some point while driving will use it, pedestrians do not look before crossing, neither do most drivers, they are either blind or operate on blind faith. 

Shopping is another challenge in every day life.  Since I have to confess to being a poor linguist shopping and ordering food in a restaurant are problematic.  I have several Aps on my smart phone for translations but they only work when I have Wifi and that is not very frequent.  Going to a public market one is assaulted by the many smells, the motion the colours.  One stall specializes in organs, another in dog bred specially for consumption, there is street food to be avoided unless like my young teaching staff you have a cast iron stomach and even they were not always immune.  The meat section of a grocery store looks to me more like a pet department with eels, frogs, snakes, turtles, fish and numerous other things that I have never truly identified on display.  Unwrapped chicken parts are heaped on a table for people to pick through for the ideal piece they seek. In another part of the store large rice bins which resemble sand boxes are also available for people to reach into with their hands to scoop out what they require.

We cooked in our little kitchen which measured 6 and a half feet square.  There was no oven as we used a wok for most everything.  The fridge we kept in the bedroom.  Our building had rats and each morning I killed the millipedes that crawled across the floor.  Mine was one of the better apartments.  

Hygiene in China is not a priority.  One small quest I had in my section of the school was to  get paper products including toilet paper and soap into each one of our washrooms.  I was promised these things and only got them temporarily when there was a school inspection.  Once over and the supplies used up they were never again replenished.  The cleaning staff continued cleaning with their mops by drawing water from the toilet bowls.  

I spent much of my time being sick.  At one time over Christmas my wife and I removed the hard mattress from the bedroom and camped out on the living room floor where with the aid of a VPN service we were able to by pass the Chinese internet firewall and watch netflix from San Francisco while we slowly recovered on the floor sipping our green tea.

Over seas living has its challenges but despite everything I enjoyed working in China.  I liked my Chinese colleagues and support staff and especially my students, some of whom I have made contact with back in Canada.  I was able to travel much of Eastern China and SE Asia and gain an appreciation for a culture and a way of life that both loves the West and mistrusts our ways as well. 

The Chinese are tripping over themselves in trying to copy us and that’s all they are capable of at the moment.  They are not innovators or inventors.  But their image of nation is growing  and there seems to be a greater awareness of the world and in this realization China will succeed by using its new knowledge, from schools like mine, and elsewhere to grow an internal economy for its own people and raise its own standard of living and quality of life.      

After a busy day at school or after a tenuous drive be e-bike through the noisy congested streets my wife and I enjoy walking by the river where we watch the group dancers, some doing ballroom western style, some exercises and others Tai Chi.  We enjoy a calming walk along the river bank exposed after weeks of no rain, a long continuous row of willow trees lines the length of the park, roots seek moisture from deep below. Scooters, bikes, walkers, old, young, families, all walk the inlaid stones and view the sluggish brown river below. The constant fisherman, some on flat rafts, others along the receding shore, in the dry season spending the day in futile pursuit of a meager catch.  Young couples hand in hand oblivious to those around them, men in tense groups thrust cards to a small table, two brown poodles play on the grass, an old man crippled and bent walks with his wife every night, small boys play with their bubble makers, they eagerly run past and stare at my strange western face and my wife’s blond hair; soon distracted they run along the path. The evening cools, its been such a long hot day.  The gardener brings out his record player.  He tentatively sets it on an old wooden table soon opera transcends the willows.  The dancers will arrive soon.  It is evening in China.

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Venice Pictures

Justice in Alberta: Behind the Orange Door

Behind the Orange Door

The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo houses its jail in the basement of the library and one floor down from the city hall chambers.  It is a cozy venue, much like renting a basement apartment but with no windows. I also thought it was a very ironic placement for me, that is below the library because just prior to my conviction I was the chairman of the Fort McMurray Public Library and while in jail I had no sign out privileges. I often wondered if this was where the librarian sent those patrons with over due book charges. 

I’m trying to write with a sense of humour as is my traditional style but the fact of the matter I was sentenced to serve 60 days in jail because my now ex-wife Celine insisted that I threw her out of my Taurus station wagon at the Olympic Park in Calgary over the issue of my not signing some Blue Cross papers for her. And while it is true I did tear those same papers up in half and in half again and did not sign them,  I never had the opportunity to throw her out of my car as she describes.  I think I was had.  She is a good con and was able to set me up and I fell for her trap.  She never wanted anything signed.   Celine wanted to fabricate an incident and I apparently was foolish enough to oblige her and the police and court system foolish enough to believe her.

   

It is a humbling if not degrading experience going from respectable teacher, father, library chairperson to convicted criminal.  I’m not certain, despite my pardon, if I have really totally recovered from the experience. Certainly no part of me has forgiven Celine for her lies in putting me in jail. On the positive side I did meet a host of fascinating characters while serving my time and as a result of some late night conversations I know just about all there is to know about hydroponic marijuana production, grow ops and distribution.  In that way jail is an educational experience, great for networking and future business connections should one choose to branch out. 

I also discovered that there are good guards and good RCMP officers just as there are very bad ones.  I’m sure its the same in teaching, nursing or education, but the difference being these people have almost an absolute control over your life even if for only one week end at a time.  One evening I  heard a young constable bragging to other officers, “I’m going to bust some ass over at the Oil Can, I’ve been waiting to nab that bastard.”  I didn’t know if this was part of a raid, a vendetta or the guy liked rough sex, but it wasn’t the officer I would choose to meet in a deserted alley.  He was an ass and a narcissist and likely a kindred spirit to Celine.  They come in all walks of life, cops are no different.  To this day I feel nervous around police because of the power they once held over me, the helplessness I once felt.

As part of my sentencing I was required to take an anger management program.  I had been accused of dragging Celine from the car through the parking lot while verbally abusing her and finally dumping her at a curb. Sounds dramatic and a potential episode for Criminal Minds. In reality  she did exit of her own free will only to turn around and utter some threat against my sisters,...”and you tell your sisters...” while shaking her hand at me she managed, through her own anger and clumsiness to snare her hand in my partially opened window as I finally drove away.  She did fall and did eventually receive a single suture to the head to mend her almost self inflicted injury.  I never found out what she wanted to say about my sisters, but it must have been important to her.  She needed to vent at that particular moment

After driving away I had a sick feeling that Celine would use this against me in a very bad way; so I found the first police car on patrol and pulled him over.  He wasn't too pleased.  After explaining my story he had me park my car at a plaza and wait until another car and officer came to pick me up.  That they did and arrested me on the spot.  So began my criminal life sitting meekly in the back seat of the cruiser asI was taken in to be processed.

Eventually, I was released from that anger management class for an apparent lack of anger.  The social worker in charge tended to believe me because it was a small town and he new my ex and probably felt more pity for me.  During our circle time the guys in the group recounted stories about beating their lovers, girl friends, and spouses to the point that I felt like an under achiever in the group and pressured to just make up a story to fit in.  Even if my story were true I hardly felt I qualified to be in the group and so I was released.  

The quality of my jail time was also a function of which officers and guards were on duty,  I am a changed person from my jail experience and I think for the better because among other things now I know first hand how flawed and capricious the system can be.  The joke was that everyone I talked to, each of my cell mates, were for the most part misjudged, innocent, in the wrong place at the wrong time, and there is varying degrees of truth to all of that, as no one is actually guilty for me I made the near fatal mistake of marrying a narcissist with sociopathic tendencies who clearly took great joy in her power over me through the manipulation of the system. I mean I was guilty to the core of chronic bad judgement of marrying this woman in the first place and jail was the result.  I didn’t actually believe that, but it helped at the time to rationalize my attendance.

I know now that I can’t trust the judicial system as I once did.  I am no longer naive as I now know that people like Celine are able to manipulate the system.  Its actually quite impressive.  I do take  some satisfaction now in my present life to know that Celine, now with her third husband, is drinking her self steadily into oblivion just as her own mother did, is hated by her children, colleagues and students.  She is self destructive.  Worse, she is destructive to those around her.  She will die a sad lonely woman.

I had a long time to reflect on my week ends in municipal jail.  Just as at one point in our relationship Celine managed a trip to New York with her Divinity professor and together joined holy union in the mile high club, Celine too was able to litigate to infinity and beyond because of the good graces of her lawyer her enjoyed pro bono work at ground level with Celine.  I know if I ever tried to offer my lawyer sex for legal advise I’d be writing a much different story and this chapter on jail time would be a lengthy one. 

I’m just postulating when it comes to subverting a male dominated bastion of institutionalized beuracrcy women may have certain advantages.  I know for a fact that Celine was and is a master at subverting the system by whatever means it takes.  She knew how to work the system like she knows adultery. Some things are just intuitive and second nature.  Once she had admittted to sleeping with Barry, Larry and Gary and a few others we agreed for a short time to share the marital home, but she insisted that her fun times would not stop.  Her maternal instincts were also amazing, what a role model!  During one of her trustee seminars while sleeping with one of her other partners I packed my things and got an apartment.  Celine had suggested we stay together, but she would still keep her lover.  I thought that might be a tad awkward and perhaps a bad role model for the kids.  

"Where's mom tonight Dad?"

"Oh just out on a date with her boy friend, but she promised not to be too late.  I'll send her right up when they get in."

I don't know, maybe really awkward.  I moved out.

On one memorable court appearance Celine showed up wearing stage make up giving herself a pale and gaunt appearance in order to exemplify the tension and pressure she was under and the immense pain she had suffered at my hands.  It was an an exaggerated effect and obvious to those who knew her, but very effective to the uninitiated.  Celine had told our kids stories of how during our dating during university I had raped her.

 Her other specialty as you may well guess, was and actually still is, parental alienation.  She was highly effective in this regard.  It works in a cycle the kids learn to believe Celine and hate me.  They feel guilty about this and start losing self confidence from there it is a slippery slope.  After hearing tales like that I could only imagine to what depths of depravity Celine would go to slander my name further.  The pathetic thing is the kids believed this stuff as did the court system, like I said Celine was believable. I remember sitting watching her in court and thinking, she is good and I am so fucked; so let me finish telling you just how fucked I was.

I became a week ender who arrived punctually at 8 am at the orange unmarked metal door adjacent to the parking lot. Save for the absence of an insulated pizza bag I could have been delivering pizzas to a residential address. The outside casual observer, as I am certain the general public did not know what lay behind that door, or even cared.  For me it was a ritual which I mentally prepared for over the course of thirty week ends.  With practice I learned how to numb my senses and take the abuse from my fellow citizens.  Have you ever read about those college experiments, maybe urban myth, in which people in power, or with the perception of power over other vulnerable individual will induce electric shock as punishments. In the experiment those administering the shock treatment  have been led to believe that it is real and deserved.  Ethical research of our own decade would never allow this to happen, but I did realize that there are people who are quite willing to administer abuse and punishment independent of deserved or logical consequences to actions.  Celine is one of those people. 

Generally, I would arrive twenty minutes early during which time I would sit on a picnic table near the entrance and pull a paper back from my Eddie Bauer backpack.  Today, I was covering “The Bridges of Madison County.”  As the appointed time arrived, 8:55 am, I removed my water bottle from my pack and took two helpers from the pocket of my sweat pants.  These two sleep aids would effectively put me out until mid-afternoon and help ease the boredom of detention.  The best strategy I have found is to sleep as much as possible.

I got in the practice of walking to jail because it would add to my fatigue and give me some fresh air, time to think and enjoy the open space of my freedom before allowing myself to be encapsulated below ground in my cell with my fellow prisoners.  I let my mind wonder as I walked, thought about the kids when they were younger, fate and meeting Celine, jumping off the bridge as I crossed the dark cold  Athabasca River to get to the jail, moving to Ontario, then traffic sounds would bring me back to my reality.  I would see the red brick municipal building in the near distance, my beacon, but not of hope; then I would suck in my breath and finish my walk in cold numbness finally reaching the orange door.

At my school I was virtually black listed. To my further great misfortune Celine, partly through my efforts as campaign manger, had been elected to the public school board. I spent weeks putting up signs and going door to door on her behalf selling her virtues and values to the public.  I guess I was convincing too. Since she won the election and became a public school trustee she was my boss further putting me in a vulnerable position and one that she capitalized on exploiting.  Complaints began coming in about me.  How can the school in good conscience allow a teacher with a police and criminal record in the classroom.  Unethical. What message does this send the kids?  What does this say to the public and to families about abuse? 

 As I had told only my very closest of friends about my week end situation while still trying to do my job, in became obvious that Celine was behind the phone call campaign to get me out of the school.  Her campaign was effective, although later she denied every having done anything to cause me grief about my job.  I thought just like you told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in court.  

Despite the fact that I had the support of my school administration, Celine had the ear of the Superintendent and the Board. The day I was summoned to the superintendents office I wondered if I would get the option to wear a blindfold before my execution.  In twenty-five words or less I was told that I was expected to take a paid leave of absence, resign my position after 19 years of excellent teaching accompanied with equally excellent teacher evaluations and parent and student appreciation.  Resign and don’t ever come back.  That was the unofficial part.  

The official part was a fine letter of recognition for my contributions to education blah blah and excellent references and a hand shake that almost felt real.  Basically the message was that sure you served us well but now you are a pathetic embarrassment to this board and we would like you gone as soon as possible.  Knowing that it was largely Celine’s influence and phone campaign that cost me my job I still developed a feeling of deep resentment to the school, the board, the system, to any future employer.  I knew that I could never again put my heart and soul into another job and give two decades of loyal service, knowing in the end it doesn’t really count for anything. Clearly a self destructive attitude that in the future did not serve me well.  I had wanted to be an administrator, now I didn’t really even want to be in a classroom any more.

At the orange door I was required to buzz and on cue speaking to a dirty brown speaker mounted too high on the wall for even my height, state my name and reason for being there  “I’m Mark Penner.  I’m here for the week end spa treatment.  I repent of all my sins and I want to be a better person, I have learned my lesson and paid my debt to society and I beg for parole.”  Instead I said my name and that I had a reservation. 

I must enter a small glassed in enclosure separated by a locked door from the inner RCMP office area.  Officers do not staff this desk during the week end making it necessary to pick up a wall phone and talk to an officer in Edmonton, who in turn calls Fort McMurray directing them to send someone to the door and let me in.   A constable at a distant cluttered desk, who while viewing me on security camera pressed a button causing a buzzer to sound in the door in front of me releasing the lock and allowing me into captivity for another eventful week end of paying my debt to society in thirty easy installments.  

Eventually a uniformed officer enters the lobby area and opens the door for me.  This officer on this day asked me how I was.  At first I thought he was messing with my mind.  I had just showed up for my incarceration week end. I had to process this question and avoiding sarcasm at all costs I considered the many remaining permutations and combinations with which I could answer the constable’s question.

“Fine”, was the safest answer I could come up with.

To show I was a social being I added information which one should never do with police, I walked here this morning.”

He led me down the hallway to the stairwell leading down two flights of stairs to the basement cells.  I’ve been here before and knew the way.  I did not need an escort.

“How long did it take you?” as we entered into the realm of small talk.

“About half an hour from Thickwood.”

The officer then walked in front of me and took out his revolver.  I sensed for a brief moment in time that our conversation had suddenly gone horribly awry.  However, to my immediate relief officer Travis Pereira badge number 48045, was merely putting his revolver into a lock up box abiding by a no guns policy in the cell area.  Another relief because I hate gun play is small under ground surroundings.  The box was a a small version of the Canada Post Super Boxes, about five boxes in a vertical array next to the final locked door into the cell block.  I was almost home for the week end.

In order to get to the jail there are a number of security doors through which we passed until we eventually reached the sign in desk. It was like checking into a sleazy downtown Winnipeg hotel.  It was at this point, at the desk, that the mixture of fear and depression set in, realizing that my former good life had descended to this demeaning level, while knowing that the experience and the lodging were all made possible through the unified efforts of my daughter and Celine.  Now I had to focus on getting through the week end.

This is always a special moment when the last green heavy metal door swings open to receive me.  Freedom lies on one side and the opposite lies ahead, complete with sensory stimulation unique to 20 some lock up cells with men and women deprived of soap and deodorant.

The routine from this point forward also plays out in a predictable and prescribed way.  The matrons, or guards as they prefer to be called, are for the most part women working for a little above minimum wage, take constant abuse from prisoners and develop disabilitating levels of cynicism while on the job.  Matron, Linda, is the only one that affords prisoners dignity.  The others are all gargoyles.

Without being told I remove my watch, my shoes and place my jacket and backpack into a plastic  bin provided for my convenience.  I hand one of the grim faced matrons my four bottles of medications, slightly smiling as I do, thinking of the two sleeping pills already starting to work in my body.  I also smile inward because two of the bottles I have just handed the kindly matron are not prescription drugs at all.  I used two empty prescription containers and filled them with Nytol and 222’s.  Otherwise, I would not be allowed to have these non-prescription meds.  I have appreciated the joy of beating the system even at this petty level of intrigue.  Each victory is important to my state of mind even the little ones.

With my medications I also provide an official looking print out, of my own design and composition listing all of my prescriptions and the times I should get them.  I make certain to use significant vocabulary and have my doctor’s name displayed prominently at the top of the sheet.  This mock quasi official document also lists the snacks I should receive in order to battle my attacks of hypoglycemia.  In this way I don’t have to totally rely on eating prepackaged submarine sandwiches at lunch and at the same time add variety to my diet...yet another petty victory.  I may have lost the war and most battles with my ex, but I did have several Power Bars and raisins at my disposal.

While my exchange with the matrons proceeded my once friendly escort Officer Pereira, has been diligently going through my things like a little mole.  He pages through every magazine I have brought to pass the time.

“What’s this?”He asks as three computer printed pictures innocently fall out of my Mclean’s Magazine onto the worn counter top.  Busted.

“Pictures of my kids.  That one is of my son, Paul, on his friend’s boat near Victoria.”  I tried to keep up the friendly banter from earlier.  It didn’t seem to work because he took the pictures and put them in a large plastic bag along with my loose change, and other personal affects.

“Officer, I have always been allowed to keep pictures in my cell.  It keeps my spirits up to see my kids.”  I immediately realized that sounded pretty lame and whiny.

Instead of responding the officer took my red box sun ripened California raisins and added it to the bag.  “Fucking pig I thought.”

“Officer, I bet you carry a picture of your wife or girl friend (maybe both you prick) in your wallet.”  Now I knew having lost the raisin war I was on thinner ice.  I had gone too far.  What was next a power bar?  My mind sometimes deposes reason for the higher cause of fairness, civility and social justice, this time without success.

“That’s not the point.”  No friendly banter left.

Realizing my mistake in pursuing this dialogue I simply replied, “Sorry officer I’m not trying to give you a hard time.”

“Obviously you are.  Those other snacks you have.  I don’t have to allow you in your cell with those.”

I totally went mute, avoided eye contact and assumed my subservient “dog on his back” pose. Reminding myself, never talk to an officer or a guard as if you are an equal.  Preemptively, I quickly picked up my snacks and walked to cell 3.  Pereira, likely savoring his own power trip over insurrection allowed me to leave and said nothing further.  He tossed a small gray woolen blanket into my cell and firmly locked the door behind me.

I was pleased to see there were two thin mattresses on the cell cot instead of one.  This gave me double the meager comfort level, although two times zero is still zero.  Through earlier experience I quickly made up my bed.  first by laying one mattress on top of the other.  It is best to fold over the end to form a makeshift pillow.  I could now feel the sleeping pills make their first seductive tug toward oblivion.  I covered myself with the blanket, lay down and slept until three in the afternoon.

Jail noises would occasional invade my sleep. Although a relatively quiet week end there is still the lulling of other prisoners kicking at their bars as they demand phone calls, magazines or pieces of toilet paper.

“I need to fucking shit get me some fucking toilet paper.”

“When do I get my fucking phone call you bitch.”  

“Lights out is seven, “ shouted a guard.  The punishment to swearing and abusive comments was to have the lights turned off in your cell, only time and good manners would bring one back into the light.

“Hey, I have to get to fucking work get me a fucking officer in here.”

At some point I groggily perceived that another guest had been admitted to my cell.  I planned my welcome wagon greetings when I was fully awake.  I could sense some activity as objects of some sort began raining down near my head, but I was too out of it to respond.  Later, I realized that my cell mate, Rob, had been playing an aggressive game of solitaire.

Rob, a technical instructor at Syncrude, turned out to be good company.  He was educated and every other word he said was not fuck, a good sign of compatibility.  In addition to some intelligent conversation when I finally woke up we shared our stories of week ends past.  He was doing 20 week ends and was now half way through his sentence.  I was still near the beginning of mine.  He had some good survival tricks to share with me.  Although at admission the guards assured me that I could get access to my soap and tooth brush, this was forever an unfulfilled request.

Rob instructed me as to the methodology of getting soap into the cells.  Before coming to jail he soaks a corner of his shirt in liquid dish detergent.  Later, in jail when he needs a wash he simply has to wet the corner of his shirt to get a small portion of soap to wash...a tiny luxury, a small victory.

Obviously, prisoners are not allowed shoe laces, or there would be a rash of hangings on a regular basis, or so goes the accepted logic.  Nor, are we allowed pens and pencils.  “You could put out an eye with that thing.”

Rob, an engineer,simply makes his own pencil from parts he brings within magazines we are sometimes allowed to bring into the cells.  He places a lead from a mechanical pencil in the spine of the magazine along with some clear tape on a random page.  He then removes the subscription card found in the magazine, rolls it into a cylinder, places the lead inside and tapes it tight producing a fine pencil worthy to be sold on any street corner.  For Rob a valuable tool while he sits on his cot with legs up and writes his notes in the margins of his technical work papers the court allowed him to bring to the cell, pencil hidden from the video cameras constantly watching us.

Rob and I agree that there is a potential demand for a “How To” orientation manual for first time prisoners.  We share a sense of humour and a common entrepreneurial spirit.  We were destined to share the same cell several more time before Rob completed his sentence.  After that with his instruction I was on my own.

“Do you mind if I keep the light on?”  Rob has a different approach to dealing with the hours ahead.  Unlike me he is still working and doesn’t want to get his sleep cycles out of sync with his work.  He tries to stay awake by reading and solitaire.

“No leave it on as long as you want, I can sleep with it on or off.”My plan continued to be sleeping through as much time as possible.  Sunday is always slow and that’s when I do my reading.  It is best to bring a selection of books and magazines and hopefully get them by the whims of the guards.  Discovery, National Geographic, Maclean’s, The Economist, are my personal favourites and not too subversive for the guards. 

“Time should be seen as a resource, one with great value, as it is non-renewable”.  Dietrch Bonhoeffer writes in “Letters and Papers from Prison”.  “Time is the most valuable thing that we have because it is the most irrevocable, the thought of any lost time in which we have failed to live a full human life, gain experience, learn, create, enjoy and suffer; it is time that has been filled up, but left empty.”

I think Rob is making better use of his lock up time than I am.  In future I vow I will be more positive, less sarcastic, pursue my passion for Fly Fishing, try to read more, keep up with my laundry and make time a resource that can be filled up.  I have great ideas for a prisoners’ manual, but need more research and time on site to perfect my ideas.

Check in is the time when the guard on duty, under the watchful eye of the attending constable and an array of security cameras observe as I take off my shoes, even if they are loafers with no shoe laces, belt, wallet and other personal effects. I was allowed to bring prescription drugs, for the guards to administer at appropriate times.  Sometimes I was allowed to bring in books and magazines and on a whim sometimes not.  I was never sure if there was a standard policy as from week end to week end policies were unpredictable.   It was Karma.  It was fate.  It really pissed me off.

Over time I learned a few tricks, mainly by example from my more experienced cell mates.  For example, even though I was  spending an entire week end hosted by the municipality I could not bring in a change of underwear. They had a very strict one pair of underwear policy.  I would have loved to attend the meting in which that policy was decided, “Okay all those in favour of the unitary brief policy raise your hands,  fine I see the motion has been carried.” Coupled with the fact that despite the cellar location of the cells it was damn hot down there.

After just a few week ends I learned to wear my bathing suit under my pants and then when it got too hot to bear I could shed my clothing, in front of video surveillance, and relax in languor on my cot in tropical splendor.  I favoured a Tommy Bahama tropical theme and thought it added a needed splash of colour to the drab surroundings.  Any attempt at getting one of those little umbrella drinks even the virgin version always met with failure. At least I could lay in relative comfort and cope with the heat.  No guard  during check in would allow me entrance to nirvana with a bathing suit in hand, in fact I’m sure I would be the object of ridicule if I even tried it.  Survival in jail was based on small deceitful techniques and I felt were all part of my rehabilitation process.  Knowing how to problem solve would invariable make me a better person and I would reintegrate into the larger society a better person. Silly mind games help me get through the process.

Sometimes I was allowed magazines. I taped personal photographs in the magazines just for something extra to look at, occasionally I was allowed to bring in a paperback, but usually not.  Time was spent sitting or lying on a cot, two cots per cell, no windows and one toilet.  Some cell mates were conversationalists and others were silent and wanted to be left alone.  I was somewhere in the middle but mainly a good listener.  We all had stories.  

Over the course of my thirty weekends I spent several with Matt a young guy who operated his own construction company which he used as a front to distribute drugs.  While doing week ends his girl friend kept the business alive.  Eventually, he offered me a job in his family run organization and I was truly flattered.  I had made a friend.  I’m sure I could have made lots of money as my commitment to education was  at a low point. I have to admit for a moment I was tempted.   I’m not sure why Matt confided so much in me because with what I knew about his operation I could have changed his stay from week ends to several years, but oddly despite the age difference we were cell mates and there was a feeling of solidarity, something hard to explain in a classroom context. 

Mainly time in the cell was slow and tedious with too much time to think.  My joys in life had become a series of simple pleasures. While lying on my hard cot in the stifling subterranean cell with a variety of cell mates I tried not to think of my lying cheating bitch of a wife, who unfortunately was still my wife and as it turned out would be for another five years.  She had committed adultery with a string of men several of whom were also public school board trustees and therefore virtuous and honourable people like Celine who served the public and educated children. Later she would run for public office as a Member of the legislative Assembly.  Maybe it tells one something about politicians? 

 While I was was out in Ontario looking for a job Celine had taken the girls and our RV along with her boy friend either Gary, Larry or Barry and went on vacation.  But instead of dwelling on how a mother could allow her children to be part of the adultery process and be able to rationalize all of that in her sick narcissistic, sociopathic bent mind I chose to lie in my cot and think of camping trips to Jasper, or certainly I would go crazy.

During the week Kennedy, my Golden Lab, and I would pack up the Van and head for the Mountains.  Fortunately, I had the time and was still getting paid, so there were some advantages.  I needed a different type of solitude, one with dark starry sky, mountains, cold rivers and deep forests.  During my incarceration Kennedy and I made thirteen trips to Jasper, hiked many of the trails. It gave me the mental video loops I needed to play in my head while lying on my cot in my cell on the week ends.  Closing my eyes I could vividly see across a raging river the silvery fur of a wolf intently starring at Kennedy.  Kennedy and I safe because of the river, but who knew what prowled on our side.  Female predators I knew were dangerous. 

April in Jasper is an empty place and still a winter camping experience. I slept on an Ikea cot with my Arctic sleeping bag Kennedy beside me lay on top of another sleeping bag and sometime he would jump on the cot and I would ket him stay.  We needed each other’s body heat.  It was survival.  

On occasion during the week while shopping for groceries or aimlessly wondering the mall to burn up my extra time since, I was now unemployed I  occasionally ran into another weekender such as myself.  We would never talk, just a slight nod to acknowledge that we shared a dirty little secret. Once in the produce department I was putting several naval oranges into a bag.  I looked up and recognized one of my cell mates doing the same.  Words were not necessary.  We were not friends on the outside. 

Of the 14 cells in the detention hall I had the opportunity, over the duration of my thirty week ends, to be placed in 11 of them. Naturally I could not express a preference for a room and so my room placement was  somewhat random. I always craved a room with a view.  Secretly, I developed a silly little objective and that was to achieve a perfect score, like a Romanian gymnast, I was going for a perfect score by occupying, on various weekends, all 14 cells. Not something I could put on my resume later, but just one of those ridiculous mind games to give me some focus. 

I think the cops, once incarcerated they were no longer RCMP officers, were well aware that if a certain inmate such as myself, the nefarious teacher convict, were to be placed continually in the same cell there was a statistical exponential increase in the likelihood of escape.  As prisoners we were all well aware of the urban myth, make that legend, of the week ender placed in the same cell week after week end eventually tunneled out and escaped through the fiction section of the library one floor above.  It was discovered that this crafty soul had behind the cover of a Rachel Welch poster using titanium tipped plastic spoons made good his escape.  It was a story, which should be made into a movie.  It gave us all hope even if many of the younger inmates had no idea who Rachel Welch was.  I knew and in my heart I had hope.

Another irony was that as part of  the curriculum of my grade ten social studies civics class I would bring in guest speakers including RCMP officers and once even a judge.  In those cases they were my guests and I did not frisk them before entering my class and if they ever wanted to bring with them two pairs of underwear for whatever reason I would have granted them that privilege without hesitation.

The dimensions of a cell built for two is actually quite small. I suppose with regional cut backs and a near complete disregard for prisoner comfort the cells were as they were. I recalled that in a Lenin/McCartney tune the protagonist in the song counted all of the holes in the ceiling of the Albert Hall.  I though damn if he can do that and given all the spare time I am blessed with I can count the number of bricks in one cell. It was a fascinating and consuming pass time and a skill set which continues to this day.  Like starlings attracted to shiny objections due to their dark colouring I am attracted to geometric patterns in walls and ceilings.  While waiting in a doctor’s waiting room I can occupy myself for hours, so no one in good conscience can tell me I was wasting my time on the week end.  However, I did become a tad more sensitive during the week, especially, Monday’s when a cashier or virtual stranger might ask ,”So how was your week end?”

By counting bricks I could compare cell size and discover if I was really getting the true value of my tax money because I knew that in yet another irony I had helped finance the institution I was in and hell my tax dollars were paying the guards salary, yet they would still not serve umbrella drinks on hot days. By knowing the number of bricks and through cross referencing the size of bricks, at Beaver lumber on my “free” days during the week I could actually very accurately determine the volume and area of a cell.  Of course any effort to go to the planning department on the sixth floor of the same building in which I was incarcerated to look up the floor-plan for the jail was as successful as getting two pairs of underwear past the guard.

The worst feature of any cell was the toilet. The stark, functional stainless steel toilet which stood sculpture like at the end of my cot and to the left of the door.  There was no stall, since I could not get a hall-pass to go to a different washroom, like in the library, I was really stuck with an open toilet next to my cot under full video surveillance. Another theory was that the guards were overt perverts and took great personal pleasure in watching me take a shit. I know that is unfair as I would wager that at least half of them could care less if I shit, pissed, flushed or died on the spot.  I had no privacy from any angle of the cell.  When a cellmate chose to take a dump the protocol was to avert your eyes and let the good times roll.  We were allowed one roll of TP, but just a partial role because maybe the guards feared that someone would use the paper to macramé a rope and use it as a weapon, an instrument of self destruction, or an interesting mobile.

Jail was very boring and since I was not allowed to work on any hobbies or make license plates, volunteer in the laundry or keep birds I decided the best coping mechanism was sleep, but the vexing problem was how could I realistically achieve REM sleep for 48 consecutive hours.  The answer of course was pharmaceuticals. I needed drugs.  I realized that since the guards allowed prescription drugs I would get some current containers, for example I took and still take medication for migraine headaches, I’m not certain what the source of my headaches were but I was certain there was a link between stress and incarceration.  I replaced my actual prescription drugs with sleeping pills and sleep aids.  When it came time for the guards to bring bring my prescription medicine they were actually giving me a sleeping pill.  As a back up plan I would also smuggle in some pills if I really wanted to sleep.  I discovered that the guards had reluctance to frisk my crotch during the check in, although there was this one guy that did and he really creeped me out.  

Other than the guard with the lingering hands I was pretty safe to put what I wanted into the mesh of my bathing suit which I wore as an underwear surrogate.  At first I thought I would smuggle in black market oranges, to avoid scurvy. I settled on pain killers and sleep aids as an alternative, and sometimes brought some extra for my “friends.”  The trick of course was to get the pill from your crotch to your mouth while potentially being watched on camera by some sleepy guard at the desk 30 feet at the end of the row of cells.  Most guys like to scratch their own balls, and so while in a posed nap scenario I would stretch and scratch and probe, palm a pill and while extending the stretch over my head pop the pill in my mouth and oblivion here I come.

Its not that jail is such a bad place because there are lots of people to talk to even if you can’t see them several cells over.  As inmates anthropologist would wonder at the high level and intricate oral traditions that we developed. Look at me know telling you this story and we all had stories.  Of course Friday and Saturday nights were bad times for story time, because after midnight the constables started bringing in the drunks from their night patrols.  Its not that we as week enders were snobs or anything, but we had established our little ways, had our fine set of traditions, habits and practices from week to week only to be spoiled by some petty criminal off the street who could not hold his liquor.  Fortunately, one large cell was reserved for the street and bar drunks, This of course is the drunk tank and it quickly filled up with screaming, miserable wrenching and wretched down and outs and misfits.  

Few things are as pathetic as a drunk native woman screaming about being beat up and thrown out of a bar for nothing while her young kids wait in a pick up truck parked outside the bar for their parents eventual exit.  To meet that contingency I soon found it was necessary to smuggle ear plugs via my bathing suit.  I guess the guards thought I scratched my balls and awful lot because not only was I too sleepy to hear the details of the howling drunk masses from the vomit covered floor of the drunk tank, I could turn the volume button from 10 to 2 with the ear plugs. 

One week end I had the bad fortunate of being placed in the drunk tank because all of the cells were full.  There had been a lot of police activity that week  and the cells were occupied.  The drunk tank is about, at best two and a half time larger than a regular cell and I joined a Friday night group of over twenty people.  Moaning, swearing, screaming miserable drunks and many of the week enders.  It was like mixing white collar criminals with serial killers.

“Fuck you cops you can’t keep us here like this”

“Stop screaming you dumb fuck”

“Suck my cock asshole”

There was no place to sit other than the floor and no place to stretch out, there was one open toilet.  I was surrounded by screaming drunks and at this point I was about half way through my week ends.

I had read through the trial transcripts (Celine had put them online) several times trying to figure out how she had gotten away with her judicial charade.  I think part of it, a big part was my own stupidity and allowing myself to be set up in the way that I was.  When she got into my car, I should have seen it coming and simply gotten out of the car and walked away, not into the trap I allowed her to spring on me.  I trusted that not even Celine was this devious, but she proved me wrong. I think too the court may just few men as deadbeats in general.  had I actually dragged Celine the distance she described likely she would have been dead.  She had a stitch in the back of her head and some scratches when she fell away from my car as I pulled away. She got out of my car on her own, placed her hand in the open window as I pulled away from the curb and got snagged.   The physical evidence never added up but her emotional performance made up for factual gaps.   

However, today I can write these words, my story, and feel confident that Celine now on her third marriage and drinking heavily will, like her mother and father before her, drink herself into oblivion where she truly belongs.  She has not even remotely destroyed my life, just made many annoyances, and created many costs and inconveniences.  She is a sociopath.  May she rot in hell, as she desreves, for all of her lies, pretenses, games, and manipulations. 

I would have a few words for a judicial system so easily fooled, but for that I am not surprised.  Celine is highly skilled at what she does best and judges feel they know more than they really do.  To my judge I was just another dead beat wife beater who deserved to be punished.  He read his prepared sentence from a type written sheet indicating he had made up his mind before my case had even been presented.  But he, like me was fooled and that's justice in Alberta.  Thanks so much  Honourable Judge Donald Lee. 


Pictured here is the drunk tank in Fort McMurray, Alberta.  The picture at the top is the row of cells at basement level, now painted green.

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