Chasing the Comet: A Scottish-Canadian Life

Preface

T This book began with a request from one of my husband’s best friends, George Caldow, who asked me to write his father’s story, intending it to be a gift for his father’s ninetieth birthday. Because George had enjoyed and shared many of his father’s memories over the years, he wanted them recorded so they could be savoured by the family, perhaps through the generations. David Caldow was eighty-nine at the time. When he was told of George’s idea, David thought it was amusing but he also thought it would be a good idea for his grandchildren and later generations to know their family story. When we began, the Caldow family was my only intended audience . For the writing, I agreed to be paid expenses—enough to cover the cost of paper and ink cartridges. In return, I asked that David would give me publishing rights. I intended to write something of about three thousand words, like other life stories I had written and published in periodicals—something to perhaps become part of a collection of immigrant stories. To be honest, when I accepted the task, I wasn’t sure that David and I could collaborate successfully because of our many differences. The most obvious one is that he is a man and I am a woman, and we all know what difficulties that difference can create . Also, he is farm folk and I am city folk. His brogue identifies him as immigrant Scottish, while I am first generation Englishix PREFACE How this Story Came to Be Canadian. He had matured at the end of the Victorian era, while I had attended Simon Fraser University during the 1960s. He had lived a long time, happy and successful on Colony Farm (located at Essondale Provincial Mental Hospital), which I remembered from the perspective of a fear-filled teen, trembling at the sight of the place when visiting my severely depressed mother over a seven-month period. David remembers pastoral farm scenes surrounding the hospital grounds, while I remember the sight of barred windows and the clanking sound made when keys turned in iron-clad doors that locked my mother away from me. Nevertheless, I accepted George Caldow’s request to write his father’s story, partly because I was curious. I was intrigued by the possibility of learning our friend’s history. I knew David’s memories of his work at the now-dismantled and transformed Colony Farm and Tranquille would provide interesting historical details that would otherwise be lost from British Columbia’s history. Also, personally, I thought that researching the mental hospital might exorcise the ghostly sounds I carried within, although even thinking of doing so was disquieting. However, previous successful writing experiences gave me the confidence I needed to attempt the greater challenge posed by David Caldow’s story. I see myself as an artist creating true-to-life portraits, using words instead of paint. Using a hanging file instead of a palette, I collect details, vignettes, colourful words, and idiomatic phrases, then organize them into a narrative of the person’s lifetime. Interviews and research develop contrasts and shades of meaning, highlight salient features, and reveal the unique theme guiding the choices that built the life. At least, this is my goal. Because I work with living subjects, I know I’ve succeeded when the person whose life I’m portraying says “Yes, that’s exactly the way it was.” David Caldow and I had been acquaintances for many years (about twenty-three). His son George had attended UBC with my husband and had frequently reminisced about Tranquille. The first time we met George’s father, he had welcomed us to his home in Abbotsford, a visit prompted by his offer to give us our first dog, x CHASING THE COMET a black and white sheepdog named Jiggs. Over the years, we had met and talked casually numbers of times: during Christmas and birthday get-togethers, and also in the Pacific National Exhibition barns (where David supervised the exhibits), and during summers when my children were still young enough to be thrilled by sheep and hogs. Later, as guests at a welcome-home gathering, we had briefly enjoyed David and Peggy’s stories of life in Tanzania. But our long acquaintance didn’t stop me from being anxious as I drove the five minutes from my White Rock home...