I just got back from a road trip with my dad. We drove the northern route through Ontario i.e. we started on Yonge Street in Toronto and pointed the car north. Theoretically, if you keep your foot on the accelerator and don’t hit a moose, a couple days later you’ll end up in Rainy River on the Minnesota border. The first night of our trip, we stayed at the Best Western in Cochrane, eating at a bar and grill called the Ice Hut. The meal was surprisingly good for being in a place halfway to nowhere. We hadn’t been in Cochrane for more than 40 years. When I was seven or eight, my parents took my brother and me up there for a holiday and we caught the Polar Bear Express to Moosonee. Forty years later, it’s nice to see all the changes. They have some 3-story sky-scrapers now. (I know, I know, that’s just the sort of thing a smart-mouthed city boy living on the 33rd floor of a condo in downtown Toronto would say, but I can’t help myself; it’s in my nature to be smart-mouthed.) The next morning we passed through places like Smooth Rock Falls, Fauquier, Kapuskasing, Hearst, Long Lac, Geraldton, and Beardmore. Our goal was the Pijtawabik Palisades 40 km north of Nipigon. I’d driven past them two years ago but the weather had been wild with lightning and sheets of rain sweeping across the highway. I’d promised myself I’d come back in better weather with my camera and hike the Palisades Trail. On a whim, I called my dad to see if he wanted to join me. I thought it might give us a shot at one of those heartwarming father and son bonding times that you read about on TV. As with most things on TV, the real life version was messier. My dad used the time to disclose a family secret that he’d never, until then, worked up the gumption to share with me. I haven’t decided yet whether the experience totally ruined my life or only left me sorely damaged.
There are only two notable geological formations in the province of Ontario, a remarkable fact considering that Ontario spans two time zones and is larger in area than the UK, France, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands combined. One of the notable formations is famous. It’s the Niagara Escarpment which runs through Ontario from Niagara Falls in the south to Manitoulin Island in the north. The other, and arguably more spectacular, is not. It’s the Pijtawabik Palisades, but no one bothers much about it because it’s somewhere way the hell up north and you have to leave the Trans-Canada highway to get to it. The Palisades is a big 140 metre high granite mesa formed some 1.2 billion years ago and scoured bare during the last ice age. It’s home to more than 100 waterfalls and, because the waterfalls freeze solid in the winter, it provides some of the best ice climbing east of the Rockies. I took my dad to hike a 7 km trail that ascends the mesa and then winds across the top of it. On one of the hiking web sites, they describe the trail as “difficult” so I told my dad to buy a pair of good hiking boots and bring a back pack for water and lunch.
On the morning of the hike, we woke up at 5:30. We got up early because, as they say, the early photographer gets the light. Actually, we got up early because we were staying at a Days Inn in Thunder Bay and it would take at least an hour and a half to drive to the trail head. I had tried to book a room in Nipigon, which is an hour closer, but everything was booked solid with hunters and fishing types. Seeing as it was a Saturday morning and all, and seeing as it was brilliant weather and all, and seeing as all the nearby motels were booked solid and all, I assumed we’d be elbowing our way past hoards of hikers and photography types as we climbed the Palisades. With an early start, we could avoid the rush.
After a couple photo stops along the shores of Lake Helen (early morning glassy water surface type shot and mist through the hills type shot) I parked the Prius in the little scrotum-shaped cul-de-sac parking area. Yes, I drove a Prius through northern Ontario. Yes, it was the only Prius within a thousand click radius. What can I say? I’m a city boy; even so, once I’d put on my hiking boots and had shouldered my pack, you could hardly tell. I was like a real honest-to-god Canadian hiker, eh.
In retrospect, it was inappropriate for me to bring along a seventy-seven year old man. The first two kilometres were mostly vertical and damned near killed him/us. Nevertheless, my dad was hell-bent on getting to the top. I wondered what would happen if he fell and cracked his skull on a rock. There’s no cell service up there so I wouldn’t be able to call 9-1-1. And there’s no way I’d be able to sling him over a shoulder and carry him back down to the car. I’d have to leave him there, then scramble my way back to the highway and wave down a passing truck. By the time I got back to my dad, maybe a bear would have got him. I could hear my mom’s voice in my head telling us we were a pair of idiots.
We took things sensibly. We’d climb for a bit then pause. Climb then pause. Along the way, I’d pull out my camera and force the pace to a crawl while I took time to compose a shot or track the peregrine falcon that circled overhead. When we knew the top was close, we stopped for lunch. We’d packed apples, cherries, granola bars and Sweet Maries. Again, I heard my mom’s voice in my head telling us we might as well be eating bear poop for all the nutritional good our lunch would do. But what can I say? It was the sort of lunch a father and son should eat while they’re sharing a bonding experience. We dropped all our apple cores and cherry pits and wrappers into a zip-lock baggie to carry back down with us. Zero footprint. That was our by-word. Dad stuffed the zip-lock baggie into his back pack and pulled out a little bottle of that hand sanitizer that you have to take a squirt of when you visit someone in an old folks home. This wasn’t the sort of thing my dad would’ve done all on his own but was an obvious consequence of his training (read: indoctrination) by my mom. We were sitting between clumps of moss on a bare sheet of granite. The sun shone warm on our heads and filled us with a feeling of benevolence. We swatted away the occasional mosquito and listened to the hum of dragon flies whuzzing over the rocky ground. While my dad leaned back and closed his eyes, I picked a handful of wild blueberries and savoured them the same way you savour a fine wine.
I had assumed my dad was dozing but, still with his eyes closed, he spoke. He and my mom had been setting their affairs in order (again). They had gone to their lawyer and updated their wills. Nothing surprising to report on the legal front. The only change involved removing some of the trust provisions now that their youngest grandchild had reached the age of majority. I told him he shouldn’t be so hasty; I might have a midlife crisis and run off to start a second family. He smiled and shook his head; he was the one who had driven me to my vasectomy. In addition to the revised wills, my parents had consulted a funeral director. They had bought a plot, had made detailed arrangements for their services, had even commissioned a headstone. Dad pulled up a photo on his cell phone and passed it to me (presumably) for approval. There it was, in pink granite like the rock underneath our butts, names and birth dates at the top, loving parents of … me and my brother, grandparents of … a list of the grandchildren. Whatever. I passed the cell phone back to him.
It was time to keep moving. I slung the pack over my shoulder and helped dad to his feet. It wasn’t so far to the top and it wasn’t so steep either, just a couple more twists in the trail before it levelled off and took us back along the edge of the Palisades. We were walking along an unsanitized path at the top of a sheer cliff face 140 metres above the highway. I say “unsanitized” because there were none of the safeguards you find at the more touristy sites like Kakebeka Falls or High Falls on Pigeon River. They drive iron railings into the rock for fear of being sued by people too stupid to keep from slipping over the edge. But not here. Atop the Palisades there’s nothing to betray a human presence. In fact, the whole time we were on the trail to the top, we didn’t encounter another soul. At the first lookout, we drew to the edge in silence, feeling that odd lurch in our bowels that always comes when you look out unprotected from a great height. I set up my tripod and camera and took shots of the landscape that unfurled beneath our feet. It was a better view than from my condo balcony back in Toronto. While, a thousand kilometres to the south, busloads of tourists gathered each hour to watch water pour over a sanitized cliff little more than a third this height, my dad and I stood in silence, the only people through the whole day to face this wonder. We went on to the next lookout and so on until we reached the point of no return, i.e. the point at which we estimated that if we didn’t turn back then we couldn’t reach our car before dark.
As we returned to the place where we’d eaten lunch, dad said there was something he needed to tell me. He and mom had discussed it and had decided that if they were getting their affairs in order then they’d better get all their affairs in order. That meant coming right out and telling me the truth. I deserved to know. We set down our packs and took out our water bottles. I’d worn a long-sleeved shirt for the mosquitos but the shirt was hot and made me sweat like a beast. I needed to rehydrate. While I finished my first water bottle and started in on the second, dad spoke to me plain. Son, he said, you’re not my son. I mean, you’re my son in every way that matters, you know, in the emotional sense but, biologically-speaking, you’re not my son.
Reason first. Emotions later. That’s how it always goes for me. In my head, I knew exactly what my father had said. But in my gut, I had no clue how to respond. I guess that’s why I’m writing about it now, long after the fact, with the benefit of time to reflect on what the man had said to me. In a way, I wish I’d enjoyed the time right then to sit alone on that billion year old chunk of rock and gather my thoughts to myself. What a place that could have been for me to come to terms with such a thing. But reason first. And reason was nattering in my head that we had to hurry up or night would fall and screw us over.
Whenever we paused for him to catch his breath, he added a few more words to flesh out his announcement. My father—my biological father—was named Bill McBean, a kid who’d grown up on the farm behind the farm where my mom grew up. He’d been a wild one and, from mom’s perspective, it’d probably been a case of “bad boy syndrome”. He didn’t know about such things but figured a lot of young women go through it, especially if, like mom, they come from a strict background where the temptation to rebel is almost irresistible. He’d been smitten by my mom from the day he first laid eyes on her, so it nearly shattered his heart the night she tore off with Bill McBean in that souped up ’57 Chevy of his. One night was all it took. One night for Bill McBean to toss her aside like a used coat. One night for her to realize what a fool she’d been. And one night … well … one night for me to be conceived. It didn’t take him long to figure out that she’d gotten herself pregnant by Bill McBean, and, since he couldn’t find it in his heart to fall out of love with her, he did the only thing possible. He told everyone it was him who got my mom pregnant. He took the anger and shame of two families and swallowed all of it. Soon they were married and starting a family and at the centre of it all was this man’s vow to treat me as his own for as long as he lived and beyond (which would be obvious if I knew the terms of his will).
Further down the trail, while capturing an oddly shaped fungus in the late afternoon light, I asked what had happened to my real, my biological, father, the illustrious Bill McBean. The story goes that he’d been a small time grifter, gambler, cigarette smuggler, forger, liar, cheat, beater of wives, abuser of children, in and out of prison on petty charges, killed in ’95 when he ran a red light, probably impaired at the time, struck down (fittingly enough) by a young mother with a baby in a car seat behind her. I could read through a modest folder of newspaper clippings when we got back to Toronto.
I’ve read stories like this, typically in Readers’ Digest, where an adopted woman tracks down the mother who, as a teenager, left her on the doorstep of an orphanage, or a university student, feeling depressed and empty inside, who learns by chance that he has a twin brother. Always, the story ends with a sense of emotional completion. The last piece of a puzzle clicks into place and life is beautiful. The truth makes these people whole. But that’s not how it felt for me. There was no click. No moment when I could say to myself: aha, that explains why I don’t feel any close kinship to my brother—now my half brother—or: aha, that explains all those funny looks I got from the man I used to call my dad that time, years ago, when he caught me pilfering money from his drawer. Only I’ve never had any feelings like that. I’ve always felt a close kinship to my brother—now my half brother—despite our differences, and I never noticed funny looks from the man I used to call my dad even when he caught me pilfering money from his drawer. Instead, everything about our relations has been overwhelmingly normal. That’s what makes the revelation so difficult to understand. It’s almost a betrayal of our normalcy. I thought my dad was Jimmy Stewart but now I find out he’s really Dennis Hopper. There was never a missing piece to the puzzle; someone’s just gone to an already finished puzzle and swiped a piece from it.
The stolen puzzle piece has something to do with the whole personal identity issue. At least that’s the way I’ve decided to think about it. For all my life until that moment on top of the Pijtawabik Palisades, I had understood myself as a fairly conventional guy raised by a fairly conventional family in a fairly conventional city. If everything about my nurture can be described as conventional, and if everything about my nature appears to fall in line with that, what am I supposed to do with the fact that half my genetic code comes from a rebel and a criminal? Am I only my nurture and none of my nature? I didn’t think it was possible for anybody to be totally lopsided in favour of nurture. Could this man I call dad have conditioned all my natural tendencies out of me? Or have I only forgotten my natural tendencies? Maybe I can remember my true self if I trip whatever mnemonic switch will restore the suppressed genetic memories of my criminal nature.
For the rest of our road trip, I called my compadre Paul instead of Dad. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings but, at the same time, what could he expect? He’s the one who had lied to me for all my life about the true nature of my identity. Paul said that, while he could understand how this little revelation would come to me as a shock, it wasn’t as if I’d discovered a secret super power which had suddenly foisted on me an awesome responsibility for the human race. As far as he was concerned, this was pretty humble stuff. As far as he was concerned, I was still his son and he was still my dad; I could always depend on him; I could always look to him for advice. Yeah, whatever.
Paul and I didn’t go back the way we’d come; we took the TransCanada Highway along the north shore of Lake Superior. Again, we woke up at 5:30 in the morning, hoping to make it to the Cascades as the sun was rising, then we’d continue until we got tired of driving. I stuffed all my clothes in a grey gym bag then, in answer to a vague urge, I threw in one of the hotel’s large fluffy towels and a bar of soap. Was I on the verge of a slippery slope? I smiled at the thought of it. We filled the car with gas at the Husky station across from the hotel and, when I went inside to pay, stuffed a Sweet Marie into my jacket pocket. When we made it to the highway, I ripped the wrapper open with my teeth and grinned to myself all the way to the Cascades. The chocolate bar tasted sweeter for being stolen.
The Cascades is a set of rapids/waterfalls in a conservation area at the end of Balsam Street to the northeast of Thunder Bay. Paul and I sat on big granite rocks, watching the sky lighten over the roaring waters and sipping the coffees we’d bought at a Tim Horton’s drive-thru. I tossed my empty cup into the rapids and watched it disappear downstream. Paul looked at me but clenched his jaws rather than comment. I let out a whoop that echoed through the trees. It felt exhilarating to break the rules. At last it felt like we were on a real road trip. Like we were in the movie Thelma and Louise or something.
When we got back on the highway, I didn’t worry so much about how fast I was going, sometimes putting my foot all the way down on the accelerator when I wanted to pass an 18-wheeler on a grade. I whistled as the highway breezed by. Paul said my levity was forced. He said a self-conscious happiness has nothing to do with real happiness and everything to do with insecurity. I smiled sideways at him and asked what lying to a child has to do with. He frowned: that was a low thing for me to say. I didn’t respond. Instead, I let the car drift over the centre line and waited to see how long it would take for Paul to say something. When he caught me headed straight for an oncoming pickup truck, he yelled and told me to grow up. He said: sure your father—your biological father—was a rebel and a law-breaker, but there are some laws you just can’t break, not without paying a price; and your father—your biological father—paid the ultimate price the night he tried to run a red light and break the laws of physics; now, you can go testing the laws of physics if you like, but not with me in the car. He told me to pull over. He’d rather walk home.
I did as he said and veered to the shoulder. When I put the car into park, he told me to smarten up. The way his voice sounded, it was as if he was my dad all over again. Nothing had really changed. He was still my dad and I was still his son.
I said sorry.
He smiled and set his hand on my shoulder. He said: Let’s keep going, son.
That was fine. But first I had to go pee.
This would be the last rebel thing I did on the trip. The rules say you’re supposed to pee at designated rest areas, but the coffee I’d drunk at the Cascades had worked its way into my bladder and I was desperate to let it back into the world. I stepped to the other side of the car and down an embankment then past a line of jack pines that concealed me from the road. The ground was spongy with pine needles and moss. A flock of Canada Geese flew their instinctive V formation overhead, honking and flapping and reminding everything else in the forest, including me, that winter was coming. Halfway through my business, a crashing sound pushed through the brush to my right and a black bear ambled into view. Oh shit. I squeezed tight and halted the stream of piss. In general, black bears are harmless the way bees are harmless: leave them alone and they’ll leave you alone. Except the day before there’d been a news report of a camper, a man my age, seriously mauled by a black bear. They’re a force of nature. There’s no reasoning with them. They do what they do and you can’t account for it, no more than you can account for a lightning strike. Still exposed, a mosquito landed on my flesh, but I was too afraid to move so I let the mosquito feast away. The bear didn’t appear to know I was watching; it lumbered in front of me from right to left beyond the next row of trees. I felt a breeze against my face; it was blowing back toward the highway so at least the bear wouldn’t have my scent. The thump of my heart sounded so loud in my chest I was sure the bear could hear it. All I can remember thinking was: the Latin for bear is ursus. That’s it.
When the bear had passed out of sight, I zipped myself up and raced to the car. I slammed the door and shut my eyes and clamped a hand over my mouth to work my breathing back to a normal rhythm. My heart was still thumping when I put the car into drive. I wanted to get out of there. I miss my view of the lights from the thirty-third floor. I miss the roar of the traffic and the yells of the crazy street people. I miss the chaos of the city. It feels natural to me. I want to go home.