That Rebel Weed

Here's a poem that got me into a bit of trouble at the Pembina border crossing in 2003, when I went to sell Christmas trees and sleep on the streets of Manhattan. Being the single, young Canadian traveller with a one-way ticket I was a natural target for inspection.

I imagine they were most interested if I was bringing drugs. As if I'd be that stupid. Whatever, it's their job, and I think they get genuine pleasure out of making people sweat. I was cool. I had nothing to hide, except the fact that I was going down there to work illegally. And there was no physical evidence of that.

But there was a poem that mentioned "that rebel weed" which the officer read while perusing my private journal. And he questioned me about it. I told him quite honestly it was about dandelions. I used to be obsessed with weeds as a poetic metaphor in the mid-nineties. I was taken-up with their tenacity, inspired by unwanted things that could be so beautiful and free. It had very little to with marijuana.

July 24/98

Looking back
to when I was so consumed
with emptiness
wondering how sorrow could be so
addictive

Now sunshine
is reaching the cracks—
weeds are pulled, uprooted
for flowers
and it seems as though anything
is possible

Remembering that
I still cherish that rebel weed
a confusing emblem
of annoying yet voracious life,
only now will colour and charisma
shine forth

At the opposite side of the book was another entry that he read, this one was written the night before.

11/25/03

Pre-Trip
It is the night before I take off into my American adventure. Ren hit it on the head when she said that I am in the portal. I am neither here nor there, but waiting for the near-distant launch into another world. Add to that the strange hours I have subjected myself to in preparation, and it becomes clear that I am in a zone that Nikki described as being 2" in front of your face. If only I weren't so nervous about sleeping-in & missing the bus, which after all does not leave until 9:40. But I guess pre-trip jitters have to manifest themselves somehow. Only 7.5 hours to go.

Ironically, I only used the journal once on the entire trip, and that was to record my feelings about the border crossing. The rest of my observations were written nightly on Christmas cards and then dispatched via the Post Office on 84th Street. It is up to all my friends and relatives who kept their cards to put the pieces together again—I'd be grateful if anyone of you typed one into the comments ; ).

Here's what I wrote about the border crossing:

Border Crossing
The usual suspect—Young Male, casual labourer with casual plans. I would have been extremely surprised if they had waved me through, I am the type that if I were them I would scrutinize. But my travel plans, sketchy as they are have a definite conclusion, and my bank statement is compelling evidence that I have the means to support myself. Still, it is nerve racking sitting in that room being interrogated. I can only imagine how horrible it would be if I were Mr. Arar, or if the inspector had not believed my reference to "that rebel weed" referred to dandelions and not to pot. It is the curse of the wayward artist to face such sticky situations, but thankfully this is still a free country, and the word of an honest citizen is still worth something. (I don't know if I was being sarcastic at the end, but I certainly was not being totally honest, and I am by no means an American citizen.)

Flip the Coin

Below is an e-mail forward I got from my mom, and my response to it. I don't know if she sent it to me expecting my sympathy or if she was trying to bait me, but I hope it was the later, since her church has undoubtedly sponsored more than its share of refugees over the years.

SUBJECT: Canada Pension

It is interesting that the Federal government provides a single refugee
with a monthly allowance of $1,890.00 and each can also get an additional
$580.00 in social assistance for a total of $2,470.00. This compares very well
to a single pensioner who after contributing to the growth and development of
Canada for 40 to 50 years can only receive a monthly maximum of $1,012.00
in old age pension and Guaranteed Income Supplement. Maybe our pensioners
should apply as refugees! Lets send this to all Canadians, so we can all
be ticked off and maybe we can get the refugees cut back to $1,012.00 and
the pensioners up to $2,470.00 and enjoy some of the money we were forced to
submit to the Government over the last 40 or 50 years. Please forward to
every Canadian to expose what our elected politicians are doing to the
over taxed Canadian.

REPLY:

It is interesting that a Canadian Pensioner has lived his or her entire life in a nation free from civil war and political persecution. This compares very unfavourably with a refugee, who has not had an opportunity to contribute to the growth and development of his or her nation, and who in fact was forced to flee that country leaving everything they know behind forever. Maybe we should be thankful for the opportunity to be Canadians and share our good fortune with those unlucky enough to be born in less affluent and more tyrannical parts of the world.

34 looks like this:

Destination Anywhere

This poem was written on the back of two handbills for Corefest circa 1997
Prairie fish
navigating
slow, brown rivers
weaving
endless twists and turns
is there a method
to your madness?
do you meander
eventually
to the greater sea
or flounder
into an ox-bow?
does the rich salt
invigorate
the gills
or forever does
fermented algae
unfilter you?
Great Sturgeon
or prairie salmon
you are at the forks now
will you turn
back up against
the muddy current
or continue down
the water shed
to destination anywhere?

Simple Math: Cars are Expensive

Although I am largely in agreement with Dale Wiebe's letter about how to encourage Winnipeggers to cycle, I don't think any tax breaks are required. After all, someone who commits to cycling year round will save a considerable amount of money without needing any further economic incentives.

I offer the following simplified example. My commute is approximately 118 km a week. If I owned a typical car outright (a 2000 Chevy Cavalier 4-door in mint condition for the purpose of this argument), had no merits on my licence and paid $.90/litre for gas for 48 weeks (one year less vacation time and extreme weather days) it would cost me just over $2000 to run the vehicle. Of course if I had to make payments or repairs on my car or decided to use it for anything more than going directly to and from work that number would probably be more than double.

It amazes me that so many Winnipeggers will drive across town to save $10, but seldom, if ever, think about the real cost of vehicle ownership. Virtually everyone with the wherewithal, and many more without, consider a privately owned car a necessity, but it is not. It is a luxury that consumes vast amounts of their annual income.

Wake up thrifty Winnipeg, a bike is not just a path to better health, it is the road to a fatter wallet.

Original Article (WFP Subscription Only)
Original Letter (WFP Subscription Only)
N.B.: The Photo was taken without permission from the Winnipeg Free Press, Wayne Glowacki was the Photographer

Correspondences with my bank manager (post script)

This is what my bank manager had to say to my last letter (posted Jan. 10). I'm not sure if the fact that I sent a complete copy of our correspondence to the office of the Bank President lit a fire under his butt, or if he genuinely agreed with my comments. In any case, I got my way.

Dear Mr. _______:

Thank you for your response and more importantly, a second opportunity to
alleviate the irritation this matter has caused you. I apologize for the
lack of formality in my first response and hopefully can assuage the
disappointment it has brought you.

It is difficult to trace a disbursement beyond the electronic data capture
of a transaction at an off site ATM machine. The actual ATM transaction
register may have to be reviewed in this instance. Considering the
difficulty retrieving this from a third party and more importantly, our
initial offhandedness, please accept our apology and gesture of goodwill
in reimbursing your account the $20.

I would welcome an opportunity to meet with you on any of your banking
reqirements or just to introduce myself more formally. During your next
branch visit, please drop in to say hello or call me direct at 985-3290.

Sincerely,
______ _______, Manager

L'assassin orange

Watch out would-be thief
better back out of here
while you still can,
l'assassin orange is watching,
his razor sharp claws
at the ready.
He will flay you
at the drop of a dime;
just try picking up that iPod scoundrel
it will be your very last move.
L'assassin orange seems demure
but make no mistake
he is a vicious killer,
just ask any mouse
whose had the nerve
to seek shelter within his domain.
Yes my friend it is better
you try your luck next door
for surely l'assassin orange
will make minced meat of you.

Thank You Mr. Brooker

KEL BROOKER was the kind of teacher you remember, the kind you carry with you through life, even though you only knew them for one short school year. He was a life changer, the kind of person that could really enhance the way you looked at and appreciated something. He helped me appreciate my own talents. He was an invoker of my hidden genius. (And the article in the paper today about him says a lot of the same things, so I'm not just making this up.)

Kel Brooker was my Grade 11 English teacher, he died on Thursday of a heart attack, he was 52 years old. He helped inspire my faith in art and myself through literature, at a time when I was in desperate need of his keen guidance. Thank you Mr. Brooker, goodbye.

(2010 update: I am now in an Education program and although it's been more than 20 years since I had the pleasure of being in Mr. Brooker's class I still think about him and hope to become the kind of teacher he was.)

Corespondences with my bank manager

This is my original letter:

Dear Mr. ______,

This letter is in regards to some difficulty I had recently with a privately managed ATM, and your bank's response to my trouble. It is my hope that you will be able to rectify this problem, as I have already jumped though several hoops to no avail.

I will spare you the boring details of all the inquiries I've made so far. Sufficed to say there is certain amount of disagreement between your branch and the folks at TeleScotia over who is responsible for handling this issue on my behalf.

The issue is this: on December 23 I used (out of desperation, and much to my shame) one of those awful privately managed ATM's to make a withdrawal. I asked the machine for $80, it gave me $60. According to the person I talked to most recently at TeleScotia, because the amount I'm out by is less than $20.01 no one will launch an official "investigation" into the matter. As you can imagine, this state of affairs does not sit well with me.

What I expect from your people is nothing short of their best effort. If an investigation will not be launched then I should be refunded the $20 immediately, no questions asked, either by yourselves or, preferably, the service provider. I would also ask that the $1.50 "convenience charge" be refunded, as I have found this whole experience to be far from convenient.

Of course $21.50 is not a life and death matter for me; as you can see from my bank balance I have plenty of money in savings. What I am most concerned with is the principle of the matter. A privately owned ATM should have the same responsibilities as a major bank for mistakes it makes, irregardless of the total amount of the mistake. I hope you will look into this matter further and/or advise me as to what steps I must take to ensure justice is done.

Sincerely,
____ _______ (valued member of your branch for over 10 years.)
Ph. 783-____

This is his response:

____:
i read your email & empathize with your dilemma. as you, it is extremely
annoying when things like this happen but more so when there appears to be
little or nothing that can be done or no one seems to care. i cannot think
that any of this was done with any malice or forethought to the outcome as
more than likely it was the machine mechanics such as sticking bills not
being picked up, a skip on the bill pickup or even the machine or internal
tray running out of money and the switch over not being seamless. while
these are only anecdotal situations describing things that go wrong, it
doesn't make anything better when it happens to you. i have investigated
the transaction to the complete extent i can in that a third party atm was
requested to disperse funds of $80 to you and that's what the records show.
it does not show what was punched in & ultimately dispersed. your recourse
then, is to the atm provider. they are able to balance out the transactions
matching input to output but again, there can be variables here as well
such as was the machine correctly loaded and so on. the long and the short
is you recognized the cost of value in using these 3rd party machines and
now have had that reinforced. have we had similar situations here? yes, but
so infrequently & by this i mean 2 or 3 times in my 35 year career. have
there been more times when a customer just chalks it up to a bad experience
and does not notify us? certainly possible. what do we do when it is our
machine? for the amount here, just reimburse as good public relations. will
the 3rd party atm provider reimburse. loss - principal of the situation is
probably your determing factor. i have reimbursed you the bns transaction
fee & can only leave you with this. sometimes, & just as infrequently as
the 2 or 3 times mentioned above, the transaction goes the other way. i
have heard, anecdotally again, of one machine being loaded with $20's
instead of $10's & having a loss of $10,000 when the machine just kept
spitting out what it was programmed to do; only with $20 bills instead og
$10's. regards, _______ _________, manager

This was my response to his response:

Dear Mr. _______,

First of all, thank you for reimbursing the service charge on the
transaction I brought to your attention last week, I appreciate the
gesture. However, I was disappointed with your response in general.

The grammar of the email you sent was extremely poor and, in my
opinion, unacceptable. The tone of your letter, for the most part is
conciliatory, but the lack of care taken in editing the response makes
it seem as though you are dashing it off without real consideration or
respect.

Perhaps in the course of everyday business it is now common practice
to draft an email much the way one would conduct a conversation—I'm
not sure as I do not use email as a daily tool in my work. However, I
was taught that written correspondences, including email, are
typically treated as more formal documents, especially when responding
to an inquiry from outside.

You, and your entire organization, would do well to consider the
communications elements of your service model a little more closely.
The thrust of my letter was to:
a) determine what steps I could take to seek full reparation,
primarily as a matter of principle; and
b) point out the confusing customer service I received while perusing
this matter.
Aside from the reimbursement you offered, the jumbled response you
sent only added to my confusion and irritation.

It would have been better if you'd just said:

>Dear ____,

>I apologize for the trouble that this incident has caused you. As a
gesture of my goodwill I >have reimbursed you for the service charge,
as you requested. Unfortunately I am unable >to do anything about the
$20 you did not receive. For that you will need to contact the
>service provider directly. We will be happy to help you in any way we
can.

I'm sorry if I sound like a snob, I don't mean to be rude. However, I
do have high expectations of your institution and I feel it is my
right to speak out when I am disappointed.

Sincerely,
____ _______

JL's new hang-out spot

A Culinary Masterpiece

Catsanova

He is the greatest lover of all cats
the way he will meander up into your lap
and stick his face right in yours
kissing your lips, reaching in for your tongue
if you let him.

And then, just like that famous scamp,
he will sigh a kitten’s sigh
and roll over on his back
so that you are cradling him in your arms
and meow softly: “Love me all over.”

“Oh yes,” he’ll purr with delight,
“that’s the stuff. Now right here
under my armpits, if you don’t mind.
Ah, there is a spot I never can reach.
Thank you, I’m genuinely pleased!”

Indeed, he is very satisfied
but he is by no means a selfish lover;
he’ll groom your face with a thousand kisses,
and speak sweet nothings into your ear
then he’ll fall asleep beside you, content.

Shoki & Cyan

Here's a picture I took today. It's kind of small, but they sure are a couple of gorgeous kids, aren't they?

Another Letter to the Editors

As published in the Free Press January 6, 2006

Make a change at home

CHRISTOPHER Sunde’s Letter of the Day (Monday, Jan. 2) points the finger at politicians for driving the apathy of Canadian voters, but it is my view that our struggle to create meaningful democracy is just as heavily influenced by the whims of a spoiled society.

The scandals and back-room dealings that plague Ottawa are mirrored in the business community so many of us work and invest in. The greed, lust for power and short-sightedness displayed by politicians is not that distant from how many ordinary Canadians behave.

It is up to the public to inform themselves as to what matters and to pressure their leaders to commit to improving the nation. Instead many find distraction in materialism and infotainment, and let cynicism destroy their sense of duty. Our leaders are a direct result of our vacuous culture, and the complete lack of personal responsibility it engenders.

I suggest that people who truly want a change in Ottawa start by making a change at home. Talk politics at the supper table, make a meaningful contribution in cash or kind to a worthwhile organization. Stop blaming, complaining and drooling over plasma TVs. Make a difference. Better politicians begin with a better society, not vise versa.

RYAN KINRADE

Winnipeg

Here is the original letter:
No wonder there's apathy

In her letter (Encouraging apathy, Winnipeg Free Press, Dec. 28), Julia Wiebe laments the apparent apathy of voters during the "party-filled Christmas season" and encourages the media to be responsible for fostering interest in the democratic process.
One reason she cites for voter indifference is distrust in politicians, the same rationale Premier Gary Doer used to explain public reaction after the Gomery Commission Report. Canadians were justifiably disgusted and outraged at the corruption of the Adscam scandal, which led to a generalized feeling of low regard for people in public office, regardless to their connection to this series of events.

I believe that there are other reasons for this apathy on the part of the electorate. One is the sense of betrayal Canadians feel due to the actions of politicians. The generation that suffered and endured the calamities of the Great Depression and the Second World War created the social consensus which led to the development of the Canadian welfare state (employment insurance, pensions and universal health care).

Now very few elected officials vigorously defend medicare, "Canada's most cherished social service" or other positive social programs. Instead, the focus seems to be on pursuing a corporate agenda, including tax breaks for the wealthy and a growing inequality between the rich and poor. Canadians are aware of this betrayal and conscious abandonment of their values by those in positions of power.

A second factor is the reality that most social policy decisions are conducted behind closed doors with little opportunity by those affected to have meaningful input. The process is not transparent, hence, not democratic. In fact, this style of operating has been called "social policy by stealth" due to the lack of consultation and power sharing. People who are systematically excluded from the process tend to lose interest and become discouraged and apathetic. A third thing to consider is the apparent opportunism of politicians. A friend of mine who ran for public office several times once said (in jest) "These are my principles... And if you don't like them, I'll change them!" He was kidding.

Unfortunately, the opportunism and apparent lack of principles of people like Peter MacKay and Belinda Stronach lead the general public to be cynical about the motives of politicians. For this reason, it's difficult to believe in, trust, or respect people seeking public office. Some people have apparently concluded, "Why bother?" (to vote, to take an interest, to try to change things).

Until politicians at all levels start to change their behaviour with respect to these factors, apathy will not only continue but grow. This does not bode well for a healthy Canadian society.


CHRISTOPHER SUNDE

Winnipeg

Another Old Love Poem

Although you told me quite firmly
I am not for you
I did not believe it.
My life would be so much simpler
if it were true.
But in the moment
where we were leaning together,
on opposite sides of the bar table,
barely touching
not looking at one another
or saying anything,
in that moment I felt so
warm and electric
you must have felt it too.

I know all of your good reasons
they, along with my fear of losing
what we have,
have kept me here in Limbo
living a shadow life.
My passion is subverted,
it is in the room but unrecognized
like an invisible presence
dangling from the ceiling,
like the haunting spirit
that makes a candle flame
flicker inexplicably.

It is for your heart to decide,
no one else would object,
but you aren't ready to accept
an offer of true love.
I can't stand here
burning myself to the ground,
but neither can I look in your eyes
and not see the beauty before me,
nor can I cease to feel the desire,
utter happiness, and shear desperation
that course through me
whenever I think of you.