I was born on a Thursday in April barely a few weeks after the Beatles had performed their first set on the Ed Sullivan show. I mention this because not only was the No 1 song on the charts the week I was born "Can't Buy Me Love" but they also had the numbers 2 through 5 slots as well.
It was a cool day. The low the night before I entered this world had been minus 2 Celsius. There had been a dusting of snow overnight. The high expected that day was just 2 above. It was a windy day, a steady 30km/h with gusts up near 60.
Most people outside would've called it a cold day even in an area where the river froze up and mufflers were worn on the face most of the winter but to this day those are my favourite weather conditions. I like it cool and I love wind.
Although I hadn't stepped out yet, this wasn't my first time in Pembroke General hospital, not even my first time in the delivery ward. The story goes I brought my mother here on Leap Year Day, February 29th, with labour pains that had her sure my birth was eminent and early - in an era where that could be fatal.
There's also rumour I had her back on April the First.
Apparently even before I was out of the womb I was a bit of a trickster. She'd been warned.
When I was delivered I came out the smallest child born that week and the only male. Legend has it I took one look at the lasses around me and made up for it, leaving above the average weight a few days later. I believe that was the first and last time I ever bothered with the competition.
We lived in a farmhouse along the main road out from the town of Pembroke in Ontario Canada. To this day I'm not sure which side of town we were on but since the road went to Ottawa one way and North Bay the next I like to think I was on the way to our nation's capital.
I was baptised at either Holy Trinity Anglican Church or St Luke's. As with much of my very early life I'm still working on clarifying that detail. Again if I had to pick I'd choose Holy Trinity because I seem to have an affinity for those, but I've nothing against St. Luke so it could be either.
The population of Pembroke has been rather stagnant for most of the time I've been alive. In the period between 1941 and 2011 the town has mostly stuck between 11,000 and 14,000 people with a decade long spike into the 16,000's around the time I was born. It's a way station along the Ottawa River, almost exactly half way between North Bay and Ottawa.
For much of history Pembroke's primary industry was lumber and what's what brought Len Davidson and his family to it. Len was a veneer man and he dragged his brood where the work was. This branch of the family began near Saint John, New Brunswick; went to Latuque, Quebec and then back and forth a couple of times between Chicoutimi and Pembroke. It was on the second pass that I joined it but it's at this point that things get complicated.
I have 5 brothers. Only 4 of them know about me. My mom and Len had Bruce and Michael in New Brunswick; Bryan and Don in Quebec but by the time they returned to Pembroke a second time the marriage was one of compromise. There are nine years between the first and fouth, and a decade after their last boy there's me.
Mom's told me she'd long suspected Len may have cheated on her the first time they lived in Pembroke, but she wasn't sure because he had been generally cold and stoic to her most of their marriage.
As a young adult she'd been such a mess, unable to settle down, unable to secure stable footing, that his calmness had originally been what drew her to him; but over the decades the lack of involvement, both in her life and the 4 children they had, resulted in a gulf between them.
Most of the time he was embarrassed of her. Most of the time she was starving for his attention. This was the 1950's when divorce would only be granted if one party could prove adultery and single mothers needed skills to survive without social services.
The worst part for her was that his work took them away from city centers and she was the product of urban life. The sticks were pretty to photograph, but not being mechanically minded she found trying to drive nerve wracking. I imagine with 4 rambunctious impatient children to wrangle at the same time as navigating a stickshift, it was darn near impossible.
She tried to stay busy. She got into crafts and of course being pre-mass consumption most of the housework was tedious and labour intensive. Presuming she could get her boys to carry some of that, she still was left most of the day to deal with the house alone, just as she was alone to deal with the ire of neighbours whose property had been vandalized by her kids. It was draining, frustrating and seemingly endless.
In contrast, the drivers sent to move them from Pembroke to Chicoutimi, and then again to move them back, were lively, flirtatious, fun loving and younger. One of them, Bob, was a sucker for someone starving entertainment, and a playful roughhouser who enjoyed the kids. He'd drop by when he was in the area, visiting the family in Quebec, and then continued that when they returned to Pembroke.
I don't think either intended it to go anywhere, both were very outgoing and both were likely starved for attention by their partners. The air of one fanning the flame of the other, and while many times they were not synchronized in their feelings, at some point they started messing around.
He was of German descent, a roundhead who's family was from the Baden-Baden region, and was married to a woman seemingly too nervous to leave her own house most of the time. And they had a single boy, Dana.
She was a Scotch/Irish red head, orphaned at 8 years old from a woman who herself had been given up for adoption at birth.
There are very few men on the planet who can turn down an invite even when they're not looking as so one afternoon in July of 1963, I was conceived, in a grassy field.
I've had severe allergies ever since.
