Since my return from my last trip, I’ve alternated between guilt about not finishing my blog, doing some work, and just enjoying doing nothing. Today marks the start of my fourth and last international trip in the past 6 months. The first was with a week with Keith and Margaret in London. The second was by myself for 4 weeks to Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, Turkey, and Greece. The third was by myself for another 4 weeks to India, Korea, and China.

Our main reason for the trip is to celebrate my 60th birthday (June 18) and our 25th anniversary, two years late, otherwise known as our 27th anniversary (June 30). Not that I need an excuse to travel but it helped in convincing Margaret to go.

One of the big themes of my trips has been self-discovery, which is of course a big theme of most people’s lives. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do a blog on this trip but memories of a trip I took in 1970 kept pouring out and I decided to dedicate this blog to bringing back that trip. I’ll get to the details of the 2011 trip in just a minute.

I’m going to jump back and forth from 1970 to 2011 in this blog each day. In June of 1970, I left Montreal after finishing my second year at McGill University for Ithaca where I bought a 1963 Rambler Station Wagon for something like $200. I then returned to Montreal to pick up my friend Steve, who kicked in for half. Our goal was to travel across Canada with the tiny amount of money we had. I remembered Steve’s parents’ telling him that he could not survive a whole summer with our ambitious plans on the pittance of money we had.

We took the important stuff in the station wagon like a mattress to lay out in the back with the seats folded down, a battery operated record player, and sleeping bags. We planned to always have hitchhikers with us. We felt like we were living in luxury since we weren’t hitchhiking ourselves.

Going across Canada or the US was a very typical activity in 1970 for people my age (19). My world was dominated not by the split between Republicans and Democrats that we have today but by the split between hippies and left wing politicos. Virtually everyone I knew was either heavily influenced by the counterculture or by radical politics. These two groups tended not to like each other although at times people moved from one camp to the other or tried to merge them.

That summer I was definitely in the counterculture camp. I had dabbled in leftist politics such as hanging out with tear gas in DC in an anti-Vietnam War march in November 1969. Later on I would move decidedly into the radical politics camp. The summer of 1970 though, was not for politics for me. I was one of thousands of young people looking to explore the delights of the road while experiencing personal change without too much concern for changing political or social structures.

The 2011 trip includes the following:

  • A 6 hour drive to Toronto (today)
  • 3 nights in a cabin for two on the train to Jasper, Alberta in the Rockies
  • 1 night each in famous resorts in Jasper and Banff, Alberta
  • 5 nights in a ski resort just over the border in Panorama, British Columbia where we’ll meet up with Margaret’s brother Greg from Iowa
  • 1 night in the famous resort in Lake Louise, Alberta
  • 3 nights on the train coming back to Toronto
  • 1 night (maybe) at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto
  • Home after being gone a little over 2 weeks

On our first day in 2011, we interrupted our 6 hour drive from Indiana, PA to Toronto, Ontario with a stop in Buffalo. I lived in Buffalo for 7 years and had some important events occur there like meeting Margaret and getting my Ph. D. Buffalo is best known in the culinary world for Buffalo Chicken Wings but Margaret and I are almost more fond of the way fish fries are cooked there. Nowhere else I’ve been has fish fries that are as good as Buffalo’s. The fish itself is flaky, moist, and very flavorful without a strong fish taste. The batter is crisp and thick, and almost a meal in itself.

We went to one of our favorite places, Hoak’s. Unfortunately, it was too windy to sit out on their deck on Lake Erie. When Margaret was growing up in Buffalo and to a large extent still while I was there (1978-1985), fish fries were only served on Fridays. This was keeping with the pre-Vatican II edict against eating meat on Fridays in what was a heavily Catholic city. We called ahead to check whether they were serving fish fry on this Tuesday. My guess is that fish fry’s are served every day now in most if not all restaurants that serve it.

Lake Erie and Buffalo in the background from Hoak’s (left), the best fish fry in the world (right)

As we were finishing our fish, I looked right across the road to St. Francis High School, where I taught math from 1979-1981. I have an enormous amount of bad feelings about this experience. I usually can handle adjusting to worlds in which I’m an outsider but St. Francis was more than I could handle. The dark buildings dominated by scary religious figures both living and on the walls, created an atmosphere that was too intense for me at that time. The students were all boys, all white, all Catholic, and just about all suburban middle class. Not that there’s anything wrong with that (thanks, Seinfeld, for that phrase). I felt the extreme lack of diversity led to narrow thinking from students.

St. Francis High School, where I taught from 1979-1981

I could not adjust to the discipline procedures, which consisted from some (not all) of slapping kids around and humiliating them. I was supposed to start every class with a prayer and would occasionally get in trouble for not doing so. The students had to wear a tie and either the sweater purchased from the school or a sport coat, which led to a sea of 30 or so red sweaters and ties in each class. I still have a large tie collection in a closet somewhere from those days. I have hated ties since I was very young.

The Assistant Principal should have been an actor. I remember when an obscene drawing was discovered in a classroom and no one confessed to being the owner. He brought the class into the chapel and as I was passing by, I overheard him say that he would use the bodies of everyone in the class as mops to clean the floor. I was scared and I’m sure the students got the message. Another incident of discipline I remember occurred in my friend Sean’s English class. He was being observed by the head of the department, who was a priest. A photographer for the yearbook came in to take pictures and a student put his middle finger up as a joke. After the class, the priest pushed that student against the lockers, slapped him, and screamed at him. My friend felt betrayed since it was his class and his problem.

Since then, I think there are no more priests teaching there since there is such a shortage of priests. My friend Bruce from graduate school at the University of Buffalo has been a teacher at St. Francis for many years and really loves it. I’m sure it is a better place now. I was tempted to cross the street and see what the place looked like after 30 years and if Bruce was there or anyone else I knew.

I gave into this temptation and entered the school for the first time in 30 years. Immediately, I felt the dread of the dark corridors with pictures of previous principals and religious figures. I found someone in the guidance department who she said Bruce still teaches there but the school was in their testing phase and most teachers were not there. They had put in a cheerful entrance with a fountain. I left my business card with a note for Bruce and am hoping to hear from him.

The place might be truly wonderful today, I shouldn’t prejudge it. I did have some good experiences, such as an elective for seniors oriented around mathematical games. I had many wonderful students. Shockingly, I was the tennis coach for a year. Fortunately my brother-in-law. Greg helped me out. I had never been on a sports team of any time in my life and knew nothing about being a coach. If someone became injured I would have just watched them die. My pay was something like $200. The athletic director asked if I could make do with 2 balls per match for home games rather than using all 3 balls in a can. Fortunately, I knew enough to say no to him.

I left St. Francis after two years to return to graduate school. I spent the next four years as a graduate assistant before getting the job at IUP. St. Francis was an important part of my life and career and certainly points out how you can learn and grow from mostly negative experiences. I wonder if I would still be teaching high school if I was at the public school nearby where I did my student teaching. That school had much better discipline policies, better equipment, much more diversity, and at least to me a healthier environment. I’m sure that the people paying to have their children go to the Catholic school would not agree with me.

Father Leon, Principal of St. Francis when I taught there

Back to the 2011 trip. We finished the drive to Toronto. I’m still angry that the US insists that visitors to Canada have passports. While Europe was eliminating border crossings, the US made it very difficult for families to take a day trip over the border. There are few borders that are less problematic than the US / Canada one. Fortunately, we have passports.

I love Canada and Toronto. I had the equivalent of a green card in Canada and would be very happy to be a citizen there. Having a really good job in the US is more important. Certainly, the US is a good place to live so I’m not complaining. OK, I do complain about many things in the US.

We parked at a garage just 2 blocks from the train station that I had found on the internet. It’s $18 a day, which will add up over 2 weeks but for a downtown garage, it’s relatively cheap. We were only allowed to bring 2 small bags per person into the tiny cabin so we checked 2 larger bags through on the train. We won’t see those bags until we get off in Jasper.

We had maybe 4 hours until we could board so we walked to the Eaton Centre to do some shopping and then saw the old and new city halls, which are spectacular. For me, the old city hall is much more impressive.

Toronto’s Old City Hall (left), New City Hall (right)

The waiting room for the train was not quite as nice as the business class airplane lounges I had been on and was full but it was quite nice. We commented on how we were probably slightly younger than the average age. Probably the people who were riding on a seat rather than a sleeping cabin like we were, were younger. This crowd seemed to be mostly leisure travel oriented rather than people needing to get from one city to another. We boarded at 9:15 PM and the train left exactly on time at 10 PM.

I’ll describe the train on the next day’s entry. Beginning to relive my 1970 trip and my 1979-81 teaching experiences has been cathartic. Just like getting my orange soda after 50+ years at the Taj Mahal and rediscovering my Jewish roots at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, I’m gluing long lost parts of myself back to the book of my life today.