Vasey - The River

Copyright Paul Vasey, 2013

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first edition

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Vasey, Paul, author

The River / Paul Vasey.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-927428-31-3 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-927428-32-0 (ebook)

1. Vasey, Paul. 2. Television personalities--Ontario--Windsor--

Biography. 3. Journalists--Ontario--Windsor--Biography. 4. Authors,

Canadian (English)--Biography. 5. Canadian Broadcasting

Corporation--Biography. 6. Windsor (Ont.)--Biography. I. Title.

PN1992.4.V37A3 2013 791.450232092 C2013-906373-0

C2013-906374-9

Biblioasis acknowledges the ongoing financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage, the Canada Book Fund; and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Arts Council.

Edited by Daniel Wells

Copy-edited by Mary Popovich

Typeset and designed by Kate Hargreaves

printed and bound in canada

For

Liana and Amara

Evan and Eric

Life once lived, the way

you remember it is fiction

Norman Levine

and Toad, with no one to check his statements or to criticize in an unfriendly spirit, rather let himself go.

much that he related belonged more properly to the category of

what-might-have-happened-had-I-only-thought-of-it-in-time-instead-of-ten-minutes-afterwards. Those are always the best and raciest adventures; and why should they not be truly ours, as much as the somewhat inadequate things that really come off?

Kenneth Grahame

The Wind In The Willows

the lies told by writers are not untruths; they are merely unreal. Errori non falsi , Dante, who knew what he was doing, called them, Lies that are not false. The distinction is important.

Alberto Manguel

The Unanswerable Question

Tell me about the river, she said.

What do you want to know? he said.

What it means, she said.

Well, he said. Where should I begin?

At the beginning, she said.

Of course, he said.

t his story begins in the summer of 1965 the summer i turned 20in a place I thought was called Winzer. Never heard of the place until Art Davidson, my first editor, told me hed arranged a job for me at The Winzer Star .

Id gone to work for Art at The Owen Sound Sun-Times while I was still in high schoolyouth column, high-school column, summer jobsand finally pestered him to take me on full-time once Id managed to escape high school. I worked there for a year and a bit and thendont ask me whyquit and took a job as a salesman for a local printing company.

Well, actually, there was a reason. My best pal had just landed a job at that firm. His own little office, company car, three times the money I was making at The Sun-Times and like a fool I bit when he said they needed someone else. My gut told me I was being a fool. But like a fool, I ignored my instincts, quit my job at The Sun-Times , put on my new brown suit and headed into a whole new world. I knew as I walked into that place on the first day that Id made a huge mistakeme, a salesman? egadand quit before I even sat down at the desk theyd cleared out for me.

I couldnt face Art Davidsonit would take a lot of paragraphs to adequately explain how good hed been to meand so I waited a week or more before screwing up the courage to climb the stairs to the second-floor newsroom at The Sun-Times and ask for my job back.

Art was sitting at the wire desk just inside the newsroom door. He and everyone else in the room did a double take when I turned up at the door in my foolish brown salesmans suit. The look on Arts face said it all. He had just, the day before, hired my replacement. I wish youd let me know sooner, he said. And there we were on either side of a silence larger than the newsroom. Then he stood upGive me a minuteand crossed the newsroom to his office. Shut the door.

Herby, the wire editor, shook his head. He waited a week, hoping youd call.

He knew? They called him when you quit. Gave him shit for giving them such a good reference for such a little turd. He shrugged his eyebrows, went back to work. Everyone else was suddenly busy typing or talking on the phone.

I stood there watching Art standing behind his desk talking on the phone. He hung up, crooked his index finger. I crossed the newsroom, opened his office door. Shut the door. Sit down.

Winzer?

Art, still standing behind his desk, scribbled something on a scrap of paper, handed it to me.

See Norm Hull when you get there. Hes the editor. Hell have something for you.

I started to thank him, to explain what a huge screw-up I was. He waved me off, shaking his head. Good luck, he said.

I opened the door to go, then turned. Wheres Winzer?

He smiled, gave his head another shake: Get a road map.

I got the mapoh, Windsor loaded all my earthlies into my chopped-and-channeled 48 Merc coupe (flathead V-8, twin Hollywood mufflers, flat-black paint, spun aluminum hubcaps, your exceedingly evil little hot-rocks auto- mo -bile) rumbled up The West Hill, took one last look as my home town disappeared behind me in the rear-view mirror and went in search of Highway 21, which the map indicated would lead me eventually to Highway 401 and this mysterious southern city where my future, thanks to Art Davidson, was about to unfold.

The Automotive Capital of Canada. Hm.

Pretty amazing city when I got my first glimpse of it, cresting the Jackson Park overpass: A skyline that looked like New York, or what I thought a New York skyline might look like, never having been there either. But appearances can be deceiving. Once I drove all the way down Ouellette Avenue I discovered, as all newcomers do, that the skyline belonged to someone else. There was a river between them and us. Us being Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Them being Detroit, Michigan, U.S. of A.

The Detroit River.

park the car. go down the incline past the british american hotel to the rivers edge. Look upriver and theres Belle Isle with its nifty little bridge connecting to Detroit. Downriver, theres the Ambassador Bridge and beyond it, some kind of nightmare steel mill or something. Look up and down Windsors riverfront and its all railway lines and ramps leading to the rail ferries. Not all that pretty. But pretty gritty. All border town.

The River was sure nice to look at, and back then as it is right now its a magnet. You cant help but stand there and stare, the river rolling past with ducks and gulls on its back, the ocean on its mind.