BRUCE EVANS • Guest Opinion
Like many people at this time of year, I find myself in a reflective mood.
My election wounds are taking a while to heal. With the colder weather (it can snow here in the highlands of Central Arizona), my golf scores are headed northward — not a satisfying situation. We are still battling the COVID pandemic. My Trump 2020 face mask is losing its currency (but I'll keep wearing it even after Jan. 20). I need to lose weight, cut back on the single malt and exercise more. Yuck.
What disturbs me most, though, is the breakdown in civility and honesty, mostly along political lines, in the public square and in the press.
I reflect back on the days when I was growing up in Stephenville, NL. My parents were very active politically. Dad ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in 1962 and '66 against a Joey Smallwood-era cabinet minister.
Like my parents, my parents’ best friends — a couple who had sons of the same ages as my brother and me — were hard-working, industrious folks who, between their growing successful business ventures, still found time to volunteer with civic organizations — the Lions Club and Royal Canadian Legion mostly — and fish for salmon together in the summer from neighboring cabins on the Robinsons River. That couple were strident Liberals.
The difference in political affiliation never seemed to affect their friendship, community volunteering or partying hearty together. They didn’t let political persuasion define them as people and they just knew what not to talk about while casting dry flies at Black Cliff Pool or throwing birthday celebrations for the kids.
Anyone else remember those days? May we please have them back?
Consistent with my reflective mood, I offer this metaphor from real life to suggest a way we may begin to heal the politically based — big and small “p” — divide that threatens to rend our society apart over time.
In 2010, upon the unexpected death of my Mom, my Dad was admitted to the veterans’ wing of the Harbourview Hospital in Sydney Mines. Although reasonably aware and able, the combination of early-stage dementia and simply being a man of his generation dictated admission to a care facility.
I am not possessed of enough superlatives to describe the professionalism, compassion, cleanliness and quality of care at Harbourview.
Although living in Los Angeles at the time, I made sure I visited him several times a year. In early 2012, I received a call from Dad’s doctor that he was “actively dying.” He was basically tired of living, refusing to eat. He missed Mom terribly, so that was a big part of the equation. He had lots of visitors and the staff were fabulous to him, but he had become withdrawn.
I immediately flew to Cape Breton to see what I could do. And, sadly, to make arrangements for what appeared to be the fast-approaching inevitable.
On the third morning of my visit, I arrived at Harbourview to find a more energetic and engaged Dad. What had happened? The previous night, a staff member, a nice Newfoundland lady, concerned for his welfare, made him a piece of bread and molasses — the Newfoundland way, molasses drizzled on the bread first with a generous application of butter atop that. If you butter the bread first, the molasses runs off. Newfoundlanders are nothing if not practical.
I don't know what it was that Dad reacted to. Was it the sugar jolt from the molasses? Or was it the knowledge that someone cared to make an extra effort to help him? Does it matter? He started to eat again, re-engaged with friends and family and he lived another year. Thanks to that caring lady from Newfoundland.
So what's my point?
Only this: Dad's recovery is a metaphor for what needs to be done to cure our polarized and diffident public discourse. A return to basics. Simple respect. And caring. Not capitulation, but humanization. More respectful debate. Fewer real and rhetorical rocks.
But, even if I am correct, I fear that we are down to two heels of bread, a tablespoon of molasses and but one pat of butter.
Bruce Evans was born, raised and educated in Atlantic Canada — Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia. After a Dal MBA, he had a career in project finance in several cities — Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, New York and L.A. — with a variety of international (Canadian, Japanese, French and Australian) financial players. He is happily retired in Arizona, volunteering, walking a dog named Charli and working to get a golf handicap moving south.
