In honour of Canada day, I am posting a little something about my late grand-father, a veteran of Wold War II with the Canadian forces. Update: Originally posted June 1st, 2008, prior to the site apocalypse.

My earliest memories of my grampa are of visiting the farm. I’d marvel from the backseat of my parent’s car as we’d turn off of the civilized highway onto the be-graveled road that ran up and down hill and gully and out past the collapsed barn and right in front of the old house. There was a sharp corner just as the road reached my grand-parent’s property. Right at this spot, on the corner of their lot, was an upset car, abandoned there by its owner several years ago. Eventually, I’d come to realize that it was only there because grampa couldn’t be bothered to have it towed away. He had better things to do with his time and money, like cleaning wild strawberries while my grandma bought Nevada tickets and played Bingo.

Early Memories
It is a little fuzzy, but I have vague memories of collecting eggs with my grandfather, of getting my hand pecked by bitchy hens, and of stealing away their still-warm eggs. I found that the least shit-covered eggs were the most pleasant to handle. I also remember being scared of the pigs he raised one year. Don’t let the adorable pigs you see in the movies fool you. Those bastards get big and mean and covered in their own shit, especially if you don’t clean out their pen on account of their being big and mean.

I recall throwing vegetable peelings to the chickens, picking vegetables in the garden, and enduring the continual yapping of his dog, neglected and chained, in the distance. I have fond memories of falling asleep to the sounds of hockey night in Canada as my grampa watched the game on Saturday night, as was his wont. I will always cherish the hours that I spent on the lake fishing in silence with him, and his laughter whenever I managed to hook a fish. He also laughed whenever he hurt himself, like the time he got a fish hook caught in his knuckle. I’m not sure what to make of that.

An Early Lesson in Trust
There was this one time I remember walking in the back yard to see what my grampa was up to. From a distance, I could tell that he was mucking around with a motor of some type. Before I got too far, my father stopped me and said “If he tries to give you something or asks you to put something on your tongue, say no.” I wasn’t too sure what to make of these instructions, but I proceeded to investigate my grampa’s activities. Sure enough, my grandfather holds out a wire and says, “put your tongue on this.” I told him what my father had said. He just laughed. I suspect that he was secretly upset. Before he eventually died, he had over 20 grandchildren that he knew of. I’m pretty sure he viewed each one of us as a free sparkplug/battery test.

Things of course changed as I got older. The visits became less frequent, especially when I became old enough to stay at home and masturbate while my parents made the two-hour drive. I came to see my grampa as a distant figure, a strong and silent man, a farmer, a soldier, who had little affection for his city-boy grandson. God, I was a selfish whiny douche.

An heirloom to be bequeathed pre-mortem
Skip forward several years and I am in my early twenties. I’ve taken to throwing keg parties at my parent’s cottage (near my grand-parent’s farm) a couple times each summer. Technically, these were more like get-togethers with my closer friends. At any rate, prior to one of these weekends my father told me that my grampa wanted to give me something. I had recently got my hunting license and firearms permit. So, my dad figured that he’d bequeath me one of his rifles before he passed away, so that he could see me enjoy it, or whatever. In other words, on this particular weekend, I would have to stay sober enough at some point to drive down to his place and visit for awhile, which is something I would do on every other trip in any case.

So, I drive over for a visit. My grandma dominates the conversation, as per usual. That was fine by me, my grandmother was a very entertaining woman. At some point, my grampa says “Well, follow me and I’ll show you the gun I’m giving you.” I was pumped as hell about this for several reasons. First, I would never have been able to afford to buy my own rifle at the time. Second, my fucking grampa was giving me a rifle! How cool is that?

As we walked upstairs, he told me that he shot his first buck with the rifle he was giving me. He said the buck was huge and that he hoped that I would have similar luck with it. At that point , he described it in more detail, telling me that it was a 3-oh-3. I later confirmed it to be a .303 Lee-Enfield, the model used by commonwealth soldiers to fight Nazis during WWII; Incidentally, my grampa fought in the war as a tank driver/gunner; he landed on Normandy the day after D-day; he seldom spoke of it, and even then only did so in the most general terms.

Sidebar: Three Anecdotes about the War

1. My grampa once laughingly recalled the time some of his buddies got infected with French-whore gonorrhoea. Apparently you had to be there when they screamed in agony as they took a leak. If my grampa is to be believed, one of the guys bent a steel bar with his bare hand out of agony-strength. Given the size of his hands and the fact I witnessed him lift the back-end of a snowmobile with one arm in his late sixties, I am incline to think that he was the guy who bent the steel bar.

2. As a tank driver, my grampa was given the task of plowing dead bodies to create bridges over trenches and streams. Among other things, this anecdote is responsible for teaching me that real men do cry, namely my grampa and my father.

3. The day after VE-day, my grampa’s friend decided to take a short-cut across a field with his motorcycle. He hit a mine and died. This anecdote taught me that retardedly poignant shit that is only supposed to happen in movies sometimes happens in real life.
My rifle, but where is the case?

The Riffle
So, I followed my grampa into his room. He opens his closet door to reveal about 20 rifles of various description, mostly .22 cal. Somehow, he manages to pick out the rifle in question. It is a beauty. He hands it to me and I am immediately struck by how heavy it is. Awesome. Words can’t describe the joy I felt at getting a rifle, a rifle from my grandfather, a rifle that he had used to kill his first deer, a rifle of the same model as those used in the war in which he fought. It was as if this rifle were a sort of bridge across worlds, linking a soft city kid with his tough-as-nails war-vet grandfather.

While I admired my new weapon, playing around with the action and safety, my grampa started looking for the gun case he hoped to give me to go along with it. The first thing he found was a box of old bullets. He handed those over to me and kept looking for his spare gun case. He looked under the bed. He looked under some crap in the closet. He climbed up on top of some stuff and looked into this attic-type thing. No dice. I was still too enamoured with my gift to notice that my grampa was getting frustrated.

At this point, he yells out my grandma’s name. She comes upstairs and says “What!?” in a dry tone. My grampa says “Where’s my gun case?”, to which she replied “I don’t know. I didn’t touch it.” Unsatisfied, my grampa insisted, “Where’s my gun case you stupid cunt!?”

This last comment didn’t phase my grandma one bit. They went about arguing over where the case might be and who might have moved it. For me, though, the world stopped momentarily. Did grampa just say what I think he said? My mother would kill my father (my grampa’s son) if he even so much as called her a bitch. Here is my grampa, in what is arguably the most special moment we ever shared (and were ever likely to share), calling my grandmother a ’stupid cunt’.

I stuck around for awhile after that. Eventually, I drove to my parent’s cottage in a daze. When I got there, I showed my buddies my new rifle and I told them this story. They laughed with me. I think they also understood that I was actually sort of sad. My grampa had delivered a powerful dose of reality that day, dashing a certain idealized notion that I had of him.

I had mixed feelings at the time, but I am very happy to have this memory now. Grampa dropping the c-bomb made me imagine him as he really was on the farm, in the lumber mill, behind the wheel of a big rig, driving a tank, plowing French-whores, and grieving the loss of a friend and a generation of his peers. Grampa kept it real. I’ll always remember him that way.