A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Goin’ Home

Time is eternal when you look back on it, yesterday, and all that. It exists in the present as it must; unfurling continuously. The future is theoretical. There’s a good probability that it, or something like it, could happen. So, that infuriatingly trite platitude “It’s the journey and not the destination” is true although it cannot be applied to sort of, kind of post-pandemic air travel.

“Bonjour! Hi! Bienvenue a Montreal!” I’m flying way back home this week. The occasion is the forty-fifth anniversary of my high school graduation. My suitcase is open on the blanket chest at the foot of the bed. The wayfaring documents are stacking up on the dining room table. I’ve since lived a little more than the latter half of my life to date away from my hometown. But there are still a lot of yesterdays cached in that place. On the drive into the city from the airport I always see an invisible, rusting modal freight container hidden in the weeds beneath the urban ruins of the old Turcot spaghetti traffic interchange which teetered on piers above a former CNR yard; there’s a big box of me down there somewhere hard by the repurposed Imperial Tobacco cigarette factory, I swear.

Twentieth century boy: I sometimes wonder why I feel such affection for the most squirmingly uncomfortable five years of my life. Confidentially, high school was difficult. The bloc of Catholic boys was diverse in a small school way: brains, jocks, stoners, nerds and politicos. Only a spider, let alone a self-loathing ordinary average guy, could keep a foot in each camp. I did make friends and if we’re not as intimate as we once were, we’ve at least kept in touch. It follows too that I made enemies and if their personalities remotely resemble my own, they’re still nursing grudges.

High school flagged my academic shortcomings early on, math and science. Oh, the grace of a report card “51” in chemistry. My “47” in geometry required summer school; I was obtuse, the square of the hypothermia was beyond me. My algebra teacher was also my football coach: “Geoff, you’re able to memorize the playbook (Veer Series, wing formation, audibles, more backfield motion than the I-formation), so why not the terms of this formula? If you can learn just one thing this year…” Thank you for the passing grade, Coach.

Unbeknownst to me, the rigours of the Jesuit education provided by Loyola High School instilled in me the capacity for critical thinking. This was done by stealth. Little did I know that this faculty would colour my engagement with the world as a post-secondary student, worker, writer, consumer and citizen. My secondary schooling was a secret gift with no expiry date.

To paraphrase a lyric fragment sung by the immortal Eddie Money, I want to go back though I’m feeling so much older. Loyola’s alumni weekend kicks off this Friday afternoon with a football game against St. Thomas. I’m tempted to attend. We always used to beat those guys. Loyola’s teams are nicknamed the Warriors; I suspect the Indian head logo has long been consigned to the dustbin. I assume the uniforms have changed and the equipment is much safer. “Geoff! Where are you!?” “Umm, on the football field?” “Geoff! What day is it!?” “Umm, game day?” “He’s fine.”

My old school was always a piece of a larger enterprise. Though the building, modern mock Gothic, is new and not the one whose halls I haunted, it still resides on the campus of the former Loyola College which has long since been incorporated into Concordia University – another Alma Mater of mine. I’ve logged tons of time in Montreal’s wild West End through the years, but not recently. I should take a stroll around the neighbourhood.

Mister Hot Dog was on Sherbrooke Street at the east corner of the campus. It was an odd shape at an odd intersection, not quite a corner – if only I could remember my geometry. It was a counter operation, stand and inhale. Everybody knew that the fat, sweaty guy with the brush cut who ran the place really, really appreciated his lunch clientele, fresh-faced high school boys. West of the campus, still on Sherbrooke but beyond West Broadway was The Golden Moon. It was one of those family-run restaurants (Greeks, always Greeks) that used to be everywhere and are nowhere now. Till at the front behind a counter displaying cheesecakes, kitchen and toilets at the rear. In between, rows of booths, some seating two, some seating four. Each booth had its own jukebox; April Wine was popular, “Fast Train” and “Bad Side of the Moon.” Loyola boys would congregate to chain smoke and swill cups of coffee or fountain Cokes. It was a more democratic environment than the structured hierarchy inside the school because different years were compelled to mingle in a space more congenial to conversation, and one more welcoming than the inside crush of rush hour mass transit.

South of the “Moon,” down a gentle incline and across the commuter tracks was Ye Olde Pub. It was a workingman’s bar whose trade resided across the street at the Sealtest factory, that dairy with the hunting lodge exterior wall of gigantic, grinning cow heads. Drinkers of any age were welcome at Ye Olde, and the rumour was a certainty: the Vice Squad could raid the joint at any time. This fearful knowledge only enhanced the buzz of guzzling three Molson Exports before attending a dance with the girls from our sister Catholic private schools. In truth, there wasn’t enough beer in the whole damn West End to detach me from the whitewashed cinderblock wall of Loyola’s primitive cafeteria. Boys this side, girls over there on the other, and didn’t the time seem to flash by between “Ballroom Blitz” and “Stairway to Heaven.”

Forty-five years. I’m acutely aware of how I misused them and used them up, but sometimes I still can’t believe they’re gone. I cannot anticipate another forty-five years of existence. Hell, my class’s fiftieth anniversary will fall in 2027. Who knows? Those next five years may prove trickier than I’d prefer. And so Friday night at Loyola I’ll be wandering around wearing a name tag and swigging from a cup of beer, a little lost in the new building, a bit wayward, and wondering just why it is exactly that I’m so happy to be back there again.        

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of mystified nostalgia since 2013. The novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com for links to purchase it in your preferred format from various retailers.