Going To The Country

While Dumont was truly a salvation for me when I abruptly left a teaching position at my old Catholic High School in Kitchener, my personal transition continued.  What I believe facilitated this process was exactly what made Dumont my salvation – “community”.   As some of the student radicals around us argued for “the correct line” (whether Trotskyist or Maoist), at Dumont we worked together toward a shared goal. 

Yet during the 1970’s, besides politics, there were other radical, social-departure-type themes which I experienced through reading – and particularly through music.  On the one hand there was Bruce Cockburn’s joyful song “Going To The Country”, and on the other, Neil Young’s apocalyptic song “After the Gold Rush”.  Both struck a chord in me.  

At first I was drawn to the rural setting of The House of Zonk.  It certainly was fun and welcoming – but it was also confusing and, to me, it felt too loose.  So, the more serious side of me reasoned that a rural commune near Erbsville, with a garden, and a group-commitment might be the answer.  Unfortunately, the personalities who comprised that grouping didn’t mesh.  As well, it was too close to my roots in Kitchener -- for on one lovely early spring Sunday morning my parents made me a surprise visit.  It happened, at the time, that a few us had done a hit of mescaline and were enjoying the fields around us – naked (Oh weren’t those the days!).   That incident (which, regrettably, may have caused my father a heart attack), and the fact that my relatives were all Catholic, led me to believe that I ‘had to get away’.

Meanwhile others from our U of W radical group of friends began to explore more distant and dedicated rural settings.  After Zonk, there was Markdale, the closest, which I visited and enjoyed.  There was Killaloe where I also visited – and subsequently spent a winter.  And there was Kaministiquia, outside of Thunder Bay.  On my quest I visited them all.  (I should also mention the whole crew of Waterloo friends who I didn't visit, and who decided to move to New Brunswick as their country choice.)

But it was in Kaministiquia, where I spent the latter part of the summer of ’71, where my personal choice really took shape.  There I met folks who were buying land and actually building their own houses.  Some were in distinct couples, others in communal groups.  They were also having children which, out of the blue, inspired ‘family instincts’.

Accordingly, I met Kerrie at a rural ‘building work day’.  She was nursing her 5 month old baby boy at one of the “commune centres” -- which is what the OPP called them.  And there were a few of them around Thunder Bay.   In fact, that was where I found the most numerous and focused back-to-the-landers that I had come across.  Through the latter summer of that year I got to know Kerrie while making apple jelly, washing diapers, babysitting other friends’ children, and attending Pete Seger and John Lee Hooker concerts.  

In the fall Kerrie and I took a trip to Southern Ontario, and ended up wanting to live together.  So it was that we spent a snowy winter in Killaloe with Bernadine and Jim– sharing an isolated old country house on a hill, with our baby Tag, and their baby, Kelly.  For me, with few manual skills, it was a constant learning experience.  Jim will tell you that I almost cut his hand off as he taught me to use a chain saw…  At the time when I joined him, Jim was employed by a local sawyer to cut a cedar bush, using a horse to do so.  But we were dedicated.  We milked goats.  We went to an auction to buy a pig, so that we could smoke, salt, and keep it for the winter.  And as we worked we were welcomed, long hair and all, into the local farming culture.   We were invited to Christmas dinner down the road with the local Reeve, and to family occasions with our neighbours, the O’Conners.  And we were visited regularly by the local folks who were curious at first, but who soon became friends.

Working with local people was clearly a key to finding roots in the country.  Upon our return to Kaministiquia in the spring, it was with the ‘old-timers’ that we first made friends.  In the 60’s many of them had been left in the country when their children migrated into Thunder Bay, attracted by the jobs provided by post-war industrialization.

Much of our interactions and transactions were cooperative, and bartered.  For instance, the nearby sawyer traded lumber for my labour.  And because I worked with him and he trusted me, he simply gave me the lumber as I built my house.  Then, one evening three years later, he and his wife came over for evening coffee and he asked me to wire and roof the addition to his house. 

Another family lent us their tractor to cut and haul hay for our goats.  Another traded chickens and a calf for helping to cut and bring in their hay.  Many a time I carried animals out from a neighbour’s trap line, as he had been gassed in WW2, and had a reduced lung capacity.  Now and then we ‘visited’ with the snow plow operator by accompanying him on his route. 

Thus it was that I chose to live here in Kaministiquia -- 50 years ago.  Kerrie and I still maintain a rural lifestyle, and community is still very much a part of our life, as mentioned in my initial essay on this Dumont Press Grafix website.

Community and volunteer work over the years has been ongoing for me -- earlier with the Lakehead Social Planning Council, and as well with Volunteer Leadership Development.  More politically I have been engaged in environmental issues against the Energy East Pipeline; and again (after 40 years) against the continuing plans by the nuclear industry to bury waste in our region.  We drove them off then -- and hope to do it again. Check out  our Wonderful Core Band video of friends and family against nuclear waste: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28BjBP6Jdbo

Cheers.

 Teaching at Saint Jerome's High School, Kitchener ON

 In writing the following story I don’t mean to be disrespectful to many teachers in my time at St. Jermome’s who were good, hard-working, fair-minded, and sincere. But it was a time and place wherein male authority reigned supreme, and corporal punishment, condoned.  Though I know that my experience pales in light of what we now know about the history of indigenous residential schools, I would hope that it contributes something to a more egalitarian and inclusive culture in Catholic schools today.

All of the names have been ‘slightly altered’.

And 'reader-warning': It’s a bit long, but I couldn’t shorten it…

                                           * * *

It was relatively easy in the summer of ’69 to secure a teaching job at St. Jerome's High School, and to sponsor my wife, Winnie’s enrolment at St. Jerome's College, University of Waterloo.  I had been the student president there only six years earlier, and had graduated with a BA from SJ’s College in ‘67.  As such I was a ‘known commodity’ with a respectable track record.

The 1960’s was an era when young recruits to the Catholic priesthood began to drop out of the Seminary in record numbers, and it must have been very threatening for the Resurrectionist priests who managed and taught at St. Jerome's.  Thus, my leadership potential was welcomed at a time when it was needed.

Admittedly, my prime purpose in returning to teach at St. Jerome's was to support Winnie while she embarked on an undergraduate degree.  But despite my private convictions and motives, I still intended to do a good job for my pay.  I had friends, relatives, and respected past teachers at St. Jerome’s.

As it happened in the staff dining room at lunch, conversation would occasionally turn to politics.  Not able to fully conceal my inner feelings, and as well, wishing to test deeper waters around me, I voiced the opinion that the Vietnam war was an unjustifiable war, and that people should do all they could to let politicians know that they didn't approve.  By this time I had learned from my university radical friends that Canada was complicit in the war by quietly allowing universities and industry to contribute research, weapons systems, and equipment and supplies to the American war effort. 

In response, I was told by Father Kilborn* that my idealism was out of place, that I was naive in the ways of the world, and didn't know what I was talking about.  As no others of that lunchroom group of seven supported me in the least, I assumed that I stood alone. 

Father Haines, the Superior of the order, and past Principal, was often a part of this dinner crew, but always seemed preoccupied in thought, and irritated with those who spoke to him.  Twice in the early sixties he had been my French teacher and had possessed the most amazing belly laugh I had ever heard.  But the occasions I remember it most were the three times after he had caned me (10 or 11 times) with the heavy end of the wooden pointer -- with me leaning over the front desk before thirty-five male classmates. Perhaps, I later reasoned, as Superior in this era, he had little to laugh about. 

Further experiences were disillusioning.  After a football game and dance one Friday evening the teacher-chaperons stayed for an hour or so to continue the dance for our own enjoyment.  When Father Ed Denome asked Winnie to dance he gathered her so closely to his body that it shocked me.**  Yet, an hour earlier, under the watchful eyes of the priests, students were instructed to ‘leave light’ between themselves as they danced. 

But the occasion that convinced me that I was in the ‘wrong place at the wrong time’ was outside the shower room after the last class of the day one late November afternoon.  As the assistant junior basketball coach I was there awaiting my team to gather when Joe Tarbot, another of our dining room group, called me over.

"Pete, I want to show you something."

He explained, in an apparent lesson on discipline, that he had punished one of his students for not showering, by making the whole class shower again.  His obvious method was to turn the anger of thirty boys against the one offender.  It was also a demonstration of his personal power.  Joe seemed to like power.  A few days before, at a party in his home in Elmira, he had proudly shown Winnie and me his personal handgun.  I had never actually seen a handgun before.  Owning a handgun seemed a very un-Canadian thing to me, and with the politics I was learning in my ‘other life’ at the university, I suspected that he was probably a closet fascist.

As the guilty kid passed Joe on his way out of the shower room, he threw a dirty look at his oppressor.  Without hesitation Joe, who was known to have tried out with the Hamilton Tiger Cats football team, grabbed him by the shirt collar.  With one meaty arm, in a single motion Joe jerked the kid off his feet, and threw him forcefully backwards into the lockers.  It was a performance I had not anticipated, and it left me stunned. 

But it all fit.  While only a few of the teachers disciplined so grossly, this kind of punishing lesson was a long-standing, quietly approved practice.  I had felt it years before when Brother Roy had twisted my wrist mercilessly, when Father Grosse had paralyzed my shoulder in his iron grip, and when Mr. Conroy had whacked the back of my head with his sadistically head-curved Math text.  My sometimes disrespectful and often unmotivated friend, Dave Brody, had been beaten with fists by more than one teacher in front of our class.  Another friend, Bart Malone, had also been punched by big Father Sulliman in religion class.***

Although Joe had tried to teach me something, what followed wasn’t anything he could have expected from me.  Without a look, or a word, I turned my back on him -- and walked away.

The next day was the first Friday of the month, and Joe sought to follow up on his lesson.  What a non-Catholic should know about ‘first Fridays’ is that at St. Jerome's the whole school of some 600 students and 25 teachers were expected to attend mass together in the gym.  It was the routine.  But as I walked out of the gym, Joe approached with clear intent. "Pete, I couldn't help but notice that you didn't receive communion at mass today."

"So what – you blankety-blank jerk?", I would have ‘liked’ to have replied. I so despised this man.  His observation, expressed to a fellow Catholic would have implied that likely I had sinned mortally, and hadn't yet been to confession to obtain forgiveness. Joe’s question was no more than a taunt, and a challenge.

In reality my last confession had been when I was sixteen.  During a religious retreat at St. Jerome’s I was drawn to confess to a visiting missionary who, in his address to a full assembly of male students, had emphasized that ‘he understood’ the confusing sexual feelings and emotions which so regularly tempted teenage boys.  He didn't actually mention the word masturbation.  That was taboo, and was indirectly referred to as "impurely touching oneself", or even "self-abuse".  

So later, in the privacy of the confessional, I humbly told this priest that I had masturbated -- after which he went on to make me feel dirty, and despicably sinful.  As with Joe Tarbot, I was angered by his accusations, and especially -- his betrayal.  Having lured me to confess, he had berated me when I did.  As far as I was concerned, he could go to hell – if there was one.  If no one in Catholicism could help me cope with what was happening to my body, they could have their foolish religion.  I wasn’t ever going to submit to that degrading process again.****  

So, years later, after Joe’s boldly provocative question, my response was as self-contained, proud, and ironic as I could muster: "Oh, Joe, didn't you know -- I’m not Catholic."  Joe had nothing to say.  And for a second time in two days I turned my back on him, and walked away.

My bridges thus burned, I went straight to see the Principal.  I knew I would never be able to maintain my presence at St Jerome’s after that.  I was too young, and the odds were totally against me. My ensuing discussion with Father John Thorpe was honest and determined. I told him about my experiences with Joe which symbolised for me the futility of the educational system as I saw it. 

I must have had a good adrenalin rush going as I expounded upon my convictions -- for I had had Father Thorpe as a teacher, too.  He was known for his intelligence, quick wit -- and his searing sarcasm.  But I wasn't going to be intimidated by him.

Yet, on this occasion, and to his lasting credit, he was quite subdued and human.  He acknowledged my concerns for the educational system, but said that he had more faith in its effectiveness than I.  Furthermore, he quietly accepted my resignation and wished me well.*****

I should add that even though I developed a strong justification for leaving my teaching position at St. Jerome's, it was at great cost to my sub-conscious peace of mind.  For at least five years afterwards I had various forms of a recurring nightmare in which I was always subservient to some inquisitor who demanded to know why I had done this or that supposed crime or misdemeanour.  Most often the setting was a school, and I was a student.

                                                -30-

* Father Victor Kilborn was later convicted in 1990 as a pedophile for offences committed in Kitchener.  But it was earlier, after a previous such violation while teaching at St Joseph-Scollard Hall in North Bay Ontario that he was transferred by the Congregation of the Resurrectionists to St Jerome’s. I met him when he replaced my grade 10 science teacher in 1961.

** Father Ed Denome’s brother was Father Francis Denome.  Father Francis was the principal when I was a student at St Jerome’s.  In 1969, the same year that I quit teaching at St Jerome’s, my friend, Don Kuntz was married in North Ontario.  At a drinking session when Father Francis was visiting Don’s father, he met Don who was newly married.  Don told me that at the time Father Francis asked him if his wife was “a good fuck”.  Shocking again, but it finally confirmed what I had always felt about the man…   

*** Bart had questioned the Catholic doctrine against birth control.  His mother, Joan, had raised 8 children as a single parent, abandoned by an alcoholic husband.

**** As young as I was, I was confident enough to silently rebuff that missionary in the confessional because just prior to this my mother had given me the gift of critical thinking.  In true Socratic fashion she taught by asking two questions in logical sequence. First she asked, “Peter, how many religions are there in the world?”.  I answered, “Maybe one or two hundred” -- for I had no idea. 

Her second question was, “And, how many of them think that they’re right?” There was no need to answer, or for her to ask a third question. 

***** Father John Thorpe later left the priesthood in order to be married.

The following describes my introduction to the RSM (Radical Student Movement).  While I wasn’t involved in organizing specific events -- I participated.  I don’t recall any hierarchy of position or specific leadership titles.  So, in retrospect, it would be good to have others’ insights into the workings and happenings of the RSM.  For me it led to participation in “On The Line”, and later – “Dumont Press Graphix”.

                                   A Radical Student

When I quit teaching English at St. Jerome's High School in November 1969, I had already been introduced to student politics at the University of Waterloo.  In striking contrast to my graduation two years earlier, when excitement was a football game and a dance, the campus was now alive with the phenomenon of the radical student movement (the RSM).

Since Winnie's enrolment at U of W in September, I had: marched in an anti-Vietnam demonstration, shouting the praise of Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Min; listened, enrapt by speaker Eric Mann, a Black Panther from Chicago; attended near all-night public meetings in the campus centre; and had shared supper with folks from "the King St commune" -- across the street from the home where my father was raised in Waterloo.

To my mind, until my amazing discovery of student politics, the world had been going to hell.  Yet here, at last, was the possibility of positive change, and a chance to be involved in the making.  As Bob Dylan had intoned, I knew -- I'd "better start swimming", or I'd "sink like a stone". 

My real initiation to student politics arose from a friendship Winnie and I developed with a group of Marxist historians, and their mentor, Professor Leo Johnson.  Bob, Leo's teaching assistant, paid immediate attention to my need to find a meaningful replacement for the teaching career which I had just abandoned.  This largely consisted of his patient explanations of Marxism, the theory of the dialectic, and how, with the knowledge of history -- one could actually change the future for good.  I was hooked.

Bob introduced me to Leo, and Leo recommended me for enrolment within the History faculty as a graduate student.  In fact, I had arranged most of this prior to quitting SJHS, and all that was needed to flow from one separate reality to the next, was a student loan.  No problem.

Then, through a series of pot-luck suppers at Bob's, we met his wife, Judy, and Jim and Mary, who were new to Canada from Boston.  As Winnie, Judy was an undergraduate.  Jim was a Philosophy Lecturer working on his PhD, and Mary, like Bob, was an M.A. student and TA in History.  This group, unlike the King St commune, consisted only of couples.  And, unlike King St, who were into an unfamiliar mix of politics and cultural anarchy -- our politic was ‘almost religious’.  In the long run, for me -- one blended into the other.

With our student loans, and a part time job I found in the University library, Winnie and I were able to maintain our basement apartment.  At St Jerome's College, she also attended classes on the U. of W. campus.  So together, for a while, we shared the heady life of "born again students", immersed in the pursuit of studies which seemed totally relevant. 

Winnie joined an extra-curricular ‘red’ study group, led by Professor Peter Dembski.  An American from New York, Peter idolized the infamous Berrigan brothers whose ethical commitment to peace led them to instruct young people to publicly burn their draft cards and destroy military recruitment records.  Despite the fact that the Berrigans were Catholic priests, and that Peter taught at a Catholic college, he was not popular amongst his peers. This was not at all surprising to me...

Together, we also joined The Organization for Social Justice and Reconstruction (OSJR). Led by Sociology Professor, David Kirk, we mostly carried out our good works by selling Northwest Ontario Indigenous crafts at the Kitchener market. 

Randy and Wally, two other OSJR members, were hard-liners whom the King St people referred to as "Stalinists".  Beside Bob, who would chuckle when he referred to himself as a "revolutionary", Randy and Wally asserted their conviction with defiance.  Their participation in OSJR, they admitted, was to meet and "politicize" do-gooders and liberals like Winnie and me.  Joy, Randy's partner, was quiet and somewhat shy, but clearly of the same purpose.  At first, their intensity was unsettling; but after a few visits and a few beers, Randy became human, and Wally -- a teddy bear with a gruff voice. 

I can’t recall how Winnie and I agreed to become a "political commune” with ten other people, including Bob and Judy, Randy, Wally and Joy.  But there was a definite fervour, and a driving need to "change the system".  Before Christmas we had moved into two rented houses and became known to the rest of the radical student movement as "Eby Street". 

Unfortunately, our political intent wasn’t enough to sustain us through the unexpected interpersonal issues which arose amongst young adults in their twenties.  After only four or five months, we'd all had our fill of political communes, and went our own ways.  

But by now we had graduated from OSJR to participation in the militant Dare strike -- a long and nasty workers' strike at a Kitchener cookie factory.  And etched forever in my memory is standing righteously, arm-in-arm, with Leo, Randy, Wally, and the Dare workers, against a wild police attempt to burst management officials through our human barricade into the plant.  I also remember watching, across the street from the Kitchener police station, where Dare executives had parked their luxury cars for hours while they conducted their mutual strategy meetings. 

We certainly ‘knew how the system worked’, and ‘whose side we were on’. 

Meanwhile, the Strange St commune and the King St commune, some of whom had been engaged in the production of "The Chevron", began a community newspaper called "On the Line".  The Dare strike was an opportune focus for their first issues. I was immediately attracted to the paper and soon began working with them.

I’ll let others, more central to the story, tell how “On the Line” flowed into, and overlapped with, "Dumont Press. Graphix". 

                       Year One of Dumont Press Graphix: 1971/72

                               From my perspective, by Peter Lang

High on LSD, I listened for signs of spring on a snow-covered field behind the University of Waterloo.  It was 2 am. and under my feet echoed the faint but distinct babbling of running water.  The winter had been a long one in which most of my energy had been spent coping with my confusing love life.  Any sign of hope was, therefore, quite welcome.

The vision which most impressed my mind-altered brain that night was the dome of light emanating from the University.  It obscured the stars; and the buzz and hum of its machinery overlaid the trickle I barely heard under foot. 

A fact which Leo Johnson had impressed upon me in his lectures was that in only one century the distribution of urban and rural population had completely reversed.  In 1870 eighty percent of people had lived in the country, and only 20 percent in cities.  If that was the case, I reasoned that the population reverse implied that people surely were losing the awareness of their place in the universe, and amongst the diversity of living things.  Given the momentum of population growth and technological development, how then could urban born decision-makers possibly safeguard the environment for our children?  For god's sake, the profit motive was alienating enough, and quite obviously a detriment to life.  But physically and spatially, from birth we were losing touch with life itself.  It was simply being erased from our consciousness.

Another life-changing insight was that I saw the university as not just an ivory tower, but an impersonal, amoral blight which, like cities in general, was greedily swallowing up all life around it.  In terms of my own past, this was Laurel Creek, the very area where my father had swam naked with his friends in "Shantz's hole", playing "last pickle on the plate" as he floated on his back, and rested on “bare ass beach”.  Previously my critique of the University was only social and political, but from that night I couldn't help but feel that another polluting, anti-life force was galloping out of control.  As an M.A. student I was only preparing to return to the classroom.  If I didn't soon leave, I too might be swallowed up.

                                                        * * *

A most exciting prospect saved me from my dilemma -- the birth of Dumont Press Graphix.  As a business it would be a base in the community from which we could make a living, as well as continue to practice our politics.  Our workplace, of course, was named after Louis Riel's military chief, Gabriel Dumont.

The venture was tentatively financed by three U. of W. professors* whose investment was contingent upon our winning the typesetting contracts of three local student newspapers: U of W's "Chevron”, Waterloo Lutheran's “Cord”, and Conestoga College's "Spoke".  But getting the contracts wasn't so easily accomplished… for the local K-W Record daily newspaper already did a competent, if not impersonal job of all three.  That it was a local monopoly situation likely worked on our behalf.

Without too much trouble we convinced WLU and Conestoga to give us a trial period of one year at the same costs charged by the Record.  However, the Chevron, whom we knew best, was another matter.  Alex Smith, its editor, was a very capable and careful technician who took serious pride in the appearance of his paper -- and appearance was all that typesetting was really about.  He was also a liberal leftist, not a flaming radical like ourselves.  He didn't trust our politics, and wasn't convinced he could depend on us.  Alex went so far as to involve the imposing presence of the Record's Circulation Manager at our negotiation meetings.

But we hounded Alex.  We wouldn't let him deny us.  In our favour, Alex also knew our capabilities.  Gary Robins and Steve Izma were artists who were more creative than anyone he knew at the Record, or on the Chevron.  Bottom line was that he didn't trust us to tow the line, and to meet deadlines, issue after issue.  He saw us as radicals, not to mention ‘dope-smoking hedonists’.  For a young guy he thought he was all growed up, that Alex Smith.

Who knows what other pressure was applied by our three professor-patrons, other Chevron staff, and the likes of President Larry Burko and his Yippie executive on Student Council?  Larry assured us that he actively supported us; but by Alex's measure that was probably a liability.  In the final analysis, I believe it was moral suasion which won us the deal.  He had to give us a chance.  While he may not have approved of our politics and behaviour, Alex could identify more with us than a large local monopoly.

What a coup!  Within three weeks we were set up for business on the second and top floor of the former Mitchell Plastics building, a button factory, at 97 Victoria St. North.  As it happened, this was diagonally across the street from the Station Hotel which my uncle Alec had inherited from his father. Somehow it was an appropriate, and ideal place to take a beer break after putting another issue to bed.

If anyone was responsible for the founding of Dumont, I would credit Gary Robins and Eddie Hale.  Gary taught us all to enjoy the achievement of excellent work, and scrupulously critiqued our individual performances.  Eddie, was the technological genius who had the nerve to jump into typesetting in the fall of 1971 when the first phototypesetting computers came on stream to revolutionize the trade.  Inspired by his obvious confidence and zeal, we probably outstripped the old apprenticed typesetters at the Record who, in order to learn the new technology, had to give up an age-old method of setting hot lead type.  We had nothing to sacrifice or to resent, and forged ahead.  In Marxist democratic theory, we cooperatively owned the means of production -- which made all the difference.  A group of equals had achieved their dream almost overnight.

In true newspaper tradition we worked day and night to meet our production deadlines.  It was not uncommon for us to have finished the page negatives at 4:30 am, and to jump into Eddie’s white Econoline van to drive to Webb Press in Toronto for 6 am in order to have the papers printed and on campus before noon.

As for the cooperative process, it was at times cumbersome and slow.  But we were keen.  As a number of us, I immediately taught myself to type -- having previously got my mother and Winnie to type my university essays.  We all learned every skill which went into the process, and took turns doing them.  We met regularly between jobs and during shifts to discuss the most efficient and best means to do a professional job.  Hard as it was, we were both friends and our own best critics. 

At times the job was gruelling.  None of us had ever really been responsible for something so important as maintaining our own living, but we knew that mistakes might add up to losing our contracts.  Pretty well on call around the clock, we would summon all hands at any hour to finish on time.  Perhaps, unlike Eddie, we weren't born with an entrepreneurial drive to succeed in business.  We were idealists.  On weekends, and in between our three contracted student newspapers, we also volunteered to assist and teach other alternate media groups to put out their own publications.

Yet we toiled that first year without serious complaint or setback.  Together we were a very hard-working and congenial group.  Dumont thrived -- and people lined up from across the country to apply there for work.   

• The three professors who each put up $3,000 to fund Dumont Press Graphix were Leo Johnson, Fred Kemp, and Henry Crapo .