ASPIRATION

001 Slave Falls, Manitoba, Canada

I am not what happened to me, I am what I chose to become.

― Carl Gustav Jung.

I grew up in Canada. To be precise, in a town called Winnipeg, the capital of the province of Manitoba.

002 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, early 1960s

Ever heard of it? No, didn’t think you had... unless you have an interest in geography. I never did. Geography always bored the socks off me.

003 School Days

Come to think of it, school bored the socks off me too. Why? Well, because it was managed by men and women committed to planting boring ideas into my mind.

004 The Prairies

But they never asked you what you wanted to learn! They just stole you away from nature where there were thousands of things to learn

005 Reading Practice

and shut you up in a room full of kids with their heads bent over books, reading and writing.

006 Crowded classroom

That is a bit callas.

007 Hop scotch in the street

I finished by divining the subtle purpose of such systems:

008 Playing in the street

to keep kids off the street

009

I think that a casual survey of human life would show that people

009b Seeing the Sun go Down

fall into one or other of two types.

010 The Practical Man

Some of them are practical,

011 Dancing in the Rain

while others are imaginative.

012 Henry Ford

Society, however, showers its wealth on the practical ones,

013 Painting the Sea

while largely shunning the ones with creative instincts.

014 Distorted Face

I decided that making a choice like that would distort human growth by limiting its potentialities.

015 Students Hard at Work

I endured school, hopping it would improve my chances of landing a passably satisfying job,

016

and I was happy in the autumn of 1981 to join the Winnipeg division of Westinghouse Electric Corporation as a trainee assembler of lighting panels.

017 Canadian Air Force Jet

I hatched that plan as a source of revenue until recruiting time came round, when I could satisfy my long-standing plan to join the Canadian Air Force.

018 Slave Falls, Manitoba, Canada

But just a few weeks after starting my first job I was despatched to the remote location of Slave Falls on the Winnipeg River,

018b Slave Falls upper right

right on the doorstep of the great Canadian wilderness.

019 Slave Falls Generators

At that isolated place, I was attached to a gang of labourers slaving away at a colossal generator that had burned out in the powerhouse of the hydroelectric dam that spanned the river there.

020 Transport to the dam

In 1961 there was not even a road running to the dam. You had to reach it by riding on a bus adapted to run on railway tracks.

021 Pointe du Bois

We workers were housed at Pointe du Bois, some six miles up the river from the dam.

022 Dusk On the Winnipeg River

At the dusk of day the workers that formed the night crew (to which I was attached) were despatched to the isolated place of their labour by means of the Railbus.

023 The Railbus en route

The night's toil began when you climbed inside, chose a seat and waited while your fellow passengers had got aboard and slumped into seats.

024 The Railbus at Pointe du Bois

The driver then whirred his engine into life and engaged first gear.

025 Newer Model of Railbus Approaching Pointe du Bois

The old bus began to grind along its rails, absurdly slowly at first, with something like a screech and a wail of pain.

026 Railbus Nearing its Shed

The sheds of the settlement began to glide behind outside the windows,

027

and the chatter of the passengers swelled as the rusty iron wheels began to clatter

028 Railbus Interior

and the seats began to shake

029 The Railbus Controls

as the driver rammed home his gears.

030 Worker's Lunch

How strange it was for a lad like me, a schoolboy just weeks before, to wake late in the day to an evening meal eaten sleepily at a table crowded with workmen,

031 Rail Line through the Forest

and then to go clattering into the wilderness in that outlandish craft that scattered rabbits and deer from the fringes of the line in the fading sunlight of the forest.

032 The Slave Falls Generators

Strange, too, it was, to labour all through the night in a floodlit hum, bandaging up the burnt-out guts of that stricken thing,

033 Pointe du Bois

till it was time to come rattling back in the grey light of dawn to a dozy breakfast in the cookhouse and a dazed slumber in a bunk.

034 Road to the Dam in Construction

Since a road has now been built between Pointe du Bois and the hydroelectric dam at Slave Falls, the rail link is no longer in use.

035 Manitoba Legislative Building, Winnipeg

The Slave Falls generator repair project must have got back on track, because I was directed back to Winnipeg within a week.

036 The Dam at Slave Falls

Yes, I spent less than seven days at that fascinating place, but I suspect I learned something crucial while there.

037

On one of those days I got talking with a fellow who coaxed me to be escorted by him to the very summit of the dam.

038

Once at the height and perched before a knee-high parapet,

039

I saw the river dizzyingly beneath me and the vast landscape of trees and water stretching far to the four horizons.

040 Winnipeg River System in Ontario

An exhilarating site. Especially for a denizen of the Prairies like me who had rarely seen anything of the world from higher than several feet.

041 High Angle View of Mountain by Sea

Maybe my workmate hailed from a place where high-up views were common. Near Winnipeg?… No chance!

042 The Hydroelectric Dam at Pointe du Bois

Or maybe he had begun by ascending to the summit of the much older dam at Pointe du Bois.

043 Pointe du Bois Dam in Winter

But now he clambered upon the parapet itself and invited me to join him there on the dizzying pinnacle of the abyss!

044 Facing Challenges

Well, much as I wished to be apt at facing challenges, I declined this one.

045 Striving to Accomplish Challenges

It galled me to think that this windbag probably thought me spineless, but in my own eyes it was just prudent to prepare yourself beforehand for such high jinks.