Chapter 2
IT WASN’T LOVE AT
FIRST SIGHT
Across the Lake, View of Saskatchewan Legislative Buildings, Regina Saskatchewan
It wasn’t love at first sight, that day in 2013, in Kentfield, (near San Francisco) California. That day when I first gazed at a picture of Uncle Dave and read enthralled by his words that were preserved as if in amber on the Internet. I don’t even think I had a crush on him at first but that guy has totally taken over my life. And he is dead;. He has been dead since 1948.
I was sifting through my things preparing for my solitary journey to London to study creative nonfiction writing at the ripe old age of 71. I was pitching stuff, as my earthly possessions were going into storage; the two-year program did not allow the whole-cale exportation of crap.
A postcard of the city of my birth, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, fell out of a folder. The post card wasn’t a memory of my own trip but that of an unknown traveler who had passed through Regina many, many years before. It was not the picture postcard of today but a watercolor in pale pastels. This postcard had somehow passed into the hands of an antique dealer in a dusty store in Sonora, California. It seemed such an unlikely juxtaposition so I bought it on a whim, imagining the travels we both had taken to meet in this unlikely place. I left Regina 60 years ago and had never looked back.
The postcard pictured a lake with an imposing building in the background, cumulous clouds overhead, the lake in the foreground was complete with a canoe and a sailboat. The title at the bottom described the scene: “Across the Lake, View of Saskatchewan Legislative Buildings. Regina Saskatchewan.”
Looking at the scene reminded me of a, actually, THE paternal family tragedy. My paternal uncle, Dave Dryburgh, a sportswriter in Regina, drowned while he was in the prime of his life and his career. I was five at the time, hence I have no memory of him. But he was the stuff of lore. I wondered if this postcard pictured the lake where he met his fate. I was distressed thinking that there would be no way to discover the answer. Uncle Dave had no children. My mother, the family historian, died three years ago, so there was no asking her. My father, a younger brother of Dave, has dementia so there would be no trusting in his answer.
But then it came to me, Techie that I am. Google the guy! There he was, in black and white. The first Dave Dryburgh image that appeared found him resplendent in an overcoat and tie, a hat sat jauntily at an angle. Not really smiling but confident, in control, looking pleased with life and his role in it. Then in minutes, not only did I have an image but a sample of his writing. Who needs a mom, or a competent dad for that matter, I had Google.
An excerpt from a book told me the whole story in far greater detail than I had previously known. I flashed a credit card and Amazon was transporting a book, from someone in Australia. The book: Saskatchewan Sports: Lives Past and Present was definitely not on the Best Seller List. Certainly one I wouldn’t normally purchase, but I was on a mission. The book arrived about three weeks later. Holden Stifler wrote that:
DRYBURGH, DAVID (1908-1948) Dave Dryburgh was recognized as one of the shrewdest sports observers in western Canada. He was born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland on November 20, 1908. His family arrived in Regina on July 1, 1912. The entire family returned to Scotland during the First World War but Dave Dryburgh made his way back to Regina following the cessation of hostilities. He starred on the soccer pitch with juvenile, junior and senior teams in the city…
For a number of years Dryburgh covered soccer matches for the Leader-Post as a side-line but instead decided to follow his father’s trade and apprenticed as a furniture maker for four years. During this period he contracted pneumonia and was told by a physician to take another job. Dryburgh returned to the Leader-Post as a sports writer in 1928 and was promoted to sports editor four years later. He followed all sports, but hockey and football were his preferred subjects, including the Regina Roughriders football team. An astute commentator with high principles, Dryburgh usually chaired the discussions on coffee row at Regina’s Balmoral and Ritz cafes. He drowned in a boating accident at B-Say-aTh Point near Fort Qu’Appelle on July 11, 1948. Since then the Canadian Football League has presented the Dave Dryburgh Memorial Trophy to the player finishing first in scoring in the West Division. Dryburgh was also inducted posthumously to the Football Reporters of Canada Hall of Fame in 1981.
My curiosity was piqued. There were a lot of unanswered questions. Where, and how, did Uncle Dave acquire his writing skills and abilities? Neither he nor any of his siblings had college degrees. No one else in the family, as far as I know, has ever demonstrated an ability or inclination to write. After being told to follow another profession Uncle Dave picked writing. Writing? How dissimilar can one profession be from one another? But the biggest question was his approach. What made him shrewd? Why was he so admired?
Google came to my rescue yet again. Here is what it told me, here is the writing it displayed.
“Forty seconds to go and the score tied; to one team a goal would mean the Dominion junior hockey championship; to the other an opportunity to force another contest before the holders of the Memorial Cup for 1930 could be decided.
That was the situation which faced the Regina Pats and West Toronto at the Amphitheater rink on Saturday night in the second game of the title series. And it was a tense moment for over 5,000 spectators who jammed the ice palace to capacity.
And it was Moore, who had scored the first goal of the series, who became the hero.
Suddenly two blue-and-white clad figures emerged from the midst of a horde of players at the Regina blue line and darted toward the opposing citadel as fast as steel blades would carry them. It was (Gordon) Pettinger and Moore who had taken opportunity of this break. There was hardly a sound as they neared the defence. Pettinger slid the disc over to Moore on the right boards–the winger seemed to skate too far into the corner but eventually took a shot which Geddes, the Toronto goalie, saved with his pads. Darting in after the rebound, the dusky Regina niger picked it up and slipped it across three feet from the goal mouth. There was nobody on hand to pick it up and it seemed for a second that the opportunity was lost –but everyone had forgotten about Moore. Skating around the cage at top speed in order to get back in the play again, the winger grabbed over the prostrate form of Geddes to make the score 3-2 and to win for the Regina Pats the junior hockey championship of Canada after one of the most sensational finishes ever seen in the puck pastime.”
WOW! How exciting! This is hockey, I am definitely not a fan but give me writing like this and I will be! He invented words. This was eighty years ago! This was a paper from Saskatchewan. What an incredible waste of talent but also how truly amazing that I can access this and his verve and enthusiasm can continue to excite.
I decide on the spot that I will dedicate the book of short stories I was penning to him. I was in the throes of a graduate course in Buddhism where we were philosophizing about reincarnation. I decided that words strung together in certain ways can, and do, have a life of their own. They can express the creativity, hence the soul, of the author. The subject can be anything, even hockey. I decide.
It is amazing to think that the purchase of the post card in 2002 would lead led to this chance encounter in 2013 that was to change my lite forever. But, at that 2013 moment and in the days and weeks to follow I was not in love. I was not transported. However I did transport myself to London (in September of 2014), immediately got smacked by a motorbike, almost died but soldiered on, enrolled in graduate school and tried to create nonfictionally.
The course demanded a focus, an idea, or a topic that would serve as an impetus for an (about) 70,000 word epistle. The course did nothing to suggest one. I became desperate for a subject, a topic ANYTHING to base the bloody book upon. I wrote of Uncle Dave’s death for an assignment and so accidentally (almost) landed on him. Apparently, I had to become a desperate woman to fall into his arms. But I did fall. And rescue me he did. He became my lifeline, my love, and the focus of this book.
