I recently heard from my old friend Roy of the passing of yet another of my mentors. Cahill Rooney died on Good Friday 2021. Along with this news came other news that someone had written a book called “Brothers In Montebello”.

The author (Shawn Urlocker) arrived the September after I graduated, so I never knew him, but I purchased the book anyway,buying it online on Monday. It arrived Thursday morning and I devoured it by Friday evening. The stories inside stirred up memories of school mates and names long forgotten and places that I had known intimately. The book mentioned an event that I was involved in. The back cover said that:

“Presentation High school in Montebello was a ‘last chance’ for Montreal’s most incorrigible youth, while also offering a quality education for “regular lads”.”

Needless to say, I was not a “regular lad”. I did graduate with top grades in English and Religion, and went from being a mediocre student to being accepted at Acadia University.

The book told of the kids at the school and their lives in and out of school. It also mentioned a caper that I had been involved in.

Mr. Rooney was the Vice Principal of Presentation High School. The school year I attended was my final year of high school. 1973-74. Mr Rooney was a character to be sure. Physically, I felt he looked like Roy Orbison. He had a thick mop of jet black hair and black rimmed Ray Ban glasses. He walked on the balls of his feet and it seemed like he was always smiling. He had a way of emitting a short and high pitched “hm” and raised his eyebrows in surprise as he entered a scene. I am pretty sure it was a nervous habit of his, but it made us wonder what he knew and we would wonder if he was “hmm”ing disdainfully or playfully. I often found myself copying this mannerism of his in my own teaching career from time to time, and each time I did, I would think of Rooney.

Cahill Rooney loved cars. He had several classic Jaguars that were not running, but parked on the lawn beside the school. The year I was there he had a Hemi Roadrunner which is a honking big muscle car. I only remember riding in it once, which was a trip to Ottawa and back. The date was Saturday March 16th, 1974. I had convinced some of my pals to come to a concert in Ottawa with me. I played guitar and was becoming increasingly fascinated by things musical. Mr. Rooney took courses in Ottawa and went frequently. He was going that Saturday and we were able somehow to not only get tickets, but get a ride, (we also got some potent LSD) and all this before internet and not having any credit. Rooney was a pretty cool guy, all told.

The concert was a triple bill. The first act was “The James Gang” which at this time had Canadian guitar legend Domenic Troiano on guitar (not Joe Walsh…who had left by then). They were loud and heavy. Not my thing, I was there for Roy Buchanan who was a blues based telecaster slinger who I had discovered while hanging out at Phantasmagoria record store which was a cool store with barnwood, sofas and tropical fish. I heard Roy there and bought the album “Second Contribution” on the spot. I think he came on second, but I can’t be sure. I know I loved the music. The other band on the bill was “Soft Machine” which was a prog rock outfit… lotsa synths and I did not relate to them at all. Fortunately the double barrel orange pills we had taken before made all the music and the experience a cloudy jumble. Meeting up with Rooney after the show was a trip in itself…. We were so blotto… every thing he said and every growl of the engine were amplified with cosmic significance somehow. Rooney drove fast! We were doing well over a hundred and twenty. (Miles Per Hour) Canada would go metric in almost exactly one year. Ripping down the 417 from Ottawa to Hawkesbury was like when the Enterprise goes warp speed… all the while with Rooney smiling and “hmm”ing and we feeble ados not able to discern if he knew how fucked up we were… The bridge to quebec and up the road we all knew so well back to Montebello. There is now a high speed bypass from Lachute to Gatineau, but the old road is pretty much as it was then.

That was not “the” caper. It sticks out in my memory, though. I remember Dave MacDonald was with us, and I am pretty sure there were two others but time has erased those details.

AT our “reform” school there were brothers who taught and ran the place and several teaching positions held by “lay people” The year I attended there were two men from Queens, NY . I remembered them as Bart and Steve, but in the book it refers to a Mr. Ross. They both used to regale us of stories of going “clamming” near their native Queens. Very heavy and thick Queens accents. I think they may have been “old boys”. We’ll call “Bart” “Ross” for the sake of this story.

Ross had an old Volvo like this one:

His was easily classifiable as an old car… junker….beater….etc. It had a manual transmission.

One of my classmates (I don’t remember who, but probably Dave) came up with the brilliant idea to “relocate” the Volvo as a practical joke. We snuck around after lights out and got to work. We needed many strong boys to push it and someone behind the wheel to steer. Gerry (Muttsey) was the strongest and Bruno was also muscular. There were others, but only hazy in my memory. David and a long haired kid named “Poshton”. I had my driver’s licence and knew stick, so I was elected the wheel man. The goal was to push the car around to the back of the school and deposit it in the Gym. The school was built on an embankment. Two storeys visible in the front, but two more storeys beneath those levels. We got the car around to the back alright, but hit a snag at the Gym door. The car did not have enough room to turn the 90 degrees necessary to go through the door. We had to lift the back of the car up and swing the tail around without very much room to do it because the sidewalk we were on could accommodate the car, but dropped off severely not unlike a mountain road. When we got the car perpendicular to the school, we realized the gym doors needed to be removed and the car needed to be lifted in the front to get over the threshold and into the gym. Imagine all the grunting and swearing of pubescent boys exerting themselves and picture the bedroom window of Mr. Rooney’s bedroom two stories directly above. It is a miracle we didn’t wake him.

We got the car into the centre of the gym and someone took a picture. I wish I had that photo now, I don’t even remember who took it. About a dozen boys in the middle of the night atop and astride the Volvo. We all snuck off to our dorms and went to sleep feeling pretty damn proud of our collective naughtiness. We were awoken rudely before the usual time by the Brothers and Ross yelling for the grade ten and elevens to wake up. They told us that the Volvo had been stolen and we were the prime suspects. No-one spoke. Muttsey was singled out, but he remained mute. We had a code as young punks to not “squeal”. This is before they found it in the Gym… The Securité du Québec officers were there and one officer strolled downstairs and came back grinning and said “J’ai trouver ton auto, monsieur!” and Ross went downstairs and came back fuming and ranting (and smacked a few of us that he was sure were in on it. Muttsey and Timmins….. Still we were all mute. Mr. Rooney came in with a shit eating grin and brother Raymond came in smirking as well. They lectured us and made us skip breakfast and we had several duties piled on the lot of us. That was it.

I felt kind of bad because Ross had gotten up very early to drive to Montreal for a dentist appointment which he ultimately missed. We really loved the guy, and were totally not thinking of the ramifications or consequences of our brilliant, but admittedly delinquent caper. Idiot boys.

I am pretty sure that Brother Raymond and Mr. Rooney were secretly proud of our teamwork and our ingenuity in pulling this off even though they feigned anger, disbelief and revenge. I can picture them sitting over a scotch and howling with laughter at how their incorrigibles did.

I am quite sad that I couldn’t find pictures of Cahill Rooney (the right one…) on line. He was ultimately a very private man. I have many pictures of him etched into the recesses of my brain and another memory of seeing his name in the Gazette in 2012 in regards to a development project in Shaughnessy Village where his home backed onto the development. I checked the phone book for Rooneys and found one on Chomedey Street. I knew the street as I had had an apartment in a converted townhouse there in the 70’s. I called him up and we chatted a bit agreed to meet up at a café nearby on another day. He was thrilled to know I became a teacher and was eager to discuss my music with me. Alas, it never transpired. I regret it. My life was about to become unmanageable as I was close to burn out my job, my mother’s health, worry over one of my children and my marriage had unravelled beyond repair.

Now he is gone. We never have anybody forever, but having him ever present in my memories and habits will have to do. I am surely not the only boy he ever helped as I see from Urlocker’s book. I intend to have a chat with my buddy Roy who went on to help him establish his own school in Aylmer, Quebec a few short years after I graduated.

I have another tale from school days here:

https://vignettesandbagatelles.blog/?s=no+pain

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”   ― Heraclitus

Aside from the gender specific reference of the above quote, it is profoundly true. I like to revisit things. Places, people, music, films, ideas, books. 

Recently, I have undertaken the task of Reading “The Unabridged Mark Twain”. Many of the stories are ones I read as a boy and/or as a younger man. One of the tales is “Huckleberry Finn” which is a sequel of “Tom Sawyer” which I have also re-read (as the tome is chronological and I started at the beginning). Immediately after publication, Huckleberry Finn was banned on the recommendation of public commissioners in Concord, Massachusetts, who described it as racist, coarse, trashy, inelegant, irreligious, obsolete, inaccurate, and mindless. It is none of these, but what more temptation would a young boy need but to read a book that was banned?

When I first read Huckleberry Finn I doubt if I was yet ten years old. It is quite a compelling story of an adventure down the Mississippi River on a raft by a young boy who was around my age at the time and his friend, a runaway slave. The narrative is written in a style that imitates the language of the people of the southern United States in the mid eighteen hundreds which is pre-Civil War. Being Canadian and raised in the 60’s, my models for this style of speech would have been from TV at that time. The Andy Griffith Show, Disney movies, Gomer Pyle, etc. Perhaps I had seen Gone With The Wind as well. The tropes of southern belles, country bumpkins, gamblers, grifters, southern preachers etc. would all have been modelled in Western Movies and shows like Roy Rogers, The Rifleman, etc.

The intention behind my reading books as a child was just to follow the story. To get to the end. It never struck me as odd or unnatural or unusual that black skinned people in this book were referred to with what we now call “the ‘n’ word”. I didn’t use it myself, I didn’t hear it except from time to time on the playground at school even though my elementary schooling was in a privileged and predominately white neighbourhood and the word was meant to disparage like “fag”, “Pepsi”, “retard”. Words meant to isolate, to demean, to destroy. Thinking about it now makes me realize how little I understood things. To me, those words were just sounds that did not apply to me because I was not black, gay, or French or intellectually challenged (my sister would argue the last point. Lol). I was truly naive.

The ‘n’ word did not make my skin crawl as it does now. The social order of the story was just a description, no more, no less. I did not question it. The matter- of-fact manner in which slaves appeared in the story lacked the ominous and oppressive weight that I understand now as an adult. I had heard about and read about slaves in Sunday School. Jews enslaved in Egypt, etc. Just Stories. 

The interval since I first read Twain is 50 odd years. My education and personal growth and changes since then have been vast. I have held beliefs, reversed beliefs, been entirely skeptical, entirely optimistic. Ambivalence, it could be argued, is a Canadian trait. Yet I have always had a healthy disregard for authority, always questioned yet generally adhered to the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you). I have travelled. I have worked and played, loved and hated, fulfilled both dreams and nightmares. 

The human body almost entirely replaces itself on a cellular level every 7 years. So At age 64, I am Ian Hanchet version 8.0. I have been regenerated roughly six and a half times since I read Huck Finn the first time. Who was that guy?

I have benefitted greatly from my White Privilege. Which I now know has been at the expense of others. I am a direct result of the colonial system living in a land that was stolen. I have been able to do things others could only dream of. It seems the world is in constant flux. Economic and Territorial powers are always in flux. I have the luxury of being able to think and not be worried where my next meal comes from. I am thankful and ashamed.

To revisit Huck after reading Maya Angelou, Alex Haley, James Baldwin, Howard Zinn, is to uncover the degrees of subtlety that Twain infused into his writing. I googled “Twain and racism” to see if I should continue. It turns out that Twain was a champion of racial tolerance and critical social commentary and human rights. Did my world view come from him in the first place, the subliminal foundation on which I built me beliefs and non-beliefs throughout my life or am I just realizing now what has always been there? Every awakening I experience is like being freed from being a prisoner in Plato’s Allegory of the cave. 

Not just Huck, either. So far I have revisited: “The Innocents Abroad” which satirizes Amerocentric travellers and the revelations of places visited and the people in them as a huge hustle; “The Prince and The Pauper” where privilege and disenfranchisement trade places; At this writing, I am half way through “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” which is also a scathing yet subtle satire of aristocracy and power structure. I am at page 1,000 (about 3/4 of the way through)of the first of two tomes. 

Some of the stories in here I will be encountering for the first time. Putting my feet into a new river. Early in my teaching career I remember taking a school band by bus on an excursion from Winnipeg to Minneapolis. The bus driver announced at some point that “to our right is the great Mississippi River!” I asked him rather excitedly to stop the bus as I wanted to dip my toe in this heralded river that bisects america, rich in history, down to the Delta which is Blues country and ends in New Orleans the birthplace of Jazz. I scrambled down the embankment with my students watching on as their Weirdo Music Teacher took off his shoes and waded into what turned out to be a very polluted part of the great Mississippi River. I remember that, rather than elation I was horrified that such a great natural wonder could be so mistreated. An environmentally conscious person was newly baptized. Part of my reverence was shattered. It was restored a decade later on a trip to St. Louis where the river was cleaner and better represented the images of my youth. The literary river I just waded through was like reading it for the first time with eyes wide open. I wish I could have gleaned from it way back when what I did this time. Alas, not the same man, not the same river.

The real richesse  of retirement is the amount of time I have to reflect on things, assume a mantle of wisdom and to get to projects and books I could never make the time for on the treadmill. *ironic side note… I listened to “A People’s History of America” while exercising on an actual treadmill. Makes me feel less like a chubby hamster.