This blog started back in 2006 or 2007 as a development “bake off” between Drupal and WordPress. Drupal won the bake off. It was the platform upon which I focused my early development efforts.
The blog was re-purposed from a WP test / development site in 2011. I had a revenue concept but found myself unable to proceed as, post-accident, I lacked the ability to code, or even to update my skill set. At the time I was unaware of the fact I was suffering from TBI.
January 2013 saw the revenue project being scrapped and the blog re-aligned to meet the needs of a non-profit which I served as a board member. I started a project which was much too ambitious given my injury. The project was halted and I left the site dormant.
Dr H encouraged me to continue with blogging and web development as a rehabilitation activity; the blog has served in this rehab role since the first of the “new” posts in May of 2013. Since May I have been waffling around. Three sets of themes have emerged:
- Rehabilitation and related posts
- Posts on aesthetics and imagery, topics of personal of interest to me
- An aborted effort to identify a business model
To date the blog has been “dark.” The robots.txt file has not been activated so no search engine will crawl the site and facticity.ca will not show in any web search. Basically, I have operated the site as a “private” site with no visitors, and no real expectation of visitors other than my son.
Yesterday, I discovered I have a serious problem. I believe the only way I am going to obtain redress is to fight very hard for some basic human rights.
When I was younger I was beaten up on the school playground, or on my way home. I learned from that experience that I could not rely on authority figures. I was regularly tormented in the locker room during gym period. When I complained to the coach, I was told to “Buck it up and take it like a man.”
To put this in context you need to understand that the school I attended, Hudson High School, was located in what was then a semi-rural area. A number of my classmates were the sons of farmers. They had failed several grades. My peer group therefore included students of my own age together with three or four students two to three years older than the rest of us. This older group was a particular source of torment.
During this period, Hudson High was consistently winning the trophy in the West Island High School football conference. One reason for this success was the presence of linebackers, and halfbacks, and tight ends, who were farm boys raised and bred, each of whom likely moved 100 pounds of hay and feed before I got out of bed each morning. After school they went home to muck out the cow barns and the horse stables. They were each three feet taller than I was, were all muscle and no brain, and built like brick outhouses. Put a few of these characters in your football squad and the opposing teams from Beaconsfield and Point Claire simply didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of getting anywhere the football, much less near a football trophy.
When I complained to coach Steeves over being beaten in the showers, the students I was complaining about were the core members of his football squad. Coach Steeves had absolutely no interest in disciplining any member of his football squad, especially not those individuals who were the key winning ingredients in his secret sauce.
A second example drives home the point.
We lived on Forestview Avenue which came off Cote St Charles, dipped downhill in a beautiful swooping curve that formed a perfect skateboard track, and then doubled back to reconnect with Cote St Charles at a lower level as Hillcrest Avenue. The Elwoods lived across from us and the Scofields, the Muirs, Oliphants, Lascoskies, Cundhills, Millers, and Freemen were some of the other households.
Hudson High was a half mile distant and I would walk this distance four times a day. Once I departed our small, self-contained enclave, I entered the danger zone and would be subject to attack by the people who lived along the route to school. In one of these attacks I was lifted and physically tossed into a deep ravine (Lowery’s Under the Volcano has always had a special resonance for me). My fall was broken by a dense growth of brambles and stinging nettles. When I sought to climb out of the ravine I was targeted by stones thrown by the crowd of boys arrayed along the parapet above. One of these rocks opened a nasty gash just above my left eye.
I gave up trying to scale the embankment under the continious fusillade of stones and turned and made my way deeper into the nettles and brambles, following the ravine downstream until I was able to safely exit and return home. My mother was horrified. Blood ran all over my face. An eye swollen shut. Clothes torn ragged. Skin scratched and ripped by the thorns. I do not know the full story but I expect she went ballistic as mothers are wont to do. Apparently, she complained to the authorities.
I was informed of her complaint by the gang of toughs that accosted me the next day. They demanded to know why I was trying to get them into trouble. Then they beat me up for having the temerity to squeal on them. And beat me up a second time for the gall of denying my involvement in the complaint process. It takes very few of these beatings before it is reinforced to you that “the authorities” are not to be trusted and cannot be relied upon for help.
This are the chief lessons learned in my youth. Sadly I appear to have forgotten it in my dotage. But believe me, all that I learned then is coming back with a painful clarity.
Update
Jack Layton, the former leader of the NDP, attended the same high school. When he became leader of the NDP I heard stories to the effect he had attended Hudson High and I would study the photographs of him that appeared in the press but I failed to recognize him.
After his death the Globe & Mail published a new set of photographs. One was immediately recognizable as being a Hudson High school yearbook photograph of the student council president I had approached for funding to start up a school camera club. He hemmed and hawed a bit and then gave me twenty dollars. That doesn’t sound like much but this was back in the day when soft drinks were 10 cents for each cold green bottle (no cans), and cigarettes (Black Cat) were 50 cents a package.
Black and white film was a dollar twenty five cents a roll. I shot a lot of images for the school yearbook. Somewhere I have a picture of a tired and sweaty young Mr Layton entering the locker room after a football practice.