I walk with the crowd toward the giant apple at the centre of Orchard Park Mall. Around the bronze monolith we are a storm swirling, unmindful of the morphing face of a valley on fire with harvest. I am a leaf in the stream of milling thousands who have passed this way, caught for a moment against this capsule of time. In the sealed darkness memories wait to be judged and woven imperceptibly into the fabric of an unknown generation. Without memory we do not know who we are. And I wonder how well we have listened to those who have come before us.
The babble of shoppers fades while memories of a northern kid on summer vacation surface. Sun-kissed beaches flood my brain. And my smile remembers holidays stuffed to the gills with fresh fruit and the freedom to be outside without a jacket. It is 1962, and my Regatta-stoked family is parked at the Restmore Motel. Across the street my sister and I play in a parched field where the Capri will rise like a forerunner of the changes to come. Regatta and motel now live in my memory like fruit-bits suspended in aspic. And I search for their threads within the fabric of who we have become.
I drive the thronged highway to the centre of town, and walk past brick buildings crowned with dates from early past century. How would our ancestors counsel a city threatened with becoming a party town fueled by drugs and biker gangs? In the hurly-burly to become a four season’s destination we must bend an ear to their voices. If we do not listen we will lose our way, and the forgotten souls inscribed on the fire-hall cenotaph will haunt us in our misery.
Several days later I am waiting for a movie to begin, and catch a glimpse of the future. A family of four children sits in front of me. The father is Caucasian, the mother East Indian. Their children are Chinese, Caucasian, African, and Native Canadian. It is their hands that will open the vault in the apple. And from the past I watch, with anxious uncertainty, a rainbow of fingers sifting the threads we have suggested for their vision of a people.
There is a story of a young hunter who was fascinated by a beautiful tweed coat. He did not have the money to pay for it so he gave the salesman his rifle. The hunter’s wife was very distressed, but he paraded himself before the village believing he had gotten the better part of the deal. When night came, the hunter and his wife were awakened by a hungry bear who wanted to eat them. “What shall we do?! Oh what shall we do?!” The hunter cried out. His wife looked at him and said, “Why don’t you shoot him with your new jacket!”
Let us not trade our rifle for a sport coat. The wisdom of generations waits.
