www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weather/everything-is-dying-prairie-farmers-crops-struggling-with-yearly-droughts/ar-AA1I3Q1J?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=b3ec791bd1fb4257ee0866d18607a1b8&ei=21

https://breachmedia.ca/?vgo_ee=kpd20pPV3mSO2MzwwX2sOsJp09Afrtk4WR5YEwWhTbKfVNA%3D%3ATkJRhi%2F%2F1%2BxO2e3eVCWQmhSkVNFVSZMc

Toward a People’s Art
The following lines are simply me trying to crystallize my attitude and intent in writing beyond the primary purpose, which is to fulfill and entertain myself. The trick is to entertain and stimulate my readers to consider things that they may not have. Also, I would like to motivate people to read who might not do that often or at all.
I want my story telling to be simple and accessible to as many as possible, while answering questions I have about the world.
 
Art: defined as writing, music and the visual, tactile arts that have a purpose beyond entertainment or decoration.
 
Fundamental principles: to inform and stimulate a response; to reach as broad an audience as possible spanning all education levels, race, gender and generations.
 
I can only talk about writing, but the fundamentals should apply in all art, even if the craft, media and techniques differ.
My desire in my writing is to reach as many as possible, hopefully, some who seldom read. I have no interest in receiving praise and attention from the narrow audience of intellectually trained readers even though I respect that training and learn from that audience. Simple story and language would be easy for that group to receive, but it leaves no opening for long analysis of meaning, imagery, allegory and complex forms, words and derived ideas. They are not delicious food for the literary intellectual academic. There would be little chance of satisfaction in discussing the colour of curtains and rifles on the wall and their deeper meaning.
Peoples’ art does not intrude the form between the reader and the content. Most people do not have the training or interest in examining the form, but they receive the content in wide-eyed satisfaction.
In sculpture, this is the difference between a Henry Moore abstraction that requires secondary explanation and Ruth Abernethy realism where the statement, context or intent of her sculpture is wonderfully obvious to all. (Canadian reference)
Caring
The creator needs to care about the value of the work and their audience. A writer also needs to care about our characters. We cannot treat our story people, even though we created them, as mere stage decoration. Even necessary, secondary characters should have a hint of human dimension. We must share this care with the reader; make the reader care too.
Reach, the broad audience
Language should aim to fit the average reading level of the population. This is mid-elementary school level (Grade 6). I do not mean that we should write less sophisticated content, but the words and form should be at that reading level.
Using obscure, obtuse or complex words is simply a writer’s ego, perhaps aimed at impressing other sophisticates, but it intrudes the writer between the reader and the story. I consider balance to be forcing a reader to a dictionary twice in 200 pages.
Imagery, symbolism and metaphor must relate to a common and mutually understood cultural base shared with the reader. This can include current popular culture, shared myths and historic understanding. Using obscure literary or historic and cultural references makes the reading difficult and, unless they are necessary to the story and we should avoid them.
Subject matter
Must appeal to the masses, so most genres are valid platforms. If the writer wishes to plants seeds of thought in readers, using popular genres in an engaging story is a great method.
Value of the work
While engaging to the audience, there must be a deeper purpose and message in the work, otherwise it is mere entertainment, which is valid, but not art.
My work either answers a question or contains a deeper meaning, but my job is to embed that in a story that avoids the polemic or lecture and to provide the exposition through setting and action.
I see good story telling as scattering seeds of thought that may germinate in the readers mind and encourage the reader to explore those things independent of the story. That is, for the reader to think about things they would not have had in mind before reading my story.
These thoughts are not yet done.

breachmedia.ca/national-post-rewrote-wire-stories-to-push-pro-israel-narrative-analysis-find/?vgo_ee=QYqdCXl1yVhP3zjUdBQzIY1wWe5amoJ1uvzJbQnlZYfcDww%3D%3A3ko%2Bsoxi%2BB1vR24yVjEu7YxaFpbZztgs

www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/this-iconic-toronto-tree-is-dying-but-is-it-the-end-of-the-line/vi-AA1GEWA3?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=5e0df1e9d886498abc03998c21e59981&ei=42

Believe in Samaria – Don Hayward
 
“Do you believe in God?” He asked.
I turned on the bench and examined my inquisitor who had plunked, uninvited, beside me on the bench.
Damn, I thought, I can’t catch a quiet lunch hour anymore.
I had hoped to think through a plot problem in the quiet shade of a maple and in sight of the bastardized architecture of Victoria College.
The man reeked of the street: unkempt, mismatched clothes that had all fallen off a rag cart, shoes that barely deserved the term, and all that emphasized bony hands and a beard like a riparian hazel bush that had captured white, aspen fluff.
Beyond the man, and his status as such might be a bold assumption on my part, traffic flowed on Queen’s Park Circle, East. University students hurried along the angular pathways between Vic and the main campus with faces reflecting ideas, subjects, tests, failures, victories, love, hate, him or her.
Before I considered my new friend’s challenge, I pondered the unity between the hurried young and the flow of cars beyond. They both reflected individual cares, the young to make their way in the world and those in the cars who hurried to make money, for themselves or others.
Make way, make way here I come, no time for rubbys.
I examined the interloper, ready to discount what might seem to be a crazy person with his own version of talking about the weather, chitchat, as if our discussing God or Environment Canada might do for meaningless conviviality. His eyes, the only feature that spoke of worth, said he wanted a real answer, no idle chatter here.
He deserved that answer, and I had become his latest hoped for source. It was my fault, appearing to be thoughtful while munching sliced beef on sourdough, an easy mark for anyone with a question, an empty gut and a desperate need for an answer.
“We all need hope,” I said. It was a life-long quest that I had yet to fulfill, the search for hope’s reward. I saw little in the man that suggested he had any hope, but then his eyes asked, hopeful. He wanted me to be that hope.
“Where do I find hope?” He asked, and shivered despite the mid-day Toronto heat.
I offered the uneaten half of my sandwich. He snatched it as if a feral cat had missed a few days kibble.
“Luck or invention,” I said as I sadly slipped into pontification.
Arrogant bastard, I described myself.
He deserved more. He had created this serendipitous role-playing where we might be Socrates and Plato on a bench, or drunks in a bar. In the end, perhaps both pairs might make equal sense, the ancients with incomplete information and the latter with disrupted brains. No doubt, our pairing of a want-to-be writer and a denizen of the street fit the group. Perhaps we represented middle ground between philosophical and drunken bullshit. My new friend appeared to be sober, and I did not drink.
“If we don’t have hope,” I said, “we need to invent it.”
“I hope to be warm and fed,” he said, between bites of beef and carbs. “We don’t invent hunger.”
He licked the mayonnaise from a finger. “Down at the mission, they tell me if I believe in God, I will be fed, here, here and here.”
He slapped is gut, his head, his heart.
“Does that give you hope?” I asked. My eye fell to the large oatmeal cookie in my bag. We still hungered. He finished the sandwich. I broke the cookie in half.
“No,” he said. “Maybe I don’t pray enough. They pray all the time. Is that the trick, how to find hope? I feel warm and they feed me, so I guess it helps.”
“Hope comes from the need for a reward,” I said. “Being fed and warm is a reward. To get there we perform purposeful activity, actions that we think will fill our hope with the reward. For them, it’s praying and feeding you. If all you want is food, it seems to me that farming might be more useful for that, same hope, action and reward, or chatting to strangers in the park.”
I munched my half of the cookie and hoped to appear smart.
He noticed the cookie, but perhaps not my smarts. I gave him his half.
Maybe half my smarts too, oh, I’m so witty. I kept the thought to myself, but it might sneak into a story sometime.
“I get hungry quick when I leave there.” The cookie disappeared. “I guess there is a connection between them praying and me eating. Do they have hope?”
His laugh was honest.
“Their hope is eternal life,” I said. “I think feeding you is part of their purposeful activity to get there, their reward.”
“Is that the only reason they do it? Saving me seems to be a doubtful incentive. I’m just a bit of life’s road-kill.”
I considered my new friend. He had had an education, maybe more than me, and then something had broken; something that stole hope.
We all break, I thought. For some, the drugs are real, for others, I looked at my hands, a keyboard, a story is the medication.
“Everyone is worth saving,” I said, and hoped I did not patronize. “Even those dressed in Goodwill rejects with a grumbling gut.”
We shared a laugh.
Somewhere a bell tolled noon.
Suddenly I knew.
Screw you, Hemmingway, the bell tolls at birth too.
I stood.
“Come with me, friend.” I extended my hand. “I have a spare room, and I know where the Goodwill is.”
 

https://www.ctvnews.ca/london/article/future-of-goderich-and-exeter-hospitals-up-for-debate/

Healthcare in Canada is in decline, partly because of the ongoing collapse of feudal-capitalism but speed up by ideological governments like ford's. Both the Cons and the Libs have done damage, and the New Delusional Party is bankrupt of ideas and ineffective.

This is a story I had to write.
The Acorn
 
Prowling for a victim, cold November air blasted up the river, raising whitecaps across the broad mouth of the estuary. Up the valley, the steep slopes squeezed the flow into a jet of chilled lake air that shook the stout cedar and birch trees anchored in the flood plain. The river turned, and at the turning, the lake air escaped through the bare maples and oaks up the steep north slope of the river valley. Sumac, adorned with the last clinging red leaves and berries trembled in the flow, and the wind lifted higher, finding a gap in the bank to whistle free into the gaunt stand of huge oaks on the high ground.
With all of the cares of his tumultuous world weighing on his shoulders, Harvey Walker shuffled along the dusty country lane. He felt a failure. Even more, he knew his whole community judged him a disappointment, if not a traitor. War erupted in Europe two months before, and Harvey bore the cruel judgment of his family, friends and neighbours.
Why haven’t you joined up? Someone asked every day. He could not answer. The patriotic frenzy had exploded since the Canadian government eagerly declared war in support of Mother England. Even in this small country town in a remote part of southern Ontario, flags and bunting festooned every establishment; recruiting posters adorned the post office, the bank and Maccabee’s General Store; God Save King George concluded many conversations. Young ladies scorned eligible men such as Harvey who did not sport a red armband, the local code signifying the wearer had signed up to loyally serve Mother England.
The struggle between duty and fear conflicted Harvey. His mother said he was too old to go, being on the high side of twenty-five years old, while his father, quoting passages from The Bible about David and Goliath, suggested only cowards would not go and condemned his second son. Harvey was second-rate at best and worthless at the worst in his father's eyes. He was weak, full of book learning and could only manage to be the lowly clerk at the feed mill, not a real man’s job. The oldest boy, David, ran the farm and could do no wrong. No one expected David to go. The brave troops would need butter and meat. David wanted the high prices.
Harvey felt expendable. His father bluntly told him that it was his big chance to atone for his failures, and he needed to go, “to avoid bringing disgrace onto the family. After all, a girl could take over your job.” His father sneered.
Harvey easily endured the angry young women, but not his father’s judgement. It would be better to drown him in the river, ending the pain, than to carry on. For in truth, he was afraid. His father was right. He was a worthless coward. Harvey had not played the brutal game of hockey, or lacrosse for fear of being hurt.
For fear, he thought. I’m always afraid, and he had headed to the river to consider dying beneath the cold, soothing water.
It’s my last cowardly act, dominated his thoughts as he plodded toward the riverbank.
The wind rattled the dry leaves of the tall wild grass and moaned through the bare oak branches. He had fled from his father’s latest tirade in only a flannel shirt, despite the late autumn cold. He wore no hat, surly a sin in the face of God ordained human convention.
Cold will speed my dying. He thought.
An acorn clung to an old mother-oak, resisting the fall to the country road beneath. All of its siblings had long since surrendered to the relentless tug of gravity; to lie on the road, crushed to crow food beneath passing livestock hooves, or safely hidden away in a grey squirrel’s larder. The wind wrenched the stubborn nut into the blasting flow.
Harvey did not see the falling acorn, spinning in the bright sunshine. The object hit his head, right on the temple as if shot from a gun. The painful impact of the small, dense nut yanked Harvey back into the reality of the dusty roadway. The acorn bounced in front of the young man and rested in the dirt, askew on its stemmed cap. Harvey bent down, retrieved his attacker and rolled the thing in his hand.
“Even you are out to get me.” Harvey squeezed the nut as if exacting revenge, and then hurled the offending object in a long high arc, over the tall dead grass towards the scrub that hid the steep slope down to the river. The acorn bounced off the second rail of an old snake fence, sideways into the brown drifts of dead leaves in the fence corners. It rolled beneath leaves that would save the nut from becoming grey-squirrel food.
Harvey stared in the direction of the acorn’s flight and contemplated what had just happened. The rush of the wind cooled his tear dampened face. The relentless flow carried a mixture of subtle forest aroma and the pungent odour of the estuary. Harvey was a scholar, or at least as much of a scholar, that graduating from the local high school and spending hours in the Carnegie library could manufacture. He thought in metaphors, and the fate of the acorn easily slid into that role. He looked at the limb where the nut had grown, flailing in the strong breeze and without control. The acorn itself had had no say in its fate. Harvey now realised he also had no control, that he was simply an object blown in the winds of history and doomed to land in some random place. Perhaps he would ricochet from something and land, peacefully at last, beneath protective dirt.
It would be better to go off to fight with the chance he might not die than to certainly die in the cold river water.
Clarity hit; the burden lifted from his shoulders. Harvey knew he must enlist, not to satisfy the oppressive anger of his father or the patriotism of the town, but to realise his fate, fulfilling his destiny blowing in history’s uncontrollable wind, to be a knight of noble purpose, to do and die. He turned back and hurried to the town hall and the recruiters. The clanging noon bell beckoned from the courthouse roof. Everyone said France would be “a good show” and “over in a month”.
Snows came and buried the leaves and the acorn in the cold quiet of winter. In Flanders, hell reigned. Then spring and the wet from the melting snows saturated the leaves. The moisture softened the shell, preparing its destiny. Warm spring sun gently caressed the spot, stirring life. The shell cracked and a small tendril eased out, seeking the nurturing earth. The shoot parted into two, with one strand searching the sustaining soil while the other rose towards the life giving sun. It pushed aside the protective leaves, and two green leaves reached into the warming air, into a miracle. The acorn should have died on the dusty road, and only the chance encounter with another who was on his way to die had given life. The acorn did not know it had also given life to an equally desperate being.
Winter passed; summer came and went. In Flanders, hell reigned. The little tree grew taller, formed more leaves, and drew strength from the fertile soil. Its roots sank securely into the depths where moisture and food lurked. The isolated spot by the fence escaped the attention of wandering rabbits and deer. These creatures, dangerous killers of seedling oak, found more attraction in the margins of the forest where the acorn’s less fortunate cousins sprouted and met their fate. The light weakened and the few leaves turned and fell in the first gusts of winter. Another spring came, and growth and summer in its turn with nurturing warmth and through the seasons. In Flanders, hell reigned.
In the third autumn, many men came to the forest beside the road. They had money to make here. Axes cut deep into the old parents of the young tree and saws, drawn by strong men felled and squared off the trunks and killed the forest. They needed stout decking for the King’s ships that would dance with death above the rolling sea. Trees do not have eyes and ears; they feel no grief and the seedling did not grieve the loss of its mighty family. In Flanders, hell reigned.
The winter winds blew harsher then, unrestrained by the protective forest, but the young sprout, now three feet high and strong, resisted unharmed as it nestled into the crook of the decaying fence. Two more summers passed. In Flanders, hell reigned.
In that fourth summer, the war that convulsed Europe headed into is final horrible act. Armies swept back and forth over the devastated land. Places that mired in fetid mud for four winters succumbed, first to one army with dreams of victory, and then to another in a more certain counter attack. Harvey had survived these four long years. He began to think he would be one of the lucky few “originals” as they called themselves. The Hun retreated. The division had swept past Cambrai to deal with minor German resistance. They really might be home for Christmas.
“Let’s go boys!” The Sergeant Major shouted and blew his whistle. Harvey’s company clambered up the crumbling temporary trench bank, really just a few shell holes joined for overnight rest in the sweeping advance. On top, Harvey could see the objective obscured by October morning haze thickened by smoke and dust from exploding shells.
Keep going…no time to look around…what? The snap and blast of a Hun 77 whizz-bang sounded to his right and the screams of those hit by the shrapnel. Harvey turned and stepped that way. This saved his life, although he would often wonder if salvation had been a good thing. The blast of the nine-inch daisy-cutter behind him was far enough away to spare his body, but close enough to shatter his mind. He did not remember flying through the air, landing on his back in the trench. He did not see the bodies of his twelve friends shattered and scattered on the blast. In Flanders, hell reigned. The next thing he saw was the frowning face of a doctor, and then the smile as the man realized Harvey’s eyes had opened. He felt a hand grip his wrist.
“Nurse,” the doctor shouted, check this one. Pulse is strong.” The doctor hurried to more urgent broken bodies. Harvey drifted back to sleep. Explosions filled his dreams, screams and faces of men just beyond recognition. He slept and woke and ate and slept. Day passed to day. His head stopped hurting, but his mind would not.
“Get up, you!” The voice commanded, stern, not friendly.
Harvey tried to focus through the fog of another waking nightmare. The scowling face of a Captain glared down at him.
“Get up, you malingerer. Get your ass out of that bed.”
Harvey reacted to his training. An officer demanded obedience. He struggled onto wobbly legs and tried to salute. The Captain, uniform perfectly pressed, shirt starched, tie done to the book and brass polished and clean did not return the patient’s feeble gesture. This headquarters man had never been near the mud and blood of any trench. He waved a file in Harvey’s face.
“Says here you’re okay…says you were wounded in action and a hero. I think you were a coward, hid in the trench and that’s why you survived.” He sounded like Harvey's father. "You're lucky, boy. I would have you shot for cowardice, but you were out cold with your mate’s left leg lying on you. Never did find the rest of his body.”
Harvey did not remember the severed leg hitting his head, boot first and taking away what consciousness the shell blast had left.
Was it Peter’s leg? Pete was the closest in the group to the left. Beads of sweat grew on Harvey’s brow. He felt faint.
“That’s why I think you were a coward, hiding there and the boot knocked you out…not up to me though. Here are your orders.” The man shoved a sheaf of paper towards Harvey who sat on the bed and struggled to focus.” He held the papers in a shaky hand. A medal with a bit of ribbon fell onto the floor.
“They’re going to ship you back to Canada.” The man sneered.
“No, no, I have to get back to my friends, to the war.” Harvey found strength and reached about, wondering where his clothes and rifle were.
“Forget that. The war’s over. Been done a month. You cowards slept through us winning.” The Captain smiled, claimed his part of the glory, and stalked away.
Cooty, thought Harvey disdainfully, except that fleas served in the trenches.
In Flanders, a new hell reigned.
Harvey had no obvious injuries, but struggled to think, and to forget everything. He had no good memories of home to replace the horrors that swallowed him. He distracted himself by carrying stretchers onto the train and ship, and off again at Halifax. In France, drink did not dull the pain, but he found that path in the Canadian port. His papers declared him fit, so he did not enter a hospital. Harvey missed many trains to Ontario as he lay in the wintery Halifax streets, wallowing in drunken stupor. Finally, someone, perhaps other soldiers put him on a westbound train, drunk and swearing. He had no alcohol on the way, and he arrived in Toronto sober with a massive headache in his waking hours and haunting dreams asleep in the unyielding coach seat. In Flanders, poppies grew.
 
The oak sapling stood proudly in the late spring sunshine. It was over a meter tall, the top just peeked over the uppermost rail of the old snake fence. The grass between it and the road had headed and waited for the mower. Only luck saved the little tree from destruction as the farmer had harvested the hay in previous years. At the high end of the field, a horse drawn side cutter began to drop the early hay crop. The snorting pair of light horses and the clucking from the driver, perched high on the spring-seat echoed along the fence. The constant clack-clack of the sickle plates as they ran over the ledgers gave rhythm to his confused thoughts as Harvey made his way along the road. The young man’s body had become strong and healthy in contrast to his scarred mind. His ruptured mind hid, not understood by family and friends, and especially not by his father who could not understand why Harvey showed no interest in seeking a job. To earn his keep, when not drunk, he would labour for his brother, but most days Harvey sat on the porch, staring blankly, or wandering up and down the roads, muttering to himself. This was the first time since the war that he had taken the river road. The place held old horror, a place to avoid. His mind buried the memory; it was on this road where he had decided to volunteer for the slaughter. As he trod the familiar track, the memories returned. He had believed that blustery November day that death was the worst that could happen, but now he knew dying in battle would have been a blessing compared to reliving horror every waking moment.
Harvey enjoyed the stroll, but when he reached the place where the oak woods had stood, ugly desolation confronted him. It seemed as desolate as the blasted forests of France, and it drew his memories back to a misty, horror filled, October morning. He trembled and tried to close his eyes to hide the cut stumps and scraggly scrub growth.
There’s the objective! He peered to the far side of the stumps, straining for the sight of the enemy. The team and cutter drew up behind and for some reason the horses paused, frustrating the farm hand. He whistled loudly at the beasts.
“Let’s go, boys!” The man shouted to the horses, sounding like a Sergeant Major.
Harvey shook with fear, his mind returned to nine months before. He glanced sideways waiting for the whine of the whizz-bang. The sudden clacking of the mower sounded loud, sinister like a Hun Maxim machine gun somewhere near. Harvey turned away. The shell is coming. I must run…run…run. Run he did, acting out the cowardice that the Captain had accused him of, racing away from the impending blast that was so real in his memory. The field ditch recalled the improvised trench in France, stirring more horror as he raced through the hay field, keeping low, stumbling to the snake fence. The fence meant safety. He stopped, panting and crying, leaning on the sun-warmed top rail. Harvey trembled oblivious to a small oak sapling. Tears blinded him. The hysteria blocked out all thoughts. He waited for the deafening blast. It`s coming! It`s coming! He could hear the cries from the wounded and the low whoosh of the incoming shell. He dropped hard to the ground, curled into a foetal ball and hugged the gangly oak. In Flanders, poppies grew.
The mower came with its machine-gun clatter of the sickles, clack-clack, clack-clack, clack-clack…
Harvey shuddered, sobbed, covered his head with his arms and blacked out.
The team and the cutter rounded the end of the narrow strip of the field and began the return leg of the outside cut. The driver weaved in and out, snaking along the fence for every bit of grass. At the alcove where Harvey slept hugging the small tree, the driver saw the prone man and swerved away from the fence. He knew Harvey, and he feared the man was crazed, some of the people at church said “possessed of the devil”, and he gave a wide berth. He didn`t bother to check on the body. If Crazy Harvey died, it would be a blessing. The judgmental people did not relate Harvey to other local boys, “heroes”, who also came back from the war but could walk upright and proud. Harvey was “strange”. For the second time in their lives, Harvey saved the life of the oak, diverting the ravages of the sickles. This goodness of heart would heal Harvey. In Flanders, poppies grew.
When Harvey awoke, he hurt but felt less broken. The shade of the oak comforted him as he lay staring at the blue sky beyond the leaves, and the man thought clearly about the events of that awful French morning, as if the clacking mower had cut the horror out. He would never forget, never stop having bad dreams, but suddenly he had a future, life awaited him and he would live it. Reliving the horror had made it bearable. The green leaves fluttered above and promised life. Harvey would do what he could to honour the deaths of his friends. Harvey would live the life that they had died to give him. At home, Harvey grew.
 
“Come over here, my love.” Johnny drew his new bride to the tree, their fingers intertwined. “Here you are.” He pointed to the trunk of the young oak. Carved into the grey-brown bark, enclosed in a rough heart shape were the letters J and J. The sap bled slightly from the new wound. The letters stood out where the white of the living trunk now showed through the grey.
The newlyweds had come here from the town hall where they had just been married. Jenny wore her best light blue suit. She could not afford a real wedding dress or a wedding for that matter. Her parents had disapproved of her choice in a husband: “A no good low class,” they had insisted. In the end, her father had relented and attended the ceremony. Mother had not.
Johnny wore his dress naval uniform, crisp and fresh dark blue. He was only a rating, but the sailor looked handsome and important to Jenny. Their wedding day had been coordinated with Johnny’s leave. Tonight he would be on a train to Halifax to join his ship, a brand new corvette. Jenny’s hand trailed down his back, feeling the firm muscles, the result of months of training and physical activity. Their lips met and soon they were on the ground, embraced in passion. Both were faithful churchgoers, although to different churches, and so they had not dared to satisfy their lust before marriage. Their passion burst out, consummating their blessed union, and they made love with halting eagerness. The shade of the two-decade-old oak comforted them, and the tall spring grass hid them from wandering eyes. Few ventured to this spot above the river. Johnny had chosen it for this purpose. He could not afford a room, and they were well away from the gossips and judgemental petty minds of some locals.
The lovemaking lasted all afternoon, interrupted only to eat Jenny’s picnic lunch. As the shadow of the oak lengthened, the pair reluctantly dressed and headed back to town. They had heard the chimes for supper hour from the town hall clock, and in the distance, the wail of the approaching locomotive called Johnny to the evening train. This was the end of the line and the passenger train would be leaving just before dark on the return to Brantford. Their parting kiss, their last ever, would burn throughout Jenny’s life. On the Atlantic, hell reigned.
 
“Avril, come here.” Jennifer’s voice called, soft and kind. “Look at this.”
“I’m here, Mommy.” Jennifer’s daughter was six years old. The war had ended over two years ago, and now Jenny took her precious baby to an almost equally precious spot.
"Come stand beneath this tree." She drew her daughter by the hand into the welcoming shade of the mature oak. By tree standards, it was still a baby, but it towered above them, reaching for the sun. Brown leaves formed irregular piles of wind whipped bracken.
“This is your father’s and my tree.”
The little girl stood wide-eyed as if she had just met the man called her father whom she would never know. Her mother’s hand traced black markings on the grey trunk.
“See, your father carved our initials here, and we are in the heart of love.” Jennifer felt sad, but the grieving had eased. It took her three years after Johnny’s death, of his ship being lost, to be able to return to this place. She eagerly shared this place of love with Avril.
“J plus J.” Avril had learned to read and was proud that she understood.
“Aren’t you clever?” Jennifer’s face shone with pride and love. Her daughter had brains and she was determined Avril would get the education Jenny had missed.
“Not so clever as you, Mommy.”
“Daddy and I made you here the day he carved the tree. Do you know how babies are made?” Even though Avril was only six, Jennifer decided to make her wise in the ways of the world, except for Santa. That fantasy could go another year.
“Tommy says a stork brings babies and drops them down a chimney.” Avril seemed doubtful at her friend’s explanation, but it was generally accepted on the playground. “Did I fall down a chimney?”
Jennifer giggled but was determined.
“A man plants a seed inside a woman who has a little thing we call an egg that takes the seed and makes a baby grow in her tummy.” Jenny touched the rough bark. “It’s like the acorn seed that made this tree.”
Avril looked even more doubtful of this fantastic revelation. Jennifer hurried on. “You see Mommy’s friend, Mary?” They sat down on the damp leaf litter and Jennifer took her daughter’s hand. “Do you see her big and round tummy?” Avril nodded. “She has a baby growing inside her and soon it will be born.”
“Does it hurt?” Avril seemed to be practical and perceptive.
"It hurts a lot when the baby is coming," Jennifer remembered the long hours of labour and the pain when her daughter had come. "It's worth it." She hugged Avril.
“I like Tommy’s idea better.” Avril giggled even though she had to believe her own mother.
She has Johnny’s sense of humour. The thought cheered Jennifer. She looked up into the oak; its gentle green canopy sheltered them in the hot June sun, and she felt once again Johnny’s love beneath the fledgling tree. Mother and daughter shared the sandwiches and pint of milk they had brought for a picnic, completed by the penny butter tarts from the bakery. Together they planted Forget-me-nots at the base of the faithful oak.
With this sharing, Jennifer felt for the first time that her family sat together. Johnny lived here. She and Avril would return often, and then less frequently after her little girl had become a woman and spent most of her time at the university. The tree was Johnny, and it comforted her and they forgot him not.
 
The contractor glanced over the river valley beyond the fence. Far below, white rills broke the deep blue of the flowing water as the shallow bottom forced the flow to splash into the air and contrasted with the variegated green along the bank.
“Why did you have the bench facing in?” Bob steadied the plank as Jeff slide the carriage bolt through and slipped the washer and nut onto the stainless steel bolt. They finished the bench Harvey Walker had commissioned, out here in the boonies under a maturing oak. “It seems prettier out that way.” He nodded over his shoulder.
“Sits in the shade better,” Harvey looked up to the leafy tree. I’ll sit better in the shade. He thought. “The memories are this way and I can watch the new oak forest growing over the road.”
“Some memories seem better forgotten.” Bob knew Harvey’s story as passed on by his own father. Not nice stories either. Bob's father had resented Harvey's success, and he called him “a lucky drunk”. Bob could not understand since as far as he knew, Harvey did not drink alcohol, “hadn't for forty years” according to Harvey.
“Maybe so,” Harvey said. “I hope it stays as quiet as it has these past few years.”
“It’s too boring.” Jeff lay on his back tightening a nut to clamp the seat plank to the steel frame. “Look at that field there…grass…weeds…nothing.” He ignored the patch of Forget-me-nots between the bench and the tree. The nut squealed against the washer as he twisted the wrench hard.
“Don’t strip that bolt, boy.” Bob snapped.
“Me, I’m getting out of here soon.” Jeff continued from beneath the bench. “A friend joined the Yankee army. He tells me this Viet Nam thing’s exciting. He says it’s important, not like building benches and boat houses. I’m going to Detroit to join up; get out of this hick town.”
Harvey looked down the quiet field and then the Forget-me-nots. In his memory, it suddenly turned into a morass of mud, smoke, twisted wood and steel, and corpses. He staggered slightly and grasped the bench top. When he opened his eyes, the field was grass…weeds…boring. He smiled, and then looked down at the boy, at the Forget-me-nots and frowned.
“You ever fire a gun?” Harvey squatted so that he could see Jeff’s eyes.
“Went hunting deer a couple of times,” he kept his eyes on the wrench, not looking at Harvey. “Fired a few practice shots all’s I ever did. I’m looking forward to the real thing.”
“Did the deer shoot back?”
“That’s stupid.” The young lad flashed anger. “Deer can’t shoot.”
“The enemy can.” Harvey whispered, but inside he heard shouts, screams and cries for mom.
“You help carry a deer out of the bush?” Harvey went on. “Hard work, eh?”
“Yah, but the steaks were worth it.”
"In war, there’s no glory or victory. You carry your dying buddy out, his blood over you. Him crying in pain, maybe asking you to shoot him, or he might be carrying you. If you’re lucky, you won’t see the enemy, dead or alive, suffering the same as you. It never ends, even when you’re old like me. If you live, you’ll bring it home. You ready for that?”
It was many years since Harvey had remembered the screams and blood when it had not been the middle of the night. He reached out and leant on the tree. The boy slid out from under the bench and stared at the old man.
“What do you know?” Jeff growled.
“Jeff!” Bob was stern. He had heard bits of Harvey’s war.
“Come sit here.” Harvey went to the now completed bench. “Sit here in the shade of my tree and I’ll tell you.” He was kind and the contrite boy sat.
Harvey told the whole story, from the acorn preventing his suicide to the drunken attempts to forget. He included the severed left leg of his unknown comrade, the leg that had saved him from a firing squad. He told of how lying beneath this tree in those painful first years after the war, when it was a mere sapling, had saved his life once more.
“There are worse things than boredom, Jeff…worse things.” His voice trailed off and he stared once more down the field and the Forget-me-nots. It had flashed back to Flanders while he talked, but now a bluebird flitted over it in the bright sunshine and the wind gently stirred the filling seed heads. In Flanders, poppies grew.
“Maybe this job ain’t so bad.” Jeff looked up. Bob, who had tears in his eyes had never heard Harvey’s story from Harvey. The man had honoured them in the telling, and he knew Harvey, here under the oak tree, risked his horror to save Jeff from living his own version of hell. Harvey sat as tears streamed from his eyes.
“Maybe there are some memories worth remembering,” Bob said, but knew he could never cure Harvey’s memories. “It can make your life interesting,” Bob managed a smile at Jeff. “If you keep trying to strip the threads on my bolts, I’ll give you something to remember.”
“The girls like live carpenters more than dead heroes. You can bring the girls here to sit under my tree.” Harvey said.
Harvey thought of his wife who said she loved her boring seed clerk, her broken live hero. Many nights, she had placed cold rags onto his forehead, helping to ease the crying, the shouting, and the haunting dreams. She had only come here once with Harvey, when they courted. The tree had stirred up deep memories in him. It scared her, and she refused to return. It comforted her to know the only rival in the world for his love was this strong, young oak.
 
Harvey leant against the backrest of the plank bench, enjoying the shade. The bench of the best cedar and stainless steel had survived the years well. It was custom designed just for Harvey. Unlike normal park benches, its curved seat and convex back gave his old body extra comfort. He had been successful in business, starting with his clerk’s job at the feed mill until his own company became the largest grain handler in southern Ontario. Some of that wealth had bought this land, years before, along with the old oak forest over the road. That bush, although naturally full of maple and birch, now had a good sprinkling of red oak, planted by Harvey. The saplings took their rightful place in the congregation. For Harvey, it was a place of spiritual renewal. He would never see these oaks as they had been in 1914, but people in the future would enjoy their comfort. He had buried her ashes beside the Forget-me-nots.
He watched as a young woman in her late twenties strolled down the lane separating the hay field from the woods. She moved with a purpose and briskly turned off the road to follow Harvey’s trail of bent grass to the beaconing oak. The old man decided she knew where she was going and was not just out for a random stroll.
“Hello, young lady.” Harvey slid over to make room and patted the bench. The girl sat. “Do you come here often?”
“If you were sixty years younger and looked stupid, I would think you were flirting.” The woman had the typical brashness of the young, but she smiled. “Yes, I come here as often as I can. It was nice when they put this bench here too.”
"I may be stupider than I look." It was Harvey's turn to grin. "I might be flirting, but I'm harmless." To emphasise the point, he lifted his walking stick, a plain bit of linseed oiled oak branch, showing his developing feebleness. “I had the bench built. This is my land.” He waved the stick in an arc that swept the complete landscape.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m trespassing. I never knew anyone owned or cared about this place, but me and my mother.” She stood abruptly as if to leave. Harvey patted the bench seat once more.
“Sit, my dear, you and everyone can come anytime you wish. My name is on the deed, but that only saves it for everyone I owe something to,” he looked her directly in the eyes, “and that includes you.”
“Why is this place so special?” The young woman seemed interested.
“I owe my life to it, twice, especially to this old tree,” he wacked the solid trunk with his stick. “The first time it was only an acorn. I planted this tree by accident.” Harvey recounted the conflict between him and the nut in 1914. “I didn’t think I was planting anything, but here it is.
“Why’s this place important to you?” Harvey shifted his weight from a hip that had suddenly decided to tell its age.
“I was made here.” The woman chuckled. “Not many can say exactly when and where they were conceived, but I can. Mom and Dad made me right here in June 1940. See,” she rose and went to the oak. “Here is the heart and initials that my father carved for my mother the day they married, ‘J + J’ in a heart.” She ran her fingers of the markings that were now black and smudged in the rough bark of the mature tree. “My Mom says that they made love all afternoon.”
“Do they come here often?” Harvey was uncomfortable with the woman’s easy discussion of sex, and her own parents making love. “How can you be sure it was then?”
"Mom comes here several times a year, especially in June. I never knew my father. He was in the navy in the war. His ship took a torpedo in 1944. He was never home again after 1940. They made me here. Mother and I planted those Forget-me-nots.”
It was hard for her to feel real grief. She had more of a longing for a man she never knew. When she looked into Harvey’s eyes, she saw deep sympathy, but something even greater, a love and understanding as if the man had known her father.
“Oh, did you know my father?” She had only ever seen that look in the eyes of those mourning a close loved one.
“No,” Harvey’s voice was quiet and he glanced at the Forget-me-nots, “but I knew many men like him.” In the back of his mind, whizz-bangs, and thuds tried to come alive. He was afraid to look at the field, afraid of Flanders.
After all these years…
Up the field, a team of horses drew a ground driven side-cutter into the field. It began its run down along the road, making the outside cut in the mature hay. The harvesting was why Harvey had come this day, to enjoy the ritual. He had bequeathed the local museum a large endowment to maintain a working horse farm on this land and the old family farm he acquired from the estate when his brother passed away. He mandated that they mow the first cut from this little field every June, but never the second cut. He wanted to hear, like in 1914, the cold November wind rattle the dead grass. The sickle blades on the ledgers grew louder.
“You said the tree saved your life twice.” The woman felt a connection between that and Harvey’s grieving her unknown father.
Harvey related his story from world war one. This young woman, so affected by part two of that war deserved the story. Harvey felt she would understand.
“What do you do?” He asked, wanting to retreat from his sad memories.
“I’m at the university, working on my doctorate in science.” She did not sound boastful. “My thesis is on the interconnection of events and causality.”
“Sounds important and it must be very mathematical.” He was interested, thinking back to the old Carnegie library. “I read about you in the paper a few years back: ‘Local student makes good.’ sort of story.”
Avril blushed.
“Oh, don’t get full of yourself.” Harvey smiled kindly. “They wrote something like that about me, twenty-five years ago or so, when they realised I was rich. Some bask in other’s glory.
“You mean events like this?” He abruptly changed the subject, taking his walking stick and shoving the tip into the pile of old brown oak leaves beneath their feet. “Do you see the interconnection between my pushing on the stick and the disturbing of the leaves?”
“No,” she smiled warmly. “I see a kindly old man who was once young, humouring an impatient youngster by using a stick that was once alive to stir leaves that once grew green, high up in a living tree. In those leaves, I see an acorn saving a life, growing to a tree that binds more people together and then stays to comfort us. You are the oak too.”
“Oh, you mean this?” Harvey misunderstood his new friend and waved the oak branch that served as his cane.
“No, I mean you were the oak’s life saver, its brother. The two of you were saving each other. You also saved the tree’s life twice.” The woman was perceptive. “The acorn should not have survived to germinate, and you kept the hay mower from destroying it as the tree comforted you. It sounds to me you two are a pair.” Her smile was genuine. “My doctoral advisor says I’m too romantic to be a physicist, and I should consider teaching.”
“The tree saved another.” Harvey looked at the bench and thought of Jeff. “You would be a good teacher."
Harvey shifted and leant forward on his cane as the mower finally clicked and clanked to a stop in front of the bench. A man, not much younger than Harvey removed a battered straw hat and wiped his brow. The horses nodded and snorted, knowing once this job ended, they would be back at the barn and into their oats.
“Good day, Harvey…Miss…” The man glanced inquisitively at Harvey.
This is…” Harvey began.
“Avril,” she interjected. “Dad proposed to Mom by mail in April 1940.”
“Avril,” Harvey agreed. “This tree belongs to her as much as me, George. You’ll see her here long after I’m not.”
George frowned, confronted by his own mortality, tipped his cap, and whistled loudly at the team.
“Let’s go boys!” he shouted, but the Sergeant Major no longer strutted in this field.
Harvey leant back in the shade and closed his eyes. He did not hear the whine of a whizz-bang, the screams of dying men, or a menacing thud behind him. He could hear the clicking of the receding sickles, Avril’s gentle sigh, and the life-giving rustle of oak leaves in the breeze, his wife’s ashes and the Forget-me-nots. Life’s circle remained true.