Once upon a time in Canada

Once upon a time in a suburb of London a young boy at secondary school sat listening to a Canadian teacher talk about the country the teacher had grown up and worked in, He spoke of an almost unimaginable world that had no equal in the UK that the boy had ever experienced. Hence was born for the boy the desire to see this magic, harsh, almost unbelievable place. That hope/expectation lurked within the man into middle life where it started to grow roots and plans of how to achieve it. But the high apparent costs, lack of opportunity and a belief in that “one day” expectation kept it both alive but inactive.

That was until a realization that increasing age, reducing ability to cope with the rigors of travel, and the consequent rise in the cost of travel insurance created an urgency to do it while he still could. And so the family talked to, the plan developed and possibilities checked out, travel agents spoken to, the costings examined, the options considered and decided upon, and the bookings made. So it was that the one time young lad with those now long hoarded images of Canada boarded a plane to Halifax, Nova Scotia on 1^st June 2018.

As may be expected from such a background there is the potential for plenty of space between anticipation and delivery, but that once young lad, now having become this 74 year old me, has been well aware that not only has the world changed since the late 50’s but what can and can’t be experienced since those early inspirations has also greatly altered. I was never likely to go exploring the vast northern wildernesses of Canada, I was never going to repeat some of the experiences that teacher, Jerry Wilson, spoke of. He told of living in the frozen north where you could throw a cup of boiling water out of the door and it would be frozen solid by the time it hit the ground, where the atmosphere was so clear your eyes could not see things as the brain had too much visual information to process, think of those “Where’s Wally” pictures. So what did he/I expect? Well he expected, hoped for, a taste of the extraordinary, a feel for the vastness of Canada, an adventure into a very different part of the world. I on the other hand I was almost prepared to be disappointed as there is always going to be massive difference between the perceptions of a 17 year old and a 74 year old. In the weeks prior to departure, and for reasons I do not really understand, I seemed almost put off by the whole idea of the trip, wondering in one sense why I was going through with it. Maybe a phycologist could easily point out the reasoning behind this but for me, about to set off, it was a very strange reaction, but I was going to do it and put my memories and perceptions to the test and in some sort of order.

One aspect of those memories of Jerry telling us about Canada was his passion, rage even, about the horrendous consequences of the asbestos trade. At the time Canada was producing massive amounts of asbestos which was principally used in the construction and shipping industry, it was seen as “the” fire protective material, was used extensively, and was known apparently as Canadian Gold. But Jerry knew of the long dark side of the business, especially the nature of the material and gave us graphic explanations and detail of the diseases it caused and how it caused them. A new word came into our lives Mesothelioma. https://www.asbestos.com/mesothelioma/canada/ But out of school and with other things on our minds we went our separate ways and asbestos, its uses, and the health risks it brings with it became just a background echo. I became an architect, and hence deep buried in the construction industry and I although I don’t remember ever specifying asbestos, but I am pretty sure that some of the materials I did specify would have had asbestos incorporated into their matrixes, such as floor tiles ad paints, I became an unwitting part of that bad story. Back then asbestos was used widely for fire protection, which it was very effective for. But that meant we built into all sorts of buildings a deadly legacy as not only were the processors and suppliers exposed to the deadly fibres but all those who not only installed the material but worked in other trades on the buildings with it in, as well as maintained the building during the rest of the life of the building. That is where this part of this story is going, the hidden hazards of old buildings and the prices paid.

A near neighbour of mine, also an architect and probably getting on for ten years younger than me, worked for a local authority as a conservation architect in later life. Not so many years ago he was asked by the local authority to carry out a schedule of condition of an old school building. He told me he asked if it was safe and if it contained any asbestos and was told it was safe and had been cleared of asbestos, so he carried out the survey. Subsequently it was found that he had an asbestos related disease where the asbestos micro fibres had entered his lungs and worked their way through its lining till they lodged in the surrounding tissues and then led to fluids constantly building up there. He was told it was incurable, he maybe had a year to live, so it was a case of managing the consequences. That was just under four years ago and he died an unpleasant death last Thursday after spending the last four weeks in a hospice. That means he went into the hospice around the time I set off to Canada and in pursuit of the images of the country put into my head by that Canadian teacher who had told us all so forcefully about the horrors of asbestosis. I just want to point out that what we were hearing, in a secondary school in West London around 1960, was known in research centres way back in the 1930’s but was not fully banned in this country until 1999. There are around 2,500 mesothelioma deaths in Great Britain each and every year. I did not know it at the time but while I was in Montreal I walked through the McGill University campus where that 1930’s research clearly identified the health/death toll asbestos brings with it. https://www.inspectas.co.uk/hse-publishes-latest-stats-on-asbestos-related-deaths-in-the-uk/