Like career change, never too late for a good confession

This blog entry has been awaiting birth for about 43 years now. Let’s call it a revelation, or, possibly, a confession I make to the world and seek absolution for. If I had a priest, I think you will agree he’d be mighty proud of me.

The story begins about 48 years ago, when my cousin and I, both under five at the time and six months apart in age, he being the elder, started hanging out. He – let’s call him Sam (a pseudonym) – lived in Chomedy, just off the island of Montreal in the municipality of Laval and I adored him.

Chomedy wasn’t as developed then as it is today. The fields near Sam’s house were devoid of human life and there were actually cattle skulls and skeletons there, which makes me wonder today what actually went on there. Was it land upon which the beasts were slaughtered, their remains later disposed of there as well? But I digress.

Because Sam’s place wasn’t so close (Montreal’s below-ground expressway hadn’t been built yet, so getting there took longer), seeing Sam was a big deal for me. The drive, right past the historic, now-defunct Parc Belmont amusement park in my father’s powder blue 1961 Comet, was a seemingly-endless adventure for me. And spending time with Sam, which I liked to do weekends when the opportunity arose, was like magic. He was the brother I never had and I loved him like one.

During the summer, Sam’s mom (my mother’s sister and a second mother to me until several years ago, when she died at 94), Sam, my mom and I were driven by my dad to Old Orchard Beach, Maine, some six hours away and a favourite destination of Quebecers since the 1800s, when direct train service linked Montreal and Maine. He dropped us off and we spent a month there, while he returned several times on weekends, when he did not work. Sam and I had the time of our young lives, our days spent on the pristine seven-mile long beach and our nights in the town’s most famous attraction, Palace Playland, an amusement park featuring a massive pinball arcade – it was the era before video games, after all – where you could pose as a pinball wizard and tilt the night away, or Ski-Ball dozens of times in order to win tickets you could later exchange for the tackiest prizes. The park still exists to this very day, as does a section of the famous Pier that dates back to the 1800s.

Old Orchard wasn’t the only spot we vacationed every summer.... and herein lies the crux of my tale. The Laurentian mountain cottage community of Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts is just 45 minutes away from Montreal by car and we would spend a week or two there, as well. We would stay at Lodge Lac des Sables, built right on the lake and owned by the Weinrich family. And here, our days were spent fishing off the small pier owned by the Lodge, shooting targets with our BB rifles next door at the municipal beach and walking the short distance to town to buy treats at Dairy Queen, take a ride on the Alouette site-seeing boat or see movies in the Alahambra and Roxy theatres, musky, cool, cob-webbed places that offered perfect refuge on a hot summer’s day.

We would also visit the small Canadian Tire store in town and here is where my confession comes in. Despite the fact I grew up to become anything BUT a criminal, please remember that Sam could do no wrong in my eyes. So, when he suggested we steal Rappala Minnow lures, too pricy for 10-12 year old boys to afford, I jumped at the chance. This was my chance to prove to Sam that I was as cool as he was... and I didn’t let him down. There were no closed circuit cameras then and, really, your chances of getting caught were quite low, unless you were a bumbling thief. I’m not sure how many lures we stole that one summer in particular, but it was quite a few and all I recall is that they worked like a charm on the doomed bass, sunfish and trout of Lac des Sables.

I haven’t been in touch with Sam for about 25 years. He ditched my aunt (the woman who raised this asthmatic boy from the day she married my uncle, when his son Sam was three) and when my motel owner uncle died, leaving what I heard was more than a million dollars to Sam and his now ex-wife, they moved to the Bahamas. I am not sure if he has any regrets today about stealing those fishing lures and for all I know he did far worse than that during his lifetime. I am not even sure whether Sam is still alive. But I certainly am and, on behalf of both of us, I offer apologies to Canadian Tire. I see you have done well as a corporation despite the loss of that particular revenue, but it was wrong of us in any event. Children, do NOT try this at home...

So, padre, how was my first-ever confession? Thank you for listening.