The (Almost Short) Biography of Douglas Thomas Garrett
I was raised in the labour class district of Rosemount, in Montreal’s East side. I remember the rows and rows of three story “flats” that went in all directions, on both sides the streets, as far as one could walk. Mysterious alleyways behind the houses were lined with three story woodsheds, mostly painted silver. And yards enclosed with six-foot wooden fences, mostly left to gray on their own, made them surreal hiding places for us as well as a practical necessities for our parents.
While the folks in the Government, Industrial, Commercial and Financial Institutions had worked out an understanding of how to get along and make money on a daily basis, the same could not be said of the relationship between the English and French populations on the streets. There was resentment and hostility because of the lack of opportunity for those who spoke only French. This brought them nose-to-nose with the blockheaded people who spoke only English. Refusal or inability? Who can say. Maybe it was both, but it was impossible for us to accept or admit that such a profound discrimination even existed.
A young French boy in our neighborhood, for instance, in the same social class as I, living at that time in history, could only look forward to a little better future than his Father before him had. Likely he came from a large family who were poor and just managed to survive. Chances are he would be asked to drop out of school early in order to help his family have food on the table and a roof over their heads. His father, and grandfather before him, would have had the same limited opportunity for education or training. This meant they all faced the future with the same limited choice of competing for marginal jobs. The only other options for anyone of them, if they weren’t inclined to be a street-cleaner, a factory worker, a janitor or a laborer, was to become a policeman, a politician or to join the Catholic Priesthood. As a result, my young French compatriot was facing the same dilemma as his Dad with one exception. He would have managed to get a few more years of Education. That was a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing was it made him more marketable when he searched for a job. The bad thing was that there was still an invisible ceiling in place regarding how far up the economic ladder the French were allowed to climb, in the English dominated, English speaking companies in Quebec. The extra education would have also brought a clearer understanding of the injustice of the system and endowed him with a multi-generational, pent up determination not to settle any longer for the status-quo.
Compare this to my privileged life. While studying French was a compulsory in school, it was not a compulsory language in the working place. In most cases its use was discouraged, English being the working language of North America. There was no ceiling on how high I could climb. The only restriction would be determined by my ambition, sociability, skills or experience, and my competence. Having a few friends or relatives in high places would also be a definite advantage.
At age six, war broke out in Europe. It didn’t end until I was twelve. While I wasn’t enlisted in the conflict, I was very much involved in its effects. Nothing was the same during or afterwards. Everything in and around us had changed. Parents, siblings, the neighborhood, the English and French situation – all had profoundly changed.
At age fifteen, we moved out of Montreal’s East End and into an growing English suburb on the South Shore, called Greenfield Park. Our conscience was no longer continuously pricked by the socially depressed living in full view on our doorstep. Now we had a beautiful house in a brand new community. I got to finish high school and my uncle hired me to work in the garment industry. Few doors were closed to me. The sky was the limit. At least it appeared that way for a few years.
Ignorance is a strange sickness. When you have it, you are the last to know. All the norms, all the attitudes, all the beliefs that we had accepted as firm and unshakable, carved in rock by our wise elders, were only a hologram image on a styrofoam wall. We had never looked beyond the wall. We lived and lavished in our blissful ignorance. When it fell over, we sat with open mouths, staring at what we could never have imagined.
Years earlier, I had sat in my grade seven class room in Rosemount Grade School. One boring afternoon, a thought materialized by itself in my brain. I had never experienced this phenomenon before. I wrote it down and I stared at it incredulously.
( See: The Road )
Where had it come from? What did it mean?
This was my first experience with involuntary inspiration. I have since learned through many other experiences that the third member of the Godhead, the Holy Ghost, has as his role, to teach and impart truth to us. But at that point in my young life, I was yet unable to understand or appreciate such profound concepts. I asked everyone I knew, including my teacher, but they also could not shed any light on the source of the words I had written. So I put the paper copy of them in a book and left it on a shelf for later. It was a full 50 years before I discovered the beautiful meaning of those prose in one of those personal “ Aha!” moments.
I did not have a plan for the future that included Education. I managed to get that on the run while living life. I only had a plan of escape. To get away from this hatred and sniping. I lived for the day when I could be on a train heading West and watching the dirty, grimy city high-rise buildings disappearing behind me.
After leaving school, I sat on the newly painted steps of my parent’s nearly new home, facing the deep black asphalted road, that had recently replace wooden sidewalks, and wondered what I was going to do now that the garment industry was going the way of the horse and buggy.
Manufacturers had decided it was cheaper to sell all their existing companies and lay off the thousands of employees in the cotton mills scattered all over the small towns in Quebec. These workers were totally depended on this income. The plan was to make new contracts with any country that would allow them to pay a pittance in pennies for a day’s work to people who were hungry enough to work at anything as long as they could eat and stay alive. In such countries, under such conditions, they would make the garments which they used to make in Canada. The manufacturers would collect so much profit they could afford to pay for shipping those garments all the way back to North America to their same customers as before and still have lots of money left over. Plus, these places would have not have labor laws to fight, or buildings and depreciating equipment to pay maintenance on, or income taxes to be accountable for. Win/win for free enterprise and share-holders. Lose/lose for everybody else — including Canada.
The day finally arrived when I got on that train and said “Good-bye” to what I loathed about Montreal. When I got to Calgary, Alberta, nothing worked out. Wisely, and before I ran completely out of money, I boarded a train and headed back East. I was hungry and frustrated at my complete failure. It was not pleasant returning home and living with my parents. Yet it gave me time to learn what I had not yet learned about becoming self-reliant. It took many lessons and a companion, who gave me courage and a family, before I could try again ten years later. That time, we were successful.
In the meanwhile, more and more French people were voicing their right to make their own decisions to protect their own people from such callous capitalistic maneuvering. Votes were even taken in hopes of making Quebec its own independent country. Some bombs were planted and people killed. The financial and commercial folk had heard that sort of talk and seen that kind of behavior before in other parts of the socialist’s and Marxist’s world. They had watched what happened to privately owned companies. So they began to make secret preparations to move their headquarters into Ontario. While hundreds of thousands of people uprooted themselves, just as we would do to follow our jobs or dreams in other more secure parts of Canada, hundreds of companies quietly moved their head offices out of Quebec for the same reason.
It was during this unsettled time of rapid changes that my life also dramatically changed — and changed again. As I began to upgrade my skills by taking courses, I met and fell in love with my future wife Shirley Anne Kelly.
They say that any one of the following disruptions can be the most stressful time in your life: Getting married, having a baby. Changing your job. Losing your job. Moving to a new location. Changing your religion. Losing a loved one. Within those 10 years, we had done them all. As well, I had undergone a psychological tectonic shift. I had moved from what would be labeled today as social anxiety dysfunction to normal social functioning — while being too preoccupied to even notice. Talk about creative therapy! It was not cheap. Blood, sweat and tears are never cheap, but they are very thorough school masters.
In grade eleven, Class-2 at St. Lambert High, (Montreal, Quebec) I wrote my first intentional poem. I had just read poetry by William Henry Drummond:
” On wan dark night on Lac St. Pierre,
De win’ she blow, blow, blow,
An’ de crew of de wood scow “Julie Plante”
Got scar’t an’ run below—”
I fell in love with the rhythm and patter of French patrie that I so often heard in the area Southeast of Montreal. If you have ever heard Prime Minister Jean Chretien speak English, you will remember what I mean. I tried my own patrie as an experiment and entered it into the yearbook.
‘Allo dis plass” is wat we say, wan Septomb is come and go away,
We did not know jus wat to do, but dats not long for ‘leven two.
Da noise and laffter is soon come, wan Dave is scream like burst a lung.
An ‘ees make funny all da time. Tout la monde is leff and h’all is fine.
By Gar, is touch me to de ‘eart, to tink dis year we ‘ave to part,
And leave dis room, pass true dad door, and ‘ear dis teacher pas encore.
‘Ees struggles never reach my h’ear, I see ‘ees mout, is go like gear.
Try to make me learn a rule, wan all dad time I wan play pool.
Wall, such is life, somebody say. You wan be ‘ere wan you away.
H’enjoy you self, “ave fun dear fran. You nevar ‘ave dis fun haggan.
– Doug Garrett
It barely made the yearbook as it was judged to be lowlife. I wished Drummond could have been there to hear the comment. I know what he would say. “ You don like my H’inglish? What about all duh better we ‘ear you speak Franch, eh?”
After struggling to make a living in Quebec and not succeeding with much distinction, we sold everything we had. We took our three daughters, the youngest five-weeks-old, to Calgary for a new start. It was one of the best decisions we have ever made. To honor our six-day trip across Canada in June 1965 (in a used milk truck) I wrote a third poem.
(See: Modern Pioneer Reality)
As each new adventure was followed by new challenges and trials, poems were the comforting balm of Gilead. They provided a calming outlet and moments of solitude in an otherwise anxious and demanding life. We moved from Calgary to Edmonton — into the land of 12 Foot Davis and the “Pale Blue Snow”. Six years were enough of wind chills of “ninety-nine below” and to “watch the ice worms nest again“.
Desperate prayers were prayed at times and answers were given so stark in their clarity that we wept tears of appreciation. One “for instance” was when we almost lost our oldest daughter who was diagnosed with nephritis.
It’s true, it’s true. Dear God it’s true,
Not once in all my searching through
Could I conceive of this your plan.
The knowledge of this truth astounds,
Compelling me to higher grounds,
Convincing me that, yes, I can.
The greatest joy of all persists:
To know, you know that I exist,
And love me still, imperfect as I am.
– Doug Garrett
Thirty-five years of church leadership in Edmonton, Alberta, Regina, Saskatchewan and White Rock, British Columbia.
Two years of teaching youth and the youthful in New Zealand. Fifteen years of service in Medicine Hat, Alberta.
Sixty-one years of marriage to a most remarkable woman who has cared, loved and shared with me – unconditionally – all that she hath possessed.
Raising five loving, obedient daughters, each with their own special talents and personalities, and one boy with his own free spirit and personal road map, has helped us to understand the Father of our spirits. He, who sent us here for our final exams.
All this has helped us to understand and love all God’s children. This has been our path. These our lessons. And from these experiences has come truths we could never so enthusiastically have discovered, or so thoroughly cherished, in any other way.
The path of the Eternal Plan of Salvation leads us to have become what we are today. Love and total trust, or rejection and total loss. Which will we choose? When you feel you cannot go on, but he leads us to where we discover the strength to do so, all this is “…but a small moment, and if we endure well, God will exalt us on high.” (D&C 121: 8)
- Doug Garrett