Friends once known

In the late 1980's, returning home to Ottawa from a business trip to Edmonton, I suddenly paused, in the rush of people leaving arrivals at the Ottawa International Airport.  Coming towards me was a white-bearded gentleman maybe twenty years older than I. Our eyes met and his lit up with recognition before he was swept forward by the crush pushing towards departures. That was the last time I saw Don Heap, member of parliament for the Toronto riding of Spadina. He was most likely leaving his weekday parliamentary office and heading home to his family in Toronto for the weekend. My life has frequently been touched by people like Don (who went by the first name of "Dan" in public office). I was in his home in Toronto in 1965 when the telephone rang. It was Don phoning from Selma, Alabama where he had gone to join a civil rights march. I was in the house alone and had a difficult time trying to make out what the operator in Alabama was trying to tell me, her accent being so thick.

If you check out Don's Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Heap there is a sentence that reads from the 1960's to 1980's "as many as a dozen young people stay[ed] with the Heap family at one time.^" I was one of those young people, though during the six months I bunked at the Heaps' home, I was the only one not a member of the immediate family. It was a period of transition in my life--from being a lost high school dropout to getting myself geared up to enter university in a few years, thus taking the steps that led from a life of low-paying entry-level casual jobs to a professional deplaning from a week-long business trip to the other side of the country.  

The first time I met the Heaps I was at a peace camp located not far from La Macaza, Quebec where American Bomarc missiles were stationed at the Canadian Forces Base. This would have been in the summer of 1964. At the time the previous government of John Diefenbaker had refused to allow the Americans to arm the missiles with nuclear warheads, but the new government under Lester Pearson (ironically winner of the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize) elected in April 1963 agreed to accept them. I was one of a small group who prevented access to the base for 24 hours in order to draw attention to the issue. Well, we did make the cover of MacLean's Magazine and Pierre Trudeau ordered the dismantling of the base in 1972. (Two highly negative outcomes of the original decision to accept the missiles in the first place: Canada had to cede control of the launch of the missiles to the American military even though the missiles were on a Canadian forces base on Canadian territory and, secondly, Diefenbaker scrapped Canada's outstanding Avro Arrow program arguing it was redundant in light of the acquisition of American missiles. This effectively killed the Canadian aviation industry and to this day the Avro Arrow could have outperformed many of the standard military aircraft available. In other words, we could have avoided all these Eh-101 military helicopter and F-35 military aircraft scandals and political quagmires.) But, who was going to listen to an 18-year-old kid at the time? I was right then and subsequent events have bourn that out.

Back to the story: a cry went up at camp when a beat-up old white panel truck arrived, "The Heaps are here! The Heaps are here!" It seemed like dozens of blond-haired kids spilled out of the truck and scattered throughout the camp, greeting everyone. Don and Alice were received as leaders of the protest group. Back in Toronto I stayed with a group of University of Toronto students in an old house on Huron Avenue. Alice Heap was at the time secretary of the Student Christian Movement, a nation-wide campus-situated social activist organization and many members of my household were active supporters. (Yes, I know some will find it hard to believe, but the original hippy movement began as a religious organization. It organized "peace camps" across the country every summer to that students could live and work together while studying the social issues of the day. Nothing like working in a garment factory in Ville LaSalle while living in Point Charles  to learn to appreciate just what poverty was about. Even better: try it now: the garment factories are all closed.)

Alice Heap (2012). Don is in the background.

 

So, I met Alice frequently and Don occasionally lead communion services (he was/is an ordained Anglican priest.) When for various reasons I could not continue to live in the student house, Alice invited me to use an empty bedroom in their home. I paid room and board and did my share of family chores (Alice ran the home as a cooperative enterprise where everyone had a role and contributions to make. One of mine was to keep the kitchen floor clean. Every second night after everyone was in bed, I washed then waxed the floor.) I was working as a night security guard then: every second night I worked 5:00 pm until 8:00 am walking the campus of Connaught Labs in northern Toronto. Between rounds I wrote. Mostly poetry, filling notebook after notebook, struggling to figure out my place in the scheme of things. By the fall, I joined another student co-op group and started taking night courses. It didn't work out, but it led me to a job at the University of Toronto in the chemistry department where I stayed for two years before I was accepted as a university student in Montreal.

During those years the Heaps were very much a part of my social landscape. Gatherings at the Heap's were common. Don and I never spoke much, as I recall, but he was there at the party my girlfriend threw for me a day before I left for Montreal and an entirely new life. Even though I was established in Montreal, I still visited the Heap household from time to time over the years and followed Don's career in politics, first as a municipal counsellor  in Toronto and then as a Member of Parliament. In 1973 one night (2:00 am) I saw their eldest daughter riding a bicycle through the streets of Montreal. I phoned her and learned she was working in a factory in order to study the issues of the working poor. Google "Danny Heap" (professor at the University of Toronto) and "David Heap" (professor at University of Western Ontario) if you want to find out about two of Don and Alice's sons and the international stirs they have caused over the years.

Today Don suffers from Alzheimer's and lives in a nursing home. Alice died this past March. As for their home, they gave it away so it could be used to house refugees. I miss having people like Don and Alice in my life.