Time Travel on a Beautiful June Afternoon

It is late June—an absolutely glorious day. Low 20’s, a gentle breeze, a few fluffy clouds. I can hear only the wind in the trees, a bit of traffic noise, and the birds as I quietly paint the back deck. It reminds me of childhood days when no friends were around. I’d play with a toy truck or some such, all the while wondering about the big questions of life. What is “forever?” What is the “I” that observes everything? “How old and how big is the universe?” Those kinds of questions.

So, today, on a day very similar to such days when I was a child, I ruminate as I paint. Today my question to myself is “Is time travel possible?” I hate to break it to you…. After all, we have much enjoyed stories where time travel is a feature for a long time—both in literature and in movies.  But, the sad news is: time travel within the context of our universe is impossible. Doesn’t matter whether you are going forwards in time, or back—it just can’t be done.

There is one “sort-of” exception. According to relativity, the faster an object moves the slower time passes for that object. Actually, that is verifiable; apparently the satellites that control GPS have to be constantly adjusted to make up for the fact that time is slower on them than it is for a stationary object on earth. It is enough of a difference that unless these adjustments were made, positions would drift by about 10 km a day.  Look it up if you don’t believe me. So, if one travelled in a spaceship at very fast speeds for a few months (spaceship time), on the return to earth a hundred or so years might have passed. In a sense, forward time travel is possible—but there is absolutely no way back.

Oh, I know the old arguments: men have said we could never fly…travel to the moon…explore the deepest oceans…climb Everest…build machines that can perform billions of calculations in a second and potentially connect everyone in the world. All we need is the right technology.

Misunderstanding of the meaning of the space-time continuum that physicists and cosmologists describe leads to some false assumptions. It stand to reason that if we can freely travel in any of the other three dimensions—even all of them at the same time—we ought to be able to travel through the fourth dimension at will. We get confused because if we travel in any—or all—of the three basic directions, we will arrive at a location different than our present position; in other words: some place other than “here.” What we are doing is moving our three-dimensional selves from one coordinate to another. Some would say that if it takes us ten minutes to accomplish that readjustment of our coordinates then we have travelled through ten minutes of time as well.

No, we haven’t.

Whether we move our bodies from one location to another during that ten minute interval or we remain at rest makes no difference as far as the time dimension is concerned. Time marches on, as they say. Some scientists describe time as an arrow pointing in one direction. They complicate it by adding concepts like entropy (a word taken from thermodynamics), but, however they muddle the concept it still boils down to one directional travel—or something. Though many equations work just as well backwards as they do forwards, in our universe an egg dropped on the floor does not reassemble itself and hop back into our hand complete. We simply cannot treat time as if it were a film strip that we can play in reverse for our amusement.

Paradoxes exist only in our minds; they do not occur in nature. If we observe that a photon seems to be in two different places simultaneously that indicates that we haven’t quite grasped the concepts of space and coordinates yet. Then there’s the old chestnut of going back in time and murdering your grandfather before your father was conceived. If you do so, then you don’t exist; and, if you don’t exist, then you cannot go back in time and murder your grandfather….and around and around we go looking for clever ways to get out of our dilemma.

The fatal flaw in our thinking, when it comes to time travel, is in thinking that the past exists somewhere and the future exists somewhere else—and so what we are doing by passing time is moving from a “past place” towards a “future place.”  Okay, I ask, where are these “past places” and “future places”? If they have a concrete existence then, yes, it may be possible to move from one to the other and visa versa. But, do they? What, exactly, is the “past?” Or, better yet, where is it? I’ve read scientific descriptions of it as if time were a loaf of bread that contains all events—and that we can experience past and future events by cutting the slice of bread-time at an angle. I think it is a bit difficult to physically affect a metaphor by using another metaphor, but, that’s just in the world that I inhabit. I know there are many out these who treat metaphors, such as “the creator,” as if they were physical entities. Does thinking make it so?

Well, if you go along with respected philosophers like Emmanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason), and physicists like Werner Heisenberg (observation causes the collapse of probability) then you must realize that nothing has an existence independent of our experience of it—at least in any form that we can recognize.  “Reality” is the construct that our brain uses to reference and catalogue the bombardment of sensory signals that it is constantly receiving. Our brains frame our experience of time within the context of movement. But, does it really have an existence independent of our experience of it? If it does, then is the future thus preordained? Everything that can happen has happened? I sincerely have a lot of trouble with that concept. Where did free-will go then? Are we just automata following pathways that have been prepared ahead of time?

Some talk of alternate universes, where every possibility has fruition. That means that even the smallest action that I take creates a complete universe where I did not take that action. I have a bit of a problem accepting that. It seems to me that it is just another clever way of getting out of the paradox of murdering one’s grandfather before one’s father has been conceived. To suggest that both events happened—the murder and the later conception—even if in different universes (or space-time continuums to get fancy) is evading the question of what is time, really?

Do all “pasts” exist somewhere? Is there a definitive past? I’m sure that each of us likes to believe that our memories of past events represent a physical reality. But, where is this “past” located? Photos, journals, videos, artefacts, etc. do not prove that a past “exists” now. What we are looking at, when we look at such things, is in the present.

So, stripping away all wishful thinking, we are left with the proposition that neither the future nor the past has a “real” existence that we could, possibly, travel to. I think that the “past” goes “poof!” as soon as it stops being the “present.” It hasn’t “gone” anywhere—it just ceases being. Yes, we have recordings of things that happened in the past, but, when the recordings were made the “past” was really a “present.”   If I write a word “now,” that “now” cannot possibly be the same “now” when you read it. The “now” when I wrote the word is long gone. So, we can have records of “past” events, but, they were really “present” events when they happened.

Same as the future. It does not exist. Except, in the sense of potential. There is a good possibility that at some point in the future I will stop writing this paragraph. A pretty good possibility that I will eat a meal later in the day—and that I will go to sleep sometime during the night and that the sun will rise tomorrow. But, none of those things has an existence “now.” They might happen; they might not.  A chunk of ice could fall from an overhead airplane and knock my brains out so that I will not experience any of those events. But, in no case is there a physical place where a chunk of ice is falling towards my head or where I will wrap this up, eat a meal, go to sleep later, and then awake to a new day all having happened “already” just waiting for me to experience them.

The only “real” thing we can count on is the ever-present present and even that will no longer exist when we die.

Here’s the algorithm:

Future –>	Now –>	Past
Possible events –>	Occurrence of specific event –>	Done
Non-existent probabilities. (Potential)	Experience; expression. Potential collapses into existence.	Nothing. It’s all gone.

Meditation on a Summer Afternoon

It’s a beautiful day. Low 20’s and a stiff breeze. The maples, aspen, and elm that line the back of our property are swaying and swooshing in the wind. It’s a comforting sound—one that reminds me of the waves of Lake Huron against the shore, all night—all day—long.  Which reminds me of the fog horns of the lakers as they passed Sarnia in the night. My childhood memories do not go back to the time when my parents and I actually lived in Sarnia, though I must have spent at least the first six months of my life there. But, visiting a favourite aunt and uncle in the house that my grandfather built on Cromwell Street, always brought that mournful sound in the night, triggering some ancient primitive memories. It makes me want to cry, though I have no idea why.

My office window is next to a maple that is probably about forty feet tall—and I’m about twenty-five feet up so that I am looking directly into the middling branches. Have you realized that there is a mathematical pattern in the branches of a tree? In my maple, wherever a branch begins, another begins at roughly the same place on the other side of the limb. In other words, as it grows, each branch splits into three parts with the central part continuing on and the pair of side branches going off in new directions. Sometimes they split into three, and so on and on. Such self-replicating patterns are called fractals. If you search hard enough and with an open imagination you can find fractal relationships in all living things, from the shape of a snail’s shell to the pattern of seeds in a sunflower, to the pattern found in the branchings of your blood vessels.

I don’t find it amazing that nature mimics mathematics. What else should it be based on? I know many dismiss or belittle evolution as “random” events; in fact, they often say the same thing about our universe. But, nothing could be further from the truth. If our universe was the result of purely random events then we would be living in a state of chaos. Actually, we wouldn’t be living at all because chaos and life cannot exist together. On the other hand, when confronted with the overwhelming beauty and complexity of life, the universe, and everything some insist that there must be an intelligent creative force behind it all. Why? That raises more questions than it answers. Where, for example, can this intelligent force reside if it is outside of our universe (which it must be, if it created it)? And, of course, what came before this “force” or being?

There are many, many things that you and I do not understand when we look around us. How, for example, did my maple “know” that splitting branch growth into three parts would give its leaves the maximum amount of surface area for collecting sunlight? It didn’t “know”—and that’s the beauty of it. Over millions of years trees that depend on manufacturing chlorophyll from sunlight have always “maximized” the surface area of their leaves (some, like cacti, minimize their surface area in other to preserve water.) One way works; others don’t work so well and so such trees do not flourish.  In plants that must preserve water, a tubular shape gives the least amount of surface area. Look at a cactus; look at a tree; different mathematics for difference purposes.

There are valid reasons found in chemistry and physics for the patterns that living things follow. The Fibonacci sequence (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc.) when followed by a plant—for example in the organization of leaves in a single cabbage plant—expend the least amount of energy for the layers of growth (cut a cabbage in half along its “equator” to check it out).  Or is it the other way around? A plant “prefers” the least expenditure of energy as it grows and so “created” the first Fibonacci sequence. Life is not modeled on math, but mathematics is derived from observing life.

My trees are still bending and bowing in the wind. It looks like chaos from my perspective, but that is perspective only. If I look down on the forest as the wind blows through it, I would see patterns in the way the trees bend—the same kind of patterns in the waves on the sea. If I looked from even further away I would see the immense patterns of weather across the planet with all its local subsets. And, of course, as we retreat further and further into space we see the patterns in the orbits of the planets; and, further yet, in the orbits of the stars around the centre of our galaxy. And, even further, the beautiful and mysterious patterns (that look amazingly like fractals) in the long filament-like arrangements of the galaxies themselves. If you want to see what it looks like here is a piece of it: http://www.windows2universe.org/the_universe/Cosmology.html.

The Latest Cosmological-Physics Theory of Everything

One of the most amazing insights I’ve read about lately was made by the early Greek “atomists,” Leucippus and his student Democritus. Observing a fish moving through water, Leucippus asked himself how is this possible? After all, both fish and water are “things,” both apparently having mass and occupying space. The only way, he reasoned, that this could happen is that if the water is actually composed of tiny particles separated by a void. The fish, therefore, in moving into the void between the particles of water, is able to push particles out of its way. It was a short step to realizing that everything is made up of tiny particles (that he called atoms) and the characteristics of things were defined by those atoms and their relationships to each other.  He pictured atoms as having hooks that linked them together. Solids had more hooks and so were bound more tightly together than the somewhat “slippery” atoms of liquids. Brilliant! And done without any “scientific” experiments or direct observations.

But, did you notice that these atoms, in Leucippus’ view, are separated by a “void?” What on earth is that?  It’s simply nothing, you might answer. But what is that? Parmenides, for one, rejected the idea of the existence of a nothing. Everywhere, he argued, that there appears to be nothing there is actually something, like air. Though the Greeks couldn’t reach the altitudes where air does not exist, you might still argue that outer space itself is not nothing; the average density of the universe (including all dark matter and dark energy) being approximately 6 protons per cubic meter, and the density counting just the observable matter and energy is closer to 1 proton per 4 cubic meters. Protons are rather small, so what is—and there is a lot of whatever it is—between them?  Even more so, the distance between an electron and the core of neutrons and protons that it orbits, is comparable to the distance from our sun to Pluto. Even on the subatomic level, that is still a lot of something?

So, what is this nothing of which I speak? Parmenides argued: "You say there 'is' a void; therefore the void is not nothing; therefore there is not the void." That seems a rather circular argument that relies more on grammatical relationships than on observation, because if it were true that there is no “void,” then all motion would be impossible. Contemporary physics usually describes the void as the “quantum foam” out of which pairs of negatively and positively charged bits of energy are continuously coming into being and annihilating each other. If I understand this correctly, then that means that what we call nothing is actually something akin to a randomly-arranged chaotic and continually changing backdrop on which everything depends.

In The Unobservable Universe: A Paradox-free Framework for Understanding the Universe, (Albuquerque, NM: Galaxia Way; 2011) Scott Tyson argues that the “nothing” from which particles of opposite-charged energy emerge is the part of our universe that we can never observe (he calls it the voidverse). Characteristics of the voidverse are that it is dimensionless and timeless. In other words, when matter emerges from the voidverse into our observable universe (he calls it the observerse) it comes from anyplace, anytime in our perspective. The universe will eventually reach a state where the energy in one “verse” so greatly exceeds that in the other that the flow will reverse itself.

He uses this argument to explain how it is that photons can take several different paths simultaneously and can be “entangled” at any distance from each other. He throws out the string theory (or M-theory) argument explaining that 10 or 11 extra dimensions are not necessary in describing the universe and its behaviour at subatomic levels. Gravity, which has always been a difficult subject for the sciences, is not, he claims, one of the four basic forces of the universe (the weak force, the strong force, and the electromagnetic force being the others), but is, rather a characteristic of space, rather than of mass. String theorists in particular have had to resort to elaborate constructs of parallel universes in order to explain why gravity is so weak compared to the other three fundamental forces. In their view, the strings that represent gravity (gravitons) are attached to a parallel universe (called a brane in string theory) which bleeds off a lot of their energy.

Tyson doesn’t rely on infinity (which, in some theorist’s minds means that there are an infinite number of universes, logic dictating that somewhere, at some time, there is a duplicate of you doing what you are doing now). He postulates that infinity exists only in our minds and that the universe as he describes it has bounds. His theory is elegantly simple: the universe has two parts, one we can never observe (i.e. “nothing”) and one that we can observe (i.e. “something”), and that these two parts are forever swapping energy maintaining a perfect equilibrium such that (Kenetic Energy action in the observerse) X (Potential Energy reaction in the voidverse) = 1. This expansion of Newton’s Third Law embraces both the quantum world and the large scale world. The preservation of energy has been a problem at the quantum level because energy has been observed to pop into and out of existence. However, taking the “non-existent” aspect of the universe into account, unity is re-established.

Pretty neat, eh? 

A Modern Story

A man, bleeding heavily, lay on the downtown sidewalk of a busy city.  To any casual observer he appeared to be the victim of a mugging. People hurried by him, careful to avoid the spreading blood, on their way to their businesses.

The first to pause was a self-made millionaire who addressed the man as follows: I am sorry for your plight and am in personal pain to see you suffer. However, I am a self-made man who, by hard work and determination, has made my way through life so that I wouldn’t end up where you are. It is unfortunate that you made some bad decisions along the way, but, you have no one to blame for your plight but yourself.

The next to pause was a middle-aged well-dressed woman who said: Poor man! I wish I could help you, but, I have heard about the dangers of blood-born disease and so cannot touch you for fear of catching a deadly disease myself. You will have to help yourself.

A parson happened by who immediately knelt on the ground next to the man and said quietly: Such are the wages of sin. However, our God is a loving God who, if you sincerely repent, will forgive you and welcome you into his heavenly kingdom. I will pray for you.

A conservative politician was next to address the man: I am so, so sorry to see you in such a state. We must all work together to make our streets safer so that this type of thing doesn’t happen to others. I will build more prisons and dictate harsher sentences so that others will not become victims like yourself.

A liberal politician said: We must launch a Royal Commission to examine the root causes of what has happened to you. The Commission will hear from witnesses and experts who will explain why you and others like you are on our streets bleeding. They will make recommendations so that we can better understand what has led to your fate.

  

A holy man, freshly returned from years of meditation, said to him: Do not focus on your pain. It is a transitory illusion. Look only to the present and seek inner peace.

Finally, a police officer saw the man and approached him. He examined the man’s wounds and then used his cell phone to call for an ambulance.  However, due to cutbacks needed to finance additional prisons and Royal Commissions, emergency services had been reduced to one ambulance for the entire city and it was busy attending to others in need of urgent help.

After the man died, the city coroner held an inquest and recommended that emergency services should, in future, guarantee a response time of ten minutes and that police officers be given more training in first aid.

Maniwaki and me....

Yesterday I noticed a small story in the Ottawa Citizen about an apparent murder that occurred in Maniwaki. For those who don't know, Maniwaki is a town in Quebec about a two hour drive north of Ottawa. It is situated on land that legally belongs to the Algonquins of the Kitigan Zibi Reserve, one of the largest Algonquin settlements in existence. I taught at the secondary school in Maniwaki from 1975 to 1982. About half of my students were from Kitigan Zibi and the rest a mixture of French Canadian and Irish. The secondary school was built in the late 1960's when the Quebec government invested heavily in education, believing that all students living anywhere in the province should have access to the same opportunities. Large "polyvalent" ("many streams") secondary schools were built across the province, complemented by CEGEPs (collèges d'enseignement général et professionnel ) at the post-secondary level.


Secondary school ran from grades 7 to 11, followed by two years in an academic program at the CEGEP level to prepare for university entrance, making pre-university education about the same number of years as in other provinces. (Ontario high schools at the time ran from grades 9 to 13.) At the ends of both grades 10 and 11 were provincial examinations in each subject. Generally the exams were set at two levels: the higher one for CEGEP-bound students, and the lower for those who simply wanted a secondary school leaving certificate. As there was no such thing as a province-wide curriculum teachers at individual school geared their own curriculums towards the expected examinations. As the senior English teacher, I set the curriculum for all English courses from grades 7 to 11. 


As in many smaller Quebec communities, the predominant language of instruction was in French, though, if numbers warranted a secteur anglais could be set up. Education, at the time, was divided along religious lines. The predominate religion being Roman Catholic, though the Quebec government, under the terms of the British North America Act of 1867, offered education programs for Protestants, along the lines of Ontario's commitments to its Roman Catholic minority. By the time I started teaching in Maniwaki, the religious lines were blurring because the language issue was taking on much more significance. Public education was formally "deconfessionalized" in 2000. When I was teaching in the 1970's and 80's the eventuality of realigning school boards along language rather than religious lines was becoming apparent. Though most of my students were nominally Protestant, a large number were Roman Catholic. Without the English-speaking Catholics there would not have been enough English-speaking students to justify the existence of the secteur anglais. Students requiring an English secondary school education would have had to travel an hour by bus to the small English secondary school in Low, or, two hours to a secondary school in Hull.


The big change in Maniwaki since I was there was the creation of a native-run secondary school, situated on the reserve. I knew many of the people involved in the planning for this school. In fact, I knew many of the people of Maniwaki and Kitigan Zibi whose names I saw in news stories over the years since I left. One has become a police chief. Another, head of surgery at a large hospital. And yet another was a Member of Parliament for a session. Many entered the teaching profession, some returning to Kitigan Zibi to work in the school there. A few, perhaps a half dozen in all, have died violently, either in auto accidents, or, in one case, murder.


That is the background to the story I read in yesterday's Citizen.  No names were given in the initial story, though the street were it happened was named. I knew that street well. Today's Citizen named both the victim and the suspect. The victim, an 85 year old man, taught auto shop in the polyvalent for the first two years I was there. He nursed my wreaks of cars through crisis after crisis, accepting only a bottle of Scotch at Christmas as payment. The suspect, the man's 50-year-old son, was in my classes for the first two years I taught. I remember him particularly well because he was a bully with a sullen and hostile attitude. On one occasion when I had dragged him to the principal's office by the ear because he had torn up a note book belonging to another student, the principal literally kicked him in the ass. It did no good. Even his father appeared to have no influence on him. Eventually, he disappeared from the school's life before completing grade 8. I've known students like him all my life; they were in my elementary school classes, and I've run into their adult counterparts in my professional careers since. 


I don't know where they come from or why they adopt the attitude that the world is their enemy when they are about 12 years old. But, once set into a pattern of defiance, they seem to get stuck there. Of course, the more they act out, the harder the adults around them are on them. It's likely a self-perpetuating cycle. What I know for certain is that with 35 students in my classes there was no way that I could adopt a plan of action for reaching this kid. He was disruptive, so I had to get him out of the way so I could teach the other 34 students. Life does not resemble a Hollywood movie at all. It might have been nice if some deeply compassionate and understanding teacher took this kid under their wing and set him on the road to redemption, but, this doesn't happen in real life. We try to deal with the problems quickly and get on with the rest of the job.


When I reflect back on my time in Maniwaki, I feel both pride and sadness.  There were some successes, but there were also failures. I don't know how this balances out. But, once when I was in a conflict with the Algonquin counsellor in the school, many of my students approached him to support me (and he eventually apologized), and, at one graduation party a small group of Algonquin students told me that I was the only white teacher they had ever encountered who did not have a trace of prejudice in his body. They laughed and said they knew that all I cared about was getting them through those god-damned provincial exams.

I should have gone to jail…

I graduated university in 1971. In 1971-72 I took the required graduate courses leading to an MA. In 1972-73, while supposedly writing my master’s thesis, I taught a first year level course. By the summer of 1973 I was lost. A long-term relationship had ended and I had no idea where I was headed or what I wanted to do.  There was no way that I could concentrate on my thesis and I badly needed income. So, I applied for every job that a college grad was qualified for. One was at a small publishing company to work as an editor. I would have loved that kind of work, but the owner who interviewed me “regretted” that she could offer me only $100/week. That was roughly $100 more per week than I was currently earning and sounded like a god-send to me, but her attitude told me that she did not expect someone with my qualifications to accept.

I had been applying for teaching jobs. For one, I had a degree and had a year’s experience teaching (I actually gave a couple of guest seminars at McGill as well.) Secondly, schools could hire teachers who did not have their teaching certificate if they could not find anyone else qualified (which is how most “shops” teachers were hired). One day I took a bus from Montreal to Sherbrooke to be interviewed for a teaching job and then spent the night with a casual girlfriend who had just moved there to start teaching. The next morning I took a bus back to Montreal, then another bus to Ottawa, where I caught a local bus to the town of Buckingham, about 30 minutes downstream from Ottawa on the Quebec side. I had been wearing the same clothes for two days in incredible heat and was soaked in sweat.

Nevertheless, the principal of the elementary school seem delighted to meet me. He explained that though his was an elementary school, the students completed their first year of secondary school in the same building (which, in Quebec, was grade seven—13 and 14 year olds). He needed two teachers to cover the secondary program and had already hired a lovely local woman. He told me that he believed that there should be more men teaching in the elementary schools. His was a “confessional” school—which meant it was Roman Catholic. He asked if I had a problem with that. Nope. (It turned out he was Protestant as well.)

Then he ran through the subjects he expected me to teach. Was I comfortable with English composition and literature? No problem. Could I teach basic science? Sure. How about gym and fine arts? I figured I could wing my way through it. How did I feel about teaching religion? He did not expect me to teach the catechism, but thought I could take a page from the Quebec Protestant program: general ethics. “Just talk about abortion and subjects like that,” he told me. And then he asked, quelle université avez-vous assisté?  I got the gist of what he had asked and replied, in my best French accent (which I have been told is similar to Hungarian), université de Sir George Williams. Amazingly he said, “I like your accent” and shook my hand. He then gave me a copy of each of the textbooks I was to use and asked me to start the day after the Labour Day holiday.

I leafed through the books while I had a much-needed cold beer at the local hotel waiting for the bus to take me back to Montreal. A few days before the long weekend, I returned to Buckingham by bus and rented a room in the local hotel. I started to teach on the Tuesday after Labour Day. I had never stood before a group of 13 and 14 year olds before. Nervously, I talked non-stop until recess time. About what, I’m not sure. The cigarette break in the teachers’ lounge was heavenly.

The other teachers in the school, with the exception of my secondary school partner, were elderly women, stiff-necked and judgemental. They never did take to me, a city-boy with a cynical attitude. I eventually found a suitable apartment and tried to settle into the town. Other than a few weekend visits from girlfriends I kept to myself. Still, it didn’t take long for word to get around that I was always high on drugs. Not true. On the other hand, many of the elementary school teachers consumed several beer each lunch hour. They were Irish so I guess that was okay. They knew I was Protestant. In fact one of them went so far as to tell me that I should consider myself lucky not to be teaching in “that Protestant school” on the other side of town because “they didn’t have God over there.”  I spent a couple of nights with a young local woman home for the Christmas vacation. It was a small town. The attitude hardened towards me. In the spring I met a young Irish woman who was related to one of the other teachers. We dated (chastely) for a while until her father phoned to tell me to “stay the hell away from” his daughter. I met her several years later and we remained friends for a while before drifting apart; she had never married.

In any case, I struggled with teaching. I had had no training and no preparation for what I faced in the classroom every day. It didn’t take long for the students to figure out that I was a softy whose bark had no bite. Classes were unruly as I tried to keep order. I used my imagination to come up with what I hoped they would find interesting. When it came to grading the principal sometimes over-ruled me, raising grades for the children of local people with some influence. For one of their art projects I had the students create collages out of pictures they had cut from magazines. When their work was displayed in the gymnasium, the principal called me and my class to the gym. He said something about “we all know that boys and men have a third appendage.” I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. It turned out that one of the students had added a third leg to a male figure. I hadn’t paid any attention to it, but apparently someone had complained that it was obscene. I was chastised for it along with the students.

Taking the principal at his word—that he expected me to discuss abortion and similar topics with the students—I brought the subject up in my “ethics” course. The children seemed to think the subject was hilarious and made so many ignorant remarks that I decided that before I could discuss a topic like abortion, they needed some background so that they would have a better understanding of what they were talking about. So, I taught them about puberty and the changes they were going through, bringing up topics like sexually transmitted disease and contraception. I took a matter of fact approach that I thought was suitable. Apparently not everyone agreed with me. The principal called me to his office and shouted at me, “Do you have an emotional problem?”  After he calmed down he told me that I had one class to sum up the subject and then drop it.  

I admit that I was not the best fit for the school and the age group I was dealing with. I had spent so many years in academia that I really had no understanding of the points of view of “civilians.” I was a foreigner in the town. My wardrobe clashed with the environment. The leather pants that I was so proud of were referred to as “plastic” by the students. I couldn’t fit my knee-high boots under my jeans so I wore them on the outside. I wore a heavy racoon coat in the winter. It kept me warm, but made the locals laugh about the “bear.” I had no friends in the town. People gossiped about the “strange” women that visited me some weekends. The loneliness seeped into me.

But, none of that was “criminal.” Taken in perspective, I was a single young man inexperienced in social settings outside of the life of a university student. If I had stayed, I probably would have matured and gradually melded into the community. But, I had one unforgivable failing: I could not speak a word of French. It was sheer luck that I had managed to understand what the principal had asked me during our interview and so was able to give an answer that made sense. Every single student in my class had a far superior grasp of French than I did. At that point I had had only two years of French in high school in Ontario—and failed the second year. I had no experience with the French-speaking population of Quebec. The only thing I could do—and that’s how I justified myself—was read the textbook faster than the students could. I taught French entirely in English, focused solely on grammar.

As the school year drew to a close the principal told me he was concerned about my French classes. He sat in on one, but, I was so nervous with him present that I could barely speak. He told me to tape a couple of classes. I did—and carefully reviewed the tapes following the example set by Richard Nixon—and recorded noise several times over any mistakes I noticed. I gave him the tapes and next day he told me that he would not renew my contract for the next year “for the good of the children.” I enrolled in the education program at McGill, graduating with a teaching certificate a year later and went off to teach (non-French) subjects in high school for the next several years.

But, many years later I noticed a small story in the Ottawa Citizen about a teacher in Buckingham who had been arrested for molesting students. He taught grade seven at the same school I had taught at. Given the dates mentioned in the story I realized that he was the guy who had replaced me the next year. I felt somewhat vindicated when I read that story because, no matter what I had failed at during my year there, I had never crossed the line—in fact, it had never occurred to me. To me, they were children, even the well-developed thirteen year old girls. I had enough problems with women my own age and just never saw the adolescents as possible “mates.” In fact, the very idea leaves me feeling somewhat ill.

I hope that guy did go to jail—and everyone like him. But, I can’t help but feel that my year posing as a French teacher should be against the law as well. I (and the principal who hired me) should have spent some time in jail. On other hand, I worked with — and my children were exposed to — teachers who were even more unqualified than I had been. When I think of all the damage that teachers pretending to be psychologists did to one of my sons, I feel a visceral anger. And, being a lousy French teacher doesn’t seem so bad after all.

Cats and Us

I just finished reading “The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival,” written by John Vaillant (A Canadian, by the way). Set in the Bikin River valley in Khabarovski Krai, a province in far eastern Russia (near the Sea of Japan). It is, as the title says, an account of events involving a man-eating tiger in this area during the 1990’s. But, it is far more than just a narrative of events. In the book Vaillant explores the complex relationships between man and tiger (and big cats in general).

If we go back approximately two million years, we find our ancestors (homo habilis) living in the African savannah. Other than snakes, our greatest enemies were cats—very large cats—the progenitors of today’s lions, tigers, and leopards (the three main groups of large cats). We avoided becoming victims of the cats by restricting our hunting to daylight hours (cats generally prefer hunting at night), and staying close to a fire at night. At the same time, homo habilis and large cats had a symbiotic relationship. Man—and let’s use this in a very general sense—is not very well equipped for hunting, unlike the cats who are have large fangs and claws, powerful legs, and an intuitive ability to stalk prey. While homo habilis had large jaws and some nasty canine teeth (much like today’s baboons), he was pretty much otherwise defenseless, except for two advantages: the ability to sweat through our skin and the ability to make tools.

Sweat? Yes. Other land mammals rid their bodies of excess heat by panting—rapidly breathing over a wet out-stretched tongue to promote quick evaporation. A result of this is that most mammals cannot run very far in a single burst—they have to stop periodically to pant. People have no such problem. By perspiring through their skin, they can continue to run even as their bodies cast off any excess heat generated. Today in the Kalahari Desert this ability is put to use: hunters simple run their prey into the ground. Eventually the pursued animal will suffer heat stroke because of the constant pressure of pursuers who never give it a chance to stop to cool off by panting.

The other advantage is tools. Going back two million years the only tools we find are simple stones deliberately chipped to create a sharp edge on one side. Not much use for hunting—but very useful for cutting meat and cracking open bones.  That was our only tool for about a million years before the invention of the stone hand axe—and that gave the advantage that it could be easily carried and used for more delicate tasks than cutting meat from sinew. The stone hand axe was it for about another million years. So, for most of our history we used simple stone tools that had limited uses.

Out-running animals to the point of heat exhaustion is pretty useful, but not always practical, especially if you have a large group to feed—or you had moved to an area where it was generally cooler. Our ancestors had to find another way to supplement their high-protein diet and that they did by scavenging. The African desert lions and cave lions frequently left partially-devoured prey. Today’s hyenas utilize that to move in on an abandoned carcass, probably very much like our ancestors did. A quick dash to the carcass and a few swift chops with a hand axe and a capable hunter could recover a fair-sized chunk of meat. The only way we could pull that off is by not angering the cats. There is evidence that humans left part of their kill for the cats, and the cats left part of their kill for the humans. Also, both humans and cats are territorial creatures. As our territories undoubtedly overlapped, some sort of modus vivendi had to be worked out between the two species.

The situation today is that in remote areas like eastern Russia people and big cats (in this case tigers) generally co-exist. As long as people leave the tigers alone and respect their “rights,” tigers will leave people alone and give them their due respect. The problems arise when tigers are hunted (for pelts and Chinese medicines) or crowded out of their territories by logging and similar activities. Vaillant describes the almost mystical relationship between the cats and humans in striking detail and example.

Which brings me to the purring ball of fur on my lap. Today’s domestic cats are descended from small African wild cats. The oldest known association between these cats and humans is a 10,000 year old grave containing skeletons of each. The crude symbiotic relationship between humans and large cats likely became more clearly defined in our relations with the small cats. They would keep the rodent and snake population around human encampments in check and we would provide them with a safe place (near a fire) for the night. I’ve seen it suggested that we never really domesticated cats, as we did dogs, but, rather, our two species simply got used to each other being around. We are all aware, I am sure, of the high regard that ancient Egyptians had for cats.

So reading Vaillant’s book made me look at our little friends in a different light. We are still dependent on each other—our cats and us. They need our attention just as we benefit from their loving attention to us. But, underneath it all, lies the heart of a hunter. Two hunters—actually—the clumsy human one and the highly skilled feline one.