Boreal
FAREWELL POSTINGS
Part 1
A LIFE OF DELUSIONS
October 16, 2024
Lately, as I fear my days are numbered, I have been sharing too much with people I barely know, including snippets of my favourite video, that of my late wife’s fiftieth birthday. While pointing her out to my friendly waitress, I mentioned that one of the last things she said to me was that I was the smartest man she had ever met. What a pretentious jerk I imagined her thinking as I left Abby’s Wine Bar. There was no time to provide context, so I will try to do so here.
Three failed career choices is not a sign of a smart person, but a delusional one. The reason I survived my failures was that they did not stop her from believing in me. She knew that after she was gone, there would be no one to encourage me to persevere, and she wanted me to persevere.
My first failure was the result of ignoring the advice of Sophocles who, in Antigone, warned us: “None love the messenger who brings bad news” and informed my superiors, at the then of Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs (Global Affairs), about my discovery of a multi-million dollar fraud on the Canadian taxpayers first confirmed by our Tokyo embassy and inadvertently revealed by our numbers man in Brussels duping a visit to Ottawa.
My unearthing of this massive fraud would lead to my receiving what I refer to as the Appraisal from Hell, and being fired on a bogus charge of insubordination with a hapless former Prime Minister making it possible for them to get away with it.
The Right Honourable Chief Justice Brian Dickson
The Honourable Mr. Justice William McIntyre
The Honourable Mr. Justice Antonio Lamer
Robert Cousineau, Q.C., counsel for HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN IN RIGHT OF CANADA and Treasury Board.
John E. McCormick, Esq., counsel for the Public Service Staff Relations Board
Bernard Payeur representing himself
During the two years it took to appeal my firing all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, I built a computer application, using leading edge Canadian software that I would use as my calling card to find work despite the Appraisal from Hell. It was not quite ready when my appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada was dismissed, not on its merit, but because, in the words of The Right Honourable Chief Justice Brian Dickson, it was “not a question of national interest.”
The Court staff had emphasized that for my appeal to be successful, I had to convince the Court that my case was “a question of national interest,” and this is what I tried to do in my Memorandum of Points of Arguments and during my presentation, to no avail.
12. This case raises the following question of importance:
Whether correspondence between a private citizen and a Member of Parliament is privileged information and whether such correspondence can be used by public servants in judicial or quasi-judicial proceedings, in which they are implicated, without bringing the administration of justice into disrepute.
13. By introducing the letter from the Rt. Hon. Joe Clark to the Applicant into the proceedings before the Public Service Staff Relations Board, officials of the Department of External Affairs brought the administration of justice into disrepute by creating a situation whereby the adjudicator could not rule in favour of the Applicant without questioning the competence of the Secretary of State for External Affairs.
A few days after The Right Honourable Chief Justice Brian Dickson said those discouraging words and invited me to leave his courtroom I received word that someone wanted to offer me a job. André’s small Montréal-based computer consulting firm had won an impressive contract to provide user support to the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), and he was looking for someone to manage the young people he would be sending to Ottawa. I took the job.
Sharing a drink at a bar during one of his visit to Ottawa I told André that I had inadvertently found out who he bribed at CIDA and at the then Department of Supply and Services to obtain the contract. He was candid about it and said it was the reason why he hired me. Knowing my history, he was confident that after what they did to me for telling on my bosses I would not make that mistake again. And he was right. And that is how corruption becomes endemic.
André was convinced, and I can’t blame him, that a supplier of goods or services to the Federal Government could not play by the rules and stay in business. "You played by the rules," he said, "and what did that get you?"
He had a point. It did not matter; I could not operate that way. We parted amicably; after all, he had saved my marriage and possibly my life when he offered me a job. The Boreal Shell was now ready for prime time. I started my own consulting firm, Boreal Consulting and used the shell to get clients. The next few years were good years.
My first client was the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs (INAC); my last, Bell Canada Enterprises for whom, with the help of the smartest manager I have ever worked with beat Google to Google, only to have new management abandon the project. Then the proverbial butterfly flapped its wings, not in Beijing, but in a desert of Iran which led to the Canadian government declaring the software that allowed us to do the impossible to be non-compliant with archaic American standards it had adopted—a death knell for my application and my business.
It was after 9/11 when I picked up a copy of the Koran in the hope of understanding what happened that fateful day and decided to write about it. It is a failure in progress.
INVESTIGATING A TARDY DEMISE
November 6, 2024
In 2017 I was diagnosed with a rising aortic aneurism. Every eight months or so I went in for an echocardiogram to check if it had expanded to a size where surgery to cut off the damaged portion to be replaced by some type of polyethylene tubing was called for. After Lucette passed away on July 5, 2019 I cancelled any further measurements and decided to let nature take its course.
I will now have my first thoracic echocardiogram in more than five years. It was my doctor’s idea. In the event that the size of the aneurism warrants surgical intervention, she still hopes to convince me to have the operation to replace the damaged portion with some kind of polyethylene tube. Not going to happen!
LEAVING MONTRÉAL
November 12, 2024
Rather than wait for a balloon to burst or on a fanatic like those in the above photograph to do their worst, maybe it’s time to do a Leaving Las Vegas type of exit. For those unfamiliar with the movie, it stars Nicholas Cage who plays a despondent character who “decides to move to Las Vegas and drink himself to death… Once there, he develops a romantic relationship with a prostitute played by Elisabeth Shue.”
Having been unable to connect with a partner who would join me for some excessive drinking and a bout of intimacy, and be well rewarded if I don't survive, maybe it’s time to return to Montréal and hook up with a woman like Mary, or travel back in time with a girl like Jasmine.
Lucette, when I got depressed in the more than two years I was stuck at home preparing one appeal of my firing after another, would tell me to go to Montréal, have a good time and see you tomorrow. But of course this is not quite the same thing, which, at this stage in my life, she would probably say: “Are you out of your mind?”
I don’t think so, but I am so much older.
AN ECHOCARDIOGRAM EXPERTLY PERFORMED BY A POACHED TECHNICIAN
November 16, 2024
Today, I had a thoracic echocardiogram. The first since Lucette passed away. My doctor will be getting the results in about a week’s time.
The technician who performed the procedure was an Egyptian-Canadian. It again reminded me of how the Canadian health care system depends on pilfered expertise from the third world to survive. I level this criticism in spite of the fact that it was a Nigerian doctor who corrected a diagnose and thereby extended my wife’s life by at least five years.
REGRETS
November 19, 2024
One evening, a short time before her passing, Lucette and I talked about regrets. She said she had none. I did, one of them being that losing my job and having to start over after my forlorn appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada meant she missed out on a lot, including what she loved to do: travelling and meeting people.
At the worst of times, and even as her world was closing in on her, she never complained about our life together, and that night was no different. She reached out and placed one hand on top of mine, looked at me with those soft blue eyes, and said, "Don't be sad; that doesn't matter. What matters is that during my life with you, I have always felt loved. What more could a woman ask for?"
A toast to us on the occasion of our 25th Wedding Anniversary
In spite of everything, she had "always felt loved." I never realized how much I loved her until I contemplated divorcing her.
Two regrets I never divulged were about girlfriends to whom I abruptly said goodbye. I broke up with Glenna after attending her graduation. Following the dinner and dance, rather than drive to our special place where we would kiss and make-out, I drove her home and told her it was over. Was I afraid about what could happen next, and convinced that our relationship had no future deciding that someone else should be the first? I don’t know!
The way I behaved, and not talking things over, remains a lasting regret as does the way I ended my relationship with Margaret. She would fly to Ottawa from Windsor to visit me after I made the city my home. After I decided I was marrying Lucette, I simply packed the clothes she kept in my apartment and mailed them to her with a note that said “I’m sorry.”
Returning to my apartment, after driving her to the airport after her last visit, I found a note she left behind: “I think am falling in love with you all over again.” When I wrote my own note, I felt a twinge of satisfaction that she might feel the pain I felt when I found her in bed with Rakesh; a twinge of satisfaction for a lifetime of regret. Not worth it!
Then, there is the death of a young woman, when I was a young man living across the hall from her, whose suicide I should have anticipated.
Of all my regrets there is one I consider poetic justice, which makes it even worse. I was working at the Energy Supplies Allocation Board (ESAB) when I came back from lunch and she wasn’t there. "Where is she?" I asked Arthur. When he told me, I only felt a twinge of remorse. That would change. It wasn't my decision, after all. It wasn't even Art's. I had told Art, who had told the chairman, who had told Art what to do, or so Art told me. Only years later would I fully appreciate the pain and humiliation I must have caused.
To cap it all, a few months ago, a beautiful 30-something woman I had just met wanted us to spend time together. I was putting the finishing touches to my last book and worried that if one thing led to another I might not get it done, I declined. Maybe it’s because I didn’t want her to give me a reason to live, who knows? One last regret—a minor one you might say, considering… but you would be wrong. A regret made even worse by my doctor's observation that the type of activity I feared would interfered with completing my legacy— now a done thing with the publishing of Fade to Black— would not have a caused my aneurism to burst before its time.
THE DAY I SHOULD HAVE DIED
November 22, 2024
In informing me of the result of my latest thoracic echocardiogram my doctor said that I had been dodging a bullet for years, and I may continue doing so, but the odds were no longer in my favour.
I should have died almost 60 years ago as I laid on my back in a drainage ditch adjacent a country road looking up at the sky with a gentle rain caressing my face telling me not to worry. I often remember that day, and just as often wish for a different outcome and avoiding the life of someone who seldom fitted in and caused unnecessary hardship to a woman who deserved better.
The priest who was the difference between life and death said it was God saving me for the priesthood. If there is a god, I must be quite the disappointment.
A POEM THAT SAYS IT ALL
November 25, 2024
As I contemplate an abrupt and momentarily painful end to my existence, I am reminded of a poem written by someone facing death by firing squad during one of Khomeini's purges of mostly young dissidents.
Momentarily with pain
for my wounded heart
in this desert of pain
there is
not
a
road
whereof
there is
no end.
From my eyes the water
of
grief’s rain.
A red moment,
as you know,
is on the way.
Sooner or later,
a rage from Hell
will yell
“Fire!”
FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS AND GRAVE MARKERS
November 26, 2024
Having already paid for my grave when I purchased Lucette’s, I was a bit surprised at the cost when I went to make my funeral arrangements: more than nine thousand dollars for a simple graveside ceremony, no embalming and an actual pine box. It’s not that I could not afford it, but I did balk, to no avail, at paying $500 for them hosing my body. I may have put on some weight but I doubt if it will take more than a few minutes. I also did not think it was necessary with a closed casket.
I should have negotiated my own funeral arrangements when I agreed to hers. That would have avoided what may have been non-negotiable extras added knowing that I would pay anything to be buried next to her. Beechwood is a national treasure operated by a non-profit foundation; if the money will go to its upkeep, who I am to complain.
To
the left is a picture of me sitting in the shade a few days after Lucette's
burial having planted the first of many flowers and shrubs (even a tree)
before and after the installation of our tombstone.
To get Lucette a grave near a large shady tree I had to buy three graves, instead of two—one for her and one for me. This was a short time before she died.
At first she said I was wasting my money. She changed her mind when I said it meant I would visit with her on even the hottest of days and sit under the shade of her tree while we talked.
I visited with her every week except for when that idiotic Covid restriction went into effect that forced Beechwood to close the cemetery to visitors.
While waiting to install a proper tombstone, Beechwood gave me to following plaque to mark Lucette's resting place.
Her grave last summer:
Her tombstone in winter fronted by a small plastic XMAS tree that used to decorate her apartment at Christmas time when we dated.
MISSING HER MORE THAN EVER
November 27, 2024
EYES WIDE OPEN
November 28, 2024
In September, after having a late supper in front of the television, I got up and felt a stabbing pain in my chest with every beat of my heart. This is it thought, and let myself fall back on the couch, stretched out my legs, crossed my arms over my chest and tried to maintain what I hoped would be a lasting serene facial expression, not unlike Lucette’s death mask, and said to myself “let it rip!”
No such luck. Once back on the couch, the pain went away to be replaced by a dull sensation. After about half an hour with nothing new to report, I got up, put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, brushed my teeth and went to bed.
I don’t understand the attraction of dying a natural death surrounded by family. Unlike a medically assisted death, like that of my Lucette where they first put you into a deep sleep before the lethal injections are administered about five minutes later, it’s usually not a pretty sight.
That expression of being in a deep, pleasant and undisturbed sleep never left Lucette’s face except for her eyes flashing open just before her passing was confirmed by the attending physician. He said that this happens sometimes, after making a futile attempt to close her eyes. He then made a call and handed me the phone. It was the coroner offering her condolences and asking if I was satisfied with how my wife’s assisted death had been carried out.
After I handed it back, he left with his nurse leaving me alone with my partner of 38 years on the bed, propped up by pillows, staring into the distance as if mesmerized by some spectacle. It felt so real that the first words out of my mouth were “are you okay?”
We had said our last goodbye minutes earlier; therefore, there was nothing left to say, or to do but call to have her body removed. Just before they arrived, I tried one last time to close her eyes. She had a favourite scarf with which I covered them when a knock on the door announced the arrival of the people from Beechwood cemetery.
I hope to die nursing a tall glass of well-aged single malt scotch, and not while watching a porno, but in the company of a real woman—hope springs eternal—with whom I will have had dinner before inviting her to my place to test if sex and alcohol will do for me what assisted death did for my Lucette, die happy.
FINDING SOLACE IN THE ABSURD
November 29, 2024
I envy those who believe they have a nice place to go to when they die. What a comfort it must be when facing your imminent demise. A theory I read about as a teenager devouring books on science fiction and science facts, is that this evidence-free notion was imagined when primitive man first became aware of his mortality and, unable to deal with the implication, invented an afterlife.
In Islam, this idea of a life after death has degenerated into men spending eternity fornicating ad nauseam with female facsimiles in a sterile static musky Paradise in the sky where you all look alike, dress alike and eat like a desert dweller.
This is the second time I have recycled The Promise of Absurd Sex, and I probably would recycle it again given the opportunity because what it reveals about sex in the hereafter is key to fighting the scourge of young men killing and dying on a god’s promise of an eternity of sex with the equivalent sophisticated sex dolls.
And then there is Hell, a place where most women will be spending their forever time exacerbating a need for replicas to keep the men in Paradise busy.
Hell is for Mothers—The Promise of Absurd Sex’s female counterpart—serves as a powerful reminder for women who seek the love and benevolence of a misogynous deity that, in the end, their final destination will probably still be Hell’s Fire
ALLAH’S LOVE OF THE MALE GENDER AND MY ESTATE
November 30, 2024
Islam makes no allowance for reasonableness and that is particular evident in the disposition of an inheritance. Abu Hanifah (b. 700 - d. 767), founder of the Hanafi Madhhab, the most progressive of the four mainstream Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence, denied that reason played any part in his rulings using Revelation 4:11, “Allah commands you, with respect to your children, that the male shall inherit the equivalent of the share of two females.”
Hanifah: Who is weaker, man or woman?
Baqir: Woman.
Hanifah: Which of them is entitled to larger share in inheritance?
Baqir: The man.
Hanifah: If I had been making deductions by analogy, I should have said that the woman should get the larger share, since on the face of it the weaker one is entitled to more consideration. But I have not said so.
Allah's love of the male gender and the disdain that He shares with Muhammad for females—which many women find endearing—played no part in my giving a male, in my last will and testament, a slightly larger portion over time of my modest estate. If I don’t continue to support him after I am dead, he risks becoming one of Trudeau’s homeless, and I wouldn’t want that no matter the gender.
MY AND MUHAMMAD'S DEATH
December 1, 2024
Unless I get hit by a bus, or suffer some other misfortune before the blessed event, my official cause of death will be a ruptured aorta, not unlike what Muhammad expected. The Prophet thought he was dying from poison he ingested a few years earlier from eating a leg of lamb, prepared by a Jewish cook, that was causing his aorta to rupture.
Narrated Aisha:
The Prophet in his ailment in which he died, used to say, "O Aisha! I still feel the pain caused by the food I ate at Khaibar, and at this time, I feel as if my aorta is being cut from that poison."
Bukhari 59.713
Muhammad's Official Cause of Death
OF SCRIBES AND LAWYERS
December 2, 2024
With my mortality coming into focus I decided to simplify my will.
Mon 2024-11-25 8:30 AM
To: Lawyer
The following changes will greatly simplify my will:
...
Thu 2024-11-28 1:31 PM
To: Lawyer
When can I expect a revised will to review?
Mon 2024-12-02 8:28 AM
To: Me
Given current work load, will do what I can to get this done before the holidays.
Not unlike Muhammad during the negotiations that would lead to the Treaty of Hudaibiyah, I decided to take matters into my own hands.
Mon 2024-12-02 9:50 AM
To: Lawyer
I understand. I am somewhat concerned about my durability; therefore, if you could send me the Word copy of my will, I will make the changes myself then have them notarized.
Muhammad rewrote a section of the treaty, to which the Meccans objected, after his scribe refused to make the modification. This raises the question as to whether the successful merchant was actually an illiterate as implied from Allah's use of the words "the unlettered Prophet" in Revelations 7:157-158 and as reiterated in a questionable biography.
PROPHETIC MEDICINE AND NOT BLEEDING INTO MY RISOTTO
December 3, 2024
Should I have an aortic graph to extend my life for maybe five years I will, for the rest of my life, be on blood thinners; this, after a five hour operation under general amnestic and being put on and off a heart-lung machine which will probably leave me somewhat stupider than when I agreed to the procedure. My sister tells me I have brain cells to spare so I should not worry about that. She is being kind.
What I worry about is a quality of life that now hinges on going out for dinner without having to worry about my nose bleeding into my food because of blood with a viscosity approaching that of water. Of course, if I followed Muhammad’s medical advice for whatever ails you the idea of surgery would never come up.
At one point in time, there was talk of setting up a school of Prophetic Medicine. The idea was dropped when it became clear that much of it was nonsense. Example:
Narrated Abu Sa'id al-Khudri:
I heard that the people asked the Prophet of Allah (peace be upon him): Water is brought for you from the well of Buda'ah. It is a well in which dead dogs, menstrual clothes and excrement of people are thrown.
The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) replied: Verily water is pure and is not defiled by anything.
Abu Dawud 1.0067
Muhammad’s understanding of human anatomy, and the cause of diseases, was on par with the god for whom he spoke who could not even accurately describe the gestation process for which He took credit.
Islam is not so much a religion as a way of life, with thousands of indelible rules to instruct every waking moment of a believer’s existence. First, there is the Koran’s more than six thousand revealed truths, i.e., immutable facts communicated to a mortal by a god. Then, there is the more than 14,000 hadiths (the sayings and example of the Prophet Muhammad) of the Sunni Canon.
In Islam: A Short History (2002), Karen Armstrong, former nun and unabashed fan of Muhammad, explains why hadiths were made necessary and how they transformed Islam:
The Quran contains very little legislation, and what laws there were had been designed for a much simpler society. So some of the jurists began to collect reports about the Prophet and his companions to find out how they had behaved in a given situation… Thus they believed they would gain true ilm, knowledge of what was right and how to behave... (p.49)
The Prophet, the Perfect Man, became the person to imitate. (p. 60)
Today, you imitate the "Perfect Man" if it does not cause you pain, as his medical advice is bound to, but not if it causes pain to another; that other most often being females with whom, like Muhammad, you can have sex with when they are still children, and stone them when they have reached puberty and beyond.
Today, you also imitate the "Perfect Man" if it does not cause you financial pain, which following Muhammad decrees on the exchange of goods would invariably do, while crippling the modern economy faster than Trump’s tariffs.
HE WHO WILL FIND ME DEAD AND THE HIJAB'S CONNECTION TO PUBLIC LATRINES
December 4, 2024
Abbas calls every day, often more than once. It’s an arrangement we have. Should I fail to answer on any given day, he is to check in on me to make sure I have not passed. He has a key to my condo.
We talked about his home country a lot. Today, it was about Iran’s Parliament enacting a harsh new modesty law that will not only increase penalties for not wearing the hijab, a piece of cloth that was never about piety, but also for not wearing it correctly, i.e., not a strand of hair must be visible.
Abbas still hopes that the oppression of women by the ruling theocracy will lead to a revolution but, as Uzza pointed out in Remembering Uzza – If Islam Was Explained to Me in a Pub, Boreal Books, they can’t do it without the men in their lives.
Uzza: I have to go.
Gerry: Uzza, I’ve thought about it and maybe we should…
Uzza: Just kiss and say goodbye. I am okay with that. Really.
Bob: Uzza, I don’t think…
Gerry: [looking at Uzza] That is exactly what I was going to say [they kiss].
Gerry: Abdulla, or whatever his name is, is one lucky guy.
Uzza: Ahmed. His name his Ahmed, which is short for Muhammad, and he may not be so lucky.
Gerry: Uzza, are you having second thoughts?
Uzza: No, but Ahmed may, after I insist he holds me in his arms and kisses me before our wedding day and when we are alone.
Bob: Why, because you want to find out if he’s a better kisser than Gerry? You know, kissing and being good in bed don’t necessarily go together.
Uzza: We are so beyond those concerns.
Archie: But, only a few minutes ago…
Uzza: It was more than a few minutes ago. More than a few minutes ago I wanted to make love in the absolute worst place if you have never made love before, and with the wrong man. Sorry, Gerry.
Gerry: Don’t be.
Uzza: If things are going to change − and you sort of convinced me of that, Archie, and you, Gerry − women cannot do it alone; in fact, without the men in our lives, we cannot do it at all. We have to find a way to engage with them as equals and in a meaningful way. Get them to acknowledge, if they love us, that there is something wrong with a religion whose founder would have the god for whom he claimed to speak burn us in Hell for an eternity after we have given them all the sex and children they wanted and raised them to believe in the Koran.
Gerry: That last one is no small favour.
Uzza: Tell that to them, Allah and Muhammad I mean.
Archie: Perhaps, Uzza, a first step would be to acknowledge that “them” are one of the same.
Bob: I would have said STOP GETTING THE KIDS HOOKED ON THE DAMNED BOOK!
Uzza: [earnestly] I have to find out if Ahmed is open-minded about Islam.
Gerry: And you are going to do that by getting him to kiss you before getting married?
Uzza: If we even touch for no good reason before we are wife and man, even with a close relative present, we commit the sin of Khalwat, the sin of close proximity.
Archie: Forgive me again Uzza, but that is another one of the stupidest things I have ever heard.
Uzza: I may not disagree. By kissing me under the conditions I have set, Ahmed will demonstrate that he is not a steadfast believer, that he is a reasonable man … or not.
Archie: Any man would agree to kiss you with the promise of what comes after, especially knowing that Allah will forgive him and blame you for having gotten him to sin, which you will have, a good-looking girl like you.
Uzza: Why, thank you. That is why Ahmed must also agree that I do not have to sign that whore’s contract. I will be his whore if that is what it takes, but I will be damned if I agree to it in writing.
Bob: Actually, you will damned if you don’t!
Uzza: You are so cute. Now I really have to go.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
December 6, 2024
Muhammad was the top choice for parents naming their baby boys in England and Wales in 2023. BBC Dec. 5, 2024
The less deserving a religious icon’s reputation for propriety, the louder will be the call to silence his critics. And, so it would seem, why parents name their sons after him; proving once again, that you can take the person out of the Land of Peace—the land where wars are never-ending—but you can’t take the Land of Peace out of the person.
My name, whose one meaning is “brave as a bear” will always be associated, not with a bear but a big, friendly dog. I am okay with that, although it would be nice to also be remembered as the author who revealed the real Muhammad in postings such as Most Common Lies Told About Muhammad, in a book about a war he started that continues to this day, in a unique biography, in a collection of his sayings and deeds, etc.
As to being brave… the risk I took in writing about a violent, militant religion from the comfort of my home after a life lived is nothing compared to the risk we expose young people with their life ahead of them, when we send them to fight the likes of the Taliban and ISIS. Rest in peace.
------
* For example, in the Land of Peace, naming your children after Greek or Roman gods and goddesses is considered an insult against Allah, the one and only god. Such insults are punishable by death.
PRAY FOR ME IF YOU WANT. JUST DON’T MAKE A BIG PRODUCTION OUT OF IT
December 7, 2024
While I don’t believe there is a Paradise and a god who decides who gets in and who doesn’t, I have no objections to someone praying that I be let in. It shows they care and for that I am grateful.
You could say that prayers have been around since Adam and Eve walked and talked with God, meaning they have been around for millennia.
Until Muhammad, prayers were very much a subdued conversation with yourself, and, for people of faith an uncoerced one-on-one conversations with their god–not unlike Adam and Eve’s—even when praying in groups in places designated as houses of worship.
Muhammad would make prayers mandatory, at the risk of losing one’s head for non-compliance, saying that this is what Allah wanted after a private meeting in Paradise with the god for whom claimed to speak. It was during this momentous face-to-face (God’s face may have been obscured by what the Koran refers to as “a veil of majesty”) that the number of daily prayers were established after some back and forth caused by the intervention of Moses, who should have been relaxing in his spacious grave waiting for Judgement Day.
Muhammad also made prayers a highly choreographed affair, ostensibly after being shown the steps by the angel Gabriel. It is this prayer play that used to be largely confined to mosques and their surrounding, the Musalla, that is increasingly staged in the public space that is the focus of Québec’s premier Legault when he says, as reported by the CBC, “he wants to stop people from praying in public.”
Québec is going one way and English Canada another.
STOP TALKING
December 9, 2024
Sunday evening is roast beef night at The Lieutenant’s Pump. It‘s the closest thing to a home cooked meal, something I haven’t had in years. I was already seated at my small table next to the bar when she walked in and took the seat closest to me. So close that I felt a need to reach out and introduce myself to a woman who reminded me of the character Constance "Connie" Tucker, played by Anne Potts in Young Sheldon.
She asked if I was here for the roast beef dinner. So was she, and could she join me.
I thought everything was going well until, as if out of the blue, she said: “stop talking.”
I apologized and said that is why I often preferred dining alone so as not to risk boring my dinner companion.
She then placed her hands palms down on the table getting ready to stand up. “Maybe I should go back to my seat at the bar,” she said.
I place one hand on top of her hers. It was so nice and warm. Maybe that is how it is supposed to feel. Having not touched a woman for so long, I don’t remember.
“Please stay,” I pleaded.
She did and our conversation return to a more normal back and forth exchange of pleasantries.
I was usually such a good listener. I realized then and there that I was behaving like a dying man who has a lot to say and only a short time say it, and I should stop that.
When her phone told her that her Uber had arrived, and it was time to go, it was her who took my hand and said she hoped to see me again next week. Hope so.
I took her admonition in stride; this is not something that Muhammad did. Before he was powerful enough to exact his own vengeance on those who interrupted him or criticised what he had to say, it was the god for whom he spoke who took it upon himself to do the retribution. The cruel and sadistic story of what He will do to Abu Lahab and His wife for her husband interrupting Muhammad can be found in children’s books published in Canada.
LUCETTE AND KHADIJA
December 9, 2024
Monday evening is when I usually dine at Harmon’s Steak House. I have my favourite table next to a large window that allows me to gaze upon the apartment building where Lucette and her parents lived during the seven years Lucette and I dated. Then it was The Bonaventure Apartments, today it's The Business Inn. It was in her apartment that we first made love.
Muhammad and I both married women that were older than us: His first and my first and last.