I miss rotary phones and party lines. Oh wait a minute, most of you reading this don’t even know what a rotary phone is and you no doubt think a party line is something on your smartphone. Yes, well a rotary phone was a simple, easy to use mechanical device. Before you could use it you needed to listen to the earpiece and see if anyone was already on the line. And you would ask them how long they would be. Quaint right? Well, actually no not quaint, at times the whole thing was infuriating but as one does, I have beatified the whole experience and I now remember it fondly. That was back in the early 60’s surrounded as I was with black and white TV and phones with long cords screwed to the wall. And never mind this concept of every member of the family having a phone of their own. Nope. One family, one phone. One family, one TV. One family, one car. You get the idea. And of course like everybody else I thought this was the way it was and always would be. But nope again! Not for one minute has it remained the same. With a loud whistling whoosh I find myself transported into 2023 and nothing is the same. Save one thing.

Quite frankly, it has been a little exhausting, even unsettling and I find myself harkening back. I’m not longing for a trusty, easy to use rotary phone, I’m just yearning for some sameness, something universal that all humans understand and seek. Something that has never changed and never will. And I may have found it in Canmore, AB. Not that it is resident in Canmore, that would be a silly concept and if you think about it, would require all of us to travel there to find it and that has practical implications. No not at all. This is not the Holy Grail of which I speak, this is something simpler and common to us all.

The thing is, the more things change the more they stay the same. I have navigated a lifetime of change and at times it all seemed a bit relentless, even overwhelming. We all have our lists and most will include the incredible impact of technology on our lives; the internet, smartphones, Google maps, Siri, FB, Instagram, Telegram or whatever new platform has just been launched, it’s never ending and at 73 it can be intimidating. Global events have changed our world; 9/11, terrorism, the pandemic to mention just a few, again a list we can get lost in.

Extraordinary social, cultural, economic and political change has engulfed us all. Nowadays I’m told that being male is one of sixteen identifiable genders. Just a few years ago I was good with two. Don’t misunderstand, if there are sixteen, sixteen it is, just give me a moment to learn the vocabulary. And give me another moment to become proficient at ‘they’ where previously I might have thought to use ‘he’ or ‘she’. But give me this: It’s all a bit mind bending. If you ask me I’d tell you I’ve done a pretty good job of dealing with these changes, some of which were tectonic. Every time I lost my balance, I’d find my footing again. But there’s one which is pure curveball, hard high heat that I still can’t get ahold of.

For me the legalization of pot has been the real mind bender. And I don’t mean that in the obvious psychoactive way. It actually arrived without much fanfare after many decades of controversy, in the stroke of a pen turning criminal sanction into social and cultural approval. It wasn’t so long ago I was prosecuting marijuana cases on behalf of the federal government and depending on the amount, asking for jail time when the defendant was convicted. Now, that same federal government is collecting tax revenues on the legal sale of pot. The criminal underbelly of our society is feeling totally ripped off, man! It is a mind bender for me that just keeps on giving.

So back to Canmore lest it be rubbished as a passing comment without relevance to these idle musings. I was in Canmore, Alberta in 2022 for a wedding, seventy-two years of age at the time, a pregnant fact the purpose of which will become apparent shortly. We were there to help babysit two of our grandchildren while our kids Toby and Sophie went to the wedding of a close friend. Both my wife Mac and I have the predictable age based aches and pains and want to investigate CBD, a cannabis derived oil, if not as solution then at least to provide a reprieve from what ails. Alberta being sales tax free I decided that Canmore would be a good place to start. Now do you see how I’m connecting the dots.

Change … Canmore … CBD … Wedding (note the connecting dots).

And so off on my quest I went. Now our world is best experienced in contrast, the sharper the better. So in words I need to describe myself. I am mildly pleasant to look at, with an easy smile, I’m probably perceived as kind. I have a shock of grey white hair and long bushy eyebrow whiskers which would have made Andy Rooney proud (never mind if that name means nothing to you, just trust that he had fabulous unruly eyebrows). Sometimes I’ll give you, my random nose hairs and ear hairs distract whomsoever it is I am engaging in conversation. Deal with it, if that is now stuck in your mind’s eye. I’m seventy-three and I look seventy-three! Now back to my Canmore Quest for CBD. I thought who better to ask where the best place would be to find some pot, than the young woman I had met at the hotel reception desk.

So she was probably twenty, a lovely English girl on a two year visa to Canada,

“Hello” I said, “How’s it going?”

“I absolutely love it here in Canada. I don’t get snow in Portsmouth”.

“Portsmouth? Don’t suppose you know my uncle? Norman Rowe? He lives in Portsmouth.”

Yes, I did. I asked that question. So you’ll understand that we had shared our Englishness (no, it’s not a word) and I decided she would be the natural starting point for my quest.

It plays out like one of those bar jokes: A seventy-two year old Canadian man asks a twenty year old English woman, “Where can I buy some pot?”

Her eyes betrayed her as did that short but unmistakable delay in her response. Pot has not been legalized in Great Britain and I knew she had been caught off guard. Even asking the question made me laugh. Here was this old man, some vague aesthetic of her own grandfather, asking her where he could buy drugs. Her response was impeccably English. She hesitated, smiled and provided the answer I needed.

“Spiritleaf Cannabis in Shops of Canmore”.

I am quite sure her Sunday night call back home included telling her mum and dad about this old man asking where he could find some pot.

“Mummy, he was as old Grampa. He had long white hairs in his eyebrows. And he asked me where he could buy pot. I almost laughed out loud.”

And how would I know that? She didn’t say as much. Yes, well her eyes told me. They said everything I needed to hear. They twinkled her amusement.

As an aside, I should say Spiritleaf Cannabis is a very nice store and a very helpful young woman walked me through the purchase. It still bends my mind. However, that is not the point. And speaking of bending minds it has just occurred to me that my own children will be reading this. I should imagine that reading about their dad going in search of pot will do its own mind bending with them. But what the hell, they’re young and they have a whole lifetime of change ahead of them. It’s good training.

Now for those of you familiar with my writing you will know that I am given to digression, plunging blindly down rabbit holes in search of I know not what. And wouldn’t you know it here we are again, tumbling down a rabbit hole not knowing how on earth I’m going to back out of this one. I had caught your interest with some suggestion that some things don’t change and that ‘thing’ is universal. So let’s get back to that shall we. My apologies, as always.

So here’s the thing about change. The more things change, the more they stay the same. And that gives me comfort. For all the change, all the technology, for the relentless parade of the next shiny advance, one thing has never changed and my visit to Canmore was just the reminder I needed and you’ll be pleased to learn that it has nothing to do with CBD.

I’ve told you that we were there to babysit our grandchildren so our own kids could enjoy the wedding of one of their best friends. They were doing what humans have done for thousands of years, all over the world. They were gathering together for a ritual celebration of a human relationship, a celebration that can take a thousand different forms but which is at its heart something that has never changed. We celebrate relationships, we thrive in relationship, we are better for relationships and our best comes out in commitment. Since time began ritual celebration has been part of the social and cultural bedrock of all societies. Of course the celebration part of it all is easy to understand, the perfect excuse to gather and reconnect with friends and family. But it is all more important than that.

As with this wedding in Canmore, we come together often times from far away and at considerable expense. And it is not just for the party (although I gotta tell you … no, never mind). We have a stake in it. Strong, thriving, growing, healthy relationships are the bedrock upon which all societies thrive. On every level they are foundational and they offer us a sense of stability, something we understand ourselves, something we can trust. Something which is not going to change with the seasons. We join in the celebration to anoint the relationship with our own energy, knowing that it will be challenging but knowing as well that it could be the most fulfilling experience of their lives. We join in the celebration as a way of saying to our friends, “This is big stuff. This is important to all of us. We have a stake in it.” I am not a religious man but I always love the moment in a church wedding when the minister asks the congregation if we will do everything in our power to support the couple. That is another version of the same awareness.

“This is big stuff. This is important to all of us. We have a stake in it.”

And as we left Canmore on our travel back home I quietly thought to myself, “There. There it is Tony. You’re getting old but that never gets old and that never changes.”

Thank you for wading your way through my idle musings, rabbit holes and all. So I’ll finish with this. We’re heading back to Deep Bay, BC after the wedding in Canmore. I’m on a BC ferry and needed to pee, sorry just being real. And so there I am, assuming the position known to every man who has ever faced a pissoir; minding my own business, eyes front, knees apart, standing approximately thirty centimetres from the wall, summoning my urinary tract to go about its business (so did I tell you I’m seventy-two, sometimes the ‘summoning’ things takes a ‘wee’ bit longer than it used to. Whatever!). And I notice a sign directly in front of me. It’s impossible to miss and besides I had nothing else to do, so I read it.

“Place used needles in the hole below.” an arrow pointing down, both redundant and obvious.

Good Lord, make it stop. All this change is killing me.