Joe Jezioranski

I was going to fly in an airplane for the first time in my life. I wondered what it would feel like?

While waiting for the plane, I was going over in my mind the trip I had just taken from Big Bell to Perth. My companion had been the constable, who was taking his yearly holidays. He looked quite different in a suit. We spent three days together…told each other our life story. I found that he was very lonely. Once he left his official duties behind and had nothing to do but brood, he knew not where to go nor what to do with himself. He was going to see his sister and her family, but seemed to be yearning for a family of his own, yet there was no room for a family in his life – not at that time anyway. Made me think about my future…

Still, I had never met anybody I would like to share my life with. Moreover I still had sorrow about my family back home, or did I? Probably not so much. Mainly disregard for most of the girls I had met so far. Never considered getting married. Was I as lonely as the “big brute”? (The constable was all of six foot six, with size eighteen boots.) He had seemed to like showing off his brute strength while on duty, but sounded like a pussycat on the way to Perth. What makes a person lonely? I did not know. It seemed to me that I was less lonely than most. Also my work in Big Bell was the final step on my road to independence from family, friends and crowds.

Then why was I going to Adelaide where I had friends? Was it because I was fired from my previous job? I did not really feel any regret about losing my job. I could not resolve the dilemma.

There was really nothing to this flying. The two hours flight went very fast. In comparison with the three days I had just spent on the train, the flying time felt like a very short moment. It seemed that waiting for the flight and the trip from the airport to Henley Beach, where Kajtek lived, was longer than the flight itself.

Kajtek was glad to see me. Apparently Stan had found him a place to live. Kajtek worked at General Motors, but did not like his job. I found a job in a junk yard, which paid a little better. Went to see all my friends, some I had not seen for a few years. Met some others I did not care very much for. Always the boasting about the great conquests made and gambling and sports as a pastime; I was getting bored.

A girl I corresponded with lived in Adelaide. I tried to arrange to see her.

I decided to room together with Kajtek. His landlady was an old pro. She annoyed us by regularly walking into our room without knocking some ten or fifteen minutes after the alarm sounded, thus generally catching us undressed. I asked her to put a lock on the door, which she refused to do. At first we used to take meals with her as well, but after being fed the same soup for two weeks, I asked whether she could see the bottom of the soup pot yet, to which she replied that the soup stock did not spoil by standing and being reused. I maintained that it was not the soup stock that I was worried about but my stomach. Anyway we decided to eat elsewhere.

The lady had an in-living boyfriend, an ex-policeman. He was the other annoying fixture of the house. He would come in with a bottle at night and recount his old days in the force. Most of his stories seemed to be designed to reduce our respect for the Australian police. Neither of us enjoyed drinking “plonk” (wine) with him, especially as he liked the heavy port type. It seemed that listening to his stories was a part of the rental agreement.

Stan and his friend lived with a German lady whose place was just across the back fence. Stan’s friend seemed to have long experience in handling old landladies. He seemed to prefer ones with young daughters, but although he got along fabulously with the landladies, he seemed to get into difficulties with the daughters. He told us stories about the “paradise” he had in Germany, where his landlady liked him so much that she financed the garage in which he and Stan shared work and ownership. Things had got rather hot and humid when he had an affair with the lady’s teenage daughter who did not look kindly at him when he decided to break up their relationship. This affair did not seem to deter him from having a similar relationship where he lived now. We turned down invitations to get together on blind dates, which he and his girlfriend were going to arrange for us.

Kajtek saw a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and fell in love with it. He did not have enough money to buy it himself, so we bought it to share. Now we could go on trips to see our other friends. We travelled to Gawler to see Leszek and down the Murray to see “Pawel” and Charlie and Johnny and Edmund.

I remember a town in which we stayed, because of the unbearable hot weather we encountered. Our friends took us to their Australian mate’s house. The place was full of people, most somewhat under the weather. We all drank beer, which was the only cold thing you could find. Most men were down to their singlets and rolled-up pants while the women seem to have underwear on. I found the atmosphere somewhat revolting, especially after some middle-aged lady sat down on my knees and started describing her marriage difficulties. Since we were going to stay there overnight, I guess we were a captive audience.

Leszek got married. At first he lived with his wife in a very tiny apartment. When his daughter was born they moved to a more reasonable place, which could be described as row housing, I guess. It had a certain charm. When we visited him soon after my arrival, he took us to see Shirley’s relatives. I liked all three of Shirley’s sisters. They were uncomplicated and very basic in their approach to life. I did not like the husband of her older sister. Seemed to be narrow-minded and somewhat boorish.

I had corresponded with Yvonne for a few years now, but of course I had never met her, as I had come to Adelaide only recently, and that was where she had spent all her life. I met her one December day; we walked and talked. I was very impressed with her sincerity. Yvonne not only ever told a lie but also was impelled to tell you anything that she felt threw a negative light on her personality. At the same time she was very suspicious that I did not like her. Which of course forced me to convince her that I did.

I was impressed with her beauty. She had beautiful eyes which tended to change color. Some days they were almost green, other days they almost looked brown. Her hair seemed to have a tendency to go frizzy at the ends but kept a really nice shape of hairdo, or was it only a good perm? She had nice full lips. The two flaws of her face – a ball at the end of her nose and a round, somewhat heavy chin – only made her face more interesting. I loved her full figure. She had a tempting feminine bosom and hips and nice-looking legs.

From the first day she impressed me with her intelligence. Yvonne could carry on a conversation with herself by looking at different aspects of the same question. It was amusing at times to listen to her getting lost in her own argument. Contradictory statements seemed to be followed by reasoned-out arguments. Normally the first statement would turn out to be the right one, but occasionally the statement would be hidden by the reasoning.

I was impressed by her faith. As the years went by, I came to be strengthened in the Catholic faith through my relations with Yvonne. In those early days Yvonne was full of innocence; it could bring tears to my eyes.

Yvonne liked simple pleasures. We arranged to meet at the beach and walked for hours along the beach. I think we started at Glenelg and finished up at Largs Bay beach. At first she would let me talk but soon joined in. She seemed to be more relaxed on our second date.

She invited me to spend Christmas with her and her family. Just before Christmas, Yvonne’s grandmother took sick. I was asked not to come. Yvonne’s grandmother had died on Christmas morning. I missed her terribly over the holidays. It was obvious I liked her very much.

I saw Yvonne a number of times in January and visited the house where the three sisters (Marie, Eileen and Yvonne) lived. I told Yvonne I loved her. She was surprised.

Kajtek and I decided that we were not earning enough money in the city and got a job mining in the Flinders Ranges. It took a whole day travelling on the motorcycle, with Kajtek doing most of the driving.

Before I left, I bought a whole box of records as a gift for Yvonne’s birthday. I knew she had gotten a gramophone for Christmas. I was writing love letters almost every day. I missed her even more. I was not much use at work. First they lost a drilling sample that was supposed to indicate the presence of ore in the rock – I dropped it while carrying it. Then I broke the rock crusher through my daydreaming. Finally I almost tipped a bucket of rock down the chute on top of the manager’s head. A strong case of lovesickness.

The mine was not much, little more than a hole in the ground. It had been worked originally at the beginning of the century and abandoned. Reopened recently because of the high price of lead, it produced only a limited amount of the ore. The ore was transported 200 miles to the south to a smelter before it could be sold. The mine was only marginally profitable. We lived in tents; the only wooden structure housed the kitchen. There was only six of us working the mine.

The Flinders Ranges was a beautiful area – rolling hills with sparse vegetation and some animals including wild donkeys. These were originally used as draught animals when the mine operated some forty years ago but had been let loose when the mine was closed. There were sheep on the farms (the mine was situated inside a large farm area) and even a few cattle. There were some kangaroos and wallabies in the area. As anywhere in Australia, the area abounded in snakes and goannas and some exotic insects. Kajtek slept on poisonous red-back spiders for a couple of months before he found their nest. Still with all those living creatures around there were very few people. Beautiful views. From the top of the hill one could see far away some salt lakes shining in the sun.

At Easter the manager gave us a week off. We carried a letter that I was supposed to deliver to the main office in Adelaide. As soon as I got to Adelaide I forgot all about it. All I could think of was meeting Yvonne.

Yvonne did not think it was very seemly to meet me every day but I managed to see her at least three times. She seemed happy to see me, and I was in seventh heaven.

Before we left I remembered the letter and we managed to send it to the office. The outside envelope was somewhat worn out as it had ridden in my pocket during the 500-mile journey from the Flinders Ranges to Adelaide, so I placed it in a second envelope addressed to the main office of the mine.

The manager was surprised to see us back. It turned out that in the letter he was asking the office to pay us off and find a replacement. He accused us of reading the letter when the main office advised him how the envelope was badly worn out. We got into a rather sharp verbal exchange. We continued to work for another month, but I was sick of the job and wanted to go back to Adelaide anyway.

We went to live at the same place as before. We now worked together in a pipe-manufacturing concern. Kajtek worked on large pipes and I worked in the yard, stacking pipes, loading pipes on the trucks, etc.

As I was visiting Yvonne often, I brought Kajtek to the little house on Kneebone Street (or was it Williams Street then?). Kajtek was sad because Irene had got engaged to George in Canada, without actually breaking correspondence with him. To make himself feel better, he would talk nonsense about Irene.

I kept proposing to Yvonne and she finally accepted my proposal. Now I was looking for a steady job. I tried a foundry and the railways, but finally finished up working for a car manufacturer.

Now that we were planning to get married, my relationship with Yvonne began to be stormy. She did not like my apparent admiration, she was irritated with my satisfaction at just being with her or with my lack of imagination in selecting our outings, and above all she did not condone my critical view of the Catholic church. We would break up our relationship about every couple of months and then come back after a couple of months absence. Usually I would apologize for my “sins,” but once or twice she would apologize for hers.

Our on-off relationship would irritate Marie more than anybody else and Yvonne would conduct additional warfare at home. This kind of relationship went on for two years.

In the meantime Kajtek made up with Irene and left for Canada. I moved to live with Johnny Malko in a house which some Polish people bought. Both Johnny and I started attending school at night.

After two years of fighting with Yvonne, she decided that she had enough of this and we finally broke off for a longer period of time. It seemed to me now that I had a rather useless existence and so I decided to undertake serious studies. I quit my job at General Motors and started first year engineering at the School of Mines in Adelaide. I had to have a job while I was going to school, so I got a sort of apprenticeship with a branch of Chrysler (Steel Pressings). Johnny moved in with another friend of his and I moved closer to the city to cut down on travelling to and from school to work and home. In the meantime I asked Kajtek whether he could get me over to Canada. It seemed to me that it would not be easy to work as an engineer in Australia. The day came when I was told that the application for the emigration to Canada was approved.

I knew I would miss many things. The most beautiful beaches in the world. Adelaide beaches had anything that one could desire: shallow and warm like Largs Bay or deep with strong surf like Christie’s – natural beaches between Adelaide and Victor Harbour, some full of people and conveniences, others secluded with no interlopers. South of the city, a range of hills from which one could see the city or the coastline and the sea. Beautiful gardens and many wild and rugged scenes.

It was a place for many sports: tennis courts everywhere, Australian football, soccer, cricket. Dancehalls that I loved so well. Must have spent at least one night every week in one of them. Met many people who became my friends in some of them.

People! Easygoing with amusing customs and prejudices but always friendly and ready for a joke. Uncomplicated and freedom loving,

Many friends. Many of them were inviting me over and trying to persuade me to stay. I was terribly busy attending all those functions. All Shirley’s friends were giving me parties and making feel sad and nostalgic. Many friends I had been with for long years even in Germany. My fellow students, a really nice bunch of guys. Here for the first time I gathered the courage to go into higher studies and succeeded. I remember a question on the physics exam, which I was the only one in the class to answer correctly – it dealt with fluids, but it was concerned with a ball flying through the air.

I would miss my long trips through the wide-open countryside on a motorcycle. Hot air flowing fast past my face. A plateau stretching seemingly forever, sometimes little groups of trees, rabbits, wallabies. In the trees stood multitudes of parakeets and kookaburras. Winding roads in the hills – one stopped in the shade of the hill to get a mildly cooler rest. I had gotten used to the place…

I would miss Yvonne for sure. I saw her last at the baseball game with a fellow I did not even know. Almost made a fool of myself. If I saw her again I probably would make a fool of myself. She was one person I never said good-bye to before leaving. She was not speaking to me any more. I still sent her letters occasionally, still could not love any other girl.

Within two weeks of my journey to Canada and after all my papers were approved, my landlady told me that a policeman wanted to see me. She asked him to come after I came back from work and he said he will be there at seven o’clock. I was wondering what did I do to deserve a visit from the police.

True to his word a policeman appeared at seven o’clock. He asked me whether I knew a person by the name of Alina Zaremba. I was overjoyed to hear again about my sister. Of course I knew that she escaped from Poland, because my father told me about it, but he had no further news about her after she left Poland. I was surprised to hear the policeman claim that he could not give my sister my address without my permission. However he gave me her address because she apparently gave the police a permission to do so.

Since I was at the point of leaving Australia, I wrote to Alina giving her Kajtek’s address. The idea that I will hear from Alina again was a further inducement to leave immediately. Soon I was boarding the train for Melbourne.

I enjoyed the trip. I was watching out of the window at the Adelaide station hoping that Yvonne would come to say good-bye at the last moment, but this was not going to be. An overnight to Melbourne was very comfortable and pleasant. I spent a day in Melbourne sightseeing. The city seemed cold to me. Maybe because I did not know anybody, maybe by now a fear of the unknown took over.

The trip to Sydney by train was unusual. One had to change the trains at the New South Wales border – the width of tracks changed. Both trains were old and not very comfortable. Sydney was exciting – a lot to see. The city is built in an unusual way. Apparently the streets follow the route of the original paths of the camp started by old Capt Cook. The streets seem to meander and the roadway itself was unusually narrow for the big city of three million or so. But it had a lot of things to see: I went to the beach and to the zoo – on the other side of the bay – to some night spots, and visited the port of Sydney. Very impressive. I like the city, maybe because I also knew some people in Sydney, so I did not feel as alone as in Melbourne.

From Sydney we flew on Canadian Pacific propeller driven plane to New Zealand (Auckland) and arrived at Fiji at midnight. It was a warm mysterious tropical night. I was at peace and full of curiosity. Unfortunately one cannot see much in a couple of hours stopover. The flight was quiet and pleasant, the food fabulous, lots of space as the plane was only half full. The hostesses were very pretty and had time to talk and take care of the passengers well. I met a clothes buyer for a Canadian store, a very pleasant and interesting fellow. If it was not for the drunken group in the first class, composed of a number of visiting Hollywood actors (Ella Fitzgerald, Jerry Colonna and others), it would have been a very pleasant trip.

Next afternoon Hawaii and an overnight stop. I created a panic at the airport by filling out a questionnaire (eight pages long) in a satirical way. After agreeing that I did not belong to any of the listed subversive fascist or communist organizations, I finally got sick of it and answer the question: “Are you planning to assassinate any US political figure?” I answered, “I like Mr Eisenhower, but I am not sure about his vice-president.” Upon which I was held for a three-hour investigation and warned that I will not be allowed to stay on US soil, which of course I did not intend to do.

The investigating officer wanted to know why I have written that I do not like Nixon under the question about planned assassination of the political figure. I said, “Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer!” He warned me again that I will be thrown out of the country if I criticize the US official language. I maintained that somewhere in the US amendments they talk about freedom of speech and he advised me not to be cheeky. I said that there was nothing in the constitution about “cheekiness.” He declared finally that I can only stay in Hawaii for 24 hours. I suggested that he talks to the pilot about the length of stay and he let me go, reluctantly abandoning the questioning.

Although we stayed at the beautiful hotel at the Waikiki beach, I found in a painful way that the sand on the beach was imported from the mainland. While rolling in the surf, I hit the bottom and cut my toe on the volcanic rock.

I arrived to Vancouver at night and was met at the airport by Irene and George. They took me to the little apartment built out of the attic of the house owned by Irene’s parents. The apartment was not quite finished and I was helping Kajtek to smooth out and paint the walls. I was surprised, but grateful to learn that I was claimed to be a relative of Kajtek in order that I could pass through the Canadian immigration. I soon got a job with Pioneer Saws, a firm that manufactured chain saws. I did well on most machines until they put me on vertical mill, on which I messed up a set-up. I got a severe reprimand from the foreman.

Anyway I worked for a while in Pioneer and saved my money. My trip and incidental expenses brought down my savings to five hundred dollars, so I needed some funds before I started going to school again. I continued to go to night school to improve my English. After a year of work, I decided to go to university.

When I tried applying to UBC I found to my dismay how narrow-minded all those institutions are. I was told that they do not recognize Australian universities and that I will have to pass the entrance exams. I was determined not to lose a year and agreed to pass the necessary exams in two weeks. Fortunately after talking to various department heads, they let me go to the first year engineering (skip the entrance year) if I pass English and chemistry. I studied very hard for the make-up exams. Fortunately these were made for the students who did not quite pass the course in the entrance year and were consequently relatively easy. I made first class (or A) in all the exams.

A week after the exams, I was attending university. I tried to keep working at night at Pioneer Saws, but found it too exhausting. Between classes and seminars and tutorials, I was spending 38 hours a week at the university. If I worked at night full time, I did not have enough time to sleep and study. Travelling time was also eating into my spare hours. I quit the full-time job and decided I needed to move closer to university. I was worried about offending Irene and Kajtek. Fortunately Irene got pregnant and suggested herself that looking after me in addition to all other things was getting too much for her. I found a room close to university and a part time job at the bakery.

When midterm exam time arrived, I found that even that arrangement will not work. I quit working completely. When I was working, I bought an old car. During the early years at the university, I used to carry students who needed a ride. This arrangement not only paid my transportation costs but also provided an opportunity for a bit of social life. The students I carried would often invite me to their homes or to the parties held by their friends. Through these contacts I was able to get a roommate and supplement my diet by snacks in private homes.

I must say that my quarters were very economical. I liked my landlady, Mrs Bradshaw, and her husband who was an administrator of the student house at UBC. The Bradshaws had three sons who were great “sportsmen” – most of the year they would be out fighting their lacrosse, football or hockey battles, all limping home for supper and immediately leaving to play another game. The oldest boy was a camp counselor and seemed to work for a salary barely over the legal minimum wage. Another son worked for a broker and studied accountancy through correspondence courses. I was never quite sure what the third one was doing, besides playing all those games. Miss Bradshaw was mainly looking for a husband, but occasionally working as a secretary. I had to be careful as her room was next door to mine and we shared the bathroom. The continual meetings on the staircase ceased when she became engaged.

In general the living arrangements were very satisfactory except for the meals, which were well tasting but short on substance. While I studied in the evening, I would often feel hungry. A lot of social life between the students would be conducted by meeting late at night for a snack.

When spring came the exams were in sight. One of the courses at the university was a surveying course. This course demanded field work at the end of the school year. As we moved around the campus in the spring sunshine, the desire to play hooky became almost unbearable. We had a girl student in engineering, who was as ugly as sin, but even she became popular during our field work. If we did not have a daily milestone to meet, nothing would have got done.

My summer job was with the surveyor in the Canadian Rockies. I was exhausted taking final course – drafting: this was a two weeks course with drawings to be turned in at the end of each day. The rate at which we worked would have been fast for an experience draftsman, while we had absolutely no idea what we were doing. Thus one could find some students still working at it early in the morning, while the others were beginning to arrive to start the next day’s work.

I slept through the last weekend until early Tuesday morning. Luckily I had nothing to pack, as I was as poor as a church mouse.

At that time Trans-Canada highway BC portion was still under discussion, although the provincial government already decided to ask the federal government to route it through so-called northern route. Most of the analysts claimed that the provincial government reserved an easier southern route for its own highway through the province. The southern route (or Highway No 3 as it was called) was a fairly good highway – at the time – except for the portion near Trail, BC.

I started very early in the morning and by 9 o’clock I was through Okanagan, which is a beautiful fruit-growing valley. Past Okanagan the highway climbed through the hills shielding the valley from the east and then dropped into another valley that, through its dry, arid character, reminded me somewhat of the internal part of South Australia. After driving for an hour or so through this desolate countryside, I had to stop by the side of the road and sleep for a while. As I resumed my journey I was soon climbing the steep mountains before Trail. The road was so narrow in places that two cars would not fit side by side. Often when one met an oncoming car, one had to back for up to a quarter of a mile to a place where the road was wider. It was only thirty miles of this winding road through the mountains but it took me over three hours to traverse it. Today the trans-provincial highway bypasses this stretch by the road carved out around Christie Lake.

It was mid-afternoon when I passed Trail and I had to hurry if I was going to get to Kimberley before nighttime. Luckily, although the road again climbs into the Rockies it is a good highway through the Kootenays, with most of the countryside owned at the time by either Cominco, Canadian Pacific (CP) or companies owned by one of those companies. Of course CP also owned Cominco at the time. It was not a case of company town but the whole countryside was owned by one mammoth concern. I got to Kimberley by ten in the evening and booked into hotel.

I was supposed to report for work that day. Although it was late, I decided to phone my boss Mr Shayler. He was glad to hear from me and told me he will pick me up on the way to work in the morning. It turned out that had I not called him, I would have missed him, as his crew was going into the mountains to survey a mining claim. As it was, he let them go ahead in order to go with me to a store to buy me appropriate clothes and some gear he could use. When we got to the place where we were going to stay, the others were gone to find the location of the mining claim. It was too late to join them, so we looked over the campsite – a group of shacks – and laid blankets and such on different bunk beds. We played a game of table tennis in which I impressed my boss by beating him relentlessly through some ten games – my previous training in the labor company came in handy – and then we cooked dinner in anticipation of return of the crew. After dinner I had to sharpen my new ax with some help of more experienced and somewhat condescending other crewmen.

As the days went by, with the schedule involving climbing up a mountain, clearing the paths required for line of sight (we were doing surveying), climbing down the mountain, late meal, table tennis, sleep, I seemed to be lousy at all of the jobs except table tennis. It seemed however that this ability somehow allowed me to gain adequate respect to survive my introductory period. After a while I was able to clear the path even if I did work only at half the speed of the other members of the party.

When we finished surveying the mining claims, we surveyed new lots or land parcels. After some time, Mr Shayler left me in charge of another man surveying Doukhobor lands. Luckily the place where we surveyed was not a part of Sons of Freedom lands; still, we encountered some bitterness. We were trying to establish the division of lands owned originally by the Doukhobor community but for which the loan was in default because of some shady dealings by the community leaders. The simple people saw it as a conspiracy against them, especially as often they were part of third or fourth generation that “owned” the land.

One day as we came close to a house on the land being surveyed we were invited for lunch by an old lady. She spoke in an old Russian which I could barely understand. As she served us buttermilk with dark bread and watermelon, she sat down at the end of the old kitchen table and began to tell us about the old times.

I asked her about the land surveying markers, which we could not find – the surveyor thought that Doukhobors pulled them out on purpose, since they knew that the land was being surveyed for possible sale by auction. The old lady claimed that the markers were gathered as firewood during the long winters. Most of the land was cleared for cultivation, so any trees standing or pegs in the ground provided a rare opportunity to get firewood. She claimed that they paid for the land, and anyway after so many years of cultivating the land they should not be threatened with the loss. I tried to disassociate myself from the due process of law, but she would not be deceived and lumped me with all the rich who were threatening her livelihood. And so I thanked her for the food and left – this is how I found out how it felt to be a hated imperialist.

It took longer than I thought to survey those lands, especially as I found my first survey to be inaccurate and had to repeat it. Whereupon I found some of my original stakes missing. We were bored with the whole process. Our landlady showed us one of the local amusements. All telephone subscribers in the area were using party lines. Whenever a call was made to you, the local custom demanded that you wait until all the interested parties got on the line, whereas when the call was not for you, you picked up the receiver quickly so that the real party was not interrupted by the click while you were spying on their call. This served as the local source of news about the close neighbors.

Of course we could and did drive fifty miles to Nelson for movies or to watch curling matches. The main attraction of the curling match was the booze that was drunk by the spectators. We were hampered by the need to drive back to our “home” town. To spice the visit to the movie, one could pick up the local girls in the cafe-cum-games-room. We did it once. The two girls must have been all of seventeen. During the journey back, one of them continue to make allusions to her sex life, boys prowess and such – I was getting sick of her showing off. So I said, “Should we take you home for the whole night, or do you want a quickie in the car with both of us?”

There was a deathly silence. After about five minutes the “sexy” seventeen-year old said in a very small voice, “I don’t feel too good. Can you take me home?”

I presume we were not used as a subject for “the boys and sex” stories, but then one never knows.

When we got back to Kimberley, I had the first of my kidney stones attacks – this is very painful. I was taken to hospital and fed enormous amount of liquids to push the stone out, which of course increases both the pressure and the pain. Finally I passed the stone with a lot of help not only from the liquid but also from morphia injections, which would dull the pain somewhat. I asked the old doctor whether this attack would repeat itself.

“Of course,” he said, “probably many times!” He cheered me up.

My summer job ended with a stint at Golden, where I got the exposure to “no-see-ums” and horse flies and mosquitos of such magnitude, that it was difficult to see the target through the instruments as the clouds of insects obliterated the view. The herds of cows were semi-protected by the smoke from especially prepared smouldering fires, while we were not so lucky. By the time I left for school I was not sure that I enjoyed this surveying bit.

I was doing relatively well at school but had to work hard at it. Most of the day was spent at lectures, labs and symposia. At night I was studying. It was interesting that those subject I was most afraid of, I usually made the highest grades in, while those I enjoyed, the lowest. I believe this was so because I worked hardest in the frightening subjects.

My social life was limited. Occasionally I would go to visit Kajtek and Irene or attended mass or some social at the Polish church. At one of those socials a girl asked me whether I met any bushmen while I was in Australia. I was not familiar with this term and said, “Of course! I am one. I worked in the bush.”

She looked at me with surprise and laughed. I realized she must have been asking about aborigines.

Sometimes I went dancing to the house kept by the Catholic nuns for the newcomers and met different people who recently migrated to Canada. Sometimes stayed at the university and attended various club functions. Generally the driving force to go out was a bit of hunger as much as loneliness. Most of the time I studied.

My roommate was a young boy from a farm on Vancouver Island. He was very lonesome. I went out with him a couple of time but did not enjoy his “cherchez la femme” pursuits. So he roamed alone. One day he came home elated. He found a girl of his dreams. From this day he was disappearing more and more often. The girl seemed to prefer daytime appointments. At night he would bore with description of his happiness and telling me how she always knew what he wanted and needed, but never allow him to have sex at night, only in the daytime. What was irritating him, was that she did not want to see him at weekends. One Sunday he decided to visit her and caught her “in flagrante” with a customer. He was brokenhearted – he already bought a ring and was going to ask her to marry him. I guess the end of the affair saved him from failing his year, but not from failing one subject, which he had to make up the following year.

At the exam time I got another attack of kidney stones. I was admitted into University hospital three days before my exams. The engineering department would not allow me to write make-up exams, but they did permit me to write the exam in the hospital. In order to be able to write the exams, I had to be heavily doped with morphine to dull the pain. This, however, was not very helpful to my thinking process. I was surprised to find out that I passed – not as well as I did in other years but adequately to continue my studies.

My third year was devoted to electrical engineering. I have now identified with many younger colleagues – I was now 29, and moved in the circle of more mature students. The third year was more pleasant, seemed to be easier. My new roommate was now a man who studied arts and liked to play tennis. His game was just about on my level, so we played often at the university or on city courts.

Throughout my university days, I still thought about Yvonne very often. When January came, I would think about her birthday. So every year I would send flowers for her birthday. In fact occasionally I would send a letter telling her about my life or just some polite gossip.

Mr and Mrs Bradshaw, the couple I lived with, had a house in the western part of lower Vancouver – not far from the university. On Sunday I attended mass at St Augustine church. One day the pastor of St Augustine asked me to come and talk to him. He inquired whether I am a practicing catholic, whether I thought about getting married, how do I relate to the sacraments, and so on. After these preliminaries he told me what this was all about. Apparently the pastor of Yvonne’s church asked him to establish whether I was a suitable person to seriously correspond with her. I left it up to him to decide, but he would not leave off the hook. He wanted to know whether I would seriously consider marrying Yvonne in the catholic faith marriage. I said I would definitely consider it, but there was no question of her agreeing to it – so that’s where the matters rested.

Imagine my surprise, when a couple of months later, a letter arrived suggesting that Yvonne would like to come to Canada and reopen our relationship. She asked if I still felt strongly about her. For about a week I was undergoing a major revision of my feelings – a deep soul searching exercise. Then I wrote that I thought I still loved her and would be very happy to marry her after I graduated. She replied that she was coming by ship.