Several years ago I devoted my fall Fishing Column in Outdoor Canada Magazine to the significance that Remembrance Day held for me. It touched a chord with readers, many of them veterans, but many others simply folks who felt as I did.  One of them was my cousin, Jeannie Miklos, who e-mailed me recently and asked if I might send her a copy of the column so she could share it with her kids and grandkids. Unfortunately, I wrote the piece back when I stored everything on floppy disks.  So I was unable to send Jeannie a copy.  But the girl was on a mission and lo and behold she found an old faded copy of the magazine and was nice enough to retype the manuscript and e-mail it to me, along with an old black and white photograph of my Grandfather.  With Remembrance Day fast approaching, I thought I’d share it you!  Thanks again, Jeannie.  And I do love you!  ;<)

   

 

Inside each of us we hold a special place for certain holidays.  For many, it’s Christmas when families and friends gather in warm, bright lit houses on cold, dark wintry evenings to celebrate the joys of the season.  For others, it’s Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, or a date circled on the calendar that signifies a special anniversary or a birthday.  I’ve never told this to anyone before, but the day I am swayed by greatly is Remembrance Day.

 

For some peculiar reason, ever since I was a kid, Remembrance Day has drawn me under its extraordinary spell.  Stranger still perhaps, is the connection I make between Remembrance Day and fishing, although in retrospect, I suppose the association isn’t really so odd.  You see, some of my fondest fishing memories are of the times I spent with my grandfather.  And, while I can’t recall a single fish that either he, my brother or I ever caught, I can recall vividly the many hours we spent together and the tales he spun of his First World War adventures as we trolled for walleye in a leaky, old wooden punt pushed by a smoky outboard motor.

 

Even today, when Remembrance Day approaches, I am taken back almost 50 years, to a lush, tree shrouded gravel path in the Haliburton Highlands, with the unlikely name of Hell’s Road.  It’s hot and muggy and the cicadas are screeching as a thin, grey haired old timer, with two scrawny mischievous kids toting steel fishing poles strung with black nylon line head for a creaky old Bailey bridge spanning the Irondale River.  There, we’d peek through the knot holes on the wooden decking looking for bass or trout before we floated down our bobbers and drowned a couple of dew worms.  The long summer walks would take hours although the fishing often lasted but minutes.  And always, there were the stories.  Of people we never knew and of far away places with strange sounding names.  Like Vimy Ridge, Ypres, the Somme and Passchendaele.

 

Let is also be said that my grandfather was a man ahead of his time in terms of political correctness.  You see, all his war stories were happy ones.  Though he spent the better part of four bloody years in the muddy trenches of Europe his tales were nearly always of old friends and of humorous misadventures.  I didn’t know it at the time, but I learned a lot from my grandfather…and I don’t mean how to roll your own cigarette…which he let us do for him whenever we were alone.  On other occasions, he let us take a tiny swig of his bitter, warm ale, which as any good Englishman will tell you, is the only way to drink it.  

What can I say ... my Grandfather Pyzer was quite a man.

 

 

My grandfather was decorated with the Order of the British Empire and though we’d listened to the story of how he won this honour a hundred times before while we fished, we always pestered him incessantly until he told it to us, just one more time.  Yet even when he spoke of his courage, he found a way to minimize his accomplishments.  Some time later, when the Queen bestowed the same OBE honour on the Beatles, several veterans returned their medals in protest and disgust , but my grandfather only laughed.  I kind of think he was proud to be associated with the famous mop topped foursome.

 

My grandfather died in a veteran’s hospital almost 35 years ago, ironically from smoking too many of those roll-your-own cigarettes.  Yet, not a single Remembrance Day passes that I don’t think about him.  And, about our fishing trips together.  I can’t help think too, when I watch the now grainy black and white documentaries each November 11^th and see soldiers fall, planes crash, and ships sink how many kids from across this huge country…from little dirt water towns and villages to big cities…who enjoyed fishing as much as I do, never came home to wet another line.  I am embarrassed to think how well off I am as a result of the sacrifices my grandfather and later my father (who passed away two years ago in that same Sunnybrook Veterans Hospital) made overseas, like so manly other Canadian grandfathers, fathers, grandmothers and mothers.

 

I am even more ashamed to witness the pittance of respect we now pay these old forgotten heroes who won us the freedoms we now take so much for granted.  Why most of us can’t even take a minute out of our busy days, at the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month…to remember.

 

 

Gord:

 

I was so pleased to find this…I was on a mission. I knew that I was so impressed with it that I would have kept a copy somewhere!  As I read it again I had tears in my eyes.  We were very fortunate to have such a wonderful grandfather. 

 

My “fishing” memories were probably a little different than yours, sitting on a dock at Caesarea or like you sitting with him in a little wooden dory out in the middle of the lake.  I came across a picture of him at Caesarea painting that little boat.  I think that all I ever caught were sunfish.  It was the time that we spent with this remarkably modest man that was important.

 

I am sure that he had an affect on you with your chosen career and I like to think that some of the values and ideals I have had in my life are as a result of his teachings.

 

I too remember his stories.  His warm sense of humour and how modest he was.  I never remember him being upset.  He treated everyone with respect and I am so proud to be his granddaughter. 

 

I also remember him rolling his own cigarettes.  I was fortunate to take a trip to England to the little town where he was born.  We stopped in a little pub there and I could imagine him sitting there rolling his own…the people in the pub were still doing that today.  When he left our house, he left a trail of cigarette butts and ashes, but nobody ever minded.

 

I can remember going to the Warriors Day Parade in Toronto and tears streaming down my eyes thinking of him and how brave he was.  I also remember being a Brownie and chosen to decorate the cenotaph (those were the days when we had November 11^th as a holiday!)  I was so proud to be chosen and felt I was representing him.

 

I have been able to see his war records and he received his medal while serving in the military in France on November 2, 1916 for bravery in the field.  My only regret is that I didn’t quiz him harder on the details.  I vaguely remember the story of him being in the trenches.  How I wish I had written it down and paid more attention.

 

I will think of him on November 11^th this year and every year after and I will make sure that my children and grandchildren know how lucky they were to have him help keep our country free.

 

All the best

 

Jeannie

 

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