It might seem unusual to be publishing a memoir in your mid-forties but when you’re an old soul with miles of experiential wisdom to impart, it works beautifully.
This is a genuinely inspirational story of perseverance and resilience. Chris MacDonald is a Toronto tattoo artist who’s come a long way from his rural beginnings in Alliston, Ontario, where he ran wild with his brothers. Along the way, his parents divorced and his mother disappeared from his life. He lived the life of an at-risk kid—cutting school, imbibing, starving, skateboarding, playing punk rock—learning his trade, and building relationships along the way.
“I miss my mom all the time. Maybe if I had closure, things would be different. Unfortunately, I don’t. I only have the things I came here with” (257).
Those things are a creative soul, a solid work ethic, and a talent for music and art. Chris’s writing is lyrical and impressive, flowing from his fingers like the tattoos he respectfully etches on his client’s skin.
“Tattooing is a hulking chimerical beast, startling and beautiful when spotted. It’s a shape-shifter: a cosmic, chrome scorpion; a crude, grey-scale beauty; a Zulueta tribal badge” (240).
This page-turner is divided into three parts: early life in the small town of Alliston, surviving Toronto on his own, and finally, becoming a tattoo artist and getting his own shop. Part One flows like poetry as his memories paint the page. Part Two is tougher as he crawls through the underbelly of the city. And Part Three reads like prose. By then, MacDonald is head-down into the business of becoming an entrepreneur so he can support his new family. His poetic soul never leaves, though; it’s just transferred to his art and music.
Through a series of descriptive vignettes, we wend our way through MacDonald’s life. He’s sensitive, caring, wounded, emotional, and most of all, honest. You’ll find yourself rooting for him and identifying with him. An eighties’ kid, his first crush was a “safari-guide figurine” and then he saw Olivia Newton-John.
If you know Toronto at all, you’ll paint yourself into the many places where MacDonald skates and crashes. Poor and starving, he does what he must to survive.
I can only applaud Chris for his perseverance, and for using the talents he came here with.
You can find Chris at Under My Thumb on the “western edge of Little Portugal” in Toronto. You can even book some time with him, enjoy the therapy being tattooed offers, and emerge wearing one of his creations. Go to Instagram and view his work. But first, read this, his first book.
PD TORONTO, ON – MARCH 11 – – Chris MacDonald, owner/operator of Under My Thumb Tattoos poses for pictures in his shop.__The drawing on the left is his. Vince Talotta/Toronto Star
Twenty-five years ago today, on July 10, 1997, we left our home in Ontario for a new life in British Columbia.
At the time, I was working as a domestic abuse counsellor in a transition house in Oshawa, Ontario. Bethesda House is still there, helping women and children find their way through a tumultuous time. I’d graduated with my B.A. in Indigenous Studies in 1995, worked as a sexual assault counsellor at a Rape Crisis Centre, and then been hired at Bethesda House. But I was done with Ontario. The hot summers. The snowy winters. Freezing pipes and terrifying drives through icy roads. Bad weather and worse boyfriends. When I stopped feeling my fingers in winter, I knew I had to go.
I had no job and no idea where we’d live in British Columbia, but I had one friend on the Sunshine Coast and another in the Kootenays. I’d been accepted at UBC, and thought maybe I’d become a teacher.
My daughter had graduated from grade 8 that year and was starting high school. What better time to begin an adventure?
Tara & Carmen. still friends today
Fortunately, I jotted down a few notes in a journal as we drove West, like so many have done before us, and continue to do today. My daughter was fourteen, and we had Riley with us, our six-month-old border collie. Our friend, Dave, helped us pack the U-Haul trailer. I’ll never forget those puffins on the side! Dave helped us hitch it to my old white Cavalier station wagon. We looked something like this.
Everything we owned we packed in that trailer, but left our camping gear in the back of the wagon. I’d found a campground close to Vancouver—Anmore Campground near Buntzen Lake. That X on the map was our destination.
packing up our possessions
I’d never hauled a trailer and had no idea how to back it up, so we drove the whole way going forward. Except for this one time when I drove to the top of a hill and then realized I was on a dead end road. Somehow, I turned us around jack-knifing, cursing, and praying all the while. The following is taken from my 1997 journal.
Thursday July 10. We drove off at 6am and landed at the Queensway Motel in Espanola (between Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie) at 3:30pm — $40/night. 486 km and $16.00 for gas.
Friday July 11. We left Espanola at 6am and crossed the border into Michigan at 9:30 am. By 8pm, we’d arrived in Wakefield. 13 hours. 733 km and $16.00 for gas. I wrote: “The country along the South Superior shore is beautiful. We swam in Superior between Munising and Marquette. Gorgeous sandy beaches, but the water is freezing!”
Saturday July 12. We left Wakefield, Michigan at 6am and drove through two whole states: Wisconsin and Minnesota. I loved the land, the national parks, and later set a novel right there in central Minnesota near the Leech Lake Reservation—LURE. We arrived in Grand Forks, North Dakota around 4pm. 10 hours. 635 km and $23.50 for gas. I wrote: “Yikes. Prairie rain. We drove through two hours of hard rain storms but tonight is very hot and humid. More thunderstorms expected.”
Sunday July 13. We left Grand Forks at 6:30am and drove to Williston, North Dakota (which is almost Montana). We arrived at the Select Inn at 3pm. 8.25 hours. 546 km and $20.50 for gas. I wrote: “Ran rainclouds and learned to read a prairie sky. Yeah! They have a pool! We ate supper at a cool place called Trappers Kettle.” Aha. It’s still there and still cool.
Monday July 14. We left Williston at 6:15am, changed time zones again, and arrived in Laurel (just past Billings) Montana at 3:30pm. It was sunny & 90 degrees F. We were just too frazzled to go on. 615 km and $19.50 for gas. We stayed at the Welcome Travelers Motel. I wrote: “Miles and miles of rangeland dotted with cows and horses. We passed deer and pheasants on the road.”
Roadside Break in Montana
Tuesday July 15. At 6am, we left Laurel Montana. We drove through the Rocky Mountains all through Montana and Idaho. Yellowstone Country! We almost didn’t make it to the top of Lookout Pass in Montana, and the Fourth of July Pass in Idaho was terrifying—driving in 3rd gear, 20mph to the top. We landed in Sprague, Washington at 7pm as we stopped to shop in Butte, Montana. 14 hours. 913 km. I think I was too freaked out to check the gas! I remember that Sprague was a one-silo town and I had the creeps. We stayed at the Purple Sage Motel (now closed) and I hid my purse in the bed with me that night. This Capital I Introvert was starting to lose her mind.
Wednesday July 16. A HORRIBLE HORRIBLE DAY. We left Sprague and drove through the Cascade Mountains. As we drove up the pass, my temperature gauge glowed red and as we hurtled down the other side it slipped back into the green. It was blistering hot but I kept my foot on the gas.
We drove through Seattle at noon and arrived at Canada Customs at 2pm. As we were sitting in the lineup at the Peace Arch, I smelled something burning. “I hope that’s not us,” I said to Tara. Then we saw smoke wafting out the hood of the wagon. I’d toasted the thermostat and the fan. The motor ran out of coolant and the car overheated. The border guard took one look at us and waved us on. “Just go,” he said. “Just keep going.” We drove through White Rock spewing coolant. Some nice guys helped us out at Crescent Service Station where we got a new thermostat installed. Still, we overheated all the way through New Westminster. I hated driving through New West, and I still do to this day! We finally arrived at the Sleepy Lodge Motel in Coquitlam at 8pm. Riley ate some rotten bone out back and had diarrhea all over the disgusting gold shag rug! I wrote: “Oh yeah. I got my period too.”
Thursday July 17. We unpacked the trailer at the U-Haul Storage in Port Moody and got the fan fixed at Canadian Tire. From Sprague Washington to Port Moody 695 km.
And then we got a fantastic camping spot in the overflow area at Anmore Campground near Buntzen Lake. We pitched the tent and crawled into our sleepings bags for the very first time. $22/night. We’d finally made it to that little X on the map.
Caesarea, Ontario to Buntzen Lake, BC 4,258 KM in 7 DAYS
Ironically, I ended up living and teaching in Port Moody for most of the next twenty-five years, though I never went to UBC. On Saturday July 19, we drove down Hastings Street and right through downtown Vancouver. I wrote: “Scary. Chaotic. Too many people. Too little space. No UBC.” At the time, I knew nothing about the Downtown Eastside, and the people we saw there in the streets that Saturday morning. On the way back to Port Moody, we decided to try and find a beach. I mean, we were finally at the West Coast and hadn’t found the ocean yet! I looked at the map and chose Wreck Beach which, unbeknownst to us at the time, is the most famous nude beach in Vancouver. Right about then, we realized we rural Ontario girls were just not ready for Vancouver life.
I was destroyed! I thought I’d made a huge mistake and was considering going back to Ontario. I called my friend, Jackie, who lives in Kaslo (the Kootenay Mountains) and asked if we could stay at her place for a few days while I figured out what to do. It didn’t look far on the map (just over an inch) but 13 hours later, I was driving through the Rockies, covering my view of the drop-off cliffs, and crying, “I can’t do this!” I told Jackie I’d never drive to her place again along the Crow’s Nest highway, and I never have. I love you Jackie, but mountains to flatlanders are like traversing another planet. Jackie calmed me down, and while we were visiting, we found our first basement suite in Burnaby at Canada Way and 10th Avenue. I discovered SFU on Burnaby Mountain, and so our new lives began.
We had great times at Anmore Campground and, years later, I set my Hollystone Mystery series at Buntzen Lake. We camped for about three weeks and, after that, my daughter refused to camp with me ever again! Though I think I still have that old blue cooler.
In all, we travelled 4,258 km in 7 days—me, my 14-year-old daughter, and our 6-month-old border collie puppy.
No regrets. If we’d stayed in Ontario our lives would be someone else’s lives. We wouldn’t be the people we are today. We wouldn’t know the people we know today. And oh, the experiences we would have missed.
As I was working on my writing course this afternoon, I came across this letter I wrote to my mom on Valentine’s Day 2003. She wasn’t well. Dementia and strokes had taken their toll and I hoped to trigger good memories for her. In doing so, I triggered my own.
Though I end the letter by promising to come and see her that summer, it didn’t happen. She passed over on May 1, 2003, Beltaine, and so this ended up being a kind of farewell.
I do hope someone read it to her. We loved the same things, her and I. I hope she closed her eyes and traveled with me among the trees and flowers and bygone seasons. I hope for a moment she relived the beauteous times of her life on our farm in Pickering.
My Mom
My Dearest Mom:
It is St. Valentine’s Day. My
daughter is almost twenty, and you are in your ninetieth year. I float
somewhere in between, still feeling like a young woman, but when I look into
the department store mirror I see someone unrecognizable. I wonder if I will
ever feel my age. This is a kind of limbo. I am beyond childbearing, yet I
often feel like a child. And, of course, I am. I am your child and will always
be. I find you in a country garden, in a warm jar of preserved peaches, in a
well-worn novel, in a nonsense rhyme, and a giggle.
Do you know that I remember
all the trees and flowers from our farm? On the roadside, a tangle of tiger
lilies swelled each spring, and beside them hovered a chokecherry bush. Dixie
Road was hidden by a hedge of cedars that grew into an impenetrable wooden wall
over the years. At the front door snug against the blue cement steps was your
rockery—a murmuring mass of blooms: purply blue delphiniums, giant hot pink
peonies swarming with ants, crimson gladiolas, and fuzzy, buttery irises
towered over the blossoming ground creepers.
In the backyard, a weeping
willow tickled my rosy cheeks, the arm of an old apple tree held my makeshift
steel trapeze, and Manitoba maples multiplied each year when the wind unleashed
their keys. It was a topsy-turvy world, as I swung on my trapeze hanging by my
knees, and sometimes by my ankles. Beside my playhouse and the old outhouse,
the lilac garden marked the border into the vegetable fields. The north side
was a hubbub of rhubarb, and the south side a soft plethora of yellow
primroses, and deep blue Sweet William.
I remember them all. Do you?
The orchard was a place to lie and drift in the misty veils of clouds that shifted shapes and whispered words. I wrote poems there, beneath the old apricot tree where a Baltimore oriole had been seduced by the coral blossoms and built a silken nest that swayed like a stocking from its branches. A tiny cherry tree clung to life amidst several pear trees and my favourite apples, a half snow-half something that I’ve never been able to find again.
Was spring your favourite
season as it was mine? The first shoots burst through the mud and snow, creeks
swelled their banks and called to me and my rubber boots. Bees raced to
pollinate the blossoms like eager young boys darting this way and that
throughout the gardens. Purple violets and lily of the valley burst through the
emerald grass and all the earth awoke.
Summer was sewn up by rows
of potatoes, peas, beans, corn, tomatoes, and carrots all demanding attention. A
long row of raspberries enticed Bootsie who loved to nibble them off the
branches. And what you did with that harvest.
One wall in the damp stony
cellar was lined with shelves of preserves: jars of pinky red tomatoes, bright
orange peaches, green chunky relishes, bread and butter pickles. How did you
ever manage? And then it was pear-picking time and ladders were set up in the
orchard so baskets of succulent green pears could be sent off to Richardson’s
IGA in Pickering Village. It was a miraculous place to grow up, akin to the
earth, listening to the winds, the insects, the birds, the trees and flowers.
It lives in my memory. Can you remember it too?
Now there must be snow on the ground in Pickering, crusting the earth, and ice-encased branches tapping against the windows begging for release. I hated winter. I hated the cold, the trudging, the attempts at tobogganing in the back fields and skating at William’s pond by myself. I tried to like it. But I hated it. My frozen toes, numb in damp snow boots, would itch like crazy when I finally warmed them. The upper tips of my ears threatened to break off, and they too would itch when they finally thawed. The only things I really loved were the gigantic icicles that clung from roof corners, and the feathery paintings by Jack Frost on our living room windows. I hibernated, like the rest of the earth’s creatures, and came alive again in spring.
Winter was the reason I moved to B.C. Here, there is only a long, long autumn followed by a long, long spring. Here I am awake all year long, hiking in the rainforest and along the ocean. Here I do not freeze and itch for months at a time.
I don’t miss Ontario, but I
do miss you, Mom. And I wish that I could be with you, especially now that
you’re not well. You must remember to
eat and drink as much as you can. Please. Water is our life force. So you must
drink even when you don’t feel like it.
Going through old papers and memorabilia, I ran across two pencil-scrawled smudged pieces of lined paper—my grade eight speech. I’ve typed it here as I wrote it.
It’s interesting for me to look back and hear my thoughts at thirteen. I was innocent then. Going to church with my father, obviously believed in God, was probably studying for my confirmation in the Lutheran Church.
That never happened.
A year later my world imploded and God did not survive the Father-Daughter War.
But, what I see here is my mini-INFP voice coming through and the genesis of the writer/poet. Decades later, I’m still looking for answers to these questions, though not in the bible. And I’m still asking “Who am I? Why am I here?”
I’m glad that I preserved something of who I once was. Although that little girl still exists, she has changed drastically. Experience does that.
Grade 8 Speech (12-13 years old)
Mr. Sellers and Class.
“Why are we here on this earth? What are we to do while we are here? What happens to us after we die? Is there something greater than us? What is re-incarnation? Does re-incarnation really happen?
Even the great professors and scientists of our era cannot answer these questions. The people of our so-called ingenious world, who have worked vigorously inventing A-bombs and hair bleach cannot answer these questions. Great doctors and philosophers cannot answer these questions. They have made up theories. The Earth people changed through the ages from amoeba to reptiles to apes and finally to human in the form of cavemen. All we can do is have faith.
Should the religious point-of-view be mixed with scientific theory? “Faith of our Fathers. Holy Faith.” All we can do is have faith and believe. The religious opinion cannot even fully explain why we are here and what will happen to us after we die. We cannot obtain straight-forward answers to these questions from the Bible. We do know however, that we are here and while we are here we are to do God’s will. But what is God’s will?
It states in Luther’s Catechism, we are to fear and love God, our highest superior, and love our neighbour, which is everyone in the world. These are also the two greatest commandments God gave through Moses.
What happens to us after life? A children’s verse tries to answer this question.
“I am but a stranger here. Heaven is my home. Earth is but a desert drear. Heaven is my home. Danger and sorrow stand round me on ev’ry hand. Heaven is my fatherland. Heaven is my home.”
What is this heaven? The dictionary says heaven is “the atmosphere; the dwelling place of God; the home of the blessed; God himself; supreme happiness.” Living on this earth now, we are either living in heaven or hell. Heaven is being with God and hell is without God. After we die, our soul or the spiritual and immortal part of us continues either being in heaven or hell. Heaven is a feeling towards God or to be with God—not a placid place in the atmosphere made of fleecy clouds, the entrance being gates of pearl, and strangely inhabited by angels dressed in white and playing sweet music from their harps.
I sometimes wish it was.
However, we must not let our dreams and wishes get too far-fetched. When we die we will be buried in the ground and the immortal part of our being, our soul, will go to God wherever he is.
As for the question, “is there something greater than us?” a children’s hymn tries to answer this. “God is great and we are small, but we on his name may call. When we fold our hands to pray, he hears every word we say.”
Yes, there is something greater than us. God, whom we worship in prayer, praise, and thanksgiving. God our creator. God, the supreme being who created man and woman with his own breath of life. Who was lonely and wanted something and someone to reign over. Our great God of love and salvation. But God is not always pleased with us, although he always loves us. When we are disobedient as Adam and Eve were, and when we are tempted by evil and we do evil; that is when God is not pleased. But redemption is possible by admitting defeat and going humbly to God asking for forgiveness.
We are born. We live a normal lifespan of seventy-five years. We die. We go to heaven or hell. Will we have another opportunity to relive our life? Will we come back as another human, animal, or plant? To live life’s problems over again? If you can answer yes to both of these questions then you believe in re-incarnation—to be made over again. The Bible does not mention anything about re-incarnation. However, after the Day of Judgment, we may come back to Earth.
Can the Bible, which people have been studying and reading for millions of years be wrong? One big lie?
If so, there are going to be many disappointed people in the world. The statements I chose to present to you today come from the Bible.
Will we live from day to day or will we die and float away?
If we are good upon this earth, will afterlife be another birth?
Life on Earth is one big question—to die or live, God only knows.
We are curious human beings, but no one knows where we will go.
April 28th was an important day for some men, historically-speaking. In 1770, James Cook, British captain of the Endeavour landed at Botany Bay in Australia. In 1789, the mutiny against Captain William Bligh of the Bounty erupted, led by Fletcher Christian. And in 1905, E.A. VanSickler completed this piece of calligraphy:
I stare at this piece every day. Ernest Albert VanSickler is my maternal grandfather. And, this is the only thing I have that once belonged to him. It’s a treasure. Imagine the hours he spent perfecting this calligraphy; the intensity of detail, the focus of eye, brain, and hand, the discipline to avoid a smudge and perfect each stroke. His energy and his DNA are both trapped behind the glass; though the man is something of a mystery to me. He was born November 7, 1889 in Toronto, Ontario; which means that Ernie was sixteen years old when he completed this work. I wonder: did he ever want to become an artist or a writer or a monk?
Ernie was twenty-two when he married my grandmother, and twenty-seven when he signed up to fight in the First World War on Spring Equinox 1916. He is listed as a roofer-contractor on his attestation papers. So much for the pen being mightier than the sword.
I don’t think it was entirely his idea. According to my aunt, Ernie and his father went off and got drunk that night and both signed up together. My grandmother was furious. In the five years they’d been married, they’d created four children: Jim, Grace (my mother), and Ernest and Arthur, a pair of delicate twin boys. His namesake Ernest Albert, actually died less than two months later on May 11, 1916. Had he shipped out already? And Arthur (who we called Tiny Tim) was forever sweet and fragile.
I can’t imagine what it must have been like for my grandmother, a twenty-five-year-old woman left with four children to tend while her husband went off to war. Cora was strong. I remember that. And she had her mother-in-law, tiny Annie, who kept her husband in line with an iron skillet; a trick she must have learned during her ten years of maid service (14-24) in England.
Ernie & Cora
We know that Ernie’s father was a drinker, and somewhat tricksy. On his attestation papers, James VanSickler claims his birthdate is August 20, 1871. He was actually born in 1862, but had he attested to the truth–that he was 54–he likely would have been rejected. And the thought of war abroad was too great an adventure to risk that.
James is described as being 5’11”, dark complexion, dark brown hair, and blue eyes. His mother was Tuscarora (the sixth Iroquois nation); his father a Dutchman from a colony in New York. The family homesteaded in Michigan for several years. It was the frontier; a wild, dangerous place. When he was only ten, James’s father was killed in a bar fight. When his mother remarried his killer, James and his younger siblings ended up living with their grandmother back in Ontario.
374 Dupont Street @Brunswick Avenue in Toronto
Later, the VanSicklers, father and son, ran one of the first gas stations in Toronto. They had an auto body and paint shop, and grew mushrooms in the basement. My mother refused to eat mushrooms ever after. The VanSicklers held dances for their customers.
Here they are throwing a party for the returning war heroes. It’s remarkable these two came home unscathed.
I would have loved to live in this house–sleep in that turreted tower. What stories are trapped beneath those shingles?
The pen is mightier than the sword.
These words were first spoken in Richelieu, a historical play written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839. Richelieu says: “The pen is mightier than the sword… Take away the sword; states can be saved without it!”
I think I understand why sixteen-year-old Ernie would choose this adage. I see him as a warm, sweet, sensitive, happy-go-lucky guy–quite unlike his father. I see it in the twirling fronds, in the passionate precision he uses to highlight:
Surely, this was a man of the arts, not of the gas station. Could he have painted something other than cars? Still, country and family come first. I wish I had known him better. Wish I could remember more. I was just a kid when he passed away. But, perhaps he is with me still, whispering in my ear, breathing through his pen.
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So much for the pen being mightier than the sword. 
