step by step, the longest march

I arrived to visit my dad on Friday April 13 in mid-afternoon. After declaring emphatically that he didn’t want to go for a walk (apparently he had refused earlier in the day too), dad eventually consented to go as far as the activity room to read the paper. We sang (My life flows on, and "Kisses sweeter than wine" with lyrics modified to reflect his life with mum, among other things). 

After supper, dad became quite excited about the idea of getting out for a walk (“we can send for those books & photos later”) so I got him dressed and headed (with the walker) down then out towards the driveway entrance off Major St. near College. It took two rest stops outbound and three on the return, as well as an uncounted number of verses of:

Step by step, the longest march

Can be won, can be won.

Many stones can form an arch

Singly none, singly none.

And by union what we will

Can be accomplished still.

Drops of water turn a mill.

Singly none, singly none.

(This is great walking song, which my sister Margie says is attributed to the foreword from a 19th century miners' union constitution according to liner notes from a Pete Seeger album. There is some different history with a great performance by John McCutcheon here).

After our return (the whole excursion to the corner of the driveway and back took about an hour, maybe 40-60 meters total traveled) he wanted to sing more, so we did. After repeating How can I keep from Singing, he remarked “you seem to have recovered pretty well from your experience (long pause) on the boat” – this from someone who an hour earlier had been unable to remember my brother Danny’s name or mine, or even the word “brother” to describe our relationship (“You two, same mother, right?"). Uncharacteristically, I was not wearing any sort of political t-shirt or even a button as a clue, and my boat experience would be neither in his immediate memory, nor in his well-laid-down distant memories, and there are no immediate print cues around either (I later printed this account out for him to read, or have read to him). The song was of course connected to my boat experience for me (but not so much for him), but not very recently -- it had been sung much more recently at mum's memorial).

Dad’s acceptance of a walk (or any activity) seems to be conditioned by luck as well as stubbornness, but as my brother Danny points out, stubbornness helps create opportunities for luck. As luck (¿?) would have it, dad turns out to be related to some stubborn people.

Radical hospitality, practical solidarity, boundless love: Memorial for mum

Alice Mildred Heap (née Boomhour)

July 20, 1925 - March 24, 2012

  Antiphon  The work of Justice shall be peace,

           and the effect of Justice quietness and confidence forever.

  Verse       Keep ye Judgment and do Justice:

  Response  For my Salvation is near to come and my Justice to be revealed.

Wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother; Christian, pacifist, socialist, feminist, community activist and organizer extraordinaire. Died peacefully of complications following pneumonia after a brief hospitalization at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.


Alice is survived by loving husband Don (Dan), her inseparable partner in faith and in social justice causes for more than 61 years. Also survived by sisters Margaret Boomhour, Muriel Holmes, Irene Lathe, Ruth Coburn, and brother Lawrence Boomhour. Sorely missed by daughters Margaret (Serge Lalonde), Eleanor (Terry Quance), Susan (Pascal Laforest) and sons Harold (Hilary Dickson), Danny (Carol Schwartz), Andrew (Elizabeth Rainsberry) and David (Stephanie Kelly), and by grandchildren Rachel, Miriam, Michaël, Amanda, Tia, Katie, Odile, Évelyne, Marie-Hélène, Rian, Hannah, Eric, Danni, Nicolás, Felipe, Thomas and Steven, and great- grandchildren Dylan and Grace. Predeceased by brothers Robert and Charles Boomhour and by grandson Jesse Cohen. Fondly remembered by countless others who were embraced by her radical hospitality, her practical solidarity and her boundless love over the years.


After high-school, Alice attended the United Church Training School in Toronto (affectionately known as the Angel Factory) and McGill University in Montreal, where she became close to, and eventually joined, an extended family of Marxist Anglicans, the Society of the Catholic Commonwealth (SCC). She led her fiancé Don in converting to the Anglican Church. She also took part in Student Christian Movement (SCM) student-in- industry summer work-camps, worked in factories and participated in organizing drives with now legendary Québec trade-unionist and feminist Madeleine Parent, among others. In 1948 Alice attended the founding meeting of the Canadian Peace Congress in Toronto. In 1950 she was banned from traveling to the United States, though she ignored the ban for unauthorized personal, religious and political visits there. She worked with the Church Peace Mission and Easter Peace Marches until the mid-1960s and on the White Poppy campaign for Peace until 2009.


While raising a large family and welcoming SCM work-camps, war resisters, civil rights activists, farm-workers and many others into a home where the door was never locked, Alice worked at different times for University College, for the Toronto Public Library (Yorkville Branch), for the Visiting Home-makers Association and for housing co-ops including the Kalmar Co-op and Alexandra Park Co-op, where she was a member of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union. While remaining in comradely dialogue with many friends in and out of the Labour Progressive (later Communist) Party, Alice joined the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and later the New Democratic Party, where she served many organizing functions in local riding associations as well as being elected to the Provincial Executive as a socialist caucus delegate. She was recognized with a Bishop's Award for Faithful Service in 2000 for her steadfast work at Holy Trinity Church in areas such as social housing, a support group for released offenders, and anti-poverty work (she continued at weekly People’s Presence until the year of her death).


Donations in Alice’s memory can be made to any of many causes dear to her heart, including but not limited to: the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly, the Canadian Council for Refugees or the Christian Peacemaker Teams.


Many friends rallied around in support as age and infirmity set in. The family is grateful to three in particular - Marty Crowder, Abraham Blank and David Chong – who attended faithfully to Alice, in addition to the dedicated care she received at Kensington Gardens and from front-line workers elsewhere.

There are those who struggle for a day and they are good. 

There are those who struggle for a year and they are better.

 There are those who struggle many years, and they are better still. 

But there are those who struggle all their lives:

These are the indispensable ones.

(Bertolt Brecht) 

Musical winterlude 2 (+post-script: the Power of Song)

Contrary to the impression an earlier post might have left, I am not opposed to seasonal singing generally (just to artifically “festive” piped-in muzak). Live singing is good at any time, and especially when family and friends get together. On December 26 and 27 my family gathered at the long-term care facility where my parents live for sing-songs with a few friends.  We sang labour classics like The Banks are Made of Marble, Solidarity Forever  (with some of the great new lyrics from Wisconsin), Union Maid, Joe Hill, Preacher and the slave (Long-haired preachers come out every night), peace songs like Ain’t gonna study war no more and protest songs of hope like Oh Mary don’t you weep, We shall overcome, We shall not be moved  and If I had a hammer. There were a few funny songs like I am an Anglican (sort a a religious in-joke) and Old time religion. We ended up (dad gets tired quickly – my parents turned 86 this year) with How can I keep from Singing? (I had difficulty controlling my tears, predictably) and the Irish freedom song Kevin Barry (which for me recalled my Irish cellmate from Givon prison in Israel).


Post-script: my brother Danny sent this link to the CBC program Definitely not the Opera from December 31, on the Power of song, with some powerful first-hand stories from different times & places (including Dan Hill having to prove he was himself by singing his own song for Bahamian police).

Musical winterlude

While my feelings on this time of the year might not go as far at to list Top Ten Things I hate about Christmas like my friend and blogging idol Laura on We move to Canada, I completely concur with her #2 hated item. One of the seasonal hazards of this time of year is the ghastly “festive” muzak which is piped into all sorts of public places, especially where people are supposed to be shopping. I think it must even offend a lot of people who (sometimes) believe in or celebrate (at least some) aspects of Christmas. I suspect if serious market research were done, malls would discover that people would be happier to go and shop to almost any other soundtrack, and that a significant portion of the the shopping public actively stays away from stores at this time of year specifically because of the schlocky muzak.

This auditory drek is particularly insidious for anyone susceptible to ear worms. Even though I avoid malls and other muzak-infested spaces at this time of the year (and am very careful when I turn on the radio), even a short exposure can leave me involuntarily humming or whistling one of those goddam tunes for hours afterwards.

For many years my personal antidote to "festive" muzak has been Tom Lehrer's Christmas Carol -- his attempt to capture the true, commercial spirit of Christmas, as celebrated in North America: buy buy buy! Decades old, but like a lot of Lehrer's material, it never seems to go out of style (alas). His songs like Send the Marines and Pollution could’ve been written this year: he is reputed to have abandoned writing when they gave Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize (because “satire had become obsolete”). That story may be apocryphal, but it must’ve been depressing to have joked in the 1960s about Ronald Reagan going into politics (to huge laughter from his audience) only to live to see the bad B actor become POTUS.

Lehrer’s twisted rhymes and even more twisted humour were what I like to call a deformative influence on my childhood: many happy hours were spend listening to his albums. I even sang his Masochism Tango at a school concert at Kensington Community School, with my teacher and friend David Chong at the piano (considering the lyrics, it is difficult to imagine an elementary student or teacher getting away with such a performance today). His parodic Christmas carol also has catchy tune that was set down in my impressionable young memory as a child, so it is always effective in obliterating whatever schlocky ear-worms manage to creep in (though repeated applications are sometimes necessary by late December).

In a similar vein (though I have yet to learn the song), the incomparable David Rovics (who has many great songs which I recommend, on topics from Bradley Manning to the Mavi Marmara, and much more) recently sent his most new seasonal offering If I hear another Chrismas Song I think I'm gonna puke (with the note "this is not a children's song and it is not radio-friendly" but based on my personal history, I would say, 

depnds on the kids...)

(This post was originally a comment on Laura`s blog, which I then realised was worth working up into a post of my own...). I will return to other topics soon, but meanwhile let me leave you with a link to a classic Tom Lehrer playlist on Youtube -- good for what ails us at this time of year (and others).