RETIREMENT: A Plan

     Most of my life I have had jobs that engaged some type of planning: Land Use, or Transportation Corridors or budgets. I encouraged friends and youthful family members to always try and have a 5 year plan. It helps in making decisions when we face choices. Will it lead me to where I want to be in 5 years? Or at least on the path to achieving it.

Naturally, the Universe has its own plan and events occur that we could not foresee but have to deal with when they come along. 

     So: I planned what I wanted to study, where I wanted to travel, when to have a family, the usual Timeline for a careerist!!  I am very happy with how the bulk of things turned out.

 

     However, in a ridiculously dumb act for a supposed "planner" I did not plan for Retirement. Not many people actually think they "need to plan for retirement". It is simply something that comes along. We look out for a pension plan to provide money to live during retirement, but what on earth was I going to do during the day. No commuting, healthy lunches to pack,  memos to write... I also was one of the lucky ones from the turn of the Century that had an opportunity to retire early. Then children left home and I began to think -- Now What? I hoped to have decades left of life - what should I do with it?  Clearly the Nobel Prize or Pulitzer Prize will not be on the horizon. 

     From my early childhood, I have loved music. Listening to it; reading about it  and going to concerts. I had accumulated this collection of grey cells in my skull that held info that was not being used ; nor likely to be used.

     Then, I saw a write-up in the local paper about a new Local Radio station who were looking for volunteers. I applied and managed to secure a position doing TWO radio shows a week. I absolutely adore it. Searching through my huge digital library for appropriate tunes to either create a theme or celebrate a singer/song's anniversary.

     I came to Canada long before Y2K was a threat, and had a "Plan" to quietly become a prominent Geographer, drool over maps, study communities in the daytime and at night be disc-jockey playing rock and roll music. Well, none of that happened 50  years ago, but at the tail end of my so-called working life, I have in fact achieved what I planned 50 years ago!! Guess my 5 year plan seems to be written on a very elastic medium.  I love my retirement now. Doing something I have wanted to do all my life and share my love of music with others.

     If you get a moment, listen to me on 97.5CIOE-FM over the airwaves or 97.5Community Radio on the Internet. Wednesday at 1pm (AST), I play oldies;  Perry Como, Patti Page, Al Jolson and Do-wop groups. (You know, those singers that pop up twice a year on the PBS Fund raising shows!!) It is called, When the Lights Come On Again.  Then in the evening at 7pm, (AST) also on Wednesday, it is the Beatles and Beyond show. Obviously featuring the Fab Four, but also what music in the sixties evolved into after the youth boom took over the world's developed economies.

 

So, I guess, some five year plans take a bit longer to achieve.  

CMHC + Canadian Housing Market

A recent article in Maclean's had an interview with Evan Siddall who is the CEO of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).

 

While it was very interesting, I feel it is much too narrow in its perspective. No acknowledgement of the history of homes in Canada. It solely looks at mortgages, banking and how money flow works in an economy.

Mortgages and Mortgage Insurance were only PART of what CMHC delivered and administered.

However, as he points out in one sentence, then never returns to the issue -- postwar Canada's housing was in poor shape.  Furthermore, the apparatus for delivering housing for a growing 1950s economy did not exist in Canada at that time. Both Canada and major Municipalities sought out Professionals from Britain to shore up the need for the processing the supply of homes for the booming demand.

CMHC built it all up,  dollars and bricks -- the non-mortgage side of housing is what made us significant... and Pierre Elliot Trudeau's  belief that Housing was important as the engine of economic growth and change  within (and between,) the Provinces; therefore, outside the Constitution's clauses that said housing & planning were Provincial jurisdictions. Economic Growth is a federal responsibility in the Constitution. (Siddall acknowledges that housing is an engine of growth but only views it from the monetary side. Because he is a money man by "trade".)

The planning and infrastructure and social housing aspects of CMHC were huge in the 70s up to late 90s as the impact of the Baby Boomers moved through society.

 

Even now, the social aspects of housing (i.e. subsidies for the poor) gets ignored. Everyone comments on the need for assistance --but nobody provides it; save for the government.

Look up the earlier Maclean's article on CMHC, written in 2011. All the doom and gloom never happened,  because it was about bankers and their worries... the Banking sector which Canada has managed better than the United States. ONE PERCENTERS do not buy the average house -- it is a different market and requires different controls.

Do not blame CMHC for Mortgage-backed securities -- those happened because of changes the IMF made that permitted banks to securitize mortgages (MBS,) and remove the liability from the books;  Lending Institutions pressured the Government to allow MBS. The availability of these "extra" mortgage funds was supposed to facilitate growth. Of course, when MBS proved popular,  the sharks dove into the tank and created havoc with the "extra" dollars.

Canada is beautiful and its cities are great BECAUSE of everything CMHC did from 1947 right up to early C21st. It is too simplistic to look at the housing market in Vancouver or Toronto and think it was caused by CMHC and its insured mortgages.

2B or not 2B?

I feel sorry for today's children coming of school age and then young adulthood in the 21st century. They will not have the joy of writing on paper with a pencil in their everyday lives.
Everybody seems attached to their digital devices that spell out words for you before you have even typed a single character from the keyboard that pops up on one's "smart screen."




When my own children were of school age, one of the things I actually enjoyed as a parent was to go shopping for "School Supplies."  We would buy a dozen pencils usually a medium firmness HB box. They may have used them for art or math, but the box never lasted the year... before the end of the school year, they would be rummaging amongst my stationery items for a pencil.


When I went to school (I think Charlie Dickens may have been at the desk next to me...) I not only had an open topped ink well in the corner of the desk, I was given 2 pens to dip into the aforementioned ink-well!  How ever, the thrilling "supplies" I went to school with, was a compass set (look it up in Google. It seems fitting to mention here, that I still have that same set in my possession.) And 2 or 3 pencils -- generally HB ones, but possibly a B softness for drawing biology specimens. However, I and my friends were quirky individuals, interested in art, but not artists. So I am unclear why we adopted the habit of using a strong. firm pencil sharpened to a very fine point; My favourite was my 2H. Yes you read that correctly, a 2H. Extra hard, so one could press hard and not snap the point as well as giving one a fine straight line.  Great for drawing hot rods during chemistry and idolized sketches of "Julie" a few desks over in Maths ... well, any drawing. My note books had few lines of writing but had hundreds of drawings in them.


Now do not get my started on "propelling pencils". I loved them too, For more idiosyncratic reasons ...that I no longer recall, I used to use a green leaded one.


That pencil lasted me through college and in to my first  job. Whilst there, I was correcting a draft letter and my boss informed me that the "green" coloured ink (or pencil) I was using for corrections was a no-no. Green ink was for the excusive use of the accountants.


Had to revert to blues and blacks, but my 2H remained a useful tool for doodling during boring meetings!!

The day the music died

 I remember when young, and moaning about school and probably about homework, my mother would say: "Ah, these are the best days of your life. Time for fun and excitement." It did not seem very exciting being 15 in gloomy London in the 1950s.

England still had not fully recovered from WWII nor would it for many more years. However, what a privileged life we were living had not sunk in yet. Free education, even at the University Level, warm homes and food in the fridge. Yes, we had a fridge back then. The neighbours thought we were weird wanting a fridge in that climate, but of course, nowadays, it is a different story.

 

I think I have finally absorbed what my mother meant by those words. Childhood and schooldays appear to have been like a spaceship ride from one simple planet to another very complicated one called adulthood!

 Teachers, counsellors "life-style" coaches forget to warn you that even adulthood comes in a variety of stages: young adult, mature adult.... and the one most people ignore -- Old Adult!

I gave this portion of my life little consideration until it appeared like a wild dog on the scene and bit me! Ouch, being old aches!!

I have a good memory and feel blessed to be able to vividly recall many events from the 1950s and 60s. However, I have ended up in a location without the people that figure prominently in those memories. Similarly, there is a whole decade -- the Seventies, a time that truly helped shape me, and gave me the opportunities to realize a lot of dreams, plus learn "adult" skills. Now I find, those people also seem to be out of reach.

The factor that figures as links between all these events is music.

My memories are intrinsically wound up in melodies. Working on my radio shows leads me to refresh the memories and articulate many of my feelings from those times. Not surprisingly, I long to be able to sit with those people & relive those times; but time has robbed me of too many of the actors in my life.

I remember very well February 4th, 1959, when my Dad woke me up for school with a cup of tea and the newspaper whose headline shouted out that Buddy Holly had died. It was a huge shock.

Feb 3rd, the day that the plane crashed, is the "day the music died" according to Don MacLean in American Pie.  I feel blessed to have enjoyed a long life after that day, which has been filled with music and love and friendship.

 

Yet, I still wish, for just a moment, that I could experience things again with my friends from the best days of my life.  School Days !!

Christmas

mostly, my family and friends know me as a Scrooge-like person when it comes to Christmas celebrations.
The truth, however, is less obvious. The scrooge character has become associated with people who are tight fisted or unhappy or trying to squeeze the last drop of work out of the staff without acknowledging their family's needs.
Scrooge has also become associated with what we now call the "ghosts of Christmases past" and "Christmas Future" -- a future that will happen if we do not change the present. (Present as in Time not gifts.)

Well, if Christmas was a one week affair, full of carols and hymns with it culminating  in a family gathering. I would love it.

I am not the first, nor the only one, that laments all the commercialization of Christmas, but to me it is not about gift giving or the Santa fable, with too many voices saying how parents can harm their children with the continued spreading of that tale.
It is a) the length of the shopping spree that depresses me, and b) the types of gifts. Really, A car with a bow on it for Christmas?!  How big is this demographic? Of course some of the One-percenters can do that.
Just to set the record straight, I love Christmas. I still remember "Christmases past" with a smile and a tear. I was raised in vicarage for my first 9 years. I still remember sitting in the church watching my Grandfather conducting the Christmas service; every time I hear Hark the Herald Angels sing, I can see him standing there announcing the "final Hymn". I cry, even it is Mariah Carey's version!
And Elvis singing Blue Christmas recalls a very special memory and link with my sister. (I miss you, honey. If only the young Michael had a clue as to how jets, the Internet or Skype are useless tools for replacing the touch of a hand.)
It is the Christmas-Futures I can no longer cope with.
The ache of missing loved ones increases every month and Christmas just seems to amplify the pain.

On a brighter note, Bring on the eggnog ! Put on Phil Spector's Christmas LP ! I also enjoy the sharing of time with family and friends, but I do not need another gift to open for the rest of my life... however, if you need a hint, I always appreciate another book. (p.s. not a hardback!)

Discrimination

I have to say that for the major part of my life I have been treated the same as everyone else in the community around me. My friends and neighbours were blind to my skin colour, accent and accurate knowledge of my origins.

That is not to say that people have not insulted me along the way nor made absurd assumptions about my links. On reflection, some of them were hilarious.
In the fifties, the local busy-body of the neighbourhood introduced my family to the "other new immigrants" in the vicinity... small issue, he was a Jamaican, not from India... or even Asia! There was little that we had in common, other than ANY newcomer to an area.

Luckily, he and his English wife were a charming couple and did not take offence. We did not actually become fast-friends, but we were always friendly to each other.

I write about this now because I was listening to a radio interview which focused a lot on discrimination that Blacks were suffering in Canada, specifically Ontario and Nova Scotia in that radio show.
Yet, I had many West Indian friends in Toronto and, it amused me no-end that they would make fun of other Blacks that had come from Africa. Admittedly, it was many years ago, and the substitute terminology "African-Canadian" to include all Blacks was not in common usage. However, back then, they saw their two worlds as being very different.

In Toronto, I was trying to rent a 1-bedroom apartment in the Italian quarter of Toronto, (it was a great flat!) but the woman showing it to me, the "head" of the family no doubt, asked if it was for my wife and me. When I said "No" because I was a bachelor. She told me I should find a good woman and settle down. I, a single man, ought not to be looking for a 1-bedroom flat in town.
Her logic was comical... I guess she thought that I would regularly be bringing women back to her family's "home" and it was not appropriate. I am not sure how I was supposed to find a good woman to settle down with, if I did not actually have a base from which to start looking.
So, even bachelors meet weird discrimination.

It may be that I was fortunate to grow up in a quieter more gentle time. The world seems a lot more angry nowadays.

The most obvious discrimination my family met most people do not even know about. We are Anglo-Indians. In Calcutta, now Kolkata, in the immediate post-colonial time, we did not fit in anywhere; As Christians, our religion was away from the mainstream, and at that time, the two main religions on the sub-continent were not even getting along with each other. That was why we immigrated to Britain.
If you wish to see what Anglo-Indian discrimination was about, watch PBS' Indian Summers; It does a decent job of bringing out the problems.

correspondence

From my teenage years, I have written letters regularly to family and friends. It did not matter if they lived just down the road from me, or around the world. There is magic in receiving a letter in the mail, opening it and then sitting down to enjoy reading it in peace; Then re-reading it immediately.

I have a "pen-pal" from 60 years ago with whom I am still friends. She also became a huge family friend and we shared many fun filled travel outings together in different countries.

When I arrived in Canada, a century ago... at least. I wrote a round-robin letter. It was addressed to the whole family: Parents, Nana, Aunts (in 2 separate locations) and my sister. Back then, the copies were carbon copies. Sometime after a year or so of employment, I was brave enough to sneak into the corridor where the photocopier was, and make copies in the lunch time to send to the different locations. I kept track of which family member received the "top copy" and who got the Xeroxes! I rotated the receiving of the much prized hand written version!!

I also did something similar with the gang of friends I left behind, and in the first two years, I would often receive back a multi-party tome. Sometimes created under a haze of booze and late night party going. (I often wondered what kind of socializing they were doing without me, if someone was to suggest around midnight, "Let's write to Mik" and there were others who  agreed that this might be a fun thing to do !!)

I am not as hopelessly misguided as to thing that I was a siren-calling  attraction, it was a lot more a case of boredom and a desire to emulate a Monty Pythonesque situation. (We were big fans.)

After a couple of years, the family correspondence continued in the previous manner, but old friendships broke up, drifted away or just plain preferred a one-on-one natter. Luckily, there were 3 or 4 of those friends that trailed into the next century. Only a handful, but I still enjoy putting pen to paper for them.

I truly feel the present generation, and society in general, severely under-estimates the joy of writing letters.

Now that my parents have passed on, as have Nana, Aunts & Uncles, and way too many friends, I often dig out the old correspondence, -- did I forget to say, it is important to retain the material? -- and read those stories and tales and jokes of a long time ago.

I do have  a digital social media presence (Hello! what am I doing RIGHT now!) However, I cherish those old letters.

Thank you Sir Rowland Hill, you started a wonderful thing.