Last Pennant Before Armageddon: RIP WP Kinsella

News of WP Kinsella’s death hit me this AM like a beanball to the heart. The first feeling I experienced was sadness at the loss of a Canadian literary icon. His folksy, earthy stories of First Nations people and baseball helped me at an early age to make some sense of Canadian culture, history and baseball, one of my favourite sports.

My second feeling upon hearing the news was a mixture of curiosity and fear. The curiosity comes from learning that the man ended his own life yesterday, September 16, in Hope, BC. Strange name for a place in which to end one’s life, yes? The timing of his death, though, seems stranger. Keep in mind that he chose to die, electing to undergo doctor-assisted suicide. He’d suffered from diabetes for years, according to an obit in the Montreal Gazette, and perhaps also from lingering after-effects of a head injury suffered when a car hit him back in 1997. Maybe these health problems had finally caught up to him. After all, he turned 81 this past May. I hope he and his family achieve a measure of solace.

Now for the fear. A part deep inside me can’t help but worry there’s another reason he chose this particular autumn to die. In the mid-Eighties, I read a short story of his that scarred me like raised cleats from a dirty slide. Called The Last Pennant Before Armageddon, it details the Chicago Cubs’ march toward their first World Series victory since 1908. Concurrently, the global political landscape is heating up, with the USSR and US edging toward nuclear war over an invasion of Sri Lanka. The story ends ambiguously, with the Cubs only a few outs away from advancing to the World Series, leading in the game and threatening to score more.

You see where I’m going with this.

The Cubs are good this year. Really good. They ran away with their division, and on paper at least they are huge favourites to cakewalk their way to the National League Pennant. Yes, as every baseball pundit loves to remind us plebes, the playoffs are a different beast entirely, and anything can happen. But I don’t get the feeling the Cubs will fold. I get the feeling they’ll keep rolling all the way to the World Series.

Now, I’m not saying Kinsella knew something we don’t know. But I do wonder what was going through his mind as he was (surely) watching the Cubs win at a .630 clip this year while no other team has won even 60% of their games. I wonder why he chose this fall as his death date. And I wonder about his thoughts on the international political landscape. I don’t see any parallels in terms of mortal superpower enemies these days. There’s no Russian Bad Guys to the American Good Guys. The closest analogy may be ISIS vs the west. But that doesn’t offer the same WWIII-type fears as the tense climate of the Eighties did.

I remember reading The Last Pennant Before Armageddon at night at my grandparents’ farm, and looking out the window at the dark sky and the horizon and expecting to see the mushroom cloud any minute. Sure, I was a 13-year-old kid who, after being terrorized by the apocalyptic films The Day After and Threads, feared the threat of nuclear war practically every day. Those days may be gone, but residues of those fears will always linger, no matter how old I am or how stable the political landscape. Because I am an anxious person by nature, and I fear for the safety of my loved ones. Maybe I just wish The Last Pennant Before Armageddon hadn’t ended so ambiguously.

Kinsella’s posthumous book, Russian Dolls, is due out in 2017. Rest in peace, WP, while I hope to be able to read in peace.

On Muslim Weddings and Thomas Paine

Another weekend, another wedding for Praveena and me to attend. A Muslim wedding, no less; yet like the Tamil Catholic wedding we attended in June, another poignant example of Canadian multiculturalism. The bride’s family heritage was Indian, the groom’s Pakistani. Praveena and I knew neither of them personally, but that didn’t stop the bride’s mother, Praveena’s colleague, from inviting us.

The festivities took place in the Governor’s Room, the largest ballroom of the Canadian National Exhibition’s Liberty Grand building. Built in 1926, the building served for 45 years as a display case of sorts for the Ontario government’s general exhibits during the CNE. When Ontario Place opened in 1971, the government moved its display case there. Since 2001, the Governor’s Room has served as an elegant setting for weddings and other posh parties.

The wedding was an evening event, with the invitation indicating a 5:30 arrival time. But when Praveena and I showed up just after 5:30, we were among the first arrivals, which is to say the least late. Over the next ninety minutes, guests in evening attire trickled into the leafy courtyard, where drinks were being served. (The open bar surprised me a bit. I wasn’t even sure there’d be booze, it being a Muslim wedding.) Much mingling and drinking and picture-taking ensued. We got a sense of being in the midst of money, that Praveena and her physician colleagues weren’t nearly the richest people in attendance.

The theme of multiculturalism quickly asserted itself, with a well-integrated crowd of Arabs, Asians, whites, browns and a few blacks. The mix of sartorial styles was particularly interesting. I felt like I was at an international fashion show with all the hijab and khimar headscarves, kufis, turbans, kurtas and sherwanis, saris, shalwar kameezes, lehengas, churidars, modest long-sleeved gowns and slutty low-cut dresses. Here we had the best of Canadian diversity on display at the aptly named Liberty Grand.

A two-piece band filled the courtyard with Indian music. One musician played a shenai (Indian oboe) while the other played tabla (North Indian drums), overtop a recorded drone of mind-melting sitar. Loud as it was—such that we occasionally had to raise our voices to chat—the music was one of the highlights for me.

As liquor flowed freely and lips flapped around us, I started wondering if the bride and groom were getting anxious. Usually by this time of the day, during all the drinking and mingling—at the kinds of wedding I’m used to, at least—the special couple has already undergone the ceremony, exchanged vows and kisses, been pronounced man and wife. Yet here they remained unmarried. Was this extra unmarried time good or bad? What if one of them took the opportunity to reconsider?

Finally, around 7:30, everyone was ushered inside, into the Governor’s Room, to await the ceremony, which would begin around 8. The brother of the bride was sort of the MC. But really, all he did was welcome everyone and introduce the Fez-wearing father of the bride. Proud papa came up to the stage and spoke at length. Seemingly well-educated, he lauded Canada’s multicultural tradition, invoking Thomas Paine and his famous quote: “The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”

Once the father introduced the presiding Imam, the ceremony ramped up. The Imam turned out to be my favourite speaker. Conducting the proceedings in thickly accented English, he frequently cited Allah (obviously, it being a Muslim wedding), but not in a discomforting, we’re-better-than-you kind of way. Due to his thick accent, I couldn’t understand everything he said, but of what I did understand, he said some really cool things. At one point, he said that no matter what God you prayed to, no matter what faith you professed, you’d end up held in good regard by your god as long as you did good in the world. Shades of Thomas Paine!

Another wise sentiment: A shout-out to those who can’t see the faults of others because they’re too consumed with the faults of themselves.

The ceremony lasted a couple hours. Then came the food, starting with green salad. Famished, I ate it dry, before the wait staff could bring the balsamic vinaigrette dressing. A steady procession of food continued over the next hour: curried vegetables, spicy eggplant, spinach paneer, biryani lamb, tandoori chicken, naan, papadum, spicy pickled mango chutney. Dessert consisted of pistachio ice cream in a (literally) chocolate cup or panna cotta covered in fresh berries. A buffet table also offered wedding cake and assorted hand-held goodies.

Shortly after dinner, the dance floor opened up so we could burn off all those calories. Guests young and old gleefully shook booty til 1am, at which point the hired band, God Made Me Funky, shut ‘er down. The ballroom quickly cleared out after that as guests made their way to the parking lot.

All in all, the evening offered great enjoyment, and certainly a different side to the uncomfortable Muslim stereotype perpetuated in western media. Education truly is the enemy of narrow-minded fundamentalism. Sensible folks of all backgrounds really just want to get along and have fun together.