The Last Summer of Rob

About the Book

Neither Rob nor Craig have needed another friend until the complex urges of adolescence created changes in their lives that started each of them down different paths. Craig tries to follow the acceptable social patterns of living, but in doing so, creates an increasing distance between him and his friend. Rob is torn between two lifestyles until a crisis forces a decision. Neither family is aware of the problems with which their sons are struggling. One father is a sex-hungry drunk; the other is so tied up in doing "community service" that he barely knows his son except as an unpaid helper in his shop. Neither mother recognizes their sons' turmoil. Rob gets into trouble with the law and is sent to a young-offenders' institution. A child is born to Rob's girlfriend, with a birthmark carried by Craig that he inherited from his father; the deep friendship between the two boys is shattered. Whatever the pain, for Rob there can be no reconciliations.

About the Author

I was born and raised on the Prairies, the fourth child of five, in the Depression years. My father moved to BC and I stayed to finish my high school. I supported myself by working at a variety of odd jobs. When I graduated from high school, because of a failing economy in BC, I moved east by cattle car, with all of my worldly goods in a suitcase and $7. After a week of freight train travel, I landed in Toronto, very hungry, very broke and very dirty. But Toronto was too busy for a country boy, and I moved on---still hungry. I was hitching to Hamilton when I was picked up by a taxi-driver returning empty, who, on hearing my story, found me a job and a place to live on "spec" with "Mom" and son George, whom I cherished for the rest of their lives.

When war was declared in 1939, I joined the Air Force, was finally selected for pilot training and got my wings. I was shipped overseas to England, where I took another course in combat flying after which I , along with 50-60 more neophytes like myself, was loaded aboard an aircraft carrier with our Hurricanes. We flew off at Gibraltar with orders to fly to Wadi Natrun in the Sahara Desert. We stayed in the shifting sands of the desert for a month. Then the Japanese threatened Singapore and we were formed into a unit and told to go to India to protect Singapore.

So, 11 of us set out, following a Blenheim with a navigator, across the Sahara and the Nile and Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, Iran and Persia, then across the Oman Gulf to Jiwani and on to Karachi--that was April 4, 1942. We then had a day of R & R, after which we pushed on through Jodhpur, where for the next year, I air tested and delivered the aircraft that came off the service line, earning a ticket to fly all singles, all twins and specified multis (that was before Jets).

At Jodhpur, we were living in the old palace of the Maharajah Bahadur Sahib, Sir Umaaid Singh, who was an honorary Air Commodore in the RAF with earned wings and who enjoyed the company of aircrew. Not a bad way to spend the war.

I had a month's leave in Canada and was then posted to a Dakota squadron where we flew people and parcels all over Europe and its capitals. The war ended and while other squadrons disbanded and the men went home, we stayed on. For a year we flew straight and level, emptying POW camps and flying VIPS around to see war-torn Europe. Then, finally, wee returned home. Most other returned men had been discharged, so the friends I made were scattered. I elected to stay in the permanent air force and I worked for a brief period as a discharge officer in Vancouver, urging the discharge airmen to use their credits for education rather than for a dining room suite. Finally I took my own advice, discharged myself, enrolled in psychology at UBC, got a BA, got married, went east to U of T for an MA and a PhD, started a family, returned to BC, was hired by the Canadian Mental Health Association to start the first marriage counseling service in Canada. I also lectured part time at UBC.

Later I joined the to-be-formed Langara College as chairman of the Department of Social Sciences; left CMHA and went into private practice and continued to lecture part-time at UBC. I was invited to get involved in a T.V. show called People in Conflict that was taped in Montreal two weekends a month. The show lasted for six years; in the last years I was writing half the scripts and vetting the other half. Meanwhile, our family had increased to five children and each seemed to have a pet.

At Langara, we pressed for some unification of the provincially sponsored colleges and as Chairman of the Faculty Association I was active in forming the College Institute Educators Association, of which I was the first president. Soon after that, I retired; my wife and I bought a trailer and some new golf clubs, gypsied around for a few winters, settled in a little winter home in El Centro on a golf course, which is a companion place for our lake shore summer home in the Caribou that we bought and built 30-odd years ago and where our children have learned some of the excitements of nature and of life. These are the places that feel like home.