Strike!
Whenever my parents took the family to our relatives’ exquisite cottage in Tidnish, near Amherst , Nova Scotia, we travelled by overnight train. Boarding right at our Montreal suburb in the evening, we arrived in Amherst the following afternoon. It was always a fun train ride, and we could count on three things happening sometime during the trip: a crying baby, a loud talker, and a drunk. In the summer of 1973, a rail strike forced us to travel home a different way. We discovered that what the Greyhound lacked in drunks and babies, it made up for in pot-smokers. Strikes are a common feature of our western culture, so there’s nothing unique about that aspect of my Montreal childhood. Teachers’ strikes were frequent and welcome. When I could stay home and read my books, instead of sitting in a classroom surrounded by a bewildering array of subjects and socializing, I was just as happy. My education wasn’t affected by the strikes, and...