Richard wrote this back in July.
It is unfinished, and I don't think it was intended to be a blog post, but it's exactly the sort of thing he'd share, when he was done with it.
It is somewhat fitting that he writes of missing his Dad, as we miss Richard.
"
I miss my Dad. I remember so much about him
and often wonder what he would think of this or how he would handle that or
what he would say about the next thing. He was my Dad. He was not perfect; he
was deeply flawed, almost incapable of any emotional connection beyond anger.
Yet he was my father, my Dad.
Richard Thomas McBride was born in East
Kildonan, a part of Winnipeg, Manitoba, the center most province in Canada,
equidistant from all three Canadian oceans. Perhaps that is why he was destined
to join the Canadian Navy. Perversity was my Dad’s name just as often as the
name he acquired in the navy, “Mac”.
His birthday was, and still is, October 3,
1930. He was born between the two great wars of the twentieth century, too late
for World War One, where his father, uncle and grandfather all fought, and too
late for World War Two, where is older brother Adam fought. I would like to say
he was born in the sweet spot, at the perfect time, but that would be a
betrayal of his service in the Korean War. There were plenty of wars to go
round in the twentieth century and likely there will always be some place where
men can kill other men in the service of something they don’t understand and will
never reach.
My father spent his childhood years in
Winnipeg, living at the end of the streetcar line where the bright yellow tram
cars of the Winnipeg Electric Company turned around, taking the working class
from this outer suburb into the Winnipeg city center each morning and returning
them back each night. Like a great many cities in the depression era, the
streetcars ran to the very edge of the city. In his case it stopped near the
end of his street. At the other end of his street, off to the east, there was
nothing but open prairie and the rail yards of the CPR. The other side of his
childhood dominion was bounded by the sluggish and muddy Red River. He loved
his childhood time; the prairie was his playground and the Red River was his
personal Mississippi.
He was the second of four children. His
older brother, Adam, was born in 1925. Then, five years later my Dad came
along. Five years after that, in 1935, his sister Diane was born. Then, in the
mid-1940’s his brother, born with Downs Syndrome, came into his life. For the
whole of his life my Dad admired his older brother Adam in spite of his erratic
and unkind, sometimes criminal, behaviour. For the whole of his life, my Dad
doted on Ronnie, granting his every wish in spite of the damage to a man who,
due to his incapacity to understand, would often ask for the very things that
were worst for him; more food, more candy, more beer, staying up late. My Dad
would not say “no” to Ronnie, and he could not say “no” to his older brother
Adam.
The Great Depression hardly touched my
father. He once said to me that if it weren’t for the neighbours and others
around him, he would never have known there was a Depression. His father, my
grandfather, worked for the railroad all through the 1930’s. While the pay was
not great, there was always money for the family, albeit often subsumed with my
grandfather’s prodigious ability to consume alcohol.
"
-30-
