Proust Q 5.0 June 2012: Father John Mahoney

John Mahoney is a colleague at the Montreal Gazette, a photographer, chair of our union and a father and husband. He is a rock solid friend, one of only three who joined Shaun’s parents and me last summer to tell stories about the late great Shaun Best. And while he is nearly my match in years, I think of him mostly as a father. He lights up, as you’ll see, whenever he gets a chance to talk about his children, a couple of whom I have worked with at the Gazette, Riley being the current secondary Gazette Mahoney. Fine lad. Though judging by what John is like as an occasional desk mate, he didn’t have much of a choice. I have a swear jar on the half wall between me and the photo editor’s desk, where John sits in on occasion. No one else complains about my swearing. John complains. For my own good, of course. So I give you, for this month’s Proust questionnaire 5.0, Father John Mahoney.

Since we are conducting this interview via email, the world is ours for the inventing. If, as I some day hope, money is no object, in what city and establishment would you like this interview to be taking place? In Venice, in Piazza San Marco, in the spring before too many tourists bring the pigeons with them. At any one of the many cafe tables. Preferably later in the afternoon on a sunny day when the Piazza is bathed in the warmth of the late day sun.

Who and what would you be wearing? Probably jeans and Blundstones with a shirt and sweater under a windbreaker.

And, most importantly, what would we be drinking? I’ve never drunk alcohol and my New Year’s resolution this year was to go a year without Coke or Pepsi (last year I went a year without eating McDonald’s) so I’d be drinking water or lemonade.

Okay then. What are the qualities you most admire in others? Down-to-earth self-confidence, a good sense of humour, loyalty and some sort of recognition of the need for people with shared interests to pull together.

What do you like most about yourself? I think I’ve been a pretty good Dad.

Least? Procrastination and claustrophobia.

What is your greatest achievement? My family. Jocelyne’s and my four kids are adults now, and people seem to like them and they all have different individual skills. And they’re all still talking to us.

What is your more treasured possession? Our house. We raised the family here and now that they’re slowly leaving we have no desire to move. Nice house in a nice location with a killer 54″ tv.

What is your present state of mind? Concerned. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the news business and no one really knows the long-term viability of many news organizations. We’re also living through a period where Anglo Montrealers are under renewed pressure from the French majority. As much as I love living and working here the idea of leaving Quebec after I retire has crept up recently.

Where and when are/were you happiest? February 19, 2011 at my daughter Adrian’s wedding. She married an Italian so it was big, with lots of build-up. Great wedding; terrific food, great band, dancing until 2 in the morning.

What is your first memory? I don’t know exactly how old I was but probably around 2 years old. My family was living in an apartment building and my mother would dry laundry on racks over the big round heat registers in the hall. One evening a diaper fell through the grate and started smoking and we all had to evacuate the building for a bit.

What, currently, do you most love doing? Making a big weekend meal for our family and their spouse/girlfriends.

What was your worst job? I’ve been very fortunate to have had some good, stimulating jobs, even before the news business. I can’t say I ever really hated any one of them. One of my summer jobs was court monitor at a municipal tennis court in Lachine. People would show up looking for someone to play and if there was no one else around I’d play them. Or fill out a foursome for doubles. Got paid even when it rained. Great job when you’ve 18.

Your favourite colour? Blue

What is your idea of perfect happiness? To have the financial wherewithal to travel where I wanted when I wanted. Especially to escape the winter.

Of misery? Stuck in a job where I’d only have 2 weeks vacation a year.

If not yourself, who or what would you be? I’m pretty comfortable with who I am but if pressed, it would be pretty cool coaching an NCAA basketball team.

Where would you like to live? I’m a bit of a Montreal chauvinist. I think it’s still the most stimulating city in the country (not always for good, but rarely dull), so in Canada I’d stay here. Winter in Barbados sounds pretty inviting, though.

What is your favourite journey? Jocelyne and I spend two weeks every summer in Truro in Cape Cod. Total rest and relaxation.

What is your favourite or most memorable meal and when is the last time you indulged? I like the veal at Vago on Greene Ave. Was there last about a year ago.

Name the person who influenced you most and how. Chris Haney was the photo editor at Canadian Press in Montreal when I brought him my feeble student portfolio in August 1976. He invited me to come spend a day with the photo staff and later got me a job as a copy boy (there’s a job title from the history of newspapers) in the bureau. He pushed me to take a job in the darkroom at CP in Ottawa and then hired me at the Gazette in June ’79. He then went on to co-invent Trivial Pursuit. I didn’t have the guts to invest in the game when I had the chance, but much of what I have and much of what I’ve experienced professionally I owe to him. He gave me a chance and every bit of advice he ever gave me was right.

Name the film/song/book/art that influenced you most and why? In the 70’s there was a series of photography books titled Masters of Contemporary Photography. I had most of them. My favourites were about sports photographers Mark Kaufman and Neil Leifer. I think that was when I first thought of making photography a career.

In this or any time, which real-life figure(s) do you most admire? My dad. He lived the Death of a Salesman with six kids and somehow remained a loving and lovable man.

Who is your favourite fictional hero? Don’t really have one.

What fault can you most easily forgive? Forgetfulness. Our clan of Mahoneys are notorious for having lousy memories.

Not forgive? Lack of loyalty.

What is your motto? No guts, no glory.

How would you hope to die? In my sleep under the sun on Longnook Beach on the Cape.

Anything I haven’t asked about that you’d like to volunteer? Deep dark secret? When I was in my 20’s my Dad had a stroke that left him unable to speak. At the time I was busy starting my family and my career. Now that I’m in my 50s and have lived a lot more, there are some questions I’d like to have been able to ask him. He passed away a dozen years ago.

Admit it. You read those celebrity Q&As and you know you’re easily as worthy of being profiled. I know I do, but my friends are way more interesting. So, with nods to the “confession albums” of the late 1800s  made famous by the fabulous Marcel Proust’s answers, to French TV host Bernard Pivot who adapted the questionnaire, to Inside the Actors Studio host James Lipton who gave it another spin and to Vanity Fair, which uses its own elegantly spun version to anchor the magazine’s back pages, I submit for your entertainment and enlightenment, my own version of the Proust Questionnaire, re-retooled for a blog age.

soundtracking with Robert Szkolnicki: thoughts on our changing soundtracks

RIP, Robin Gibb (b. 1949). Is there any music I like more as an adult that I liked less as a teen than the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack?

— Marc Weidenbaum (@disquiet) May 21, 2012

This tweet from Disquiet was a thought about the recent death of the former member of the Bee Gees. To me, this comment is a reminder that our musical soundtrack changes as we get older.

When we are young, our musical influences were our parents, older brothers and sisters, friends and what we heard on radio. As we get older, we come into contact with new influences in the form of new friends and new media outlets.

To me, and to many of a certain age group, radio was the device that allowed us to experience music in a social collective. You were listening to the same song with thousands of other people. If you liked what you heard then you went to the record store and bought the album. If you didn’t like what you heard then you moved to a new radio station.

To a different age group, music videos and MuchMusic became the new social collective. The result was the same, in that if you liked what you heard (and saw) then you bought the album. If not then you moved on.

Ah, moving on. That happens in so many ways as we age. Friends drift away. We move to a different apartment or house (city! country!!). Marriage and kids. The “important” items of our youth get left behind. We also leave behind the prejudices of our early years.

Through the years, we not only have the opportunity to hear more music, we have the opportunity to hear older music in a different context.

Music makes an important impression in movies and television. Mad Men, anything with Quentin Tarantino involved features music (artists) that we should not forget.

So yes the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack may not have been in your social circle when it was first released. Many years later and seeing the movie with older eyes, you might say, okay I get it. It’s not that bad.

The new album by Saint Etienne, Words and Music by Saint Etienne, has an opening track about growing up with music. The setting is in a different part of the world from me but the effect of music is the same. The spoken word ends with an important question. You might have already faced it. Maybe you will.

Check out Over the Border.

you are here: Montreal’s Mount Royal

Mount Royal is crawling with people, right now and later and until the snow falls, when the numbers fall off but only a little. We are hard core, we Montreal mountain people. I walk there several times a week, about 10 km, including The Stairs, which is a grueling workout and quickest access on my, south access, to the summit. I climb to blow off steam. I know a woman who climbs 20 sets. Best I can do is 5. I’m working on it.

My favourite time to hit the mountain is, now that the nights are longest, about 8 p.m. or so. All last summer, standing on Pine Avenue, watching runners and lovers emerge from the path as from black air, I was curious but timid; I didn’t want to get caught after dark on the mountain’s switchback paths. Couple of weeks ago, it was late but I was in desperate need of a good hike so I sucked it up. First reward? Watching from the lookout as the city lights come up after the sun goes down. My golden city. Better reward? Looking out from the paths I had feared and seeing people looking timidly up, as into black air. The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

If you live in Monteal, go to the mountain. If you don’t, check this out.

Click here to slide through the NFB’s excellent multi multi media piece on the mountain, from tweets to videos to audio to still photos. Click and hover, click and hover.

original writing: the hand of somebody

Been dreading this day. This anniversary of the day Shaun Best died. This terrible remembering. And I figured I’d be sad. I’d be coming apart at the seams.

And I was not alone in that fear. Not a week ago, a friend with a huge heart and a rock throughout this past year, looked at me over cake and coffee and said: “I’m worried about you. You haven’t had your … you know. You have broken down yet.”

And I said to her as I say to you, that I have. I have. In private mostly. On the walk home from the Royal Victoria emergency department last June 11, wearing a broken flipflop that it did not occur to me to take off. I broke down nine days later, upon exiting the hall where we held the Winnipeg memorial, under the gaze of my niece Sydney who exploded in worried tears that were soothed by the holy-shit-I-couldn’t-have-planned-this-better moment that followed in the church bathroom, where somehow many of Shaun and my former Winnipeg Sun coworkers converged and pulled Syd and I back together.

I have broken down in journals, a crate full of journals (from which the world is spared). I have broken down in more formal writing (from which the world will not, it appears, be spared). In the supermarket checkout line. In the west bathroom at The Gazette building at Peel and Ste. Catherine. In movie theatre, in all the movie theatres. On the phone, often late at night. On Mount Royal, always Mount Royal. This past weekend, on the beach at Ogunquit, Maine.

I have broken down at a friend’s wedding, at another friend’s 50th birthday gathering, at Christmas, at Easter, at sunset, at sunrise (okay that last one’s a lie; i’m never up early enough for sunrise). I’ve broken down at breakfast, lunch and dinner. I’ve broken down and broken down and broken down.

But goddamn it if it Shaun Best isn’t always there to build me back up, make me laugh. Shaun Best or something.

Like the morning of June 12, 2011, after I had slept only a few minutes and dragged myself into the bathroom to shower before picking up his parents at the airport. I looked at the mirror and saw not just the ragged eyes of a shocked-out widow, but a gigantic, red mound of a mosquito bite in the centre of my forehead. Inspite of myself, I squeaked out a laugh. Who could possibly take me and my grief seriously with this bull’s eye on my forehead? I smiled as I reached for the first aid tin, and then began full out laughing. The tin was crammed with pins, the kind of special-event pins that Shaun brought home from sporting events by the handful and hid around the apartment to vex me. These were from curling, a couple of months back.

There was my recent trip to New York, part of my keep-busy-before-the-anniversary campaign of travel and visiting. New York was special because the last time we’d been there together had been to see my brother Richard perform from his brand new and excellent album. Shaun had met Richard before only at my father’s and then my mother’s funeral. I fretted for naught. New York was a great couple of days. Shaun took brilliant photos of Richard on stage. We hung out. All good. But one detail had disappeared and it was driving me crazy. While Richard rehearsed, Shaun and I had wandered around lower Manhattan, and he spotted a joint that had been named by Esquire magazine one of the best bars in the U.S. We went in, had great bowls of soup and chili and a couple of pints and it was dark-wood, grotty-floor, nice-but-not-too-nice-bartender, sports-on-the-TV heaven. There on my own a few weeks ago, I had worked myself into a lather over not being able to name and revisit the spot. But then, I decided to just let it go and just wander. It was the first time of dozens of times I’d been to New York that I was setting out without a map in my bag. Somehow, though, I felt I couldn’t get lost. So I wandered and turned on whims and just as daylight was slanting through the westside and the neon signs were sputtering to life, there it was. Old Town Bar. I looked in the window to make sure. Exact right spot. Didn’t go in. Didn’t need to. The rest of my walkabout was filled with oh yeah we were there. And there. And there too. Walking with a ghost. A happy ghost.

There were other moments before and after and I hope there will be many more, but I’ll leave you with this one because it is especially Shaun.

Walking to the Ogunguit public beach this June 11, 2012 morning, I spied tourist crap in the shop windows on Main Street and thought, I guess I should buy some souvenirs for the nieces and nephews, as we had done together in past. But first, to the beach. And so I went. And on the beach, I walked for a couple of hours, as far north as the beach would go, under light cloud that parted for moments here and there. And on the way back, I spotted three black rectangular stones. Perfect skippers if, and that’s always the worry, IF they are thin enough, or so Uncle Shaun had advised Matthew and Abby back at Matlock on Lake Winnipeg during our August visits. All three of these Atlantic blacks were wafer thin. Bending over to rinse off the sand to take them home, souvenirs, I had a thought. Famously … let’s say frugal, I think those rocks were the hand of Shaun Best. And right there, that sound you don’t hear, is the happy sound of Shaun Best’s wallet not opening. That, THAT is Shaun Best.

But is that really, REALLY Shaun Best? Because he didn’t believe in an afterlife. “Nothing. That’s it. Over,” he answered when I asked him, shortly after my mom died in 2010 and such things were on my mind.

If it is you, my love, thanks for watching over me, us, from an afterlife you don’t believe in. Also, if it’s not crass to state the obvious, I was right and you were wrong.

But if it’s not Shaun sending the signs, if the iPod is shuffling all on its own to the absolute perfect song as the different stages and months demanded – Springsteen’s You’re Not Here from The Rising last Christmas and just the other day John Mayer’s My Love For You Is Real and (this split me in two) Pete Townsend’s Let My Love Open the Door; if the cheese monger decided all on his own to display the gigantic wedge of Drunken Goat in the Chelsea Whole Foods in New York on the only day I’d ever stepped foot inside, completely unaware I had not seen that cheese in a year, when I bought it for what turned out to be the last plate of crackers and cheese I served you; if it’s not your hand in all this, my love, then it’s … it’s everything. Then everything is conspiring to see me, to see us through this.

And while lovely, perhaps even as lovely as the idea of you hovering angel-like over me and us, that would mean that you were right. And that would irk.

So, one for Bella.

xo