i want to clarify the context a little.

because when i was 8 or 9 years old, i didn't know that my dad had this history, where he really had his life changed about ten years earlier by a dirty knee-on-knee hit. the way he explained it is that it literally blew his knee out, and that it never healed properly. but, i couldn't have known any of this.

he just didn't talk about it. and, i don't think i ever saw him on a pair of skates.

it wasn't until years later that he filled me in, on a drive through the place he grew up in, an impoverished and crime-filled district in west ottawa ('bayshore') called the ritchie street project. it's around the britannia pier.

rather, the dad that i knew as a young child was not a hockey player but a scholar!

my parents split when i was a toddler; my mom had developed into quite a violent alcoholic, and my dad ultimately had to get away from what was an abusive relationship and start over. so, we had the twice weekly visits, to start, when i was 3 and 4 and 5. and, we basically did the same thing every time he picked me up: we went to the south gloucester library (this has been closed for years, but was near the kmart on queensdale). but, these were not recreational sessions, they were learning sessions. and, the truth is that i could read better than most high school kids by the time i entered kindergarten.

so, this interest in reading wasn't spontaneous, it was taught. and, in truth, my interests reflected what i'd been exposed to - and were very much integrated and internalized into my own being as a consequence of it.

(and, it was the same thing with my younger sister, too, who was maybe even reading that proficiently a little younger than i was.)

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.