It’s winter and I’m not in sunny Mexico. I’m in Canada, partway to the Arctic, and the air prickles with cold and the crankiness that settles in mid-winter. Wrapped head to toe in layers of fleece and poly-something and jammed behind the wheel of my small all-weather car, I’ve stopped to fill up at the local gas station. Things are not going well.
There is a car arbitrarily parked between the two pumps, and I won’t be able to reach the first one unless said car pulls ahead a little. I give a gentle honk to signal the driver to move ahead. In reply, the driver guns the engine, whips ahead, spins around the station and lurches to a stop behind me. He steps out, slams his door, and yells:
“Is that good enough for you?”
“Yes, thanks for moving. Didn’t know if you had seen me or not,” I respond a little too apologetically.
“Oh, yeah, I saw you alright.” He is still fuming.
“Well, I couldn’t reach the pump, and wanted to make sure that I didn’t get too close to your car, and ding it,” says she, who had just recently backed into another car.
“Yeah, right, worried about a little ‘ding’, are you? Maybe you should just stay off the road then!” he flings at me before storming into the station.
So, should I be affronted or just ashamed that I probably share the same nationality as this less-than-hospitable-and-understanding individual who just flattened me at the pump? Or the one who publicly humiliated me in a staff meeting? Sped by me when I had fallen off my bike and needed help? Couldn’t cool the profanities when my nieces, children at the time, were on the beach not far away?
I limped away from the gas station that day, absolutely sure that every young boy in Canada, regardless of how much he liked his grandmother or writing stories with hobbits in them, was doomed.
And I don’t stop glowering until I ride across Canada a few summers later.
Terry Fox beams from every second highway sign on this part of the Trans Canada, and it’s his spirit I’m summoning to keep my pedals spinning.
Our days have been full-on since the beginning of our cross-country trip for my sister and to raise awareness for ovarian cancer.
This one had started at 7 a.m. at the Thunder Bay Farmer’s Market and now I’m in a race with the setting sun to make it to our campground before dark.
After hoisting myself up yet another hill, the campsite finally appears on the last finger of land by the Nipigon river, green fields bracketed by willows and bits of breakwater.
I almost burst into tears when our ‘Ride for Sheila Rae’ van appears beneath those willows. My partner is standing beside it, and the man he’s with is smiling at me encouragingly, willing me to stay strong.
“Congratulations, you’re at the halfway point between Vancouver and Halifax!”
He’s youngish, a freshly shaved face, eyes crinkling in welcome. Dressed in Canadian casual – plaid shirt, jeans and work boots — he looks comfortably at home in a grove of trees near the shores of Lake Superior.
“Really?”
Truly, this was news for me. Ken had done all the big picture planning of our cross-Canada trip; I just tried to make it to the end of the road each day.
“Yeah, and what you’re doing is fantastic. I lost an uncle recently to cancer. It’s just the most brutal disease.”
I murmur a thank you to him, for completely dispelling the throbbing pain in my legs, and making me dismount from my bike with something close to pride.
“Well, you guys let us know if there is anything you need. The toilets and showers are just at the end of this path, and, see that bench over there?” He points to a log cleaved in two and overlooking the river. “Make sure you carve your initials beside all of the other cyclists that have stopped here on their way across Canada.”
I look around; being June, I was ‘ahead of the pack’.
“Enjoy our little piece of paradise here, and don’t forget to take in the music at the gazebo later. We have a local band, led by “Mr. Nipigon” himself, that likes to entertain the campers and plays every Saturday night.”
We call out our thanks as he heads towards his truck. He’s back in a moment with a few bills in his hand. He insists I take them.
“Hope this little bit can help.” And then he is gone.
Warmth and generosity like this were not unusual on our trip; in fact, people like Dan, the campground attendant in Nipigon, had become wonderfully commonplace.
Bush pilots, motorcyclists rushing to catch up with us, mechanics who lost their wife to the disease – none of them would let us go before they had heard our story and donated to our cause.
The kindness, the chivalry, the machismo of my countrymen that summer I rode across Canada stunned me. Yes, machismo. Not the swaggering, bullying, misogynistic kind but the full-plumaged kind it was meant to be.
I remember that variant well from winters I spent in Mexico.
In Mexico, machismo, or ‘manliness’, is truer to its original Spanish roots and gives men the permission to express themselves in much broader, more nuanced ways.
It’s the version that lets men greet their sons with hugs and backslaps and solve world problems with arms around a friend. It makes family sacrosanct; a man would never miss a Sunday taking their family to the seashore, or to show up to march in a funeral procession whether they’re a pallbearer or not.
It’s the version that ensures one’s masculinity is not breached when you trade your wheelbarrow of bricks for a crocheted shopping bag, or wear tight sparkling pants and white boots so that you can be part of the scene and play music in the square for a dollar or two. Or climb onto your horse, amble into the village plaza, and be the caballero – machismo’s most venerated gentleman – for an evening. Or just hang out at a petrol station, and offer help when the need arises.
We had been on a road trip through the sugarcane highlands of the Sierra Madres, the agave-rich plains that surround the town of Tequila.
A pit stop was in order, and while Ken was getting help from the gas attendant, I was edging towards the facilities. Unusual for Pemex (the national petrol company), the bathroom door had a coin slot at the door; it would take two pesos to get in. I didn’t have my purse with me. The young attendant with my partner noticed my hesitation, and after filling the car, came up behind me:
“Sí, cuesta dos pesos entrar. ¿Tiene usted dos pesos?”
(Yes, it costs two pesos to get in. Do you have two pesos?)
“No, no tengo nada.” (No, I don’t have anything).
The attendant reaches into his pocket and pulls out a couple of coins, drops them into the slot and opens the door, saving me the discomfort of retrieving my purse, fumbling with the unknown machine, and counting on the bladder control I no longer had.
“Muchas gracias, señor.”
“De nada,” (It’s nothing) and he discreetly disappears into the station.
The inseparability of machismo and caballerismo – the idea that a man’s courage and strength be put to the service of the more vulnerable and one’s community at large — appears unproblematic for most Mexican men.
It’s just when it heads north that the notion of gallantry and guardianship sometimes takes a wrong turn, and what’s left of machismo bumps into feminism and her now seismic forces. Sixty years of chipping away at patriarchy has left men on the defensive and caballerismo flummoxed. Witness the gas pump episode in Canada. Luckily for me that memory is getting a makeover.
We do go listen to Mr. Nipigon’s band that night. They are grateful for the much-expanded audience when we show up, and break into energetic renditions of “The Blackfly Song” and “Good-night Irene”.
After putting away his banjo, Mr. Nipigon comes over to welcome us to his town. He apologizes that the museum will be closed in the morning – he and his wife don’t open it on Sundays – but perhaps we would like to see the local materials his friends have used in the construction of their new post and beam home, up the road a little. Ken signs up. I’ll be riding.
The hills continue the next day, but now baptized into Nipigon country, I’m ready for them.
I stop at each look-out on Lake Superior, and marvel at an ‘ocean’ so still, and how it possibly could have been the raging sea that had split the Edmund Fitzgerald in two.
I receive a text from Dan – via Ken, via the universe – who is ecstatic that Ken has just seen his grandparent’s place.
Family, love, respect, honour, guardianship. Canadian men fully invested in life. Just one more thing on this trip on which I think my sister – Saint Sheila – wanted me to turn the page.