Chapter 29: Leaving on a Jet Plane

On Monday, the 10^th of March, Wendy and I were busy writing exams. It was the end of another semester for us. The team, because we were going to be leaving on Wednesday, had to write all their exams in one day. A very long day. The rest of the school had all week for the semester finals. Einstein was writing exams as well, but his were midterms. By a rare twist, his March break would start the same time as ours, though he only had a week off, whereas Wendy and I had a two-week break before our next semester of study started. I was sort of glad the basketball team had filled its ranks without needing Wendy, Annette, or any of the other girls from the volleyball team. Something sporty must have hit the school as the basketball team was winning over three quarters of their games. Compared to the previous year with two wins for the entire season, this was spectacular!

I'm not sure who was more surprised that we were headed to the volleyball Nationals - the Canadian public or the nuns who ran, maintained, and taught at St. Ursula's. Every day after exams, our team was encouraged to go out and get some fresh air! Yeah. Sister Elizabeth wanted us out mingling with the public in London.

Robert Denure had changed the rear signs on all of his company's city busses to a banner showing our unofficial Saints logo (the one with the lopsided halo), a team picture of us taken before the Regionals, and just two words in between. "Go Saints!"

Annette, Mandy, Wendy, and I spent a lot of time traveling, switching from one bus to another, and usually ending up for a bite at the White Oaks mall. It had quickly become our favorite gathering place though we did also frequent the Wellington Square mall in downtown London. Wendy thought it was all great fun. Traveling by bus and seeing all the sights of London were dream trips for her. We had ridden the busses enough during our last break, but I think coming from her Mennonite background, plus the fact the Saints were treated as royalty on Robert's busses was still new enough to her to make her love it. There were so many routes and so many busses; we never took the same route twice. Her enthusiasm was contagious, and between meeting people and shaking hands, we decided to spend a bit of time visiting the local hospitals as well. When she heard about that, Sister Elizabeth encouraged all the team members to stop by the hospitals and nursing homes to meet those who couldn't get out to meet us. The only part of this I didn't enjoy was a trip to the cardiac ward at Victoria hospital. The only real difference was that it was and looked newer in 1975 than when I died there in 2003, but the memory rush of smells and sounds was almost overwhelming to me and made me more than a bit uneasy.

University Hospital was easier to take as it was even newer, and it was a teaching hospital. I wanted to tell my friends that in less than four years, singer and actress, Della Reese, would be flown here from Los Angeles after suffering a near-fatal aneurysm. I remember she had been scheduled to sing on the Tonight Show when she collapsed during rehearsal. University Hospital was one of two hospitals in the world that had perfected the brain surgery necessary to handle this. After her recovery, she would do a free concert for the staff of the hospital, and the proceeds from tickets sold to others would be donated to the hospital's research fund.

~~~

Dr. Charles Drake was a world-renowned neurosurgeon at University Hospital (known in later years as LHSC- University Campus) and Chair of the Department of Clinical Neurological Sciences at the University of Western Ontario. He perfected, documented, and taught surgical techniques on the repair of ruptured brain aneurysms. Dr. Drake passed away Sept. 15, 1998. He had personally performed the two surgeries on Della, which allowed her to make a full recovery and resume her career.

~~~

Sister Elizabeth still held fast to her public statement of not giving team members preferred status. But as she explained, based on our hospital and nursing home visits, our exam schedule and having to spend two days away from school... Hey, any way she wanted to rationalize it was fine with me. I still had a bit of a cynical side to me, and I knew other schools were bending rules way past the breaking point. To her credit, though, Sister Elizabeth's bending of the rules was required due to both our unplanned absence later in the week and the need for us girls to write all our exams. The team was allowed to write exams under the watchful eye of our teachers in a single, marathon one-day session.

In some ways it was proof that none of us had neglected our studies, though I was exhausted at the end of the day. I expected reasonably good marks, partly on the strength of having been through some of this before, and I expected Einstein to do well in his exams, also, but this was the first time through for Wendy. She took it in stride and sat to write her exams with me with the confidence of a real genius. God, I loved her!

Annette, generous to a fault, paid for our meals away from the school. She claimed her dad gave her the money to spend on her friends, but I knew she was taking it from her own allowance. Yeah, her allowance was probably large enough she wouldn't notice what little she spent on us, but it still bothered me. Wendy and I had everything we needed at the school from our scholarships and also through the generosity of the Alumnae Association, but there were times when a bit of pocket money would come in handy.

When we got back Monday night, I called Dad and explained to him how I felt I was abusing Annette's friendship. Mike was quick to pick up on my dilemma and drove to the school that same night with $300 in twenties. He said to split it with Wendy - just some pocket money. Wow! In 1975 that was big and deep pockets! Of course we both protested, but Mike insisted. He told us that, since the store had gone into high-end retail in such a big way after my idea of putting the Bose speakers on display, he could now easily afford it - and he knew that we had no other way of earning money.

Both Wendy and I showered him with kisses, and Tuesday evening it was Wendy and I who treated Annette and Mandy to supper at the Swiss Chalet on Dundas.

Annette protested, of course, but Wendy and I stuck firmly to our guns. We said we didn't want to feel like poor relatives, and the least Annette could do was allow us a little bit of dignity. With an exasperated sigh, Annette gave in. Mandy's family wasn't wealthy and she only had a little independent income herself, but she was Annette's lover, and if I was reading the signs right, the two of them would be together for life.

When we got back to the school Tuesday night, we were surprised to find our suitcases packed and a note from Sister Gabe informing us that Wednesday morning we would be flying out of London International Airport on our way to Ottawa. Wendy squealed with delight and jumped my bones on the spot! She had never been in a plane before. Flying, however, not an experience I cared for. From a purely logical standpoint, planes weigh more than air, and gravity has steadfast rules about leaving the ground. It wasn't a fear of flying, just a preference not to. I couldn't say anything because this body had so far never been any higher than the seven floors the escalators could take me in the Simpson Sears building in downtown London. I resigned myself to the inevitable.

At eight o'clock, we were standing on the tarmac of the London Airport, waving goodbye to our families and friends. A DC-8 was waiting for us to board. Marvelous, just fucking marvelous.

It wasn't that I felt my life was going to be in peril; on the contrary, the DC-8s had a great safety record. In the past I used to fortify myself with a few stiff drinks before taking off, but obviously this was not going to be possible. I sighed and when it came time to board. After my mild panic attack - calmed somewhat by Wendy - I sighed and walked out with the rest of the team.

The London Airport was "international" by name mostly. In the past, DC-8s had flown from here to Europe, but these days the only 'international flights' were to the US. The runway wasn't big enough to handle the 747s that by this time dominated the skies, but it was handy for most flights in and around North America.

Father Ed and Sister Elizabeth were booked on this flight, and to no one's great surprise, Jim Blake and Brett Faison were onboard as well. Both Linda and Julie came this time, and an anonymous donor had paid for a few of our classmates to come and cheer us on. Amazing which ones they were, too! Oz was among them, keeping a smile on Krissy's face. And of course, Robert Denure was present.

More surprising was seeing Dr. Parker making his way down the aisle. He smiled at us as he strolled by and sat next to Robert. How was London going to function with everybody gone?

At nine o'clock the turbines picked up speed, and we felt the plane start to move. We were on our way. We taxied down to the end of the runway, and looking out the window, I realized we would be just clearing Fanshawe Lake and Park as we departed. I told Wendy to keep an eye out the window and watch, as one of our favorite memory places would fall away beneath us as we started to climb. Fanshawe, the Park, and the Maze, where Wendy had shared her first kiss with Einstein, showing her how much she turned him on!

Soon the bumpiness of the runway disappeared and now we felt just the four jet engines as they fought Newton's law of gravity and won their right to be airborne.

Wendy couldn't drag her eyes away from the sights visible outside the plane. Her nose was glued to the window as she watched the farms and fields getting smaller and smaller. She was so excited her nails were digging into the palm of my hand. We broke through the clouds into a crystal clear sky, but still Wendy didn't avert her gaze. It was a beautiful day for flying. Moderate cloud cover meant that between views of the land below, we would be entering and exiting the large fluffy clumps that hung in the sky.

"I feel like an angel," whispered Wendy to the window. "I'm touching the clouds. Oh, if I could just walk on them," she sighed.

I wasn't going to be the one to shatter her dreams with the hard facts of gravity vs. low-density cloud formations. We had leveled out and were now moving along at a decent speed, yet Wendy hadn't even undone her seatbelt. When the stewardess walked by asking if we would like a drink, I looked at Robert's Canadian Club whisky and sighed. Then I asked for a ginger ale for both Wendy and myself. The stewardess smiled and asked if this was Wendy's first time. I smirked. "Her first time flying, yes."

The stewardess chuckled and moved on. Since the flight was not going to take us through any time zones and would only last about 90 minutes, there was no meal on the plane - just peanuts and hard candy. The hard candy was, of course, for helping with ear popping necessitated by the changes in air pressure. Linda and Julie made their way over to us to chat, but it was very one sided. They were both amused at Wendy's fascination. I promised myself that one day I would take her for a ride on the Concorde, assuming I would have the money when that plane rolled out for its debut. I had never been on it myself. I knew the ticket prices were exorbitantly expensive, but I knew Wendy would love to see the curvature of the earth, which I had heard you could see from the Concorde. Besides, flying at six miles high as we were now as opposed to 12 miles high and faster than the speed of sound, would still be defying gravity, but this I would gladly endure for my lover.

I sipped at my ginger ale and listened to the growing excitement around me. Wendy's drink remained untouched. Before I had a chance to think about it, I heard the captain ask us to return our chairs to an upright position, fasten our seatbelts, and extinguish all cigarettes. Wendy hadn't undone her seatbelt, nor reclined her chair, and for that matter, neither had I! My drink tray was down, but the stewardess, seeing my predicament, came and took my empty cup and Wendy's still-full one. Then she raised my tray, smiled at me, and walked away.

I could hear the jets switch as we began our descent. I would have looked as well, just to see our nation's capital come into view, but that would do nothing but remind me that I was still way too high to just step out without Newton's gravity and his related laws of acceleration earthward kicking in. I just held onto Wendy's hand and listened to her running commentary about the rivers and the roads and how big the buildings were getting. Just full of great news, she is.

The touchdown at Macdonald-Cartier International Airport was textbook perfect, and finally Wendy pried herself from the window already asking if we could ride on the other side on the way home so she could see everything she had missed from this side. I shook my head in wonder and then reminded her that, in order to see what she had not seen the first time, it would be best if we sat in the same seats again since we would be headed in the opposite direction!

"Oh!" she said. "I didn't think of that! I love you, Pete," she added. "You're so good to me!"

ME??? What had I done? Not that I was going to try and change her mind!

Since we had not left the country, there was no need to go through customs, and we picked up our luggage and headed for the waiting bus. There were other standard yellow school busses waiting to pick up other teams, but Robert had called in a favor, and we were escorted to a travel coach.

It was close to lunchtime by the time we were all on board and headed for our hotel, but Robert assured us there was a great restaurant at the hotel, and we could eat as soon as we were settled in.

It wasn't the Royal York, but then, what could be? We were billeted in the nearly new Holiday Inn, just 15 minutes from Carleton University. Carleton was located on a new campus between the Rideau River and the Rideau Canal on 125 acres of prime real estate. It had moved there less than 25 years ago, and the grounds and buildings were still pristine. We would have loved to explore the University properly, especially as some of the seniors were hoping to get accepted here. Hell, if we'd had the time I think most of us would have explored the entire city. This was Ottawa — rich in cultural history and home of the National Archives and the museums, but alas, our wishes took second place to the tournament this trip. However, as we discovered at lunch, the high school teams competing in the next two days had all been invited to sit in the gallery at the House of Commons at the Parliament buildings.

Unlike the older, smaller rooms we had shared at the Royal York, the Holiday Inn had been well booked in advance, and we were four to the spacious rooms for the team players. Julie and Linda had a room of their own, but Wendy and I had to share a room with two other players. As captain of the team and a senior, Annette had first choice of roommates, and it came as no surprise that Mandy, Wendy and I would join her for the nights we would be staying there.

The room was large with a separate makeup counter and mirror outside of the oversized bathroom. We had our bags stuffed into the closet, our uniforms hung up, and we were dressed in our Sunday outfits for lunch at the insistence of Sister Elizabeth. Lunch was good - a light fare with lots of fresh fruit and thinly sliced ham and beef from the sandwich buffet.

We were in a reserved section of the restaurant that held not only the players and school personnel, but also parents and fans from London who had flown either with us or to join us for this final stage of the tournaments. I didn't recognize half of them.

When Sister Elizabeth announced we were to go to the Parliament buildings, I could hear more than a few groans. There were museums that would have been much more interesting, as well as the National Gallery of Arts. I knew that in my first life, I had never been very interested in politics - rarely even bothering to vote. However, now I was interested in the man who was the Prime Minister of the country - Pierre Elliot Trudeau. This man I knew a lot about. A life dedicated to becoming a politician and having enough education for four people, he had set his ambitions while he was young and had realized them in a way that few others could ever hope for. Many in my other life had claimed him to be one of the greatest leaders of our country, though my opinion of him was not nearly as flattering. I believe he had been largely responsible for the fractured relationship between the Anglophones and Francophones in Canada, which led to a decades-long battle for separation from Canada by Quebec.

The press glamorized him, enjoying his defiant attitude toward old institutions. He wore sandals in the Canada's House of Commons, dated celebrities such as Barbara Streisand, Kim Cattrall, Liona Boyd, and Margot Kidder, used obscenities to insult his opponents, and one time, did a pirouette behind the back of Queen Elizabeth II.

He had frolicked in Jamaica, sworn in the House, and was a notorious womanizer before he married a much younger woman - from much older money - Margaret Sinclair in 1971. Their marriage didn't last. She left after only 13, fed up with the beatings that the so-called free press hushed up. Despite all his charisma, the action that really turned me against him was, after an election loss to Joe Clark and his Conservative party in 1979, he managed to call a vote of non-confidence within six months of Clark's term in office. This was after the Iranians had captured the American Embassy and were still holding 66 hostages out of the 90 Americans who were stationed there. Thirteen had managed to avoid capture and hid out in the Canadian Embassy while passports and other documents were drawn up by the CIA to help them escape the country.

Clark was briefed daily on the developments, and since an election had been called; he had to keep Trudeau in the information loop. Trudeau, true to form, used the information as a way to humiliate Clark, daily asking in public what Clark was going to do about the situation in Iran, knowing full well that Clark could not respond until the 13 Americans were out of danger. In this, my second chance at life, I despised the man even more for showing character traits that too closely resembled what I was like in my previous life.

Our bus arrived at the House of Commons, and we were seated in the Gallery, though we could as well have watched the silly political games live on television. Two weeks earlier cameras had been installed in the House and daily broadcasts of parliamentary procedures were made public. Either way I was seething as I sat between Annette and Wendy. Having seen too many self-serving hypocrites sit in the chair of the Prime Minister, I mumbled under my breath that the person who held the highest office in the land should have the interests of the people guiding him. I must have mumbled louder than I thought as Annette looked at me and said, "Or her."

I smiled at Annette, grateful for her insight, but I knew that the only woman who would hold the reins of power in the next quarter century would be Kim Campbell. She would be given the job by default on the resignation of a future Prime Minister but would then lead her party to such a stunning and humiliating defeat in the next election only a few months later that the chances of a woman again soon becoming Prime Minister ranged from slim to none.

I grumbled all the way through the question period aching and itching to ask a few questions of my own. When Trudeau slurred one of his opponents with yet another disparaging remark toward females, I rose up in my seat to shout down at the arrogant prick, but Wendy and Annette both grabbed me and pulled me back down into my seat.

Annette looked me square in the eyes and said, "Keep your mouth shut Patti! We're here to play a tournament. If you make a scene, you'll be kicked off the team. One day we'll run the government and we'll be able to fix things, but right now, concentrate on the team."

I bit the inside of my cheek to prevent myself from speaking, but nodded that I would remain quiet. However, Linda and Julie had moved towards me as well, and the commotion had caught the attention of the Speaker of the House.

We weren't the only team who had been sent to the House to listen in on our government in action. One of the runners for the Speaker whispered to him, and the next thing I heard was the voice of the Speaker, James Alexander Jerome, as he announced to the members present that in the Gallery were the finalists in the Girls Senior High School Volleyball Tournament. We received a mild round of applause, and then Question Time resumed. Julie and Linda walked me out followed by Wendy, Annette, and Mandy.

We prowled the halls for nearly an hour before our teammates came to find us. Thankfully, Sister Elizabeth and Father Ed were busy with the supporters of the Saints back at the Holiday Inn. Sister Gabe was with us, though, and gently took me by the arm and walked with me.

With her arm through mine, Sister Gabe walked me away from the others after telling Wendy I was all right and designating Linda and Julie to get everyone on the bus and back to the hotel. I wondered for a brief moment how we were going to get back with the bus gone, but I was with Sister Gabe. This was a nun who I trusted, maybe more than anyone outside of our private group. She seemed to know her way around the parliament buildings, and her nun's habit seemed to magically open doors for us as we wandered from the main building to official offices via the underground tunnels. I was starting to wonder what was up when finally she found a place for us to sit and talk.

"Patricia, I see a fire in you that God had to have lit. Maybe that's why you ended up with us at St. Ursula's. Perhaps that too was His plan, so you could be tempered and focused for when you leave our fold."

I was going to say something, but Sister Gabe gently placed a finger on my lips.

"Patti, this isn't a movie where at the last minute you are going to decide the best work you can do is as a nun. You can and will do a lot more if you can work the system from outside of a convent. I've met girls like you before." My ears perked up when I heard that, but I was pretty sure this was not about my 'rebirth' seven months ago or even my selection of Wendy, another girl, as a preferred sexual partner.

"I turned fifty-four a few weeks ago, Patti. I was born and raised in Holland, and by the time Hitler started his rise to power, all I was focused on were my dreams of going to the Olympics as a swimmer. My grades in school were sufficient, but I never really tried to improve them. All I wanted to do was swim. I raced bicycles with the boys through the week and swam every day. I was very naïve. When the war broke out, I was barely 20. I had been to the XI Olympiad in 1936 and won both a Silver and a Bronze for our team out of the 17 medals Holland won.

But, Patti, Hitler had already led the National Socialist Party to power in 1933. Instead of looking at the growing danger of the Third Reich, which was started the same year as the Nazis came to power; all I could see were my dreams of the Olympics. I believed I could do better in the next Olympic games, so I practiced harder and longer. I had finished school by the time the 11^th Olympic games were over, and I confess I was a bit of a flirt afterwards. I was 16 and free. I worked part time in my parents' bakery and dated many boys." Sister Gabe paused and blushed.

"Too many boys according to my father," she continued. "Actually nearly every boy in our town," she added with a laugh, "and I was not a tease. I was not exactly innocent, but times were different, as they are for each generation." She sighed and patted my arm. "I had my head buried in my own dreams, Patti. All I could think about was having fun and training. I fully planned on going to another Olympics and then becoming a coach. I never saw 1939 coming, and one day I turned around and we had been invaded. Many countries were."

"Many of my boyfriends soon either disappeared or were taken for labor camps." She paused as a tear grew in her eye. "Then my mother and father were taken and later executed. I was gone that day so I never got a chance to even tell them how much I loved them. That might have also saved me as young women were not overlooked, Patti. While I had enjoyed the attention of the young men in our town, I did not welcome what the Nazis brought or would have wanted from me. The safest bet was to leave, but so many of my teammates joined the resistance that I did as well. I had no home or family, and I did not want to become a play toy for German soldiers."

"Most of my friends from the resistance were killed as time passed and there were prices on the heads of the rest of us. The underground had special and often difficult assignments for skilled athletes like me. I was an information courier, and as a swimmer, I would often have to slip into the channel and swim to a small boat three or four miles from shore and then swim back again."

"On land one of the safest ways for us girls to travel around was to be dressed in a nun's habit. This meant we had to lop off our hair, but that was a small sacrifice. When the Canadians landed in Holland, the need for my skills was over, but the war was still going on, and I still had a price on my head. The Canadians spirited me out of the country and helped me get to Canada. My life had been shattered, Patti, and after four years of pretending to be a nun, I joined the Sisters of St. Ursula."

I was speechless. The nun who I thought I knew so well turned out to have lived a life that would scare me to death. I gave her a hug as tears formed in my own eyes and I told her that I was glad she had survived.

"The reason I'm telling you this, Patti, is so you will not be blind to what goes on around you. I've seen how you notice more things than the other girls, and you are quick to react to something that is not right. I wish I had been more like you. But sometimes you have to pick your battles, and right now is not the time for you to tackle government double standards when it comes to women. I've seen you influence people without forcing an issue. However, your powers of subtle persuasion still need to be honed so you can slip - like the resistance - into the ranks of the powerful and make changes to better your sisters. Become a powerful lawyer, then fight them in their courts and on their laws."

Hmm... A lawyer. In my first life I had not had a high opinion of lawyers but I could see where Sister Gabe was making sense, and it was something I had suggested to Einstein as a possible future career for myself. We walked a bit more, and then Sister Gabe said we should be heading back and had someone call us a cab.

After supper, in our room, I told Wendy, Annette and Mandy most of what Sister Gabe had told me. We were all gaining a deeper respect for our coach!

Annette was intrigued. Wendy was confused.

"Why not become a politician?" Wendy asked.

"Because most people don't trust politicians," said Mandy.

"You know that there are many areas of law you could go into if you go this route," said Annette. "You could become a corporate lawyer or a criminal lawyer or even a prosecutor. I think it would be kind of neat to be a feminist rights activist or a public defender for people who aren't being treated fairly by the government."