Erin's Journals

Just a thought… Do the best you can until you know better. When you know better, do better. [Maya Angelou]

As usual, you can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

So, I got in deep deep trouble among some people on Monday. I’m not here to whine or complain; just to point out how carefully we all tread these days.

I am politically correct, in what I hope is the best possible interpretation of those two words that so many people use as a weapon of disgust. I go out of my way not to offend anyone, to include everyone and to try to stay up on all of the changes in our languages. I read the articles on the most mispronounced words and how language and meaning change.

I’ve even read a piece this week in The Atlantic that suggests that when we acknowledge the Indigenous lands on which we stand, or have our events, or in whatever circumstances we use the statements of gratitude, it’s actually just moral exhibition. Okay, that’s one I’ll read and consider. And maybe look again at my stance. I just don’t know.

That’s what I do – what I think we do – and following Maya Angelou’s gentle directions, try to be better.

But on Monday, I wanted to acknowledge a national day of remembrance for the 14 victims of the horrific massacre that took place in 1989 at Ecole Polytechnique. In being extremely careful about my terminology, I copied the wording from a post on a union website from last year that said, in short, that these women were murdered simply because of their gender.

And that, my friend, was my mistake. I took at face value a post from a credible source. But it wasn’t based on these women’s gender, it was based on their sex. And there is a difference, I was reminded in the firmest and foulest of terms on Monday (actually Sunday night when I posted and later checked before going to sleep).

I was accused by one poster (often retweeted) of adding to the violence of that day. I was told I “obviously didn’t remember,” which was really ridiculous in that I was on the air doing news that next morning on CHFI. I even had to fend off the worst reaction from a male co-worker, reacting to my sadness and shock by saying, “Who cares?” This is something I’ve never told anyone before now, because the story wasn’t about me. So this criticism Sunday night was personal.

No, the tweets were not an attack by a madman with a gun – and I am pretty sure that I can say he was a man – but I was deeply disturbed by the way that my tweet was tagged by several very angry people who had a cause, presumably from a transgender point of view, that I was not aware of. Gender and sex are not interchangeable in our current terminology.

Even the OCAD University website used these words: “The 14 women were killed in a gender-based act of violence.”

I’m aware now. I was to the point of thinking I would never again acknowledge the December 6^th attack, lest I add the worst kind of distraction to a day of remembrance about 14 innocent women whose lives were taken because of their sex. Because they were women.

When I apologized and took down the tweet, then I was questioned in the least gentle of terms as to why I had taken it down. There was no pleasing anyone, except for the initial group of infuriated tweeters who said, “Fair play. She’s apologized.”

Look, this isn’t me. But I remember that Twitter doesn’t take into account the…account. Who I am. What I stand for and how I try to protect and give a voice to those who don’t have my platform and followers, when I can.

I’ll be careful but never careful enough, it seems. In AA there’s a motto that goes “Progress, Not Perfection.” I’m angry that I trusted some site’s presumably careful terminology because I didn’t know better. But I’m angrier because I was taken to the public square and hanged before I got a chance even to say what it was that I meant or knew.

Educate me, by all means. Help me to learn the ways that you can be acknowledged and aided in your cause, but by attacking and name-calling and trying to cancel me and still my voice, you are not helping me, and certainly not helping your case. You turned a day in which 14 women were murdered into your cause. And as much as we all need our eyes opened, there has got to be a better way. If you scream at me, I will not listen. And then how do I learn?

Have a gentle weekend. I’ll be in Kelowna visiting my dad and sisters for an early Christmas.

Just a thought… Sometimes I look up and smile and say, “I know that was you.” [Author Unknown]

You can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

You know me: I’m the kid digging through manure, looking for the pony. I use that analogy a lot because it’s true. It’s me.

In pre-pandemic (and pre-tap payment) times, I would find dimes all the time, which some say are messages from the ones we love. In fact, the other day, as we were about to visit our friend Mira and deliver her meals as well as a few Hanukkah decorations (again, thank you, Brooke, for making that possible), I found a Canadian penny wedged in a mat outside her building’s front door. Now that’s rare! And, of course, I dug it out of the muck and kept it.

Lately, though, I’ve been finding Band-aids. Don’t ask me why people are dropping wrapped, clean Band-aids, but here’s what I choose to believe, because that’s just how I work: Rob’s thing was and is always to keep a Band-aid in his wallet (I joke that it’s where the condom used to be) and whenever there’s a blister, scratch or minor emergency, there he is to make it better. If it’s a sign from above, it’s a good one. We’re healing.

I had another sign from above the other day, but not a good one. Brooke and I were having a great day: we’d strolled and shopped a local Christmas Craft market and then walked along the main street in our nearby Sidney to pick up a few more gifts. Suddenly, out of the blue, I was splashed all down my shoulder, into my phone holster and down on a plastic bag that thankfully protected a few children’s books we’d just bought. It was a deluge of freezing water from the flat rooftop one storey above.

I squealed a bit from the cold and the surprise of it, and then we kept walking, brushing off the new handmade cloth jacket I had just bought an hour earlier at the market, and looking back and up over our shoulders. Then, as we listened, we could hear someone up there, sweeping off the water from the previous month’s heavy rains.

So now, a couple of days later, I’ve been considering a few things I could have done. I could’ve stopped and yelled, “Hey! Could you please watch where that water’s going?” or gone into the business below that roof and told them what had happened. But I did neither. Why? Because: a) I couldn’t believe it, and b) it had to have been an accident, so why make some poor guy feel bad? I mean, no one would do that on purpose, would they? I don’t actually think it’ll be making into a future episode of Just for Laffs.

So what would you have done? You’re welcome to leave a comment on Facebook or Instagram as to how you’d have handled it. Brooke says she would have yelled; Phil said he’d have gone into the building. Me? I’m more like, “Don’t make a scene – they might be listeners.” Yeah, I still have that nutty mindset almost five years to the day since leaving CHFI.

Maybe it serves as a reminder that I shouldn’t always be looking down, but honestly, if I’d been looking up, I’d have just gotten a free sinus cleanse, so perhaps it’s for the best? And considering what can come from above in a town with a LOT of sea gulls, I guess I was lucky. And…there’s that kid in the manure pile again!

Take good care and I’ll be back here with you on Thursday. And stay dry, if you can, will you?

Just a thought… If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. [Maya Angelou]

You can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

There is so much to talk about here today. I mean, there’s the new Covid variant and we are just extremely grateful that we seized the seas and took our trip when we did. Just another example of tomorrow being promised to no one. We wait for our booster shots, continue wearing N95 masks and on we go.

Then there’s the weather. When conditions in your home province are front page on your ship’s Canadian newsletter, that’s an eye-opener. Of course, I kept up with everything via the internet and if you were asking if we’re okay, we are, thank you. Our little family here on the Saanich Peninsula is safe, and this mountain that Rob and I live on has an Indigenous name that translates to “place of refuge” after people escaped a tsunami here many years ago.

So here’s what I want to share with you today, and it’s all about how you frame things. Our trip home (except for being moved out of the seats that we paid to be in from Miami to Toronto on American Airlines, which is an infuriating story you don’t need to hear) well, most of it was just flawless. Until it wasn’t.

First the good: we got to Toronto Friday and had a fantastic visit with these guys in the hotel bar/restaurant.

Of course, this is Mike Cooper and Ian MacArthur from my CHFI days – both of whom are doing great (Ian is loving the sleep) and they shared the welcome news that morning producer Gord has a new job on another radio station. Fantastic news, Gord!

Our lifelong bestie Allan Bell came, too, and between him and Mike (quite literally, actually) Rob laughed more than he has all year. It was the perfect ending to the trip.

Or…it should have been. Now the bad: we flew Toronto to Vancouver and all went well, waited our two hours and got on a small plane from YVR to Victoria International Airport. It was raining hard and getting dark.

Rob and I sat in the two little seats in 1A and 1C, which provided a front row view to what was going on on the flight deck, whose door was open before we left the ground. I heard one of the two flight attendants talking to the duo at the controls and I kept hearing the word “relax…” and then again “relax….” Hmm…I thought. I hope there’s nothing to be tense about.

The announcements and safety demo done, we buckled in and left Vancouver for the 12-minute flight home. As the landing gear came down, we began our descent in the fog and rain and cloud and then – uh-oh – up we went again. Okay….

We had been making light conversation with her, so we asked the flight attendant, who was now seated facing us about three metres away, if this was normal. She was very matter-of-fact and said, “Oh, yeah.” (Thank goodness for level-headed flight attendants. We take more cues from them than we realize, I think.)

Later, after a quick convo on the handset with the flight deck, we found out from her that the pilot couldn’t see the runway, so she went back up and around and approached from another direction.

As a 12-minute flight stretched out to an eventual 40-minute trip, I started thinking about how our wills had almost been finished up recently, our family at home and that conversation on the deck that included the word “relax.”

And here’s what I chose to believe. I decided to tell myself that he was telling the crew that when the day ended, they were going to relax. Maybe have a bath and relax. Or take some time off in December and relax. That has to have been it, right?

As we touched down on the runway (yes, there was applause) and deplaned, I felt like Lloyd Bridges in Airplane! and was thinking: Maybe I picked the wrong decade to quit drinking…. 

But we made it home safe and sound with family awaiting, and I was thankful: to have made it, to have had a welcome such as the one we got, and for the power of testing negative and thinking positive. What else are we going to do, right?

Talk to you here on Monday.

Just a thought… I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move. [Robert Louis Stevenson]

You can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

Welcome back – to you and I guess to me – as we wrap up November together!

So I told you I’d give you a better picture of where Rob and I have been the last two weeks. And I’ve been really struggling with how to explain it, because I feel it needs justifying. Here we go.

Picture yourself reading a story online today about someone who died, or got sick, and your reaction is “Serves them right” or “Well, what did they expect?” That’s exactly what I have been trying to avoid the last two weeks because Rob and I chose to do something that has gotten some very bad press over the past nearly two years and, in some cases, with good reason.

You see, when we had two weeks we could clear, I went online and looked at different scenarios.

Well, we chose a cruise – a transatlantic crossing. And I know ships have been described as floating petri dishes, but a lot of stringent precautions and guidelines were followed diligently by staff and passengers alike.

The Azamara Quest is a relatively small ship, and was booked at half its normal 700-passenger capacity. We sailed across the Atlantic for 12 days with one stop, St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, where we didn’t even get off the ship for the day.

Our trip began in Portugal, a gorgeous country that I cannot wait to return to and explore some more, and which clamped down due to Covid about a week after we left. Luckily for us, we were able to squeeze in a one-day tour of castles and mansions around Lisbon (you can see photos on my video journal).

And then we boarded a small ship, our first time with the Azamara line, and began a very quiet journey, much of it of our own choosing. We went to just one evening show, kept it to two meals a day. There were no self-serve buffets or anything where germs could be spread; I can only imagine the money a ship saves when people have to ask to be served portions rather than taking that extra one themselves. I know I chose differently!

We took everything very slowly. And despite writing for podcasts, including seven new Drift with Erin Davis sleep stories (!) this was what we needed. Being rocked to sleep every night on the ocean is my idea of paradise.

What did not rock was the number of times we were tested for Covid. I’m grateful for every swab and brain tickle that made my eyes water, but we were tested at Vancouver airport, and again before we got on our ship. Then we were tested halfway through the cruise…and that’s when things got a little curious, as there was one positive outcome on board. We were told that person had been quarantined in a special section of the ship – but HOW someone tested positive after seven days aboard was a mystery to Rob and me.

The captain announced that they’d gone through closed circuit camera footage of that person, where they’d been and with whom they’d spent time, and none of their circle tested positive. Thank goodness. Maybe it was a false positive after all?

On Friday we disembarked, flew out of Miami, and stayed the night in Toronto, where we got together with friends. I’ll you that and more about the homecoming next time. Oh, and a huge thanks to Brooke for keeping things up and running on Facebook and Instagram, and to you for coming back. It’s great to get away, despite all of our concerns, but better to come home to a welcome and so much love. And of course rain, so much more rain. Take care and we’ll talk soon.

Just a thought… Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. [Mark Twain]

As always, you can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

So, thanks for coming by – and I have a few things to share with you. None of them is life altering, but in our house, they’ll be life-improving.

Rob and I are going away for two weeks starting today. Our daughter-in-law Brooke will be keeping a steady hand on my Facebook page, and I’ll have posts planned in advance to go for you daily. (If anything world-shattering happens between now and when I get back, you’ll understand why I haven’t reflected or commented on it on social media.) Just no journal until the 29th. I plan to shoot something when I’m away and tell you about our escape then.

For now, it’s just this: I felt myself starting to really crack and when that happens, it’s time for some self-care. Picture lying in a hammock and you’re doing just fine keeping comfortable and balanced, and then, say…a hippopotamus…jumps in on top of you. You end up with your butt dragging on the ground.

Since I first started working at age 17, Novembers have always been busier than almost every month for me, but this year, so was October, and I was doing it all with one hand tied behind my back because of my ridiculous computer troubles.

My social media accounts are all just like a ball of wool after a cat’s gotten to it, and I was hitting walls all over the place. Hard. So when we saw that there were two weeks that had only hockey on the calendar, we decided to keep those weeks free, not offering any options for meetings or rehearsals or writing or posting or recording, and to take some time away together.

You’ll still get new stories on Drift with Erin Davis every Tuesday, and free ones moved over to listen to for the first time. I’ll be honest: Drift has been a much bigger project than I thought, as I’m responsible for promoting it, getting new subscribers (both free and paid) and, of course, writing, recording, editing, mixing and posting. It’s a LOT. A labour of love, for sure, but a lot.

So, with everything all ready for you for the next two weeks, Rob and I are taking that time to reconnect. To breathe. To sleep and to relax. As I say, Brooke will be online to make sure everything’s okay and when I come back in a couple of weeks, I’ll have plenty of stories and experiences – positive but not in a “test” kind of way (we hope). So take care of yourself. Take it easy if you can, enjoy the daily posts at Facebook and Instagram if you follow and please find a way to breathe, to sleep, yes, to Drift and I’ll be back on the 29th.

And thanks for understanding as you always seem to do. You amaze me.