Nott What You'd Expected...

Minding Gaps

Minding Gaps

*

The call came early. As if the thought of the time difference had yet to set in. Nine missed birthdays. Nine missed winters. As if the call itself had not been dramatic in its own right, some sort of vindictive justice must be served in an:

Oh Yes, The Time Difference.

The Gap That Remains.

You Know How Forgetful Your Mother Is, What State She Must Be In

At A Time Like This.

“Hello, then?” He half shouted, waking himself up in the process.

“Did…did we wake you?” The voice was familiar but almost foreign, odd in the context of driving London rains and summers in Cornwall, but familiar the way smells from childhood can call you back. The methane smell of dying grass and leaves revealed by melting snows of spring. Schoolyard recess.

“Who is this?” He squinted at the bedside alarm.

“It’s Dad.” The voice choked. “It’s Cairine…we lost her.” In 34 years of marriage, his father had always referred to his mother-in-law by her first name. Cairine—like a cancerous cell, an unmentionable disease. A detachment that carried to all aspects of family life. Everything had a name. Everything had a place. Sentimentality, pet names, nicknames—trivial.

The tradition continued.

“Goddamnit, Keith. D’you realize it’s fucking half past three in the morning?” The sound of his father’s first name surprised even him. It had been years since he had actually said it aloud. “How is Mom? Is she all right? What happened to Gram? Was she sick?”

“We don’t know. My best guess is the drinking. Doris thinks old age, she was almost 74. Spry, though. Brent and Taylor, they said they’d seen it coming months now.” The mention of uncles and in-laws told him that his Gram’s passing was not as recent as a late night call would have suggested.

“When’d it happen?”

“Tuesday night, just after supper—Doris was home, got the call from some ambulance driver in Oshawa. Said they found her passed out on a park bench. Didn’t have nothing with her, just that ratty notebook and that thermos she always took everywhere.”

His grandmother was a freelance writer. That’s how she described herself. Emphasis on free. Writing whatever came to her—that was an original too. Whatever came to her. A Mecca of inspiration, a pilgrimage of worthy topics circumnavigating her brain until genius flowed like oil. She traveled with a rare sense of familiarity, freely spending her inheritance and Grandpa’s earnings as if ignorant to her life and obligations at home. Most of the time what actually came out was drivel. As a boy, he watched in awe as her rhythmic scratching formed arching words and phrases on the rotting pages of her leather-bound journal, stained with Irish coffee. As a young man, a trip to her den revealed notebooks filled with ideas never fully complete, phrases ending mid page. A rebel, she might have been called by those who only saw the travel, the idiosyncratic antics. Drunk was closer—the only thing she held in common with his father. No steady job, no recognizable moral standard, a radiant black sheep in an otherwise grey family left behind. Despite her shortcomings, she had faith. In him. He was not like his father, she was adamant in repeating. Seen by most as a harsh criticism in a town where his father was a well respected rancher just outside of Huntsville—owned his own land, worked it himself—he saw it otherwise. That was David's place. Seated at the right hand, she used to joke.

“So what happens now?” He snapped back from coffee stains and chicken scratch. “Is there an autopsy?”

“Doris and the family—they just don’t think it’s right. Especially after all they’ve been through, what with the way Cairine acted these last few months.” His father’s voice ached, and he wondered if his mother was in the room.

“Just tell me what you want from me.”

“I was just callin’ to tell you. Cai—your Gram died, Wil. Do whatever the hell you want.”

The shortness, the use of his own name, caught him off guard. “When’s the funeral?” He rolled over and faced the ceiling. He closed his eyes.

“Services are on Friday. 10 am. They’re doing it north of Toronto, so I dunno what kind of train you’d have to catch, but if you can make it...” As his father’s voice trailed off, he could hear his mother in the background, asking about him but never brave enough to grasp the phone. It was nearly 9:30 there—she was headed to bed herself.

“Fine.” He let the phone fall to his side, and buried himself in the mass of silk and down. He glanced at a nearby clock. 3:48 am. “Fuck” he groaned. He pulled off his glasses and placed them on a pile of worn leather notebooks and scraps of used looseleaf. His irritated whisper bounced off exposed brick and stainless steel before dying out in the empty flat.

**

You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. It was in his head, but if anyone nearby had any sense of decency, they’d be thinking the same thing.

The Asian woman wore a red trench coat and wrapped a molting fox pelt around her poorly dyed auburn hair. Thai? Japanese? Didn't matter. She blocked an entire platform from entering the car, scuffing his newly purchased loafers. He’d spent a week in every shop in SoHo looking for the pair, a healthy balance between runway chic and business casual—the perfect shade of russet tan.

This was rush hour.

This was Oxford heading south on the Bakerloo.

This was unacceptable.

“’scuse amee—get of t’way” she jeered, butchering the language of Shakespeare, smothering a troupe of small, smartly dressed school children with her bulging sacks.

A pleasant voice of reason piped in from above sternly advising Mind the Gap. It had often crossed his mind, who she was, this LadyofTheGap, and how she became the most elegant, peaceful woman in Britain. She couldn’t be real, he reasoned. There was no cause for peace here. Not in this dungeon of consumerism and personal propagation. People were ruthless, blind to the common man. There were stories, he was told in his first years at grad school at Oxford, of riders being trampled by busy passersby, too numb to notice a fellow Londoner in peril. Stilettos punching holes through wayward limbs. He wasn’t sure who he felt like today. The trampled or the trampler. The scuffed loafer reminded him that yes, today he was a victim.

A blast of dry, decaying air pushed forward to signal the arrival of another, less crowded train. He shuffled in with the masses. Buttressed by an Indian chap in highwaters and a Chav complete with sideways cap and trainers, he clutched his Bottega Veneta attaché case and closed his eyes, waiting for Piccadilly.

***

The line at the airport was short. Heathrow on a Thursday was busy, but busy like Hyde Park on a Sunday morning: still occupied, but lacking a sense of purpose. The second run of a play with bad reviews. A ghost town. Dormant planes reflected off of shining glass enclosures. Towering white paneled walls and moving platforms spelled affluence, said Welcome to The Financial Center of the World, smugly stated Yeah We Invented The Language, Now What The Fuck Are You Staring At? And yet still managed to house some of the most ignorant shits he had ever seen.

Maybe Thursday travel brought out the worst in people. Or rather, the worst of people. Cheap-ass rates? Cheap-ass fliers. This was when the East Midlands newlyweds and Shropshire whores come out from their Hobbit-like dwellings and stand in his way. He had never seen so much rubbish, save for the gutters of West End on a drizzling weekend night.

The line for the plane was, however short, a feast for his insatiable appetite.

If she knew how daft she sounded when she used that phrase, she’d never open her mouth again—and maybe she’d be better off… her ass would be…Does he really think that people won’t notice the hair plugs? Fake tan is passable, and the watch is an Omega, but that collar brings out the wrinkles in his neck like a goddamn turkey, and—God, are the rest of you getting this?!?...Who told that mum that dressing the twins alike was okay? She realizes it’s child abuse, right? God this is fucking pathetic….

He gnawed on a stale bap from Greggs and washed down two Valium with a vodka and Coke in preparation for the flight. The perks of a well-paying job in the second most overpriced country on the planet? He could afford to drink at airport bars.

First Class passengers boarded first, and he placed the noise-cancelling Bose earbuds into their full and upright position, where they remained the duration of the flight. He nervously clicked his pen. Two hot towels, a terrible Ben Stiller film and four glasses of Pinot Noir later, he landed on the desolate Canadian tundra, alone.

****

He wasn’t used to the cold. The bitter, driving cold that chills the bones and takes the warmth from your breath before it leaves your mouth, almost drawing from your lungs. It was hard to remember a time when he felt this alone. Even as a student landing in a strange country a decade earlier, the multitude of people in city life discouraged a sense of isolation. Here, he was physically and emotionally detached.

The seven-hour flight proved damaging. A hangover coupled with exhaustion only added to the unenviable position he painted himself to be in. Away from home, back in the icy depths of Canada—his first return since Winter Holiday of his first year at Oxford—back to the origin of his exodus, the homecoming site for this prodigal son.

A rental car proved the best option. Given the choice between a Ford pickup and a Mercedes GL450, he chose the Mercedes. Ha, Dave would have made fun of him. His brother had been a pickup guy, just like his father. He tossed his luggage—two matching Vuitton cases—in the cargo hold, and laid the briefcase on the smooth, mechanically heated leather of the passenger seat. He paid the fee and headed north. The memory of open spaces flooded back to him. Skyscrapers could no longer absentmindedly block his view of the horizon. Ahead of him, the land seemed to curve with the earth—a porcelain shell over black soil. Trees scattered in the distance, the result of squirrels who had misplaced winter rations decades before. They were gone now, but the result of their fastidious planning lived on, effigies to the obsessive compulsive.

*****

The funeral home was a converted mansion, built in the early 1930’s, with a car port that served well for loading and unloading hearses. The shrubs in front were bare from winter frost, clawing at the path leading to the front steps, awash with frozen puddles and shards of ice. Frozen crystal tubes stood like marble columns of ice from holes on the sloping roof where gutters should be, stretching long and thin down the side of poorly stuccoed outer walls and shutters that rusted at the seams. The pale yellow color of the house stood out against the grey, dull Canadian winter sky, and reminded him of London—of home.

A steady stream of elderly women entered the house, grasping gingerly at the frozen metal knob before shyly entering, as if the next time they entered, it would be them lying prostrate on the altar of tribute. He was anxious and upset that he had yet to recognize any of the aging members of the community, as he sat in the car and waited with the heat still blasting. He crossed his arms. Why should he recognize them? How could he? Nine years is enough to change even the most lively person into a decrepit shadow of their former selves. He knew about change.

“Fuck, I’ll jus—I’ll just….go…. Now….ugh.” He forcibly nudged the door with his shoulder and, grabbing his scarf and sunglasses, trudged carefully along the frozen asphalt.

The room smelled like death. A mix of formaldehyde, old women’s hairspray, dusty mothballs and lunch meat sweating on the kitchen table. Radiators pinged as smoke played with unnaturally yellow lighting from overhead lamps. Visitors milled around, speaking in hushed tones as if their ten-inch voices would have disturbed Gram’s eternal slumber. The crowd continued its collective trip down memory lane.

“She had such a vivid imagination,” one woman would mumble between sloppy bites of mandarin orange Jello. A euphemism for slightly insane.

“She gave her children such freedom, such independence, a lively character,” clearly referring to her regular spells at the local bar. Never mind his mother, left at home to watch the younger ones while Gram was away.

“She had stories, I’ll give her that—stories for days…” An elderly man in a stained grey sweater sipped burnt coffee a Styrofoam cup clutched in slowly warming hands.

He weaved through the mass of sweaty, decaying mourners, careful not to brush his suit against their less dignified apparel. Eyes followed his every move. He dreaded the inevitable encounter. He thumbed the pills in his pocket.

The procession wrapped its way around to Gram’s final resting place. He caught the sight of the flowers before he saw the casket, and a feeling of guilt overtook him. I left her here, he thought. Alone. In his idle standing, he had thawed. The sight of the body chilled him again. He was familiar with death, but it was the first corpse he had ever seen.

The leather of his polished shoes squeaked as he rounded the chairs, jarring his knee on the twisted cheap aluminum. squeak.

Damnit.

He was here for one purpose: tribute.

The coffin was a seafoam green. Disgusting. The pale moldy hue reflected into the case, giving Gram a sick, olive tone. As if the clammy, wrinkly skin didn’t have enough to work against. Three strikes. They had dressed her in a modest pink blouse, a color she abhorred. Hands gently resting in her lap, the pearls in her ears matched the necklace that draped across her bony collarbones. The skin of her hands was jaundiced and pulled taut against an underlying weave of sinewy muscles and age-weakened bones. A callous on the middle finger of her left hand was a sign of her occupation—her life’s vocation. Under folded hands rested the faded red notebook. Her companion. When he left her in Huntsville for a life abroad—experience, education and wealth, it stayed at her side.

Her face smiled gently—content—her lips slightly pursed, revealing dimples buried in overblushed cheeks and an impish smile that he remembered from his childhood. In their heyday, they would often escape for hours at a time, visiting old friends, perusing antique markets stopping at corner stores for Gram to refill her thermos. Always thirsty. Like his brother before him, he shared her dimples, her impish smile, her thirst.

A hand gently rested on his back, just between the shoulder blades. He jumped. “Have you seen your mother yet?” The tone was hushed, reverent, pitying. He turned, and shrugged the dirty, tar-stained hand off of his back. The suit was new. Fall collection. It took a day of work to pay for the tailoring alone.

His father’s eyes were not puffy, nor was his voice as hoarse as the rest of the gatherers. This was to be expected. His father sighed.

“Nah, nah, just got in…” He trailed off, and caught the faint smell of whiskey.

“Well, be sure to see her. She’s been expecting you… we’ve all been expecting you.” The careful digs were intentional. He could hear it in the tone. Who is We supposed to be?

“Gimme a second,” he said, “I just need some time.”

His father stuffed his calloused hands into the bulging pocket of his unhemmed trousers. “Here” he said, “you can have these—I won’t need them…” His father removed a handful of balled up Kleenexes, placed them in his hand and slowly backed away. For a man who had failed to produce a single tear as his first-born son was lowered into the ground, the death of a mother in law could hope for kind words at best. After ten years of Spartan, stone-faced silence, the end of his wife's source of pain was more a blessing than anything else.

He took time to compose himself, dabbing his eyes, but making no impact on the dusty balls of tissue. It’s a show, he thought to himself. This whole damn thing. No one knew her, at least not enough to really care. Shit, I didn’t even know her, not like this. Turning suddenly, he knocked a cheap wreath to the floor. Eyes darted in his direction. Muffled whispers. Our Beloved Cairine lay sideways, half torn among a pile of silk flowers. Seafoam greens and fluorescent pinks, like 1980’s bridesmaid dresses. A white orchid that, God knows, is probably a terrible omen in some Eastern country. He headed for the kitchen, a room of solace set aside for the family, his eyes fixed firmly on the floor. If reunion is what they want, fuck it, I’m here, let’s get it over with.

His relatives, the strangers he recalled with vague familiarity, milled around a pot of coffee. The smell of burnt coffee grounds, freshly starched shirts, and cigarette smoke filtered to the ceiling. The kitchen was small, encased in wood paneling and cramped with olive-colored appliances. His aunt mixed grape drink for the cousins, cursing the mound of spilled sugar on the countertop. His uncle Taylor removed the cap from a faded silver flask and emptied its contents into a dull yellow mug. The way Gram would have liked it. Irish.

He saw his sister first. Her dress was worn, a beige paisley print that faded as it wrapped around her swelling midsection. Her feet swelled with expectant grace, her face glowed from sweat and maternal patience. She stood hunched, on a swivel, her hands moving back and forth—clearing the counter space from cracker crumbs with the left, pacifying a crying, raven-headed toddler with the right. Calie, he guessed. Christmas photos were flashcards of his discarded past. Calie with the black hair, Janie with the lanky arms, Landon the lying sonofabitch who had been missing from the pictures the last two years. Which left Trish. Worn by two daughters and another on the way. She looked up from a pyramid of crumbs.

“Issat? Oh my God!” she sighed, dragging the Lord’s name.

They had always been close. Or, closer. When the family moved from five to four, the siblings grew together. It was the first time he had seen her in years—since his Winter break a decade ago on Canadian soil, and a trip she and Landon had taken to The Continent after Calie was born. She liked the city, she told him. Feeling so Cosmo. That was years ago. She came back. She settled. Responsibility. Respect. She was her mother’s daughter. Calie pulled at the sagging fabric above her mother’s thigh.

“Justa minute, sweetie—yer uncle is back—I don’t know if you’ve ever met Uncle Wil…” the child turned away, moving her blushing, crumb-covered face between her mother’s swelling knees. A traitor in the stocks. Betrayed by childhood shyness.

He leaned in for a one-armed hug, knees avoiding the niece he had never met. Three pats on his sister’s aching back. The smell of Chanel knock-off and baby formula. She couldn’t help but smile. He felt oddly at home.

“How’ve you been? When’s this little guy coming out?” he asked, gesturing but avoiding contact with her belly.

“Soon, soon—I’m—we’re doing real well. Calie starts preschool next year, Janie’s doin good, real good. Baby’s due in the summer—listen, Wil.” Her voice dropped. “I’m just so sorry about all of this—you and Gram were just so similar, so close… First Davi...”

“I’m fine, I’m good—it’s just really good to see you.” He spotted his mother near the fridge, talking with distant relatives she barely knew herself.

“I just hope after this, we can all just settle down, put things behind us—maybe talk it through, like it was before the funerals and you being so far and…” He listened, but kept tabs on his mother. He tousled Calie’s hair and moved past his sister to ladle a glass of punch from a large crystal bowl on the counter.

His mother was dressed for the occasion. Cheap black shoes, the left missing a plastic bow, the right scuffed and reminding him of a journey that seemed to have taken place years ago. A journey he was now regretting. Her nylons were without a run, but they were on the verge. She scratched the dry skin on her thigh with an aggressive nail, the bright red polish a painful contrast to her pale, winter worn legs. Her dress was charcoal—black, machine washed to the point of nearly grey. A string of pearls clung tightly to her neck. Her eyes swollen with emotion—the same pink of Gram’s final gown.

“Hey Mah,” he said, the emotion dialed down upon the sight of her, crouched down, fixing the back of her heel. Trish moved with her rag to a puddle of fruit punch on the floor.

“Is that? Oh, I’m glad you’re here.” She responded without looking—his presence had been announced long before he showed his face. “She would have wanted you here.” Years of silence, isolation, melted in an instant of grief.

His mother was fond of sentimentality. Gram hated it.

“How have you been?”

“Well, you know how things are with these things… people you don’t know, things you weren’t prepared for, things just happen and…”

“Is there anything I can do?” He asked, but knew full well that she would refuse. Too proud.

“You being here is enough—it’s all that I can ask…honestly, I’m a little surprised…”

“Excuse me?” He reacted without thinking, knowing full well what she had said.

“Gram—she loved you—you two were so close, but after David…” her voice trembled, treading on subjects untested.

“After David what?...” He had not expected confrontation. “I’m here now. Can we keep it at that? Jesus.” He was unsure how strained his mother’s relationship with her mother had been in the remaining years of her life. “Give your own mother her time—give her some respect.”

“Now you quiet down, son. You quiet down. This is a time of mourning… Your mother is very upset. Show some of that class you picked up while you were gone…”

“You picked a hell of a time to speak up, Keith.”

His sister looked up and dropped the rag she had been holding. It landed with a dull smack on the tile. The rest of the family poured out of the small kitchen, eyes darting to the floor then back at him as they passed. His sister herded cousins like cattle, grabbing stuffed animals and discarded cups, half-empty, and funneled them to the foyer. His father moved towards the door before turning and blocking the view for loose-lipped relatives.

His mother stood up, and slowly looked in his direction. She began softly, slowly raising her voice. “Your grandmother decided long ago that this family wasn’t right for her—she moved on, she lived her own life. She didn’t want us around. I…” She clenched her jaw.

“Since when is independence a negative trait?” A trickle of sweat beaded on the back of his neck. “You abandoned her when she needed you—turned your backs on her—if you want someone to leave bad enough, maybe that’s just what happens.”

“Don’t pretend like you know what’s going on—you’ve been gone for too long to show up and start—”

“Just because she didn’t live the life you expected or act in line with what you wanted…”

“Don’t you talk to your mother like that, you sonofabitch!” his father hissed. His mother began to cry, but the tears were gone. Dried up. Her chest heaved, violently.

“Why did you do this? You show up and yell? What is wrong with you? You haven't seen her in years! The way she's been.... Goddamnit... You...You just…” She was wheezing, and trailed off.

“I just…”

“You don’t know her the way we know her-”

“Knew her,” He said. Salt in an open wound. He was getting nowhere, and forgot where he was going in the first place.

“What do you want from us? She’s dead—there’s nothing you or I, or anyone can do…She’s in a better place.” He could tell his mother had rationalized the statement in her head hours before he had arrived, a mantra to keep herself sane.

“Better place? Better—anywhere is better than this—gah…” He couldn’t say what he wanted to. About family, about the ties that bond, about support—about—

“Son, if you’ve said your last respects, I think it’s best if you leaved.” His father had had enough, slipping into familiar ranch hand speak.

“You know, it wasn’t my fault.” They both turned, looking at him.

“Of course it wasn’t… how anyone five thousand miles away could…?” His father reasoned, while his mother interjected—“She drank herself to...”

“No." He inhaled the dry air. "David.” A picture of his brother, laughing, flashed in his mind. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“What?” It felt as though the air had been sucked out of the room. Zero pressure.

“The trip was his idea—I had to get to the Toronto somehow, a taxi would’ve been too expensive. He was always like that—you know it wasn’t my fault.”

“Wil, no one ever said…” The volume of the conversation had dropped to barely audible tones.

“You don’t have to say anything.” He glanced back to the coffin. “I know you think that without me, without Oxford, without….” He shook his head. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“That’s ridiculous.” His father mumbled, slowly turning the color of fruit punch on a tiled floor. His mother was silent. She looked over at the burbling coffee machine.

“That’s fine, whatever—I saw what I needed to see—I just need to say goodbye.”

He took a final pass in front of the casket, saying his final farewell. To Gram. To this. He paused a final time, turning slightly and glancing at his mother, clutching the arm of his father’s discolored suit jacket, forcing herself to look away before taking a parting shot—

“You left us once—you can do it again.” Her voice cracked, hoarse. She looked down.

He slumped in the still-freezing car interior. His breath clouded the windscreen, and tiny crystals formed on the slowly defrosting glass. His chest caught, pulled tight—anxiety and stress not accounted for in the tailoring of his suits and form-fitting shirts. He sighed. The pit of his stomach pulled towards his spine as his hands limply felt the wheel, elbows dragging. He felt lost. Cold. Tears welled but would not fall. “What the fuck!” he retched, bringing his forehead to the wheel. A puff of air stuck to the glass, distorting his vision. Tires screamed as he pulled onto the highway. His briefcase slid onto the floormat, his scarf unfurled. A flash of red caught his eye. The funeral home wavered in the rearview mirror, trapped in a horizontal cell of thin black lines. A flight was leaving for Gatwick in four hours. Eleven hours to home. He had been up for more than 24 hours. He bought the tickets over the phone and gazed lazily onto the long stretch of road that lay ahead. The sun began to set. Ice glared black in the bluish glow of the high beams.

This was the last stretch David ever saw. Morbid, he thought. He had rushed from London, rushed to Canada, rushed to the car. No time. He now had all the time in the world. Time to mourn. Time to watch. Time to think. He had often wondered when the change occurred. When the middle class rancher’s son from Ontario had become a shell of his former self, or rather, when he had discarded his outer shell—the guilt it stored—leaving it all behind.

Replaced it.

Changed.

His mother publicly credited grad school, telling her friends that, of course she supported education, but only in the figurative sense. She supported learning. Finding yourself, but only rooted in practicality. No one in the family had completed a bachelor’s degree, let alone attended a foreign university, let alone Oxford. There was life in the farm, in the land. His siblings understood. He had it wrong. David the farmhand, Trish the caring mother. Or David the drunk. Trish the cheating housewife. His mother knew her role and abided: a good daughter, a better wife. She knew her role. His father wasn’t sure when the change had happened. Wasn’t sure if it mattered when, just that it had. Good riddance.

He left Canada as he found it, save for a bit less vodka and a pile of crumpled tissue. The plane took off, banking slightly right over the Toronto skyline, showering the passengers on the enviable right side of the plane with a display of city lights. Children shouting for pilot’s wings and grape soda caused other First Class fliers to look back with disgust. He never noticed. His face was wrapped in a warmed towel, a bottle of vintage red at his side. His pen slipped from his side and rolled back to the thin maroon curtain guarding him from economy class. Radiohead droned on, and Valium flooded his bloodstream.

******

The black box was never found. Wreckage floated ominously in time with the tide, a pair of seat cushions nodded silently in the water, brushing against a leather briefcase. A worn stuffed bear bobbed rhythmically, its fur matted and sopping wet. On top of the case, a crimson leather-bound notebook, swollen and bloated, folded open—pages fluttering in the morning breeze before settling on a final page, scratched with ink, corrected, made right, showing wear:

The body is a vessel. A well-manicured device, draped, wrapped, and pampered.

Tested.

Sent forth into a world of judgment to be analyzed, dissected, destroyed.

We cleanse it, strain it, nourish it.

Drown it in alcohol.

Inject it.

Cover it with woolen, poly-cotton blends.

Place it on a pedestal.

And then lower it,

back into the ground.

The page held, stoic, before the ink ran purple and the pages melted together, absorbing the salty sea. An Irish fishing vessel was the first to spot the smoldering remains, early on Saturday morning 240 kilometers west off the coast of Ardara. The Times thought it worthy of front page coverage, while The Durham Central Region News in Oshawa placed the report on 4D, between the livestock auctions, just in front of the obituaries.

posted by Kevin @ 3:22 AM