Who's the boss of me?

MAD ABOUT PLAID: Portrait of the editor as a
young show-off.

Last night I decided to write down the names all the terrific managers I've had since I started working as a journalist.

There's a lesson here somewhere.

Starting with my first reporting job, in 1979, they are:

Jon Butler, The Standard in Elliot Lake, Ont.: Jon hired me twice. Then, when I tried to quit, Jon didn't let me go. In 1981 I spent an evening drinking beer with a man named Mark Cranford and we came to the very sensible conclusion that we should both quit our jobs and go to India. Mark backed out. Me, I handed in my letter of resignation, which Jon flatly refused. He said if I wrote stories for The Standard from India, my job would be waiting when I got back. That was only one tiny part of Jon's stellar bossness. As publisher of the first newspaper I ever worked for, The Standard, Jon set the bar against which all subsequent managers would be measured. The Standard? Get it? Never mind. 

Rick McCutcheon, Manitoulin Expositor. I still write for this, the best community paper in the world, whenever I get a chance. Rick told me one of the reasons he hired me was I wore red Converse high-tops to my job interview.

Glen Brisebois, Northern Life: Speaking of shoes, Glen put on his front page a story I wrote about my parents' neighbour Joe Hughes' 40 year-old shoes. At the time, I thought keeping an item of clothing for four decades bordered on the miraculous. As I type, this I'm wearing a red t-shirt I bought 25 years ago and still think is pretty cool. 

Jim Cormier, Influence Magazine: When our kids were little, my wife Helena augmented Kraft Dinner with extra cheeses and spices and it was delicious, but Jim always prepared KD according to the directions on the box, which the kids preferred and called Kraft Dinner a la Jim Cormier. Jim died far too young in 1998 at 39, but I think about and consult Jim so often he might as well still be alive.

REJECTED LETTER : My notice of
quitting that Jon Butler turned down.  

Alan Lofft, Sound &Vision, ProSound: Alan's not only an editor, banjo picker and actor, he's a hi-fi expert. When I applied for a job with his hi-fi magazine Sound&Vision, he gave me a little test that asked what the terms "wow" and "flutter" meant. I didn't have a clue. I answered "what I would say and what my heart would do if I got a job here." I got a job there.

Peter Worthington, Influence:  An "every idea is a good idea" guy who taught me that the only difference between a good and bad haircut is three days. Plus he said my ability to write attention-grabbing headlines probably stems from me being the youngest of 10 Carter kids. 

Ernest Hillen, Influence: When I first met Ernest, he had already travelled the world for various magazines including one I grew up with, Weekend, but despite that, he shared the same excitement and sense of wonder of a 12-year-old and never made me feel like a junior. He turned 90 this past April 6 and strangely enough, our phone conversation just yesterday lasted a mere 47 minutes. By Ernest's standards that was scarcely enough for a hi-how-are-ya?

Alan Morantz, Metropolitan Toronto Business Journal: Years after I worked for Alan, after he had moved on to another magazine; as I had,  I one day found myself fired. (That was neither the first nor the last time.) Next morning, Alan, sensing how much I'd feel like a loser, assigned me a story about Mississauga rattlesnakes. Those snakes made me feel like a writer again.  

GENTLEMAN JIM: He still helps me
make decisions.

Patricia Anderson, Metropolitan Toronto Business Journal: Pat was my boss the year my wife Helena gave birth to our twin daughters Ewa and Ria. A year or so earlier, Pat had become mom to Zoe. So sweet was Pat that one day, visiting our house and holding Ewa or Ria in her arms, my boss Pat actually mused about her actually nursing our daughter. My late brother Ed was on hand. Ed was like, "I work at the post office. Every day, we're fighting  with our managers. If my boss showed up right now I'd call the cops to get him off the property. And yours is talking about breastfeeding your baby??? "

David Bailey, Financial Post Magazine: Here's David, to me, when our baby son Michel arrived into our lives: "I really like what you've done with Michel. If you need any extra days off, just call me and say 'I need a Michel day' and don't worry about it." David died young and is now in heaven. 

Maureen Cavan, Harrowsmith Country Life: My mom and three of my sisters are nurses. Maureen was a nurse before becoming a publisher. That was evident in everything she did and that's all you need to know.

Caroline Connell, Chatelaine: Everybody who has worked with Caroline calls her the best manager they've ever had. And she might kill me when she reads this next part but what the hell I've had a good run. Before Facebook; before Instagram, before emojis, Caroline's family and close friends and her jazz-piano wizard husband Peter Hill called her, presciently, "LOL"! As in laugh out loud. There. I've outed Lol, one the best bosses on the planet. 

Rona Maynard, Chatelaine: Before Facebook, before Instagram, before the invention of everything, Rona let me brag about my family in a column in her magazine. But also, before I worked at Chatelaine, and shortly after Rona was named editor, I wondered, in the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors newsletter, how a physically wee woman like Rona could hold sway over such a behemoth as Chatelaine. She told me later that helped convince her it wouldn't hurt to have me around. Humour. More powerful than you know.

Stephen Petit, Today's Trucking: Hired me for what turned out to be the job of a lifetime. "There'll be as much travel," he said before leaving and handing me the reins, "as you want." I wanted lots.

UNTIL HE WAS PETERED OUT: 
 At 13-plus-years, Rolf was the longest
 putter up with me of all. 

Rolf Lockwood, Today's Trucking: Rolf was Stephen Petit's boss and then mine and let me, for 13 and change years, have as much fun as Stephen promised. 

Jim Glionna, Today's Trucking: You've never met anybody like Jim,  the founder of Todays' Trucking. Come visit me and I'll spend two days amazing you with Jim Glionna stories. But you ain't getting any here.

Okey Chigbo, CPA Magazine: Way back up there at Metropolitan Toronto Business Journal, I hired Okey to be an associate editor; his first full time editorial gig, and he's never let me forget it. In a good way. 

John Carson, The Lawyer's Daily: John's style: If an issue arises, look it in the eye, solve, move on. Staff love bosses for that.

Matt Grace, The Lawyer's Daily/Law360 Canada: Matt has put up with me as his direct charge for more than three years and hasn't fired me yet. 

And those are all the great journalism bosses I've had. 

So far.

 

 

Boodle Fight!

OODLES OF BOODLE: Ria, Josie (who comes from the delightfully named Sama, which 
rhymes with summer) and proud pop Michel

I don't want to  make anybody jealous, but two days ago my wife Helena, my son Michel, my daughter Ria and I ate dinner at a Filipino restaurant that's a 15-minute walk from our place and it was among the most memorable dining experiences ever. And not very expensive. 

The restaurant's called iSLAS, which is Tagalog for island. 

We were celebrating Ria becoming a licensed psyschotherapist, and Michel entertained us with stories about his visit a week earlier to see his handsome eight-year-old son Mateus, who lives in Nova Scotia.

 And who knew Filipino food would be so tasty and exotic? I don't even know what all we ate; just that there was fish and chicken and pork bellies and noodles and rice and plantain and it was all served on one giant plate made of banana leaves. I will even admit that I enjoyed a non-alcoholic cocktail called an Ubu Latte, which was cold yam juice and tastes way better'n it sounds. I'm talking spices and sizzling stuff everywhere. But one of the coolest things about the visit was that the menu was first recommended to me by a friend who lives in Manila Philippines and who has never been to Toronto.

HANDS DOWN GOOD FOOD: Hands up, actually
because Kamayan means "eat with your hands"

"Make sure you have the boodle fight!" is what Aian Nuestro told me, two years ago, when he and I first talked about this restaurant. 

"It's something that started on army bases, a long time ago. You don't use knives and forks, you just use your hands to fight for the food." Sounds to me, I said, like the 11- or 12- Carter household I grew up in.

I bet you're thinking: "But you've never been  to Manila, Peter. How can you have a friend there?"

And I'm glad you asked. 

One of the best things about my job is that I get to talk to colleagues around the globe, all day long, about anything I want, via Microsoft Teams software. Our company has something like 35,000 workers, and we're all just one click away from each other.

A STAND-UP-AND-THEN-SIT-DOWN-
AND-EAT GUY: Aian, whose name means "He of good taste."
 I just made that up.

For the record, I am not required to talk to anybody outside the dozen or so Canadians I work directly with, but, frankly, what's the good in being able to connect with the rest of the planet if you're not going to meet people? 

So I do. Via  computer. People from South Africa. The Philippines.  I've even got a workplace pal in--I hope you're sitting down--Carleton Place Ontario.

 

As my sister Charlene puts it, "Nobody's safe from you Pete."

But never mind her.

Manila and Toronto are on opposite ends of the clock so when it's midnight there, it's noon here. When I started my shift at 8 a.m., Aian'd be starting his at 8 p.m.. and because he likes trucks and motorcycles and his family and his job and joking around, well, having him helped make logging on every day all the more enjoyable. 

He's also Catholic, funny and a real stand-up guy. Which is a joke. Aian is not only a trustworthy chap, he knows a lot about stand-up comics and in fact turned me on to his fellow countryman Jo Koy and when he saw my daughter Ewa's  most recent 10-minute stand up routine, Aian responded with "Wow! She's a natural. She could give Dave Chappelle or Jo Koy a run for their money. She's good! I'm laughing like a proud uncle!" (That was the correct response.)

He also taught me a few tagalog words and laughed when I told him I wanted to tag along to some language lessons.  

And is his English good you ask? 

Get this. At one point about a year ago, the dog who shares his, his wife Sophia's and son Aori's Manila home, gave birth to a litter of pups. 

I told him I trust he was going to name one after me and Aian's response was, "I already did. The dorkiest looking one."

If you don't think that's the kind of thing a person who loves you says, you don't have any brothers.

And p.s. Sorry if I made anybody jealous. But jeez, sometimes I make me jealous. 

And another p.s. Check out  iSLAS, featuring the charismatic and informative Josie, here. 

 

No More Bad Hair Days!

TWO OLD WHITE CATS: I'm the
one wearing glasses

I got a haircut last Saturday at First Choice near my house and I have lost track of how many people told me they like my new do.

My favourite was on Tuesday, just after I finished work for the day.

I stepped out onto the porch and noticed our brand new neighbour woman, who just bought the house directly across the street, walking up the sidewalk towards her recently purchased home. 

I knew what I had to do. (My sister Charlene once put it this way: "Nobody's safe around you are they?" Nope.)

I strode across the street, introduced myself and before we said much, I saw another neighbour, who lives a few houses east of us on our side. I motioned her over, with "Ashley come meet the new person." 

She did  but before I could introduce them, Ashley was like, "Hey Peter. Nice haircut!"

If that didn't freak Ms New Neighbour out a bit,  maybe it should have, especially if she'd seen the super eerie Netflix series The Watcher, in which a happy family moves into their dream home. At first, the weirdly perfect neighbours are all smiling and like, "welcome here" and "we get along so well on this street" and then you know what happens next. But never mind that. 

My second favourite was another neighbour named Calvin who started with "great haircut," but then paused and added, with so much diplomacy he should be appointed to the UN, "but I liked it longer, too. You're one of those fortunate people who can make it work either way."  Calvin could write a book titled How to make people feel good about themselves.

I've had coworkers comment; quite a few neighbours and even the members of the writers' group that I sit in on every Friday. I told my wife Helena that I am going into the office one day next week because there were a few people I wanted to talk to directly but also, "because some folks haven't seen my new haircut." I was kidding. I swear.

Such a great hair week has this been that this morning, I decided to return to the scene of the wizardry--First Choice Haircutters--to thank the stylist, whose name I believe is Rob--for his handiwork.  

I also wanted to take Rob's picture to go with this blog because the barber's photo is a key part of the story.  

Here's why: For as long as I've been going for haircuts, when the barber gets to that part where he or she asks, "how would you like your hair?" I am at a loss for words. (Yeah, I know.) 

I glance at the handsome haircut models on the wall, but nobody has a head like mine. Most are mysteriously dark-eyed swarthy types with artistically shaped five o'clock shadows. 

I've always dreaded that question.

THUNK THE BARBER: "My customer has it bad 
for this guy."

The only time I got the answer right was once when I was writing the Family Room column for Chatelaine, and a professionally taken shot of me appeared  on the page, every issue. 

On one trip to the barber, I happened to be carrying a copy and when he asked how I wanted my hair, I opened the magazine and pointed at me.  "Like that!" I said.

My haircut turned out alright but I forgot to tell him the photo was actually me, so I'm sure the barber was left thinking, "My customer must really like  the woman's magazine columnist." (He's right. I do.)

But last Saturday, I didn't have a magazine.

Rob asked me how I wanted my hair, I looked into the mirror and realized the right answer was looking me in the eye.

 

"Same as yours," I said.

Rob: "Mine?"

Me: "Yup."  

Away he went. Confidently clipping and snipping and wiping and chatting, about travel, his love of airplanes and his 92 year old mom who still lives alone and drives a car. Only after it was done did I realize he probably took my instructions as a compliment. I hope he did. 

Because his work has certainly led to more than my fair share. That's why I returned to tell him this morning.

Turns out he's on three weeks holidays. So I'll have to wait to tell him the story I just told you. You can bet I will. The  hair stylist added an unprecedented sparkle to my week.

Which reminds me of another Chatelaine memory. The day news went around the office that a locally renowned stylist, who had a shop on Yorkville Avenue not far from Chatelaine, was closing up shop and moving to another city, a  few of my colleagues--his loyal clients-- almost fell into a state of mourning. At least one broke down and cried. That was, I thought, quite the over-reaction.

Oh wait. Another thing Rob told me? 

He's retiring in a few years and probably moving to Niagara. 

My question is, do you suppose Helena will be surprised when I tell  her I think we should move there too? I have a busload of cousins down that way. Should be fun.

3,444 reasons why you should visit Louisiana

TEAM MARDI GRAS: Gerard (Jed) Delahoussaye;
Marie-Therese (Maite) Costisella; Helena (my wife) Szybalski;
and Marie-Jose(Marie-Jo) Delahoussaye.

Last Thursday evening, my wife Helena and I arrived in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. 

I know. 

How fortunate is that? I've been wanting to see Mardi Gras since I was a little kid, but somehow, my guardian angel has been, until now, smart enough to keep me safely away. 

I'm thinking that at 66, she figured, I couldn't get into trouble

She was almost right.

After our Delta flight landed at the Louis Armstrong International Airport, we hopped a taxi to our hotel, but because of the crowds and parade barriers, the cab could only take us to within three short city blocks of the front door. 

We got out, and at one point as we were winding our way through the crowd, a passerby mentioned to Helena that it's unwise to leave a backpack unzipped. "You never know," he said. 

We stopped, checked her backpack and  discovered that her red leather wallet was gone, along with two credit cards, somewhere between $50 and $100 Canadian in cash, a debit card, driver's licence, health card, Costco membership, assorted photos, some other stuff, a gold Cross pen and her passport.

CSI NEW ORLEANS: Helena raising cane, showing the local 
constabulary where we were when we found the wallet was lost.

Up to that point, the trip had been flawless. Our flights had been prompt, we flew to New Orleans by way of La Guardia in New York, and flying over the Statue of Liberty is always memorable. In the taxi lineup at Louis Armstrong International, I enquired of the young woman in front of me if she knew how far downtown was. She laughed and said, "I know less than nothing." Turns out she, Nancy, and her charming companion Greg were, like us, in Louisiana for the first time, and they had travelled from Northern Ontario. So we shared a cab and Shania Twain jokes all the way to town.

But then the cabbie arrived downtown, we exited and approximately three and a half minutes later, the trip turned sour because we learned the wallet was gone.

But you're busy. I won't waste your time. Things turned around fast.

The next morning---preceded by a fretful night that included a visit to the Royal Street precinct where a compassionate officer named Shultz helped us through the process of reporting the loss--Helena's cell phone rang.

It was Marie-Josee--the one in the far right in the photo--reporting in a delightful French Canadian accent, that her sister (Marie-Therese, visiting from Hull, Quebec) had been downtown the night before. Marie-Therese had found the wallet with all contents, minus the cash, intact. And if we could find our way out to their place, we could retrieve it.

She gave us her address, we hired a cab, met Jed, Marie-Josee and Marie-Therese, and our trip was happy again! Elated in fact.

Plus, our new acquaintances wouldn't accept a reward. 

End of story, really. 

If you want to learn more about our terrific time in New Orleans, call me. The ensuing week was among the most memorable and fun weeks of my life and to this point, there have been --and I just did the math, about 3,444 of them. 

Most people are good. 

But herein is the lesson.

One of  the things in the temporarily lost wallet was a little card with my, our daughter Ria's, her sister Ewa's, and our son Michel's phone numbers, without which Marie-Josee wouldn't have been able to find us. 

This excellent travel tip has been brought to you by Jed, Marie-Therese and Mary-Jo.

  

Roland down the road to work

IRIS WATCHERWOMAN: Fur the love of Pete, she doesn't abide anybody dogging it.

I miss going to the office.

I'm not complaining. I love my job and the fact that I can do it from home makes it all the more enviable. Also, if you know me you know I don't use the word love unless I mean it.

Here's why I love my work. 

All day long, I deal with some of the smartest and most well-intentioned people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting; people who want to make the world a better place and who believe that telling stories is a good way to do that.  

Most days I exchange emails, texts and conversations with these extraordinarily articulate folks often about big ideas like right and wrong but also about what's funny; what's not and what our families are up to.

My friend Baxter Naday once  put it this way "You do the same sorts of things when you're not at work as you do on the job." 

I mostly do my job from the comfort of my living room couch, with Iris the cat near at hand. Plus I listen to music while I work. All day.

The vast majority of the people I work with are in Canada but I also regularly deal with colleagues in South Africa,  Italy, The Philippines and Zimbabwe.

And get this: Somebody pays me to do it. Every two weeks! Real folding money. 

And it's always the right amount. They never pay me less than they say they're going to; and the money arrives on time! 

Who in the history of humankind has had a more luxurious lifestyle? With clean clothes, deodorant? A furnace that works and all the food I can possibly ever want a few steps away?

I was going to write a column about how I miss commuting to work because last week, one of the really interesting people I work with; an Ottawa-area lawyer named Juliana Saxberg (I love that elegant name) asked if I miss going into the office.

I wrote:

"I love going to the office. I think I'm a better person for the experience. Smarter, funnier, wiser, fitter, I hear more jokes and juicier gossip, and in fact I  dress up prettier because I go out in public. It keeps my driving skills honed and I get to see the changing city landscape and the everchanging variety of motor vehicles that occupy our roadways. PLUS I listen to radio in the car and NEVER listen to radio at home. Morning show deejays are the hippest people on the planet. Plus the diner downstairs at 111 Gordon Baker Road is owned and operated by a European trained chef and nothing that comes out of that place bland. He makes the best hamburgers in Toronto. There's dozens of varieties of free coffee at work and stuff--copiers, toilets, power sources--works! But mostly it's the people. Every individual is like a beautiful blossoming flower and I am a social bumblebee. Yesterday, one of our colleagues at Gordon Baker, a relatively new Canadian named Roland who emigrated from Cameroon a few years ago, said to me in his deep voice and that great African accent "people with a positive attitude like you live a long time, Peter." I never heard that before. And I wouldn't have heard it yesterday had I not gone into work. Yeah, you might say I miss the office." 

And that is the kind of email I spend my days writing. 

See what I mean about not having anything to complain about? 

I heard a gerontologist last week say that there are more than 10,000 Canadians over 100 years old. Ten thousand!  Imagine. When my grandmother Carter turned 90, she got a letter from the queen. 

I sure hope Roland's right.  

I forget what it was I started writing about.

 

A jeep called Glenda

My cousin Glenda MacIsaac, who lives in a village called Lively on the outskirts of my hometown of Sudbury, nailed this morning's Wordle puzzle on her first guess.  

It took me four. 

Also--and this happens a lot--by the time Glenda'd sent me her result, I'd already forgotten what the winning word was. 

Anyway, I'm super proud of Glenda for a whole bunch of reasons, the least of which is her Wordle-iness. 

She's going to kill me when she reads the following but Glenda's one of those beautiful inside and out people who go through life quietly doing good work, helping others, making people laugh, challenging herself and being humbly brilliant. (After she showed us that she won with the word "stole," this morning, she added, "I meant to write store but hit l instead of r.")

Among the many cool things you should know about Glenda is she was named after a jeep. 

True fact! Glenda was the only girl born to one of my favourite uncles, Alex MacIsaac, and his wife Marie. Her brothers were given proud traditional handles: Donald, James, Andrew and the eldest everybody called Sandy but who was in fact baptized Alexander after his dad. 

Alex the dad, meantime, was in the forces and saw a jeep called Glenda. Alex was so taken by the name when his and Marie's second youngest child arrived, they called her after an all terrain-vehicle. Which sorta suits her. 

ROSE AND ME: Note: This photo was taken before Wordle 

Back to the word thing.

My daughter Ria introduced me to Wordle in 2021. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you this simple diversion, which is now owned by the New  York Times, has made my life immeasurably richer. 

But not for the reason you might think.

(Yeah, yeah, I know. With every punch of a Wordle key I'm ceding over my entire life's data to some big organization to do who knows what with. I say, have at it.)

Since I started doing these things, the five-letter-word puzzle in the morning has replaced a first cup of coffee. Wordle kickstarts my brain.

And something that's way more important? 

Shortly after getting out of bed, every morning for the past I'm embarrassed to admit how many months, Glenda, I and one of our other cousins, Roseanne Rice in Halifax, swap Wordle results.  

(Rose Rice. I know. Sounds like a car. Except a Rolls Royce doesn't make sound. I just thought of that.) 

Pre-Wordle, I was in touch with Glenda and Rose maybe when an aunt died or a nephew won something, or every Boxing Day, which is when Halifax always seems to lose its power so we have to check in to see if the family's okay. 

Mostly though, contact was a few times a year at best.  

Since Wordle?

Every single day. Invariably, when we share results, we trade family gossip, condolences, or whatever the opposite of condolences are, or sarcastic notes. I'm absolutely sure that these simple daily messages are good for our spiritual, mental, physical and social health. 

If my math's not wrong, I'm talking about more than a thousand individual hi-have-a-nice-day-I-love-you messages.

For me, Wordle means daily connection with people I love deeply and who, I'm hoping, feel the same. 

I don't care who you are. Being reminded you're loved is the absolute best way to start your day.

The Marriage Rehearsal

In early December, a University of Metropolitan Toronto (nee Ryerson) journalism student pointed me toward a website that -- surprise surprise--held a lot of material published before the whole world went online.  

One of my favourite finds: This story I wrote for Chatelaine, about Kiran Pal and Geoff Pross, who travelled the world and got married in eight different cultural traditions. 

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The taxi ride between my house and Lester B. Pearson International Airport is about 15 minutes on a good day and on this particular Friday morning, traffic was light and the sky clear. So, for a quarter of an hour - and because I asked - I was treated to the story of a marriage as lived by one chatty Ethiopian cabbie.

 

He had arrived in Canada a dozen years ago. Here, he met and fell in love with a woman, but his parents wanted him to follow his two older brothers and have a traditional arranged marriage. He ignored them, listened to his heart and married for love. Now, he and his wife have one little boy who needs extra help at school and Dad drives a cab about 60 hours a week to make ends meet. Life, he said as I was exiting his taxi, is hard. "You know," he said, "after all these years, I realize something. My father was right. I should have gone for the arranged marriage." It seems that no matter where you go, marriage is complicated.

 

 If I'd told the driver why I was catching a plane, he probably would have wanted to join me. I was flying to Whistler, B.C., to meet Kiran Pal and Geoff Pross, two self-styled marriage experts. Their claim to fame: Kiran, 30, and Geoff, 31, had been married eight times in traditional ceremonies around the world. Eight times. To each other.

 

By the time you read this, they will have had a ninth wedding, scheduled for mid-July, in British Columbia Kiran and Geoff had been a couple for eight years since graduating from university. Then, in the fall of 2000, they decided to get married - but not until they thoroughly researched the roots of the institution. In the hope of learning as much about weddings - and each other - as they could, they took all their savings, left their Vancouver home and and pursued this eccentric year-long project.

 

The pair moved to eight different countries - sometimes for a few days, sometimes for a few months - made friends and shared their plans with the locals. They would ask about traditional wedding ceremonies, find someone to perform the rituals and then hire people to throw the parties. The price tag on this elaborate 12-month wedding? "The price of a new SUV," Geoff told me. "A really fancy SUV," Kiran added.

 

Their first ceremony was an Aboriginal affair in South Australia. There, they became honorary members of a tribe, adopted honorary godparents and sat around a fire while an elder wielded a flaming stick and told the newlyweds about their obligations.

 

The sixth wedding was a Celtic celebration in County Leitrim, Ireland. For that one, Kiran and Geoff got bound to each other at the wrist. It's called a handfasting, and the couple is supposed to consummate the marriage tied up. (Each ceremony holds its unique appeal.)

 

At the Thai marriage, a pair of elders - spry ones, I might suppose - did the traditional job of warming up the marriage bed before the newlyweds hopped into it. (If experience is any teacher - I've got 16 years of matrimony under my belt - I bet the older married folks just read a bit, gave each other a peck on the cheek and nodded off.)

 

Kiran and Geoff exchanged vows in a Shinto ceremony in Japan, watched a pig get slaughtered in Borneo and drank litre after litre of some horrid drink called Kill Me Quick in Africa. I went to meet them not so much to hear details of their trips (I can wait until the book that they're writing comes out) but because I hoped they might answer a couple of simple questions.

 

First, what is up with marriage? Statistics show that most North American couples live together before they tie the knot, and even though some figures indicate a 42 per cent divorce rate in this country, we never seem to give up. The wedding business is hotter than ever.  Is it like this in the rest of the world, too? I once heard that the phrase "Till death do us part" was invented when a person's lifespan   averaged 34 years.

 

My question: are all cultures into this long-term business or are people who shill for the deathdo-us-part thing out of their minds? Some days, you have to wonder.

 

The second question I had was about wedding ceremonies themselves. Are they worth it? Anybody who's been involved in planning a wedding knows how stressful it can be, that you sometimes have to tread the steps from engagement announcement to marriage vows as gingerly as if they were littered with landmines.

 

One group of relatives wants a big to-do, the other kind of hopes the couple elopes. The groom would like to invite his university pals, but the bride knows they're nothing but a bunch of hard-drinking all-night-partying boors. I remember more about planning my wedding than I do about planning my career. I recall debating what kind of cutlery we would use at our reception but I don't ever remember talking about whether we'd raise the kids Catholic.

 

 It strikes me as pretty weird. When you think about it, weddings are but one small part of marriage. Just like giving birth is one of the tiniest parts of raising a child. So, there's really no point knotting ourselves up over the details, right? Wrong. There must be something to this long-term marriage thing because everybody's into it. Kiran and Geoff discovered people everywhere have similar attitudes toward getting hitched.

 

For example, here's what they were told when they got married in Australia: "With the Adnyamathanha people, if you break up you have to come back to where the marriage took place, find the burning sticks and throw them in opposite directions. And then you're not to see each other ever again and you cannot enter the community as a couple."

 

Only the Celtic handfasting ceremony offered any chance of dissolution. The others were for life. And that answered my first question.

 

As for No. 2, I realized, after meeting Kiran and Geoff, that the wedding and everything that leads up to it is a preview - or a trailer as it's known in the movie biz - for the epic thriller called Married Life.

 

"The funny thing is," Kiran says, "we went on this journey because we wanted to get away from people fussing over little things, like brides freaking out when their bouquets don't arrive on time. But what we found were people interfering and fussing wherever we went."

 

And let's face it: the way you handle the interfering and fussing prepares you for life together. "They say travelling is living life in a hurry," says Geoff. "And we had all these experiences in a short period of time - and we had our differences. Kiran would want to do it one way, I'd want to do it another. We had to shelve our differences, so we learned how to get past hurdles together."

 

Case in point: what's the most important word in the married person's lexicon? Compromise. A couple who gives in to each other once in a while stays together. And what teaches this better than hosting a wedding where you have to entertain 150 guests who include, for example, the bride's estranged stepfather, the groom's salacious brother-inlaw and a few people both families deny even knowing?

 

If a couple doesn't compromise when it comes time to getting married, they're doomed. Did Kiran and Geoff compromise? You're darn right they did.

 

At their very first wedding, among the Australian Adnyamathanha, they had to eat kangaroo meat. Kiran and Geoff are both vegetarians. "Yeah, we agreed," says Kiran. "But at least it hadn't been domesticated." A pretty tiny compromise, you might think. But eating things you hadn't planned on - especially your words - is a huge part of staying married.

 

What about the generations-old marriage-saver called living in denial? Of course, marriage is based on love, acceptance, trust and forbearance, but sometimes indifference and ignoring things that just don't make sense go a long way to getting you through the day. Weddings are perfect practice for this.

 

Everywhere. When Kiran and Geoff were getting married in the Iban tradition in Borneo, they had to pick little candies off a banana tree. Only after they did this were they informed that the bananas symbolize shrunken enemy heads. "An Iban warrior," Geoff says, "had to take at least one head before being allowed to marry."

 

We all adhere to traditions we ignore the meaning of. According to statistics, 96 per cent of Canadian brides get married in a virginal white or ivory gown. As if.

 

Weddings also groom you for the little surprises that life never stops springing on you. Back in Borneo, Kiran and Geoff were dressed up - he in a loin-cloth and she in a beaded shimmering dress - and they put on a feast for more than 100 people. And just like at my wedding, one trusted guest was responsible for videotaping the affair. At my wedding, my brother Alex was in charge of the camera and it became clear that he enjoyed our Polish dance band because during our ensemble's version of "I Just Called to Say I Love You," the camera starts polka-ing.

 

That scene adds a grace note to the cherished video record of our special day. "In Borneo," Geoff says, "the camera guy should have been zooming in on Kiran's sparkling new headdress - a silver tinkling thing with beads on it - and then you hear the squealing of the pig being slaughtered. So, guess what got videotaped? You guessed it - the pig intestines." In life, as in wedding ceremonies, sometimes you get the tiara and sometimes you get the intestines.

 

Weddings also make a couple say "I do" several times. That can't be a bad thing. Kiran maintains that their yearlong journey from wedding to wedding forced them to reiterate and demonstrate their love for each other on innumerable occasions. At least eight times they professed their undying devotion. "There's never too much reassuring the other person how much you love them," she says.

 

Their various weddings shared other characteristics. In Australia, the couple not only marries each other; in the Aboriginal tradition, once they marry into another family, they are responsible for the members of that other family. I, as well as anyone who's had a brother-in-law move in with them "until he gets a place," will agree that there isn't one society on the planet where you don't marry all the members of a family. It goes on. During the Iban ceremony in Borneo, Geoff had to do a warrior dance.

 

He recalls it this way: "I did my best, and the shrieks of laughter started up immediately." Like I said, I've been married 16 years. I have three children. I know from getting laughed at.

 

Finally, every ceremony that Kiran and Geoff found themselves involved in invoked unseen forces. Wherever they went, weddings were spiritual events. Kiran again: "We had to believe we were spiritually connected to the land in the Aboriginal ceremony. In the Shinto ceremony, God was called to witness the event. It was like that wherever we went."

 

I recently read that almost 75 per cent of Canadians who have traditional weddings include religion as part of the ceremony. And if nothing else preps you for life,  that does. Because God knows, sometimes it's pure faith that gets married people through their daily lives.

 

Still, with all of Kiran and Geoff's experiences and rituals, I thought there was something missing. So, I'd like to add one detail - maybe a moment of silence or a boring rest period during which nothing happens - to every wedding reception, wherever it takes place. Because you might as well rehearse for marriage's best part, too.

En route to Whistler, I spent a night in an inexpensive hotel near the airport. This place had walls so thin I could hear exactly what was going on in the next room. I'm not exaggerating. My neighbours were named John and, from what I could gather through the wall, Emmy.

 

I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but no sooner had I flopped down on my bed than I heard laughter coming through the flowery wall-paper. And I'm not talking faint giggles, either. I could make out each tee and every hee as well as everything in-between. Their mattress squeaked. While I don't know for certain that John and Emmy were a married couple, it sure sounded like it.

 

Because from what I could tell, Emmy was in bed reading the paper and eating chips and John was in bed beside her watching the game. He was also having a few beers.

 

Which, apparently, he didn't do very often, because Emmy sweetly chided him. It was OK, though, because "This," she reasured him, "is a special occasion." Then after a half-hour or so, I heard the newspaper rustle. She said, "I'm going to sleep. G'nite, dear. Don't forget to turn out the light." "G'nite," said John. Then there was silence, except for the sounds of two people getting comfy enough to nod off in peace.

 

Ask any longtime married person, including my Ethiopian taxi driver - the one who works 60 hours a week and really needs a break. I'm sure he'd agree with me. It just doesn't get any better than that.