I am, by a crude and somewhat offensive definition, a half-breed. My parents never treated me as though I was different or unusual or strange. I loved my life right up until about the age of 6 or 7 years old. I didn’t know that I was “different” until then. The issue of being a child of mixed race reared it’s ugly head shortly after I started attending public school. I am not sure why I just wrote “public school”. There was no other kind of school where I was born. I guess I wrote it because that’s when I, like every other kid that has gone to school, was fully exposed to the public on my own.
I was never treated as though I was half of anything by anyone on the white side of my family. Sadly I was not treated so well on the native side of my family in my early years. This was the 1960s. For those of you who were alive in Canada (And anywhere else in the world for that matter.) during those days know that that was very much a different time.
Oh yeah! If you really want to annoy me tell me I am a member of a first nation. How do we know we were first? Oh, what? We’re relying on an archeologist’s report? How about family history? You can’t beat recorded family history. Through recorded genealogy I can prove that I am from the Campbell River and Quadra Island area at least seven generations back. All thanks to a special lady’s work that was shared with me by this special lady with permission from an elder in my family over 10 years ago. I can also prove that my white ancestors lived in Victoria in the 1870s. Long before my father met my mother in the 1950s. Archeology is important but, that doesn’t make my families first! That makes my families belong within a specific area or region and holds their places in history. There is a huge difference and a topic of another blog or other blogs in the future.
Like a lot of Canadian towns and cities, Campbell River lies within 100 miles of the Canada/United States of America border between British Columbia and the State of Washington. I remember as a child how influenced we youngsters growing up in Campbell River were at that time by American media. By media I mean, television, radio, newspapers, magazines and of course, comic books! Every boy and sometimes there were girls as well, had some sort of comic book collection or at least read the cartoons in the various news papers of the day. I’m really sorry I didn’t hang onto my comic book collection. I’m sure some of the comic books I had as a kid are worth a lot of money now. Just kidding! At the time I got rid of my comic book collection I decided it was time to grow up. So I threw my comic books in the garbage like most every other older teenager did at the time.
I vaguely recall receiving my first transistor radio about the time that I was 7 years old. I don’t know what my mom would have paid for such a wonderful gadget. It obviously didn’t break the bank because my brother got one too. I’m saving my brother for a different blog writing sometime in the future. Needless to say that my mom gave us both a similar gift otherwise fighting between my brother and I would break out and that was never good because it generally meant that a spanking was soon to follow if we couldn’t sort out our differences. Yes, I was spanked! I deserved every smack I got too. Anyway, back to the story at hand: A.M. Radio.
The pocket transistor radio that my mother gave me changed my life for both good and bad. About 2 years later, by another amazing trait of motherhood, my mother gave my brother and I crystal radio sets. The crystal radio set is a significant step backwards from the now ancient transistor radio in terms of technology. The building of that crystal radio set was where my love of radio circuitry and all things electronic began. I think everyone should build a crystal radio set. Crystal radio sets are generally inexpensive and a bit hard to find these days but, well worth understanding a simple electronic circuit. I forgot to mention that a crystal radio does not run on batteries and will last for the life of the diode. The radio has to be built properly in order to hear anything at all in the earpiece. You’ll know when you’ve built the radio circuit properly because you will start hearing audio immediately.
What I heard on both my A.M. transistor radio (I don’t remember how many transistors that little pocket radio had.) and the crystal radio set caused a major jump and change in the way that I learned of the world in which I lived. Remember earlier that I wrote about Campbell River being within 100 miles of the B.C./Washington border? The significance of this is that I heard radio stations on my two radios from Campbell River, Courtenay, Naniamo, Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle as well as many other radio stations from around the state of Washington mainly along the coast.
My favourite radio station of the day was CKLG located at 730 kHz in Vancouver. I don’t know what kind of radio frequency power in kilowatts that CKLG ran in the 1960s and early 1970’s but, one could hear CKLG day and night in Campbell River on a crystal radio set. Amongst the most influential radio stations were KIRO and KOMO out of Seattle. KIRO and KOMO also ran television stations that we could watch on cable television in Campbell River in colour.
During this time while I was falling in love with radio and learning my ABCs I also learned that the world was not a very friendly place. As I learned to read and write I saw it in newspapers and magazines. I watched it on television and heard it on my radios. I learned words like discrimination, race, hatred, murder, war, assassination and half-breed. I learned good things as well. I loved watching National Geographic documentaries and other excellent documentary programming of the day. Because of the bad stuff I learned about I developed a dislike for both reading and writing. Reading and writing as a child was traumatic. I didn’t want to learn of the bad stuff and there only seem to be bad stuff yet, my mother and grandparents were constantly after me to improve my reading and writing. There was a moment in time when I thought I was from sometime or somewhere else because I hated reading and writing. Maybe that was just a weird coping mechanism because I obviously am from the Planet Earth and I look similar to the other more than 6.7 billion people located here.
My main concern at the time was that I was different than those around me. This wasn’t my choice. I didn’t do anything different than anyone else. I was different! Being different in the 1960s and 1970s wasn’t cool and often times wound up with my brother and I being involved in confrontations and conflicts that we neither needed or wanted. As a result, my brother and I agreed that we would tell no one of our mixed race origin. It was better not to talk about it at all.
It’s taken me 40 years to find my voice on this issue. Life is too short! I’m never again going to allow myself to let so much time pass before I say something about these kinds of issues. Is blogging for me? Blogging has been around for a long time now. I am still kind of skeptical about sharing information like this on the Internet. Privacy is a big concern but, so is being silent about that which was wrong and still may be wrong. I choose to no longer be silent!
I may attempt to do this on a monthly basis. I may be writing from the Philippines in December. Thanks for reading.
