Spazio 1975

What a wonderful toy this was, and remains. It's a circa-1975 Space: 1999 Eagle Freighter, made by Dinky. Mom and Dad bought it for me in Leaf Rapids in the mid-1970s, and I had many adventures with it alongside my friend Kelvin Bear, who had the Eagle Transport model. For a toy only a few years younger than I am, it's in great shape, missing just a few stickers, the tow rope that once raised and lowered the nuclear waste barrels, and some small plastic bits. This is one item I don't think I'll ever depart with. 

Busting Caps: How I Caused the Biggest Bang in Leaf Rapids

While I think myself as a pacifist, I can't deny that much of my play and entertainment revolved (and still revolves) around fantasy violence. I'm not educated enough to know if humanity's violent tendencies stem more from nature or nurture, nor do I understand why cowboys and indians and cops and robbers were games played almost exclusively by boys.

What I can say is there's something deeply satisfying about gunning down an imaginary foe, vanquishing something, even if only metaphorically. Lobbing nukes at Gandhi in Civilization, gunning down raiders and mutants in Fallout, slaying dragons in Dungeons & Dragons, beating up thugs, goons, robots and monsters in games of all kinds. Considering the suffering wrought by real-world violence, I have to wonder if these hobbies serve the greater good. Are they an escape valve for our darker impulses, or am I simply rationalizing my own behaviour?

The older I get, the more questions I have, the fewer answers. So instead of philosophizing further, a story:

Like many little boys, I used to play with cap guns. In the 70s, cap guns, at least the ones I had, looked like pistols from the Old West; wood and iron, with a chamber for caps: segmented rolls of paper, each segment containing a four or five millimeter diameter dot filled with gunpowder. By pulling the trigger, you could advance one segment up out of the gun and into the path of the gun's hammer; when the hammer slammed down, the cap would go off, producing a burst of sparks and noise. It was a very satisfying, visceral way to blow off steam, and many a friend went down in those days, plugged by my imaginary bullets. (Of course, I took my fare share of hits, too.)

With a child's logic, I reasoned that if popping off one cap at a time was fun, it must be exponentially more exciting to see a bunch of them explode at once. So one slightly overcast day in 1976 or 1977 or 1978, I gathered my friend Kelly Bear and took him to the town's only drug store, located, like most of the infrastructure of Leaf Rapids, inside the rust-coloured Town Centre. Using several weeks' worth of saved allowance (at the time, $1.00 a week), we purchased many, many red boxes of paper caps, which at the time were quite cheap; perhaps ten cents a box, perhaps a quarter. The druggist must have thought we were going to re-enact the American Civil War.

We carried out munitions out behind the Town Centre, at the corner where a loading ramp overlooked a steep dropoff of some two or three metres to the earthy ground below. A large boulder with an admirably smooth, flat top rested in that miniature canyon; we piled our caps atop it, and I carried a heavy stone about the size of a football up to the top of the loading ramp. Kelly wisely stuck his fingers in his ears as I hefted the stone over my head and flung it at the boulder below.

My aim was truer than it had any right to be. With a window-vibrating CRACK the caps exploded, the BANG so loud that my ears rung, and kept ringing, for minutes. Our nostrils filled with the acrid tang of exploded gunpowder, and countless bits of debris - chiefly the tattered remnants of the paper caps and the boxes they'd come in- rained down like dangerous confetti. Kelly and I both reeled, me more than him, as I hadn't been smart enough to anticipate the scale of the explosion.

It was tremendous, and best of all, we had plenty of caps left; once we gathered them all up (a time-consuming process), we figured we had about a third of our stash left, which we promptly used to repeat the experiment, taking turns blowing them up until we had only a handful of leftovers. No subsequent explosion was as amazing as the first, but we still had a lot of fun.

Perhaps luckiest of all, no one interfered with our play. We probably wouldn't have gotten into much trouble, given the era, but we felt like renegades, desperadoes, blowing things up because it was fun. To the best of my knowledge, no adult ever found out (until now).

To this day, I don't know if that experience was good or bad for me, or for Kelly. But if I had it all to do over again, I would.

Leaving Leaf Rapids

In March 1979, the Woods family packed up a U-Haul and left our home in Leaf Rapids, Manitoba to embark on the long journey to Edmonton, Alberta. Kelly Bear and Dave Doran, my best friends in Leaf Rapids, showed up just before departure to pose for this farewell photo.

Kelly and I shared a love of Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica; we loved all things science fiction, really. I remember listening to soundtrack and otherwise SF-themed albums over at his place - the trippy Meco disco version of the Star Wars theme, Close Encounters, and even Boney M.'s Night Flight to Venus. Dave and I were both into the Micronauts toys; I remember being jealous of his giant Biotron figure. He was also the first to tell me about the "mirror mirror on the door, I wish my balls would touch the floor" joke - a little ribald for an 8 year old, and I didn't really get it, but of course I laughed like I understood the punchline.

I was pretty devastated when my parents broke the news that we were moving. We were just leaving the Town Centre, the indoor mall that served as Leaf Rapids' community hub. It was dark, and I believe it was Dad who gently informed me of the new situation. I wheeled about in a blind rage and wound up burying my little fists in the midsection of an RCMP officer who'd been walking behind us. He graciously yelped out a "Whoa there!" and returned me to the custody of my parents. Embarrassed, I quieted down, but I was heartbroken. Leaf Rapids was home; all my friends were here, all my secret places were here. It seemed utterly unfair that I had to leave it all behind.

Of course my parents were right to move to Edmonton, with its far vaster spectrum of opportunity. Had they not, I would never have wound up serving as a CBC television host (however briefly) or speechwriter to two Lieutenants-Governor and three Leaders of the Official Opposition. I wouldn't have met my new(er), enduring group of friends, or, most importantly, Sylvia.

Could I have prospered as much or more had we stayed in northern Manitoba? I suspect not. I probably would have attended university in Winnipeg, but if the job situation in the early 90s was bad in Alberta, it must have been worse in Manitoba. It may have taken me even longer to make writing my career. Everything would have been different.

Oddly enough, Dave wound up moving to Leduc not long after we did, and while we met once or twice, the friendship was never rekindled. I ran into Kelly (or Kelvin, as he styles himself now) via ICQ about ten years ago; we chatted briefly to catch up, and I haven't heard from him since. He seemed happy though, working in law enforcement, married with children.

Sometimes I still miss Leaf Rapids, which I suppose is obvious given how often I've written about the place. But in truth, I have few regrets. We learn and grow by taking chances and making hard choices. Mom and Dad did it back in 1979, and I'm grateful. Moving on is important.