Catch and Release

Old fossils never die, do they Sonja Wood ? – pt. 7

Catch and Release

What I am doing right now is archiving my wife’s unusual life in a new series of blogs, and thus far, the telling barely scratches it. Her’s is a very complex life, which better lends itself to being told in a more-or-less piecemeal fashion. Even so, while simply explaining these events accurately, they will not always appear to make perfect sense.

Annie's Got The Antidote ~ Sonja Wood ~ Music

PS: Sonja says, 'Crank It'

Sonja Wood, real famous in Nova Scotia, with a 'following' in Newfoundland, can’t really be classified in a quick top-ten list, but, for posterity, I will attempt to build one here: She is (1) a respected singer/songwriter; (2) the philanthropist-owner of the Blue Beach Fossil Museum and Research Centre; (3) the well-known and successful Highway 101 twinning advocate, (4) a winning proponent for the Ben Jackson Interchange at Lockhartville; (5) the long-time chair of the environmental group F.A.R. – Fish of the Avon River Society, (6) a recurrent caregiver and counsel-giver to a few of society’s most challenging cases, (7) a three-time attemptee at running for politics; (8) had once briefly written for a newspaper column; (9) has been an emotionally-tested mother of two; and (10) is now a grandmother !

Somewhere in the middle of all that business, (and over the years) Sonja was recording CDs in Halifax, was organizing practices or bookings, writing new tunes, or producing ‘not enough’ of these cool Maritime-Music videos to run on MTV. Of course, this meant she always seemed to be on the road, touring bars or playing some event; and sometimes just driving around, doing old-style promotions for the band.

Can you imagine how smooth all this must have went ? In my experience, this usually is how Sonja gets herself into big trouble: first, there’s the (high) probability my wife will behave, as usual, like some catalyst for the misadventure to form around; this will be compounded by a little of the good-old rock’n’roll mayhem effect; and then, all this will be further magnified because more than one of her band members are not really user-friendly; are clearly mayhem-friendly, in fact. I promise you, these road trips with Sonja’s band were always larger than life experiences.

Under circumstances much like those, Sonja had traveled to Newfoundland more than once. First they’d take the van over on the Ferry with all their gear, and they’d book themselves to play as many places as they could as they crossed The Rock en-route to Saint John. Along the way, Sonja was giving out her CDs, talking to people; promoting them as she went.

Shortly after they reached Saint John, on their first trip, the Dobro player, Mark LaBerge, meets this Icelandic guy, and this guy buys him a drink. Mark passed a copy of the CD to the bartender, and they were playing it while Mark talked the man up. The man was deeply impressed, and soon desired to meet Sonja in person.

Mark soon returns to the bar with Sonja. The big Icelandic man buys a round of drinks, and with that, toasts their overall excellence. Now to simply call this man ‘big’ isn’t quite enough; he was the first mate of a fishing trawler out of Reykjavik, Iceland; had spent his whole life at sea, and was for all intents and purposes, as massive as any proper bear. Even his fingers were thick; thick as the wet ropes he’d hauled in for years. His blonde beard was a rich, tangled mat and reached the sternum; the eyes burning with a serious, blue-berserker bloodline, further evidence of his ancestry. His first name was something like ‘Erlingur’; don’t even ask Sonja what the last name was.

He had everyone call him ‘Eli’ for short, and here is where the fun begins - Mark had a surprise arranged for Sonja another bar, on George Street, where they could partake of that old Newfoundland tradition - being screeched-in. Eli had been to Newfoundland countless times, and as far as he was concerned, this stuff was way too much fun and asked if he could join them.

Upon early arrival while having their first drink together, Erlingur turns to Sonja and out of blue nowhere says “Canadian woman-in-a-wheelchair… so many years I have been at sea; a first mate, soon to retire… I seen many things and met many beautiful women… but never have I seen such a woman as this… you… I cannot believe it, Canadian-woman-in-a-wheelchair took my heart, I feel so much love for you ! I feel we must be together, always ! I feel we must be buried beside each other when we die, and never part !”

Sonja’s panic lever was jammed full open now. She tried being gentle, and being sympathetic, then she tried being direct. After awhile, with Mark’s help, they explained how Sonja wasn’t ready for settling down, how she had young children at home, and basically that she had a life already. Besides, he had his important fishing career to worry about, his captain and the rest of the crew depended on him; and he had to stay connected to all that. After another drink or two, he seemed to accept this, and they all parted ways, heading for their respective motels.

In Sonja’s room, the neighbor’s kid, Zack’, was sleeping on the cot, and Sonja had the big bed. Zack had a big surprise when Sonja was leaving Blue Beach; she pulled into his yard and asked, on about 5-minutes notice, if he would like to come to Newfoundland. The next big surprise was their mutual one, at about 1 am in the morning, when the desk manager came to their room and started knocking.

“I’m so sorry to bother you Ma’am. This man says he’s your friend, and he is insisting he needs to see you. He says can’t come back tomorrow, he has to see you now. We didn’t know what else to do. He said he won’t leave until he sees you.” The huge bulk of Eli standing behind the entrance was evident. Zack, not knowing who this was, crept further under his blankets. Sonja wished she could too. Instead she asks them to give her a moment, she’ll get up.

Eli had jumped ship. Apparently he’d requested leave from the captain to come woo his bride, but the captain denied it. He rightfully believed the ship’s second mate was out of his bloody mind. They argued. Eli did the unthinkable - he walked down the gang-plank and off that ship with nothing but the clothes on his back, a wallet, and thankfully, his credit card, so Sonja could take him shopping for clothes; he had been too love-struck and full of screech to pack.

Again, all hands came on deck. The band members worked hard to once again convince Eli that Sonja simply COULD NOT marry him, and he finally snapped out of it. They managed to convince him he belonged at sea, just one last problem existed: Erlingur had left his passport and almost all his ID on the boat, which had since sailed off without him. “All the calls to Reykjavik I had to make just to get that man back to his country, he had no passport or ID, only a Gold American Express card”, Sonja tells us, “…it took several more days.” Sadly, she cannot erase the image of this big Icelandic man, standing there watching them as they were pulling away; the big tears rolling down his face, leaving him there in the parking lot.

Erlingur returns every year, and habitually insists on renting Sonja’s old room. We can only hope this is not a sign of his big re-kindled heart. Sonja, meanwhile, had returned on another tour of Newfoundland the following year, but she never encountered Eli again. This doesn’t mean she’s stayed out of trouble that second time, but I can say she didn’t touch the screech again. On that note we’ll see you next time, for some more archival attention to my wife’s little collection of Newfoundland follies. Like I always say, for lots of fun, “just add Sonja and stir”.

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Thanks for reading; hope you enjoyed the fun!

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Serving up a curveball

My wife and I have been brought together over vast distances, and against all reasonable odds of coincidence, to the fossil-crusted cliffs of Blue Beach for, it appears, a much larger purpose. But could it really be because we have made this contract with fate, and isn’t FATE just a word ?

Fate or no, this is some of the story of Sonja’s moving to Wolfville, still a fateful choice. Afterwards, neither she nor the Valley would ever be the same…

While she had still been walking around the Province, people started hearing about what she was doing; some would meet her along the route, some would join her to walk for a ways. One woman who did this unknowingly served her up life’s first curveball, altering the future I think, by becoming her friend.

The woman soon introduced Sonja to her eighty-six year old grandfather, Fred Salzman. He had been reading about it all along in the papers. When Sonja mentioned she had applied to the local university, and may soon need an apartment, Fred was delighted and said he would help find her one. Once she found out, she had to talk to him before she started looking around. One estimate suggests Fred owned over twenty apartments in town, so the offer was certainly very encouraging. So when Sonja received the letter from the Acadia School of Music Studies, she promptly hiked back up the hill to Fred’s place.

At first it turned out there were no apartments available, however, Fred’s grand-daughter was moving out of hers in a few weeks’ time. “Look””, he said, “why don’t you just stay here for now ? I have this place all set up, and you’d have your own little room, you won’t have to go anywhere ‘till your other apartment’s ready.” Sonja envisioned her sheepdog Sampson in this neat and very antique house; all the bone china he’d collected. She politely tried to object because of the dog, but Fred brushed it off and practically insisted.

By the time the new apartment became available, Fred’s family wanted Sonja to stay on as their father’s caregiver. They were astonished how Sonja wasn’t going out of her mind with dad, and that he absolutely adored her, something rare. They had tried to find professional help more than once, and desperately wanted her to say yes.

By the time Sonja began her music studies, she was not only coping with the unimaginable Fred, she was beginning to interface with McCluskey Two (the previous blog). Sonja has always seemed to be attached to one cause or another; some of those causes are people.

Fred wore a hearing-aid which needed to be turned up full blast before he got any inkling what it was you were saying. He had the biggest console-TV money could buy at the time, all carved wood with enormous speakers inside. The volume was always turned all the way up to watch his favorite show of all: Bob Barker and The Price is Right. Fred thought Bob was terrific, this was how life should be, always giving people stuff - everybody so happy ! However, he wouldn’t turn down the hearing-aid, and it would be feeding back from the TV and squealing like an angry tea kettle until Sonja turned it off for him.

With the severe deafness that comes with old age, Fred spoke embarrassingly loud in public. They went to a bonspiel where they were giving out the awards for all the curling teams. Fred just loved curling too, and was so proud of his new live-in, Sonja, he got them a pair of tickets. There were lots of speeches, and Fred wasn’t able to hear. “What the hell is that feller going on about ?”, causing many heads to swivel. Sonja did her best to get through it.

The first time Sonja lived with Fred for about three months, and she attended Acadia. Soon she started looking for a rock band to join. She auditioned at a gig in Berwick one night, got the job, and on the way home they were in the accident. Sonja returned from the hospital four months later, and Fred had fixed-up the apartment underneath him so she could stay. She also joined the band that who hired her, but were denied just as she was by the fateful accident. Sonja Wood would live below Fred for almost three years, right up until she built her new home and was ready to move to Blue Beach.

There were lots of day-to-day emergencies with Fred of course. He needed his daily ride to town. He never kept groceries in a fridge; bought everything fresh daily. His son was supposed to do the driving but was always late in Fred’s opinion (it wasn’t a happy arrangement for either). One day when his son was late, Fred started cursing and headed out the door. Sonja figured he was just stepping out to wait, until she heard the car starting.

The car started immediately, but Fred of course couldn’t hear anything and kept holding the key on. The starter was complaining so loudly, Sonja could hear it getting ready to meltdown all the way back to her bedroom. It took less than a minute to get into the wheelchair, push herself down the hall, to reach the kitchen window where she could look out. She got there just in time to see Fred going for the gearshift.

Putting it into drive, the car shot forward and hit the rose garden; coming to rest once it could go no further. Fred cursed some more and put it in reverse, backwards down the driveway at a reckless speed. Fred always had to have big cars, like Cadillac’s or Monte Carlo’s, built like a tank. Considering the holes in Fred’s driveway, which the car lurched and bounced through with ease, he probably needed the extra suspension. He just kept backing up and nearly hit the white house where his son-in-law lived, then turned downhill, crossing the yards. When he saw the hedges coming, Fred at last veered over, back into the street.

He survived the two block drive down the street to safely arrive at his son’s house. Half the neighborhood was out of their houses by this time. Everyone knew Fred’s driving was horrific, had always been so.

Sugar Rush

Old fossils never die, do they Sonja Wood ? – pt. 5

Everybody who knew McCluskey Number Two agreed: this was a man of towering intellect, but the great mind had been evicted from the premises long before Sonja showed up. The reality was not a laughing matter – he was a former academic man, retired to Wolfville, and given to excessive drink. He was also artistic in many ways; as a gift for Sonja, he did this painting of a pheasant, a watercolor. It’s hangs on our pantry door, and I can’t resist sharing a quick photo (below). But as time went on, he drank himself insane. Twenty-three years-old, Sonja Wood was not fully aware of the mess she was getting into, and quite naturally took him under her wing.

Sometimes I tell my wife she is crazy. But this is just a word we throw around; a word that can have anywhere upwards of ten meanings.

Crazy isn’t the kind of thing one kids one’s self about. Mr. McCluskey thought he was the real live Wyatt Earp. He loved Wyatt Earp and he literally would don this leather cowboy hat and proclaim he was Wyatt; and of course, he loved his guns, his favorite sugar rush.

But he also loved Tina Turner. He had this giant poster of her fixed on the ceiling above his bed so that he could see her every morning, first thing, as soon as he opened his eyes. Then third great love of his life was golden retrievers. For decades, he had always owned one. Because of the dog, lately he worried about his health, which was not going well. If anything happened to him, who will take care of Gunnar?

After all the alcohol abuse, he suffered extreme schizophrenia, often hallucinating elaborately, so all too often he’d start shooting up the house. The cops kept confiscating the guns, and courts would call for their psychiatric evaluations, but the state of mind had been diagnosed and known for years, so they could never find him criminally liable for his actions. Sure enough, he’d head right back home, and get his hands on more guns.

McCluskey was methodical. He really hated it when the cops kept took his guns, and he started hiding them. In a bookshelf, in certain chosen books, he carved-out the pages in the shape of the pistol, which could then fit snugly inside. Sonja says he carved the books out with such incredible skill, it really spoke to the quality of the man. She would ask him though; “Why do you need to keep a gun anyway ? Who do you think would be trying to get you ? You do know how ridiculous that sounds, don’t you ?”

But waves of drink and more drink had been coming ashore for too long. These nonexistent tormentors persisted, (or so his mind insisted), and could pop if you ever dropped your guard; gunfire on the Wolfville Ridge became just another little piece of the rural ambience. 

At one point, McCluskey Two calls the RCMP himself. He warns the desk sergeant they’d “…better get down here and move all these kids out of my house ! I’ve got a shotgun ! If they don’t start leaving, I’m going to start shooting !” He stayed on the phone for quite awhile and finely argued the point. It kept coming back to the fact there were a bunch of school kids that just wouldn’t leave his house no matter what, and he doesn’t know why they continued to ignore him ? Finally, the caller grew tired of having to ‘just calm down and explain it again’, and decided to put away the shotgun. Of course the police realized it was McCluskey; he was alone in the house, and thankfully, just coming down off that sour Mountain-moonshine again. Not one of his better friends, but what he’d turn to when the pension money started running out. As became the practice, unless they heard shots, cars no longer were dispatched to his address.

The functions that lend to mental illness are not so well-understood. Raised in a sizeable city, I don’t want to ask how these wheels of the clock go ‘round. Mere curiosity would never be enough to justify me hanging out with somebody else’s sixty year-old demented cowboy father. McCluskey Two was Sonja’s new friend’s sixty year-old father, so of course, Sonja approached all of this very differently, becoming: (1) his unofficial caregiver, (2) his ad hoc legal advisor, (3) his deputy-assistant power-of-attorney, and (4) his first in-spirit-only faith-healer (he’d never met one before). I can’t imagine how she thought she was supposed to keep him on the rails, but the Sonja I Know is always in adoption mode, the same way as Jesus always loved the fallen sheep.

Within a few years he died. It was a Thursday afternoon, but because he lived alone (of course) he wasn’t discovered the same day. None of Wolfville’s seasoned veterans had ever seen anything like it, and they called Sonja, for they badly wanted to hear an explanation.

All over the walls and doors of his house, her name and phone number were scrawled in black jiffy marker: “CALL SONJA…” and “IN CASE OF EMERGENCY”, “SONJA Ph. # …”; it was over the inside of the door-jamb when you entered the house; it was written in foot-high block letters on the wall over the phone; in all, it was written in many different places throughout the house.

They probably never managed to stop that ink from bleeding through their paint, even to this day. We still use the same phone number. Is this not an omen? Is there always a beginning and end to everything?

Sonja drove over to McCluskey’s house right away, for the final time, and she collected up his big old dog. In no time at all, he then became ‘a Blue Beach dog’, with lots of new people to love him. He lived out his remaining days by the Bay, and did what happy dogs should always do. This is why it was so important, when McCluskey finally went to his Happy Hunting Grounds, why everybody had to call Sonja. Gunnar was all that really mattered now.

We’re Just Bozo’s On This Bus

Old fossils never die, do they Sonja Wood ? – pt. 4

Living with someone like Sonja Wood is like fishing through a giant toy box you didn’t know was there. This not just a story populated with highlights and milestones, like the stuff discussed in the first few blogs: life is simply not going to be a glamour-filled succession of civil disobediences, nor an endless fantasy of rock-n-roll shows and big city lights, but you sure do get to know some curious people along the way. There’s a lot of hilarious stuff in there that has never yet been recorded for posterity, much of which will prove to be just as important as any milestone or achievement in our ongoing efforts to illustrate the many sides of Sonja (the recurring theme of all the crazy people you get to know; the way everything can go from cool and collective one second, to circumstances next that strain the limits of imagination, or I daresay, the fabric of belief).

If you ever wind up hanging out in the Maritimes with Sonja E. Wood (which I most certainly have), you will probably come to witness something you’d never conceive or predict. When this happens, it will likely be so weird and improbable you’ll agree with this much at least; this kind of thing could never happen twice on the same planet…

As you read the following story, note that sometimes people become absolute legends in their own minds. The two McCluskeys are (or were) very real people from our neighborhood, and I have to explain them in this context. Oddly, while the events relating to the two men took place in the same small town, these two shared not a sliver of common ancestry. Both collectively fell under that ‘crazy’ category, with no wiggle room. Today we are mainly concerned with the matter of McCluskey number one.

The first McCluskey is a large man. I met him for my first time a couple years ago. He was back in the province for a short time, I’d guess visiting his old haunts. He pulled up to the fossil museum in a curtain of dust, shutting off the very loud and noticeably overheated motorcycle at once. He climbed down off the smoking bike, and with these thick, black leather chaps creaking stiffly, and with size-thirteen Civil Army War Boots in the gravel crunching ominously, he approached and stood in the doorway.

At this point, several parties inside the museum who were innocently roaming around the displays develop this common goal: to extricate themselves out that door and back to the cars. That’s enough adventure time for today, they must have been thinking. He bore a resemblance which immediately struck me: he compared to either the grim-reaper after his makeover (trying to look like a biker, or even a hit man); or maybe some real leather-cutout, b-grade, attention-starved pulp-fiction guy. I’d swear he was sensing our apprehension for a moment longer, savoring it, before finally speaking. “Is Sonja here ?” This he says without showing the faintest trace of a smile.

Okay, this is when I need to vet the solicitors. Out comes my most effective and time-tested response: “She is, but she’s in a meeting right now”, (share a sad moment with him while he grasps this). “Who may I say is calling ?”

That’s when he told me his name was McClusky (number one). I got it the first time, and immediately associated all of the dubious legends with the man himself. His appearance, on the whole, managed to live up to his reputation, and it is hard to say with certainty which one was more extreme. As if I were a hapless idiot, like nothing bad could ever happen in the world today; (as if it was perfectly okay to treat this guy like some lost kitten that needed milk), I marched him into our humble home.

I learned this response a long time ago: don’t be surprised who comes calling up from Sonja’s past. She knows a lot of people from all over the place, but when the first fact they add habitually goes something like “I’m an old friend of Sonja’s”, no matter how unlikely they may seem at first glance, you know they are just like the rest of us. You know they l.o.v.e. Sonja and would follow her to Mordor and back if that’s where the next gig was scheduled. So I walked him straight to the kitchen door and never gave it another thought.

This particular McCluskey had been a professional wrester for years, but he was also a drummer, and had filled in at times with Sonja’s band. On one occasion, they were playing the tavern Friday night in Wolfville, and he had been ordering drinks all night. After they had played three sets, the bar was absolutely hopping, and by then he had run up one hell of a tab. When the bar manager brought the band its pay, with the big tab deducted, it was pretty obvious (especially to look at him), most of it was McCluskey’s doing.

Sonja divvied-up the money and gave him twenty bucks. He looked at her with a stunned expression. “Where’s the rest of my pay ?”

“You drank your pay. What do you want me to do ?”

McClusley one went from Mr. Happy to Mr. Flippie in a second. For at least the next 15 minutes as the band was packing up their gear, he stormed around like a thundercloud, ranting constantly; getting pissy with everybody. He never relented, right up until they were leaving.

Sonja was just in the process of maneuvering into the van through side door, when the drummer ended up doing something very regrettable. As Sonja started to get in the van, he reached across and grabbed her two little wrists into his massive hands. Each went all the way around her arms like a clamps, and she couldn’t do nothing. He was holding her arms so she could not even grab at a wheel to move herself, or even to stop her chair from rolling back out of the van.

Sonja saw there was this one fraction of a second, as his momentum came forward, she knew just what to do. Perhaps you get used to using that second sense. It probably comes from twenty-seven years of living in a wheelchair, when you deal with your own poor center of gravity and physics doing everyday mundane tasks. She jerked her arms back in a quick but effective move.

The former wrestler (a man who had gone to Russia to fight with very big men, but who Sonja says probably used to get his head rubbed into the mat too often), wasn’t ready for all 130 pounds of her. He smacked the doorframe with his mouth, and his tooth flew off to one side in a very graceful arc. He released her immediately, and he never got around to asking about that money thing again.

Years later he would still recount, even after all his fights in the gym, that the only time anyone ever knocked out one of his teeth, it was by a woman in a wheelchair.

Plowing Up The Weeds

Old fossils never die, do they Sonja Wood ? – pt. 3

I remember very early on in our relationship, my girl told me I was going to have to get used to my life becoming a little more public. I didn’t really appreciate to what extent she was predicting the future, and was thinking, like, maybe more cocktail parties and gatherings. Never saw it coming. Later that evening I was watching myself on the TV news walking Ms. Sonja Wood into the Kentville courthouse where a judge would be considering the matter of Wood vs. Ron Russell, Minister of Transportation.

The year was 1999, and I had already moved about six thousand pounds of fossils into Sonja’s ‘barn’ - a steel Quonset building which is the Blue Beach Fossil Museum of today. We both shared a vision for this museum, understanding what a great thing it could be for so many. We still have a vision, but that’s for real. The fossils have outgrown their home and yet cannot be asked to leave. Old fossils never die (they just get lovingly curated).

As you probably know, Sonja quickly wore the John Hamm government down, and the movement to spur our leaders to action began gaining momentum. Soon there was a unified voice, calling from the streets and commerce chambers alike, to twin Highway 101; and they finally did it. Not all of it, but a significant segment (with construction costs these days, who can afford to build more than a segment at a time?).

I don’t know exactly why Sonja went from musician to activist, but I think it was just her reaction to the incompetence. She didn’t agitate about the dangerous highway because she was it’s victim - she saw herself as a mascot who could help impact an issue and apply a little of her media savvy.

It all started when she saw a piece on the news about a family involved in yet another fatal accident, and thought “how can I do something about that?” She had been scheduled to perform at the Country Music Awards, in Toronto, so after finishing her show Sonja jumped back on a plane to Nova Scotia to started making her placards and plans.

Don’t laugh, the thing that worried her most was she had to let the other band members pack up the gear and drive back without her. A van full of rowdy men…

Incidentally, Sonja did amazingly well in her music career, and was nominated twice for the East Coast Music Awards. Along the way she also enjoyed working with some of the best musical talents in the Maritimes. She is especially noted for her fine voice. I think what stuns me most is the sheer entertainment which ensues after she gets on that stage.

Although she started out doing her shows off the back porch with her sister, Tammy, and having the other half of Mt. Thom for an audience, Sonja had years of frustration after buying herself a mandolin, and then getting nothing good-sounding out of it. She sure could sing, but she couldn’t play worth a pinch (which more-or-less describes my own efforts). A short while after her accident, one day sitting by herself, suddenly playing came easy. Well, at least that’s how she describes it.

The first official tune she learned on the mandolin was shown to her by an old-time player who called himself “Back Alley John”; the song is “Saint James’ Infirmary”, and still brings up goose bumps every time I hear it. Sonja was a fast study, with a natural ear and perfect sense of pitch. If you don’t believe me, you can ask anyone who’s worked with her. I’m proud to tell you my baby really rocks the Kasbah !

So when she packs away her guitar or mandolin and comes home to Nova Scotia, to sit on the highway for seventeen days and nights, it’s safe to say she was sorely missed. It was at this point the promoter lost his patience, and then dropped her from his portfolio, which Sonja characterized as an unfortunate piece of attrition. If you want to make yourself an omelet, you have to break a few eggs along the way…

A lot of those eggs were politicians; a few reporters and editors also got an ear-full. In fact I know of a few old boys who came darn close to threatening her. Listen boys, she knows enough karate to make you think twice about that! (Her left hand was trained in China, the other hand in Japan !) More importantly though, Sonja E. Wood pushes her wheelchair through the valley of darkness, and don’t you try to stop her; she is proud to tell you she carries the biggest stick of all – and that happens to be her faith in the Lord God.

Life Has a Sea of Challenges

Considering how we should perceive the world around us, I think perspective is sometimes more important than the events themselves. Something can happen to us, but it’s our choice to decide how we’re going to let it affect us. We have a choice to either let something drag us down, buoy us up, change our path in life, or remain unaffected.

When we can make positive things come out of bad news we know we’re really getting a grip. Sometimes you just have to let it go, like water off the back of a duck, and carry on.

(photo credit: Google)

Then there’s my wife, Sonja E. Wood of Nova Scotia, about whom I think most people claim no true understanding. As I said in the last installment, she was ripped in half and put back together again, and despite the reality of now being paralyzed from the waist down, she shot out of the rehab centre like a vivacious cosmonaut, leaving so many concerns behind and they just fall back to earth unnoticed…

I confess, Sonja was already somebody ‘on a mission’ before her accident happened; in fact, already a force to be considered. In one instance, she found herself living in an apartment in Wolfville, and all they had was some dry macaroni and a dry heel of bread. Feeling slightly sorry for herself, she watched the evening news and munched back the discouraging dinner, and on came the story of starvation happening in Ethiopia.

The news outlets didn’t cover the story for long, and it was quickly learned that our middle-class TV-viewing audience in Canada did not wish to be subjected to scenes of starving foreigners in their living rooms after supper. The Canadian relief organization sent only one cargo plane of supplies to Ethiopia, and claimed they had done their share. Sonja said we should do more, we can do more.

The year was 1985, and two very notable things were going on: (1) Terry Fox was in the spotlight for his run across Canada, for cancer awareness; (2) Sonja Wood was walking around the Province of Nova Scotia, raising awareness for the famine in Ethiopia. Incidentally, Sonja didn’t know anything about Terry Fox or his run when she made up her mind about setting up her walk. During one of the many interviews she gave at the time one reporter asked her if she was doing this because of Terry Fox, and her reply was an honest one, “Terry who?!”

Sonja, and her sheepdog Sampson completed their walk, and money was sent to Ethiopia, but more important, Sonja got the famine back into the news every time she did another sound byte, and kinda showed them up a bit. They said she couldn’t make it; she wasn’t strong like that; It would take some pile of determination ! Looking back, Sonja was apparently just getting started.

But fate doesn’t arrange for a nice straightforward voyage, and life has a sea of challenges like nature you can’t tame. Three weeks after her walk ended, slightly deflated and coming off the high of being ‘all about the walk’, she was studying music at Acadia and joining a rock band, and all of the sudden her life-changing accident.

Against all odds she bounced back, and became, if anything, bolder. Some believe when you get a second chance at life you come to appreciate every moment like never before. Sonja ‘went to the light’ there she tells of her experience with the afterlife.

She was approaching the typical reassuring glow that many others have claimed is waiting out there for us, and says she heard her mother’s voice telling her something she told her once when just a little girl. They were explaining that grandma had died and had ‘gone to the light’, but when Sonja asked if they could go to the light sometime to see her, was told the words Sonja heard again: “sometimes when people go to the light, they don’t come back.” She turned away from the serene light, and with a gentle calming sensation she remembers falling back to her body. 

But life after the accident was especially challenging. One thing you have to learn is a new kind of patience. Try to make a cup of hot tea and then wheel yourself over to the table without spilling it… and the list is endless. Sonja’s uncle noted this was going to be a particular challenge for his niece, because she was never one to sit still long enough for any moss or mosquito to take advantage of.

To date, this still holds truth, and Sonja Wood has gone on from one cause to another, and always has something cooking on the burner. I will be reporting these stories over time, and will continue to chronicle the indefatigable personality of Ms. Wood as have witnessed it. Join us again, and note that in my next post I am pretty much ready to say: “and now for something completely different.”

Funny How Life Evolves...

My name is Christopher Frederick Mansky, and I have been the curator for the Blue Beach Fossil Museum in Nova Scotia for seventeen years. But I am not here to tell you my story, for that would not be half as good as what I’ve been keeping under my hat. My wife and what she’s got going on is a far more fascinating case in point, if you ask me (or if you ask Hana Gartner, former host of CBC’s Fifth Estate).

Her name is Sonja Elizabeth Wood, and it’s not just her mercurial life history, or her amazing talent as a musical performer; it’s not even her moral-fiber that quite explains the way she makes you see the world. After a while you come to realize it’s all that plus her ambition under fire you’ve come to like so much, and nowadays respect like that is hard to find in a world gone mad.

Most people who know about Sonja Wood realize they are dealing with a miracle. She shouldn’t actually be alive today. In 1985, just when she was emerging as a young East Coast singer-songwriter, fate dealt her a cruel hand, and she was nearly torn in half by a violent head-on collision on the highway. She had been a passenger in the back seat of a Ford Pinto, and late at night, black ice had coated the road. The driver of the other car lost control and helplessly plowed into the little Ford Pinto she was in. It struck them with such force, it threw the smaller car back into the guard rail, pinning it there.

Three other people were in the crash, but they all walked away. Sonja’s seat belt, in those days the sort which only went across your waist, failed to hold her in place. She travelled forwards at about 80 km/hr, until the belt ran out of slack. It tightened with a jerk and her body, by this time in the front seat with her fellow musicians, jackknifed around the thin strap, was finally stopped.

It nearly cut her in half, and would have surely done so were it not for a fluffy wool sweater all bulked-up under a serious ‘biker jacket’ (a jacket she somehow wrangled the week previously off a local chapter member). The only thing holding her upper body and everything south of her waist together was the skin; inside was nothing but lacerated tissue and crushed bone. Amazingly, all the major organs had been shoved up out of the way by the sweater when the belt did its worst, and nothing else was damaged.

Sonja remained conscious and trapped inside the wreck, in a snowstorm, while the ambulance took nearly two hours to find the accident site; then to extricate her using their jaws-of-life. If it were me I know I’d have bled to death, and there’s something called the ‘golden hour’, which first-responders say is how fast a trauma victim needs to get to a hospital. After that, one’s chances go downhill very quickly. Sonja can elaborate and tell you all about her emergency surgery, and describe how the doctors and nurses got up to some pretty fancy mucking around inside her abdomen, and how her intestines were draped all around the room (on the other hand, it might best if the remaining details were left unsaid).

Incidentally, Sonja got the jacket which saved her life for thirty bucks ($30.00). Her father was Chester Wood, and he liked to do his share of horse-trading, and I think a lot of Chester rubbed off on his girl. He would have approved of the jacket deal, and worried about who she bought it from, and have to admit she was still one smart girl. She had already paid ten dollars down-payment and took the coat before the accident changed her life. Afterwards, in the hospital and recovering, she got a visit from her biker friend; she insisted he take the twenty-bucks she still owed for that jacket. Meanwhile, he was probably thinking one thing: he’s so glad you’re alive and isn’t there for his twenty bucks ! That’s the Wood’s for you.

The Wood family adopted Sonja and her sister when she was three; Tammy was just a baby. Sonja then grew up in Mt. Thom, Nova Scotia, where the Wood family made up about half the population. They always liked to kid their father that he was “the mayor of Mt. Thom, (population nine).”

Their father Chester was an honest man, religious and hard-working. He had Mi’ kmaw running through his veins, and couldn’t stand to see someone picking on another who was weaker. That’s kind of ironic because what he didn’t always realize was that his little girl endured years of torment at school at the hands of the cruel ‘cool kids’.

Sonja Wood describes her’ younger self as a skinny little tom-boy, who worked in the barn, smelt of barn residue, and struggled with learning. She was just too precocious and A-D-D to focus and relax. When she was tasked to any sort of ‘paperwork challenge’, she froze!

She had a natural way of communicating with animals though, and aspired to become a vet one day. Her teachers failed her there, a recurring theme that says “Sonja, you have to count on yourself; you can’t be banking on others”, and told her she “was never gong to be smart enough for veterinary school.” They could be partly right, but are mostly wrong about that. Sonja is too smart for normal assessment: she’s smart enough to do anything she wants, but on her own terms. She is not destined to become a vet, so however she got herself through grade ten Math or English is not important.

In one of her now ‘classic’ songs there’s a line that goes “…she makes something good come from everything…” After the accident that left her parapelegic, she leant her voice to the legendary Ralph Nader, lobbyist crusading against the automobile industry and seeking to improve safety standards for motorists. She was one more important testimony to be heard for improving seat belts; today we all take this for granted. But this was not enough. Then she took herself back to the Highway 101, to the scene of her accident, in her wheelchair, and held a vigil in plain sight of the daily travelers. She hung banners, waived signs of protest; she challenged government’s back-pedaling; they were to twin this dangerous highway as promised! Sonja then summarily filed civil suit against the Provincial Minister of Transportation, then wound up in Ottawa negotiating a deal to see our highway twinned. She may not be available to give your cat or dog its annual checkup, bit she saved lives here in the Valley, and that’s because she made something good happen.

That’s why I think it’s funny how life evolves. There aren’t a lot of things you can imagine that really prove to be impossible. So for more twists and dips than a good roller-coaster, watch my blog for part two of the saga of my wife; Nova Scotia’s best-known activist, Sonja Wood.

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