Son of a Critch Read online

  VIKING

  an imprint of Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited

  Canada • USA • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

  First published 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by Mark Critch

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Critch, Mark, author

  Son of a Critch : a childish Newfoundland memoir / Mark Critch.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 9780735235069 (hardcover).—ISBN 9780735235076 (electronic)

  1. Critch, Mark. 2. Critch, Mark—Childhood and youth. 3. Television actors and actresses—Canada—Biography. 4. Motion picture actors and actresses—Canada—Biography. 5. Comedians—Canada—Biography. 6. Newfoundland and Labrador—Biography. I. Title.

  PN2308.C755A3 2018     791.4502’8092     C2018-902424-0

                             C2018-902425-9

  Cover by Leah Springate

  Ebook design adapted from printed book design by Leah Springate

  Cover photograph: Ray Fennelly

  v5.3.2

  a

  For Jacob, Will, and Lucy.

  This is my story; I so love watching as

  you write yours each and every day.

  Some of the names of my classmates and teachers have been changed out of respect for their privacy and out of my desire to not have the crap beaten out of me.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1: Home

  2: Who Knit You?

  3: The Wheels on the Bus

  4: The Inside

  5: The Strap

  6: Bless Me Father

  7: The Real World

  8: Lack-of-Faith Healing

  9: Slack

  10: Innocence Lost

  11: Sins of the Fathers

  12: Late Bloomer

  Epilogue

  Photo Insert

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  AS I WRITE THIS I’m sitting in the prime minister’s plane en route to Vietnam. I’m travelling with the Canadian media to cover Justin Trudeau’s first official visit there, but I’m not a journalist. I’m a comedian. For the past fifteen years I’ve been a writer and performer on Canada’s longest-running TV comedy, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, now in its twenty-fifth season.

  My time on 22 Minutes has allowed me to do things I’d never have had the opportunity to experience otherwise. It’s brought me to Afghanistan, where my show for the troops was interrupted by a Taliban rocket attack. It brought me to China, where I pretended to be a Canadian premier and was given the same private show at the famous Lao She Teahouse that they gave Presidents Nixon and Bush 1. It brought me to Moscow, where, after the Russians had planted a flag on the Arctic seabed to lay claim to the energy riches of the North, I planted a giant Canadian flag in the middle of Red Square. I laid claim to it based on their rules and was questioned by the Politsiya.

  My job has taken me to the White House four times. On my second visit, a staffer who recognized me (he was part Canadian) brought me down to the basement under the press briefing room where the tiles from President Kennedy’s swimming pool still line the walls. I was invited to sign my name on a tile right alongside the signatures of Frank Sinatra and Muhammad Ali.

  My role as the show’s roving reporter has taken me to the top of the Peace Tower in Ottawa. I was invited to sign my name again, this time on a wall of the small room under the flagpole. Being a comedian has taken me from the basement of the White House to the roof of the Parliament Buildings, but it has never taken me this far from home.

  The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is halfway around the world from Newfoundland and Labrador. I can’t really get any farther away without starting to come back home again. It’s four a.m. and we’ve stopped in Anchorage, Alaska, to refuel. The PM is taking the opportunity to go for a jog along the runway. “Hey, Critch,” he shouts from the front of the plane, “are you coming?” No. I am not. I have work to do. Also, I would never be able to keep up and I prefer to embarrass myself on TV.

  Just about everyone else on the plane is sleeping. It will take a full day to reach our destination, and the weight of that journey is ever present. Journalists are taking turns, one sleeping on the seats and the other on the floor between rows, then switching every couple of hours. This is not a fancy plane like Air Force One. Air Force One is a flying fortress. It has advanced communications capabilities and can be refuelled mid-flight, giving it unlimited range. The prime minister’s plane is a little more modest. It is thirty years old, doesn’t have Wi-Fi, and still has ashtrays in the washrooms. It doesn’t even have a cool name like “Air Force One.” Call it what you will, but Royal Canadian Air Force One could very easily be Air Canada flight 692 with service from Winnipeg to Moncton. Nothing fancy. Very Canadian.

  I am far away from home, but home is never far from my mind. My mother was recently admitted to hospital, at eighty years of age. She’s been living on her own for three years now, since my father passed away at the age of ninety-three. She took a bad turn, as people in their eighties often do, but she’s on the mend again and insisted that I go on this trip. Still, everything in my being makes me think I shouldn’t have left. I should be with her.

  My job has taken me all over the world, but I never see it like that. To me, it has always taken me away from home. Newfoundlanders have always travelled for work. Whether it’s out to the Grand Banks of the Atlantic Ocean to catch cod or to the Alberta tar sands to help power the country—or, in my case, to Vietnam with the prime minister to make jokes—we go where the work is. Travelling all the time comes with sacrifice, but it’s worth it because the thought of moving away forever is too much to bear.

  The PM returns to the plane from his run fresh-faced, followed by four tired-looking RCMP officers who, unlike me, were bound by duty to jog alongside. “Critch,” Trudeau calls playfully, “I thought you were going to come, man. You missed out!” I laugh and promise to join in next time. The engines rev as we prepare to make our way again along the 13,743 kilometres to Hanoi. I turn my head to the window and close my eyes. I think of my mother. I dream of home.

  1

  HOME

  THE FIRST THING I REMEMBER is drowning.

  My mother had taken me swimming at what Newfoundlanders call “the beach.” This is not what the average person would imagine when they picture a beach. There is no golden sand. Emerald water does not dance along the shoreline. Bronzed and toned bodies do not lounge on beach blankets, hiding flirtatious glances under designer sunglasses.

  This is not what the Beach Boys sang about. This is more like a beach in the “Allied troop carriers landed on the beaches of Normandy despite the poor weather conditions” sense. In fact, most of my childhood memories seem like black-and-white war footage. The sky is always grey. There’s a lot of shaking and someone is always yelling, “Move! Move! Move!”

  When you’re walking on a Newfoundland beach you have to keep an eye out for any large rocks you might accidentally step on. It’s difficult because the large rocks are usually hidden under thousands of smaller, sharper rocks. If
you’re lucky you can avoid them by hopping from broken beer bottles to broken pop bottles, tacking left and right around the dozens of pale white bodies lying back to sunbathe and rub their bleeding feet. A Newfoundland sunbather is a sight to behold. It’s best to use protective eyewear. Directly looking at a Newfoundland sunbather can result in snow blindness. I myself am so pale that my skin takes on an almost translucent appearance. It’s known that Newfoundlanders have big hearts. We know this because on the beach you can actually see them beating through our pale skin. Imagine a jellyfish that has somehow swallowed a large fish and chips.

  Keep in mind that these people have chosen to swim in the North Atlantic. This is the water the Titanic sunk in. Remember the scene in the movie where Rose is floating on the door and Jack, his hair streaked with icicles, slips below the frigid water into the darkness? Same water. Consider that these are the same beaches that blue whales wash up onto as they die. This is where the largest creatures on earth decide to commit suicide. And yet wave after wave of doughy, cadaverous swimmers playfully dive in and say, “Water’s not so bad today! I can feel my legs!”

  Now back to drowning. It actually wasn’t the cold water that almost got me. Nor was it the powerful Labrador current that drags icebergs down from the Arctic. No, it was something much more dangerous. It was that all-consuming, ever-present Newfoundland danger: conversation.

  I was three years old and in awe of the sights and sounds. Up until this point, I had led a fairly sheltered life. I grew up about five kilometres from anything. My father was a newsman at VOCM radio in St. John’s. He tried valiantly to fill small-town news with big-city excitement. A typical Mike Critch news report would go:

  Late last night, early this morning, a moose was struck on the Trans-Canada Highway. The sex of the moose has not yet been released. Two men were killed, one seriously. Mike Critch for the VOCM news service.

  We lived next to the radio station, which was next to a four-lane highway that led into the Trans-Canada. My early childhood was like the first level of the video game Frogger. And there were no other children for miles. The closest thing to other kids for me to play with were the used car salesmen in their plaid suits at the lots down the road.

  Halloween was a lonely time. I was a sad sight walking along the Trans-Canada in my plastic C-3PO costume from Woolco. Not that you’d know I even wore a costume under the snowsuit I had to wear to protect me from the snowdrifts along the highway.

  LITTLE ME: Trick or Treat.

  USED CAR SALESMAN: Hey, Mark, what are you supposed to be?

  A robot in a snowsuit?

  LITTLE ME: Something like that.

  USED CAR SALESMAN: You’re a weird kid. Look, I don’t got no candy. How about a pack of Halls and a handful of Rothman’s?

  LITTLE ME: Sounds good.

  I once thought for a moment that I’d seen another child, but he turned out to be a midget wrestler who went by the name “Little Beaver.” He’d come to the station to promote a wrestling match. He had a Mohawk, wore a three-piece suit, and smoked a cigar that was almost as big as he was. I thought, “That is the toughest kid I have ever seen.”

  But now, here among the rocks of the beach, there were more kids than I’d ever seen before. Half of them seemed tough enough to last a round or two with Little Beaver, but even still, I was drawn to them. My mother, on the other hand, was drawn into a conversation. That was not hard to do. My father worked at a radio station. My mother was a radio station. She was a news-gathering machine who could spit out gossip at a machine-gun pace. To engage my mother in conversation was to face a barrage of gossip-loaded ammunition.

  STRANGER: How are you today, ma’am?

  MOM: Oh​I’m​Good. Yes,​How​Are​You​Now,​My​Dear? MyGod​I​Heard​All​About​Your​Mother. Shockin’​Isn’t​It? You’re​Marjorie​Chafe’s​Son, Aren’t​Ya? Yes,​My​God. And​He­r​Full​Up​With​The​Cancer. Of​Course​She​Smoked​All​Her​Life​But​So​Did​You­r​Father. Hard​To​Say​If​It​Was​Her​Smoke​Or​His​Smoke​Got​Her​But,​Sure,​You​Smoke​Too​So​Could​Have​Been​You,​IS’pose. Died​Of​A​Hat​Trick. First,​Second,​And​Third​Hand​Smoke. My​God,​Some​Shockin’.

  STRANGER: Do you want fries with that?

  My mother had noticed someone she thought might look like someone she thought she knew, and that was enough for her to risk the death-defying journey over the jagged rocks in search of information. I was left to follow the siren call of the ocean and the children being tossed on the waves like seagulls waiting out a storm.

  I started to walk directly into the water. The cold didn’t affect me. I was a husky child with a good layer of heat-protective blubber around me. I was made for this. The water came up to my knees and I walked on. It came up to my navel and forward I marched. Then I felt the strangest sensation. The rocks beneath my feet had given way to sand. It felt glorious. Smooth, soft, and grainy. It reminded me of the few moments of barefoot wonder I’d experienced standing in the cat’s litter box before my mother told me to “Get​Out​Of​That​Now​Before​I​Skins​Ya! For​God​Sakes,​B’y,The​Cat’s​Arse​Was​In​That!”

  I looked over at the children, watching them frolic, and wondered, “How can I be a part of that?” Surely they would notice me and ask me to play with them, like kids did on Sesame Street? We’d sing some song about “the letter C” or something. Maybe they’d like some Halls or some Rothman’s? All I had to do was wait.

  I remember looking up at a cliff and seeing the Newfoundland flag. Not the red, blue, and gold flag designed by the famous artist Christopher Pratt. No, I mean the true Newfoundland flag: a plastic grocery bag caught in a tree. Then my gaze shifted to two kids, a boy and girl floating by in a tire. They sat on it, their feet dangling into the water through the centre. It looked like everything that childhood should be. I continued on. The water came up to my neck. The children on the tire laughed together as they spun lazily. I stepped closer, hypnotized by their joy.

  The water slipped over my head. I didn’t realize that the ground was on a slope. I’d never been in deep water before and assumed I could just keep walking.

  I’d never thought about breathing until that moment. I remember thinking, “Oh, right. I have to breathe.” Try as I might, I couldn’t get my head above the water. I looked back to shore and could just barely make out the image of my mother interrogating a couple about their exact lineage. Nobody knew I was there. I kept going.

  With every step I took, I could feel a great weight pressing down inside me. I was walking farther but going deeper. I looked up, confused. I caught sight of the tire children. They were floating above me, still laughing. I reached for a pink Minnie Mouse sandal on the surface, just over my head. With the strength of a panicked child, I pulled her foot toward me with all my might. Next, I latched on to the Six Million Dollar Man sneaker of the boy. “He kept his sneakers on,” I thought. “He doesn’t even know there’s sand here. I should tell him to take them off and feel it squish between his toes. That’ll be a good ice-breaker.”

  I pulled them down. I could feel the panic leave my body and transfer into theirs. I grabbed their tire, sending them splashing into the cold water. Exhausted, I lay on the improvised float like a walrus on a rock and sunned myself. It was nice to have friends my own age.

  My mother rushed into the water. “My​God,​Mark! That’s​Not​Nice​That’s​The​Little​Boy’s​Tire​Not​Yours! What​A​Sin​He’s​Crying​Now! I’m​Sorry! I​Don’t​Know​What’s​Gotten​Into​Him​Now,​He​Was​In​The​Cat’s​Litter​Box​Last​Week!”

  Even to this day, I can’t swim. I nearly drowned a second time when I was twelve. That time was in a pool. I was trying to impress a girl and was too embarrassed to admit I couldn’t swim. I thought I could just stay in the shallow end, but the pool had a concave floor and I kept sliding to the deeper centre. The more I splashed, the harder everyone laughed.
“Oh, look! Critch is pretending to drown. Hilarious!”

  I had just managed to come up for a breath when a kid threw a float toward me to add to the jubilation. It hit me in the nose, knocking the wind from me and causing a spiderweb of crimson blood to float upward to the surface as I sank to the bottom like a stone. The air had left my lungs, taking any primal desire for survival with it. The pain of the struggle gave in to what can only be described as a good buzz. I lay on the bottom, looking up and thinking, “It was a short life but it was good.” I flashed back to the earlier time at the beach, but there were no tires here. I suddenly felt quite warm, as though I’d peed my pants. The water took on a golden hue, but it wasn’t urine. It was as if someone was swiping through Instagram filters to find the perfect look for #DrownedKid.

  It was at that moment that the girl I was trying to impress jumped in to save me, removing any hint of testosterone from my newly pubescent body. I pushed her away. I wanted to tell her that she didn’t understand. It was nice here. It was warm and peaceful, and I looked good with this filter. She pulled me to the surface and my lungs burned as I coughed up water. The object of my affection looked down at me with a mix of pity and disdain. It reminded me of the faces on the statues of the saints at school. They seemed to be saying, “I’m here for you, but you’re kind of annoying.”

  I still can’t swim, but I’ve never been afraid of the water. As a Newfoundlander, I guess that shouldn’t be too surprising. For over five hundred years, Newfoundlanders have pulled a living out of the unforgiving North Atlantic. First they went after the cod, but then the cod disappeared. I assume, like all Newfoundlanders, that the cod simply went off to Alberta to look for work because the arse was out of the cod fishery. Then there was the seal hunt. But when that became the cause célèbre de rigueur for fading American film stars and newly married Beatles, the seal hunt went the way of the dodo. And as any Newfoundlander can tell you, dodos were delicious.