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A note Aragon tucked into McCann’s laptop before his first sober overseas tour

This is Part 3 (of 3) of my “live blogging” my experience reading One Good Reason: A Memoir of Addiction and Recovery, Music and Love by Séan McCann and Andrea Aragon. 

Premise: Things come to a head, reckoning comes, followed by sobriety, truth speaking and the healing process.

Reading Speed: Still quick, both authors write directly and write well.

Format: Pdf on my laptop.

Accompanying Music: McCann’s solo songs “Stronger” and “Take Off My Armour,” perfect songs for recovery.

Show-stopping quotations:

From McCann:

I didn’t know a single chord, but I was determined to learn how to play it and now I know all three chords.

and

I was on a bus with ten of my closest friends but I had never felt more isolated and alone.

and

By the end of my second year as a “mental health advocate,” I had accumulated so many corporate logos I began to feel like a NASCAR driver.

and

The Catholic Church has done an excellent job of protecting its many ordained pedophiles while the international justice system has consistently failed to defend and support millions of victims of sexual abuse.

From Aragon:

Yet, I always figured they’d have each other’s backs if and when the chips were down. I assumed that with a lot of our “friends,” but time and time again I was proven wrong.

and

Although I’ve lived with two in my lifetime, I will never profess to know how to get through life with an alcoholic.

Insights:

Alcohol is such a weird part of Newfoundland culture, and East Coast and Canadian culture in general. It’s the drug that’s okay to abuse–up to a point. If you cross the line it’s your own fault. As McCann notes, it’s so acceptable, it’s part of the brand. Come party with us. (See also: New Orleans and Los Vegas.) Get-drunk-off-your-ass destinations.

One Good Reason is not a deep dive into Great Big Sea. Either McCann didn’t want to gossip, or he had bigger and more personal issues he wanted to stay with. Or perhaps it was self-preservation–it’s weird how people are still shocked and appalled that a band breaks up after 20 years. They should try being in a bus with the same people for 20 years, so if they don’t quit.

A good part of his story involves, I think, finding himself as an artist rather just a performer. The songs he’s created post-GBS are much more personal, his “battle songs,” cries from his heart. They resonate with other addicts and victims of abuse.

Aragon’s take on their relationship, and relationships in general, is really interesting. She says loyalty isn’t a natural value of hers, yet she is fiercely loyal to McCann. Still, she says if it ends, it ends, that their mutual happiness, and honesty, is ultimately what matters. She’s in it because of love, but also because they have found a way to make it work. They chose to stay.

The simple telling of this book encases great complexity of theme including trauma, love, family, parenthood, addiction, mental health issues, recovery, and music. I had a damn good cry with it.

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One Good ReasonOver the next few days I’ll be “live blogging” my experience reading One Good Reason: A Memoir of Addiction and Recovery, Music and Love by Séan McCann and Andrea Aragon. This first entry is after reading the first third of the book.  

Premise: McCann is the founding member of Canada’s most successful bar band, Great Big Sea. When he left the band in 2013, he went public with the fact that he’d long used alcohol to mask the pain of surviving sexual abuse. This memoir, co-authored by his wife Andrea Aragon, explores the roots of both their traumas, and its long-term impacts.

Reading Speed: The prose is crisp, clear, very readable, so I’m flying through it.

Format: I’m reading it as a pdf on my laptop.

Accompanying Music: Well this book comes with its own title track: “One Good Reason.” As McCann puts on his YouTube channel, the ballad is “almost word for word the conversation I had with my wife Andrea on November 9th 2011, the day she gave me the ‘One Good Reason’ I needed to face my demons.”

Show-stopping quotations:

“Daddy Jerry,” as he was affectionately known by his lawless gang of grandchildren, was a gentle man with giant hands and a glass eye, the result of an accident while playing with dynamite blasting caps as a child.

and

The church was a confusing mixture of power and lust that tickled my burgeoning adolescent sexuality and seduced my teenaged soul.

 

 

Insights:

McCann and Aragon take turns telling their own stories. Both have experienced trauma. McCann is explicit in saying he isn’t trying to excuse his actions in life by talking about the abuse he suffered. He’s just contextualizing.

Doing so reveals something about the nature of trauma. It tends to stay secret. We hide it away. People say things, even decades after the fact, like, “Please don’t tell your father.” He leaves the rest unsaid, but I could almost hear the followup, It would break his heart.

Is this secrecy truer in tight-knit Atlantic Canadian communities? Regardless, it makes children more vulnerable (That’s why #metoo is so powerful, it flips a defiant middle finger to secrecy, whatever the consequences. It puts everything out in the open in its efforts to bring abusers to account. But I’m sidetracked.)

In this Newfoundland context, the absolute authority of the Catholic Church, via the local priest, allowed an abuser ultimate access to a vulnerable boy. McCann’s parents gave the man a key to their house.

Meanwhile, young Aragon’s trauma comes more directly from family dysfunction, and leads to self-harm, “to finally feel some physical pain to match the emotional pain I’d been feeling for so very long.” Her story moves faster, making me wonder if her sections will be longer later in the book.

Aragon’s father fought in Vietnam. She describes his alcoholism. Another instance of way-back trauma seeping down the generations.

 

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Photo by Lorna Lillo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mi’kmaw Elder Doug Knockwood and his wife Michelle reside on Indian Brook Indian Reserve, Hants County, Nova Scotia, part of the Sipekne’katik Band. I visited Doug on February 19 and we talked about his upcoming book, Doug Knockwood: Mi’kmaw Elder, Stories, Memories, Reflections.

We also reminisced about the past and had a laugh about the time in the 1950s when I was attending New York City’s New Year’s Eve celebrations and in the midst of about one million people we ran into each other. Like finding a needle in a haystack.

Doug grew up with his parents, Ann Mary and Freeman Bernard Knockwood, and their extended family, including his grandfather Sam, in Halfway River, Cumberland County. Sam was blind, but for Doug a great teacher.

Doug Knockwood spent two years at the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School

When Doug was five or six years old he was separated from his family. Against their wishes, the Indian Agent had him enrolled in the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School. This was possible because, at the time, the provisions of the Indian Act enabled the Canadian government to do just about anything it wanted with Registered Indians, who were classified as Wards of the Crown.

Doug spent about two years in the institution before he was returned to his family. Doug didn’t recognize it at the time, but realized later in life that this was his first experience with overt racism. Such treatment, he learned, was the norm for his people. It created in many of us large inferiority complexes.

In Doug’s case, it probably sowed the seeds that grew into two addictions. They controlled his life for 34 years, traumatizing his family and nearly costing him his life.

Doug’s addiction to nicotine began when he was about five years old. He started smoking butts left behind by others. Slowly but surely the habit grew into a strong craving.

Alcohol came into his life when he was around 11.

Doug: “At first I thought I had control of the nicotine and alcohol addictions; however, with the passing of several years, it dawned on me that they had me well hooked!”

During the next 34 years, Doug would join the Canadian armed forces, which would increase his dependence on alcohol and cause his family to break up. After being discharged he hit the skids; sometimes he’d have a period of stability, then he’d be back at it.

Along the way to his near destruction he contracted tuberculosis.

Doug: “It was 1953. In Gagetown we were sleeping in tents on rolled up mattresses, and it rained for about 11 days steady and we were all wet, cold, and I lost my voice. One morning I couldn’t answer my name on parade. They put me in the military hospital. I was there for seven weeks. Finally they decided to send me to Saint John, Lancaster Military Hospital, and I was in there for 40 weeks. They took x-rays and the doctor came to my room to report.

“Now there were probably half a dozen of us who used to play penny ante. We were playing cards when the doctor came down. We were playing penny ante on my bed.

“The doctor said, ‘I have good news and bad news. You have an infection in your lung. I guess we’re going to be transferring you to Halifax, Camp Hill. You have a case of tuberculosis.’

“The guys playing cards asked, ‘What is tuberculosis?’ The doctor said, ‘Guys, if I were you, I wouldn’t be playing cards with him anymore.’

“One of the guys dropped his cards and money and left.”

Even with this diagnosis, Doug continued to feed his addictions. He was locked up in a secure sanatorium because he would take off from voluntary ones to try to satisfy his cravings. Lung and other operations followed but it did not sway him.

I asked Doug, what caused you to finally quit?

Doug: “By 1964, my health had declined to the extent that [cigarettes and alcohol] were making me very sick, and when you consume alcohol you smoke like a stovepipe. I had spent several years in the sanatorium with contagious TB and had had several operations. I was in Halifax at the time I finally had enough and was staying at the city’s jail when AA offered me a chance to change my life and I took it. AA became my life raft.”

As a reformed nicotine addict myself—90 cigarettes a day—and having found my three-year withdrawal from it a traumatic experience, I posed this question to my friend: which of the addictions was hardest to quit?

Doug: “Nicotine.” Said without a moment’s hesitation.

Knockwood receives an honorary doctorate from Acadia University (photo: Dan Callis)

At the age of 88, he no longer has any inclination to indulge in either of the addictions that took him down such a rocky road.

When he finally conquered his addictions, Doug became successful in helping others who had fallen into the same downward spiral he had. He was instrumental in establishing detox centres and became a sought-after addictions counsellor.

The following are quotes from his son, Bernie Knockwood, and Vera Marr, a grateful benefactor of his wisdom and services.

Bernie Knockwood: “When Dad talks to people, there’s that innate understanding…he knows where he’s coming from and he’s coming from the same place they are…a combination of knowing who he is as a person [and] his life experiences.

“I’m really proud of my dad. I’m totally amazed that after all these years and all the things he’s gone through, and all the things I’ve gone through, and my sister, all of us—that we can still come together and be a loving family.

“We’re not tearing at each other and saying, ‘You did this, you did that, why did you do this? Why did you do that?’ …because we know the pain of not being there for somebody. And I’m really glad…he’s my Dad. That’s all I can say.”

Vera Marr: “If Doug wasn’t there, there would be a big chapter in our lives that would be gone. Lord knows how we would have ended up. Our dad was a strong man, but even strong men need help. I think the most important part was that we knew Doug was coming to visit Dad. There was someone who would come by to take care of Dad, because he had to be taken care of. He took care of us eight kids and his wife. Doug was always his constant. Everybody should have one constant in their life…Ours would be Doug.”

Doug Knockwood’s life story is an inspiring one, about the courage and resilience needed to overcome powerful addictions.