In this ephemeral moment the timeline flows like this...
1689 - The battle of the Lake of Two Mountains;
1925 - the monument is built;
1948 - Atmo Zakes is 9 years old, finding joy in Berlin during the Russian blockade, against all odds;
1974 - I set out on my Vélo Solex to explore Montreal's western shore;
1995 - Hilary Hedges and Atmo Zakes publish The Senneville Time Warp;
2011 - I stumble on the book while taking a spin in Senneville on my red Vespa. I share an exchange of emails between myself and Atmo Zakes;
2015 - I donate The Senneville Time Warp to the Beaconsfield Public Library before moving to Toronto;
2025 - Atmo Zakes reaches out and offers to send me The Senneville Time Warp once more. I accept her kind offer.
I am recording this because it inspires me when moments from the past reach out to me in the present. The moments are like threads that are woven by our actions and those of others who touch us, and become the fabric of our lives.
The moment when it happens feels very special to me.
This most recent moment, as I lay in bed, taking a last look at my emails before going to sleep, and seeing a message from Atmo, felt like a light that glowed. It's difficult to describe and to convey. In the moment I am unexpectedly touched, pleased, surprised, and grateful. Grateful for the things that I and others have done that coalesce in this special way. I feel the need to save the moment here, and to share it with you.
What makes these particular moments in time special, is the history, beginning with a horrific massacre in the distant past, whose memory sparked a series of events where people, touched by the history, find ways to deal with the horror. It often happens that artistry is woven into the fabric, in this case by Hilary Hedges and Atmo Zakes who create a book that imagines an indigenous child, Little Feather, and two white children, Christabel and Mark, who stumble into a time warp and become compassionate allies and friends, contributing to saving Little Feather from the massacre, thus adding a very human and caring narrative that lives, thanks to Jim Katz, in the precise place where the horror occurred. It is Jim who leaves The Senneville Time Warp at the foot of the monument where I, and others have found it. The pain of the horror likely motivates indigenous descendants of the victims of 1689, time after time, to remove the monument's bronze plaque that speaks of the horror. The book is a gesture that lives at the monument, a small compassionate step in a healing process.
Atmo shared similar feelings with me in an email after I first posted this story.
Here is what Atmo told me:
“Hello David
I just read your blog and enjoyed it a lot.
I call these moments magical and love them just as much as you do.
It is great fun to be a little part of yours now!
When they happen they make me feel very alive, part of a greater WHOLE in which I have a place and am an acting member.
Just now I am having a collection of these magical moments, that I wrote down over the years, edited by a friend and am thinking of posting them online. For that I need to learn how to make a website… which I find a huge challenge to do.
But just because I can, let me include here, one of these magical stories, to illustrate what I mean.
For clarity let me tell you that I was born in 1939 in Berlin Germany!
I also created a series of 21 paintings of my childhood in Berlin, that has been exhibited here in Québec and in Germany as well. You can see the paintings here in a video of an interview I gave to Denise Palisaitis:
This is one of my paintings (The Candy Bomber):
During the Russian blockade of 1948, the city was provided with food and supplies by the Berlin Airlift. Chocolate was not high on the list of goods for anyone… but us kids. We would wait for hours near the local landing strip for a piece of chocolate that might be dropped by a pilot from the open window of his cockpit. Many pilots dropped chocolates attached to tiny handkerchief parachutes. The children of Berlin were most thankful for these sweet, delightful moments of joy.
The magical story about the Candy Bomber Gail Halvorsen.
While I was painting the picture with the candy bomber I did a ”memory check”, to find out who it was, that created this kind tradition during the blockade of Berlin in 1948-49. It was the American colonel Gail Seymour Halvorsen who started this, when he was one of the many pilots that flew frequently to Berlin to provide the city with essential supplies. Children were always watching the planes landing. So he tied candies to a handkerchief parachute and dropped them out of his cabin window while landing at the Tempelhof airport, which was situated right in the middle of downtown Berlin. When they discovered he was dropping candy for them, they arrived in droves from all over town. He got permission from his superiors to continue to do this and to have other pilots participate too. It became a whole industry to make the parachutes with candy at home in the US and then fly them into Berlin.
This is how I also found out, that he was still alive! I was very happy, because it gave me a chance to thank him for his kindness and actions during the blockade. I wrote him an online note and was thrilled when I even got an answer! It was not from Mr. Halvorsen himself, but it was an acknowledgement from one of his many friends that he had gotten my message and was happy about it. He was not able to answer me personally, because he had Covid at the time. This again was pure magic, because not very long after that he passed away at the age of 101. What a rich life he had… a real inspiration."
