Easter Monday: Death has no dominion.
Holy Week gives way to another Week of Remembering; My son claims his ancient birthright; It's personal: Saint Columbanus is the patron saint of bikers.
In Paul's letter Romans (6:9): “Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.” I like the way that’s put. It’s about knowing rather than believing.
I don’t know these things, but I’m nonethless inclined to the way it was put by a former junior reporter for the South Wales Daily Post by the name of Dylan Thomas: Though they go mad they shall be sane, Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.
In a working life devoted almost entirely to the journalism racket, I’ve never been a good judge of the sort of story that will get attention or what readers want of me. So I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that Good Friday’s newsletter, The Keening of the Three Marys, was the second most widely read Real Story of the year so far.
Maybe it’s because this newsletter’s subscribers appreciated a break from the usual content. So much of my work over the years for Maclean’s, the Ottawa Citizen and the National Post covers quite a bit of awful bomb-cratered ground, and still does. This newsletter’s content tends to be pretty intense.
It was a bit more than two years ago that I launched The Real Story. Canada’s “national emergency” was just ending and Ukraine’s national emergency was just beginning. Much of my attention since the Simchat Torah pogrom of last October has been about the forces unleashed by that historic event - demons and monsters I’d been already keeping a close eye on going back quite a few years.
The Good Friday newsletter was a bit personal too I suppose, and I’ve avoided disclosing much in the way of the personal. I don’t want to make a habit of it. But I will today on the other side of the paywall. I can offer a couple of things to all comers today in that vein of content.
I can’t help it. It’s how I was made.
Firstly, if it’s of any interest at all, here’s some relevant and personal stuff that has made it into this newsletter: The Stories That Haunt The House. My Mother The Spy: Not fond of Putin. Most recently, The Faith Of Our Fathers.
Secondly, it’s true what I said in the subhead about Columbanus, who happens to have been an Irish guy. Started out in the 6th Century in a little monastery on an island in the River Erne up in County Fermanagh. He soon hit the road and founded several institutions of higher learning in the savage depths of the continent of Europe.
It’s also true what I say about motorcycles, which I touched on here in Back in the saddle, rough road ahead, also in That’s enough Canada, I’m outta here. Since those dispatches I’ve traded up from my old 865 cc 61-horse cruiser-style 2008 Triumph America to a 2023 900-cc 64-horse classic-style Triumph Bonneville T100 and I can’t tell you how pleased I am with it. It is my primary mode of transportation when the weather allows.
Even so, my pride and joy remains my 1977 Triumph Bonneville 750-cc T140E, which is more precisely a 1977-and-a-half, the first months of that year having been given over to the T140J, which was a modified Bonneville produced to commemorate the silver jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II’s ascension to the throne. The Meriden Workers’ Co-operative was in sole command of Triumph production, distribution and marketing in 1977, thanks to the interventions of the great British Trade & Industry minister Tony Benn.
I’m dredging all this up because it’s my custom to devote the Easter weekend to getting the old Bonnie tuned up and fettled with and out on the backroads again. So that’s what I’ve done. Old Bonnies don’t like the heat of summer. They absolutely revel in the springtime. Feast your eyes:
And now for the more personal stuff. . .