(Image Source: Brighton College)

I was busy teaching web marketing classes last month at BCIT in Vancouver and also Brighton College right in my backyard at Central City in Surrey. Brighton’s campus is located right above my favourite hangout, the Central City Brew Pub.

(Image Source: Brighton College)

Read The Brighton College Surrey Campus blog post about my class

Jessica Hurford, who writes for the Brighton College Blog sat in on one of my classes and we had lots of fun that day looking at Viral Videos and taking about Hootsuite. She took some photos of me teaching and I’m excited to share Jessica’s Brighton College blog post with you here… Check it out!

Looking for some Hawai’i travel/adventure advice for the islands of Oahu and Kauai!

Next month Fatima and I are heading to Hawai’i for the first time! We’ve got 10 days and will spend half the time in Oahu and half in Kauai. We’re up for just about anything. We want to do some exploring out in the rural areas as well as beaches / resorts.

We’re open to staying at some Bed & Breakfasts and unconventional places, in other words ADVENTURE! So if you have any stories or suggestions on awesome things, people or places to visit please let me know by commenting below!

He says their visit to Lake Pontchartrain, New Orleans was the first time he and Doug (a couple of small town country bumpkins) had seen a nude ‘girlie show’ but it turns out they weren’t exactly girls but in fact New Orleans drag queens! They had no idea what that was at the time!

(I’m guessing this is the exact “Queer” Drag Queen Show Lounge Dad and Doug visited as it was right on Lake Pontchartrain, New Orleans as mentioned.)

Listen to his hilarious account… keep in mind he’s telling it from the perspective of a 1950′s country boy, so please forgive some of the language he uses.

The Story Continues!

After I showed him this video, Dad’s youngest brother told me the part of the story Dad left out: Dad brought back some girlie photos (of topless women) from New Orleans but when he was moving out to get married he gave them to this younger brother (11 years old at the time! LOL). Their father later found them and boy was he pissed at Dad! Too funny! Reminds me of The Wonder Years!

(Here’s a photo of Dad [right] and his youngest brother on the family farm circa 1952.)

By the way, during Dad’s trip across the USA with Doug they wrote letters home to the local newspaper, The Williamston Enterprise. I plan to publish them all here so stay tuned. Lots more interviews with Dad as well!

My father was born in 1933 and grew up on a farm in Williamston, Michigan during the Great Depression. His family didn’t have much money, but nobody did back then. His mother died when he was 13. He was the eldest of two brothers. Since his father was busy as a probate judge in town, he was responsible for most of the parental and farming duties. These had him getting up before sunrise to milk the cows and such before school.

For most of his childhood they had no electricity or running water. This meant putting on your jacket in the middle of the night to go outside and take a whizz, or much worse. They used Sears catalogs because they couldn’t afford toilet paper.

Dad talks about this life in the video above. It was filmed in his hospital room on my iPhone, which has a decent camera but it’s not perfect, and a little shaky.

References

I’ve provided some references below to some of the things he talks about.

Kerosene Lamp

(Kerosene lamp circa 1940. Image Source.)

Crystal Set

(Crystal Set Radio Ad from Sears Catalog. Image Source. A crystal radio receiver, also called a crystal set or cat’s whisker receiver, is a very simple radio receiver, popular in the early days of radio. It needs no battery or power source and runs on the power received from radio waves by a long wire antenna. It gets its name from its most important component, known as a crystal detector, originally made with a piece of crystalline mineral such as galena. This component is now called a diode. More…)

Early Television

(A family sitting around the glowing television in 1951. This is how I picture Dad’s family back then, except with his step mother crying in the adjacent bedroom. Image Source. )

(Jan Sterling, this stunning actress from the 1950s is just the type of blasphemous harlot that Dad’s stepmom must have lost many a night’s sleep over consumed with rage while the boys gathered ’round the Boob Tube. Now I know why it’s called the “Boob Tube” LOL! Image Source.)

Stay tuned for more interviews with Dr. Beatty…

Read the introductory post “Dr. David Beatty: About My Father and Lewy Body Disease”

Update:
I looked up this ‘Maranatha’ where he mentions his mother went and it turns out to be a place in Muskegon, Michigan which hosts the Maranatha Bible and Missionary Conference. This is how it is described:

“Maranatha provides spiritual renewal in a recreational setting emphasizing Bible teaching and worldwide missions. Maranatha is an 88+ acre vacation spot and retreat center located on Lake Michigan.

We are a conservative, evangelical vacation destination, conference center and resident community where guests and residents Vacation and Retreat with Purpose.” – so probably the worst place for her to be at the time of his television purchase.

Dr. David Beatty, Professor Emeritus, History,
Mount Allison University

Many people know my father as Dr. David Pierce Beatty, a retired history professor at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada. He was born in Williamston, Michigan USA on October 10, 1933. He liked farming and dropped out of college to be a farmer but that didn’t last long. He went back to school, attending Michigan State University where he earned his Masters & Ph.D and moved to Sackville in the 1960s when Mount Allison was recruiting professors from all over.

He absolutely loved teaching and only retired because he had to at 65. I was lucky enough to attend Mount A at the same time he taught there. The students truly loved him. It was easy to make friends, I’d just say I’m Dr. Beatty’s son. It was quite an experience.

(Above: This is a paired photo set made by Mount Allison fine arts student Nancy Conly Pinkerton at the time Dad and I were at the university together [1999]. She wanted to contrast my father and I as storytellers. I was telling a story about my altercation with a hobo on a Paris subway car, and he was likely talking about Abraham Lincoln or foreign policy.)

In the Dog House: Campus Life with Dad 1996-2000

Students would stop me on campus to tell me what an incredible lecture he had just delivered, then they’d shake my hand like I had some part in it, which I definitely did not. The creative outlet for my youthful angst at the time was The Argosy Weekly, Mount Allison’s Student Newspaper. I was part of the original team who launched the web version of the paper. I was also the Graphics Editor and every week I published a controversial comic strip called “The Dog Who Went to Mount A.”

(Above: Some random clippings from comics I published in the Argosy Weekly Graphix Section 1996-2000. The guy on the top right threatening the bird is my friend Chief Arlen Dumas. The context of the comic is that the bird, Bobby Crow owes him money for pool. Arlen used to severely kick my ass at pool so it was a bit of an inside joke. I got a scolding from Jack Drover [Head of Athletics] for the bottom one. This was shortly after Mount A got rid of the men’s hockey program.)

Luckily Mount A was a very liberal university and would let us publish just about anything. I took full advantage of that freedom and I’m glad that stuff is no longer available online. My poor mother would be terrified of what I’d publish each week (justifiably) while Dad seemed OK with it. I remember him chuckling at some of the ones I showed him before they went to print.

(Above: More of my cartoons)

Fellow student and Argosy Editor, Marty Patriquin (now a writer for Maclean’s Magazine) once told me he asked Dad privately what he thought about my crazy comics. All Dad said was, “he’s figuring some things out.” Haha!

But sometimes he himself went a little too far with his stories. I do recall one time there were letters to the editor in one single issue complaining about both Dad (for telling some hijinks of campus life in the 60s in his convocation address) and myself (for the comics). I guess I was a chip off the old block.

Retirement

Dad retired in 1999 and I graduated in 2000, but we both wore gowns at my graduation because he received an honorary Professor Emeritus status from the university that year.

(Above: Dad and I at Mount Allison Convocation 2000 where he received Professor Emeritus status and I received my degree)

(Above: Dad shaking hands with student and varsity football player Colin Burleton at his retirement party in 1999. Notice Burleton is holding a copy of Dad’s second book “Memories of the Forgotten War”. Dad loved football and the players loved him. He never, ever missed a Mount Allison Mounties Football game.)

(Above: My sister Margaret and I sitting at Dad’s retirement party. Margaret looks a little overwhelmed with it all. Notice my firm grip on that beer.)

This G… Damned Disease

Dad jogged an average of 10km a day most of his life and always made a point to eat the healthiest foods. I figured he’d live to be 100, but in 2009 he was diagnosed with a degenerative disease called Lewy Body Dementia – the same disease Kelsey Grammar’s character has in “Boss” (really good show). It is like a cross between Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, but Dad actually does have Parkinson’s too.

It’s been really tough watching Dad slowly lose his battle with this disease. I’m sure he’d still be farming, running, writing more books and visiting with former students if not for this. I know he was upset when I moved back to Vancouver in 2009, and it is difficult being so far away.

Just before Christmas 2012 his condition worsened and he ended up in the Sackville Memorial Hospital. I took a trip home from Vancouver to visit him. Luckily my profession allows me to work remotely. My wife and I spent a week with Dad right in his hospital room.

(Left: Dad and his Christmas buddy Rex the baby penguin. Right: Me working in Dad’s hospital room as he rests.)

Benjamin Franklin was the biggest son of a…

Dad is an amazing storyteller. This is what students loved about him the most. A former student and friend, author Rick Maclean wrote a wonderful 3-part blog post about a visit with my Dad at his summer residence (the Farm) in 2006.

David Beatty, Me and What Do in Life by Rick Maclean: (Part 1), (Part 2), (Part 3).

Rick can really paint pictures with words. I love the way he describes my Dad, it’s so bang on. I’ve added some of my favourite excerpts below along with some related pictures (with captions) from my vast archives.

I was reminded of that story on a recent day when I stopped at Lake’s country store in southern New Brunswick, as I often do on the way here. It’s next to the water and quiet, except when the wind is howling off the Northumberland Strait, as it was that day.

(Lake’s General Store)

The store owner was where he always is – if I’m not buying gas, which he pumped at 113.9 a litre that day. He was sitting in the corner of the crowded store, green ball hat on his head. His wife worked the cash register. An ice cream and a chocolate bar chewed up the better part of a $5 bill.
 

That kind of money would buy a night’s beer at the pub when I headed to Mount Allison University in the fall of 1975. Time at the pub was a rare treat for a serious-minded science student with ambitions of becoming a doctor, and a girlfriend starting Grade 12 at MVHS back home.

(The Farm, also known as Parkbeg Farm in Murray Corner NB)

Back in the car outside the country store, I chewed on the ice cream and looked up the hill across the road. The battered blue half-ton was there. How long had he had that truck? It was nearly 4:30. Nearly supper time. His family might be there. Best not to stop in.

(Dad’s old 1984 Chevy Truck parked somewhere in Quebec during a camping trip)

But, as Beautiful Daughter is prone to pointing out whenever I try to duck out of something we’ve done year after year, “it’s a tradition.”
 

I’d stopped by around this time of year for the past five years.
 

The car turned itself left as I pulled out of the parking lot. It turned left again into the green tunnel of trees, complete with foot-high grass growing in the middle of the dirt lane, leading to his house.
 

David Beatty opened the door.
 

Dave – Dr. Beatty, Professor Beatty back then – had been a legend at Mount A long before I arrived. His classes in the foreign policy of Canada and the United States were packed and everyone went. Missing a day was rare, even though no attendance was kept.
 
“Benjamin Franklin was the biggest son of a…”
 

“You should’ve been there today,” a pitiless classmate crowed the one day I missed Dave’s class that term. “Beatty came in, turned sideways, looked out of the corner of his eye, smirked and that’s how he started: Benjamin Franklin was…”
 

…
 

The guy hadn’t taken a note, but he rhymed off the entire lecture. From memory. And I’d missed it.
 

Dave Beatty was a runner. We started running together while I was a student. He wasn’t fast, but he could go for an hour and talk about foreign policy at the same time. Free lectures on the run.
 

There’d be no running this visit. He’s 73. He has a bit of limp and stoop, but there’s a bicycle in the corner with a well-used water bottle attached. His hair is a bit thinner and whiter, but just as unruly as ever. His hand serves a comb and by evening the hair is where it is.
 

Instead of running, we sat in the kitchen of the renovated home he’d bought years ago when it was a junk heap with a rock basement, gyprock ceilings and a wood shed doing its best to fall down. Today the house has been restored to its original beauty. Walls with board two feet wide. Beams across the ceiling.
 

“You can still see the adze marks,” he points up at a beam. I nod. At home later I look up adze in a dictionary: “An ax-like tool with a curved blade at right angles to the handle, used for shaping wood.”
 

He has a new book out, The World War I Diaries and Letters of Lieut. Louis Stanley Edgett, edited with Moncton doctor Tom Edgett. Dave pops out of his chair and begins rooting in a desk drawer. Moments later he returns and hands me a copy.
 

“This is yours.”
 

…
 

I didn’t realize it then, but if anyone could understand what I was going through, Dave Beatty could.
 

Now retired after decades of teaching at Mt. A, he sat in his summer home recently and laughed at the memory of my phone call saying I’d quit yet another career. He raked a hand through his unruly hair, then ran his fingers across the front of his dark green, Michigan State University sweatshirt.

(Dad and his unruly hair)

He grew up to become a farmer in the American Midwest in the 1950s.
 

“Oh-high-ah,” he still calls it when talking about Ohio. Still in his twenties, he married, settled down. His life’s direction was set.
 

Not quite.
 

Farming was then, as it is now, a tough way to earn a living. In a bid to keep prices up, the federal government paid some farmers not to farm. Dave took the money and, with the military draft and Vietnam looming, headed to university, which offered a temporary reprieve from a Huey helicopter and an M-16.
 

He did well, very well. Earning a spot among the 40-some students on the honour roll. But the time slid by and suddenly he was graduating. He’d been so focused on his studies, he’d made no plans for the future. His marriage was stumbling towards divorce and the military draft awaited.
 

Then, a professor stepped in and changed his life.
 

Professor Gesner was an imposing woman with a reputation for not suffering fools gladly. One of the most influential academics in the region, she called him into her office.
 

What are your plans? she demanded.
 

He didn’t know.
 

There is a new scholarship, intended to encourage students to study diplomatic history.
 

Did he know about it?
 

No.
 

Well, the deadline is the next day. He should apply, she said, then she stared at him knowingly. She’d act as a reference. He needed two others.
 

It was nearly 4:30. He’d better hurry, she said.
 

Dave rushed from the office and somehow found two professors who hadn’t gone home for the day. Both knew his work, had given him excellent marks. The application deadline was when?
 

Oh, Professor Gesner had suggested he apply for the scholarship. The letters would be ready, they both promised.
 

Dave drove the 23 miles to his home, where he spent much of the night filing out the forms. Ten days later he got word, he had the fellowship. He spent the next few years earning a master’s degree and getting a good start on a doctorate.
 

Finally, he went looking for work. He received a phone call from Bill Crawford, the vice-president of Mount A. Dave had no idea where it was, but Professor Gesner did. She had family connections there.
 

Crawford had three teaching jobs in the history department to fill and he wanted the young American to fill one of them.
 

“Give you $8,000 a year,” he said as part of his pitch.
 

Well, there are other job offers. New Hampshire. Maine.
 

“Anything Maine can do, we can do better, $8,500.”
 

Dave Beatty sat on a chair in the kitchen of his summer home and laughed. He traveled halfway across the continent to a tiny school in a tiny town to teach history, he said, and shook his head in wonder.
 

But the administration left him alone to do what he’d discovered he loved to do. And that was exactly what he needed.
 

“Things turned out alright.”
 

Yes, they did. He remarried, settled down for a second time and taught students like me until mandatory retirement drove him, kicking and screaming, from the classroom. Then he turned his energies to saving the tumbledown, 1840-something house he’d discovered near Northumberland Strait.

(Renovated Parkbeg Farm – have to give my Mom a lot of credit for this restoration too.)

He hired a former biology student at Mount A who had a knack for careful carpentry to do the work. Mark turned the house with the rock basement and attached woodshed full of dry rot into a dazzling home of varnish and original wood.
 

Dave looked at me across the kitchen table and smiled again.
 

“And they’ve turned out alright for you, too.”

Rick Maclean’s account was really touching. If you’re a former student or fan of Dr. Beatty I invite you to share your story too, down below in the comments.

My Interviews with Dad

Over the years he shared so many great memories about growing up during the Great Depression, the dirty 30′s. Remember, he was born in 1933! I always told him he should write a book about his childhood.

(Here’s an old picture of me and Dad – or as he would correct me to say ‘Dad and I’ on a camping trip to Roger Lake in northern New Brunswick [1980s]. It was on these trips Dad would tell me a lot of his crazy stories.)

Dad’s mind is not as sharp as it once was because of this “God damned disease” – as he would say. Frankly, these days he may not be sure even where he is, but he could still name off most of the students in his grade 3 class if you asked him to. If you visited him, I bet he’d remember you, at least for a little while yet. I am told that as a history prof, he used this part of his brain a lot – remembering names, dates, facts and figures and it actually built up strength in those areas which has still survived the severe deterioration of his mind.

One day in particular at the hospital he seemed really sharp so I pulled out my iPhone and asked him to tell some of his childhood stories. He and I had a good laugh.

I wrote this post because I am thinking of my poor Dad back home in his worsening condition, and I have collected these videos which I will publish here on my blog, (along with some other goodies) over the next few weeks and months, so stay tuned! Believe me, you’re in for a treat! This will be your source for everything David Beatty!

NEXT: Dr. David Beatty – Growing Up With No Running Water or Electricity

Read my next post, the first video interview of a series with Dad talking about growing up in the dirty 30′s.

Related Posts:

That’s What Over 300,000 Dead Look Like – “Letters to Annie” A Remembrance Day Address by Dr. David Beatty, 2002

Dr. Jason Beatty – Stories from the field – Port-au-Prince, Haiti
There is another Dr. Beatty but this one is a medical doctor (there’s one more after that if you include his wife, also a medical doctor). Jason is my nephew, the son of my older half brother David Jr.

(A still from the video showing me drinking from a stream along the Joffre Lakes Trail – you’re supposed to boil the water!)

Visit Joffre Lakes Provincial Park — Vancouver Is Awesome, Unplugged for the full article and some beautiful video.

(This is Kenny Robinson, the hitchhiker and unofficial tour guide who took me into his town)

Visit BC Parks – Nisga’a Memorial Lava Bed Park – Vancouver Is Awesome for the full story and video!

This was our first roast turkey we made at home with special Christmas guest Esmir Milavic.

We got this young turkey free from Superstore for spending over $250 on groceries (yowza)! Fatima cooked this baby up with butter and white wine marinade. I swear it was one of the best turkeys I ever had. She’s a good cook!

Find the Martha Stewart recipe here…

While visiting my friends Anna Samuelsen and Kim Martin in my hometown of Sackville, New Brunswick this holiday season we decided to drop in to see the outrageous and beautiful Christmas decorations at the Marshlands Inn: a Victorian home built in the 1850s which has hosted many notables and celebrities including the Queen of England!

My iPhone video tour of what is perhaps the most Christmassy place ever!

Here is a great article about the Marshlands in The Globe & Mail:

• Inn owner restores profit with energy efficiency

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E.C. Manning Provincial Park

(A Whiskey Jack bird which is very common in this region perches atop the sign at Cascade Lookout, Manning Park.)

(The Crowsnest Pass Highway 3 sign just outside Manning Park Lodge.)

(The timeless Booger2000 1996 Mazda MX3 my grandfather gave me in 1999 on the hills above Manning Lodge.)

(Me soaking in the beauty, sunlight and fresh air at Manning Park)

Lightening Lake and Mount Frosty

(Frost on the leaves at Lightening Lake, Manning Park, BC on a bright sunny morning)

(Lightening Lake, Manning Park, BC)

To Kelowna and Alto Vista B&B

The next day we explored Lightening Lake where we met some hikers heading up to Mount Frosty. Along the very scenic Highway 3 we couldn’t resist little stops at historic places like the little mining town of Hedley, and then we headed toward wine country in Kelowna where we stayed at the gorgeous Alto Vista Bed & Breakfast overlooking Lake Okanagan.

(Patio at Alto Vista B&B overlooking Lake Okanagan)

In Kelowna we dined at Quail’s Gate Okanagan Valley Estate Wineries (so good!) and also visited the breathtaking Mission Hill Family Estate Winery & Vineyards.

We highly recommend Alto Vista Bed & Breakfast and their incredibly yummy breakfasts with great coffee which we enjoyed amongst some other guests who we got to know quite well. One couple flew in from Germany and the others came from Vancouver like us. The couple who runs this B&B were very nice and the wife even gave us some prints of the beautiful paintings she’d made. I can’t express how luxurious the house was, with a bar downstairs and quite possibly the best views and patios in Kelowna!

(Fatima at Alto Vista Bed and Breakfast, Kelowna BC)

Watch the video of our trip to Manning Park and Kelowna BC

0:00 Manning Park
1:13 Manning Lodge, Manning Park
1:22 Cascade Lookout, Manning Park
2:11 Lightening Lake / Mount Frosty Trail, Manning Park
3:15 Whiskey Jack bird at Lightening Lake
3:38 Alto Vista Bed and Breakfast in Kelowna, BC overlooking Okanagan Lake
4:00 Quail’s Gate Okanagan Valley Estate Wineries and vineyards
4:11 Mission Hill Family Estate Winery & Vineyards

Pictures From the Trip

Photography by Daman and Fatima Beatty.

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