I was a spy in Antarctica
White lies told to protect the world's worst uncle from being exposed
The phone call
Before I picked up the ringing phone in my office on that fateful day in late 1996, I knew it was probably bad news.
When you’re head of security, that’s more common than good news is.
I was half-prepared to hear an angry mother on the other end of the line. In my line of work, that wasn’t uncommon either.
I was fully unprepared to hear that the angry mother was my own.
“What’s wrong with you?”
She and my Dad had just been on the phone with my brother. They lived in British Columbia, Canada, he lived thousands of miles away in Toronto, and I lived many more thousands of miles away in Norway.
In 1990, my brother and sister-in-law lived in Luxembourg for a year. They’re in the film business and were shooting a series there. While they were in Luxembourg, their second child was born. That’s a big occasion in any family. Like any good brother, I made my way to Luxembourg to see the little gaffer and his newborn son. (Look it up: A gaffer is a job in the film business.)
That was the last time he and his family would hear from me for almost seven years.
When we were kids, my brother wasn’t great at keeping secrets. In fact, whenever anything happened, he would rush to tell Mom so I would be blamed. (In my defence, at the very least, he was wrong 13% of the time.)
Even if nothing had happened, he would make things up if he thought it had been too long since I had been blamed for something.
(If you think I’m making this up, please read the postscript that follows at the end of the story. Thank you.)
For some reason, after I slipped into silent oblivion following my visit to Luxembourg, my brother kept my disappearance secret.
It was the world’s best-kept secret right up until he and his wife decided to invite the whole family for Christmas. They shared the happy news with my parents by phone.
My parents were elated until the discussion turned to how many beds they would need. (I have another brother, who was better at keeping in touch, so a bed for him was in the count.)
The count came up one short for Mom.
“What about Paul?”, she asked.
“We’re not sure we’re going to invite him.”
“He’s your brother!”
“Yes, but we haven’t heard from him for seven years. Not since we were in Luxembourg.”
“What do you mean? What about cards and presents for your kids’ birthdays or Christmas?”
“Nope, nothing.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. We’ve thought about it but can’t think of any reason. I don’t think we had a falling out…”
That’s when Mom hung up and called me.
“What’s wrong with you?”
I wanted to ask her if I should make a list but decided that might take too long. After all, she and Dad would be footing the bill for the international phone call. Those were expensive back then.
“What’s the problem?”, I asked. (I know, never answer a question with a question - I told you I could make a list of things that were wrong with me.)
“Your brother hasn’t heard from you for seven years! Your nephews haven’t had a card or birthday present or anything! What kind of uncle are you?”
Again, empathetically thinking of the time, I decided against describing my lack of uncle qualities. I also decided against answering a question with a question for a second time.
Mom must have been thinking about the cost of the call too, because what could have been a long, awkward silence was very short.
“They want to have a family Christmas and they’re not sure if they should invite you or not!”
The call ended shortly thereafter.
The fax
I promised I would patch things up and I asked a technical question. It confirmed to me that Dad was also on the line and he for his part confirmed that my brother and sister-in-law had a fax machine. He even knew the number.
I was in my office at the hotel and immediately set to work righting the seven-year wrong that I was guilty of.
The quickest fix I could think of was to send a fax. (If you’re too young to know what the word fax means, Google it, I might use it again.)
To the best of my recollection, the fax was politely and kindly worded... I’m pretty sure this is an exact transcript:
“Dearest brother and sister-in-law, dear nephews, It's me, your long-lost brother/uncle. I understand that you have invited everyone to a family Christmas at your house. I further understand that you may not be inviting me. I hereby inform you that I am coming anyway. If you do not wish for me to partake in the family gathering, I shall pitch a tent outside your home. All media outlets in the metro Toronto area will be informed that I am a poor soul with a family that would rather watch me freeze to death in the snow on their lawn than join in the celebrations during the season of peace and goodwill. With kindest regards, Paul
It didn’t take long before the fax in the office was whirring with a reply that magically appeared on thermal paper as it rolled out the back of the machine.
As I unrolled the scroll like a pre-Twitter version of the Threadunroll App, I noticed that it was just as polite, if not as eloquently written, as mine:
“You’re welcome to join us for Christmas.”
Brotherly love is amazing.
For the entirety of the fourteen years that we lived in the same house before I left home, we were inseparable. Oh, I often longed for separation, but he always seemed to be there.
Despite a four-year difference in age, it sometimes felt like he was the loopy part of a Velcro bond between us and I was the hook part.
When I was 18, separation from velcro-bro was achieved when I went to Norway on a high school gap year that would last four decades.
I wrote letters and sent cassette tapes to my parents’ address once in a while and even made it home on holiday a few times during my first dozen years abroad.
But I never saw, wrote to, or spoke to my brother between 1990 and December 1996.
The reunion
It was ten days before Christmas when I landed at YYZ Pearson International Airport on a cold, wintery evening. As I followed the stream of passengers off the plane, I’ll admit to being a little apprehensive. Thankfully, my worry was cured by an immigration officer that had clearly seen too many movies and decided his main duty was to make life difficult for every person arriving on the flight that had come in from Paris. By the time I cleared customs, I was more tired than excited or concerned about what kind of welcome awaited.
Our reunion wasn’t like the final scene of Love Actually. I didn’t emerge into anything like the chaotic throng of people that always fill the arrivals hall in Istanbul.
Only two lonely souls were waiting in the brightly lit terminal cavern. One looked a little like me, the other one, shorter, didn’t have a beard and his eyes were as wide as I’ve ever seen eyes before or since.
By the time we left the parking lot and hit the 401, my brother and I were talking and joking like I’d been away for a weekend. The beardless person in the backseat was silent. His staring, still wide-open eyes were boring laser-hot holes of guilt in the back of my neck. I didn’t know what he was thinking but I did know I’d not played the role of uncle very well.
The party
A few days before Christmas, and the day before he and his wife were hosting a late afternoon open house, my brother was invited to a Christmas party by a film equipment supply services company. My sister-in-law insisted I accompany him.
“He won’t go if you don’t go with him. He deserves a night out.”
I didn’t ask her to twist my arm.
The party was held in a huge warehouse. It was a low-key affair with hundreds of casually clothed people milling around like unpaid extras waiting for their five seconds of fame when they’d be crossing the road in the background of a made-for-TV movie.
Just like on a film set, most people were crowded around the catering tables.
Unlike on a film set, the catering included huge aluminum washtubs full of beer and ice cubes.
We joined the crowd, dipped our digits in a tub, and pulled out a twist-top bottle of beer each. I think it was Labatt’s, but it could have been Canadian, and by the time we’d repeated the process a few more times, neither of us cared about the label on the bottles.
Everyone seemed to know my brother, but I might have been the only one that knew his name. The others just called him “Moxy”. (Even at his wedding a decade earlier, some of the guests asked who the hell this David guy was. They all thought Maggie was marrying “Moxy”.)
There was one person at the party that I’d met before, or at least one that I remembered. We’d walked into his FX workshop a few days earlier. He was putting the finishing touches of silicone on the edges of a huge fish tank that was going to explode with perfect timing on a film set and send a flood of fake fish into the path of a fictional hero. He briefly looked down from the fifteen-foot-tall scaffolding he was on and yelled out:
“Holy shit, there’s two of him! He’s been cloned!”
(My brother has been trying to emulate my good looks ever since he could grow a beard.)
At the party, we had a beer with FX-man while he engaged us with hilarious stories that would never make it to the small screen in the pre-streaming days of television for reasons I will only describe as language-related.
As the beer seeped in, we decided to take a tour of the warehouse. Moxy impressed me with his knowledge of every light, pole, bracket, generator, and gadget in the building that was large enough to house a couple of A380s. Of course, he could have just been making things up as we walked along. I have a hard time telling the difference between a hammer and a nail or, more correctly, a nail and a thumb. I and my thumbs are well-acquainted with hammers.
As we came to a very back corner of the warehouse, there was joyous screeching and angry screaming in a language I didn’t understand. There was also loud swearing that I understood perfectly. A group of Vietnamese warehouse workers were playing cards. There was money on the floor in front of them.
Of course, they too knew my brother.
“Moxy, Moxy, we’ll deal you in.”
Fortunately, it was still relatively early and we had only been drinking beer. Moxy politely declined the offer using me as an excuse.
When the munchies kicked in, we returned to the buffet.
I mentioned that it was a casual do, but the buffet was first-class. We descended upon a table with a huge, cured ham. Bro, who’s a handyman, expertly sliced off what he thought he could eat.
He handed me the knife. It was extremely sharp and slid swiftly through the meat right down to the bone…
…of my left index finger.
One of the caterers came running toward us with a first-aid kit.
I had honed my reflexes as an ice hockey goalie from a very early age and I had my “spy skills”. I was quick, observant, and well-coordinated. The combination allowed me to plunge my left hand into a tub of ice and pull a beer out with my right hand.
It was a twist-top so I asked my brother to open it for me and the party continued. Not wanting to disappoint the caterer with the first-aid certificate, my finger was bandaged before we left for home.
Not that we went straight home mind you.
The train
Things are a little blurry after we left the warehouse.
It was relatively early and we were still hungry.
My local brother that never went out on the town had observational skills that rivalled my own. He said he knew a place.
We arrived at “the place” and, surprise surprise, it was packed with people he knew. Some of them were recognizable to me too.
They had been at the party. I hadn’t heard anyone mention meeting up at a pub later, probably because I was half deaf from the screech of the head caterer who didn’t enjoy the sight of blood, or perhaps just didn’t enjoy seeing it on her expensive ham, expensive knife, and in the tub of ice and beer. (I think most of the film people were used to seeing chopped-off limbs on set. None of them had batted an eye.)
The mini-reunion at the pub included burgers and beer, darts and tequila shots.
Wiser brothers would have skipped the shots or at least the combination of shots and sharp-pointed darts.
Relax, there were no further injuries that we know of.
The people in the pub were so friendly that we missed the last train home. We ended up at the Moetel. That’s not a spelling mistake. Someone named Moe was out of town and somehow we were able to lawfully enter and overnight at his place. Airbnb wasn’t invented yet so it was free.
In my memory, I like to think I did a few reps with an ab-roller before I fell asleep on the floor.
The fall guy again
The next morning I felt a little poorly. Yes, that is a gigantic understatement.
My brother, the person that never partied, was up, ready, raring to go, and craving breakfast. He ate. I didn’t.
He bought tickets for the train. I worked valiantly, and successfully I can proudly say, at keeping last night’s ham, beer, burgers, and tequila from becoming putrid projectiles of vomit.
As the train pulled out of the station, I wondered how I could shut my happy, talkative brother up.
I may have dozed off.
A scary silence woke me when we were pulling into the station one stop before our destination.
I looked to my left. My brother was an unrecognizable colour that resembled a paler, almost pastel version of the green logo on the Go-Train. He was looking less than healthy, but he too was born in the “walk it off” generation and declined my offer to exit a station early to get some fresh air.
There was good news and bad news when we arrived in Oakville.
The good news: My sister-in-law was on her way to pick us up. ETA twenty minutes.
The bad news: My mother was riding shotgun in their SUV. (Don’t worry, that’s a figure of speech. It’s Canada. She was unarmed.)
As expected, Mom wasn’t too happy when they arrived and found us “resting” on the wooden benches in the station.
Yogi Berra would have said it was “Deja-vu all over again” when my younger sibling, he who had been invited to the party and he whose wife had insisted I chaperone him to said party, was immediately and fully exonerated from any wrongdoing.
Just like in the good old days, I was found guilty.
The severity of my crime increased when people started showing up for the open house several hours early. Apparently, we’d told our friends at the pub to come, and if they couldn’t come when the doors were scheduled to open at 5:00 pm, we told them they were welcome to come at noon…
Without discussion, I accepted being the only person found guilty of disrupting a peaceful family Christmas. After my seven years of silence, it was the least I could do.
The Spy and Santa
Sometime during my visit, I apologized for being such a lousy uncle.
“The kids used to ask who you were when we looked at family photo albums. We told them you were a spy in Antarctica and that there were no post offices there. They still think you’re a spy. That’s why they just sit and stare at you.”
My youngest nephew had just started school and still believed in Santa Claus despite the recess rumours he’d heard. With a little help from his Dad, he was able to set up a video camera on a tripod and capture Santa stealthily delivering presents in the dark of night. Unfortunately, due to camera angles and lighting, he couldn’t get both the chimney and the tree in the frame at once. On the soundtrack, one could clearly hear Santa land with a thud in the living room and the captured images unequivocally showed Santa delivering the parcels under the tree. Upon viewing the tape Christmas morning, my pyjama-wearing nephew immediately ran out into the snowy winter weather loudly proclaiming that he had proof.
“Santa is real!”
The kid ran around in the cold, his uncle the spy, had come in from the cold, and we all had a wonderful Christmas.
I’m so lucky to have family that works in the fictional world of film even though I prefer to write fully-factual documentaries like this one.
Stay safe, Always Care
P.S.: For Christmas that year, I gave my brother an internet/email startup pack. We’ve been pretty good at keeping in touch since then, but I’m still not great at birthday cards or Christmas presents for my nephews. Sorry, guys!
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Thanks for reading 87 Stories - Lessons from the University of Life!
I’m Paul. My post-high school gap year in Europe lasted forty years and included a 30-year, basement-to-boardroom career at a company that didn’t want to hire me.
Written with the clarity of hindsight, the accuracy of a faded memory, and countless creative liberties, 87 Stories is a journal of life lessons learned and how my “gap year” made me an emigrant, an immigrant, and gave me a life I’d never dreamed of.
Not exactly, but I get it