Joseph Gavin, SJ,. Is superior of Ogilvie Residence in Ottawa and province director of Gregoriana, Inc.
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Some thought I was daft to head off to Lusaka, Zambia, in January 1988. They may have been right, of course. When I arrived nothing had been arranged for me: no teaching, no parish ministry, nothing, and that despite assurances from the Jesuit authorities there that considerable work awaited me....
Not having one's "papers" in order in France was seriously frowned on. Or at least, that was so years ago were one stopped by the police--not unusual if the individual was neither white nor "French-looking"--and immigration papers and visas were either lacking or out-of-date. The results could be chilling, to say the least. I have no idea what the situation in France is now, and no doubt the police have lightened up a bit. Yet certainly in 1970, they were very serious about such matters. Very serious indeed!...
xTouring in 1970 by car in France, or "going to the Continent" as the English said, was venturesome, no question, especially in a car with right-hand steering. Yet that was what I intended to do for three weeks during May with a fellow Jesuit. We headed off through south London towards Kent and Dover to the ferry on our first tour of France....
During August 1971 I worked as a young priest and responsable at a L'Arche house in a small village, Ambleteuse. The surrounding area along the northern French coast, some ten or less kilometres from Boulogne-sur-Mer, is very beautiful. My memory of that time is richly filled with days at L'Arche, beautiful sunsets over La Manche, visits to Cap Gris-Nez, Normandy, and the never-ending beaches stretching away towards Belgium....
Vancouver is among the most beautiful of cities. It is especially attractive to us eastern Canadians during our long winter months. Of course, it rains a lot there, yet in my judgement that is better than the piles and piles of snow and dangerous icy patches lurking about everywhere east of the Rocky Mountains. Perhaps I'd change my mind were I to live there, but at present it is the closest we have to a civil climate between December and late March. Autumn can be lovely there. With that in mind, I once went for a brief rest and to visit a long-standing friend....
Take your umbrella, just in case, was the wise advice given me by the young hotel clerk. Indeed! As we headed into the street in central Dublin, a light rain--more a mist--was falling. Of course it is never as bad as we imagine or remember. During my three-day visit, rain always seemed to be falling, yet the long stretches of warm sunshine surpassed the periods of rain....
Recently I was called upon to celebrate a Mass of the Resurrection in a nearby parish church. The priest had a difficult decision to make, whether to take the funeral or cancel a long-standing commitment. When he asked if I could help him out, knowing something of his busy schedule, I was pleased to lend a hand....
For many years when responding to questions of security surrounding credit cards, when the question, "What is your favourite city?" appears, I write in "London". Of course I could write in several other cities, Rome, New York, and so forth. Yet in the end, it is always London. Why that city rather than any other--it surely doesn't matter to the credit card company--is not easy to explain except that in my mind London remains a "civil" city, one where courteous behaviour in public still seems important, where people still know the phrases, "Pardon me", "Excuse me", "Sorry"....
You are, he said to me in his well-modulated upper middle class London accent, "a near dibbly dobbly if ever". It was hard enough sorting out the mysteries of cricket without being called something or other that was even more perplexing. Clearly Philip Caramen, among the most prominent of English Jesuit historians of his generation, didn't quite know what to make of my thick-head inability to follow his explanations of cricket, a game he passionately loved....
When the Jesuits accepted in 1918 direction of the newly established Campion College in Regina, they had no money whatsoever to run the institution. Everything depended on Thomas J. MacMahon, SJ, the first appointed Rector there. He had to raise the money within a three months' period, and it wasn't easy. He relied on giving retreats, missions, preaching, speeches, and he begged. By late August, he had scraped together barely enough to open the two rented houses on 13th Avenue for classes and for a Jesuit house. Not much fazed him, however, and certainly not the lack of money or the poverty-stricken living-conditions he and his fellow Jesuits shared. In time his fearless determination to make the college a success paid off....
