In the fall of 1995, Nov. 4th, to be exact, the Prime Minister of Israel was assassinated.
I remember driving the Sea-to-Sky highway from Whistler British Columbia to Vancouver Airport. I was going to a funeral.
The year before, 1994, I went bankrupt. I lost my manufacturing business in Montreal and my home. My husband and I packed our suitcases and took our two young boys across Canada to start all over again. I’m good at re-inventing myself. I’ve done it several times during my lifetime.
I had charmed my way into a top job in Whistler BC. In those days, if you were female and in charge of a multi-million-dollar sales team, you were a Bitch. When I think back to those days, I might have been tough; but I was a very Successful Bitch! And my boys and husband and I were happy with our new life.
Then I received a phone call. My Dad was dead.
My father fought in the Canadian army during WWII, and he was also a UN peacekeeper in the Middle East. The military moved us every three years. I’m sure this is familiar to many who lived the military life in the ’50s and ’60s.
I skipped the hippie years. I was too busy being a ‘good girl’ and too afraid to smoke pot or do drugs, or drop out, or experience free love—I made up for the ‘free love’ thing over the years! As an adult, I divorced like we moved, often, and never looking back.
My fondest memories of my father were him sitting in his lazy-boy chair, smoking his cigarettes surrounded by newspapers. He was a brilliant man, a techie—Morse Code guy in his time. He would have loved the Internet! I was never sure what he did in London during the war, but I have my suspicions. No one knew for sure. I think he was a spy, decrypting coded messages.
But in my memories, my Dad was always talking about world events. He gave up alcohol in the ’80s, because it almost killed him, and pretended to give up smoking. But we could smell it on his clothes when he would come up from his basement workroom. So, not long after re-inventing my life and moving to Western Canada, I got the phone call. My Dad was dead. And a couple of days later, so was Yitzhak Rabin, the PM of Israel.
It’s strange how the mind works. Growing up with my father was challenging. We always fought—he was drunk by dinner time, and I often left the table in tears. But I know he loved me with everything he was capable of giving. And I’m thinking about him tonight on New Year’s Eve.
Every time I release a new Code Raven novel (spies and current event-related mysteries and suspense), I think of my father. Driving along the Sea-to-Sky highway in November of 1995, Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, was assassinated. And through my tears, for my Dad, I smiled and thought to myself: My Dad will have someone to talk politics in Heaven, or wherever you go in the afterlife.
1949… Petawawa, Canada.
Sometimes I forget.
