Requiem for My Brother.

Pauline Carey is an actor, playwright and librettist and author of the
children’s books Magic and What’s in a Name?

Dave Botsford was a mining engineer on Vancouver Island when he joined the author for a canoe trip down the Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean. The journey was exhausting and dangerous, yet the telling of it in this engrossing memoir is full of bugs, birds, geology, and history. Dave and his sisters, Marian and Sara, had shared a 1950s childhood in the wilderness of northern Ontario, exploring abandoned mines and dense forest; after the death of their parents, the three siblings bought a summerhouse on Lake Simcoe. When Dave came east for a summer vacation, he told his sisters he had multiple sclerosis.

This is a book of journeys, a tapestry of family memories, and the story of a brother diagnosed with a slowly worsening disability. The recurring theme is the gathering in northern Ontario of Dave’s family as they prepare to scatter his ashes on Lake Beaverhouse. The most astonishing journey is one Dave embarked on by himself: a round-the-world cruise that promised special help for the disabled. Marian went with him for a few days but then he was alone with his own hospital bed, toilet seat, catheters, computer with voice recognition software, and often resentful staff. Never less than fiercely independent, he needed to know he could still seek adventure.

As the story unfolds, the quiet appeal of nature and the satisfaction of meeting its challenges are interspersed with the cruelty and pain visited on a disabled person. Dave raged at the physical difficulty of simple movements, yet was often unable to admit he needed help. The author, while acknowledging the kindness and help of others, including her sister Sara, was frustrated at the inefficiency of the Ontario medical system, angered by the habitual callousness and ignorance toward the disabled, and strung out by the patience needed to help her brother. Yet love of a brother and passion for the north permeate these heartfelt pages.

The final journey, a canoe trip Marian takes on Lake Beaverhouse, is marred by the sight of clear-cutting but ends in nature’s silence.