Big Fists, Bigger Heart

A criticism that's followed me throughout my life has been my contradictory personality. I can be your worst enemy, the person that will fight you to the ends of the earth and win. Or I can be the most loving, nurturing, caring, and giving person in the universe. The version of me you get depends largely on how you approach me. I get that from my daddy.

The direct descendant of a South Carolina slave, my dad grew up poor. The oldest of 12 children in a Black family in Atlantic Canada during the Great Depression and World War II, he learned the importance of fighting for your life and the importance of kindness all at the same time.

He never got an education. Unless you count grade 4. He walked out of the 5th grade in June of 1940 with a note from his teacher, Mrs. Winslow, advising his parents that young Reuben, Rudy for short, had not met the mark. He'd be required to repeat.

He never set foot in a school again. With an ever-expanding family, he joined his father in working at whatever job would have them. The young boy dutifully turned his wages over to his mother for the good of the family.

Duty was a calling that followed him. An up-and-coming boxer with a local reputation, he felt called by his country to fight the growing threat of Communism in a land he had never been to and he likely couldn't have identified on a map, Korea.

He signed on the dotted line and became a member of the Black Watch in the Canadian Armed Forces.

And duty is what led him to a baby girl.

The phone rang on August 14, 1971. It was his baby brother, inconsolable. His girlfriend had died. She was 25 and left behind 3 children, a 6-year-old boy, an 18-mont- old girl, and a 3-week-old baby with a full head of raven-coloured hair.

There was talk, the younger brother said, about taking the children away. They all looked white, and he, well, was not. No job, no plan to support the children, he turned to his oldest brother.

And he came to the rescue. When duty called, Rudy answered. He drove the hour to the hospital where his brother's deceased partner succumbed to a sudden illness. He spoke to social workers and nurses and he held the raven-haired baby.

And as he told it, he fell in love. That baby, me, grabbed his nose, and the rest was history.

Suddenly, at 43, with a 15-year-old son on the brink of striking out on his own, he decided to dedicate himself to a brand new baby. A deal was made. I don't know all the details. All I know is he ended up taking all 3 children home on the understanding that the oldest two, the boy and girl, would be returned to his brother once he secured stable employment and housing.

A year later, he sobbed as he said goodbye to the 2 kids he'd raised as his own for 13 months. He knew his brother might not be ready. He knew he could give the kids a better home. But he had a duty. He gave his word. And he handed the children back to his baby brother with only the faint faith that it would all be okay and the knowledge he'd done what he said he'd do.

I stayed behind with him, officially adopted as his little girl. And a Daddy's Girl, I was! Although he was biologically my uncle, and he was big and Black, and I was tiny and white-presenting, I was him and he was me.

We went everywhere together. He taught me everything he knew, good and bad.

The good was almost saintly. Daddy was a man that knew hunger as a child. He knew poverty and couldn't stand to see anyone go without. He couldn't pass a salvation army kettle without tossing $5 in.

Every Christmas, he sponsored one or two families, usually from the Black settlement at Elm Hill. On a Corporal's salary, he somehow provided me with a lavish holiday and was equally generous to whomever he pledged his assistance to.

I remember one year, when I was in grade 5, I had a friend named Trina. She lived in "the apartments," not on the army base, but out in the larger town. She had siblings and a mother, but no father. She never had money for field trips. She never had the right school supplies. She was the first poor person I ever met. She was also the first person from a single-parent household I ever met.

Trina distressed me a great deal. I had a difficult time understanding why she didn't have money and stuff. When field trips came up, my father started slipping me extra money, for her, so she could go too.

She often didn't have lunch, so now and then, he'd pop up with A&W for both of us.

And at Easter, he took it upon himself to see what the kids needed and showed up, complete with bunny ears to give not just my friend, but her brothers and sisters a holiday to remember.

He had tears in his eyes watching them tear into their baskets. I didn't really understand it then. I do now. He lived to spread joy, especially to children.

But not only to children. He'd lend a hand to anyone in need. He lent money out, never getting it back, because he couldn't stand to see a friend in need.

But he was no doormat. Quite the contrary. He was ready, willing, and able to fight for what he thought was right.

He defended the weak and the different before it was fashionable. I watched him sit down and have coffee with a man in a dress in the mid-80s and dare anyone to speak a word against his friend.

I watched him, weeks after a life-saving kidney transplant, ask the local bus driver to stop the bus so he could physically throw 2 white men off who were picking on a Black boy who might have been 12 or 13.

I watched him beat the living crap out of more than one man who tried to physically remove me from his custody when I was little because the idea of a blue-eyed, light-skinned child with a large Black man was more than they could comprehend.

He always tried to settle things with kindness first. But if that didn't do the trick, he'd throw down, if that's what he needed to do.

He told me two things, "Don't go looking for a fight, but if one comes to you, go on and finish it," and "Never be afraid to stand up for what's right." I still live by those words.

Like him, I'm a ball of contradictions. I'll give till it hurts. I'll go hungry so you can eat. But, I'm also the person who will intervene when something's wrong. I'll stand up to the bullies. I'll defy so-called authorities. I'll fight you with everything I've got if I truly believe I'm on the side of right. Because, like my father, I feel we all have a duty to leave this world a little better than we found it.

Of course, I do most of my fighting with words. It's amazing how tough you look with a law degree. My little size 5s won't ever fill his size 10s, but I think Daddy would be proud of his baby girl just the same.