FEAR IN BEAR COUNTRY

“I want to eat his children...Come on you scared coward.”
Mike Tyson

Look. Listen. Iron Mike said these things on the eve of his 2002 title challenge of Lennox Lewis in Memphis, Tennessee. I am not frightened of him now, nor was I then; apparently neither was Lewis because, in a one sided affair, he mercilessly bloodied both Tyson’s eyes and sent him to the canvas in eight rounds. These were scary words, just as Mike is such a scary man on so many violent and depraved levels that only military psy-op personnel could begin or want to understand his twisted mind. But at the time, I had no fear of Mike because he was not speaking to me and I would not be in the ring that night. Even if I were Lennox Lewis, I would have had no fear either; after all Mike Tyson was a wrecked, sluggard of a pugilist past his prime and Lewis was the heavyweight champion of the world. These are facts.

So today, days after the anniversary of 9/11, the day that fear came to town and pissed on everyone’s front steps; the day that we woke up and discovered we were in the valley of the shadow and surrounded by every evil known to man; the day that we stopped dabbling with fear and began mainlining it straight into our elusive souls, I am pondering what I have been told, everywhere and by everyone, including that babbling morning host on my local sports radio (is nothing sacred?) that the fear is there, undiminished, unresolved, and more relentlessly cruel and determined than ever. Our own Minister of Public Safety, Stockwell Day, emerged from the Diefenbunker to breathe Ottawa’s polluted air of nertu and criminal lies long enough to declare that Canada was in a state of high danger and still a potential target for Al Qaeda, sternly reminding us that they had threatened us four times. Four. Lest we forget, eh?

We have been and will be reminded every day of our lives that danger is at the door and no one, not even our own children, can be trusted. Say it with me: Terrorists hate Canada…Lightning is your enemy…Junkies with bus passes and titanium daggers will soon roam your suburban neighborhoods in broad daylight…Food is danger…Muslims aren’t like you and me…Words can break your bones… Black bears are swimming across small harbours to maul and maim unsuspecting fishermen with absolutely no just cause…Your computer is unprotected against viruses…Children are weird and dangerous…You could die at any time…Mike Tyson will eat your children… So on and so on.

Well, I can only tell you that in these swollen days of thwarted hope and fragile dreams, fear is not what it seems. In the dark hours of this long night, it may seem we are as saddled with fears as the Toronto Maple Leafs are with losing. Yes, it has been a long slide from the jubilance and confidence of victory—Bill Barilko is gone and the brutal shadow of Harold Ballard’s grotesquely, crippled reign has never been exorcized. So, for the Maple Leafs, this nation and many others, the return against the current will be littered with many bodies of the infirm of mind and soul, and both those piloting the ship and those left in its wake will be a grim bunch of sailors indeed. But a return is possible, friend. The contagion of fear is not unassailable. The mouth pieces of darkness may jabber and moan, but you can scorn them like a midnight bride howling in the wastelands outside Atlantic City during football season, because fear is not what the grinding bastards would have you believe it is. Ultimately the wise choose and the dumb cower. So choose. Choose your fears wisely.

Let me make this clear, there are some things worth fearing, like frostbite and hypothermia in sub-zero temperatures; Revenue Canada; electrocution; tasers; broken glass; guns in most people’s hands; loan sharks and tooth decay. But these are simple dangers, and for all but a miserable, doomed few, relatively simple to escape. But the fears that are foisted on us at every possible moment, the audacious fears that slink like recreant, feral vermin through the daily news and the blathering of people nostalgic for the cold war, these are illusions, captivating like bearded ladies, but empty as drunken promises and they should be treated as such. No. There are worse, more frightening menaces than even Mike Tyson and they are far closer to you than you are to the squared circle. The people and the enterprises we should fear are the same people who will eat and are eating our children. These are people who want to beat you like a cheap rug each and every day of your life. They are vicious and relentless, and to them, the rules of the game are irrelevant: it is not enough for them to take your money at the table; they want you to get up and leave it there in a pathetic, slobbering panic. See, we are living in the age of a branded fear that has become so ubiquitous that it seems innocuous; the omnipotence it is given makes it very nearly transparent and it overlays our lives like a suffocating film of bubble wrap. We are encased and convinced of the fragility of ourselves and our world to the point of a cowering, rabid dread of everything and everyone outside our doors—of even ourselves—and this is the way these people want it. Don’t ask who these shameless fear mongers are, by their foul clouds of inglorious feats you shall know them, for you cannot escape the corpse-like stink that emanates from every grasping move they make. They are the cheap, insurance peddlers and no-men whose goal is to reduce morality to risk-management strategy. They are the blind opponents of change and the virtueless champions of family values, the charlatans of vigilance. These people have no souls and their minds are wired to make every single individual tremble before the altar of loss. They will make you feel like a loser each and every time they remind you what you stand to lose if you dare open your mouth. They are the anti-choice, the anti-question, the anti-hero, and worst of all, the anti-love. There is about as much love in them as in a rapist, and they will push their own grandmothers down the stairs in the name of expediency and power. This is a viral nation, a globalized ulcer and it is not interested in your future, your community, your neighbors or your friends, the outcast, the vulnerable, or the free. And most of all, they want you to fear and hate yourself beyond all love. Power is their fix and fear is the most effective lever in their tool kit of extortion. This is the crux; in their world, there can be nothing, no power that is worth having without fear. Yes, these are the child-eaters.

But I am hopelessly unable to get up in the morning without some good news, no? Well this is it: of so many things, you don’t have to be afraid. The terrorists are not winning. Lightning will not strike you. Children are still good and pure at heart, even if you don’t quite understand them. Junkies don’t hate you and they can’t afford titanium knives. We have been eating food for a long, long time; it can continue. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you. Muslims are just like you and I. Your computer is not that important; they have people who can fix it.

And that crazed, morbid black bear that attacked the fisherman in Port Renfrew? Well, fisherman Ed Stirling cut its throat with a 37 cm razor honed, Swedish filleting knife. This bear was seized with a deep, primal madness that I doubt even it could understand, and everything it got, it had coming. It was fearsome, but Stirling was brave and resourceful, and saw, knew and did what he had to. He “pleaded with another to stop annoying the bear with his ‘tiny’ knife.”
“I was saying where is his head?” Yes. Cut of the head and the body will die. (Thompson) Don’t worry, this bear had it coming. It swam across an estuary, past a free pile of sacrificial fish and guts and vaulted straight at an innocent bystander. Well, it called its shot and missed. Stirling called his and won. There is a moral here somewhere. He did not surrender to the fear. Like the bear and the fisherman, we are all going to die someday, and there is nothing that will stop it when the time finally comes. But no one has to go down like a scared coward.