Conrad Boyce is the editor and publisher of the Cosmos. He has a BA in English from the University of Alberta and a diploma in journalism from Grant Macewan Community College in Edmonton. He lived and worked in the Yukon and Vancouver Island before arriving in Ontario in 1995. Beyond these pages, he is the Artistic Director of OnStage Uxbridge, and the technical manager of the Uxbridge Music Hall.
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Brotherhood
I was at a rehearsal the other day for The Importance of Being Earnest (which is going to be non-stop hilarious, by the way, don’t miss it), when one of the characters said something which got me to musing.
It was something along the lines of: “Nobody talks about his brother these days; it’s not something one does.”
Very true in my case. Most people of my Ontario acquaintance would never suspect I even had a brother. Of course, that could be partly due to the fact that he hasn’t been to visit once in the 13 1/2 years I’ve lived in Ontario, although, to be fair, I’ve never visited him in northern Manitoba either, and he’s lived there a lot longer than I’ve lived in Ontario (I think). Probably his Manitoba friends aren’t particularly aware of my existence either.
But not only has Uxbridge not seen my brother (whose name is David), they haven’t heard much about him either. I talk more about my sister, about my niece and nephews (including my brother’s kids), than I do about my brother. I wonder why that is.
It’s probably partly because I was always a lot closer to my sister. She and I were only a year apart at school, whereas David was a full six years behind. In Alberta, elementary school only goes to Grade 6, and kindergarten wasn’t compulsory in the 60s, so by the time I went on to junior high, Dave was only just arriving in school. By the time he got to junior high and then high school, I was long gone.
My sister and I got involved in a lot of the same stuff, particularly at university. I hung out with her a lot (one of her friends even taught me how to kiss properly - I was a bit slow to learn in that particular sphere...). But Dave was on his own; for us, we’d been there and done that. He was reliving our past, and we were focused on the future.
My parents even picked up and moved to Victoria in 1972, by which time my sister and I had left home, but Dave was still in high school. Rather than follow them, he stayed with us, but my sister was already working as a nurse by then, and I was already married! We were in completely different worlds.
The ironic thing is that if you were to talk to me for a while and then call up my brother, you’d wonder how I got to Manitoba so fast. And it’s not just the voice, it’s physical mannerisms as well. Considering how far apart we grew up, it’s strong evidence that heredity plays a way bigger role than environmental factors in how you appear to the world.
And those highly similar genes made their mark in terms of how we lived our lives, as well. He loves theatre, and writing, and teaching, and history, identical passions to my own. We’re both musicians of a sort as well, he being an untrained pianist and composer, myself an untrained singer and vocal conductor.
We both grew up in a fairly large city, but once we got out of school, we’ve avoided them like the plague. He’s made his living in even smaller centres than I, more remote from big cities, the last decade and a half (or is it longer?) on native reserves many hours from Brandon or Winnipeg.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s our common interests that keep us apart, almost like a “this town ain’t big enough for the both of us” syndrome.
One summer, when I was in my late twenties and he in his mid-ones (and not long out of university), we worked for the same theatre company in the Yukon, although I was in Dawson City and he in Whitehorse. For the initial rehearsal period, though, we were both in Whitehorse.
I’d recommended him for the gig, since I’d already been in the Yukon for two summers. Over that time my castmates had come to nickname me “C-Rad”. When Dave came to town and they saw how much we sounded and looked alike (although he’s a fair bit taller and ganglier than I), they immediately started calling him “D-Rad”.
Although he never let on to them, he told me he resented this, because of course the “Rad” had absolutely nothing to do with him. To him, it meant that he had no identity of his own, only related to me, and I know that it ate away at him for the next four months.
We were 300 miles apart that summer, my brother and I, but we’ve never been remotely that close since. In any sense of the word.
I’ve gotten irritated with him about some of the choices he’s made in his life, but I’m sure he feels the same way about mine. None of us are perfect, particularly when they’re family, it seems.
But I only have one brother. Do you think maybe it’s time I started treating him like one?
