Front-Line Meals on the Go

April 21, 2020

I still remember the call. The phone ringing in the long, dark hallway in Baba’s apartment, and my dad muttering ‘mmm hmmm,’ ‘ok,’ ‘great,’ ‘goodbye,’ as Baba and I stood in silence watching, listening. That call changed our lives. Dad had finally gotten a full-time job and soon he’d be off to Aylmer, Ontario, which was then an eight hour drive from home, to attend police college for four months. It was 1984, the start of my father’s honourable thirty-four-year-career with Sudbury’s police force.

My dad didn’t go into community policing to be a hero, he did it because he needed a job. He was the first in his family to obtain a university degree, coming from a long line of peasants who came to Canada seeking out a better life and finding it, for better or for worse, in the region’s nickel mines. Yet, when he graduated, there were no jobs for him. Not even underground. A recession was in full swing and despite applying to 120 jobs, my dad couldn’t find work. His precarity resulted in bouts of unemployment, which were punctuated by a number of temporary jobs. My mom supported us, I was born in 1978 and my brother in 1982, with her job at a local stationery and office supply store.

Full-time, permanent employment meant stability but those early days were tough. My mom suddenly became a single parent overnight, tasked with working to pay the bills while she cared for two young kids, thankfully with help from both of my grandparents. I still remember rushing each morning and piling into the Chevette, so that Mom wouldn’t be late for work. She’d drop my brother off at his babysitter’s house and then bring me to my grandma and grandpa’s house where I was bussed to school. It was well beyond our district but essential because I had care prior to and after school. Those were long days and I can only imagine the toll it took on my mom. Dad made his way home a few times over that period, always bringing us something from Toys R Us, a store we didn’t have in the north. Somehow the Rainbow Brite doll was supposed to make his absence better. I never played with it.

When Dad returned home, we all adapted to our new normal. The shiftwork and the stress of the job meant that he was often not physically with us. Sometimes he wasn’t emotionally with us either. That’s the reality of this type of work. Dad says that “what happened in the cruiser, stayed in the cruiser.” And while his statement is mostly true, and his partners became his best friends because of the ways they could debrief and support each other, there were always shortcomings. There was no perfect balance. My mom picked up the slack, despite the tensions this new normal caused, as did both sets of my grandparents, who cooked meals and brought my brother and me to swimming lessons and soccer games. As time rolled on, we all got used to this change in our collective experience. To altering the day we’d celebrate Christmas, to planning family vacations around dad’s long stints off, to the quiet that had to be maintained when dad slept. Being the kids of a cop with a distinct last name also meant we had to be on our best behavior, always. God forbid we’d get arrested or pulled over because we were breaking the law. My dad’s reputation in our small community was important, and we knew and respected that.

My dad spent time on the beat, where I’m sure he saw things that radically changed how he now sees the world. Humanity at its best and its worst. He also moved in and out of community policing, fraud, and domestic violence, among other departments. He seemed to excel when he got to interact with people. I remember him coming to my grade school, St. Aloysius, where he spoke to my class about drugs and then handed out hockey cards of players on the local minor hockey team. My friends, many of whom lived in social housing nearby, looked up to him but from that point forward, I became known as the cop’s kid, another layer added to my evolving identity. I can’t tell you what their parents did. They never said. Although there was respect for my dad and his job, there was also a lot of teasing. I pushed back against my new label, but I also pushed back against my Dad.

It was hard living up to everyone’s expectations, but mostly I just resented my Dad, who refused to allow me to go to birthday parties or to have sleepovers with my friends. I didn’t realize that he knew many of their parents, and that their homes weren’t safe places for them, let alone me. When Dad finally caved and allowed me to go to my fifth grade girlfriend’s birthday party, he waited in the car outside until it was over. There was lots of yelling, drinking, and smoking at the party among the adults who were supervising it. That was the last extracurricular event I attended until high school, when my circle of friends changed again.

Through all of this, my dad was my dad, not a police officer. Seeing him in a cruiser was what he did, not who he was to me. But that all changed when Constable Joe MacDonald, a 29-year-old officer with two small kids, was gunned down in a routine traffic stop in 1993. Joe was an exceptional human being who helped coach my high school’s football team, among others in our community. I didn’t know him personally but I’d pass him while dashing off to my cross country running practices after school. Everyone knew he was a police officer.

As my friends and I gathered alongside the hundreds of Sudburians paying their respects as the hearse made its way through the city’s downtown core, I stood and watched the sea of officers marching stoically behind Joe and his family. The shiny boots, the pressed costume uniforms, and the white gloves all took my breath away. Then I saw my Dad. He nodded and kept marching on to the church. The reality of the call, which changed our lives nearly ten years before, came clearly into focus. I never looked at Dad and his partners in those cruisers the same way. The costs, beyond those I experienced in our home, were clear.

Joe’s death led to significant improvements in how officers communicated with each other and the call center moving forward. Protests, led by Joe’s wife Nancy and others who took up the cause, demanded changes to the firearms police officers carried. As a result, my dad and his peers soon carried semi-automatic guns rather than the six-shot, .38 calibre revolver that failed Joe that fateful night. Change was only possible because there had been death, a problematic pattern we see all too often when it comes to first responders.

My Dad retired from the Greater Sudbury Police force two years ago. He made it through, safely, unlike Joe and the many other men and women who have not been so lucky. I’m grateful for that every day. Although we rarely see eye to eye—we are too head strong and too similar for that occur—I now recognize how his experiences in policing have shaped our relationship. How his job was about enforcing systems of oppression while mine is focused on breaking them down and making a better world. This privilege is rooted in generations of people, like him, doing front-line work that makes my efforts, through my research and teaching, possible. Most of those with whom I went to grade school never made it beyond the walls of the social housing complexes they called home. The odds were never in their favour. It’s now my job to support the most vulnerable in my classrooms, and help them devise a way out. Their future is brighter because of the dangers my dad and his colleagues have had to endure on the front line.

*This post is dedicated to Constable Heidi Stevenson’s family as well as those who lost loved ones in Nova Scotia’s mass shooting this past weekend.

There are no recipes to accompany this post, just a couple of hurried sandwiches made on the go, between shifts.

Cheese Buns: When Dad would get off night shift and wake up my brother and I, he’d often hand us these cheese buns before we piled into the car and dropped off at school. Incidentally, Dad has no recollection of these beauties, a reminder of his struggle to get through most days with young kids, on minimal amounts of sleep. Pick up a package of white dinner rolls, the kind that can sit on the counter for a week and still not go stale. Cut open and slather both sides with cheese whiz. Heat in the microwave for 15-20 seconds. Enjoy but be careful not to burn your tongue!

Tuna Sandwich: Open a can of tuna. Dump out the water and mix with mayonnaise, sweet green relish, and pepper, all to taste. Slather it on two pieces of white bread, again the loaves that stay fresh for longer than they should. Enjoy with a cantaloupe, cut and de-seeded, scooping out the contents with a large spoon shared between family members.

Kolbassa Sandwich: Stop off at the best Eastern European deli in town. Buy a hunk of kolbassa or a series of the long skinny cured sausages. Cut or break off pieces and wrap in white bread. No condiments or utensils needed. Great for road trips!