Click on the links below to hear Excerpts 3 and 4 from the novel, which were read on CJSF Radio (90.1 FM) in Vancouver last week. There’s a 10-minute interview with me that runs before the storytelling begins.

Click here for Excerpt 3, continuation of Chapter 2 (following interview)
Click here for Excerpt 4, also a continuation of Chapter 2

Chapter 1 and the first half of Chapter 2 are available here:

Click here for Part 1, Chapter 1 (following interview).
Click here for Part 2, start of Chapter 2.

The burgers at Archie Manning's restaurant feature his uniform number and those of his sons.

A restaurant in New Orleans bearing the Manning name was going to pack the house no matter what. Archie Manning’s a classy guy, though, so you could expect that he would deliver an establishment with style and sophistication. At Manning’s, you’ll find a big, airy sports bar that has plenty of hospitality and enough warmth to make it appeal to women too.

The newly opened restaurant in the Big Easy’s trendy Warehouse Arts District features a large patio, which will host live music, as well as a banquet hall and 300 televisions, including a dominating 13.5-foot-by-7-foot screen that will catch the eye of anyone passing by. The menu from chef Anthony Spizale includes well-known southern favourites like Shrimp Po Boy sandwiches and Gumbo, along with some eccentric choices (Pig Skin Sliders and Alligator Sliders) that might surprise tourists.

“I’m real excited about it,” Archie Manning told me on Thursday, a night after the 210-seat restaurant held a grand opening celebration at its 519 Fulton Street location. “I’ve been on the road a lot and this business will help me stay closer to home.”

Manning, the former quarterback for the Saints, lives in the city’s Garden District (his home is on the walking tour of the posh neighbourhood) and is one of the most popular figures in New Orleans. He was walking around the restaurant on Thursday taking photographs with all of the guests and smiling wide inside his new digs. He had the idea for the restaurant about five years ago and opened it in time for this weekend’s NFL playoff games, which included his youngest son, Eli, quarterbacking the New York Giants to victory over the San Francisco 49ers. They will play the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI on February 5 in Indianapolis, on the field where Peyton Manning, Archie’s other quarterback son, has led the Colts.

The Shrimp Po Boy is one of the southern faves on the Manning's menu.

The dinner menu at Manning’s has a No. 8 Burger that bears its owner’s uniform number. The lunch menu features the No. 18 and No. 10 Burgers, using the uniform numbers of Peyton and Eli, respectively. There’s also a No. 14 Burger in honour of Cooper, the one son who never reached the pros.

“I haven’t tried the burgers yet, but I hear they’re pretty good,” said Archie Manning, who partnered with casino giant Harrah’s in the venture. “I like the Gumbo a lot. The Simply Grilled Fish is real good, the two steaks are excellent.”

I tried the Gumbo ($8) and it was delicious, with andouille sausage and chicken, and in a broth that wasn’t too thick. The Shrimp Po Boy ($13) was okay, nothing special, but you do get lots of shrimp. The Spinach Salad ($9) was fresh and tasty, served with bacon. Manning’s offers a lengthy wine list and a beer list with several local craft brews.

There’s competition in the area, with Gordon Biersch, an excellent microbrewery restaurant, and the popular Ernst Café both close to Manning’s. With Archie’s name, though, and with the quality of the food, ambience and service, Manning’s is going to be a winner.

Come Super Bowl party time, you can bet it will also be packed with a lot of Giants backers rooting for the owner’s kid.

Manning's is sure to draw a crowd come Super Bowl Sunday. (Julia Pelish photos)

The All That Jazz is a thing of legend in New Orleans. (Julia Pelish photo)

NEW ORLEANS, LOUSIANA — Two days before I arrive in New Orleans, I receive an email urging me to go to a convenience store for “the best sandwich I’ve ever had in my life.” When you travel, words like that always grab your interest, even more so when you’re a travel writer and you sense the potential for a story. Still, you have to remain skeptical about such claims. The email was written from a contact who went to university in New Orleans and was now at Berkeley, so it’s more than possible he was a victim of a hallucination. So when I arrived, I asked around town.

“The All That Jazz — delicious,” said Nick Ruggiero, a waiter who moved from Washington, D.C. to the Big Easy about six years ago. “It’s awesome. Gooey, cheesy. You’ll love it.”

Ruggiero knows his stuff. He works at Arnaud’s, one of the city’s finer restaurants, and recommended particular dishes around town. He was the third person to verify that the All That Jazz sandwich at the Verti-Marte was, indeed, deserving of the hype.

“You’re getting the All That Jazz,” said a fourth endorser, who happened to be the nephew of former Raptors forward Sherell Ford. He was standing in line with me at the little 24-hour grocery store in the French Quarter and his eyes lit up when he spoke about the sandwich. “That’s delicious. It’s messy, but amazing.”

The Verti-Marte is across from the La Laurie Mansion, Nicolas Cage’s former home known for its gruesome 19^th-century murders and mutilations, and its reputed ghosts. For all of the visitors who come to this town fascinated by its spooky history, the store’s location may be the only thing notable about it. Inside, it looks like your typical U.S. mini-market, with overpriced snack foods, a freezer full of ice cream, long refrigerators stocked with soft drinks, milk and beer, and a cash register that guards the liquor and cigarettes behind it. At the rear, though, is a deli that churns out dozens of items, ranging from rich desserts like bread pudding to entrees like Creole Chicken and, of course, its po-boy sandwiches, of which the $10.25 All That Jazz is the most popular.

“We’ll serve 20 of those a day, sometimes a hundred,” says Ken behind the counter after he takes my order at 11 p.m. “We normally get a lot of people coming in here at four in the morning after all of the drinking and they’re looking for that sandwich.”

The Verti-Marte is across the street from the infamous La Laurie Mansion. (Julia Pelish photo)

While the All That Jazz may be a good hangover cure, you really should enjoy it sober. The ingredients include sautéed shrimp, turkey, ham, cheese and the Verti-Marte’s special “Wow” sauce, which Ken says is “kind of like a tartar sauce.” The sandwich is as advertised: delicious, satisfying and not as messy as I expected. It’s a foot long and comes on soft French bread. Sliced in half, you can take a portion with you for later, which I’d recommend, because eating it all at once may be impossible for anyone who’s not a football player. It may not be the best sandwich I’ve ever had (the finger sandwiches at Zum Schwarzen Kameel in Vienna are pretty fine), but it’s definitely in the top five. The flavours blend perfectly, one doesn’t stand out from the other, and you still get the taste of the turkey, ham and shrimp.

“It’s been served from the beginning,” Ken says of the sandwich. The Verti-Marte has had it on the menu for about four decades and its popularity continued even after the store had to close for several months following a May 2010 fire.

In one of those ironies that you encounter so often around New Orleans, Ken has never eaten the All That Jazz. Turns out, the guy who serves up dozens of these local favourites a day is a vegetarian.

NOTE: The Verti-Marte is at 1201 Royal Street and it delivers (504-525-4767).

Delta and other U.S. airlines have a bad rep with consumers for a reason.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — “If I can get people on a plane and moving, that’s what I’m going to do,” Andrew Martin said shortly after doing the completely unexpected: Booking me a first-class ticket to New Orleans when no one else at Delta Airlines would do any more than place me on standby for a possible coach seat sometime in the next two days. This even though it was a system error that caused me to miss my initial departure. Under such conditions, airlines or ticketing agencies must get their customers to their final destination on confirmed flights, not standby. But no one at Delta’s reservations center would acknowledge an error on their part, trying to blame it on Hotwire, the third-party agent with whom I had booked my flight. Hotwire, in turn, was adamant Delta was at fault for the failure to notify me that a 1:30 p.m. flight had been rescheduled to 1:12 p.m. It was an episode that showed how consumers can get stuck in a pass-the-buck game that causes expense and frustration.

Martin, though, showed class and reason, and saved Delta’s reputation in my eyes. He is a Delta supervisor at Buffalo Niagara International Airport and his efforts, along with the diligence of customer service rep Mari Ainsley, got me into New Orleans on the same day and without any extra fees tacked on.

However, there are other issues that Delta, or consumer advocates, need to address. After driving through the gut-churning blizzard that smacked southern Ontario and upstate New York on Friday the 13th, I arrived at the Delta counter at 12:50 p.m. for the 1:30 p.m. flight I had booked in October. Two ticket agents at the Delta counter said the gate for Flight 723 was closed. There was never a 1:30 p.m. flight, I was told; it was always scheduled for 1:12 p.m., which was a false statement. I was put on standby for a 3:53 p.m. flight to Atlanta and a connecting flight to New Orleans.

I might have been content with waiting it out and seeing what happened, chastising myself for not leaving a half-hour earlier for the airport. But when I arrived at the Delta gates at 1:35 p.m., the 1:12 p.m. flight hadn’t even boarded as yet. The gate hadn’t closed, as the Delta reps at the ticket counter insisted. This flight that I was supposed to be on was still on the tarmac. But Delta had sold my ticket and I wasn’t allowed to board.

The airline industry has a bad reputation with consumers and practices such as this one is why. On a day when just about every Delta flight out of Buffalo was postponed or delayed, Delta never gave customers the kind of leeway and understanding it asks from us. A whole lot of other passengers were in a similar situation, I discovered. In my case, I had to find out why I wasn’t notified of the change in departure time. That meant spending the next two hours calling Hotwire, pleading with Delta’s customer service reps and contemplating other arrangements.

“The problem is when someone books with a third-party agent, they now become that agent’s customer,” Martin said, explaining part of the reason why passengers get stuck in a go-between process such as the one I was in with Hotwire and Delta. Neither of those companies would own up to a communication error, instead pointing a finger at the other.

Fortunately for me, Ainsley secured seats on a 6:50 p.m. flight to Atlanta, and when the first-class seats came up for a connecting flight to New Orleans, Martin booked them. (Neither of them was told I was a journalist until I asked them afterwards if I could use their names for this account.)

Had this situation occurred in another city, I doubt if things would have ended with such a reasonable outcome. Buffalo’s a friendly place, though, and maybe that played a role in Martin’s decency. The bigger issue is with Delta. Other airlines, such as WestJet, put an emphasis on customer experience. The first ticket agent I spoke with at the Delta counter should have had the power to resolve this case — and been encouraged to do so. Bottom line is the major U.S. airlines have a woeful reputation with consumers because their first instinct isn’t to treat us with the compassion we deserve.

The sad thing is all they have to do is empower more of their employees, the way WestJet does, and their customers would feel more cared for. Instead, flyers are left feeling like we have to be on guard when dealing with them. And, after one-too-many infuriating situations, some of us will reach the point where we choose to avoid them altogether.

Accordionist Dwayne Dopsie plays rock classics at Krazy Korner down on Bourbon Street. (Julia Pelish photo)

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA — Krista Schuster sits at a bar in Pirate’s Alley, her fiancé beside her, a well drink in her hand, the thump of a tuba in her ear and beignets on her mind.

“The best travel deal going is New Orleans,” she declares.

In December, Schuster, a Pittsburgh resident who has worked as a travel agent, made her fourth visit to the Big Easy since 2006. New Orleans has taken its punches, as everyone knows, but you can’t beat the spirit of this place, or its citizens. Mardi Gras starts March 8 here, but this is a rollicking city any time of year.

“People are so much fun, it’s cheap and the food and music are amazing,” she says.

The food and the music.

They are the hallmarks of this town, what keep people coming and what makes you entice others to visit once you’ve returned home.

Bourbon Street is a blast, but it’s not where you should spend most of your time. It’s a spot for tourists and college kids looking for debauchery. There are things to enjoy, for sure. Great music can be found in a number of places on the street and those looking to splurge should drop in on Arnaud’s for a meal. The historic restaurant, which has a small Mardi Gras museum on its second floor, is an icon of the food scene and deserves the laurels it has received through the years.

“Business isn’t back to where it was before the storm,” says Robert, my server, “but it’s improving.”

The restaurant lost part of its wine collection during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Bottles were submerged, some were contaminated, others “just weren’t presentable for sale,” Robert says, adding that a few of those gems ended up being served at the owner’s home, not in the restaurant. “It’s a shame to see a ’68 Rothschild being used at a table with crackers and biscuits.”

Arnaud’s service is impeccable and so are many of the signature dishes, including Shrimp Arnaud, which is served in a remoulade sauce. The restaurant on the corner of Bourbon and Bienville is one of the pricier options in town — with entrees in the $25-$40 range — but there are many less expensive choices, including those beignets at Café du Monde that draw Schuster to the city.

“It’s the real reason I keep coming back,” she says of the doughy treats that are served covered with powdered sugar and cost just $2.14 for a serving of three. “They’re so sweet and soft like a pillow. You can’t find them anywhere else.”

The 149-year-old Café du Monde serves beignets and coffee 24/7, with the most popular location being in the French Market on Decatur Street.

Outside of the historic district, another place to hit is the Avenue Pub, which has a fantastic selection of draft and bottled beers, including several varieties from Quebec-based Unibroue. It serves pub fare, much of it for less than $10, including a thick, delicious Crab Cake sandwich.

What was it like to live here during Katrina?

“It sucked,” Andrew, the bartender, says matter-of-factly, before adding that there was great camaraderie within the city and that when the NFL’s Saints won the Super Bowl in 2010 there was optimism that better times had arrived.

The oil spill set progress in tourism back for at least last year, but bargain hunters, partygoers and music lovers still clamour to visit New Orleans. Last year, “Travel + Leisure” named it the best U.S. city for singles and in 2009 it topped that magazine’s list of “America’s Favorite Cities” in a survey.

While you won’t have a problem finding good, cheap food, when people talk about the deals in New Orleans these days they’re mostly speaking about the low cost of accommodation. Thanks to an offer I spotted on the hotels.ca website, I was able to book a five-night stay at Le Pavillon for just $65 a night. It’s a fabulous hotel located two blocks south of the Superdome and four blocks east of the Canal Street entrance to the French Quarter. Built in 1907, Le Pavillon is grand with some charming touches, including complimentary servings of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with hot chocolate served in the lobby at 10 p.m., which makes for a nice bedtime snack or a respite before another late-night stroll in the city.

That walk should take you to Frenchmen Street. It’s where the New Orleans musicians and their local followers go, and also where the arts community is helping the city to re-shape after the flood and the economic devastation caused by last year’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Artist Terrence Sanders recently opened a studio near Frenchmen and says the street is where the real New Orleans resides.

“The people on Frenchmen never ever go to Bourbon Street and the people on Bourbon Street, it would take them forever to find Frenchmen, so they don’t make it around here,” he says.

Sanders, who is originally from New York, has been in New Orleans for more than six years and is involved with projects aimed to revitalize the damaged metropolis.

“There is a brain gain going on in this city,” he says. “There will be a renaissance because of it. It was so cheap that it attracted architects, artists, musicians and now you’re seeing things take place that weren’t here before Katrina.”

And, of course, there’s plenty of New Orleans that has endured for centuries and keeps attracting tourists, including rustic Preservation Hall, which has seating on wooden benches for about 50 and standing room for about 50 more. In this intimate setting, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band plays classic tunes, sometimes with big-name musicians like Tom Waits. It costs $12 to enter and during the set the band will take requests, asking for a small contribution for a classic jazz standard, a little bit more for “unusual requests” and up to a whopping $10 to hear “Saints”. That may be to discourage guests from demanding a song anyone from New Orleans has probably heard every day, multiple times a day from birth. But for a visitor, no moment in the Big Easy seems complete without “When the Saints Come Marching In” playing somewhere within earshot, and during a 90-minute stay at Preservation Hall, I heard three delightful renditions of it. All by request.

Some tourists, though, come to New Orleans for the sight of saints or other spirits marching or flying or causing general mischief. Ghost tours take visitors to the reputedly haunted locales in the French Quarter, including the La Laurie mansion, considered one of the most spooky places in the United States, and the Provincial Hotel, on the site of a former military hospital that saw hundreds of casualties during the U.S. Civil War.

More tangible evidence of war damage is visible at the World War II Museum, which features the display of New Orleans’ contribution to the Allieds’ war effort: a Higgins boat that made the D-Day invasion of Normandy a success. The best thing about the museum, though, is its current feature film, a moving Tom Hanks-produced documentary about the war and its implications for all sides. As Schuster’s fiancé, Christian Groblewski, says, “You’re not human if you leave the theatre without a tear in your eye.”

Just the facts

MARDI GRAS: While Fat Tuesday is March 8, parades begin this Saturday as Carnival season descends on New Orleans.

DOING: “I’m not a ghost hunter, I’m a ghost debunker,” says Bill Arendell, a guide for Haunted History Tours in the French Quarter. The nightly tours last about 90 minutes, cost $20 and take you to some of the spots known for supernatural activity. Some of those places have to be accessed through bars or cafes, which is convenient for those businesses. But the tour is fascinating and fun (passersby will taunt tourgoers with shouts of “Boo!” or “I’m a ghost, I’m a ghost.”), with the most creepy building being the notorious La Laurie Mansion at 1140 Royal Street. You stand on the sidewalk and look at the vacant building as Arendell or another guide tells you of the diabolical things that happened inside centuries ago. The public can’t go in — and, really, you wouldn’t want to.

ARRIVING: Air Canada and WestJet fly direct to New Orleans’ Louis Armstrong Airport.

SLEEPING: Le Pavillon is an outstanding hotel with comfortable beds and attentive service. Room sizes are small; prices vary depending on day of travel. www.lepavillon.com.

EATING: Along with Arnaud’s in the French Quarter, you’ll want to try the Sunday Jazz Brunch at the historic Court of Two Sisters between Royal and Bourbon Streets. The food is decadent, rich Creole, Cajun and southern fare with lots of tasty choices. The shrimp and corn maux choux, a kind of stuffing, is loaded with spicy flavours.

DON’T WEAR BLACK: Those beignets at Café du Monde are covered with powdered sugar. A lot of it will end up on your clothes. You’re forewarned.

LISTENING: Preservation Hall (726 St. Peter St.) is a must. It costs $12 (cash only) to get in and lines start around 7 p.m. for the 8 p.m. shows. Visitors come and go through the night for the shows that run until about 11 p.m.

The Rink at the Brink is a thrill in Niagara Falls. (Julia Pelish photo)

NIAGARA FALLS, ONTARIO — Skating outdoors is nothing new for Canadians. Doing it a couple of hundred metres from certain death? That gives a new meaning to going over the boards.

The unique thrill of skating adjacent to Niagara Falls is the overwhelming appeal of the TD Rink at the Brink, which opened its third season on November 30. Expectations are it will host more visitors than it did last year, when 15,000 skaters revelled in the rink set up on Niagara Parkway, about 200 metres across from the natural wonder. Despite the hyperbolic name, there’s no chance of a wayward skater plunging over the Horseshoe Falls. The only threat to a good time, really, is the on-site concession stand running out of hot chocolate.

“There’s nothing like this anywhere else in the world,” said David Groulx, operations manager at the Rink at the Brink and a former owner of the Florida-based Sunshine Coast Hockey League. “You can’t skate this close to an attraction like the Falls anywhere. It’s a really unique experience”

Groulx maintains the ice conditions, which were very good when I went for a few spins on Saturday. It was a magical evening, actually, with the lunar eclipse that night causing a bright, orange-yellow moon to climb slowly over the Niagara night. At first glance, the Rink at the Brink seems like a victim of its own good marketing. When you walk up to it, you feel a touch of disappointment because it is not right at the edge of the Falls, but once you start to skate, the sight of the water curtaining over the cliff and the beauty of the mist rising up and then freezing as it clings to tree branches really is a thrill. I found myself stopping several times or turning my head around just to look.

“Every day is different here. This afternoon, we had a rainbow that came over the Falls and ended right here on the rink,” says Groulx. “There are days when the mist rises over the moraine here and crystallizes, and it’s just absolutely gorgeous.”

The rink, which is 60 feet-by-120 feet, will stay open until February 29. It costs $7 for adults and $6 for youths to skate, which might be a deterrent considering Canadians across the country are used to skating for free on outdoor rinks, including at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto and the Rideau Canal in Ottawa. The Rink at the Brink, though, is a distinct experience and one that’s certainly worth at least one outing.

“This is really beautiful, to see the Falls like that and with all the lights in the city. They did a great job with it,” said Kelly Dawns, who is from Toronto. She credited the rink for keeping her kids busy and blending in with the rest of the festive atmosphere in Niagara.

The city’s Winter Festival of Lights is drawing thousands of tourists, as well. Just this week, Frommers.com named that attraction the fifth-best holiday lights show in the world. There are displays of Disney characters along Niagara Parkway and then in Dufferin Islands, a couple of kilometres beyond the Falls, there’s a hugely popular light display that dozens and dozens of cars inch their way through each night.

“The view’s beautiful and they’ve got the Winter Festival of Lights going on, which is really spectacular,” said Willie Reynolds, who lives in the Niagara area and was enjoying the Rink at the Brink for the first time last Saturday with friends and family.

For sure, the rink is a great Canadian experience, right down to the most popular choice at its concession stand. “It’s fun to skate,” said Reynolds’ son, Noah, “but I like the hot chocolate best.”

Here are the links to the interview:

Click here for Part 1.
Click here for Part 2.

When I met my son Alex it was three years ago, on a rainy spring Saturday morning, after I had walked four blocks to the Babylon community center—a place I never had been—and volunteered with a Long Island chapter of Big Brothers. A caseworker named Bryan asked about my interests and the amount of hours I had available. I said I was flexible and he was happy to hear it. The interview was brief, and he suggested I observe the children and their interaction with adults. I proceeded to watch the boys from a distance as they played tag with each other and shot baskets with the older men.

The Big Brothers were white and black men. Being an Indian man, and often the only Indian man in a place, I notice such things. That’s not to say I was uncomfortable. I did keep to a corner of the claustrophobic gym in my damp clothes with my arms crossed; I was a stranger and naturally felt out of place.

The fact the men were of similar age (I’m now thirty-six) and were smiling reassured me. If they attended to feel purposeful, and I suspected they did, then they must have found fulfillment in the process, a sequence of weekly visits with boys who needed every warm emotion and word of guidance Big Brothers could provide.
Unlike the men, the boys were an inconsistent group. They ranged from kindergarten age to teenagers taller than the volunteers who accompanied them. Many were relentlessly giddy, happy to just run around and be social. The time with their designated Big Brother, it was clear, ebbed whatever negativity was in their past or present home lives. For others, malaise could be shaken only for a few moments before they returned to a sulk or grave-faced stare, as if happiness was a boundary they did not want to approach, an untouchable treat they might be punished for indulging in.

Of those boys, Alex was the most fractured. In my eyes, he stood out among this gathering of males that seemed ritualistic in a way. Alex was small and round, and not at all good at the games. He heaved up shots that fell far short of the basket, eliciting snickers, even from the men who knew better. He ran out of breath easily while playing tag and always seemed to be “It”, causing him to be teased and to grow frustrated. At one point, he shoved another boy for an inexplicable reason and stomped away. A young counselor punished him for uncooperative behavior and removed him from the group, isolating him on a bench. I watched this ordeal without knowing how noticeable my vexation and concern was.

“Abusive father,” Bryan, the caseworker, said, “very abusive alcoholic mother. Both long gone, no one knows where.”

Bryan had come out of nowhere to tell me this. “I don’t know what foster care is doing for him. Sometimes kids just fall through the cracks.” He added that most social workers in New York foster care cope with more than forty cases a month, when they’re supposed to have seventeen. Reports are falsified, Bryan told me, because workers can’t handle all the cases. As a result, children such as Alex go unaccounted. He was eight then and had been bounced from home to home, and from Big Brother to Big Brother.

“He’s a loner.” Bryan watched with his arms crossed. “As you can see.”

We moved into a utilitarian cafeteria adjacent to the gym. Lunch was being served, and the situation grew worse for Alex. The Little Brothers made a game of avoiding sitting next to him, then chiding the boy who eventually had to, because he was too tardy or not forceful enough to get another spot. The boy relegated to being Alex’s neighbor shuffled his chair so its legs grated conspicuously on the concrete floor. He then made knowing eyes at his friends and held his nose and pointed until he was told to stop and be nice. Alex, in the mean time, furrowed his eyebrows, bent his head and pouted. He seethed while champing on his pizza, dribbling sauce and cheese onto his Jurassic Park T-shirt, and I turned away.

I pinched the bridge of my nose between my eyes and decided it was time to leave. I told Bryan I was glad I had come. We shook hands and he said he would tell me when the background check was clear, then I could join the group officially. He also informed me he was going to match me with Alex. “If that’s okay,” he said.

The thought had never occurred to me. Somehow I believed that Alex was for a more advanced Big Brother, someone with experience, and I was more suited to one of the well-adjusted kids with a semblance of a family. No such hierarchy existed among the volunteers, though, and when Bryan made that clear, my eyes widened as if I had just received an incomprehensibly large bill. I looked at Alex again. Behind him, a boy was holding two fingers above his head, a mocking gesture that was corrected by one of the men at the end of the table. Obliviously, Alex continued to frown and masticate in a solitude that was endearing in its sadness.

“Of course it’s okay,” I replied.

Bryan smiled and sighed, then went over to retrieve Alex, who came toward me with his chin touching his chest and a gait that resembled a waddle. “Alex, this is Sam,” Bryan said. “He’s going to be your Big Brother, starting next week.”

I grinned, bent down and took Alex’s tiny hand, which was warm and soft, like a freshly used sponge. “It’s very nice to meet you, Alex,” I said.

His response: “Yeah, whatever.”

A gloomy face and an enervating tone matched the words, which deflated me immediately. Later, after I left the community center, the thought of his voice angered me as an insult would. Later still, as I pondered Alex further, I found myself invigorated. Such hopelessness as I saw from Alex that day should not be known by any living, breathing thing, I determined, let alone a child not yet out of grade school. Alex was a boy with scars that needed to be healed and thick memories that had to be gradually reduced until they seemed as if they were of another life.

The next week, I took him out to lunch, away from the kids at the community center. He remained aloof, speaking with shrugs and in whines, and eating quickly, as if he wanted to get the chore over with. He never thanked me, although he waved and managed a smile when he said goodbye.

The week after that we went on a bus trip to Yankee Stadium with the group from Big Brothers. We sat in the front and he looked out the window and I looked out the windshield as the bus rattled along the Grand Central Parkway. I glanced around once, smiling at Bryan and another counselor beside us, both of whom had been observing us peripherally. The others, it seemed, got along fine and apparently had known each other for some time. They joked in the way friends do when they have shared an experience, speaking obtusely as if in code, in the lingo of an exclusive club. The men teased a man named Marshall about his use of a golf cart and the children kept repeating the phrase, “Watch the finger.” As we entered the Bronx through the Triboro Bridge, I removed a pen from my jacket, opened a notebook I had brought to score the baseball game, and asked Alex if he wanted to play Hangman. He nodded enthusiastically and proceeded to win the first game. When I told him how smart he was, he was very pleased and his blue eyes even gleamed with life as the pearls of a shell do. However, Alex couldn’t figure out the second word I gave him, and he abruptly called it quits and returned to staring out the window as the stadium approached.

We sat with the others in the rightfield bleachers and I bought him a hot dog, a Coke, and a ice cream bar before the third inning was through. In the fifth inning, I made a futile attempt to teach him how to score the game like an official does. He became fed up and angry when he couldn’t remember that the shortstop was 6 on the scorecard and the third baseman 5. I told him it was an easy mistake, because on the field it does seem like it should be the other way around. Also, he didn’t understand why a player could move up a base on a flyball out and why pitchers kept throwing to the first baseman all the time. It frustrated him, being so confused by a game so many others his age seemed to understand without effort. I told him he had legitimate questions and it was good he was curious enough to ask, but he again appeared bothered by my presence and, to be honest, I was discouraged.

“You’re making a difference, Sam,” Bryan said when I admitted my distress.

“Am I?”

“Yes!” He went on to give examples of my influence and did so emphatically. Alex’s teachers said he was less temperamental at school in the days after the baseball game and the fact that he was participating in anything was a leap. He even bragged about how I bought him a souvenir baseball. “You’re spoiling him a little,” Bryan said, “and he needs that. He needs to feel like he’s worth the time.”

I exhaled and ran a hand through my hair and said okay. Bryan had convinced me to continue. Sometimes, in those early months, I regretted it. Alex was extremely misanthropic and I am no social savant, nor an athlete, so we sat in corners, with him pouting and me wearing a mask of a smile, and we left events early, after finishing last in the three-legged race or the potato sack relay. I wondered if Alex didn’t need someone more like himself, a typically American Big Brother, and there are occasions when I still wonder such things. Alex has never been a confident boy, although he has gotten much better. He is large and not terribly cute, although he’s still a boy and good looks are sometimes an attribute one grows into. There is a sweetness to Alex, in his innocence and his unabashed craving for love. In fact, he was the one who advanced our relationship beyond four or five hours a week.

When I informed him I was living alone because Amrita, my wife, had left and moved closer to her family in California, he began to call daily. “Sam,” he said, “anytime you want to do something, you know, outside of Big Brothers, I could make myself available.” I smiled and felt a great sense of reward and happiness, and suggested we visit the museum that weekend, the second Saturday in June.

That was the first big step for us. After a few more months of stepping gingerly, I told Alex I wanted to adopt him. He said he didn’t believe me. (Actually, he said he would believe it when he saw it.) As the process began and as the social workers asked him often if he wanted to be my son, he started to see I was serious and took a moment one day, over milkshakes at a McDonald’s, to inform me that I didn’t know what I was doing.

“I don’t think you can be my father.” He kept sucking on his straw after he was finished his shake, causing a wheezing sound that reminded me of hunger. “Fathers are supposed to love their sons, you know.”
I reached for his arm, clenching it as if I wanted to squeeze out poison, and said, “I love you very much, Alex.” He ducked his chin to his chest, and shook his head. “I do, Alex. I do,” I said, as families of three and four past with Happy Meals on their trays, and smiles and features that said they were the same, that they belonged to each other by nature’s decree. “I love you very much, and I want you to be my son.”
No part of him moved, other than the trickle of tears he had begun to shed.

“Do you understand?” I asked, and he nodded, moving his head in a taut motion that seemed a struggle.
The adoption was not easy, although I was told it was less difficult than most. The court wasn’t keen on handing Alex over to a person not of his background, with no parental experience and with a recently broken home. I managed to show that Amrita—a good woman who never took to her arranged marriage—had made an amicable split with me, and that I had the means to support him because of my practice as a tax accountant, which also allowed me to work at home. The testimony of Bryan at Big Brothers was a great help, as were recent laws that have made it easier for older children to be placed into homes that may be considered unconventional, but are stable. Stability, it was wisely determined, is what children most need, and if they don’t have two parents of the same sex and color to provide it, the system now allows them alternatives. I am an alternative. As such, I was put through several background checks before Alex was allowed to temporarily stay in my home. After those processes, an appointed counselor came into our home for two weeks to carefully observe us—especially me.

Our conversations were scrutinized. He shouldn’t have been scolded for damaging the VCR because he wasn’t aware of how it worked. He should have been told not to do homework after his bedtime, otherwise he wouldn’t know his limits and Alex was very much a boy in need of limits. On the same point, I was asked why I let him watch so much unsupervised television at night and why I allowed him to eat all of the donuts in one sitting. The time I spent on the phone with clients after Alex came home from school would have to be cut down significantly if I wanted to be an effective parent. I also needed to introduce him to my friends. Alex should see how adults communicate with each other in different situations. When I informed her that I tend to keep to myself, she said I needed to change. Also, I didn’t have enough physical contact with him. Nothing was wrong with a pat on the back, or a mussing of the hair, or an outright hug. In fact, it was necessary.

I knew that, of course, and I was also well aware any touching would be recorded and homed in on while the woman was there. I had decided beforehand that I wouldn’t lay a hand on Alex during the counselor’s stay.
The counselor did have some positive things to say. Most importantly, it was obvious my feelings and intentions for Alex were genuine, as was his affection for me. This home of mine would be stable and fit for any child I wanted to welcome into it, I was pleased to hear. She recommended the adoption, and several months later it was approved.

We celebrated with ice cream and many Coney Island ferris wheel rides. The following day, we finally moved Alex out of the home of his foster parents. It didn’t take long to get the rest of his belongings; we found them waiting for him in a box on the porch of their home. I was angry and rang the bell and knocked on the door several times. I had been there before and understood these people were more concerned with the money they were given for housing Alex than for the boy himself. For some time, I wanted to confront them and I was finally angry enough to do so. No answer came, however, even though lights were on and I could hear the television droning inside.

Alex didn’t say anything. He simply kept his head down and meandered back to the car when it became clear there would be no goodbyes or wishes of good luck.

I don’t know why people are so hard on Alex, so ignorant of his feelings; he can be good company. He is talkative and has many interests. Also, he is very, very bright, but he has been left back a year, several grades ago, and is cognizant of the stigma of that “failure.” To convince those who may doubt his brightness, he has relentlessly pursued knowledge. I find it sweet, possibly because he reminds me of me, when I was young and had just arrived with my family from New Delhi and felt I needed to know all things American to fit in. Besides dinosaurs, Alex, in the time he has been with me, has memorized the names of presidents and generals, capitals of far-off countries, Greek gods and Super Bowl winners, and dinosaurs, everything about dinosaurs. He can’t stop talking about dinosaurs.

We’ve been together for fourteen months and today marked our third annual visit to The American Museum of Natural History, and our second as father and son. Alex is into dinosaurs the way most boys his age are into sports and how I was into American movies when I was young. He rattles off the names of saurs and raptors as if naming accomplished baseball players, and he can even supply statistics, so to speak, for each extinct reptile. Paleontologists have estimated the height, weight, and tendencies of most dinosaurs, and Alex has spent many hours on the Internet searching out these bits of information. Once, I asked why he was so fascinated by this subject and he shrugged and declared loudly, with a hint of conceit, he just was. I could have pressed for a more expressive answer, but I didn’t want him to feel self-conscious for having a healthy interest.

“Bet ya didn’t know that oviraptors had feathers,” he told me several weeks ago.

“You’re right,” I replied, while flipping through the paper. “I didn’t know that.”

“I know you didn’t!” His tone implied I wasn’t as smart as he, but I didn’t point it out. For one thing, I try to keep from always correcting him. I also have found the silent treatment can convey my displeasure to Alex more effectively than yelling.

“Reptiles with feathers!” he continued while I kept reading. “And they couldn’t fly. Just like turkeys. They couldn’t fly.” He put a hand to his chubby cheek and shook his head. “Stupid birds.”
Here, I had to correct him, asking him to please not speak like that.

“Like what?”

“In a denigrating . . . Like you’re putting down the birds.”

“They’re dead birds!”

I tsked in annoyance, then sighed and rattled the paper. I turned the page to a new story and took my eyes off him completely. My mind, though, stayed on Alex. I was curious to see how he would react. First, he sat and slumped, then exhaled loudly. Then he was quiet for a moment, before turning on the TV. I clenched my teeth. He knows I prefer the TV off when I’m reading. He began to flip channels and giggled when he paused on a cartoon or commercial. He glanced over at me and his giggles grew louder, then transformed into obstreperous laughs as he clutched his stomach and doubled over and turned up the volume until I couldn’t concentrate.

I ruffled and rumpled the paper, folded it under my arm and left the room without looking at him. From the kitchen table, I heard his laughter grow more desperate. He is eleven now and he has to learn he can’t get attention this way, or by throwing angry fits, or crying uncontrollably. I continued reading and Alex stayed in the other room matching the volume of the TV with his cackles.

During a commercial, about a half-hour after I got up, he came into the kitchen and asked if he could have a cookie. I said no, because it was too close to dinner for him to be snacking. He whined and said please, and I said no. He huffed and collapsed next to me with another loud sigh. From the periphery of my vision, over the fold of the paper, I saw him glance at me a couple of times. Initially, he didn’t move or speak.

“No cookies,” I told him.

He began to fidget. He crossed his arms, shook his leg, raised his head all the way back, then brought it all the way forward again. These motions were repeated at least twice before he smacked an elbow down on the table and rested his chin in his palm, settling into a sulk. A few minutes later, he lifted his face from his hand and, with a barely audible murmur, broke the silence.

“The name means egg stealer,” he said.

“Hmmm.”

“That’s what an oviraptor is.” He stared at the table. “An egg stealer.”

I ruffled the paper, folded it carefully, and set it down, pressing my elbow on top of it. I turned to him and asked, “Is that right?”

Alex smiled and said yes, politely, and told me a great many more facts about dinosaurs, some of which I didn’t know, most of which I had forgotten or apparently needed brushing up on. At the end of his dissertation, he became so excited that he blurted, “I can’t wait to go back to the museum. When can we go, Sam?”

“We can go any time you want.” I smiled and touched his hand and rubbed his sturdy shoulder as I got up to fix him dinner. “Just tell me when.”

He thought about this for a while and looked anxious, almost as if he was fighting to suppress an urge to speak his mind. It’s fascinating how children think and prioritize, and how they’re quite capable of making decisions based on need. “I’ll wait until the first Saturday in June,” he said. “It’s our tradition.”

I agreed and in that agreement, Museum Day, which had been only a joke or silly notion to me, was marked permanently in my heart, just as Alex is.

[Wish to read more? Purchase the issue of "Confrontation" in which "Nothing to Be Afraid Of" by Adrian Brijbassi appeared - or send a friendly email requesting the full story!]

Unibroue brewmaster Jerry Vietz and BeerBistro chef Michelle Usprech toast to the release of Grand Reserve 17 to LCBO stores. (Julia Pelish photo)

TORONTO — You don’t know Jerry Vietz, but if you like beer he’s no doubt brought joy into your life. Vietz is the brewmaster of Canada’s most acclaimed craft brewer, Unibroue, which will exhaust you of superlatives if you try to describe what its roster of beers has meant for the international reputation of Canadian brewing.

Since debuting with Blanche de Chambly in 1992, Unibroue has delivered flavourful, Belgian-style ales that stand up to Trappist stalwarts like Huyghe Brewery’s Delirium Tremens and Rochefort’s top brews. It’s also earned all the accolades to live up to its stature as one of the best breweries on the planet. La Fin du Monde, the top-selling Unibroue beer in the U.S., has won five platinum and six gold medals from the Chicago Beverage Tasting Institute’s World Beer Championships, and Unibroue beers have won 152 awards overall.

On Wednesday, Vietz was at BeerBistro in Toronto to unveil perhaps Unibroue’s finest creation, Grand Reserve 17, which in 2010 was named the World’s Best Dark Ale from the annual World Beer Awards in London. About 30 of us were invited to the event that also featured servings of BeerBistro chef Michelle Usprech’s Unibroue-infused cuisine and a special serving of a Christmas ale Vietz first made in his home. It’s not a surprise that Grand Reserve 17 is a delicious beer, what you will raise your eyebrow at, though, is how light it feels on your palate. Rather than a thick, rich ale like Maudite that announces the intent of its 8-percent alcohol content upon the first sip, Grand Reserve 17 is immensely smooth and easy to drink. It costs $9.95 for a 750-millilitre bottle and is available only at LCBO stores.

This beer with 10-percent alcohol content was the first Vietz created when he took over as brewmaster in 2007, after working at the brewery for more than four years. He calls Grand Reserve 17 “my baby.”

“We have a small batch and we cannot go to the world market,” he said, explaining why the brewery has the exclusive deal with the LCBO. It could also be that Unibroue wants to get back into LCBO stores with more beer than Blanche de Chambly, although Vietz avoided commenting on that issue. Earlier this year, the LCBO said poor sales of the pricey Unibroue beers spurred a decision to remove La Fin du Monde, Maudite, Trois Pistoles and others from its supply list.

You could call this the best liquid lunch ever. (Julia Pelish photo)

Beer drinkers in Toronto, of course, can still find some other Unibroue products at The Beer Store and in a number of the fine beer establishments in the city, including BeerBistro, Bar Volo and Ciro’s. Unibroue started as an independent in Lennoxville, Quebec, and then moved to Chambly. It was purchased by the Sleeman Brewing Company in 2004, which was subsequently bought by Japanese mega-brewer Sapporo in 2006. Sapporo has helped push Unibroue into the Far East market and rapid expansion has meant the brewing capacity in Chambly is at peak volume.

“Four years ago, when we worked on the 17, we reached the maximum capacity. That means to put out a short-run beer, you have to create back order on the market for our other beers,” Vietz said. For many years, Unibroue put out a special-edition beer to mark each anniversary, but that stopped after the release of Grand Reserve 17. “It’s a good problem to have, selling more beer.”

As Vietz tells it, Unibroue’s founder, former Rona CEO Andre Dion, was on vacation in Belgium when he witnessed his wife enjoying beer, something she’d never done in Canada. “He said, ‘If women like her will drink this beer, I can sell that in Canada.’”

He returned to Quebec and started the Belgian-inspired brewery that now probably has more fans outside of the country than in it. Great beer bars in the U.S., from the Avenue Pub in New Orleans to Rattle ’n Hum in New York and the Tap House in Seattle, stock copious amounts of Unibroue. When I lived in New York, I would make runs to the border, driving straight up I-87 to Quebec to bring back cases of La Fin du Monde, Don de Dieu, Maudite, Trois Pistoles and Raftman. The beers made me a lot of friends in the States. Their inspired names all with compelling stories (the label on Maudite, or “the Damned,” tells the tale of early Les Habitants lumberjacks who made a deal with the devil in order to get back to Montreal from the Outaouais in time for Christmas) are splendid marketing. Then, there’s the craftsmanship of passionate employees like Vietz, who says he “works for the yeast.”

“I studied pure science for two years, but I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do. I worked in a candy factory for four years when I was younger and that was my first introduction to the food industry. Since then, I studied three years in food science, and that’s where I started to concentrate on fermentation,” he says.

All of Unibroue’s beers, even the light-coloured Blanche de Chambly, are ales. As Vietz explains, the difference between lagers and ales is in the yeast. Ale strains are fermented at a higher temperature than lager strains, which is why Unibroue beers are often kept at room temperature and in a dark place for optimal taste and for aging.

Of Unibroue’s beers, “17 is my favourite,” Vietz admits. “Of our regular portfolio, I’m a big fan of aged beer and Trois Pistoles ages very well.”

As it enters its third decade, you could say the same for Unibroue.

A walk through pristine King's Garden is one reason to visit Copenhagen. (Julia Pelish photo)

The Danes in Copenhagen sure know how to do things right.

They’ve got the best restaurant in the world, some of its finest architecture and a public transportation system any Torontonian would envy. On Tuesday, about 100 of us received the opportunity to enjoy an exceptional evening at the Gardiner Museum, where our province’s own phenom chef, Jamie Kennedy, teamed with one of Copenhagen’s greats, Paul Cunningham, to deliver a meal worthy of an award itself.

Called “Cool Copenhagen,” the night was about filling in guests on the splendour of life in Denmark’s capital while indulging in some top-notch cuisine and first-rate music by A Friend in London, who are in Mississauga recording their debut album and have a growing fan base in Ontario.

Kennedy started things off with a silky soup featuring pumpkin and sunchokes (or Jerusalem artichokes) harvested from his Prince Edward County farm on Monday. A sunchoke chip that crackled with flavour topped the dish, a terrific opener that was followed by the meal’s highlight: the Cunningham-prepared smoked mackerel and parsley salad that was salty and textured. The choice of fish was typically Danish (“we try not to overfish salmon and cod,” the Michelin-starred Cunningham told guests) but the presentation and flavours were distinct. Kennedy’s main course of Roast and Confit of Pork was served with brussels sprouts and beans from his farm. The roast pork was fabulous, with the tenderness of well-marinated duck and juicy flavours. Cunningham finished things with an interesting dessert of goat’s milk sorbet with a herb meringue that featured Chinese medicinal herbs as well as parsley and thyme. It was refreshing and impressively inventive.

“There are definitely differences,” Kennedy said about his way of cooking and Cunningham’s. “Danish cuisine is very traditional. Here, we’re still developing our cuisine. We’re a young country and we have a lot of different cultures. We won’t develop a national cuisine, I don’t think. It will be regional, and that’s because of a lot of factors, including proximity to water, or not, in some cases.”

Danish band A Friend in London are in Ontario recording an album. They're shown here at Mitzi's Sister during Canadian Music Week in March. (Julia Pelish photo)

Cunningham, who owns Michelin-starred The Paul in Copenhagen’s famed Tivoli Gardens, got a taste of Toronto’s often-discussed diversity, telling guests he had the best mackerel he’s ever eaten at Yamamoto, the outstanding Yorkville teppanyaki restaurant.

When asked if the omission of Canada from the World’s 50 Best Restaurants in recent years has caused the culinary community any grief, Kennedy said not at all. “Those things don’t matter. Canadian cooking is getting better all the time and we have so much to offer. There are a lot of exciting things going on in the Canada right now.”

Visit Denmark and Air Canada partnered to host the event, which was held to promote travel to Copenhagen. I visited the city around this time last year. It is impressive for the reasons you would think: clean, efficient, easy to get around, excellent food, vibrant art and absolutely beautiful architecture that’s surrounded by pristine parks and delightful streets that run alongside canalways. Canadians, I think, will love it because it has European charm without the hassles of bigger cities on the continent. Rose peddlers won’t accost you and you’re not likely to be ignored by waiters because you’re not fluent with their language.

Copenhagen is an expensive city, though. Be prepared for some pricey meals and shopping. But as far as getting value for your money, Copenhagen, in most cases, won’t disappoint.

The Stroget in Copenhagen is called the longest shopping boulevard in Europe. (Julia Pelish photo)