When fishing is the best medicine

My friend Paul Quarrington and I began this spring much the same way we have for the past several years: talking about when and where to get out fishing together. Last year, we managed to mesh our schedules a couple of times, escaping to the Ganaraska, a fine southern Ontario river. This spring, Paul was sick, laid up with some bothersome breathing problems, so our plans were delayed more than usual.

As it turns out, things are worse than first thought, as anyone who read yesterday’s Toronto Star or today’s Globe and Mail now knows—Paul has been diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer. No mere Outdoor Canada field editor, Paul is well known within Toronto arts circles as an award-winning novelist (Whale Music, King Leary, Galveston and The Ravine, among many other works), screenwriter and musician (he sings and plays guitar for the band Porkbelly Futures), hence the attention from the big local dailies.

Had the mainstream media not outed Paul’s condition, I doubt you’d be reading about it in this blog; it’s Paul’s news to tell, to whom he wants to tell it, and when. But here we are, and as you might imagine, talk of wetting a line together suddenly gathered a bit more urgency (at least in my mind; Paul, on the other hand, has seemed remarkably sanguine about his diagnosis).

All of this is to say that Paul and I, along with another one of my fishing buddies, Naoto Aoki, hit the barbless waters of the Grand River near Fergus today. For six and a half hours it was all about the fish. And some friends sharing a few laughs. Cancer be damned.