Food for Thought

iUniverse, Inc.

Chapter One

Hello, from the east coast of Canada in beautiful Nova Scotia. I am Richard Todd Canton, at least that's what my mother named me. Up until I was five years old, I was Richie. Beginning school that year friends started calling me Todd and the name stuck. At six pounds, I was born on a snowy December morning, the fifth of seven natural children born to Bert and Vivian Canton. That was Amherst Nova Scotia. We lived on Russell Street in a house our father built and our mother turned into a home.

As a boy I suffered a great emotional blow in the death of my father. It left me lost to say the very least. Naturally I turned to my mother for comfort and grew to admire her greatly. As a teen, I later found true love in the arms of the only woman I will ever care for, Sherry Benjamin. She was able to see inside of me and knew when to rein me in and when to let me run. Thank God she came along when she did.

Life is a struggle at the best of times. Think about it, weren't we put on this earth to climb one mountain after the other? It all starts with birth. We have had to fight our way out of our mother's body, fight for your first breath of air. Even learning how to walk is a struggle. Toss in a disease or two, learning to ride a bike, entering relationships, and life in general, it really is really one hurdle after another. Having said that, it always surprises me how whiny people can be when forced to face life and all it has to offer.

I was told as a child that a man in India might face a monsoon that will literally wipe out his home and family and yet he seems to pick up and move on. In this country, a man might break up with his wife or lose his job and bam!, he jumps off a roof. Coping mechanisms don't seem to be in place when needed most. So, what to do? Give up? Of course not. A man should think about living, not concentrate on dying. After all, it is the last thing you will ever do. I have a strong desire to live, to never stop trying and honestly, I fear death. It took my father at an early age and left us all to mourn. I am not ready to go anytime soon so I keep trudging along, making the most of situations and if nothing else, I learn from them.

In living one's life, you really have to make the best of some very bad situations. You have to learn that the sun is not going to shine everyday and despite any dark clouds and the subsequent rain that ensues, you really can weather any storm, so do it! The sun will come up eventually and when it does, you might appreciate it all the more. Ok then.

Don't be discouraged if you try something and fail. Do be discouraged if you try the same thing over and over and you continually fail, then you are doing it wrong. A person should learn from their mistakes and then hopefully somewhere along the line, sensibility will set in and realization as well. On the other hand, don't let any kind of failure keep you from trying new things. Wow, to hear me tell it I sound like a hell of a guy.

If the truth be known, I certainly have made my share of mistakes. It seems that I was a misfit in school, both socially and academically. I truly fit in no where. So I had to realize that I was on my own, that there were few others out there the same as me and to `just keep going', there really are better days ahead'. And as it turns out, there were.

So I take all of my misfortunes that I struggled with as a child and do my best to turn them into something positive. In that area of my life, I am successful. So, one might ask, did you learn so much that you can qualify writing an inspirational book about life? Yes! I truly believe I have something to offer the world.

Now, in doing so, I can offer sound advice with some very delicate situations but if you are not willing to heed what is offered, what good does it all do? Every one of us has sought out advice and because we did not like what was told to us, passed it off. Following instructions is not a favourite of most people in crisis. Think about it. How many times has someone told you to settle down when you are upset? Do you? Really, give them an adequate amount of time to vent and then try to talk to them. If they are still unreachable, then perhaps they are the type that enjoys life most when they are the most miserable. Hey, it happens.

Some people enjoy poor health, other are constantly crying woe and somewhere in between, are the rest of us. The average intelligent person suffers from a sore back until they see someone in a wheelchair and then without thinking about it, straighten up. I know I do. It is the same with just about anything. Adopt a philosophy for life. I have and I must tell you that it works. Life is a banquet, life is a celebration.

So what if I were here talking about food and life. Would you understand where I was coming from? Growing up in the food business, I certainly was quick to realize how important food is and just how important life is. To me there is not much difference between the two. I need food to live and I tend to live for food. I possess certain philosophies where life is concerned and they are really comparable with food. Life can easily be compared to a fresh egg. If you treat it with care, and let it live up to its potential there is no telling what could happen. It could possibly end up in a souffle for the future King of England, but if you are not careful with it or you abuse it, then you have nothing more than a great big mess on your hands, that no matter how you try you cannot put back together. Ask Humpty Dumpty!

There would not be much point in moving forward if I did not at least introduce you to my mother, our mother. Our mother Vivian Gillis was born to an unwed mother and given up to her father's family in Springhill. A coal mining community and a coal mining family. Her father urged her not to marry a coal miner as the future is nearly always filled with a sick husband, resulting in an early demise on his part and a lonely `rest of your life' for the widow. She met and married my father in Amherst and they began a life together.

My father was one of twelve children raised on a farm on Russell Road which stretched out onto the rich and vast marshes near the New Brunswick/Nova Scotia border. This fertile land was good for farming and that's exactly what it was used for. A rural life was comfortable for a large farming family. A century before, the Acadian settlers dyked the land to keep the water back and to allow the richness of this soil to be their bread and butter, so to speak. Wise choice.

Over time and with progress things changed. After facing WW1, the Great Depression and then WW2, and all they had to offer, things in our little town changed. Over the course of the years factories and businesses had moved into Amherst, the Enamel and Heating Aircraft factory, the Foundry, Bata Shoes, and with them a healthy post war life was afforded by all. By the time the war was over, rezoning caused it to become a residential area now known as Russell Street.

I have always said that my father built our house but it was our mother who filled it with life, laughter and love. She, our mother, was the centre of our family and was all we lived for. So with a house so full, our mother found her true calling. She was needed. At forty-three years of age she suffered a terrible blow in the death of our father. We all suffered, together. That situation brought us...