The Endgame

Newsletter #125 - The old-fashioned way

Toronto, January 25, 2026

The old-fashioned way

Earlier this month we went on a family holiday to Costa Rica.

Before the Air Canada plane left for San José, a flight attendant made an unusual announcement. “This is an old aircraft,” she said. She paused, and then added, portentously: “Because this aircraft has old technology, we cannot show a safety video on your seatback screens, so watch us at the front of the cabin while we do a live safety demonstration the old-fashioned way.” (The plane was an Airbus 330—tail number C-FDHU—that entered into service in 2010 and was leased by Air Canada from Singapore Airlines. I checked on Flighty, a smartphone app that tells you stuff like this.)

The aircraft rattled and wheezed its way to San José. I thought: My loved ones are in this old-technology tin can, thirty thousand feet up in the air. God help us all! My wife Cynnie saw my discomfort. “You need to calm down,” she said. “Listen,” I told her, “This is an old plane. It has old technology. The flight attendant said so. Why would she tell us that? I think she’s worried. Look at her, she doesn’t seem happy.”

Not our plane

In Costa Rica we stayed at a place we’d been to before, Vista Celestial in Uvita de Osa, Puntarenas Province. The resort is a collection of villas on a mountain side. It’s 1700 feet up a steep and rocky road, four miles from a small town and beach below. To get anywhere at Vista Celestial requires something akin to climbing up or rappelling down a sheer rock face. For my granddaughter Rosie, aged 14, that was as nothing. “Behold, she is as a gazelle, fair and swift;/ her eyes sparkle as the morning dew,/ and her steps glide upon the hills.” (Song of Songs) It was a different story for Rosie’s grandparents, and even for Gabrielle, her mother. “To climb the mountain now/ needs other strength than that/ which once sustained me.” (Dante Alighieri — Purgatorio, Canto I)

The steps

The steps leading up from our villa to the resort dining room were steep. Cynnie and went up and down them slowly and carefully. I used old technology—a cane. I dislike using a cane, a visible symbol of age and decrepitude, marking me as an old codger, but needs must: Non timor, sed prudentia (“Not fear, but prudence”). Getting to the top of the steps was an achievement, but worth it for the view and the food. Getting down, back safely to our villa, was a relief.

Gabrielle and Rosie in the dining room at the top of the steps

This year, as last, we went birdwatching with the knowledgeable and gentle Alex. I added 27 birds to my life list, including the Mealy Amazon, the Laughing Falcon, the Black-hooded Antshrike, and the Tropical Parula. Once again the intricate and interdependent beauty of the rain forest and its inhabitants was overwhelming. How could this resplendence and complexity be an accident? “And I have felt/ A presence that disturbs me with the joy/ Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime/ Of something far more deeply interfused...” (Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey”). In Endgame #55 I wrote about the fine-tuning theory, “the claim that the existence of life depends on the constants found in the standard model of particle physics. Almost any change in those constants, however small, would preclude life. How can numbers that essential and precise be an accident?” This is an argument for a cosmic designer, e.g., God (God is only one of many designer possibilities).

Birding with Alex

When the time came to leave Costa Rica, the time to replace good times with good memories, we returned sorrowfully to San José airport, got back on old-technology C-FDHU, and flew home to a cold and snowy Toronto.

The glory and joy of youth: Rosie on the beach in Costa Rica at sunset

*****

Some reader comments on Endgame #124 (“Emotion recollected in tranquility”)

From Naomi Duguid: “I love the way your memories are of specific sensations. Mine tend mostly to be visual and olfactory. For example, it takes effort to retrieve the feeling of the shoe brush in my hand as I sat on the floor helping my father polish several pairs of shoes, but the smell of the polish is intensely present as soon as the situation comes to mind.” (Naomi Duguid writes the always interesting and eloquent Substack, “Home & Elsewhere”.)

Brent Willock: “Took me back in time to my origins in Montreal, and to similarly detailed recollections of my first home... I think of the line from Blueberry Hill: ‘You’re part of me still.’”

Heather Chisvin: “Emotion recollected in tranquility is universal, so true for all of us at this stage in our lives. [I] long for those sweet, safe moments of my childhood.”

From the writer and broadcaster Karin Wells: “Sarah Binks, ergo Paul Heibert, are not entirely forgotten. Walter Unger, producer of Arts National, the daily CBC radio arts show I hosted into the early 80s, was very fond of Sarah Binks. There wasn’t a great deal of prairie satire, if you recall. When Eric Donkin brought his one man show to Ottawa ‘The Wonderful World of Sara Binks,’ we were only beginning to put one-man Canadiana on stage as well, we were much pleased. As I recall it was Donkin in drag which added another layer to things—not Rue Paul sequins and brocade, rather tweeds and stout shoes. Good actor, good material.” (Karin Wells’ latest book is “Women Who Woke Up the Law: Inside the Cases that Changed Womens Rights in Canada.”)

Wayne Nylin writes: “I recall one summer school at University of Manitoba, very early 60’s before he retired, and some of us were in the dining hall eating and along came Prof. Hiebert, who entertained us with other topics but I always enjoy cracking open my ancient copy of Sarah Binks for a good chuckle more than 6 decades after that. I wished sometimes I had been taking chemistry from him.”

And, as usual, the last word goes to Bob Rae: “Very good indeed. No smart-ass comments from me. Just good.”

*****

A well-known American author once told me “the only thing that sells books is word-of-mouth.” All Remaining Passengers continues to have modest but consistent word-of-mouth sales, mostly online, but also in some independent bookstores, notably Munro’s Books in Victoria, B.C., Ben McNally Books in Toronto, and Salt-Water Ballad Books in Port Medway, Nova Scotia. My thanks to past and future purchasers and readers.