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March 25, 2011
Memoir brings fond memories
Nathan Cannon recently published the second volume of his autobiography at age 98.
BASYA LAYE
It was a case of simple motivation that led 99-year-old Dr. Nathan Cannon to publish not one, but two volumes of memoirs in the last 15 years. The second volume, Growing Up Jewish in a Small Town, was completed late last year and covers his early life up until his 1944 marriage in just under 100 pages. The first volume, I Remember, was published 15 years ago, when Cannon was in his early 80s, and it constituted his first attempt at writing. Together, the books cover nearly 100 years and life on two continents.
Self-publishing can be an extensive undertaking and Cannon’s two volumes are detailed and confident accounts. Having been involved with the Jewish Genealogical Society of British Columbia, Cannon may have been familiar with the self-published memoir format, but these projects were undertaken by his own inspiration and he’s proud of the result.
“I just thought I’d like to write it,” Cannon matter-of-factly told the Independent in an interview at his home at the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg (of Baltimore) Residence, where he has lived for the past five years. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s his newest volume that covers memories from his very early life, starting from when he was two and three years old. These memories “just flash into my mind,” he said. “I can’t think of what happened yesterday, but what happened 90 years ago, it just comes back…. It reminded me of things so far back. I’m a very nostalgic person. And I love the city I was born in so much.”
Cannon was born in 1911, in Durham, northeastern England, to a religious Jewish family in a decidedly non-Jewish city. Growing Up Jewish pays particular attention to how Cannon and his family navigated the dynamics and challenges of living Jewishly in this environment, which Cannon recalls as a defining feature of his young life. He details how these elements shaped his young adulthood, when he was finally began to investigate Judaism for himself.
“Growing up Jewish in a small town was not too difficult for me. I had Jewish and non-Jewish friends,” he writes in Growing Up Jewish. “Religion was never an issue. As I mentioned previously, there was no doubt about my ‘Jewishness’ and I had been taught how to behave in a Jewish manner, that was to keep the laws as written in the Torah, as well as carrying out other acts, which I much later learned, were not mentioned in the Torah, but were traditional. I have already mentioned some of them, such as shlogging Kappores and performing Tashlich.”
Cannon writes with a great deal of affection for the push and pull of Judaism in his youth and reminisces openly about several rebellious episodes in his younger days, including an engaging account of the first time he didn't observe Shavuot, in order to play an important game with his soccer team, an episode he recounted in the interview with a good deal of humor. “I was chosen for the team and I argued and argued and argued. With my mother’s help, [my father] gave in. ‘It’s just a game, it’s not work,’ she convinced him. Actually, they came and watched me afterwards! I couldn’t understand it. I was surprised.”
When Cannon left home, he had to start making decisions for himself, including figuring out what kind of an adult Jewish life he wanted to lead. “I think, when I was in Crook, during the war, I was the only Jewish person in the town. Quite a lot of them knew I was Jewish and perhaps talked among themselves, but it never affected me. They always had complete respect,” he recalled. In fact, he had very little consciousness around antisemitism as a child. “I was called things, ‘dirty Jew’ and all that, or [asked] ‘Who killed Christ?’ I had no idea, of course, because I didn’t know I was Jewish – I thought everyone was Jewish, until I went to school.”
As a writer and in person, Cannon is nostalgic and bright, cheerfully and honestly recounting the various challenges and the vast changes that he has witnessed in his nearly 100 years. He describes advances in technology and living conditions, life during the Depression, the Second World War, changes in Jewish identity and the overwhelming progress that has been made in the field of medicine since he began his practice.
Cannon said he had an inkling early on that he would become a doctor, though the actual plan to attend medical school didn’t come together for several years. “I think I mentioned in the book that I saw this Jewish doctor when I was a kid, six or seven years old, driving a car on Shabbos,” he remembered. It was this flouting of Jewish law that made Cannon take notice. During the war, Cannon served as a medical practitioner and then set up his own medical practice as he and his wife, Lyn, were beginning their family.
One of the most engaging aspects of Cannon’s memoirs is the appreciation and wonder he expresses in relation to his family, his achievements and the natural world around him. One episode, in a chapter covering the first year of his marriage, occurred as he was on his way, by car, to Newscastle.
“I had seen a rainbow in the distance. A few minutes later, I traveled through the ‘end’ of that rainbow. It was an amazing experience. It was so unexpected. I was traveling through a mist of tiny multi-colored particles. Somehow I felt wonderful, as though I was in a different world. I cannot find words to express the feeling. To me, it was unique, since I hadn’t heard of anybody who had reached the ‘end’ of a rainbow, and yet, as I discovered, it does end somewhere, and, on that day, it was on the road to Newcastle.”
Another anecdote that is affectionately recounted at the end of Growing Up Jewish is a life-changing bit of interference from a usual suspect – his mother. After leaving home to pursue his studies, Cannon became romantically involved with non-Jewish women and his mother duly took note.
“She interfered,” Cannon affirmed. “I didn’t mind. She could interfere as much as she liked…. When I was invited to come back home for the winter holidays … I was met by a mother and the daughter, good-looking daughter, actually.” Cannon wasn’t interested at first, but after spending a couple of days with her, he said, “I took her out and I began to see something quite interesting. She was quite nice. It was nice to be with a Jewish girl again, it’s just different.”
He liked how natural he could be with Lyn, his future wife. “I could talk,” he said. “I could say anything I liked and she had a sense of humor. You could tell she had a sense of humor, not because of what I said, I have quite a good sense of humor, but it was the way she laughed at it…. I quite liked her. I saw her the following day. I took her out, very nice. So, that’s the girl…. I think it was two weeks later … I actually fell in love.” By August of that same year, Lyn had become his wife.
“We were married 46 years,” he said. He lovingly describes his relationship with Lyn in I Remember: “Lyn and I had a happy life together – of course, we had our arguments like every other married couple, but they were soon settled. They must have been very minor, since I can’t remember the cause of any of them. Anyway, we were compatible – it was a case of ‘give and take,’ and that’s what makes a happy marriage.”
The Cannons relocated to Vancouver in 1978, following their two girls, Gloria, who today lives in Kelowna, and Pauline, who now lives in Richmond. Cannon is also the proud grandfather of four and great-grandfather to seven.
Upon arriving in Vancouver, Cannon and his wife found the local Jewish community to be somewhat less friendly than the one they had left in England, though they persevered and eventually became active members of Schara Tzedeck Synagogue and, between them, B’nai B’rith, Haro Park Lodge, Canadian Friends of Amal and Hadassah-WIZO, among other organizations.
“When I first came here, I went to the Schara Tzedeck and I went to an Oneg Shabbat, Motzei Shabbos. I thought I’d go with my wife. We didn’t know anybody but we thought we’d sit at a table and someone would join us. We sat at a table; the next table, people started to congregate and nobody joined us. So, we got up, wished them gut vacht [good week] and went and joined the others. I thought: that’s it! Six months, I didn’t go anywhere. Then I had a yahrzeit so I went to shul; that was just for my father. I went to shul and I met the old Mr. Rosenthal … we started talking and he said, ‘Why don’t you come to shul?’ I told him what happened and said, ‘I went to this melavah malkah and nobody joined us.’ He said, ‘Come to shul.’ So, I went to shul. I’d already joined, actually. I went to shul and I became a regular attender.”
Writing came naturally to Cannon, and he enjoyed the process. “I just sit down [to write],” he said. “I had to add, now and again, [to] the chapters. I would go back and add things. It took me almost a year, I think. I enjoyed everything. I enjoyed the memories coming back.”
Cannon said he would recommend that others write their own memoirs and he enjoyed the experience so much that he’s considering writing more, if his health permits. After a lifetime of saving mementoes and papers, Cannon is thinking about compiling the various speeches he’s made over the years into a volume.
Cannon ends I Remember by acknowledging his uncanny ability to recall the details of his long and accomplished life. “I do have memories and, not having kept a diary (I sometimes wish that I had), I have had to rely on these memories, so that, at times, I can relive those happy moments of my life, as well as reflect on the sad ones. It will always be a case of I Remember.”
A copy of Growing Up Jewish in a Small Town is available at the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library.
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