I spent a lot of time in a car with Pa.

Parents often chauffeur their kids around, but this was especially true in our case – for both our parents – but in particular for me, when I first started out at Carleton U, in 1998.  The Hemmingford-Ottawa commute was easily a six hour round trip – but Pa did it, dropping me off at the campus residences – and later, at my first apartment (which he helped me locate and furnish).

In time I started taking Via Rail (to Montreal) and then the Voyageur (to Kirkland) – and there he collected me and dropped me off as well.

Those drives were long too – but the ones to Ottawa in the early days were the longest, and some of the most memorable.  I occasionally drove him nuts with my propensity to listen to a single song or track on loop for half the drive.  His colorful, typically Swiss-German way expressing his exhaustion with the single song or track I’d selected doesn’t really translate into English – but suffice it to say the word ‘diarrhea’ featured prominently.

We talked a lot on those drives.  About a lot of things.

I have forgotten more of those conversations than I remember, but it was some legitimate father-son time, on the road.  There were a number of deep, heavy discussions on those drives.  Especially after a particular trip in early spring of 1999.

It was toward the end of my first year at Carleton U – I had already started taking ViaRail – but on this occasion Pa had come to collect me directly from Ottawa.  And as it happened, it was the first of April.

Now in my youth, I had always found great fun in the “April Fools” tradition.  And people who knew me had, to an extent, gotten wise.  This made it more and more difficult to pull a good one off.  But on this occasion, timing, circumstance and inspiration came together in a way too good for me to pass up.

That morning, my roommate at the dorm – for whom I had little fondness – had been in a mild panic while I was packing for my trip home.  He had been made to understand a – by one of the girls he had been seeing that semester – that she thought she might be pregnant.  And he was quite alarmed by the news (as it turned out, she was not, but that’s neither here nor there).

But his dilemma at the time inspired an idea.  Determined to pull off an epic April Fools prank – I determined to lift his story wholesale, and make it my own.

Pa picked me up and I carefully play-acted the part of someone suppressing anxiety for the first few minutes of the drive.  As I worked up to springing the prank, I started having some apprehension – I really wasn’t sure how strongly he’d react – but the timing and the story all coming together was just too good to pass up.  And indeed – there was no topping the result – to this day I have never planned or played another April Fools prank.

When I finally dropped the bomb, his reaction was incredible.

Absolute, unflappable calm.

I had expected at minimum some agitation or annoyance – a lecture – something negative.  Possibly even outright anger.  But not a bit of it.

There was no upset, no annoyance.  Just a pause.  After which he calmly started asking questions and proposing courses of action.

I kept him going for about two kilometers before I finally could no longer keep a straight face and called the prank out for what it was – and we both had a good laugh.  I will never forget the atmosphere in the car for the rest of that drive.

A lot of fathers tell their sons “you know, you can tell me anything”.  But I learned that day, that – with my father – I really actually could.

And we had many more great conversations on later trips.

And many, many more in the years that followed.

Growing up in Switzerland during the height of the Cold War, Pa – like every other fit, young Swiss man – was called for reserve military service.  I remember his occasional stories about it.  He made no secret of the fact he’d hated it - but he also admitted it was a useful thing for a young man to experience.

Tales of Pa’s military service – and his obvious veneration of the WW1 heirlooms inherited from his own grandfather – significantly informed my own decision to enlist in the Canadian Reserve.  And there were many such tales – from the ones about the brawny farm boy who once ended up carrying three rucksacks and two rifles to help his flagging comrades, to several featuring the unusually short, perpetually angry Lieutenant who was Pa’s chief nemesis in the service.

The one I remember best – probably because it was his favorite and he told it most often – was of a particular occasion on which his unit was engaged in a firing range exercise.  Pa was a “mitrailleur” – part of a three-man crew for a light machinegun – and on this occasion, several such teams were firing across a small valley, learning to shoot distant targets via signal observers.  The guns would fire a few bursts, the observers would see where the rounds hit, relay adjustments, and so on – until the gunners were on target.

However, at one point Pa saw that the observers had miscalculated – the guns were all still shooting too low when the command was given to fire for effect.  Never being one to blindly follow instructions – he took a moment to further elevate his aim, then fired using his own judgement.  The short delay in shooting, however, drew the attention of the afore-mentioned irritable Lieutenant, who quickly came over to berate the gun team.

This vivid berating drew the attention of a visiting Colonel – a much more senior officer – who asked the Lieutenant what the problem was.  The Lieutenant replied that Private Frei’s team had clearly not followed the signalers' direction, since they were firing at a different angle, and Private Frei clearly required discipline.

The Colonel looked across the valley at the targets, then calmly replied that perhaps this was so – but that Private Frei was also the only gun in the whole line actually hitting his target.

The Lieutenant was left speechless – and Private Frei had won not only vindication – but also a great anecdote.

I remember how he could never prevent a mischievous smirk creeping onto his face every time he told that one.  Maybe he didn’t really try.

Pa never was one to let someone else's mistake stop him from hitting his mark.