9. Seven Years in Tibet

Though this book is a favourite of mine, this story is about the friend, Don Fleming, who gave me the book.

In 1995, Don and I worked together in at the department of Municipal Affairs (affectionately known as Miscellaneous Despairs) trying to educate Albertans about property taxes, market-value assessment and other issues they should care about but don't. That summer I was reading books about mountaineering, of which Seven Years in Tibet was one.

Over lunch one day I was relating some parts of Heinrich Harrer's escape from a POW camp in India to Don, and insisted that as soon as I was done he had to read the book. He insisted, just as forcefully, that as soon as I was done my book I had to read Endurance, the story of Ernest Shackleton's failed Trans-Antarctic expedition. Shackleton, he explained, got his entire party of 28 men lost in the Antarctic for two years and didn't lose a single person. "Now that's leadership."

Rather than trying to explain Don Fleming--I'd get it only half right--let me tell you about the things he does: 1) after a lunch meeting, he picks up all the uneaten sandwiches and takes them to the local homeless shelter; 2) he chases solar eclipses (including solo treks to Mongolia and Zimbabwe); 3) he eats lunch at the cheapest Asian restaurants in the worst parts of town and seems to know all the staff; 4) he runs for public office because his employer won't give him any time off to go to India. He's sort of crazy and eccentric and compassionate and anti-authoritarian all in one. Plus he can quote Bob Dylan lyrics on a dime.

Anyway, it's the summer of 1995, and by happy coincidence I discover that Heinrich Harrer is speaking at the Banff Festival of Mountain Films the coming fall. I asked a couple of friends if they want to go, and arrangements were quickly made. Don, on the other hand, wouldn't commit. He wasn't sure, he'd make it if he could.

So I hung around Banff for a weekend with a good friend, Dick, and JJ, his then-girlfriend. JJ had been an artist in residence at the Banff Centre, so she toured us through the studios and galleries. After lunch one day we headed down to the local bookstore for Harrer's only book signing of the weekend. Except that I'd made a mistake--the signing wasn't at the bookstore in downtown Banff it was at the book fair on the Banff Centre campus. Dick, JJ and I hopped back in the car and rushed to the book fair. The queue was a hundred people long, and with five minutes left in the signing, there was no chance of us making it to the front.

Don turned up that evening, just before Harrer's lecture and slide show, and we chatted in the theatre lobby. I recounted the story of book signing error, we talked about the previous night's films, and made plans to go for a drink after the show.

Harrer's show was excellent (this was before the movie and the Nazi controversy that has tainted his remarkable story). He was a diminutive man, bald with twin plumes of white hair rising from the sides of his head, but he was gracious and entertaining on stage.

Afterwards, Dick and I head over to a bar in Banff. Eventually Don shows up, and slides a book across the table to me.

"What's this?"

"It's for you," he says.

It's Seven Years in Tibet, the new paperback edition. "I've already got it," I say.

"No, he signed it. I chased him down just before he got on his bus. He wasn't signing any more books, but I told him it was for a friend."

I open the cover and sure enough there's the inscription, part of it in Tibetan. (I'd tell you what it says, but I've forgotten. It's an incidental detail anyway.)

"Don, I can't take this." I try to give the book back to him but he refuses.

"Sure you can. It's nothing. It's a book."

And he was right.