Reviews for Summer tours by the Canadian Pacific Railway

The average rating for Summer tours by the Canadian Pacific Railway based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-03-29 00:00:00 Gloria Seborg Michael Davidson's The World, the Flesh, and Myself (TWTFAM) is a conversational, introspective, and honest autobiography of a gay British journalist and layabout who travelled around the Eastern hemisphere during the first half of the 20th century. "I wasn't out for medals'I prayed only for a comfortable life." However, like Wilde and Isherwood, Davidson was an unapologetic admirer of adolescent and young men and wrote longingly about the various adventures he shared with his loves and friends at home in Guernsey, London, Weimar Berlin, and other turbulent areas. TWTFAM is far from a salacious read. "I've always considered that most of the sexual actions one's nature drives one unreasonably to perform are too silly for words." As a lover of social history, his story offered me an important street-level glimpse of how people lived nearly a century ago. He lived in Britain when "buggery" was resoundingly prosecuted, but the poor in London languished under bridges and went hungry. He lived in Algiers, Morocco, Cyprus, Israel, and Malaysia at times when their people were about to go to war or otherwise violently cast aside that "sad clinging… vestige of imperial grandeur," that was European colonialism. A lack of concern for finances permeated Davidson's life. He enjoyed an esteemed, upper-middle class background. But although his mother financed many of his first ventures (South Africa, Berlin, and Mediterranean Africa), she did so at the expense of his share of the family's estate. Consequently, when his mother died, Davidson had no income. "This incurably louche improbity of mine over money, this blind spot in my nature, is, I think, the gravest of all my turpitudes'if only because, when one borrows from one's friends one loses them." Nearly a pauper, Davidson resorted to teaching English to foreign folks and serving as a newspaper correspondent. Because news occurs where stuff happens, as correspondent Davidson ventured to places almost always at the cusp of revolt and war. Davidson offers valuable, thought-provoking insights for today's geo-politico neophyte: "I knew that terrorism can never be defeated by counter-terror: only by understanding and removing the reasons for that terror…" Throughout, Davidson attributes his "natural attraction" to other males to a number of things ' a primary and secondary school "arrested adolescence," a lack of any real emotional bond with a distant, lost-to-drink father, and a fearful endearment to a mother with high expectations. Like me, some gay guys know share similar life experiences. In his boyhood, Davidson, "already knew instinctively that for me the female'apart from the wholly incomparable state of mother and sister'was only seemly in an aunt-like shape, or in some totally impersonal role like the vicar's wife's." Compliments of the Labouchere Amendment, Davidson lived in a Britain where "gross indecency" between guys was absolutely illegal. Just before World War II, Davidson was sentenced to 6 months hard labor for the attempted infraction of buggery. "I should like to have heard that magistrate's juridical explanation of his sending me to Brixton; charged as I was, his powers were limited by the tiny law of 'insulting behavior'. I suppose, though, his private purpose was to inflict, by the device of the 'report', what extra-legal punishment he could manage'not for something I had done but for what I was." While the cops and judge made fun of him, his largest concern was how to hide the news of the affair from his mother. In Davidson's time, a guy who liked other guys had little choice but to embrace what we call today the 'hookup culture.' Davidson writes, "I've often felt, during the many harrowing partings of my life, that one has no right to love when one knows that circumstances must brutally cut it short; by loving and being loved, one is storing up pain." When your relationship is only recognized as a criminal act, there is nothing to ground you with the person you may love. Sex becomes the means and the end. I believe the resulting explosion of HIV/AIDS underscores the harm that so-called "morality laws" cause rather than prevent. Davidson concludes: "I've done nothing to be proud of: much less than most people, who have lots to be proud of'their families, the good work they do, their neat lawns, their bank balances, the world's esteem." This is simply not true: Davidson should have been proud of his autobiography, as should his gay contemporaries who wrote about their experiences. Gay guys today should indeed be proud of them, for their brave words subsequently fueled a movement to recognize that some of us are 'that way.' Without these heroes, I would not be able to call today, in the eyes of the law, the love of my life my husband.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-08-12 00:00:00 Donald Streutker A curious history of gay life from the 1920's onwards, I love the details, its not all about sex but life and living and the struggles. This guy though was a very much a happy go lucky type person and everything seems to be an eye opener to him but there is sadness, tragedy, alot of laughs and a whole lot of drinking.