The Accidental Pilgrim : The Decision to walk the Camino Frances
Where does a hike or pilgrimage begin? Is it when you step onto the trail? Is it when you purchase your airline or railway tickets? Is making the final choice to go? Or is it a decision woven in parts and pieces throughout your lifetime that slowly put you on the path?
I can say with all honesty that before my best friend asked, I had never really thought of long distance hiking. Sure I had trekked 100 and 200 km stretches of the Bruce Trail, and hiked along 50 km pathways in Algonquin Park or walked in amazing places such as Banff National Park, However, the fact was that deep down I had never even considered thru hiking or something as long as the Camino de Santiago. If the truth was to be told, until that point I had never even heard of it and knew almost nothing about the country of Spain, or the Way of St. James. Indeed, (if a second truth had to be told) I am not even particularly “religious”. Perhaps I say a quick prayer during important exams, or before a tense job interview, but I am not the sort of person who devoutly attends church week in and week out. So how did I end up deciding to become a pilgrim on the Way of Saint James trekking from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port France across Spain to Santiago de Compostella?
Was the choice made for me as a Waldorf student spending more time in the forest and on pathways than in a classroom? Was the route set as a graduate student spending six years working and living in Ontario’s provincial parks studying migratory birds? Maybe the decision had already been made as I strove to help raise a younger relative struggling with video game addictions by spending more and more time outdoors and teaching him to camp? Or perhaps my feet were set on the path when two family friends senselessly passed away days after retiring?
Ultimately, I am not sure where or when the seed was planted. I only know when the final decision was made – it happened the day my best friend came to me with nothing left and on the edge of suicide asking if I could help him. He asked me one question – “would you follow me to the end of the world?”
And so, in many ways, I could say that I never directly chose this path, it was chosen for me. I know what we are all told over and over again that "we all find our way onto the Camino" and that "we cannot be forced on it". But really, I agreed to walk across Spain when my friend asked me to walk with him to make sense of some of the events of the past year and to help him put his life back in order. In other words I became an accidental pilgrim.
To make sense of it all, I'll try to describe the past couple of years (from 2013 to 2016) as clearly as possible. My best friend is one of those rumoured perpetual students. The sort you hear about in university or college, the sort who have a few degrees, are always curious, but never seem to move beyond the academic world. I had met him years ago when we were both students at University and we have known each other since while he moved through undergraduate studies through to a completing a number of graduate degrees until it was eventually decided that was time for a Doctorate. Despite his long path through academia he is accomplished having taught at some of Ontario’s best universities, become an academic librarian, edited scholarly books, and even guest lectured at Yale University. As a PhD student he would again excel and soon received a number of awards for his presentations and scholarly research, his work was again published, and by the end of 2013 with his exams completed and nearing the end of his studies all seemed to be going well. But then in the blink of an eye everything broke apart.
Early in his final year of his studies now a top student in his program with national funding; he was pushed to take a course and forced work for free as a Research Assistant for an instructor and Canada Research Chair with a known bad reputation. Hesitant, but unwilling to question his own supervisor he accepted that a semester could pass quickly and got to work. Unfortunately it did not take long for the instructor my friend had been assigned to soon began to harass him, threaten him with academic punishments, suggest that he could have his funding revoked, and infer physical violence. As the situation got worse and worse my friend soon discovered that this same instructor had similarly harassed and threatened others as a graduate student and as a professor in other institutions. Yet despite all of what seemed to be known or rumoured about them, and regardless of their reputation for their behaviour nothing ever seemed to be done to deter it or protect those around them.
As the semester passed, the threats and harassment piled up. By November after being pushed into over 200 hours of undocumented and unpaid extra work, and after being repeatedly confronted in the school’s hallways my friend turned to his supervisors, to the department and to the school’s guidance councillors to beg for help. Yet despite everything and emails to prove his situation he was doubted. He was told that he was the "only student in the history of the school to ever make claims about a professor harassing them", and he was warned to stay quiet, and finally offered “funding to help him move on”. The head of the department even sent him a blistering email for "bringing up these types of matters" and "creating problems" which only "distracted her while she planned for her wedding". Even the school’s councillors advised that the situation was only making “the instructor involved feel bad” suggesting that the matter "should be forgotten", "not talked about" and that perhaps it might be time for my friend to take some time off "with a paid stipend for a year or so" he could "reflect and realize that it was best not to pursue or even talk about the matter".
Uncertain of what to do the situation continued to deteriorate leading to more threats and further problems. The instructor informed my friend that (despite the semester hardly having begun) he was going to be “purposefully failed in the course”, that he had contacted people to have his funding reconsidered, and that he had requested to become his supervisor so that “he could more closely watch over what was being said”. The conversations and emails now began to disturbingly detail what this instructor thought he could do to my friend. When he tried to transfer out of the department he was refused by the school. When he tried to transfer to another institution which given his background and the fact that he had received OGS and SSHRC (both huge awards for Ontario Scholars in Canada) he discovered that "someone" had contacted several other institutions "warning them against accepting him". By the end of the year he was left with no choice but to either stay and endure the regular comments or to leave.
During all of this the situation and my friend continued to deteriorate. After three months of non-stop harassment he had lost almost 30 lbs and his blond hair had begun to turn grey. Then the day before Christmas Break, after being confronted in the department hallway by this instructor the answer was clear. My friend finished marking his student’s exams, returned their term essays and then quietly emailed his supervisors and the school informing them that he could no longer take the harassment and was withdrawing immediately. In response the instructor who had begot the situation contacted him stating "Since you've given up on your career you might as well go home kill yourself!!! Your life is done because of what you started here." Despite even this comment, he was free. The harassment would have to end now, or so he thought....
Two months after leaving the same instructor began randomly sending letters through the mail and emailing continuing his threats. A few weeks after that the instructor arrived at our house with a letter from the University and Department demanding all copies of my friend's graduate research stating that they owned it, warning him that he could no longer utilize any of his information and that his harasser, still a school instructor, now had every right to publish these materials as his new supervisor. They also warned him that he had signed a Confidentiality Agreement by being a Graduate Student and that if he talked to anyone about the situation, showed them any emails from instructors at the institution, talked to the police, or the press he would be subject to lawsuit for breach of contract. The instructor boxed up all of my friend's research, loaded up his books and notes, and took his framed degrees off the wall, packed them into his car and drove off. In response my friend sank further and further away from life.
Eight months later, came the worst news of all. My friend received a couriered letter from the University stating that they had investigated the matter, decided to praise the instructor's attitude and actions, concluded that they could not allow him to withdraw from the program, and instead had decided to retroactively fail him in his final course, charge him for academic misconduct, and expel him. Then as the weeks passed by my friend was informed by institution after institution across Ontario that his academic credentials were being revoked on the advice of one institution and at the behest of one particular instructor. Everything seemed lost.
As the New Year arrived, my parents loving and caring as always decided to step in and help. Losing one degree would be tough, but the loss of an entire academic career would be irrecoverable. Armed with dozens of harassing emails, emailed offers of funding for silence from the school, as well as the institution's final decision we went to a lawyer who contacted the school and were told that they could and would fight their decision for years. The estimated cost for challenging them would range from $100,000 to $250,000 in personal legal fees, after which the university promised to counter sue for defamation, breach of the Confidentiality Agreement, and their own legal expenses. Even if we won the debt would be insurmountable and the instructor would remain teaching. This process alone, which had lasted little longer than an afternoon, cost more than $5000.00 in consultation fees. It was clear that a legal approach was not going to solve anything, and so with this hope also crushed my friend gave up....on everything.
As the weeks passed his depression only deepened. Then one morning a new email arrived. A student and teaching assistant still working in the same department at the same school forwarded a draft copy of an upcoming CBC article. This CBC article would be the first in a series of reports by Canada’s news press on this same institution and same department (though not the same professor) which would ultimately began a nationwide discussion on sexual harassment and threats which graduate students face from professors in Canadian Universities. However for someone who knew of the varying and ranging situations and attitudes within the department my friend knew that these instructors would evade responsibility. As the articles rolled across Canada the same ready made excuses from the school emerged and the suggestion that students were offered funding to silence had a very familiar ring to them. For him to watch as those who were involved with his case and who had been sent to intimidate him now purport to take a stand against a single colleague, sign proclamations, and support institutional changes after so many of them had engaged in similar tactics was devastating.
For my friend the sense that he could have stopped others from being hurt if he had taken a bigger stand or gone to the media cut him the deepest. He knew the culture of the department and so for him, these scholars were hurt and under threat because he had failed to stop instructors harassing students. As the months rolled on and more articles came out his frustration was increased by the sense that the University continued to present the matter as an isolated incident of “a few bad apples”, a rare situation, and an oversight. Adding to this pain for him was the fact that his case was forgotten for no other reason than what had happened had taken place a year before anyone would notice the departmental and school's culture. And so his health worsened and a person who just over a year ago had been happy, outgoing and fit now spent most of his time wracked with stomach pains and scared of the world.
So by now you are no doubt wondering how we went from all of this to the Camino?
Well, more than a two years after leaving everything beyond and not long after these articles were released, my friend awoke one morning to find a movie on TV. The movie was Martin Sheen's The Way, and while watching this story he decided that perhaps – just perhaps – the Camino might just be the way to rediscover a direction in life and to moving on beyond the events of the past two years. Thus the seed was planted. Within days he was reading everything he could on the Camino and was particularly moved by a book written by Canadian author Jane Christmas called "What the Psychic told the Pilgrim". It was at this point, near to exhaustion, living with depression and constantly lingering on the edge of suicide he came to me and told me that he was going to go to Spain to walk the Way of Saint James to Santiago, would I help him? Would I walk with him? Would I walk with him to the ends of the world? What could I do? So I said yes....with absolutely no idea of where it was, what it involved, any notion of how to pay for it, or how to arrange to take time off for it….
As he wrote in a letter to me a few weeks ago, "Everyone walks their own way and out there anything is possible. I have to do this or I am done. I just don't know if I have the strength alone. I need someone to help me along the way."
Therefore it is because of my love for him and our friendship that I have decided to walk with him from a small town on the board of France across Spain to the Atlantic Ocean. I don't yet know how we will do it or even if we can. But I do know that we will try with everything we have, and I pray it will help him.
Where this decision takes us is anyone’s guess. I can only hope that if a single moment can undo a person's life, then so too can a simple choice to walk out the door and hike transform one's entire life for the better.
All I can say - in the words of "The Way"...
"don't judge this and don't judge me...."
"O Muse! Sing in me, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in the ways of contending, a wanderer, harried for years on end …"
Homer, 'The Odyssey'
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