Random Access

My heart sank when I heard the news: someone had stopped outside Oscar Peterson’s house and hurled racial slurs at the master of the keyboard and his family.
Your first reaction is shame. How could anyone be so thoughtless and stupid and just plain inconsiderate?
The next reaction is anger. You want to say to those responsible, How could you do this to someone so talented, so decent and so venerated around the globe?
Listen to the beautiful playing of this man who produced the majesty of the Canadiana suite, the sweep of Wheatland where you can almost hear the prairie wind whistle across the melody, and tell me that Oscar Peterson isn’t more Canadian than most of us who were born here.
Then think of the shame that your actions will bring to the community where you live.
That was yesterday.
Today comes the news that the incident may not have been racially motivated at all.
Oops. You mean all my angst was in vain?
Does this mean that a group of punks decided to cruise through West Erindale randomly yelling from the street at 80-year-old Lifetime Grammy Award winners and their families? How very strange.
Stranger still are the musings of the good doctor that suggest he might move his family to the West Indies.
It would be a travesty if one aberrant incident prompted such a regrettable move.
Let’s hope that the beast of the Bösendorfer reconsiders.
If Oscar needs to feel wanted, then Canada is the place to stay. This week’s reporting of the incident prompted a quantum outpouring of love and affection for Peterson in letters to the editors and columns right across the country.
If nothing else, this situation has reconfirmed his place of honour in our national psyche.
Most telling to me was an e-mail I received this morning from Constable Craig Platt of the Peel Regional Police media bureau. In cryptic fashion, he says it all: “Active investigation and a priority. He (Peterson) is well-known and a cherished member of our community.”
Geez, even the cops are on the Oscar bandwagon.
This particular incident with Dr. Peterson may not have been racially motivated but every day many other Canadians of colour, who do not share his profile and influence, face acts of unkindness that are racially motivated.
With his career-long willingness to speak out against bigotry in all its forms (remember his opposition to the Canadian government dealings with the apartheid regime in South Africa), Peterson has exemplified class in the face of those who judge people on their place or origin or colour.
He’s a symbol for us all of how Canadians persevere in the face of adversity ( his stroke, his immigrant family’s struggles in Montreal, his brother’s premature death) and can triumph on the international stage.
Someone I just don’t see Oscar leaving town. And if he is serious, we’ll just send his good friend Hazel around to change his mind.
Somehow, it just seems impossible that the man who was inspired by Martin Luther King to write Hymn to Freedom (When every man joins in our song and together, singing harmony/ That’s when we’ll be free) is going to abandon the fight so easily.