Spirit Quest

“Summertime and the livin'’ is easy,”  - so in Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess.” 

By The Rev. Dr. Hanns Skoutajan

Yes, it is that time of the year when we seek to relax in a tent or cottage on a beautiful lake or just take it easy at home.  The price of fuel nowadays may cause many to cut back on travel. Some people, myself included, are staying close to home.

I have always thought of June 30th as the year’s end, a time to be free from the classroom and homework. And the day after Labour Day  always seemed like the beginning of a new year. Those two months in between were a kind of blessed hiatus, a time to do as I please, within reason of course.  

For many, however, the work-a-day world goes on, especially for those in the service industries and the tourist trade. That also includes many students who depend on vacation time to earn money to see them through the next academic year. While in high school and in university I worked every summer with a week off at the end.

Some such as the self-employed often do not take holidays. Others prefer to work during their vacation to collect extra pay. Thus summer time isn’t always easy living.

Vacations whether in the middle of the calendar year or at other times as business or work allows, are very important. Everyone needs a respite, not only those who can afford it. Paid vacation ought to be a human right.

In the province of Ontario vacation time is covered by the Ontario Employment Standards Act .. Under this legislation most employees get vacations. Full time, part time, temporary, seasonal, term contract employees and student employees are eligible. Nevertheless there is a long list of exceptions and it is important to check out what those exceptions are and whether your job falls in that category. 

Nor should “time off” be an option. Every human being needs rest. Employers long ago realized that their workers  cannot perform efficiently  and productively  without a regular respite. I fear for those patients whose doctor has been on duty for forty-eight hours or more. Often, however, it took labour unions to fight for adequate vacation time.

In the Biblical story of creation God laboured for six days  and rested on the seventh. In the Mosaic law rest was mandatory not only for labourers but for their beasts of burden. Later it became obvious that land also needs to lie fallow if it is to be productive. Of course the Judeo-Christian Bible did not anticipate our present industrial age, but what is important  is the belief that human life cannot be all work. 

The exploitation of workers isn’t a thing of the past.  Craig Kielburger as a teenager became keenly aware of the terrible conditions under which children were forced to work in certain third world countries, particularly in India’s carpet industry. He set about to form “Free the Children,” an organization dedicated to liberate and to educate about the reality of slave labour in our time. Although very successful there are still “sweat shops” and not only in the third world. Immigrants, especially illegal immigrants and refugees, are worked to the bone and respite time for them is barely enough to keep them reasonably healthy and not always so.

Porgy and Bess  is an opera first performed in 1935 with music by George and Ira Gershwin. It deals with African American  life in the fictitious Catfish Row in Charleston, South Carolina  in the early 1920s.  Although slavery had been long abolished the lot of the Blacks was scarcely free and easy as the song "Summertime" seems to intimate. 

A century earlier Blacks were brought from Africa  and were “owned” by plantation farmers. Read  “The Book of Negroes,” by the Canadian writer Lawrence Hill (Harper Collins) to get a picture of the terrible life of those brought to America in chains as well as their bare existence in Nova Scotia, prior to the abolition of Slave Trade in the British Empire.  Of course some slave owners were less brutal than others, but the truth is that no one owns anybody. Humans are meant to be free and their labour must be justly rewarded. This must include vacation time in order to recuperate, time to spend with family, time away from stress.

Vacation Right has a long history. From the very earliest times there has been a struggle for work justice. Throughout that history there has been the evidence of a spirit working to humanize life and living conditions.

That spirit is a’ movin’ still. Remember that this summer.

Hanns F. Skoutajan
July 4, 2008
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More about Rev. Dr. Hanns Skoutajan’s story can be found in his excellent book Uprooted and Transplanted: A Sudeten Odyssey from Tragedy to Freedom available from Canada Books Online. — Mike Heenan, Literary Editor
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