A valuable voice from the past

Since my youth did not include Scouting, the centenary of the marvellous organization founded by Lord Robert Baden-Powell probably would have slipped by me -- except for an audio clip of B-P himself. I was half awake one morning last week listening as Bob Murphy on CBC's Information Morning announced B-P from 1937. My ears perked up.

A remarkably vigorous sounding, B-P was recorded that year speaking to the fifth World Jamboree in Vogelenzang, The Netherlands. I woke up in a hurry when I realized that my father was at that same event as a Wolfville Boy Scout. In 1937 the storm clouds of war were forming and it was the last such gathering for 10 years. It was also B-P's last jamboree because he died in 1945.

He said then that there is a “difference between pleasure and happiness. Pleasure is amusement like going to the cinema or a football match or eating a good dinner and when the amusement ends that pleasurable feeling ends as well.” But an amusement is not a joy that lasts always, B-P noted; happiness comes from doing good turns to help others.

“I am 80 years old,” B-P said, “and I can't remember a time that I wasn't busy. There are a lot of people wanting help and if you cheer them up by working for others you'll find yourself happier too. I have had a most happy life and I want each one of you to have as happy a life too.”

Fine old man

Listening to that fine old man, I was struck by the impact I imagined his words having on my father. Busy was his credo, too. Dad was busy until his body literally ran out of steam in 2003. The son of a volunteer, he happily worked his entire retirement for one community group or another.

I couldn't help thinking too about the Barendrecht family that Dad was billeted with during that long ago World Jamboree. He kept in touch until Holland was invaded, then in 1945 he went back with food packages. There he found in the town hall census a baby with “Robbins” -- his name -- as a middle name. Maarten G.R. Barendrecht and I still exchange Christmas greetings. Youth exchanges do make the world a smaller place.

Back to B-P, he might have over used the word ‘jolly,’ but he certainly said some remarkably profound things 80 years ago.

The folks at Information Morning indulged me by playing the audio clip a second time over the phone line, so I could hear him say happiness doesn't come from being rich, or merely from being successful in your career, nor by self-indulgence. But the real way to get happiness is by giving out happiness to other people.

“Somewhere about 1893,” he also said, “I started teaching Scouting to young soldiers in my regiment. When these young fellows joined the Army they had learned reading, writing, and arithmetic in school but as a rule not much else. They were nice lads and made very good parade soldiers, obeyed orders, kept themselves clean and smart and all that, but they had never been taught to be men, how to look after themselves, how to take responsibility, and so on.”

Education chances

“They had not had my chances of education outside the classroom,” B-P said. “They had been brought up in the herd at school, they were trained as a herd in the Army; they simply did as they were told and had no ideas or initiative of their own. In action they carried out orders, but if their officer was shot they were as helpless as a flock of sheep.”

The secret of sound education is to get each pupil to learn for himself, B-P believed, instead of instructing him by driving knowledge into him on a stereotyped system.

“Try and leave this world a little better than you found it and when your turn comes to die,” he said. “You can die happy in feeling that, at any rate, you have not wasted your time but have done your best. No one can pass through life, any more than he can pass through a bit of country, without leaving tracks behind, and those tracks may often be helpful to those coming after him in finding their way.”

So B-P left lots of tracks behind -- even some audio tracks of his voice -- and surely his impact on my father and countless others was profound.

I wish his other sage advice to leave our environment on this planet a little better had been heeded, but his words of wisdom certainly have stood the test of time.