Part One – Thomas the Cook:
There is an old tree planting dictum that states: “the cook is your best friend”. This is even more so true when one has dietary concerns. Being friendly with your camp cook can mean larger portions, faster seconds and their willingness to make you delicious food in lieu of a special diet; in my case veganism. A cooks job is not an easy one; Up at 4am, short nap in the afternoon and then cooking/cleaning from 3pm till 11 or 12 at night. So imagine cooking for a camp of 30-40 people while having to prepare a separate meal for one or two people. Needless to say, I’ve stopped short of bribery to ensure the cook and I get along. The camp cook serves several important functions in the life of the tree planter aside from providing sustenance; they are the largest morale boost short of the hottub on a day off. After working for 10 to 12hrs in the bitter cold and rain; burning 2000-3000 calories, food becomes our oasis. Some of my fondest memories these past 5 years involve food in some way. Cold, soggy fajitas after a 17hr day and a third degree burn or eating lasagne with Sam in our work truck at 11pm after we rescued a badly injured Elizabeth and rushed her through 100km of logging roads to the hospital.
In my 5 years of tree planting, 4 have been nothing short of spectacular in regards to the cooking. Teresa, Jen, Abe, Katherine and Vanessa have been amazing cooks and people. Teresa in particular will always hold a place in my heart. Teresa was the cook that people warned me I would never have. She went out of her way to make everyone happy and ensured we were well-fed. Smoothies every morning, sushi, fresh bread and soup every night. We had it far too good to be perfectly honest. I landed in Prince George at the beginning of my third year and found out Teresa had moved on. This is where the story of Thomas the cook begins…
Our camp converged on our yearly orientation meeting in Prince George with rumours swirling. Teresa had left, the new cook Thomas seemed really nice, he used to own a vegan restaurent in India and was a vegetarian cook from Ottawa. I couldn’t have been happier. In the dank conference hall of the German owned motel we were in, my eyes focused on a tallish man with a moustache and fedora, arms crossed and sitting on a table facing the crowd. This was Thomas and when it came time for him to address the crowd, his kurt, brutish manner managed not to betray our expectations for the summer ahead. As is my custom, I approached Thomas after orientation in order to introduce myself and offer to help out in any way, considering my dietary limitations. His response: “Vegan? Yeah. We’ll see what happens.”
His lack luster cooking did not however, betray his cold response. For a cook claiming to have owned a proper vegan restaurant, his use of canned food and frozen vegetables lacked quite the imagination. While the meat-eaters enjoyed their steaks, et al, the vegetarians and vegans were stuck with repetitive, terrible meal choices. I went to bed hungry more often than not and our displeasure became very apparent. Three weeks into our season and we began to witness the crazy side of Thomas. His wonderful assistant quit in a stream of tears after having obscenities hurled at her and Thomas barely spoke a word to anyone in camp. So now that Thomas was the only cook in camp, the food situation for the vegetarians became worse than it had been. By this point, Thomas scared us to the point where no one dared question his cooking and morale was low. Do not forget the point to which food plays a critical role in our lives. We stopped speaking of food on our rides home except to complain or express pity for the vegetarians. The atmosphere in the mess tent was sullen and bleak. Our oasis of food was revealed to be a mirage, an illusion of Teresa and a joke on the word edible.
After another meal of frozen vegetables and unpalatable goop, I hit my breaking point and took up our case with the camp supervisor, Jim. Upon our return to camp after our day off, I saw Thomas unloading the food for the coming week. I was walking towards my tent when I heard a whistle followed by Thomas calling my name. I met him behind the school bus kitchen where I met him sitting on a ramp, slightly elevated above me.
“What is your problem” He asked, cold eyes locked on me.
“Excuse me?”
“Are you such an ass that you couldn’t talk to me about my cooking”
“Well you are not the most approachable person AND, it is Jim’s job to deal with this”
“What’s wrong with my cooking? You’re the ONLY person who seems to hate it. I asked all the vegetarians in camp and they love my cooking!” – Thomas was an intimidating figure. The majority of people who told him his cooking was decent had done so out of fear.
“That is not what I have heard. You feed us mostly frozen veggies…etc”
“Why the fuck did you go to Jim?” His hands were gripping the edge of the ramp and his body kept lurching towards me.
“It’s his job, calm down Thomas. What is your problem? Stop yelling.”
“Problem?” He brought his face down within centimetres of mine. “You want to see a fucking problem? How about I headbutt you, then you’ll have a fucking problem”
I don’t exactly remember what happened next but visibly shaken, I most likely uttered something embarrassingly awkward and walked away. I made my way across camp to a work truck in which sat Sam and Tim. As I explained to them what had just occurred, voice trembling, we noticed Thomas sitting inside a truck opposite us. He sat staring, not moving a muscle except to slowly drink from his beer. He sat there with his gaze fixed for the next half an hour. The next morning I nervously waited in line for Thomas to serve breakfast. Thomas looked me in the eyes and said:
“Since you’re so special and have such special needs, I’m not going to feed you.” That morning I had no breakfast and that night, my friends had to sneak me my supper. This ended the next morning when Jim exchanged choice words with Thomas.
This is where the bi-polarity of Thomas and his insanity took new and different turns. Thomas, now forced to feed me, refused to look me in the eye as I refused to look in his. Slowly he began to alienate more and more planters. Dani and Jess incurred his wrath and he began to loudly complain that we were not holding our plates high enough for him to properly serve us food. The strangest thing during this time was that Thomas began acting like my best friend. Huge smiles, friendly greetings and a vast improvement in the quality of my food. I was perplexed. Though our relationship had outwardly improved, his manner became more inexplicable. Thomas began sleeping inside the kitchen bus. When informed of such a health hazard, he set up his tent on the roof of the bus and someone caught Thomas filling up our camps juice reserves with lake water instead of the purified water at hand. The nail in the insanity coffin however, was his behaviour when left alone. Joel, a planter, had injured himself and spent his days doing menial tasks in camp. Thomas would sporadically sneak up behind Joel, laugh maniacally in his face and walk away in silence. Or if they were to pass each other, Thomas would literally scream gibberish in Joel’s face and then continue on his way.
With the culmination of these events and the inability of our company to find a replacement cook(something I still take issue with) a meeting was called. Instead of our usual meeting in camp, Jim made us drive several kilometres down the road, so as to speak privately with the 50 of us. We aired our grievances, spoke loudly over each other, expressed our fears and were eventually told that we would have to deal with him for our final 3 weeks. With one week left to go in our season and Thomas appearing as normal as he’d ever been, he just suddenly disappeared. Our season was going to be extended by an extra week and Thomas had already booked his flight home. So a day before his flight and with a week still left in our season, he “fell off a ramp and injured his back” and had to be driven into town. What a mess. The season ended with a great cook who was forced to leave her other camp.
There was a polarity to Thomas that spoke to a severe mental illness. He had reduced an assistant to tears several times over, threatened me with physical violence and refused to feed me only to reverse course and act as my best friend two weeks later. He smiled at us one day, scowling the next and abused his authority in hazardous ways. Three years ago, this was one of my first encounters with the rope-walk of mental illness and how poorly that reality co-exists with a broader reality. The world of the mentally ill does exists in an alternate universe, albeit one that runs alongside our own. This is something I would later see in myself and in many others. Thomas taught me valuable lessons in diplomacy and stress, as well as in how to deal with psychosis in the work place. In much the same way that my worse days as a tree planter begat life lessons and positive memories, this episode has turned into a great story to tell as well as a lesson for our entire camp and more importantly, our company.
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