CHAPTER 2: FATHER

The Saint and the Wall

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Chapter 2. The Saint and the Wall.

Off the cuff, open heart, a little voice memo about my father, Nick Auf der Maur.

To speak of my father, is to speak of a larger than life man, not just because he was my father and the DNA I spawn from, but because he was as radical as any radical human I played in a rock band with, and we all know for those who followed 90s rock music, they were pretty radical.

My father was a rebel rouser, a fearless independent journalist and politician. But his roots are that of a child from deep poverty and immigrants in the 1940s in Montreal, in the neighborhood that I grew up in. Later in the ‘70s, I grew up in the bohemian version of Le Plateau Mont Royal. But he grew up there in the ‘40s when it was where all the immigrants landed at the turn of the century and during the depression to discover a New World, far from their Old World that they came from.

My grandparents arrived there in the ‘30s. From overseas, strangely from Switzerland, not escaping a war or depression, but actually escaping their own omnipresent families. My grandfather had dreams of finding his New World in the New World. He came from an ancient lineage, a 1000 year old name, Auf der Maur - which translates to “on the wall” in Swiss German. We were the family who participated in building the wall and lived in the wall that created; the town of Schwyz, in the canton of Schwyz l, in the country of Schwiiz aka Switzerland.

Mega mega family legacy DNA that my grandfather ran from, he wanted to find his own way. And brought his wife into complete poverty, and they lived like any other immigrants who came at the turn of the century to the New World. My grandmother worked in a bakery. My young father and grandfather lived off the grid, digging for diamonds and minerals. My grandfather was an engineer and prospector back home, and set up the Auf der Maur mining camp in the deep woods of Quebec.

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(This is a photo of him at the cabin - Severin Joseph Auf der Maur, is the one on the left, with his trusted dog “Petit Loup” (Little Wolf) and a visiting Texan mining investor)

My father Nick was the youngest of 4 kids. My grandmother held it down with her extremely religious beliefs and raised the 3 other kids in a Catholic infused poverty stricken world in Montreal. Whereas, my father, had his early days living off the grid with baby bears and wolves, scratching the ground and watching hydroelectric lights flicker that his father had connected to their little hand built cabin.

My father’s roots are wild. His life, that ended at the age that I am now, was an incredible adventure of 54 years of wild fire expression and self-destruction. He smoked and drank himself to death. This chapter of my book is an ode to a force, the masculine force that made me, and the tragic force that died too young yet still defined me.

This photo of him smoking a cigarette in a rare moment of no mustache was him as a beatnik poet in the ‘60s. He carried a pet rock and would recite poetry in bars in exchange for beer.

I love Nick.

I love wild hearts.

I love poets.

And I feel the pain of a tortured soul living in a broken man, who loved life. He had one daughter, and he loved me with a wild heart, one that barely knew how to love himself.

xMx

1. ^{“Nick Auf der Maur” 1969. © Family Archive}

2. ^{“Severin Joseph Auf der Maur with investor and dogs” 1945. © Family Archive}

^{These photos appear in “Even The Good Girls Will Cry: A ‘90s Rock Memoir” by Melissa Auf der Maur. Available to purchase through Hachette.}