The Life and Death of A Canadian Mystic. Part Three.
Don Graves went to India to deepen his spiritual knowledge. He succeeded. He meditated at Hindu shrines. He met gurus and holy men and women. He also exchanged information with fellow spiritual travelers from the western world. Then he left India and journeyed west to Pakistan. To him Pakistan seemed more dangerous than India. One reporter called Pakistan "India's arch enemy". Pakistan was much smaller than India. Yet its growing population stood at close to 180 million people, and many of them were poor.
The country's people were divided into different ethnic groups. They spoke languages like Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto or Baluchi. Nearly all Pakistanis are Moslems. Yet the county is racked by conflict, violence and corruption. It is usually ruled by military dictators though sometimes its leaders are chosen by elections. By contrast, India for all of tits faults remains a democracy.
Graves didn't stay long in Pakistan. He moved north to the small county of Nepal. Here too he found another country in upheaval. He left Nepal after two weeks. Still his six month journey to South Asia had been fruitful. His religious beliefs had deepened. Now he openly told people "I'm a Buddhist." Yet in India where he had spent most of his time hadn't too many Buddhists. Buddhism was born in India. Yet most Buddhists now live in east Asia not India.
Don Graves came back to India a changed man. He seemed now to be "blissed out" as devotees of eastern religions used to say. He was always smiling. His eyes were now often narrowed but in joy not in fear. On his Indian journey he'd met Isabel MacRae, a woman in her 40's from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. They moved in together to share an apartment in Port Coquitlam, a growing suburb to the east of Vancouver. Dan went to see his former wife and growing daughter Stacy. His former wife had met another man and the former couple parted on good terms.
In their Port Coquitlam apartment Isabel and Dan set up a Buddhist shrine. They burned incense, bought a carpet that was made in the Middle East and sat on the carpet meditating for hours on end. Dan read Buddhist texts and to make money he drove a truck for a small trucking firm. "That man's not on drugs, is he?" his boss asked one of Dan's co-workers. "He seems far out." The co-worker assured the boss that as far as he knew, Dan didn't smoke, drank or took any drugs at all.
At night time, after work and then sessions of meditations, Don would walk alone in the dark along quiet suburban streets, past houses, strip malls and apartment buildings. Some of these streets had no sidewalks and were poorly lit. Don was taking his life in his hands now since many drivers only saw him at the last moment.
In March 2002, a driver in a late model car drove into Dan and killed him. Ironically, Dan Graves had journeyed through supposedly dangerous areas of the world and had emerged unscathed. It was in Canada, a land that was thought to be one of the safest in the world that he met his end. "Far more Canadians die in traffic accidents every year," says one criminologists, "than get murdered. About 600 people did every year from some violent act. Yet over 2000 Canadians die on the roads and in traffic accidents."
In 2002 Dan Graves was one of those 2000 people. His death at the age of 54 was a tragedy. His search for truth ended in death on a suburban highway outside Vancouver.
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