(Thomas Froese Photo)
The two lion paintings now in the Froese family, including the painting, in front, gifted to Jonathan Froese.
(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, May 17, 2025)
It’s easy to get so distracted and even discouraged in life that we miss the point of it all, so busy or otherwise preoccupied with the clattering noise that we miss how ordinary events – a casual walk or a train ride home – can show the world’s beauty and order.
Mathematics has order. In middle school I’d walk with Glen Greschuk to a high school for advanced math because we were decent enough at it. Now I have my son Jonathan. Before today’s math, though, here’s something.
Just before Easter, Jonathan and I had visited Montreal, including Notre Dame, the historic church visited by millions every year. We later sat in the public square outside where a buasker’s song reminded Jonathan of our family’s early-morning school runs in Uganda.
Those long bumpy drives, for years, were bearable for the kids only with music and audio stories. One was “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” the well-known Narnia story by C.S. Lewis, translated into dozens of languages. The Shaw Festival now has one adaptation. Sitting in that square, we recalled this also, the original storybook, good for any age.
Jonathan and I then wandered somewhat aimlessly through historic Old Montreal. That’s when we spotted, funny enough, in a gallery window, a striking lion painting that’s similar to a lion painting in our home that came from Uganda.
“That’s really something,” I said. “And we were just talking about Narnia.”
We were so struck by that Montreal painting – it’s by Montreal native Josée Forest – that it’s now Jonathan’s gift: a reminder of this father-son trip, and his boyhood in Africa, and that Narnia lion who teaches the children about friendship and love and courage and adventure.
We left Montreal in wonder of the lion co-incidence, my boy on a train back to Ottawa and aerospace engineering studies (why I rely on him for math), myself Toronto-bound. Once aboard his train, Jonathan texted. “I’ve made it safely in Seat 12D.”
I looked at my assigned seat. 12D. Really? Different trains and identical seat numbers? What are the odds? A car has 64 seats. Laughing about it, later we discovered on two trains of five cars, we both had Car 4. Come on. And those odds?
Jonathan explains the answer involves the probability of two independent events intersecting. The chance of two travellers on two, five-car trains “randomly” assigned the same seat and car number, like we were, is one in 320. But the chance of two travellers assigned the same “specific, non-random” seat and car number is one in 102,400.
Likewise, the chance of Pope Francis’ death recently intersecting with Easter weekend (a “specific, non-random” four-day weekend) is tiny. But life is not an equation to be solved as much as it’s an experience to be had and enjoyed, like a story or song. So the odds of that Montreal lion appearing? Who knows?
And what, if anything, is the message when we have these strange, personally-tailored experiences, these unexplainable wonders? Maybe it’s something like, “You’ve appeared right on time. You’re in the right place. You’re not forgotten.” Or, in this case, “Jonathan, you’re on the right track. Literally. Be encouraged.”
This week we hung that Montreal painting in Jonathan’s space. How cool to be reminded of the wind and how it blows where it will.
By the way, the Greek word for God’s workmanship, how your life (or mine or Jonathan’s or the neighbours’) is like a work of art, is “Poiema.” It’s where we get the word “poem.” No wonder our teachers, the good ones anyway, always said (repeatedly to some of us) “Pay attention!”
So keep your eyes and ears open. Remember, that lion in Narnia – “He’s not a tame lion, you know” – can appear when the children least expect. Take time, then. Listen carefully. You never know what your life might be trying to tell you. Even in this wobbly old world, light and mystery are on the move.