If you're going through hell, just keep going

By I.M. GreNada Sun, Jan 9 2011

http://communities.canada.com/theprovince/blogs/houseofthedead/archive/2011/01/09/if-you-re-going-through-hell-just-keep-going.aspx

Churchill once explained Russia as "A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." He could just as easily have been talking about penitentiary life — and the time I met Bea.

My first encounter with Bea came 20 years ago in the exercise yard of a Fraser Valley prison notorious for its high volume of street drugs. One day I was clearing my head on the yard's half-mile running track when something I saw stopped me like a bullet. Yard time is an important part of the prison day. Most guys use it to kick a soccer ball around, lift weights, or walk endless laps on the loose-gravel track. Not that day. As I rounded the corner leading to the raised upper yard, there lay Bea — on a large Budweiser beach towel, bottom to the sun, wearing nothing but a hot pink thong accentuating well-bronzed buns.