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By Patty Pitts
Some men buy a sports car to mark a mid-life crisis. Others switch careers. Calvin Sandborn, legal director of UVic Faculty of Law’s Environmental Law Clinic, wrote a highly personal book about his painful relationship with his now-deceased father. The resulting flurry of interviews about his critique of patriarchy is adding special poignancy to Sandborn’s upcoming Father’s Day.
“I’m getting a very strong response to the book,” says Sanborn of Becoming the Kind Father: A Son’s Journey. “There’s a lot of pain between fathers and children.”
Sandborn was 13 when his father, an angry alcoholic man, died. The dissolution of his own marriage and the termination of a job with government prompted Sanborn to consider the impact of his behaviour on his wife, three daughters and “future generations.”
He read “about 90 books on male psychology and the effect male role modeling had on men” and realized that very little had been written about how men “could live their lives in a post-patriarchal world.
“I started looking at myself and understood the saying ‘Men grow wise against their will.’ In writing the book I came to forgive my father and appreciate the good parts of our relationship,” says Sandborn.
Since the book was published in April he’s given numerous radio interviews. “They’re saving them for Father’s Day broadcasts that will be heard over several hundred U.S. radio stations.” Sandborn has had reviews in the Vancouver Sun, Sacramento Bee, anticipates another in the Washington Post and has been invited to give readings and signings in significant book stores in Seattle and Portland.
But even more gratifying than all the attention for his book will be the attention Sandborn receives from his 16-month-old grandson on Father’s Day.
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