My musical tastes run the gamut: progressive and old-timey country, folk, Americana, lounge, progressive dance, klezmer, world beat, Celtic folk, Japanese pop, trip-hop, orchestral, urban pop, hip hop soul, rhythm and blues, acoustic, dirty bass south, avant-garde, europop, gospel, house music, dream pop, trance, ambient and downtempo, acid jazz, rock ballads, post-Britpop — and with all that, I’m only scratching the surface of the types, styles and genres of music I love which constitute the soundtrack of my life, the various genres of music which you’ll come to hear through this screen in the days, weeks, months and years to come.
Where I am a listener and an appreciator of music, with some background in piano and guitar — long forgotten, alas — my son Jude, a recording engineer and D.J. creates his own complex, layered, multi-dimensional music, electronica for wont of a better word. Jude records under the name Dj Nameless, as has been the case for well more than a decade now.
I love well-produced, textured music, and remixes, of which you’ll be hearing a great deal more in the time to come. Today, a remix by New York-based D.J. Branchez of Rihanna’s 2012 chart topper, Stay. When this song pops up on my iTunes playlist, through my bluetooth headphones, when I’m heading downtown to a movie, the bus crowded, rain pelting down on the bus, the wetness of the day permeating not just the clothing but the very souls of the people around me, the Branchez bootleg remix of Stay simply raises my mood — see if it does the same thing for you.
Megan, my great daughter, age 11 (in 1988), am just putting the picture up cuz I like it …
In the 1970s, when I was “co-ordinating” the Tillicum Food Co-operative — honestly, a big deal, a multi-million dollar grassroots endeavour that not only changed eating habits across Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, and beyond, but put power into the hands of activists and working people — as Tillicum’s produce, and some other, suppliers were located in the area just north of Powell Street, and east of Main, Cathy and I would frequently stop in for lunch at the then one and only existing sushi restaurant in Vancouver, The Japanese Deli, I think it was called, or perhaps some other name.
As time passed, as Cathy and I moved into the Interior for me to take a job as a teacher, and she as a Financial Aid worker with the Ministry of Human Resources, and as I moved on from my responsibilities with the Tillicum and Fed-Up Food Co-operatives — although Cathy and I re-invigorated the Shuswap / North Okanagan food co-operative movement in our years in the Interior — we got out of the habit of eating Japanese cuisine.
I recall in the early 1980s attending a garden party at the University of British Columbia, accompanied by my friends Scott Parker and the late Daryl Adams — with whom I worked on the Galindo Madrid Defense Committee, in concert with Gary Cristall and the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Latin America, and Svend Robinson — the food on offer at the sunny, mid-spring afternoon political event, fresh sushi, the first time in years I’d had sushi, although I had long ago mastered the use of chopsticks (which took me four arduous months — one cannot honestly call me the most co-ordinated person in the world, but once I get it, it’s got!).
A couple of summers later, in the summer of 1982, when Megan was a whole five years old, I asked her one summer’s day where she’d like to go for dinner, to which she replied, “Kibune Sushi — it’s my favourite.” So, off Jude, Megan and I went to Kibune Sushi on Yew Street, just up from Kitsilano Beach. Once we’d seated ourselves in the tatami room, after a couple of minutes, the waitperson came by with tea and to take our order. Being the adult present, I set about to order — but, really, what did I know about ordering sushi? Not much I can tell you.
After about 30 seconds of my fumbling around with the menu, Megan looked over at the waitperson and said, pointing in my direction, “He doesn’t know much about Japanese food,” and then turning to me, she said, “Dad, I’ll take over the ordering. You just sit back — we’ll be good.”
Megan, age 5, a ‘take charge’ kind of person, always …
At which point, Megan set about to order …
“Well, given that my dad doesn’t know much about Japanese food, I think we should start him off with chicken yakatori, because that’s really BBQ chicken, and I’m sure he’s familiar with that. An order of chicken yakatori, then. Next, a California roll will hit the spot, I think — I know my dad likes avocado, and my brother and I do, as well. So, an order of one California roll. I like the yam roll, and I think my dad wouldn’t find that too confrontational — so, we’ll have a yam roll, as well.
(looking at me, Megan said) “Now, sooner or later, dad, you’re going to have to get used to eating sashimi. To complete our order, because all three of us are hungry, I’m going to place an order for an assorted sashimi platter,” which the waitperson dutifully wrote down.
So, that’s Megan: in control always, and I do mean always. Honestly, in the entirety of my life, I’ve never seen anything quite like it: Megan sets her mind to do something, and it’s done — almost like magic. Megan is stubborn, she knows her own mind, she knows what she wants, and she always gets her way — it’s simply unprecedented in my experience.
Oh, and did I say that Megan is a lovely, lovely person — tough, but wonderful, possessed of a social conscience, capable of much good, and one of the brightest, most able people I’ve ever met. And I’m not saying that because Megan is my daughter — she is simply a gift of our landscape.
Lord Nelson Elementary School, on Vancouver’s eastside, where I attended Grades 1 thru 3. The portable on the left is where I experienced a happy and rewarding Grade 2, in Mrs. Goloff’s class (I liked her, I thought there was a solid goodness about her and a genuine affection, as well as a deep respect, for students) from September 1957 thru June 1958.
In the summer of 1959, after I’d completed Grade 3 at Lord Nelson Elementary School in Vancouver (my memory of Grade 3 only slight), in August of ’59, my parents moved from Vancouver to Edmonton to be closer to family — on both my mother’s and father’s sides of the family.
In Alberta at the time, the provincial government had adopted what they called an “Enterprise Programme,” a focused academic programme meant to engage students intellectually while providing them with the tools they would require to compete successfully at post-secondary university. While all other Canadian provinces had adopted a two stream programme, one academic (university bound), the other vocational (meant to prepare students to work in the trades), Alberta was having none of that — educational achievement at the highest possible level was Alberta’s goal, the curriculum requirements rigorous, demanding and challenging, and consistently above grade level. The Enterprise Programme was defined by competition and the striving to become the best possible student — failure was never an option, doing your best was expected and required, academically and socially. Future leaders were being trained in Alberta.
“The provincial government meant to produce the best and the brightest, informed by a progressive educational ideology that Alberta was the first Canadian province to adopt in the 1950s, an educational philosophy that was child-centred, subject-integrated, with an activity-based approach, known in Alberta as the Enterprise Programme, focused on content centered courses in History, Geography, and Civics integrated into a new course: Social Studies, which was taught across all grade levels, this new subject emphasizing the development of democratic, co-operative behaviour, and inquisitiveness through experiential learning.”
Lynn Speer Lemisko & Kurt W. Clausen, Connections, Contrarities and Convolutions: Curriculum and Pedagogic Reform in Alberta; Faculty of Education, SFU, March 1, 2017
In the summer of 1962, my parents made the decision to return to Vancouver — the reasons are unclear to me, but whatever the case, in the summer of 1962, living at 2136 Venables Street, I found myself enrolled at Templeton Secondary School, then the toughest school in Vancouver (that mantle would soon be claimed by VanTech — but in 1962, Templeton was the school where all the toughest “juvenile delinquents” were enrolled, although truth to tell, many of the tougher students found themselves behind lock and key at the Brannen Lake Juvenile Correctional Facility).
From Grades 7 through Grade 12, I attended Templeton Secondary. Based on my experience in Alberta, I was enrolled in the academic programme at Templeton, whereas every person I’d attended Grades 1 thru 3 with at Lord Nelson found themselves enrolled in the vocational stream. Odd, I thought to myself at the time. Another odd thing I found: from the spring of 1963 on, my grades never soared about a C-average — whereas in Alberta, I’d been a straight A student. Unlike most others enrolled in the academic programme, I was required to take vocational classes — and from Grade 8, I was enrolled in typing and secretarial classes, unlike any other student in the academic stream. Although a typing speed of 160wpm would serve me well later in life, I still found it odd, and just a bit concerning, that I was required to take three clerical classes each year through to graduation.
From Grade 8 on, I was also concerned that when I submitted an essay in Social Studies or one of my English classes, it either came back to me with a C, a D or a fail — with a comment from my teacher that someone other than me had written the essay, or I had either plagiarized or copied directly the work of someone else. By the time I reached Grade 12, where I had achieved an A- average in French, was taking the lead in the school plays, and editing the student newspaper, I was surprised and disappointed to receive a D in English, and a fail in History and Geography.
I recall one spring afternoon in 1968, the teacher having turned down the lights, with soft music playing in the background, the teacher asking the students in my Grade 12 English class to write a stream of consciousness essay, which I was only too happy to do. When I submitted the essay to the teacher, she took a glance at the essay and tore it up, saying to me, “You didn’t write this. You either copied it from someone else or had the essay prepared in advance (note. there had been no notice of a stream of consciousness essay taking place in class that day). You receive a fail for the essay. I’m disgusted with you.”
A dozen years later, I was the Assistant Director of Teacher Training, PDP 401-402 at Simon Fraser University (a position I held while working on my Master’s degree). The English teacher referred to above had taken a seconded position as a PDP Faculty Associate — in essence I was her boss. When we first connected, in September, at the outset of the 1980 academic school year, almost the first words out of her mouth were, “I had a student with your name at Templeton Secondary. How odd that you should both have the same name,” at which point I informed her that the Raymond Tomlin she had taught, and the person standing in front of her was one and the same person. She looked aghast, stammering, “But how?”
I told her I had a 3.8 grade point average and two undergraduate degrees, and was currently enrolled in a Master’s programme at the university, letting her in on what I am about to write and record for posterity now …
In June of 1968, when I was about to graduate, as was the case with all of the other graduating students, I met with Ken Waites, the patrician, white-haired Principal at Templeton Secondary School, in his office with the door closed, and this is what he said to me …
“Well, Raymond, even though you’re a couple of courses short of graduation, given your failing grades in History and Geography, I am nonetheless going to graduate you anyway — because any kind of academic future is clearly not in the cards for you. I want to tell you something that we’ve kept from you for the past five years: for each of those years, you were recorded as having the lowest IQ of any student enrolled in the Vancouver school district, not just at Templeton, but city wide. Your teachers and I had often wondered, given your low IQ, how it is that you locomoted yourself from point A to point B. Someone with as low an IQ as you shouldn’t even be able to speak — but here you are.
You’ve probably wondered to yourself, why you were required to take three clerical courses each of the past five years. The answer is easy: you spell well, and it was clear early on that you had an aptitude for secretarial work, your typing speed and accuracy superior. Your guidance counsellor and I determined a long time ago that the best course in life for you would be to enter the clerical field, to be a secretary — because, clearly, you are possessed of no academic skill whatsoever, although you seem to have done well in French.
I have had these meetings with all graduating students, providing what I believe to be sound advice on how each student should proceed with his life following graduation. In your case, your best — and I would say, your only — hope is as a secretary. Thank you for meeting with me this afternoon, Raymond. All the best in your future.”
In 1970, my new wife insisted I enroll at Simon Fraser University, where students with an inferior academic record were being accepted, in order to build the student body. In my first semester at SFU, I achieved 3 C’s and two B’s. In my second semester, 3 B’s and 2 A’s — and every semester after that, straight A’s (not that I ever cared about grades, as did many of my fellow students — I was just hungry for knowledge, and curious about the world, eager to learn as much as I could, at one point early on not leaving SFU’s Burnaby campus over an 18-month period). I loved to read, I loved to write, I loved to learn, I was curious about everything — being at Simon Fraser University and hanging out with and being challenged by the best and the brightest was like a dream come true for me.
My curiosity about life, about all aspects of our existence on Earth remains to this day — I want to read all of the papers of record every day (and I do!), to engage with nation builders and city builders, to work with persons of conscience, to work towards better, fairer, more just. And I am afforded that opportunity each and every day, surrounded (outside of my plangent housing co-op life) by strong-willed persons of conscience who mean to build a better and more just world. As such, my life is near filled with joy!
1903: In the early part of the 20th century, my grandfather escaped the Ukrainian pogroms, an ethnic cleansing of the Jewish population that was taking place across eastern Europe that resulted in the murder of tens of thousands of Jews.
Whether it be the 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue who were wantonly murdered only two short weeks ago, or Jews being targeted in the alt-right rally in Charlottesville on August 11th and 12th of 2017, or the 907 Jewish refugees escaping Hitler’s Germany in 1939 who were refused safe harbour in both Canada and the United States, most of the 907 returning to their deaths in Europe, where six million more Jews were slaughtered during the course of WWII, or the fact that since 2015 hate crimes in Canada against people of the Jewish faith has risen by an astonishing 30%, the fact of the Jewish diaspora and the murder over the centuries of hundreds of thousands of Jews as “the other” in countries across the globe is a devastating and unjust historical fact for the ages.
The Hep-Hep riots in Frankfurt, Germany in 1819 that occurred amidst a climate of anti-Semitism fueled by various anti-Jewish publications. Participants in these riots rallied to the cry, “Hepp Hepp”, which may have been an acronym for “Hierosolyma est perdita”, meaning “Jerusalem is lost”. On the left, two peasant women are assaulting a Jewish man with pitchfork and broom. On the right, a man wearing spectacles, tails and a six-button waistcoat, “perhaps a pharmacist or a schoolteacher,” holds another Jewish man by the throat and is about to club him with a truncheon. The houses are being looted.
First recorded in 1882, the Russian word pogrom is derived from the common prefix po- and the verb gromit’ meaning “to destroy, to wreak havoc, to demolish violently” — apparently a word borrowed from Yiddish, the term first used to describe the anti-Semitic excesses in the Russian Empire from 1881 — 1883. Antisemitism in the Ukraine has been a historical issue, as well, but became more widespread in the 20th century.
Pogroms were a generational fact of life in the Ukraine, in 1821, 1859, 1871, 1881, 1903 and 1905, across the whole of the Ukraine.
In 1903, when my grandfather was but a young Jewish teenage boy, he managed to escape the Odessa pogroms that killed thousands that year, making his way by foot to Sweden, where he hoped to find passage to Canada. Word had filtered into Europe at the turn of the last century that the Canadian government was offering tracts of land to European settlers, and it was with this fact in mind that my grandfather set about to make his way to Canada, fully aware that Jews were not included in the Canadian government’s offer of land in exchange for breadbasket farming development, in the hope of settling the Prairie provinces, and making Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba part of the new country of Canada.
While in Sweden, my grandfather married a young Jewish woman he met while awaiting passage, and not many months later the two were boarded onto a ship sailing out of Sweden for Canada, arriving in our burgeoning new country in the spring of 1905. Irrespective of the laws of the time, and because the new province of Alberta was desperate to have their land settled, my grandparents were provided a densely treed tract, a full section of land just outside of what we now know as High River, Alberta. Over the years, one section of land grew into many, 10 children were born, five boys and five girls, the last of whom was my mother, born on March 28th, 1924.
The life was hardscrabble, even more so upon the death of my grandmother in the early winter of 1927, when my mother was but three years of age. All the children pitched in, though, creating a thriving farm — up until the Great Depression of the 1930s. By the time my mother was twelve years of age, she had struck out on her own, making a life for herself as a waitress in Drumheller, Alberta, a job she held off and on for the next fourteen years. World War II saw her moving to Vancouver to work first in the shipyards, and then in the factories making armaments — factory work a staple of her life for the next 35 years.
In 1946, my mother Mary met my father Jack, the two were married, and in 1947 my brother Robert was born, a sickly child who died three months after his birth. Escaping grief, my parents moved to Drumheller, where my mother had friends, and where her old waitress job awaited her, my father picking up what work he could. On August 9th, 1950, my mother went into labour, and had my father drive the both of them back over the deadly Rocky Mountain pass, the two arriving in Vancouver and driving directly to Vancouver General Hospital, where I was born at 2:26pm on Friday, August 11th, 1950. My sister Linda was born a bit less than two years later at St. Paul’s Hospital, on May 29th, 1952. My mother had insisted that both her children be born in Vancouver — to know my mother is to know that no one ever refused her. To this day, I am attracted only, and have found myself in loving relationships with tough, take no guff, opinionated (and, dare I say, “crazy” and just a tad, or more than a tad, mentally unstable — and, yes, I realize that’s sorta like the pot calling the kettle black … even so) women.
For the first 20 years of my life, the fact of my Jewishness was never raised with either my sister or me, not by my parents, not by my “spinster” aunt Freda (Blackerman, my mother’s maiden name), nor my aunt Anne and Uncle Dave, my uncle Joe nor any of my mother’s Jewish brothers and sisters — the quid pro quo in my family was that if my aunts, uncles and cousins wanted me to be a part of their lives, there was to be no talk of my Jewish heritage — this edict by my mother extended as well to my tall oak of a grandfather, who was every bit the sophisticated patrician Jew.
Every Sunday of our youth, my sister and I were picked up by a small school bus and transported to Sunday school, spending the rest of the day being taken to lunch, swimming, out to Stanley Park, or otherwise engaged by the members of the church. Every week I memorized and recited verses from the New Testament at Sunday school.
Now, there were some “hints” given that I might be Jewish — my mother, when she wasn’t working at one of her three jobs, loved to bake, and I grew up on a steady diet of Jewish pastries, my favourite the jam-infused hamantaschen, and jam, nut and raisin-infused rugelach, which latter small pastries I could consume by the dozen.
Growing up there was a great deal of arguing that went on between my parents, epithets thrown at my mother by my father, with the words “dirty Jew” heard on the other side of the door inside of my parent’s bedroom, words raged at my mother by my father. Otherwise, although I suspected I was Jewish, the fact was never confirmed for me growing up.
Simon Fraser University’s Louis Riel House, student family 1 + 2 bedroom residence
At around 10am one summer’s morning in July, 1972, while we were resident at Louis Riel House, Cathy and I received a telephone call from a woman identifying herself as my “Aunt Sally.” I took pains to explain to her that she must have the wrong number, that I had no “Aunt Sally”, to which she replied …
“I am your Aunt Sally. Your mother is Mary, who is my youngest sister. Your Aunt Freda — who all but raised you — is my second youngest sister. Summer’s you went to stay with your Auntie Anne, my sister, and your Uncle Dave, in Lethbridge. When you were younger, you stayed on my father’s farm in High River, Alberta. You know my older brother, Joe — who, when you lived in Edmonton for Grades 4, 5 and 6, helped to raise you when your mother was working three jobs, and your father was working evenings at the Post Office. Believe me when I say, Raymond — I am your Aunt Sally.”
At which point, my newly-discovered Aunt Sally invited Cathy and I for lunch at the Bayshore Inn where she and her husband, Alex (Promislow) were staying while in town, on a mission to make contact with me. Aunt Sally told me that she’d already made arrangements with my mother to join us for lunch, and she expected Cathy and I to arrive at noon, where she would greet us at the entrance to The Bayshore.
Lunch was good, my mother remaining all but mute throughout the meal.
I met my Uncle Alex, Sally’s husband — who years earlier had secured the distribution rights for Lee’s jeans in Canada, a percentage of each pair of jeans, and other Lee’s products, placed into his bank account, making him a wealthy man. I heard all about my aunt, now living in Calgary, spending the early part of her life, after leaving home, in Winnipeg, where she’d met Alex. I was given the Five Books of Moses, and was provided with a more in-depth history of my family, dating back centuries, than I ever could have hoped for. Through it all, my mother denied her Jewishness — she readily admitted that Sally was her sister, but insisted she had been adopted, and had not a drop of Jewish blood in her, and as an atheist had never been a member of any church, never mind a synagogue, which notion she told us she found offensive and off-putting, her so-called “heritage” a complete and utter lie. My aunt Sally simply rolled her eyes, and harrumphed a bit.
I stayed in touch with my aunt Sally and Uncle Alex for another 15 years, but eventually lost touch with the both of them.
Growing up, I apprised both Jude and Megan of their Jewish heritage — much to their mother’s chagrin, my children’s mother both anti-religion and an avowed atheist. Hanukkah, one of the lesser Jewish holidays, was their favourite, occurring as it did in December, and generally just before Christmas. Jude and Megan loved receiving one small gift each day of Hanukkah, and enjoyed lighting the menora, as well. We always attended cultural celebrations at the Jewish Community Centre, dancing up a storm.
Jude and Megan had Jewish friends, and attended at various bat and bar mitzvahs, but did not have one of their own (their mother would have had a conniption fit!). During Passover, we were invited to friend’s homes for Seder, at which time our Jewish friends explained the importance of Passover, and what it meant to people of the Jewish faith.
I have come to believe that the immense amount of energy that I have brought to the tasks of my life — as is the case with my daughter, who possesses the same capacity as me to work days on end with little or no sleep, while maintaining both a high energy and output level — derives from the Jewish blood that courses through my veins. For my children, their Jewishness is not a factor in their lives, as is the case with my grandsons.
Still, I consider myself to be Jewish — my mother was Jewish, and Judaism is a matriarchy, so I am very much a Jew, even if my mother denied her Jewish heritage to her dying day. For my younger sister Linda, her Jewish heritage plays no role in her life, nor in that of my two nieces.
I have decided to take classes with Rabbi Dan Moskovitz in the new year to become better acquainted with my heritage — a bit late in my life, but better late than never. And, of course, at the invitation of my friend Jacob Kojfman, I will once again attend the Dreidels & Drinks Hanukkah celebration, for me the low-key, warmly inviting, edifying and humane event of the holiday season, to which are invited every federal, provincial and Metro Vancouver elected official, providing an opportunity to converse and interact across political boundaries (the number of political figures I introduced to one another, avowed “enemies” at first introduction, and only a few minutes later best of friends, person after person approaching me to say, “Thank you for that introduction, Raymond — who’d have thought that —- and I had so much in common? We got along famously!”
And, really, when you get right down to it, isn’t that what the holiday season is all about — peace, love, understanding, brother-and-sisterhood.
