Category Archives: Jude and Megan

Saving the Environment | Fast Fashion vs the ‘Thrift’ Economy

November 19, 2019Environment, Jude and Megan, News, Pop Culture, Vancouver, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

Fashion is today the second most polluting industry in the world, following only the oil business.
For altruistic and ecological reasons, the shopping attitude of Canadians towards second-hand clothes has been changing, and consignment stores are bustling with their newfound clientele, and consequent increased sales.
What was once a $12 billion North American market only a few short years ago is now a thriving $24 billion consignment clothing market, with the marketplace expected to top $50 billion by the middle of the next decade.
In other words, the ‘second hand economy’ is thriving.

Consignment stores are not what they used to be, offering quality like never before, carefully curated collections, and an elevated shopping experience for their burgeoning customer base.
A recent published study shows that in 2018, 64% of women and men were willing to buy pre-owned consignment store clothing — clothing which often has never been worn, and acquired from businesses which have gone bankrupt — up from 45% in 2016. The clothing retail industry believes that by 2028, up to half of the clothes in women’s and men’s wardrobes are likely to be ‘secondhand’. Fashion circularity, a new term referring to the recycled life of a garment, as indicated above is projected to reach $51 billion in five years, up from the current $24 billion.
In discussion with consignment store operators across Vancouver, proprietors told VanRamblings that where there was once “a stigma attached” to purchasing consignment store clothing — conjuring images of the yellow sweat patches, clothes strewn casually and confusingly hung (if at all) and emotional baggage people often associate with used clothing …
“Now, thankfully, purchasing clothing from consignment stores is not just acceptable — it’s cool and has completely captured the fashion zeitgeist,” one consignment clothing proprietor recently told us.
A recent study published by the Raymond James Financial Centre reports that 56% of women and men aged 18-29 prefer the consignment second hand market over conventional retailers of new clothing. Shopping in a thrifty manner guarantees shoppers the uniqueness of their own style. Most of the pieces in a consignment clothing shop are one of a kind, and allow endless possibilities of matching and styling in a creative and unique way.
All of which is to say, no longer is there a taboo about consignment clothes shopping. The rise of the sharing economy has also helped — it’s taken the stigma out of resale and removed the need to own something forever.

In September, fast fashion chain Forever 21 announced it was closing all its international locations, including 44 stores in Canada, amid flagging sales.
According to a recent interview conducted with the CBC finance guru Diane Buckner, British Columbia retail consultant Bruce Winder told her fast fashion’s target market — young, style-conscious shoppers on a budget — are also among those most concerned about the health of the planet.

“The younger millennial specifically, along with Gen Z, are incredibly environmentally conscious,” he said. “And they look at every brand and every product in terms of what is the impact on society, but also what is the impact on the employees and the environment.”

Not only do consignment stores benefit from the fact that the city’s stylish set are clearing out their closets like never before, a return to quality over quantity in the minds of most shoppers means visits to consignment stores for quality designer goods that will last (i.e. not end up in a landfill) and not break the bank will only continue to rise.

How does consignment clothing store shopping save the environment while also saving you money? Thrift shopping at consignment stores offers a viable solution for anyone looking to help out the environment.

Saving Money. Thrifted clothing is far more affordable than new clothes of comparable quality.
Smarter Buys. You tend to spend more time looking over each item instead of buying it outright.
Unique Finds. It’s highly unlikely that anyone else is walking around in the same clothes as you.
Creative Potential. You might be inspired to try new combinations, or even some DIY reconstruction!

If that isn’t enough incentive, as promised above, here are seven ways Erich Lawson writes thrifting helps the environment …

1. Consignment clothing shopping lowers your carbon footprint. A great deal of energy goes into clothing manufacture, right from the transportation of raw materials to the production process. Then, there’s the energy required to transport clothing to stores, and dispose of unwanted pieces. When shoppers buy from consignment stores, we prevent wastage of energy & resources on production of new clothes.

2. Aiding in Water Preservation. In addition to energy, water consumption is extremely high at every stage of clothing production. For instance, growing one kilogram of cotton requires 5,300 gallons of water, while wet processing and printing use 18 and 21.6 gallons respectively, per pound of cotton. Manufacturing, packaging and transportation processes add to this cost as well.

3. Reducing Chemical Pollution. The production of cotton is highly pesticide-intensive, causing soil acidification and water contamination. Textile manufacturing processes also involve the use of harmful dyes, caustic soda and crude oil by-products. These chemicals are generally dumped into areas around manufacturing units, contaminating surface and ground water through soil runoff.

4. North Americans throw out anywhere from 60 to over 80 pounds of textile waste annually, and only about 10% of this makes it to consignment stores. If more people start shopping for consignment clothes, less fabric ends up being dumped in landfills. That’s not all. Packaging material is also reduced, keeping plastic, paper and metal out of the waste stream.

5. Inspiring Green Living. Thrifting is an essential part of green living, in more ways than one. When you buy consignment clothing, you keep them from being sent to a landfill and reduce manufacturing demand as well. Also, by donating consigning clothes you no longer wish to wear, you encourage others simply by giving them something they can use.

6. Boosting Community Development. Shopping at consignment stores means support for local business instead of multinational corporations. Consignment stores provide employment in retail outlets, creating more jobs and boosting the local economy. Many hire disabled workers and support local community programming projects as well.

7. Encourages Recycling. Did you know that recycled cotton clothing uses less than 3% of the energy that would have gone into producing new clothes? When you reuse or recycle clothes, you’re decreasing the demand for production & encouraging sustainabity. It may not seem like much, but every item that doesn’t end up in a landfill counts as a win!

In the 1990s, when VanRamblings was charged with training Statistics Canada employees on how to conduct the annual Survey of Household Spending, during the role play portion of the training exercise, in answer to the question as to how much we spent on clothing and shoes each year, we responded with: $500. Senior staff at Statistics Canada guffawed loudly when VanRamblings offered this bit of information, saying to us at days’ end, “Raymond, suggesting that you spend only $500 a year on clothing and shoes is the funniest thing I think I’ll ever hear. How clever of you. Good for you. It brought lightness to the day’s proceedings.”

Little did senior staff know that, in fact, VanRamblings was acquiring most of our clothing from Arthur’s for Men on West 1st Avenue just west of Burrard Street, where fashionable wool sweaters could be had for $15, shirts and pants for $10, and jackets and shoes for $25, or less.
VanRamblings’ children had long encouraged shopping at consignment stores.

“Dad, not only are you colour blind, you have no fashion sense. In the past, you’ve bought your clothing at The Bay, and you’ve tended to shop for the store brands. You are much better off shopping for name label clothing at a consignment store: those clothing items are priced less expensively than what you’re buying now, the clothes are of invariably better quality — and will hold their nap in a way your current shirts, sweaters and pants will never do, meaning the clothing will last longer.”

“Buying name label consignment clothing assures quality, assures — at least in most cases — proper colour and design that will match the remaining items in your wardrobe, and as long as you shop at Arthur’s for Men, the owners will know what clothing items you have in your wardrobe at home, because they have a list of what you’ve purchased, so will be able to recommend complementary items.”

And now to the present.
Recently, we purchased an Italian suede jacket we’d seen at a neighbourhood Italian clothing boutique that had now gone out of business.
The jacket was retailing for $380.
When Turnabout (our consignment clothing shop of choice, these days) purchased almost the entire stock of the bankrupt Italian clothing boutique, that $380 suede jacket was put on sale for $40!

When walking into the store the morning the jacket was put on sale, staff approached me to say, “Mr. Tomlin, we’ve just put a jacket out on the floor that we think you’ll love,” directing me to the suede jacket. “You’d better buy it now, or it’ll be gone by noon.”
So, we did — and enjoy wearing it today!

Now, it may be a lark that our former employers at Statistics Canada thought our voiced annual clothing expenditure to be a laugh, but in our current scarce and uncertain economy, if sales at the consignment store we most often attend is any indication — where only a decade ago, we could wait for an item to drop 80% in price were we to wait six to eight weeks — when an item we like now appears in the shop, we purchase it immediately, because if we don’t, it’s almost a certainty that it’ll be gone the next day.

Stories of a Life | 1989 – 90 | The Balloon Story

November 16, 2019Jude and Megan, Stories of a Life, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

Christmas of 1989, Cathy asked me if she might have the children on Christmas Day, as her mother would be in town and very much wanted to spend Christmas Day with her two grandchildren, Jude and Megan.
Now, just the previous year Cathy and I had come to the bitter end of an arduous and discomfiting 10 year, million dollar separation and divorce journey that had near bankrupted me. Although I had sole custody of the children from 1978 through 1981, because Myrtle (Cathy’s mother) hated having to go through me to see her grandchildren, she financed what turned out to be a brutal seven year campaign to wrest sole custody away from me in favour of Cathy having the children year round, in the court proceedings setting about to deny me access to my two loving children.
In order to pay for the legal fees necessary to put my position forward in the Supreme Court (and to preserve my access to Jude and Megan), I worked three jobs simultaneously, teaching, working as a social worker, as well as a corrections officer, taking an inheritance from my aunt, as well, to fund legal fees from 1981 through 1988 — going so far in the late eighties as to cash in my teacher’s pension to pay off the last of my legal bills — all but living in the Supreme Court throughout the 1980s, until one fine day, Supreme Court Justice Patrick Dohm seized himself of our divorce and custody matter (which meant that all future proceedings would be directed to his court), with Justice Dohm finally deciding in 1988 that “enough was enough”, scolding Cathy, instructing her to “behave”, and then awarding the two of us joint custody, which gave me 183 days of access to the children each year, Wednesday evenings, Friday evenings through Sunday evenings, half of each of the Easter and Christmas holidays, as well as all summers, from the beginning of July through the end of August.

Note of reflection: I will say this, had I to do it all over again, I would not have fought what was for me a half million dollar custody battle with Cathy throughout the 1980s. Some people are meant to be parents — Cathy is not one of those people. Had I not fought with her, gone to court half a dozen or more times each year for seven years, because Cathy is who she is, I likely would have spent just as much time, perhaps even more time, with Jude and Megan throughout the 1980s than I did by fighting with her in court to maintain my access to the children — and would most probably have a better relationship with my children than is the case today.

In 1988, as per the Supreme Court ruling of Justice Dohm, in the first year of the Court mandated agreement I was given the latter half of the Christmas holidays as access, which meant that in 1989, I would have the two children from the last day of school through Boxing Day morning. But as Myrtle was in Vancouver during Christmas 1989, Cathy asked if she might have the children from the end of the school term in December through Boxing Day morning.

“Raymond, you know you want to spend time with the children. School gets out for the holidays on Friday, December 22nd and Boxing Day is only four days later, which would give you very little time with Jude and Megan. If you take them for the second half of the holidays, you would have the children from Boxing Day through the late evening of Sunday, January 7th — which would give you the children for thirteen full days, more than three times the number of days you would get if you just had them through Boxing Day, which I’m sure would make you happy.”

The more time I got to spend with the children the better, I had long thought, so I agreed to take the children from Boxing Day through their return to school on the 8th of January, agreeing to forfeit spending Christmas Day with the children in favour of a longer period with the children over the holiday season, granting Myrtle her Christmas wish.
Now, given the previous seven year history of our rancorous divorce, I should have known something was up, but being the good-hearted, naïve fellow I was then (and remain today), I readily — if stupidly — agreed to Cathy’s plan. And thus the conditions are set for part one of today’s story.

A bit of background as to why I should’ve been wary of Cathy’s intentions:

On my birthday on August 11th 1989, Cathy drove over to my home to drop the kids off, as Jude, Megan and I prepared to spend my birthday afternoon together, after which we would attend at The Cannery Restaurant for my much-looked-forward-to birthday dinner.

Cathy drove up in her late model Jetta, parked illegally across the street, leaving Jude and Megan (who were all dressed up) in the car, approaching me as I stood on the front lawn of my home. Cathy said, in an angry tone, “I want to talk with you.” “Something contentious?” I asked. “Yes,” she said, to which I replied, “Could we put off having that discussion until tomorrow? I’d very much like to speak with you, and I’m sure we could work out to your satisfaction whatever it is that you feel needs doing — it’s my birthday, though, and as you well know from having been married to me, I like to steer clear of any sort of contention on my birthday.”

Before I knew what was happening, Cathy balled up her fist, and moving her arm back and then towards my face hit me squarely on my left cheek, with such force that it knocked me to the ground. With me now lying sprawled out on the ground, Cathy stomped back across the street, got back into her car, and drove off, the children looking at me piteously through the rear window of their mother’s car as she speedily drove off.

Cathy could have her moods, and that is an example of one of them.

Boxing Day 1989: the Beginning of a Three Month Interregnum
As pre-arranged and agreed upon, Cathy dropped the children off to my place in the late morning of Boxing Day 1989. Upon alighting from their mother’s car, both children approached me to say that they wanted to go shopping for clothes, the first stop on our buying spree to be Aritzia at Oakridge where Megan had scoped out exactly what she wanted to acquire, with Jude asking afterwards that we drive downtown to Robson Street to a shop where he wanted to acquire a pair of jeans he’d had his eye on, and were on sale on Boxing Day. The three of us spent that day after Christmas day bopping around town, shopping, walking along crowded streets, stopping off for lunch, driving around Stanley Park and out to Horseshoe Bay — the children loved to be driven across the landscape of our region, soaking in the sights, listening to the radio and spending time together — before heading home for dinner, and a night in together watching a video.
Jude and Megan had chosen Good Morning Vietnam as the video, and after cleaning up the kitchen post dinner, set about to create the warming conditions to watch the Robin Williams movie, the three of us all snuggly & toasty warm in our pj’s and housecoats, sitting on the sofa hot chocolate in hand, and snacking on an array of chocolates and shortbread cookies.

At 11:30pm, the front door buzzer in my apartment sounded, with me thinking, “Who could that be at this time of night?” In fact, it was two Vancouver police officers, who asked to be let in, who told me that one of them would be knocking on my apartment door within the next minute. When the officer arrived at my door, I greeted him, the officer looking into my apartment to see Jude and Megan on the sofa staring out at him, the officer asking, “Are you two alright?” “Yep, we’re fine,” they said. The officer asked me to step out into the hallway of my apartment, which I did.
The officer explained to me that a frantic Cathy was in the foyer of my apartment building, court order in hand, exclaiming that I had not returned the children to her earlier in the day, as per the court order (a court order which she had re-proclaimed for this evening event). Cathy contended, the officer said, that I had not returned the children to her, so she called the police to enforce the court order — which he and his fellow officer were now compelled to do. I set about to explain the circumstance, but the officer was clear that the court order trumped whatever exclamation of events I was presenting to him. The officer asked me to return to my apartment to instruct the children to get dressed, and prepare to return to their mother’s home — which I solemnly and reluctantly set about to do.
Within 15 minutes, Jude and Megan were in the custody of the officer, after which they took the elevator to the main floor, reuniting with their mother.
I had no contact with the children for the next three months. Despite the fact that I was earning good money, I had no desire to spend even more money taking Cathy back into court, before Justice Dohm — who, no matter what he ruled, would at the end of the day, as had been the case in the past, have little effect on Cathy’s arbitrary and injudicious conduct.

Megan was born on March 26th, 1977. March 26th, 1990 would not only mark her 13 birthday, but her entrance into teenage hood. There was no likelihood that I was not going to move the sun, the moon, the stars to become a part of the celebration of the young woman I had raised, despite the fact that we’d had no contact with one another for three months.
So, I did what any good father would do: I arranged to have a large bouquet of birthday helium balloons delivered to the offices of University Hill Secondary, addressed to the young woman, Megan Jessica Tomlin.
That afternoon, I received a telephone call from Megan asking me to pick her up from school, which I did. Megan told me how disconcerting and embarrassing she found my outré birthday gift to be, but that her friends prevailed upon her that afternoon, saying what a wonderful gesture it was, that she couldn’t possibly not see how loving the gift was, and that she must, must, must get in touch with me as soon as was practicable.
For the next nine years, Megan’s and my relationship was steady and as close as it had always been, with no breaks away from one another throughout that entire time period, trusting confidants and friends with one another, lovers of baseball both, father and daughter, advocate and advocatee, Megan in charge (Megan always had to be in charge, then and to this very day), decided and loving, independent, feminist and caring.

Music Sundays | Angus and Julia Stone | Sibling Folk

June 2, 2019A & E, fixin to die rag, Jude and Megan, Music, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

Julia Natasha Stone was born on the 13th of April 1984 in Sydney Australia.
Julia’s parents, Kim and John Stone, were both well-regarded Australian folk musicians who played locally. Two years later, on April 27th 1986, her brother Angus was born. At family gatherings, it was not uncommon to see the two siblings perform — all was well until, in 2000, their parents split.
After finishing secondary school and while on a holiday with her brother in South America, Julia was impressed by her brother’s musical talent, “Angus was writing amazing songs … he had shown me how to play guitar when we were traveling in Bolivia, and those songs had gotten me through that year (Julia had, earlier that year separated from her boyfriend, from all reports a turbulent relationship, which left Julia emotionally devastated)”.
Within a year, in 2004, Julia began writing her own songs.
By 2005, and back in Sydney, Angus and Julia began to play gigs at open mic nights, with Angus performing backing vocals for Julia, as in time Julia did for Angus, on the songs he wrote. Finally, in 2006, the two formed a duo, Angus and Julia Stone. In March of that year the pair recorded their début extended play, Chocolates and Cigarettes, a remarkably chill amalgam of songs written and recorded live at home.
The EP, released in August, went on to win the ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) 2006 Best Album award, with Angus and Julia also taking home the Best New Group prize. The rest, as they say, is history.

Chocolates & Cigarettes directed by Angus and Julia Stone — from their 2006 début EP.

Angus and Julia Stone’s second album, Down the Way (March 2010), débuted at number one on the ARIA Albums Chart and was certified 3x platinum in 2011, It was the highest-selling album by an Australian artist for 2010. At the 2010 ARIA Music Awards the duo won ARIA Album of the Year for Down the Way and ARIA Single of the Year for Big Jet Plane, attaining the number-one position in the Triple J Hottest 100 in 2011, as voted on by radio station listeners across Australia.

Angus and Julia Stone last played in Vancouver on November 28th 2017, to a sold-out audience of 1280 fans at The Vogue.

Stories of a Life | 1978 – 1982 | Chief Cook and Bottlewasher

June 1, 2019fixin to die rag, Jude and Megan, Stories of a Life, Thought for the Day, Vancouver, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

1978. Jude, at age 3½, and Megan at 2 years of age. At the kitchen table for breakfast.

A couple of weeks ago, when I was extolling the virtues of my Instant Pot to a friend, in a lull in the conversation, she turned to me and said, “You like to cook, don’t you?”
The short answer: I derive pleasure from both cooking and baking.
Here’s the story behind my love for the culinary powers of the kitchen.

1616 Semlin Drive, at E. 1st Ave. in Vancouver. One of the homes I lived in growing up.

From my earliest days, I fended for myself. My mother worked three jobs, and my father worked the afternoon shift at the Post Office. When I arrived home, although my father often left a stew bubbling away in the slow cooker, from age seven on, for the most part if I wanted to eat, I’d have to make breakfast, lunch and dinner for myself and for my sister.
So, being somewhat industrious, I learned to cook — well, make sandwiches and, for dessert, Jello, at least for the first few years. I loved turkey growing up (all that triptiphan), so with the help of my mother, I learned to make her delicious turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes and vegetables. For the most part, though, my cooking skills were rudimentary — but I didn’t starve, and more often than not there was food in my belly.
When in 1970 Cathy and I moved in together, marrying soon after, I was responsible for most of the cooking. Cathy’s mom sent her out $1000 a month (she didn’t know we were living together), visiting every three months, taking us to the local Woodward’s grocery floor, where she dropped in excess of $300 at each visit. With Cathy’s mother money, we ate a fairly staple diet of generously thick T-bone steaks and baked potatoes.

Simon Fraser University’s Louis Riel House, student family 1 + 2 bedroom residence.

Soon after moving into the Louis Riel Student Residence at Simon Fraser University in 1971, Cathy joined a women’s group, who met every Wednesday evening. Among the decisions that were taken by the women’s group was this: men shall participate in all household chores, and share in all food preparation. As we often ate together with other of the students in the residence, my specialty became salads — all different kinds of healthy, nutritious salads, chock full of vegetables, nuts, sunflower seeds, and more.
At this point, Cathy still hated to cook — there was immense pressure placed on Cathy by her peers to develop culinary skills, but she refused. All that changed in the summer of 1973, which is a story for another day.

2182 East 2nd Avenue, in the Grandview Woodland neighbourhood of Vancouver.

When Cathy and I separated in 1978 — Jude and I lived in the home above, before Jude, Megan and I moved to Simon Fraser University and Louis Riel House, when I began work on my Masters degree — the thought occurred to me one morning when making breakfast that I was now the lone parent, and the sole person responsible for ensuring the children ate nutritious foods at each meal in order that they might grow up into healthy adults. I took on the task of learning the art of cooking (and baking), in earnest.
There was, however, a quid pro quo involved.
After returning from a day of larnin’ and T.A.’ing at SFU, after picking up the children at daycare at 4:30pm, and walking the relatively short distance to our two-bedroom apartment at Louis Riel House, while the children played with their friends on the lawn in front of our apartment, I prepared dinner, calling them in about 45 minutes after dinner preparation had begun. The kids were famished, and so was I.
Here’s where the quid pro quo came in: at the end of each meal, each of the children had to turn and say to me some version of, “Daddy that was a good dinner. It was mmmm, delicious. Thank you for making dinner for all of us, and all the work you put in to feeding us healthy and nutritious breakfasts, lunches and dinners, and all those wonderful desserts we love!”
I needed the incentive provided to me by both children, so their gratitude — which, in time, they came to acknowledge as their own — and the kids felt good about encouraging me, as I encouraged them in all of their endeavours. We were a happy family & all was well with the world for us.
Now, I was an adventuresome cook, and not everything I made turned out to the liking of each one of us.
Being a dedicated democrat, Jude, Megan and I made a deal with one another in respect of dinner. Both children had to eat at least two bites of each food item I prepared: after all the work I put into preparing a dish, the least they could do was try out the dish to see whether they might like it. Most of the time they did, but sometimes not.
One night, I made cream of escargot soup. Honestly, it wasn’t bad. But at the end of the soup entrée, I turned to the children and asked them what they thought, to which they replied almost in unison, “It was all right, tasty enough I suppose, but I’m not sure if I’d ever want to have it again.” I agreed with them. We never ate cream of escargot soup ever again.
Each of us were allowed to have three foods on a list of our creation, foods we did not have to eat, no matter what. Megan had three foods, Jude had three foods, and I had three foods — those foods changed over a period of time. In order to add a food to our individual “nah, I don’t want to eat that food” list, some food on each of our lists had to come off. Took some thought on the part of the children as to whether they wanted to remove a food. Megan, for a great long while didn’t like avocados — but one day, while placing a new food she didn’t like onto her “don’t eat” list, she took out avocados, eventually coming to love avocados, as she does to this day.
Watching me prepare meals all the time he was growing up caused Jude to want to become a chef — he worked in the food industry throughout his late teens and twenties, before getting into teaching, which paid better, and was overall less stressful, with “more honourable people”, he’d say to me.
In her teens, Megan became a vegan — there’s a story there, too, which I’ll leave for another day — and, for the most part, took on the preparation of her own meals, as did Jude over a period of time. After the summer of 1973, Cathy became a great cook — there’s not much I miss about that tumultuous marriage, but I sure miss Cathy’s avant-garde cooking, her culinary craftsmanship, spicing & phenomenally delicious cooking. Ah well.