An early 1970s Mexican Adventure, Part 1 of 4 Simon Fraser University to Los Angeles, then Mexico
I loved university. In the 1970s, I loved attending classes at Simon Fraser University, talking hours on end with classmates sharing obscure insights into arcane literature, or why anarchism is the most humanist political philosophy, or spending hours in the library, or finding some quiet corner to type out the dozens of essays that were due each semester.
Surprising myself, I was so curious about the world around me, so committed to learning everything I could on any given subject presented to me by my various approachable and erudite professors and radicalized teaching assistants, in the books I was reading or from folks in the pub at whatever stage of their university career, who over a beer would good-naturedly engage with me in philosophical arguments, whatever the topic of the moment. Attending classes and living at Louis Riel House — sometimes not leaving Burnaby Mountain for months on end — attending Simon Fraser University was for me the happiest and most rewarding time of my life.
Not so much for Cathy, my long-suffering wife.
Ever since we had met, and as would remain the case for years to come, there was no disappointment to be found in our love-making, when we arose from our overnight slumber, between classes or when I came home for lunch. Before and after dinner. And, of course, before bed, which was always the longest period we dedicated to connubial bliss. Quite simply, we couldn’t get enough of one another. And that was good, for the both of us.
Still, after Cathy left her employment at Grayce Florists, and although Cathy worked with me and our friends publishing weekly at The Peak, where I was the Arts & Entertainment Editor, writing 10,000 words each and every week, in addition to my regular daily afternoon radio programme on CKSF, and all those classes, and tutorials, and essays, Cathy often attending classes with me, attending protest rallies and reviewing my essays before I handed them in — given that Cathy had consciously chosen not to re-enroll in school, to continue her university into its third year, there was something missing in her life and in her wanderlust nature. Travel.
Cathy made no secret of the fact that she wanted to get away, to explore new lands, to be adventurous and anonymous thousands of miles away.
In February 1972, I was enrolled in my fifth consecutive semester at SFU, having early on identified my areas of interest for my studies — political science, sociology and anthropology, part of the radical PSA department at SFU, as well as English literature.
Much to my astonishment, I was achieving straight A’s in school, my grade point average past my first year 4.0, and in this fifth semester I was on a roll, most of my course work completed by early February, as I prepared to ready myself with the reward of five more A’s, bursaries and scholarships, and further down the academic road enrollment in a Master’s programme.
Arriving home mid-afternoon Tuesday, February 8th, 1972, opening the door and walking into our student apartment, Cathy standing in the living room, rather than approaching me to give me a kiss, she stood stock still, looking down, then looking up and directly at me, and said, “We’re leaving for Mexico next Monday, for two months. Get your head around it.”
Cathy and I traveling along the Oregon coast, headed to California, and then Mexico
I knew there was no arguing with her about her dictum. Cathy had sacrificed so much for me that it was quite clear: it was her turn now. The next Monday morning, early, we jumped into our 1970 Datsun 510 — a wedding present from her mother — and only hours later we found ourselves barrelling down the coast of Oregon heading towards Los Angeles, where arrangements had been made to stay with our friend, Bachi — with whom I had attended almost all my classes my first four semesters, and who was my best friend, Manuel Vittorio Esquivel, handsome, swarthy, adventuresome, and the best friend anyone could wish for.
While in Los Angeles, Cathy & I listened to KRLA, southern California’s rock ‘n roll giant
Cathy didn’t like driving, so I drove the entire 1500 miles (I love driving!) to our L.A. destination, arriving two days after we’d left our Burnaby Mountain home, as we found our way to the Chicano area of Los Angeles, a Latino and Latina East L.A. of boom boxes and low-riders, a vibrant Mexican community with which we fell in love, as we did Bachi’s mother’s cooking — eating mole chicken and lime-cilantro rice for the first time while consuming gallons of fresh-squeezed orange juice available at farmer’s markets in two quart containers, for only a dollar, driving along the freeways in the jasmine-scented night area, KRLA radio at full volume blasting into the warm night air, free and in love, and enjoying the time of our young lives.
The sunny, open air shopping mall located in wealthy, beach-fronted Santa Monica
All was not perfect, though. One afternoon while awaiting dinner and sitting in the living room, Bachi’s 18-year-old sister, Maria — one of the most beautiful and self-possessed young women I’d ever met, who was enrolled in her second semester at a nearby college, and who worked as a sales clerk at a department store in a mall in the wealthy Santa Monica neighbourhood to help pay for her tuition — came home crying, sobbing, inconsolable, wracked with pain, broken and disconsolate, collapsing onto the sofa, curled up into a heaving ball of sobs and pain, bereft of hope, for the moment not of this world, not of any world, alone and withdrawn.
Maria worked in the shoe department at Macy’s. Earlier that afternoon, a wealthy woman in her early 30s had arrived at the shoe department, miserable, abusive, racist, on the attack and demanding service — now pointing at Maria — to “that dirty Chicana over there, who oughta be sent back to where she came from, but if she’s gonna be here, she damn well better serve me, and get her ass over here. Now!”
The manager stood nearby, but didn’t come to Maria’s aid, instead directing the abusive woman over to where Maria stood, now quivering, saying to the irate-for-no-good-reason shopper, “Of course, ma’am. Maria is here to serve you. She will find you anything you need. Now hop to it, Maria.”
The situation devolved from there, with Maria finding one pair of shoes after another for this racist and abusive early-30s woman, responding to the demands of the woman to, “Get down on your knees, don’t look at me, put those shoes onto my feet now, don’t look up, and you better be careful when fitting those shoes, or I’ll have your job.” The woman remained in the shoe department for an hour, loudly and abusively making Maria’s life a hell on earth, before finally leaving the department store harrumphing, having made no purchase. Maria finished her shift, and drove home.
Once home, after her mother intervened, Maria spent the rest of the evening in her bedroom, while Bachi, Cathy and I left his home, leaving Maria — whose young life had been a litany of the kind of abuse she had suffered that afternoon — in the care of her mother, as the three of us drove to a nearby drive-in for a burger and fries, staying away until late.
That evening, Cathy and I decided we would leave for Mexico the next day.
After an early breakfast of heuvos rancheros prepared by Bachi’s mom, Maria still in her bedroom, not wishing to join us at the kitchen table, leaving our car in the garage attached to Bachi’s home, Bachi drove us in his own vehicle to the Mexican border, just north of Tijuana. Cathy had mapped out our journey, involving us taking a bus to Mexicali, where we would board a train for the 2,000 kilometre journey to Guadalajara.
The train above, very much like the train Cathy and I traveled on throughout Mexico
Both Cathy and I, once we’d boarded the train in Mexicali for the first leg of our Mexican adventure — we were planning on staying in Guadalajara for a few days, then planned to make our way over to the coast, and come back to Guadalajara before heading to Mexico City, but it was still a largely unplanned adventure, where we both felt secure that we’d meet good folks, and learn something about a country about which knew little — were surprised that there were 20 young Americans traveling in the same car as us, hippies who’d shorn there hair, as I had, in order to get a visa, the men letting their hair and beards grow once we’d made it across the border.
As is almost always the case when traveling in a group — not that any one of us knew one another, or anyone else in our car — one of our 20 ‘fellow travelers’, in this case a gaunt young man with an adventurous spirit who’d traveled to Mexico before, suggested to us all that upon arriving in Guadalajara, we immediately make our way over to La Peñita, along the coast, 72 kilometres north of Puerto Vallarta, where we could stay for as little as a dollar a day, swim, get to know the townspeople, and enjoy ourselves away from the hubbub of the tourist trap to the south.
Sounded good to all of us — we now had a destination.
Now, traveling as a financially itinerant train and bus traveler in the 1970s was fraught with adventure. Why fraught? Well, because revolution was the order of the day, throughout Europe, throughout central and South America, and most certainly in Mexico, where guerilla groups fought with the Mexican army, farmers led by ex-teacher Lucio Cabañas fighting against landholder impunity and oppressive police practices in rural Mexico, the guerillas carrying out ambushes of the army and security forces, and blowing up train tracks throughout northern Mexico — as proved to be the case on the first leg of our collective journey into the heart of Mexico.
Above, a contemporary photo of Benjamin Hill, in the northern Sonora state of Mexico
Upon arriving in Benjamin Hill, in the northern Mexico state of Sonora, approximately 714 kilometres south of Mexicali, the train conductor informed us that there’d be a day or two layover in Benjamin Hill, as the tracks 30 kilometres south had been blown up by guerillas. When we arrived in Benjamin Hill, midday, the sun was bright, the day sweltering. We all alighted the train to take a look around at the dusty little village.
We debated whether or not we’d each rent a room in one of the mud shacks off the main street. One of our companions, who had kept a close watch on me since we’d boarded the train in Mexicali, a ‘sexual freedom leaguer’ traveling with her boyfriend, she a stunningly gorgeous Asian woman, her boyfriend a nerdy-looking, quiet guy, looked at me and looked at Cathy, and then set about to announce to everyone gathered around in the boldest possible fashion, “I want to fuck him,” then looking at me said, “I want to fuck you. Let’s go find a room in that building over there.”
I looked over at Cathy, who was rolling her eyes, looking heavenward, then looking at me, exclaimed, “You want to fuck her, go ahead. I’m not fucking her boyfriend, though.”
Me, I’m not good in situations such as the one I was now being confronted with. Would I liked to have gone off with this beautiful young woman for a sweaty afternoon of sexual frolic? Sure — but that would mean leaving Cathy behind, and I wasn’t prepared to do that, so I just said, “You’re invitation is very kind, and I appreciate it, but I’m going to stay with Cathy,” at which statement the young sexual freedom leaguer grabbed her boyfriend’s hand, marching off to rent a room in a sun-baked mud building.
As it happens, the twenty-two of us remained in Benjamin Hill for only about six hours, as the authorities had identified an alternative route to get around the tracks that had been destroyed. By late evening, we were all on our way again, the night chill, Cathy wrapped securely in my arms, under a blanket we’d purchased in town for about three dollars.
Two days later, we arrived in Guadalajara, the twenty-two of us alighting the train, seeking food and drink. “No water,” our appointed leader told us — ”Stay with Coke, you’ll be better off. You can trust it because it’s bottled by Americans under strict standards. Drink the water, or anything washed in local water, and you’re going to find yourself in trouble.” So, we found a food cart along the street — all along the way from Mexicali to Guadalajara, we’d fed ourselves from the food carts at stops along our journey south.
We looked for, and found the bus station, all of us purchasing tickets to La Peñita for the five-hour, 262 kilometre pilgrimage to our coastal village destination, arriving around 7pm, by which time it was night, although the near full moon above shone bright. Once in La Peñita, we secured our accommodation — spacious houses about 200 yards back from the beachfront water, several of us staying in each of three houses we rented for what would be our one-week stay in the rural village, our new home.
Having left our pack sacks in our new domiciles we all went back into town, where we were accosted by a group of 6, 7, 8 and 9-year-old boys who wanted us to play foosball with them, for a peso a game — if they won, we gave them a peso (equivalent to about one cent), the game free to play.
The first game I played was with one of the 6-year-old boys, who wasn’t tall enough to even see the top of the foosball table. “This is gonna be easy,” I thought to myself, “Poor kid.” I meant to win, and show this boy how it’s done — although I’d never played foosball before. Five minutes in, the game was over, I hadn’t scored once, the boy’s facing beaming, looking up at me saying, “De nuevo, señor, de nuevo.” Over the course of the next hour, I played each of the boys, as did the men in the group, losing each game successively more quickly, as was the case with each of my companions, now 20 pesos poorer than when I’d begun the night, the women standing nearby by shaking their heads, going off to look at the “shops” nearby (stalls, really), the young boys now gleeful.
Our leader, the gaunt young American man, rounded us all up, and said, “Let’s go for a swim,” and we did, some of the women going back to our new homes to find blankets to lay on the sand, but not swim suits, as this was to be a naked swim in the ocean, all twenty-two of us running toward and splashing in the warm, sparking water, the moon above glistening in the purple night sky, the light of the moon reflecting off the water.
Mike, Mark & Jack, New Westminster’s The Rhythm Pals, Canada’s best country group
In the 1950s my mother sang with the The Rhythm Pals, a New Westminster-based country music trio that was all the rage in the late 1940s, 50s and into the 1960s, in 1965, 1967, and 1968 winning the Juno Award as best Canadian country group, a few years after which they were inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Honour, in 1989.
In my household growing up, it was Mike, Marc and Jack this, and Mike, Marc and Jack that, my mother keeping up her friendship with The Pals throughout the entirety of my young life. My mother loved to sing, sang all the time around our home and in the car, loved music of every description — when she was home there was always music in the house, Patti Page and Teresa Brewer her two favourite 1950s singers, later turning to Patsy Cline, all of whose music invested almost my every waking moment for years.
Looking back on it, I suppose my love for female vocalists originated with my own mother’s, if not exactly angelic but still melodic voice, her entire demeanour the very definition of joy when she sang. Driving around with my parents in the family car, the radio was turned up loud, my mother singing along with all of the artists of the day, save Nat King Cole, who she worshipped, and would not as his daughter did years later, ‘duet’ with him.
Above all else, though, my mother loved country and western music, a mix of Americana, folk and roots music that spoke of struggle and love lost, of tragedy and wont and lives not fully realized, the heartfelt music I grew up on and which, later in life, would emerge as my favourite musical genre, coming around to appreciate country music, after having as a teenager and for many years after rejecting the music my mother loved, finally coming around in my early 40s — I’ve loved Iris DeMent, Alison Moorer, Shelby Lynne, Kasey Chambers, Lucinda Williams, Lori McKenna, Miranda Lambert and Kacey Musgraves ever since. whose music has become the melancholy and thoughtful soundtrack that has informed my life this past 30 years.
In the late summer of 1958, my parents moved the family to Edmonton, to be closer to family and to be closer to the soundtrack of my mother’s life, roots and classic country music being far more popular on the Prairies than would ever be the case in the Lotusland Vancouver has always aspired to.
12221 81st Street, in northwest Edmonton, my family home from late 1959 through 1961
In 1960, with the help of my tall oak of a grandfather, my parents bought a house in northwest Edmonton, at 12221 81st Street, a working-aspiring-to-middle class neighbourhood, where I attended Eastwood Elementary for Grades 5 & 6, the new school and neighbourhood a step up from inner-city Edmonton, where we had rented for a year, and where I attended Sir John A. McDougall school in Grade 4 befriending all of the tough kids in school, helping them with their in-class & their homework, in exchange keeping me safe — to say it was a rough neighbourhood is to dramatically understate the matter. Still, I made it out in one piece, and was glad for the move.
As I say, my mother loved country roots music, the music of her youth, the music she sang, and the music that most spoke to her, that I believe kept her alive and her mind and spirit active — amidst the three back-breaking jobs she always held down, working at a puff wheat factory overnight for the entirety of our three-year tenure in Edmonton, working at a local bakery during the day, and the Swift Meat Packing Plant in the late afternoon and throughout the evening, ambitious and anxious to get ahead, or at least keep hers, and our heads above water, my father continuing his work at the Post Office, and surprising to everyone stepping up to the plate as our increasingly competent and loving father, to whom I’d help teach the ability to read, and with whom I’d spend endless hours quizzing him on aspects of his employment, in preparation for the quarterly tests of competence imposed by a draconian employer, the Canada Post Office.
Every now and then, though, my mother would get an evening off — she didn’t want to sit around the house “wasting time”, as she put it, she wanted to go out into the evening, be with people, to live and to feel free and to feel a part of the community, and if there was a country music concert at the nearby and walkable Edmonton Fairgrounds, all the better.
My mother loved to walk. One early Tuesday evening, she told my sister and I to put on our coats, that we were going out, saying to my father, “You’re coming along, too, to keep the kids out of mischief, to keep an eye on them so they don’t run away” — not that my sister and I ever did, we were homebodies, most evenings both my father and mother off at work, my sister and I at home watching TV or doing our homework, or visiting with friends in the neighbourhood, but back at home never later than 8pm.
On this particularly chill October 1960 evening, we made our way down to what appeared to us to be a deserted Edmonton Fairgrounds, although once inside the grounds and the closer we got to as our yet unknown destination, the clearer were the sounds of guitars being tuned up, and voices testing microphones — until we found ourselves arriving at a small tent, chairs for about 75 people, over the course of the half hour we waited for the evening’s festivities to begin, much to our mother’s displeasure, kicking around the sawdust on the floor, while looking around at the others who were in attendance, a few ragtag kids, but mostly adults in heavy, working class clothing, most drawn and seemingly weary with life, until …
Classic country music artists extraordinaire, The Wayfaring Stranger, Burl Ives; Montana Slim, otherwise know as Wilf Carter, and the Singing Cowboy himself, Hank Snow.
“Howdy, my name is Burl Ives, and this here to my left is Wilf Carter and standin’ next to him, the singing ranger himself, Hank Snow.”
And with that introduction, the small but fervently enthusiastic crowd came alive, as we were treated to a concert, and musicianship the likes of which I would not hear again till 1998, at a Lucinda Williams concert at The Vogue.
For the first and only time in my life, I saw my mother happy, in her element, dancing off to the side, a look of bliss on her face, her tired and aching bones revitalized with a renewed energy and strength, two and a half hours in my mother’s life that neither she nor I would ever forget, one of the best nights of my life, when I felt safe and loved amidst the music that had long been the soundtrack of my life, as it still remains to this day.
Anyone who knows me, knows that I live for film, and for the past 37 years have attended the annual Vancouver International Film Festival each spring (in the early years) and autumn since the inception of VIFF in 1981.
For me, VIFF has provided a sense of connection to the larger world around me, and occurs as a humanizing event in my life, helping me to remember that no matter where we live across our planet – be it in Kenya, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Chile, Italy, Sweden, Vietnam, Guatemala or Iran – the issues we all confront in our daily lives are the same: wont and need, reconciliation with family and the need for understanding, pending environmental collapse, housing as a human right, love, tragedy, personal disaster, rage, injustice and how over time it becomes clearer and clearer how necessary it is that we all work together for change to improve the conditions of our lives, our family’s life and the lives of those around us, to make ours a more inclusive and more socially just world for all, no matter where we live, no matter our ethnicity or sexual orientation, or our economic circumstance, we are all one, and must learn to work together.
The Vancity Theatre … early morning lineups for the early September advance screenings, at 2012’s 31st annual Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF)
In the first week of each September dating back to 2005 — when the Vancity Theatre opened — VIFF administrators have held an early morning press conference mid-week at the Vancity Theatre. Some 365 films are introduced, programmers talk excitedly about the films that will be coming to that particular year’s festival, a teaser trailer is shown, Festival Director Alan Franey — if you beg and plead — will provide insight into his favourite films that will screen during the Festival, after which about 120 folks, including actors, directors and producers of Canadian films that will screen at the Festival, repair to the reception area to consume delicious noshing canapés (“hey, we’re indigent writers & actors, it’s our meal for the day!”). And then the fun really begins …
The very next day — on Thursday — starting at 10am, VIFF commences advance screenings of films where directors, actors and producers for the advance screening films will be present during the Festival. About 30 members of the press, complemented by about 80 festival pass-holders line up outside the Vancity, and after we’ve done our waiting in line, scurry in to find the seats where we’ll remain for the next six hours, losing ourselves in the cinema of the world, the cinema of despair, the cinema of hope. 2012. Noon. Break between films. Vancity Theatre. Sitting in the back row is Len, a Richmond-based filmmaker, and veteran Vancouver Film Festival attendee. As we rise together — I’m sitting in the fourth row from the front of the theatre in the middle of the row, Len is sitting in the back row near the south exit. Except this year for the first time, there is a woman nudging beside him as he stands — would it be fair to say, a beautiful woman, a goddess with an aura around her, an entirely angelic beneficent presence, for she is all of that, a young Botticelli madonna brought to life. Love, at first sight. Kismet. Magnificent, life-changing, transcendent love.
As I make my way to the south stairway to rise toward Len, looking at me he says, “This is my friend, Julienne. We’re making a film together, a documentary. This is Raymond — he writes about the Festival.” Julienne is grace in human form, polite verging on deferential. The three of us engage in a repartee, on which subjects I cannot recall. Julienne looks at me. Clearly, she sees that I cannot move. I am awestruck in her seraphic presence — which I hope against hope she has not sensed, but who am I kidding .. of course she has. But Julienne does not let on, as she sets about to create a protective space, so that my heart will not break.
Each day for the next three weeks, it proves much the same — three, as many as five films screening in advance each day Monday through Thursday, polite conversation between films, talk about the documentary Julienne and Len were making. And I behaved myself — which is unusual for me, because most years I am utterly out of control for the duration of the film festival period, so alive, so lacking in sleep, moved to tears by so many films, in so much despair yet feeling so much hope, falling in love every minute with the women on the screen, with the young, socially gifted women VIFF volunteers — joy verging on madness. But 2012? I was calm.
As is the case with a great many film festival devotees, in the week before the festival is officially to get underway, I create a daily schedule for the 16-day duration of the festival — usually five films, sometimes six or even seven films — that I will see each day, the film schedule based on input from Alan Franey or other festival staff, buzz from film-goers, awards from a dozen other film festivals, and reviews in the New York and Los Angeles Times, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Screen Daily, Britain’s The Guardian and The Telegraph, and a retinue of other print & online sources.
Showbiz Shayne, and the ineffable Mr. Know-It-All
My friend, J.B. Shayne, for two decades and more accompanied me to the Vancouver International Film Festival, giving me the nickname, Mr. Know-It-All (J.B. billed himself as Showbiz Shayne). One doesn’t know the meaning of the word insufferable until you’ve encountered me pontificating on one film or other, or what to see that day, or some inside festival scoop, while waiting endlessly in line to gain entrance to one venue or another.
The first day of the 2012 Vancouver International Film Festival, J.B. and I were a little blurry-eyed, lined up outside the Granville 7 cinema waiting to pick up our entrance tickets for the day’s screenings, the first one of which would unspool at 10am. As per usual, in a state of near madness, personalized festival schedule in hand, 100 hundred films lovingly and carefully chosen for both J.B.’s and my viewing pleasure (although we don’t attend all screenings together), me in an excited state of near derangement, dogmatic about the films, “You just must see, take my word for it …” offering my opinion on the work of a particular European director or other, her or his oeuvre and body of work, a crowd gathering around me, present for this early morning devolution into insanity … when … Julienne, standing in line some ways in front of me, unseen by me, approached. Approached to correct me.
What followed was a professorial treatise on the history of film made ‘live’, and where this particular director fell into the timeline of the history of film and the arts, whose work he was drawing from, the lighting technique innovative and all his own, lambent always with just a touch of sheen, his use of time and space, how he moves the actors around on screen … making it quite plain to everyone standing around that I was but a mere novice on the history of film, a charlatan, an imposter, a pretender, perhaps even a buffoon. And for the first time in 20 years, I was truly in love. Julienne was angelic in her presentation of information, her love and respect for me infusing her every word of criticism, each word a hug, a kiss, a warm embrace. Here was someone who truly loved me, cared for me, wished to make her presence known and felt, her words a devotion to me, fealty made extant, as real and palpable, as moving and transcendently lovely as anything I have ever experienced in my life, every word uttered by her one of utter respect, and true love and appreciation.
After Julienne completed her discourse on cinematic history, those around us turned away, as it was clear that for Julienne and I there was only the two of us, Julienne and I now standing close, standing side by side, almost touching, Julienne asking to see the schedule of films I had in my right hand. Turning over my personalized VIFF schedule to her, Julienne did the same for me. As she perused my VIFF schedule, I looked at her film schedule — barely recognizing any of the films on her filmgoing agenda, all of the films on my schedule vetted through weeks of painstaking research.
Without hesitation, looking at her list of scheduled VIFF films, I made a decision: for me, this would be the Julienne festival. I threw away my film schedule, knowing that it was essential that I attend at a screening of every film on Julienne’s list. And so it was. We attended every one of her chosen films together, well more than 80 films over the course of sixteen days, never sitting even remotely close to one another at any one of the screenings, for as it is me for me, it is for Julienne: the Vancouver International Film Festival represents the church of cinema …
” … the church and the cinema create a sense of sacred space with their high ceilings, long aisles running the length of the darkened rooms inside, the use of dim lighting, the sweeping curvature of the walls, and the use of curtains to enhance the sacredness of the experience.
The seating, and the opening introduction by a VIFF manager constituting a liturgy for one and all, not dissimilar to the welcoming ritual that occurs in a church service prior to the sermon.
There is, too, the notion that as the film limns your unconscious mind you are being transported, elevated in some meaningful way, left in awe in the presence of a work of film art.
At the Vancouver International Film Festival, there is the vague, unshakable notion that the eternal and invisible world is all around us, transporting us as we sit in rapt attention. We experience the progress and acceleration of time, as we see life begin, progress, and find redemption. All within two hours. The films at the Vancouver International Film Festival constituting much more than entertainment; each film a thoughtful meditation on our place in society and our purpose in life.
Cinema emerging as that place where we might experience life in the form of parable, within a safe and welcoming environment, that place where we are able to become vulnerable and open, hungry to make sense of our lives. Cinema delivers for Julienne and I, as it does for many, access to the new spiritualism, the place where we experience not merely film, but language, memory, art, love, death and, perhaps even, spiritual transcendence.”
And so it went, from early morning til late at night, until one morning while the two of us were in line, a friend came up to Julienne and I, saying …
“What the two of you are doing is disgusting. Raymond, Julienne is 30 years younger than you. She’s a married woman, yet the two of you carry on like you are lovers. Leave her alone. The two of you have no business spending any time together. Stop it. Stop it now!”
Even before Diana finished her denunciation of the two of us, Julienne was crying, tears trickling, then cascading down her cheeks, unable to catch her breath, unable to reply. I wanted to hold Julienne, tell her that all would be fine. But I had not touched Julienne, nor had we or did we intend to have any sort of physical contact, ever. Ours was a love that existed on another plane, our relationship — by which I mean to say, that we related as friends and colleagues, our respect for one another based on an intellectual and spiritual rapport. But physical love? Never would that occur, Never, ever would we together disrespect Julienne’s lovely and generous husband, Bill.
Julienne, finally gathering herself together, her voice catching, was able to utter the words …
“I am so, so sorry, Diana. Raymond and I are friends, that’s all. He has a keen intelligence. I have two PhDs, one in economics and one in medicine. I have taught economics at the Sorbonne, and worked at the Mayo Clinic, yet most days I am unable to keep up with Raymond, his mind is so vibrant, his vast knowledge on the broadest range of academia — save the sciences, where I am wont to point out to him, his knowledge is quite lacking — our rapport entirely intellectual, the joy we experience in one another’s company based solely on an intellectual plane of curiosity, and the desire to learn more, to know more, to be challenged. Somehow the two of us have found one another in time and space, perhaps knowing one another in another life, kismet as Raymond has called it. I would say that is all it is — but all that it is is so great, and so very much appreciated by the two of us that I am taken aback, and profoundly hurt that you would judge me, that you would judge the two of us, that you would think for even one moment that we would ever wish to cause harm, to cause anyone harm. You have referred to Raymond as your friend, in past conversations with me. Diana, a friend does not speak or use the language of judgment you employed in setting about to destroy what is for Raymond and I beauty in our lives, a meeting across the universe.”
And with that, Julienne turned and walked away, the two of us not spending one more moment together for the remaining nine days of the festival.
Then ten minutes following Diana’s denunciation of Julienne, in particular, and me only by association, Diana and her companion, Graham, J.B. and I foregoing the 10am screening found ourselves at the Granville & Smithe Starbucks looking for a coffee, certainly not to calm our jangled nerves, silence between the four us, until we were all seated, me now rising …
“What the fuck did you think you were doing, Diana? You made Julienne cry, Julienne who is as close to an angel on Earth as I have ever encountered. Julienne the personification of loveliness and grace, who would never hurt anyone, nor cause anyone a moment’s concern.
What the fuck were you thinking confronting the two of us on the street? And what business is it of yours, anyway, what I do or don’t do with any person of my acquaintance, particularly when it is as clear to you as it would be to anyone with eyes and a heart, that there is — now was, I fear — a joy that was passing between the two of us, when joy is a commodity in rare possession these days. What in hell would cause you to interfere? Did you, perhaps, think that you were defending Bill’s honour, Bill with whom Julienne and I attend evening screenings together, with me sitting on the other side of the cinema, as per usual, from where Bill and Julienne are sitting. Do you think so little of me, do you think me so lacking in honour and integrity and human compassion, so self-serving and unconscious of the love that Bill and Julienne have for one another that I would, or that Julienne would, engage in behaviour that would be ruinous and contrary to both our natures? Diana — fuck off, never pull that shit around me again. Keep your sick and twisted thoughts to yourself, and never ever speak to me again in the way you did on the street just minutes ago. And one more thing — stay the fuck away from Julienne, don’t ever hurt her again.”
And with that said, I left the Starbucks.
Julienne and I did see one another at the annual Saturday morning, post-festival brunch at The Bellagio, on Hornby at Robson, across from the Vancouver Art Gallery, where 20 or so diehard festival-goes gather each year to debrief on all that has occurred at VIFF over the course of the past month and more, the food and service great, the company — almost everyone present more accomplished than myself, healthy of body and mind and intellect, and inveterate life long lovers of cinema, particularly world cinema — Julienne sitting on the other side and at the end of the table, distant from me. The two of us did not speak. Nor did our eyes meet.
Bill and Julienne and I did get together three more times in the weeks after the festival had ended, for dinner, for a coffee, and for a dessert one late evening. We all got along famously, but it wasn’t too difficult to discern that what had transpired between Julienne and I from early September to early October 2012 could, and would, no longer occur. And, of course, there was the Diana incident. Julienne took a job that required much of her time, and although we communicated from time to time, sometimes in a phone call, more often — but only sporadically — by e-mail, never initiated by me. And then, barely noticing it, the two of us drifted apart … until …
In mid-summer of 2016, I contracted hilar cholangeocarcinoma, a terminal, inoperable form of cancer that was most assuredly going to kill me, sooner than later. Do you recall reading earlier in this story that Julienne had acquired a PhD from the Mayo Clinic?
Turns out that Julienne had trained at the Mayo Clinic under Dr. Gerald Klatskin, best known for his work on the biochemical and biological abnormalities and the clinical features of the diseased liver, but who was also the doctor to first identify and develop a treatment — an operative intervention actually, a rebuilding of the entire bile duct and intestinal system, and replacement of the liver — for hilar cholangeocarcinoma.
Hilar cholangeocarcinoma is often called Klatskin’s tumour, where the bile duct system — a series of tubes or tracts, sometimes called the biliary tract — connects all the elements of the intestinal system to the liver in order that the body’s proteins and materials the body can’t use are eliminated.
Now, I already had a scientist friend — another of the great loves of my life, Alison Fitch, who for the past 10 years has run a multi-billion dollar biotech lab in Seattle, and wouldn’t you know that one of the projects her lab was working on was a cellular intervention to mitigate the growth of cancer cells in the intestinal system, and in the biliary tract and bile duct system, in particular. You wonder why I’m still alive when I was supposed to be dead, at the very latest, a year ago today?
Both Julienne and Alison played key roles in my recovery — one can have great doctors and surgeons, and I did, but it is quite another thing to have women who love you, women who are skilled and are scientists and who love you, who are committed to finding treatments to prolong your life, and working on a “cure”, or at least an intervention that will allow you to live in good health for the next 30 years, while keeping the cancer at bay, women who are on your side, adamant that as long as they’re around, you will be.
In February 2017, when it still appeared that I was a goner — not that Alison or Julienne were going to let that stand — Julienne asked if we might go to lunch at Baguette and Co. on West Broadway, near my home, that she wanted to introduce me to David, whom she and Bill had adopted in Chile, where Julienne was born, and where she and Bill had spent the better part of a year working through the adoption process (why and how it was that Julienne and I had lost contact, she and Bill needing months to help David adjust to his new home in Canada).
David, 2½ years of age, when we were at lunch together — a lunch that lasted some three hours, Julienne and I having much catching up to do in this leisurely setting — focused only on ourselves and David, with no talk of cancer, but only of joy, a joy that was clearly evident in David’s demeanour, a joy his parents shared with him, David an angel on Earth as much as is the case with his mother, Julienne. Julienne told me that Bill and she had attempted to, and believed they were successful in helping to, create a sense of safety and love for David, that since his arrival in Canada the year previous, he had not cried, nor experienced any emotion other than joy, his life so full of love and goodness and warmth and the love of his parents — to see Bill together with David is to witness the same love that Julienne has for her son, the most hopeful love it has been my privilege to witness.
David’s record of no tears was about to come to a bitter — and, really, there’s no other way of saying it, tragic — end, a part of one of ugliest incidents I have ever been party to, and all arising from an unforgivably heinous, revolting and extremely ugly intervention by my daughter, Megan.
With whom I had spoken at some length over the summer, she telling me, “Dad, I’m raising my sons (my two grandsons, Sasha and Leo) the same way you raised me,” about which she went into some detail, and with then Vancouver School Board trustee Christopher Richardson by my side at the opening of the new General Gordon elementary school — where my two grandsons are enrolled — with Megan, her engineer husband, Maz and Leo nearby, Megan saying my two favourite words, “Hi, daddy,” then putting her arms around me, and then her arm in mine, Maz standing opposite, Leo playing, Christopher standing off to the side, as pleasant and as warm & loving an interaction as any father would wish to have with the daughter he loves with all his heart, who he has known since birth to be the toughest, brightest, most heart-filled person I’ve ever encountered (in all the years I raised her, Megan was the most transcendently lovely and intellectually acute person of whose life I had ever been a part — but tough, omigawd tough, as well as the most socially skilled person I’ve ever known).
When I was diagnosed with hilar cholangeocarcinoma in the late summer of 2016, I spoke with my son, Jude — who was supportive and loving through my months long cancer journey — leaving a message for Megan that I wished to speak with her, calling her mother, Cathy afterwards to ask if she might intervene to mitigate any pain Megan might feel in hearing of my terminal, inoperable cancer diagnosis.
I have yet to write about my cancer journey, and will likely set about to do so once the current Vancouver civic election is over, but for the purposes of this Story of a Life, suffice to say that subsequent to the call I made to Megan in September, and the half dozen or so calls I made to her in succeeding months, when the news about my cancer was getting worse and worse and worse, me needing to hear her voice on voicemail, that Megan had no contact with me, did not as I suggested to her visit with our family physician, Dr. Brad Fritz, or in any other way intervene throughout the eight months I was told my cancer was terminal, my death imminent.
About 2:45pm on that early February afternoon Julienne, David and I were meeting, on this unseasonably warm and sunny February day, after our lunch Julienne asked if I might walk with her and David to Macdonald Street, in order that she and David might catch the bus home. While we were walking up 7th Avenue toward Macdonald, Julienne asked if there was a school nearby, and I said there was, General Gordon, where my grandsons were enrolled. Julienne told me that she and Bill were looking at moving into the neighbourhood, in order to find a good school for David to attend kindergarten — Julienne thought she might drop into the school to speak briefly with the principal, to set up a meeting for a future date.
But that did not happen.
Instead, shortly after 3pm when Julienne, David and I were near to General Gordon school, David spotted the playground and the playground equipment, and ran over to play on the slide and teeter-totter, round-about and other playscape items on the school’s grounds. While David played, a number of kindergarten age and younger children playing nearby, David was full of smiles, as was his mother, the moment one of joy, until …
Megan — my 41-year-old daughter, who I held in my arms for the first 10 minutes of her life, as Cathy was still under anaesthetic, who I raised from the time she was a baby, through her years at UBC — walked up to Julienne and I, her face twisted and unforgiving — something I’d never seen before with Megan, a monstrous look — looking at me, saying in a bare whisper, “I love you,” after which she turned to Julienne, not introducing herself so Julienne had no indication as to who was speaking with her, and said …
“He’s probably told you that he’s going to die. That’s bullshit. He’s only looking for sympathy. Look at him. He looks the same way he always has. There’s nothing wrong with him. You’re being a fool if you believe that there’s anything wrong with him, other than he’s sick in the head …”
At which point David looked over — Julienne’s attention consumed by Megan’s vicious diatribe, Julienne now in tears — a look of alarm on David’s face, a crestfallen look of fear. I immediately went over to David, who was the priority in this circumstance. David wanted his mother.
Megan was still yelling at Julienne, Megan an out of control madwoman, Julienne in response now subject to heaving sobs, David running towards his mother, David now crying, too, inconsolably, both mother and son so emotionally flooded that even in her state of madness, with one adult and one child before her crying in pain, Megan left, yelling some epithet or other at Julienne.
Julienne looked at me, and through tears and sobbing, said, “Raymond, you didn’t say anything.” I took Julienne and David over to sit down, to calm Julienne, David now wailing and inconsolable, David wrapped tightly in Julienne’s arms. I was able to calm Julienne, which took a good five minutes. With Julienne now calm and no longer crying, with David still crying and inconsolable, but quieter now, his face buried in his mother’s chest, I responded to the statement Julienne had made only minutes earlier …
“Julienne, this past six months has brought one piece of tragic news after another. I decided early on that if I was going to live, I would need to establish an equilibrium in my life, and never react to any situation, never give up any control in my life over which I have jurisdiction. If I reacted to all the news I’ve heard on almost a daily basis these past six months, I’d be dead, from fear. I decided a long time ago I would not allow fear to rule my life through my cancer journey, and afterwards should I find myself subject to a miracle. I will not relinquish what little control I have over my life, I will not react, as I did not react this afternoon. If I were to do so, I feel quite assured that I would be sounding the death knell for my life.”
At which point, Julienne — David in her arms, arose saying, “We should go, Raymond. I have to get David home. I’ve got to put some dinner on.”
But it took another 15 minutes to make it the one block to Macdonald, Julienne and David stopping along West 7th Avenue, she concentrating on David’s recovery, his sobs still prominent, his demeanour inconsolable. Finally, David released his tight hold on his mother, putting his feet on the ground, putting one step in front of the other, his body still heaving.
The three of us did make it Macdonald Street, now back in the sun, the time close to 4pm, Julienne now saying that she wanted to walk with David and I over to West 4th Avenue to catch the Macdonald bus — which she did, but not before turning to me, for the first and what would assuredly be the last time, placing her arms around me in an embrace, a tight hug that said, “Raymond, I need assurance that all will be well.”
And then, Julienne and David were gone.
I have told you that I love Julienne. And I do with all my heart — but as I told Bill the next day …
“It seems fated that Julienne and I cannot ever have a relationship. It’s just too dangerous for her. I wish it wasn’t so, because as you know, I love your wife, and there exists between us a rapport of kindness and connection, and an intellectual curiosity that is challenging and rewarding for the two of us. But I will never see Julienne again, nor you or David. I am so very, very sorry for what happened to your wife yesterday. I wish I knew what to say. I simply can’t find the words.”
After walking with Julienne to the bus that tragic afternoon, while slowly making my way home, I called my son to tell him what had happened. Jude was generous, kind and supportive, saying to me by way of explanation …
“That wasn’t Megan speaking today. That was mom speaking. Mom has filled Megan’s head so full of lies and hate, Megan is so conflicted, the entire circumstance of the dysfunction of our lives arising from Cathy’s morbidity, that I don’t know what can be done to repair a family situation so rent that there seems no way of putting the pieces back to make us whole again. I love you. Megan loves you. Maybe some day Megan will get away from Cathy’s influence, maybe some day Megan will make her way back to you in a healthy and whole way — but first she’s going to have to get away from the influence of mom, who will just keep on buying Megan off with trips and the promise of purchasing a new home for her, and as she has always set about to do, buying Megan’s affection, but surely not her love, because although mom is many things, one of those things is certainly not lovable. Forget about what happened today. Concentrate on getting better, or if you’re not going to get better, if your time on this Earth is fated to end soon, then enjoy every day you have left.”
No Julienne in my life, a woman I love. A caring and loving son, though. A conflicted daughter. And, an ex-wife who seemingly wants to destroy me.
And, another story of a life.
On a chilly Tuesday, February 9th afternoon in 1989, I was fired from my job as a teacher at a privately-operated school for gifted children.
The principal at the school had met with the parents of one of the students in my class, a nine-year-boy, the boy’s parents instructing the principal that they wanted their son promoted from Grade 4 — the grade he was in — to Grade 7, a request the principal readily acquiesced to. After all, hers was a business bent on lining her pocket and making her rich, not education and the welfare of children, so why wouldn’t she accede to such a request?
Towards the end of lunch hour that overcast day, the principal called me into her office, and instructed that, going forward, I was to teach this young boy from materials provided for the two Grade 7 students in my 15-student classroom, explaining why I must do this, and her expectation that I would immediately act on her demand.
Unsurprisingly, for anyone who knows me, I refused her untoward request.
The boy in question had experienced problems with the Grade 4 curriculum, could barely read, with arithmetic and math skills more common for a late Grade One student. I told the principal that as the boy was already struggling with academic work appropriate for the Grade 4 level, I could not in all good conscience — and as a professional & given my obligation to the young student — would not, in the circumstance, accede to her demand.
The principal, now sitting rigidly in her chair, looking directly at me with steely eyes, asked me the following question, “What difference does it make whether the boy is working with the Grade 4 or the Grade 7 curriculum, they’re virtually the same? What difference does it make to you whether he’s working with Grade 7 or Grade 4 textbooks and curriculum? Make no mistake, Raymond: I am not making a request of you, nor a demand. As the principal of this school, I am ordering you this afternoon to move (student’s name) work to Grade 7. I hope I am making perfectly clear what is expected of you, by me, as the principal, and owner, of this school.”
At which point, I re-iterated my concerns to the principal, once again letting her know that I could not, and I would not, move the student into Grade 7.
With a cold look of disdain on her face, the principal, with a meanness I had not seen previously, in a quiet and measured tone, said, “You’re fired. I will make arrangements this afternoon to have your belongings delivered to your home. Leave the school immediately. You are no longer in the employ of (name of school), nor will you speak of why you have left to anyone.
The events that lead up to my dismissal from the school, the impact my firing had on the parents, and more particularly on the students in my class, who were devoted to me, is a story for another day, a story I am not yet brave enough to tell. Perhaps someday. Not today.
Although the headline for today’s story reads “Aftermath of Being Fired”, my use of that particular description is, for the purposes of today’s story, meant to apply only to the events of that particular Tuesday, February 9th afternoon, and not the years’ long aftermath of my employment termination, which story, as I write above, I may write another day.
Little white house: 336 East 28th Avenue, in the Riley Park neighbourhood of Vancouver, the home of my father, John Tomlin, in the 1980s and 1990s
Today, I have another story from my life that occurred in the aftermath of my firing, on that chill Tuesday afternoon, when I drove to my father’s home on East 28th Avenue near Main, where warming cups of tea awaited me, and where a story that I will always cherish unfolded that afternoon, the story I am about to tell you, that to some great extent has provided the impetus and rationale for the weekly VanRamblings’ Stories of a Life feature, as a gift for my two children, in order that they — along with you — might know me better, the stories to be found by clicking on the stories of a life rectangular box, among the highlighted links at the top of the site.
</ br>My father, John Tomlin, outside our home on Venables Street, circa 1962
As is my usual custom after an upsetting event, I got into my car and drove around town, lonely and wandering down the streets and around the city, arriving at my father’s home on East 28th, about 2:20pm that afternoon.
I knocked on the door, my father invited me in, put on some tea, and we sat down at the kitchen table, as per our usual custom. He didn’t ask what I was doing over at his home in the middle of the afternoon, and why I wasn’t at work. He was at home alone, we were in his home alone together, his second wife, Rose, at work. That afternoon it was just the two of us.
With the sounds of country music wafting in the air from CJJC radio Langley, as we sat there and drank our tea, my father now having put some biscuits on the table for the two of us to eat, I didn’t tell him of the events of earlier that day. I was feeling in a pensive mood, quieter than usual, reflective, when an idea struck me.
Here we were, just the two of us, no one expected home until at least 6pm, quiet in the house except for the plaintive sounds of country radio in the background, and I thought to myself, “Well, Raymond, it’s now or never. Ask Dad about his life. Tell him that your curious. Ask him if he would tell you about himself, and his experience of life.” So, I asked my father. He put his hand to his chin, looked down, and began …
“As you know, I was born on the prairies in the autumn of 1916, in northern Saskatchewan, one of six boys and girls, all of us working the farm from the earliest age. My father died when I was three, and given that I was the second to oldest, it was my job to take care of my younger twin brothers and twin sisters, and my older brother, too, to care for the farm, and care for my mother. It was a hardscrabble life for me from the age of six on — we struggled, often there wasn’t any food on the table, and we went days without anything more than a bit of bread and butter.
I was in Grade One at the age of six, but I had to quit because I was needed on the farm.
Life up until the end of the 1920s stayed much the same, the only relief we had from the sameness of our days, was our old Marconi radio, which had been a gift from one of our neighbours who had decided to move away, leaving his possessions behind, as he went off to look for work, and a life better than what he, or we had in our struggling farm community.
Then the Great Depression hit, and we had to go on Relief, the bottom fell out of the market for wheat, which was our main crop, people packed up and left for the city to see if they could find work, and for those who were left behind, it was devastation, Dust Bowl like conditions, with not enough coming in to keep kith and kin together. By 1930, the only option available to me became clear: like thousands of others, I would ride the rails, looking for work and looking for a handout if I was going to survive. Staying at home, all I’d be was a burden. So, I packed up an old kit bag, went down to the railyards & jumped into the first open car I could see, the surprise of my life confronting me once I was onboard, when I looked around, i saw another 20 guys, looking gaunt and worn out like me.
And that was my life throughout the Great Depression, riding the rails from one end of Canada to the other, picking up work wherever I could, spending time each summer in the Annapolis Valley picking apples, eating as much as I could to fill my belly, working long days, living in hobo camps at night — we weren’t tramps or bums, we worked for what we got — learning to cook chicken and flat bread over the camp fire. All and all, I thought we did pretty well, but near 10 years of that life, and I was ready for a change, ready to settle down somewhere. But the economy wasn’t getting any better, I couldn’t read and my prospects were poor.
In early September of 1939, I was living in a hobo camp on the outskirts of Revelstoke, on my way to the Okanagan to pick apples. There was talk in the camp that something was up in Europe, that the German Army had invaded Poland. On September 10th, I was in town looking for food out back of a restaurant when I heard a bunch of kids, saw them running down the street, screaming into the air, “We’re going to war. There’s a war. We’re going to fight those dirty …”
Next thing I knew, there was a hand on my shoulder, a man in a uniform. “Son,” he said to me, “we’re at war now, saw it comin’. I’m with the Army recruitment office just down the street. Why don’t you come with me, and we’ll get you signed up. Three squares a day, a nice clean uniform, and you’ll get to see the world. No more living in hobo camps for you.”
So, I did, I went with him, signed up. For the first time in almost a decade, things were looking up. After I signed my name on the dotted line, the sergeant handed me an army uniform, saying, “Find a place to put this on.” I ran back to the hobo camp, more excited than I’d been in I don’t know how long. There was a pond nearby the camp, I stripped off my tattered old clothes, jumped in the pond, got myself nice and wet, dried myself with my old clothes, and set about to get dressed up in my spanking new uniform. I don’t think I’d ever felt better in my whole life.”
At which point, my father got up from the table when he heard a knock at the front door. It was a neighbour asking my father if he could borrow one of my father’s tools. My father went downstairs into the basement, retrieved the tool and gave it to his neighbour. After pouring us both a cup of tea, and replenishing the biscuit tray, my father returned to the kitchen table, and began the telling of his story once again.
There were small barracks in Revelstoke, but we weren’t going to be there for long. Canada knew that a war was coming, preparation had been made, and within two days we boarded a train – not a boxcar, but a real train car with seats, and a dining room car, as we headed towards Saskatchewan for six weeks of boot camp, after which we were told we’d be shipped to London. Boot camp went by in a blur. I was tough and strong, as I’ve been all my life, and boot camp was fine, the 600 or so of us in the camp boarding a train for Halifax, a ship waiting for us to take us to London.
Upon arriving in England, we stuffed our belongings away, all 600 of us now resident in the major garrison for Canadian solidiers, our barracks in Aldershot, in the Rushmoor district of Hampshire, England, along the southern coast of the country. All looked well until I got sick about a week in, and was hospitalized with some sort of intestinal disorder, some form of hyperthyroidism, I think, causing a massive weight loss for me, until I was little more than skin and bone. Which is when and where my osteoporosis first presented itself.
Soon enough, it became clear that I wouldn’t be seeing any action on the front. One of my lieutenants assigned me to the stores, the supply centre for the camp, which is where I spent the next three years of my life. It wasn’t bad over there, I made friends, worked hard, went to dances on the weekends, did a bit of volunteering and thought that, all and all, it wasn’t a bad life.
But I got in with a bad lot. There was money to be made working in the stores, with a big black market for all sorts of goods that we kept in the supply warehouse at the garrison. A few of the hustlers in the camp, soldiers who had also gotten a deferment for some other phony malady or other, ended up as a group taking over the camp’s stores, and ran a racket out of there you wouldn’t believe. I’ve always been a ‘go along to get along’ kind of guy, but what I saw worried me. Still, there wasn’t much I could do. It wasn’t as if I was going to go to the commander and rat these guys out.
Next thing I knew, I was in hot and heavy in all the schemes dreamed up by these creeps, who were inventive in how they could rip off the camp, curry favour with the girls in town, making a killing through sales of tens of thousands of dollars, and more over a period of time, of Canadian army goods. I knew it couldn’t last, and it didn’t. One morning I was rousted out of bed by the MPs, and taken to the brig to await trial on charges of theft and conversion and what not. I served most of the last two years of the war in the brig.”
When the war came to an end in May 1945, my father told me, almost the entire camp went into London to celebrate V-E Day. “It was quite a day, let me tell you,” he said, almost wistfully.
Soldiers and friends celebrating V-E Day on the streets of London, May 9th 1945
At this point he realized he hadn’t had a cigarette all afternoon, and told me, “I’m going out back for a cigarette. You can stay in here for awhile. I need some time to myself.” Moving slowly, he left the house.
When my father came back into the house and returned to the kitchen, pouring himself a fresh cup of tea, he sat down once again at the kitchen table, asking me, “Do you want to hear anymore?”
Yes, oh yes, oh yes, please God, let this story of a life continue — but all I said was, “Sure, I’d like to hear more. Can I ask you a question, though? How did you meet mom?”
“Once the war was over — surprising to me, I got an honourable discharge — it was only six weeks before I found myself on board a ship headed for Canada, but not Halifax this time, because the port was too small to handle the tens, the hundreds of thousands of returning troops. No, the ship I boarded was to travel through the Panama Canal towards our destination of Vancouver, British Columbia.
Arriving in Vancouver, I was able to find a small room in a boarding house — there were lots of those that cropped up to house returning soldiers like me — and set about looking for work. Fun was to be had on the weekends, at dances mostly, which is where I met your mother. Man oh man, could she dance. Your mother really liked to have a good time. She was kind of a pretty young thing, too, eight years my junior. We got to dancing one evening when she told me that I was “the one”.
“The one?” I asked, to which she replied, “Yes, you’re the one I’m going to marry.” I suppose I was kind of handsome in those days, with a kind of rugged if gaunt look, a three day growth wiry beard most days. Your mother’s proposal got me thinking. That night, your mother and I became an item. She was working, slinging hash at some diner or other, while I was still looking for work, living off the re-establishment veterans benefit that the Canadian government paid us. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get by on.
Things went on like that throughout the summer, and into the early fall, and your mother was always on me to set a date. But you know me. I have an impossible time making up my mind about almost anything. One morning your mother came to my rooming house, told the landlady she wanted to see me, and marched right upstairs to my room, busting through the door like a force of nature, which you and I know she always was and continues to be, I imagine. Your mother confronted me, saying, “I’ve waited long enough. You’ve got to make up your mind. I want to be married by the end of the week, if not sooner. Either we get married now, or it’s finished, we’re over.”
I hemmed and hawed. I just didn’t know if I wanted to get married. And your mother, she was a piece of work, not often easy to get along with, demanding, opinionated, loud and like I said, a force of nature. I thought to myself, “Mary is too much woman for me. What would my life with her be like?” Not bliss, I knew, but something, although I wasn’t sure what.
Your mother, looking me right in the eye, said, “I’ve got a job waiting for me in Drumheller. I’m going down to the CN station on Main Street, and I’m catching the 5 o’ clock. Once I’m on that train, you’ll never see me again.” And then she stomped out, slamming the door behind her.
I just sat there. I thought to myself, “You know, Jack, you’re almost 30 years of age. When are you going to get married? When are you ever going to find another girl?” And I just lay there, thinking and thinking and thinking. I didn’t know what to do. I got on the bus, headed downtown, and walked to Stanley Park from there, because I needed some quiet, and some time to think.
Finally, by around 3pm, I’d decided. For better, or for worse, I’d marry your mother. I got on the bus, and headed in the direction of the CN station. When I arrived at the station, I walked through the big front doors, and found that the place was packed. Even so, I spotted your mother, who was in line getting ready to board the train. I ran up to her and said, “Will you marry me?” And with that, this petite 21-year-old girl jumped into my arms, and said, “Yes, a million times yes.”
I moved out of the rooming house, and your mother and I found a basement suite up by Fraser and 57th. By year’s end, your mother was pregnant with your brother Robert. Oh, I forgot, no one’s ever told you that you had an older brother. He was born in the summer of 1946, but was kind of sickly. Within three months he was gone.
Your mother was so sad that she told me she needed to be near family if she was going to get through the loss of your brother. So, we packed up, and a few days later, we were on our way to Drumheller, Alberta, and that job your mother had been promised, where she had friends and work, and a place where she could recover, not that she ever did, I don’t think.”
And with that, my father got up, gave me a hug, and said, “You better be on your way. I think I’m going to pick Rose up from work today.”
“I love you son.”
And thus ends the saga of my father’s life, in the years before I was born, a story that was mine to cherish — for the rest of my life. It is the telling of that story that has led to Stories of a Life on VanRamblings.
I have often thought to myself, “Fire me any day of the week, and twice on Sunday, if the result is a story like the one my father told me that day.”
And so it is, and so it always will be. A gift of deliverance as told through narrative, my history laid bare through the words my father spoke to me that afternoon, and a life lived that much better and with more meaning, in the knowledge of where I’ve come from — although the details of that story, the story of my young life beyond, is best left for another day.
Cathy and I traveling along the Oregon coast, headed to California, and then Mexico
The sunny, open air shopping mall located in wealthy, beach-fronted Santa Monica
The train above, very much like the train Cathy and I traveled on throughout Mexico
Above, a contemporary photo of Benjamin Hill, in the northern Sonora state of Mexico
