The holiday season is upon us. For VanRamblings that means spending time with friends and family (as I suspect is the case with most of us), and a level of busyness that is unusual for us — given that much of our life is given over to the creative endeavour of writing on VanRamblings, which entails a dozen hours or more each day sitting in front of our computer composing the posts that you read from time to time, on this blog of ours.
From April 20th on of this year — six months out from the 2018 Vancouver municipal election — there was a raison d’être for VanRamblings: to introduce you to the candidates we felt were worthy and deserving of your vote. To that end, we wrote as many as 2500 words each day about the 2018 Vancouver municipal election, the issues we felt were important for candidates to address, and who we felt best were most capable of creating the city we need, a fairer and more just city for all.
While it remains our intention to continue our coverage of Vancouver City Council, School Board and Park Board, we are not quite so obsessed with civic governance and all that occurs each day with the process of decision-making that will lead to creating a city for all of us. In Vancouver, we’ve elected our Mayor, Kennedy Stewart, and a pretty darn fine group of City Councillors, School Board trustees and Park Board Commissioners — we’re prepared to let them get on with the job sans the obsessive coverage that has come to define VanRamblings these past almost eight months.
Damara, our new 3-year-old kitty, soon to be our companion as we write each day.
Here’s our plan for VanRamblings, then, going forward, which, of course, is subject to change — we’re planning on writing about politics once or twice a week this month. We have a column on Janet Fraser, Chairperson of the Vancouver School Board, that we’re intending to write, with likely publication this upcoming week (for the record, we consider Dr. Fraser to be a transformative political figure, and believe we should all be grateful for the gift of her presence on Vancouver’s political scene). We’ve also got a column on Vancouver International Film Festival programmer Tom Charity’s Best of 2018, which it is our current intention to publish next Friday.
In fact, VanRamblings will publish a great many columns on film this month — because we love film, considering it to be the art of our age, and during the April through October period we forfeited our love of film in favour of covering the election — where the majority of candidates we endorsed were elected to office, as well as a few we failed to endorse, but should have.
As far as is possible, in addition to our once or twice a week political coverage, we’ll keep up our Arts Friday coverage — which will be given over to film for the foreseeable future, but within which we plan to expand our coverage into other facets of Vancouver’s arts scene. We’ll continue our Stories of a Life feature — no such posting this week, or last, but next week we promise — and our Music Sunday feature, which tomorrow oughta emerge as a sort of Story of a Life when, and if, it actually comes to fruition. Tuesdays and Thursdays may be fallow days, or given over to tech coverage — we have a column for Apple iPhone SE, 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, 7, 7 Plus, 8, 8 Plus, and X users we’ll publish this upcoming Tuesday.
In the new year, VanRamblings will finally write about our cancer journey — which “story” will begin 10 months prior to our official cancer diagnosis. We’ll introduce you to those who made a difference in our life, and who are — we believe — the reason we are here today, enabling you to read those words on the screen in front of you (there’ll be a great many political folks who will find their way into our reporting out, as our “life savers”).
Thank you for hanging in with us.
Going forward, it is our intention to remain relentlessly positive about pretty much darn near everyone and everything, while focusing on change for the better, and a better life for everyone in all aspects of our lives.
In the autumn of 1966, C-FUN — long the A.M. rock’n roll radio giant of Vancouver — put out a call to listeners requesting applications to take on the task of organizing fan clubs for rock groups getting airplay on the radio. All you had to do was turn up one Saturday morning at 10am, meet with C-FUN’s Program Director Red Robinson — who would assign you a group to organize a fan club for, and once the fan club had been established, you’d turn up on subsequent Saturdays for an hour to secure memberships.
With Douglas Miller, recently arrived from Kelowna, working the 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. shift, I arrived each Saturday morning just before 11 a.m. to take phone calls in the studio next to the main control room. Doug Miller would give out the phone number, Doug Pearson — a friend of mine — and I would take calls for an hour, and after each call-in session, we’d take a break for an hour, before heading out to a local venue — more often than not a local department store — to listen to the group play a few songs, and sign up new fan club members. The group I was assigned to: The Chessmen, consisting of Terry Jacks, Susan Pesklevits, and Craig McCaw.
I know, and am friends with, Craig McCaw, to this very day.
A couple of weeks into this volunteer gig, after the call-in session, Red Robinson called me into his office and said, “You’re a good lookin’ kid. I bet you’d do well in radio.” I remember thinking to myself, “But this is radio — listeners can’t see you.” Nonetheless, each Saturday from noon til 12:30pm, Red Robinson proceeded to teach me everything he knew about radio, most particularly how to read copy for a commercial.
In addition, he signed me up for voice lessons with a woman voice coach who lived in the West End, who had trained every voice on radio in Vancouver. Within a year, I sounded like a radio announcer. I had also, much to my surprise, developed a deep bass, mellifluous voice. I’d play back tapes of me on the radio, and say to myself, “Who is that guy?”
Weekend, midday, radio aircheck of Daryl B. (Burlingham) on 14 C-FUN
During that period I became friends with John Tanner, Fred Latremouille, Al Jordan, Tom Peacock, Neil Soper, Daryl B., and Roff Johannsen, among other radio luminaries. Although I worked the occasional relief overnight weekend shift, my main job was to produce the six hours of foreground programming each Sunday evening, that was required by the CRTC. All of this work was done for free — but I was given ready access to the radio station, could “practice” being a radio announcer in the production studio, attend concerts at no charge, meet all of the traveling rock ‘n roll groups that stopped off in Vancouver as part of a North American tour of gigs to support the group’s latest hit release. All and all, I had a blast.
The Boss Radio, ‘Drake format’, upbeat radio package exported out of Los Angeles
But radio was changing in 1966, particularly when classical music Lion’s Gate radio, CKLG Vancouver, adopted the hit Drake format that had catapulted KHJ Los Angeles from a last place radio station in the market to #1 in a matter of months: CKLG adopted the Drake format, the jingles, the 17-song-an-hour ‘hot clock’, talking over the intro, upbeat radio format, by early 1967 stealing away C-FUN’s listenership, and catapulting CKLG to #2 in the Vancouver radio market, just behind powerhouse Top Dog radio, CKNW 98. One announcer after another left C-FUN for CKLG.
In early 1967, in a last ditch effort to save C-FUN (which to that point had refused to play The Rolling Stones, and any Motown music — which CKLG just thrived on) — Red Robinson hired a deejay out of Regina by the name of Terry David Mulligan, giving him the 7pm to midnight show. I sat with Terry, and his wife, CarolAnn (who everyone called Angel, and with whom I fell head over heels in love) in the studio on his first night on 1410 C-FUN. But it was too late. Within three months, Terry moved over to do noon to three on CKLG, CFUN folding to become CKVN, The Voice of News.
Soon enough, I was over at CKLG, as well — working on the FM side (CKLG-FM), six to noon Sundays on both CKLG-FM & A.M., as well as operating throughout the week in the evenings, for Bill Reiter and his Groovin’ Blue program 6pm to 8pm, as well as operating for Tim Burge. Occasionally — because absolutely no one listened to FM in those days, CKLG-FM Program Director John Runge would give me a midday shift, requiring me to skip school — my voice all hushed baritone, playing whole album sides during any given shift. I was in radio heaven — working daily with radio legends Roy Hennessey, Daryl B., J.B. Shayne, Stevie Wonder, Michael Morgan, Don Richards, John Tanner, Bob Ness, Rick Honey, Stirling Faux, Terry David Mulligan, and a raft of others. I had found my family.
Aircheck, J.B. Shayne, overnight, 1am til 2am on 73 CKLG Vancouver, April 11, 1968
Working in radio, going to concerts, being on air, hosting various public events for CKLG, hanging out with J.B., Fred, John, Terry, Rick, Stirling, Jim Hault, Daryl B., John Runge, Bill Reiter and more was the gift of a lifetime, a gift I will cherish forever, a gift which keeps me young to this day.
There are a great many stories to tell, all of which I’ll leave for another day.
1903: In the early part of the 20th century, my grandfather escaped the Ukrainian pogroms, an ethnic cleansing of the Jewish population that was taking place across eastern Europe that resulted in the murder of tens of thousands of Jews.
Whether it be the 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue who were wantonly murdered only two short weeks ago, or Jews being targeted in the alt-right rally in Charlottesville on August 11th and 12th of 2017, or the 907 Jewish refugees escaping Hitler’s Germany in 1939 who were refused safe harbour in both Canada and the United States, most of the 907 returning to their deaths in Europe, where six million more Jews were slaughtered during the course of WWII, or the fact that since 2015 hate crimes in Canada against people of the Jewish faith has risen by an astonishing 30%, the fact of the Jewish diaspora and the murder over the centuries of hundreds of thousands of Jews as “the other” in countries across the globe is a devastating and unjust historical fact for the ages.
The Hep-Hep riots in Frankfurt, Germany in 1819 that occurred amidst a climate of anti-Semitism fueled by various anti-Jewish publications. Participants in these riots rallied to the cry, “Hepp Hepp”, which may have been an acronym for “Hierosolyma est perdita”, meaning “Jerusalem is lost”. On the left, two peasant women are assaulting a Jewish man with pitchfork and broom. On the right, a man wearing spectacles, tails and a six-button waistcoat, “perhaps a pharmacist or a schoolteacher,” holds another Jewish man by the throat and is about to club him with a truncheon. The houses are being looted.
First recorded in 1882, the Russian word pogrom is derived from the common prefix po- and the verb gromit’ meaning “to destroy, to wreak havoc, to demolish violently” — apparently a word borrowed from Yiddish, the term first used to describe the anti-Semitic excesses in the Russian Empire from 1881 — 1883. Antisemitism in the Ukraine has been a historical issue, as well, but became more widespread in the 20th century.
Pogroms were a generational fact of life in the Ukraine, in 1821, 1859, 1871, 1881, 1903 and 1905, across the whole of the Ukraine.
In 1903, when my grandfather was but a young Jewish teenage boy, he managed to escape the Odessa pogroms that killed thousands that year, making his way by foot to Sweden, where he hoped to find passage to Canada. Word had filtered into Europe at the turn of the last century that the Canadian government was offering tracts of land to European settlers, and it was with this fact in mind that my grandfather set about to make his way to Canada, fully aware that Jews were not included in the Canadian government’s offer of land in exchange for breadbasket farming development, in the hope of settling the Prairie provinces, and making Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba part of the new country of Canada.
While in Sweden, my grandfather married a young Jewish woman he met while awaiting passage, and not many months later the two were boarded onto a ship sailing out of Sweden for Canada, arriving in our burgeoning new country in the spring of 1905. Irrespective of the laws of the time, and because the new province of Alberta was desperate to have their land settled, my grandparents were provided a densely treed tract, a full section of land just outside of what we now know as High River, Alberta. Over the years, one section of land grew into many, 10 children were born, five boys and five girls, the last of whom was my mother, born on March 28th, 1924.
The life was hardscrabble, even more so upon the death of my grandmother in the early winter of 1927, when my mother was but three years of age. All the children pitched in, though, creating a thriving farm — up until the Great Depression of the 1930s. By the time my mother was twelve years of age, she had struck out on her own, making a life for herself as a waitress in Drumheller, Alberta, a job she held off and on for the next fourteen years. World War II saw her moving to Vancouver to work first in the shipyards, and then in the factories making armaments — factory work a staple of her life for the next 35 years.
In 1946, my mother Mary met my father Jack, the two were married, and in 1947 my brother Robert was born, a sickly child who died three months after his birth. Escaping grief, my parents moved to Drumheller, where my mother had friends, and where her old waitress job awaited her, my father picking up what work he could. On August 9th, 1950, my mother went into labour, and had my father drive the both of them back over the deadly Rocky Mountain pass, the two arriving in Vancouver and driving directly to Vancouver General Hospital, where I was born at 2:26pm on Friday, August 11th, 1950. My sister Linda was born a bit less than two years later at St. Paul’s Hospital, on May 29th, 1952. My mother had insisted that both her children be born in Vancouver — to know my mother is to know that no one ever refused her. To this day, I am attracted only, and have found myself in loving relationships with tough, take no guff, opinionated (and, dare I say, “crazy” and just a tad, or more than a tad, mentally unstable — and, yes, I realize that’s sorta like the pot calling the kettle black … even so) women.
For the first 20 years of my life, the fact of my Jewishness was never raised with either my sister or me, not by my parents, not by my “spinster” aunt Freda (Blackerman, my mother’s maiden name), nor my aunt Anne and Uncle Dave, my uncle Joe nor any of my mother’s Jewish brothers and sisters — the quid pro quo in my family was that if my aunts, uncles and cousins wanted me to be a part of their lives, there was to be no talk of my Jewish heritage — this edict by my mother extended as well to my tall oak of a grandfather, who was every bit the sophisticated patrician Jew.
Every Sunday of our youth, my sister and I were picked up by a small school bus and transported to Sunday school, spending the rest of the day being taken to lunch, swimming, out to Stanley Park, or otherwise engaged by the members of the church. Every week I memorized and recited verses from the New Testament at Sunday school.
Now, there were some “hints” given that I might be Jewish — my mother, when she wasn’t working at one of her three jobs, loved to bake, and I grew up on a steady diet of Jewish pastries, my favourite the jam-infused hamantaschen, and jam, nut and raisin-infused rugelach, which latter small pastries I could consume by the dozen.
Growing up there was a great deal of arguing that went on between my parents, epithets thrown at my mother by my father, with the words “dirty Jew” heard on the other side of the door inside of my parent’s bedroom, words raged at my mother by my father. Otherwise, although I suspected I was Jewish, the fact was never confirmed for me growing up.
Simon Fraser University’s Louis Riel House, student family 1 + 2 bedroom residence
At around 10am one summer’s morning in July, 1972, while we were resident at Louis Riel House, Cathy and I received a telephone call from a woman identifying herself as my “Aunt Sally.” I took pains to explain to her that she must have the wrong number, that I had no “Aunt Sally”, to which she replied …
“I am your Aunt Sally. Your mother is Mary, who is my youngest sister. Your Aunt Freda — who all but raised you — is my second youngest sister. Summer’s you went to stay with your Auntie Anne, my sister, and your Uncle Dave, in Lethbridge. When you were younger, you stayed on my father’s farm in High River, Alberta. You know my older brother, Joe — who, when you lived in Edmonton for Grades 4, 5 and 6, helped to raise you when your mother was working three jobs, and your father was working evenings at the Post Office. Believe me when I say, Raymond — I am your Aunt Sally.”
At which point, my newly-discovered Aunt Sally invited Cathy and I for lunch at the Bayshore Inn where she and her husband, Alex (Promislow) were staying while in town, on a mission to make contact with me. Aunt Sally told me that she’d already made arrangements with my mother to join us for lunch, and she expected Cathy and I to arrive at noon, where she would greet us at the entrance to The Bayshore.
Lunch was good, my mother remaining all but mute throughout the meal.
I met my Uncle Alex, Sally’s husband — who years earlier had secured the distribution rights for Lee’s jeans in Canada, a percentage of each pair of jeans, and other Lee’s products, placed into his bank account, making him a wealthy man. I heard all about my aunt, now living in Calgary, spending the early part of her life, after leaving home, in Winnipeg, where she’d met Alex. I was given the Five Books of Moses, and was provided with a more in-depth history of my family, dating back centuries, than I ever could have hoped for. Through it all, my mother denied her Jewishness — she readily admitted that Sally was her sister, but insisted she had been adopted, and had not a drop of Jewish blood in her, and as an atheist had never been a member of any church, never mind a synagogue, which notion she told us she found offensive and off-putting, her so-called “heritage” a complete and utter lie. My aunt Sally simply rolled her eyes, and harrumphed a bit.
I stayed in touch with my aunt Sally and Uncle Alex for another 15 years, but eventually lost touch with the both of them.
Growing up, I apprised both Jude and Megan of their Jewish heritage — much to their mother’s chagrin, my children’s mother both anti-religion and an avowed atheist. Hanukkah, one of the lesser Jewish holidays, was their favourite, occurring as it did in December, and generally just before Christmas. Jude and Megan loved receiving one small gift each day of Hanukkah, and enjoyed lighting the menora, as well. We always attended cultural celebrations at the Jewish Community Centre, dancing up a storm.
Jude and Megan had Jewish friends, and attended at various bat and bar mitzvahs, but did not have one of their own (their mother would have had a conniption fit!). During Passover, we were invited to friend’s homes for Seder, at which time our Jewish friends explained the importance of Passover, and what it meant to people of the Jewish faith.
I have come to believe that the immense amount of energy that I have brought to the tasks of my life — as is the case with my daughter, who possesses the same capacity as me to work days on end with little or no sleep, while maintaining both a high energy and output level — derives from the Jewish blood that courses through my veins. For my children, their Jewishness is not a factor in their lives, as is the case with my grandsons.
Still, I consider myself to be Jewish — my mother was Jewish, and Judaism is a matriarchy, so I am very much a Jew, even if my mother denied her Jewish heritage to her dying day. For my younger sister Linda, her Jewish heritage plays no role in her life, nor in that of my two nieces.
I have decided to take classes with Rabbi Dan Moskovitz in the new year to become better acquainted with my heritage — a bit late in my life, but better late than never. And, of course, at the invitation of my friend Jacob Kojfman, I will once again attend the Dreidels & Drinks Hanukkah celebration, for me the low-key, warmly inviting, edifying and humane event of the holiday season, to which are invited every federal, provincial and Metro Vancouver elected official, providing an opportunity to converse and interact across political boundaries (the number of political figures I introduced to one another, avowed “enemies” at first introduction, and only a few minutes later best of friends, person after person approaching me to say, “Thank you for that introduction, Raymond — who’d have thought that —- and I had so much in common? We got along famously!”
And, really, when you get right down to it, isn’t that what the holiday season is all about — peace, love, understanding, brother-and-sisterhood.
In my 68 years on this planet, from the time of her birth, the most meaningful relationship in my life was the one I shared with my daughter, Megan, who saw something in me, a kindness of spirit and a gentleness of soul that previous to her birth on Saturday, March 26th 1977 was unplumbed, a capacity for love that remains in me still today, as will always be the case.
Megan was a breach birth, undecided if she wanted to make her entrance into the world. At Burnaby General Hospital, late on that Saturday night, Cathy under anaesthetic, forceps brought my daughter through the birth canal into the warmth of the operating room. After the umbilical cord had been snipped, Megan was wrapped in swaddling clothes, and given to me.
For the first 10 minutes of her new life, I held Megan in my arms, she looking directly into my eyes, and mine into hers, an event that is most often referred to as imprinting, a remarkable phenomenon that occurs in the first minutes and hours of life. From that moment to this, my connection with my daughter has remained the strongest bond of my life.
The months after Megan’s birth were tempestuous in her mother’s life, as our marriage was slowly breaking down.
By the time Megan was nine months of age, and I was enrolled in a Master’s programme at Simon Fraser University, her mother had removed Megan from the jurisdiction several times — these days we’d call it kidnapping, but back then in the limbo of a jurisdictional dispute between the family court and Supreme Court, and a supine provincial government seemingly unable or unwilling to bring closure to the jurisdictional debate (the Supreme Court eventually “won”, and was given jurisdiction over custodial and all other matters relating to the welfare of children), in B.C. we existed in a state of stasis, the welfare of our children in jeopardy.
Over the months of her first year, Megan would be taken away, I’d frantically attempt to discover her whereabouts, and the family court, police & Ministry of Human Resources would become involved in the pursuit of discovering Megan’s whereabouts (I was never overly concerned about Megan’s welfare — I knew she was with her mother and that was fine with me, it was just that I missed her & wished her reunited with her brother).
Early in 1978, when Megan had “disappeared” again, this time for a couple of months — Cathy had taken Megan to her mother’s winter home in Arizona — and was “apprehended” by Ministry social workers upon Cathy and Megan’s return, arrangements were made to once again place Megan in my care (at the time, I thought Cathy had got a raw deal in the courts).
One Saturday afternoon early in the year, arrangements were made for a social worker to drop Megan off at a friend’s home in the 4400 block of Albert Street, near Willingdon and East Hastings. A request had been made that the “exchange” take place in a public area — in this case, a friend’s home — and shortly after 1pm, there was a knock at the door. Someone sitting nearby the front entrance opened the door, the social worker asked if I was present, to which the person who’d answered the door said, “yes.” I could see around the corner near the front entrance, and could see Megan gently moved from the arms of the social worker, until her two feet touched the ground, at which point the social worker exited.
Megan, looking into the room, saw what I am sure she experienced as an unusual and confusing sight. That afternoon, was my usual practice, I was a participant in a Marxist reading group, about 20 friends scattered around the room, half of them men, half of them women. As was the de rigeur haberdashery presentation style of the day, I was wearing rimless glasses, had on a check shirt and jeans, my hair dark, wavy and unkempt, as I sat reclined in an armchair on the other side of the room, about twenty to twenty-five feet away from where Megan stood near the front entrance.
Megan set about to scan the room, all the men looking almost identical with their longish dark hair, checkered shirts, beards, worn jeans, with world weary, pre-revolutionary looks on their faces. The room went momentarily silent, at which point Megan took her first tentative steps, then a bit more determinedly, heading straight for me, stopping at and holding my bony knees, allowing me to pick her up and onto my lap, she turning to look at my face, then placing her body against my chest, breathing slowly and rhythmically. The Marxist reading group continued our afternoon’s activity.
After two months away from me, and at such a young age, how did Megan recognize me on that chill mid-winter’s afternoon?
The answer: the same way she has always recognized me, as my daughter, me as her father, our bond unbreakable, then, now and forever.
Damara, our new 3-year-old kitty, soon to be our companion as we write each day.
