In the early 1970s, I attended Simon Fraser University. Early on in my student career, I met the head of Medical Services at SFU, Dr. Ed Lipinski, one of the most impressive men I’ve ever met. He asked if we might meet from time to time, that given my various political involvements of the day, he said he found me “fascinating”, and would like to get to know me better.
Now, as it happens, Dr. Lipinski was a psychiatrist, a dedicated and gifted therapist, for a long period of time the head of the World Psychiatric Association, and someone that every person of influence, in administration and among the student body at SFU, saw on a regular basis. Ed made things happen.
For me, that meant bursaries and scholarships, and paving the way for whatever I needed. In addition, as a journalist / editor at the student newspaper, The Peak, Ed Lipinski ensured that I had access to senior administration officials, who almost inevitably became “unnamed sources” for a series of provocative articles I wrote over the years.
Had Ed not died in a car accident along the Algarve in Portugal in 1981, my life would have been much different. Ed was 100% on my side, he had influence with the Courts, and in the political, banking, and corporate worlds — apart from being a first-rate psychiatrist, Dr. Ed Lipinski, British Columbia’s first forensic psychiatrist knew how to connect influential people to get things done. Dr. Lipinski was, then, our province’s trusted figure.
In 1972, as was occurring more frequently, Cathy and I were experiencing one of several episodes of turbulence in our marriage — I was giving serious thought to leaving her, calling it quits. Here’s what Ed said to me …
“Raymond, imagine that you’re 63 years of age, it’s 3 a.m. on a chilly winter’s morning, and you’re lying in bed all on your own. You’ve been on your own for awhile now. No marriage. No relationships with women who you love. No one to share your life with, just you taking responsibility for yourself. Ask yourself, ‘Do I want to be alone as I approach the latter third of my life, or do I want to share my life with a woman I love?’ Raymond, should you leave Cathy, is that a decision that you will regret? Do you honestly want to face the prospect of lying their at 3 a.m. alone, with no one to turn to, and no one with whom you can share your life?”
The impact at the time of Ed asking me those questions was to return home to Cathy, and make a renewed effort to preserve our marriage.
Now, of course, I am just shy of 69 years of age, and alone. But not lonely.
Would I prefer to be in a relationship with a woman I love? Yes, I would — and you only have to know me to know that for me, hope reigns eternal. I am an optimist about love, as I am about my political involvement, and almost every aspect of my life. When I reflect on my life now, I believe I am, overall, satisfied with my life.
Still & all, when I’m lying in bed at 3 a.m., I think back to that conversation with Ed Lipinski in 1972, and reflect on the fact that I am alone.
In respect of the matter of regret, up until 1997 I was, every moment of the day, as I had been for years, filled with regret and, as it happens, self-loathing. There was so much that I regretted about my life, things I wished I had done differently. Fortunately, I had another gifted therapist, Max, in my life who was able to present to me a logically consistent argument as to why I should look forward and not back, that the decisions I had taken in the past that I had come to regret were things I could do nothing about.
What I could do was each and every day work towards becoming a better, more sensitive and thoughtful, more whole and more generous person.
Glaswegian Paul Buchanan, lead singer and founder of the Scottish trio, Blue Nile.
Still and all, I do reflect from time to time on the regrets of my life, and the better decisions I might have made. As such, the music of Glaswegian Paul Buchanan and his two band mates in the 90s Scottish trio, The Blue Nile, speaks to me in the early hours of the morning, and when I am feeling in a melancholic mood, the song Regret speaks to the deepest part of my soul.
1987 was a terrible year for me, one of the worst in the past five decades.
Cathy and I were still embroiled in an ugly, seemingly never-ending custody battle, when my two partners pulled out of our successful business the business was so prejudiced that I was forced to close it, displacing a dozen workers, after which over the course of the year I lost two professional jobs through no fault of my own, and the housing co-op where I had lived for the previous three years had moved to evict me because, “you’re gay, you have AIDS, you’re gonna kill us all, and we want you gone!” — by the time 1988 rolled around, I was experiencing an ever deepening despair, gripped by a black depression that had me almost catatonic, and without hope.
I was also in the worst shape, physically, that I’d ever found myself in —eating poorly, and weighing in at an unhealthy 225 pounds.
When in February 1988 I was offered a teaching job at Vancouver Community College, I wasn’t sure I had the stamina to stand in front of a class 15 hours a week to teach courses in English Literature, and writing.
Linda, a friend who lived nearby (in the picture above), one day when I was over at her home, who was aware of my various travails, turned to me on that chill, overcast mid-winter afternoon, and said to me …
“I want you over at my house at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning with your best pair of runners, and dressed warmly. We’re going to turn your life around, get you fit, deal with Cathy and your children, and those assholes in your co-op. You’re starting a new job in two and a half months, you have EI coming in so you’re not hurting for money, and you’ve got the time to get yourself into shape — beginning at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning, sharp.”
The next morning at 9 a.m. sharp, I arrived at her home on West 2nd Avenue on the north side of the street just east of Waterloo Street. Linda put some coffee on, and we smoked a joint (“it’ll help you focus on your body, and what needs to be done”) and by 9:30 a.m. we were off, walking towards Jericho Beach, on the first leg of our walk along Spanish Banks.
I was so out of shape that by the time we reached Jericho Beach, I needed a 15-minute break, to sit down and catch my breath before continuing on the walk Linda had planned for us, to the end of Spanish Banks, just east of the forests of Pacific Spirit Park, and the University of British Columbia.
That first morning, I had to stop seven times on the way to the end of Spanish Banks, and seven times on the way back. A walk that should have taken us an hour or an hour and a half, instead took three hours — and I was wiped out. Upon arriving back at Linda’s house, she made us both a warming cup of coffee, and afterwards sent me home, saying, “I want you back here in two hours. We’re going to do the same thing again this afternoon, and every morning and afternoon until you’re in shape.”
I returned at 2:30 p.m. that afternoon and we were off again. This time we stopped only five times on the way to the end of the beach, and four times on the way back. It was raining outside, the skies dark and overcast. “Rain or shine, we’re going to be out here every day. Get your head around it!”
Linda was like a drill sergeant, “Head up, look over at the mountains, this is an exercise as much for your eyes and for your head as it is for your body. No looking down, ever.” By the end of the first week, I could walk to the end of the beach without stopping, the same on the way back. We would rest at the far west end of the Spanish Banks beach for 10 – 15 minutes before heading back, taking in the beauty of the nature around us.
During our walks we talked about everything.
Linda knew Cathy from our days living in the Interior — the first time they met one another, each took an immediate, visceral dislike to the other, which was odd given how similar their respective backgrounds were, and what strong, take charge personalities both possessed. Linda knew my children; she had a son the same age as my son, Jude, and had met Megan many times (Megan didn’t like Linda — again, a clash of personalities and will). Linda and I continued our walks and hikes, twice a day every day.
By the beginning of the second week of our walks, we were not only walking along the full length of Spanish Banks twice a day, Linda had added a twice daily hike through Pacific Spirit Park. The third week had us making a foray into Stanley Park, walking through the woods, and up the 45 degree embankment leading to Prospect Point. By mid-March, one month into our twice daily walking and hiking regimen, I had dropped 40 pounds, while consuming a satisfyingly substantial amount of healthy foods.
Linda had also added yoga as a feature of our walks, involving a great many stretching exercises. Between the twice daily walks, the hikes, the yoga, and my new healthy diet, by mid-April, I had lost 75 pounds and was down to a fit 150 pounds — I felt like Superman, stronger and healthier than I’d been since I was in high school twenty years previous. My depression? Gone. My ability to stand up for myself, and not allow myself to get pushed around, by circumstance or by some of the malcontents in my life (those who meant me ill), and ready to do battle with Cathy in the Courts? I was back. By mid-year, the custody battle was resolved, as was the battle with my co-op (the latter, which I’ll write about another day).
Photo, Broadway campus, Vancouver Community College, taken from Chinacreek Park
By the time classes at Vancouver Community College began at the beginning of May, I was me again — tough, strong-minded, confident, fit and healthy, and ready for whatever was coming my way … which, as I wrote two weeks ago, was love. In May, as the classes I taught were scheduled in the evening, Linda and I continued our walks during the day, with Lori and I walking in the late afternoon, once we were living together.
For the next three years, I continued my daily walks from my home to Jericho Beach and along Spanish Banks, leaving the hikes through Pacific Spirit and / or Stanley parks for the weekend. In two and a half months in 1988, Linda had trained my body such that it was as easy for me to power walk and hike 7 miles, as it is for most people to cross the street.
In 2017, after walking well over 400 miles in service of both Morgane Oger’s NDP campaign in Vancouver False Creek and David Eby’s campaign in Vancouver Point Grey, that summer — arising from a case of plantar fasciitis — for the first time in 29 years I did not keep up with my regimen of walking along the beach and through the woods of Pacific Spirit Park.
Still, I will never forget, and will always be grateful for, the gift Linda gave me of health and not just just the ability and willingness to leave my home to get out into the elements, but the pure joy I experience when walking along Spanish Banks or through Pacific Spirit Park, riding my bike, or otherwise engaging in healthy activity, a regimen that prevails to this day.
Saturday night, the 72nd annual Cannes Film Festival draws to a close.
Why should that matter to you?
Well, if you love film, and foreign cinema in particular, the award winning films that will be announced Saturday night in Cannes highlight the most important films made outside the North American continent this year, and most probably predict this year’s Oscar award contenders for what used to be called Best Foreign Language Film but for the 2020 Oscar ceremony will be renamed the Best International Feature Film. Not to mention, for aficionados of the Vancouver International Film Festival, a raft of Cannes films will arrive on our shores this upcoming September and October.
Here’s IndieWire chief film critic Eric Kohn’s wrap up column on the 72nd annual Cannes Film Festival, Class War & the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. WINNER, Palme d’Or | Director: Bong Joon-ho Parasite | South Korea
The fearlessly and fiendishly well-crafted new film from director Bong Joon-ho (The Host, Snowpiecer) offers a masterful dissection of social inequality, in a film that while a diabolically fun watch is also resolutely political, the film’s tonal shifts clearly in service of its class politics, infecting Parasite’s breezy dark-comedy with notes of rage and melancholy. Bong delivers a stunning return to form with this newest venture, which takes bold leaps between tenors and tone, the film entertaining and intelligent, and an unsparing social indictment of class inequality — a roaringly raucous, blood-spattered social satire that is also luxuriously watchable, suspenseful, uproarious, and a brilliant return to form for South Korean auteur Bong.
For background on how the Cannes Jury chose Parasite, click here. WINNER, Grand Prix | Director: Mati Diop Atlantics | Senegal
Mati Diop entered the Official Competition at Cannes with plenty of attention, as the first black woman with a film in the section across the festival’s 72 years. But, according to IndieWire film critic, Eric Kohn …
“The real reason to pay attention to Atlantics is its singular vision of the migration crisis. Diop’s gorgeous, mesmerizing feature directorial début focuses on the experiences of a young woman named Ada (Mama Sané) stuck in repressive circumstances on the coast of Dakar after her boyfriend vanishes en route to Spain. But the film is less fixated on his departure than with the community around her.
Diop’s enigmatic, lyrical narrative left audiences dazzled by its cinematic textures and haunting atmosphere. The peculiar allegorical nature of its story, and a supernatural twist that creeps into the plot, could make it a tough consensus choice for this year’s jury. But it’s quite the impressive début, and could very well wind up with some sort of prize by the end of the festival.”
There was a tie for the next category … WINNER, Jury Prize | Tie Les Misérables | France | Director: Ladj Ly
The directorial début of Ladj Ly offers a relentless tale of mounting tension between tough police officers and an oppressed Muslim population in modern-day Paris. Ly’s jittery, naturalistic style spends much of its running time focused on several officers as they clash with the neighborhood youth, and one conflicted new recruit (Damien Bonnard) with a moral conscience. The suspense builds to an anxiety-inducing showdown involving the bubbling frustrations of a local Muslim boy (Issa Perica) whose pithy crimes receive a nasty comeuppance in the film’s wrenching finale, causing audiences to draw thematic parallels to Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. Bacurau | Brazil | Directors: Kleber Mendonça Filho Juliano Dornelles
A bracingly confrontational commentary on the direction his home country of Brazil is taking in the Trump-like era of Bolsonaro, Bacurau’s propulsive storytelling doesn’t come at the expense of the vividly sketched personality of Brazil, in this often strange fever-dream Jacobean-style bloodbath of a film, all at once densely layered and rich, ruthless and clear-minded, a film that divided the critics, but not this year’s Cannes Jury, it would seem. Mendonça Filho has scored before at the Vancouver International Film Festival, with his absolutely brilliant Neighbouring Sounds, which took VIFF 2016 by storm, emerging as an audience favourite. Best Screenplay | Writer / director: Céline Sciamma Queer Palm (Feature) | Céline Sciamma Portrait of a Lady on Fire | France
Acclaimed French director Céline Sciamma makes her long-overdue Competition début with this vivid period drama, which focuses on an 18th century lesbian romance about a painter (Noémie Merlant) hired to create a portrait of a woman from a wealthy family (Adèle Haenel) without her knowledge. In the process, the two women fall in love, against the backdrop of a magical seaside landscape. Sciamma’s sharp, picturesque imagery meshes with the palpable erotic sparks between her two stars, who transform this emotionally resonant two-hander into a riveting portrait of hidden sexuality, a film Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeff Wells writes is “as close to perfect as a gently erotic, deeply passionate period drama could be,” while The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw writes in his five-star review …
Céline Sciamma has brought a superbly elegant, enigmatic drama to Cannes that compels a shiver of aesthetic pleasure and fear, demonstrating a deeply satisfying new mastery of classical style to go with the contemporary social realism she showed in Girlhood (2014) and Tomboy (2011).
The setting is 18th-century Brittany, where an Italian noblewoman (Valeria Golino) has engaged what is officially a ladies’ companion for her beautiful daughter, Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), who has just come out of a convent and is recovering from the loss of her sister. The companion, Marianne (Noémie Merlant), is actually an artist, and the countess wishes her to paint a portrait of Héloïse in secret, to be shown to a wealthy prospective husband in Milan, because headstrong Héloïse would never consent to sitting for any such picture.
Sciamma brings the erotic together with the cerebral. The final scenes set in the art gallery and the opera house are gripping: a past obsession simultaneously sour and yet vividly alive. What did it remind me of? De Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons? Nicolas Roeg’s Bad Timing? I don’t know.
But what a story of desire.
From the reviews out of Cannes, Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a sure-fire contender for the Palme d’Or, with a seeming Best Actress nod for the luminous Adèle Haenel [2017’s BPM (Beats Per Minute)] a near certainty. Best Actor | Antonio Banderas Pain and Glory | Spain
A beautiful, full-hearted celebration of the craft of filmmaking, Pain and Glory is one of the most meditative of Pedro Almodóvar’s career, an especially personal work, anchored by the director’s on-off muse Antonio Banderas in perhaps his greatest performance, as he sweeps through the Spanish maestro’s recurrent themes: high melodrama and kitsch comedy, piety and carnal lust, sex and death, human pain and transcendent glory. Best Actress | Emily Beecham Little Joe | France
An artfully unnerving, austerely hypnotic horror movie about a very sinister plant, visually Little Joe is a total feast for the eyes, contrasting art-deco pinks and mint greens against sterile, symmetrically framed expanses of white, vaguely evoking the aesthetic of some lost sci-fi film of the ’70s. Another film that divided the critics, with CineVue critic John Bleasdale writing, “compared to the sophisticated and nuanced horrors of Black Mirror, Little Joe feels like a fairly straightforward riff on a very familiar idea. Nonethless, because it won an award at Cannes, because it’s a horror film (and outside of the hothouse of the Cannes Film Festival, the film will receive stronger reviews), Little Joe will likely arrive on our shores at some point this summer or autumn. Best Director | Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne The Young Ahmed | Belgium
Camera d’Or Our Mothers | Guatemala | Director: César Díaz
From the military dictatorship established in the late 1970’s in Guatemala was born a civil war that only ended some twenty years later, leaving in its wake more than 200, 000 victims, and burying the memories of 40, 000 missing people. With Our Mothers, selected in the Critics’ Week section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, César Díaz offers a film of remembrance and resilience, Our Mothers erupting like a shout in the darkness that surrounds this often overlooked massacre that cost mostly Indian lives, the film a heartbreaking portrait of a mother and her son.
Otherwise, the following films garnered praise at Cannes 2019 …
An American film, but director Quentin Tarantino and his all-star cast of Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Al Pacino, Lena Dunham, Kurt Russell, Dakota Fanning, James Marsden, Tim Roth, Timothy Olyphant and a host of other actors, stepped onto The Croisette at Cannes for the international début of his latest film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which more than lived up to its hype in advance of the film’s much-anticipated mid-summer (July 26th) release in theatres across the continent.
Strong buzz out of Cannes 2019 for Brad Pitt as a potential Best Actor Oscar winner in Quentin Tarantino’s enthusiastically received Once Upon a Time in Hollywood..
At screening’s end, Once Upon a Time received a rare 7-minute standing ovation, with both Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio scoring great reviews and buzz for the two as potential Best Actor Oscar nominees.
Another film emerging from Cannes with immense positive buzz for probable Best Actor Oscar nominee Taron Egerton, in the title role, is Dexter Fletcher’s Rocketman, the story of Elton John’s life, from his years as a prodigy at the Royal Academy of Music through his influential and enduring musical partnership with Bernie Taupin, a film that the critics raved about, writing that Rocketman “explodes with the kind of colour and energy that only Elton John himself could invoke.”
“Freddie Mercury may have had the better voice,” writes the New York Post’s Johnny Oleksinski. “but it’s Elton John who gets the better movie. Rocketman, director Dexter Fletcher’s trippy new biopic about the flamboyant rocker is braver, deeper and more enlightening than last year’s slobbering piece of Queen propaganda Bohemian Rhapsody (which he also partly directed), a flashy fantasia of a movie that will have you both cheering and in tears in the film’s phenomenally moving pivotal scene.”
We’ll know soon enough — Rocketman opens in theatres next Friday.
Since 1955, the Cannes Film Festival has awarded the coveted Palme d’Or to the greatest filmmakers of our age, from Frances Ford Coppola to Michael Haneke, Terrence Malick, Abdellatif Kechiche, Costas Gavras and Jane Campion. While Oscar season involves thousands of voters and aggressive, months-long campaigns, the Palme d’Or race among the 20, or so, films selected for Official Competition is often difficult to predict.
This year’s Cannes jury stands out for being particularly filmmaker-centric, with Cannes veteran Alejandro G. Iñarritu serving as president, joined by fellow directors Kelly Reichardt, Alice Rohrwatcher, Maimouna N’Diaye, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Pawel Pawlikowski — as well as Elle Fanning, the youngest Cannes juror in history. All have screened work at the festival, this year’s jury composed of particularly complex & disparate sensibilities.
Today’s update: the winners, and more, at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, some of which will receive a Best International Film Feature Oscar nomination, most of which will screen at the 38th Vancouver International Film Festival, running from September 26th through October 11th, 2019.
Just announced: The Lighthouse has won the Fipresci Critics Awards at Cannes, about which the Deadline website writes …
“A story of two lighthouse keepers who drive each other to madness, won the Cannes Film Festival critics’ award for best first or second features in Directors’ Fortnight and Critics Week. The award was announced Saturday by the International Federation of Film Critics (Fipresci).
Robert Eggers The Lighthouse was shot in black and white and starred Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson.
Fipresci also honoured Elia Suleiman’s It Must Be Heaven as the best film in competition and Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole as best film in the sidebar Un Certain Regard.
Terrence Malick’s Cannes competition entry, Hidden Life, won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury.
The Lighthouse sees ‘two lead actors give stormy, career-best performances,” according to the statement from the Fipresci jury. It described the Eggers film as “a brutal work of art, all shot in beautiful black-and-white cinematography and fueled by a soundscape that echoes like a foghorn.”
In the spring of 1974, Cathy and I traveled to Europe for a three-month vacation across the vast expanse of the European continent, something Cathy had insisted on — and when Cathy wanted something, she got it.
Within 48 hours of our arrival at Heathrow Airport, and after snuggling down in a small hotel, Cathy — who was two months pregnant at the time, her pregnancy not in any way proving a deterrent to her desire for a summer European sojourn — fell “ill”. Cathy and I took a taxi to the hospital, where she ended up staying a week, miscarrying our child.
In the two months prior to our departure, Cathy and I had talked about whether we should follow through on our summer plans, given that when we had traveled to San Francisco to visit her mother’s cousins, she had miscarried. But Cathy’s mind was set, and the doctor signed off, so …
After leaving the hospital, Cathy needed rest, so we traveled down to and vacationed on the Isle of Wight for a week, before continuing our vacation on the continent, taking a luxury cruise ship from Southampton to Lisbon.
The vacation was everything and more that we both thought it might be, and by the end of our vacation in the latter part of August, upon returning home (landing in Edmonton, where her mother and sister lived), we were both thrilled to discover that Cathy was pregnant once again!
Over the course of the nine months Cathy was pregnant this time, Cathy took every precaution to preserve her pregnancy: changing her diet to organic foods, plant-based proteins, and upon the advice of the doulas who worked with us during the pregnancy, a great many foods with Vitamin E, including almonds, sunflower seeds, spinach and broccoli, wheat germ and safflower oil, in order that Cathy’s uterus might become more supple.
On Friday, May 16th, 1975, just two days before Jude’s date of birth, Cathy and I took in a concert at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, with Eric Andersen opening, and Phoebe Snow as the headliner. As it happened, our doctors — Roy, our primary physician, and his wife Dr. Patricia Blackshaw, who also saw Cathy during her pregnancy — were sitting in the row right behind us.
When Eric Andersen took the stage, Cathy went into labour, no Braxton Hicks contractions this time. We spoke with Roy and Patricia during the intermission — Patricia examining Cathy in a private room — with both advising us that it would be fine for the two of us to remain at the concert.
We called our doulas to inform them that Cathy was in labour, and that we’d be home around 11:30pm. Our son to be was on his way, and about to announce himself to the world!
16343 96th Avenue, in the Tynehead area of Surrey. In the early 1970s, a decision had been taken by the GVRD to acquire all the land from 160th to 176th streets, and from 96th Avenue to Highway #1, in order that the regional district might create a large regional zoo. While discussions were ongoing, the GVRD acquired all of the land, renting it out to any who applied — which Cathy and I did early in 1973, living on the farm until August 1975, after which we traveled into the Interior for me to begin a teaching job.
At the time Cathy and I were living on a five-acre farm in the Tynehead area of Surrey, renting our farm home (pictured above) from the Greater Vancouver Regional District, for $125 a month. Between boarding horses and selling hay (and the eggs from our chickens out back), we ended up living rent free on the property for more than two years.
Upon arriving home, our doulas were waiting for us, taking Cathy up to our bedroom to examine her. Cathy was only 1cm dilated, and birth didn’t seem imminent. We had prepared for a home birth and kept up our communication with Dr. Roy Blackshaw (who visited the next day), as Cathy’s labour continued throughout the Saturday, and into the evening.
Cathy’s mother called on Saturday morning, the phone answered by a friend of ours (who we had instructed not to tell her of the pending birth — Myrtle was opposed to the home birth, despite our precautions, and we felt sure that were she present, she’d harass us into going to the hospital).
Myrtle knew that something was afoot. When she hung the phone up at 10am, she almost immediately had friends take her to the Edmonton airport. By 2pm, she was bursting through the front door of our house, all but screaming, “Where’s my daughter? Where’s Cathy? I want to see her now,” yelling this in a packed front room of 20 of our closest friends.
Now, you can see a picture of Cathy above in the week before Jude’s birth — Cathy gained massive weight, going from 110 pounds to 185 pounds. By the time her labour pains started, she was more than ready to give birth — but truth be told, both a little uncertain and a little scared at the prospect.
We had made the decision for a home birth in large measure because: Cathy wanted me present and in the room for the birth, which at the time no hospital would allow, and because we didn’t want drops placed into our child’s eyes, and his care taking place in an antiseptic hospital setting.
From the time Myrtle arrived on Saturday til noon on Sunday, she was like a broken record: “Get Cathy to the hospital now. What are you trying to do, kill my daughter?” Myrtle threatened to sue the doulas, and have me charged if any harm came to her daughter. To be fair, had I the opportunity to do it all over again, I would opt for a hospital birth, despite the attendant “problems” that a hospital birth would have conferred on us, and our baby.
Finally, at noon on Sunday, after speaking with the doulas and on the advice of Roy Blackshaw, we made the decision to have the birth at Surrey Memorial Hospital, who were ready for us upon our arrival, placing Cathy in a wheelchair and whisking her to the maternity ward, and into a surgical room where Roy and three nurses were waiting for us.
The room was brightly lit (not what we wanted), the nurses overly officious and insisting that everything be “done by the book”, ordering me out surgical room with Cathy screaming, “No, no, no! He stays!”
Roy took charge, and ordered the nurses out of the delivery room, telling me to stay, and asking that I dim the lights. By 1pm, Jude was ready to announce himself to the world, with Cathy’s screams of pain piercing the room, with me not knowing what the heck was going on, and Roy keeping the both of us calm, and focused.
At 1:42pm, on a warm, sunny and wondrous Sunday, May 18, 1975 afternoon, Jude Nathan Tomlin was born — the single most transformative and most joyous moment of my life (and Cathy’s, too, as within seconds of Jude’s birth, Cathy looked at me to say, “I want another baby right away!”).
Roy recommended keeping Cathy in the hospital overnight, with Cathy and I discussing a middle name for our new baby boy. Earlier, we had decided on the name Jude — one sunny afternoon while visiting friends a couple of months prior to our son’s birth, as we were conversing around the dinner table about what we would name our child, something miraculous occurred: at the very same moment, the song Hey Jude came on the radio, the recently drafted Montréal Canadiens centre Jude Drouin, scored a goal (the hockey game was playing on the TV, which could just be heard in the background), and at the very same moment, Cathy and I simultaneously spotted a copy of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure on a side table. Almost in unison, Cathy and I screamed out, “Jude, we’ll name our child Jude!”
And so we did.
In her hospital room early on Monday, with me by her side, Cathy and I discussed what name we would choose for Jude’s middle name. At the time, Cathy was reading Nathaniel West’s Miss Lonelyhearts, West’s widely regarded masterpiece, the book on the table by her bed (Cathy had asked me to bring the paperback to the hospital later on the Sunday afternoon of Jude’s birth). I suggested to Cathy, “How about Nathaniel as the middle name?” Cathy considered my suggestion for a moment before saying, “Nathan, let’s choose Nathan, instead, for his middle name.” And so we did.
By 2pm on Monday afternoon, just 24 hours after Jude’s birth, Cathy and I left the hospital to return to our home (Myrtle traveling in a taxi, right behind our car). Once home, Cathy rested, and I assumed Jude’s care, along with his maternal grandmother, who was now calmer, and … elated!
Cathy’s mom stayed only through Tuesday afternoon (Cathy insisted she leave — Cathy wanted the experience to be ours, sans her mother). On Wednesday, we left our farm house to go shopping at the Woodward’s food floor at the nearby Guildford Shopping Centre, Jude’s first foray into his bright new world — from the time we got out of the car, until we reached the entrance to the food floor, at least a dozen people stopped us to look at our newborn son, with Cathy & I beaming like the proud parents we were!
Jude Nathan Tomlin, the boy now man, in the winter of 2017, snow boarding up on Grouse Mountain. Happy 44th birthday, my most beloved, precious and much-loved son.
Glaswegian Paul Buchanan, lead singer and founder of the Scottish trio, Blue Nile.
