Sunday, 26 July 2015

Whatever Happened to Michelle Bell?

(Although I stopped posting to this blog every Sunday in order to concentrate on writing fiction, apparently I cannot stop myself from posting from time to time.)

I’ve told this to lots of people over the past four decades, so I should include it in my blog too.

A woman I worked with named Martha Bell told me in 1972 that she was Paul McCartney’s mother’s sister. Her daughter Michelle Bell was about 8 years old. They lived in Essex County somewhere near Maidstone, Ontario.

That would make Martha Paul McCartney’s aunt and her daughter, Michelle, Paul McCartney’s cousin.

I was especially sceptical. Actually, I did not believe her, until the next week when she brought a few black and white Brownie snapshots to work that showed her and her older children with Paul, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They were all relaxing around a living room with her family.

There was no doubt. It was the three Beatles circa 1964 in those little square photographs with the perforated edges.

Now you think I am making this up. But I am not. In the words of my good friend Jennifer: “I swear to God!”

Let me set the scene. This happened at the office of The Essex Times, a weekly tabloid newspaper owned and operated by a man named Woody Nicholson. The office was on the north side of Talbot Road right next to the railway tracks. It’s not there anymore. It blew up in 1980. I was living near Ottawa by then.


My job for The Essex Times was to cover and write local news; take, develop and print photographs; write heads and layout the pages; shoot the line shots on the graphics camera; size and shoot my photographs to make half tones; take the stripped line shots to the printer; and deliver the printed tabloids to local stores. The venerable Evelyn Walker was the editor. A high school kid and a young woman who typed my stories into a typesetting machine were the rest of the staff.

Martha was the classifieds person working with Woody on the ads. Michelle came into the office with her mom from time to time. After seeing the photos, I remember thinking, “Michelle Bell, those are words that go together well.”

“Martha my dear, don’t forget me,” popped into my head too.

Martha said that the photos were taken when the three Beatles stopped to see her when they first played in Toronto. Michelle was a baby. I recall one of the pictures showed one of the Beatles holding baby Michelle. Martha’s other kids were teenagers. Where in Toronto I do not know, but I had the impression it was an attached home in the older part of the city.

Michelle would be about 50 years old now. I wonder sometimes what happened to her and whether she ever connected with her cousin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifobQSP-b7E

Sunday, 5 July 2015

Hairy Days of My Youth

This is the 24th post of memories from years long past. I posted a story each Sunday and they’ve had more than 500 views. At this point, I’m setting the memory-blog writing aside to concentrate on writing fiction. However, I have not run out of ideas, so I’ll be firing out more memories again sometime.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bill Hicks gave me white walls for the first time when I was in Grade 8.

He rubbed hot lather around my ears, sharpened his straight razor on a long leather strap, then shaved the smooth ring from my sideburns up over my ears. That was a milestone.

My boss at the little neighbourhood store where I worked in high school called it, “getting your ears lowered.”

He and I both went to Bill Hicks, whose barber shop was in that red brick cluster of stores on the north side of Erie Street West at Victoria Ave.

Until around Grade 10, for me a haircut was a haircut was a haircut. There were just two choices: sticking up in a brush cut like my Dad had, or slicked down with a part. The latter was easier. The brush cut would mean keeping a flat platform on top of my head, which meant keeping it full of Brylcreem and carrying a comb.

A lot of guys had what we called a rat-tail comb so the point stuck out of their back pocket like a dangerous weapon. I tried it. It caught on the couch cushion and stuck out when I rode my bike. It looked cool but it was a nuisance.

It was sometime in Grade 10, I’d be about 15. John Bradac and Joe Rispoli, who lived on Dougall in our neighbourhood, were the first to have long hair. Not just early-Beatles long, their hair was Rolling Stones long, right down to their necks. I told Bill Hicks, “I’d like to leave it longer on the sides.” Bill told me he knew how I should have my hair and gave me the same old short on the sides with white walls. I never went back.

By Grade 11, I had a big wave in front that went up on the sides and down over my forehead in the middle. Extra Brylcreem held it in place.

By college, my hair was longer. I cut it myself, shaped like Prince Valiant’s. This was a period when I had a pair of bright red corduroy bell bottom hip hugger pants which I wore with a multicolored shirt with a South Asian style pattern. I also had an orange shirt with bell shaped sleeves. 

Remembering this helps me when I see young people today with tattoos on their neck. I too was reckless in my youth.

After college, I went to what was called a unisex hair salon, so it was long but not too long. These were the days when I had a tweed and a salmon leisure suit, and a bright yellow suit, which had extra wide lapels and pant legs and two-inch cuffs. I wore the bright yellow suit when I photographed weddings. I wore it with a silk black shirt that had bright green vines sprouting blossoms of every bright colour. Around my neck was a choker of red wood beads held by a black shoelace.

Still in my 20s and working as a reporter, Joan and I went to see my friend John Bortolin who was living in Vancouver. John took me to a hairdresser who put a perm-wave in my hair. This looked good for a couple of months. Back in Chatham I went to a hairdresser near the office of The Windsor Star bureau to get the wave put back. It came out like an Afro. So, I had an Afro for a couple of months until it flopped and I looked like I was a close relation of Bozo the Clown. I got it cut off short then kept it just long enough to cover part of my ears.

When I was working at Queen’s Park in my late 30s, a woman, who had a spider drawn on her cheek, gave me a spiked style. It wasn’t ultra punk, just sort of like a high brush cut, but instead of flat top, it was a set of random pointed clusters. I liked it for a while, but that was the end of the experiments. With kids, a career and a variety of other interests, a haircut was a haircut was a haircut.

Sunday, 28 June 2015

When the North is on Fire

Being Public Communications Officer for forest fire emergency operations in Northern Ontario was my favourite job of all time.

In 1978, I’d only been with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources for a few months when I got my first fire experience. They sent me to the Regional Fire Centre in Dryden. People there soon learned that was a mistake. I was clueless. Any former reporter from southern Ontario with no knowledge about the North would be. Lucky for me, the Regional Director was Ray Fortner, the former District Manager in Chatham. He knew me from my reporter days where I had met him and had written about Rondeau Park and about Conservation Officers patrolling for fish poachers on the Thames River. So, he turned my few days in Dryden into an orientation. He even took me in a scout plane to view the huge fire from the air.

A fire that is a couple of miles wide and perhaps ten miles long will push streams of hot air miles into the sky. A small plane will hit an updraft and be carried skyward, then plummet when it flies into the cooler downdraft. I tossed my cookies, using my jacket for a barf bag.

A couple of years later, near the end of May of 1980, I was at a meeting with naturalists in Murphy’s Point Provincial Park at Big Rideau Lake. It was about a two-hour drive from both my office in Kemptville and my home in Nepean. I was told to leave the government car I was using at the airport in Ottawa where a ticket was waiting. I was to go straight to the Ontario Fire Centre (OFC) in Sault Ste. Marie. If I missed the flight, the back-up was early the next morning.

I thought to myself that I needed to pack and to tell Joan that I would be away, and there were people I needed to inform from my office, so I chose to go to the office and take the morning flight. When my boss, Roy Taylor, saw me in the hallway, he called me into his office. “You missed a flight to go on fire duty,” he said. “If you ever miss another, you will never get chance to miss a third.”

I’d never seen Mr. Taylor so serious.

The fire flap that spring was huge with 100 fires not under control across the North. At the OFC, my job was to collect the fire reports sent by teletype from the regional centres and write a daily round-up of the fire situation province-wide. My report was checked by the provincial fire boss then sent to news services. Teletype – basically typing through phone lines -- was the most efficient way to send information at the time. Compared to today’s electronic communications, teletype was slow and limited.

My news experience, that orientation up in Dryden, plus my stint at OFC, made me the candidate for communications officer for the provincial fire team. During two weeks in winter, I went to the OMNR professional development centre in Dorset, near Algonquin Park, to attend fire management training. Foresters, biologists, resource technicians and others from offices across the province were handpicked for the team: fire boss, personnel manager, supplies manager, aircraft manager, and others. The public communications manager (me) reported to and got information from the maps and records officer. I learned not to bother anyone else. Fighting fire was like a military operation.

In 1982, twice I got a call for fire and went straight to the Ottawa airport. I knew somebody else would tell Joan. I knew I could get toiletries and extra clothes from the supply manager in Red Lake when I got there. I flew to Toronto, changed plans to a Nordair flight that landed in Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay before I got off in Dryden. In Dryden, I got on a plane that held less than a dozen people that put down in Kenora and Sioux Lookout before landing in Red Lake. At Red Lake, a truck took me to the district fire centre where the team I had met during the winter in Dorset were doing their jobs – tracking aircraft, marking jump fires on a wall-size topographic map, ordering equipment, planning personnel allocations -- it was intense and just like a military operation.

I went right to work, collecting statistics – size and location of the fire, type of fuel (forest type), threat to habitation, threat to private property, weather conditions and forecast, number of fire crews* on the ground, number of water bombers and helicopters. My job was to write public dispatches and to speak to any media who called. I was at the fire centre for two weeks from before 6 a.m. to after 10 p.m. daily and loved every minute.

The fire was threatening a Native community. My daily dispatch said an evacuation plan was set to go. I got a call from CBC in Toronto, they were sending a reporter and videographer to cover the fire. The reporter told me they would be renting a helicopter to get aerial shots.

“No you won’t,” I said. “Our first priority is to protect lives. We have air traffic control of the region. Besides, there are no helicopters available because we are using them all. Come and get your footage and information, buy I will take you in a helicopter, make sure you get the best footage of the fire that can be taken safely, and also arrange for us to land at the base camp where you can interview the firefighters.”

They arrived and it went as planned. They got great footage and we got the coverage we needed to inform the province about our efforts.

The camp was set up in a location that had already burned. It was the most surreal thing I have ever seen. Imagine a sunny day after a snow storm in a forest where everything is blanketed in white snow. Now, change that white snow to black ash. The stumps and skeletons of trees were black. When a forest fire consumes all the oxygen in a location, some trees actually bake from the heat but do not catch fire. So, small clusters of unburned evergreens were completely black. The rocks faces and the earth were black. The only things not black were the lake and the sky, and brown tents, firefighters in orange jumpsuits, and the yellow float planes.

Toward the end of my years with OMNR, I was Communications Planner and Projects Manager for Forest Resources Group at Queen’s Park. By then, the forest fire management centre in Sault Ste. Marie had hired a full-time communications person. That ended fire duty for me, but I was always glad to have had to the opportunity to be part of the team.

*A fire crew is five people armed with chain saws, axes, hose, a pump and a radio. Never six, never four. If the fire changes and they have to get out of their positions, a helicopter will land in a clearing or shore. There is no time to ask how many people are getting on. The pilot counts one, two, three, four, five guys and takes off. Each crew has a leader. Every five crews has a group leader. Every five groups … and so on.

I was never on a crew -- battling in the heat, the smoke, the ash, the mud, the rugged terrain and their own exhaustion. They fought the fire, I told the story. They had their job. I had mine.

Saturday, 20 June 2015

Penny Candy at the End of an Era

When we were kids, we had corner stores that sold penny candy.

People who have only known 7-11s and Mac’s Milk stores can hardly imagine what our corner grocery stores were like.

Every neighbourhood in the old inner city of Windsor had a store. When I lived at 1115 Bruce Ave., I could walk 20 minutes north to Wyandotte or the same distance south to Tecumseh Road, and never be more than two or three blocks from a little store. People called them “corner stores,” although they weren’t always on a corner. Prier’s Market, at Erie and Church, and an IGA on Bruce by St. Clare School, were actually built to be stores. Most were just the converted living room of a basic house, but they all had penny candy.

Today they are all back to being just houses again.

I worked Grades 9, 10 and 11 at Clark’s Market, which was the front room of a little house on Grove between Dougall and Church. A few times every day, a couple of little kids would come in all by themselves. Some would hardly be tall enough to reach up and put their few pennies on the counter. Perhaps they had found three or four pop bottles, which they could turn in for the deposit: 2¢ each for 10 oz. bottles, 5¢ for a large bottle. Either I or Mr. Clark would open a small paper bag and the ritual would begin.

The kids would point at their choices through the glass side of a cabinet with four or five shelves. On the shelves were open boxes of various candy. As I put each selection in the bag I would tell the kids what it cost and how much money they had left. It would go like this: Black balls (3 for a penny), four green leaves (gumdrops, 2 for a penny), jube jubes (3 for a penny), a licorice (2¢), a caramel (1¢), a straw of powdered sugar(1¢), a necklace of hard candies on a string (3¢) and so on until all the pennies were spent. And out they would go with their bag of treasure.
Older kids would come in for a pop (10¢) or a pop to “drink in” so they didn’t pay the deposit. They could have a red licorice with their pop as they sat drinking it on the ice cream freezer. The chrome freezer had thick rubberized lids on top. It was sturdy and it was where I’d sit when we weren’t busy.

In the freezer were cylinders of ice cream wrapped in paper. We had vanilla, chocolate or strawberry. I would make an ice cream cone by pealing the paper off and pressing the cylinder of ice cream into a cone (6¢). Also, we had Popsicles (cherry, banana, grape, orange, chocolate, maybe pineapple) and Icycles, which were flavoured ice, like Popsicles in a plastic tube (all 5¢), plus two sizes of bricks of ice cream.

The pop cooler by the window beside the front door was a rectangular tub about as high as desk. It was painted with a brand, Coca Cola probably. The whole top of pop cooler was a chrome centre-hinged lid so you would open one side or the other to look down to see what kind of pop it held. The bottles stood half submerged in water that kept them cold. A towel sat on the lid so kids could wipe their wet bottles. We had Coke, Pepsi, Double Cola, Hires Root Beer, Orange Crush, 7 Up, Vernors, Grape, Cream Soda, Lemon Lime – what am I forgetting? All 8¢ plus 2¢ deposit.

Often kids who had been playing a game like scrub at Mitchell Park would go to Clark’s, just a block from the park, and hang out on the steps with their cold pop, then come in to trade the bottle deposit for a licorice or some gum. Double Bubble and Buzooka Joe both had comics under the wrapper.

Part of my job was to keep the pop cooler filled and to take the empties to the basement. In the basement, I would sort the bottles in their wooden crates that held four sets of six bottles.

George Clark and his sister, Mrs. Thompson, lived in the back. They worked very hard to get by. Clark’s had a butcher’s meat cooler with a glass front. He sold steaks, pork chops, stewing beef and hamburger, which he would grind fresh when the customer asked. What I am saying, it wasn’t hamburger yet when a customer said “a pound and a half of hamburger.” Mr. Clark would put on his apron, weigh the chunks of beef, then grind it and weigh it again, wrap it in red paper and write the price with a grease pencil.

The market sold cigarettes by the pack (32¢) or by the carton. Players, Export, Chesterfield and Palm Mall were not filtered, Cameo and DuMaurier were. Clark’s sold nickel and dime chocolate bars – Crispy Crunch, Coffee Crisp, O Henry, Aero, Cadbury. Clark’s carried a few fresh vegetables and they had canned goods, detergents, cooking oil… not a lot of choice but if you needed it, they had it. And for some regulars, they kept a book of credit, which the customers paid on payday.

People with credit would run in for a few items, it would be recorded and they would pay at the end of the week. Once, Mr. Clark saw some people who lived nearby arrive home with a trunk full of groceries. They hadn’t paid their bill to Mr. Clark yet, so he phoned them to say they should pay him. He sent me down to their house to collect.

Until the early 60s, the big grocery stores were on the main street downtown. People walked to these stores – Dominion, A&P, Loblaw’s -- and carried armfuls of groceries home two or three times a week. In those days, most mothers did not have jobs outside the home. Then suburban plazas opened with larger grocery stores with lots of parking so people could drive to get their groceries once a week. The current Value Village at Dorwin Plaza was the site of the first of these drive-to grocery stores that I saw. When we moved to South Windsor in 1965, we had four large stores a few minutes by car to buy our groceries.

I worked 4 to 6 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays and 10 to 6 p.m. on Saturdays. I kept shelves stocked. I delivered groceries to homes when someone phoned in an order or were not able to carry it all. I waited on the kids sometimes. I went to the wholesaler on Janette near Caron first thing Saturday morning to stock up on cigarettes and a few other items that would fit in my big carrier on the front of my bike.

After Mr. Clark had sawed some perfect y-bone steaks off a hind quarter of beef, he was tired. He’d hang up his apron and say, “I can’t sing and I can’t dance.”

Working at Clark’s Market was always interesting. Potatoes were murphys or spuds. Eggs were cackle berries. Every customer was important, whether a family buying steaks or a child buying a licorice with a dirty pop bottle. At 6 p.m. every Saturday, when all the empties were sorted in the basement, the store was swept and the counter was wiped clean, Mr. Clark gave me a $5 bill.

Rest in peace, Mr. Clark and Mrs. Thompson. Thanks for showing me the honour of a good day’s work. Now I’m the age that you were then, and guess what. I can’t sing and I can’t dance.

Sunday, 14 June 2015

Going on the Record about Music

Once in a while somebody makes a remark along the lines of -- imagine the young Bob Dylan trying out for one of those singer competition shows on TV. He’d be gone in a minute – this guy who has generated an album every year for 50 years. Same for Mick Jagger, Diana Ross, James Brown, Chris Montez, Domingo Samudio – the Sam of Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. (Woolly Bully was the top selling song of 1965.)

That always gets me thinking about my love for music and the music I especially love.
In 1964, Mom handed me a glossy insert from the Reader’s Digest. Opened up, it became one big poster with pictures of record albums. It said they would send me six for free if I joined the Columbia Record Club.

It was pretty enticing, because finding and buying the music you wanted wasn’t easy back then.
There were no music stores. Records were sold in a back corner of the same stores that sold Davy Crocket underwear, Royal Family t-towels, Flash Gordon pyjamas, moosehead knickknacks, cartoon-cat wall clocks, cone bras and hair spray for beehive hairdos. Those five and dime stores – S. S. Kresge, Woolworth and Metropolitan – also had long counters with stools where men could eat a hot breakfast or lunch while making crude remarks to the waitress. Music wasn’t the specialty at those stores.

At least two other record clubs were similar, but I went with the Columbia Club because it had The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night and all three of Bob Dylan’s albums. The deal was: you selected six records to buy, then picked six more that they would send to you free. You only had to buy six more over the next year.

Six records at about $3.50 each plus shipping was about $25. I only made $5 a week at my after-school job. It was a hard decision but I went for it.

Bobby Vinton’s Blue Velvet, a Jan and Dean and The New Christy Minstrels were part of my free choices. Not my style, but they were free, so what the hay. A Peter Paul and Mary album that had Blowin’ in the Wind on it turned out to be a great choice. And, of course, I got the first three Dylan albums and A Hard Day’s Night.

Things turned sour from there. The club only offered albums from the Columbia record label. Columbia did not produce other Beatle albums, just that one movie track. So, no more Beatles choices. And the price of the monthly album was higher than the price in stores. Worse yet, Columbia was an established label with older artists and hadn’t signed many rock and rollers. Columbia would send an album that I didn’t want with a big poster full of more lame choices. If I didn’t want that month’s album, I had to figure out how to send it back quickly at my cost. If I missed the deadline, I had to buy the album. I think that’s how I got stuck with Andy Williams’ Days of Wine and Roses.

Every month, some junky album would come in the mail and I would have to pay to send it back. I also had to buy something until I made the six-more quota. Another Side of Bob Dylan came out later that year. I grabbed that one. I think I got the Tim Rose album with Morning Dew because the year was up and I had to buy something. Luckily, that turned out to be a good one.

Here in my old age, music is everywhere. My computer came with at least two ways to listen to music, not counting hundreds of iTunes stations. In the USA they also have Pandora. My car has satellite radio with over a hundred stations. People have music in their phones. My iPod has 5,000 songs, which I can just shuffle without choosing.

I know there are popular artists these days. The skinny blond on talk shows who just moved from Nashville to New York, Taylor Swift. A lot of people with made up names like Drake and 50 Cent. Maroon 5 or 6. The Perry woman who did half-time at the last superbowl. So, maybe some young people today have a special bond with their favourite music. I don’t know. Music seems so transitory today, the downloading and freeloading, but where is it, where’s the music? In the anti-tactile cloud.

I sound like my parents’ generation. “I can’t understand the words in that rock and roll music,” they’d say. I guess old is old, but then again, maybe old is as old does.

One thing for sure, my music is part of who I am. It’s me as much as my accent or the way I walk or my big rosy nose.

Over the years I have lent and lost some of my records, and my brothers have some of the records that we played in our basement in the 60s, but I still have three milk crates of old albums and about a dozen 45s.

My records are a reflection of me. I like being able to look at them, read their liner notes; it’s like looking in a retro-mirror at myself. I’ve got a couple of Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks; Thunderclap Newman; the David Bromberg with the King Kong cover; three Siegal Schwall Blues Band; High Tide and Green Grass and Let Your Ya-Yas Out; Time Has Come by the Chambers Brothers; Tauhid by Pharoah Sanders; Mothermania; Asylum Choir; Doug Sahm and Band; a couple of Aretha albums; collections of obscure blues; The Kinks’ Soap Opera; Grant Smith and the Power; a John Mayall reunion with some great songs with Eric and Sugarcane Harris; plus sundry other reflections of my eclectic taste.


Of course, I have most of the mandatory records appropriate to my age. All the Beatles. The Stones from Beggar’s Banquet through Goat’s Head Soup; Frampton Comes Alive. All Dylan’s up to the motorcycle accident plus a bunch after the come back. Bob Seger’s first live album plus Night Moves. Hendrix first. Traffic’s first. Velvet Underground’s too. Live at Leeds. Big Brother and the Holding Company. Tapestry. The list, if not the beat, goes on.

Saturday, 6 June 2015

Sam, the dog at Beaver

(This is the second post about working at the Beaver station. The first was posted last week.)

A noisy group of guys got out of a car with Michigan plates one hot night after 2 a.m. when I was on midnights at the Beaver Gas Station on Dougal.

I was alone because the other guy on midnights was out with the truck to change a flat tire. At that time of night, the flat was likely in the parking lot of The Riviera, the topless bar down the street that stayed open until about that time of night. Most likely, this rowdy group had also come from the Riv.

One asked me for change for the pop machine. I took his bill and opened the till. They could see I was alone. I could tell they were thinking it would be easy to overpower me and take whatever they wanted. Then the grins dropped off their faces. I did not have to turn to look. I knew Sam had come out from where ever he was sleeping and was standing right behind me.

Sam was a large Alsatian that lived at the Beaver station. At 2 a.m., Sam was on the job.

The rowdy boys got their pop and left.

In those summers of 1967 and 68, I enjoyed working the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift. The big Beaver station was a couple of blocks from the end of Highway 401, and the only station open at night between the 401 and Detroit, so we had all kinds of travellers stop for gas, a washroom break or just a stretch and some conversation. A few became regulars.

Two or three times, the band Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels came in about 4 o’clock in the morning after playing in Toronto or Buffalo.

The band rode in a stretch Cadillac, one of the early 60s models with the long sleek fins. It had a front, middle and back seat and pulled an equipment trailer that looked like a mini camper.
I recognized the car and trailer when I went out to the pumps. The band remembered something too. As they got out to head to the washroom, one said to me with a trace of concern, “Hey Man, that dog around?”

Sam roamed the lot freely. We had no leash or rope. Sam would greet the guys wagging his tail and crying like a puppy at the beginning of each shift – especially the guys who fed him and gave him special attention. He’d be so enthusiastic he’d nearly knock people over.

His biggest greeting was reserved for Don Plumb, the station owner. If we heard the crying and carrying on from Sam in the middle of a shift, the guys knew the big boss might be on site.

A few times a day, Sam would disappear, through the traffic of the busy plaza parking lot that surrounded the station, and between the stores to a field out back. It occurs to me now, thinking about all the bags I use to pick up after my dog, that we never even thought about needing to pick up after Sam.

With a bed behind the oil cans beneath the work bench in the bay, he must have been the dirtiest dog in the city. Once each summer, the Plumbs took him to Lake Erie for a swim. That was his annual bath. For a week or more after the swim, his white and brown fur showed against his black. Most of the year, his colours were covered in grime. Sam was fed cans of sloppy cheap dog food from a can. His teeth had large black spots, probably because he never got kibble or dog cookies to keep his teeth clean.

My beautiful red MGB was a convertible with leather seats. Once in a while, when I had left the top down, some of the guys would let Sam get in the passenger seat just as my shift ended. Sam was so big sitting in that seat, he could look over the top of the windshield. I would be heading to the car and then see Sam sitting there, big grin, so excited. There was no way Sam would get out of the car until after I had driven him around the local streets with the top down.

After that incident with rowdy Americans, I never begrudged Sam the occasional joy ride at the end of a shift. Even after I left Beaver, when I would stop by for gas, Sam seemed to recognize the sound of my MG or would hear my voice, and he’d come out to give me a great greeting, whining and crying like a puppy.

Beaver Stations are a little piece of Windsor history that everyone my age remembers fondly. The Beaver station on Dougal was sold and eventually torn down to be replaced by a generic Shell station where people pump their own gas and try to clean their own windows. How cool would it be to have one of my old Beaver uniform shirts and show up wearing it to the A&W on classic car cruise night in Windsor!


Oh, wait. I was 130 pounds in high school. Oh well. I’ve got the memories.

Sunday, 31 May 2015

Working at the Beaver Station

To this day, I am very efficient at washing windshields, checking oil and pumping gas. That’s because, for three years at the end of high school and the beginning of college, I worked at the Beaver Gas Station on Dougal Ave. at Norfolk in Windsor.

I got that job after I had moved to the suburbs. I needed money to pay for my car, a 1966 MGB. I needed a car because I wanted to be able to go see my friends who were all downtown. As it worked out, I had little time left to see my friends since I spent 24 hours (three shifts) on weekends getting $1.25 an hour to pay $60 a month for the car loan.

Nowadays, a service station like those locally-owned Beaver stations doesn’t exist. The owner of these stations, Don Plumb, was a visionary in his time.

Most other gas stations had licenced mechanics plus a couple of guys who helped in the bays. There were no self-serve gas stations also selling cigarettes and snacks in the 60s. When customers pulled up to pumps at a regular gas station, somebody in the bay would put down what they were doing and walk out to pump the gas and maybe clean the windshield. That was not what happened at a Beaver station. 
Image result for beaver gas stationAt Beaver, as a customer pulled in, three guys ran out to the car. One greeted the customer, pumped the gas and handled the money. Another checked under the hood: oil, battery and radiator. The third did all the windows with a squeegee and paper towel, leaving no streaks and getting all the bugs off with a special sponge if necessary. If they wanted the transmission fluid checked, we had them start the engine and checked that too. If the customer asked, we checked the pressure in the tires with the gauge in our breast pocket, and if a tire was low, we followed the car to the air pump and filled the tire.

Imagine today pulling into a gas station and getting that kind of service! In driving rain, humidity and heat or ripping cold snow – Beaver service never varied.

A weekend shift had eight or 10 guys working 7 in the morning to 3 p.m. and a similar group working 3 to 11. Most shifts, we were all moving most of the time. The Dougal station had nine pumps, three to an island. The middle pumps were high test, the outside pumps were regular. Some days, cars were waiting because each pump lane was busy. When it was that busy, one person did all three jobs on a car.

There were no chairs for staff to rest. For lunch or dinner, we would grab a bite of a burger or sandwich between cars, not having time to wash our hands after handling money, dirty rags, squeegees, sponges, oil cans and everything else.

We carried rags in our back pockets so we did not burn our hands on radiator caps. We learned from practice how to ease a cap off a hot rad to let out pressure and not let hot fluid explode in our faces.

Our Beaver uniforms were dark blue pants and a light blue shirt with a Beaver emblem over the left pocket. For spring and fall, we had a jacket that matched the pants, and for winter, a heavy parka that also had the Beaver emblem.

Plumb, the visionary, was the first to build automatic car washes at his stations. That meant more guys on the shift. If you bought enough gas, you got a free wash. Beaver also gave stamps to fill little books that could be redeemed for gifts. Regular customers demanded extra stamps.

The Beaver station had two bays for oil changes and tire repairs. I learned how to put a car on a hoist, take a tire off, find a leak and repair it with a plug. I also learned how to remove a tire from a rim, and let the owner examine the hole from the inside. I could apply a patch to the inside or put a tube in the tire. In those days, tubeless tires were an innovation.

After working there a few months, I could get the nod to take the station’s pick-up truck on service calls to change a flat or boost a dead battery. Most of the guys working at Beaver including myself learned how to drive a manual transmission on the Beaver service pick-up.

The summer of 1967 and again in 1968, regular was 49 cents an imperial gallon. That’s about 10 cents a liter. I worked the midnight shift, 11 to 7. This gave me more hours and the manager, Ron Treleven, paid me $1.50 an hour. For six shifts, that was $72 a week. It doesn’t seem like much now, but I saved enough money to pay my college tuition and keep up my car payments.

Ron was always fair and rewarded hard work and capability with shift requests and responsibility. Nonetheless, he had only one response for anyone who did not call in with a reason before missing a shift. If you missed a shift, there was no discussion. Ron just said, “Hand in your uniform.”


More next week about the dog that lived at the Beaver station. 

Sunday, 24 May 2015

Radio days

My Grade 6 science teacher at Victoria Ave. School, Mr. Fordham, said something that I still remember as one of the egregiously faulty pronouncements of my youth.

He relayed this obscured insight to our class just before the Christmas Holidays at the end of 1959.
“You’ll be able to tell your grandchildren that you lived in this historic decade, when the total knowledge in the world actually doubled in just 10 years,” Mr. Fordham said. “So many marvelous developments happened in the 1950s -- jet airliners, television and the first satellites in space. An era like this will never happen again.”

Mr. Fordham should have realized that the acceleration of new science and technology would continue, and civilization would be churning in its wake. Clearly, most of Mr. Fordham’s generation was the last to grow up with things not changing a whole lot.

Like a monument to that generation, my parents’ Philco Radio cabinet stood against the wall of our front hallway.

Philco Model 42-400X, closed
This high quality wooden cabinet was about a metre high, maybe 50 cm wide and 30cm deep (about 3x2x1 in feet). It had one large speaker in front. The speaker was behind a cloth screen protected by wooden art deco pillars. The front top of the cabinet opened forward to reveal a plate of lighted glass showing four scales for tuning: one for the AM frequencies, one for the FM, and two for short wave radio bands. Along the glass, five wooden knobs protruded: on/off; volume; tuning AM and FM; and tuning Short Wave I and II. (Photo similar)

It had been an expensive purchase, but my parents believed when they bought it that this handsome piece of furniture would serve the family for many years to come.

Inside the big radio were shelves of tubes that looked like light bulbs. When the radio was on for any length of time, you could feel the heat from those tubes as you passed by. Tubes would burn out from time to time, so my parents kept a supply of replacements. Finding which one burned out was always a chore. The radio had to be turned and its back removed. Then Dad had to reach in and replace the tube that wasn’t glowing without burning his arm on the tubes that worked.

I tinkered with those knobs to find out what sounds could come out of the radio, but only the AM band produced anything you could listen to. The others produced only screaks and static. There were no FM stations and the radio would need to be connected to a large antenna to get short wave.

I dutifully returned the dial to WJR in Detroit, which was my parents’ station. WJR carried a morning DJ named J. P. McCarthy, commentator Bud Guest’s show called the Sunny Side of the Street Club from 8 to 8:15 weekdays, the Lone Ranger and other serial dramas, the Tiger games, and no rock and roll music. WJR played Perry Como, Pearl Baily, Frank Sinatra, Mills Brothers, Dean Martin, Jo Stafford and music like that.

Big radios like these were quickly made obsolete when manufacturers introduced radios with tiny transistors. Without those tubes, radios no longer needed to be heavy, cumbersome or even plugged in.

By 1962 and some years following, I often took my plastic 6-transistor radio in its leather case all kinds of places. It was battery powered. It fit in my hand. I could move the tuning dial with my thumb from CKLW to WKNR to WXYZ without even looking. My little radio played Duke of Earl, Bristol Stomp, Ruby Baby, Runaway, Peppermint Twist, Lonely Teardrops, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, La Bamba, Earth Angel, Pretty Little Angel Eyes, Johnny Angel (Angel songs seemed to be big in the early 60s), and let’s not forget, If You Want to Be Happy (for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife).

Portable transistor radios came with a little ear-piece. The wire to the earpiece broke off about the third time it was used, so we listened by holding the radio up to our ear as we walked or biked. People made the same kind of remarks about us with our radios next to our heads as people say now about young people always looking down at their cellphones.

A transistor radio for me was pure freedom. Transistor radios let kids listen to what they wanted, where ever and whenever – except around moms and dads, oh, and teachers.

Also, television got better and increased the hours of broadcasting. In the 1950s, a test pattern was all you could get through the day. Broadcasts began with the national anthem around 4 p.m. and signed off around midnight.


In the early 60s, the big radio that was supposed to serve for years to come had been replaced by a console TV in the living room and a new small radio in the kitchen for Bud Guest in the morning and the ball game in the afternoon. 

Saturday, 16 May 2015

Going to the Fair

Gary McLister and I saw Little Steve Wonder open the Motown Review at the Michigan State Fair in August 1963.

The fairgrounds are in Detroit on the east side of Woodward Ave. just south of 8 Mile Road.

It was Gary’s idea to go. Someone had taken him to the Fair some previous year, so he knew where it was. It was probably a Sunday because I worked late afternoons at Clark’s Market on Thursdays and Fridays and all day on Saturdays. I think back – I wonder if we told our parents where we were going. Probably not. Our plan was to be home for supper. Gary and I had turned 15 that spring.
We walked to the Windsor Terminal for the Tunnel Bus between Windsor and Detroit. That bus took passengers to the Immigration and Customs Office on the US side, where you would get off, walk in line to a Customs Officer, tell him where you were going and then get back on the bus. We may have had our birth certificates, or maybe something less officious, like a library card. Going to Detroit was not a big deal in those days. ID may not have been required. (The photo here is more recent. The Canadian flag was not adopted until 1964.)

The Tunnel Bus let us off at Grand Circus Park, the place where Detroit’s main streets radiate out from the downtown. We got on a Woodward Avenue Bus and rode it north, past United Shirt, the giant Hudson’s, Griswald’s, and the other downtown stores, past the Detroit Institute of Arts on the right and the huge library facing it on the left. Past the Olympia where the Red Wings played. Farther on north we went, past big houses and big churches, car lots and smaller stores. People got on, people got off, mostly African American people, but that didn’t mean anything to us. Gary and I had Black friends at school, we went into Windsor’s Black neighbourhood all the time. Even Mr. Lemon, our math teacher, was Black and nobody ever said anything about that. Mr. Lemon was just another (good) teacher.

The Tunnel Bus had cost just a quarter, but the Detroit bus fare was more expensive than we expected, and when we got to the Michigan State Fair, we had to pay to get in. I don’t remember how much it was, but it left us with just enough to take the buses home and maybe split a pop. No money for a hot dog, so lunch was out.

With no money to spend, Gary and I wandered the fairgrounds, taking in the sights. I think Gary saw the sign. Free Motown Review. We went through the entrance into an open area with a stage at the far end. We walked over and watched the band set up. The drum set was impressive. A set of horn players tuned up. Guitars came out of cases and plugged in. Guys in shinny suits walked around, arranging microphones, setting up their chart stands and chairs.

All this was fascinating for Gary and me. We stood right in front of the stage which was about as high as we were. We jumped up to get a glimpse of what was going on at the very back.
Image
A few other people were watching with us by the time someone led a skinny kid up to the front microphone. He wore dark glasses and carried a really big harmonica. The kid reached out to touch the microphone and get his bearings. We realized he was blind. The skinny kid stood around, touching the microphone from time to time to be sure it was there. The band members were getting settled in their places. The kid asked “Now?” And someone in the band said “Not yet.” This happened a couple more times until the guy in the band said, “Okay, now.”

And Little Stevie Wonder yelled into the microphone, “Everybody say YEAAAHH.”

And Gary and I said to each other, “It’s Little Stevie Wonder.” We knew this song from the radio. The crowd behind us yelled “Yeah.”

And he said it again, “Everybody say YYEEAAAAAHHH!” And Gary and I realized a crowd had closed in around and behind us. The crown yelled shouted back “YEAH!”

And the band broke into Fingertips as Stevie Wonder began playing that giant harmonica and we were really into the music until we felt the crowd pushing and jostling us. I first thought, “Hey, you don’t need to push, we were here first,” but then Gary and I realized we were the only kids in the crowd who were not Black.

We slid out across the area in front of the stage and then through the crowd to the back of the area that had just about filled up. We were too short to see much of the people on stage from back there. Little Stevie Wonder finished Fingertips and then started into High Heel Sneakers.

We were getting menacing looks and motions from some of the guys in the crowd so I agreed with Gary when he said, “We better get out of here.”

We were home for supper. The bus ride back down Woodward was hot and seemed like it took a lot longer than it did to get to the fairgrounds. I looked at the Black people getting on and getting off. I felt different than I had that morning. I had known there was racism. I had seen discrimination, but I had never been part of it and had intended to never be part of it. I joked with the girl whose locker was next to mine at school the same as I would with anybody else. Racism may be elsewhere, I thought, but if I wasn’t racist, I could live in a world without racism.

That simple idea died the day Gary and I saw Little Stevie Wonder at the Free Motown Review.


Four years later, parked on the Windsor side of the Detroit River, we listened to the shouts and gunshots, and watched the glow in the night sky as the city we enjoyed and felt a part of was ablaze in riots. I knew, we knew, the Gary’s and the rest of us, that racism was something we had to find ways to undo, diminish, sweep away and out of our lives. I think we knew too that we were the generation to do it. It was on us.

Saturday, 9 May 2015

Great fun for 12 cents

When The Amazing Spider-Man comic first appeared in 1963, I was the big red circle in the centre of its target audience. I turned 15 that year.

The grip that comics had on me in my teens has never completely let go. It’s been a kick seeing how those characters that were launched way back in the 60s have been reintroduced this century in movies and television.

Windsor’s largest comic book store, when I was a kid, was in the front of an old frame house on Wyandotte Street just west of Windsor Arena. It had bins of used issues and racks of new releases. Most issues were a dime or 12 cents, some large special issues were as much as 35 cents.

I bought the original and next 20 issues of Spider-Man; the first and a few others of Daredevil; the first dozen X-men; the original year or two of Fantastic Four; Thor and a bunch of others including Dr. Strange, which first appeared in the back half of an issue of Thor.

I surprise myself at how much content I still recall.

The first Avengers series had a guy who hasn’t made it to the movies. Called Giant Man or Ant Man, this guy could get very large or very small as the occasion required. He had a girlfriend called The Wasp. Neither were a great hit.

The Incredible Hulk, on the other hand, was on a trial basis with The Avengers. Some Avengers thought he couldn’t be trusted because of that temper. Hulk wasn’t excited about hanging out with them either, after various battles with super heroes in other books. All this was great fun for a 15-year-old.

I kept my comics in boxes in my bedroom closet, as well as a few that were not from Marvel: The Phantom, Blackhawks, and the occasional DC.

Marvel comics eclipsed the others because they introduced superheroes that had to deal with personal dilemmas -- like Hulk who just wanted to be normal. This was unlike DC's characters, such as Superman, who was revered and honoured in Metropolis, or Batman who was a rich guy and resource for the police. Flash was a cop. Wonder Woman was a privileged princess. Green Lantern was a fearless test pilot (I had the first issue of that too.) None of those DC characters led tragic lives or second-guessed themselves.

But in Marvel, Spider-Man was an orphan teen living with his poor aunt and uncle. And when he accidently got his powers, he didn’t want to fight crime. Instead, he tried to use his new abilities to make money. He ignored a bad guy and the bad guy turned around and killed his uncle. Realizing he could have prevented his uncle’s death, Spider-Man was a tormented kid. I loved that.

Other Marvel headliners had their troubles too. Thor was stranded on Earth because he had been kicked out of Asgard. Iron Man could die anytime; only the power device in his chest kept his heart beating – long before the invention of actual pacemakers. All the Marvel comics had these back stories. It was my introduction to literature. That notion struck me when we were taking King Lear in high school. I thought the tragedy of King Lear was the same as the tragedy of The Silver Surfer: they both gave up a secure and privileged life for a promise of adventure, then realized their mistake when it was too late. I doubt that this notion impressed my English teacher.

In English class, we were supposed to read Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Heart of Darkness, and Shakespeare. None of it held my attention for a minute.

As my teens ended, novels and short stories replaced superhero comics. Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein; Sirens of Titan and other Vonnegut novels; I Robot; Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas; Miami and the Siege of Chicago by Mailer. Plus there was poetry: Leonard Cohen, Richard Brautigan. And let us never forget In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works.

Nonetheless, once a super-hero fan, always a bit of a super-hero fan, I guess. Recently, I watched episodes of the new Marvel’s Daredevil series on Netflix.


Oh, what happened to my boxes of now valuable comic books? On a day after I was married, I came by my parents’ home I asked my Mom about my boxes of comics and things. She didn’t recall where they might be. I looked around but never found them. I didn’t live there anymore so I suppose they got tossed out. After all, why would a married man want to keep old comic books?

Sunday, 3 May 2015

Your Mother Should Know

In fall of 1967, Magical Mystery Tour was released.

Earlier that summer, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band had been launched with great fanfare. Even Time magazine got involved with a cover article about how the band worked with the London Philharmonic.

Conversely, Mystery Tour rolled up unexpectedly. That day, I was having lunch at Massey Secondary School. One of the usual group at our table was away at some appointment. Shortly after lunch period began, he came through the backdoor into the cafeteria. He was exuberant and waving a record album high over his head. As he made his way to our table, some people rose from their seats to follow him.

It was our first look at the Magical Mystery Tour album: for us at the time, an event of epoch discovery. The Beatles wore animal masks in the cover picture. (Gasp! Which Beatle was which animal?) The cover unfolded to reveal a picture book aside – first time a record album had a book inside. As the people at our table looked through the pictures, word spread. A crowd gathered around. People were standing on nearby tables to get a glimpse, everyone fascinated with pictures inside with The Beatles on a bus tour.

As I was looking at the picture of John Lennon with a shovel full of spaghetti, I realized that Woolco, the only store in South Windsor that sold records, would have a limited supply. I got up and shot out the back door of the cafeteria, and ran nonstop through the back campus and the three blocks to my house. I jumped on my old bike and peddled hard to Gateway Plaza. Already, kids were ahead of me, grabbing their copies. I secured mine, bicycled home then ran back to school relieved that I had my copy of the new Beatle album, which I would be playing over and over that night.

By this time, it was half way through the next period. I expected to get sent to the office for a late slip. Likely, I’d be given a detention. However, in the school, my teacher was standing in the hall chatting with a couple of others. I understood why when I got to my classroom. Half the students were gone.

It seemed to me that nearly half the school was either out to buy the new Beatle album or gone to somebody’s house to listen to it.

It is impossible to explain the hold the Beatles had on the youth of the 60s. There has been nothing so popular since. The first three Beatles albums at one time were the top three sellers on the Billboard charts for music sales in North America. At the same time, five of their singles held the top five spots on the singles chart. And the phenomenon took off from there.

In their day, they were original in many ways and it is an understatement to point out that they were trend setters. They were the trend setters. Not just as musicians, but as thinkers. An obscure example – their manager was openly gay. This was influential. Beatles fans were unlikely to be intolerant knowing the Beatles had a gay manager.

The fab four were hard working young men who loved the music and were not afraid to try new things. In the turbulent 60s, The Beatles showed the baby boom generation that, for some, life could be what you make it. You say you want a revolution… you’d better free your mind instead.


I feel very fortunate to have grown up in the 60s, when there was an explosion of great music, from Miles Davis to Mungo Jerry, Soul sounds, California sounds, the Philadelphia sound, Chess Records, Motown, psychedelic, blues, the British invasion... It was a trip. And The Beatles were driving.

Sunday, 26 April 2015

Delivering the news

My first job was delivery boy for The Sunday Detroit Times. I had about 30 customers. Hardly any lived close to the next on my route through a major part of midtown Windsor. I had customers in the Black neighbourhood, the Italian neighbourhood, up the stairs and down the halls in big apartment buildings on Ouellette Ave. and Giles Blvd., and in stately homes on Victoria Ave.


The Sunday papers in Detroit were the major editions for the week. They each had a lot of big specialty sections, colour comics, a glossy magazine and lots of advertising. Delivering Sunday papers was heavy slogging. I’d start out with a bundle in my carrier and another bundle in the big canvas bag slung over my shoulder. I had to walk with my bike all but the last quarter of the route.

I had this job when Ike and Mamie were being followed by Jack and Jackie at the White House, and Pearson was sparing with Diefenbaker were to head the government in Canada. Cars had fins or were tapered like B-movie rocket ships. The Union Jack and Canadian Ensign hung in the hallway at Victoria Ave. Public School.

The colour comics section, some 12 or 16 pages, was on the outside of The Sunday Detroit Times, with Dick Tracy and Prince Valiant on the cover. I figured those comics were the main reason people wanted The Times rather than The Detroit News or The Detroit Free Press. I looked forward each week to Prince Valiant’s adventures. [http://comicskingdom.com/prince-valiant ] Very early Sunday morning, I'd read Prince Valiant, then set off so my customers could read him too.

I realize now that my customers had me delivering those huge newspapers because they wanted the news, the features and even the ads. In those days, I was too young to know the value of news and the essential role of good journalism in society.

The Detroit Times was the first paper I knew that went out of business. Many have followed. I worry that there are fewer jobs today for good journalists and that people have come to accept all kinds of information in the absence of good journalism.

In journalism school, they taught us our job was to be cynical, to look at it all as circumspect. We learned to ask questions and consider all points of view before we wrote our stories. We believed journalists provided information that was filtered through our shit detectors. Our checklist was who, what, where, when and why, and no story was complete unless we attributed our sources. We stuck to facts and kept our opinions out of the story.

And advertisers had no place in the newsroom. Mr. Bradley, my journalism instructor, had been a managing editor at The Toronto Star. He told us that the Eaton’s department store company, which bought tons of advertising in The Star, called an editor to say a member of the Eaton family was in court for a driving infraction, and that Eaton’s did not want to see a word about it in the paper. The story would have been missed otherwise, but a reporter was sent to the court house and the story appeared on the front page, for no other reason than to show advertisers that they could not influence the news.


Today, I fear that’s changed big time. The wealthy few in society own the networks and news syndicates that bring us our news. These same people own most large corporations. They control the discourse and focus the public perspective. They lure audiences with sensation and leave out the context and in-depth analysis. We should all be concerned about the credibility and agenda of the organizations that bring us the news, and the waning neutrality of the people who write and broadcast news reports, unless, of course, we are aspiring to be North Korea.

Sunday, 19 April 2015

The Sunshine Bicycle

My Dad came home and surprised me with a bicycle when I was in Grade 3.

We still lived in London. It may have been for my 9th birthday.

In those days, there were no small-size bicycles. The bike my Dad brought home was way too big for me. I could not reach the pedals.

Dad tried to solve that by cutting blocks of wood and bolting them through the pedals. I tried riding it, but after a few falls, the bike got put away until I was big enough to handle it.

In Windsor a couple of years later, we put a big heavy-duty carrier on the handle bars. I used it to deliver The Sunday Detroit Times and, later, groceries when I worked for Clark’s Market.

The bike had a medallion below the handlebars that said Sunshine Bicycles, Waterloo, Ontario. As bicycles go, my Sunshine bike was a tank. Everything on it was bigger and heavier. The tires were wide balloon white-walls with tread like a car. The fenders were thick heavy galvanized steel. I remember I was in a bad collision with another bike one time. The other bike’s front wheel, fender and handle bars were all bent. My bike didn’t have a dent.

There were no gears or hand brakes. The brake was part of the back axle assembly. To stop, you back-peddled a quarter turn and pressed. This bike was so heavy, the brakes in the back axle sometimes wore out. When that happened, I had to get a replacement part machined to put the bike back on the road.

The heavy bike was dead last in a short sprint. It was work to get it going, but once it was cruising, it had enough inertia to make peddling and coasting almost effortless. When the overpass was being built through Jackson Park, my friends and I went to the top to see how far we could coast. My friends made it almost to Tecumseh Road. My bike took me nearly a full block farther.

The picture above shows me at about 15 with my little sister Shirley in the carrier. We are in the alley behind our house at 1115 Bruce Ave., in Windsor. The green garage had a dirt floor and was nearly too small to hold a car. The car in the picture is my Dad’s 1962 Plymouth Fury. It had push-button transmission and was the first car I drove when I got my beginner’s licence when I was 16.

Once we were old enough to drive, my friends and I stopped riding our bikes.


I took Driver’s Education through the high school with some other kids in my class. My driving instructor was Mr. Nash. He had a Rambler. I always thought that was funny. If you do not know why, Google Nash and Rambler.  

Saturday, 11 April 2015

The FLQ Helped Me Choose My Career

October 1970. Ring any bells?

Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) were radical Quebec nationalist, separatists, whatever. The FLQ kidnapped a British consulate official, demanding the release of political prisoners in exchange for his life. He survived but the FLQ also kidnapped and killed a provincial labour minister. [Review the details at http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/october-crisis/.]

I was editor of the college paper in October 1970.

This was more or less by default. Two guys who had been putting out the paper were fired by the student council for printing too many swear words and rambling poetry. I was asked to step in because I had been the editor in the spring and was the only one who knew how to produce an issue. I didn’t really want the job anymore. I was thinking about working in advertising, not journalism.

During the October Crisis, Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau was cool and decisive when appearing before cameras, but history shows his actions were over the top in response to these kidnappers and their organization when he invoked the War Measures Act. Under this Act, hundreds of people who were thought to be possibly connected with the FLQ were arrested and jailed without due process. The Act also restricted freedom of speech and freedom of the press -- media could be shut down or individuals could be arrested for criticizing the government.

The restrictions on media may have deterred some comment in the major papers and networks. However, a student news service called the Canadian University Press distributed all kinds of great material in response to the crisis and the government’s reaction and disregard for justice. I printed some of it. For instance, on one side of a page I set out recent remarks by Quebec Premier Bourassa about the importance of equal justice and, on the other side, his remarks supporting the jailing of innocent people that he made during the crisis.

Printing this material could have been contrary to the War Measures Act. Under the Act, I suppose that I could have been tossed in the slammer as well, but I don’t think any journalists were arrested during the crisis.

The business students at my college, however, staged a protest about their college paper printing that material. Some carried signs calling me a traitor. They demonstrated at the president’s office, calling for me to be expelled from the college.

I thought, “Wow, this is great,” and decided the hell with advertising. Journalism is a lot more fun.


The War Measures Act had been created in 1914 and used during the WWI to round up and intern Ukrainians and others who might support the other side. The act was used again during WWII to intern Canadians of Japanese descent. The October Crisis was the only time it was invoked when Canada was not at war. The act clearly said it was there in case of an insurrection, nonetheless, the act was contrary to Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In 1981 it was repealed. Canada no longer has an act that would allow government to limit freedom of speech or toss people in jail without due process… I would hope.

Sunday, 5 April 2015

I remember Duke Ellington

Explosions of great art mark periods of history that stand out for us today. For instance, the Renaissance that followed the decay of the medieval empires, and the Romantic period at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. I believe that, centuries from now, the explosion of art in 20th Century America will be in that same category.


One of 20th Century’s contributions to history is jazz, and one of its greatest artists, I believe, was Duke Ellington. This is a man whom I actually met.

Ellington died in 1974, but his 110th birthday is celebrated this year with a concert by the Duke Ellington Orchestra in Madison Square Garden, New York City. It’s not surprising that this musical tradition, born before the Second World War, still lives on and still plays that music live. A performance by the Duke Ellington Orchestra is unique, wonderful and it makes you happy.

I heard the orchestra on a cold night in 1977 at Lambton College’s gym in Sarnia, Ontario. They had played in Cleveland the night before, and no one would have faulted them for not making it to Sarnia. A fierce snow storm had made some Ohio and Michigan highways impassable. Even some people in Sarnia who had bought tickets had decided not to chance going out in that weather.

Part of my job as Information Office at the college involved arrangements for “big band” concerts.

The bus full of musicians and their truck full of instruments and equipment arrived in darkness shortly before show time. Someone went out for Kentucky Fried Chicken. I remember holding the door against the blowing snow as all the KFC cartons and drinks were brought in. The musicians ate as they changed and scrambled to get set up. Mercer Ellington, Duke’s son, was the band leader.

After a day of difficult travel and hardly a bite to eat, they blew the roof off the joint. Band members were young and old. One young sax soloist danced down the steps and through the audience as he played. I was amazed at the arrangements, the solos, the energy and quality of the musicianship.

A year and a half before he passed, Duke Ellington led his orchestra at the opening of The Wheels Motor Inn, a new hotel and restaurant. I worked for The Chatham Daily News at the time. Everybody who was anybody in Chatham was there. At the legal last call for the bar, Ellington said, “wait a minute. Is the mayor here?” He was. “Is the chief of police here?” He was. “Is there a judge in the house?” There were more than one. “Then keep the bar open and we’ll keep playing. No cop is going to raid this joint tonight.”

The next day, I was assigned to photograph Ellington signing the official city guest book. It was after the appointed 4 p.m. when he came into the room. Mayor Doug Allin and others were waiting. Ellington wore satin black slippers, purple silk socks, black tuxedo pants with shiny stripe up the seam, and ruffled white formal shirt, open at the top. His hair was slicked straight back to a wave of curls over the collar. His eyes were puffy. A middle-aged blond woman guided him by the arm, and gave him his sunglasses. “I’m not used to this daylight,” he joked.

I interviewed him briefly. I asked him the obvious question about not retiring. He said it was inspiring to come to a place like Chatham and to see people loving the music.

“After we closed 3 in the morning, I went to my room and wrote some new music until about 5 a.m. I have a command performance for The Queen across the big pond coming up this summer. She likes to hear something new when we play for her.”

From the Queen of England to Joe and Jane Blow in small-town Ontario, people loved to hear Ellington’s band perform and Ellington loved performing his music. His grandson leads the big band these days in concerts around the world. If you ever get a chance to hear them live, do yourself a favour. http://www.dukeellington.com/

Tuesday, 31 March 2015

Motorcycles

(This is the first soapbox bonus post. Memories are posted each Sunday)

Picture this. A boulevard six lanes wide plus turning lanes, guarded on both sides by majestic royal palms. Behind those palms, you’d find furniture stores, strip malls, restaurants, nautical shops, golf stores, a shopper’s paradise, busy busy busy.

Brittney is driving daddy’s Tahoe with best friend Miranda sunk into the plush leather on the passenger side. Miranda has her own and Brittney’s cell, at the same time texting LeMario and Barwin, of course, plus various other friends. It’s prom time. Brittney pulls into the left lane to pass an old batmobile, the caped crusader now silver haired and long retired.

Suddenly, Miranda is like, “oh my gawd, Sophia’s dress is like the same green as yours.” And Brittney is like, “oh gawd.” And then she notices that they are almost going to miss the entrance to the salon for their mani-pedis. Brittany swerves the Tahoe right and thwack, she sideswipes the motorcycle that had zipped around the batmobile was about to weave past the Tahoe on the inside lane. The biker, in sleeveless T breaks his neck against the trunk of a palm tree and leaves a smear of blood across the decorative paving stones, his body coming to rest awkwardly contorted against a line of tourist brochure boxes.

Something just like this happens every day in Florida. It would appear to me that a person has to fail some kind of I.Q. test before they are issued a licence to operate a motorcycle in this State.

The Tampa Bay newspaper reported in September 2013 that hundreds of people had already been killed that year while riding motorcycles in Florida. In fact, bikers are 60 percent of Florida highway fatalities even though motorcycles are only 16 percent of the vehicles.

The chances of dying in a motorcycle accident are cut in half by wearing a helmet. However, Florida statistics are unaffected by that because nobody wears one.

You’d think that a cotton head scarf emblazed with the American flag, or the Confederate flag, a vision of the Blessed Virgin, or a fire-breathing skull over an iron cross, or some combination of those, would indeed provide supernatural protection, but alas…

Some people seem to believe that the more annoying the sound of the vehicle, the less likely that vehicle will be in a collision. These people think that the road is made safer by replacing mufflers with straight pipes, which make your $15,000 vehicle sound like dueling lawnmowers with dirty gas, but alas again…

What astonishes me is how motorcycle drivers seem to think other drivers can see them. They pass on the right, often weaving back and forth from lane to lane. Sometimes with partners on the back, sometimes with their kid.

I stay alert to the traffic around me, but sometimes motorcycles whiz by before I know they are there, and then they disappear by weaving around the traffic ahead.

Bikers often say drivers of cars and trucks need to watch for motorcycles. Hello – drivers in cars and trucks are in a concealed and padded steal box on four wheels; you are on two wheels with nothing around you. Who needs to be watching out for whom?

Especially in Florida -- where every block has a tiny old guy who can hardly peer over the dashboard of his luxury cruiser. The truth be told, a FedEx van could hide in the blind spot of these batmobiles. Also heading to or from the beach are the local kids and spring breakers under the influence of no end of distractions.

In the summer of 1965, when we moved to the suburbs, I told my parents that I wanted to buy a little Honda motorcycle so I could get downtown to see my old friends. My Dad said motorcycles are too dangerous, how about an MGB? Dad was no dummy.

When I think of stupid things I did in my late teens and wonder if I would have done stupid things on a motorcycle, I don’t have to wonder long. Sure I would’ve. But -- and this is my point -- then I grew up.