Saturday, June 30, 2007


My daughter Ale called us this morning at 9. Last night she drove to her new home in Lillooet and arrived at 4 this morning. We spent the afternoon helping her move stuff into her friend Dave's truck and Rosemary, and I cleaned her kitchen, bathroom, etc. During this whole ordeal (and an ordeal it was) I kept thinking of Ale not being near us for the first time in 38 years. Rebecca and Lauren worship her and listen to her gentle admonitions on their behaviour.

We will miss her even though Ale was always very Mexican in her relationship with time. It drives Rosemary crazy that to this day Ale will show up at our door step, spur of the moment, without calling. Ale also retains not only her Mexico City accent but also all the slang words of being a chilanga (Mexico City born).

On the other hand Hilary, who was also born in Mexico City retains a connection with her father's birth in Argentina. She inherited that illogical attraction to soccer that seems to be in our blood. She has always been crazy about Argentina and its performances in the FIFA World Cup. If she didn't have to work today she would be glued as I will to the Under 20 FIFA World Cup on CBC TV when Argentina plays Czechoslovakia.

When Ale called she told us her old place still had some things to pick up and that the fridge had to be cleaned. I went with Rosemary and removed hooks from the wall and emptied the refrigerator. The detritus of someone who has left a house after years of living in it has the power to depress deeply. And this power is double when it affects the ex-tenant's father. I determined then that I was not going to clean the fridge. Rosemary looked at me and said, "I thought your were going to do it." "No, I am going home right now."

All the time I had in mind the idea rustling up the only image in my files related to futbol (soccer). It is my photograph of the handsome, and quiet spoken Carl Valentine who came so many years ago to play for the Whitecaps. I had been assigned in the mid 80s to photograph him for Equity. I also had in mind of sitting in front of my TV to watch the Brazilians play Poland.

I am sure there are many more fridges for me to clean (and Rosemary will do fine without me this time). The depression is beginning to lift and who knows, perhaps Rebecca will inherit something of her mother and she just might want to sit next to me when I watch Argentina this afternoon.

Friday, June 29, 2007

In November 1997 Globe & Mail writer Chris Dafoe and I spent some time in actor Lance Henriksen's movie trailer. He was in town filming a TV series called Millenium. When we left, after the end of the interview and the photo session, Dafoe commented to me, "What a likeable guy." I could not disagree as I, too, was astounded by Henriksen's hospitality and gentlemanly demeanor. The November piece in the Globe by Dafoe had the charming title you see above for this blog. And it was accompanied by a photo of mine where Henriksen smiled.






Thinking back on that day and from my perspective of 2007 I realize it all started sometime in 1985 when Vancouver Magazine associate editor Don Stanley told me to photograph a science fiction writer called William Gibson.



It seems that his 1984 novel Neuromancer had won a science fiction hat trick. It had won the Hugo, the Nebula and the Philip K Dick awards for best novel of that year. I immediately looked for some high technology looking place to photograph the author. I picked Gibson at his Kitsilano home. Getting into my Fiat X-19 presented a problem.My tiny two seater sports car was not able to accomodate his 6ft 5in frame. Gibson ended up with his knees bent to his chin. I took the photo you see here at a new nightclub called Systems that was at the foot of Richards Street. At the time I believed that when one lacked a good photographic idea one resorted (and I did here) to the Dutch Tilt.



Gibson liked his photograph and for many years I was his official photographer. I received calls from Stern, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, etc for pictures. But his influence over me (it certainly helped my finances) went beyond. It was from Gibson that I learned to appreciate Raymond Chandler. I remember fondly going to see Terry Gilliam's Brazil with Gibson and John Lekich at the Park on Cambie Street. We discussed the film over coffee across the street.

But it was also Gibson who first told me of American director Kathryn Bigelow and her 1987 vampire western, Near Dark. It was in this scary but wonderful film that I discovered Lance Henriksen.



While this favourite film of mine is one I have only seen once, I do believe I will see it again soon. I will enjoy Henriksen being very good at being very bad.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

The Maiden:
Pass by! Oh, pass by!
Go away, fierce man of bone!
I am still young, go my dear!
And do not touch me.

Death:
Give me your hand, you beautiful and delicate form!
I am a friend, and am not come to punish.
Be of good cheer! I am not savage,
You will sleep softly in my arms!

Death and the Maiden - Franz Schubert


I don't dare buy Reginald Hill's latest The Death of Dalziel (with a far more interesting title in the UK of Death Comes for the Fat Man - Death of Dalziel). I have read all of Hill's Dalziel (pronounced deal) and Pascoe novels and all of his stand alone novels, too (over 25 in all). But I just don't have the nerve to read this one yet to find out as I did with Colin Dexter's The Remorseful Day of the death of the novel's protagonist, Inspector Morse at the end of it.

Only today I made the connection between my sickly Rosa 'Maiden's Blush' and Franz Schubert's String Quartet No 14 (Death and the Maiden) or Schubert's 1817 lied song Der Tod und das Mädchen from which the second movement of that string quartet is based on. When I hear the quartet or the song I brood but I feel nicely depressed. I feel the same when I listen to Miles Davis playing All Blues with that obsessive Paul Chambers bass vamp.

Eight or so years ago I had the last of my terrible weekly migraines. With age I might have outgrown them. I noticed in those last years that I had few migraines in June and July. I quickly found the reason. In June and July I deadhead my roses and fuss over them and smell them. This is so relaxing that whatever stress I had in my system was dissipated by the roses.

One of my favourite Dalziel & Pascoe police procedurals set in Mid Yorkshire is called Deadheads. In this 1983 novel the scene opens with an old woman deadheading roses. She is suddenly aspproached by a young boy. He shows some curiousity so she explains to the young boy, her niece's bastard son, what she is doing:

'Why do you do it?' demanded Patrick.

'Because,'she lectured, 'once the the flowers have bloomed and begun to die, they inhibit - that is to say , they stop - other young flowers from developing and blooming. Also the petals fall and make the bush and the flower-beds look very untidy. So we cut off the blooms. It's called deadheading.'

By the end of that chapter Patrick is being instructed by his great aunt on the art of deadheading. He has posession of the extremely sharp knife.

'Patrick,'she said taking a step back. 'Patrick!'

There was a sting on her bare forearm as the thorns of the richly scented bush dug into her flesh. And then further up, along the upper arm and in the armpit, there was a series of sharper, more violent stings which had nothing to do with the barbs of mere roses.

Mrs Aldermann shrieked once, sent a skinny parchment-skinned hand to her shrunken breast and fell backwards into the rose-bed. Petals showered down on her from the shaken bushes.

Patrick watched, expressionless, till all was still.
Then he let the knife fall beside the old woman and set off running up to the house, shouting for his mother.

This delightful book features chapter titles that are the names of real roses with short descriptions which somehow reveal the action of the chapter. Since Patrick's mother is called Penelope one of the chapters is appropriately called Penelope, a hybrid musk rose. But the ones that made me laugh are Dandy Dick (the first chapter): Floribunda. Clear pink, erect carriage, almost a Hybrid Tea. And the last chapter, when all the loose ends are resolved, is called Félicité Et Perpétue.

All the above has a connecting purpose. I have two favourite roses, Rosa 'Maiden's Blush (also called Cuisse de Nymphe Emu, Incarnata, La Virginale, La Séduisante) and Rosa 'Reine des Violettes'. Both have a fungus disease called Botrytis cinerea. After struggling for five years to check the disease I have come to the conclusion that these two roses in our wet spring weather are pre-disposed to Botrytis and I must uproot them and throw them away. Even today (check the picture above) amongst all the yellowing and aborted buds, both roses produced a few beautiful and fragrant blooms. I have another Maiden's Blush in a different section of the garden that is fine so I don't feel as terrible a pang about doing in my maiden. I recently purchased a clean Reine des Violettes and she will replace my sick one. I am saddened. If you consider all the other names Maiden's Blush has you have to realize that she does seduce.

But at least when I am deadheading my roses with my secateurs I need not watch my back.

More secateurs

Wednesday, June 27, 2007



I believe I am beginning to understand that children now are different from children then (my time). While I was thrilled at Gene Kelly's swordfighting skills and mesmerized by the beautiful but evil Lana Turner as Milady in The Three Musketeers Rebecca did not understand what was going on and soon got bored. We switched off the TV. Yet a couple of years back we had enjoyed Gunga Din. I have postponed indefinitely what I think should be a child's passage into early adulthood. This would be the watching of Gary Cooper in Beau Geste. Would I be able to take in stride my disappointment if Rebecca would be bored by it? I saw Beau Geste for the first time at the General Paz in Buenos Aires with my father and mother. I was 8 or 9. Could it be possible that she would not be thrilled by the burning of the toy ship in the Geste garden pond?

Yet three years ago Rebecca, Rosemary and I sat a block away from the General Paz in on Cabildo Street. We were eating on a sidewalk table the marvelous pizza at Burgio. It was a very hot Buenos Aires evening. It was 11:30pm. Rebecca asked me what I was sipping. I was sipping moscato which is a very sweet (it tastes of pure grape juice) wine that is served ice cold. Argentines of back then still indulge in this unlikely combination of sweet wine with pizza. Moscato, 14% alcohol (you would never know) is uncommonly good. Rebecca asked me if she could have some. I passed her the glass and she had a couple of sips which she said she enjoyed. Perhaps my right of passage through Beau Geste with my father and mother somehow has the parallel with Rebecca sipping her moscato at 11pm in a hot Buenos Aires evening.

As a child my grandmother (below, right) often told me of equally hot evenings in turn-of-the-20th century Manila. She told me of the old Spanish quarter called Intramuros (within the walls) and how people dressed and flirted with their Spanish fans.



She told me of going to little establishments to sip on ice cold horchata. This is a Spanish non alcholic beverage made from sugar, coconut, rice water and almonds. The beverage was accompanied by ensaimadas which were pastry (very soft and spongy) that was made by twisting the batter (left to rise often) in a nautilus swirl. I enjoy a close approximation of horchata by buying the Italian version called horzata. I buy the syrup in Italian stores. At Goldilocks, on Fur and Broadway, I get the ensaimadas (spelled enzaimadas by the establishment's Filipinos). All I lack to go back to that turn-of-the-century and heavily Spanish influenced Manila is to read one of my favourite books. This is The Blue Afternoon. That the book would be written by a Ghana born Englishman, William Boyd is sort of strange. My Rebecca would not understand that this child (then) would instantly equate William Boyd with Hopalong Cassidy. Luckily I discovered this writer some years ago and I am a reader of his novels. I can tell you that Boyd coined the word zemblanity which is the opposite of serendipity. Boyd defines it as, "The opposite of serendipity, the faculty of making unhappy, unlucky and expected discoveries by design."

The Manila book by Boyd is a time machine into my grandmother's past. I can easily cite it as one of my ten favourite books from my collection. It involves an architect, a surgeon and a some early fliers who may have preceded the Wright Brothers. Reading about Manila at the turn of that century is like listening to my grandmother talk in her Castilian accent. But it is the killer prologue that kills me every time I read it.

Last week on Saturday afternoon I asked Rebecca to turn of the TV and we sat in the living room while I read to her:

The Blue Afternoon
William Boyd
Prologue


I remember that afternoon, not long into our travels, sitting on deck in the mild mid-Atlantic sun on a slightly smirched and foggy day, the sky pale washed-out blue above the smokestacks, when I asked my father what it felt like to pick up a knife and make an incision into living human flesh. He thought seriously for a while before replying.
 
'It depends on where you cut,'he said.' Sometimes it's like a knife through clay or modelling wax. Some days it's like cutting into a cold blancmange or... or cold raw chicken.'
He pondered pondered a while longer and then reached inside his coat pocket and drew out a scalpel. He removed the small sleeve that protected the blade and offered the slim knife to me.
'Take this. See for yourself.'
I took the scalpel from him, small as a pen but much heavier than I had imagined. He looked down at the remains of our lunch on the table: an edge of cheese with a thick yellow ridn, a bowl of fruit, four apples and a green melon, some bread rolls.'
'Close your eyes, 'he said. 'I'll get something for you, an exact simulacrum.'
I closed my eyes and gripped the scalpel firmly between my thumb and first two fingers. I felt his hand on mine, the gentle pressure on his dry rough fingers, and then he lifted my hand up and I felt him guiding it forward until the poised blade came to rest on a surface, firm, but somehow yielding.
'Make a cut,'he said. 'A small cut. Press down.'
I pressed. Whatever I cut into yielded easily and I moved the blade down an inch or so, or so it seemed, smoothly, with no fuss.
'Keep your eyes closed....What did it feel like?'
I thought for a second or two before replying. I wanted this to be right, to be exact, to be scientific.
'It felt like....Like cold butter, you know, from an icebox. Or a sirloin, like cutting through a tender sirloin.'
 
'See?'he said. 'There's nothing mysterious, nothing to be alarmed about.'
 
I opened my eyes and saw his square face, smiling at me, almost in triumph, as if he had been vindicated in some argument. He was holding out his bare left forearm, the sleeve of his coat and shirt pushed back to the crook of his elbow. On a bulge of muscle, six inches above his wrist, a thin two-inch gash oozed bright blisters of blood.
 
'There, 'he said. 'It's easy. A beautiful incision. Not a waver, with even pressure and with your eyes closed, too.'
 
The expression on his face changed at this moment, to a form of sadness mingled with pride.
'You know,'he said, 'you would have made a great surgeon.'

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Only later in the book did I find out (with a shock) that the above scene is between a father and daughter.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007


The story really began when my daughter Alexandra was born in Mexico City 38 years ago. I will skip all that.

Two years ago we suddenly found ourselves the owners of two exquisite hardwood handled stainless steel garden spades. For years I had been using cheap spades ignoring the common sense of not applying too much leverage. I have broken many. I decided then to purchase a good one. So did Ale (Alexandra) who had noticed my track record. I felt saddened that Ale had spent at least $65 on the spade but there was no way I could tell her I already had one. The problem of an extra spade was soon solved when I broke my own. It did not break at the handle. A section of the stainless steel blade simply sheared off.



I continued working in the garden with Ale's spade. After using it to pry a large stone to bury our white cat Polilla in the garden I broke the handle off. The solution was simple. I went to 16th Avenue and Dunbar garden repair shop, the one with the nasty old woman who overcharges. Her shop is the last place left in our area that repairs garden equipment. The good handle from one spade was put into Ale's spade. A couple of months ago I broke it.

I was determined to end the folly. At Lee Valley Tools I bought a fibre glass handled spade with a lifetime guarantee. I looked at Ale's spade sadly and put it away.

Ale is moving to Lillooet this Saturday to live. For the first time in 38 years we will not have her living a few blocks away. Rosemary is upset. So am I but I try to hide it. Ale is moving to a 3/4 acre property. We suspect her house is a shack. She is taking most of her plants.

A couple of years ago Ale gave me the rugosa rose, Rosa 'Hansa'. This extremely hardy rose would grow well in Lillooet's Zone 4. But I could not uproot Ale's gift to me. Luckily I found another classic rugosa, Rosa 'Belle Poitveine' at the UBC Botanical Garden shop. Today I took Ale's spade to be repaired at the 16th and Dunbar shop. The old lady has softened up since she came down with Parkinson's. I explained I wanted the spade repaired, no matter the cost. I told her about Ale and Lillooet. She looked at me and with a smile on her face she said, "It will be ready by Friday."

I hope that Ale's spade will serve her well and that when Rosa 'Belle Poitevine' blooms next year she will remember that we love her.

Ale, I wish you all the best in your new adventure. If you break the spade, don't throw it away. I'll have it fixed.

Monday, June 25, 2007


A couple of years ago I walked into McLeod's Books on West Pender and spotted Reverend Joseph H. Pemberton's Roses - Their History, Development And Cultivation. It was a 1908 first edition. Many of the pages had not been cut. This meant that the book had probably never been read. Trying to give my friend and owner of the used book store, Don Stewart my best poker face I asked him for the price. He said, "$50.00 but for you it will be $40.00." I could have sold the book to a collector for $200 that same day but I would never sell this treasure. In the early 20s Pemberton introduced a new class of roses (the first of the modern rose shrubs) that featured smallish flowers but that compensated by being extremely fragrant and which grew in large clusters. Pemberton called them Hybrid Musks.

Pemberton's (1852-1926) account on how he first became interested in roses is enough reason to want to keep it. Here it is:

My early recollections of church-going are associated with roses. We went every Sunday morning to an old Queen Anne church: ours was a square pew; the pew opener, a woman, walked before us, opened the pew door and shut us in. We sat round facing one another, but could not see anything except the gallery having the royal arms in the centre, the children who sat there with the village schoolmaster, who was also parish clerk and gave out the hymns. When standing-up time came I had to stand on the seat to see over the top of the pew. In a neighbouring pew there was a gentleman who appeared every Sunday with a rose in his buttonhole; I admired that rose and resolved to wear as good if not a better one the next Sunday. During the week I was on the look-out for a suitable one, and when Sunday came again it was gathered – Moss, White-crested Moss, Red Provence at first and then Baron de Maynard or Boule de Neige were favourites. I appeared with my bloom, and when the time came to mount the seat compared it with the rose in the buttonhole of the rival. The result of the judging was usually adverse to me, but I always went home hoping for better luck next time. My flowers were handicapped by the staging; you see I was in petticoats at first and wore a light-coloured Norfolk jacket, large mother-of-pearl buttons down the front and a belt. My rival had a black coat, and the rose had a buttonhole all to itself; there is nothing like black to set off a rose, specially when added to this the flower did not have to share the buttonhole with a large button. I was quite aware of the drawback, and longed for the time when I might have a cloth jacket with a buttonhole on the side.

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Apart from the autobiographical gem from his book, I have been unable to find much information on the Reverend Pemberton, who was born in Essex and lived there most of his life. He died in 1926, one year after he hybridized one of his most popular roses, Rosa 'Cornelia'. Here you see a scan of my specimen. Cornelia's blooms are smallish but they come in giant clusters. Best of all, besides having that odd but attractive moschata (musk) fragrance, she is extremely shade tolerant and disease resistant. I have also been unable to find any image of Pemberton.



When Rosemary first took me to a Vancouver Rose Society meeting some 15 years ago I suffered on the hard chairs and the interminable projection of bad rose slides. The only light moments of those evenings were provided by a giant and bald old man with a booming voice. Erskine McPherson had the driest and most wonderful humour and could really grow roses. In the picture above, which I took a few years before his recent death you can spot the rose in his lapel and his beloved Jack Terrier, whose name was Jack. With no existing image of the Reverend Joseph Pemberton it is not too hard for me to imagine that the Reverend Pemberton and Erskine McPherson perhaps looked the same.

Another of my Pemberton favourites is Rosa 'Penelope' and Rosa 'Bishop of Darlington'. Of the latter I wish I could find out who the man was and why Pemberton would dedicate and name a rose after him.

Sunday, June 24, 2007





English rosarian and hybridizer David Austin has named a few of his English Roses after locations and people who lived in Shropshire. There is a red rose called Wenlock and my beautiful pink rose seen here, Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad'. I also have the pale yellow Mary Webb and a rose that perhaps A. E. Houseman would have ignored, Rosa 'A Shropshire Lass'. I took the photographs below at Stokesay Castle and at Ludlow Castle. For some unknown reason Rosa 'Brother Cadfael' has been shy in blooming this year.




When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
`Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.'
But I was one-and-twenty
No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
`The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.'
And I am two-and-twenty
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.

XXIII A Shropshire Lad
A.E. Houseman

Saturday, June 23, 2007


In November 1994 when Robertson Davies posed for me in the Sun Room of the Vancouver Hotel he tried to railroad me into taking his picture with his eye glasses in his mouth.



I had seen this photograph many times taken by different photographers all over Canada. Davies always managed to look like the distinguished man of letters we all thought he was. This he was. But in close contact with him in the room, with his charming wife Brenda knitting, the experience was different from what I thought it was going to be. I was a bit intimidated when I walked into the room but in no time Davies had me relaxed.




I told him that as I child I had been an admirer of Leonardo da Vinci and I had even copied, with charcoal on paper, da Vinci's self potrait. I told Davies that I was determined to make him look like Leonardo. The process involved taking a normal b+w photograph which I then converted into a b+w transparency (slide). I used some German Uhu glue to stick the b+w slide on my living room window. I then re-photographed this with Polaroid, first in b+w Polaroid and then with colour Polaroid.



All along the process I felt that somehow I had been in the presence of Leonardo da Vinci, albeit a charming one who spoke beautiful English. A few days later I received a pleasant note from Brenda Davies which included three snapshots she took of me in action. I was thrilled!

Friday, June 22, 2007


In 1983 when I photographed Gene Simmons I first understood the difference between the actor and the person. Gene Simmons the actor posed for me and scared me to death. He personified evil. Then with a smile in his face he told writer Les Wiseman and me a curious story. While living in New York City this scenario often repeated itself. The door bell would ring. Simmons would open the door to face a couple of geeky teenagers with a question in their face. Simmons would simply say, "Try next door," and would then close the door. Simmons's neighbour for many years was famous science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. The teenagers never suspected who the affable man without makeup really was.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

A year before Argentine born William Henry Hudson (1841-1922) died he wrote a book of essays (traveling in England where he lived towards the end of his life) called A Traveller In Little Things. Here is chapter XXI: Wild Flowers And Little Girls Thinking of the numerous company of little girls of infinite charm I have met, and of their evanishment, I have a vision of myself on horseback on the illimitable green level pampas, under the wide sunlit cerulean sky in late September or early October, when the wild flowers are at their best before the wilting heats of summer. Seeing the flowers so abundant, I dismount and lead my horse by the bridle and walk knee-deep in the lush grass, stooping down at every step to look closely at the shy, exquisite blooms in their dewy morning freshness and divine colours. Flowers of an inexpressible unearthly loveliness and unforgettable; for how forget them when their images shine in memory in all their pristine morning brilliance! That's how I remember and love to remember them, in that first fresh aspect, not as they appear later, the petals wilted or dropped, sunbrowned, ripening their seed and fruit. And so with the little human flowers. I love to remember and think of them as flowers, not as ripening or ripened into young ladies, wives, matrons, mothers of sons and daughters. As little girls, as human flowers, they shone and passed out of sight. Only of one do I think differently, the most exquisite among them, the most beautiful in body and soul, or so I imagine, perhaps because of the manner of her vanishing even while my eyes were still on her. That was Dolly, aged eight, and because her little life finished then she is the one that never faded, never changed. Here are some lines I wrote when grief at her going was still fresh. They were in a monthly magazine at that time years ago, and were set to music, although not very successfully, and I wish it could be done again. Should'st thou come to me again From the sunshine and the rain, With thy laughter sweet and free, O how should I welcome thee! Like a streamlet dark and cold Kindled into fiery gold By a sunbeam swift that cleaves Downward through curtained leaves; So this darkned life of mine Lit with sudden joy would shine, And to greet thee I should start With a cry in my heart. Back to drop again, the cry On my trembling lips would die: Thou would'st pass to be again With the sunshine and the rain. W.H. Hudson goes on to write in Chapter XXIII A Spray Of Southernwood To pass from little girls to little boys is to go into quite another, an inferior, coarser world. No doubt there are wonderful little boys, but as a rule their wondefullness consists in a precocious intellect: this kind doesn't appeal to me, so that if I were to say anything on the matter, it would be a prejudiced judgment. Even the ordinary civilized little boy, the nice little gentleman who is as much at home in the drawing-room as at his desk in the school-room or with a bat in the playing field - even that harmless little person seems somehow unnatural, or denaturalized to my primitive taste. A result, I will have it, of improper treatment. He has been under the tap, too thoroughly scrubbed, boiled, strained and served up with melted butter and a sprig of parsley for ornament in a gilt-edged dish. I prefer him raw, and would rather have the street-Arab, if in town, and the unkempt, rough and tough cottage boy in the country. But take them civilized or natural, those who love and observe little children no more expect to find that peculiar exquisite charm of the girl-child which I have endeavoured to describe in the boy, than they would expect the music of the wood-lark and the airy fairy grace and beauty of the grey wagtail in Philip Sparrow......... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I had these stories in mind yesterday as I sat on my bench gazing at Rebecca, her friend Britany, Lauren and Tim Bray and Lauren Wood's little girl. We were having iced tea, Filipino ensaimadas and polvorones, watermelon, melon and grapes in our sunny afternoon garden. My granddaughter Lauren (she is going to be five this Sunday) was blowing soap bubbles by the centre rose bed. I could not get enough of her (above left in her wine coloured dress and below being made up for that photograph by Ale my eldest daughter). When my daughter Hilary was pregnant for the second time I would tell her (I may have been almost serious) that if she had a little boy I was going to disown her. Luckily Lauren was a little girl and I never had to carry out my threat. I honestly would not know how to deal with a little baby boy. After all, I have two daughters and never wanted a son. I don't particularly care if I am the last of the Waterhouse-Haywards. I think of W. H. Hudson's stories and wonder how they would be read in our overly cautious 21st century? Would any monthly magazine have published that story of the little girl? I can't get enough of my little girls. I guess that I can write about them and how I feel here and be safe. I have the protection that being a grandfather provides. I believe that W.H. Hudson wrote from an innocent heart in more innocent times and while he would have been pilloried now for what he wrote then, he was lucky to have been a man of his time. Perhaps, he may have even been lucky enough to be a grandfather. And perhaps, if Hudson had cultivated a rose garden, he would have come to appreciate the beauty in the faded glory of the rose. Seen here is a spent bloom of the Gallica rose, Rosa 'Alain Blanchard'.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Kate & Anna McGarrigle

In my first year in Vancouver in 1975 I worked for Tilden Rent-A-Car. When I answered the phone (I was promoted from washing cars to the counter desk in 4 months) I had to say, "In Canada it's Tilden, may I help you?" I learned lots at Tilden. I learned not to rent to black people or native people as they were bad risks. I broke this rule a few times and the cars disappeared and I was almost fired. But I did learn a few useful things. In jockeying cars from our downtown location on Alberni Street (across from the Ritz Hotel) to the airport I discovered Vancouver's few shortcuts and back alleys. I have a very good Vancouver GPS in my head thanks to Tilden. While I didn't feel part of Vancouver that first year at least I got to know it well.

A few days ago I was walking west on Helmcken Street and when I arrived at the corner with Howe, I cut through the hotel courtyard of the Holiday Inn that is there. As I walked south on Howe, I saw a step well and I suddenly felt a tingling of memory in my head. I knew I had been near it. I instantly remembered I had photographed the McGarrigle sisters on it sometime in the late 70s.

I can understand how butterflies and birds find their way. They have a more advanced body GPS than I do. I can be driving through some street in Vancouver when I might not have driven through in years and something in my head tells me that I have been there before. It is nothing paranormal. It's just my brain's ability to seek and find coordinates in time and place.

As a 8-year old boy I remember when my mother could not return with me in the train from Belgrano to Coghlan (one stop) at the end of a school day on those special days she had to stay at school for meetings. She would put me in the train and Mercedes, our housekeeper waited for me at the other end usually with a Noel chocolate covered vanilla "Revello". When I traveled alone on the train I looked out of the window and noticed the neighbourhoods and their streets. Once without my mother's permission I took that train alone and walked from the Coghlan train station home (6 blocks). I arrived without getting lost and was given a spanking for my efforts. I feel that thanks to this childhood "roaming" I have a keen sense of direction and I know where I am at most times.

I worry about Rebecca who is picked up, delivered here and there and rarely walks in her neighbourhood. When she is in the car with me and we are near her house I ask here where she is. She usually does not know. So I have been teaching her a bit about the streets of Vancouver. Rosemary's new Audi has a compass that is built-in the rear view mirror. Rebecca and I have been talking about sur and norte and oeste and este. She is getting her bearings. We have to make up for lost time. One day I will take her to the Holiday Inn stepwell and tell her the story of the McGarrigles.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007


He suspects the woman is a prostitute, not because he is particularly good at guessing people's professions at first glance, besides, not that long ago he himself would have been identified as a shepherd by the smell of goat, yet now everyone would say, He's a fisherman, for he lost one smell only to replace it with another. The woman reeks of perfume, but Jesus, who may be innocent, has learned certain facts of life by watching the mating of goats and rams, he also has enough common sense to know that just because a woman uses perfume, it does not necessarily mean she is a whore.

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
José Saramago translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero

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Much has been written lately about Mary Magdalene. If that name has an e or not is one of the matters in dispute between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, where the colleges dedicated to her bear the rival spellings. To my granddaughter Mary Magdalene is very real. But this Mary Magdalene is many Mary Magdalenes. She is Rembrandt's The Woman Taken in Adultery and John the Evangelist's unamed woman of Verse 7:53-8:11 where he relates Jesus having a confrontation with scribes and pharisees over whether a woman accused of adultery should be stoned.



Traditionally Mary Magdalene has also been the Mary of Bethany who annoints Jesus's feet with oil using her hair and the first person to see Jesus after the crucifixion. It's all a muddle if you consider that we cannot prove that John the Apostle is John the Evangelist! But from my New American Bible (with Rembrandt's paintings and sketches illustrating it) I quote one of the most fascinating passages. I first learned about them from Brother Edwin Reggio CSC in the late 50s in Austin Texas. The passages (when Jesus saves the adultress from stoning) describe the only two occasions when we learn that Jesus perhaps knew how to write.

Jesus bent down and started tracing on the ground with his finger. When they persisted in their questioning he straightened up and said to them, "Let the man among you who has no sin be the first to cast a stone at her." A second time he bent down and wrote on the ground. Then the audience drifted away one by one, beginning with the elders. They left him alone with the woman, who continued to stand there before him. Jesus finally straightened up and said to her, "Woman where did they all disappear to? Has no one condemned you?" "No one, sir," she answered. Jesus said, "Nor do I condemn you. You may go. But from now on avoid sin."

Magdalene is real to Rebecca since we saw the extremely large painting inside the church of San Cayetano in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, Mexico two years ago. She was so taken by the 19th century painting that featured a blonde (just like Rembrandt's) Mary Magdalene facing Jesus and with a prominently large stone at her feet. What was about to happen was graphically ominous. We had to return twice to see the painting. Back in Vancouver I bought Rebecca the English Rose, Rosa 'Mary Magdalene' seen above.

All this brings to mind one of the most exquisitely written novels on the subject, José Saramago's The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. I have the novel in Spanish, El Evangelio Según Jesucristo (1991) but I dared not translate some of he passages from the chapter where an 18 year-old Jesus spends 8 days with Mary Magdalene in fear of not doing justice to Saramago. After all Giovanni Pontiero (from Manchester!) was (alas he died) one of the most lucid translators of Saramago into English. So this morning I went to the Vancouver Public Library to get a copy in English.


After they had eaten, Mary helped Jesus into his sandals and told him, You must leave if you're to reach Nazareth before nightfall. Farewell, said Jesus, and taking up his pack and staff, he went out into the yard. The sky was covered with clouds as if lined with unwashed wool, the Lord must not be finding it easy today to keep an eye on His sheep from on high. Jesus and Mary Madgalene embraced a long time before exchanging a farewell kiss, which did not take long at all, and little wonder, for kissing was not the custom then.

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
José Saramago translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero

Monday, June 18, 2007




Objectivity is a subjective invention of man.
Santiago Genovés Tarazaga

In November 1983 writer Don McLellan and I were sent by Vancouver Magazine editor, Malcolm Parry, to St. George's, the Vancouver private school, for a story that made the January 1984 cover. At the time I remember that Don McLellan wore torn jeans ahead of the fashion trend of later years. He wore torn jeans because he was poor. Facing rich kids at a private institution that almost guaranteed that those who graduated would have a certain prosperous future amongst the social elite of our city made McLellan ill disposed to write positively of the school. I sensed this and I believe that was the first time in my photographic career that I determined that whatever objectivity had guided me before had no say here.








I consciously took photographs, with a definite positive bent, that were to "balance" McLellan's writing. I had attended a Catholic boarding school in my youth and the experience had been a positive one. I liked private schools.

Later that year I took photographs of Mayor Mike Harcourt. Vancouver Magazine art director, Chris Dahl, asked me to photograph him sitting in a wing chair and wanted the photograph full frontal with plenty of room all around. He told me he was going to put it on the cover. He never told me his complete plans. In an age before Photoshop Dahl had an artist paint obvious hair on Harcourt's very bald head and when the magazine was on the newstands it caught me by surprise.



Harcourt never blamed me for this and our relations have been cordial all these years. I have photographed him for his campaign poster when he was running for premier and recently I took the first photographs of his early attempts at walking after his accident.

In April 1985 I headed to Victoria in a float plane with Equity editor, Harvey Southam. He interviewed Bob Skelly who was then leader of the NDP. Subsequently I photographed Skelly for his campaign to become premier (he lost). I had an admiration for this honest man who looked great in shark skin suits and looked at you in the eye when he talked to you. But I sensed a lack of passion and perhaps that's what did him in.



In December 1985 I was asked to photograph Premier Bill Bennett for the Equity cover. I was given 30 minutes by Bennett's assistant. I decided to take a make-up artist (Inga Vollmer) who would probably use up most of that time. I thought that makeup would work wonders on the man and I would then quickly shoot him in 5 minutes. I will never know what led me to chose a portable pink velour backdrom for the picture.



I had read bad stuff about Bennett in the newspapers and I had seen his wooden performance when facing a TV camera (except the time I caught him enjoying a not so friendly sparing with Jack Webster). I was prepared to dislike the man but I vowed to make him look as good as I could. I have always thought that it is the obligation of a photographer to do just that.

The day of the shoot with Bennett came and I was most nervous. Vollmer and I were whisked into Bennett's Vancouver office (at Robson Square). We were both instantly charmed by him. We quickly found out that in a one-to-one basis Bennett was not wooden. He was intelligent and we left loving the man.



Photoshop was still not available. I had to shoot with colour negative so that the resulting C-print (colour print) could be air brushed. And it was. Vollmer said of Bennett's face, "I never expected to see all the colours of a Persian carpet on a man's face."

Sunday, June 17, 2007



In the May 1986 Vancouver Magazine I had a feature article called Sequels of literary parents who had written about their offspring. When I asked William Gibson to be part of my project he not only posed with his son Graeme and a hard copy of his Hugo award, but he also wrote a beautiful little essay on a father's love for a son.
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"I was an only child, both parents dead. Kind of like being the sole survivor of some drowned Atlantis; nobody else remembers. The way back, it turns out, is to have your own kids. As a kind of bonus, you get to figure out all the kid stuff you might have missed on the way up. Like I'd only ever known how to make this one kind of paper airplane, a really clumsy one that didn't fly very well. So I started buying Graeme books with instructions for different planes. Now he knows about 20 different folds: darts, canards, flying wings, tiny little origami numbers that imitate swallows, step-discontinuity airfoils that I still haven't learned how to make...We fly them off the front porch, they get caught in trees, I knock them down with sticks. Truly the basic stuff of sanity."
William Gibson


My Father George

Saturday, June 16, 2007



I pointed at the purple Gallica in my garden and told Rebecca yesterday that it was Rosa 'Cardinal de Richelieu'. Her answering question, "Who was he? Is he dead?" means that this afternoon Lauren, Rebecca and I are going to watch George Sidney's 1948 The Three Musketeers. In spite of everything that has been said and written about the sophistication of director Richard Lester's subsequent versions of the Alexandre Dumas novels, this Technicolor Hollywood production is my fave.



Nobody could possibly out do Vincent Price as the villanous cardinal (made villanous by Dumas). Gene Kelly is a delight as the handsome young fourth musketeer. But the treasure of this film is Lana Turner as Milady. I would affirm that if there is no protagonist in literature with fewer redeeming qualities than Milady. I would have to search in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian for a an equal match. Lana Turner plays the role so well that in the end (I was 10 when I saw this film) I almost cheered as I imagined her head being chopped off by the Executioner of Lyon. Lana Turner was never more beautiful. As much as the bra was one of many anachronisms of the film, I don't think an anachronism was ever better served.

This purple Gallica (with an extremely sweet old rose scent) in my garden was hybridized in 1840, 200 years after the Cardinal's death. There are conflicting opinions if M. Laffay of Bellevue, France or the Dutchman Van Sian should get the credit for this rose that sometimes gets so close to being blue as it fades with age. In my scan here you can see a spent bloom on the bottom right.

That a rose, like so many others steeped in history, can help to make a Saturday with my granddaughters an excuse (with no guilt) for such fun as sitting down to watch one of my favourite films, has to be all the rationale needed to grow them.

Friday, June 15, 2007



I would sit at the bar and Jorge, the Mexican barman would smile with a, "Que tal," and place a large glass of soda water in front of me. This was the Marble Arch Hotel, which had a stripper joint. The room was L-shaped. From my vantage point I could barely see the talent on stage. It was here that I pretended that I was Humphrey Bogart (Jorge didn't even have to ask me, "The usual?") in one of his early movies.



I could go to this bar, or the Drake, the Number 5 and Gary Taylor's and never have to pay for a drink even though my favourite was always soda water. It was at the Marble Arch with Jorge where I would glean information of Vancouver's underworld, a world that few ever read about in the newspapers.


Recently my youngest daughter Hilary reminded me (I was trying to explain to her the importance of culture) that it was not always so with me.



"You should get down from your culture high horse Papi. I remember when you used to go to listen to punk bands in bars with Les Wiseman and drank beer while Ale (my oldest daughter) and I were home watching TV." I tried to deny that I ever drank beer. But Ale did remind me that there were a few times (she remembers only two) where I arrived home late and made noisy use of the toilet.



My friend John Lekich could write and has written beautiful romantic pieces on the lore, culture and mystique of good bars. In fact the photograph of Jim Byrnes having a chat with the barman of Gerrard's is at a place (never a joint for John) that is John's favourite bar of Vancouver.


For a long time I attempted to live this lore of the bar with Les Wiseman but I could never get past the two beers that either triggered a migraine or nausea. But I learned plenty from Les. I became a musical snob and with Les I have had drinks with such musical stars as Sting and Lenny Kaye to Art Bergmann. It was with the latter that I remember once going to the Number 5 where at the time they had a most agressive waitress who asked us if we wanted more beer. We told her we had no more money. She said, "Look in your pockets and scrounge some change." We did. We put the coins on the table. She scooped them up and then placed a pint on the table and gave us two extra glasses. "Share that," she said and was gone.



I remember the first time I got drunk. I was a boarder at St Edward's High School at Austin, Texas and I was in grade 11. My room mate, Maurice Badeaux was out on a date on a Saturday night. He kept a bottle of bourbon in his desk. I removed it and drank up and then got in bed to see what would happen. It was rapid oblivion and all I remember was being pulled to the floor and then kicked in the ribs by an irate Maurice, " You SOB, you drank all my liquor!" I can safely say that I got drunk maybe four more times in my life and I remember the circumstances for each case of which I will not bore you here. But I do remember the first bar I ever entered.

When I was 9, I had my first communion at the Nuestra Señora del Carmen chapel, around the corner on Roque Pérez in Buenos Aires. When the nuns came to collect our contributions, my father who was drunk, placed a package of Volpi, tangerine flavoured lozenges in the basket. I was ashamed. A few months later my father, George, voluntarily left the house. He would come to visit twice a month. In one of those visits he took me to Schubert House on Rivera Street. That is when I first got a whiff of that smell that defined all bars from the most sophisticated to the least. I remember going up a spiral staircase on to the upper floor. A pianist and violinist were playing a tango. My father proudly introduced me to them. I was so blond then, that the pianist told my father, “Your son looks German.” My mother was furious with George when she found out he had taken me to a bar. I didn’t see him for a long time. Of all of my father’s visits I remember best when he took me to the General Paz Theater on Cabildo Street to see Beau Geste with Gary Cooper and Ray Milland. It was only recently that I saw Ray Milland in Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend with horror. The movie brought memories of my childhood. My father was an alcoholic who came from a family of alcoholics. My first cousin, Rollo Barber (who had a fondness for directing symphonic music played on his record player, much in the same way that others play air guitar) could hold a lot of liquor. It is because of this family history that I have never really enjoyed bars. But circumstances have made me go to many bars and there are quite a few memories that are pleasant.



I used to frequent Ferydoun Manavi's Uforia, across from the Gerrard Bar on Burrard. Manavi, an Iranian, did not drink but had Vancouver's finest assortments of single malt Scotch. He often offered me ice-cold juice of pressed pomegranates which we would sip while admiring Ona Grauer's charms. Ona, seen here with Freddy (as all called Manavi) worked behind the bar.

Perhaps the most pleasant of all memories involved seeing the look on my friend Sean Rossiter's face. I was assigned by Equity Magazine to take photographs of exotic dancers getting ready in the dressing room of the Number 5. The article je was called Sex Sells. Once I had finished I came down with my equipment, assisted in this task by one of the most beautiful dancers of the day. I was spotted by Sean Rossiter who has never forgotten this incident.

In many of those bars, while I only drank water I still had conversations with many friends. In the photograph here with the exotic dancer as background at the Marble Arch I am sharing a table with Paul Wilson Brown, a musician and intellectual of note.



The language of drinking makes me think of some of the differences between the languages themselves. While it is one for the road in English in Spanish we say, "la del estribo," which includes the idea of finishing the last of your drink as you place your foot on the stirrup (estribo) of your horse. Let's have a drink usually means just that. In Argentina a "copetín" (a little wine glass) means a drink served with finger food. A beer in Mexico is a "cheve" which somehow evokes the sound of the z sounding c of cerveza.

A bar is a bar and only John Lekich would beg to differ as a good bar transcends all definitions. My friend Les Wiseman has risen to the occasion (on demand and with no lead time) to explain to us that perhaps a bar can even be a hotel room at the Holiday Inn on Howe Street before 9 am. Here is what he says:



Motorhead
Wiseman



AW-H mentioned in a phone call that he was blogging about drinking with celebrities. I immediately broke in and said you must mention the time with Motorhead and started rambling on the salient points of our lubricious intercourse with the kings of metal.

Scene: We walk into the hotel room and there are Lemmy and Philthy Phil. Lemmy with full wartage; Phil spiked and moustachioed. As we go to shake hands, we notice that our shoes are splopping through the carpet. What the hell happened here? Lemmy says, “Oh, an ice bucket got overturned and we never bothered to clean it up.” Must have been a heck of an ice bucket, about six square feet was underwater. Then Lem cracks a quart of Smirnoff and puts a couple fingers of orange juice in some tall tumblers and fills the rest with vodka. Throughout the interview, Lem keeps topping up the drinks, though the orange juice is never touched again until we are pulling on about eight inches of relatively clear fluid. I mention that it seems a touch early in the day of the gig to be hitting it with such enthusiasm. Phil pipes up, “We’re alcoholics, this is nothing for us.”

When we are joined by Robbo Robertson, the former Thin Lizzy guitarist who was replacing the departed Fast Eddie Clarke on the Another Perfect Day tour, he was completely out of sync with the black clothing and facial hair of Lem and Phil. He was also noticeably suffering the effects of the previous night, to which the others were conditioned and showed no such effects.

I asked what sort of groupies Motorhead got. Lem opened the door to an adjoining room and called for a young lady to come in. She was rail thin and stringy haired, mumbling incoherently. Lem nodded his head to her. “She’s from Philadelphia. She has no idea what city she’s in or where we are.” Then he motioned for her to remove herself and she shuffled back into the room and closed the door.
Robbo held his head and said nothing. Lem was effusive. Going on about amphetamine sulfate, his Canadian bust, and was egged on by Phil to talk about the fact that his father was a preacher and hence his longstanding dislike of organized religion. Phil pulled out a picture of his girlfriend, showed it to me. She was an ethereal type with a resemblance to Kate Bush. Not the brassy metalhead babe one might assume. Phil got a bit maudlin about being away from her.



Time for A W-H to take the shot. The guys were great, though the black and whites likely do not show Robertson’s somewhat greenish hue. After the shoot, we all waddled off and it was only on trying to sight myself through the door that I realized maintaining my verticality might be a touch of a challenge for the next few hours.



That night, the show at the Kerrisdale Arena was awesomely loud. The best acoustics were to be had at the MacDonalds a block away. Inside, the volume of air displaced by the speakers was large enough to press my clothing to my body. The band was tight and showed no deleterious effects from the breakfast libations. The only downside of the show was that, just before it began, news circulated that the greatest of rock crits, Lester Bangs had been found dead in his apartment. July 15, 1981.