Angst On Victory Square
Sunday, September 04, 2016
Many say that some of our human actions resemble that of
computers. What then was the
statement made of human actions before computers were invented?
I can
drive through areas of Vancouver in which at spots I can instinctively know I
have been there before and I recall the circumstances. Does a GPS truly know it has been somewhere before?
When I drive onto the Knight Street Bridge going south I invariably remember a photographic blunder as I pass the Mitchell Island exit. Sometime in 1977, in one of my first photo jobs at a logging mill for MacMillan Bloedel (my first job at that company came from a legendary man by the name of T.J. MacDowell), I dropped and left the dark slide of my then brand-new Mamiya RB-67. Without a dark slide a Mamiya can be pretty well useless if you want to shoot with two backs, one with colour and one with b+w.
When I drive onto the Knight Street Bridge going south I invariably remember a photographic blunder as I pass the Mitchell Island exit. Sometime in 1977, in one of my first photo jobs at a logging mill for MacMillan Bloedel (my first job at that company came from a legendary man by the name of T.J. MacDowell), I dropped and left the dark slide of my then brand-new Mamiya RB-67. Without a dark slide a Mamiya can be pretty well useless if you want to shoot with two backs, one with colour and one with b+w.
When I
drive through downtown Vancouver I can remember the two spots where I used to
go to get my Vancouver Magazine jobs.
But
there is another spot that has not only a memory of the past but also a more
contemporary and altogether unpleasant and troubling aspect to it of which I am
not at liberty to disclose here.
This is
Victory Square. My photograph here I took for a Sean Rossiter article for
Vancouver Magazine (early 80s) on the venerable firm Thompson, Berwick &
Pratt. The art director, Chris Dahl asked me to shoot the buildings (the more
famous ones) at night. One of them was the Cenotaph at Victory Square.
In the
last few months I have regularly visited the place in the evening. I have gone
to pleasant Saturday concerts at the avant-garde Gold Saucer Studio on the
second floor of the Dominion Building. I have been in that building many times
in a distant past as a few freelance writers who worked for our city magazines
had offices there. I photographed lawyer Cameron Ward there.
As the
area has begun to be gentrified by the activities associated with the downtown
campus of Simon Fraser University, paradoxically the area around it, including
Victory Square now houses the homeless more and more.It is depressing to see Victory Square at night.
I have a
dear friend who is usually under the shelter of one of the trees of Victory Square.
I watch unable to help or to remedy the situation.
But I am an optimist and believe all of it will
be over soon. And I smile every time I think of my slivovitz with Zvonko.
