Samuel Frid and Joanne Tod's My Father, Bob and I

At the last years of the 20th century Charles Campbell, a former Editor of the Georgia Straight was working at the Vancouver Sun. He created a page called Rear Window especially for moi so that I could write and illustrate with my photographs stuff I had done in the past.

I had forgotten this one until I was rummaging through my files looking for something I could write about. Now that it is 2026 I feel completely out of place as the change I observe is not to my liking.

I received an email from a friend who is an editor for a weekly periodical on an obvious decline. I had sent him/her an email about 3 weeks ago. It was answered yesterday thusly: Sorry I didn’t get the chance to respond. I currently have 18, 458 emails in my inbox. Ninety % of them are unopened, partly because all of us are having trouble grinding things out with a skeleton staff.

Because the periodical does not have a phone or a receptionist communication is only through emails.

This particular Rear Window is dear to me (even though I had forgotten it) as the painting by Joanne Tod is a definite Christmas one with the delightfully confusing title. Is Bob the name of the little boy’s mother? The painting was also the favourite of my red-haired Mexican friend, Samuel Fridd who at the time had a gallery called the Threshold.

When I called the VAG and asked them If I could see this painting again they answered, “We are not going to put it up on the wall just for you.”