Wednesday, May 24, 2006



Vancouver Magazine editor, Mac Parry (aka Malcolm Parry) assigned me in May 1984 to find 6 interesting Vancouverites who happened to own boats for a summer themed June issue. I called my friend Alyn Edwards, car collector and restorer (specializing in convertible hardtop Fords, Meteors and battle ship gray T Birds) and BCTV newscaster and asked him if he knew anybody who owned a boat. "Pamela owns a boat but I cannot tell you if it is a good one." So a few days later I made an appointment with Martin at a dock where she had her boat. I will never forget the occasion because of two details. While I was taking pictures of Martin I watched as my prime 50mm F-1.4 lens rolled off (in what I perceived as slow motion) the dock and into the sea. The second was the name of the boat. I asked Martin about it. She explained that her man at the time was called Clyde. "Combine Clyde and Pam and that's how you get to Clam," she said.

Quite a few years later, when Fanny Kiefer had a radio talks show program, she invited me for an interview. She made that usual question of what person I had photographed that had made the most impression on me. I decided to be playful and said on live radio, "I want to tell you about Pamela Sue (yes!) Martin's Clam. Within seconds a man called into the show who said he had purchased the Clam and was very happy with it.

For an interesting explanation on the the origin of the sexual connotation of the clam to a woman's privates check page 79 of Stephen Jay Gould's Leonardo's Mountain Of Clams And The Diet Of Worms (1998, New York, Harmony Books). The illustration on that page is reproduced above.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

I was 24 and in Mexico City when Ingeniero Luis de la Rosa introduced me to Kodak b+w Infrared Film. He warned me to open the container and load the film only in absolute darkness. I ignored his instructions. I did not believe him when he said that the film would be fogged, as light would slide in through the felts into the cassette. He was right and I had to try again. He suggested that I use Kodak HC-110 to process the film instead of the usual D-76. I have worked with de la Rosa's formula all these years. Part of the tradition (which I started with my two daughters Hilary and Ale in 1978 ( top, Hilary, Rebecca and Lauren's mother, left and Ale, right) has been to photograph my granddaughters Rebecca and Lauren (bottom left and right) with this film. They come out with white lips (normal if I used purple based lipstick) and look like the child blond fiends from the Wolf Rilla film Village of the Damned. The film was based on the book by British science fiction writer John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos. The book will always remind me of Ale's godfather, Andrew Taylor, who is from Yorkshire. He lent me his book in Mexico City and introduced me to the books of Wyndham. I saw the movie in the early 60s in the Israeli/Mexican Institute of Cultural Relations. Wolf Rilla was present and he explained that every frame of film (before digital special effects) had to be re-touched by hand so that blond children's eyes would make them look like fiends. Another reason to remember the film is George Sanders who had the lead adult part. My friend Maanus Pikker invited us to the VanDusen Garden British Car Show on Saturday. Rebecca and I agreed that the best car in the show was the powder blue Jaguar (top left) and that the new Lotus Elise, top right was the only new car in the show that could in any way match the excitement of the old Lagondas and Aston Martins we saw. 

Monday, May 22, 2006




In 1992 during a Halloween evening at the Anza Club Art Bergmann and his band played dressed in drag. At the time I was preparing a one man show (a double one man show) in which I was going to display 50 photographs of Art Bergmann taken from the late 70s up to that time at the Red Dot Gallery on West Hastings. So I went back stage and took pictures of Art applying makeup, etc plus this one of the group. I also asked Art if he would pose with his wife Sherri in bed for me. He did. I was thrilled with the results.

A month ago Randall Watson, Vancouver Magazine's art director, assigned me to photograph Tamara Taggart. I made up my mind that I was going to photograph her in bed with her new husband Dave Genn. It took me a few minutes to figure out that I had photographed Dave back in 1992 at the Anza Club. That's Dave, at the bottom left with long hair. I also decided that I would do my best to have Taggart pose with the least amount of makeup. I wanted to make her look as different as possible from her CTV weathercaster look. Perhaps after I fired the Anza Club and the Art in Bed photos to Taggart via email, things were softened up a bit and I got what I wanted. Vancouver Magazine published a colour version of this b+w one.

Sunday, May 21, 2006


I cannot abide showy flowers that don't have scent. Most of my garden roses are fragrant. Rosemary is in charge of clematis since I have no interest in them. Most are scent free plus they are fragile and you have to know higher mathematics (Rosemary does my income taxes) to find out when and how to prune them. The only clematis that I like is Clematis montana. This one is very fragrant. To me its scent is reminiscent of the sugar coating in the inside of Adams Chiclets squares. Not only that, but Clematis montana is an honorary bamboo. If you don't prune it back every few years it can bring down your house. The clematis shown here is Clematis 'The President'. It is even beautiful before the flower opens. Clematis is pronounced with emphasis in the first syllable. I often seriously ask the master gardeners (most are very correct older women) who have 'clinics' at local nurseries how they pronounce clematis. Their usual answer is with emphasis in the second syllable. At that point I ask them how to pronounce c-l-i-t-o-r-i-s. They shoo me away. The fact is that both words are emphasized in that first syllable.

Saturday, May 20, 2006




There is one garden chore that I am ambivalent about. This is my very long, wrap around, laurel hedge (Prunus laurocerasus). I have been pruning it since 1986. In 1992 I decided to achieve the "Holy Grail" of pruning by using only secateurs (above right). It took me a week. Since then I have found that if I do it now I only have to do it once in the year. I don't use electric hedge clippers as they don't cut off all the leaves or some of the thicker stems. These yellow in a few weeks and the hedge is unsightly. I use hand hedge clippers, which this year I had sharpened. It will take two days of this Victoria Day weekend.

Friday, May 19, 2006


In the mid 1990s my neighbourhood was in flux. Older people who had gardened for years sold their houses which were then torn down to be replaced by bigger houses with smaller gardens that were supposed to be maintenance free. In those days contractors did not understand the value of the old plants in the gardens so I was able to remove many of them (with the contractors' blessing)and bring them home in a wheel barrow. There are many plants in my garden that remind me of the houses they came from or of the people who lived in them. I have a spirea from the garden across the street, where Mrs. Alm used to live. In hot summers, when the crows would make noise during her siesta, Mrs. Alm would come out and clap in a futile gesture as the crows never paid attention to her. My first hosta ever, a huge green one, came from a house on 43 Avenue and Hudson that had one of the most beautiful blue spruces I had ever seen. Since I have never found out its cultivar name of the hosta (probably Hosta 'Elata') I have always called it Hosta '43d & Hudson' For about 5 years an orange and red rose from Cartier Street had the name Rosa 'Cartier' until one day Brad Jalbert (from Select Roses in Langley) identified it as Rosa 'All That Jazz'. Rosemary has come to love it in spite of its lurid orange/red colour. Rebecca wants one. But one of the mystery guests of my garden is a peony tree that has very fragrant and large dark red flowers with white streaks. I know nothing about peonies so I have never identified it. In good years we got one to three blooms. A couple of years ago we had to remove a dying juniper hedge from the lane wall and since there is now a lot more sun coming in, the mystery peony is in full bloom today. I counted 12 flowers.

I find that I don't grieve for that beautiful blue spruce on 43d and Hudson Street. The new owners(who must have been young and patient) planted a Magnolia grandiflora. It has taken 10 years for the tree to grow and to finally bloom. The scent of Magnolia grandiflora's (called the Southern Magnolia) very large and very white flowers is sublime. Other scents I love are:

1. Rhododendron luteum
2. Rosa 'Fair Bianca'
3. old fashioned sweet peas

Select Roses

Thursday, May 18, 2006



Rhododendron luteum was first described by Linneus in 1753 as Azalea lutea because of its yellow flowers. Recently azaleas, formerly thought to be first cousins of rhododendrons, have entered as full fledged rhododendrons and are no longer called azaleas. This scan of the flowers of the Rhododendron luteum from my garden show some spent flowers. I am showing them for a reason. The large tree-like bush (large because I calculate that my specimen must be 40 years old) begins to bloom around May 6 but by May 16 many of the flowers begin to wither. It is at this stage when the unusually sweet scent of luteum becomes even more so. The combination of a hot evening and the overipeness of the flowers is one of the spring pleasures of my garden.