Saturday, April 04, 2009


In the early 70s I was a high school teacher at a private school for wealthy American and other foreign kids in Mexico City. I was idealistic and I had teaching in my blood. Both my mother and grandmother had been teachers. This seemed to be my career, too. My bible was Neil Postman and Charles Weintgartner’s Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969). In many ways I was at odds with the school principal who was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and she was enamored with Richard Nixon.

One day my students, ninth graders, were vocally complaining about the stupidity of the coming student council elections. Their complaints sounded much like the modern beef about politicians these days. It was about promises being made and never carried out and how the student council really had no power as democracy was not evident in a school ruled by an irond hand principal. In spite of everything that I was accused of having done, including the corruption of youth, much later, all I told my students was, “If you don’t like the methods being used for the election of student council officers, change the system. Look up how governments were changed in my country of Argentina.” My ninth graders made the motion of participating in the election proceedings and some ran for the only office available for ninth graders, the office of treasurer. But I knew something was up as they would whisper in corners and stare in my direction when I passed them by the school corridors.

The day of the elections we had an assembly. Just before it all started a couple of my students went up to the principal and told her that they had a relevant announcement to make. They went up to the microphone while a few other students surrounded the sound system controls. The two students then explained they were going to read us the school constitution. The principal smiled. After reading it they set it on fire. We all watched in shock as the told us that the constitution was no longer in effect and that the 9th grade had taken over the student council. At that point the school principal was looking in my direction in a most unpleasant way. I remember how funny it was to see all those 12th graders who were running for president and vice president protest. They demanded a return to democracy. To make matters worse for myself I was called into the principal's office and blamed for the coup. She said, "This is not right if you believe in democracy." I was perhaps to young and also too stupid to check myself before I answered, "Only if you believe in it." I was not fired.

A few weeks later I had written on the board the following:

While performing the part that is truly ours, how exhausting it is to be obliged to play a role which is not ours: the person you must really be, in order to fulfill your task, you must not appear to others to be, in order to be allowed by them to fulfill it. How exhausting – but unavoidable, since mankind has laid down once and for all the organized rules of social behaviour.

I asked my class if they could take a guess as to who might have written the above words. The principal suddenly walked into the room unannounced and said, “Probably Fidel Castro.” She had pegged me for a communist.

When I told them all that the writer was no less than Dag Hammarskjöld the ex Secretary General of the United Nations the principal turned around and left the room.

It was somewhat in that spirit of duplicity that I invited Rebecca to attend Studies in Motion – The Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge tonight. I told Rebecca that her ex-ballet teacher, Andrea Hodge was the movement rehearsal director, that Crystal Pite was the choreographer and that Kim Collier was the director. I told her the story of Eadweard Muybridge but I did not reveal to her that 11 of the 12 actors would take all their clothes off many times during the play.

We watched a bit of Rigoletto at Opera Sushi before going to the Playhouse. The owner chatted with Rebecca and noticed how she has grown. I told him we were out for an evening of theatre.

In the end Rebecca said to me, “I have been entertained tonight. I really liked the play. And like you say, Papi, it is a play I will not forget.” Perhaps we need not see Beau Geste (my personal right of passage from boyhood to that transition into adulthood). Rebecca has just about grown up.

Friday, April 03, 2009



Last night at the opening of the Electric Company's Studies in Motion - The Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge presented by the Playhouse Theatre Company, I missed Robert Chesterman very much.

During the intermission of the same play at the Frederick Wood Theatre in January 2006, I ran into red-haired, red-faced film director Robert Chesterman. A man who had been born in England and had been a TV and film pioneer at the CBC was wowed by the show. “I have seen just about everything in my life (he was 75) but I have never seen anything like this. It is fantastic.” I was just as amazed and delighted at the performance. But for the moment I had to put that aside. I saw a kind of hope in the older man that gave me an impetus to realize that there is much excitement left for me to see in my own life (I am 66). When Chesterman died the next year I remembered his excitement. I still have a bit of his hope for the new and undiscovered.



There is theatre, there is ballet, there is opera, there is film there is television. It is not often that any of these art disciplines mix or merge. Of late, most operas have excluded the traditional ballet that many productions incorporated in the 19th century. A recent production of Aida by the Vancouver Opera included some dance. One of my favourite Vancouver male dancers, Tod Woffinden was relegated to looking like an Apache Indian. The dance was terrible. I have seen many modern dance works that attempt to bring in projected video. Most of these have not satisfied me.

In Studies in Motion – The Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge the folks at the Electric Theatre Company (actor Jonathon Young, director Kim Collier, below rigth, and playwright Kevin Kerr, above, decided to bring into their mix the choreography of Vancouver’s Crystal Pite, below, left. This was a felicitous decision and the result is a play that is dance. It is dance that is theatre. It is an amalgamation that is better than its two parts.



The play with the help of Crystal Pite’s choreography and music by Patrick Pennefather (well known in the Vancouver dance scene) somehow transported me into the 19 th century when science was an all-is-possible solution to the world’s ills. Robert Gardiner’s stark scenery of projected white lines and the human figures moving back in forth, draped and undraped, seemed all in a realistic black and white. I was watching Muybridge himself (Andrew Wheeler) perform his experiments in human and animal locomotion.

Eadweard Muybridge himself is ample proof that truth is far stranger than fiction. As an example you might consider that before the English born photographer began his motion studies he went off to take pictures in Guatemala and Panama under the name of Eduardo Santiago Muybridge. When he died in 1904 in Kingston upon Thames (where he was born) his memorial stone misspelled his name Eadweard Maybridge, and the crematorium register calls him Eudweard Muybridge!



Between his birth in 1830 and his cremation in 1904 Muybridge’s life was full of excitement, murder, a lawsuit all well covered by Kevin Kerr’s play. Perhaps the most singular event in Muybridge’s career involved a horse, a horse that should be as famous as the horses listed below. Unlike those other horses this one had a surname.

1. Bucephalus, Alexander the Great’s horse.
2. Cincinnatus, General Ulysses S. Grant’s horse.
3. Traveler, General Robert E. Lee’s horse.
4. Copenhagen, the Duke of Wellington’s horse at Waterloo.
5. Rocinante, Don Quixote’s horse.

Before Eadweard Muybridge came along, famous 19th century French painter Ernest Meissonier had his son Charles and several cuirassiers, veterans of the Napoleonic wars, galloping in his back garden. These studies in the motion of horses were for Meissonier's epic paintings of Napoleon in famous battles. The painter was obsessed with detail. Not being able to see the motion itself, Meissonier had a little railroad built in the garden and had assistants push his little railway car down a hill while a horse galloped on the side. Meissonier furiously sketched while trying to discern the pattern of the horse’s hooves, to no avail.





On June 15, 1878, on a clear and sunny day (good for photography involving slow film and slow lenses of the time) in Palo Alto, California, amid a gathering of art and sports journalists, Eadweard Muybridge photographed the first successful serial images of fast motion.

The subject of these photographs was the trotting horse, Abe Edgington, right, harnessed to a sulky ( a two-wheeled sit-down chariot-like carriage). The horse was owned by railroad builder and former governor, Leland Stanford. The images proved Stanford's theory that during a horse's running stride, there is a moment of suspension where no hooves are touching the ground.

What had begun as a topic of unresolvable debate among artists and horse enthusiasts now launched a new era in photography, and the birth of the motion picture. It also inspired artists of the time to finally and accurately depict the horse in motion. One of the most famous was Thomas Eakins’ (grandly played by Jonathon Young in Studies in Motion) painting A May Morning in the Park painted in 1879-80 as a result of careful observation of Muybridge’s work.



During the play 11 of the 12 performers manage to take all their clothes off. It is done humorously in some instances but in most the effect is scientific and clinical and should not offend anybody. I plan to return with my 11-year-old granddaughter Rebecca as I think this is a play that she will relish in years to come. There are several stand out performances. Allan Morgan is perfect and should not consider ever wanting to get in shape again. Those who will see the show will understand and snicker when I suggest Morgan never try hot potatoes. Jonathon Young had me confused for a while as he plays three roles. Two of them, as the womanizer Henry Larkyns and the other as the not-so-womanizer Thomas Eakins were superb.

And Andrew Wheeler is so good as Eadweard Muybridge that I plead that Kevin Kerr write a play very soon on Darwin. Wheeler would be the perfect Darwin. Then there is George Bernard Shaw, too.

The folks of the Playhouse Theatre Company know a good thing when it comes along. They are presenting this Electric Theatre Company production until April 18 at the Vancouver Playhouse.

Jonathan Young
Kim Collier, Jonathon Young and Kevin Kerr
Kevin Kerr
Kim Collier
Allan Morgan

Thursday, April 02, 2009


In my 35 years of being a photographer my photographs have been treated with respect. They may have appeared extra small, or smudged, or in the wrong colour but in almost ever case the pictures looked as I had taken them. Only once did I have a problem. The art director in question worked for a local business magazine. When I first met him he told me, “Alex give me a full frame photograph so I can crop the shit out of it.” I thought he was joking. I photographed, per instructions a gentleman holding an apple in his hand. When the magazine appeared the picture was of the gentleman’s hand holding the apple. I was furious.

In the middle 70s (I have been unable to find the exact date and not even in this Vancouver Sun article by Amy O’Brian was the date given) the CBC moved from its old and tired building on Georgia to its new facilities on Hamilton and Georgia. The fact is that Paul Merrick designed the new CBC building on Hamilton street and the structure won a Governor General’s Award. Somebody at the Corporation approved of the project and the unusual building was built. It seems to be almost as universally hated as the Eaton’s and now Sears building by Cesar Pelli.

I began taking pictures of variety shows at the new building as soon as it opened and I have “grown accustomed to its face” through the years. I liked the CBC cafeteria with the wonderful Shadbolt mural. I liked the cavernous studios, and the beautiful wood paneling of Studio One. I have heard memorable concerts there. Its acoustics are beautiful.

In the mid 80s Sean Rossiter wrote an article on the venerable Vancouver architectural firm Thompson, Berwick, Pratt and Partners. I was commissioned to photograph some of the firm’s notable structures at night. One of them was the CBC as Paul Merrick had designed it as an architect for that firm that gave us the Cenotaph, the Burrard Street Bridge and the BC Electric Building on Burrard.

I fell in love with the personality of architect Ned Pratt and I fell in love with architects and their architecture. I fell in love with the CBC at night as I took photographs of the curious pyramid-shaped skylights. For me the building is beautiful and functional.

A building’s design has to be respected and it has to be respected in the spirit of the times it was built. We might not like intricately baroque architecture in our Postmodern times. That does not mean that we must demolish baroque churches.

My friend, architect Abraham Rogatnick arrived in Vancouver in 1955 exactly when our main post office on Georgia had just been finished. Rogatnick was appalled at the structure. He dislikes it and thinks it occupies important city space that in this age of the internet a post office no longer merits. I think the post office was designed in the spirit of the monumental 50s when so much of the world had been destroyed by bombs. I love going into the post office to gaze at the lofty ceiling and imagining a cumulus cloud here and there. This building is Rumanian/Soviet architecture at its best. I like it. I like it as much as I like the CBC.


This is why I cannot abide when the city and the CBC without any clear mandate that I have been aware of have seen fit to surround and hide Merrick’s design with enough density condominiums that must even grate on Gordon Price who has been promoting city density for years.

What has emerged in the last few months is a structure that has to be as ugly as the two buildings that replaced our BC Electric, the BC Gas on Georgia and BC Hydro on Dunsmuir.

The West side of the CBC can be seen in the colour picture here. The parking lot for the truck (and entrance to Studios 40 and 41) has been mostly blocked by towers that wrap all around to the front on Hamilton. The towers are designed by the firm Hotson Bakker Boniface Haden. This firm has managed to emulate the common practice of ancient Mexican cultures that imposed their wills over the vanquished by building over the old pyramids new and even bigger pyramids. As soon as I can I will go and explore and see if I can still find Merrick's curious but lovely glass ones.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009


Warning! While I have often boasted that I never rant, what I have written below could be one. Read at your peril.



My uncle Tony had a technique with dealing with his nagging wife Sarita. “Yes dear, I will be there in a moment.” “Yes dear, I will do that today, without fail.” And then he would do as he pleased. The technique worked for 13 years. They were divorced when my uncle found an even more patient woman.

In 1975 when I arrived with my wife and two daughters to Vancouver I heard about a beautiful building that had been torn down. It was a department store called Eaton’s. I had no memory of it so the stories did not affect me. I felt differently in 1989 when the Georgia Medical Dental Building was demolished even after protracted protest. The building was beautiful. Now we only have the Marine Building to boast about in that area of our city.



I see the Uncle Tony technique alive and well in Vancouver and in Canada. We sign petitions. We assert we do not want the Olympics. The results are always the same things are done in spite of protests and petitions.

As I walked today on Granville on my way to buy photo supplies at Leo’s Camera I had to brave noise, mud, fences and detour signs. Not only does it seem that all the protests and petitions against the Cambie construction of the Canada Line were useless but now I can see how Granville has been Cambied (I claim here and now the coining of the verb!).



And so in the last week I have received many e-mails from friends and from people I don’t know to sign an E-protest to attempt to save the CBC from the budget cuts. By the easy and effortless technique of pressing the send button I can feel I am doing my best to save the CBC from itself.



Except for the use of drones and a few rockets here and there the use of the button has yet to take over completely in our human expertise at warfare. We still find it necessary to kill people by using weapons that send metal slugs through people. We press triggers and not buttons. But we are content to protest with buttons from the comfort of our homes. I am not promoting here anything violent at all in contrasting bullets with buttons. Whatever happened to calling our MP and demanding they act on our behalf? What if we shower our Vancouver Sun with protest letters? What if we find some way to convince Carole Taylor that it would no longer be conflict of any interest and that she could be our spokeswoman in a crusade to save and improve the CBC? Unfortunately we no longer have Daryl Duke to write intelligent essays on why the CBC is important to our lives.

With that e-mail command to send I am supposed to sleep nights in my knowledge that I have done all that is possible to save our beloved CBC. I use the word beloved with all honesty but I have been told that this feeling is of one in a minority.



Our aboriginals have repeatedly asked for land and monetary compensation. The Uncle Tony Technique has been clearly used here. “Next year.” “Have patience. It will happen.” Years and years have passed with little being done for the plight of aboriginals. The Uncle Tony Technique relies on the proven fact that, at least here in Canada and in Vancouver, all protests peter out sooner or later. Just weather the storm is the corollary to the technique.

Every time I drive to Lillooet to visit my daughter and pass by the beautiful Lillooet train station I think of CN, BC Rail and the whole imbroglio of the legislature raids and the present BC government that is simply weathering the storm. This has worked every time, hasn’t it?

We can blog, and write letters to the editor about how we want to keep our CBC just the way it is. We can protest that CBC Radio is about the only media entity that keeps our province and other provinces together. I am sure it is important in keeping our country together.

Consider that Mark Forsythe’s noon to 2 program, BC Almanac. It is one of only two other radio programs (North by Nortwest and Hot Air) that has listeners across our province. From one of the old photographs here you can note that in the late 70s the program was only an hour and a half long. BC Almanac is now to be cut to only one hour. This could be the decision of some executive who works in what we have called (most accurately as it is indeed its name) The Corporation. All along many have complained that the problem with the Corporation is the personnel at the top - the corporate heads. Could it be a coincidence that both the CBC and the venerable American GMC both have products nobody wants? I don't quite think so. While I no longer dream of buying a Plymouth Fury I know that without my CBC Radio my radios would only then be obsolete.

We can protest that we want to keep and enjoy commercial free radio. We can cite all the advantages. We can protest that we want a fairly unbiased reporting that is not beholden to advertisers. But we will protest in vain. A friend pointed out to me that we are living in a post-radio-talk-host era. There are no Websters, Bannermans or Mairs to fan the flames of our recalcitrant almost flame-proof consciences.

In the end those of us who try to defend the CBC are accused of being elitists or snobs. We have to be elitists and snobs because some of us like the obsolete music of other centuries. We are deemed to be elitist because we want announcers with pleasant voices that have no lisps and or speech impediments.

Cut a piece of tin from a tin can and bend it back and forth. It will be surprisingly resilient. But after a few too many foldings the tin will separate in two. That is what is being done to our CBC in small increments. When it finally breaks nobody will care or have a memory of what it was. It will be our Georgia Medical Dental Building of our forgotten past. We will not miss what was so diluted so that by the time it ceases being what it was supposed to be we will have no memory. We will have no memory of what it was.

As for me I will not send any e-mail to Harper. As my friend Robert Blake erroneously used to say to me all the time, “You can’t win if you don’t buy a ticket.” I don’t believe this ticket has a chance in ---- of winning anything.

The pictures you see here I took one very rainy day in the late 70s. It was the day of the PNE parade. I remember that the CBC float was the good ship Mirthful. From the parade I went to the PNE and took some pictures of the CBC in action with llamas, parrots and spaghetti. It was all in good fun.

If you believe that sending an e-mail to Harper is going to help click here.

CBC
More CBC.
Even More CBC
And Even More CBC
More
More Again
French CBC

Tuesday, March 31, 2009


The name crocus comes from the Greek krokos (κρόκος), which like the Hebrew karkōm, Aramaic kurkama, Persian and Arabic kurkum means saffron or saffron yellow.

The genus Crocus is in the iris family (Iridaceae). They grow from corms and are mainly hardy perennials, and are found in a wide range of habitats, including woodland, scrub and meadows. There are about eighty species of crocus (of which approximately 30 are cultivated). Their cup-shaped, solitary, salverform flowers taper off into a narrow tube. The spice saffron is obtained from the stigmas of Crocus sativus, an autumn/fall-blooming species.

Pruning my dead or dying roses even on a bright sunny day is not a cheerful task particularly as it was windy and cold. Many of my plants do not look all that good. Perhaps it is too early in spring to make an opinion. There is a slim possibility that in a few weeks I might see some new growth from underneath the dead canes of my roses.



In the middle of my round rose bed I spotted the mauve crocuses. Rosemary swears at them in late spring. After they flower they send up mounds of green leaves that mess up the tidiness of the rose bed. She gets on her knees and cuts them off in late spring. Our crocuses are either volunteers or someone planted them before we came to the house. They are cheerful and give colour when nothing much is in colour. You have to separate the petals to look on the bright orange (saffron yellow?) stigmas. In their own way my crocuses made my day.

Monday, March 30, 2009


This morning I photographed a prosperous lawyer from Vancouver’s largest tax law firm. I had last photographed him 20 years ago and he was in need of a new photograph for his firm’s web page. We spoke at length as to what we had done since we last met in the studio all those years ago. I was floored when he told me that he had two sons in their 20s and that both had muscular dystrophy. It seems that both inherited it yet as far as my subject lawyer could recall nobody in his family had ever had the disease. I looked at my subject’s face lines (many but a handsome man indeed) with a different light.

I called a friend after my shoot. We had a chat and a coffee at the Sears Starbucks. My friend has a teenage son with an active version of autism. I was thinking of my Maserati Biturbo when he told me of his travails with his son. I remember one day that I was driving my maroon Maserati on the ramp leading to the Granville St Bridge. I applied to the gas pedal enough pressure “to clean the sparkplugs” as my friend Sean Rossiter would say. My passenger was rocker/journalist John Armstrong. He was wowed as his head stuck to the seat at the sudden surge of the twin turbos. I remember telling Armstrong, “This car is rarely without some mechanical malady but when it is just right it soars and the noise from the tailpipes is pure music.”

The only problem is that whenever I voice this or even think of it, something breaks and I have to spend a lot of money. A couple of days after the bridge incident my car developed a transmission clunk. I finally gave up trying not to think or to tell anybody what a pleasure it was to drive my Maser because I was emptying my bank account and transferring all of the funds to one very happy and ever richer Girolamo Clemente, my lucky mechanic. I parked the car and it lies forgotten in my garage.

I was thinking of my Maserati because I was thinking of my family and how none of my daughters have any diseases or health issues. Our granddaughters, Lauren and Rebecca are healthy, too and pretty to boot. Could things be any better? Is this a Maserati situation where I should keep my mouth shut and not even think of it?

My friend at coffee said something like, “I am jealous of you but happy for you. Take advantage of it.” He need not have said it as I am now fully aware of my luck.

I told my Hilary and my granddaughters at the table tonight (Rosemary was away taking a computer course) how I savoured the moment we had together and if it meant I had to cook for them (something I always do when they come over) I would do it gladly. I told them that if I was suddenly diagnosed with some sort of lethal cancer I would not be fazed as anything past half a century is just extra. I have almost 17 years of extra time. When I mentioned that dying at this point would not upset me in the least it was Lauren (6) who said, “You should not be talking about these things at the dinner table.” Rebecca added, "You must live one day at a time and enjoy it." I am sure that at her age (11) I would have never thought of such "rubbish" or even dared to have uttered the recommendation to my grandmother.

After our dinner Rebecca and Lauren invited us to a puppet show. One puppet (Rebecca as a dog) would say, “A is for airplane.” Lauren, the rabbit would repeat, “A is for zebra.” The dog would get furious and make the rabbit repeat it correctly. The next time around the rabbit would again say, “A is for zebra.” And on it on it went and I laughed!

Thinking about Art Bergmann’s concert on Thursday I had a look at all my Bergmann records, tapes and CDs. There was one I had forgotten about, Art Bergmann –Design Flaw where he plays a 6 string and a 12 string acoustic guitar while being accompanied by Chris Spedding on electric guitar. There was no drum, no bass, nothing to distract from the lyrics and that unique Bergmann voice. As I listened to my fave, the Hospital Song, Hilary read the very complete liner notes of the Zulu release Young Canadians – No Escape which is all about Art Bergmann’s early career.




Tonight has been about as perfect a night as I could possibly imagine. I found this picture of Hilary taken with my Widelux, swivel lens panoramic camera. I asked Hilary a few questions. She was 17 and it was late spring. She was in grade 11. She had been invited to the graduation of one Thomas Chromey who was graduating from Kitsilano High School. Hilary is wearing Rosemary’s Mexican colorín jewelry. I asked Hilary about the dress. “I borrowed the dress from Ale (her older sister) who had many formal dresses because she went to York House (a Vancouver private school for girls).” I looked at the picture. We had moved to Athlone three years before, in 1986. The three conifers on the right are all gone. They succumbed to root rot. The garden is changed. But we are still happily here.

I am thankful and appreciative that we are.

Sunday, March 29, 2009


I have been a bit miffed with the Vancouver Sun for their oversight in not running either an obituary or a memorial piece on the March 6 death of Vancouver choreographer Lola Maclaughlin. You can imagine my anger on seeing a full page obituary on the Sun lawyer and media law expert Barry Gibson in the Saturday Sun. Why would we care?

I was wrong. I noticed that the obituary writer was David Baines (left). I then read and was fascinated since many of the people mentioned in the piece crossed my path, too. The one page obituary is a fascinating history of important events in Vancouver’s past. Barry Gibson as described by Baines was a gem. We have lost an important personality who in many ways, by defending the Vancouver Sun (and other papers and magazines) from libel law suits and to gain information blocked by judges, has helped us in knowing the truth on events that have shaped our city. This obituary deserves wider dissemination. Read it here. (this link is now nonexistent but obituary will be found below).



After reading this fine obituary which mentioned that Barry Gibson inherited the beat from that other expert libel lawyer, Peter Butler I remembered a story that I heard from both sides (writers Lyndon Grove and Ben Metcalfe) that involved libel, the media and Peter Butler.

In the early 70s the previous incarnation to Malcolm Parry's Vancouver Magazine was Vancouver Life which was published by Dick MacLean. I met Dick MacLean and his son while renting cars for Tilden Rent-A-Car on Alberni Street because his son washed cars for us. By then Dick Maclean was publishing something called Dick Maclean's Guide which listed events and restaurants in our city. But Vancouver Life was not a bad city magazine. A couple of writers I subsequently worked for, Lyndon Grove and Ray Torresan worked for Dick Maclean's Vancouver Life. Lyndon Grove (who was also a most competent radio announcer with a voice just like Walter Cronkite's) was assigned to write a feature story on Vancouver critics. Grove wrote the piece and submitted it to MacLean. Between submission and the magazine going to press some changes and additions were made to Grove's article without Grove knowing about it. The article asserted that CBC theatre critic Ben Metcalfe, top, right, had the habit of reviewing plays that he had not personally attended. The magazine went to press and the next day Dick MacLean was served a scary document signed by one called Peter Butler. Few knew then or now that Butler was Metcalfe's brother-in-law.

Ben Metcalf died in 2003. Yesterday I called his widow, Dorothy for some sort of corroboration of the story. Grove had told me that he had not written the offending sentence and that his editor had an ax to grind with Metcalfe. Dorothy Metcalfe told me on the phone, "Did you call me to rile me up, Alex?" The writer should have demanded a retraction by the magazine (I do not know if a retraction was made). Writers have to defend their honour and sense of ethics. As she told me I thought of one occasion (and there were others) when an editor of Western Living trashed a story I had written in its entirety and published something he/she wrote but still kept my name. I attempted to defend my honour by calling the editor and saying, "Thank you so very much. You made me sound like Shakespeare." The answer to my cynical remark was a pleasant, "You are welcome." I was unable to make Dorothy Metcalfe understand that loud complaining can blackball a freelance writer and photographer so that work will be impossible to obtain.

Dorothy Metcalfe told me that the direct result of Butler's libel document was, "They settled at the steps of the law courts."

I worked with Ben Metcalf on many stories for what became the next incarnation of Vancouver Life. Vancouver Magazine was published by Ron Stern and edited by Malcolm Parry.

Ben Metcalfe told me many stories. One of them happened when he was a reporter for the Province which at the time was published by Thomson and competed with the Vancouver Sun which was part of the Southam empire. It seems that a group of Mafioso that Metcalf wrote about kidnapped him and kept him for several weeks. I have forgotten how Metcalf escaped his predicament. In another story he told me, "There was this short funny girl who came to pick up my copy at my desk at the paper. Her name was Pat Carney."

Many years later Malcolm Parry assigned writer Mark Budgen to write a profile on MP Pat Carney. In a show of ethics that would have brought a smile on Dorothy Metcalfe's face, Budgen told Parry that he (Budgen) did not agree with the policies of Carney and of her party and that he was not accepting the assignment. Parry then assigned the story to Metcalfe's partner in Greenpeace, Robert Hunter and I took the picture.



Another player in my libel memories was Allan Fotheringham, left, a man I photographed many times. It happened in 1986. I remember that it all happened in an Air Canada jet and that Fotheringham was sitting behind two lawyers and overheard their conversation. He lost the much publicized libel suit. In a 1984 Macleans column he'd stated that the two Vancouver lawyers, both associates of Liberal leader John Turner, were "cementing their connections through the tennis club circuits and the wife-swapping brigades". Despite two printed apologies, the court awarded the lawyers $10,000 each in damages. One of my favourite moments with Dr Foth, as Fotherigham was affectionately called, happened in the 1986 Socred Convention in Whistler that was ultimately won by Bill Vander Zalm. It was nine in the morning and I spied Fotheringham enter with a large brown bag under his arm. I followed him up some stairs. He sat down at his cubicle and pulled a case of beer. He took out a can and opened it. As he began to sip it I took my photo. Alas the colour transparency is not currently in my Fotheringham file!

The last time I photographed him was for a profile in Toronto Life. I was dispatched to some nearby island (Bowen, I believe) and he kindly posed with a martini and his perfectly nude mistress behind him.

For some reasons that I will not go into here I can point out that Fotheringham and Metcalfe did not like each other. Sometime in the early 80s, in his Georgia Straight column, Metcalfe hinted that Fotheringham was having a homosexual affair with the scion of the Southam publishing fortune, Harvey Southam who at the time had started a business magazine called Equity. Southam's office was not far from Malcolm Parry's as they shared a publisher, Ron Stern. Equity quickly became a much better business magazine than BC Business which to my mind featured questionable edtorial content.

One day, a few months after Metcalfe's offensive Straight column, I was returning with Harvey Southam in his white Mercedes from a trip to Whistler. We had gone there to interview (and for me to photograph) Peter Brown, below, who had recently purchased a restaurant there. We were munching chocolate covered expresson beans (not a good snack when navigating tight curves with only one working headlight.



We were chatting about magazines and I decided that I would give Southam a suggestion. "Harvey, I think you should hire some literary writers to write about manly things for your magazine. I would think that Ben Metcalfe would be a good beginning." With a kind smile on his face Southam looked at me and said, "I really admire Ben's writing and his literary capabilities. At this moment, I think I will pass on your suggestion." And that was it. Southam had class and seemed to harbour no animosity to the man. I was impressed. I learned to love the man and we had a fond business relationship.

After Harvey Southam left Equity (in the questionable hands of Mike Campbell, the Premier's brother) Equity ran several covers that would not have passed muster in our more careful times. I wonder what Barry Gibson would have said of a cover (the most infamous of them all) that featured Premier Mike Harcourt and his Finance Minister Glen Clark dressed (courtesy of Photoshop) in Nazi brown shirt uniforms? I know that Harvey Southam would have never allowed it.

Addendum by Lyndon Grove on October 18, 2009

The addendum was preceded by Grove's e-mail

The other evening I stumbled upon one of your blog entries recounting
the tale of the Ben Metcalfe libel suit. Ben is now, I believe, pleading
his case in a higher court. Entertaining story--at this remove--but not
entirely accurate. If you'd like what I believe (Rashomon like) to be
the true story, send an e-message.

Incidentally, I have recently, as a form of cerebral exercise, launched
a blog of my own: here

Trust this finds you enjoying a pot of tea and some mellow jazz.


Regarding the Metcalfe/Grove libel case:

The magazine involved was not Dick MacLean's Vancouver Guide (to which I had contributed the odd piece, and I remember with fondness MacLean's very attractive wife at the time, Carole Stewart, whom I had known at CHQM and later as public relations director at the Hyatt Regency--but that, of course, is not the story).

No, the magazine was Vancouver Life & About Town, launched into life by the flamboyant former Vancouver Sun publisher Don Cromie (who later purchased Palm Springs Life and set into motion Toronto Life). And, in this period, I served as editor (number two or three out of an ultimate six).

The article at the centre of the case was titled "Gentlemen, This Time the Heat's On You." It was intended to be a criticism of Vancouver's reigning critics in all areas of the arts. Through the efforts of Nelles Hamilton, then assistant editor, we were able to draw all of the critics into a studio and photograph them gathered around a stepladder, the significance of which is lost to memory.

To write the article, we commissioned the urbane Bill Phillips, and he turned in the story as required. And that's when the problems began. Some of us felt the piece needed more zip, and, as I had Bill's notes, I began adding material from them to the story, without consulting the writer. Serious error. Among his notes was a comment from Malcolm Black, then artistic director of the Playhouse Theatre Company, who was said to have said something like this: How can Vancouver Life criticize critics when its own critic reviews a play without even seeing it?

I thought this was a charming bit, and threw it into the mix. Ben Metcalfe was then Vancouver Life's theatre critic, and if I had been more than six years old, I would have called him, too. But I didn't. Instead, his lawyer called us. And he wasn't alone. We had a call as well from a lawyer representing Jonathan Baker, a sometime music critic for The Province, a flautist, and a civic official. Both Metcalfe and Baker sued. Metcalfe's case was helped by Black's denial of the words attributed to him. I cannot remember Baker's complaint. In any event, his suit was minor, and Cromie said, "Pay him his two dollars and fifty cents and let him go."

The Metcalfe suit reached the trial stage, and the magazine's eminent and enormously skillful lawyer George Murray, who, like a great football player, could work both offence and defence, was convinced Vancouver Life could win. Indeed, Metcalfe's lawyer, Peter Butler, had approached Murray with a settlement offer. But it happened that a pro-am golf tournament was about to take place at Point Grey, and Cromie had a chance to play on a foursome that could include Palmer or Nicklaus. "How long would I have to be here?" he asked. "A day or two," said Murray. "Well, I can't miss the game. Let's give him the money and go."

And that's what happened. Phillips and I went to Sir Walter Raleigh and had a lunch that lasted the entire afternoon, as Ruben Kopp continued to pour Slivovitz.

I must confess, that almost fifty years later, I have some nervousness in telling this story, worrying that some complainant and his lawyer may leap up out of the past and launch another libel suit. In which case, I say this: this is entirely fiction.

Lyndon Grove.

The above link to the Barry Gibson obituary by David Baines was disconnected at the Sun. Below you will find that original obituary:



The Quiet Gunslinger
Sat Mar 28 2009 / David Baines



On Tuesday, Vancouver libel lawyer Barry Gibson, who represented The Vancouver Sun for more than two decades -- as well as more than 100 other media outlets in the province -- collapsed in his office and died of a heart attack. He was just 60 years old.

The next day, I walked into the office at Farris Vaughan Wills & Murphy where he had worked for the past 34 years.

There I found anthropological evidence of the important things in his life: Legal files stacked asymmetrically on every possible perch. A putter and assorted golf balls strewn on the floor. Family photographs hanging on the wall, most interestingly a picture of two little boys dressed as bad-guy gunslingers.

That would be Barry and older brother Byran, trying their darndest, but failing utterly, to look dangerous.

It was a posture that never suited Barry, even in later years when he had reached a stature where he could, more convincingly, play the role of tough-guy lawyer. He was not in the fight game, he used to tell me -- he was in the business of fixing things.

There were, however, many times in his career where things couldn't be fixed, and fights couldn't be avoided. That's when the other Barry Gibson appeared, the one with the glint of steel at his side.

"He was the most dangerous adversary you could ever have," said Byran, also a lawyer and Queen's Counsel (at McCarthy Tetrault in Vancouver). "But he was not one to posture and yell. His delight would be turning his adversaries aside, deftly, economically and gracefully."

Dan Burnett, a senior lawyer at Owen Bird whose media clients have included Canwest Global, Corus Entertainment, and the Canadian Press, described Gibson as "the most senior expert in the province on libel issues."

"He could be an advocate with the very best in town, but his style was not abrasive. I think judges appreciated that, and lawyers on the other side appreciated being able to deal with the problem without having to huff and puff."

Burnett was struck by how self-effacing Gibson was: "I can recall being at a conference of lawyers, all trading war stories, and remember sitting beside Barry and it occurring to me that, of everybody at the table, he had been in the trenches and at trial more than any of them, and he was just sitting there, saying nothing."

One of the lawyers on "the other side" is Roger McConchie who, as counsel for many people who have felt aggrieved by Gibson's media clients, has frequently engaged in legal combat with him.

"I have the deepest respect for him," McConchie said in an interview this week. "Barry was involved in many of the significant decisions of our courts -- both at the trial and appellant levels -- concerning libel defences. With his passing, the libel bar has certainly suffered a significant loss. I deeply regret that I will not again have another opportunity to act either with or against him."

Howard Shapray, another lawyer who has frequently parried with Gibson over libel issues, described his sudden death as "a great tragedy."

"He was involved in an area of law that a lot of people dabble in, but he knew backwards and forwards. That made him a tremendous resource to his clients and a daunting adversary. He was certainly at the top of the class."

Editors appreciated his common-sense approach to what is otherwise an esoteric area of law. Vancouver Sun Editor-in-Chief Patricia Graham said Gibson was "intensely pragmatic, but he respected our role in a democratic society, and he understood the importance of fighting for principles in the kind of work we do."

Sun reporter Kim Bolan, who chronicles all things dangerous -- from Sikh extremists to gangster thugs -- said she viewed Gibson as both a mentor and protector.

"Barry made me a much better reporter. Instead of simply vetoing a story, he would explain what I had to do to get it in the paper. It made you work a lot harder to get what you needed, to bring a difficult but important story to the level where it could be published."

In addition to a highly analytical mind, Gibson had a deep appreciation for and understanding of the English language, the nuances and implications of words and phrases, and the context in which they were being used. He could identify the "sting" of a story, and determine whether the facts supported it. He knew how to round the sharp edges, to avoid unnecessary scraps.

As Charlie Smith, managing editor of the Georgia Straight, said in a blog this week, Gibson "taught me a great deal about how to do hard-hitting journalism without spending the rest of my life in court."

Bolan concurred, but she added that when the process server came calling, "Barry was the person you wanted in your corner."


PRECEDENT-SETTING CASES

Gibson's libel practice consisted of vetting and defending stories, making applications to courts and administrative bodies for access to hearings and documents, and fighting publication bans. The overall purpose is to make the principle of a democratic society and a free press more than a theoretical notion.

He argued many precedent-setting cases. In 1991, working on behalf of The Sun, he won the right to attend a Workers' Compensation Board hearing regarding a prison guard who alleged he was tormented by his supervisors for reporting the beating of an inmate by other guards and prisoners.

The following year, he won the right to attend a B.C. Review Board hearing regarding an inmate who was asking to be released from custody at a psychiatric facility. The inmate had been found not guilty by reason of insanity in the murder of a woman praying at a Baptist church.

In 1994, he petitioned B.C. Information and Privacy Commissioner David Flaherty to give the media access to citizen complaints against municipal police officers. He successfully argued that opening the police complaint process to public scrutiny was consistent with public accountability, as defined in the Freedom of Information Act.

In 1995, Gibson and Burnett persuaded B.C. Supreme Court Justice John Hall to release forensic auditor Ron Parks' report into the Nanaimo Commonwealth Holding Society "bingo-gate" scandal. The report had prompted an RCMP investigation, but charges had not been laid. Gibson argued the report should be made public because it could determine the fate of the NDP in the upcoming election. As events unfolded, the scandal prompted then-B.C. premier Michael Harcourt to resign, even though he had not been accused of any wrongdoing.

In 2002, Gibson was among a group of media lawyers who persuaded Vancouver Provincial Court Judge David Stone to permit the media to attend the preliminary hearing for serial killer Robert Pickton. (Reporters were still prohibited from publishing details, however.)

In 2006, he petitioned B.C. Supreme Court to give media access to testimony from one of the sex victims of former teacher Tom Ellison. Gibson noted that a publication ban on the identities of the victims was already in place, and he assured the judge that The Sun had no interest in "outing" any of the victims. "However, we have a long history of commitment to the important, fundamental principle of open courts."

The judge agreed.

A FAMILY OF LAWYERS

Law is in the Gibson family's DNA. In addition to Barry and Byran, brother Garth and sister Greer are lawyers. Gibson's wife Beth is a lawyer. His daughter Leslie graduated from UBC law school last year.

His mother, Eileen Gibson, now 86, says she isn't sure how that happened. "Byran [the eldest sibling] started it, I guess," she said.

The patriarch of the family, Thomas, now 89, was born in Ireland and emigrated to Ontario, settling in what is now Thunder Bay, where he met and married Eileen.

Barry, the second child, was born on March 12, 1949. He was a brilliant student who excelled in math and, as news clippings attest, ranked among the best in the province. He was also a keen athlete who played on the high school basketball team and inherited his father's passion for golf.

Upon graduation, he attended the University of Toronto where he earned an arts degree, and then Osgoode Hall where he obtained a law degree, then returned to Thunder Bay to article at a local law firm. Beth, meanwhile, also had aspirations to be a lawyer, but there was no law school in Thunder Bay, so they moved to Vancouver so she could attend UBC.

Barry quickly found work at Farris, generally viewed as one of the finest law firms in the city. "I met him when he was articling," recalls George Macintosh, who heads the firm's litigation department. "We all realized pretty quickly how bright he was, and what a laser sense of humour he had.

"From a very early stage, he was giving people in the firm counsel on all the legal issues they were grappling with. In the evenings and weekends, he spent literally thousands of hours advising me on cases, and rarely charged any money. He played down the fact he was doing an awful lot of work without directly benefitting. He was the most unselfish lawyer I've dealt with."

Beth and Barry had two children, Leslie, who was to start articling at her father's law firm in September, and Connor, who is attending Langara College's co-op commerce program and working toward a chartered accounting designation.

In the early years at work, Gibson gravitated toward a flamboyant and idiosyncratic lawyer named Peter Butler, who was the city's pre-eminent libel lawyer. Gibson assisted on four or five files, and by the early 1990s, he was doing most of The Sun's day-to-day legal work. By the time Butler died in 2002, Gibson was widely viewed as one of the foremost authorities on libel law, the go-to guy for most of the newspapers and magazines in the province.

He also did property assessment appeals, dealing mainly with large commercial and industrial properties, and employment law, including wrongful dismissal lawsuits. Most notably, in 1995, he won a $175,000 wrongful dismissal suit for former B.C. Transit chief Frank Dixon, plus $125,000 in aggravated and punitive damages. It was the largest award of punitive and aggravated damages ever handed down in a wrongful dismissal case.

ONE REPORTER, EIGHT LAWSUITS

Former Sun reporter Rick Ouston, now the paper's convergence editor, holds the record for simultaneous lawsuits. In 2000 and 2001, Gibson was juggling eight separate lawsuits that had been filed against the veteran journalist.

Gibson, in his usual low-key fashion, made seven of them go away. Just one went to trial, a suit brought by Nelson city councillor Doug Jay, who had been rejected as a political candidate by the provincial Liberals.

Ouston did some digging and was told by court staff that Jay had a criminal conviction for assaulting a teenage girl, but before he could obtain the court record, Jay asked for it to be sealed. Ouston went ahead with the story.

Jay's lawyer argued that because The Sun didn't have the record, the paper couldn't prove the story was true. During the discovery process, the conviction was unsealed, showing the story to be true in all substantive respects. The judge ruled in The Sun's favour and assessed costs against Jay.

That same year, Gibson defended Bolan, who was being sued by four Sikh fundamentalists who alleged she had linked them to the murder of Tara Singh Hayer, a Sikh moderate and the publisher of the Indo-Canadian Times. Gibson argued that, although Bolan's story noted that all four men were opponents of Hayer and were connected to the militant International Sikh Youth Federation, that did not amount to linking them to Hayer's death. The judge agreed, and once again ordered the plaintiffs to pay costs.

While Ouston has the record for concurrent lawsuits, this writer has the record for consecutive lawsuits -- 19 in all. Under Gibson's stewardship, 18 of them went away without going to trial, or paying any money in settlement, or issuing an apology. (The nineteenth suit is pending, the outcome to be determined.)

I recall one lawsuit filed by a man who walked into an examination for discovery like a hit man from the Sopranos. He thought I had unjustly damaged his reputation by calling him a drug dealer and loan shark. Gibson quickly established he had a reputation, although not the one he claimed:

Q: [You had] a 1987 assault charge in Vancouver?

A: Yes.

Q: [And] in 1988, a conviction in Vancouver?

A: May I say one thing? The assault was somebody at my penthouse in False Creek that I pushed, literally pushed. ... There are varying degrees of assault as I am sure you are well aware of."

Q: Your handshake this morning came close to an assault, sir.

Gibson, an avid fisherman, let a little line out:

Q: Was it the incident in False Creek that led to your appearance before Judge Johnson?

A: I don't know which judges appeared where. I mean, I haven't appeared in front of that many judges. I wouldn't know their names.

Q: That's Judge Johnson we are dealing with. He is the one who sends you to Oakalla for 21 days. That you would remember.

A: No, no. I drove my Porsche to Oakalla. He didn't send me there. I parked it out front.

Q: I see. He issued the invitation.

Now it was time to reel some line in:

Q: Didn't you get on TV and praise the guards?

A: Without my name being mentioned. Keep that in mind...

Q: Did any of your friends mention that they had seen you on TV?

A: No, no, no. I think there was a hockey game on that night actually, on a different station, so it didn't get much publicity at all.

The plaintiff's lawyer sat there stone-faced. He knew his case was over.

Ironically, the only lawsuit involving me that went to trial was one in which I was the plaintiff. Florida stock tout George Chelekis wrote a series of articles, published in a U.S. penny stock letter called Bull & Bear and disseminated through Market News Publishing in Vancouver, accusing me of trading against my column.

The allegation, if true, would have amounted to a serious employment breach, not to mention criminal misconduct. Sun Editor-in-Chief Graham said Gibson was acutely aware of the implications of a media outlet acting as a plaintiff in a libel action, the possibility of setting a precedent that would come back to haunt the newspaper. He also realized the allegation not only struck to the core of my integrity, but the newspaper as a whole.

He threw himself into the case, and succeeded beyond everybody's expectations. In April 1998, after a one-week trial, B.C. Supreme Court judge John Rowan ordered the defendants to pay $825,000 plus costs. At the time, it was the second-highest libel award in Canadian legal history, and more than six times the existing B.C. record. The award survived appeals to the B.C. Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada, cementing Gibson's place in the Canadian libel pantheon.

"There's nobody I had higher regard for in the defamation bar," said Bryan Baynham of Harper Grey in Vancouver, who represented Market News Publishing at trial. "As you can no doubt tell from my voice, I was shocked to hear about Barry's death. It went around the courthouse very quickly. Virtually every lawyer on the street is talking about it. It's a real loss."

The family is planning a private funeral service. An open memorial service will be held at 5 p.m. on Wednesday at the Law Courts Inn, 800 Smythe St.


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