Hilary Stewart & Rebecca on Bowen Island many years ago

When I married my Canadian Rosemary in Mexico City in 1968 we had the routine when driving our VW Beetle to listen to a local radio station that was in English. There were a lot of ads for moving companies and pest removal. My favourite was the nasty sounding Ratex.

On the hour the station would connect with American CBS and we would have news in English in which our stellar favourite was Dan Rather. I particularly remember a broadcast on October 2 1968 in which CBS went live to a reporter on the Plaza de la Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco in Mexico City. The reporter said that the army and the police were shooting and killing the students. I could distinctly hear the gun fire. Suddenly during all this there was a loud click and, “The baseball scores are as follows.”

All the other stations had music and CBS was censored for weeks.

On another occasion I remember distinctly my favourite left-wing guy on one of the on the hour broadcasts, Nicholas von Hoffman who was talking about the looming problem of over-population. This is what he said:

“If you really want to have a kid, buy a baby goat.”

Yesterday my NY Times had his obituary: this one. On YouTube I was able to find a video where he talks. It was most pleasant to listen to his voice again after all these years.

There is no record that I could find of the name of the English language radio station in Mexico City.

I photographed Dave Barrett five times. The first time was when he was a radio commentator for a local radio station. The second time I photographed him with his beloved Volvo in Grandview Park which was in his riding. The third time was when he became premier and my photos were used for political publicity. The fourth time happened when he was about to publish his autobiography. I was hired to shoot the book’s cover.

The fifth time, in fact, was my favourite. When it dawned on me that lefty (politically) Barrett was living in Victoria I decided it was time that lefty (politically) writer Ben Metcalf who lived in Shawnigan Lake should meet. At the time Mecalf drove a Cadillac. I had Metcalf meet me in Victoria in his land yacht and we picked up Barrett and had lunch at the Bengal Lounge at the Empress Hotel.

I do not recall the details or their names but next to us there was a table with two or three political columnists for the Vancouver Sun and Province. They kept staring at us wondering what was afoot.

My memories of both men is that they were extremely intelligent but most importantly shared a wonderful sense of humour. 

Early Bearing

A bug or a berry got stuck in my hair

when my head was buried in leaves

and eyes uplifted for the ripe

but recondite fruit of the raspberry bush.

The tickly, little thing slipped down

and stalled between my neck and collar.

I reached back over my shoulder

and squeezed it, expecting a crushed

spider or mosquito, where her finger

            landed to tap me for a long-

                                    ago dance in the ladies’ choice.

                                               

I squeezed to avoid a splash of blood

or berry juice on my shirt from the slap

to drive away her attention,

too well-endowed and much too soon

for her to press against me

a nubile dolt ready to burst

at the feel of her fingers on me.                         

Was it fruit, lush with the sugars of sunshine, I touched

or bug, flush with the blood and sweat of my own skin?

“Don’t stop. Just throw me out,

here,” she said in order not to be heard

being left off closer to home. She said it

like she’d jumped into bed, not the seat of a car,

and woke up to  her body beside me,

just as I woke up to hers, having squeezed

at the fatness between my fingers, and thrown it

out into the raspberry patch, where, when I looked

to see what it really was, I couldn’t find it.

Buzzed, crawled off it had, and what if it were

a pure emission of afternoon sun, a gob of Helios,

throbbing raspberry red on a raspberry wand,

and her whole body, shrunk to a plump

unseeable feeling. Red raspberry rube, too defective

a detective for this obese mystery (burst bug

or eviscerated berry), I picked through the white

kitchen colander I collected the raspberries in —

perhaps it was in there, there? — as these red-faced gods

still wreathed in leaves, watched me, saying nothing

about the incapacity of a prude like me to deal with

what I felt too fat and sweet, who believèd not that

a little divinity tapped me on the shoulder and still

drops the fruit of her finger down the back of my neck,

and at night, shocks me with the feeling of a squeezed

nipple everywhere I lie.

George McWhirter

                                                                                             

George McWhirter is a Irish-born poet. He was Vancouver Poet Laureate (2007-2009). He taught literature at UBC for many years. He has translated Mexican poet and novelist Homero Aridjis into English.

The Railway Club for me and my friends was a refuge in Vancouver for at least 20 years. We had a noon-on-Thursdays get together lunch where photographers, writers, illustrators and the occasional ecdysiasts would converse in leisure.

The group finally dissolved (all good things do) and I never returned. But recently I became curious. The club is no longer run by the children of former NDP Minister Bob Williams. Whoever has purchased the club has renovated the place.They removed the ratty carpet and and cleaned it all up. One element of the former club has not changed. Food is good, especially the soup.

One of the extras we had at the Railway Club is that we were kitty corner with the St. Regis which had a Grade–B calibre exotic dance club.

It was in one occasion when I saw a dancer that had very long hair. I persuaded her to pose for a shoot involving Randy Rampage (on bass) and Doug Bennett of Doug & the Slugs fame. She said yes and best of all I managed to have Vancouver Magazine pay her an honorarium. I have forgotten her name. During the photo session she confessed that her long hair was an extension.

In those days of competition between magazines and newspapers the photographs had to be spectacular. You may note that for this shoot I had to rent two smoke machines.

Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum.

As it was in the beginning, and now, and ever shall be, world without end.

The above was my first philosophical look into time. Before that, I suffered as a young boy that interval between Christmas Eve (practical presents) and the Epiphany (El Día de Los Reyes Magos when we children in Argentina received our toys) on January 6. That segment of time that breezes past one now, was an eternity of wait.

Closer to my maturity in high school, a boring class before the lunch recess, was another eternity and more so if the classroom (like many at St. Edward’s High School had a prominent clock somewhere in the room.

Most anybody my age (75) will tell you that time flows (the correct word if you consider Heraclitus) much more quickly and we keep telling our younger relatives, “It seems only yesterday.”

In Vancouver this specifically applies to those who may have visited Expo – 86. Was it only yesterday?

Sometime in the late 80s after I had purchased my Philippines-made, titanium Timex, I noticed a singular and most unusual quality. The watch (still at my wrist at this date) was and is completely waterproof. I never take it off.

I was in my tub and I was staring at the watch. I liked to immerse it in the water and by flicking my wrist the glass top would reflect the light of the bathroom. While doing this I noticed that the second hand stopped and began to go backwards. I have seen this more than once. I believe my Filipino Timex is special. It is a time machine. It stops time and goes back.

Recently I have discovered an revealing description of how time works. The NY Times has started a new series they call Overlooked, about women who deserved an obituary in The New York Times at the time of their death but did not get one. A very good one was one about Sylvia Plath. The writer Anemona Hartocollis wrote a further essay on the subject in which she explains that when Plath died, her most famous work The Bell Jar was virtually unknown. It was my mother's interest in Plath's Bell Jar that led me to read it.

Hartocollis writes: