There are three famous men born in Shrewsbury, Charles
Darwin, Brother Cadfael and John Bishop.
Willoughby Blew
I met up with my friend, designer (many magazines including
Vancouver Magazine and Maclean’s) and now artist Chris Dahl yesterday at a
Vietnamese soup place on Broadway and MacDonald. Dahl now lives in Qualicum
Beach. He told me how upset he gets when he comes to Vancouver to see buildings
and places he knew that are now gone.
I could have told him, since I am a lot older than he is, that thinking about stuff from the past (family, old friends, former girlfriends) is an ever constant endeavour.
Georgia Straight - September 2006 |
While I have dined a few times at Bishop’s on 4th
Avenue I recall one very important one when I took my 13 year-old granddaughter
Rebecca for dinner there. I called ahead and told them to bring the food the
table with as much ceremony as possible. This they did covering all dishes with
lovely silver covers and the unveling as if a white rabbit would be underneath.
What made the evening even more special is that our friend, animator
Marv Newland was dining there with his girlfriend. We exchanged comments on our
food across the aisle.
But there was one more event that I am sure my Rebecca will
not ever forget. We were invited by John Bishop to inspect his kitchen.
I have no idea if anybody has ever said or written this: “A
restaurant is as good as its kitchen.”
My former editor at Vancouver Magazine, and friend, Malcolm
Parry calls life experience as being twofold. You can look up at heights and we
know anybody can do that. Or you can look down and only the privileged do that.
He thus has this idea about The Privileged Position. In my view being invited
by John Bishop to inspect his kitchen is not something that is the usual for
most.
The outstanding reality about Bishop’s is that the kitchen,
while neat as a pin, is not big in the least. I can almost imagine what it must
be like in it during a busy evening at the restaurant.
For me a kitchen is something that is embedded in my memory.
All the kitchens of my past are there to be brought out again with no notice.
The first one I can remember was on Melián in Coghlan in
Buenos Aires. It was there where my father told me, “Alexander, if you do not know how to make sauces you will never be a
good cook.” I learned.
It was also in that kitchen, in a damp and cold house with no
heating that one could feel warm if the oven door of the big iron stove were
left open. My father in those cold winter nights had a frequent visitor. He was
writer Julio Cortázar. Our housekeeper, Mercedes Basaldúa would slowly whip
Nescafé with a spoon and carefully measured water drops to make what almost
resembled a cappuccino. My father would then offer Cortázar one of his Player’s
Cigarettes but Cortázar would point out he didn’t like English tobacco. Cortázar,
with a voice I have never forgotten, would send me (I was 8) to the corner
store owned by Don Pascual to buy him the Argentine Arizonas.
There were many more kitchens in my life but there is one
that I will never forget because of what happened in it. It was in Arboledas,
Estado de México. Rosemary and I arrived one day and were told my our
housekeeper that our eldest daughter (5 or 6) had opened a bottle of Carbona
upholstery cleaner under the sink and taken a swig. I put Ale in the tub and
poured cold water on her face. I took her to a doctor around the corner who
pumped her stomach and thus saved her.
That Bishops is closing soon brings for me the grief of
living in a place that if I were a migrating Canada Goose I would not recognize
from the air. When I drive around town I can instantly feel the three previous
locations of Vancouver Magazine for which I worked for so many years. The fibreglass
replicas of the lovely women on the corners of the former Georgia
Dental/Medical Building cannot in any way represent the building now there.
I cannot look at the semi-abandoned Dal Grauer Substation on
Burrard without thinking of that architect’s architect, Ned Pratt who dispatched a young man to the library to look up Mondrian. How many people in Vancouver know that the Substation in its glory days was a Mondrian?
I have fond
memories of eating at the CBC cafeteria inside the building (now hidden by
neither here nor there towers) on Hamilton Street. I can remember staring at
length the very large Shadbolt hanging from a wall.
In this city with such a poor memory who can remember having
that wonderful Easter buffet at the William Tell?
But there is one other memory about Bishops that is seared in my brain. I wrote about it here. I will reprise it by explaining that writer John Lekich had interviewed Audrey Hepburn on that special day. Knowing that it was Canada Elections on that same day I invited Lekich to Bishop's knowing that the bill might be reduced by not being able to buy booze. We sat down and I notice a couple of men with wires in their ears.. I then saw a limousine stop and a man got out. He sat down with the two men. He looked at me and said, "How are you Alex?" It was John Turner.
But there is one other memory about Bishops that is seared in my brain. I wrote about it here. I will reprise it by explaining that writer John Lekich had interviewed Audrey Hepburn on that special day. Knowing that it was Canada Elections on that same day I invited Lekich to Bishop's knowing that the bill might be reduced by not being able to buy booze. We sat down and I notice a couple of men with wires in their ears.. I then saw a limousine stop and a man got out. He sat down with the two men. He looked at me and said, "How are you Alex?" It was John Turner.
A favourite restaurant to me is like a mother, my mother,
when she was gone I regretted (and have until this day) not having told her how
much I loved her.