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| Coyocán - 1962 |
The old neighbourhood of Coyoacán in Mexico City has always been a place that I remember fondly. It was in 1962 that I took this photograph with a borrowed Steinheil telephoto lens on my Pentacon-F camera.
It’s special significance is that it was here that my Rosemary and I were successfully married by a justice of the peace after two attempts elsewhere.
The argument given in those other attempts is that since Rosemary was a Canadian citizen and I was a Mexican resident, we needed permission from Gobernación a place then known for extreme bureaucracy. The third time I went to see the judge and gave him an expensive bottle of Cognac.
This third time my mother failed to come from Veracruz. My good Friend Raúl Guerrero Montemayor was one of the witnesses and the other we got as a passerby on the street.
Montemayor’s presence was crucial as it was in 1967 that I did not know what to do with my life. Montemayor taught me how to teach English using the Berlitz method and I started working at a school where on day I met my Rosemary.
This photograph is the kind of photograph that I could only take in an “exotic” to our Vancouver eyes. There is one little detail that makes me smile. I took this picture very close to Palm Sunday. Note the little piece of palm on the bottom right.