Majka Demcak & Jiten Beairsto

As I drive through my Vancouver (since 1975), I feel alienated in a city that my Rosemary, who died 9 December 2020, would not recognize. I see in this city an ultra-clean sterility as long as you don’t approach the homelessness camp that is Maine and Hastings.

With Rosemary we would go to concerts, theatres and dance.  I have curtailed most of that as I now choose to attend what in my mind are events in smaller and more intimate venues. I believe that large halls like the Queen Elizabeth, the Chan Centre and even the Orpheum are now white elephants. I warm up to events at  Pyatt Hall, the Orpheum Annex and concerts in churches like the one I attended tonight at St. Augustine on 7^th Ave. I find the basement hall in Simon Fraser University's downtown campus a manageable one where my fave The Turning Point Ensemble plays.

Marc Destrubé’s musical groups like La Modestine and the Microcosmos Quartet often play in home concerts. These are pleasant even though the music in some cases can be never ever heard before avant-garde.

With no city journalism, and next to no coverage of culture on our CBC (bridge traffic coverage is important with them), the only way I keep track of the wonderful music available here is through email subscription.

One of my fave of these is the Gallo Chamber Players who played an unusual concert last night. One of their features was to rely sometimes on the wonderful echoes a church has. They had their soprano Brittany St.Clair sing Frescobaldi’s Ricercar su Sancta María from the organ balcony in the rear with (I believe) Connor Page on the organ. In another St. Clair sang accompanied by Rebecca Rut on violin.

To me this scandalously fabulous concert is scandalous for another reason.While the Gallo Chamber Players are mentored by Early Music Vancouver in all the concerts I have attended at St. Augustine’s I have never ever seen a member (either musicians or executives) present. To top that, the concerts of this young group feature far more inventive programs as was last night’s. I had never heard of Rosa Giacinta Badalla , Leonora Duarte  or Fux!

I cannot wait for Gallo Chamber Players’s next concert Salve Regina on Saturday May 31at 7:30 at St. Augustine’s 2028 West 7^th Avenue.

Hilary

Thanks (but not from me) proliferation of the internet and social media, statistically some famous or not so famous person dies every day. And so, social media is full of ambulance chasers RIPeeing.

In 1974 my Rosemary and our two young daughters drove in our VW Beetle to San Francisco. We stayed at the grand Westin St. Francis Hotel at reduced rates as Rosemary and I were teaching English to the staff of Mexico City’s Camino Real hotels.

On our first morning we were having breakfast. Hilary who was 3 was having a loud cry. A waiter in a smoking jacket came to our table and asked, “Is there anything I can do for the young lady?” I replied, “Yes if you can provide her with some beans and tortillas.” And that was not to be.

Outside on Union Square there is a monument in honour of the triumph of Admiral of the Navy George Dewey at Manila Bay on May 1, 1998. On that date one of my ancestors, also and admiral surrendered to Dewey and asked him if he could keep some bags of rice for the family. His wish was granted and that is how many of the family jewels in our Bank of Montreal safety deposit box were saved.

It just so happens that there is another connection to Union Square in my memory.

The Conversation is a 1974 American neo-noir mystery thriller film written, produced, and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It stars Gene Hackman as a surveillance expert who faces a moral dilemma when his recordings reveal a potential murder.

To me that is Gene Hackman’s finest film and one of my most favourite films ever.

And so I sort of ambulance chase and remember in my thoughts the great actor who died (or was found dead) some days ago.

I often broach the subject that I am a decent photographer not because of some innate talent but because I have been influenced by mentors all my life.

We do know that the first mentor in history, so named because his name was Mentor, was the chap Odysseus appointed to teach his son Telemachus while he went to fight in Troy.

That does not mean that mentors have to be men. My most important mentors where my grandmother, my mother and my wife Rosemary.

In 2019 (she died 9 December 2020) when we went on a trip to Venice and Florence I went equipped with two digital cameras and two panoramic cameras (a Widelux and a Horizont, both with moving a sweeping lens). I had also recently bought a Galaxy 5 phone. My wife urged me (forcefully!) that I should use it. One immediate aspect of using it is that in art galleries like the Uffizi I found out that by placing my phone on one side of a famous painting I could get an idea of where the painting was and of human interaction with it.

Of course if you are a halfway decent photographer and I think I am one of those you understand when to use a phone and when it is detrimental as in situations with too much contrast or just too dark.

And so I place here in honour of my Rosemary some photographs (I printed all of these) that I took with the Galaxy 5 that is still going strong particularly when I photograph my cats Niño and Niña during my frequent bed rotting.

 Cliff Robertson & Neil Armstrong

Of Memory - Jorge Luís Borges

It is in my memory and when I listen to Cortázar videos I find his voice familiar. Now in this 21^st century when we are bombarded with photographs of Marilyn Monroe or pictures of Cary Grant when he was a little boy next to one before he died I wonder what makes upt what we call memory.

Jorge Luís Borges liked to use a lovely word in Spanish rememorar. It is far nicer than the ordinary word to remember – acordar. There is an idea to me of going into our mind in search of those moments that so affected our life as it was to become.

This idea of remembering may have an odd variant. What of the portrait photographer who has countless framed pictures of the family on the walls of my Kits home?

When I remember my father I mostly remember incidents when I was with him as I have few photographs of him. When I went to Argentina in 1966 to do my military service in the Argentine Navy I also had the intention of finding my father whom we (my mother and grandmother) left in 1953 for Mexico City. I found him and for about 6 months I would visit him on weekends. For reasons I cannot understand I have no memory of our conversations.

My father George Waterhouse-Hayward

And so when I think of my Rosemary I think of moments we shared and places we visited together. Her voice is beginning to fade but her face in my memory varies according to the event and the year. I remember her as when I first met her, I remember her on our bed dying.

So again I want to find out if the constant barrage of images is affecting how people remember now? That first landing on the moon is ingrained in my mind. Rosemary and I watched it on TV. As soon as the astronaut:

At 02:56 GMT on 21 July 1969, American astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the Moon. He stepped out of the Apollo 11 lunar module and onto the Moon's surface, in an area called the 'Sea of Tranquility.

As soon as he stepped, we turned of the TV and went to see Charly the film with Cliff Robertson.

In that memory, in my mind is the image of that actor. I photographed him.

Left - Gail Skrela, centre Andrea Hodge - right Lauri Stallings

Because I live alone with 2 cats I have plenty of time to do nothing. My specialty is now called bed rotting.

I have little obsessions to keep me busy so as not to think of my Rosemary who died four years ago. One of them is the personal pleasure in participating in Facebook’s so called stories. One frustration is that I do not know how to add a cutline to explain the why of the photograph posted. 

And so this time around I am going to write this blog explaining how that photograph came to be.

Although I was not known to be a fashion photographer I was approached by the Georgia Straight in October 1997 and asked if I could do something. I consulted my then friend David Boswell (he of The World’s Toughest  Milkman) and we came up with the idea of using the best room, Room 615, of the sleazy Hotel Marble Arch. The scenario involved members of Ballet BC, 3 women, Andrea Hodge, Gail Skrela and Lauri Stallings, and 2 men, MIroslaw Zydowicz and Todd Woffinden. The women would lure the two men and kill one of them with a snub-nosed .38 revolver.

In my files I found that I had kept the tear sheets (yellowed they are) from the published article.

I find it amazing that I could have done such a thing with the blessings of both Ballet BC and the Straight. Most important I used my secret weapon which was stylist Maureen Willick. I would like to point out that in one of the photographs you will note a framed photograph of a young man. The man is Vancouver poet Michael Turner whom I had photographed in that room a few months back for Quill and Quire. I had photographed him sitting on the bed with a woman behind him. The Quill and Quire editor called me to thank me for the fact that they had gotten hate mail because of my photograph and he was very happy!

Back in that century when we had good journalism, writers, illustrators & photographers could dream up ideas and quickly see them in print and sometimes as covers.

Michael Turner with Salem on the bed