The Browns

I went to two high schools in Montreal in the early 1960s. The first was West Hill High School and after my first year in grade 8 they gave me the heave-ho. I was persona non grata and shortly after my expulsion I found myself living at The Boys Home of Montreal, also known as Weredale House, where I attended the new Westmount High School on St. Catherine Street for two years. I then returned to West Hill before quitting school all together about a year and a half later.

On my latter stint at West Hill I hung out with a group of mostly jocks, some of whom I had known since grade school. Some of the girls we spent time hanging out with were from the same high school, a few were Catholic, and several went to private girl’s schools (The Study, Miss Edgar’s and Miss Cramps) and lived in the toney community of Hampstead close by. Some of the guys played high school hockey or football. We would usually meet at the school cafeteria at lunch. Some of the chatter was about the latest funny thing that Johnny Carson had said the night before. After school we would often crowd into a nearby restaurant called Bellman’s where kids from the Catholic Marymount High School also hung out.

Every Friday night during the school year there was a dance at the Hampstead elementary school. They called the dance “The Hampstead Hop”. Many of us were drinking our first beers. Once in a while a fight would break out in the field next to the school. The rich private school gals had a number of house parties. After a dance or a party we would often go to Manny’s Deli on Queen Mary Road in Snowden.

Without going too far astray here, allow me to tell one little side story about one of those rich girls. Her name was Brenda and was as they used to say “stacked”. She was quite interested in a guy I knew and one summer’s night invited us over to her house in Hampstead which was vacant at the time with her parents being away for the summer. She phoned her grandmother to tell her she would be spending the night at her own house and grandma nixed that idea and told her that she would be picking her up shortly. Grandma turned up quicker than we anticipated. By this time there were just 3 of us in the house. I scrambled under the bed in the master bedroom and the other guy hid in the bathroom behind the shower curtain. Granny marched in and went straight upstairs to the bathroom. She was sitting on the throne when the other guy burst through the shower curtains and high tailed it downstairs. I can still remember the shrieking.

West Hill High School was about 3 blocks from my house. On the way to and from school I would occasionally run into other students that I didn’t hang out with but knew well enough to have a 10 minute or so conservation with. One guy lived almost across the street from me and was on the school water polo team. Another guy lived on the next block and seemed pretty sophisticated for his age. A number of years later I learned that after high school he was supposedly pimping his sister. I was disappointed to hear that as he seemed to be a pretty bright guy.

There were two other guys that I often walked to school with, brothers Dalton and John Brown.  Dalton was the older brother by about a year and he had been in my grade 8 class a few years before. They also had a younger sister who was at the same high school. Both brothers were easygoing types. John was a little huskier.

I'm at the left end of the top row and Dalton Brown is at the right end of the top row. Grade 8-1961

 

One day they asked me if I would like to come up to their cottage for the weekend. I was always game for some new adventure and took them up on their offer. I later learned that they spent almost every weekend at their cottage and couldn’t wait to get out of Montreal. I guess you could say that they loved the country life.

Friday came around and I went over to their house. Along with me there were 6 of us packed into the car (I can’t recall if they had a dog) and we wended our way through Friday rush hour traffic and over one of the bridges that crosses the St. Lawrence River. I’m not exactly sure where their cottage was located. It was about 40 miles or so from Montreal not far from towns with names like Lachute, Arundel, Weir, and Huberdeau.

I’m not sure what their old man did for a living. I do remember that he carried a mickey with him in the car and had a few nips on the way up to the cottage. The total time travelling was something like an hour and a half to 2 hours including getting off of Montreal Island. We drove down a number of dirt roads. The cottage was quite small with maybe 2 bedrooms. It had a kitchen/dining area and a screened porch which was where I slept. It did dawn on me that I wasn’t spending time with a Leave It To Beaver kind of family.

Sometime around 7:00 a.m. the next morning the two boys woke me up and handed me a 22 calibre rifle. Apparently we were going chipmunk hunting. I was only slightly familiar with a 22 rifle having taken a rifle shooting class at a camp I went to. Somehow in my still drowsy fog I managed to shoot a chipmunk. I cut off its tail and put it on my bedroom wall back home. The tail sat on display for a few months until I got to thinking how stupid it was killing something just for the sake of killing it.

I started to learn a few things about the younger brother John. Although I thought he was a great guy he was also a bit on the reckless side. He once ground up part of his leg with a chainsaw and another time he was in a car accident and yanked some of his teeth out of his mouth. I think John was about 15 at the time and didn’t have a driver’s license. That never stopped him from careening around the countryside in a borrowed pick-up truck with clouds of dust trailing the truck. There was a fine line between a thrill and panic driving with John.

The area was predominantly French. We hung around a local convenience store that had a pop machine and a juke box. I remember someone playing the Beatle’s The Hippy, Hippy Shake over and over. We danced with a few local French gals. It was at this joint that I was introduced to a gal whose family were local farmers. She was English speaking and we sort of had a bit of a thing for a few weeks. You might say that this gal was large chested. One night I was in the back seat of her brother’s car with some other folks in the front seat and decided to check out what was inside her shirt. I looked up and could see her brother eyeballing me in the rear view window. That kind of ended my exploring.

All in all, I think I spent 3 weekends up at the Brown’s cottage. I was always invited but kind of thought I might to overstaying my welcome. I thought that the dad might not have been that fussy about feeding an extra mouth and I wasn’t that likable that they might want to adopt me.

One weekend we went to a local fair. I can’t recall which town it was in. John was exceptionally good at throwing darts at balloons even if the darts were loaded. John won about 8 panda bears before the carney guys shuttered their stand until he went away. My family’s pet Scottie dog later tried to mate with the panda I brought home. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

Like any city boy, I asked a lot of questions. One of the questions I asked was if there were any fish in a nearby creek. I was told that not only was there fish but the boys had some flippers and goggles and a fishing net. I spent a few hours in that creek trying to catch trout with a net and never came close to catching one. I’m not sure if they were sharing a private joke about the city guy as they watched me from the creek bank.

I quit school a few months later and never saw the Browns again. I’m glad I got to experience those weekends and another way of life. It was a slice!

It seems like so long ago now. Close to 50 years. I hope Dalton and John and their family have had full lives. They were good people.

I Am An Atheist

 

I am an atheist. I am not an agnostic. I am an atheist. If you are interested as to why I came to believe what I do read on. If not, skip on to one of my other stories. I know this is not a topic that everyone is willing to take a look at.

Like most atheists I believe that everyone has the right to believe in whatever they want to as long as those beliefs do not cause harm to others without the same thinking. I also believe that by far most people who adhere to an organized religion do so because of how they were brought up. Whether we admit it or not, our parents have an extraordinary influence on us.

I grew up in a non-religious household in Montreal in the 1950s. Both of my parents were atheists. We never went to church and I never attended Sunday school. There wasn’t a lot of discussion about religion at the dinner table. From time to time my father would talk a bit about “pie in the sky” but that was about it. We celebrated Christmas and Easter but there was no religious connection to those days.

At an early age, I was aware that some of our neighbours went to church on Sundays and that some went to synagogue on Saturday mornings. Back then, Catholics went to Catholic Schools and Protestants, Jews, and “others” attended schools that were part of The Protestant School Board. The 50s was a conservative time and most parents didn’t want to rock the boat. Your family may not have been believers but in a de facto kind of way you identified as being a Protestant. I guess you kind of had to be something.

For the most part, people of different faiths got along. Religion was rarely discussed outside of the home. One reason for this is that it could cause a lot of unneeded trouble and even jeopardize an adult’s livelihood. There was no mistaking that one’s religion was often a large part of a child’s identity. Kids tend to hang around with those that go to the same school as them.

Back then, Protestants seemed kind of white bread in that they may or may not have been regular church attendees but you would have a tough time identifying their beliefs other than being for things like law and order. There were two kinds of Jewish people, the ones that strongly believed in their religion and the others that identified more with their heritage. Some of them never went to synagogue other than for a wedding or a bar mitzvah. Catholicism was a very powerful religion with a lot more demands than being a Protestant, the priests, the nuns, the beads, the fish on Fridays etc.

Parents may not have wished to discuss religion outside of the home but many had a clear direction that they wanted their children to follow. In a lot of homes the kids were taught that their religion was superior to others. In the sanctity of one’s home distrust of other religions could also be expressed. There were and are derogatory terms for the “others”. From time to time these thoughts could spill out from homes and occasionally kids would end up in fights. Added fuel could also be the French/English differences. All parties had their factions who had their prejudices.

I went to an elementary school called Willingdon which was part of the Protestant School Board In Montreal  Although it was not listed on our report cards we did have bible classes. We learned what the 10 commandments are. We recited the 23^rd psalm. We even sang spiritual songs like Swing Low, Sweet Charriot. We were told about the birth of Jesus, Moses in the bulrushes, the parting of the Red Sea, and the 40 loaves of bread and the 40 fish.

I never really bought into any of it. The stories were kind of interesting at that tender age but a lot of it seemed very implausible. To me Aesop’s fables made more sense. Personally, I think by the time a child is 5 years of age they have a good sense of right and wrong and adding another dimension like religion isn’t needed to cement knowing the difference.

For the first few years of grade school there was a miniature manger with the 3 wise men at Christmas. I can’t recall any kid associating Christmas with religion and Christ’s birthday. It was all about the gifts and Santa Claus.

I can’t recall talking to other kids much about religion. Mostly it was TV cartoon shows, dirty jokes, sports, and the latest fads like Davey Crockett and yo-yos. I do remember sitting on the front door steps at a Jewish girl’s house and her telling me and others that we were responsible for Jesus’s death. Me? Really?

For the most part I never really had much of a clue what others were up to when they went to church on Sunday or the synagogue on Saturday. I had a Jewish friend who disappeared after regular school to go to Hebrew school. I think the first time I ever set foot in a Catholic institution was at a school called St. Malachy’s when I was about 10 years old. It was some kind of open house kind of thing where you could shoot basketballs or play floor hockey in the gym. What left a lasting image was the sight of some boys in raggedy clothes who appeared to come from poor families.

For some reason I can remember some conservations I overheard between a few older Jewish boys. I can’t recall the details but the talk involved questioning some things that we had taken for granted. It was as if they were at a higher plain than I was used to. You might call it intellectual. Whatever it was, it left a lasting impression on me.

As mentioned in another one of my stories, I was a bit of a TV addict in the 50s. Unbeknownst to anyone else I would watch religious programs if there was nothing else on. Bishop Fulton J. Sheen was quite popular at the time. He would tell matter of fact kind of stories about people. He was always dressed in a religious robe and had very strange eyes. His stories were always parables that seemed to end up with him saying you were going to fry in hell if you didn’t smarten up.

I watched evangelicals like Billy Graham and Oral Roberts. Even as a kid I was amazed that one man could influence so many. The theme was pretty much the same all of the time. Right and wrong and the bible and a belief in god being the absolute only answer to any question.

When I was about 16 I went to some Sunday night meetings at a nearby United Church. I think the group gathering was called Hi-C and later YPU (Young People’s Union). I went purely for social reasons. Some of my friends brought me along. I didn’t believe in god but was impressed with the church. Occasionally at the meetings I would voice my disbelief. I’m pretty sure some others took this as a means to get attention. It wasn’t. I have to give the parents who oversaw the group credit for not asking me to leave immediately. I appreciated their tolerance. One of the things I also liked about the United Church was that they didn’t seem to be overly judgemental. They seemed progressive and devoid of evoking fear.

I am sure there are some who remember their younger years as being blissful and look at their twenties as a walk in the park but the reality is that almost all of us have had difficult times in our lives. In life, some of us have been luckier than others. Sometimes misfortune is something we have no control of. There are dark moments in everyone’s lives. Some days are just not that sunny. Sometimes we need to distance ourselves from the picture in front of us. An effort often needs to be made to change whatever for the better.

I’ve never sat up in the middle of the night praying. There were times when I was a kid that I was frustrated that I had no control over a number of events. I couldn’t use that excuse as an adult. In life, resilience is what kept me going. More than once things seemed a bit futile or that progress wasn’t happening fast enough. I knew that nothing was ever going to be perfect but if I could get to 80% or so that would be pretty decent.

I don’t have an exact philosophy about life. I could care less about how the earth originated. I believe we only have one life and that that there is no prize at the bottom of the cereal box called heaven. I’m grateful that I have been able to have a full life.

I have a value system. I fully appreciate nature and our ability to enjoy so many aspects of being a living human being. I also believe in a balance, that there is time to go fast and a time to go slow. We are always evolving and although the past is our history our destiny often requires adapting.

It is quite apparent that there are a number of brilliant people who believe in god. Many of these people have stuck with one religion throughout their whole lives. Most have grown up with the faith that they have. I can’t really argue with their choices. What I can argue with is the common hypocrisy.

If religion is a club or organization you belong to, why is OK to repeatedly break the rules with no intent of adhering to the rules? Something like 90% of Catholics use birth control for instance.

When one religious person with a position in his or her church spouts hate why don’t others of the same faith or a different faith speak out about this damaging vitriol?

Why do many Christians condone breaking the 10 commandments?

#1 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.  Hasn’t money and wealth become a god to many?

#2 Thou shalt not make unto thee any craven image. There are churches with all kinds of statues of saints aren’t there?

#3 Thou shalt not take the name of the lord thy god in vain. Heard any gawddamits lately?

#4 Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Know any Christian business owners that keep their businesses running on Sundays?

#5 Honour thy father and thy mother. Do all parents really deserve to be respected? Even when they have done horrific things?

#6 Thou shalt not kill. This isn’t a multiple choice thing. People have been killed for land (American Indians), for the oil they have, because they have a different religious belief. Wars have been started against people who have been of no threat. Millions have died over the centuries because of religion. Innocent women and children have died. Is this OK?

#7 Thou shalt not commit adultery. There isn’t enough room here to print all the names of famous people of faith who have committed adultery.

#8 Thou shalt not steal. Stealing isn’t just breaking into someone’s house or robbing a bank. Stealing is avoiding paying income tax. Stealing is when corporations and their officers get no jail time for stealing from their clients. Stealing is paying off politicians.

#9 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. Just think of all of the lies that have been told by people of faith, some out of pure dumbness, other times just to stir up fear and distrust.

#10 Thou shalt not covet they neighbour’s house, his wife….Society today is saturated by people who want what someone else has. Some of the very rich do not need more but want it anyway.

The world is an astounding place and life is an astounding thing. I am as curious as the next person. I don’t need all of the answers. What would I do with all the answers if I had them?

I’ve been on this planet for almost 66 years. I know some things. I know what a con is. I know that there is a reason some religious types want to scare you. I know that for some the end justifies the means. I know that religious types who ask you for money on TV are mostly living very extravagant lives. I know that there are many who choose others to do their thinking and never question anything.

I also know that when you bend all the rules that the rules no longer have much substance and can become meaningless.

Certainly nobody is perfect but it seems to me what used to be the golden rule still applies…do unto others as you would be done by.

I am not writing this to try and destroy your faith if you do have a faith.

The evidence is out there. We know the difference between right and wrong. Bending facts is simply delusional.

Atheists are not a formed group. We have almost no power in our non-beliefs. Like any other faction, some of us are a real pain in the ass. What we generally have in common is a large amount of tolerance. In some areas it would be almost impossible for us to get elected. I also know that there are a lot more of us out there than some would think.

Statistics about organized religion can be confusing. Something like less than 50% of Canadians and Americans attend a church weekly. Agnostics sit on the fence betting on both possibilities. More and more people are choosing spiritualism which often seems to be whatever you want to make up to suit yourself. You have to wonder if the two biggest religions in the world are Christianity and Islam how one god could or the other could have failed so often.

There are about 2.1 billion Christians in the world.

There are about 1.5 Islamists in the world.

There are about 1.1 non-religious, secular, agnostic, and atheists in the world.

Did you know that about 42% of the population of Vancouver, BC has no religious affiliation?

So…let me tell you what having no religion in my life has done for me.

I’m a pretty happy guy almost all of the time. I don’t stay up at night worrying about things. I am often in awe of nature. I enjoy a wide variety of things. I believe in ying and yang and balance. I don’t sweat the small stuff. I laugh a fair amount. I don’t take myself too, too seriously. I almost always try to make the best of things. I’ve had an interesting life. I’m not worried about dying and what happens to me.

In closing, I thought I would jot down a bit of a list of some famous people who believe or believed that they were only along for one ride.

Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Michelangelo Antoni, Kingsley Amis, Fred Armisen, Isaac Asimov, Francis Bacon, Kevin Bacon, Bela Bartok, Sarah Bernardt, Norman Bethune, Simone de Beauvoir, George Carlin, Bon Geldof, Billy Joel, Charlie Parker, Giuseppe Verdi, Frank Zappa, Julian Assange, Dave Barry, James Baldwin, Charles Darwin, Henrik Ibsen, Ernest Hemingway, W. Somerset Maugham, Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter, Marcel Proust, Phillip Roth, Gore Vidal, H.G. Wells, Virginia Wolf, Billy Connolly, Phyliss Diller, Sergei Eisenstein, Peter Fonda, Dave Foley, Paul Giamatti, Katherine Hepburn, John Huston, Larry King, Burt Lancaster, Fritz Lang, Charles Laughton, Bill Maher, Mike Nichols, Gene Roddenberry, Ray Romano, Andy Rooney, Sarah Silverman, Matt Stone, Clarence Darrow, Pierre Curie, Thomas Edison, Carl Sagan, Alfred Nobel, Larry David, Lance Armstrong, Davif Feherty, Pierre Berton, Johannes Brahms, James Cameron, Arthur C. Clarke, Noel Coward, Richard Dawkins, Marlene Dietrich, Stanley Donen, Jodie Foster, Ricky Gervais, Stephen Hawking, Christopher Hitchens, John Landis, Geddy Lee, Seth MacFarlane, Jawaharial Nehru, Fredrich Nietzche, Joyce Carol Oates, George Orwell, Linus Pauling, Ivan Pavlov, Brad Pitt, Daniel Ratcliffe, Ron Reagan Jr., Keanu Reeves, Carl Reiner, Rob Reiner, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Diego Rivera, Richard Rogers, Bertrand Russell, Margaret Sanger, George Santayana, Jean-Paul Sartre, George Bernard Shaw, Robert Lewis Stevenson, Dmitri Shostakovich, David Suzuki, Matt Tiabbi, Emma Thompson, Pat Tillman, Kurt Vonnegut, Roger Waters, Gene Wilder, Tom Wolfe, Steve Wozniak, Mark Zuckerberg.

If you want to see an interesting video on YouTube...Google....Jerry Dewitt on his transition from pastor to atheist. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xYLKh3cdCI   As a former Pentecostal preacher he has some interesting viewpoints on religion.

Gone Fishing

I can’t say that I have been a life-long fisherman. I can say that there was a time in my life, probably from my late twenties until my early forties, when fishing was one of my favourite things to do. There is a sound that kind of goes z-z-z-z-z, z-z-z-z-z-z-z  that is unforgettable when a salmon hits a lure and the fishing line takes off into the water as the fish speeds off trying to get free of the hook by sheer force. That sound is like a payoff at a Las Vegas slot machine except that you are not rewarded right away. You still have to get the darn thing into the boat.

My guess is that I am not alone in that there have been times in my life that I was really interested in one activity for a period of time and eventually I would let that interest wane and become involved with something else. At one time or other I was keen on sailing and tennis. I even joined sailing and tennis clubs. For a few years I was hooked on rollerblading. I used to love kayaking. It wasn’t as if I got bored. Nor did I lose complete interest. It was just time to move on to something else. Tennis might be the only one of these pastimes that I can’t see myself doing as I get older. I’m just not the old gaffer type who has learned some off speed shots to confuse two other old gaffers on the other side of the net. Shit! Why not be honest….I just can’t run like I used to!

Growing up in Montreal, Quebec, I never had many opportunities to go fishing. About the only time I can remember actually being out on a lake in a boat with a fishing rod was when I was about 19 and got together with some co-workers at the Simpson’s department store in Pointe Claire, Quebec for a day out on Lac St. Louis. We drank some beers and had a great time. I think we caught a fish or two but tossed them back as the word at the time was that the lake, which is part of the St. Lawrence River, was polluted. I remember getting sunburned really badly and getting lathered with Noxema when I got home.

A year or so later I was living in downtown Montreal at a frat house and one of the roomers was a student from British Columbia who paid for part of his schooling by working as a deckhand in BC each summer. His stories peeked my interest but I had no idea at the time that I would later be spending many hours out on the Pacific Ocean.

One summer when I was in Banff another guy and I tried fishing in the small Spray River that feeds into the Bow River right near the Banff Springs Hotel. The river was glacier fed and the water was as cold as ice. We never got a bite and were highly doubtful that there actually was any fish in the river.

It was in the late 1970s that I really got interested in salmon fishing. I was working in Vancouver at the time and every so often I would go over to Vancouver Island and rent a boat for the day. I fished near two cities that have both laid claims as being the salmon capital of the world, Port Alberni and Campbell River. I also rented a boat once at Bowser Bill’s at Bowser, BC which I have written about elsewhere on here. Another placed I rented a boat was at a place called Patterson’s at Qualicum Beach. One day I caught 2 salmon just off the shelf drop-off a few hundred yards out from the beach at Qualicum Beach.

 

Sometime around 25 years ago almost all of the old boat rental places closed down. The insurance rates skyrocketed and it was just about impossible to make a go of it. Today, they only way to go salmon fishing if you don’t own your own boat is go out on an expensive charter.

Somewhere along the line I picked up a salmon rod and a Peetz reel. Peetz reels are made of a hardwood like mahogany and have brass fittings and gears. This ain’t no plastic spinning reel. They are built to drag in big fish. The company that makes them is still in operation in Victoria, BC. The mechanism is kind of simple but very practical. Owning a Peetz reel is a bit like becoming serious about your hobby.

Peetz reel.

In 1981 we moved over to Bowen Island just off of Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver. Our next door neighbour was an outdoors kind of guy and I went salmon fishing with him several times. At first he had a 2 seater speed boat that was very awkward to fish from. Later he bought a used Bayliner. One weekend the neighbour took me and one of my salesmen up to Gibsons to do some fishing. Gibsons was where the TV series The Beachcombers was filmed. We parked the boat in the marina and walked up the ramp to a pub called Molly’s Reach that overlooked the ocean. We had a few beers and my salesman had brought along some pot. By the time the sun had disappeared we were totally wasted and we hit the sack early. I remember waking up in the middle of the night not knowing where I was and banging my head on the ceiling. It took me a few moments to realize that I was sleeping in the bow and that the ceiling was only a foot or so above me.

Salmon catch at Gibsons, BC.

Relic and Bruno Gerussi.

Molly's Reach, Gibsons, BC
 

I got married in Saskatchewan on August 1^st of 1981 and we travelled through the western US to San Francisco and up the Pacific coast on our honeymoon. We stopped off in a little town called Winchester Bay, Oregon and went out on a salmon fishing charter. We caught a couple of salmon that we brought back to Canada. As we were coming back to shore the captain spotted a marlin flaying about. These were not marlin waters and how the fish ended up in the area is a mystery. Someone gaffed the marlin and it was brought ashore. A few years ago we stopped off at Winchester Bay and we were told that the marlin had been stuffed and had been displayed for about 30 years before they decided to take it down.

Out on the salt chuck in Oregon.

Confused marlin at Winchester Bay, Oregon 1981

I used to fish for cod down on the rocks below our house on Bowen Island. You catch them with a thing called a buzz bomb which is kind of a diamond shaped piece of lead with a hook that flutters as it drops to the bottom of the ocean where the cod live. I bought a whole wack of these lures at the old Army and Navy store in downtown Vancouver where many fishermen bought their gear at the time. Cod are a pretty stinky fish when you are cleaning them.

We moved back to Vancouver from Bowen Island. I had hired a secretary from Saskatchewan and knowing that her husband was a prairie guy I thought he might be keen on doing some salmon fishing. I picked him up about 5:00 a.m. one morning and we headed off to Sewell’s boat rental in Horseshoe Bay. We both lived in Richmond, BC at the time. I got pulled over for speeding by a cop near the airport and after I explained that there really wasn’t any other cars around and that we were going fishing he just let us go without a ticket. That was about as lucky as I was going to get this day.

Fishing with Shane Kenneally.

 

We checked in at Sewell’s Marina in Horsehoe Bay and a young guy once overed the boat over before sending us on our way. We were just leaving the harbour when it dawned on me that my secretary’s husband was frightened by the ocean. He seemed to be very anxious. We were headed to Passage Island which is just off of West Vancouver and on the west side of the this little island is a shelf where I had caught salmon before. As we neared the island I suddenly realized that we didn’t have any rod holders on the boat. We had to go back to the marina to get them. I don’t know what I was thinking at the time. I wanted to get back to the marina as quickly as possible and I was also kind of concerned about the other guy’s fear of the ocean. I gunned the motor and on our way back we hit a few waves. And then it happened. My rod complete with my prized Peetz reel bounced off the back of the boat and into the water never to be seen again. What a bummer!

Horseshoe Bay.

 I went deep sea fishing in Hawaii a few times. On the first charter I caught a marlin. My wife at the time’s parents had a condo in Honolulu. I went out with my later to be ex father and law and a friend of his from Saskatchewan. There were also about 4 American tourists. Everyone else on the boat other than the crew had a few alcoholic beverages other than me and all of them got seasick when we got out to open waters. You might say that I was the last man standing. When the marlin hit the lure I was the only one capable of reeling it in. They use steel line to fish for marlin and the lure bounces along the surface of the water. The marlin kind of looks like it is dancing on the water after it strikes the lure. That big dorsal fin actually collapses when the fish is in the boat and you may notice in a lot of photos that someone is holding the dorsal fin out.

My ex father-in-law and his pal Emanuel with Maui Maui in Hawaii. They have both passed on.

My marlin in Hawaii.
 

Marlin rod off of Hawaii.

The second time I went marlin fishing was less eventful but I did catch a few Maui Mauis which are part of the dolphin family and yellow in colour. On both fishing trips I gave the fish I caught to the crew.

On the west coast of Vancouver Island there are two towns at the opposite ends of Long Beach and Pacific Rim National Park, Tofino and Ucluelet. Tofino is more touristy with a number of seaside upscale lodges. Whale watching and salmon fishing are two of the bigger draws in Tofino. Ucluelet also has some lodges and a fair sized first nation’s population. Ucluelet is also where the The Canadian Princess is moored. The boat has been made into a hotel and about a dozen or so salmon sports fishing boats  are tied up next to it. The Canadian Princess is owned by the Oak Bay Marine Group in Victoria, BC. They also own resorts at April Point on Quadra Island, Painter’s Lodge near Campbell River (John Wayne and Bing Crosby spent time at the original Painter’s Lodge), a spot on Langara Island and Pedder bay, and a resort in the Bahamas.

The Canadian Princess also has a lodge close to the boat. I stayed at the resort 3 different times. The first time was the only time I stayed on the boat and was when I was dating my future wife. The rooms are pretty small and the beds are very narrow. On that first stay we were just guests and never went fishing. The other two times I stayed at the resort.

Cormerants.

Fishing at a resort is quite expensive. Being wealthy doesn’t hurt. For some it is a once in a life experience, perhaps a special gift to dear old dad. Often guests are part of a corporate group. It is kind of a neat tax write off if one can manage it. I was part of one of the latter groups. My wife at the time, worked in the tile business (she still does) and a lot of her suppliers and contractors took part in the two day trip. Many in the group were Italian-Canadians.

Canadian Princess, Ucluelet. BC.
 

 

 

 

Catch of the day.

 

Fish on!
 

 

On one of the trips out to the Canadian Princess we all met out at the small aircraft airport near the Vancouver International Airport. I can’t remember if we flew on a Dash 6 or Dash 7. When we landed at the Tofino-Long Beach airport the pilot brought us within a few yards of the bus that was to take us to the Canadian Princess. I was impressed. The following is a general description of one of those fishing trips.

Everyone was pretty gung-ho about going fishing and after a pleasant dinner most of us hit the sack early so that we could get a good night’s sleep and be up and ready the next morning. It was still dark when we got our wake-up calls. Coffee and a light breakfast were offered and we were given bags with our lunches in them. Some of the group seemed to be in a sort of a fog as we put on our rubber pants and rubber jackets. The captain introduced himself and moments later we were headed down the channel out to the open ocean. There was something like 20 of us on each boat.

Charter captains all have their favourite fishing spots and we headed out through the rolling sea to find this captain’s special spot. Most of the group stayed inside the cabin and it didn’t take long for a few to become seasick. One of the tricks to avoid seasickness supposedly is to keep your eyes on the horizon. Just the smell of burning gas and rolling water can make some people sick. Sitting in the cabin wasn’t the best idea because you can’t see the horizon from there.

The style of fishing on the boats owned by the Canadian Princess is called mooching. Basically what this is is having your line drop off the end of your rod into the water and giving it a tug every so often. You really can’t troll on a boat with 20 fishermen. As odd as it may sound, there are times when you are actually fishing upwards. By that I mean the rolling water is sometimes higher than where you are standing.

More and more of the group started to get seasick and there was a bunch of sad looking individuals now in the cabin. About half of the group managed to get in a full day of fishing. I never throw up out on the open sea but I did this time, probably because I ate some lunch. I was glad I had the rubber clothes on because the wind blew the stuff right back on me. I might not have been able to hold my food down but I never actually felt sick. One thing that really ticked me off was a sales manager who went into a he-man act like everyone who was sick was a pansy. His bravado certainly wasn’t appreciated by those with the pasty white faces.

That night some of us went out for dinner and another sales manager from my wife’s company insisted on picking up the tab. He said something about it only being the company owner’s money which was fine by me. The next morning only about half of the group turned up for the 2^nd day of fishing. Some swore to never get on a fishing boat again. Mooching isn’t my favourite way of fishing but I still had a good time.

My interest in fishing started to wane. One summer day I took my kids up to Painter’s Lodge near Campbell River. We chartered a boat at the lodge and it cost me something like 350 bucks for 4 hours. I didn’t fish myself and left it up to the kids. They only caught one salmon. We fished near an area called Ripple Rock. You can actually see the currents going two different ways and what appears to be a ledge of water about a foot or so higher than the water next to it. Many years ago over 110 people drowned in this area and something like 120 ships were damaged or sunk. In 1958 they set off a huge dynamite explosion that could be heard in Vancouver to make the sea in the area safer.The last time I went salmon fishing was about a dozen years ago with my son who was about 12 years old at the time. We rented a boat in Campbell River and went over to Quadra Island. We had a fish finder screen on the boat and you could see the schools of salmon going by beneath the boat. Occasionally the salmon would jump out of the water nearby. We never caught a thing.

Painters Lodge, Campbell River, BC.

 

My son Dean fishing off of Quadra Island when he was 12.

Now that I am kind of retired I have had some thoughts about getting out on the ocean again. There is an old salesmen’s joke about the 3 “F’s”….If it floats, flies, or f__ks….rent it! The joke kind of makes sense. Owning a boat is very expensive.

Being the old salesman that I am I think I might have figured out how to go fishing cheaply. I am thinking about printing up a little poster and leaving them at the nearby marinas. “Retiree available as company or crew. Will keep quiet or tell stories depending on your wishes. Will supply I dozen beer of your choice or a 26 ouncer.

It might just work!

I drew this years ago.

 

Fishing...the good life!

 

 

The Yale

 

It is a Friday or Saturday night sometime between 1995 and 2005. I’m driving into Vancouver from the burbs out in Richmond, BC. It is raining out. I cross over the Granville Street Bridge, pass the Cecil Hotel and there it is with the neon sign with the saxophone on the corner of Drake and Granville, the 3 story building that dates back to the 1880s, the home of the blues in Vancouver for many years, The Yale Hotel.

I drive a little further up Granville Avenue. I can see the run down shops to my left and the second hand bookstores. Ahead of me is the movie theatre area that runs to West Georgia Street. The many neon signs are reflected on the wet pavement. I make a right turn and then another right turn and start heading in the direction I just came from. Off to one side of me I can see a line-up outside of some huge nightclub that caters to people in their twenties. The name of the nightclub escapes me. Parking is at a premium in this area on a weekend night.

I park my car underneath the Granville Street Bridge or on Pacific Boulevard. It isn’t exactly a well- lit area. I wait for a break in the traffic on Pacific Boulevard and run across the street when the chance comes along. There is a curved pedestrian walkway that leads up to Granville Street that I take. I pass the Cecil Hotel that is renowned for its strippers. As I near the front door to the Yale I peak in the front windows and can see some folks playing pool. A few people, maybe street people, are milling about the entranceway. The outdoor hotdog stand that is usually on the corner is just setting up for business.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMT03WSWiyg

Just inside the front door of The Yale is a small coat check room with a thin counter. Most people keep their coats with them if they are wearing one. An older gal behind the counter collects the cover charge. I walk up a few steps. I can see the stage at the far end of the room. It is about 7:30 p.m. and the joint is just starting to fill up. The carpet on the floor is well worn. The walls are made of brick. Off to the right is the bar seating area with about 20 stools. These are some of the choicest seats in the house. The service bar wraps around and faces the area where the two pool tables are. Behind the pool tables, on the brick wall, are some photographs of musicians who have played at The Yale in the past. There is a small area by the bar with a metal railing where the waitresses pick up their drinks.

 

Over by the pool tables is a chalk board. People write their names on the board to indicate who gets to challenge the winner of the pool game that is currently going on. You might very well see a guy in a suit and tie playing against a gal in her thirties with black hair with purple streaks. The crowd at The Yale is very eclectic. People came from a wide variety of backgrounds. The Yale has a bouncer or two, usually guys around 40 years of age or older, but there are hardly ever any fights or disturbances. It isn’t that kind of place. Drunk or not, patrons tend to mind their Ps and Qs.

The Yale drew people from all kinds of walks of life. On any given weekend night you might see older guys with pony tails who still had a bit of the 1960s in them, middle aged suburbanites or tourists out for a night on the town, the occasional pimp, businessmen in suits who hadn’t gone home to change into more casual clothes, some shuckers and jivers, old friends of the band that was playing that night, every now and then a few bikers, university kids who had had a few brewskies at the nearby Cecil Hotel as warm-up to the evening, mysterious looking guys in raincoats, gals in their forties and older who still had it going on, and younger couples on date night. To some well to do yuppie types this joint might be considered as “slumming”.

The Yale was also a great singles bar, particularly if you were getting up there in years. The first gal I went out with after splitting up with my ex was an Italian lady I met at the Yale. It was a short lived relationship that I just wasn’t ready for after 14 years of marriage. I hope her life has gone well.

Every once in a while a waitress would try and short change me. It would take me more than a few beers not to be able to count and I never had more than a few beers. In a way, I kind of found it funny that they would try that on me. My guess is I didn’t catch them every time. The smoking ban came in and the ashtrays were removed and for a year or two the staff would look the other way if you lit up a smoke. I am sure somebody along the way picked up a beer bottle with a few wet butts in it and gagged.

By around 9:00 p.m. the joint would be close to full with a line-up outside waiting to get in. Up on the stage the band for the night would be tuning up their instruments. There was a fair amount of noise in the room with people talking, glasses clinking, and some piped in blues music. A roadie or two might be seen scurrying around the stage doing last minute sound checks. The lighting guy was ready to go.

I think the stage had a curtain but I don’t remember ever seeing it. The band for the night would walk out on the stage, make sure their instruments were tuned. This was usually about 10-15 minutes before they started playing. At around 9:15 or 9:30 the music started. Usually there wasn’t any introduction. The music just began blasting. Almost always the first tune was kind of peppy to get the crowd in the mood. Those that were more confident about their dancing skills and others that couldn’t give a shit about those skills were often the first on the dance floor. If you were looking at picking someone up it was a good idea to make an early move. If you were a single guy you probably had the place pretty well scoped out way before the music started.

Rocking the joint.

So what is this thing called “rhythm and blues”? If the “blues” means sadness it hardly ever was reflected in the music played at The Yale. It was far more like party time. 

If you came of age like I did in the 1960s, you were aware of the folkie years and coffee houses and hippie joints where people like B.B. King played. Even if you knew very little about R & B you had probably heard the song “The Thrill Has Gone”. If you were a little more curious you might have listened to 33-1/3 albums by John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, or Willie Dixon. You might be familiar with Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, or Taj Mahal. You might have heard something by Bobby “Blue” Bland.

B.B. King
 

Around 1980 in Vancouver there were two local bands that created a local following and got some exposure across Canada and the US. Both bands played at a small club in Gastown called the Spinning Wheel. One of the groups was Doug And The Slugs (Doug Bennett had a unique voice and died way too young) and the other group was a band called Powder Blues headed by Tom Lavin. His brother Jack was also in the band along  with a cool saxophone player, David Woodward, who had previously been with The Downchild Blues Band. Probably more than anyone else, the Powder Blues created a wider interest in the blues in Vancouver.

Powder Blues Band early years.

If you followed the British invasion back in the 1960s at all you knew that bands like the Rolling Stones were heavily influenced by imported blues music records from the US. At one time Rod Stewart, Elton John, and Long John Baldry played in the same blues band in the UK.

It is interesting to note that many who have played The Yale over the years had settled in Vancouver after growing up and living in other places. Tom Lavin and his brother grew up in Chicago. Jim Byrnes came from the St. Louis, Missouri area. Long John Baldry was from the UK. I have to wonder if they still see Vancouver as the same city they discovered many years ago. That they decided to call Vancouver their home must have a lot to do with the friends they have met over the years. I don’t think they watch The Real Housewives of Vancouver and I don’t think they are probably totally thrilled when they see another hi-rise condo being built.

When you think about it, most of those who play R & B are in their 50s and 60s. You hardly ever see a younger guy up on the stage. I think R& B is kind of like Viagra to a lot of them. Most of these musicians like jazz but probably find it too sedate. Rock and roll kind of died a long time ago and a lot of it was kind of saccharine. Playing R & B shows that you have made a long time commitment to a music that can’t be learned in 5 minutes. It also shows that you still have some shit disturber in you. You have seen the good and the bad times and R & B was always about the good times.

Over a period of about 10 years, I must have been in The Yale 50 times. I saw Brickhouse, Russell Jackson, Widemouth Mason, Doc Fingers, Long John Baldry, Jim Byrnes, Powder Blues, Gerry Doucette, and many others. I was never ever disappointed.

 

 

The late Long John Baldry

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJy-u2OyEc4

 

Jim Byrnes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR4zDKUepCI

The dance floor has filled up. Occasionally somebody will go bouncing into a nearby table. The place is packed with people standing on the emergency exit steps and it is standing room only. If you were going to make your move it is now probably too late unless you are standing beside some good looking gal. A young lady in a long dress wanders through the place selling roses. Buying some flowers for some gal you had just met moments before might just be a tad on the cheesy side.

I used to have a routine at The Yale. I drank a maximum of 3 beers (usually Heinekens) and about an hour before I planned to leave I would order a coffee. One night I went out and got into my car for the trip home. I rounded a corner and lo and behold I was faced with a police roadblock. When it was my turn to answer some questions a women cop said to me “Have you got decals for this rig?” I thought for sure I was going to have to blow into breathalyser. It turned out that I hadn’t put the decal on my back plate. I got out of the car and started fumbling with the backing on the decal. It was raining out and the woman cop came over and gave me a rag to dry off the area where the decal was supposed to go. I lucked out that night.

The last time I was at The Yale was about 4 years ago. The billing for the night was Jim Byrnes and Bill Henderson and Chilliwack. I went with my girlfriend Linda and my son Dean. Up ahead of us in the line-up was Jack McIlhargey, the former Canuck player and coach. The Yale was a popular spot for the famous and near famous. One night a gal I danced with claimed to be professional Canadian golfer Sandra Post. It was great evening with Linda and Dean and the joint rocked. I was very glad to expose some more people to the unique place that the Yale was.

Bill Henderson and Chilliwack

Nobody ever got rich playing the Yale. Rich or not, a lot of the musicians had big hearts. A lot of fund raising was done over the years at The Yale for good causes. When I was doing a bit of research on this story I went through some videos on YouTube. One of the videos had Dave Woodward on it. He was one cool looking guy back in the day with his head bobbing when he wasn’t playing his sax. He spent 20 years with Powder Blues and 10 years before that with The Downchild Blues Band. For the past several years he has been working with senile older folks and involving them in music. The dude seems like a class act.

I highly recommend looking at Youtube videos of the great musicians who played at The Yale. It will bring back a lot of good memories if you ever happened to stumble into The Yale.

I left Vancouver for Vancouver Island several years ago. About 4 years ago we went a club in Nanaimo called The Queens. The joint reminded me a lot about The Yale. The Queens Hotel dates back to the 1890s. In all the dives and nightclubs I have been to over the years, this particular night was one of the best. Buckwheat Zydeco was the entertainment for the evening and the place shook. Our seats were just a few feet away from the band. I got to shake hands with Buckwheat (Stan Dural) as he left the stage after their last song. As he would say….”It don’t get much better then dat!”

 

Last Christmas Linda bought me guitar lessons for Christmas. I already had a guitar that my son had let me have that wasn’t being used. My guitar teacher’s name is Doug Thring. Doug is a pretty laid back type. After my first lesson Linda asked Doug if he could find an acoustic guitar at a reasonable price. He did just that. We see Doug about once a week for an hour and there are always a few laughs. That G Major is a bitch! I don’t have big expectations. I don’t think I will ever be on any stage but I will learn how to play a few tunes….”Scotch and soda, mud in your eye, baby do I feel high”?

The Yale closed on November 20^th, 2011. I have no idea when the new Yale Hotel is supposed to open. As I understand it a deal was cut where the old Yale would be updated and incorporated into a new condo complex.

I’m no R & B expert, but I actually do know how to walk my dog. I will close this story with a song recommendation for people who like the blues. Look it up on YouTube. It is the blues version of Dave Brubeck’s Take Five by Jimmy Johnson……

“Right now ladies and gents we’re going to take 5 so we can stay alive.

We might take 10 but we’ll be back again.

We might take 20 but when we come back we’re going to play a plenty.

We’re not going to take 30 because that would be kind of dirty.

So if you want to be somebody, get yourself another beer and stay here.

Don’t be a clown and go to town or be a square and walk out and go somewhere.”

One last note…I used to make a lot of homemade CD’s that had themes to them.  If I was doing something on bluesy stuff I would often run the following 3 tunes back to back.

#1 Somewhere Down The Crazy River- Robbie Robertson…”I followed the song of a jukebox coming from up the levee.”

#2 Blue Bayou-Roy Orbsison…”I feel so bad, I’ve got a worried mind…”

#3 Blues In The Night-Peggy Lee…”From Natchez to Mobile, from Memphis to St. Joe…”

 

Update:

I was in Vancouver a few days ago and took the following photo of The Yale. The restoration is way behind schedule. I had a brief look inside and it looks like the place has been gutted. A security guy told me I couldn't come in. He also told me that he thought it was a waste of time rebuilding the place and if it was up to him he would have levelled the building. The Yale was built in the 1890's. Vancouver has very few buildings that old. It is well worth restoring as far as I'm concerned.