Garrow Bay 1972 - 1974

Various Personal and Perhaps Historical Remembrances

Lee Baldwin

" The best friends you can have as you grow
old are those who knew you when you were young "

Garrow Bay... West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. In 1972 this was a derelict marina, home to several moored boats, five decaying wooden floats, a twisted ramp that jutted from the sea wall at a crazy angle, and abundant masses of driftwood. A dozen or so old rental rowboats, some with fixed Briggs & Stratton inboard motors on straight shafts, lay about the beach, slowly rotting. The Bay itself was a broad expanse of usually calm water, between high forested cliffs on one side and Whyte Island on the other.

I remember Garrow Bay because of all the places I lived in Canada from 1971 through 1992, my time there was the most formative and eventful. At this distance it somehow remains the most vivid.

Garrow Bay in 1972 felt like a secret, forgotten ruin, a zeitgeist. All around were fading signs of the earlier enterprise, now melting slowly back into the land. The weekend visitors and pleasure boaters had gone. Garrow Bay was a private corner of B.C.'s rain forests, scenic island views, and secluded bays. The Beach House, a private sanctuary, was perfect. If you could stand the rain.

I relocated to British Columbia in June of 1971, driving there in a clapped-out 1960 Ford station wagon with a friend from San Bernardino, California, where I'd grown up. I was not escaping the draft, although that question was put to me many times by sympathetic Canadians. I was simply looking for something new. I told the officials at the Canadian border in Blaine that my friend and I were planning to camp in Canada for a month or two. Even I believed that at the time.

After brief stints at odd jobs in Vancouver, by June of 1972 I caught up with a friend and former housemate, Sherry Levinson, who had rented a rustic old place above the beach near Horseshoe Bay. The address was 6221 Imperial Drive, West Vancouver, but everyone knew the place as Garrow Bay, or the Beach House. I took in the scene: Beach House, tearoom, and boat house, and naturally saw this as the perfect place to park.

Sherry was pregnant at the time. She would put on her bikini and lie out on a green futon, sunning her bulging belly. We kidded she looked like a beached whale. She'd probably thought of the Beach House as a quiet place to have her kid, but the spot she'd picked was just too attractive for her to be alone. Sherry at first didn't want to add another to the sizable roster of roommates, slackers, and hangers-on that occupied or frequented the Beach House, but when I walked in with several bags of fresh groceries from Stong's market in Dundarave, she relented.

The summer of 1972 was a long one, quite warm for Vancouver. There being no available bedrooms in the house, I promptly conscripted a large shipping crate that stood beneath the trees for a cozy abode. Sherry's friend Patricia had lived in it for a while. The interior dimensions were about 6 feet each way, a cubical space that neatly accommodated a large foam mattress, my Navajo blankets, a couple of antique muzzle-loading guns, and my Gibson L5 jazz guitar. I couldn't sand up inside the crate, but there was no need to... the entire floor was a bed.

This did annoy some of the local kids who had been using the shipping crate as a playhouse, but they left me alone. I had spent the day feverishly working on the small abode, and that night when I opened the door ready to fall into my comfy bed I heard a weak voice say, "Lee would you go up to Marianne's and get me some aspirin? I'm really sick." One of the locals, Fred Beech, had helped himself to my mini-chateau. Damn. Well, I got him some aspirin, some water, and found myself a place for the night on a rickety sofa in the house.

I occupied the shipping crate through the long summer. It was a quiet corner whenever I wanted to check out from the constant party activity in the house and on the beach. Occupants of the house that summer were Sherry Levinson and her sister, Shannon Dockweiler, plus Dee Davidoff, Dave Taug, Michael Slater (Blond Michael), Peggy, and one or two others. People who were around a lot included Evelyn Fordham, Donna Brocato, Monica (a Factory dancer), Fred Beech, Ruth Payne and numerous others.

The Green Canoe

I first met Logger Dave (Dave Taug) on the concrete launching ramp of the old marina. He was just beaching a long green canoe. We talked and he offered me the paddle, saying he'd just rowed out to "that island," waving vaguely at a small whitish bump on the horizon.

I shoved off and began to paddle, and was struck by the beauty, the peace, the serenity of the calm secluded bay. As I neared Bird Islet at the mouth of the bay, an island came into view, forested and distant. I looked from one to the other, finally deciding, "This is the rock, that is the island."

So I continued to paddle, heading for what I later learned was Passage Island, some 3 miles offshore. I beached the canoe and walked over the rocks and driftwood. Looking back at downtown Vancouver, thinking of the things I'd done there my first year in Canada, I decided I was ready to change things. And I'd found what I wanted to change things into.

There's another vivid memory of the green canoe. Later that summer, six of us got into it at sunset for a quiet paddle around the Bay. In the canoe was Evelyn's daughter Leslie, my daughter Kira, Dee, myself, and two others. The canoe was so loaded that we had literally one inch of freeboard at the rail's lowest point amidships. A one-inch ripple would have come into the boat.

But the water was mirror-flat, the stillness remarkable. There was no surface... looking down we saw only a perfect image of sky. The sun had gone, and Bowen Island was a dark silhouette to the west. Red arcs of cloud stretched from the horizon, matched by their unwavering reflection beneath us. A pair of loons called far across the Bay. No one said anything... we just hung quietly in the middle of it all, suspended in a vast illusion.

The Garrow Bay Special

Garrow Bay had in the 1960's been a thriving destination via land and water. A commercial marina and boat rental, a small tea room, a dock and floats, a broad concrete launching ramp, and a large boat house were the main attractions. One year, a log boom broke loose in a storm and wrecked many of the boats and floats. The most solid remnant of this earlier period was the boat house, with 'Garrow Bay' painted large across its outer wall, occupying the beach below the Beach House. Here's a more distant view of the Bay and the boat house.

A number of the old rental boats lay abandoned on the beach, mostly rotted planks and rusted metal. A few appeared intact, so Logger Dave and I made it a project to find one that would float.

Laboriously we hauled the first one down the concrete ramp and into the water, hopefully to swell up and seal itself. With a rotted piece of line we tied it to one of the remaining floats of the marina, and watched it fill slowly with water. By next morning, the boat was completely submerged, but still attached to the float. Now it was really heavy, but we managed to haul it out and dump the water, to give it another night. Next morning it was gone. Most likely it had sunk again and broken its line, drifting away underwater on the falling tide.

Oh well. There were still a few boats left, and one by one we tried them. And we were definitely clearing the beach. Finally, success! We had a boat that floated, and although there were three inches of water in it by morning, it sat atop the glassy swell of the bay in the fresh sunlight. Dave and I boarded with a bailing bucket and two sets of oars, to set out for a mellow morning row. The craft felt heavy, even when empty of water, but once it had acquired some speed, it wanted to keep that speed. It also liked to travel in a straight line... mistakes at the oars did not much affect it.

Thus was christened the Garrow Bay Special, a 12-ft. lapstrake hull with two sets of oarlocks and a mounting for a small motor amidships. I don't recall which number this one was, it may have been number 12, but it rowed and floated well and was the vehicle for many pleasure and work trips. One of our summer visitors, Texas Dave, rowed it to Horseshoe Bay for groceries. It took him over six hours, as he first had to cross Garrow Bay, row around Whyte Island (a peninsula at most tides), Whytecliffe Park, Copper Cove, and into Horseshoe Bay. The round-trip distance by water was only 2 1/2 miles, but facing wind and current, moving the heavy hull was a real chore. I don't recall anyone else trying that trip again.

Louie

Taug had a dawg. Not just any dog, Lucas was a huge bull mastiff or similar with enormous dangling black lips that drooled. Dave often called him Louie. Short-haired and tan, Louie must have weighed 150 pounds. Louie and Dave had been going around for years in Dave's Model A truck. Louie would sit up on the seat beside Dave and look out the window as they drove, drooling onto the floorboards. Whenever I rode with Dave and Louie I had to scrunch up against the door. Louie's drool was like a faucet. Left turns were the worst, as the drool line slanted toward my location with increasing G forces...

So many people were staying at the Beach House the summer of 1972 that beds were everywhere. No room was off limits, we had even set up one or two beds in the dining room. After one ridiculous night of partying, folks were just settling down for some snooze time, and Louie had crawled under the bed Dave was using in the dining room. Finally all was still. We could hear the swell of the night's last Nanaimo ferry swishing against the rocks below the house.

Suddenly, Dave's loud cry: Louie! The anguish in his voice was palpable, somewhere between a curse and a plea for mercy. From the other rooms we could hear Dee giggling, then Sherry, then Shannon.

The giggles turned to moans as the full impact of the situation wafted their way. Louie had farted. Louie could fart like the bloody blue blazes, and he had let off a silent bomb directly under Dave's bed. Groans and the sounds of wildly flapping bed covers could be heard from every corner of the house.

But Louie was probably the smartest dog I ever knew. Next door to the Beach House lived a woman named Jane, with her husband and a big black Lab named Lot. Lot was a temperamental dog, and Jane sometimes had trouble controlling him. Lot would get into it with any dog he saw.

One warm afternoon I was loafing on a log far down the beach from the house. Jane was sunning a few hundred feet from where I sat, and she'd had brought Lot down. Just as I noticed this, I caught a movement from the path beside the Beach House. Louie. He had spotted Lot and was starting down toward the beach at a fast trot. His body language was purposeful. I sat up quick. No one wanted to see those dogs get together, it would be a mess.

Frantically I yelled, Louie as loud as I could. From a distance of at least 200 yards, Louie heard me and stopped in his tracks, halfway down the path. I yelled his name again and gestured, shouting Louie go back. Louie paused to consider. I shouted once more, Go back to the house. For a long moment nothing happened. Then that dog just dropped his head, turned back, and went to lie down on the porch. I could see him watching the beach attentively, but he never made another move to leave the porch. Damn smart, obedient dog.

Hanging out with Louie showed me a few things, including that it is not only humans that have a spiritual presence. And although I'm not a big fan of dogdom in general, occasionally I encounter one that forms a lasting impression. It's the same with people, too.

I bumped into Dave in Burnaby around 1983 and asked about Louie. Dave said he was guarding a health food store in Philadelphia...

Dee

Anyone visiting Garrow Bay in those years would remember Dee. She called herself Dee Davis but her last name was really Davidoff. Dee was a genial combination of earth mother, spiritual guru, visionary, world traveller, and just plain fun. She could trip her way into any conversation and see the cosmic dimension of just about anything. She was ready for liftoff from any topic. When I met her in 1971 she was reading the Urantia Book. A brief synopsis of the book provides a real clue to who Dee was.

The Urantia Book was authored by celestial beings as a special revelation to people on the planet Urantia, better known to most of us as Earth.

The book's message is that all human beings are one family, the sons and daughters of the Universal Father. It instructs on the genesis, history, and destiny of mankind and on our relationship with God. It also presents a unique and compelling portrayal of the life and teachings of Jesus, opening new vistas of time and eternity, and reveals new concepts of Man's search for the Universal Father in our friendly and carefully administered universe.

For her accommodation at the Beach House in 1972, Dee had selected the basement. There was no light in the area that she preferred, so she got Dave Taug to cut a 4 ft. X 6 ft. hole in the wall that faced the bay. Minor miracle: the house didn't fall over. No need for a screen or a window, as the weather Dee was planning for would be warm and bug-free.

Dee and Sherry, along with friends Patricia and Donna, had walked across half of India during 1970 - 71. Dee's travels were extensive... she had trekked all over the Middle East, Afghanistan, Nepal, and Tibet, although it's hard to reckon how she survived any time at high altitude with the abuse she'd laid on her lungs. A heavy smoker, Dee had a persistent cough she referred to as walking pneumonia, but most of us knew better.

Anytime the conversation turned to world destinations, Dee could ask, 'Did you see this, did you see that?' and it would become clear that her explorations were usually deeper and more thorough.

People would befriend Dee wherever she went, language barriers were no problem for her because she had that smile, those clear brown eyes, and that radiant trust. She told me one story of living in Fiji, where the natives honored her by building her a hut so she could live in their village. There were cockroaches in the fancy hotels, but somehow there were none in the Fijian areas.

Dee, Sherry, Donna, and Patricia maintained a strong group identity. They agreed to "hold thoughts" in order to manifest material things. After they left Garrow Bay for a large house in Delta, Dee displayed a collage of photos cut from magazines and pasted on paperboard, a piece they had created while in the Beach House. Dee explained how their collective imagination had manifested a physical reality and got them the new house. Sherry tells me the people at the rental agency always laughed when they called to check on available leads that fit their vision. Laughter or no, they got what they wanted.

Maurice Levy, who lived nearby on Wellington St., became interested in Dee's travels and observations, and recorded a number of interviews with her. I don't know what Maurice had planned, or what became of those tapes. They would sure be interesting today.

Sherry
- or -
Unseen Strands of Cause and Effect

I became friends with Sherry Levinson, and thereby found my way to the Beach House, through a topless joint on Vancouver's Davie Street.

Sue, a friend in Kitsilano, got a job in mid-1971 dancing at The Factory. I went down one night for a beer, and concluded she was likely the worst dancer they'd ever hired. A few others agreed with this assessment. She would scowl at the men in the audience while repeating the same gestures and footwork. Another Factory dancer, Patty, was invited to a party and asked Sue and I to come. After all, I had the wheels. For about an hour we cruised up and down Southeast Marine Drive in Vancouver, looking for 1257 on a house number. No luck. Somehow we decided that maybe the party was in West Vancouver, and as soon as we crossed the Lion's Gate bridge onto the north shore, our luck improved.

The large two-story house at 1257 Marine Drive was home to four quite amazing women who had just trekked across half of India... Sherry, Patricia, Dee, and Donna. Five minutes after introductions at this place I was offered a hit of acid. Someone reached into a ceiling light fixture and pulled out a sheet of windowpane about four inches square. I watched in fascination as a thin sliver was cut from one edge of this sheet, then divided into a dozen small rectangles. I ingested one, and the evening gradually morphed into further levels of interest, color, and complexity. Wheee.

Sherry and Dee worked at The Factory, but they were management, not dancers. Sherry, as I came to learn, is one of the most easy-going and generous people you'll find anywhere. I never heard her raise her voice, she always made her point softly and with dignity. She is a great believer in fate, the symmetry and friendliness of the universe. She and her friends worked together to "hold a space" to achieve their ends and better their situation. I've always been impressed with people who exhibit great trust and faith...

Later that summer I wound up living for a time at 1257 Marine, thanks to the generosity of Sherry and Dee, and later those two, plus Tom Loretta, Dee's cat Einstein, and I, moved to a house at 2558 Marine in Dundarave. It was months after that, following a dismal winter working in Vancouver, that I caught up with Sherry in Garrow Bay.

It always amazes me the number of fragile connections through which I made my way to Garrow Bay, and to my work with glass... without the Beach House, there might have been no glass career. If I hadn't known Sherry, I wouldn't have found the Beach House. If I hadn't known Sue when she got her Factory gig, I would not have known Sherry and Dee. If I hadn't gone to Canada... Hell, *you* know what I'm trying to say.

The Salmon Derby, 1972

Every Fall, the Vancouver Sun newspaper sponsored a weekend fish-binge known as the Salmon Derby. In 1972 there was some grand prize for the biggest salmon caught, maybe $25,000 that year.

At the Beach House, there was much partying the night before. The Salmon Derby partying was mostly indistinguishable from the usual drinking, smoking, and carousing. Our current favorite music was Paul Horn's Inside album, flute and voice recorded inside India's Taj Mahal. We played this album constantly. One day I kept track, it may have been the day before the Salmon Derby, and the album repeated for nineteen hours on the Beach House stereo. Another album that played nonstop was It's a Beautiful Day

Logger Dave and I were sitting on the dock about one in the morning. It had grown too quiet for Dave's liking, so he walked up to the house, switched on the stereo, and rejoined me on the dock carrying a lit joint. The sound of Paul Horn's flute was languid, drifting from the open windows and settling on the quiet bay like a fog. After a few minutes we saw Blond Michael hurry from bed to turn it off, and the night was again still. Laughing, Dave passed the roach, which was dead. I shredded it and threw it in the water.

Anyway it was only natural for a bunch of stoned hippies to try for the prize. After all, twenty-five grand would support everyone at the Beach House for about three years. So sometime around dawn, six of us piled into the Garrow Bay Special. Mike Noble was so hung over that Logger Dave had to carry him to the boat, and off we went. First we had to row into Whytecliffe Marina to get our entry form, which cost a dollar. I remember the current song, 'Green Onions,' blasting over the water from a moored yacht. Only one of us, Ruth Payne, had so much as a buck on them (who the Hell shops from a rowboat, anyway?), so we settled for one Official Entry Form in the entire boat. After all, we reasoned, whoever caught the winning fish could simply hand it to the person holding the entry form.

No sooner had we re-assembled ourselves into the boat and rowed out into Howe sound, bouncing on the wakes of the many pleasure boats jostling for space, than Jim Miller came along in an aluminum outboard. Ruth hopped into his boat and they took off, not to be seen again for many days. The Official Entry Form went with them, so the rest of us were officially out of the contest. Later Ruth and Jim became an item, and eventually married. None of the hung-over occupants of the Garrow Bay Special caught a fish, but we did smoke a lot of blond Lebanese, and finally made it back to the beach around noon.

Mike Noble was so drunk and so hung over that he spent nearly four hours trying to bait his hook. His patience was remarkable. Or perhaps he had lost all track of time. He was still trying to bait it when the keel scraped the launching ramp and the rest of us got out. We tied a line to a chunk of broken concrete and left him there in the Garrow Bay Special, baiting his hook.

Who was in the boat that day? I think it was Blond Michael and Julie, Logger Dave, Ruth Payne, Mike Noble, and me. Or maybe it was Marilyn Beech instead of Logger Dave. I know Blond Michael and Julie were there, for at one point Julie stood up and took off her clothes, to change into something cooler as the day warmed. As she stood on the seat right in front of me in the stern I watched in amazement as a gob of whitish fluid ran down the inside of her thigh. How charming.

Fred's New Job

Fred Beech landed a job on the tugs. Late one night I drove him down to the Vancouver docks to meet his first boat, I think it was the Johnstone Straight. I was surprised at how large the tugboat was, at least 120 feet. Their gig was to meet a log boom at a mill up the coast, and lug it back to Vancouver.

One sunny afternoon about three weeks later, Fred called the Beach House to announce he would soon be passing by in the tug. For some stoned and irrational reason, someone, possibly Dee, decided we should go meet him, so three of us jumped in the green canoe. Dee handed us a small stash of weed and some papers in a plastic bag, and off we went. As we hit the water, I saw the tug just passing Whyte Island, moving slowly with the mass of the log boom behind. We rowed like mad. After about half an hour, we caught the tug, which had since traversed the mouth of the bay. From a distance we could see Fred walking up and down the deck, watching us. His body language expressed concern. About 3/4 mile past Bird Islet, we pulled up alongside the tug. The channel slop was bouncing us several feet up and down. First we'd be at Fred's level, then well below the tug's rail. Someone handed him the package. Fred said, "Gee, guys, this is really dangerous," which was our first clue of the sort. We turned and headed back. I was paddling like stink in the stern, the other two guys were collapsed over their paddles. When I remarked that there was the "little matter of the log boom following the tug," they both sat up quick and began to paddle with gusto.

When we got back I put away the canoe and went to the basement to play with glass. It was such a beautiful day. The sunlight glinting off the water, warm breezes blowing through the open basement windows, puffy white clouds rising over Bowen Island to the west. I went to my shipping crate and took a nap.

Goodbye, Garrow Bay Special

We used the Garrow Bay Special through the summer. One day Blond Michael (or Surfer Michael), one of the hangers-on, took the boat on a trip. He had borrowed a small outboard motor and set out to a beach on Gambier Island, some 11 miles distant, where he'd seen a fibreglass skiff abandoned on a beach. With him were two people, one being Sherry's 14-year-old sister, Shannon. It was nearly midnight when they all returned to Garrow Bay, motoring up to the dock in the salvaged boat. Sherry and a few others went down to the dock to give Michael shit for the stunt, mostly for taking Shannon. For half the day we'd speculated that the outboard motor, for which the Garrow Bay Special was not designed, could have ripped the transom off. The boat would have sunk immediately.

The Garrow Bay Special was nowhere in sight! Michael had left it on the Gambier Island beach and motored off in the fiberglass boat. He made no apology for leaving the Garrow Bay Special behind, and he'd made no attempt to tow it back. He said towing the boat was too hard, but in reality he hadn't the foresight to bring a towline. Of course, the new boat was "his" and the rest of us were out of luck. He had traded a really classy hand-built wood boat that belonged to everyone for a shapeless, unpainted, undistinguished lump of plastic. And that's how the Garrow Bay Special was lost.

Sunday on The Promiscuity

Promiscuity is the name of a boat, a sloop or a schooner, about 60 feet overall. Don't remember who owned her, maybe his name is Russell. I think Promiscuity tied up in Coal Harbor. Anyway she pulled into Garrow Bay one fine Sunday afternoon and dropped anchor. From the house we could see several people boarding a skiff, which soon scraped aground on the launching ramp. Two guys got out, one of them asked if Fred Beech was around. Two women got out wearing only bikini bottoms. Bare-breasted and tattooed, they staggered drunkenly about the beach, gave themselves a tour of the house. One of them walked into the boathouse and was soon followed by some guy, don't know who it was. Presently there emerged from the upper floor a series of breathless, insane animal howls. Several families that had brought their kids down for an afternoon on the beach quickly departed the scene. One of the women was named Candy, and I think another was named Dale, a West Van friend of Marilyn's. Both were quite loopy. At least at the time. Or perhaps it was a permanent condition.

Several of us were invited on a cruise up Howe Sound. There were probably 15 people on board. The day was warm, the blue water sparkled in the sunlight, and many boats large and small zipped about among the islands. We progressed up the sound under power, everyone was too stoned to hoist the sails. Of course the women got down in the altogether and oiled each other up to lie on the warm deck. This made a nice spectacle from the helm in the cabin amidships.

The guys all took turns at the wheel, passing joints and beers in the mellow afternoon. We made it as far as Porteau Bay and headed back to Garrow Bay. I'd wound up at the con. I wasn't thinking much about anything as I watched Whyte Island ease past close on our port side. The Island was packed with people, most of them watching us glide by at about six knots.

Both I and the boat's owner must have noticed the same thing at the same time: we were remarkably close to the point where the huge rock that was Whyte Island disappeared beneath the water. I looked at the slope of that rock, and started edging the boat away into deeper water. When Russell came to talk to me about it, he was remarkably cool, although clearly upset. He said I probably knew those waters better than he did but there was a good chance we could have run aground. It then came back to me that sailboats have deep keels, don't they? This painted an instant nightmare of the boat dispensing a dozen or more stoned partyers into the waves while sinking within a few feet of land, or in this case, a big rock. I mumbled something to the effect that I knew we were in good shape, sorry to worry him needlessly, but my scrotum had cinched up real tight and stayed that way until we were safely in the middle of Garrow Bay. Whew.

Pernod Party

Several people who frequented the Beach House actually lived right up the street, renters in Marianne Dolan's house while she was in Ireland working on a film, possibly Robert Altman's Images. Ruth Payne, Fred Beech, Marilyn Beech, and Mike Noble lived there.

I walked in to see what was up one afternoon and found Dave Taug there too. Someone with highly-refined tastes suggested Pernod, Vishnu knows why. So Dave, Mike, and I hopped in Dave's Model A truck and headed off to the Government Liquor Store in Park Royal. That truck was such fun... it rattled and shook, belched smoke on occasion, and through a hole in the floorboards you could see the blur of pavement rushing underneath.

We got a gallon of cheap red wine, a bottle of Pernod, and a dozen beer. Or two dozen. On the way back we sampled the wine, hoping we were inconspicuous as we hoisted the heavy glass bottle in the jiggling cab of the old truck. When we got back to their house, Marilyn had dressed herself up as a French waitress, white blouse and long sheath skirt, and had set the table cafe style.

We started taking shots of Pernod mixed with water. After the first few shots all around, we were too uncoordinated to mix the water, so just drank it straight. Everyone had to make a toast before they drank their shot, and the toasts soon became as long-winded as they were vague. Mike began ranting on about working for Time-Life in London. Marilyn gave a lecture on the relative virtues of ouzo. I talked about jazz guitar chording. Marilyn took off her long skirt and turned up the stereo, announcing she was going to marry all three of us. Dave turned a polite green shade and made a run for the door. We could hear him making car sounds as he stumbled away down Wellington. Buick, Buick, Buick...

When I made my way blearily downhill toward the Beach House a while later I passed colorful splats of vomit in the weeds and shrubbery. They made a kind of trail along the roadside. For me it was a two-day hangover, and my last encounter with Pernod. Who needs that shit anyway?

The entire party took about 55 minutes. Long after that, we had the habit of asking each other, You up for a shot of Pernod?

The Black Bedroom

In September, I bought a car. I hadn't owned a car since junking the '60 Ford wagon I'd driven from California. This was another Ford, a '59 sedan that belonged to Sherry's friend Patricia and her boyfriend Stan. I paid them $100 for it. It was worth every single penny.

I drove the car to California to see family and friends. What a saga. First a hitch-hiker I picked up on the way south dropped a butt and caught the upholstery on fire. Later while driving daughter Kira to the beach near San Diego, the engine seized up, and forward progress ground to a halt. I junked the Ford and found another car, another beater I should say, and drove it to San Francisco, staying there with friends Karen and Wilson Fields at their place on Leavenworth. The 'new' car had become rather ill driving up the Cajon Pass (loaded down with two hitchhikers and their packs), and I didn't think it would make it to Canada. So I gave the car to Wilson and flew home. Later I began receiving packets of parking tickets in the mail, two and three at a go. Wilson loved the car. He could park it anywhere and ignore the parking tickets. Karen was nice enough to write me a letter and ask "...if Wilson could run up parking tickets with my car." I politely said no way, and the mailings stopped.

That was a two-car, one-planeride, eight-parking-ticket, come-home-broke epic trip...

When I returned in mid-October, I found the Beach House abandoned, dark and cold. The electricity was off, the furnace had shut down. The interior reeked of cat shit, everything was somewhat trashed. Closet doors and kitchen cupboards stood open, the floors overflowed with debris. Sherry Levinson had given birth to her daughter Shekina. She and Dee Davidoff, Sherry's sister Shannon, Dave Taug, Peggy, Blond Surfer Michael, and the 1972 summer crowd had moved out, leaving me the sole resident in the house.

Alone, that is, except for the abandoned pets. There were about six cats and one or two dogs. None had been fed for at least a week, and it was a real challenge keeping them out of the house. Every time I opened an outside door, there was this thundering charge of 7 or 8 hungry animals galloping full-tilt. I made the trip on foot down to the grocery in Horseshoe Bay to find food for this herd. One by one I got rid of them, finding homes, dropping one or two off at the pound, calling the SPCA. The most interesting was Dee's cat, Einstein. We called him Einstein because his tongue always hung out, imparting a rather dopey expression. Einstein would crap anywhere, and the crap that came out of that particular mangy animal was the sickest, sloppiest substance on record. One day I was playing my guitar when Einstein walked in, hopped into my open briefcase, squatted and emitted a loud wet splat and departed. GAWD! WTF, you might ask, was a bearded hippie doing with a briefcase?

I had only been away from the Beach House a couple of weeks, but the place was different. Most of my stuff I'd left in the shipping crate, some in the basement. My guitar I'd entrusted with a friend. I started cleaning up after the long party, and discovered for the first time how it felt to be alone at Garrow Bay. For almost two weeks I saw no one. The days were still long but growing shorter, the sun tracked lower in the sky, and the color of the light had changed, lambent, golden. And it was quiet. The calls of seagulls and the occasional loon had taken on a wistful, forlorn empty sound, echoing from the high forested cliffs that edged the Bay. It was a world about to go to sleep. I was enveloped by this enormous silence, and I knew that I was happy.

But practical matters prevailed: where to live? Somehow I contacted the landlord, who said no one had rented the place, so I could stay. After one or two calls to some of the summer crowd, I had three roommates: Marilyn Beech, Mike Noble, and Fred Beech. I lined up the rental with Ed Walmsley who owned the house, and we were set for the winter: $175 a month plus heating oil wasn't bad for a cool place overlooking a private beach.

I rebuilt the redwood table for the dining room, its top was a pattern of dark cigarette burns. We harvested a couple of four-foot plants that were growing in the basement, and the four of us continued the cleaning job in a mellow state. We got some paint and went through living room, dining room, and kitchen. I found a pair of tall mullion windows, and framed one with a redwood plank. This became a light fixture that hung above the dining room redwood table.

Four people was a lighter load for the place than the dozen or so who'd lived there through the summer, so things went smoothly. And I got dibs on the basement workshop.

I also got the best bedroom, the black bedroom. Don't recall if it was black already, or if I painted it black. But I built a driftwood bed frame that placed the bed four feet off the floor, leaving lots of room for storage and cobwebs underneath. My thick foamy from the shipping crate went atop the frame, a heavy greenish fish net hung across the ceiling for atmosphere. I put up some shelves, hung my antique guns and Navajo blankets on the walls. My guitar amp fit neatly beneath the bed. I'd sit on the bed playing blues, looking out the window, up the slope to the shipping crate, my old home...

I framed in the other mullion window, put lights in it, and hung it from the bedroom ceiling. With blue filter gel inside, it cast a subdued glow over everything. My guitar strings picked up blue highlights, reminding me of a jazz club, a perfect atmosphere for practice.

By December of 1972 the house had settled into a comfortable rhythm: informal parties and jam sessions with local musicians, late nights with cribbage, backgammon, wine and dope, 401 pancakes for breakfast, a pokey check every two weeks, sleep until the sun came over the cliffs around eleven a.m. Did I say pokey chick? Well, once in a while...

Except I always woke up around four a. m. to see the sunrise. Except it was winter and the light came up around eight. Except I woke up at four a.m. anyway. I'd go to the basement in a heavy sweater and fool around with glass, sipping on a cup of coffee. When feet sounded on the floor above it would be light. I'd go upstairs and chat with whoever was awake, have breakfast, then go back to bed until afternoon. I got two mornings that way, and I loved mornings.

Whatever time of day or night, there was usually company in the Beach House. Everyone had a different sleep schedule, but somehow we managed to sleep through each other's comings and goings. There were spontaneous arrivals of friends and acquaintances from Horseshoe Bay, West Van, and beyond, people looking for a place to hang for the day, just checking in on the Beach House scene.

Diving Board

One quiet November morning in 1972 Fred and I were having coffee when we saw an unusual shape floating in the water that lapped at the launching ramp. Nearly submerged, it was very long and narrow. We went to look. This was the biggest board I'd ever seen in the wild, at least eighteen inches across. Fred found an eye ring and hammered it into the wood, and we tied it up. Later when the tide went out we measured it... it was 58 feet long, six inches thick, probably douglas fir or similar.

Such a singular board obviously called for a project. The plank appeared long enough to reach the first float from the seawall, so we decided it would make a decent ramp. Four of us managed to move the heavy thing up the beach and pivot it over the seawall. Like ancient Egyptians we edged it outward over the concrete lip. It wanted to tip into the water, so we maneuvered a huge silver-gray tree stump to rest on the landward end. The stump wouldn't quite sit still... it would probably maybe likely hold the big board down, but it jiggled if anyone walked out very far. It SEEMED like it would stay put...

We were all pooped so just sat and looked at it. Someone said it was OK as it was. We could walk 30 feet out over the water, slowly, eyeballing the jiggly stump to make sure it wasn't about to fall over. Everyone was satisfied with that, so it was christened a diving board instead of a ramp. It wouldn't reach the first float anyway.

The plank actually saw action as a diving board... Months later in January 1973 Robbie McArthur and Billy Lamb tried it. They may have been inspired by the English Bay New Years Day Polar Bear Swim. Maybe they were sloshing with anti-freeze, or perhaps there was a bet on. They in swimming shorts and some well-wishers in heavy parkas stood around the diving board, discussing matters. I watched from my usual perch at the dining room table with a cup of something hot at my elbow. I don't remember who went first, but one then the other went off the board. Their shrieks of agony echoed from the trees that lined the Bay.

Later Robbie suggested using the small bait shack as a sauna, adding an airtight heater, but nothing ever came of it.

Tequila Party

There is nothing intrinsically remarkable about the tequila party. It was just one of the things that happened at the Beach House that gave the place its character. Garrow Bay was definitely a locus of convergence.

One cold cold February day in 1973, I was sitting at the long redwood table in the dining room, 'wearing out the glass' as I thought of it, gazing out the big windows at the Bay, Howe Sound, and the islands. I heard a bike pull to a stop on the road, and presently a guy we knew as West End Dave appeared at the door with a large sack. I think he had a friend with him, and I think Logger Dave (Dave Taug) was there too. What West End Dave pulled from the sack was a bottle of tequila and a dozen limes. Glad cries of approval echoed in the dining room, and we were off: salty wrists, limes, and tequila shooters. How do you say shitfaced? In spite of the cold, Logger Dave and I flung the windows open and wound up sitting on the window sill, dangling our feet outside, just cracking up. I still remember his laughing face. We were kings that day.

We got to the end of the bottle, and stared at the empty vessel disconsolately. There was a silence. Someone suggested a game of crib. There was a knock at the door, and another West End friend stood there, I don't recall who it was.

What I do remember was that he had brought a bottle of tequila and a dozen lemons. What I don't recall is anything after that at all.

Snow

It snowed for a few days that winter, and the path leading from the house to the beach became a toboggan run for anyone who would dare it.

There was one rather serious hazard at the bottom, aside from going stright down the launching ramp and into the frigid water: a sinkhole had developed that might have been a broken septic tank. It had opened up during a stretch of hard rain in the Fall, and although the covering of soft fresh snow kept the stench down somewhat, it was still an open trench.

We were all taking our first runs on the toboggan, and it was Marilyn's turn. She made a grand announcement from the top that hers would be the best run of the day. She took off. The trip down was marked by the usual feminine squeals, which as she neared the bottom became yelps of real fright tinged with dread anticipation. Try as she might, she couldn't avoid the trench. She succeeded in turning the toboggan away from the hole, but by that time it and she had parted company. I still have a vision of Marilyn sliding on her butt backward, down, and smack into the hole, where she vanished from view.

Her yelps became a string of loud curses any stevedore would envy. She emerged from the hole, swearing, her pants smeared with a brownish something we didn't want to be around. She headed for the house and a hot bath. Damn, no photo! But here's a shot of someone making a night run, holding a flashlight for the time exposure.

Marilyn was right, though. Hers was the best run of the day.

401 Pancakes

'401' at the Beach House in 1973 referred to a pancake recipe. It was not named after the Trans-Canada Highway, but rather the page of the cookbook where I had first found it. These were wonderful scratch-made pancakes, topped with brown sugar and lemon juice. I would usually make about a quart of batter, four wet ingredients and four dry, and cook cakes on the old gas stove until those present groaned 'no more, please no more.'

Here, Mike Noble settles into a morning read after a plate of 401's.

(Wo-oh-oh) Listen to The Music

What was playing at the Beach House in those times? Carol King of course, with her hit Tapestry album, So Far Away captured a mood. Paul Horn's Inside and La Flamme's It's a Beautiful Day. The Doobie Brothers' Listen to the Music. Paul Simon's Kodachrome.

Robbie McArthur loaned the house a stack of his records. Les McAnn's Swiss Movement was played a lot, Roberta Flack's First Take album, which I think featured The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick, and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon saw a lot of play. Green Onions, The Allman Brothers, Black Sabbath, The Eagles, ELP, Simon and Garfunkel, Steely Dan...

Elvis and John Lennon were still alive. Cat Stevens was still Cat Stevens and recorded Morning Has Broken, while Elton John came out with Rocket Man. And of course The Moody Blues' Nights in White Satin. (I always thought it was 'Knights.' Oh well, I must be queer.)

One day Robbie came to the house and "liberated" a stack of his records. Next day I walked into his place (Slim and Betty's house) and liberated some of them back. Sorry man, I would have asked but you weren't around...

Glass

The Beach House in 1972 was already home to some 60 years of memories, abandoned clothes, furniture, and rusting tools. Prowling through dusty relics in the basement, I came upon piles of window glass left from someone's forgotten project, and a rusted coffee can full of glass cutters. I tried my hand with the glass cutters, quickly creating a wide array of splintered, fractured, broken bits all over the plank workbench and dirt floor. Later I heard from someone that the cutter wheels need to be oiled, and things went much better. It was fun making shapes of the glass but I had no particular direction with it.

At a party in Vancouver, I met a fellow who had made a simple lamp. He'd used clear glass and glass paint, and fastened the pieces together with asphalt tile caulk. From the hardware store in Ambleside I got the materials, and tried a few small projects with modest success. Here's a forgotten piece that was glued together. Finally I went to town (Vancouver) and looked up a stained glass supply shop. There I bought some of the proper materials... new cutters, lead came, actual stained glass stock, and a solder gun. I also met Ray Dodge and Brigid Clarke; Brigid now owns Tiffany Glass Centre in Richmond, B.C.

After working with the authentic materials, it was clear that this was a better approach than the caulked and painted method, and I began to achieve some worthwhile results. People from the neighborhood started asking me to make lamps for their homes, and something was underway. Here's the first, second, and third lamps, all concocted in the Beach House basement...

Arts Grant

In retrospect, I got a lot out of UIC, or as Bob Ede once put it, "Unemployment Enjoyment." When I arrived in Garrow Bay I was staring at about a year's worth of pokey checks, whee, and after I got serious with glass, began to think of it as my own private funding, an arts grant. All I had to do was fill out a form every two weeks which some hardworking government employee kindly mailed to the Beach House, check the proper boxes and wait. Thank you, British Columbia.

Letter Home

18 Jan, 1973

Dear Dad;

This is one of those mornings when the Bay simply makes you stop and look... it's about 8 a.m., the sun is spreading a diffuse glow over the islands, the sky is woven with long pale streamers of cloud.

The Squamish wind is blowing hard down the channel, raising whitecaps. A large boat ploughs into the wind with effort, pitching heavily into the waves and throwing sheets of spray over the wheelhouse...

Clouds of grebes and ducks wheel inches above the calmer water inside the Bay, another very touching lesson from the Master Artist.

The Fire Pit

Fred and I adopted a minimal project of cleaning up the beach below the house. Our task was simply to burn all the refuse, scrap wood and driftwood, and rake the clean ash around the beach.

One night we had a giant bonfire going beside the sea wall. It had rained so much that we didn't worry about the showers of sparks that flew up every time we tossed more wood on the fire, or when a wet chunk popped with gusto.

As usual we were conducting a wide-ranging discussion, touching on many topics vital to humankind as we passed a joint back and forth and washed it down with warm beer. The fire seemed to be in on the discussion too. Every so often, there would be a savage pop from the flames to punctuate our more cogent remarks, columns of sparks and embers climbing into the dark night.

Fred returned to one of his usual themes, asking me why I didn't take my guitar downtown and get a gig playing somewhere. We'd had many discussions about employment, based on the premise that "There has to be a $1000 - a - month job within walking distance of Garrow Bay."

I replied as always that I'd already had music gigs in Vancouver, that I wasn't interested, wasn't in practice, then uttered the grand pronouncement that, "There's no doubt about it, the music scene in Vancouver is absolutely fucked."

At this moment the fire exploded with a heavy whump and blew itself completely out. Large chunks of glowing wood and debris flew outward to a radius of about ten feet. The red embers on the dark beach made a cool light show.

Fred and I just looked at each other. Without a word, we picked up our empty bottles and headed up to the house.

Fred's Pickup

Fred had been visiting John and Marge Newton-Mason at their place on Gambier, and late one night walked in with a chick he'd met on the ferry from Langdale. She was cute, slender, long dark hair, and as they came in the door Fred's step had a bounce like he was about to get lucky.

But this girl was WACKY. The three of us sat at the long table and what emerged from her conversation was a very odd perspective on life, upside down and inside out from anything I knew. The details of this philosophy are unfortunately lost to the ages, but she was so far from center that a usual discussion was impossible. I put myself in the role of a talk show host and just asked her questions. She always spoke with a calm smile. I didn't judge or disagree with her answers, just asked her more questions, it became a kind of quiet entertainment.

Fred went silent after while, then a look of glazed resignation began to appear on his face. Finally we all went to bed.

Next day Fred walked her to the bus, and when he returned later said that was the strangest night he'd ever spent in his life. When they'd gone to bed, she assumed a lotus position and sat motionless under the bedspread for over an hour, mumbling something too faint to hear. Fred went to sleep.

The Stolen Piano

There was a guy named Jack who lived in Batchelor Bay, the other side of Garrow Bay, at the foot of Dufferin Avenue. I would row the Garrow Bay Special around the cliff and beach it, and walk up to his house, a spacious two-story hidden behind tall hedges. Dave Taug was around that place a lot too, in fact Dave introduced me to Jack.

The first thing I noticed when I walked into the large living room was a six-foot Yamaha grand piano. Man! I hadn't played a decent piano for a couple of years. We were all passing a joint and all I could do was stare at that piano. Jack said of course it was all right for me to play it. His ex-roommate had left it behind when he moved out. Nobody played, and no one knew I could play keyboards, but I spent half that afternoon playing blues and old standards while folks lolled on the couches rolling weed and cracking beers.

Jack's house became a nice second home on Garrow Bay. All I had to do was walk down to the dock, hop in the Garrow Bay Special, and in five minutes I'd be among friends hanging out in the sunlit beachfront yard, usually nude and never rude. One time someone from the public beach below the yard came up to tell us to turn down the music. When he saw we were all hanging out in the buff he rolled his eyes and retreated rather quickly.

There were wild blueberry vines up the slope outside Jack's kitchen window. One day the berries were too many, too big and ripe to ignore, so I took a saucepan outside and soon filled it with fat, juicy blueberries. Poking around in the spacious kitchen, I found not only a decent cookbook, but all the ingredients for PIE.

An hour later, people from all corners of the house and yard were poking their heads in, asking what was that wonderful aroma. Scratch-made including the crust, two pies vanished in the first sitting. Sated, several of us sat around the table, passing a joint. The look on their faces was heavy-lidded and orgiastic.

The berry vines kept it up most of the summer and so did the chef: I would row over, make pies, and play piano while they baked in the oven, once or twice a week.

One day I was in Jack's house baking pies when the Mounties knocked. They announced the'd come to take the piano. I calmly explained that I was a house guest and couldn't let them in, so they left.

When Jack heard about it he told the story about his young ex-roommate, a 17-year-old kid from Toronto. The kid had bought the piano in Vancouver, on credit. After a few months he'd moved back home and left off making payments. Someone phoned from the piano company and right off the bat was rude to Jack, so he was pissed off and instantly uncooperative.

While cleaning out the kid's room to re-rent it, Jack came upon a note, written to the kid by a 50-ish woman at the piano showroom. The note was at least a proposition, at most somewhat graphic, and the kid was underage.

Next time someone phoned from the showroom about the piano, Jack read them the note. There was a long silence, then a click. There were no more phone calls after that.

Toward the end of summer, Jack announced he was moving. He wanted to move the piano to his girl friend's West End apartment. So Dave Taug and I took the Yamaha grand apart and the three of us carried it out to Dave's Model A truck. We covered the piano with a tarp, lit a joint, and headed across the Lion's Gate Bridge in a light drizzle. In the underground parking, the piano barely fit in the elevator, but up we went.

We assembled the grand in Sotch's living room and left. The Garrow Bay Special had been abandoned on Gambier by then, and I never went back to the house on Dufferin again. Bye-bye berry pie.

The Company Store

One night in late 1972 Mike Noble and I were leaving Troll's Restaurant after a sumptuous dinner of fish and chips, heading back to Garrow Bay. Walking up Royal Avenue past dark and silent storefronts we saw a guy in one of the shops nailing wood paneling to the floor. Mike wondered if the paneling shouldn't be going on the wall instead. We walked in and met Al Zimmerman, a refugee from his L.A. graphic design business. He had bought Mrs. Dohnalek's Company Store, and was preparing to sell local arts and crafts to the tourists.

It wasn't long before Al became a regular visitor at the Beach House, and a compatriot in various schemes. Al was behind many of the social events in Horseshoe Bay, in particular dances at the Community Hall. His challenge to any band was a bonus if they could "Dance Horseshoe Bay under the table." The Horseshoe Bay crowd was strong, lots of 20- and 30-somethings, and there were loud complaints when the bands wearily packed up around two in the morning. So far as I knew, no band ever collected the bonus.

Remember Crazy Hats? These were officially Garrow Bay Crazy Hats or Horseshoe Bay Crazy Hats, whichever. They were knitted from jute or similar by Mrs. Tenowski, a local in her 80's at the time. Several of them were gathering dust in the store when Al bought it, but through his example and promotional acumen the entire crowd was soon wearing them. Crazy Hats were completely useless, wouldn't keep off the rain, no good as sun hats, but everyone had to have one... it was the equivalent of selling refrigerators to Inuits.

And who could forget the Bay Ballers, Horseshoe Bay's own baseball team? Al designed the team T-shirt, two baseballs at the bottom flanking a huge bat that stood straight up. Subtle, it was not.

Iffya wanna see some pix of Horseshoe Bay folk not necessarily connected with the Beach House, go here.

The Airport Inn

The Airport Inn was my first interesting and good-paying job in Canada, and I had the grace to find this while living as a dropout hippie at the Beach House, in mid-1973.

One of the locals on Wellington Road, John Newton-Mason, was a fine professional designer, most of his work was commercial interiors. Somehow we arranged that I would help him on a large project for the Airport Inn, a fancy bar, or 'meat rack,' to be called The Bull Pen. It later developed that John would not have time to work on the project himself, so he suggested I get someone to help me with it, and just carry out his design from the drawings he supplied. Me in charge? What a concept. The only person around that seemed a logical choice was Al Zimmerman, a recent immigrant from California with an art and design background. At least he could act straight while stoned.

We had a typically nuts-o time completing this project. Al would pick me up in his tan Volvo around ten in the morning, we'd drive to Richmond to a metalwork shop where we'd rented space and facilities. We wound up buying literal truckloads of old farm equipment: spring-tined tractor rakes, plowshares, huge metal augers, metal tractor seats, shovels and other hand tools. These we fashioned into large wall screens, and mounted them in huge frames of 12 in. X 12 in. yellow cedar timbers. It turned out fine, we were well paid, and it felt like a real accomplishment.

The Airport Inn management came to us with an add-on project, an exterior sign for the Bull Pen. I came up with the idea of standing two spring-tined tractor rakes on end side by side, and attaching the signage between them. Of course, I reasoned it should be well anchored. So I ordered a backhoe to dig a hole big enough to accommodate two concrete forms four feet by four feet by four feet. I calculated that these footings were 64 cubic feet, weighing over three tons. Each. No wind was going to blow over THIS sign!

Before ordering the digging, I went to everyone on the project who had a site map, all five of them, showed them where I wanted the hole, and then called in the backhoe.

When Al and I showed up the next day, we were greeted with frowns, in particular from the project electrician. The backhoe had broken into a large underground electrical conduit that passed through the spot the sign was to occupy. No one with a site map had noticed. The electrician was sure we'd be sacked, but management got over it, and the project went ahead.

The footings were formed and poured, all 13,000 pounds. To erect the sign I ordered a 20-foot crane to meet me on the site the next day. To my surprise a crane arrived with an 80-foot boom. The driver explained that his was the only rig available that day, and I'd be charged for the 20-foot unit. The scale of this crane did rather fit in with my 6 1/2 tons of concrete footings.

The crane lifted the sign. With my guidance the two tractor rakes slipped neatly down into the sockets I'd installed in the concrete. I added the bracing, the metal bull logo and Bruce McArthur's carved cedar letters that same day, and it looked alright.

About every two weeks I would give the Airport Inn management an invoice for our services. The following Friday, they would hand us a check for several thousand bucks, which we would cash at the Imperial Bank of Commerce in Horseshoe Bay. Because we were hiring services from several people around the Bay, such as Bruce, we had debts to pay. The ensuing social interactions were quite remarkable. Within a few hours after our check hit the bank, a number of people had been paid by us (in cash), those people had bought things or settled debts with other locals. Beer, wine, and hard liquor began to flow, drugs were purchased, and a mellow party atmosphere prevailed, lasting through the weekend.

An interesting spinoff of this project was that Al and I invented a completely new art form, which we christened Rust Painting. We are the world leaders in rust painting 30 years later, largely because artists worldwide have so far ignored it completely.

Part of John Newton-Mason's concept for the interior was to use surfaces such as were found on weathered barn exteriors... large painted lettering, wood siding, sheet metal patching, and the like. We nailed large sections of sheet metal to the walls, and painted supergraphic lettering over the whole thing, extending around 180 feet of circular interior wall inside the club. We decided the metal would look better if it were rusted. One of us went to the hotel kitchen and got a pound of table salt from the cook. Likewise we secured a number of king-size sheets from the laundry room. We nailed the sheets to the walls so they hung down over the sheet metal, and proceeded to wet them with salt water, throwing it from a styrofoam cup. After a week of wetting the sheets every day, we peeled them off the walls. We were treated to a wonderful textured surface of many shades of rust in fantastic shapes, which subdued the bright sheet metal and contributed a well-aged look to the whole club.

The by-product of this process was the sheets themselves. They were stark laundry-room white covered with the same patterns, colors, and textures of rust all over them. The sheets had picked up the seams where we'd placed rows of nails, showed imprints of every shape and feature of the metal, and were quite gorgeous. I took them home and put some of them in frames.

As Al dropped me off at the Beach House that evening, he called out merrily, 'rust in peace'.

Just because there was a lot of paint left over from the Airport Inn project, I brought it home and painted a supergraphic on the living room wall.

Commodore Bee Fart

One time Fred Beech got the idea I should meet some real musicians. He was very supportive about my guitar playing and was bugging me to do more with it. So when Fred heard Captain Beefheart was playing downtown, at the Commodore (March 3 and 5, 1973), Fred tracked the guy down in his hotel room and arranged for us to go and meet him. On the phone, Beefheart told Fred to "Bring some chicks, bring some chicks." I found out later the guy's wife was in another room at the hotel, quite ill.

Naturally, this evolved into a dozen of us in a three-car caravan, heading downtown at about three in the morning. Although I didn't know anything about this cat's style of music, I took my guitar along anyway. Jam session? Sounded like the guy just wanted to get laid. Gary Barclay, who hosted a late night jazz show on radio CHQM, confirms that Beefheart never did any jamming.

We found Beefheart's room at the Holiday Inn, a small room with two twins. He appeared taken aback when all of us piled inside. Al tried to introduce himself, which was to be the only note of sanity. Beefheart said his name was Don van Vliet. Somebody asked Beefheart a question, and a short conversation followed. Beefheart remarked that the gig had gone bad: his guitar player had stabbed someone backstage at the show. This pleasant repartee ended when Cairn McArthur, the lone chick we'd brought with us, declared: "Ah, you contradicted yourself," at which Beefheart said "You're too hip for me, baby," flung the door open and told us to get out.

I referred to him as Commodore Bee Fart after that, but no one ever got it.

The Girl Friend

When my daughter Kira, age 9, came to spend a few weeks with me at the Beach House in 1972, she hooked up with two neighborhood kids, Michael Dolan and his sister Colleen. Michael later became an actor, appearing in such films as Necessary Roughness and The Hunley. Their mom, Marianne, lived up the street from the Beach House, on Wellington Ave. She was somewhat hooked up to the L.A. film community, a paramour of cinematographer Vilmos Zigmond. (Close Encounters of the Third Kind if you want to get going on Vilmos.)

Marianne was living with Maurice Levy, quite a bit older than she, some of us thought of him as The Wandering Jew. He drove a white Dodge van with a greyhound decal on the doors, a la Greyhound Bus Lines.

I don't recall how I met Marianne, so I don't know how this came about, but one morning I was sitting on a stool in the Beach House basement fiddling with some glass when she walked in and rather directly parked herself on my lap. She smiled and gave me a wet hello. It wasn't long (about 5 minutes) before we adjourned to the black bedroom, and in the following days it looked like there might be something more to it. She was smart, confident, and funny. However, a couple weeks later she announced she had to go to Mexico. She was mysterious about the reason, and so vanished for a while. Next time I saw her she confessed she'd had to say goodbye to someone. The person she was saying goodbye to turned out to be Vilmos. It didn't take much to visualize the manner, variety, and duration of this goodbye, so at that moment I checked out of the relationship in any serious way.

That didn't keep us from hanging out, splitting up and getting back together in various installments until about 1976, when I pulled up stakes entirely and headed for California.

When I think about the ridiculous things I've done, the strange situations I put myself and others into as a result of some cells in my body having half the usual number of chromosomes, I feel that biology has been in control... Sure, it gets the race to the next generation, but damn, the mayhem it creates along the way. I was always hoping for a relationship that was a couple of chakras farther north...

The Closet

Pat McArthur, Carole Bryant, and Marianne Dolan wanted to start a clothing shoppe in Horseshoe Bay, to make a little money and use their sewing and couture talents. The spot they picked was on Royal Avenue, next door to Al Zimmerman's Company Store. They were almost ready for the opening when they discovered they didn't have a name for the shoppe. Much head-scratching and many suggestions followed from all comers. Al or somebody said there was a prize for the winning name, you can pick which owner you want to sleep with.

Al wanted them to call it "The Three Cunts." Finally I suggested "The Closet" and they decided that had a more businesslike ring to it.

Carole was an excellent seamstress, and designed interesting clothing. One of her popular designs was a white long-sleeved tunic with leather cuffs. She sold quite a few of these shirts, which we called "Carole Shirts." A Carole Shirt and a Crazy Hat was the ultimate in Horseshoe Bay fashion. I bought one, and really enjoyed wearing it. Carole told me not to wash it, and maybe I forgot the rest of the cleaning instructions. I have mine, still unwashed, 32 years later...

An Epic of Flaming Love

I pestered Carole Bryant for a date until finally she invited me to the place she shared with Bonnie MacDonald on Bowen Island. Maybe this was the prize for the name-the-store contest. In any case, I don't think she was really into it. We walked from the ferry dock in Snug Cove up to Miller's Landing. She took this shortcut that involved climbing up hills, through people's yards, bending under tree branches, etc. She was way ahead some of the time; maybe she was trying to ditch me.

When we got to her place on Miller's Landing Road she noticed that her friend Richard had installed her new bed. This was a tall affair that lifted the mattress close to the ceiling, making more floor space in the small bedroom. She tried to climb up. The bed was very jiggly. I didn't think it would fall over, but it was kind of leaning and banging against the wall. Not confidence-inspiring.

After dinner, wine and joints with Bonnie, Carole and I went to get in bed. Carole lit a candle on the high window sill and turned out the lights. We undressed unceremoniously, and Carole climbed up between the window and the wall to get on the bed. Her long hair swung into the candle flame and a chunk of it ignited. Both of us slapped at her hair, putting out the flames, but I clouted the side of her head a good one in the ruckus and the small bedroom stank of burnt hair. Carole looked at me with a grim smile and announced she was OK. This was going great, talk about your hot date!

I debated my options, but they were limited: the last ferry had departed for Horseshoe Bay hours ago, I was there for the night. I climbed up slowly, wary of the candle flame. The bed swayed ominously, sounds of straining wooden joints. Slowly I worked my way under the sheets beside her, the bed doing a mild hula beneath us. Who the Hell was this carpenter, this Richard, I wondered. Finally there was nothing between us but us.

"Don't move," Carole said.

Al's Recollection of Copper Cove

Al Zimmerman writes this, shortly after the passing of Denny Baxter... Al recalls that Denny was always an 'early guest' at any gathering. He always brought endless energy, fun and mischief to whatever we were all doing at the time. He also was usually one of the very last guests to leave and he could always be counted on to show up the next day to clean up the mess.

Al was living in Lions Bay and wanted to move closer to his Company Store on Royal Avenue in Horseshoe Bay. One of the cooks at Trolls, either Randy or Mike, told him about a family that was moving from Quesnel into a house on Copper Cove that just might have an extra room. Soon he found myself living near the beach with Bruce and Pat McArthur, their young kids Kevin and Melanie, and later on David Ford. I think it was a few mornings after he moved in that Al shared a walk up Copper Cove Road and down Marine Drive with one of his new neighbors. It was Denny, and you would have noticed that the two were dressed quite differently. Denny was wearing a sport coat, shirt and paisley tie, plaid slacks and topcoat, and had a newspaper tucked under his arm.

Al on the other hand probably had on one of Mrs. Dohnalek's heavy wool sweaters, Levis, cowboy boots and one of those goofy macrame hats from The Company Store, the famed Horseshoe Bay Crazy Hat. I shared some conversation and a "little pick-me-up smoke" with Denny, noted that he had a one-of-a-kind laugh, and left him at the fire hall bus stop shortly before 10 am. What the hell was this guy up to? Was he living a secret daytime life? Did he have a real job? It was my first of many walks with Denny and it wasn't very long before Al would meet the rest of his new neighbors.

Denny lived a few houses up the hill in Copper Cove with George Borradaile, Dwight Davies and Mark Gibson. George and Dwight usually had the company of their girlfriends and soon-to-be wives, Susie and Nancy. Mark had the company of his Irish Setter, Whiskey, and Denny had the frequent company of Stephanie Davies, a neighbor whose age at that time should have landed him squarely in jail. There was also the usual 'cast of thousands' that such houses seem to attract. Stephanie's older sister Michele, Mike and Janine Donaldson, Hans Branvold and his girlfriend Teresa, Bill and Liz Reid, Jan Steele who lived across the street, Tommy and Donna Craddock, Roz Mitchell (another neighbor who was more of 'legal' age) Penny Damm, Francie Prittie, and others too numerous to remember.

A year later Pat and Bruce moved to Powell River and Al left Copper Cove to move down to the 'eye of the hurricane' on Douglas Street. Like many Horseshoe Bay storekeepers, Al spent many hours observing the cast of characters on Royal Avenue, and soon discovered that Denny was a big part of the whole scene. He was a fascinating guy who was moving in several different circles of people. Although you might find him in Trolls, more often than not he spent time at Donny Wong's cafe, which perched above Sewells Marina. Denny let me in on the secret that Thorn's Market had the best meat and fresh mushrooms for sale and that Donny had a decent cup of coffee and breakfast. The biggest secret though, was that we could always get a few beers after Donny placed his required 'rubber cheese sandwich' on your table. It was a great place to watch the sun go down over Telegraph Hill and I don't think it takes much to figure out why Denny liked that cafe. All the regulars like Ken Johnson, Chris and Tommie Craddock, Billy Lord, Frank Wright, Ron Carrall and others either worked at the ferries, or with boats.

There was another circle Denny moved in, a big group that probably included all of us at one time or another. You might call that group the "Horseshoe Bay jokers" and if Denny wasn't the king of that group then he certainly was one of its crown Princes. Crashing and burning on skateboards with Hans at midnight above Nelson Creek. Falling through Bob and Judy Troll's roof on Royal with Wilda Agassiz. (Just what was he up to with her?) Stealing a salmon from Troll's freezer to stick through that hole in the roof (like Bob would 'really' think a fish fell from the sky). Falling out of and almost getting run over by his own boat while fishing in the ferry leads off Horseshoe Bay. Picking off a runner at second base at a Bay Baller game without spilling a drop of his Labatts. The "Pirates and Wenches Ball" in the Horseshoe Bay Community Hall. Denny was guilty of all of this and much, much more.

All of us were getting older (30 to 35) and Horseshoe Bay soon became a circle of couples, not singles. Denny Baxter and and Roz Mitchell who were neighbors in Copper Cove re-connected and became part of that group of friends with our somewhat more serious but quite pleasant lifestyle of dinners and salmon barbecues. Everyone had kids and jobs, getting on with their lives and gradually, inevitably, many of us ended up moving away from Horseshoe Bay. They were all becoming quite different from that easygoing group living in Copper Cove just a few years earlier, but every time we met again we would quickly fall into that easy familiarity of old friends. Like everyone else that shared what was really only a brief period of our lives our connections grew less and less frequent. I think it's been almost 15 years since Lynn and I last saw and spoke with Denny at a party in Chris and Wilda's Lions Bay home. I really wish that wasn't the case but I still have memories of him as if it were only yesterday.

Al recalls Denny in his plaid sport coat with a long wool scarf around his neck climbing into his white 190SL Mercedes roadster. He's laughing that one-of-a-kind laugh at some joke one of us has just made, and he has that "shit eating" smile of someone who you just know is up to something. He waves and says "see you later" as he shifts up through the gears leaving a faint trail of blue smoke as he cruises up the hill on Nelson. At the top of the hill he slows by the fire hall, turns and accelerates onto Marine Drive and then he's gone.

A Little Night Surfing

John and Marge Newton-Mason moved from their house on Wellington in Garrow Bay to a property on Gambier Island's West Bay, about 10 water miles out of Horseshoe Bay. They lived in a small house with their four kids, and the conditions were rudimentary to basic... the property had a barn, a shed, and an outhouse. The toilet seat in this outhouse was famous, as it maintained a temperature of approximately 0 degrees Celsius year 'round.

They chose not to have a car. Rather, John and Marge would board the Dogwood Princess, a foot ferry, in New Brighton on Gambier for the trip to Langdale, wait for the ferry there for a ride to Horseshoe Bay, then bus into town. Marge could be seen at Woodward's grocery in Park Royal pushing a full shopping cart, later she would leave the store with all of that in a huge backpack and retrace her steps to Gambier. One trip to the grocery for them was a day's labor. They had many overnight visitors at their place on Gambier, and the effort they put out to bring in supplies was a testament to their generous hospitality.

One sunny morning I rented a skiff from Sewell's Marina in Horseshoe Bay, and set off with Marianne and her two kids for a picnic on Gambier. On the way over the outboard motor began acting up... sounded like the shear pin was ready to let go. By taking it easy on the gas we arrived in West Bay, popped in on John and Marge, spent the day, and had our picnic on their lawn.

I decided that Marianne and the kids should go back on the ferry... I was worried that the motor would fail, a bad situation with four of us in the boat, at night. So as day slid into evening I waved goodbye to everyone on the dock of West Bay, and headed out into Howe Sound. The sun was down, the islands and the water were large dark masses against the fading sky. Passing by the mouth of West Bay was the Langdale Ferry heading for Horseshoe Bay, a large, throbbing metal monster with rows of lights... it looked rather like an overgrown floating layer cake. I zipped along over the smooth water, keeping a careful eye for stray logs.

Testing the outboard to full throttle, I was promptly rewarded by sudden lack of forward momentum which sent my spine a chill... but I found that by being careful with the urge I could hold a decent speed. And hello, I was catching the ferry. About a mile off the point at West Bay I pulled up a hundred yards off the ferry's stern, and found a set of perfect two-foot swells glistening in reflected light from the ferry's decks. The forward thrust of this wake was such that I could cut the power and keep pace. The sky had gone to black and stars were reflected in the smooth moving humps of water. And so we proceeded across the dark sound. Morceau de gàteau

Moving into Horseshoe Bay, the ferry slowed. I caught and passed the forward swells, and was tying up at Sewell's when they hissed and whispered through the pilings beneath the marina.

Good Ship Teacup

Another time I was visiting on Gambier, having arrived by ferry. Returning from a walk with John and Marge's kids, I saw Mark Gibson standing in their yard smoking a cigarette. This was curious, as it was hours since the last boat from Langdale.

It turned out that Mark and Bruce McArthur had sailed to West Bay from Horseshoe Bay. No big deal, really, until we saw their craft, an 8-foot Sabot sailboat. It had taken them four hours in moderate winds to make the trip. Now THAT was a voyage.

They couldn't stay long, they had to start back before the light started to go. We all went down to the dock at West Bay to see them off. The two of them climbed carefully into the boat. It was so small that they had to recline, only heads and knees sticking up. They pushed off, we called our goodbyes. But the wind had died. For fifteen minutes as we all stood there, they tacked back and forth against a mild sea breeze, getting a few feet farther from the dock on each tack. The kids kept saying goodbye to them, one could do that in a normal voice. After about 30 minutes of this, Mark shouted we should all just go away. They were tired of the extended farewells. The two of them bobbed, helpless, moving slowly, looking like giants in a teacup. One by one we turned and walked up the hill.

Later I found out that two RCMP Mounties in a power boat saw them floating outside West Bay, and offered them a tow over to Langdale. Bruce and Mark carried the Sabot onto the car ferry, and so made their way as foot passengers back to Horseshoe Bay.

Shacking Up

Sometime around October 1973 I left the Beach House. Mike Noble had gone back to London, Fred Beech invited some Fred person to move in, so we had the two Freds, Marilyn who was now on her own, and I. Mike's energy and intelligence had been replaced by the new Wierd Fred's sleaze, a background murmur of drug deals.

The landlord had also installed a large For Sale sign near the mailbox... you could buy the Beach House property, all two acres of it, for a measly $125,000. That was a ton of cash in 1973, and the sign stood by the road so long it became part of the landscape...

It was partly push and partly pull when I moved half a block up the street to Marianne's place on Wellington. This was technically in Garrow Bay, at least in the neighborhood, but it was not the same. Nothing could match the Beach House scene. Al and I were working the Airport Inn project, and I was already thinking of a house-cum-studio, somewhere to park a drawing board, a glass bench and a bed. Solo.

I later found that setup on Bowen Island.

Green Canoe Part Deux
Doug and Dave Cheat Death

Summer of 1974, Doug Reid and Dave Giblin shoved off from Garrow Bay in the Green Canoe, paddling out around Whyte Island. Lifesavers came in a multi-colored roll, and Dave was wearing his lace-up work boots. Anyway, they capsized nicely into the cold water, and Dave picks that moment to mention that he can't swim. Doug said something to the effect of, "No shit you can't swim, with those big, honkin' boots on."

So there they are clinging to the submerged canoe, which was going lower by the minute. Something about holes in the bouyancy tanks. The tide was sweeping them further out at a rapid clip so Doug tells Dave to hang on to the canoe, and he would swim to shore and get help. When Doug was about 3/4 of the way to shore, Dave starts screaming. Doug turns around to see the canoe going down for the 3rd time. That was the official finish of the green canoe.

Doug managed to swim to Whyte Island but the tide was out and the rocks were slimy from seaweed and he couldn't get out of the water. A larger wave than the rest picked him up and dropped him on a ledge where he sat until he had the strength to climb the rest of the way.

Meanwhile Dave was floating out to sea. Someone overlooking the bay saw the sinking canoe and called the marina at WhiteCliffe. Dave recalls he was passing out from the cold when a boat arrived and plucked him from the jaws of disaster. It was close to being something you read about in the paper the next day.

Doug said Alex Lamb, who owned the green canoe, bugged him for years afterward to pay for it.

Doug recalls right aound that same time, one of his first 'dates' with Marilyn Beech. They took a ferry to Bowen with a couple of bottles of fine Spanish wine that she had boosted from the Sundowner Restaurant where she was working. After a visit to my island studio, they pushed on to Jim Miller's cabin where with Jim and Ruth Payne they promptly drank the wine. Another beautiful summer afternoon, survival has its benefits.

Adios, Beach House

In 1974, the Garrow Bay property sold. The whole thing, including the house, the foreshore rights, and the boat house, went to June and Roger Earle, who would soon be building a large house there.

I was on Bowen by then. Who was living in the Beach House? Michelle Davies had moved in with her cage of budgies. Marilyn Beech was still there, she was working either at Troll's or the Sundowner. I think Fred Beech had left, leaving Wierd Fred and Gaynor Galbreath, a friend (or acquaintance) of Al's from LA. Gaynor was a real loose cannon, he wierded-out almost anyone.

Anyway the word went out that we would have a big party and trash the place. It was a not-to-be-missed affair for anyone who had ever lived in the neighborhood, the house, or merely visited there. Many from far and wide turned out, and there was much drinking, toking, joking, and remembering. A nostalgic air pervaded the evening, and no one was in any mood to do much trashing.

About the only trashed thing was the general condition of the place. It hadn't been cleaned for about six months... or at least it seemed that way. Looking in my old black bedroom, the high bed was still there, with a pink foamy and a sleeping bag on it. A vacuum cleaner lay on the floor. Someone had kicked a hole in the wall below the light switch. Just as I noticed this, a shaft of light streamed through the hole from the adjoining bathroom. Some guy was in there taking a leak.

I turned on the vacuum cleaner and extended the chrome tube through the hole, maneuvering it under the dangling end of the toilet paper. The paper streamed into the tube, the roll accelerating and spinning wildly until all the paper had been sucked into the vacuum. I withdrew the tube and the empty roll spun wildly.

Laughing, I told the first person I saw, Rolf Brandvold. He looked at me grimly and said "Bad connotations, bad connotations." That's when it dawned on me, I must be queer.

Another funny story this night re: The Girlfriend. When I got in my car there was someone sleeping under a heavy coat in the back seat. I didn't show any outward reaction, just started up and drove down the hill into Horseshoe Bay, and parked behind my studio on Royal Avenue. Next morning when I came out my tires were flat. Or partly flat. Boy did that show me! Something.

Later I heard the Beach House had been torn down, but I hadn't the heart to go look. The shipping crate had vanished as well. Years later I drove by and took a look at the Earle's place on the site, a large stone structure with terraces and glass, quite a nice house for the location. All remnants of the old marina had been erased, although the Boat House was looking good. But Garrow Bay was not the same place at all.

Where Were You in '72?

In 1987 a few of us planned a reunion at Garrow Bay. Francie Prittie was one of the instigators, she helped me with the invites. We had to pick a day with a low tide, as the only public access to Garrow Bay was at the spur end of Wellington and down a cliffside trail. The beach there was narrow and submerged at high tide. The Beach House was of course long gone, the Boat House on private property.

Garrow Bay today? Really it's just another beach surrounded by high-priced homes.

About 40 folks showed up from the old days for a picnic. The gang was older in 1987. John and Marge, Tony and Mary Ann, Andrea Michelson, Sherry and Shekina, then with Russell and living on Hornby Island, Dee, Patricia, Al and Lynn, Hans and Trish, Doug, and a pile of kids that hadn't been on the scene in 1972.

Besides the Boat House, the most recognizable features were the unconquerable land and sea, and for each of us, a stock of fading memories. Which is why this chapter was written... to kick those sparks once again to life. And to say, to everyone, I miss you guys.

Golden lads and girls all must
As chimney sweepers, come to dust...

Today (2005) the gang is older still and some of us have packed it in. Dee Davidoff, Denny Baxter, Billy Lamb, Bob Ede. You were so beautiful then.

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