Just before... The Festival of Lights at VanDusen Gardens

It's an annual tradition in Vancouver: The Festival of Lights at VanDusen Gardens. What seems to involve millions of lights and just about as many visitors, the light show is a major winter attraction.

In the month leading up to opening day, this year on December 11, there is much activity within the grounds as the gardens take on a festive appearance. We missed last year's event, spending time on the Ninth Avenue Trail and in El Rosedal instead.

On the day of the Festival's opening, workers were finishing various displays, grooming the gardens and readying for the crowds. The rains will likely start soon enough, but for now it is dry with a touch of snow and the ponds are frozen over here and throughout the city.






I don't know what I make of the continued commercialisation of the Gardens and its special events, like the Festival of Lights. It seems harmless enough, but where does this hunger for revenue end?





As well, many of the Touch Wood sculptures that we enjoyed through the summer and autumn have been "decorated" with lights or uniforms. Doesn't this detract from the integrity of the art? Is it right to put a halo on a piece of art, or dress up another group as toy soldiers?











And what about this drilling rig in the middle of the pond? I know our provincial government has promised us trillions in receipts from LNG, but really, in VanDusen Gardens? What's next, a pipeline?

Still, there is something magical about this thing, and as we approach the darkest night of the year, there is beauty in these lights.

Photos by Jim Murray

Copyright 2013

Remembering John Lennon and a gun crazed America

John Lennon died December 8, 1980. He was shot to death in the city he loved, in the city that adopted him as one of its own.















I was living in south-east Saskatchewan in 1980 and it was a cold winter's night on the prairie. ABC's Monday Night Football was on television, but I was listening to the radio. KSTP from Minneapolis/St. Paul was blasting in like a furnace that night. At its height, KSTP was a powerhouse rock station, and as they liked to say, "one of America's most imitated radio stations," not unlike WLS in Chicago or CKLW in Windsor/Detroit. The hits never stopped. Literally.

I recall there being a brief announcement by the radio deejay, something about Lennon and a shooting outside the Dakota in NYC. It was made over top a song, and there was a quiver in the announcers voice. Reports were sketchy. KSTP had ABC network news at the top of the hour, when John's murder were announced.

And then the music stopped.





All across the US and Canada, radio stations opened their phone lines to listeners. Music stations aired news reports where before that would have been considered a tune out factor. The music stopped that night.

I think I phoned a dozen friends, in town and around the country. I listened to the phone calls on radio through the night and into the morning. We shared our shock and grief. And anger.

The morning after John's murder, Yoko Ono issued a statement: There is no funeral for John. John loved and prayed for the human race. Please do the same for him. Love, Yoko and Sean.

At first I think we looked for some sort of higher reason for Lennon's murder. It seemed impossible to believe that one crazed individual could be responsible for this act of violence. Yet we knew it was just one crazy guy with a gun. And in all the years since 1980, America has done nothing about gun control. Of course they didn't do anything before that either, and a president was shot, a presidential candidate was killed, a civil rights leader was murdered, and who knows how many others. One might think after all the carnage, some sort of effort to control the sale of guns in the US might have happened by now, but if anything the culture of guns is today even more firmly entrenched. It's one thing to have a nut case shoot at a politician or kill a rock star. It's quite another to have school children slaughtered in their classrooms. Yet nothing seems to change. Only in America. The music has stopped all too often since 1980.

Nelson Mandela ~ 1918 - 2013

Nelson Mandela has died.

Born July 18, 1918, Mr Mandela was 95 years of age.

I grew up in the time of Nelson Mandela. Though he was in prison for much of my life, his story was a significant part of my growing up and coming of age.

During the 1950s Mr Mandela was banned and arrested for challenging the evil of apartheid. At the beginning of his political life he favoured nonviolent protest. That ended after the famous Treason Trial, the banning of the ANC, and the Sharpeville Massacre, all occurring in 1960, forcing many underground where Mr Mandela and his comrades formed the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), often referred to by the
initials MK.


At the time, the African National Congress was not open to whites, nor to Communists. MK was not so constrained and welcomed members of both, including Communist Party members Rusty Bernstein and Joe Slavo, among others. MK named Mr Mandela its commander-in-chief and went on to wage a bombing campaign throughout the country. Many were arrested. Among them, Mr Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964.


The story of Nelson Mandela was unknown to me in 1964; as a child  the only thing catching my attention was the music of The Beatles. With the events of 1968 we all became politically aware; Mandela's name was known, but he was in  prison and no one really knew what was going on. Was he even alive? It was during 1968 I learned his words given before entering prison four years earlier:

“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

While Mr Mandela and other ANC and SACP leaders languished in prison, or lived in exile, the young people of South Africa did their best to continue the fight, many under the banner of Steve Biko's Black Consciousness Movement.  Hundreds were killed and thousands were injured before the children's uprising was crushed in 1976. Mr Biko was murdered by police, while in detention, in 1977.


In 1980, the ANC, led by the exiled Oliver Tambo, launched an international campaign against apartheid with the focus on one cause and one person: the demand to release Mr Mandela. It was brilliant. It was peaceful. It worked.

On February 11, 1990 we all watched, and celebrated, when Mr Mandela was finally released from captivity.




Nelson Mandela's story is one of hope and perseverance, of humility and struggle. None of that ends with Mr Mandela's passing. The story continues. As it should.

Amandla!  

Awethu!

Viper Central ~ on the ferry

A few days ago I took the ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo and from there on to a brief visit in Courtenay. It was a dull day, foggy and damp, and I planned to settle in with a good book.



I found a seat and was about to get into an old Don DeLillo I hadn't read, when music broke out. Toe tapping, smile inducing, good feeling music; the kind of thing you'd like to sing along to, if only you knew the words.





Viper Central, or at least those of its members present for this voyage, entertained passengers and crew for the better part of the sailing and it was wonderful.

Viper Central plays bluegrass. On the ferry they were friendly, endearing and warmly appreciative of their audience. The band was on their way to Ucluelet to play at the Black Rock resort.














With them on their "tour boat," and at the concert in Ucluelet, was John Reischman on mandolin. John is considered a master and it shows.














Acoustics aren't a hallmark of BC Ferries, but the music sounded good and it was a hit with everyone aboard. I was hoping the band might appear on our return sailing, but no such luck.







We really should do this more often on BC Ferries.

Photos by Jim Murray
Copyright 2013.

November 22, 1963

It seems a long time ago. Fifty years is a long time. I was nine when it happened. I remember it being hot and sunny, even though it was late November in southern Saskatchewan and snow was on the ground and the wind was cold. My memory of the event is forever trapped in a sunny Dallas.

We came home from school over the noon hour. My Mom would always have lunch ready for my sister and me. I remember turning on the television, as usual, to watch the Flintstones, or whatever else might have been showing every weekday at noon. The program was interrupted by news reports, bulletins as they were called then; breaking news had yet to be created.





We received two channels, and only in black and white, and the CBC affiliate was using the CBS News feed for its bulletins. I don't know for certain if I heard Walter Cronkite's announcement, the one where he took off his glasses and teared up ever so slightly, that the President had died at 1:00 p.m. Dallas time, but it's stuck in my mind as though I did.





When I returned to school, late for the beginning of afternoon classes, the phrase I kept hearing, and saying myself, was "They killed the President." Even then, that early in the telling of the event, we seemed unwilling to believe that one man, acting alone, could possibly kill the most powerful man in the world. Throughout the school, radios had been brought into classrooms and we listened to CBC Radio coverage of the assassination. We were sent home early that day.



Maybe I was too young to cry. I'm not sure if my mother cried; maybe she did, I don't know. When Dad came home he was quiet, deep in thought. He had come home early too. I didn't cry.








I was glued to the television all weekend, watching the murder of Kennedy's assassin and the funeral of the President. Nothing really made sense, and that angered me. In a sense my political education began on that November day, as I began to read and watch and listen to the news. I became a news junkie at ten years of age. My life was changing and the world around me was changing too.



In 1968 while on a family vacation, as my sister and parents prepared to go out for dinner in Ottawa, I watched the television images of the Chicago Police Riot. The whole world was apparently watching and this time it was in colour. The year had already brought us the joy of Prague Spring, and its brutal destruction just days before the Chicago riots. We had seen the assassinations of Dr King and Bobby, and the insanity of Hubert Humphrey and Dick Nixon running for President. Students and workers had been crushed in Paris, and the cities of Vietnam were burning. If November 22 in Dallas saw the beginning of my awareness, 1968 brought the horrible realisation that everything was spinning out of control. I was angry. I didn't cry.

Today, the truth of Dallas on November 22, 1963 is still unclear. Fifty years on, and I'm still angry. And sometimes I cry.

Photos from AP. 

Text copyright 2013 by Jim Murray.