Saving for Europe, 1969
I had decided to go hitch-hiking around Europe with my sister, Karen, so I had to save some money. For the next few months after the B&B Commission research, I worked at a nightclub, ‘The Riverside’ in Ottawa. The waitresses there had to wear bunny outfits. Many of the girls had artificial tails made of cotton but mine was a real ones that was rabbit fur. At some point, it got stolen.
It was there I met Liliane. She became a life long friend. She was very straight and overly cautious, and never dated the customers. I found no need to, so I didn’t either.
Liliane had a heart of gold. She never had much money, always worked hard, and gave away the best of what she had. She was a darling. The only thing with Liliane was that she had the bad habit of smoking. She was in my inner circle of close friends and I missed her terribly after she passed away just before her sixtieth year, of lung cancer.
I was a bunny until I saved enough money to go to Europe the following January with Karen. During that brief time, I lived in Ottawa with a dear friend of my mother’s, Lois Langevin.
Lois had two kids a bit younger than I whom I adored, Robert and Liane. Robert was adorable, and I knew as long as I was on the planet, he’d never be lonely. [just kidding]
I realized that I loved people easily, I didn’t judge anyone. I accepted them just as they were and for me they were beautiful packages with bows on. They were all gifts. This seemed like a nice quality to have, but it interfered with my ability to separate the wheat from the chaff. This partly explains how I got mixed up with some genuine ‘characters’.
Folk's retirement and Spain 1969
My mother went to Spain with my dad in his retirement in 1969. They were off to make their fortune in real estate during ‘El Boom’, as mom liked to call it.
They settled in an authentic Spanish town, Mijs, in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. It had small narrow streets lined with stark white walls of the stores and homes of the locals. They made and sold straw baskets, hats, mats. Their goods were hanging all around the diminutive door ways.
There were small grocery stores and material shops. The bars had the doors open and elderly people sitting outside on caned wicker chairs. They used donkeys and carts to go to market. It wasn’t uncommon for a donkey to stop in the middle of the road, out of sheer stubbornness, I guess, causing his owner to yell out loud in Spanish.
Mom and Dad rented a beautiful villa with a swimming pool from which you could see the cascading valley to the Mediterranean. They were way up.
Mom didn’t like living there, but my father loved it. She felt the booze was too readily available and with all the socializing, she was sure to become an alcoholic.
My father acquiesced to my mother’s desire to return to Canada, and they moved everything back home. It lasted for a year. My father was so miserable that my mother conceded to move back to Spain. She lasted two years before returning to Canada for good, leaving him in the mess he had created.
During those 35 years Dad lived in Spain, Mom married twice more and provided all of us, myself and my sisters, Karen and Susan, a base and family headquarters. We all admire her for her independence, dry wit, charm, support and that marvellous ego. Dad stayed isolated and incommunicative. He was unhappily remarried for 30 years.
I always thought my father could fall off the planet and I wouldn’t care. But that was all about to change 37 years later.
