In the almost incidental line of an author’s less than friendly fire…
An old acquaintance (and Facebook friend,) Larry Gambone, has written a book entitled No Regrets: Counter-culture and Anarchism in Vancouver.
While I had no measurable truck with Anarchism back in the day, except for a union supporters lifelong flirtatious interest in the IWW, and barely any as it is manifests itself these days on my charming little Island of Denman, I do consider myself, as friends once described themselves some years back, a veteran of the counter-culture.
Larry’s book is an engrossingly personal, cultural and political memoir. It scans decades and is an entertaining, occasionally jargon-heavy polemic.
Our lives rarely intersected. We do and did share a few of the same friends and contemporaries.
The times we lived through affected us in appreciably different ways.
We briefly lived together in a dynamic Co-op house, the Campus Residence Cooperative Association, an institution (actually two side by side Edwardian homes) still in existence today and planning its 50th Anniversary for August, 2017. This, above all, enhances the nostalgic tone of the book for me.
I make a brief appearance in No Regrets. It is a walk-on role. On page 87. It is not a flattering depiction. Well, it’s not devastating but it was unexpected. As a writer, I spend a reasonable amount of time diving into the deep pool of my past, snorkeling around, recalling people and incidents who might serve me with writerly inspiration. I mask, I reinvent, and I vary characteristics. I protect.
This go-around, I am on the receiving end. Naked, with nary a nom de plume, nor a fig leaf, to cover me.
Here is Larry’s brief reference to me in Chapter 13 (New West Coop.)
“Although a coop in name it was in some ways a collection of individuals. Many people were there because it was cheap. A minority were so eccentric this was the only place they could live with other people. In a smaller group, their rough edges would be intolerable, but they could find a tolerant space among forty people. One such eccentric was Bill Engleson. Everyone found Bill arrogant, cynical and full of himself, yet he lived there for ten years.”
That’s it. The sum of me at twenty.
I suppose it feels a bit like time travel. Larry’s facts are not faultless as far as the Co-op goes but I have to assume that how he sketched me is how he observed me.
Living communally for almost fifteen years, a small factual error easily forgiven, was one of the most significant experiences of my life. While Larry only skims the raw surface of a complex social experiment in group living that continues to this day, I have many fond memories of those days, with the various waves of people who came and went all too briefly and the few who stayed for longer periods. I could easily have lived there forever.
Living communally with a large disparate group, folks from many backgrounds, a range of ages and experiences, was, however, a constant challenge. Problem solving was a daily occurrence. The population was fluid. It was a time of transience and transition.
To keep our communal ship afloat we held weekly Sunday night meetings. Attendance was de rigueur although we had no capacity for enforcement.
I learned how to share, how to care, how to negotiate, how to be a more complete human being.
Still, I suppose, for a time, I was arrogant. I know I was cynical. I think I still am, albeit in a more elderly, curmudgeonly way.
Full of myself? I was nineteen when I first made contact with the coop living. I was on the Simon Fraser Student’s Council and strongly supported the sort of housing being considered by the founders of the CRCA. We helped bring Howard Adelman out from Toronto to assist with planning for coop student housing as there was hardly any student housing available. At around the same time, the students of SFU were rejecting the notion of Fraternities which had made some forays on campus.
Sadly, or perhaps not, we never achieved the size of coop housing project some were envisioning.
I first moved into the CRCA in September, 1967 because I fervently, arrogantly, eccentrically believed in group living. Yes it was economical but more than that it was an experimental model that would serve many of us very well then and for as long as we allowed it to.
Eventually other forces came into play. Life has a habit of doing that. I moved on.
Nevertheless, many of the people I lived with then remain friends to this day. Others whom I have lost track of remain with me in memory, in spirit and always close to my heart.
All that aside, I have just read that Larry has been nominated for the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness. I sincerely congratulate him for his nomination and his interesting retrospective.
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