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Various Canada. Us. 1972. Times square. 1972. Lake Louise
( where David worked for five seasons )
An avalanche caught live ! We were walking up the path heading to Abbots Hutt, Lake Louise. Canada.
I heard the roaring sound of fall and quickly pointed my camera. 1972
-As the tourist season started, we worked a long season at Banff Springs Hotel after we journeyed up the American West Coast. Oh the pleasure of the wonderful air and time off walking. At the hotel stone complex, the staff quarters gave us a view hundreds of meters below, a gully of evergreens, a glinting river and a golf course.
After the season, we crossed back over the Canadian continent for three nights of rail in a first class cabin that came with a viewing lounge and a porter, an experience that we gave ourselves with all our spare cash, seeing as we knew that a trip such as this trip was legendary. The view, the thought of it all, the services. We had solo butler service on that trip and the end box car viewing room to ourselves. There were no other passengers in that class that week. We had friends to visit in Montreal, David’s climbing and work buddy from the early Lake Louise days. This was our exceptional friend, Hudson. He effused with us at Guinguette les Trois. He took us to see the Expo 67s grand dome, as well as the apartments, still there with Habitat ( Le Corbossier ). *
We stayed at a hotel that looked the same architecture as the Drake. (The Drake Hotel in New York.* ) Our room was an ensuite for three nights (42nd and 7th - bellhop staff rates). I remember marveling at, a) nervousness of a black woman, a hotel staff member, who warned us about the dangers of entering Time Square, whilst I saw it as where artists loitered in cheap lofts. trusting the dark lit nights, and where everyone was having fun. Then, b), my first introduction to paintings by Constable occurred. There were multiple versions of one scene by him at the Frick.
Pause now on the uniqueness of those two modes of transport in those years; crossing the Atlantic on the S.S. France and the Canadian Pacific train. These majestic vehicles were both sets of such excellence, each an ecstasy of experience. On the S.S. France, for three days, dinner service was two staff to a table, three course meals every three hours. (due to crossing the time zone).
In London, back for months for a second time there was the need of money to earn. Work changed from working in restaurants to teaching at school, primary and secondary, in Peckham. We stayed on the south side of the river. I took in the Tate (Tate Britain), again, and the Tate again. The photo that I sought to click of Regent Street on a Sunday in London in 1972 speaks a thousand words about weekend people population as well as traffic densities then. Tottenham Court Road on a Saturday still allocated buses to the streets with people still on the footpath.
After the season, we crossed back over the Canadian continent for three nights of rail in a first class cabin that came with a viewing lounge and a porter, an experience that we gave ourselves with all our spare cash, seeing as we knew that a trip such as this trip was legendary. The view, the thought of it all, the services. We had solo butler service on that trip and the end box car viewing room to ourselves. There were no other passengers in that class that week. We had friends to visit in Montreal, David’s climbing and work buddy from the early Lake Louise days. This was our exceptional friend, Hudson. He effused with us at Guinguette les Trois. He took us to see the Expo 67s grand dome, as well as the apartments, still there with Habitat ( Le Corbossier ). *
We stayed at a hotel that looked the same architecture as the Drake. (The Drake Hotel in New York.* ) Our room was an ensuite for three nights (42nd and 7th - bellhop staff rates). I remember marveling at, a) nervousness of a black woman, a hotel staff member, who warned us about the dangers of entering Time Square, whilst I saw it as where artists loitered in cheap lofts. trusting the dark lit nights, and where everyone was having fun. Then, b), my first introduction to paintings by Constable occurred. There were multiple versions of one scene by him at the Frick.
Pause now on the uniqueness of those two modes of transport in those years; crossing the Atlantic on the S.S. France and the Canadian Pacific train. These majestic vehicles were both sets of such excellence, each an ecstasy of experience. On the S.S. France, for three days, dinner service was two staff to a table, three course meals every three hours. (due to crossing the time zone).
In London, back for months for a second time there was the need of money to earn. Work changed from working in restaurants to teaching at school, primary and secondary, in Peckham. We stayed on the south side of the river. I took in the Tate (Tate Britain), again, and the Tate again. The photo that I sought to click of Regent Street on a Sunday in London in 1972 speaks a thousand words about weekend people population as well as traffic densities then. Tottenham Court Road on a Saturday still allocated buses to the streets with people still on the footpath.
* New astonishments. (2026)Le Corbossier. dropped out of school at age 13. Was on the spectrum. Fascinated to build viable suburban density in metropolises.
** The Drake was demolished in 2007 to make way for offices in 2012.
** The Drake was demolished in 2007 to make way for offices in 2012.
Pot, sieve, Kitchen wall. Home 2023
One of the first exhibitions I saw at the TATE when I arrived in London in 1970, was an exhibition of Russian Constructivism. Included was a marquette of the Tatlin Tower. (10) The exhibition was a survey of artists of the Russian Avant Garde. It included graphic artists. I spent three hours at that exhibition. The Tower was a wooden marquette - an interpretation of the Tower of Babel. You can look up a first etching from 1679. Then, the artist was Athanasius Kircher. (11 )The experience was mind blowing to me. To see artists at the turn of the twentieth century so engaged with social ideas. As an adolescent I had been informed of the assassinations of a number of aristocrats; the period drama of Dicken’s, A Tale of Two Cities'(1958) was compelling. It would take me a lot longer to perceive and sustain what the flightiness and speed of revolutions might mean.
Also what our brains did as they absorbed experience. I grew up on a sheep station. For me, this meant quite a swath of hills and valleys. I travelled these adventurously on horseback. It was a life without crowds or many daily interchanges except that I hung around the sheds where the shepherds worked. The shed went up in 1882. I hung around there whilst the employees and dad drank tea out of metal cups for the smoko breaks.
My life had particular dynamisms. You know how cinema used to give points of view from rides on trains, the trees rushing by in a blur and music surging as he or she was in close view staring out. The romance was in the portrayal of this character’s inner emotions, safe in a carriage, the camera held on the face. The activities of riding were really my first romance. I trotted, galloped and sidled. I looked at blur from a horse, not a train.
Granville Island. Vancouver. Megan Ollinger, Tom and David Robinson. 1993
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