I could not break away from life to make it to the Dave Barrett memorial. Tell the truth, I am uncomfortable with the idea of such gatherings for people who blazed trail decades before I tried my less skillful hand cutting path for my fellows.
I was alive, mind you, when Barrett and the rest got elected. The difference afterward, to barely teenaged me, was a proper bus service which provided better access to drug dealers outside the sometimes unreliable circle of neighbourhood providers of nickel bags and the like.
I took note of the other changes that happened later in life except for one other that was quite immediate. Teachers and other authourity figures in school were no longer permitted (legally) to physically punish the little fucks (like me) they were faced with on a daily basis. Every once in a while a teacher would still punch out one of us little fucks but school got a lot more social after that.
The streets, however, remained the wild, wild west same as they are today.
1 comment:
I was old enough but not engaged enough to appreciate when Barrett sat in our kitchen in East Van talking to my old man during his re-election bid. I was a bit late for the school beating ban. At our school I think the teachers had meetings and picked out the recipient. They slipped a piece of paper to the PE teacher. He would then join in the game of the day and lay in a pretty big hit. Probably why I took Automotives instead. I was in time for the lowered drinking age though. Imagine the surprise of the waiter at the St. Regis when we went in celebrating being old enough....after he had been serving us for 2 years.
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