§ I once wrote columns
for The Georgia
Straight.

That was back in its hippie
days. I wasn’t a hippie but

ry

a my then employer, The

Vancouver Sun, was on strike
m and my pen itched.

A book has now been put
on the paper titled, Whar The
Hell Happened? Meaning.
how could a hippie rag rise to
the ranks of routine journal-

a isn?
Well, we all have to grow
Eup. The Straight is 30 years

Maes Of age; its publisher, the

@ once-hairy Dan McLeod, has
B had a haircut, and the place i is
4 Now quite corporate, where it
too was hairy.
mw =» « Hairy or not, the Straight
8 was involved in great battles
for freedom of the press
fay when being left-wing and
us g weird were not in fashion.
Today such things are very
; I uch i in fashion. And in gov-
a ernment. Hence the paper’s
Bl respectabily
; It was born in 1967 dur-
ing the Summer of Love.
wm Most of its stuff was crazy.
iB But a lot of the reaction was
Crazy, too.
- Tt was a time ‘when some
# stores put up notices that
iB they would not serve men
am with long beards and long

m mailbox

Dear Editor:
mI read the Aug. 13 article,
& “NV choir hits a high note” by
ai Layne Christensen. It reports,
the cast ‘of Joseph and she
S Technicolor Dreamcoat ...
Andrew Lloyd Webber's
“Christian” musical. At my
x Sunday school, — Temple
ag Sholom Synagogue, I learned
faa that this is a Jewish story. 1 was
a told that Joseph and his broth-

‘The Thread Bear

hair; when the Mayor of
Vancouver, “Tom Terrific,”
(aka Tom Campbell), had
hippies arrested and cleared
off the grounds of the old
courthouse; and, when the
city had a self- appointed
town fool, Joachim Foikis,
who ran around the streets in
a jester’s cap and bells, inton-
ing that the nuclear end was
nigh,

Vancouver was not dull. It
was 2 comic opera.

The Straight awarded
magistrate (later judge) Larry
Eckhardt The Pontius Pilate
Certificate of Justice. The
citation read as follows:

“To Lawrence Eckhardt,
who, by closing his mind to
justice, his eyes to fairness,
and his ears to equality, has
encouraged the belief that
the law is nor only blind, but
also deaf, dumb, and stupid.
LET HISTORY JUDGE
YOUR ACTIONS — then
appeal.”

This resulted in criminal
libel charges. The courts
threw them out.

Police Chief John Fisk got
the Heinrich Himmler
Humanitarian Award. His
citation read:

“To John Fisk, who has
striven, despite the terrible
restrictions of the Canadian
Legal Code, to maintain the
splendid police tradition
established in Germany,
Russia, South Africa, and
Selma, Alabama. YOU HAVE
WITHSTOOD THE
ENEMY — such as progress,
civil libertics, and legal equal-
ity.”

° Mayor Campbell got The
Happy Crapshaw Award,
Crapshaw being the man who

ers are the fathers of the people
of Isracl, and the 12 brothers
became the 12 wibes of Isracl.
1 had to laugh at the
thought of Layne Christensen
going to church and thinking,
that these “people of the
book” were not the Jewish
people, but were the forerun-
ners of Cluistianity.
A. Walker
North Vancouver

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between 1927 and 1934 pre-
dicted the end of the world
72 times and made his views
known by threatening to
jump off bridges.

Campbell’s citation said
he had proven thar the lip is
faster than the mind.

McLeod & Ca, also faced
nine obscenity counts, none
of which were upheld.

Men's private paris often
featured prominently in the
cartoons, a dog was shown
peeing on a fire hydrant, and
the cops didn’ tike an ad
placed by a man who wanted
a girl for “muffdiving.”

The latter caper was dis-
missed by Judge Bernie
Isman, who said he had never
heard of the word.

Another abortive com-
plaint was about a syndicated
interview with “Cynthia
Plastercaster,” a Los Angeles

“chick” who made statues of
penises. (Syndicated, presum-
ably, by the underground
press.)

The book contains one of
my brilliant pieces. It stated
that artists and actors are
bums, had always been bums,
and always would be bums,
operating on the government
grant circuit. Even in those
days (1978) I was hated by
the politically correct, who
had not yet been invented.

When my byline appeared
in the paper, theatre critic

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Tom Shandell and book
reviewer Alan Twigg resigned
in disgust.

There's nothing less liber-
al than a liberal.

I was also the subject of a
libel writ issued by Eric
Denhoff, a later chairman of
the Transit Commission and
an NDP crony. I forget what
it was that stirred his bile but
whatever it was it never got
to court. There was much
strange company: Stan
Persky, David Suzuki, who
claimed that coffee was more
dangerous than LSD, Laurier
LaPierre, Harry Rankin, Paul
Watson, Bob Geldof, now
“Sir” Bob in the UK, and
many others.

Yes, the Straight carries
pretty straight stuff these
days. So much so that it went
to Hollinger boss David
Radler to ask how he could
possibly allow me to write
controversial columns about
the holocaust.

Let’s hope it hasn’t for-
gotten where it came from.
And that a redneck stood up
for it.

— The North Shore News
believes strongly in freedom of
specch and the right of all sides
in a debate to be heard. The
columnists published in the
News present differing points
of view, but those views are not
necessarily those of the newspa-
per itself.

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