Serendipity

I was downtown, charged with getting Sushi for my wife’s contribution to the pot-luck the theater was having for the last night of the play Calendar Girls. My wife had been in charge of getting and creating props for the show and during the show as the Assistant Stage Manager. As I left the restaurant, I heard some singing and music coming from Leigh Square, which is just down the block. As I believe in Serendipity I wandered over to the square.

A band with three wonderful singers was playing some old-fashioned Christmas songs and there were a number of booths. One of the booths was from the City and as I talked to the young person in the booth, another lady there asked if I wanted a hot chocolate. So, I said yes, and asked what was going on at the square. She explained it was the second and last day of an event called Christmas in Leigh Square. 

Inside the building, there were many artesian booths with great ideas for Christmas gifts. Booths were set up to sell, scarves, perfumes, local wine, craft beer, stocking stuffers, Christmas sweaters and other home-made crafts. Everyone was having a good time and there were a lot of people passing through the stalls.

At one of the stalls, I noticed some posters that were definitely from the 1960’s. I stopped to look and the person manning the booth began to talk to me. He told me that he had been a music promoter in the 1960’s in Vancouver and had been asked to write a book about his experiences. He asked me if I had been around Vancouver in the 60’s and I said yes, I had been at SFU during this time and when I was on Student’s Council I was involved in booking Acts for the theater.  

We talked for a while about how he had booked “Country Joe and the Fish” at SFU. He asked if I had been to any of the Be in’s in Vancouver’s Stanley Park, specifically the one with the Country Joe. I had been and we talked about that and other things.

 I thought to myself, it is a small world as he and I had known many of the same people back then, but I did not remember running into him nor did he remember running into me.

Another man joined us and he was a sound engineer and had worked in many of the top recording studios in Vancouver. So, we talked about old times in Vancouver in the 60’s for about 15 minutes and I realized that I needed to get the Sushi back so my wife could get to the theater on time. 

 The man I met was Jerry Kurz and his book is called The Afterthought: West Coast Rock Posters and Recollections from the '60s I highly recommend the book especially if you survived the 60’s in Canada or the West Coast of the United States or you want to know what it was like in the 60's on the West Coast of Canada.