The Life of Steve continued.

   Steve was now working on a tug boat again. But he spent hours, sometimes days, marching in demos, picketting companies who were being struck by their workers, and running off pamphlets for coming demonstrations.
     He was a militant who'd found his religion or passion in life and worked happily within it. He had also found a family, someting he hadn't had in many years.
     But he had fun too. He ended up on the downtown eastside or 'skid road' as it was known back then. Here he drank, partied and often stayed in the area's cheap hotels for months on end. "The downtown eastside wasn't a bad area back then," he recalls.
    Steve also went back to school. He fulfilled his adolescent dream of going further than high school. He studied at a local community college. Then he went to the University of British Columbia and got a Bachelor of Arts in political science. Now he aimed to get a Master of Arts in political science. But his thesis advisor didn't help him here. And Steve alleges that the advisor sabotaged his efforts.
     But then the world changed.
     In 1979 the new pope John Paul the Second went back to visit his native land of Poland and held an open air mass in Warsaw. The Poles had been the most rebellious of the eastern European people who lived under Soviet control. Millions of Polish people turned out to see and listen to the pope. Soon a new trade union appeared in Gdandsk, called Solidarnosc or Solidarity. It was led by a tough talking moustached shipyard worker called Lech Walensa.
     Walensa and the Gdansk shipyard workers struck against their communist bosses. Soon they were joined by other Polish workers. And unlike previous Polish revolts in the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's, the communists couldn't crush this uprising.
   "This Walensa is an agent of the C.I.A.," Steve claims. In any case, it's clear that the new pope did shovel$40 million to Solidarity and the striking Polish workers. The western media adored and feted the Polish workers though such media had never given the same treatment  to strikers in their own country.
    One thing was clear. Many Polish workers weren't happy living under communism.
     Nor were the Afghanis.