Chapter Nine - Part One.
In 1989 my family doctor probed my body and discovered a tumour in my right lung. I thought it might be lung cancer. Yet after sessions in an MRI, my doctor concluded that the tumour was benign. This episode happily reminded me of one of comedian and film director Woody Allen's jokes about aging. "What's the three nicest words you hear before the age of thirty?" Allen asks. "I love you," Allen answers.
"What's the three nicest words you hear after the age of forty?" Allen then asks. "Your tumour is benign," he replies.
Still this incident steered me to the Unitarian Church of Vancouver. Here I thought, in this church complex in the south west part of the city, I could find some spiritual solace. Going to a synagogue wasn't part of my agenda. I no longer identified with the Jewish religion or Jewish culture. My father's hard core belief in the Jewish religion had turned me off the Jewish faith many years before.
"Unitarians are the intellectuals of the churches," Dorothy Sutherland a more orthodox Christian said when I told her where I was going on a Sunday morning. In this church I met many creative people. Boston-born Jeanni Corsi played the piano wonderfully and also composed operas and modern music. The charming Carol Davis sang beautiful songs. The by now senior citizen Harold Douglas Brown played on the church piano every Sunday. In his late 70's Brown stepped aside to make way for Elliott Dainow, who like Brown played many stretches of great music on the piano.
Harry Aoki would turn up from time to time to play his musical compositions at church services.
This church also attracted talented actors like Joy Coghill and her daughter Debra Thorne. Visual artists like Cass Lindsey, Margaret Wilkins, Hal Logan, and Don Slade painted beautiful pictures. The church also attracted many scientists such as Bob Woodham, Jim Black, John Smith and Merva and Wally Cottle.
During the 1990's this church for me truly was a haven in the now fast paced world of Metro Vancouver.
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