Right, Left and Center: The Politics of Some Canadians by Dave Jaffe: Part Six; The Lady That Moved From left to Right.

     Right, Left and Centre: Part Six; The Lady That Moved From Left to Right


         Preface: All the people in these blogs are real. But I've changed their names.
    When Barry Nakamura came to Toronto in the late 1990's, he didn't think he'd meet anyone from his past. "I just wanted to see Central Canada," this 50 something postal worker said. "I'd never been back east before."
    Yet one early morning in late November, Barry was sitting in a restaurant in downtown Toronto. A woman dressed in business clothes and  a dark overcoat approached this former yippie. "You're Barry aren't you?" this woman who carried a briefcase and was wearing high heels and glasses said. "You were a left winger."
    Barry admitted that he had been on the left at one time. Now he was a strong supporter of his union but that was the extent of his politics now. "I'm Mary Anne Evans," this woman said. "Now I'm part of the Mike Harris Revolution." This woman who was about Barry's age then launched into a full scale right wing political speech. As she did, Barry Nakamura now remembered her. She had joined the yippies in Vancouver, just about the same time he had.   She'd taken part in demonstrations against the Vietnam War, organized people to demonstrate against Pierre Elliot Trudeau's imposing the War Measures Act, called policemen 'Pigs', and threw rocks and bottles at police when they clashed with the yippies in street demonstrations.
     Back then just  like Barry, Mary Anne Burns had called herself " A Revolutionary." Now she told Barry, "I'm against welfare. I'm not in favour of unemployment insurance. Those programs just encourage people to sit on their behinds and do nothing." She told Barry that she was no longer a bleeding heart radical. "I'm a conservative lawyer and I'm damn proud of it." Then Evans vanished. Nakamura sat for about a half an hour afterwards, nursing a cup of coffee and thinking how people changed.
     For when Barry and Mary Anne first met, this brown haired woman was in her late 20's and was living a very different life than she did now. Back then she was in love with Ken Farmakides who had a nine year old daughter named Dara. Ken was a tall muscular American who came to Canada in the late 1960's to avoid the draft and fighting in the Vietnam War. 
     Ken, Mary Anne and Dara, were out and out hippies.  Worse yet they were yippies or left wing hippies.They lived in Surrey, then a rough suburb of Vancouver. Ken flew the flag of the National Liberation Front, of  Vietnam, outside their scruffy house. The NLF were Vietnamese communists who were then engaged in total war with the United States in Vietnam. Also Mary Anne, Ken and Dara were living on welfare. "Living in Surrey was no picnic," Mary Anne recalled a few years later. "But we did have fun."