Thursday 31 August 2017

Right, Left and Centre: The Poltics of Some Canadians by Dave Jaffe. Chapter 43, part one.

    From California to Canada. One woman's journey to adulthood.


      Marion Lansbury wasn't happy. In less than an hour another school day would end,. This 12 year old knew what was waiting for her in her family's suburban Pasadena home. Her three younger siblings would be tearing around their southern California home, causing her all sorts of problems.
Their faces would be smeared with jam and food from the fridge. Their noise would fill the house.
      "Oh my God," Marion said as she walked through the front door of her home. She saw her siblings up to all sorts of mischief. "What are you kids up to, to-day? And where's mom?"
    Yet she knew already where her mother was. Antonia Lansbury was no doubt lying down on her a and her husband's twin bed in one of the home's bedrooms on the second floor. She was probably enmeshed in an alcoholic haze. A half empty glass of scotch liquor was usually perched on one of the bedroom's side tables. Next to the bottle of scotch often sat a half empty glass of liquor. When Marion went upstairs to check her mother's condition, she was right again.
     Marion knew before the age of ten, that her mother had serious problems with life. A few years later, she told some of her friends, "My mum's a lush. All she does is drink liquor."
     Now in this spring time afternoon of 1957, Marion had to bring order to the Lansbury home. She had to clean up the faces of her younger brothers and sister.  She had to cook a meal for all of them. Then, too, she remembered she had to do the laundry and clean up the house. She also had to prepare the meals for her siblings to take to school tomorrow. Her father, a big chunky man was far away, steering a big plane across the Pacific Ocean for a private U.S. airline.
     "Fly the friendly skies of United," went one popular airline advertisement of a few years later. Marion Lansbury stood in the living room of her home and asked herself, "Where's the people who will help m and where's my friends?'' She looked out at the house's  small back yard that also needed cleaning up, and sure couldn't see too much help for her. Once again, she was on her own, confronted with problems that no 12 year old should have to face alone.
     So Marion had to grow up early but not always happily. Her blue eyes turned cold. Her blonde hair became grey early on. At first, she bloated up and became fat. Later on, when she reached her adult medium height of  five foot five inches, she slimmed down. Soon she took up smoking cigarettes. It was a necessary evil  but a necessary vice.
       Yet Marion was also a very intelligent young female. IQ tests were all the rage in the 1950's. Marion nearly always scored in the top 5 percent when taking these tests. When she was 17, she won a scholarship to a nearby state university. Here she studied biological sciences and benefitted from the tremendous post- Sputnik surge in spending on science that happened in the U.S. in the late 1950's. When the Soviet Union beat the U.S. into launching rockets into space, science student like Marion Lansbury benefitted. Then in the middle of her academic career she moved to northern California.    
      "I want to go and study somewhere else," she told her family and a university guidance counselor. In fact, she wanted to leave her family and her still alcoholic mother Antonia behind. Which she did.
     

Thursday 24 August 2017

Right, Left and Centre: The Poltics of Some Canadians by Dave Jaffe; Chapter 42. Part Three.

   A Second Soldier Who Came Home Alive. Chapter 42. Part Three.


      By the time he reached his 50's, Graham Stark had quite an aggressive personality. "It's hard to stop him talking once he's started a conversation," someone remarked after meeting Stark a few years before he passed away. "He doesn't always listen to you."
    One group of people Stark did listen to, were the powerful people in the federal Liberal Party and he knew many of them. They included the powerful Vancouver Member of Parliament Ron Basford, Margaret Trudeau's father and Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau's father-in-law, James Sinclair, and the father of former B.C. premier Christy Clark.
    In later life, Stark left his job in the lumber company he was working for, and tried his hand in private businesses. Here he failed once or twice. Yet he died a loyal federal Liberal, who  after wading through massive amounts of paper work, did get a decent veteran's pension for himself and his wife. Only once was he deeply disappointed when he went to the movies.
     In the mid-1990's, he went to see a film about D-Day called 'Saving Private Ryan'. It starred Tom Hanks and Matt Damon and was directed by Steven Spielberg. It was a great hit and packed in the crowds to local theatres. "Yet there was no mention of the Canadian armed forces," Stark complained. "We just weren't on the screen at all."
      The movie similarly ignored British soldiers (although they were mentioned), Polish troops and fighting men from some other nations too. 'Ryan' after all was a typical Hollywood production that was pro-American and nothing else.
     Graham Stark senior passed away in the early 21st century in Nanaimo, B.C. He was  survived by his wife Lillian and his son Graham Junior. Like many other Canadians who came of age in the 1930's and 1940's, he had helped defeat German Nazism, Italian Fascism and Japanese militarism.

Tuesday 22 August 2017

Right, Left and Centre: The Politics of Some Canadians by Dave Jaffe. Another Soldier Who Came Home Alive. Chapter 42, Part Two.

    Part Two of 'Another Soldier Who Came Home Alive'.


       Graham Stark didn't remember World war One. It ended in 1918 and he wasn't born until 1925. Yet he never forgot World War Two. He marched across France, Belgium and Holland, killing and shooting Germans, and being shot at.  At war's end in 1945 he had moved slightly up the army ranks from private to sergeant. Yet most importantly he came home alive. He saw many of his fellow soldiers fall in battle and die.
    Of course Canadian casualties in the Second World War were dwarfed by those of other countries. "Over 27 million people  died in the Soviet Union fighting Nazi Germany," one military historian said. And the Japanese armed forces killed somewhere between 10 and 15 million Chinese in the 1930's and 1940's. "My wife hates the Japanese," one transplanted American said about his Chinese-born wife. "They did terrible things in China during World War Two."
     Anyway Graham Stark came home to British Columbia in 1945. He was only 20 and had to find a job, which he did. He ended up working for a B.C.-based lumber company. This son in a family of 11 children got lucky. By the late 1940's, the B.C. forest industry was on a roll. In 1947 a new B.C. forest act granted what later became Tree Farm licenses to lumber companies. These leases, forest industry Ken Drushka asserts, "constituted the bestowal of an immense windfall capital gain on the recipient at no cost."
     As a wave of prosperity rolled across postwar Canada, millions of new and old Canadians flocked to suburbia. They moved into new homes and the need for wood to build these new houses seemed endless. B.C. forest firms thrived. Graham Stark spent a large part of his adult life, working for big B.C. lumber companies. He travelled throughout east Asia and spent some time in Singapore and Indonesia.
      In Indonesia in 1965, a military coup led by General Suharto overthrew the left leaning government of president Sukarno. Suharto's troops wiped out over half a million communists. Suharto had thus made Indonesia safe for capitalism and Suharto and his family became very rich.
     Canadian, American and Japanese lumber firms poured money into Indonesia and other tropical lands. Woods like radiate pine and eucalyptus trees were planted on islands that were cleared of all native vegetation. "The forest industry is no longer the preserve of the north of the world," forestry expert Patricia Marchak pointed out in the 1990's. In tropical and southern forests, trees  like the eucalyptus and radiate pines,can be grown much faster and grown more quickly than say cedars in British Columbia.
      New technologies came on stream to process these trees and investment flowed south. "North American forests are in decline," Marchak pointed out. A good company man, Stark didn't question these changes. What was good for the company he worked for, was good for him. He accepted the free enterprise system. As for his politics, he joined and remained a federal Liberal supporter for most of his life. He met his wife Lillian Waterland in the Liberal party. They had a son also called Graham who acquired a massive knowledge of world politics.
     Stark senior had little time for the Conservative Party of Canada. "It's too much King and British Empire stuff for me," he said. He also kept clear of the New Democratic Party ands its predecessor the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation or the C.C.F. "It has little time for our armed forces and I wouldn't vote for it," he said. he was overjoyed when his friend, (later Senator) Ray Perrault won a seat as a federal Liberal Member of Parliament in Burnaby in the Trudeaumania year of 1968. Perrault edged out not only the Conservative contender but also the leader of the N.D.P., namely Tommy Douglas. Douglas, now a left wing icon, had led Saskatchewan for many years and had paved the way for Medicare.

Saturday 19 August 2017

Right, Left and Centre: The Politcs of Some Canadians: Chapter 42, Part One. Another Soldier Who Came Home Alive

     Another Soldier Who Came Home Alive - Part One.


          Graham Stark huddled in a landing craft, side by side with a dozen or more young Canadian men. At this moment he was a scared young Canadian who was only 19 years old. He could hear machine guns crackle, shells explode overhead and soldiers screaming in pain as they lay wounded or dying in the waters of the Channel just off the French coastline.
     For this was D-Day, June 6th 1944. Graham was just one of 150,000 Allied troops who would have to fight their way onto French beaches. Waiting for them were thousands of well-entrenched German soldiers. Thousands of Allied troops died on D-Day and after. Many thousands died afterwards as they fought their way across France, Belgium and Holland On D-day alone over 350 Canadians were killed and hundreds more were wounded. As the commanding general U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower looked on, the struggle began for Allied control of Western Europe. And 14,000 Canadian troops were part of that struggle on June 6.
      Now the landing craft that Graham Stark was on fell open and there was the beach right in front of him. It was a sliver of the French coast even now littered with bodies of dead and wounded men and packed with barb wire. "Oh my God," Graham Stark said to himself. "What a bloody mess." Then he was thrown into the battle for Europe. He grabbed his gun tightly and soon he was another combatant. The Canadians fired on the German troops who seemed to be popping up everywhere, shooting, throwing grenades and killing dozens of Canadians.
  This horrible battle was necessary. It was just another part of the Second World War. This war lasted from 1939 to 1945. In the end, the Soviet Union, Britain, the United States, Canada and other countries defeated Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and a militaristic Japan. At war's end, Germany, Japan and Italy were crushed and lay in ruins. Yet the war's destruction left over 55 million people dead and devastated many parts of Europe and Asia.
      "When I entered Warsaw in Poland in 1945," said the American journalist John Gunther, "I don't think I saw more than two buildings in the entire city left standing."
      Canada back then had no more that 10 million people. Yet over 55,000 Canadians, mostly men, were killed in the war. Tens of thousands of other soldiers came home injured in mind or body or both. This by the way was the second time in 25 years that Canada had been involved in a world war. The First World War lasted from 1914 to 1945 and over 60,000 Canadians died in that war.

Wednesday 9 August 2017

Right, Left and Centre: The Poltics of Some Canadians: Chapter 41, Part Seven. by Dave jaffe.

  A Happy Couple in a Sometimes Conflicted Church. Part Seven.
    


    The Unitarian Church in Vancouver as pointed out in the last two parts had many clever and talented people in its congregation. Yet this didn't always prevent arguments from breaking out from time to time.
     In the early 21st century, Tilda Sweet and Barry Look stayed on the sidelines as another controversy erupted, shortly after Steven Epperson took over as the church's new minister  Epperson was a bearded intellectual who was a former Mormon from Salt Lake City. "Be fruitful and multiply," the Bible said and Epperson and his wife had followed this injunction. They had five children.
    Epperson finally calmed the troubled waters of the church and led it very successfully for many years afterwards. He was still there in 2016. Phillip Hewett had been retired since the 1990's yet he remained a presence in the church. Of course the Unitarian church didn't please all people. "It's just a club," former member Jennifer Wade said about it. Wade was a founder of Amnesty International in B.C. She wanted the church to bring justice as she saw it to the wider world. After many years at the church Wade left the place in the early 21st century.
    Other people dropped out too along the way including Evelyn Riley and Margaret Wilkins. Whatever their disappointments with the place they didn't speak about them. So this church didn't please everybody. Yet it did do important things. It did help the poor by sponsoring refugees and running a weekly food bank. It remained a liberal religion at a time when most other churches were conservative. It also brought happiness and spiritual happiness to many people in Metro Vancouver. Tilda Sweets and Garry Look still enjoy it there. So do many others.
      "Religions endure," said Rodger Garbutt a former social science teacher and talented visual artist. The Unitarian religion is close to 500 years old. This time frame is dwarfed by other religions like Hinduism which is 5,000 years old and Judaism which has been around for over 3,000 years. Catholicism has been around for over two millennia.
     When the Unitarian came to the corner of 49th and Oak Street in the late 1950's, the Social Credit Party ruled the roost in British Columbia and the Union Nationale ran the province of Quebec. Both political parties have vanished. Strong Canadian presences like Eaton's department stores and Simpson Sears are now defunct. Other signposts have also vanished. Yet the Unitarian church is still there. It's a success story and has carved out for itself an important place in Vancouver.
     
     
                                 

Right, Left and Centre: The Poltics of Some Canadians by Dave Jaffe: :Chapter 41. Part Six.

    A Happy Couple in s Sometimes Conflicted Church. By Dave Jaffe. Part Six.


     The Unitarian Church of Vancouver didn't only attract talented musicians and visual artists. One of Canada's well known novelists, Margaret Laurence came to this church in the 1960's. Later she returned to Ontario.
      The church also had among its members some very clever people. "David Donaldson is a brilliant economist ," Jennifer Wade said about Donaldson. This was true. Donaldson taught for many years at UBC. Then there was John Smith, a tall talented mathematician who worked with  mathematically challenged youngsters at the B.C. Institute of Technology. A married couple, Merva and Wally Cottle both taught histology or the science of tissues at UBC.
    Wally Cottle was a scrapper who told the minister Sydney Morris, "I'm going to get rid of you." And he did. Another clever teacher was Joyce Griffiths who had many children. "I don't bring them all together at one time," she once confessed. "If they all get together, they usually end up arguing." Griffiths had a Master of Science in physics and taught for many years at the B.C. Institute of Technology.
     Randy Mackinnon had a Masters of Arts in the social sciences. This ambitious man from Alberta found a true outlet for his talents by setting up philosopher's cafes at the Unitarian Church on Friday nights. They proved to be very popular. "This church meets all my needs," Mackinnon said as his philosopher's cafes were in full swing.
     

Tuesday 8 August 2017

Right, Left and Centre: The Poltics of Some Canadisn by Dave Jaffe: A Happy Couple in a Sometsimes Conflicted Church.

     Chapter 41. Part Five by Dave Jaffe


    Like any other organization the Unitarian Church of Vancouver was a hierarchy. At the top of the pyramid stood women like Patience Towler, Dorothy Goresky, Evelyn Riley and Art Hughes. Towler was a sometimes stern police type who kept troublemakers in line or got them out of the church. She came from England and showed up at the church in the 1970's. In the 21st century she went back to England.
     Evelyn Riley was a thin elegant woman who had a great love for opera. Dorothy Goresky had been a medical doctor from at least  the 1950's to the 1990's. This was a rare accomplishment in an age when women were routinely kept out of lucrative male-dominated professions. She was a skilled bureaucratic practitioner who kept the church functioning efficiently.
      Art Hughes was a tall military veteran who was always collecting money from many organizations. He always defended the Canadian military against any critics. "I don't trust him," said one woman who at one time invited Hughes into her house. Yet this was a minority opinion in the church. After he passed away, Hughes received a glowing obituary in the 'Globe and Mail'.
      The Unitarian Church attracted some very talented people. The Saskatchewan born Harold Douglas Brown played classical music on most Sunday mornings at the beginning of the church service. This is the way many newcomers and longtime members of the congregation were welcomed to the church.  The Boston-born Jeanni Corsi was another talented musician who often played the piano at Unitarian services. She not only played music. She also composed songs and operas. The tall Elliott Dainow took over Harold Brown's job of playing music every Sunday, when Harold Brown retired in the 1990's.
     Along with these talented pianists , many other gifted people came to the church to perform. Carol Davis sang some beautiful music as one of the lead singers in the Unitarian choirs. Davis was a very fine singer who at one time tried unsuccessfully to get a job with the Vancouver Opera. Still, she had a great voice and the Unitarian choirs performed some fine music. "The choirs kept the church together through some very difficult times," said former choir director Sally Novinger.
      A fine actress Susan Chapple appeared at many Unitarian services. So too did another talented actor namely Joy Coghill and her also very competent actor and daughter Debra Thorne.
        Not only actors flocked to the church. So too did visual artists. A wonderful artist named Don Slade often had shows at the church. Margaret Wilkins was another talented visual artist who painted beautiful abstract works. As some of these people mentioned got older, new younger persons came along.  Meanwhile many brilliant academics came to the church also.
     
     
     

Saturday 5 August 2017

Right, Left and Centre: The Politics of Some Canadians: Chapter 41. Part Four.

    A Happy Couple in A Sometimes Conflicted Church. Part Four.


        As the Unitarian church progressed into the 1990's, the surrounding neighbourhood changed its character. Many Asian Canadians, who were Chinese in origin, bought up many of the nearby houses. Some of these new and old Canadians worshipped at Buddhist temples. Others flocked to the evangelical  and Anglican churches. Most of these churches preached an unyielding conservatism.
       Filipino newcomers meanwhile ended up in Catholic churches that had little time for women needing abortions or same sex couples. "We're just not wanted in this church," one gay man whose partner was HIV positive said about one Catholic church he used to go to. The Unitarian church welcomed many gay and lesbian people and contrasted sharply with other more conservative places of worship.
     The Unitarian church was at times also a haven for people with personal problems. "People come here who have problems," said Merva Cottle, a histologist or tissue expert, who taught at UBC's Faculty of Medicine. "Sometimes they solutions to their problems here and sometimes they don't. If they don't ,they often leave."
     A number of disturbed men showed up at the church from time to time and then left. One man who arrived in the 1980's, used to look obsessively at well dressed women who had dark or brown hair. He walked past one woman's house quite a few times. Then  he wrote a letter of apology to the woman. He then wrote a memoir of his time in the church and then left.
      " There's too much information in this work," a church member named Virginia said about the memoir. The memoir vanished down the memory hole. Yet Virginia soon left the church too. Another man showed up at the church with money problems. He was paid money by the church to officiate at some services. Yet then he went out into the larger world and clamed even more money from some other people. He also persuaded a church member who'd inherited money to buy him a car.
        This man vanished from the church also after someone disagreed with what he was doing.
       Some ministers ran into problems at the church and had to leave. Sydney Morris was a young Midwestern American minister who came to the church in the 1990's. She was forced out of her job after pressure from irate members. Another minister came but was also forced to leave. "Where's a Canadian minister?" one congregant asked. "They're all Americans coming up here." Another American minister showed up in the 1990's. Andy Backus was a tall American who had lived for some time in upstate New York. He put his Ph.D. after his name and this riled up some church members. The Vancouver Unitarians had many Ph.D's in their midst and most of these people didn't advertise their degrees. At last in 2002 the church got a permanent minister again, namely Steven Epperson, a bearded former Mormon from Salt Lake City, Utah.
    
    

Friday 4 August 2017

Right, Left and Centre: The Politics of Some Canadians: Chapter 41, part three.

      A Happy Couple in A Sometimes Conflicted Church; Part Three.


    More upheavals lay ahead of the Unitarian church in Vancouver in the 1970's onward. One good thing that happened was the founding of the environmental organization 'Greenpeace' in the church's basement. Very few churches back then would have allowed such a gathering of environmentalists in their place of worship, let alone found an organization to fight for environmental issues.
    Yet then came two problems. One was a male minister who ended up sleeping with a number of Unitarian women. He was fired when someone uncovered his exploits. Another dispute arose in the 1980's that was harder to solve. By now in the 1980's, Ronald Reagan was president of the United States of America. His aggressive rearmament program provoked anti-U.S. demonstrations across parts of western Europe and North America. Protestors stood foursquare against Reagan's plans to plant Cruise missiles and Stealth bombers in the heart of Europe. These new weapons of course were aimed at the then-Soviet Union.
     In the Vancouver church several women from the pro-peace group 'The Voice of Women' came out in favour of the protestors. They urged the church to support the anti-Cruise missile and anti-Stealth bomber marchers. "They're just a bunch of old Commie women," someone said contemptuously about these older females.Yet the women were right to point out that U.S. president Ronald Reagan was dangerously raising tensions again and renewing the Cold War.
     Still, quite a few people in the church didn't agree with the women's politics. "The Unitarian Church is socially progressive," says Barbara Taylor, who with her husband John, ran quite a few prize winning Bread and Breakfast hotels. "Yet the church isn't economically progressive." In other word, Unitarians are all in favour of gay or lesbian ministers, same sex marriages and a woman's right to choose. The controversies that roiled the United Church  of Canada in the 1980's, about gay ministers for example, never happened in the Unitarian church. Unitarians quickly accepted gay and lesbian ministers and same sex marriages, some of which were performed at the church.
     Yet many Unitarians at the church don't support making trade unions stronger, raising the minimum wage and governments taking a stronger role in the economy. Also many Unitarians were quite hostile to the Soviet Union. Tilda Sweet supported the Voice of Women on the issue of  opposing Stealth bombers and Cruise missiles. Barry Look sided with Ronald Reagan.
     In the end after much debate, the church took part in the huge anti-war demos that took place in Vancouver in the early 1980's. Yet it took some arguments for this to happen before the Unitarians joined the demonstrations. By now, the Unitarian Church stood out a  beacon of liberalism among Vancouver churches. It invited into its church  speakers like Murray Dobbin , Linda McQuaig  and the fiery Canadian nationalist Maud Barlow all of whom were definitely on the left, and often to the left of many Unitarians. It married same sex couples. It also married people and performed memorial services for those who had no religion. "They do things we can't do," a member of  another church not  far from the Unitarian Church said later. This was true.
     

Thursday 3 August 2017

Right, Left and Centre: The Politics of Some Canadians by Dave Jaffe; Chapter 41, part two.

  A Happy Couple in a Sometimes Conflicted Church: Part Two.


     What is the Unitarian faith? Basically it was yet another religion that came out of the reformation in 16th century Europe. Unitarians believed back then that God, the Son and the Holy Ghost were all one being. This of course smacked of heresy to the Catholic and Orthodox churches back then. They attacked the church's doctrines and the Unitarians that worshipped there. Still, the Unitarians managed to survive in places like Transylvania in present day Romania. The  Unitarian doctrines later trickled out to other parts of Europe.
    In the early 19th century it came to Canada and spread westward. By the 1950's, most Unitarians were  liberal believers. "Unitarians believe in the dignity of the individual," one clergyman said. Few Unitarian sermons contain references to Christ, the Holy Ghost or God for that matter. Nor do their hymns. No crosses grace the walls of any Unitarian church. And there are no stained glass windows in any Unitarian church either. "God is noted by its absence," says one Unitarian .
      Yet all of this freedom didn't always lead to harmony. "There's really no theology in Unitarianism," said Sally Novinger, a former choir director at the Vancouver church. "So there's plenty of disagreements." The first outbreak of dissent hit the church in the 1960's. If the 1950's was an age of innocence, the 1960's was an age of rebellion. Dozens of groups came out of the woodwork to claim a place in the sun.
   Feminists, Quebec sovereigntists, anti-Vietnam war protestors, First nations, environmentalists, hippies and yippies, and gays and lesbians demanded social justice in Canada.  Religions faced challenges too. "A cultural revolution was under way in the 1960's," writes the American socialist Michael Harrington. "It challenged moral certitudes and practices with the authority of  centuries behind them." Organized mainstream religions, Harrington points out, declined in importance and many Eastern and pseudo religions sprung up. Casual sex, casual drugs, and casual dress became commonplace.
    Cultural and political challenges surfaced in the Vancouver Unitarian church too. Many of its members tried L.S.D and marijuana which then as now were illegal. A few members left their wives or husbands to practice what they called back then "free love". At one Unitarian conference held in Canada in the late 1960's, American black  power advocates demanded social justice and money as reparations for what they said were centuries of  oppression of African-Americans.
   As this age of dissent faded somewhat in the early 1970's, it left some scars behind. Yet the Unitarian Church of Vancouver, like most other churches survived. Tilda Sweet and Barry Look came here to the church in the 1970's, and stayed. At this time it had a congregation of about 600. It went into the 1970's on a firm footing. It still had a future ahead of it.

    

Wednesday 2 August 2017

Right, Left and Centre: The Politcs of Some Canadians by Dave Jaffe. Chapter 41, part one.

A Happy Couple in A Sometimes Conflicted Church. Chapter 41, part one.


      They looked like a happy couple and they were. He was a tall heavy set man from the state of Delaware. She was a short thin woman who grew up in Saskatchewan. They weren't on the same political page though. Tilda Sweet stood on the left politically speaking. Her father was a staunch New Democrat. So was she and all of her siblings. She taught English as a second language in the public school system.
     Barry Look was a civil engineer who worshipped free enterprise. "The market is the magic," U.S. President Ronald Reagan used to say. Barry Look agreed. He loved Ronald Reagan. This couple stayed together despite their political differences. They rarely fought with each other and they live in a comfortable home on Vancouver's west side which they bought before housing prices went through the roof.
    Yet the church they went to was often divided on issues of politics and some theological points. And unlike Tilda Sweet and Barry Lord's view points, these differences sometimes swelled into open if nonviolent conflict. The church they went to for years was and is the Unitarian Church of Vancouver. It came to its present place on the city's west side in the late 1950's.
      "It was an era of church building," one observer pointed out. It was also the first real age of mass affluence. For many Canadians, the 1950's, gave them their first taste of the good life. Millions of Canadians, new and old ones moved out to the suburbs. They bought, houses, cars and t.v. sets for the first time. They raised children, usually two or three of them and they were happy. Or so the history books tell us.
    Of course there were millions of Canadians who weren't affluent. Yet even many of these people later went on to enjoy the good things of life. "The 1950's was an age of innocence," former premier Dave Barrett said. Groups like the First Nations, feminists, ands others weren't on the radar screen back then. They showed up later.
     Still, to make the Unitarian Church of Vancouver really take off, you needed a strong take charge leader. Philip Hewitt was that man. He came out from England in the 1950's, a tall, angular graduate of Oxford university. . He breathed new life and ambitions into the then Unitarian congregation that worshipped in a small church near the corner of Granville and Tenth Avenue. He persuaded some Unitarians to take out mortgages on their homes and lend the money towards building a new church.
    Vancouver, he noted was spreading out north, east and south and the church should move with the times. The Unitarians for the most part agreed.  So on one Sunday in the late 1950's a new big Unitarian church with three buildings opened up on the north east corner of 49th Avenue and Oak Street.
      "I was a bit worried," one Unitarian member recalls., "because I'd taken out a mortgage to help pay for the church property. Yet in the end it all worked out."