History I Partly Bunk: Part Six by Dave Jaffe

  History Is Partly Bunk by Dave Jaffe; Part Six.




   In 1983 Social Credit premier Bill Bennett swept away many of the social programs that Dave Barrett's N.D.P. government had put into law in the early 1970's. A massive group of protestors took to the streets in Vancouver and Victoria and tried to pressure the premier to withdraw his tough programs of restraint. Yet premier Bennett remained defiant and finally won the day. His program of austerity stayed in place.
   At this time in 1983 I worked as a volunteer in the Vancouver Unemployment Action Centre in the heart of the hard scrabble Downtown Eastside area. So the Action Centre which was set up to help the jobless sat smack dab in the middle of the anti-Socred protest that was now called the Solidarity Coalition.
     Upstairs was the office of the United Fishermen's Allied Workers Union or UFAW. And in that office you could find the tough talking and young UFAWU organizer George Hewison. Hewison had helped create the Solidarity Coalition. As the talk in the centre became more intense, I would exit the centre and get on a bus that would drive into the Kitsilano area of the city. Wandering along Broadway, one of the main east roads of Vancouver. I sometimes ended up in small greasy spoon restaurants or laundromats. Most of these places have now vanished, swept away by the rising tide of gentrification.
     After settling into a seat I would take out a sketch book and start to draw trees outside in the streets. For 1983 for me was not just the year of the Solidarity Coalition. "Protest and survive," said the well-known British historian Edward P. Thompson as he and many others in Europe protested the escalating arms buildup and the resurgence of the Cold War. I surely wanted to protest premier Bennett's cutbacks.
     Yet in 1983 I had just discovered the magic of drawing and the history of the visual arts. I spent hours drawing again and again. I realized with great joy that I had the power of creativity within me. This was for me a great moment. Still  to be sure it doesn't belong in any history of B.C. in the 1980's. Yet in some way my drawing helped soften the blows from Bill Bennett;'s austerity program.
       "Success turns an artist who continues to claim exemption(from history) as an escapist," wrote John Berger. I am not a successful artist. Yet in the summer of 1983, I still enjoyed escaping for a few hours the heavy politics of the moment, and in this way I managed to be partly exempt from history. History was not bunk as Henry Ford once said.  Still, drawing in a sketch book helped lift its heavy hand from my back.
     

History May Be Partly Bunk: Part Five by Dave Jaffe

  History May Be Partly Bunk by Dave Jaffe: Part Five




    Did Henry Ford really say, "History is bunk." ?  Some writers say he did. Others writers disagree. Yet wherever the truth lies, Ford was a true innovator. His Model T Ford car opened up the auto as a mass method of transit to millions of Americans. He despised tradition and most of the past and paved the way to a consumer society and mass affluence.
     Most historians I've read do seem to stress the negative. Wars, plagues, depressions and famines fill their books. Yet these afflictions don't tell the whole story. "To-day there are still liable to be pockets of exemption from crises anywhere," wrote the British writer John Berger over 50 years ago.
In other words no matter how bad things look, there's always places where good things occur.
    In the early 1980's, I lived in one of these pockets of exemption. Interest rates had soared to over 20 per cent and the British Columbian economy nose dived. The jobless rate climbed to more than 15 per cent as one sawmill after another shut down. Next door in Alberta, dozens of oil wells closed down and many oil workers were left without jobs. I didn't blame these people and others for feeling bad. Yet I felt immune from the general suffering.
    At that time in the early 1980's, I moved into a spanking new housing co-op and had never felt better. I was working for an organization that served the disabled and for the first time in years I saved money, instead of living on welfare. "Life is sweet," I told a friend of mine back then. "Though it's not the same for many others."
     In the early fall afternoons of 1982 I would rent a car or get on a Greyhound bus and ride through the Fraser Valley. For the first time since I had moved to Vancouver in the mid-1960's, I explored this beautiful area that stood a bare hour from where I lived. I marveled at the beauty of this land whose mountains and lush forests looked lovely in the autumn months. Ten years later the valley started to fill up with shopping malls, suburban tract homes and high rises. Yet in the early 80's, I moved through Chilliwack, Langley and parts of Surrey, thinking how these small places were surrounded by scenic beauty.
   Once again as in the late 1950's, I felt truly happy and fulfilled. History was not bunk. I knew that some people would look back at this time as a time of torment. Yet for me I felt happy and fulfilled.  Yet times did change and soon I felt history's sharp edges.
    In 1983, history or the age's politics moved in on me. In 1983, the B.C. Social Credit premier Bill Bennett led his right wing party to a third election victory in a row. In the  summer of 1983 he swept away the reforms that Dave Barrett's N.D.P. government had brought in from 1972 to 1975. The premier fired over 10,000 government workers, scrapped one social program after another and told the public as he justified these sweeping changes, "We are facing a new reality." Now I couldn't escape history.