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.