Exits and Entrances - A Journey Through Many Landscapes - by Dave Jaffe. Chapter Three - Part Two.

    Exits and Entrances - Chapter Three - PartTwo


         I'm glad I took my first trip across the U.S. and parts of Canada. Yet after my return to Montreal I feel unhappy. In a few years I would leave Montreal. But I decided to head out once more.
     In the basement of the Eaton's department store not far from McGill University, I meet a woman from Los Angeles. I fall in love with her though she tells me right away, "I'm engaged to be married." Ignoring these warning signals, I hitchhike and ride buses to Los Angeles the next summer. The woman I like so much tells me to get lost. Yet I live at my sister's apartment and spend long wonderful hours on the beaches at Santa Monica. I realized years later that this was the first time in 15 years that I'd been to a beach.
    Once again, back in Montreal I vow to leave this city. I'd seen the west coast of North America and the climate and natural beauty there had turned me off Montreal forever. Yet I don't want to live in the U.S. of A. Its right-wing politics frighten me.
     Yet everything seems seems to be tilting west. Aldous Huxley lives and dies in Los Angeles. He dies on the same day that President JFK is shot dead. Henry Miller, another one of my favourite writers, stays in Big Sur in California. Ken Kesey, a rising young novelist, farms in Oregon.  And Montreal's winters and summers still suck. Plus I'm now increasingly aware of the rise of separatist feelings in the province of Quebec. But where can I go to?
    Then an answer comes in the person of Dick Clemens now calling himself 'p.x. belinski'. He introduces me to the writings of C. Wright Mills, a left-leaning American sociologist. He gives me back issues of the Marxist monthly 'Monthly Review'.  This long-haired 20 something hippie type has been to Cuba, joined 'ban-the bomb' movements and has had at least one nervous breakdown. Still, I find him to be one of the most interesting people I've met. Clemens moves to Vancouver in 1965 and I plan to follow him.
     I'm not saying "I'm apolitical" anymore. I've become a Marxist. Soon I head off to Vancouver. For the first time I hitchhike and bus across this vast land of Canada, astounded at its empty spaces and clean neat western cities like Regina, Calgary and Vancouver.
     Then in September 1966 I come back to Montreal. "I'm leaving here," my dad tells me when I come to my parents' tiny one bedroom apartment in McGill's student's ghetto. "We're going to Vancouver." My father has found a  job with a cablevision company that has its head office in Vancouver. And wonder of wonders he's no longer poor. He and my mother aren't rich either . Yet their and mine 15 year trek through poverty and destitution is over. Life is bearable again.
    Me and my family are on the move again but this time with more money in our pockets. So goodbye Montreal. Hello Vancouver. This was a good move.