Fact & Fiction Made in canada by annabel lyon t d.M. Fraser t edith iglauer t Paul tough t MiriaM toews

charles bernstein t Meandricus t Mary Meigs t Michael nicoll yahgulanaas t toM walMsley

soren bondruP-nielsen t Mandelbrot t bill bissett t yoshihiro tatsuMi t Jane awde goodwin t cleM

and olivier Martini t bakir Junaideen t edward hoagland t Jennica harPer t Patricia young

We keyed everything into the database in the afternoons, and unwound in the evenings with a

glass of Savage Caves, a can of Kokanee, a bottle of Moosehead beer. Twenty years passed and we had 3,383 things in the database, a tidy collec-tion of top-notch work. But where was the pain, the struggle, the agony? Where was the hijacking of No. 8, the whole edition snatched from the loading dock by faceless villains? Who would steal 5,325 copies of a literary magazine, said the officer attending. No one had any ideas, but one fact remains: Geist No. 8 is the most completely collected issue in the twenty-year history of the illustrious magazine that you hold in your hands at this mo-ment, with 1,388 writers and artists of the first calibre in the database, along with 302 poems, 404 fiction pieces,740 narrative pieces, 175 comix, 295 essays, 108 “other” things, and hundreds of photographs, maps, puzzles and illustrations, reviews of 1,558 books, films, zines and comix. Some-one said the numbers don’t add up. Well, some of the records are multiples. And don’t forget the readers, the illustrious 22,580, every one of them keyed into the database with loving attention throughout the same period, readers who followed these same writers and artists of the first calibre through 5,248 published pages, a lot of page turning, a lot of keyboarding, but no smoking, not any more, not in this century anyway. We outgrew our tiny office, and booked meeting rooms in the public library until the librarians threw us out for laughing too loudly too often: it was time to move on . . . continued on page 82

Winner : Western Magazine of the Year

GEISTFall & Winter 78/79

20yeAr

r e t r o s p e c t i v e : Special Collector’s edition $9.95

pub lished byThe Geist Foun da tion

pub lisherSte phen Osborne

se nior ed i torMary Schendlinger

pub lish ing as sis tantMichal Kozlowskias so ci ate ed i torC.E. Coughlan

ex ec u tive di rec torPatty Osborne

cir cu la tion managerKristin Cheung

web ed i torRoss Merriam

ed i to rial as sis tantsSa rah Hill ier, Chelsea Novak

ad min is tra tive as sis tantDan iel Zomparelli

in terns Becky McEachern,

Lauren Ogston, Dan Post

ed i to rial boardKevin Bare foot, Bartosz Barczak, Trevor Battye,Jill Boettger, Marisa Chan dler, Todd Coyne,Brad Cran, Laurie Ed wards, Me lissa Ed wards,Rob ert Everett-Green, Derek Fairbridge, Dan -iel Fran cis, Erinna Gilkison, Helen Godolphin,Leni T. Goggins, Lily Gontard, Mi chael Hay -ward, Gillian Jerome, Brian Lam, Sa rah Leavitt,Sa rah Maitland, Thad McIlroy, Billeh Nicker -son, Eric Pe ter son, Leah Pires, Leah Rae,Debby Reis, Craig Riggs, Kris Rothstein,Norbert Ruebsaat, Jane Silcott, Paul Tough,Michelle van der Merwe, Carrie Villeneuve,Josh Wallaert, Kathy Vito, Kaleigh Wisman,Barbara Zatyko

ac coun tantMindy Abramowitz, cga

ad ver tis ing & mar ket ingClevers Me dia

coverSteffen Quong

web ar chi tectscascadiamedia.ca

com po si tionVan cou ver Desk top

dis tri bu tionMag a zines Can ada

printed in can ada byHem lock Print ersfirst sub scriber

Jane Springerman ag ing ed i tor emer i tus

Barbara Zatyko

Support the Geist Writ ers and Art ists Fund:geist.com/donate

www.geist.com

N O T E S & D I S P A T C H E S

Stephen Osborne 9 Shots FiredVeron ica Gaylie 12 Mem ory Test

Jane Silcott 14 Lurch ing ManJane Awde Goodwin 16 Dear Doc tor

Megan Mueller 17 Vladi mir Tay lor Brown-Evans 18 In the Cen tre

F I N D I N G S

Joseph O’Connor, CatherineOwen, Olivier Mar tini, Bakir

Junaideen, Edward Hoagland, Jennica Harper, Tim Inkster,

Don McLeod, George A. Walkerand Frank Newfeld, Patri cia

Young, Shane Rhodes, YoshihiroTatsumi, François Mandeville,

Sarah Leavitt, Roger Epp, Harry Karlinsky, Renee Rodin, SusanTelfer, Jeffery Donaldson, Soren Bondrup-Niel sen,

Gillian Jerome

21 From a Growl to a Scream,

Father’s Day, Bitter Medicine, The

But ler’s Room, Hotcakes on a String,

Strange Time, Flow ers for Hit ler

Was a Pecu liar Book, Extinc tion,

Cir cle the Wag ons: In Ink,

Drift ing Life, The Cheat ing

Gam bler, The Agony and the Impasse,

Wait ing For Sleep,

Moniyaw Treaty,

Evo lu tion of Objects, Home Team,

Funeral Fire, Here afters, Like a Belly Dancer,

Ten e ment Song

C O M M E N T

Stephen Henighan 121 The BookNet Dic ta tor shipDan iel Fran cis 125 Revis ing Mr. Bennett

Alberto Manguel 127 Going to Hell

R E T R O S P E C T I V E

Authors old and new 81 Selections from 20 years of Geist

D E P A R T M E N T S

4 Let tersMandelbrot 7 In Camera

The Usual Gang 131 EndnotesMeandricus 143 Puzzle

Me lissa Ed wards 144 Caught Map ping

Vol ume 19 Num ber 78/79 Fall/Winter 2010

F E A T U R E S

Flowchartleannej

41 Christopher runs.He runs everywhere. Sometimes hewears no shoes.

Eye for DetailAnnabel Lyon

42 A profile of Edith IglauerShe has been writing for more thanseventy years, and her dense, detailedstyle of description has a quality of almostphotographic accuracy and deep care.

Guanacaste JournalEvelyn Lau

54 We are intent on leisureThe pool, the food, the drinks, theartificial waterfall . . .

Letters from JosefAnn Diamond

56 Joseph Meyer, or Josef Mengele?At age eleven, a young man fromPennsylvania realized that he was areincarnated Nazi war criminal

Motion SensitiveM.A.C. Farrant

62 Stories like lines of washThe time we buried Daddy is anotherstory. The grave was too shallow andthen it rained

Postcard LitHonourable Mentions

64 500 words or less6th Annual Postcard Story Contest

Tilly StarblanketKelly Shepherd

70 “Are you an Indian squaw?”Tilly says that when people try to guessher ethnicity they are always wrong,because they see what they want to seeand Natives aren’t exotic

Red ScareDaniel Francis

77 Our winter of protestCanada on the brink of a Bolshevikrevolution?

Sholem PaintsSheila Heti

119 The Ugly Painting CompetitionSo ugly, Sholem couldn’t look at it

Cover design by Steffen Quong. Geist is printed on eco-friendly paperswith vegetable-based inks.

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Geist is published four times a year byThe Geist Foundation.

Contents copyright © 2010 The GeistFoundation. All rights reserved.

Subscriptions: in Canada:Individuals $24 (4 issues);Institutions $31; in the United States:$32; elsewhere: $32. Visa and MasterCardaccepted.

Correspondence and inquiries:subscriptions@geist.com,advertising@geist.com, letters@geist.com,editor@geist.com.

Include sase with Canadian postage orirc with all submissions and queries.#210 – 111 West Hastings Street,Vancouver, B.C. Canada v6b 1h4.Submission guidelines are available atgeist.com. issn 1181-6554.

Geist swaps its subscriber list with othercultural magazines for one-time mailings.Please contact us if you prefer not to receivethese mailings.

Publications Mail Agreement 40069678Registration No. 07582Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to:

Circulation Department,#210 – 111 West Hastings Street,Vancouver, B.C. Canada v6b 1h4.

Email: geist@geist.comTel: (604) 681-9161, 1-888-geist-eh;Fax: (604) 677-6319; Web: geist.com

Geist is a member of Magazines Canadaand the B.C. Association of MagazinePublishers. Indexed in the CanadianLiterary Periodicals Index and available onmicrofilm from University Microfilms Inc.,Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.

The Geist Foundation receives assistancefrom private donors, the Tula Foundation,the Canada Council, the B.C. Arts Counciland the B.C. Gaming Branch. Weacknowledge the financial support of theGovernment of Canada through the CanadaPeriodical Fund (CPF) for our publishingactivities.

special thanks tothe tula foundation

www.geist.com

O H , T H E B O W E R I N G F E E L I N G

“Still a Writer” by GeorgeBowering, at geist.com (from The

Box, published by New Star Books),about being a writer and a spy, pickedme up with the first sentence andcarried me through the paragraphs withas much suspense and anticipation asthe Grand Chute on the Des MoinesRiver once whisked my canoe from topto bottom. Nice pic, too. Hope you stillhave those shoes, George.

—Bruce McDougall, TorontoAt geist.com: “Still a Writer” and otherwork by George Bowering.

E L E M E N T A L S

Ienjoyed Lynn Coady’s short story“The Natural Elements” (Geist 76 ) so

much, I actually resubscribed to Geist.But I take exception to Cal, the maincharacter, being called “a well-meaningschlub” by Steve Fahnestalk (Letters,No. 77). To me, Cal is a man a bit adriftin a world where the rules andcertainties he grew up believing to bewritten in stone turned out to havebeen etched on ice and melted awaywith the years. (And when I look at theyoung men of today, I think we mayhave lost something valuable.) Whatparticularly struck me was thecompassion Coady telegraphed for thisman, who might be thought of asold-fashioned, even sexist. I couldn’thelp but feel he was human and good,even if I don’t agree with his worldview. So not a schlub.

—Beverly Akerman, MontrealAt geist.com: “The Natural Elements.”

A B S E N T F R I E N D S

Thanks to Julie Vandervoort forsharing her heart (“Sewing

Cabinet,” No. 74). All of us who havelost a mother or a loved one willimmediately understand what she istalking about. How our lives, like it ornot, are woven with others’ lives, and in

their absence we need to fill in forthem, with our memories that spring asthey never did before. Objects andspaces acquire a new meaning. Thequestion arises: Why live distancedfrom the ones we love? The ones whoare still here, in this transient journeylike us? I like the way the story flows inpsychological time more than lineartime. It gives the narrator atri-dimensional, human quality and thereader can follow her in everyheartbeat.

—Maja L., Tulum, MexicoAt geist.com: “Sewing Cabinet” and otherwork by Julie Vandervoort.

L I N G U I S T I C P E S T C O N T R O L

Sarah Leavitt’s cartoon “TheAuthoritative Field Guide to

Language Vermin” (No. 76) is the mostsuper, if visual, bit of languagelessoning I have seen/heard in alo-o-o-o-o-ng time.

—Janet E. Smith, EdmontonAt geist.com: The field guide, and otherworks by Sarah Leavitt. Read an excerptfrom her new graphic memoir, Tangles, inthis issue.

W A Y O U T O F T H E P A R K

Thanks for “Kosmic Baseball,” BradRobinson’s memoir of counter-

culture baseball in Vancouver duringthe 1970s. Like Robinson, I was writ-ing for the Georgia Straight in 1970,and played in the Kosmic League, atConnaught and McBride Parks. A cou-ple of memories. First, an all-femaleteam called the Eager Beavers had acentre fielder who, in desperation dur-ing a lopsided mismatch, threw herglove up at a fly ball that was hopelesslyout of her range. The glove actuallycaught the ball some twenty feet in theair and fell to earth, and she attemptedto throw the runner out at third base (invain). Second, if I remember right, FlexMorgan and the Mock Heroics had a

L E T T E R S

Readers Write

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Fall/Winter 2010 • G E I S T 78 & 79 • Page 5

L E T T E R S

catcher who wore pants that were splitin the crotch, and he played sans cup orunderwear. Anything to distract thepitcher . . .

—Ted Laturnus, Delta, BCAt geist.com: “Kosmic Baseball.”

C L I M A T E W A R S

Istarted “Phony War,”Stephen Henighan’s

opinion piece (No. 77)—about the cataclysmicdamage being done byclimate change—withreluctance, only because Ihave been listening forsome time to the low humof rising panic that rests onthe horizon, waiting toarrive full-blown and terrifying. I didnot want to read more doom andgloom. I really didn’t. But Henighan isa compelling writer, and an intelligent,reasoned argument is difficult to resist;and so, I read the whole thing. And Iagree with him, absolutely.

Nonetheless, I will soon board anairplane and head to Texas (one of thefuture desert states), where our onlygrandson lives with his parents. I amgoing to celebrate a wedding—his par-ents’, in fact. And I will look around atall the drive-through businesses (eventhe liquor and beer stores) and lack ofsidewalks and limited public transit andkeep my thoughts (mostly) to myself.We will be there to celebrate life. Butwhat of our young grandson’s future?Thirty years (according to Henighan)?Please be wrong. Thank you for thearticle. And how I wish I hadn’t read it.But like all things truly important anddifficult, it will stick with me in waysthat others on the same topic have not.Instead, they have simply drifted away.

—Ruth E. Walker, Whitby ONAt geist.com: “Phony War” and more workby Stephen Henighan. And, for thatmatter, more work by Ruth E. Walker.

P O S T C A R D L I T

Attention, Geist readers who didn’tget the connection between the

story and the postcard image for “BlueEye” by Donna Kane (No. 77): checkout the magazine cover on the far right.There’s a single blue eye that lookspermanently open. Subtle connection,

but what a start for a story.Imagine if that eye were inyour stroke-damagedbody.

—Heidi Greco, Surrey BC

Good riddance toLouis, I say (“Blue

Eye”). Never trust a guywho keeps his eyes shut.Do you remember Jean

McKay’s story about the teacher she hadin elementary school who made the kidscarry a clean teaspoon in their pockets incase one of their eyeballs ever poppedout, so they could scoop it up and plunkit back in? Can’t pull off that little trickunless you’re looking. Same with life.

—George Sipos, Salt Spring Island BC

The postcard story “Men Gone Mad”by Richard Harris—so damn funny. Isthat a teapot in your pocket or . . .

—Jason Tannenbaum, Bronx NYAt geist.com: Winners of the 6th AnnualGeist Literal Literary Postcard StoryContest, and entry information on the 7thannual contest, underway now.

S P E L L C H E Q U E R

Iwas going to let you have the lastword on the spelling of “plough”

(“plow,” according to the CanadianOxford Dictionary, your house lexicon)when, just yesterday, reading JackHodgins’s A Passion for Narrative, Inoticed that on page 213 he uses theword ploughing. I believe that theCanadian Oxford would be well advisedto take its spelling preferences fromliving Canadian authors—who, I’ve

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noticed, generally agree with the way Iwas taught to spell in Canadian schools.

—Anne Miles, Gibsons BC

V O G O N ’ S A D V O C A T E

In her blog, your editor BeckyMcEachern objects to The Hitchhiker’s

Guide to the Galaxy as the One Book,One Vancouver title chosen by theVancouver Public Library. To playVogon’s advocate for a moment: Iagree that it’s hard to drag anythingVancouver-specific out of this thirty-year-old British book, but I have toagree with the selection on principle.It’s an incisive, funny, whimsical bookwhose satirical relevance has, ifanything, grown over time—the titularhandheld, networked computer thatsprang from Adams’s fertileimagination in 1979 is very much areality today, and in fact it’s hard for usto appreciate how fantastical it wouldhave seemed when originally published.Now, you can argue that public readingevents should focus on up-and-coming,or local, or capital-L literary authors (orpreferably all three) and ignore lighter,popular fare such as The Hitchhiker’sGuide, but that attitude is so prevalentthat it actually makes a popular book adaring choice. I’m reminded of recentcriticism of the work of Anne Michaels(as one of Canada’s ten most overratedauthors) in the National Post: “They’rethe All-Bran of CanLit: books thatpeople read because they think they’regood for them, not out of anyexpectation of pleasure or enjoyment.”Surely we can allow ourselves a breakfrom the All-Bran and enjoy a nice mealof fish and chips every now and againinstead? One more thing: McEachern’sblog entry on the subject was postedOctober 10, 2010, binary-42 day(10/10/10 = 101010 = 42 in binarynotation). That only rolls around oncea century.

—Brook Jones, Vancouver

S E N S E O F P L A C E

Having grown up in eastern Ontario,I was pleased to see Apple Hill

included on the “Beatles Map ofCanada” (Jill Mandrake and MelissaEdwards, No. 77). My buddy and I usedto bicycle there from Alexandria to visithis grandparents.

However, you appear to have locatedit north of the Ottawa River, in “LaBelle Province.” Did I miss something?Has Harper ceded that part of Ontarioto Quebec in his crazed quest for theQuebec vote?

—Peter Dawes, EdmontonMelissa Edwards replies: Hm, looks likethere are two, and I chose the less culturallysignificant one. Go to http://ow.ly/2qrxL tosee the one in Quebec.

For more on the Geist maps of Canada,see geist.com/atlas.

C A N U C K - S P E A K

More grist (geist?) to the mill for theCross-Canada Phrasebook-in-Progress, atrove of words, names and turns of phrasethat explore regional differences inCanadian English.

I’ve noticed that B.C. and Ontario haveboth common and different terms forputting your old stuff outside for sale.In Vancouver, I’ve seen “yard sale,”“backyard sale” and, on rare occasions,“lawn sale.” Ontario uses “yard sale,”“lawn sale” and “garage sale.” Is there aplace in Canada that calls the sorrydisplay of mouldy items what it really is:junk sale? —Ken Klonsky, Vancouver

SEND YOUR LETTER TO:

The Editor, Geistletters@geist.com,Fax 604-677-6319,#210 – 111 W. Hastings StreetVancouver BC, v6b 1h4

Letters to Geist may be edited for clarity,brevity and decorum. Authors of pub-lished letters will receive a Geist Map,suitable for framing.

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Fall/Winter 2010 • G E I S T 78 & 79 • Page 7

I N C A M E R A

From: “100 Shopping Carts,” a work-in-progress by Brian Howell, who sinceJune 2010 has been photographingshopping carts in Vancouver used bystreet vendors engaged in scavenging,recycling and related economic activity.Howell purchases the carts outright,with their contents, so that he can pho-tograph them under controlled condi-tions in his studio. He pays the prices

asked by the vendors, who say they haveno difficulty acquiring replacement cartswhenever they need them. The shop-ping cart on the right-hand end of themiddle row was retained by its owner, aman named Cowboy, as it contains hispersonal belongings rather than com-mercial goods. The two new bicycles inthe cart in the bottom row were returnedby the photographer to their young

owners, whom he found on craigslist.Brian Howell’s work has appeared fre-quently in Geist. It can be seen atgeist.com, along with images of the tenton his front lawn in which he stores hisgrowing collection of shopping carts(numbering “just under forty” at presstime). His publications include Fame Us:Celebrity Impersonators & the Cult(ure) ofFame. —Mandelbrot

COLLECTING

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Fall/Winter 2010 • G E I S T 78 & 79 • Page 9

Shots FiredS T E P H E N O S B O R N E

What makes a real city real?

On the afternoon of September 11,2004, in a Lebanese café on HastingsStreet near Victory Square in Vancou-ver, a heavy-set older man in awindbreaker and baseball cap who hadbeen chatting quietly with the propri-etor began to speak up in a remarkablegravelly voice on the subject of whatwas wrong with this city; or, to put itanother way, he said to the proprietor in

measured tones, I can tell you what thiscity needs, what this town doesn’t havenearly enough of, he said, is more shotsfired. He paused with these words and itwas clear now that he was addressingnot only the proprietor, an amiable manin an embroidered flat-topped cap whowas standing behind the counter, buteveryone in the café, young women andmen sitting alone or in pairs at tiny

tables and along the tiny counter, stu-dents from the downtown universitycampus and the film school at the end ofthe block, with their books and maga-zines and hushed conversations, all ofwhom ceased talking or reading or star-ing out the window to look over at theproprietor and the gravelly-voiced manin the windbreaker, who seemed, to meat least, to be an unlikely connoisseur ofbaba ghanouj, tabbouleh, hummus orthe falafel wrapped in pita that lay onthe plate before him; he held a foldednewspaper in his hand as if it were apointer or a wand; he was forceful butnot unfriendly; in fact he was smiling.The proprietor remained attentive butuncommitted; he seemed to be a man ofconsiderable equanimity. Earlier when Ihad asked for a bowl of lentil soup, forexample, from my stool at the other endof the counter, he met my gaze sol-emnly with a nod that seemed to seal apact between us that would never bebroken. Perhaps it was his trusting andat the same time conspiratorial mannerthat encouraged the gravelly-voicedman in the windbreaker to speak soforthrightly to a room full of strangers,all of whom had fallen silent at thewords more shots fired, and remainedsilent as he went on to describe a recentjourney in a pickup truck along thecoastal highway through California,Oregon and Washington, accompaniedby his faithful dog Alf, whom hereferred to as his best living friend. Nowin this city here, he said, as he returnedto his theme in the same measuredtones, you got a fine city here, don’t getme wrong, a good city, a good-lookingcity, but you can’t call it a real city. You

NOTES & DISPATCHES

photographs: victory square, steve dynie, dyniephoto.ca0

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Page 10 • G E I S T 78 & 79 • Fall/Winter 2010

go to L.A. to get real, he said. As muchas I admire this city, he said, but this cityis not real like L.A. is real. That’s wherewhat you need is more shots fired. Saywhat you want about L.A., but you go toL.A., you get shots fired, lots of shotsfired.

None of the other diners offered tocontradict or to affirm these remarksdelivered with such authority by thegravelly-voiced man, who now lookedconfidently along the counter towardme and toward the other diners, invit-ing a response from any who wished tospeak. But no one spoke; perhaps, beingyoung film students and university stu-dents, and a marijuana advocate or twofrom the paraphernalia shop across thestreet, they felt that the gravelly-voicedman in the windbreaker was in somedisquieting way right in his call for moreshots fired; but to agree with him wouldbe to collude in an unpleasant truth aboutideas of urbanity and the city, and toargue with him would be to exposeoneself as naïve and foolish. Eventuallya young man at the front ofthe café spoke up, only to askthe gravelly-voiced man inthe windbreaker if the truckparked outside was the one hehad been speaking of, and ifso, would it be cool for him togo out and say hello to thedog? Better than that, I’llintroduce you personally, saidthe gravelly-voiced man, and he and theyoung man stepped out onto the side-walk and no more was heard, during theremainder of my time in the Lebanesecafé, of L.A., shots fired and/or themore general question of the real in cit-ies. In another moment all was nearly asit had been when I entered the Leba-nese café, low conversations, occasionaleye contact, falafels and lentils, babaghanouj, but one could still feel anafter-effect lingering in the air, a con-tinuing reverberation, the consequence

and the promise or the possibility ofneeding more, more shots perhaps,more shots fired.

The lentil soup was, unsurprisingly,superb, thick and savoury, possibly thebest lentil soup I had ever tasted. Islipped along the counter and scoopedthe newspaper left behind by thegravelly-voiced man and read on thearts page an account of the International3-Day Novel Writing Contest, whichhad been founded thirty-four years ear-lier, shortly before closing time in thePiccadilly Bar, three blocks from where Iwas sitting, followed by a report of theCity of Vancouver Book Award, whichhad been won by Maggie de Vries forMissing Sarah, a biography of her sister,one of the twenty-seven or possiblyfifty-six or even sixty-five women takenfrom the streets a few blocks away fromthe Lebanese café and possibly mur-dered on the pig farm in Coquitlam orsomewhere nearby over a period ofyears while the police failed to investi-gate or even to keep an accurate tally of

the missing or the dead. The questionof what made a real city real, as impliedby the remarks of the gravelly-voicedman in the windbreaker, had colouredmy attention, which I could feel seekingsigns of the real in the news of the day.The front page carried a so-called exposéof the business holdings of the Hell’sAngels, which included nightclubs, cof-fee shops, a travel company, truckingfirm, supermarket and chocolate fac-tory, but clearly the business dealings ofthe Hell’s Angels were not an element

of the real in the sense that the man inthe windbreaker had intended and as Ithink all of us in the café, fellow diners,the proprietor and myself, had under-stood it while he was speaking; and infact the Hell’s Angels story in the news-paper was so long and so boring that noone, not me and certainly not the grav-elly-voiced man who had been flourish-ing the same newspaper like a wandduring his address, and who, as I left thecafé and turned down Hastings Streettoward Victory Square, was out on thesidewalk looking into the passengerwindow of his pickup truck with theyoung man who wanted to say hello tothe dog Alf, would be likely to read it tothe end.

How did more shots fired representwhat we miss in life, in city life, I won-dered: during our lives in cities, I mean,in this city. What can we mean by moreshots fired, words never spoken in cafésor restaurants, or on public transit, but

nevertheless words to conjurewith, words that conjure aworld of dark passages andlurid behaviours; a matter ofaesthetics, I wanted to say as Iwalked down Hastings fromthe Lebanese café on mybirthday, although I had for-gotten that it was my birthday,a cloudy Saturday, a day well

suited to walking along with nothingmuch on one’s mind. Who, after all,yearns for shots fired, I wanted to ask orto have asked, in the Lebanese café.Surely, had I thought of it in time, Iwould have or could have pointed out tothe gravelly-voiced man in the wind-breaker that an apparent lack of shotsfired, encountered after a journey alongthe winding, scenic, bucolic highway upfrom L.A. along the Pacific coast andover the border, was in fact a lack ofreports of shots fired; and doesn’t the

N O T E S & D I S P A T C H E S

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Fall/Winter 2010 • G E I S T 78 & 79 • Page 11

phrase shots fired refer to shots not heardby those who read or hear reports ofshots fired, a phrase that itself emergesfrom textures woven by journalists,photographers, novelists, moviemakers, news reporters and the like,whose trade is to wrap a veil of the realaround the unreal ordinary city, so tospeak, always with one proviso: that thereal remain at a distance, just aroundthe corner or over on another side oftown, a darker place of mysteriousbyways and elusive histories, such asthe Downtown Eastside, which laybeyond Hamilton Street at theHastings Street intersection where Ipaused and looked over into VictorySquare at the cenotaph rising up andthe grounds around it recently terracedin such a way as to render them unsuit-able for the tents of the homeless. I feltconfounded by this question of thereal, and no matter what I imaginedmyself saying to the gravelly-voicedman in the windbreaker, or to theother diners in the Lebanese café, Icouldn’t shake the feeling that indeedwhat cities needed, in order to fill anobscure but real requirement, lay in therequirement more shots fired. Thefacade of the cenotaph in VictorySquare bears a text carved in gleamingcapital letters coated with gold paintthat I often recited to myself when Iwas in the neighbourhood: IS ITNOTHING TO YOV ALL YETHAT PASS BY. Now I said it aloud:YOV. What kind of city says YOVwhen rebuking its citizens? Beside me,on the wall of an empty bank building,hung a bronze plaque memorializingthe land commissioner for the CPR, aman named Hamilton, who, in 1885,according to the plaque-writer, INTHE SILENT SOLITUDE OF thePrimeval Forest drove a wooden stakein the earth and commenced to mea-sure an empty land into the streets ofVancouver. Here was an urbanity that

denied the gravelly-voiced man, avision of the city emerging fromsilence, from an unpeopled vastness,inoculated with a wooden stake againstthe lurid, the criminal, the world ofshots fired, of reality, of any reality atall. I crossed Hamilton Street and Vic-tory Square and went up to theentrance to the six-storey building onthe corner that had been head office ofthe daily newspaper, to read another,smaller plaque memorializing theReading of the Riot Act by the Mayor,in 1935, on the steps of the cenotaph,before a thousand or more unem-ployed men who were refusing to workin labour camps for ten cents a day.The photograph on the front page ofthe newspaper shows the mayor fromabove, brandishing a sheet of paper,presumably the Act itself, on the ceno-taph steps surrounded by police offi-cers armed with tear-gas canisters andtruncheons; junior reporters and pho-tographers had merely to hang out ofthe windows in the six-storey buildingto get their materials for the big story.The senior reporters were with thechief of police over in the courthouseon Georgia Street, attending the evenbigger story of his trial for corruptionand conspiracy, a lurid tale of high-level cops in low-level dives, joyrides inthe police boat with notorious procur-ers and known white-slavers, late-nightfeasts of chicken, rolls, whisky, beer,champagne, and the bagpipe-playingof a constable named Johnson—sensa-tional events for a city born in emptysilence; for some weeks traces of thelurid, alluring world implied by moreshots fired can be found in the newspa-pers of the day, but not on the memo-rial plaques.

Since that Saturday in September, Iam often reminded of the gravelly-voiced man in the Lebanese café bynewspaper headlines and radio news-casts. A few days ago the local CBC

news described a jewellery store rob-bery as a brazen heist, a phrase thatbelongs with shots fired in a certain lexi-con, and indeed, the announcer went onto report both a shot fired and thenmore shots fired. Closer to my home,during the first week of September2010, several headlines reported a mur-dered man found stuffed in trunk in aparking lot miles away from the murderscene identified by police as a ware-house on Victoria Diversion, aroundthe corner from where I live on the eastside. Stuffed in trunk: were there shotsfired as well, I wondered. On Saturday,the 11th of September, I went for abirthday walk along Victoria Diversion,a two-block stretch of cinder-block andwood-frame warehouses, and found thecrime scene, a crumbling single-storeystructure housing a liquidation centreidentified by hand-painted signs offer-ing bicycles, cans of paint, decorations,tables, chairs and other liquidationitems for sale wholesale to the public, atenormous discounts. I approached theentrance and peered into a dark interiorlined with wooden shelving and card-board boxes spilling over onto the floor,and felt my neighbourhood enjoined inthe texture of urbanity revealed brieflyin the Lebanese café: a world of shotsfired, bodies stuffed in trunks, decrepitwarehouses, empty bank buildings, cor-rupt police chiefs; as well as the distantscream of sirens, helicopters throbbingoverhead late at night, signs of the realthat the gravelly-voiced man in thewindbreaker, having emerged from thewilderness accompanied by the dog Alf,had prophesied on my birthday in theLebanese café.

Stephen Osborne is publisher and editor-in-chief of Geist. He is also the award-winningwriter of Ice & Fire: Dispatches from theNew World and dozens of shorter works,many of which can be read at geist.com.

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