My Page
James Allen
Victoria
In the spring of 1973, when I was literally down to my last $20 and had no idea where my next $20 would come from, I thought about Dumont. Maybe I could get a job there. I knew some past and present workers, considered a few my friends, and notwithstanding what I had heard about staff meetings and wage rates, believed it an admirable enterprise. Being quite fuzzy about what they actually did there, I wondered whether I had anything to offer Dumont. I knew it was a co-op that was capital-P Political and the co-op on the edge of town where I lived was anything but.
In similar circumstances, others tell me they tried selling vacuum cleaners but I saw an ad in the Record, “part-time cab drivers wanted, no experience necessary”. That last bit really appealed to an obstinate nature since getting a licence to operate a motor vehicle had required no fewer than four attempts. As a cabbie, I adopted the idiom of Harry Chapin combined with the work ethic of Travis Bickle. Ironically, United Taxi turned out to be a co-op and had staff meetings fuelled by a customer’s fried chicken that were every bit as nutty as anything that happened at 97 Victoria North, just down the street. Quirkier still, to flash forward another seven years, on the east coast I accidentally learned I had a talent for proofreading and copyediting and earned a living doing so for well over a quarter-century.
So yes, I guess I could have worked at Dumont. But I never did. (Composed July 10, 2021)
IN THE LOOP: ANOTHER SCOOP OF KOOP
I know John would get a real charge out of having two entries in Absent Friends.
The following was composed for his 2018 memorial in St. John’s. Some fun stuff was omitted then for reasons of taste. No need to tell the story of John smashing up a fellow’s business on a joy ride to the harness racing track, for example; even less need to tell the tale of O. J. Culvert. Full credit for the multi-course Indian meal on the PEI beach (cooked on a Coleman stove) goes to Jan Peters, John’s ex-spouse, business partner and friend. She remembers it; I’ll never forget it; it was startling that John blanked on it. Of my four trips to the Rock, three were directly attributable to John and I am grateful to him for that (if you’ve never been, do yourself a favour and go; Rick will probably put you up; dine at Raymond’s; thank me later).
AN ODE TO JOHN KOOP
Rick Page brought John to my Waterloo rooming house in 1968 and while I thought that John had a lean and hungry look, he proved to be a lot more Bacchus than Cassius.
I rarely remember John without a van. Anyone who knew John knew that John knew the value of a dollar, to a degree this Scot could really admire. However, I prefer to believe his failure to replace his beloved Edna decades past her best before date may have had more to do with romantic sentimentality than anything else.
A true romantic, John offered the more staid among us an alternative way to live a life:
- avoiding annoying snowscapes whenever possible;
- obsessing about music and sports while being a musician and athlete;
- barging into a spectacular spread (with chum in tow) prepared by Mennonite women to whom he was related;
- getting married so certain people would visit St. John’s (or so he said);
- facilitating a multi-course Indian meal on a PEI beach, then forgetting all about it;
- dropping in unexpectedly, most memorably from Las Vegas to a person’s surprise birthday event;
- appearing incongruously on a televised Raptors game from Phoenix;
- being ejected with nephews from a giant inner tube being pulled by a motorboat on an Ontario lake.
When I saw photos of this last stunt in 2014, I told him he was defying the aging process for all of us. As far as I could tell, he continued to do that right to the end. I really liked that. For as long as I live, I doubt that many days will go by when my mind won’t conjure up a John memory, which means I’ll be smiling. I really like that too.
--James A., Victoria BC
1 more photos in this story.
Camp Columbia
SUMMER 1969
With the notable exception of the bottom row, fourth from the left, most of these people seem ready for their last meal. I remember it being more fun than that, when it wasn’t exhausting. I also recall playing with the campfire quite a bit after sundown/bedtime.
Staff people from left to right: Phil Elsworthy (on the ground), Patricia Connor, Ed Hale, Liz Nelson, James Allen, Bernadine Roslyn, Brenda Wilson, Bill Aird, Ross Taylor, Johanna Faulk, David Papazian, Betty Burcher
Fuelled by endless trips to a doughnut shop on Weber Street, the staff people here could be seen as sugar excess personified.
I am informed that one staff person split to attend Woodstock; bonus points for successfully guessing which one.
Also noteworthy is the fact that the staff person wearing the horizontal striped dress in the middle of the photo has not changed a bit.
Staff people from left to right: Ed Hale, Patricia Connor, Johanna Faulk, Betty Burcher (on the ground), Phil Elsworthy, Liz Nelson, Larry Burko, Ross Taylor, Bernadine Roslyn, Bill Aird, Brenda Wilson, James Allen, Larry Caesar, Charlotte von Bezold, David Papazian, Barbara Beckerman
SUMMER 1970
I do not believe this is where the camper clubbed the groundhog to death and led a Lord of the Flies-style parade back to camp with the carcass on a stick. That would have been Camp Two and no photos exist, to my knowledge. The brackish Lake Columbia, which appears in the background, was well used always thanks to a canoe or two we scored from somewhere.
Ground level staff people from left to right: Janice Lee Williams, John Moss, Eleanor Hyodo, John Koop
Standing staff people from left to right: Bonita Clarke, Lynda, James Allen, Charlotte von Bezold, Rosco Bell, Bill Jackson, Max Newby, Ronnie Martin, Larry Caesar, Inge Eckerich, Rich Hastings, Jim Hunter
The Ducks of Dumont
An Intro-duck-tion to Dumont Athletics
(Submitted by Car 6, who occasionally delivered things for Dumont)
The Year we made the Final!
Once upon a time, Dumont Press Graphix sponsored a softball team in the University of Waterloo recreation league. As far as I know, no cash considerations were involved in this sponsorship. This was a second tier competition for non-serious would-be athletes, so we took it very seriously. We pretended not to believe in competition, so our non-existent competitive juices were hidden just barely below the surface. One of us had participated in softball games with children at a summer camp where our friends worked, where all games ended in a heavily manipulated tie score to impress upon the urchins the value of non-competitiveness. With distance, it mostly appears to have been one more excuse to facilitate people hanging out together, which was our favourite thing to do (and perhaps still is).
Our star was an actual Dumont employee, who pitched almost every game and fielded his position like a vacuum cleaner. He could hit a bit too. His significant other was our indefatigable scribe and witnessed more athletic incompetence than was healthy. This always seemed to amuse her. Others were recruited. Once in a non-league pickup event, a psychologist improbably hit a ball about 800 feet. He became the first baseman but never did that again (none of us did). A future PhD was actually a serious fan(atic) of major league professional baseball (many of us were), and it is fair to say we loved to play only slightly more than we loved to fantasize. A couple of Sarnia brothers had hitches in their swings that betrayed early exposure to cricket, quite a different game with quite a different bat. A Venezuelan catcher was found at a daycare centre across a cornfield. As for me, I can only conclude the tall foreheads making such choices decided what this team really needs is another pothead. We were almost all adult-sized boys, although the league was at least theoretically co-ed. Patriarchal tokenism had many names in the early 1970s, and one was rec league sport.
In a high-water mark, we made the championship game one year, although the details of the “championship” at stake are hazy. Surprisingly, our opponents were under the impression we were “the Chevron team” (a bad thing, they believed) and we partially disarmed them by denying any role in the Maoist cult then roiling the campus newspaper. We lost (but it was close) then sipped some beer with this person, the hardworking and underappreciated university employee responsible for endless recreational activities for countless thousands of people over many years:
https://athletics.uwaterloo.ca/honors/waterloo-warriors-hall-of-fame/peter-hopkins/85/kiosk
That’s how I remember it, but I have learned recently that my memory is capable of inventing whole scenes that never happened and completely forgetting others that did.
THE TIME I CAUGHT THE BALL
In the aforementioned season this also happened (see fantasizing above; see suspect memory above).
Parked in left field (where else?), the one excellent thing I ever did in the hundreds of games I played in all sports from early childhood forward unfolded without warning at the crack of the bat (or more accurately, the ping of an aluminum bat).
It was a line drive, very well hit, to a point to my right. Off with the sound, in stride I reached across my body with a gloved left hand, which the ball entered and then stayed as I backhanded it with just the right amount of pressure. I could not believe I had caught it, but I can still conjure the rush.
There were other similar activities. Weirdest of all were the tire-encased swimming pool water polo players but they’ll have to speak for themselves.
Photo by W. Ross Taylor