大象传媒

by Marcia Toms

It was the autumn of 1967. The ructions of the Summer of Love had passed me by as I prepared for life after high school by purchasing new clothes and wondering what was in store. 大象传媒 was 2 years old and I was 17. I arrived on Burnaby Mountain at the instant school, impressive in all its concrete massiveness, unconsciously na茂ve. My sole personal attachments to the arts, in my mind cosmopolitan ones, were seeing The Beatles and other British invaders at local venues and memorizing all of Bob Dylan鈥檚 early lyrics. Vancouver was my hometown and in those days, it lived up to my Dad鈥檚 nickname, La La Land: small, green, and mild.

My parents had agitated for UBC: staid, safe, and leafy, with no legions of students rallying against Shell and in favour of reinstating fired Teaching Assistants. My high school friends who chose it fit that bill. One had a single goal: go to UBC, join a sorority, get married. Sadly for her, her Grade 12 GPA was too low, so she had to settle for sorority-less 大象传媒. Me? Despite being young and lacking life skills, I wanted something more edgy in keeping with the bar set by my hero, Percy Shelley, who was admirable for getting sent down from Oxford after writing a pamphlet extolling atheism. Media reports about 大象传媒 convinced me that it was that place.

When I arrived on the hilltop, my only ambition was to be an English major, focusing on one thing: the Romantics. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that only senior undergraduates were admitted to those rarified courses. I was furious, a short-lived emotion in the teenagers鈥� universe. And that brings me to the Arts.

Memories are made of many things. Mine of those early days at 大象传媒 are shadows, images of people and faces not quite clear, but still evocative.  The first of these is of the grey mall on a grey day. Coming toward me is a figure, a man wearing a horizontally-striped shirt and a dark Breton style beret. This figure, not short and not tall, but somehow imposing, would soon have a name: John Julianni, apparently even then a singular force in the emerging 大象传媒 arts world, and one who would help shape its reputation for innovation. To a kid鈥攎e鈥攈e seemed to be everything my Vancouver was not.

As I was in my first year, I had to take first year courses, a blow to my big fish/small pond ego. One of those was an English class taught by Ralph Maud to a couple of hundred students. It was held in a big AQ lecture theatre. One of Maud鈥檚 first lectures would bring me to realize I was not a very big fish at all. He was lecturing, with arm-flinging thrown in, about either Dylan Thomas or DH Lawrence and, with casual flair, threw in the F-word.  In those days, smokers smoked everywhere and so a few of the more mature students鈥攖he 19-year-olds鈥攃almly lit up their cigarettes while I hoped my flushed face would fade. I was ready to be shaken up.

The Arts scene at 大象传媒 cast a wide net with an equally wide reach. Dance, theatre, and cinema were accessible and free. In my previous life, I鈥檇 been to a few pantos and endured at least one school play, happily and regularly attended Nutcracker ballets each Christmas, saw The Sound of Music movie with my grandparents (Dad bowed out); all of these generally in keeping with the 鈥榤ild鈥� moniker. At 大象传媒, I began to spend long lunch hours at the open-door cinema and was introduced to real film, most of it in black and white: the dark parade along a hilltop of flagellants following a scythe-carrying Grim Reaper. And The Bicycle Thief, too. Some French 鈥淣ew Wave鈥� when I hadn鈥檛 known there was an 鈥淥ld Wave.鈥� In theatre, I learned some of the words: 鈥淧oor old Marat, in you we trust, you work 鈥檛ill your eyes are red as rust. Poor old Marat, we trust in you.鈥�  Actors throwing themselves around, a few nude scenes, challenging notions of what art could/should be. Questions welcome. Committed and charismatic teachers such as Michael Bawtree and John Mills and emerging artists, filmmaker Sandy Wilson and actor Norman Browning, seen later at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in an inimitable role of Benjamin Backbite, where he was absolutely perfect.

Although I had changed my major from English to PSA after my fit of Romantic pique, I still loved poetry. So when Russian poet Andrei Voznesenky, his translator Seymour Main, and the iconic Beat, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, hit the biggest lecture theatre at 大象传媒, I was there. I can still see it. Three men standing at the foot of many rows of seats. The place was full. The Russian recited first: short, in a black leather jacket, blond hair. Hands on hips or reaching out to the audience: 鈥淚 am Goya.鈥� In Russian, of course, accompanied by a seamless translation. I was riveted. Ferlinghetti followed: humble and appealing. I could have listened all day. Much, much later in life I found myself鈥攍ong explanation possible but not here鈥攖eaching English and being delighted that Grade 8 East Van kids in 2004 had a natural affinity for his work. Had it not been for that day at 大象传媒, I probably wouldn鈥檛 have bothered.

As fits, the radical campus and its grass roots experimental arts lent encouragement to seat-of-the-pants theatrical productions mirroring the upheavals of the time. When the PSA Department was placed under trusteeship, a group of students including Mark Vulliamy mounted a musical satire, 鈥淲e Three Trustees,鈥� which played at the campus theatre. Sandy Wilson drew cartoons for initiatives of the Students for a Democratic University (SDU)  and, later, Vancouver Women鈥檚 Caucus, and an upending of the Miss University Canada contest saw another satirical review in one of the lecture theatres with costumes borrowed from the real theatre. Bob Mercer, now a retired editor of a number of Vancouver publications, invented a cartoon character, The Little Man (who had more than a passing resemblance to Karl Marx) and students were advised to follow him. We were encouraged to thumb our noses at traditions and authority. Guerilla theatre, often raw, was always enthusiastically pursued, and it burgeoned. At convocation, one English graduate exchanged a role of toilet paper for a degree, another student鈥攚ho may or may not have graduated鈥攚heeled a large flesh-toned foam bottom around The Mall, giving out degrees to those who kissed it. 

It is now 50 years since those times. I know it is a clich茅, but (except for the images in my memories fading and the details incomplete) it could have been yesterday. Many people speak about the need to democratize the world, and those early days at 大象传媒 when artists reached out and found their efforts reciprocated were a kind of democratization. I was never an artist of any kind, but that time helped me appreciate through experience the broad reach of what art should be: free, open to all, and provocative. 

November 23, 2020