Greg Welstead

 

My friend, Greg Welstead, (centre, green shirt) on his first day at the University of Guelph, September 1983. I wanted to send him it when I scanned this but I found he died in 2012 in an auto accident in BC. I've got another better one taken at the same time, but haven't been able to find it. He lived across from me at 101 Neeve, second floor, in a 19th century limestone house. Made lots of things by hand, like a bunk bed and a wine rack our friend had roped him into making for a restaurant. He was always showing me his latest tool. He went back to school as a mature student and studied hard, like he always did. He'd been a 'Big Brother' to a local youth, and when he found he was going to be a father he started reading books on parenting. He told me to buy the Olympus Trip 35 I used here - it had a light leak. When I was in Akwesasne during the Oka Crisis in 1990 I saw a Quebec provincial police officer still wearing a Trip 35 at a checkpoint on the fairly imaginary US-Canada border that runs through the reserve at St. Regis, one of four officers, one other Quebec officer and two Mounties who would stand at the four corners of the car and look in. I don't know if the guy with the Trip 35 was using it for work or for souvenirs.

The Bo Tree

Written in 2024 - The Bo Tree was a vegetarian restaurant in Guelph that opened in 1983. I think the address would have been 98 Macdonell but that block has been remodeled since then. It was run by James Fry and Virginia SmallFry (Her original name was Small). It only lasted a year or so, but it was the first vegetarian restaurant in the region. Their son Dylan was born in a little apartment around the corner. They lived near me in Guelph and I met James' dad and grandad. All three were English. His grandad told me stories of being a merchant sailor going to Murmansk during the war as part of a convoy to keep the Soviet Union supplied.  They also had the first Laserdisc player I saw - they played "Eating Raoul" and "Pink Floyd's the Wall". Goldie Sherman, Guelph potter and dancer who played with Jane Siberry was friends with them.

View from my Apartment, 1983

View from my apartment,  8 Ontario, Guelph, of the house next door in pouring rain, just before I moved out.

Pennsic War XII - 1983

Hand lettered sign - I rescued it from the dumpster after war was over. The 'streets' that were formed by the camps got their own names. Still keep it on the wall in my room as a souvenir!

These are some photos I took in 1983 at the Society For Creative Anachronism's Pennsic War, at Coopers Lake Campground near Butler, Pennsylvania. I don't know the names of most of the people in the photos - I was just tagging along. Done with an Olympus Trip 35 that had a light leak, sorry!

The late Sheldon Lofthouse (d. 1990)

Lofthouse was later charged with gross indecency in a washroom sex case in Guelph, Ontario that went to the Supreme Court of Canada. I didn't know he was gay at the time - he was sharing his tent with a woman, but later I would see him in the showers at the University of Guelph Athletics Centre, even though he wasn't doing any sports activities there. At first he said the shower at his place was broken, but later after he'd moved and was still in the showers he said he just wanted to feel clean. 

I remember there were supposed to be rattlesnakes at the campground - never saw any - the big lake was off-limits because of snapping turtles but there was some skinny dipping at a smaller swimming hole - we'd gotten some beer, I think it was Iron City or Blue Dwarf, that was so dreadful I tossed it to the lovely blonde lady who was swimming. Met one woman whose dad was trying to get planes out of hangers during Pearl Harbor. Tuchuks, a group based on John Norman's Gor fantasy novels, had a separate camp which was hard to get into but I did, and some of them won a slave auction for some women that I think were from the massage parlour tent - I thought it was a mock auction but they were serious and one guy said "It will be worth it" when the bidding went high. They won, and I don't know what happened to the women.

Guelph Spring Festival 1983

Greg Welstead  suggested that I become an usher for the Guelph Spring Festival. Nicholas Goldschmidt was still director.  You got to see a ton of mostly classical performances for free. Benjamin Britten's Curlew River. I was late for one performance and ran up to the church in my suit. "Bride or groom's side?" the man at the door asked "I'm an usher" I said, and repressed saying "Very funny". But he asked again "Bride or groom" and I learned that I was at the wrong church and there was a wedding going on. I only thought that happened in movies.

Copenhagen, Istedgade, Huset and Tivoli

 (written May 30, 2024) - Istedgade is the famous prostitution district in downtown Copenhagen. I only saw a few prostitutes on the street in 1982 - there were lots of porn and sex shops - one displayed colourful tiny sweaters hung up on a line that were in the shape of a penis and testicles, and there were porn cinemas showing American porn.  It starts on one side of the main railway station, and on the other side was a cinema that showed uncensored versions of popular movies. When I was there Mad Max II and the German film about a child prostitute, Christiane F. were playing.  Also on the other side of the station was Tivoli Gardens, with free admission for seniors. It was a garden with cafes and rides for small children. Huset, "The House" in Danish, was a nearby drop in centre founded in 1970 which still exists, where there were lockers for your backpack and info on places to stay. Posters advertised overland bus trips east, I guess as far as Turkey since Iran's 1979 revolution had stopped most of the traffic on the hippie trail to South East Asia. 

Freetown Christiania is an old military barracks that was taken over by hippies in 1971. There were wall murals for IRA martyr Bobby Sands and Irish Republican Bernadette Devlin,  bare breasted women selling drugs from tables, pot plants growing out windows and vegetarian restaurants. I was there with a Hungarian friend and asked how much a block of hash as thick as a chocolate bar that covered half of the Afghani vendor's hand was and it was only 10 dollar US!

Murals from 2016 - the same paintings were there in 1982. Photo taken on day marijuana sales were banned. Photo Smurrayinchester, Creative Commons 4.0

I loved how topless for women was OK in Denmark. I saw a man just wearing shorts plastering his apartment wall from the S-Train and then he turned around and it was a young woman, and in Stockholm women would sunbathe topless in the parks on their lunch hour.

On the last day, rather than getting more sightseeing in, I stupidly watched Quadrophrenia, I think at a cinema that was either part of or near Huset. 'Love, Reign o'er me' kept going through my head all the way back to Guelph. 

Road to Soren Kierkegaard's grave

 

Assistens Cemetery, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1982