realize at that pointwhat we were going through was the transition out of bourgeois society and into post modern society, or the global village. B: And that you did have to go to work to support yourself. G: Ya, that too, plus dealing with sex and love and drugs and I almost went insane in around 1975. I was seeing a psychiatrist, but I just got stuck in Canada and all during that time I was thinking I should go back into the belly of the beast. I should go back to what Stokely Carmichael called Babylon, and I was thinking that I was chickenshit for not going back to America. But I finally got over all that and ended up just stuck in Canada, and after 5 years in Vancouver and then 2 years up in the north, 7 years which is the traditional time after which they consider that you're dead and gone, I realized I have now become a Canadian; in fact, the actual moment I became a Canadian was really great. I realized it because I had all these ideas about Canada and some of them were true and some of them were false, but I think one day I was talking to Scott Watson and said something like "what a boring country this is", or something like that and Scott said, "well, now you've become a Canadian--that's how Canadians feel". [laughter]. B: Just after "Donatello's David" there is another poem about Vancouver--full of great humorous diction. I remember the line--"a "passel of assholes'--and Vancouver as a bourgeois gray city. G: That poem is "Vancouver in April". I think it was April 75--an attempt to imitate Patrick Kavanagh's ... B: Ya, it says "after Kavanagh". "It's pretty shitty/ living in a protestant city/ and my heart too bleak for self pity." G: Ya, the idea is terza rima--writing in triplets with funny rhymes. That's what Kavenaugh did in a poem called "A Summer Morning Walk." Anyway, to finish that one thing about Canada, I realized that I had become a Canadian and so then I went and applied for citizenship which many at that time, of my American friends had not yet done,but I thought it was something I should do so that when the judge asked me," why are you taking out citizenship?" I said because I realize I've become a Canadian, I want to formalize the relationship (laugh) and then he asked me which provinces had joined confederation in what years--and I knew all that--passed the test--so that's how I became a Canadian, but the further irony, the historical irony is that I had come to Canada, come to Vancouver thinkingit was just another American city like Denver. After being here and becoming a Canadian, I realized what all Canadians know, Canada is a vastly different country than America. But now that Canada--we were talking about last night--Trudeau being the last Canadian--Trudeau, George Grant, Al Purdy--that Canada is no longer--it is no more. We're now all part of America because of the global village. B: So obviously terrace and that 15 year chunk of your life,--do you see it as a phase that's ending? G: Yes, I do. I see this whole Terrace period of time pretty objectively. Arriving in 1976, like I say, in that town, I just was becoming a Canadian and eventually I started teaching Canadian Literature. That's why I didn't get the job at Capilano College. I would have been at Cap College and never would have come to Terrace except that I failed the interview because I didn't know anything about Canadian Literature. So I began reading--of course I realized as the only English instructor at Northwest College I had to eventually offer a course in Canadian Literature, so I began reading it and I read Leacock's Sunshine