BOB WALKER Bob Walker, to become my good friend over the years, was a student studying fine arts at SGWU. Our connection was not, however, through writing, but a shared love of modern jazz. SGWU had a jazz society and the posters around the campus announced a Friday afternoon jam session: bring instruments. Sid and I carried my drums thru the streets to the school. I set them up and played thru the afternoon with a hodge-podge of players flubbing, honking, and banging thru various jazz standards. Walker had given up the idea of becoming a tenor player, so was no longer playing, but he did attend the so-called session and may have sensed my embarrassment. I wanted to be a jazz drummer and hadn't yet given up the idea that this pursuit was possible. A few days later Walker met and spoke with me in the hall. He looked more like one of the many business students in the Commerce Program; the art students wore black paint splattered outfits. Walker, in contrast, was clean shaven, had short hair, and wore a SGWU school jacket which I don't think he ever took off in the 2 years I knew him in Montreal, regardless of the season, temperature or context. The jacket, and one other eccentric detail (he always carried a shopping bag instead of a briefcase) - made him stand out when with us other trench-coated bohemians. He said that my drumming reminded him of a drummer in Lachine, and asked, did I know him? I might have asked Bob if the guy from Lachine was any good, but I can't remember. At this first meeting we began a non-stop conversation about jazz, and when we could afford it, went to the various clubs and coffee houses. The Barrel, the Black Bottom are the 2 clubs I best remember. The local players were abundant: Sonny Greenwich, Nelson Symonds, Charlie Biddles, Ron Proby, Peter Leitch, and several others. And occasionally the big names from New York would give a concert or do a club date. Thelonious Monk, played at McGill and Dizzy Gillespie at the Esquire Show Bar on Peele- a wonderful night of live bebop jazz by one of its inventors and masters. Bob and I took centre seats at the horseshoe shaped bar right beneath Dizzy - so close we got hit with the spit from his horn; this was our heaven of smoke and beer and jazz - those dark clubs that became a kind of home for some of us. Likewise, the folk music scene was incredibly active. Sid would go to hear his heroes, Ritchie Havens, Dave Van Ronk, Bruce Murdoch, Leonard Cohen - players who would fill the small folk clubs on Stanley Street, Bishop or Mountains streets, giving a vibrant musical backdrop to downtown Montreal nights. The last time I saw Bob in Montreal was at the end of our graduating year. He was in the hall where we first met emptying his locker and filling a trash barrel with all of his artwork. 1, along with one of his art teachers, yelled at him to stop, but he didn't. He once boasted that he got the lowest graduating grades of any student in the history of the SGWU Fine Arts Department, (C's). I think he felt the real work was yet to come - out in real life, and that school didn't have much to do with the unique sensibility and approach he went on to develop. Bob went to New York City in the 70's and became a brilliant photographer. His book, New York Inside Out introduced by William Burroughs, is a wonderful testament of his sense for colour, his compositional skills, and ability to create humorous juxtapositions that say something large about urban life. He is now back in Montreal working as a full time artist in the neighborhood he grew up in. THE POET, JUAN GARCIA The poet Juan Garcia was a friend of Marquita Crevier, a wild French speaking Spaniard who possessed a kind of mad genius, and who led me to the east end clubs where French Canadian artists and poets gathered. One night with Juan I got my first direct taste of French/English language politics when the proprietor of the club heard me speaking English, and said: "we don't like your type here." Juan came to my defence and backed the guy off. But the situation unnerved me, and we left for another more friendly club. A large regret is that I didn't learn more French. Growing up in Calgary meant we studied Parisian French, but nobody actually learned to speak it. Living in downtown Montreal, the clerks, civil servants, workers in business, - just about everybody - spoke