Monte Cristo

 In the late 1960s, word of mouth lead me to where the Monte Cristo was being built. She was a barquentine, planked with mahogany on sawn Douglas fir frames. Four disparate dreamers had combined efforts to bring this tall ship into being. Alex Brigola, an Austrian of lousy disposition, was the main push and promoter to build this ship. Joe was the partner with the building skills and like most builders was easy going and calm, confident in his skills. Jiri Novak was the muscle. He was a deserter from the Czechoslovakian army and was a whirlwind of energy and raw strength, with flowing blond hair. The fourth partner, whose name I can't recall, was of equally foul temper as Alex and rode a Triumph motor cycle. Then of course there was a handful of dreamers and waterfront hangers-on of whom I was one.

I found out about the ship from my friend Bob whose brother Bill Ingersoll was likewise 

Bill Ingersoll and blonde Jiri Novak

working at building the Monte Cristo in any spare time that he had. Bob and Bill's dad had a bare hull that he was finishing off at Mosquito Creek Yacht Basin in North Vancouver. Bill and I, being the youngest of the group, were interested in how a traditional vessel went together. The building of the hull was the same as any wooden vessel we had been involved with but just much larger. But the rigging was where traditional, almost lost, skills came into use. All the hardware had to be fabricated, by Joe, for the spars for the square sails, for the stays and bowsprit hardware, for the shrouds and ratlines, for the blocks and lines and pin rails. Shrouds of 1" wire rope had to be "wormed and parcelled with the lay, turn and served the other way", as was the ages old method. Everything was covered in, rare today, Stockholm tar. Joe turned the blocks, belaying pins and deadeyes from Lignum Vitae, a wood so dense that it did not float.

In time, the Monte Cristo was ready to be launched to be rigged, but the problem was that she was a quarter of a mile from the water. The Canadian National Railway lent us the ties and rails to build a railway to Burrard Inlet.  

Launch day, Ironworkers' Memorial Bridge 

Photo Vancouver archives

Someone lent a front-end loader so the work was not entirely by armstrong. I don't know who of the partners had a friend in the provincial government but highways minister Phil Gagliardi, an ordained minister of a church in Kamloops, came to bless the vessel, and my Canadian flag draped the bowsprit. Phil Gagliardi was of that larger-than-life era of politician who were a little outrageous in what they said and did but by-and-large were important to the development of the province. If what they did in the 1950's and 60's were left to the study-it-to-death and contract-it-out-overseas politicians of today, nothing of any size and worth would have been accomplished. Indeed, today's politicians have dismantled some of what was accomplished at great expense to the province. 

After the launching and the obligatory visits onboard, we were able to spend the first night afloat on the Monte Cristo. She was then towed to Burrard Drydock to have one of

the dockside cranes slide the sticks into her. The spars had been acquired from the then Queen Charlotte Islands, now Haida Gwaii, and floated to Vancouver in a log boom. Now, quite a few old retired seamen, who had learned the trade from the iron men of sail, appeared to help rig the masts and tension the shrouds and stays. Everything was done by eye. She had to look right, not some copy from a book.  

Coming into the CPR Pier, where the old convention centre, The Sails, now sits.

Photo Vancouver archives

This is where I left the Monte Cristo as I had gotten a job with Federal Fisheries at the Research Station in Nanaimo.

Unfortunately, after the ship had been rigged and the sails bent, I heard later from somebody, Alex Brigola tried to motor her singlehandedly through the First Narrows, against the tide, and had to be rescued and towed back to dock. This was deemed as running out on the other partners and of course it went to court. Ultimately, she was sold and the new owners sailed her into the South Pacific. The last I heard of the Monte Cristo was that she had become embayed on a lee shore in New Zealand in a gale and was driven ashore and was a total loss.

Miscellaneous Photos

 

Shirtless me at launch. 

Adventures with Ken

 My friend Ken Parker had an irrepressible grin which no doubt helped him get on in life. I first met Ken when we both worked on the Centennial Caravan #7 in 1967. For Canada's Centennial year, a number of tractor trailer caravans of ten units each had been developed to tour through the provinces, depicting Canada's history from pre-ice age to the then present. The trailers were set up so that people could enter at one end of the string of trailers and walk through an advancing depiction of key historical events and then out the other end. We boys, most in our early twenties were hired as attendants to set up the display in each new town, usher folks through and then tear down for the move to the next town. 

Ken had travelled out from Ontario and I joined the Caravan in Milk River, Alberta, in May 1967. The Caravan had a route that spiralled from small town to small town, moving northward, to eventually cover the majority of Alberta, Yukon and western Northwest Territories. As prairie folks know, May can still be winter and two others and I landed in Lethbridge in a snow storm. The Caravan was already set up in Milk River and we started work there. We were supplied with summer blazers, shirts, trousers, coveralls and a rain coat. However, this was not enough to stay warm. We shivered through a couple of small towns and as winter gear did not seem forthcoming, the attendants held a strike. This is where I got to know Ken.

I had worked for Great Northern Railway in Vancouver and when rail workers needed time off, they "booked off sick". I suggested we all book off sick. We did and of course the Caravan left without us for the next town. Ken got on the phone to our bosses in Ottawa to say what had happened. Our instructions were to get ourselves to the next town and winter coats would be on the way.

I can't remember in which town Ken had bought a 1947 Studebaker pickup but that was our transport to the next town. And it was chilly in the back of that truck. We must have made quite a sight, scrunched low in the back, singing folk songs from the era, bombing down the road. Ottawa sent fleece lined, canvas army coats for us until summer arrived.

In most prairie towns, the highest landmark is either a grain elevator or a water tower. Ken and I and sometimes one or two others would climb the water tower for great aerial photos of the town. No drones in those days. And so it went.

Most of the little prairie and northern towns centred their Centennial activities around the arrival of the Caravan. We boys were invited to homes and ranches for meals and cookouts. A memorable cookout was on the beach of Great Slave Lake, N.W.T., outside Hay River. Huge (longer than I was tall) whitefish had been caught and were being grilled over an open fire with the aurora borealis running riot overhead.

Somewhere, north of Edmonton, Ken bought a 1947 Harley Davidson motorcycle. Beautiful. It was cream in colour, had a suicide shift, a great big seat that would have looked good on a tractor. My last memory of that bike is riding behind Ken towards Edmonton. He had a fringed buckskin jacket and I was bundled up in a sheepskin. Ken then bought a 1953 Chevy.

Soon after that we left the Caravan as the World's Fair was on in Montreal but only until November. We left Edmonton with one guy driving while the other slept in the back and made it to Toronto in 54 hours. This was fairly good going as normally it takes three days to drive from the Manitoba-Ontario border to Toronto. My wife, then girlfriend, was staying with her parents in Mississauga so I was able to catch up on sleep there and then Ken and I headed to Montreal with the '53 Chevy.

On the dodgier side of things, Ken had traded a guitar for a German 9mm luger, which was with us. We stopped in a forested area along the highway to try it out. No worries back then. The first night in Montreal was spent at the foot of the big cross on the hill, sleeping in the car. Looking back, we might have been in some trouble if police had searched the car. However, all was well and we rented a room in a boarding house and went to the Fair. Driving back to Toronto at night, I was stopped by the highway police. I guess I was tired and wandered somewhat. He asked me how long I had been driving. "Since I was sixteen" was my reply which got a roll of the eyes. Tonight is what he meant. He told Ken to drive and shooed us away.

Back in Toronto, Ken had bought a pair of MG sports cars from somewhere and they needed to be driven back to Woodstock, Ontario where Ken's father ran a garage. So off we went. Halfway to Woodstock, one of the cars ran out of gas. Ken didn't bother with the Automobile Association but went to the nearest farm house and borrowed a gallon of gas and away we went. That irrepressible grin paved the way.

After that, I headed to Ottawa with Betty and then back west. I didn't see Ken again for over a decade when we were both married with kids. In 1984, I was working in California and Ken came for a conference and got in touch. I picked him up at his hotel and we went to see the sights of San Francisco. I had a 1979 Volvo that had the unfortunate fault to shut down when driven at night. First the lights would go out and about 15 minutes later the engine would stop. On this night, at about 2:00 am and not far from Ken's hotel, the lights went out. We proceeded, sans lights, around the next corner right into the midst of a police convention of several squad cars. Needless to say, we got pulled over. Our cop was one who really relished his role, right down to tight leather gloves. As he was writing the ticket, Ken decided to test the waters. "Are those scratches on your hood from slamming perps against it?" Crowbar hotel here we come. Just as it was dawning on the cop what Ken had said, he got a radio call about a break and enter in the next block. He ripped the ticket out of his book and threw it at us and disappeared. See, it was Ken's grin.

Acme Novelty

 I worked for the Centennial Commission in 1967, Canada's Centennial year, on Caravan 7.

We were one of ten caravans across the country comprised of ten tractor trailer units which could be formed up into an interactive display of Canadian history from stone age to the then present day. Caravan 7 travelled throughout Alberta and into the Yukon and Northwest Territories. While travelling, many of us mailed our photos to be developed to the Acme Novelty Company in Edmonton. They developed the film and sent the results back along with a roll of undeveloped film.

Acme Novelty brings to mind Wile E. Coyote opening a new Roadrunner trap from Acme. We laughed about that in those days but still, Acme provided a good service. I had my photos made into 35mm slides at that time and through almost a year of travelling, accumulated quite a few hundred slides. When I returned to Vancouver, where there was also an Acme Novelty branch. I went there to buy a slide projector. 

I can't now remember what else Acme sold, wholesale and retail, but they had a large camera department. I was there just before the Christmas season and was probably wearing my Centennial Commission blazer, wine coloured with the Canadian government logo in silver wire on the pocket (wowee). I made my projector purchase and as I exited the store, the manager ran after me and asked if I wanted to work in the camera department. How often does that happen? Certainly never nowadays.

I worked there over the Christmas season selling cameras. I sold more Konica cameras than any other because that was what I used and was very familiar with it. I still have that Argus projector but a while back I scanned my slides into digital form. Slide projectors and film cameras, indeed film itself, have all gone the way of the dinosaur. I'm probably on that track myself.