Chapter 9

Chapter 9      - Christmas variety - and drama travels

 [ see www.lesnpat.smugmug.com for the photos in this chapter]

The only trips in the summer after our return to Nanaimo were around the city checking the available rental houses and apartments, and later, after we had decided to rent a house on Northumberland Avenue, driving to and from Victoria to buy furniture then return to the almost empty house and wait for delivery. 

One significant drive in Nanaimo was to the BCSPCA on Jingle Pot Road to adopt a cat. Two came home with us. A pair of ten-week-old grey, semi-long-haired brothers had charmed us, and we could not bear to separate them. Jules and Jim were the substitutes for children for 15 and 13 years respectively.

Other travel that summer was to mid-Island towns as the Dickasons played for the Nanaimo Tennis Club in fixtures at weekends. When the school year began Pat was teaching Foods 11 and Textiles 11, Les was teaching Math 11 and 12 and there was little time for thinking of travel.

After spending our first two-week Christmas break in Nanaimo and, despite generous friends, feeling like outsiders crashing family gatherings, we vowed to travel somewhere each Christmas. In December there was a need for a rest and change of scenery after almost four months of hard work. We had vacations in Cannon Beach [Oregon], Victoria [BC], Hawaii, Monterey [California], Puerto Vallarta [Mexico], Vancouver, Walnut Creek/Napa Valley [California], Harrison Lake [BC], Seattle [Washington State] and a combination of Los Angeles and San Diego [California] in the decade that followed.

When friends asked, we explained that because we had no family close enough for visiting, a trip was our substitute. Some of the destinations resulted in flights, others in driving in the VW wagon or its successors. We drove to Cannon Beach on the spectacular Oregon coast years before it became a trendy destination, spent wintry days there walking the beautiful, flat but deserted beach, photographed Haystack Rock in all lights, puzzled over jigsaws, ate Pat’s traditional fruit cake, watched football on TV, and drank Australian port in a motel room with an open fireplace with wood provided. There were only two other guests in the motel. Few places were open for dinner off-season, but not many miles away was the famous “Crab Broiler,” a multi-starred restaurant where we were presented with paper neck-bibs each time we visited and ordered the fresh crab with melted butter. 

Our first trip to Hawaii gave us the opportunity to drive our rental car away from Honolulu, around the north of island to deserted beaches, and to ones crammed with surfers. The inter-island flight to Maui resulted in a stay in a small motel at the beach, with waves lulling us to sleep at night. As we sat by the pool on Christmas afternoon the motel proprietor joined us. He serenaded us with ukulele and traditional songs, and treated us to his home-made pineapple wine. We wobbled back to our room for a nap before driving out to a resort hotel for Christmas dinner and our annual toast “to absent friends and family.”

Driving down to California for a Monterey motel stay introduced us to snow-covered freeways. Just south of Ashland, Oregon, the two lanes up to the Siskiyou Summit [over 4000 ft] were temporarily closed to vehicles without chains. We returned to Ashland, joined the line at the service station selling chains, bought the last box in stock for our VW wheel size, drove to the ‘chain-up’ area to attach chains, only to discover as they were finally on the tyres after much swearing and with bleeding knuckles, that the closure had been suspended because the snow ploughs had recently passed. Taken off again that afternoon, those chains were never used.

Monterey was an eye-opener with its historical cannery row, Steinbeck and R.L. Stevenson memorabilia, jazz clubs, seafood specialties, an aquarium, and the Seventeen Mile Drive. The architect designed private homes and the golf courses on this toll road were as impressive as any seen on travels to that date in Canada or the U.S. 

Our 1966 memories of Mexico City were reasonably fresh and positive ones, so we booked a room in Puerto Vallarta for one Christmas flit. Our choice of small hotel was about 3km from old town, and two blocks from the beach. It had just recently opened, and the small room we had reserved through BCAA was not finished. Travel gods smiled as we were assigned to a much larger one with whitewashed walls and geckos [small lizards] visiting high on the walls at night. 

We caught a local bus into old town several times, saw the Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton house on the ravine, enjoyed dinner at Senor Frogs and the music in the streets - Feliz Navidad perhaps once too often. Other Canadians vacationing at Suites Las Garzas [The Herons] provided frequent entertainment as they ‘invented’ a competition for guests brave enough to jump out into the small courtyard pool to land on or pass through a large inner tube. Spectators gave marks out of ten as if it were an Olympic competition. Much beer was consumed, along with spicy antipasto which two inner-tube jumper’s wives had made in bulk on their first day in PV after visiting the nearby market for supplies. 

We were vacationing in PV at the same time as a teacher friend from Nanaimo accompanied by a young man Les had taught in 1969. It was Bob’s second or third visit to the area so he gave advice on where the four of us should eat, and we dined well and cheaply given the value of the peso that year. However our meetings with them stopped when they both suffered badly from ‘tourista’ for the final days of the vacation and took to their beds.

Whether it was the faulty wiring of the new hotel or the unreliable electric supply for the local area we were never sure, but the power went off often at Suites Las Garzas. Candles and matches were supplied by the owner so our card games and reading continued.       

       

              Candlelight reading at Suites Las Garzas, Puerto Vallarta - see photo at Smugmug

In 1975 we reserved a corner room at the Blue Horizon Hotel in Vancouver, ferried our fruit cake, port and some winter clothing and spent the Christmas week there. A series of Vancouver friends were invited to come and share appetizers and drinks with us. We enjoyed a Christmas Day ‘Pickwick’ buffet dinner at the copper-roofed Vancouver Hotel where we had stayed for two nights when we first arrived in Canada in 1966 [before we moved to a hotel we could afford - $17 a night under the copper roof was exorbitant for our limited budget then]. A Vancouver Symphony Orchestra Christmas concert and other cultural events of a seasonal nature made this a very pleasant break from working.

Walnut Creek and the Napa Valley was a combination of being with family, and revisiting favourite places from our lightning visit in 1966. A flight down to San Francisco, car rental, and short drive placed us with Les’ second sister Joan, her husband Gordon and their four children who spent two years in California as Gordon was being moved around the world by his employer. This was our first Christmas with family since 1968, and did not feel like one of the Dickason’s regular Christmas getaways. The return to Napa naturally included visits to Heitz Cellars and Caymus again, and we developed some new favourites: Beaulieu, Martini Winery and Beringer. Hard to believe, but there were fewer than 50 wineries there then.

By now, some readers may be wondering why the travel tales are concentrated on Christmas trips, and where the Dickasons were travelling in the eight week summer vacation from teaching. In the first two summers, setting up house and preparing, typing and copying teaching materials consumed the available time. Pat was teaching Foods 12 and Textiles 11 and 12 for the first time; Les was individualizing instruction for students in Math 11 and 12, so day trips on the Island were all that resulted. During the second year in Nanaimo since the return, the mentor who had persuaded the Dickasons to take a leave of absence in 1967, Frank, our Vice-Principal, was also using Les as a sounding board as NDSS was preparing to be the first secondary school in the province to switch to a semester system and to experiment with arena time-tabling of students. 

Drama travels - in and out of province.

With a background in drama - starting with solos in musicals at church Sunday School in Melbourne, latterly with Nanaimo Theatre Group roles since 1966, and many more productions in the 20 intervening years - Les cheekily suggested to Frank that year that it was a shame NDSS had no drama program and no acting classes. Frank experimentally put Acting 11 in the school calendar for 1971/72, and to the surprise of all, there was enough interest for two small classes to survive to the final timetable.

The gradual move from teaching Math to Drama brought travel to places as diverse as Drumheller, New Westminster, Dawson Creek, Vancouver, Victoria, Parksville, Port Alberni, Yellowpoint, Calgary and Malaspina College in Nanaimo.

The background began when Les felt the need for some additional training and discovered a three week course in July of 1971 - in Drumheller, Alberta. It was designed for teachers, included a hectic schedule of classes in voice, acting, movement and directing, and boasted professional instructors from theatres in Canada and the US. Registration application completed, Les was accepted, and a ticket bought for travel on the bus from Nanaimo to Drumheller. The journey on the Greyhound bus - or in the “belly of the big dog” as Sheldon the musician in Jamie Ford’s novel “Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet” calls it - took 25 hours with two changes of bus. 

Stiffness and tiredness disappeared when at a residential school [for Agricultural students during the regular school year] Les discovered that the Fine Arts school was ready to begin that evening. Three classes were held each morning and one after dinner; afternoons were for study, rest and rehearsal; meal breaks were short. For the acting classes, students had to prepare audition scenes and be ‘off book,’ and similar requirements had to be met in the directing and voice classes. There was no time to visit the ‘badlands’ or seek out the dinosaur fossils for which the area was famous.

The influence of two instructors will be evident as future travel tales are told. One, the Acting instructor, Robert Kalfin of the Chelsea Theatre Company of New York City, invited Les and a fellow student from Prince Albert to join him for a drink after the evening class near the end of the three weeks. In a famous Drumheller hotel bar, sawdust on the floor, blue terri-towelling tops on the tables, and a horse outside which drank beer from a metal plate if one bought the owner a beer as well as one for the horse, there was some general chit chat over a beer [no school drinking here]. Eventually Robert complimented Les and Jim on their work in class, then offered the two young men positions in his theatre company, and gave them a month to think about moving to New York!

The Directing instructor was Paddy Malcolm-English from Kamloops, BC, and she gathered the three BC students in the Drumheller program at the end of the course to inform them of the existence of a professional body, W.A.D.E, a P.S.A. of the B.C.T.F. [this mouthful of alphabet translates into Western Association of Drama Educators, Provincial Specialists’ Association, B.C.Teachers’ Federation] and recommended that they join. She cautioned that the WADE drama festivals for students were governed by archaic rules which included strict times for setting the stage, play length and set striking, that the competitive aspect of the festivals needed to change, and asked the BC trio to work back home to effect change.

In August in Prince Albert and Nanaimo, Jim and Les had long discussions with their spouses and a resulting conference phone call a month later with Robert in New York to inform him they were willing to take a one year leave of absence and head to the ‘big apple.’ Robert’s reaction was swift - no safety net - resign and come or forget it. So the stars in the eyes of the young actors faded and teaching for Jim and Les began again in September.

As a member of WADE, Les learned of the BC Drama Festival to be held in May  in Dawson Creek. Twelve students in the NDSS Drama Club raised funds for their bus trip and Festival registration fees; Les persuaded Don, the Drama teacher at Wellington Junior Secondary in Nanaimo, to join in with a dozen students to share the bus; and to fill it, Les found that Owen, Drama teacher in New Westminster [suburb of Vancouver] and his students would also join the bus.

The Nanaimo contingent boarded an early morning ferry, climbed on their charter bus at Horseshoe Bay [no “big dog” for this journey], detoured to collect the mainland group, and started the 750 km ride to Dawson Creek. No comments on this seemingly never-ending junket are needed. The final hundred plus kilometres gave Les his first sight of the BC prairies - the Peace River country - and the agricultural areas surrounding Dawson Creek. The city had been the base for the construction of the Alaska Highway and still retained the name Mile 0 City.

There was no time for sightseeing in Dawson Creek. Workshops and classes for students and teachers held during the day, and the Festival occupied everyone in the evening. The Festival, three one act plays presented each night by Zone winning schools, was adjudicated, and on the final night awards were presented. While in Dawson Creek, Les met other Drama teachers who would become firm friends and be involved in his travels over the coming years.

One night, after the theatre was dark and the students under curfew in the residences, Don, Owen, Les and two Executive members of WADE were invited to one of Dawson Creek’s many pubs by the adjudicator of the Festival, none other than Christopher Newton [remember Stratford?]. In yet another watering hole with sawdust on the floor and terry table tops [red this time - but no horse], we listened in awe as Christopher told stories from Stratford, and launched into a diatribe criticizing the current competitive nature of the student festivals. Owen was the WADE Vice-President, and with two other receptive Executive members present, Newton’s words reached fertile ground.

At the WADE annual general meeting on the last afternoon of the Dawson Creek event, Les was nominated and elected to the Executive as Newsletter Editor.  On the interminable bus ride back to New Westminster, Owen, now President, sat beside Les and told the history of WADE and of his plans for the future.

The exciting tales of travel in the summers of 1972 and 1973 are included in a subsequent chapter, as another door opened for the Dickasons. The Young Voyageur program swallowed them and provided many adventures.

Drama generated many trips over the next three school years on two fronts. The WADE executive met in Vancouver on a Saturday every two months and Les attended first as Newsletter Editor, then in subsequent years as Coordinator of Festivals and Conferences, and lastly as President. In the latter roles, there were trips to other Festivals and meetings with other districts as the BC one-act finals were being planned by hosting zones. In the early 70’s long hair was in fashion, so Les adopted a style suitable for a ‘theatre’ type.

[see Smugmug for photo]

Coincidentally, Mollie, a Biology teacher and friend at NDSS, suggested that the Dickasons might like to join a theatre-going group she belonged to and which had subscriptions to the Vancouver Playhouse. The group of nine had formed when all but one were at UBC in the Science faculties; before each play they met at the home or apartment of a member of the group [or one of the two couples], dined well, then drove to the Playhouse for the evening performance. Suspecting the first dinner and play with them was some sort of audition, the Dickasons gladly accepted the invitation, and found instant compatibility with Don, Janet, Iain and Sylvia, Chuck and Tammy, Roy and Gerald. 

These names will appear in later chapters as their lives and careers changed, and our travels to visit them were to far flung places. The Dickasons were accepted into the group, and Les was pleased to find that the Vancouver Playhouse had chosen Christopher Newton as Artistic Director during the days of the ‘play group.’

Other drama trips involved Les either on stage performing for the Nanaimo Theatre Group or the Yellowpoint Theatre Group, and taking his students to Festivals in plays which Les directed. Fortunately these were short trips given that NDSS hosted the one act play Festival twice for the zone and the other productions were at Wellington Junior Secondary and another in Port Alberni, an hour’s drive from Nanaimo. 

Two other drama travels were different - one to Calgary to attend a Board meeting of CCYDA [more alphabet - this time Canadian Child and Youth Drama Association] as the representative of BC as WADE President. Travel to this was unique given that it was in the middle of winter, but Les was advised not to bring a winter coat or hat or gloves. From the time the small plane from Nanaimo reached the Vancouver airport [YVR] and Les went inside to change planes for the leg to Calgary, to the time a day later when Les boarded the flight to Nanaimo at YVR he never stepped outside. In Calgary, at -10 C as a maximum, there was a walkway from the arrivals area to the hotel where Les stayed and the meeting was held. After the meeting ended, the walkway was used to reach the departure area and catch the return flight to YVR. 

At that meeting, Les was able to report that the competitive aspect of zone and provincial festivals of one act plays had been removed and replaced by adjudicators providing workshops for participating students instead. This was just three years after the round table discussion in Dawson Creek.

For a variety of reasons, in 1973/4 the Dickasons began to explore options for Les to begin a Masters degree in Ed. Admin. Friday after-school dashes to UBC in Vancouver, Bellingham in Washington State and the University of Victoria two hours drive south on the Island to meet with student advisors unearthed some potential handicaps. The B.A. transcript from Melbourne University did not fit with the grade point average entrance requirements of these institutions in the Pacific North West. Facing the possibility of doing summer classes to earn 21 or 18 units of course work, Les opted to spend a summer term in residence in at the University of Victoria to ‘test the waters’ with two courses worth a total of 4 1/2 units.

In the spring, before the end of the 73/4 school year, the Dickasons had a ‘dramatic’ move from the rental house to their first home, on Lenhart Avenue, and their first mortgage. The move was completed one Friday after school, with a rental truck and four hefty friends from NDSS and the Nanaimo Theatre Group assisting when offered beer and pizza served after the move.

That summer, one class was in Speech, the other in Directing. Don, from Wellington Junior Secondary also registered. A routine of driving down on Sunday from Nanaimo, staying in residence until Friday after class and then driving back to Nanaimo to relax with Pat and the boys was soon established. 

Classes occupied the mornings; rehearsal and practice the afternoons. The Directing class, taught by noted CBC Radio Theatre director Esse Ljungh, soon had all students scrambling for scripts and selecting a cast to direct in rehearsal. The third class in the first week, Esse had each student perform an audition scene so that students had assistance in casting a scene or play. Fortunately, Les, Don, and Victoria actor/teacher Colin formed an unholy triumvirate; Les directed Don and Colin, Don directed Colin and Les, Colin [with Les and Don breathing a sigh of relief] chose for his scene to direct some fifteen of his students from the private school where he taught. Scheduling rehearsals, learning lines, conducting rehearsals, assembling props and costumes, finding theme music introductions were all wedged around hours of practice of the Lessac method for Speech from the other class.

No mention of evenings because, though practice, rehearsal, study and sleep were recommended, the U.Vic. summer scene also included tennis and parties. Don, an ex-Irish landed immigrant, formed a duo with Les which was able to alternately tell jokes, clean and racy, for an hour or more without a break. This talent earned them invitations to many a party in the residence lounges, and their fee was simple - free beer and nibbles.

Classes ended with the Speech instructor testing each student in class and assigning grades. The Directing class ended with three nights of plays and scenes at a nearby theatre with friends, family and classmates as audience. On stage with Colin, Les smoked his first cigarettes in the play Don directed - seven in rehearsal, two in the performance - and swore off smoking from that night.

The summer classes, intended to cut into the required 15 units before admission to the U.Vic. M. Ed. program, proved to be an interesting diversion, but unnecessary. Near the end of that summer Les was contacted by the advisor from the M. Ed. program who informed that U.Vic. was initiating a program whereby landed immigrants who were practicing administrators and teachers [with degrees not assessable under BC rules] would be admitted conditionally. If selected students maintained a B+ average over the 18 units of the three summers, and passed comprehensive examinations, they would graduate. As the advisor said, we will be looking for teachers or administrators with “professional thrust” to admit to the program. This term became a standard joke amongst the students participating in the first summer of the U.Vic. experiment..... “professional thrust” indeed!

During the following school year, Les applied to this M.Ed. program and was admitted in May, the same month in which he was appointed Administrative Assistant at NDSS for the following year. His assignment would change to a combination of counselling and administration - no teaching - Don would transfer from Wellington to take over the NDSS Drama classes Les had previously taught, and so the drama travels were ended - with two exceptions.

 One penultimate drama trip was just a short distance up the hill in Nanaimo to the new Malaspina College Theatre which opened in 1976. Nanaimo Theatre Group produced Alan Ayckbourn’s “Relatively Speaking” as the first production on the stage there, and Les had the dubious distinction of being the first actor to appear on that stage as the light came up on his character, Greg, in bed. When the phone rang, Greg pulled a sheet into a diaper shape around his ‘nude’ body, and answered the phone. The play ran for three nights in each of two weeks, and the Vancouver play-going group ferried to Nanaimo to see a clean-shaven Les in action on the boards.

                opening scene of 

       “Relatively Speaking” in 1976 - see Smugmug

Given the changes to the professional lives of the Dickasons this was a swan song for involvement with drama travel with the exception that 10 years later, a group in Victoria, BC, Murder Mysteries Incorporated, invited Les to be a member and to coordinate the activities in the central Island. The format for their weekends was complicated, energetic, hard work, and more fun than it sounds. The members of MMI would hold a meeting to forge an outline of a setting, plot, characters and major incidents for the time slots of Friday evening, all day Saturday, and Sunday morning. The hotel for the weekend was sometimes in Parksville, sometimes in Yellowpoint just south of Nanaimo, with occasional weekends in Victoria or on the mainland. Up to 60 guests paid the hotel for the weekend, and that included accommodation, meals and entertainment. In advance the guests were sent some details of the setting for the mystery and almost all came with appropriate outfits to wear and props to use to join appropriately in the activities.

Over a three year period, many guests became regulars and that forced the MMI group to vary the plots, settings and timing of the murders. One example may clarify the concept; guests were informed that they were all stockholders in a small pharmaceutical company which was about to be taken over by a multi-national. Our cast of ten’s characters for that weekend included family owners and officers of the small company and representatives of the larger company. During the buffet dinner on Friday night after introductions and an angry scene between two characters, the lights failed in the hall. When the power was restored, one family member was dead - stabbed. Photographs were taken, a stretcher took away the body, our ‘detective Inspector’ took control and interviewed key guests and cast members to produce meaningful clues, red herrings and suspicions.

While guests slept, the cast worked for hours to produce a newspaper complete with photographs taken that night, articles and the Inspector’s report, photocopied it, and delivered it under the doors of guests. At breakfast, the detective continued interrogations. During ‘free time’ for guests during the day, they had the option of using the hotel facilities, or joining in some planned meetings where more hints were dropped, and arguments took place between guests and cast members concerning the take-over strategy of the multi-national. Misleading clues and gossip were introduced to confuse those who would solve the mysteries. A buffet lunch gathering was disrupted when a guest discovered another body under a table. More interrogation and photographs taken. Much later pre-dinner drinks followed and then a formal meeting of stock-holders at which the CEO [Les] took a sip of water - and died. Stretcher in - body out - then Les drove home.

After dinner the inspector summarized what had happened during the 24 hour period, asked and answered questions. She then distributed sheets on which guests were invited to write the names of who might have committed the three murders, and what the three motives were. Midnight was the deadline for the submission of the guesses. Guests and cast [only seven still alive - the others had gone home to Victoria or Nanaimo after the stretcher rides] often sat in groups and discussed the possibilities right up to the deadline. As cast members we individually knew we had done well if guests still thought some of us were guests not cast members or if some guest’s names were written in as accused murderers on the sheets.

                              Les as CEO before being poisoned - see Smugmug for photo

Another newspaper was prepared overnight, and the sheets with guesses were ‘corrected’ and marks assigned. Sunday morning brunch included a final summation by the Inspector as she peeled away the misleading clues and exposed the murderer or murderers - usually with some shouting or melodramatic attempt at escape. The guest with the highest point total on the answer sheet won a valuable prize - usually a gift certificate for a weekend for two at the resort which had hosted our shenanigans. 

At the planning session for the next mystery weekend, the group treasurer presented us with cheques representing an equal share of the profit plus mileage costs. The dollar amounts were not huge, but the thespian rewards for the group [six senior educational administrators, two teachers, an artist, a musician, a writer, and two spouses] were a delight despite the energy expended.