Elihu Entertainment

Poor Max was still in a lot of pain, so he was very restless in the night—not a good thing since we were all exhausted from the New Year’s Eve party.  The girls were able to flop on the couch and vegetate with movies, but Hugh and I had to clear the debris and prepare New Year’s Day dinner for my parents.  Max felt sufficiently pathetic that he was happy to have doting grandparents visit and shower him with sympathy.  Since my parents settled to watch videos with the girls, Hugh and I slipped out for a walk and retraced our steps, trying to find what it was that had injured Max so badly.  It turned out to be a rusted fan-belt shield from an old vehicle, half buried in leaves and dirt, but with lethal edges projecting upwards.  Hugh hung the thing up on a tree so that it couldn’t harm any other creatures, and we plodded home to finish making dinner.  When we passed Edna’s house, Brandy recognized us and barked until Dick and Edna appeared and let her out.  She was pleased to see us but puzzled not to see Max.  Edna gave me a chew bone to take home for the invalid.

By bedtime, Max had perked up a bit.  He’d enjoyed being fussed over by Mum and Dad, and he was patient putting up with his time-consuming bedtime routine.  The next morning he seemed much more cheerful.  He gulped down his pill, well-wrapped in corned beef, and was very accommodating with his plastic sock, obligingly putting his foot up so that I could tie it on.  However, once back inside, he nipped at it impatiently as if to say, “Get this thing off me!”  This was a precursor of things to come.  Once he was pain-free, Max proved to be a terrible invalid.  The diary entries said it all:

January 4:  Spent fifteen minutes in the garden in the rain trying to get Max to go to the loo—he didn’t oblige—and a further ten minutes inside unsuccessfully trying to get him to take his pills.  Needless to say, we were late at the Vet.  Dr. Zinger agreed reluctantly to change the dressing without putting Max under, so I held the biting end while Dr. Zinger worked on the paw.  Managed very well; however, as we got Max down, he banged his paw and it started to bleed, so we had to start all over again.  This time Max was cross and vocal.  Afterwards, he got even by eating a piece of gauze on the floor.

January 5:  When it was time for Kate to go to school, Max hopped about and looked so eager that I decided to let him trot down the block.  He took off at speed on his three good legs – the fourth pointing up in front like a little lance.  He was so excited at having a walk that we got right round into the lane then came back through the garden. The only way I could make him rest the paw was to insist on a long down.

January 6:  Walked Kate partway to school.  Max cried when we parted from Kate.  He wanted to keep going in the worst way, but I made him turn back.  The whole body language spelled defiance, and when he saw a squirrel in the lane, he lunged ahead on three legs, the gammy one pointing forwards as if he were jousting in the lists.

January 7:  Gave Max his turn round the block after we saw Kate off at the corner.  Then home for housework, after which I had coffee and Max pouted through a long down.  He cheered up after lunch, when we walked Kate partway back to school and we met both the postmen who had made friends with him.  More pats, more sympathy.  How he lapped it up, doing his Sarah Bernhardt routine with the pathetic raised paw.

January 8:  Hugh, Kate and I took Max to the Vet.  We were greeted by a jolly nurse whom we hadn’t met before.  She beamed and asked:  “Is this the infamous Max?”  It turned out she’d been on duty when I phoned to ask about the light bulb he’d eaten.  She added:  “Does he light up when you plug him in?”  Max was very good while his bandage was changed and afterwards he let Dr. Zinger pat him and ate a Christmas cookie provided by the nurse.  The nurse had read about the puppets and was delighted to hear we were planning to build a show around a Max Marionette.  She asked if the puppet Max was going to eat a light bulb too.

January 9:  Girls were  sick so we skipped church.  Hugh and I gave Max his loop round the block and then, feeling guilty, left him with the girls and set off for a walk at the Foreshore.  Max got his revenge by chewing off half his new bandage.

January 11:  Both girls sick at home, so I was distracted. Max entertained himself by chewing his bandage right off.  I had to make an extra trip to the vet to get the bandage redone (another $20), plus rent a huge collar to stop him from chewing.  Max was pleased with himself for forcing an outing and he seemed quite happy to have another visit to Dr. Zinger, but his face was a sight when the collar went on.  This was definitely not in the plan.  For the rest of the day, he sulked, while Caroline, Katie and Hugh went into gales of laughter every time they looked at him.

January 12:  Max is using his collar like a cross between a lacrosse racquet, a shield and a battering ram.  He had a riotous play with his chew toy, scooping it up and tossing it into the air.

The day the bandage came off was a relief for everyone.  Hugh and Kate were home sick, so I left them watching news of the Los Angeles earthquake and took Max to the Vet, where, to his joy, he was relieved of both bandage and collar.  He shook hands with Dr. Zinger and bounced out exuberantly.  I took him to city hall on my way home, and while I picked up my agenda, he was much admired and sympathized over.  Then I stopped at the top of the park and walked him around the top path.  When he got home he was very happy and he lay at our feet while we had coffee, checking his foot and seeming relieved that everything was there.  Counting pads, as Hugh said:  “One, two….more than two….more than two.”  Max didn’t care how much we laughed and teased him.  He was one very happy dog that day.

The few days following Christmas were lovely.  Max enjoyed long walks on the crisp, frosty mornings, and afternoon visits with friends and family, not to mention leftover turkey and all the other treats that were part of the festive season.  We were planning a party for New Year’s Eve, so the preparations for that were fun too.  But then, on December 30, disaster struck.  We were walking through the woods below the new George Derby Centre.  This was the route we referred to as the Cariboo Walk, as the trails meandered all the way over to Cariboo Road.  My girls were off playing with friends, but Edna had her grandsons with her, and Hugh, thank heavens, was with us too.  If Hugh hadn’t been there, I don’t think Max would have survived.

We were heading up the trail that came out on Sixteenth Avenue below Cariboo Hill School, when suddenly, Max lurched out of the bush, blood pouring out of his foot.  It was obvious he was in shock and seriously injured.  Quick-thinking Hugh whipped off his sock and made a tourniquet, then sprinted off towards the road so he could flag down a ride home and bring back our car.  Edna leashed Brandy and gave her to Justin and Josh to hold.  Then she and I took Max’s rear and front ends respectively, and carried him out of the woods a few yards at a time.  We never realized how heavy he was until we had to get him up that trail, and we had to put him down periodically so we could rest and catch our breath.  Poor Max didn’t mind being carried for he seemed to realize that he needed help.  We finally got him out to the road and lay him down on the verge.  Hugh appeared almost immediately.  Someone up there was definitely looking after Max that day.  Hugh had careened out onto the road, covered in blood, and waved to the passing vehicles for a ride.  Instantly, a young man in a flatbed truck pulled over and picked him up.  Hugh never got the driver’s name, but whoever he was, that kind man saved Max’s life.

We lay Max on the back seat and I sat with him while Hugh sped to Dr. Zinger’s veterinary hospital.  The tourniquet had stopped the bleeding, but once we got Max inside and he tried to walk, the bleeding started again.  Dr. Zinger sedated him and we left him there, but as we drove home, we felt dreadfully anxious.  The girls greeted me with quips about Nightmare on Elm Street, and when I looked down, I realized why.  I hadn’t noticed how bloody I was, but when I took off my jeans, I found they were soaked in blood.  We carried on apprehensively throughout the day and called the vet late in the afternoon.  Dr. Zinger said we would have to call again later to see if Max could go home as he’d had heavy sedation.  Evidently, the cut had opened an artery and Max had been going into shock when he arrived at the surgery.  Dr. Zinger also told us that if we’d been any longer getting Max to the hospital, he would have died.  As it was, it had been touch and go.

I survived the rest of the day on coffee and Anacin.  In the evening we called, and to our relief, the night nurse said that Max could come home.  Hugh, Katie and I set off right away.  Poor Max was ecstatic to see us.  He crawled out of the cage, tail wagging.  Then the anesthetic overpowered him and he fell over and peed himself.  While trying to keep his bandaged foot dry, I knelt in the puddle with my right knee.  As I said to Hugh later, the day had gone full circle.  I started out with a blood-soaked left knee and finished up with a pee-soaked right knee.

Max was so happy to be home, but he was terribly drowsy.  We all made a big fuss of him, then fell into bed exhausted, but relieved.  In spite of our fatigue, we had a very bad night, for Max woke up frequently.  The poor boy was restless and uncomfortable, and in the morning, he seemed depressed.  Hugh had to carry him up and down the stairs.  I think he was in pain, and he was also very cranky.  We plodded on with the cleaning and party preparations, aided cheerfully by Marcella and crabbily by my own two ingrates.  Periodically, we took breaks to put Max’s plastic sock on and take him out to the bathroom.  Miraculously, the party turned out to be a great success, not that Max got to socialize.  He was tucked up in our room sleeping off the traumas of the past 48 hours.  But when midnight came and we chorused the usual greetings, I couldn’t help thinking how close our family had been to the saddest New Year’s Eve we’d ever known.  But thanks to Hugh’s quick thinking in a crisis, it was a Happy New Year after all.

Once we’d decided to create a Max puppet, the possibilities seemed endless.  Max was to replace the poodle in the Christmas show, but I soon realized that I could build a series of shows around his various tricks.  And since Hugh was clever enough to make a Max puppet, I naturally asked him to create a Brandy puppet too.  Max couldn’t be a star without his leading lady.

The song itself took shape quickly.  It was a cute story song about Max, the reluctant sled-dog who was put to work on Christmas Eve when a little girl fell ill and needed urgent medical care.  It took a challenge from Santa to get the Ho Hum Husky moving, but once he was racing Santa’s sleigh, he delivered the doctor to the child’s bedside in record time.  Once I’d finished the song, I read the lyrics to the girls as a bedtime story.  Caroline pronounced it good, but geeky; but as she declared “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer” geeky too, Max’s song passed the test.  The chorus proved so catchy that soon everyone was singing it.  Katie grumbled that she couldn’t get away from the song because even her friends would break into ‘ho hums’ in the midst of their games.

Max enjoyed having the children home over the school holidays.  Edna’s grandsons joined us for walks too.  Max liked the boys, being such a boy-boy himself, and all the young males had lots of fun playing on the trails. Two days before Christmas, Max came home from our walk with a Christmas gift from Brandy.  He was most intrigued by this, and very eager to have his present.  His nose told him that it was something he’d like to eat.  On Christmas Eve, he, in turn, took a present round for Brandy, though he was reluctant to part with it and looked very cross when I gave it to Edna and made him come home.   His nose remained out of joint for the rest of the day, and he demonstrated his rebellious mood by trying to steal a visitor’s hat.

Since Max was starting to ferret for loot and abscond with things he was not supposed to have, Hugh built a new garden gate to block the back parking lot.  Max enjoyed being outside with Daddy and watching the project take shape, but he was not thrilled once he realized his freedom had been curtailed.  Indoors, we had to be careful too, and we made sure that his Christmas presents were kept well out of reach.  The problem we didn’t anticipate was the Christmas tree itself.  We knew Max liked berries, for he’d often pick salmon-berries to eat in the woods, but it never occurred to us that he’d mistake a red Christmas-tree bulb for a berry.  Still, that’s what he did.  He crunched down a Christmas tree light bulb!  We called Dr. Zinger, who told us to give Max hydrogen peroxide to make him throw up.  However, Max kept two doses down and licked his lips as if he thought the medicine quite tasty.  He slurped down some more spoonfuls, but still didn’t bring up the glass.  Finally, I gave up and dispensed half a loaf of bread to coat it.

That night, we were to go to the William Tell for our anniversary dinner.  My mother had come over to stay with the girls, but we set off with trepidation, not knowing if there would be problems with Max.  I supposed concern about the dog dominated our evening, so we ended up talking pets with Mr. Dobeli, and heard all about his dominant and rather misbehaved dog named Willy.   Fortunately, dinner wasn’t marred by any emergency calls, and when we arrived home, naughty Max greeted us happily.  He appeared to have digested his light bulb and was feeling in fine fettle, having been fussed over by my mother all evening.  So I stopped worrying and wrote the incident into the Christmas show.

“How’s your tummy, Max.  You look a bit peaky.”
“I can’t look Pekey.  I’m a husky.”

Max’s first Christmas Day was great fun.  The girls were up early to open their stockings, and Max, stirred into action by the activity, was very funny with his.  He couldn’t figure out what was going on, but was most interested as assorted treats came out of his stocking.  He proceeded to ‘bury’ them all over the bedroom, in the process wearing the skin off his nose.  Later, he was equally interested in the present opening, particularly when he saw that Brandy’s present was a bag of the peanuts that he regularly stole from the squirrels.  While we ripped wrapping paper off our presents, he worked his way through the peanuts, then sat down with his new chew toy and bared his teeth at anyone who went near it.  A little lacking in the Christmas spirit, but then, what could you expect from a dog that ate light bulbs.

In spite of the decorating and the festive songs tinkling from the radio, I could not come up with a concept for my Christmas song.  I had written a good script, which included three Pelham animal marionettes—a cat, a poodle and a dragon—as well as several other antique puppets.  But I needed that feature song to drive the middle of the show.  It was so frustrating, but no matter how hard I tried, I drew a blank.

My own creative flow might have dried up, but I was surrounded by enchanting tales everywhere I went.  One of these was from my friend, Edna, who explained how her lop-eared rabbit had acquired its name.  I was aware that Edna had a rabbit named CB, though for all I knew, it could have been a nautical moniker and spelled Seabee.  However, during an early-December walk, Edna explained that CB stood for Christmas Bunny.  The reason for this name was quite the tear-jerker.  The previous year, Edna and Brandy had been walking in the woods on Christmas Day, and Brandy had become fascinated by a mound of snow.  When Edna investigated, it proved to be a shivering, abandoned lop-eared rabbit, freezing cold and not long for this world if he hadn’t been discovered by this caring pair.  So the bunny was taken home, thawed, and nursed back to the land of the living.  Given the miracle of his salvation and the day it occurred, he was christened Christmas Bunny.

Well, who could compete with a story like that?  I gave up trying and concentrated on the practicalities of shopping, baking and rehearsing our shows.  We had several gigs for December.  One of these was a birthday-party show, booked by a lovely family that attended our church.  The Claydons were cheerful and patient, in spite of the fact that we had problems setting up in time.  However, our performance got underway, albeit with us frazzled and roasting, since there was a radiator belching out heat beside us.  In spite of our discomfort, the show went well until the finale when we did the unthinkable – We Dropped a Puppet!!!  Such shame, but the Claydons didn’t appear to mind.  I vaguely recall hoots of laughter and someone calling out, “There goes one!”  Fortunately, they considered it a comedy turn.  In hindsight, I quail at the thought of the primitive nature of those early shows.  What forgiving audiences we had!

A gig of a different colour was the booking to perform Babes in the Wood for Scotia MacLeod in their high-rise downtown office.  Having hauled our equipment up in a service elevator that kept getting stuck, we found ourselves performing in the lobby, opposite the front desk, where we competed with ringing phones, peripatetic couriers and roving stock-brokers.  The show was clearly the finale to the staff Christmas luncheon and was designed as What-to-do-with-the-wives-and-children-while-the-husbands-put-in-another-two-hours-at-the-office.  Needless to say, our audience sat as if press-ganged and had as much animation as a row of sausage rolls.  The adults looked bored before we started, and the children were so robotically well-behaved it was positively eerie, but we soldiered on.  The show continued smoothly, except for the Sheriff losing a string early on and proceeding to look tipsy for the rest of the performance.  By the time we’d packed up and tackled the temperamental elevator once more, everyone in the family had as much Ho Ho Ho in them as Ebenezer Scrooge.

All this pressure took its toll as December wore on.  Katie became very naughty during her church concert.  She rattled off her lines as if she was chanting her ABC’s, and tossed Baby Jesus’ gift down like a discarded bus ticket.  Hugh assessed the situation and suggested that some festive outings were in order to restore our Christmas spirit.  And so, one evening, while Caroline was at a skating party, the rest of us went to Ioco to see the Carol Ships.  Although we had intended to watch from the clubhouse, Hugh decided it would be more fun to go out on the boat.  Of course, we had not prepared for this, so needless to say, we froze.  Having chugged around the bay for half an hour, the only result was borderline hypothermia.  We saw plenty of marker ships coming out of Reed point, but no carol ships anywhere.  Finally, we gave up and came in.  Then, the minute we walked off the dock, the first Carol ship glided around the point.  So we watched from the clubhouse as originally planned, and I made Max do a long down on my feet while we saw the flotilla pass by.  That solid husky torso made a fabulous foot-warmer.

Once we were all home, Hugh made a hot rum to thaw me out.  I decided to enjoy it upstairs, lolling on the couch in our bedroom.  Max, equally exhausted by the long day, was sprawled in the middle of the carpet, having been too tired to make it to his usual corner.  A totally ho-hum husky, determined not to stir unless something really exciting got his attention.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a set of lyrics floated into my mind:

Max, the Ho Hum Husky, could run faster than the rest,
But he never made the effort unless put unto the test,
Unless he sensed another team gaining on his tail,
He’d slow down and move at a pace more suited to a snail.

Bugger the poodle, I thought.  We can do better than that.

“Hugh!”  I called down the stairs.  “Do you think you could make a puppet of Max!”

The day after the election, we set off to meet Edna and Brandy as usual.  It had snowed in the night, and then frozen, so the ground was treacherous.  To add to the hazardous conditions, we were joined by an ownerless trio of canines, made up of two unruly mongrels that we’d met before with a large German shepherd in tow.  Fortunately, all three dogs were friendly, but large and boisterous, so it proved quite the walk.  Snow plus a pack of five!  Max had such a puzzled expression on his face.  His brain was on overload trying to figure out who was the leader of the pack.  Gary Gibson was right about Max’s alpha-male attitude.  Whenever he met another male dog, Max would test for dominance.  He accepted it graciously if the other dog asserted leadership, but he had to know who was in charge.

Between watching her feet and making sure the dogs didn’t take her out at the knees, Edna, predictably, sounded off about the election.  She was very annoyed about the ultimate outcome, but as I pointed out to her, everyone was more disappointed than I was.  In fact, I wasn’t disappointed at all, merely relieved.  Edna had far more of the spirit to make a politician than I ever did.  She was quite prepared to take on difficult people.  I’ll never forget the day we ran into ‘Mr. Chow’, a particularly obnoxious walker with an equally obnoxious dog.  ‘Mr. Chow’ laid into Edna because Brandy was unleashed, even though she was nowhere near his dog.  Edna promptly told him to ‘dry up and stick his head down a toilet.’  What headlines I could have made if I’d used that turn of phrase at an all-candidates meeting!

After-effects from the election continued to interrupt my days.  Many people would call, assuming I could help with local issues.  A particularly disturbing incident occurred when I received a strange note ending with a string of x’s.  I felt disconcerted.  I was even more uneasy when a few phone calls turned up the fact that the letter writer was a schizophrenic who was known to have violent outbursts and had fixations on dark-eyed brunettes.  Never was I so glad that I had my feisty Max to keep me company.

However, with the election over, life became a mad dash to Christmas, but what fun that was.  Shopping, writing letters, wrapping presents, cleaning silver, booking and rehearsing shows—all were a joy after the strain of politics.  We had more time for visits to my parents and they were glad to see us back to normal too.  On our first post-election visit, Big Max took little Max round the block so many times that, once back in the house, Max Junior jumped into my lap for shelter.  Totally overdosed on walkies.

Max liked the fall.  He enjoyed the cooler weather, and he was very interested in the new acquisitions that began to appear in the house.  My birthday came and went, along with a gift of some weights for my morning exercises.  Max found these fascinating.  He thought I’d been given giant chew toys, though he was not so impressed when he tried to get his teeth around them.  He was very interested, too, when a box of antique Pelham marionettes arrived from my old friend, Jennifer Guttridge Milne, who had heard about Elwoodettes and decided to donate the puppets we played with as children.  These Max was not allowed to test his teeth on.  As December approached and the girls became more hyper, the anticipation in the air was too much for Max and he started to be naughty too.  It was no use issuing warnings not to pout, cry or shout; everyone was just too excited about Christmas.

Amid all these preparations, I was struggling to find a focal point for a Christmas song.  I’d written a script for a half-hour show, which we were creating with a view to performing for the Burnaby Village Museum the following year.  Babes in the Wood was fun, but it was too long and cumbersome for private gigs, and it was becoming obvious that we needed shorter shows for special occasions.  However, the song eluded me, and I finally gave up and concentrated on the tasks at hand.  One of these was the holiday decorating marathon.

Our family always decorated the house on the first weekend in December.  This practice dated back to the days of Hugh’s parents and our first dog, Beanie, when we used to make a special trip to the Sunshine Coast to cut our tree.  This event was even immortalized one year by a Sun photographer when the newspaper did a story on family traditions.  Since our house is more than 100 years old, it is full of nooks and crannies that lend themselves to ornamentation, so a lot of trees and garlands go into this endeavor.

Max, of course, new to this tradition, was ecstatic.  My diary records that we tackled the job, ‘un-helped by a very excited and naughty Max who kept stealing decorations, including Hugh’s ship-in-a-bottle which he crunched into smithereens.’  After dinner, we sat around and admired the tree, but Max lay on guard all evening.  His wolf-mask expression was easy to read:  “My tree!  My presents!”   Katie became most indignant, for Max growled at her whenever she tried to look at her present.  So much for trying to peel back the paper and take a peek.  Santa wasn’t the only one who was watching.

November passed in a blur.  There were still all the usual responsibilities:  Running the home, feeding the family, taking the girls to activities, and walking and training Max.  I was also trying to work on the role of Violetta with my wonderful singing teacher, Luigi Wood, but the election took every spare minute.  Poor Max became very neglected and very put out.  It seemed that even a sacrificial-lamb candidate had to put in an inordinate amount of time—and sacrificial lamb I was—when I went to check BVA ad copy at the local newspaper office I discovered that they’d left my name off the  ad!  That told me how important I was.  Other than managing a family visit to our friends at the George Derby Centre for their Remembrance Day service, my entire social life was centred round all-candidates meetings, radio and newspaper interviews, TV debates, and visits to sites related to issues that were hot topics.  In the evenings that weren’t accounted for, Hugh and I would take Max for long walks to deliver campaign leaflets.  This may not have got me elected, but it did give me material for future stories, such as “Death and the Doorknockers” where Beary (emulating Hugh) walks into a fishpond while cutting across a lawn in the dark.  Max took these evening outings in his stride, though he occasionally looked at us as if he thought we’d gone slightly mad.  Smart dog.

One of the things I discovered about Max during this period was the fact that he liked my voice.  When I vocalized or worked on arias, he would come bounding in and lie in the middle of the room as if to say, “I’m here for the concert.”  This was a refreshing change from Beanie, who had always got up with a pained expression on her face and left the room.  Max was also happy to sit and listen to me practice my speeches.  He must have been the most well-informed dog on municipal issues, because he gravely sat through every trial run of every talk I had to prepare.

Max was certainly an easier audience that the ones I had to deal with at campaign events.  One day, I had to do an interview on Chinese radio, where every sentence I issued was immediately reissued in high-speed staccato Mandarin.  My thoughts sounded very dramatic translated into Chinese, but I couldn’t help wondering if the translator was actually repeating what I had said.  Another outing that took an unexpected turn was a meeting with the South Asian group that owned Bonny’s Taxis.  Doreen Lawson, who was an ardent feminist, brought up the issue of prostitutes on Kingsway, clearly forgetting about the great divide over cultural attitudes.  The next thing we knew, one of the men cheerfully began to explain to her how the government could legalize prostitution, then ship all the workers to an island in the bay for an isolated red light district—for which, naturally, Bonny’s could have the exclusive water-taxi licence. Doreen’s rear view was most expressive.  The rest of us managed to keep straight faces while we watched her extract herself.

Unlike the all-candidates meetings, the Mayor’s debate was very civilized, since Bill Copeland was as amiably disposed towards me as Max was.  Bill finished his speech by telling the public that if they couldn’t vote for him, they should vote for me, because he knew I’d do a good job.  He also told me privately that he firmly believed whoever won the campaign would really be the loser.  I know how he felt.  I was itching for the election to be over so I could get back to my family and my arts activities.

Finally, Election Day rolled around.  The day started badly, as Max got into a fight with another dog when we went for our morning walk.  I took him with me to the campaign office and put him in a long down while I dutifully phoned down the BVA list of supporters.  I soon realized that Max was not the only one being put in his place; I was, too.  Hardly anyone on the list even knew who I was.  The election was, of course, the wipe-out I’d predicted, but I struggled through the day and dealt with the interminable TV appearances and interviews.  Afterwards, Hugh and I went out for a late dinner with our friends, the Coyles, where we let off steam and held an irreverent post mortem on the whole affair.  The next day, I received only two calls of sympathy:  one from my mother and one from Elwood Veitch’s widow, Sheila Veitch.  Instantly forgotten.  Such is political life.

The following Monday, I dutifully filled in my financial disclosure—all $300 of it!  We decided it must be the first time in history a politician could be embarrassed by a financial disclosure because it was so small.  After having lunch with Katie, I delivered my forms, then went down to city hall to buy Max’s dog licence.  Max trotted beside me on his leash, giving his best Gary-Gibson-perfect-canine-walk demo.  When we reached the front of the line, he repeated his stunt from the previous year.  However, he was now big enough to get his paws right up on the counter.  He leapt up and peered over the top at all the clerical ladies who immediately rose from their chairs and zoomed round to admire him.  Such adulation, and how he lapped it up.  It was obvious I was back in my proper place.  Max’s Mum—so much for the mayorionette.  The more they saw of me, the more they loved my dog!

Halloween was always fun at our house.  When the girls were old enough for trick-and-treating, we created our own family tradition, sneakily devised so they didn’t stay out too long.  We invited their friends and friends’ parents back to the house for a post-trick-and-treat party.  I prepared trays of cheese crumpets—a quick and easy heat in the oven—and we served hot chocolate for the children and mulled wine for the adults.  We decorated the house and set the atmosphere for spooky stories, so the children could gather in the dining room to tell their tales while they foraged through their treats.  Afterwards, we performed a puppet show, and everything wound up with fireworks in the back garden.  The parties were great.  The kids loved them because they were fun, and the adults liked them because they ensured that the children were off the streets by eight.  The parties also cut down on the piles of candy gathered in the pumpkin buckets.

Halloween in 1993 was particularly busy, not only because of the election campaign, but also because the ‘fun’ puppet shows had now graduated to public gigs.  On top of that, it was Max’s first Halloween, and he would have to cope with an influx of people in his home, not just with the party, but also with the classes from Second Street School who always walked down to do our ‘spooky-house’ tour and to watch a rehearsal of whatever show was on the books for that year.  The show for 1993 was The Witch from Down Under.  It was a cute production about an Australian witch who comes to visit Super Natural British Columbia and gets lost.  Instead of arriving at the Empress Hotel, she ends up in Dracula’s castle.  Once again, this was an early version of the show, with Uncle Jim, the father of our current premier, doing the voice of the Count.  No jokes about politics and bloodsuckers, please.

Two days before Halloween, we ran shows all day for the school classes.  Max coped surprisingly well with the first troop of children trailing through our ‘haunted house’.  However, when the next batch arrived, he developed a been-there-done-that expression and spent the rest of the afternoon upstairs in our bedroom enjoying a nap.  The shows went very well, in spite of the fact that the witch lost her head during one performance and we had to stop for repairs.  As is always the way with live performance, the audience loved to see something going wrong.  The teachers were all most enthusiastic, and after the final show, Mrs. Crossland talked about the follow-up projects she would give her class.  As she left, Caroline hissed at me:  “Did you hear that?  We got their class a bunch of HOMEWORK!”

Halloween fell on a Sunday that year, so the weekend was busy.  On Saturday, we performed a gig at Queens Park Hospital.  On the Sunday, we were booked to do three shows at Bonsor Rec Centre.  This also turned out to be the site for a BVA/BCA Candidates baseball game.  I was informed that I’d have to duly take part in the game between performances of our show.  However, after my first hit sent the ball up in the air and nearly knocked out the umpire, my team members happily returned me to the Arts. What a marathon it was.  We finished our shows, packed up late afternoon, loaded our theatre, drove home, unloaded and reset it all again for the party—after which I changed into my black dress and witch’s hat, then sat with a glass of mulled wine while the girls went trick-or-treating and Hugh dispensed candy to the visitors.  Max was very interested in the children who came to the door.  This was because we had also set out a dish of dog biscuits by the candy tray, and every time he sat nicely and didn’t growl, he was rewarded with a cookie.

By 8:30, the house was packed with friends and neighbours.  The children told their stories, the show had its final run, the food and drinks were served, and everyone trooped out to the deck for the grand finale.  By this time, Max was wild-eyed and hyperactive.  I spent the rest of the evening fielding the cheese crumpets that the kids tried to feed him surreptitiously, then soothing and consoling him in our room while the fireworks whizzed and roared through the night sky.  Poor Max was not impressed and he told me so in no uncertain terms.  Definitely a Halloween Howl!

During the campaign, interactions with my friends took on a Monty Python flavor.  On our morning walks, Edna would grin and refer to me as Your Worship.  When our recording-artist friend, Gary Kehoe, came to visit, he quipped that, if I won, they would have to call me the mayorionette.  Gary also gleefully noted that the BCA ad for Bill Copeland’s fundraising dinner had a ticket price of $100 and slogan that read: Burnaby loves Bill.  The cost of my fundraising dinner was only $60, so Gary suggested we should promote it with the slogan: You can love Elizabeth for only $60!

There was certainly no danger that I’d develop a sense of my own self-importance.  Max and the girls were also on TV when CBC came to interview me.  Their cameo was much more appealing than my two lines, which, taken out of context, were rendered meaningless.  The next morning, Edna was so excited about the newscast.  She raved on about how magnificent Max looked and declared him a regular Rin Tin Tin.  That summed up the impact of my appearance, but I agreed with her entirely.

Max rolled with the punches during the campaign months, though the stressed household atmosphere make him a bit antsy.  When we took him to school for show and tell with Katie’s class, he was a proper little fidget bum and kept barking at a naughty boy who was staring him down from the front seat.  The class found this most entertaining, but needless to say, I didn’t.  He was also becoming naughty about foraging for food.  Edna’s mother, Jean, used to leave food out for the squirrels, and we always knew when she’d been through the trail because Max spent most of his walk on his hind legs, looking into hollow stumps and stealing the peanuts.

Max continued to be gallant with females, one day adding a pretty Dalmatian called Maxine to his entourage.  But trying to keep up with his training was a challenge, especially as I was constantly tired.  Juggling mothering, household chores, Halloween shows, singing lessons, trips to skating contests, and campaign demands was proving tough, especially as Caroline was now pre-teen, and was reaching the stage where she could be just as out of bounds as Max.  However, she was turning into a lovely skater, so it was a joy to see her progress.  Katie, too, was becoming very artistic, and would round up the neighbourhood children and direct them in little shows that she had created.

You would think the effort of coping with all these responsibilities would have kept me slim, but I found that running for Mayor wasn’t good for my weight or my digestive tract.   My children weren’t so keen on campaign meals either.  Prior to leaving for the BVA fundraising dinner, I had a big battle with Katie over which jacket she should wear.  She wailed, “But I have to have a coat with zip-up pockets.  I need them for —” Then she paused.  Caroline finished the sentence:  “—for her brussel sprouts.”  I felt the same way after weeks of breakfast engagements and rubber-chicken dinners.  A diary note refers to one event:  “Lunch was dreadful.  Glad I didn’t pay for it.”  Another time, our candidates were asked to speak at the Sikh temple, after which we were invited to the church hall for very exotic food.  I could have definitely used Katie’s zip-up pockets on that occasion.  Home cooking never tasted so good as it did during the campaign.

Further indigestion was created by the behavior of some of our candidates.  At one event, I had to calm two warring candidates who were carrying on like angry four-year-olds.  Hugh also became very intense, and would sometimes get into heated arguments with members of the team or write terse notes on their brochures.  Then, after dealing with all these misbehaved two-legged males, I’d have to do the daily workout with my misbehaved four-legged male. On the plus side, Gary Gibson’s dog-training techniques seemed to apply to the difficult humans too.  There were a lot of similarities between training candidates and training Max.

As I was preparing to meet my political Waterloo, Max suffered a mortifying putdown too.  On the morning walk, as we reached the woods, a lady emerged from the trail.  She was accompanied by a small leashed dog, but a striped cat sloped out behind them.  The woman warned me that her cat might attack my dog.   I laughed, thinking she had a great sense of humour.  But the next moment, the wretched cat, whose name appropriately was Caesar, arched, hissed and launched itself at Max.  Poor Max howled, lay down in submission, covered his face with his paws and yowled for mercy.  Caesar ignored his pleas, delivered a couple of lashes and bloodied his nose.  Max hung his head all the way home. 

Edna observed that she kept cats out of her garden with a water pistol containing vinegar.  She suggested that I could add oil to the mixture for the next time we met Caesar and train Max to think ‘salad’.  While I never tested her theory, I did get some great show lyrics from the concept to go with a Caesar puppet that Hugh created for The Sausage Thief so Max didn’t suffer in vain.  But there was no question that he and I were both feeling somewhat embattled.  It was going to be heavenly getting back to normal after election day.

On the day after Katie’s (and Max’s) birthday, Marcella came to church with us.  After the service, Hugh and I dropped the girls at the mall and continued out to Sasamat Lake to give Max his weekend hike.  En route we turned on the news and were shocked to the core to hear that Elwood Veitch had died of a heart attack the day before.   He had only been sixty-four.   Slim, as he was nicknamed by his friends, was one of the last of the old-time politicians.  A Socred MLA and Cabinet Minister, he spent many years as the representative for Burnaby-Willingdon.

I had run to Slim many times for assistance with projects for the Burnaby Arts Council and the NorthWest Opera, and he had helped me through the mazes of red tape with good humour and diplomacy.  His wife Sheila was also active in politics.  She had served  on the Burnaby School Board and Burnaby Council, so she had also helped us with various problems and concerns.  Sheila, Slim, and Mayor Bill Copeland were all great arts supporters, and had even agreed to take part in the opening night of NWO’s Mozart/Salieri production.  Slim was no longer sitting as an MLA, but he had declared his intention of running for mayor for the BVA in the upcoming civic election.  This was no mean challenge, because Burnaby traditionally supported the BCA, and the incumbent mayor was Bill Copeland, the popular and likeable former fire chief.

You may wonder what all this political chat has to do with a dog blog.  Well, dogs, bless them, were what introduced me to the world of politics.   If it hadn’t been for canines, I would have never been a candidate in an election—and probably never created the character of Bertram Beary either.  My husband has always been interested in politics, but me, not so much so, although I was always ready to get involved if an issue arose that I felt strongly about.  And, as anyone who read this dog blog knows, I care about dogs.   How did my four-legged friends draw me into the political arena?  That’s a story in itself.

Many years before, when Caroline was a toddler, we combined our daily walk with a trail hike for Beanie, followed by a visit to the playground for Caroline.  One day, we were standing at the top of Robert Burnaby Park, chatting with the grandfather of two of Caroline’s playmates.  Beanie was sitting decorously beside me.  I had not yet leashed her as we had just come off the trails.  To my horror, a uniformed man came bounding down from the road and promptly gave me a ticket.  Having grown up walking in West Vancouver’s Lighthouse Park where the bylaw had simply stated that dogs must be under control, I was extremely taken aback.  My dog was under control and I was very indignant to be slapped with a fine.  I asked the pound officer where I could walk my dog off leash in Burnaby, and he replied, “Nowhere.”  This incident sparked two battles.  The first, and most immediate, was my determination to fight the ticket.  The second, which became a protracted and arduous struggle, was to make Council alter the bylaw and establish areas where dogs could get proper exercise.

But first, the ticket.  I did my homework carefully.  I researched judgments that followed the intent of the law, as opposed to the word of the law; I dug out examples of more friendly bylaws from other jurisdictions; and I photocopied a series of dog-association reports on the health/exercise needs of canines.  By the time I went to court, I had an impressive pile of documents worthy of a criminal lawyer defending a murder charge.  Also, being a well-brought up young woman who was respectful of appropriate dress codes, I wore a suit, hat and full makeup.  The neighbor who had witnessed the issuing of the ticket accompanied me, just in case any conflicting statements emanated from the pound officer’s mouth.  When I got to court, the judge turned out to be a very jolly Afro-Canadian who gave me an encouraging smile as soon as I took my seat.  I like to think he was smiling at my appropriate appearance, but in hindsight, he was probably trying not to laugh out loud at the massive pile of documents I had assembled to fight a dog ticket.  I sat down, feeling comforted by his benevolent manner.

However, when the pound officer rose to speak, my equilibrium was shattered.  To my amazement, he described an entirely different scenario from what had really happened.  My jaw dropped as I listened to him recounting how Beanie was roaring about the field in an uncontrolled manner and had not been called to my side until after the ticket had been issued.  Naïve as I was, I assumed that people told the truth when they were under oath.  I was very glad my neighbor had come along.  But as it turned out, I didn’t need him.  The judge, noticing my dangling jaw and bulging eyes, must have decided that the pound officer was telling porkies.  My friendly judge smiled again, then turned back to the pound officer and asked if he could definitely identify me as the woman he had talked with in the park.  To my surprise, I saw a flicker of doubt in the pound-man’s eyes.  Then I clued in.  All the people who know me love to joke about my extreme forms of dress.  It’s either glamour to the nines, or total grubbery, and, of course, my dog-walking apparel falls into the latter category.  The pound officer hesitated, said he thought I was the same woman, but then admitted that he couldn’t be 100% certain.  At this point, the judge turned to me and told me that I had two options.  I could either take my turn to speak and defend my position, or I could keep silent and he could throw out the case on the grounds of lack of identification.  All that homework for nothing—or perhaps not for nothing.  The judge was probably quailing at the prospect of hearing me blather on for the rest of the afternoon.  I was certainly not foolish enough to look this gift horse in the mouth.  Meekly, I thanked him and sat down again.  The case was won.  I didn’t have to pay.

The second battle was not so easily won.  It turned into a municipal-wide civil war.  My attempts to get the dog bylaws adjusted brought out every dog hater in the community.  Soon, dog lovers and dog haters were signing petitions and bombarding councillors with phone calls and letters.  It was then that I discovered that the manipulations of bureaucrats and elected officials really were as farcical as depicted on shows like Yes, Minister.  At the time, it was very stressful; in hindsight, it produced my story, “A Political Tail” in which a dog-hating bureaucrat was murdered in a dog park.  My forays to Council did not achieve the desired result for many years, but they did bring forth another unexpected result.  Interested people in both civic associations were desperate for candidates who could speak well in public, and the next thing I knew, both groups had asked me to run for Council.  They didn’t care about the dog issue, but they used it to lure me in.  If I were elected, I would have more influence.  By now, I was sufficiently furious that I decided to go for it.  Not wanting to be aligned with any particular party, I chose to run with the non-partisan BVA, and almost made it to Council on my first try, ending up only a few votes behind Sheila Veitch.  However, after the next term, the BCA swept the Council, led by popular Bill Copeland, so my subsequent attempts went nowhere.  However, we finally got our dog areas and at the time of Slim Veitch’s death, I had already indicated that I was not going to run again.

Famous last words!  Now that Slim had died, the BVA had lost their high-profile mayoralty candidate.  I was well known due to my arts activities, and I had the name, Elwood, so the bright sparks on the board decided that I’d be a good replacement.  Only two days after Slim died, Bruce Clark dropped by our home and tried to twist my arm into stepping into the BVA mayoralty slot.  Bruce is the brother of Christie Clark, the current B.C. Premier, and Hugh and I had known both of them for many years.  Their father, Jim, had taught with Hugh and was a frequent visitor to our home, being known as Uncle Jim to our girls.  Jim even recorded vocals for us in the early days, and though those first shows were ultimately re-recorded and upgraded, Jim’s voice is still there delivering a booming Ho Ho Ho in one of our Christmas shows.  Jim was lifetime Liberal who loved ‘the game of politics, and he instilled this enthusiasm into Bruce and Christie.  However, politics wasn’t a game to me, and I became very frustrated at the wheeler-dealing and skullduggery that went on behind the scenes.  I didn’t have the fight in me to spend my life in that arena, so I wanted to take my experiences and use them as fuel for my writing.

I pointed out to Bruce that Bill Copeland was so popular that there was no way I could win; therefore, they should forget about the mayor’s slot and concentrate on getting the councillors elected.  Bruce, like his sister, is a master manipulator, and he knew how to win me over.  He told me how the young, forward-thinking candidates on the slate were going to be held back because the old-timers who wanted to try for the mayor’s slot were potential embarrassments to the group.  I wasn’t taken in by his arguments, but I did know some of the young candidates, so had a certain sympathy for them.  Hugh loved the idea of me running, and joined up with Bruce to persuade me.  Jim Clark also stepped in, offering to act as my personal assistant to take the pressure off me during the campaign.  Finally, to get them to back off, I said I would agree, but only under the following conditions:   No involvement until the end of October when our Halloween shows were over, no financial contribution, no engagements I didn’t want to attend and no restrictions on whatever I wanted to say.  I figured that would be the end of it.

The nominating meeting was four days away, and I tried to get on with my life.  The girls were very sweet, trying to help me feel human with cozy family times.  One day, I came home from my walk to find Caroline had baked Pillsbury rolls for breakfast.  What a lovely surprise!  However, enjoying those moments was easier said than done due to the pressure of visits from BVA members, calls from reporters who had been leaked the info that I might run, and subtle hints from Hugh that I could have a lot of fun promoting things I cared about if my conditions were accepted.  By this point, I was feeling stressed and the unconditional love I received from Max was very soothing.  Fortunately, he was being a good boy and not adding to my worries, so my dog walks (since in those days, there were no cell phones) became my solace.  One day, I walked Max early, but turned my ankle and fell in the woods.  He was so worried, poor puppy.  Puff, puff, lick lick.  He wouldn’t leave me until I was back up and walking normally again.  I think he sensed that his owner was having a hard time.

September 23 was the day of the nomination meeting.  I hadn’t heard back from the committee by 4:30, so I breathed easy and decided I was off the hook.  But then came the phone call.  My terms had been accepted and Bruce was on his way over with the nomination papers.   I raced upstairs, prepared a three-minute speech, signed on by five o’clock, bolted a light meal, changed into real clothes and set off for the hall.  A few speeches, a vote, followed by an interminable count, and I was declared the BVA mayoralty candidate.  My old friend and sparring partner, Vic Stusiak, was happy, but my sense was that my colleagues were deluding themselves that they could win back a majority.  The times and the Burnaby demographic were against them. However, having taken the task on, I resolved to do my best in my sacrificial lamb role, and if nothing else, expected it would provide me with an interesting experience to look back on.  And to think, it all began with dogs!

Next:  Campaign Dog.