July, 1969

In the humid midsummer of 1969 everyone was beguiled by the moon and though they were not bathetically enthralled it was, in its own way, romantic. The Americans were about to land there – at least most people believed they were. The rest thought Hollywood was staging the world’s most expensive home movie. My father had just bought a new, large colour TV for the family room and during the night of the landing he sat transfixed on the live broadcasted proceedings waiting for the big moment. As well as music and reading my father loved science and in the realm of science this was as big a show as came. He would vehemently deny that the new TV was bought just to watch the moonlanding but no one believed him. He was a geek before the word had meaning and the night of July 20^th he, like a billion others, waited nervously and excitedly. Just before the landing my father woke any sleeping kids to make sure they didn’t miss the historic event. Both my younger brother Matthew and I remained sleeping. My grandparents, 4 of my siblings, my father and mother sat around the colonial-inspired decoration of the latest Zenith floor model TV. Just before 11 pm, after some jittery and dusty images, Armstrong spoke, “Tranquility Base here, the eagle has landed.” My father, I have it on good record, was beside himself and making the celebratory noises of a guy whose team had just won. No one knows if he noticed that the actual moon landing footage was in black and white. But the show was not over yet. The more venerated moment of man’s first steps onto the surface of the moon - complete with scripted line - was yet to come. Also, there was the placing of the American flag on the surface in what has to be the first act of galactic imperialism. It was a good night for the world and a great night for TV, at least for those who could managed to stay awake. A story goes that my father told my sister Mary (a name chosen, inexplicably, by an ex boyfriend of my mother from her university days) that there were men walking on the moon. Mary, who was 4 at the time, went out to the back porch to see if she could see the men my father had just told her were there. Mary could see neither the moon nor the men on its surface as it was a cloudy night on the east coast and those men were 363,258 - give or take - kilometers away.

Meanwhile closer to home, the Canadian government, under the allure of its glamorous new leader, Trudeau, had just given French it official language status and it was now considered equal to English across the land in an act centuries overdue. In Montreal, the nation’s largest French-speaking city, John and Yoko, in a somnolent approach to activism, checked into the Queen Elizabeth Hotel to stay in bed for a week for peace. From there they recorded Give Peace a Chance. It was a valiant effort on their part but it seemed the only peace anyone was really interested in was a piece of the bed linen on which the couple had slept. Scores of little, square John and Yoko, “actual bed sheets” souvenirs flooded the market - most of which were fake. John, Yoko and Prime Minister Trudeau probably had a good laugh about it when they got stoned together later that month.

From Room No. 1742 of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Montreal
Give Peace a Chance by John Lennon and Yoko Ono