ARTIST AMBASSADORS

Having trouble keeping up pilgrim? No worries because it’s nothing but worry all the time about everything from now on. 

I have a passing interest in Greenland, two in fact. One is as a flyover space to cast white out dreams upon while the other is following along as an expeditionary scientific research vessel samples various qualities of ice and water in her fjords. Sometimes you just have to know what you don’t know.

My first big splash in Canada was Edmonton. The first year was 1987 when I appeared at the summer street performers festival. I flew in with my first performing dog Sunshine. To add to the charm of it all we found a lovely laying hen that would sit on top my head while I juggled fire for the crowds. That made the front page that trick did.

That autumn I traveled back up to Alberta by pickup truck arriving around Labor Day to a city that had already had a hard freeze, windy days leaving the city bereft of a single autumnal leaf, hell it wasn’t even fall yet. To live in Edmonton is to have true grit.

I returned via the Icefield Parkway traveling through Jasper south. The main point of the whole adventure was that I had fallen in love with Canada, Canadians and their culture. 

Toronto was next, then Calgary for gigs. I played Halifax, Quebec City and Montreal. There was a stint in Winnipeg, Windsor and the Kootenay’s. 

By 1990 in Vancouver I was embedded in the street scene in English Bay. Then, a fine agency began booking me for one-week blocks of shows up in Whistler. I played Whistler last in 2005. 

English Bay was pure street show for the city’s locals getting out around dinner hour to enjoy the balm that is the lingering light of a long summer dusk. I wasn’t alone. Andrew Elliott, Nick Nicholas, Bill Ferguson, Alex Elixir, Drew Franklin and local legend far and wide across British Columbia the irrepressible Angus McDonald. Hell, each and every one of these buskers are made of remarkable timber.

Angus unlike anyone I’ve ever known happened to know everyone. My high school drama teacher now relocated in the Slocan Valley four hundred miles to the east in the interior was a man Angus knew. For some years Angus had a gold mine north five hours from Vancouver. The site was high upon the steep mountainsides near the Frazer River. Gold was more from what was grown on the mountain than what was dug out of it. Eventually the Royal Canadian Mounted Police helicoptered in and put stop to his enterprise. Angus did some penance for his providence and would revive his cultivation of the good weed of the north further east in the Kootenay’s. 

I had become weary of working in San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf and replaced the dull grind by playing summers in British Columbia then drifting south to Arizona for winter. It worked out. Snowbirds flocked to Arizona for the winter. It was really me just playing the same crowd. They needed to get away from the snow and I needed the sunshine to I could play my juggling act. 

The Lettuce Festival in Yuma was a plum of a job. Audiences were from Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Alberta. Resorts were packed cheek to jowl. Most just stored their trailers nearby rather than take them back north. They’d hauled them out of storage for their winter stay put them back and return the next year. This would go on so long as they still could make their way south.

It wouldn’t be until the latter part of my career that I cracked the Mexican scene landing a three-year stint in the Mexican Riviera. I had a place in Playa del Carmen and each night played an hour at any of a number of all-inclusive resorts along the shores. Technically I was supposed to have some sort of formal entry documents but in fact I didn’t. Mexican customs officials thought my coming to Mexico to juggle was such a positive for their people they’d let me in regardless. Sometimes you do for your people what you know in your heart is best for your people.  

It took years to get the whole picture in focus. In all I’d been hard at it for three decades piecing together some bigger picture of my career cast across North America. I preferred the rugged mountains of British Columbia, the sparsely populated regions of Eastern Oregon, and the sizzling winter days living outbound on a dirt road on the Sonoran Desert near Tucson.

Traveling in and out of Canada and Mexico meant I was working internationally.  Canadian customs were a little tougher on me, especially once I’d crossed over enough that they knew I was a busker traveling north to play their festivals. Some crossings were for pure pleasure, and I’d arrange to leave my props at a hotel along the border. So long as I didn’t have any of my business equipment my vacationing was legal and sanctioned. 

I did a lot of hot springing in British Columbia. I soaked in the caves at Ainsworth. Traveled to the remote Miette Hot Springs near Jasper National Park. For many years I had to spend a few days soaking in Nakusp only to be awakened in the middle of the night by curious bears. 

Time and life in British Columbia were good for my soul. And I was lucky my high school drama teacher had 50 acres in the Kootenay’s, in the Slocan, a mountainous region with vast reserves of freshwater lakes and rivers to explore. Angus took to farming again near Crawford Bay not more than an hour plus from the Slocan. I had a one-two punch of the best of best friends to charge up the zest for and unlimited lust for life. Max, my teacher an avid birdwatcher, and his wife my lifelong friend Virginia, we’d walk the long dirt road tracking parallel to the Slocan River to tell stories and toss skipping stones into the river.

Angus was always working on another tour. He had found a good circuit on Vancouver Island working the local grange halls. Into town he’d come posting his call for audiences on telephone poles and laundromat bulletin boards. Most often he’d get 10 to 50 folk to show up and these good souls paid what they could, some would bring a fresh caught salmon, jar of peanut butter or a bottle of booze to help the hustling magician on his way. 

This was not the Canada of 1990 when we first met. By now Vancouver and Victoria like everywhere was too slick and smart for the homemade hijinks of a street show. To find those innocent audiences you went north into the remote hamlets where your services would be appreciated by the chanterelle hunters and craftspeople that lived along the forested region.

That’s my Canada, the place I know. I’m a fan of the current Prime Minister. Mark Carney has had not a thing good to say about the current intentional chaotic crisis sparked by the return of America’s maddest mad man. I am beyond distraught. 

A performer is sometimes just an entertainer, sometimes a star, gifted and maybe possesses a virtuosity unique and all to their own. We are one more itinerate experience in this fraught world. We are uniquely situated to be a kind of ambassador to humankind. We bring word from our tribe in California of our respect and appreciation for our kindred spirits living along the Pacific Ocean in Baja or British Columbia. We speak of being good and decent people and urge those we meet to not believe everything they read, that we are indeed much like them. We have children, schools, and hopes and dreams. We want what is right and just and don’t want what is wrong and unfair. Clean air and clear water are important. Maintaining the peace between nations matters. Canadian and Mexican sovereignty, for that matter the Navajo have their nation within a nation to carry forward into eternity. 

Juggling for my supper was no easy way to make it through the world. Plenty of troubles piled up over the years, plenty of joy too. Still, in this moment when it seems America’s demons have been set loose to write the headlines it is important to know that even the smallest least influential artist does possess great influence. We do have our own dominion; we have our audiences that gather in and get close. They know us by our heart, know us by our kindness, know that we are here to reinforce our bonds, and a good and decent neighbor honored to be in their country, greeted and appreciated and known to be their faithful friends. A traveling artist brings word of hope.