Smoke Turret Cigarettes!

A painted billboard, recently exposed when the neighbouring building was demolished after a fire, for Turret cigarettes. Located next door to Artie Gold's old apartment building, The Westmore.

A walk in N.D.G., Summer 2008

A walk in our neighbourhood, Notre Dame de Grace, is always interesting and fun. Here, beside the apartment where Artie Gold used to live, is a painted billboard from the 1920s-1930s, pristine and clear after being protected and hidden for many decades by another building that was destroyed by fire a few years ago. The debris has now been removed from where the old building used to stand. I see others have posted photographs online of this same painted billboard. 

Montreal isn't Ville Marie--the City of Mary--for nothing. Here, a few blocks east of the Turret cigarette advertisement, is a statue of Mary (to the left of the huge statue of Jesus), in someone's back yard. 

A few hundred feet east from the statues of Jesus and Mary, on Monkland Avenue, is the former home of poet Irving Layton; it has been renovated by the new owners. I remember visiting Layton here, with CZ and Noni Howard, in his living room. Sometimes, when I would walk or drive by Layton's place, I'd look at his home and see him sitting at his dining room table writing poems, smoking his pipe.

On the Loyola Campus of Concordia University, near where Irving Layton used to live, is this statue of Mary, with a water fall and water circulating around the statue.

Next, we walk down Elmhurst Avenue from Sherbrooke, cross the railway tracks, and then walk along St. Jacques by the old Griffith-McConnell nursing home; the building has fallen in disrepair and neglect since they moved to their new location in Cote St. Luc. The old place is still standing, but since these photographs were taken, in 2008, construction has begun behind the building and I suspect it will be demolished.

Poetry, spirituality, lilacs blooming in spring, lanes that are like the country, history and people, they all make N.D.G. one of the nicest neighbourhoods in Montreal.




On the way home we stop by Rosedale-Queen Mary Road United Church, at Terrebonne and Rosedale, where they have constructed a labyrinth outside of the adjoining community centre. I gave a reading here once, all very nice people. The labyrinth is open to the public and has an amazing affect when walking on it. You are almost immediately plunged into profound questioning on the meaning of mortality. I never expected this but it certainly had this affect on me. As you walk the labyrinth, you are removed from the everyday, you find yourself in the spiritual.

There is a lot more to see than this on our walk in N.D.G.; this is just a part of the less trendy western part of N.D.G. For instance, there is a miniature Chinese garden directly across the street from the labyrinth; this is a wonderful creation someone has lovingly made and maintained in their front garden, it is a city and landscape all in miniature, with Oriental statues, running water in a little river, and tiny houses.

Signs in New York City and Los Angeles

In Richmond, BC (above), or was that Steveston? CZ and I out one day with Hilde and Denis...

(my son's name is Jake, so restaurants with his name always interest me)

On Amsterdam one day in 2008, in New York City (below):

On Broadway (below), again in New York City, reminding me of Artie Gold:

Venice Beach, California, back in 1997 at Christmas. That's where I want to live, somewhere where it's July all year long... no winters. Isn't that what we all say as we get older?

The Motel Raphael

I drove passed the Motel Raphael for years. The Motel Raphael, located just off the St. Jacques exit on highway 20... When I was a child, sitting beside my mother in our 1961 Pontiac as we returned from my future step-father's apartment in the West Island, we drove by the Motel Raphael. I remember on those occasions sitting beside Mother, singing "Me and My Shadow" in the darkness, on our way home to Oxford Avenue in N.D.G. When I lived in Huntingdon we'd pass the Motel Raphael on the way to the Mercier Bridge and arrive home an hour later; I'm glad those days of commuting are over. Later Artie Gold lived at the Motel Raphael, no money, screwed out of the trust money his father had left for him, the social services agency placed him at the motel; eventually the trust was discovered and Artie moved to the Westmore Apartments on Sherbrooke Street West, where he lived until February 2007. I've heard of others, hard on their luck, living at the Motel Raphael. Now it has a new name, bought by a chain, perhaps it's King's Inn... but stay happy, you need never be homeless, there is always the Motel Raphael (it will always be the Motel Raphael to some of us) where you can live. Yes, I've thought of living there myself. I even priced a room a few years ago. It's a short walk up the hill to a 24 hour MacDonald's, to Picasso's Restaurant if they ever reopen, Super C for inexpensive groceries, and then turn left on Cavendish, walk through the underpass, and a block later you're at the corner of Sherbrooke and a number 105 bus waiting to take you downtown, back to civilization in about twenty minutes. Hurrah for the Motel Raphael! We need never be homeless!

Artie Gold, two years later

"Language, without the monkey of historical reality clinging to its back, is poetry!!" --Artie Gold 

(Artie's handwriting and design on a piece of plastic)

____________________________________________

It was on this day two years ago, February 14, 2007, that Artie Gold died. I often go for walks and pass the apartment building on Sherbrooke Street West where he lived. At night, from the street, I can look up at his windows and see that new people have painted and decorated his old place. Not long ago I entered the building, the inside door unlocked when one of the tenants was entering. I went up to the second floor where Artie’s apartment was located; there was no aura of Artie left, it had long departed; the books of poetry Artie wrote and our memories of him are all that we have left.

What memories do we have? Artie was someone who talked, rather than listened. He was an intelligent man, one of those people who seem to have been born knowing something about many things. He had charisma and a terrific sense of humour. He could be kind but he also managed to alienate many of his friends. A few old friends looked after him in his final years as he was not well and left his home only infrequently; I think of Endre Farkas, Luci King-Edwards, and Jill Torres in particular as friends who did much for Artie. I apologize for omitting the names of any others who helped him. I also visited, bought groceries, T-shirts, sole inserts, and other things he needed; and CZ and I had coffee with him at different restaurants. He often phoned. He saw few people and he allowed even fewer to enter his apartment. Artie was not someone to whom one could be indifferent. Some of us who knew him for many years thought he was fated to die young, but he managed to live sixty years and exactly one month. Once Artie showed me a book by the American poet Larry Eigner with the author’s name, where it had been written in pencil inside the book, erased but still visible. The printing was a scrawl as a result of Eigner’s cerebral palsy. Looking at Eigner’s photograph at the back of his The World And Its Streets, Places (Santa Barbara, Black Sparrow, 1977), I noticed the similarity of how Artie looked with Eigner’s appearance. Both men, at age fifty—Eigner in 1977 and Artie in 1997—are balding but still attractive men, both were dedicated to poetry despite their physical health. Artie Gold was one of our most talented poets. His bad health was partly self-inflicted, and partly the result of childhood health problems. He came from a fairly well off family in Outremont, a neighbourhood in Montreal which is mixed socially but is also very upper middle-class. His father was a businessman who made trips to China as far back as the early 1970s. Artie suffered greatly in his life, due both to his emotional and physical condition. We will not see his like again, for no one would want to live his life and few would put up with what he endured, not even Artie Gold by the end.

Farewell, Artie (text)

Artie Gold, around 2004

Sunday, September 30, 2007 (diary notes): I walked up from La Cathédrale underground parking on Ste Catherine Street and along Aylmer to Artie’s old place on Lorne Crescent and joined Endre Farkas, Carolyn-Marie Souaid, Carol Harwood, Chris Knudsen, and Luci King-Edwards. Jill Torres arrived a few minutes later with Artie’s ashes in a large blue plastic container, the ashes in the container in a clear plastic bag and the blue container and bag of ashes both in a cloth bag. We read some of Artie’s poems and Chris spread a handful of ashes; then behind the flat where I once stood on the second floor porch with Guy Birchard while Artie was having a fit about something, and threw a coffee mug at Mary Brown who was below us in the back yard (see note below). Artie’s place on Lorne Crescent is a mess now, the back yard area under construction, run-down, dilapidated. It reminded me of my Grandmother’s run down place on Girouard; once it was nice, now it’s not. Then we walked to The Word Bookstore on Milton, where Artie visited and pontificated on poetry on an almost daily basis for several years before he moved from Lorne Crescent. Luci, who owns the bookstore with her husband Adrian, read a poem of Artie’s outside the store. Then we walked across the McGill campus to where the old Mansfield Book Mart was located, it’s now a camera store. More poems were read, more ashes left there. Then, to where Artie lived on McKay, below Ste. Catherine Street (perhaps this was the beginning of his “descent”, the days after Mary Brown told him she wanted to move from Lorne Crescent). Various comments were repeated that Artie had made in which he disparaged his close friends. I wonder what he said about me? Carolyn-Marie said she had archived five boxes of his papers. Endre said there were many unpublished poems on how much Artie hated his mother. Chris said he fell out with Artie when he couldn’t help Artie move to a new place. Carol mentioned how Artie had phoned her to comfort her when she broke up with Endre and then launched into a talk on himself. And Jill mentioned how Artie moved into a place with a newly laid floor but complained about dog fur causing him to itch and aggravate his allergies. Then we walked to Charlie’s American Bar on Bishop (almost next door to Jerry O’Regan and Stephanie Hoolahan’s O’Regan’s Irish Pub), near where Artie used to live, and more of Artie’s ashes spread and one of his poems read aloud. Then we walked along Rene Levesque Boulevard to Chinatown and I read a poem that CZ had chosen, outside the Guy Favreau Building. And then to the Welcome Café which Endre wrote about in one of his books and used in a book title. More ashes spread in an empty lot just south of the Welcome Café. Finally, we ate supper at the Beijing Restaurant (corner of St. Urbain and La Gauchietiere) and CZ joined us there at 5:45 p.m. Note: In “Fort Poetry”, a beautifully written memoir on Artie, Guy Birchard writes: “But Artie’s dissatisfactions were multiple and manifold. Nor was he remotely stoic. He would rail, harangue, and abuse. He took the world’s gravel as deliberate personal insult. To understand all is to forgive all, it has been said, and Mary Brown might be the author of the insight. Artie’s willful psycho-emotional nihilism was no mystery to her. Her savvy, as I’ve suggested, seemed total, utterly unmitigated by what he hurled at her. He quite literally hurled at her in my presence the contents of a mug. If he hadn’t already taken to his bed with some neurasthenic complaint she was trying to assuage with the proffered mug, I’d have flattened him, that time. I couldn’t understand it.” I remember the event very well. I was there, on the back porch, standing beside Guy. What made the coffee mug incident so much worse than it would otherwise have been, was that Mary Brown did so much for Artie, genuinely loved him as a mother might love a son. Living with Artie (letting Artie live with her) could only have been an act of compassion and love by Mary Brown. The only way it could have been difficult for Artie is that at times he may have been reminded of how a mother is supposed to treat her son, rather than the experience that he had of his own mother. But this is doubtful. A summing up: This was a day giving closure to Artie’s death the previous February 2007. We did not mourn Artie’s passing, for his death was the termination of years of suffering that he endured. We celebrated Artie’s great gift of creativity and his exuberance for life; his poems; his talking; his intelligence; his generosity; his insatiable appetite for food and dope. He was always bigger than life, the first real poet some of us knew. Perhaps we also thought of our own youth, gone forever, that we had shared with Artie. It is a cliché but we loved Artie despite Artie, despite the stories of his bad behaviour that seemed, that day, to exceed the positive stories about him. In fact, I heard no positive stories about Artie that day. However, all of our shared memories of Artie were told out of love for him, told with humour and kindness for him. He may have been difficult to take, but we didn’t care, it was “good old Artie” we were remembering. This is testimony to a quality he had that attracted people—Artie’s charisma—that drew people to him. He had true and loyal friends which is a part of Artie’s legacy.

Note: this is my original diary entry for this day.

Farewell, Artie (photographs)

Outside Artie's old flat on Lorne Crescent: (left to right) Carolyn-Marie Souaid, Jill Torre, Carol Harwood, Endre Farkas, Luci King-Edwards, Chris Knudson.




Endre reading the first of several poems by Artie that afternoon; Luci and Chris.

Lorne Crescent. Top of stairs, door to the right, Artie and Mary Brown's home.

The back porch of Lorne Crescent.



The Yellow Door Coffee House, on Aylmer, another of Artie's hang-outs.

Luci King-Edwards reading one of Artie's poems outside The Word Bookstore on Milton, where Artie spent many afternoons.

Jill Torre reading one of Artie's poems outside of the building (now renovated) where he lived after Lorne Crescent.

Endre and Carolyn-Marie Souaid.