I know ... it's been a while. My closest friend, John Lekich, an accomplished writer, is my guest on my blog, this entry. He has a style I have always admired. This is the first time I have been the subject of his written observations. Hope you enjoy them, I know I did! Brought back some great memories from around the time we met and I first started thinking about writing WALKOVER.
Notes in the Key of Red
I’ve known Page Turner for over thirty years, which helps a great deal to explain what follows. I first met her when she came walking into a bar called the Railway Club. A friend had invited her to a regular Thursday lunch group, which featured a loosely structured group of writers, photographers and assorted artists.
I recall her walking down the long hallway toward our corner table wearing one of those Grace Kelly dresses that look like a daffodil turned upside down. Her red hair was piled glamorously high and she was wearing pearls. Someone – a man I think - asked: “My God, who’s that?”
Plunked somewhere in the middle of a decade that favoured Spandex, mullets and ripped T-shirts, this was an honest question. It turned out that Page was, among other things, an ex-high fashion model who had knocked around Paris and Milan in search of adventure.
Over the next few months, Page treated us to some great stories. I was curious about her superior posture. It seemed to stem from a whole other era. That’s when I learned that the modeling agencies in Paris had unobtrusive notches in the doorway that surreptitiously measured a prospective model’s height. “I was always trying to make myself look taller,” she said.
The Thursday lunches stretched into years and everyone always looked forward to what Page would be wearing. Sometimes, she would enter wearing an Asian-inspired cocktail dress, her hairdo held together with a couple of chopsticks. Sometimes, she would wear a tweed suit that made her looked like the kind of librarian who secretly read Henry Miller. Once I looked up to hear a delighted female friend exclaim: “Oh, look! She’s wearing evening gloves.”
But her most constant accessory was a camera, which she handled in the casual way a gunslinger gets to know bullets. Like others at the Thursday table, she would share her work on occasion. There were shots of everything from street vendors and dancers to casual snapshots of her baby son Sean. She had an eye that won the respect of her colleagues at the table and would eventually lead her to an award-winning photograph. A panoramic shot of the Downtown Eastside that has the painterly touch of an Old Master.
I think it was a mutual affection for old movies that cemented our friendship. To me, she was always someone who had one very long leg permanently stuck in the forties. I don’t know when I began to call her Red. It just seemed to fit. She wouldn’t have looked out of place opposite a young Jimmy Stewart as one of those wisecracking photographers who were always breaking a heel to get the best shot.
Then again, she could have been in one of those vintage musicals set in Brazil. As a dancer, she’s always had a lifelong passion for burlesque In fact, one of her many adventures involved bringing some old-school moves to the forefront of Vancouver’s legendary exotic dance scene.
I recall a bunch of the Thursday lunch group turning out to see her dance during the eighties. In an era where most dancers were content to expose the deeper mysteries of Flashdance, Red came out dressed as Carmen Miranda. I recall watching the preliminaries and thinking: “There’s no way you can do that unless you worship at the church of Rita Hayworth.”
Eventually, the Thursday lunch group broke up. Of course, the memories linger. A while back, someone asked me: “Whatever happened to that friend of yours? You know, the one who wore white gloves.” I gave them the short answer. The longer one’s a bit more complicated. Glamour girl turned struggling single mother, turned Poverty Activist. The one constant? A camera.
She has never stopped taking pictures. They form an evolving document of someone who’s merged a life of glamour and hardship into a single vision of hard-won perseverance. At this stage of her life, the pictures in her head are starting to move. She’s currently at work on a documentary that blends her two strongest passions. A love for burlesque and an abiding concern with the social issues surrounding the Downtown Eastside.
If this seems like a curious mix, I have absolutely no doubt that my friend can pull it off. While I’ve watched a lot of famous directors at work, none of them can quite match the first time I watched Red shoot coverage. It could have had something to do with the fact that she was wearing a gold-spangled evening gown at the time.
I think she was wearing heels too. After all these years, she still has the habit of trying to make herself look taller. Watching her confidence behind the camera, I couldn’t help feeling she was tall enough already.
John Lekich is a former west coast arts correspondent for the Globe and Mail. His work has appeared in The Hollywood Reporter, the Los Angeles Times and Reader’s Digest. His latest novel is The Prisoner of Snowflake Falls, which The Toronto Star recently called: “Wholly refreshing and… slightly insane.”
Day trip cruise before it all began. Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
