BEYOND REASON The Margaret Tradeau Story * Copyright © 1979 Margaret Tradeau, From Canada by Paddington Press Ltd, and by Lee Editions Optimum Liml down from girl to girl « Iseldom had anything new and what came my way was often scrubbed thin and faintly stained. I was smaller than my sigters, so that the clothes hung, lopsely over my thin shoulders, That was probably the start of afelong obsession with clothes that fit. “Untill was nine my father, James Sinclair, was the minis- “®¥ of fisheries in Lester B. Pearson's cabinet. A big, ener- getic man, he worked late into the night; we didn't see much of him. But the unmistakable stamp of his authority was on everything we did. The childhood friends, the fads and passions of my early years, pale into insignificance today beside this towering presence. My mother, whom we all adored, was a tall woman with hazel eyes; she was a worrier, but she seldom judged and she was never vicious. I was my father’s son, the boy he never had. My sisters were all going to succeed in their own ways, but I was the one singled out, the one with the extra spark, the child most like my father. My mother considered me the most selfish of the family — and she was... flirt. probably right. ose ty, Five girls and a domineer- ing father: it made for com- petition. Between us we tacitly accepted Betsy's hold on his affection, but that didn't stop the race for favor. Very rarely was I singled out for attention. Dad was keen to turn us into healthy, vigorous children, and more than happy to leave . culture to later. The result was a curiously barren childhood — we had no ballet lessons, no serious music, no art. The only music he enjoyed was the bagpipes. Television was out — except for The Ed Sullivan Show. The dinner table was where we were expected to learn about life but the noise was overpowering as ‘everyone tried to compete for his attention. My father's son, I played the part. I was a tomboy — I built forts in the woods, and had adventures on the lakes. Looks, in a family of five girls, were more than just important. They were sn ob- session. We spent more time in the various bathrooms of the many houses we lived in as children than in any other single room. I was considered the prettiest, which led to jealousy and misery and fights, even to blows. Leonard Cohen, the poet, once described me as “every guy's great date.” He meant the words kindly but the fact is I never enjoyed dating. My trouble was that I didn’t like to disappoint anyone, so rather than fight to keep my clothes on in the back seat of a car I preferred to skip casual dates and stick with one boy. I was both a prude and a terrible most disapproved. of. What boys did brave the house were rewarded by snarls and grunts from my father's. deep arm- chair. Since I was the cutest, I gave most trouble. Dad and I fought: about the boys, about rock music, later about politics, values and money. My first year at Vancouv- er's Simon Fraser University was simply an extension of my schooldays: a continuation of middle-class respectability. I was a.good student, I dated a football player, I excelled in sociology and won the first- class scholarship. “ The second year, 1966, everything changed. Simon Fraser was an exciting place to be. Student activism in Canada was born that year. I was studying political science, sociology and anthro- pology. The dean of my depart- ment was Thomas Bottommore, a Marxist scholar who influ- enced me deeply. There were Maoists and Liberals, Conser- vatives and Trotskyites among us and we talked and talked and talked. It changed me. I started to date Philip, an English téaching assistant who was in Canada to study for his Ph.D. on revolutions. Our dates were spent studying together. A good Saturday night for us was a bottle of wine, classical music on the record player and talking about politics. . This was the start of a new rebellion at home.+My father, never appreciative of any boy- ~ Introducing the compact a Nihon FE. _ Nikon quality...aucomatcally. ec nm at motor drive lets you take a whole sequence of action shots automatically. © The Nikon FE is your link to the vast Nikon system, the most comprehensive in 35mm. photogra: © Nikon FE is the world's finest 35mm ct automatic camera. Dating wes what my father the book entitled “Beyond Reason”. Published in tee as “A Coeur . _ My first memory is of my younger sister Bet- sy's birth — when | was four years old and used to being the baby myself. My next image is far more “revealing. My father came home from a trip and «he brought me a pair of blue sunglasses. Gingerly, with infinite care handling such a precious object, | put them on. | have this vivid memory of astonishment: These are for me. ‘Just for me — all by myself.” «Amazed that in a family of five girls | was going to possess something , that was just mine, and that my father had actually thought of buying : something specially for me. 3 Tean't have been more than five, and he was atill a politician, There wasn’t a lot of money at hbme, and my mother struggled to keep us smartly dressed and well fed, but everything was handed Philip's hair was long, He wore a beard. And he was small Five Girls and a Domineering MY FATHER had this family shot , some of my frien Ustening to. “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields for Ever.", It was easy to get mari- juana: We grow it in our gardens or bought the grass that came cheap from Mexico and California, I drank it all in the music, the drugs, the life. I jibed only at opium, and though ds tried LSD, there was no cocaine. I did try mescaline one day, and spent eight hours ‘sitting in a tree wishing I were a bird, It was.in'this bewildered though cheerful cast of mind that I set off for what my father announced was to be our last holiday as a family — on the # Tahitian island of Moorea. taken for one of his political campigns. Even at four, | (right) had an oye for the camera. — he had had rickets as a baby during the war. And my father, who could tolerate a dim foot- ‘ball player, couldn't stand a mild revolutionary. * I began to question things ina way I never had before, and the form that took made my ‘father yell at me that I .was an’ insolent little girl. I packed my bags and moved out. T took as little as possible in the way of allowance from my father and soon found myself installed with a pro- ‘fessor, Michael Mulkay, his + wife Lucy, who was a fashion © Vancouver Sun home, nor demonstrative love, and certainly no praise. I saw how nice it was. to be cuddled but also how healthy it was to have arguments and not sense the end of the world. I saw how people can and should and do fight — and survive. I got obsessed with the idea of freedom, and choices of ways of living, with material- ism and greed, with the in- fluence of pop music and revolt. They were good months for me. The last two years were crowded with new emotions, A designer, and their three-y old daughter. Tlearned from them. There hadn't been much laughter at group -of friends introduced me to pot in a cottage facing the sea where we sat on the beach hour after hour I drank it all in — the music, the drugs, the life. | jibed only at opium, and though some o} LSD, there was no f my friends tried cocaine. | did try mescaline one day, and spent eight hours sitting in a tree wishing | were a bird. On Christmas Eve I met a handsome Frenchman called Yves Lewis, water skiing. His father had dreamed up Club Mediterranee. ‘Yves had come to Moorea to teach water aking. i He was a beautiful, almost god-like man, with silvery hair bleached to the color of aun- shine and eyes as-green as the water. He was a gifted flautist and had a degree in sociology from the Sorbonne — a yogi with astonishing humility about his own achievements. - In the evenings he sang his own songs, laments about bana- lity and greed, and danced the Tahitian national dance, the tamourai, with such skill that even the Tahitians stopped to - watch, Who could have resisted him? I fell in love. But I also received a nasty shock. From my experiences with grass and sex and political activism, I thought I was quite something. Yves made me see I had a long way to go. One lazy Father / My mother had been watching. “Do you realize who that was?" she . asked, as | cli water. other,” I said, “Oh, Pierre someone or other,” I said. “That's Pierre Elliott Tru- deav, the justice minister — the black sheep of the Liberal party.” Oh no, not another poli- ticlan, was all I thought. [ wasn't impressed. I even stood him up one day. He was.shy, and when he asked me if I would like to go deep sea fishing and told me to be at the dock at ten, I didn’t bother to show up. I went with Yves instead. T was young and romantic. Pierre struck me as very old imbed out of the “Oh Plerre ,something or I saw Plerre only once again before our first date. That was when my father took us to the Liberal convention when Pierre was. chosen a8 party leader. My father was campaign manager in the west for John Turner, another lead- ership candidate. But after our brief acquaintance with him in Moorea, the rest of us rooted for Pierre. ties Tahiti and Yves had made such an impression on me that I took a semester out of school, and spent it sleeping the time away. Yves had changed me and he had also made a mark on and very square. More on Page B3 Doukhobor Specialties © Borscht © Pyrah! © Vareniki C.E.C. RESTAURANT Located at the Kootenay Doukhobor Historical Site,-across from the Castlegar Alrport. 4 after 1 yy had been water skiing I stayed out on the raft. There was a man skiing in the bay. I followed his progress idly. Later he came over to my - raft and we started a conver- sation that soon led to student rebellion, and Plato and revolu- tion. My mother had been watching. “Do you realize who that was?" she asked, as I climbed out of the water. AARKLOW Stoneware, an upbeat collection of spirited ‘dinnerware for the young and young-at heart. 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He looked curiously into my ‘dilated eyes, studied the pillbox, and told me 'l had taken a massive ‘dose of belladonna. _, From Pago B2 my soul'— he had become a aymbol for me, a: romantic fantasy I was never to quite :shake free, It was a lonely and frus- trating time. I felt too guilty with the pot smoking to visit home much. ‘ : ‘Like many of the, luckier middle-class Canadian students, T-was offered a holiday ‘abroad after graduation. Fate, or possibly perver- sity, took me to Monsen: My father had fought in North Africa: and told such appalling tales of white slavery, poverty and pestilence that I was prob- ably drawn thero’ simply to spite him. In Geneva I paired up with Ross, a friend ‘from schooldays, and eventually we reached Agadir where wefound sun and the sea and an agree- . able hippie commune. T was well provided with _ Money by my anxious parents and my first action on arriving in Agadir. among the hippies . was to get myselfa house of my ~ own — a $10 bamboo house on , the beach complete with char- coal burner, cooking pots and a sleeping mat. ~~ Tt took me days to over- .come my shyness with the other hippies. I felt square, critical and much, much too clean. But when Ross left after, , a couple of weeks, I had to throw in my fate with the others, learn to play the guitar, eat what food there was, throw — away my conventional notions of sexual morality, and live. For the first time in my life T-had the sensation of peace, , tranquillity and utter freedom. swasn't lonely; in fact I reveled ¢in the knowledge that no one * from. my. past life had ‘the iefaintest idea where I was. Finally German tourists + °°" Who shared our camp rebelled. They asked the police to move us on, which they did, to a more beautiful camp north of Agadir. il took down my house and reassembled it under the trees of our new home, with the help of four fine Japanese boys who had become the heart of the’ community. Too much money rather than too little was my problem. How not to depend on it, and live like the others? After a _ couple of weeks I moved on again, this time on my own, to Essaouira, the old sea town of Mogador, where I had heard of ,8 Moroccan family who took in paying guests. A stone wall surrounded the village and I - found the streets clean, the yogurt delicious, the hamar spotless. Tlearned to inhale the mild keef smoked in long reed pipes with clay bowls. It was the only time in my life when I have ever been what my parents would certainly have consider- ed promiscuous — though it was probably no wilde than the life of any North American girl of my age. There were no taboos. The only standard was to care and not to make promises for the future I knew I couldn't keep. Away from the machismo of North America I finally learned to treat men as brothers, while enjoying’ making love with them in a way my puritan My life passed before me, epi- _ sodie and distorted, 1 crawled ‘out of bed and went down to the street, There I discovered, not dirt roads and + winding alleyways, but rivers. down which I had to swim, “ A‘felend found me and led ‘me back.to the hotel. He looked curiously into my’ dilated eyes, studied the pillbox, and tole me * Thad taken.a massive dose’ o! upbringing had not allowed me to consider possible. I soon became an estab- Ushed part of the North African hippie circus, Old friends from. Agadir drifted through and we would exchange experiences and joints before they moved on again. : After a month in Essaouira I crossed the ‘mountains . to Marrakesh in an ancient bus. It stopped in the main square of Marrakesh, enormous, crowd-” ed, menacing after my months of subdued village life. I was terrified. Jostled in the bustle and the dark, star- tled by the snake charmers and the beggars, I was rescued by a Eurbpean boy who led me off down narrow streets into the Arab quarter. Fate again seemed to be’ taking a hand. I found myself in a hostel run by two young Christians —.Ricky, an English girl, and her Dutch husband. belladonna. i Tho pharmacist, assuming 1 was after drugs,’ had simply handed out what ‘he gave. anyone who came his way. This happened all the time.’ Kids were’ being ‘fed, ‘sold, pushed, injected with drugs they had never heard of and didn't want, By now.-I-had ‘been -in Morocco five months and was 1 fast growing bored with the promiscuity and the emptiness of the hippie life. When s friend: ' suggested we go back ‘to - Essaoulra to meet up’ with Leonard Cohen and his girl -friend Clare I fell in happily with the plan, T wasn't ‘out’ of it yet however. I joined Leonard and . Clare and traveled with them to Tangier where I stopped taking + drugs, rented an apartment in the European . quarter and planned to work with a fashion + designer friend for a couple of months. , My first morning in the “workshops I felt a stab of pain’ in my left hand. A French doctor diagnosed a.break.in a small bone and put the hand in plaster. The pain grew, throbb- ing jerks of agony that drove me screaming back to him a few days later, Wait, he said; give it achance. » That night, my entire arm by now quite numb, I wandered into the’ streets almost frantic. “A Moroccan lady driving past slowed down and asked what ‘Twas told later that for the first. 48 hours | spent in the hospital... . . the surgeon believed he would have to amputate my hand, . : RIGHT IN THE CENTRE and unable to smile, with my mouth in — the orthodontist had not eer Canada Wide Fecture Service Ltd. tearning charm was wrong, I showed her my hand. eS ; Ina second we were on our ° way to the Spanish hospitel, where a.surgeon removed the cast and ‘discovered that: far from a break I had-osteomyeli- tis in my hand. oes It was’ already withered anda gray-blue color. I was told later that for the firat 48 hours I spent in the hospital, much ‘of . the time’ delirious: with - pain, ‘ripping my sheets, and quieten- ed-only by the morphine that I had so adamantly rejected in the streets of Marrakesh, the surgeon believed he would have to amputate my. hand. ig For two weeks I stayed in this: pretty hospital; nursed . (with great care) by nuns, I was introduced — no, lured .is the better word ~ to meet Ahmed, the drug king of Tangier. I liad known about him and on arriving in Tangier had “refused all introductions and invitations, One day, as I paused out of - the sun toretie a sandal, a voice , spoke out from the dark of 3 |. Httle shop behind me: "Come «and sit down and have a rest." I went in. Theré was a short, stocky man, with yellow eyes \and wiry hair, wearing a bright “pink skirt, It was.Ahmed, - More on Page BS Se apenas rene arwereare iret CASTLEGAR NEWS, Thursday, April 5, 1979 B3 j Notice of Annual Meeting: KOOTENAY DOUKHOBOR HISTORICAL SOCIETY fis April 10, 1079 7:30 p.m. ‘aft ' DOUKHOBOR VILLAGE Voting privileges. to all: members only. | Special entertainment of Russian singing. ' : Light refreshments will be served bbe hae — but | was Earl’s Private Pools-Ltd., 1024 - 5th:Ave. South, Castlegar, 365-6774 FREE: : _ - Swimming Pool Chemical Seminar. (De @ the Use of Poo! Ch ”. HI ARROW ARMS BANQUET ROOM “= Sunday, April 8th 2 pm, °° Complete Line of Pools, Accessories and Chemicals The house was full of forei like myself. se ga Ricky organized us all with the minimum of fuss and the greatest of kindness. She’ allo- cated each of us tasks, charged a small rent, and in return fed us and gave us mats to sleep on. Only keef was tolerated. There was 10 sex. : I left Marrakesh the day I could stand the lice on longer. The goody-goody atmosphere and the lice: I'd had enough. My Japanese quartet turn- ed up. I joined them for a trip into the,- mountains, to.-an orange grove and a flowing river outside a village called Eureka. f . Therein the . moonlight, among the ruins ofa crusader castle, I took by first LSD trip. ‘‘ Yves would have been proud of © me. I was moving nicely up the ladder of enlightenment. The smooth path: took a bruising when, having installed myself in a hotel in Marrakesh again I caught a terrible cold, I set off for the local pharmacist and tried to explain that I needed cough medicine. The pharmacist gave me a knowing glance and pushed a box of pills across the counter. I retired to bed and took two. Ikept coughing. 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