December 28 Thursday Holiday

[Yesterday Alan + Gillian decided to go downtown to show Bridget [the sights]. I decided to go but forgot to ask what time. ...tried calling Alan + Gillian [in the morning]. There was no answer at Alan's, and Gillian was asleep. Gillian called me back at 12 and said we would take the 2:10 train. I watched TV (The Greatest Show on Earth [isn't this the circus movie with Charleton Heston?]) and at 1:55 started walking to Cedar [Park station]. Alan was coming just as I arrived. Gillian didn't come and Alan got worried. He called Mrs Simons who said that she left 20 min ago. Alan + I decided that she was waiting at the Pointe Claire station [just west of Cartier and a lot closer to Gillian's house]. The train came (double decker [these were still fairly new at the time]) and we sat down in the 1st car, upstairs. We saw that there was a window at the very front of the train, downstairs, so we went [there]. Then we found out we couldn't smoke [there] so we went back a car + upstairs. We got to Windsor and waited for Gillian + Bridget]. At 2:10 Ralph and I got the train downtown, Gillian and Bridget were in another car. We met up in Windsor Station, went to P.V.M. [cause Gill said that her mother had an exhibition there], then to Phantasmagoria, got 2 American flag rolling papers and one strawberry, and mint paper [I almost bought a David Bowie album called "Space Oddity" [I think the title song had been getting some airplay on CHOM (some? I remember it in 1971). None of us would start listening to Bowie until summer '73 when "Life on Mars" became something of an FM hit and Dave bought "Aladdin Sane" (80). I finally bought a Bowie album- "Hunky Dory"- in Holland in summer '74]].. Took the metro to Alexis Nihon Plaza, went to a restaurant [Greenberg's [see December 9, 1972]], then to the poster shop. Took pictures. Got the train back to my place at 7:30 [sometime during this trip- perhaps during the rush to catch the train- we all made fun of Alan's huffing and puffing and inability to keep up as we were going at a fairly fast pace through the underground passages linking the metro to either Alexis Nihon or Place Ville Marie].. Went to the basement, smoked up [Al wanted to try out the cigarette papers he bought at Phantas and rolled 3 splifs], had the blacklite on. [We all drank a coke, looked at the aquarium]. Ralph left at 11, Gillian and Bridget at 11:40.

 

 

 

80. Not quite right; 'Ziggie Stardust and the Spiders from Mars' was released in June 1972 (though at this time the Canadian release was usually delayed) and 'Aladdin Sane' in April 1973. David Bowie made a big media slash in 1972, though he was not popular with the Americans until at least 1974. I remember hearing "Moon Age Daydream' on the radio in September 1972, and have a traditional memory of Dave and I riding the train back from Montreal (after he had just bought the latter album) in the spring of 1973.

 

Speaking of music, the British group 'Steeleye Span' had a song on the radio at this time, an a cappella Latin carol "Gaudete". I liked this song, and had a copy of it later in the '70's, until I lent it to Danielle deSmit in c. 1978 and never saw it again...