January 1977
January 4 Tuesday
Rob leaves [but due to a fuck up...]
January 5 Wednesday
Rob leaves again [I took him to the Dorval airport. Later this year he would join the Navy... (138)]
January 8 Saturday
At Peter's. Mike (139), Mich and Monica. McDonald's after.
January 10 Monday
Blizzard.
January 11 Tuesday
Taped the Beatles at Peter's [for the cassette deck in the van. Peter had a cassette recorder].
January 15 Saturday
Heather's farewell party at Tracy Tate's [I would see Heather once more at the quarry in the summer, then for the last time in May 1982...]
And with that party the era begun on September 25, 1971 comes to an end (for me at least) after a long slow decline.
To those who were there, they know...
January 30, 1977 Sunday
Impressions and Observations.
- Gillian Simons - last reported job hunting and living with Alex (her boyfriend) in Westmount.
- Rob Fenouhlet - at college in New Brunswick and doing ok.
- Michelle Jorden - recently returned from a trip out west (Revelstoke).Now working temporarily at the Bay warehouse selling furs.
- Ralph deSmit - at John Abbott, involved in the theatre there in some way, possibly writing plays with a mysterious young lady.
- Heather Cashin - left for Vancouver recently after a successful farewell party.
- Andy McLelland - at John Abbott, still looking for any partime job he can find.
- Maggie Watson - now living in and around Toronto. She had a rich interior decorator boyfriend, going to university there.
- Bob Callen - still practicing for something big. Almost musically aimless as the group goes, though some trends have developed.
- Sue Essiamabre - also living near Toronto, but farther out.
- Peter Fiset - working with Michelle and selling dope. Is going to England soon
138. Ralph's note: Rob did not join the navy in 1977. I remember that night in January (?) '77 at Michelle's apt. (at Pardo: she had moved in there after her return from Revelstoke) - Rob, Michelle, you and I were there- when Rob, home from UNB, talked about joining the navy. But that summer Rob and I worked at Textron on Labrosse Ave. in Dollard (a non-union shop which made chainsaws etc...I remember it mainly for the fact that I developed a major allergic reaction to the oil and metal shavings which got under the skin of my forearms while working a drill press, and for the fact that I got fired for taking two days off to let my swollen arms recuperate...also they had time & motion experts wandering around setting hourly piece quotas at every work station). I worked the day shift while Rob worked evenings- until 11 PM or so. I would often pick him up after work to go out for a beer. It was also during this summer that he started seeing Gwen Moody. I'd been hanging around with a bunch of people at Abbott which included Fred, Fred introduced me to his sister (he was worried- understandably- about her) and Rob met Gwen through me when he came back that summer. At the end of the summer she went back to Fredricton with Rob. I think they got married just before they left. It would have been at least a couple of years later that Fred told me about their break-up and at the time they were both still attending UNB. If Rob ever joined the Navy it would have to have been after this. Unless he joined the naval reserve?.
[In August 2006, Rob (now known as Bob) Fenoulhet emailed me, in response to his daughter coming across this journal online (“I was drawn to your website of the infamous Alan Rhodes Journal in which my daughter saw the pictures of me smoking up. Can you imagine her surprise to find her gray haired member of the establishment acting like a regular hippie ?!?!?”).
Seems he had joined the Army c. 1980 (“I am a soldier of the Queen myself and am at the lofty rank of Major. I have served on several peacekeeping tours in Cyprus, Kosovo and most recently in Afghanistan.”)]
139. Ralph's note: In the winter of '76-'77 Mike and I used to spend a fair amount of time at Miloche B.'s apartment (also at Pardo) playing "Wooden Ships and Iron Men" a hex game of 18th century naval strategy. (Miloche, whose last name I never learned to pronounce, spell or remember, had been the selfappointed president of the JAC Student Union the year of the Social Services strike in the winter of '76. I got to know him through the satirical opposition group Andrew and I created, Front de Liberation des Etudiants Anglais (FLEA). Andrew and I printed broadsides opposing the Student Union's support of the striking teachers (one of whom, the office mate of Ed Palumbo, asked us what rock we had crawled out from under) and interrupting Miloche's ad hoc council meetings with chants of "Sieg Heil!" Miloche, at least, appreciated the intended humour of our activities. He later lived with Sharon, one of the councillors in the Cluster program to which I was assigned as a condition of my probationary re-admittance to Abbott in January '76, on Pointe Claire Ave. down in the village {next door to Mike Straw} and later still was a class mate of Cherise' in Law School at University of Ottawa. He also had a short fling with Mary-Jo Pelton, another of my crushes at Abbott.).