The Times They Are A-Changin’ by Bob Dylan
The old road is rapidly aging
Get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand for the times they are a-changing.
https://www.bionity.com/en/encyclopedia/Rabbit_test.html
In the I Love Lucy episode when Lucy finds out she's pregnant with Little Ricky, she telephones a friend and excitedly reports, "The rabbit died!"
Things Have Changed by Bob Dylan
People are crazy and times are strange
I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range
I used to care, but things have changed
In the summer of 1969, I was no longer teaching, having resigned at the end of June after two frustrating years with the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal. I took Timothy Leary’s advice seriously and tuned in, turned on, and dropped out. Joel and I had spent the previous winter and spring in the “Igloo,” the ferro-cement dome we had helped build on Joel’s mother’s property, across Lake Orford, on the sunny, southern side of Mount Orford in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. I still had savings from teaching and there was no rent to pay since we were “testing” the igloo for the builder, Joe Marchand. Joel also had savings, so we were able to buy food and other necessities as well as feed our own three pets. We also took care of Mrs. Harvey’s cat and Joe Marchand’s two dogs from time to time.
In our snowy dome of a dwelling, I read, relaxed, listened to music, and played with our pets. Music was an important part of our lives, rock-and-roll being the main choice, though we had many records from other genres as well. We listened to classical, blues, folk, but mostly rock.
Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” was a favourite on those long, snowy winter nights in early 1970.
The outdoors, that sunny winter, called to us constantly. Wearing snowshoes handmade by old Mr. Bobo, our neighbour, we crossed the lake both ways several times, Joel in the lead, our big dog behind me, and our two cats in single file behind him, their tails pointing up to the sky. We went to visit the people at “The Commune,” who made Joel’s mother’s dream come true by making her place their home. We drank their bark tea, conversed about life and nature and spirituality, and sat by the fire warming ourselves. When they returned our visits, Joel always cooked pancakes made from stone-ground grains and served with maple syrup, a very nourishing meal which they all enjoyed.
In early spring, when the snow was melting on the igloo and the roads were gravel-covered instead of snow-covered, we moved. The summer of 1970 was a very different experience from the previous winter. Joel and I rented the “Little House” at Crow’s Nest, a complex at the end of Deseve Road on Lake Orford. The “Big House” and most of the property were also owned by Joel’s mother. Mrs. Harvey might sound like a wealthy woman, but she wasn’t. She was, though, generous with what she had. Although she had inherited money from her parents, her brothers controlled it and she lived very simply. She was strongly left leaning, politically. Once she even stood as a Communist candidate in her Westmount riding. The commune had made their own rules, which were: no drugs, no alcohol, and no women. Clearly that didn’t apply to me, their neighbour. We paid rent to them, not to Mrs. Harvey, and we were all on quite good terms. I made friends with one or two of the women (yes, women) who lived there from time to time. I tried to make a living by sewing. I sewed large cushions as well as blouses and skirts, once even a bikini, that I took to Eastman, about 13 miles away, to sell in their boutique, Papillon bleu. The cushions didn’t sell. I sometimes rode my bike to Eastman to pick up the mail, on my one-speed bike. I was in good shape!
That summer I lived mostly alone while Joel worked at Canadian Pacific in Montreal. A few of our friends came out on the occasional weekend. I recall a weekend when two friends came out and the four of us, Joel and I and A and L went out in the rowboat on Lake Orford. After a while a thunderstorm crashed the party and we were sitting ducks, four figures afloat in the lake with lightning striking all around. We headed for shore and found shelter under some tall weeds at the edge of the lake. The shore was too steep to climb, and we had to cower there until the storm passed and we could row back to the dock and the warmth and safety of the Little House.
I tried to create a garden out of a former horse-riding ring, without a lot of success. I did grow herbs successfully, though, and dried them and used them in cooking. That summer I made dandelion wine in a plastic 5-gallon barrel but was not happy with the flavour of the results. I foraged for food, using dandelion greens in salads. Yes, weeds grew quite well.
One day as I was weeding the garden, I received a surprise visit from two women I knew from McGill who had started the Montreal Free School two years before. Two of the teachers were moving on and they were looking for replacements. They offered me the job of teaching the Little Kids. I was reluctant. I thought perhaps teaching wasn’t for me anymore and I worried that I wouldn’t meet their expectations. I was also worried about making a long-term commitment.
I proposed that I would try it until the end of December. If either one of us wasn’t happy about how things were going, I’d move on, and they could look for someone else. They agreed to those terms, and I was committed. I had been reading This Magazine is About Schools, an alternative journal on education, and had already thought about what an alternative school could be, though I was still uncertain about how to make it happen.
The Little House at Crow’s Nest was a cute little cabin, ideal for summer, but it wasn’t winterised. It had a Franklin Stove, but the walls were thin, and the windows weren’t double glazed. Before the summer greens had turned to the bright red and yellow of autumn, we had to move. We started our search by looking at houses in the outlying areas of Montreal. On September 18, as we were driving and listening to the car radio, we heard the sad news that Jimi Hendrix had died suddenly. Janis Joplin died soon after on October 4. We both felt like part of our younger lives died along with them, a symbol of the times changing for our generation.
Though we both were going to be working in Montreal, we chose to rent a place an hour’s drive from Montreal. Why? Because it was in the country and neither of us was very happy in the city. We found a wonderful old Quebec Stone House, south-east of Montreal, near the village of Hemingford, close to the American border. The two-story house was built according to the accepted design of early Quebec architecture. The deep walls were made of grey stone, which provided deep sills at each window. The huge stone fireplace at one end of the house was roomy enough to stand in. Two bedrooms were on the second floor. The house was surrounded by farmland or grazing land, now unused.
I enjoyed decorating this new home. Luckily, the house was furnished in large, comfortable furnishings. I had a few colourful rag rugs, braided from predominantly red and blue rags, with other warm colours braided in with them. They looked bright and beautiful on the dark wood floors. I had an old quilt, in jewel tones, that covered our bed and brought colour to the white walls and dark wooden floors of our bedroom. I felt I needed to buy something new that would be my own and would celebrate this old house. There was an antique store in the nearby municipality of Lacolle, where I found a pair of kerosene lamps. The smaller one looked like a bedside lamp. I bought it for the spare room. But the larger of the two had graceful curves and a glass chimney with classical etching around it. The bowl where the kerosene would be stored was a delicate pink. I fell for it at once and bought it to reside on the massive dining room table. The pale, northern light from the window and the lack of electrical outlets made lighting this area a problem at any time. The lamp was a thing of beauty and was useful as well.
While we were settling in, the province of Quebec was being shaken by the “Quebec Crisis.” On October 5, British Trade Commissioner James Cross was kidnapped by the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ.) Five days later, they kidnapped Quebec Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte. The day after Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau introduced the War Measures Act to deal with the FLQ threat, the body of Pierre Laporte was found in the trunk of a car.
On a typical Free School afternoon, while these events were playing out in our city, and my family in Saskatchewan were worrying about my safety, I took my young students for a field trip to a nearby park and to our surprise and consternation, we had to walk past armed soldiers. It felt like a movie scene rather than reality. But it wasn’t. Joel said he had seen tanks on the street. A few people we knew were arrested in the night and all we knew was that they had disappeared. Only after they were cleared of all charges and released did we know what happened to them.
Back at home in the evenings and on weekends that fall and winter, we often played the soothing and uplifting album by George Harrison, All Things Must Pass. It was released in November, and we were more than ready for it. We nearly wore out “My Sweet Lord”, the most played cut on that album, bringing us just the solace we needed.
Life changed for us in many ways that fall, in big and small ways. Each one transformed our lives for better or for worse. But the biggest change came when I received a phone call at the Free School. It was the pharmacy calling. The rabbit had died.