Papa Bear

    In many ways Jack was the big brother I never had. He was the one who could reign in my temper and knew exactly what to say to move my butt. He helped me figure out who my friends were, and who my friends were not.
    At 21 Jack was given a 20 year jail sentence. He and some of his childhood pals had been drinking. They decided it would be a good idea to break a jewelry store window and snatch a bunch of watches from the display case. When the cops caught up to them one of their number was in possession of a weapon of some sort. They were charged with armed robbery as a result.
    Jack saw Kennedy, the Beatles, Martin Luther King, and the first two thirds of the 1960s from a jail cell in Kingston Ontario. In the late ‘60s he was released from Milhaven and headed west where he became the manager of the Catholic Charities Men’s Hostel in Vanvouver.
    It took him some time to find his place in a society that had changed drastically since his incarceration. He tried the bar scene but quickly realized it would ultimately put him back in the slammer. Later on he fell in with some Marxists who were plotting some sort of violent revolution. Then he tried drugs. One night, stoned on LSD, he found himself in the back of a van full of explosives driving around Vancouver looking for something to blow up. That night changed his life.
    Jack had something of a religious experience that night, became a complete pacifist and turned to mysticism. It was during this time I first met him. I’d known Jack’s younger brother in childhood, and heard a lot about him through the years. By time we met up he was the unofficial leader of a small band of flower children residing in Vancouver. He was introduced to me as “Papa Bear.”
    I would only know Jack for a few short years but in that time I learned a lot. He helped me find a code of ethics to live by and tried his best to teach me, and many others, how to get by in the world. He taught me not to expect much from my peers, and was forever cautioning me about smoking cigarettes, which he dubbed ‘coffin nails.’
    His biggest lesson to me what that I was free, that no one had a right to push me around, and that in a democratic society people have a right to be different. Jack taught me to let my freak flag fly, how to live cheaply, how to get what I needed without taking too much, how to stand up to authority, and when to turn the other cheek.
    Thirty years ago Jack moved on. He wandered down to America where he was involved in a lot of different counter culture activities, from peace marches to Rainbow Gatherings.
    Some time ago Jack settled in Florida, where he lived happily until this past September when he moved on again, to whatever comes next.
    Jack was a man who made a mistake and paid for it with his youth. He spent the remainder of his life recouping that youth, and in that he was magnificently successful.
    Papa Bear, one man the Mounties didn’t get.

   

Papa Bear

    My memory  of you is somewhat altered. Its not who you were, but who you were to me. Your passing is bringing many things up. I want to let my freak flag fly, for a few moments anyway, in the face of the times we’re in.
    I don’t know the details, but I imagine you were waiting for dinner being cooked by some little girl you were talking to. Were you telling her stories about long ago, when you were a hippie up in Canada?
    I’m sorry we never met again. I would have liked to talk to you. I wrote you a letter a few years back. Your brother said you read it. I was sad you never wrote back, but I understand you couldn’t confirm your whereabouts to someone you hardly knew.
    Sorry to say I fell out with your brother, he became a threat, but you warned me long ago that would happen. You always said he was no real friend of mine. I did what you suggested back then, I found other friends, even a few who have never let me down.
    I’ve lived over 50 years now. I was barely out of my teens last time we met. You were in my life for a mere five years but you were never far from my thoughts.
    Like I said, my memories are altered. It’s not who you were, but who you were to me.
   


Papa Bear

    I hadn’t seen Papa Bear in about 30 years and can’t rightfully recall the last time we met. I think it may have been when he lived up north of Kelowna with a woman he called Peaches.
    For some reason he found it necessary to leave Canada back around 1976 or ‘77. I figure he was just afraid if he stayed in Canada the mounties would find some way to put him back in jail.
    In the years that followed his release from jail, Bear went from being a ‘50s greaser to a Marxist revolutionary, to a pacifist flower child - a role that suited him and one he settled into nicely. It was the flower child I came to know.
    Jack was our guide and protector. He taught us how to get by in the world, how to deal with authority, and how to use our minds. He introduced us to alternative thinking, politics, and living.
    We used to talk philosophy a lot. I recall he once suggested to me the book of Revelations in the bible wasn't about the end of the world, but about the internal struggle of the human heart. He believed in the human soul and spirit, and said the book was meant to be a guide for those seeking inner peace, and not some sort of end-of-days prophecy.
    We sat around listening to music, and the lyrics in music, a lot. Bear didn't trust traditional news outlets and believed they were more instruments of industrial propoganda, and that the real news of the day was communicated by the artists, musicians, poets and such. I recall him laughing about how the big record companies were shooting themselves in the foot by promoting rock stars who in turn were conveying messages of revolution in their songs.
    Perhaps his biggest gift was laugher. He had a way of finding humour in most situations and possessed an infectious smile and wit. He was a gargantuan man, standing well over six feet tall and weighing in, at times, to nearly 300 pounds. I recall he once trimmed down to about 245, and was feeling great.
    One small thing I remember: Whenever the Ten Years After song ‘Over the Hill’ would come on the stereo, he would point at the speaker and say, “That’s me, here I go again, over the hill!”
    The first time I ever saw Bear was when he answered the door of his Broadway apartment, after I’d knocked, having hitchhiked across Canada and gone looking for his little brother, who was a childhood friend. His large physical presence and deep baritone voice scared the hell out of me, but it wasn’t long before I came to recognize the authentic gentleness and warmth of heart that was Bear, beneath the bearish exterior.
    I only knew Bear for about five years of my life but he left an indelible impression that endures to this day. In the days around his passing I had an inkling someone I cared about had passed on. I did not know him for the past 30 years and it strikes me as profound how deep the connection seems to have been. After all that time I still had an inkling what was going down. We were still connected. I’m not entirely sure what Bear was up to all these years but I’m glad he stayed free. The mounties did not get their man, thank goodness.
    It was an honour to know him. He helped me learn and grow up some.
    So long Bear, so long.




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