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Inter: when did you write your first book of travels?
CD: 1969
Interlocuter: Tell us more ?
CD: I You just hitch hiked around the first few times up and down the province and over to Ottawa and taking trains here and there... they were really inexpensive.... and I went down to the country and getting out was just freeing ...
CD:And in the spring that's when the traveling really started. headed
out to the West Coast and hitchhiked. Along the way I was in Toronto and then near Thunder Bay _ I'd gone there as part of the flow west but then veered south to Minnesota where I hung around for a time wanting to get to Californian.. that didn't work out so I hitched back up and continued West to Vancouver . I got there a few days later hitchhiking and riding over the Rocky Mountains.. It was up in the mountains that I saw things, and even heard them.. cosmic angels singing... I stayed in Vancouver for about 6 weeks... during that time me and a friend hitched down the coast through Washington Oregon where we stayed for a few days and then we made our way down to San Francisco .. we spent about a week a half there... at that time thousands of people were heading there.. thousands of long haired face painted hippies and others... it was great a great streaming flow...
out to the West Coast and hitchhiked. Along the way I was in Toronto and then near Thunder Bay _ I'd gone there as part of the flow west but then veered south to Minnesota where I hung around for a time wanting to get to Californian.. that didn't work out so I hitched back up and continued West to Vancouver . I got there a few days later hitchhiking and riding over the Rocky Mountains.. It was up in the mountains that I saw things, and even heard them.. cosmic angels singing... I stayed in Vancouver for about 6 weeks... during that time me and a friend hitched down the coast through Washington Oregon where we stayed for a few days and then we made our way down to San Francisco .. we spent about a week a half there... at that time thousands of people were heading there.. thousands of long haired face painted hippies and others... it was great a great streaming flow...
Int: Were you reading or writing poetry then?
CD:Yes I was you'd been writing on and off for a few years and actually reading everything... everything!
that I could get my hands on ...and I was completely happy and open to everything and
everyone.... I was a child of freedom after 10 years of prison...
that I could get my hands on ...and I was completely happy and open to everything and
everyone.... I was a child of freedom after 10 years of prison...
Inter: Prison, what do you mean by prison?
it was longer than ten years, really,
CD: I mean the years I spent as a teenager away in the places I didn't want to be in that cause me shame to name... when I got out
the sheer release sent me bounding for years.... I was carrying around books of philosophy and poetry and writing in notebooks...
Inter: and by the way how did you survive ?
Then ? I was just going with what I found I had a few dollars... and did odd jobs along the way you know..So eventually we headed back up to Vancouver ... and after about 6 weeks or so I came back East. Then I found myself after about 3 weeks heading down to New Brunswick to a free Art school a friend of mine was trying to start... and that lasted on and off for about the next year a half until the late fall of 1971.... but in the spring I'd gone to England for the first time...
You see and when I was hitching I met this guy who'd worked his way over on a boat! as part of a small crew .. he'd left from Gibraltar... anyhow, back in In 1969 I met a guy who'd gone to Europe, England actually and he said to me you can go there for 100 dollars. So I went. It was easy and amazing as Canada was practically still a British not country or colony but it was still closely linked, we were British subjects and anyhow it all felt like a fantasy if I a m goin to put words on it now.
I was there two weeks....
I was in a daze pretty much walking around London taking the tube going to things happening here and there, listneing to people talk... it would have been easy to stay then and as you know from 1972 onward I did go many times...
But basically after that foray I was in Montreal.. I went to New York in August in the
summer of 71 we went down there on the train me and a friend went
summer of 71 we went down there on the train me and a friend went
It was she who brought me to the great museums which I was amazed by and it was all
glow and new to my eyes and I was walking around in a cloud...
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glow and new to my eyes and I was walking around in a cloud...
glow and new to my eyes and I was walking around in a cloud...
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