We did this with hundreds of records during our time in Montreal. I would have had to attend the music program at Juilliard in New York City for a better musical education. They may have disapproved of my pharmaceutical dependence, so I settled for the Rocket Norton School of Life whose motto at the time was, 'A better world through chemicals'.
Our success at Man and His World brought us more gigs around town. We played clubs on Crescent Street and a lot at McGill University. But we were living in poverty. There always seemed to be a little money for liquor and drugs but nothing for food. During our months in Montreal we ate potatoes for breakfast, lunch and, well we never ate dinner.
The only treat we got was walking a couple of miles to a Greek bakery way up St. Laurent at five o’clock in the morning when the bread came out of the ovens. We would wander back through the deserted, quiet streets, each munching on a delicious round loaf of steaming hot bread; it tasted more like cake, and fell into bed satisfied. Sometimes we would get to splurge a few extra pennies for some Greek pastries called Chocolate Kok, which, because they were made of two buns of cake filled with custard and resembled a hamburger, we called 'plastic hamburgers'.
One of our favourite things was to drop acid, score a bunch of plastic hamburgers and devour them in the back pew of Notre Dame Cathedral Basilica during the early morning mass.
Notre Dame Cathedral was a magnificent neo-gothic structure built in the early eighteen hundreds over earlier cathedrals on that designated land dating all the way back to the mid-seventeenth century. I would sit nibbling my plastic hamburger while basking in the splendor of the towering main arch glittering in gold and royal blue and framed in dazzling stained glass. I would contemplate the golden centerpiece figurine of the crucifixion of Christ glowing in the spot lights. I hoped that he approved of me being there amongst the polished floors and ornately carved dark wood of the tall pillars, rounded archways and heavy pews. I hoped He didn’t mind me admiring the stage and wondering how The Seeds of Time would sound in there.
By late October we were established in Montreal. Except for the occasional taunt that was hurled at us in French from some upper window in the narrow streets of old Montreal, we felt perfectly at home there. Then Lindsay got sick.
Jim drove him to the hospital. Some officials from the Federal Social Health Services For Youth took one look at him and seized him on the spot. He was so malnourished and run down that they brought in Health & Welfare to decide what to do with him. They called his mother, put him on a plane and sent him home to Vancouver. The rest of us were no better off than Lindsay. They would have shipped us all back in a sack if they had gotten their hands on us.
It was then that we all realized just how close we had become. We were lost without Lindsay just as we would have been lost if any one of us had been taken away.
We knew it was time to go. But we still had two gigs to play first - and good thing - gas and food cost money. Geoff filled in on guitar and we did alright. Jim also called his friend George in Nelson BC and arranged for us to play Garth's Grotto on the way home.
We packed up Sub-A-Lub and Geoff and Jocelyn’s Datsun station wagon and said a tearful farewell to all of our friends in Montreal. Geoff and Jocelyn were too weak to drive so I volunteered to drive the car. Jim, Steve, John and Keith piled into the van. Geoff and Jocelyn settled into the back seat of the car and I led the procession west. I was sad to say goodbye to the city that I had come to love so much.
It became immediately obvious that Geoff had finally found a heroin source in Montreal and had scored before we left. I drove straight through the one thousand six hundred kilometers to Thunder Bay, Ontario before either Geoff or Jocelyn uttered a word. I stopped at an A&W Drive-In just long enough to order Teen-Burgers and Root Beers and hit the road in a blinding rainstorm with Creedence Crearwater Revival’s, Suzie Q on the radio.
With my passengers stirring only to fix, I crossed the prairies in a day, roared up into the Canadian Rockies and followed a wide pristine valley down between the Purcell and Rocky Mountains to Nelson. It was on this trip where I first developed my habit of driving with a beer bottle nestled between my legs. I would take a swig from time to time as I drove. It kept me awake. I would drive the highways like this for several years before I was abruptly and painfully cured. We arrived in Nelson on the evening before Halloween. The entire forty-five hundred kilometer journey had only taken me thirty-seven hours.
I rushed up the hill to Candy’s house. She was the living doll who had made sweet love to me in Banff on the way out. She came out to greet me in the cool autumn moonlight and looked even prettier and sweeter than I remembered. I was hopeful of rekindling our romance but she quickly made it clear that it was not her intention to be my girl in Nelson. I was hurt and slunk back down the hill unfulfilled and unsatisfied. Reluctantly, I understood that she was right. Still, it mirrored the depressing attitude that I felt on our rather gloomy homecoming. What should have been a celebration of our victorious expedition was reduced to a bitter disappointment.
We played The Grotto on Halloween with a wobbly Geoff on guitar. The patrons were very kind to us but, when we were done, we hitched up the horses and rode out of town. I steered the little car up and down mountain passes and wound along precarious river gorges until the highway flattened out in the Fraser Valley and the last stretch to Vancouver.
After dropping Geoff and Jocelyn at Welch Street, I pulled up in front of my parent’s house on Fiftieth Avenue. The little house looked so safe and secure. It represented a life of predictable patterns; college, job, marriage, children, matching living room furniture, retirement, grandchildren, death. Isn’t that the way it was supposed to be? What was the matter with me?
But I wasn’t even me anymore. Gary Wanstall beget Rock Wanstall who beget Rocky Wanstall who became Rocket Norton. I had a faint memory of a chubby kid who had a dream of dangerous adventure and success in the music business. Instead of self-doubt and a lack of confidence, I now possessed an actual working knowledge that I did not measure up. If only I could continue to keep my mouth shut. Maybe nobody would notice.
I hauled my plastic bag of shredded socks up to the front door and knocked. Mom and dad were happy to see me. There’s nothing like unconditional love. They never said it but I knew they felt it ... I could smell it. You know that smell of your parents’ house? Smells like love.
Trisha returned to Vancouver a few days later. We picked up where we had left off. I didn’t ask her too much about what happened to her in England and decided that the less said about my summer trip across Canada the better. Like a junkie going cold-turkey, I went from promiscuous to monogamous overnight. We were boyfriend - girlfriend; she even had pet names for our respective parts, Bengie and Bertha. I took my girlfriend to movies and to concerts and I only had eyes for her; well, the eyes might have been roving but, Bengie was exclusively Bertha‘s. The Seeds of Time were re-grouping while Lindsay convalesced. The rest of us found asylum with our parents, so I had lots of time to fool around with Trisha.
I spent many hours listening to The Beatles’ new album officially titled, The Beatles, but known to everyone simply as The White Album. It was a double album with twenty songs written mostly while they were in India with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. I found that, with the proper mixture of chemical enhancement, every track could sound like they were playing it inside your head. I particularly loved Dear Prudence, While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Revolution1. Additionally, I acquired a new nickname in Rocky Raccoon.
I took advantage of the down time to try to improve myself. I signed up for brushes lessons at Jim Blackley's Drum Village on West Broadway between Trafalgar and Stevens. My teacher was a young, sharp drummer named Ray Ayotte. I attended several lessons. I wasn't a good student but I was impressed with my teacher. Ray was focused and deliberate and businesslike. He was also