Memoirs of a Worldly Guy
Unfortunately, we had just missed the Bastille Day celebrations and there was very little formal team dancing being done. Bendix would put on her costume on the nights she danced at Quinn's but I didn't have the lighting equipment to photograph indoor dancing, particularly at night. I needed a combination of good dancing and good light conditions if I were to get good movies.
I discussed my problem with the woman in the travel bureau; she said she would make some inquiries to see if there was a couple who would be willing to dance for me for a couple of hours. The following day she informed me that she had found a young couple who were very good dancers but there was some difficulty in obtaining proper music for them. In addition, I would have to find some suitable place with sufficient privacy to allow us to do the job properly.
I walked out to the Royal Tahitian Hotel and spent a pleasant hour or so in discussion with the proprietor. We were most welcome to use his lovely grounds as a setting for the film. A 'modest' service charge was mentioned. I gathered that this must be to cover wear and tear on the grass and from the figure mentioned it looked like my host expected at least ten acres to get a pretty thorough stomping.
'He must think I'm Cecil B. de Mille wearing a red fright wig,' I concluded. Or perhaps I had not made myself clear and he was under the impression that I wanted to buy the hotel.
'I'll be in touch with you as soon as I have something definite,' I said, draining my glass. I really meant 'Don't call me, I'll call you!' Meanwhile, back at the travel office, my friend was trying to roll my problem up into one big ball of poi.
'Look here,' the travel lady said, after I had briefed her on the latest developments, 'for all the time and trouble this is going to take, I think you'd be just as far ahead to take the next tour to Moorea. A whole village dances there in full costume and I'm sure you could arrange for them to dance again in the daylight for very little extra; then you would have something really worthwhile. The whole trip including accommodation for two days is only fifteen hundred francs. You would be very foolish to leave without having seen Moorea, anyway! Now what do you think of that?'
'I think that's a damned good idea,' I said, 'It looks like this other approach will cost me just as much or more, anyway. When does the next tour leave?'
'Tomorrow! I'll reserve a space for you. Believe me, you will not be disappointed; it is a trip one will never forget!'
The next morning I was aboard the little inter-island launch 'Mitiaro' when it chugged away from the waterfront opposite the Stewart Hotel. Louise stood on the quayside protesting about my selfishness in leaving her to fend for herself in Papeete. I could not share her concern. Although the water was as still as a millpond, the Tahitians aboard settled down for a pleasant orgy of seasickness during the two-hour crossing to Moorea.
There were about a dozen Europeans aboard, all members of the three-day tour organized by the woman at the tourist bureau. One of these was Vladja Kavan, an Eastern Canadian businessman who had fled Czechoslovakia just before the communists took over. Another was Rare, whose last name I have forgotten, a Genoese doctor who had bought his wife a mink coat in exchange for permission to visit Tahiti alone. We landed at the indescribably beautiful Cook's Bay, where Leeteg had made his home, and checked into the little hotel. After being driven around the island and treated to a native feast, we arrived shortly after nightfall where the residents of a small village were in full costume waiting to perform their dances.
I knew Joe had made the trip over to Moorea about a week before but I never saw him until the dancing began. He had been staying with a Tahitian family only a stone's throw from the hotel.
'You should plan to stay on here for a week or so,' he suggested. 'If you want to get some writing done, you can't beat it!'
'I don't see how I can do that,' I said, 'my rent is paid up with the old man till the end of the week. I've got to get back over there and move my stuff. Also I have to ship some of my gear in the Thorshall to Fiji so it'll be there when I arrive. They'll murder me with overweight charges if I have to take all that crap on the plane!'
'So go over and do those things and come back. You'll never regret it. I'm leaving on the plane next Monday anyway, so maybe I can arrange for you to stay at Benjamin's.'
'It's a thought,' I said, 'see what you can do!'
Vladja, Rere and I were so impressed by the dancing that we arranged with the chief for the entire performance to be repeated the following morning so I could film it. We agreed on a price of thirty-five dollars plus sufficient wine to refresh the dancers. Since there were some thirty or forty dancers involved we felt we were getting better than Hollywood rates. We were on hand at eleven the next morning with two five-gallon demi-johns of red wine and lots of colour film. The early cloud cover had burnt off and we were blessed with perfect sunlight conditions that showed off the brilliant colours of the dancers' costumes to maximum advantage.
Things proceeded formally through the initial group dances, interrupted only by the occasional refreshment break. I was asked to preside at the wine jugs; I poured from the first jug into a water pitcher which I then used to fill a tumbler full of the wine. I handed the tumbler to the closest dancer expecting him to take a drink and pass it on. He drained the tumbler and handed it back to me! Some of the women declined but nevertheless the first round killed the contents of the first five gallon jug. By the time we got into the tamure dancing things were geting pretty lively.
Nothing really naughty transpired, but they danced in the old traditional way and there were some parts of the film I feel I shouldn't show to church groups. I became quite concerned for one of the girls for fear her posterior would become disconnected and fly off into the underbrush, with possible injury to a bystander. When we had finally run out of film, the leading female dancers presented us each with a complete dancing outfit and a pair of beautifully polished cowrie shells. We were quite overwhelmed. Since no one was in a mood to go home at this stage, we obliged their request to change into our new costumes and pitched into the dancing to the limit of our endurance. When the wine, of which we'd had our fair share, finally gave out, it was close to 3:00 p.m. We shook hands with all the men once, kissed all the girls at least twice, then climbed into our jeep and drove away, the empty wine jugs bouncing around in the back seat. It had been a banner day!
Joe introduced me to Benjamin and his wife and it was agreed I would return the following week to stay with them. I returned to Papeete with the tour and spent the rest of the week getting my heavier gear crated up and loaded aboard the Thorshall, a Scandinavian ship leaving on the weekend for Suva. I had checked into the Moorea Hotel in Papeete, a five-room affair fronting on the main street facing the harbour. My room was on the second floor and had a balcony overlooking the street.
I spent the first few nights crawling around the bars with Vladja Kavan, Stewart Kean, an Australian oil man from Suva, and John Manly, a boat builder from Vancouver, Canada, who had just delivered a tug boat to the French government. If I moved fast enough I could stay ahead of Louise most of the evening, but the coconut telegraph was too efficient and she usually caught up with me just as I was finalizing a liaison with some little vahine I had admired for some time. It was rather embarrassing at times to have the girls swearing and threatening mayhem behind me while I sipped cognac and puffed a cigar nonchalantly at the bar. It did great things for the ego, however! Unfortunately, Louise won most of the arguments.
It was during this period that I nearly crowned my long-standing admiration of little Pua with consummate success. Familiarity had apparently bred confidence in her youthful breast, and as the bar was closing at the Moulin Rouge one night I was finalizing arangements for the long-anticipated tryst when an alien influence intruded. It was none other than my good old, true friend and sailing buddy, Joe, the same, you may recall, who only short weeks before had considered this marvellous little creature unattractive.
'Get lost, former friend!' I gritted through clenched teeth, guiding Pua doorward with one hand. I have no way of knowing how this particular back-stabbing concluded, for, after two or three minutes of heated discussion, Louise sailed through the doorway. I dodged behind a pillar, but someone must have betrayed me. A moment later I saw her head peer around the pillar, a broad smile of triumph on her lips. Meanwhile, Joe had disappeared wih Pua. Bother!
'Aw, shit!' I said resignedly and walked out the door and back to the hotel, with Louise chuckling like a happy idiot beside me. I returned to Moorea the following day.
The morning following my return to Cook's Bay I had my coffee and rolls, then went back to the porch. Benjamin and Avril's house was about a hundred yards from the hotel. It faced the dirt road that ran around the island and was set back about fifty feet in a yard full of giant trees that provided shade most of the day. In Papeete I had started reading Samuel Butler's 'The Way of All Flesh' so I stretched out on my cot and opened the book at the marker.
Benjamin and some of his friends were cutting a pirogue out of a large tree trunk lying under one of the shade trees in the front yard and I could hear their laughter and the crisp clunk of the adze as it bit into the wood. Mynah birds fussed and talked in the surrounding trees and there was the faint sound of activity from the back of the house.
After I had been reading for about half an hour I heard a tapping sound and the shuffle of footsteps on the front path. I looked up and saw an old man coming toward the house. He carried a walking stick but seemed quite capable of managing without it. He was dressed in a light cotton shirt and trousers and on his head wore a curious hat of what appeared to be brown chamois leather. It was patched together in a pointed shape but fitted his head closely, then it was folded back around the bottom edge to form a cuff. I've never seen a hat like it before or since. He had a straggly white beard that covered most of his face but it was trimmed short.
'You!' he said, pointing in my direction with his stick as he came level with the porch entrance and stopped. 'Who are you and what are you doing here?' I identified myself and told him I had come to spend a week on the island.
'Good!' he said. 'I presume we'll be seeing more of you then. My name is Alister Macdonald! I live just across the road. This girl Avril you are staying with; daughter of mine, you know! Housekeeper I once had was her mother!' This was news to me, of course, and I had never heard of Alister Macdonald before. 'I sort of keep an eye on her you know, see that she's all right and so on!' The thought of this delicate, ancient fellow taking care of the healthy young Avril was rather amusing but I made no comment, of course.
'Come by and visit with me some time, young man, and I'll buy you a drink. Don't come before five o'clock, mind, I paint till then each day and will not be disturbed!' He turned away and continued along the path toward the back of the house. I came to know the old gentleman quite well in the days that followed. He lived in a small, three-room shack across the road from his daughter's house and about one hundred feet from the water's edge. His favourite spot was a back corner of the yard where he would sit on a small, canvas-covered stool in front of his easel and paint Cook's Bay. He told me he had painted the Bay from the same spot hundreds of times but never grew tired of it.
'Each afternoon the light conditions are different; the colours are never the same. I believe I could go on painting Cook's Bay forever!' he said. I once made the mistake of stopping by while he was still at work. 'Go away, boy!' he snapped, 'I've a great deal to do and I'm working against time!' Later, when I saw him fold his equipment and go back to his shack I walked over again. He was very cordial and apologized for being abrupt earlier but said he was the same with anyone who bothered him during working hours.
'All I can offer you is rum and a bit of lime,' he said.
'That'll be just fine,' I said.
He took a bottle of rum from the pantry and placed it on a sideboard. 'Could you just rinse out a couple of glasses?' he asked. There were some glasses in the sink so I rinsed them off and dried them, then set them beside the bottle.
'Ah, thank you!' he said, uncorking the bottle and pouring out a couple of good-sized tots. 'Now, I've got some nice limes here somewhere,' he said, walking back to the pantry and rummaging about. I picked up the two drinks and carried them over to where he was standing. 'Ah, yes, here they are!' he said, taking a lime from a paper bag and setting it on the pantry shelf. I put the drinks beside it.
'Now, I'll just have to get a knife,' he said and walked over to a small table in the living room. I picked up the lime and the drinks and carried them over to the table and set them down just as he located a knife in the table drawer.
'Now, what did I do with the limes?' he said, straightening up.
'Right there, beside you, sir,' I said.
'Oh yes, of course,' he said and proceeded to cut the lime in quarters as though it were the most natural thing in the world for the lime to be there. He squeezed a quarter of lime in each drink then poured some water into each from a glass pitcher on the table.
'Now, we'll just sweeten those up with a bit of sugar,' he said and shuffled away to the kitchen again. I followed with the drinks. When he dipped into the sugar bowl with the spoon, he turned as though the drinks would still be beside him on the table. They were, of course. I wonder if the dear old fellow would ever have finished mixing the drinks were it not for the surreptitious assists I rendered so gladly without his knowledge.
Absent-minded he may have been, but otherwise his mind was as clear as a new bell and he remembered and talked of many things that had happened during his long life. He told me he was 93 years old 'and at least ten to go!' but talking to him was like talking to a man of my own age. He told me of a trip he had taken aboard a tramp steamer through the Middle East and showed me a notebook full superb pencil sketches he had made en route.
One day I asked him what he thought had been the best years of his life. He thought for a while then said slowly, 'I'd have to say between the time I was fifty-five and the time I was seventy. Yes, they were the best years all right!' I asked him why.
'Well, you see, I no longer worried about the foolish things that disturbed me as a youth. I knew what I wanted from life, and I think I knew how to achieve it!' He turned to me and waved his finger in my face. 'I've had a wonderful life, my boy, a wonderful, wonderful life, and I've still got a few good years left!'
'Tell me how to live as good a life as you have, Mr. Macdonald,' I said to him.
'There's just one thing you must remember, boy!' he said. 'Never let them tell you how to run your life; all your life you'll have people trying to tell you how to run it. Ignore them! Live as you choose to live and you'll be as happy as I've been!' Then we went out to the little patio behind his hut and watched the shadow of Mt. Opunohu lengthen over the bay as we finished our drinks.
Each morning one of Avril's little daughters would walk by the porch on the way to her grandfather's hut, carrying a quart sealer full of barley and meat broth. This formed a staple part of his diet and he told me that almost invariably he would rise about three o'clock in the morning and heat up some broth. Then, his appetite satisfied, he would return to his bed until daybreak. The daily broth delivery was only one of the many little attentions Avril gave to her father. He was pampered and cared for like a royal baby but to suggest this would have infuriated him. As far as he was concerned, it was he who was watching out for Avril's interests, and she was quite happy to go along with her father's whim.
One day Mr. Macdonald told me he would like to give me one of his paintings, and he handed me a small watercolour. 'It's something I did several years ago,' he said, 'but it's quite good of Moorea, so I thought you'd enjoy it!' It was a lovely little watercolour sketch of Moorea done from the shore west of Papeete. I tried to suggest as delicately as possible that I would be glad to give him a small sum for it.
'I don't want your money, boy!' he said. 'I have no use for money any more! Besides, I have these fellows coming around who say they are collectors and want to bargain for my paintings. I told the last one I don't sell my paintings any more, and sent him packing. It was good riddance, I'd say!'
He talked that day of his friends Nordhoff and Hall, the auhors of 'Mutiny on the Bounty' and 'Men Against the Sea', with whom he'd first come to Tahiti after the first World War. Another of his acquaintances had been Zane Grey, who first wrote about and popularized the sport of big game fishing in New Zealand's Bay of Islands and other South Pacific areas. Mr. Macdonald had a large book of fishing exploits written by Zane Grey and signed by the author; he gave it to me to read. He had apparently been on some of the expeditions written about and in those sections of the book dealing with them he had filled the margins with little notations. I am bound to say that most of them were less than complimentary and many were outright contradictions of the text.
'To my mind, Zane Grey was an extremely vain man,' Mr. Macdonald told me. 'He would never admit to an error on his part and you will notice that whenever a great fish was lost he made it clear that someone else was to blame!' Grey's book was good reading on its own merits, but with Alister Macdonald's caustic comments added to the margins it was priceless. I hope that book has been preserved! If Zane Grey is really in heaven and able to read Macdonald's comments I'm sure his face will be burning!
After the punishing grind of nightlife in the fleshpots of Papeete, my nocturnal routine in Moorea was pleasingly placid and uneventful. I was in an advanced state of 'Malua', a Tahitian word meaning 'lazy, shiftless, good-for-nothing bum'! An evening stroll with the Fisher-Smiths to the little village at Papetoai Bay for a glass of wine rated as a real 'crackerjack' of an evening.
The Fisher-Smiths were living in one of the little huts adjoining the Cook's Bay Hotel. He was the scion of an old Yorkshire knitting mill family and although they had a home near Malibu Beach in California, he spent most of his time travelling around the world with his attractive young American wife. Although he had never really had to work for a living, Fisher-Smith was the type who threw himself into everything with great vigour. He'd had a go at Hollywood at one point and his favourite role had been that of the butler in 'Mrs. Miniver'. His impression of the song 'Sam, Sam, pick up thy rifle!' in a broad Yorkshire accent left me helpless with laughter.
When I wasn't lying on my back on my cot I was floating face down in the water in front of the hotel. I always understood drowning victims were usually found after a period of time floating face downward. The thing that distinguished me from the average floating body was the snorkel projecting from the side of my head. Otherwise, I wouldn't say there was a lot of difference.*
A doctor friend of mine was teeing off on the 13th hole of the Banff Springs Golf Course when a body floated up and and grounded on a sand bar just beside the tee. The body was lying on its back wih one arm up in the air, which knocks my theory all to hell!
Suspended thusly in my torporous attitude I would examine for hours on end the little fishes that lived along the steeply shoaling shoreline of Cook's Bay.There were little fishes with ersatz eyes on their tails that seemed to shoot backward instead of forward when frightened. This is known as protective colouration. It didn't fool me. It couldn't have been fooling the bigger type of fish that eat these little fish either, because I noticed the variety was rather scarce.
There were also little orange fish with bright blue stripes. Black fish with yellow spots. Green fish with red spots. Pink fish with no spots. Sometimes I just saw spots, then I'd go back to the hotel for another drink. You've probably guessed by now that what I was really looking for was a plaid fish! I promised myself that when I spotted one of these, I would stop drinking permanently! The hopelessness of my quest seemed only to add spice to the undertaking! Since my days were spent reading, floating in the bay and tossing bric-a-brac to the land crabs, and my evenings in such languid diversions as those described previously, my spirits rapidly revived. By the end of the first week I felt my essential saps and fibres had revived sufficiently for me to give consideration to a return to Papeete.
It was Benjamin's custom to leave the house at dusk each evening and spend most of the night fishing in the bay. I could see the bright light from his Coleman lantern far out from shore as he sat in his pirogue working a hand line through the long dark night hours. Benjamin was not the father of Avril's four lovely young children. Her first husband had been killed in a tragic accident a couple of years previously and since it was not acceptable for a young widow to live alone in the islands, she had married again after a short period of mourning. Avril was still a young and very pretty girl, only twenty-six years of age. Benjamin was a couple of years younger and was a friendly, easy-going fellow whose main inerest in life seemed to be fishing.
During my first few days on the island I retired early and dropped off to sleep quickly. Eventually I began to find it a bit more difficult to drowse off. I would think of Benjamin out in his pirogue and Avril in the next room and the strangest speculations would take possession of my horny little mind. At this point I decided that the time had come for me to leave Moorea. When the boat arrived the next day I was standing ready at the dock with my rucksack packed. Benjamin and Avril had protested when I insisted on giving them some money for my stay but when I told them it was to buy things for the children she agreed to accept it.
When I had gone to say goodbye to Mr. Macdonald I had found him standing in full view of the road having a shower under a pipe jutting out from the side of the house. His old body was white and withered and his bones were prominent below the wrinkled skin. He must have thought I looked a bit astonished because he said 'Nobody minds that sort of thing around here. An old man like me has nothing they'd want to see anyway!' He turned off the water and wrapped a pareu around his waist. 'So you're leaving us, eh boy? Things are too quiet around here for you, I imagine. Well, good luck to you!' He extended his hand.
'Good luck to you, sir!' I said and shook his hand. Then I turned and walked over to the dock. As soon as I stepped aboard the line was cast off and we chugged out of Cook's Bay. I didn't realize then that there would be a strange and interesting sequel to my acquaintanceship with Alister Macdonald.
Almost a year after my last meeting with him and some ten months after I had returned to my home in Calgary, I came across the small watercolour I had received from him. I set it aside and shortly afterward took it into Canadian Art Galleries for framing. When I showed it to Jack Turner, the owner of the gallery, he said 'Oh, a Macdonald, eh?'
'You mean you've heard of him!' I asked, more than slightly surprised.
'Sure, he's Jock Macdonald's uncle!' Jock was a well-known Eastern Canadian artist who had painted with 'The Group of Seven' but never really achieved the same measure of fame as that associated with the group. He was, nevertheless, an accomplished and successful painter in his own right, (I thought he was better!) and a long time friend of Turner's.
'As a matter of fact,' Jack went on, 'I've got some Macdonalds around here somewhere!' He went over to a large cabinet and began sorting through some portfolios. 'Yes, here they are!' He laid one of the folders on top of the cabinet and opened it. There were four watercolours about 8"x11" in the package. Two of them were magnificent scenes from the islands, the other two were good but appealed to me less.
'Well, I'll be damned,' I said. 'What a fantastic coincidence! I walk in here, a tiny art gallery in a small Western Canadian town, with a painting from a small island in the South Pacific, to what is probably the only gallery in North America with work by the same painter.'
"I've always told you, Ron,' said Turner with a triumphant smile, 'if you're looking for that painting that's just a little bit different, Canadian Art Galleries is bound to have it!' How could I argue with him? It seemed that Jock had sent the paintings to Jack on consignment and they had lain unsold for sometime. I asked Jack to write to Toronto and ask Jock for a price on them. I eventually bought the two I liked the most and had them framed. I gave one to a friend when he got married a year or so later and the other hangs in our living room. When Vladja Kavan came through town a few months later I took him over to the gallery and he bought one on the spot.
When Jock wrote back to Turner with a price for the paintings, he included some background information on his uncle, which I had requested. You will see from his letter that the old fellow had one or two little secrets that he had not bothered to disclose, even to his relatives. It read, in part, as follows:
18th June, 1957My Dear Jack;
Very happy to get your letter of 3rd June.
Will tell you the news after I write about the coincidence of Ron Helmer staying with my uncle W.A. Macdonald in Moorea. He would be astonished to discover that you had a number of watercolours by my uncle in your collection. I don't see any harm in giving a brief biographical about my Uncle William Alistair. He died last year at the age of 96. He was a watercolour painter all his life; never did anything other than paint, always in this medium. He was the second youngest of a family of four--three boys and one girl. His mother died giving birth to my father. His father was a 'wee-free' minister, becoming this by breaking away from the 'Presbyterian' creed. He had a church in Broara, Scotland and later at the village, called Melvich in Caithness-shire. His brothers and sister died years ago--20 or more. He told me when I last saw him in 1936, in Vancouver, when he was on his way back to Tahiti--being with Hall of 'Nordhoff and Hall', writers of 'Hurricane' and 'Mutiny on the Bounty', that he accounted for his long life--then 76-- by being 'the only breast-fed baby in his family'. He believed this implicitly.
Now for his adventures: His wife was Lucy, she being an able miniature painter who did miniatures of Royalty and noble people. Actual commissions. They had a son, who, while finishing his university course in Archeology was swept from a yacht near Cowes and drowned. He was hit by the boom when others were below deck. W.A. painted much in London, Switzerland and Italy. Somewhere around 1920 he decided he needed a trip to New Zealand so sold all his pewter collection and with the cash booked his passage. Lucy loved London and didn't wish to go to New Zealand. So off he went. His ship stopped for six hours at Tahiti. He missed the sailing from there and never returned to London for 14 years. Lucy wouldn't come out there--he didn't wish to return. So Lucy opened an art gallery in London, sold his Oceanic paintings and did well for both of them. No quarrels or cool feelings ever arose between them. When he returned to London, after 14 years, he was to discover his photograph in 'The Daily Sketch' with the remark below : 'Britain's Champion Grass-Widower'. This upset him greatly. At this time his wife decided that he should now dispose of his 120 watercolours of 'Old London', which she had carefully cared for. Most of the old streets and buildings were gone. The Guildhall of London bought all of the paintings for 40 pounds each and they are in the Guildhall collection of 'Old London' right now. Well, I didn't suspect W.A. to stay long in London. I wrote to him and told him that I would give him 2 years before returning to Tahiti. He returned there in 1-1/2 years! Just before the Second World War he wrote saying that a terrible war would open soon and there would be one with the Japanese in the Pacific so he was packing back to London to 'do his bit' in England--'I can be of use in London.'. So he returned about a month before the war commenced and he remained in London throughout hostilities. After World War 2 his wife died. He attended to the family affairs and then packed off -alone- to some island off the west coast of India. He remained there about two years but did not like it so returned to London. After a little while he decided to go back to Moorea and left England for the last time- alone- at the age of 93.
In 1936 I asked him his secret about his perfect physical condition after so many years in the South Pacific. He said his secret was--regular habits and no drinking whatsoever, in the South Seas, of hard liquor. He drank only French wines. He said, 'Hard liquor in the South Seas will kill you in seven years!' An MGM director--a Mr. Willat-- who knew my uncle very well in Tahiti, told me that W.A. was 'a very highly respected gentleman in Tahiti as he had never been other than respectful of the highest ideals in his own habits. He painted every morning and every evening so he certainly was a man of discipline.' Now I know nothing since his death. I would have known if my mother had lived but she died two months before him. She was about the only one amongst my relatives to whom he wrote.
Nearly all of my relations considered W.A. a very selfish fellow, because he spent so many years away from his wife. I have never thought this. It was a mutual understanding between Lucy and himself that each had their life to live and each wished to be where they were--there was never any tension between them over this arrangement. It was strange and unusual--very strange in fact! But they were never out of love with each other--never for a day. Whenever I met him, in London or anywhere else, he was always knowledgeable, astute, kind and gracious.It was February when I saw him in Vancouver-- a terrible weekend of snow, slush and bitter winds. He said to me 'What in Heaven's Name are you doing in this horrible climate?' I said that I would love to be in sunshine all day long, so he replied 'Well, go to California or Tahiti,' I said that I knew nobody in California. He replied 'You are a poor Macdonald if you are unable to pull wires to get to the place you wish to go to!' I thought about that for a while and soon I got an idea. So I said to him 'All right, I'll start pulling wires with you! You are with Mr. Hall and his
'Hurricane' is being produced right now at MGM in Hollywood. Get me a letter of introduction to a Director in MGM by tomorrow morning!' He smiled and said 'You are a better Macdonald than I had thought!' The next morning I had my letter of introduction. In a week I went to MGM. I was offered a job, scenic painting, but I sat in Los Angeles five weeks, feeling out the environment of the film colony and the city. I decided that I would rather be poor and free than be owned, wealthy and and spiritually destroyed, so I returned to Vancouver to my own private studio and my four pupils. I have never regretted this decision. I am still poor and still free.
This is about all I can tell you, Jack. I often wished I had gone to live with my uncle in Tahiti even for a short season. Perhaps some day I may be able to visit his land. I would like to do so. Somehow, I feel that Tahiti is also part of my world. Hoping you are all well. Our love to you all.Jock
Jock Macdonald died in November of 1960 at the age of 64 years. I don't know whether he was aware of the fact that his uncle had a half-Tahitian daughter living in Tahiti. I never told him at any rate. Nor did I mention the old man's drinking habits, moderate though they were. If he hadn't started drinking the hard stuff until his last return to the islands in about 1955, he was right about it killing a person in seven years. In his case it took only about three years! I thought if W.A. wanted to pull legs by attributing his long life to abstinence I was not the one to spoil his fun.
Apparently Mr. Macdonald fell and broke his hip (or vice-versa) a few months after my departure and he died not long afterward. I was sorry to hear of his death but not too saddened; I thought of the 'wonderful, wonderful life' he said he had lived and felt certain that he had breathed his last breath without a single regret.
— The End —