21 APRIL
Sunday
I work as a stagehand for Vive La Vie!, a musical variety review presented by the Boy Scouts.
3 MAY
Friday
Dad and I attend a Father & Son Scout Banquet during which I become a Queen's Scout.
JUNE
I appear as ‘Archibald Fraser’ in a one-act play called Archibald in the Lorraine High School Variety Show.
I don’t remember anything about this production [or the previous Viva La Vie!, for that matter] except the punch line to a skit called The Zenith and Nadir of Richard Shaw III. After they got through the rest of the skit, the final punchline was a renaming of the skit title—The Rise and Fall of the Third Rick.
14 JUNE
Friday
Along with another new girlfriend and dance partner, I graduate from the 2 Wing Twirlers square dancing course.
27 JUNE
Thursday
I pass Grade 10 [apparently, by a ‘narrow margin’ according to my teacher].
It’s around this time that I begin to pray at night before going to sleep: “Dear God—please let me become one of the world’s greatest actors, writers, singers, producers, and directors”.
Although I managed to become all those things in some capacity over the years, I was certainly far from being ‘one of the world’s greatest’.
1 - 11 AUGUST
Thursday - Sunday
With the rest of the European Canadian contingent, dad and I travel with the 2 Wing Scouts to the 11th Boy Scout World Jamboree in Marathon, Greece.
Oddly enough, on the trip down there via the Orient Express, at the northern Jugoslavian border, we all had to disembark because there was a ‘hot box’. Then, on the way back at the southern Jugoslavian border, we had to do the same thing. I found that to be so strange. Perhaps some sort of a security thing at the time.
While at the Jamboree, I am asked to pose for a picture as a scout shaving his beard for an upcoming Gillette® promotional ad.
This, even though I wouldn’t start shaving until I was in my mid-20s. I don’t know if they ever published it.
On a day trip to Athens, we visit the National Archaeological Museum. I start to take pictures with my camera when I’m suddenly approached by a security guard who jabbers something to me in Greek. Dad comes over and learns through an interpreter that I’m not allowed to take pictures and, apparently, the fellow wants to take my camera away from me. Panicked, and fearing they might arrest me, I lie(!) and tell them I don’t have any film in the camera; I was just pretending and practising composition for when I do take photos. I silently feel relieved when, after peering at me suspiciously, they let me go. Later, dad admonishes me to ‘smarten up’.
I go to a Greek cinema where a horror movie is playing. It’s about a scientist who turns into some charcoal-looking creature. I get so frightened watching it that I leave three-quarters of the way through.
I searched for years trying to find out what movie that was, and finally discovered its title: Hand of Death. Pretty tame by today’s standards of horror films. And, come to think of it, the creature looked a lot like the Fantastic Four’s, ‘The Thing’
During the time Dad and I are in Greece, mum and my sister fly to England to visit my aunt,, uncle, and cousin.
SEPTEMBER
I enter Grade 11x at Lorraine Senior High School.
What is strange and confusing to me, now, is that I remember virtually nothing about the five months I spent in Grade 11 except a trip to the opera in January next year.
I do remember Dad took me with him to the base hospital occasionally, and I used to look at the varied equipment they used.
31 OCTOBER
Thursday
I create a monologue from a MAD Magazine pocketbook and perform it at a Hallowe’en party at the elementary school opposite our apartment.
I'm dismayed once more as I learn we're going to move yet again to another air force base somewhere in Canada early next year.
DECEMBER
I'm invested as a Rover Scout.
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