05230 Barry Macleod in 1975
Barry was a good friend - a wonderful writer and story teller, a deeply compassionate guy who always championed the underdog, and the funniest person I have ever known. He wrote great letters - remember the days when people picked up pens or scrolled a sheet of clean white paper into their typewriters? - and receiving one of his epistles was always the highlight of the day. His letters were so good that after his death in 1986, at the age of 44, from non-Hodgkins lymphoma, his friends collected and edited and published them in book form.
"Speaking of death, I sure hope that my friends make sure that I am cremated and left on the coast before they can ship me back and stick me in that prairie, beard shorn, wearing a suit, with a handkerchief in my breast pocket stuck to my car keys..."
- Barry Macleod
(2018 note from Page: done!)
I made this shot of Macleod at Long Beach, in Pacific Rim National Park, Vancouver Island, BC, many years ago. It's a vertical crop from the horizontal, given the antique treatment in processing, and doesn't look bad considering its age, the slow film I was using, hand held on a rainy day.
For his last eight years Barry lived in a cabin at Tugwell Creek, on southern Vancouver Island, 40 feet from the lapping (sometimes pounding) waves of Juan de Fuca Strait. I visited him regularly through those years. Warm summer days and grey drizzling winter vistas of distant mountains and low clouds and grey water punctuated by ducks and loons and seals, and occasionally killer whales. Lots of laughs. Plenty of serious talk about anything and everything. A lot of chess games, and Cosmic Football, too, which is a whole other story.
"We sat and drank whiskey and beer in the fading afternoon light and talked talked talked and the talk turned to music and words and poetry and life. We got higher than kites on each other and nothing existed but that moment when all the pain was turned into magic. And that is what life is all about. The rest of it is just the booby prize."
- Barry Macleod
Scanned from the original Kodachrome 25 slide. Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 1975 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
05230 Barry Macleod in 1975
Barry was a good friend - a wonderful writer and story teller, a deeply compassionate guy who always championed the underdog, and the funniest person I have ever known. He wrote great letters - remember the days when people picked up pens or scrolled a sheet of clean white paper into their typewriters? - and receiving one of his epistles was always the highlight of the day. His letters were so good that after his death in 1986, at the age of 44, from non-Hodgkins lymphoma, his friends collected and edited and published them in book form.
"Speaking of death, I sure hope that my friends make sure that I am cremated and left on the coast before they can ship me back and stick me in that prairie, beard shorn, wearing a suit, with a handkerchief in my breast pocket stuck to my car keys..."
- Barry Macleod
(2018 note from Page: done!)
I made this shot of Macleod at Long Beach, in Pacific Rim National Park, Vancouver Island, BC, many years ago. It's a vertical crop from the horizontal, given the antique treatment in processing, and doesn't look bad considering its age, the slow film I was using, hand held on a rainy day.
For his last eight years Barry lived in a cabin at Tugwell Creek, on southern Vancouver Island, 40 feet from the lapping (sometimes pounding) waves of Juan de Fuca Strait. I visited him regularly through those years. Warm summer days and grey drizzling winter vistas of distant mountains and low clouds and grey water punctuated by ducks and loons and seals, and occasionally killer whales. Lots of laughs. Plenty of serious talk about anything and everything. A lot of chess games, and Cosmic Football, too, which is a whole other story.
"We sat and drank whiskey and beer in the fading afternoon light and talked talked talked and the talk turned to music and words and poetry and life. We got higher than kites on each other and nothing existed but that moment when all the pain was turned into magic. And that is what life is all about. The rest of it is just the booby prize."
- Barry Macleod
Scanned from the original Kodachrome 25 slide. Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 1975 James R. Page - all rights reserved.