One of the hangars had been turned into a giant food court, with drink available too. Those born after the 1990s can't appreciate what a shock it was to be able to go into a food place and just order a beer, something which in ordinary circumstances was well nigh impossible due to BC's restrictive liquor laws. I guess the thinking was, that if we (Vancouver) were hosting an international event, we should at least try to live up to international norms for treating adults as if they were capable of holding their liquor.
Tags: Habitat for Humanity June 1976 Vancovuer BC Jericho Beach hangars abandoned air base restaurants bars youth food courts wall hangings Canon AE Kodak Tri-X black & white drinking beer
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Another of the old hangars from the airbase at Jericho was pressed into service as a performance venue for the Habitat conference in 1976. In those days I wasn't very adept at calculating average exposures, with the result that the two performers – Rick Scott (left) and Joe Mock, of the group Pied Pear – are hardly visible at all, whereas the clouds and Burrard Inlet are nicely visible. Since every photo is a singular opportunity that doesn't come but once, I'm sad that I missed this one. My excuse is that I was somewhat new to SLR phototgraphy and perhaps a little too inclined to try and average the exposure and get everything, where more experience would have told me to forget the outside, let it blow into white, and get the people on the stage.
Tags: Habitat for Humanity June 1976 Vancouver BC Jericho beach abandoned air base Rick Scott musical groups dulcimer guitar black & white Canon AE Kodak Tri-X Joe Mock Pied Pear Greenpeace benefit concerts concerts
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The Habitat conference-cum-festival did almost everything in wood that it could do in wood (for example, no chairs in the restaurant hangar, just cut off stumps or rather, cut down wooden telegraph poles to sit on), but what it couldn't do in wood it did in colourful hangings and murals, of which these two are a good example. I don't know how they were produced, or where they went afterwards, but they were impressively big, and joyfully coloured.
Tags: Habitat for Humanity June 1976 Vancouver BC hangar Jericho Beach wall hangings cloth art Kodak Tri-X black & white Canon AE
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I don't know precisely why the Greenpeace folks came to the Habitat conference, probably just to get the brand out there, but I took a shot at (what turned out to be) their second boat of five or six. The oddest thing about the shot to my eye, nearly forty years later, is the way I framed it, excluding a good deal of the boat itself, and focussing on the shape; the thing stranger is the sail itself, completely superfluous on a diesel powered vessel, and again, one suspects that the Greenpeacers hoisted it mainly as a kind of advertising banner. Note that the sail carries not just the peace ("Ban the Bomb") symbol, but above it the Ron Cobb created Eco-symbol which was later incorporated into the ecology flag.
Tags: Habitat for Humanity 1976 June Vancouver BC Jericho Beach Greenpeace Phyllis Cormack environmentalists publicity brand management Canon AE Kodak Tri-X black & white eco symbol Ron Cobb activism
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Taken from a good distance away, so you can't see much detail in the face, but this is Country Joe MacDonald, he of Country Joe & the Fish fame; he was the one who was at Woodstock, singing his underground hit, "Fixin' to Die Rag." Musically, of course, it wasn't a rag at all (nor even a raga; but that's another tale), but that wasn't the point, which was political, anti-war protest. Why was Country Joe invited to the Habitat for Humanity conference? I have no idea, beyond the vague one that those in favour of Third World uplift would necessarily also be those in favour of Peace, against nuclear weapons and power, and in favour of environmentalism. And as you can see from the crowd, this is a hippie-ish group, captured as they begin to drift back into middle-class life, and maybe pick up the threads of local activism. The three men in the foreground look interesting, as they have a floodlight, which might be used to light up interview subjects for a local television station; the man on the right has headphones on, and perhaps a Nagra slung over his shoulder, capturing wild sound to be used by the interview crew. In those days, of course, film at 11 meant just that: FILM at eleven, so news items would be shot on 16mm, usually with synced sound, but with recorded sound laid in over, for example, crowd scenes. The next but one shot on the roll shows the team apparently filming, but, since their backs are to my camera, you can't see their camera.
Tags: Habitat for Humanity 1976 June Vancouver BC Jericho Beach Country Joe MacDonald Country Joe & the Fish protest songs folk music folk singers black & white Canon AE musicians guitars Kodak Tri-X TV crews Greenpeace concerts benefit concerts
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