Gary Geddes
Former residence, 1900 Block, Commercial Dr.
"Thus I evolve,
celebrant of the car crash,contemplate the bruises
under lamplight, the wall
of reflecting hubcaps, a constellation
of stars and minor planets,racks of bumpers, Crusader’s armour,
the perfect cold warrior, ready
for anything: earthquake, Armageddon,
Social Credit"
From The Perfect Cold Warrior
Born in Vancouver in 1940 and raised in the Commercial Drive area, Gary Geddes was once described as Canada’s best political poet by George Woodcock. Growing up in East Van, he lived for about five years in an apartment upstairs at this address. “It was not glamorous,” he recalls, “but it had a good command of the street and the passing trams and streetcars…. my time in East Van seems to have been kept alive in the imagination through the traumas of adolescence, my work at BC Sugar Refinery, and my fascination with the collapse of the Second Narrows Bridge, experiences that made their way into The Perfect Cold Warrior, Sailing Home and Falsework. Even now, I am drawn constantly back to some of those haunts out of nostalgia and the chance of a good meal at Café Kathmandu.”
