TRIBUTE - by Glen Andersen:
You showered your sparks on us all in your pursuit of the Moon
The Light from your flame was bright in your quest for the Sun
Now, through the burning web, the Mothervoid awaits you
Go beyond it all and shine on you crazy diamond
I will never forget the last good Ian Hunter night I had. It was April Fools Day, of course, 2000. We left a stilt-building/walking workshop that I led and he attended, in advance of the first Victoria lantern festival, "Luminara". Ian had had some influence on the gestation of that event, modelled after East Van's "Illuminares". We were on our way back to his house in Ferndale before going out, but we were already "out" so why waste it?We went up the street for the anniversary of John Garback's Iron Horse bookstore. It was pretty low key (I met John at Ian's wake in Nelson last month; he said Ian would always appear like a trickster when he needed a jolt of new energy to bring him out of complacence) From there to the health pharmacy to purchase the come down aids for the ecstasy we were to ingest later. (Ian was always an enterprising advocate for the safe and maximizing use of psychedelics). Then on to Ferndale for pizza at the local hangout. He knew everyone there, of course.
In a blur, we crashed a hoity toity auction at the Belfry Theatre, involved ourselves in a quasi-impromtu Fools parade in the plaza outside (involving an out-of-control stiltwalker vomitting on his kazoo to auger a little sanity from the moment), an all ages punk rock show in a neighbouring space and a anti-corporate/globalist fashion show/party put on by a youth group involving models parading in the latest Nike exploit-ware, etc. Then, settling in to the evening (and still no drugs), we drove over to a fashion designer friend's house for a dignified (with shades of debauched -for Victoria) house party among the city's alt-elegent set. Once again, Ian knew most everyone there, at least enough for small talk (though Ian's small talk was more like the latest theory on gamma rays affecting subtle layers of human consciousness) Quantites of marijuana were smoked. From there we descended upon the Community Art Councils annual erotic art show, to engage with an older, though no less hip crowd. Some of the West Coast's most prolific and legendary pre and post hippie artists were in attendance. I felt like I was having just another Ian Hunter evening but Ian reassured me that tonight indeed seemed a little extra rich. But we took it all in, never doubting that any life -or any evening needs to be any different than this. It was time to drop some E and proceed to the opening weekend of a new dance club -"Neptune" or some other netherworld name. The dose and the beat were quickening as we met some delightful friends of his there, Primitive Mike (dressed in duct-tape pants) and his sister. For a couple more blissed out hours we danced to a dreamy but intense female vocalist and "Primordial Nature" aka the Sci Fi Witchdoctor whose parents Ian introduced me to at one point -beatnik era hip shakers now trpping to their DJ son's primal electrogrooves. The world could have ended right there and probably did - a thousands times over but it didn't matter because we were in the centre of the universe, so afterwards we just kept on going, to Quan Valdez for late night food, vitamins and water. I think we even got to sleep that night eventually.
For Ian, this range of events - if not the intensity, was not uncommon. He straddled the worlds of big issue activism, grass roots community politics, film, art and music from punk to rave. We first met in 1984 in Squamish when he was interning as an assitant editor with the Squamish Times and later at the Film fest when he wrote for Reel West and various other rags, covering film and downtown art culture in Vancouver. He was always on the leading edge of anything of relevance to futurefreaks. After a while I realized that we kept turning up at the same parties, (or rather I noticed that he was at virtually every diverse party I went to, and not going to a whole lot of parties, I realized he must be at virtually all of them - to the point where I'm sure people must have thought his ubiquity meant he had multiples cast of himself - some people even distrusted him because they couldn't reconcile one person being interested in so many things. ) we found ourselves working together on various nefarious undertakings. He was always evolving, researching and considering (never too much) then implememting new ideas, possibillities and lifestyles.
He went from trading in transgressive artpolitical notions and events and throwing weekly after hours speakeasies at his Downtown Eastside Studio for a range of Vancouver visionaries and losers until the environment (or the barf and beer) seemed too acidic for him. After the hemp movement in Vancouver (of which he was a key mover) got underway, paving the way for the arrival of Mark Emery and Hemp BC, and turning hemp (in its smokin' and unsmoken forms) from political fringe issue to viable business, Ian moved to the cleaner but no less busy pace of Victoria. He established a hemp store, soon to be sold for a dollar (he had less time and mind for mercantilism than activism and the ongoing pusuit and sharing of radical ideas and lifestyle possibilities). I think he was always after a stronger feeling of immediate community (aren't we all?) with which to share, foster and practise what was interesting and/or important to him.
After leaving Victoria, where he poked holes and stitched new connections in the fabric of society for 5 years, a few months after that April Fool's Day romp in 2000, he moved to Nelson where he managed finally to focus a loose community of like-minded folk around issues and practices of eco-alternative politics and lifestyle, along with a entheobotanical plant kingdom/human consciousness integration, including lakeside house & garden raves complete with pre-party yoga sessions and education on the conscious use of mind altering substances.
Everywhere he went, he found and gathered the tribes; every idea and
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person he encountered, he entertained - if only for a moment. He was like a broad-band crystalline ganglion through which ideas flowed on the matrix of human experience, some of which found fruition and some of which remained just ideas. Now, ultimately, he, like us all eventually, continues to flow on through that web, stopping at gates, opening them a little wider for those that follow.
