TRIBUTE:
Ian Hunter 1961 - 2002
On a late Friday night, August 23rd, I received a phone call from colleague Glen Andersen. He opened with a curt: “Do you know about Ian?” I misheard Ian for “yin” and replied jokingly, “...no, but I know about yang.” (under the influence, I suppose...). Then he told me he’d heard Ian Hunter had died in a boating accident near Nelson, but had no details. Dangling in disbelief, we speculated briefly in vain, hoping it was a mistake. Would I look on the Web?A search on Google produced three entries with the words “tragedy”, “boating” and “pot activist.” There was no mistake. From a first-hand account on Marc Emery’s PotTV web site, I learned that on August 14th Ian had taken a small motor boat onto Kootenay Lake. His body had been found floating on open water. NORML’s US-based site had posted a partial reprint of a short report in the August 20th Victoria Times-Colonist: “Pot activist dies in boat accident.” For a community-minded public figure whose news clippings could wallpaper a rec room, it was meagre fare.
That the news should take eight days to reach two of his closest friends in our age of instant communications is an irony Ian would have relished. More tellingly, the strands of the human web that connected us were few and frayed from diverging lives in different cities.
Ian and I first met in early 1988 in Vancouver’s derelict, historic Victory Square district which we would later dub Crosstown (X-town .mov). We were studio neighbours on the third floor at 152 West Hastings, home to an initiative by ACE (Artists for Creative Environments) that lobbied to change the zoning by-laws to allow affordable, live-in studios. An assortment of artists and arts organizations were invited to rent space from ACE to help kick-start the process: Kootenay School of Writing, Giles Runeckles Design, Theatre At Large, Glen Alteen and Co., myself and later, Ian, who shared a desk with ACE. Ian came into my studio one day introducing himself as a writer. Affable, energetic, he was like an irrepressible fast-talking salesman. He had a computer and would be happy to instruct, to collaborate, do an exchange.
152 West Hastings was the genesis of a Vancouver arts revival that eventually saw a gritty, forlorn neighbourhood turn into a magnetic milieu. It lasted only six years, faltering along the way, but anybody who was anybody in the arts had a connection there. And most everybody, from the local merchants to the druggies, knew Ian.
At some point I parted with ACE moving into the Dominion Building across the road. Ian followed (1990-92), renting a huge office space on Hastings opposite me. Our lives crisscrossed almost daily. We partnered up and in January 1993 launched X-town, a proposal to declare the district an Arts Zone and to preserve its heritage aspects. It resulted in year-long tour-de-force of community activism, city hall lobbying, performance art, happenings, parties (block-long line-ups), exhibitions, media events and general mischief. Glen Andersen joined the fray and together we participated in the huge Artropolis exhibition in the defunct Woodward’s building, culminating in the burial of the X-town time capsule in Victory Square. It was a time of great confluence, promise, hope. A spate of alternative galleries, studios and small cafes would open almost weekly-- then die in short order. Who can forget the Smash? Mondo Lisa? Cafe Bergman?
That Ian should be wholly identified with marijuana activism would please him. It was the cause of his life. The Times-Colonist headline, “Pot activist....” though, might have irked him a bit. I once visited him at his Sacred Herb store in Victoria when he admonished me not to call it “pot” because of the derogatory connotation. He was trying to move the cause into a higher (!) realm of spiritualism with his Church of the Universe. Um, somebody pass the salt; still, here was Ian pushing the proverbial envelope once more, testifying to his seriousness. And serious he was (but never dull!). And yet his fight to have marijuana legalized obscured other passions -- for local histories, heritage buildings, grass-root politics and just about anything alt.radical, innovative, progressive. If he had a favorite word, it must have been iconoclasm.
Ian was a born communicator. He’d talk incessantly; his gift arose from a fertile, bright mind. He had a child-like sense of wonder and play, and a trust and acceptance of almost everyone he met; a candour so great it endeared him to many, while disquieting others. He was gregarious to a fault -- to my consternation I’d try to discuss some business on the street or in a cafe, and within a minute he’d have engaged several passersby who’d catch his attention. He was such an innate social creature it’s hard to imagine him without entourage (usually impressionable teenagers) or leading some rally, rave, reading or pamphleteering on the street.
Ian lived in the moment; cared little for fame (though he loved the limelight), glory, money, possessions, middle-class comforts or conceits. I caught a glimpse of him one day while passing him on a downtown bus. He had left a huge rally on the steps of the VAG. There he was striding down a ghastly empty office tower corridor: daypack, slightly dishevelled suit, loose tie and his emblematic narrow brimmed felt fedora, vaguely reminiscent of an intrepid reporter from a 50’s film. An utterly solitary figure, self-composed, grinning, impishly content and detached.
A little known fact about the X-town time capsule (1993 -2043) is that Ian placed into it a jar of hemp seeds . One of the countless symbolic acts and living metaphors comprising the essence of our work. This was well before he passed the torch to Marc Emery and co-founded with him Hemp BC. Today the Canadian government is growing medical marijuana. Editorials across the land have reached a crescendo in favour of legalization.
Farewell, friend. The seeds of your deeds will sprout on.
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Tom S. Thomas
August 25, 2002
