Sunday, July 16, 2006



Sometime in the late 80s William F. Buckley, Jr. came to Vancouver to give a speech for the Vancouver Institute. It was held at the Hotel Vancouver. Harvey Southam the editor of Equity Magazine assigned me to photograph the author and editor of the conservative National Review. I cased the hotel and found that the nearest place with a bit of privacy was the piano in the central bar. Since the speech was in the morning it was empty. I set up my large camera on a tripod and prepared my lights. Buckley had told Southam that he would pose for the magazine. After the speech I brought Buckley to the bar and asked him to sit on the piano bench. When he saw the setup he told me, "Nobody told me about a photo session. You were supposed to snap me once or twice. No!" From my back pocket I pulled a copy of Buckley's first effort at fiction, Saving the Queen whose hero Blackford Oakes, a handsome CIA hero, reads the National Review and beds Her Most Britannic Majesty the Queen of England. "Could you autograph this for me?"I asked Buckley. He looked at me and without changing his sober expression he said, "All right, and you can take two pictures." This I did.

Spooks