Ron's Background

Ron studied violin for four years in his teens. His teacher should be putting his bow between Ron's left hand and finger board, saying, "Play above the strings!" Note also the ubiquitous package of cigarettes in Ron's shirt pocket and the carefully greased hair. Photo taken in Toronto in 1963; Ron was 17.

One way of Looking at it...

We look back over the passage of our lives and concoct patterns, seeing relationships between shapes and colours, in the same way we connect random stars to create pictures in the night sky and sort through dampened and re-enforced sound waves to hear conversation and music.
The human mind is a wonderful tool for imposing its own sense of order on the world. When change becomes too insistent and intrusive the brain can create an ordered world in the past, leaving us aching for something that never existed.
One day I was a secondary school English literature teacher. Another day I was a high technology consultant and computer programmer.
One day I was a homeless teenager on the streets of Toronto. One day I was the father of three fine strong sons.
On yet another day I was a young university student living on the radical edge and then I was an old man entering a university classroom to start again.
On one glorious day I married a beautiful woman who became my life-long companion, lover, helpmate, and friend.
One day I studied music and was offered scholarships that I turned down. One day I was a terrified child hiding from abuse.
One day I stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon; another day I made love surrounded by wild geese on the edge of a northern Quebec lake.
One day I was a church official. One day I was a drunk with a desolate future.
One day I wrote poetry and read in coffee-houses. One day I was pulled from a smashed car, bleeding, faceless, and bewildered.
This day I am "that composer guy" or "the old geezer" and the owner of a Bed & Breakfast with my wife. One day I was a lecturer at a university.
One day I saw a man fall to his death. One hard and painful day I saw God in the face of a woman begging in a December rainfall.
I have danced, drunk on the power of life. I have cried, lost in the darkness.
I have no idea what I will be tomorrow, except that I know it will be good. I am many things, as are we all.

Between the ages of 19 and 21, Ron studied Flamenco guitar. He revelled in the exotic scales and rhythms and continued to play for several more years. Note the strong finger positioning. The capo on the third fret is standard for Flamenco, lending the music a higher, more urgent, pitch. Photo taken in Montreal 1968. Ron was 22. The beard was in keeping with the times.