DEATH OF A BORN COMMUNICATOR

On a late Friday night, August 23, I received a phone call from colleague
Glen Andersen. He opened with a curt "Do you know about Ian?" I misheard
yin for Ian and replied jokingly, "No, but I know about yang." Then he told
me he'd heard Ian Hunter (born 1961) had died in a boating accident near
Nelson but he had no details. 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 firsthand account on Marc
Emery's PotTV Web site, I learned that on August 14 Ian had taken a small
motorboat onto Kootenay Lake. NORML's U.S.-based site had posted a partial
reprint of a short report in the August 20 Times-Colonist: "Pot Activist
Dies in Boat Accident". For a community-minded public figure whose news
clippings could paper a rec room, it was meagre fare.

Ian and I first met in early 1988 near Victory Square, an area we would
later dub Crosstown or X-town. We were studio neighbours on the third floor
at 152 West Hastings, home to an initiative by Artists for Creative
Environments that lobbied to change the zoning bylaws 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, Glen Alteen and Co., Theatre at
Large, 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, 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, but anybody who was anybody in the arts then had
a connection there. And most every-body, 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 opposite me.
Our lives crossed 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 a yearlong tour de force of
community activism, city hall-lobbying, performance art, happenings,
parties (block-long lineups), exhibitions, media events, and general
mischief, culminating in the burial of the X-town time capsule in Victory
Square. It was a time of great confluence, promise, and hope.

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...") might have irked him a bit, though. I once visited him at his
Sacred Herb store in Victoria; 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. Yet his fight
to have marijuana legalized obscured other passions: for local histories,
heritage buildings, grassroots politics, and just about anything
alt-radical and progressive. If he had a favourite word, it must have been
iconoclasm.

Ian was a born communicator. He talked incessantly; his gift arose from a
fertile, bright mind. He had a childlike sense of wonder and play, a trust
and acceptance of almost everyone he met, and a candour so great it
endeared him to many but disquieted others. He was such an innate social
creature, it's hard to imagine him without entourage (usually
impressionable teenagers) or leading some rally, rave, or reading or
pamphleteering on the street.

Ian lived in the moment. He 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 rally on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery and was striding
down an empty office-tower canyon: daypack, slightly dishevelled suit,
loose tie, and his emblematic narrow-brimmed felt fedora, vaguely
reminiscent of an intrepid reporter from a '50s film. An utterly solitary
figure, self-composed, grinning, impishly content, and detached.

A little-known fact about the X-town time capsule (to be opened in 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 cofounded Hemp BC with Marc Emery and passed on the torch. 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.