Meeting Nicole
It was the winter of 1972 and the worst snowstorm of the year. I had just turned 26. I had taken the train from Ottawa to Montreal to visit my mentor at Penn Jim Taylor who had recently taken a post at the Université de Montreal. Nothing was moving, no trains, no taxis, no busses. I trudged up Cote de Neiges to Jim’s place to spend a delightful evening with Jim and his family.
The following day the city was still shut down so I decided to some exploring on foot. I found my way onto the campus of McGill University (Canada’s Harvard). There was a small crowd gathering at one of the buildings. I was curious about the commotion so I decided to check it out. Once inside I saw a pretty and curvy redhead standing on a table (like Lenin in the a Russian Revolution) haranguing the gathering in french. She was fiery, she was angry and I thought “wow.” I still don’t know what she was so hopped up about. I left while she was speechifying. I didn’t know her name. But I sure remembered her. Here’s a picture from around that time.
In any event, I returned to Ottawa and my job at Bell Northern Research and my relationship with Debbie (see earlier posts on my time in France) who I was living with at the time.
Cut to the spring of 1973, I was invited to Montreal to participate in a session at Videographe — an avant-garde group of Quebecois interested in the uses of video for social change. Here’s an image of their store front studio on rue Saint Denis.
I was invited there to show an infamous video of a project I had been involved with at Penn showing video effects (blending two images) could engender intimate interactions between strangers who were in separate physical locations but whose virtual images were blended. It had unleashed an extremely erotic experience — hence, its notoriety. Nicole happened to be there at that event. I recognized her but I didn’t have the courage to talk to her. The next day I was hanging around Videographe with another dude from New York (Ira Schneider) who had also been invited. Nicole approached us asked both us to go to lunch where to my dismay she made it very clear that she was interested in hooking up with Ira. Oh well. I returned to Ottawa.
The following December Debbie and I left Ottawa to live in Aix en Provence in the south of France. A year or so later we returned to Canada where I took a position teaching at the Université de Montreal where Jim Taylor was starting a new department in communications. One of the 15 or so students in that inaugural class was Nicole. Looking back, I had no chance. I was a moth to the flame. My relationship with Debbie had reached an ebb — at least for me. And Nicole represented my fantasy of a french red headed femme fatale. She was sassy, funny and being with her was like seeing a black and white world turned to color. I split with Debbie. Nicole split with Ronald (her beau at the time) and the rest of the story will await for another time…