“Peculiar travel suggestions are like dancing lessons from God”
- Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Cat’s Cradle
27 April 1970
Montreal
Crossing the St. Lawrence with a friend that day, I reached the bridge centre span, and suddenly faced the setting Apr
il sun ahead; it was huge. Actually, I wouldn’t have even been there at all: I was just keeping a friend company because his soccer buddy was visiting a sick aunt on the south shore and I was going along for the ride. They were training for a bike trip to the World Cup in Mexico City. I had no plans at all and soccer was a mystery to me. But I was so overjoyed by that vision on the bridge and what fun it was to be on a bike, I just threw my arms in the air and whooped for joy. I decided then and there to go along for the ride – to Mexico. You could say I had just crossed my own personal Rubicon. In fact, I had just had my first dancing lesson from God.
But the only thing was – I had to pass Fugue 501 first! (Even the universe has a sense of humour.)
Who knows how these things happen, but that year for the first time the McGill music faculty allowed us an extra hour for that exam (all 5 hours of it), with a pass mark of 60%. I squeaked through, thanks to Prof. Kelsey Jones’s generous acknowledgement that we were not all keyboard-proficient. In the same way, I would have never graduated at all if not for the patience of Prof. Mather four years earlier, having failed my major: of all things, first year Composition.
August, 1970
Vancouver
Four months later we finished the Mexico trip in Vancouver. I was staying at a friend’s place on Robson Street and took the bus up to Burnaby Mountain to introduce myself to Murray Schafer. We began working together at his Sonic Research Studio at SFU. We got along from the start; it began a collaboration lasting several years, and resulted in more than one commission that Murray kindly deflected my way. He also had an office full of C.G. Jung’s collected works, which I read obsessively for the next couple of years. It was also the beginning of the World Soundscape Project, which survives to this day.
Not 
many people know this, but the Soundscape project was born with the noise of seaplanes landing and taking off in Vancouver harbour. They drove Schafer crazy; eventually he sold his gorgeous Sentinel Hill house in West Van and moved to Coquitlam!
Then to get even, he hired a student to put together a collection of Canadian noise bylaws; it ballooned into a thick manual which he distributed free to each municipality in the country, which got lots of attention.
A year later he hired a small crew including myself, and with some grant money (thank you, Donner Canadian Foundation), we set out with sound level meters and portable tape recorders and proceeded to record and measure (and compose with) the sounds of Canada and Europe for the next several years.
The WSP group at SFU, 1973; left to right: R. M. Schafer, Bruce Davis, Peter Huse, Barry Truax, Howard Broomfield
The world was my oyster; I even fell briefly, but totally, in love – which undid me and loosened me up enough to survive a life-changing trip to Australia the next year. My plan was to be with some tribal people, and record music and environmental sounds. In the process I became thoroughly intoxicated with the culture.
What follows are my creative footprints since these two formative years 1975 and 1976.
