Somebody had told me about a women’s print shop in Vancouver, and I didn’t know anything about that, but y’know I had actually heard of it, and there I am moving into this house with somebody who works there once a week. And I’m at a complete loss about what to do with my life, I, y’know, I’ve just crawled out of a very troubled relationship, I am a lost 24 year-old. Uhm, y’know, I have an active imagination and I have an active intellectual life. It’s all in my head. [laughs] So, one day shortly after I move in, I say to Ina, “Ina, take me down to Press Gang when you’re going next. I wanna see this place.”

So I go down, and I am greeted by this absolutely fascinating building. It’s at 603 Powell Street. It’s a big hulk of a cavernous building that was constructed after the Second World War, of timbers from the Burrard dry dock that got dismantled after the Second World War because Canada was no longer having a ship-building industry. And this guy built this warehouse, basically. Totally not to code. And there’s this women’s printing and publishing collective, with these printing presses and this bindery, with this guillotine paper cutter that really should be called a guillotine ‘cause if you put your head or your hand in the wrong place you’d be a goner. (Laughing.) And these folding machines, and these electric arc plate burners, and it’s just fascinating. And it’s really scruffy, as is everybody who works there. And I just sorta go “Cool!”

Yeah, so I was, I’d gotten involved with a women’s theatre group called Acting Up. Fabulous women’s theatre group. We’re total amateurs, right? We’re just a buncha hams. And we’d do, and Acting Up had been begun many years earlier, and just did feminist thea… feminist skits, I think would be the way to describe it. Songs and skits. And they would perform at rallies, and they would perform at dances, and they would perform at events, and they just had so much fun. And they were pretty funny, and they were pretty good. So at some point I was thinking “Awhhh, my life! I need some fun in my life (Yeah.) Oh! I’ll see if Acting Up is taking anybody in.” And I’m a ham. And I love singing, y’know I’m just relaxed about singing. So I got involved with the theatre group, and we did a really great, uhm, most of the women in the theatre group, oh no, allll of the women in the theatre group were lesbians. (Oh wow.) Yeah, that’s not true. I just remembered Anne. Anne wasn’t. (Okay.) So not everybody was. (The majority, maybe?) Oh yeah, totally the majority, but not, not everybody. And you didn’t need to be a dyke to be in the group but I think that was what was kinda “shhhh.” And actually Anya wasn’t a lesbian either, so I should watch myself there. Uhm, but, y’know, majority lesbian. All, uhm, when I was involved with the theatre group we were all white. That wasn’t always the case in the theatre group, but certainly predominantly. Same was true at Press Gang, we were all white.