A Fool's End

On Wednesday, I said I would tell you more about Joachim Foikis and his donkey cart. A report from the Vancouver Sun states:

“Downtown rush-hour motorists Friday were the first to experience coexistence between horse-powered engines and donkey-powered carts when Foikis went out for a test drive, They rested – sometimes after only a few hoof-clops – in bus zones, intersections, and in any lane they happened to be travelling.”

Is it any wonder motorists were getting angry? What a mess that would have been! Foikis tied the donkeys to wherever he could and gave rides to anyone who asked.

The cart's maiden voyage was to the steps of City Hall. A bystander gave the newspaper The Province the following quote:

“Take them up into the council chambers, they wouldn’t know the difference.”  So some people did have a sense of humour about the situation.

The donkeys were impounded four times due to a city by-law, which prohibits the keeping of livestock within city limits. Foikis remembers one such time.

“Sir, your donkey is polluting my city,” the magistrate said. Fokis replied, “Sir, your city is polluting my donkey.”

Around the middle of 1969, Vancouver's town fool began to change. He gave up his fool's attire for street clothes and began to let his hair and beard grow. He depleted his grant and began to live on welfare. His staged events happened less and less as the novelty wore off.

His wife left him, returning to her native England with her two children. Foikis' last recorded interview was in December of 1969. He was tired of urban life, of Vancouver and wanted to try the 'poverty trip'.

For the next fifteen years, Foikis lived in self imposed poverty on Lasqueti Island, living off the land. Sometime after that, he was found working as a clerk for the Ministry of Environment in Victoria. It is rumoured he went to the Vancouver Public Library and demanded his file of clippings be destroyed but, when he reappeared a few months later, was relieved they were still intact.

He was said to be shy of the media yet eager to reappear. The last known media with Joachim Foikis was a 1990 interview with Monday Magazine. Then he seems to have dropped out of sight. In 2007, Joachim Foikis, Vancouver's Town Fool, fell from a wall while dancing to a band playing in Victoria's inner harbour. He was 72.


In a 1968 interview with Weekend Magazine, Foikis said:

 “It was something to get outside myself,”

“I was too introverted. But now I have met so many people. And I have helped quite a few in their folly, I think. The time will soon come when I will no longer be a fool. I would like to go back to my books. Maybe I would study at university again. Maybe there would be someone to take my place. There will always be a need for a fool.”

So that's the story of Vancouver's Town Fool. I want to thank The Dependent Magazine for the information.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Loved the driver of this vehicle!

Ackery in the Army

When he returned to Vancouver, Ackery got a job as an elevator operator at the Hudson's Bay store. (Years later, he could still name the goods sold on each floor.) But you know the lure of battle kept calling to him.

On November 29, 1916, at the age of 17, Ivor/Ivan enlisted again, saying he was 18. He was sent to Victoria with the 143 Battalion. This was a unique collection of men called the B.C. Battling Bantams - the unit was made of men not tall enough to qualify for regular military service.

The Southland picked Ackery and his unit up in Halifax on February 17, 1917 and ten days later, the men were in Europe. Ackery was transferred to the 24th Reserve Battalion at Seaford and by April, he was with the troops on the way to Calais. Then the men were stuffed into boxcars and shipped off to the front.

“Before we left England,” Ivor/Ivan later recalled, “I had been assigned to the Fighting 47th Battalion, 10th Infantry Brigade, a great battalion from New Westminster.”

When the battalion arrived at Chateaux de la Haie, where the 4th Canadian Division was stationed, Pte Ivor Ackery was assigned the duties of a dispatcher. He would run messages from headquarters to the front and he eventually ended up at Vimy Ridge.

“The trenches at Vimy,” Ackery said, “became as familiar to me as the streets of my home town, because it was our job to know them like the backs of our hands, and to be able to move through them with speed.”

Considering that 60 percent of the battalion never came home, this was not a cushy, behind the scenes assignment. It was dangerous. Vimy Ridge is well known for its ferocity and for the valor of the Canadian soldiers. There are some who say that this battle is what made Canada a country and no longer a sleepy outpost of the British Empire.

Even though he was surrounded by blood and violence, Ivor's humanity remained.“On one occasion I was detailed to escort a German prisoner from the front line back to the battalion HQ. He was just a kid, too. He showed me his mother’s picture in a little locket he had, and started to cry. I put my arm around him to try to comfort him, then took him to the back of the line and never saw him again. We shook hands before parting, and I shall never forget him.”

A glimpse into Ackery's future career was also shown during war.“a group of soldiers from the 3rd Division who got up a troupe [to visit the troops] to do skits and songs and dances and even female impersonations . . . The troupe stayed together after the war and were well known in Canada as a touring musical-comedy show. I would play them at the Strand Theatre in Vancouver in the 1930s.” This group was known as the Dumbbells.

Ivor's mother was worried sick about her 17 year old son and she sent a copy of his birth certificate to the army who removed young Ackery from the lines. He was sent to England where he was assigned to the Young Soldiers Battalion and was with them in northern Wales when the armistice was signed. He sailed for Canada nine months later, once again aboard the Southlands. Ivor would have returned home sooner but he had to spend some time in a military prison for going AWOL. He had been partying too enthusiastically.

Thanks goes once again to The History of Metropolitan Vancouver website for the above information.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Ivor/Ivan Ackery

As Ralph August mentioned in the comment section of the Orpheum Revisted post last week, no story on the Orpheum would be complete without a lengthy discussion of its legendary manager, Ivan Ackery.

On October 30, 1899, Ivor Frederick Wilson Ackery was born in Bristol, England. He lived with his family in the Christmas Steps area of Bristol - a historic area that apparently a fish and chips shop that is 300 years old. The young Ackery attended Duke of York's Military School in Dover - which happens to be a mile away from the legendary cliffs. There he learned to become a drummer and a bugler.

In 1908, when Ivor/Ivan was eight years old, his father died. A year later, his mother left for Toronto and left her son in the care of an aunt and uncle.

At the age of 14, Ivor/Ivan left school to go to work. His first job, which paid five shillings a week, was feeding paper bags into a printing machine at a paper factory. He gave his wages to his aunt and uncle who in turn gave the young man six pence a week for spending money. This Ackery spent at the cinema.

On October 17, 1914 - three weeks before his 15th birthday - Ivor/Ivan Ackery left Liverpool for Canada. His mother had remarried, was living in Vancouver and working as a cashier at the Windsor Hotel (later called The Castle) on Granville Street. She sent the money for her son's passage, anxious to get him out of Europe and away from the Great War.

Ivor/Ivan got a job at the Grosvenor Hotel, working as an elevator operator and bellboy. However, he was like a lot of young men in the day and anxious to fight in the war. So, on Christmas Eve 1915, he walked into the Vancouver recruiting office and joined up. Of course, he lied about his age since he was only 16. His mother wasn't happy but Ivor/Ivan was now a recruit for the 102nd Canadian Expeditionary Forces Battalion.

The young man was sent for training at Goose Spit, near Comox. One of his officers was Captain J.S. Matthews. (Matthews went on to become Major Matthews and he is revered in Vancouver as one of our original archivists.) Here, Ackery's Duke of York's musical training came in handy. His bugle woke the men in the morning and put them to bed at night.

On June 16, 1916, their orders came and the unit marched down Granville Street to the train station the tune of Laddie in Khaki. The men arrived in Halifax a week later and the next day they sailed for Europe aboard the CPR Empress of Britain. On June 29, 1916, the 102nd Canadian Expeditionary Forces Battalion arrived at Liverpool, exactly where Ivor/Ivan had left 21 months earlier.

No doubt, the young man was ready to fight for Canada but there was an official check of ages. When Ackery's age was discovered, he, and those who had lied about his age, were left behind as the battalion went to war. Ivor/Ivan decided to spend a bit of time in Bristol visiting relatives before returning to Canada on the S.S. Southland. He worked as a steward in the officer's mess. He was discharged on September 18, 1916. But that wasn't the end of his military career.

I would like to thank The History of Metropolitan Vancouver website for the information above.

I hope you find the beauty around you and see you on Wednesday when I will fill you in on more about Ivor/Ivan Ackery.