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!

No Dancing Allowed

When I toured the Orpheum Theatre, there was a photo of a dance teacher who had regularly supplied the theatre with dancers. I started doing more research on June Roper and found this book entitled June Roper Ballet Starmaker written by Leland Windreich. Today I am starting my series on Ms. Roper.

Her mother, Elizabeth Woodhead, had been raised in a strict fundamentalist family in Bury, England. This family had no books other than the Bible and the young Elizabeth  was in trouble whenever she was caught dancing. The young girl believed in fairies and loved to dance in her stocking feet in the attic.

At the age of eighteen, Elizabeth left England and went to Rosebud, Texas to visit an older brother who had settled there. While visiting, Elizabeth met George Roper, a widower from Alabama who was gaining a fortune in the cottonseed oil industry. He was also a principal force in the Baptist community.

Roper had two young daughters and was the owner and manager of the local telephone exchange. When he proposed to Elizabeth, he made her a promise. For every child she produced she could have either a diamond or a holiday in Europe. Over the next thirty years, Elizabeth gave birth to four boys and four girls, the last child was Elizabeth June Roper, born on December 4, 1906. The elder Elizabeth was forty-seven at the time.

During the early years of the marriage, Elizabeth shocked and outraged some of her more religiously strict neighbours when they peered into a barn while a square dance was in progress and saw the young Mrs. Roper dancing. The indignant neighbours insisted on her excommunication but George threatened to remove his financial support from the church so that discouraged any action.

Among the fundamentalist Christians of the American South, dancing was loathed. It was thought to be the principal trigger for immoral and criminal behaviour. Dancing was said to lead to insanity and incarceration for life in a mental hospital.

Rosebud, Texas is one hundred miles west of Palestine and forty miles south of Waco so it should have been totally isolated from any contradictory influences. The Roper children lived in a big house with a staff of servants and were encouraged to participate in less sensual arts. The girls studied piano, singing, and painting while the boys were trained on various musical instruments. As soon as the children were hold enough to hold the reins, they were given ponies.

June's enthusiasm for riding was encouraged when she saw the "little girls in big tutus, riding on ponies in the circuses"  Travelling acts would set up the tents for shows in remote towns in the Southwest and it appears that the community allowed it even though they were against most forms of theatrical entertainment.

When June was five, her sister Madelyn was sent to a sanatorium in California for galloping consumption - tuberculosis. Elizabeth Roper moved with her young children to the west coast and stayed for a little while with her older brother, David Woodhead. The Ropers liked Los Angeles and within a year had moved into their own apartment. George travelled between L.A. and the south but the family's spiritual guidance was continued under the strictly Baptist Uncle David.

However, in 1916, June's oldest sister, Anne, took the young girl to an event that would change her life forever. Ann and June went to a performance by the Russian prima ballerina, Anna Pavlova. June was transformed by what she saw.

Can you imagine what an uproar young June wanting to be a dancer would have made in her strict Baptist household? I will tell you more about that on Wednesday.

I hope you find the beauty around you.