The poster you see above is courtesy of Vancouver’s Neptoon Records. It’s a great Main Street store filled with records and posters from the past and present. Owner Rob Frith bought the entire collection of Retinal Circus posters and handbills shortly before their owner, Roger Schiffer, died.

This poster, however, was given to me by Roger in October of 1967. I had just returned from my trip back east (see previous column here) and I was still strung out on drugs and having a difficult time. It did not help that ex-partner Roger had decided to open his own dance hall. I found it interesting how much it resembled my Afterthought hall on West Fourth Avenue. This was quite understandable, as he had recruited my old (though renamed) light-show team.

But he was very friendly and let me know I was always welcome in his new establishment. I understand now that this is what can happen in business, but at 18 I did not quite see it that way. Nevertheless, this a beautiful poster that has stood the test of time. It was created by Eric Fisher, who was another great artist of the time. He ended up doing most of Roger's artwork.

Sometimes on my posters I would forget to indicate where the band was from, and I see Roger did the same with this one, featuring the PH Phactor Jug Band (from San Francisco), as well as the Painted Ship and the Seeds of Time (both local bands that started at the Afterthought). The local bands were fortunate to have a new venue after the Afterthought closed earlier that year.

The February 1968 poster above (which I created by the old-fashioned cut-and-paste method) is one of two posters that I created for dances in Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast. It was a safe haven then for hippies, and now—50 years later—it is still a safe haven.

I have been back only once in the past 50 years, and that was to run a merchandise table for the musical group Farmer’s Daughter at a country festival. I asked my love, Julie, how I spent the between-posters period—from October 1967 to February 1968—and she didn't miss a beat: “You were stoned the whole time.” I paused, then realized, sadly, that she was right. It had been more than a year from when I was first busted for pot. That was how I coped with the stress of waiting for trial.

This journey would continue for several years. It was not until I started writing about my past that I could admit that I lost more than three years of my life awaiting my legal fate for possession of cannabis. It's hard to accept now that I survived that time by using heroin as much as possible. It numbed me and made it possible to (I believed at the time) survive that strange twist of life. I thank God and Julie that I lived to be able to write about it.

Meanwhile, the 50th Anniversary of the Summer of Love, here and elsewhere, has come to an end. San Francisco did not manage to do its reunion celebration as originally planned, but there were several Summer of Love-themed events throughout the city and lots of merchandise available for purchase. On September 23, there was an event in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park (that has gone on for five years now) called Peace in the Park; this year, the theme was the Summer of Love. (It seems that a standalone 50th-anniversary event could not get approval by the powers that be, but at least they found a way to have a celebration.)

On one of the last sunny days of this summer here in Vancouver, I was fortunate to be at Kit’s Beach, playing with my grandchildren from San Francisco. We ended up playing on the rocks behind the Maritime Museum, the same rocks I played on as a kid (at about the same age as my grandchildren, who are 11 and 13). Life has a way of repeating itself, and as I played with them I relished the present and thought about what this life is all about.

The reason my eldest daughter is up from San Francisco with her family is that my son-in-law is turning 50 this month and to celebrate his birthday he is taking part in the Whistler GranFondo, a mass-participation cycling event that goes from Vancouver to Whistler (a feat that I find mind-boggling). As I played with the kids, I realized that something really special did happen 50 years ago: our son-in-law was born, and now he and our daughter have this incredible family.

You never know what is around the next corner of life. You can look back and remember, but it is more important to move forward, even with all of life's uncertainties.