{"id":4915,"date":"2024-11-10T21:54:12","date_gmt":"2024-11-10T21:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/?page_id=4915"},"modified":"2026-04-07T01:18:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T01:18:42","slug":"when-dad-met-svend","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/true-life\/1985-1989\/when-dad-met-svend\/","title":{"rendered":"When Dad met Svend"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1988, during one of my weekly Sunday visits with my Dad, he told me that Svend Robinson, the federal MP for Burnaby, had been by to do a meet and greet.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Svend
Svend Robinson, Jan. 2003 NDP convention in Toronto (by Montr\u00e9alais)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was a federal election campaign and doors were getting knocked on all over town. I was happy to learn that Svend had been there, visiting the residents at my Dad’s care home.<\/p>\n

Svend was a progressive politician known for defending gay rights and protesting against logging in BC’s old-growth forests. He was pretty popular with my age group, but not so much with my parents’ generation. My Dad had always held fairly conservative social views.<\/p>\n

I said “That’s so cool! Did you actually\u00a0 meet him?”<\/p>\n

Dad said “Yeah. I spoke to him. After he introduced himself, I said ‘You’re that queer fellah, aren’t you!”<\/p>\n

“Oh No! God, Dad! What did he say to that?”<\/p>\n

“He said ‘Well yes, but we prefer the term Gay.”<\/p>\n

“Wow. Jesus, Dad, I can’t believe you said\u00a0 that.” Dad\u00a0just smirked like a naughty school boy, enjoying his story.<\/p>\n

We shared a moment’s silence, before his face became serious and sincere.<\/p>\n

“You know,” Dad said, “he was the only one who came here to see us. That was nice of him. Maybe I should write him a letter to say thank you.”<\/p>\n

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In 1988, during one of my weekly Sunday visits with my Dad, he told me that Svend Robinson, the federal MP for Burnaby, had been by to do a meet and greet. It was a federal election campaign and doors were getting knocked on all over town. I was happy to learn that Svend had … Continue reading When Dad met Svend<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":1743,"menu_order":1085,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4915","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4915"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4926,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4915\/revisions\/4926"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}