in memory of
Reimut Lieder
in memory of
Reimut Lieder
June 22, 1950 – December 18, 2014good friend to many
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Reimut was born in Hamburg-Wandsbek, Germany in 1950, the son of Luise Auguste Wolter and Horst August Lieder. Luise brought Reimut to Canada in April 1952, to join his father, who had come on ahead in October 1951. They lived in Hamilton, where Luise's brother lived, and moved to Trois Rivières when Reimut was eight or so.
When Mr. and Mrs. Lieder separated in 1959, Mrs. Lieder brought Reimut to Vancouver in 1959 and raised him as a single mother. They lived in a 2 bedroom basement suite in a small Nicola Street apartment building in the West End.
Reimut worked after school as a delivery boy for B.C. Stamp Works and later had a large morning paper route. After leaving B.C.I.T., Reimut continued his morning paper route while working as a draftsman for C.M.H.C., then drove taxi for most of the 1970s, including six years as the owner of two cabs in the Delta Sunshine Taxi fleet. He began professional photography in the 1970s, initially from home. After selling his taxi business around 1979-1980, he took some time off, then opened his Image Makers studio in 1981 at 337 W. Pender St., operating first as AAA Imagemakers and later as Image Makers Vancouver.
Reimut lost everything in 2003 when the Pender St. building burned to the ground. He found a garage that was converted to an apartment behind a heritage house at 11th Ave. and Pine St. This humble abode became his home for the rest of his life. It did not have a street address, so he gave it one, 2750 Pine. As well as operating Image Makers from here, Reimut expanded into fine art reproductions using giclée technology, occasionally taught photography in night school, and began relationship and serenity counselling. A jack of all trades, he made custom furniture, did home renovations, and advertised himself as the neighbourhood handyman.
The neighbourhood suited Reimut. He belonged on Pine St., where his door opened to the street, and where there were many people passing by. His door was open to anybody who wanted to drop in, and many of his neighbours became his friends.
Reimut collapsed at home in early 2014 and was taken to Vancouver General Hospital by ambulance. Rejuvenated by his medical care, he seemed to be in good spirits during the summer and fall, but on December 9, he experienced great pain and began bleeding internally. That night an ambulance took him to VGH again, where he received massive doses of blood products and underwent three surgeries. He remained heavily sedated in the Intensive Care Unit until he died late in the day on December 18.
Reimut's unpublished book, Lead With Your Heart, can be read or downloaded here.
Franka Cordua-von Specht published a tribute to Reimut for his friends and family. She included excerpts from her interview with him in early 2014, several photographs, messages from his friends, and my memories of Reimut. The tribute can be downloaded here, and I have updated my section below.
Reimut's many close friends will sorely miss him. He was a good man who died too young.
David Palmquist
January 22, 2015
Luise Wolter, born in Benkheim, Kreis Angerburg, Germany, married Horst in June 1941, and had Reimut in 1950.
She brought Reimut to Canada in April 1952 to join Horst, who came ahead in October 1951. They first lived in Hamilton, where her brother's family was, and then in Trois Rivières.
Reimut's parents separated in 1959, and she brought Reimut to Vancouver, where she lived the rest of her life. At some point, her mother Johanne lived near her Vancouver home.
Luise was a bookkeeper for the German-Canadian Rest Home in Vancouver, and she lived there during her last years, dying in January 2013.
Horst married three times, Luise was his first wife and Reimut was the only child of their marriage.
I understand he was not a good husband or father, but his memoirs, written late in life and summarized here, interest me because they reflect the life of a young man raised in Germany between the wars, his schooling, his career, his life as a soldier and as a prisoner of war, and his migrations.
Horst's interest in photography, his obvious intelligence, his mathematical skills, his aptitude for engineering and his independent spirit are positive traits he passed on to Reimut, and his upbringing may have affected how he treated his wives and children.
Reimut died December 18 in the intensive care unit of Vancouver General Hospital.
Reimut and I became friends in high school in the 1960s. We were part of a close-knit, small group of kids from single-parent families who played in the school band and hung around together, making music, delivering papers, playing board games, solving the world's problems, etc. as young people do. Reimut was my sister Singne's boyfriend, and he always spoke well of his memories of my mother.
Since Reimut died, I've learned a lot that I didn't know, so I've been thinking about the nature of our friendship. We enjoyed each other's company, we did things together, we helped each other when the need arose but didn't generally talk people or politics. We shared memories, joked about things in the paper, talked about his business and his troubles. We were just a couple of friends who'd have the occasional coffee or beer together, shooting the breeze rather than talking about anything important. Usually he talked and I listened and offered advice, most of which he should have, and probably did, ignore.
We first started hanging out when we were in the King George band, and I suspect we wouldn't have become friends if he hadn't been interested in Singne, then known as Barbara.
Reimut and Mrs. Lieder lived in a basement suite at 968 Nicola St. Reimut's bedroom and probably the bathroom were to the left of their entrance and the kitchen was on the right. The living room was straight ahead (I only went in that far once that I recall), and I think the master bedroom was on the left, opening to the living room. Reimut's room was small, maybe 6' x 10', but had a really "cool" bed, a plywood board hinged to the wall on its long side so it could fold up out of the way. He had a small window and closet at the far end of his room, where I think he had a small desk or table.
The small bottom window to the right of the building entrance was their kitchen, the bigger window was the living room. The building had a back yard just a few steps from the door to their suite. The two of us spent most of a summer out there building an 8-foot punt which we never got into the water. That was the year the Beatles released Hey Jude; he played his transistor radio constantly out there. A bunch of us used to sit on the back lawn playing Monopoly or Clue those summers. Mrs. Lieder kept a gallon of red Calona wine under the kitchen sink, and Reimut poured me a snort once. He liked German food, and often ate pumpernickel bread covered with cottage cheese and corn syrup.
Reimut went to Germany once - I don't recall exactly when - but all of us were pretty excited and we went to see him off at the old Vancouver airport, at what is now the south terminal. For some reason, I think it was a prop-driven plane, but that seems unlikely. Passenger jets had been in service since the late 1940s.
Reimut had a few cars and always did his own maintenance and repairs. We cruised a lot in his '57 Chevy BelAir, which he drove into the ground. He only had a learner's licence when he bought it in, I think, 1966, but we went for a spin that evening across the Oak Bridge, running out of gas on the freeway on the Shell Road overpass. A police car pulled up behind us, making Reimut sweat because he didn't have a valid licence or any insurance. He got through it by telling the cop we were out of gas. Instead of asking for papers, the cop just told us to leave the lights on and walk to the gas station over on the Airport Causeway, a mile away. By the time we trudged over and back with a jerry can, the parking lights were very dim, but the car started and off we went. (Update: In his interview, Reimut said he drove a car when he was 15; that would put this incident in 1965, not 1966.)
Singne had a summer job with the telephone book distributor a couple of times, so Reimut was hired to deliver phone books and I was his swamper. He choseroutes way out in the toolies because they paid better. We'd filling the trunk and back seatwith the books, bottoming out his suspension. We'd string a rope through his back windows and I'd stand on the back bumper holding on to it like a water skier, jumping off and leaping over wide ditches at each stop to toss a book on the doorstep. I'd run back and jump on the bumper again, and off we'd go to the next stop along these dirt roads. Lots of fun, and we made what seemed like good money, but that poor Chev took a beating. I think we broke a leaf spring, but I may be mixing his cars up in my mind. In any event, we replaced the springs and added risers to at least one of his cars in those years, if not the Chev, then certainly his third, a Riley. He usually did the work while I passed him tools or held a light for him.
One time we were in the Chev going down the gentle hill on Cardero St. between Alberni and Georgia Streets, when we stopped behind a large truck that was waiting for the light. For some reason Reimut edged closer and closer to it. I said we were getting too close, but he thought it was okay because the truck wasn't going to roll uphill. Sure enough, it backed into us, and its tailgate hinge knuckles punched big dents in Rye's hood. Kids, eh? That was Reimut's first accident, so far as I recall.
I was with him the first time he tried driving in snow. We made it as far as the hairpin turn at Prospect Point in Stanley Park where he fishtailed and smashed us into the cliff face, pushing the front fenders back over the doors. Forcing the doors open bent the fenders, so they flared a bit until he got rid of the car. When the back of the front seat broke and wouldn't stay upright, he propped it up with a 2 x 4 board braced against the back seat. He probably sold the car for scrap, certainly nobody would have wanted it for anything other than spare parts, but we all loved that poor battered old Chevy.
I think his next car was a sky blue 1959 Mercury Monterey, seen here with Singne and Reimut in 1969. I think it was a two door hardtop, but it may have been a sedan, I don't really remember. It weighed over 2 tons, had power windows and seats, and a 3.2 meter wheelbase (126 inches). It was 5.5 meters bumper to bumper (more than 18 feet) and just over 2 meters wide (6 feet 8 inches). 
He ended up selling to me for something like $50. I didn't have my licence yet so it just sat under a tree on the far side of the alley and across the street from his apartment, until I finally resold it.
Reimut's third car was an old Riley 4/Sixty-eight, a smaller grey English sedan with red leather seats and a wooden dash, probably a 1960 or 1961 model. It was very small compared to American cars of the time, but today it be considered to be big. Here he is with it at Long Beach on the West Coast of Vancouver Island.
We took it to Prince George and back in one day, a thousand mile round trip, just for something to do. I remember tumbleweed following us down the Cariboo highway on the way back, so it must have been near the end of summer. I think Singne was with us, because I think I rode in the back. We stopped at the O'Keefe Ranch so Rye could take pictures; one is in the B.C. Encyclopedia. They paid him $75 for it and gave him a first edition copy of the book. When the publisher learned his book was lost in the fire, it gave him a new copy.
Another time he took us up the Thompson Highway, then across to the Fraser Canyon on a dirt road past Little Fort. It was full of potholes, and there was lots of snow on the hillside below us.
One time, on the way back from the Abbotsford Air Show we passed a line of cars waiting to turn left, and got pulled over. I don't know if he was ticketed for passing on the right, but he was pretty unhappy about getting a ticket for driving barefoot.
Next came a sports car, a white MGB. I think it had red leather seats like the Riley. Also like the Riley, its fuel pump would cut out often, so he'd have to hop out in traffic and run around to the trunk to tap the pump to get it going again, and off we'd go. More than once I heard him complain about Lucas electrics! I had been driving a battered Volkswagen beetle, but I liked his MGB so I bought one too, in British Racing Green. One time we took both cars to Long Beach on Vancouver Island, keeping in touch with walkie-talkies.
Reimut and Singne drove his MGB across Canada MGB in 1974, getting a cool reception from my aunt in Lethbridge, and visiting Reimut's uncle in Ontario. At some point he bought a 1975 Volkswagen Rabbit, which he made into a taxi to the disgust of other Delta Sunshine Taxi owners, and he also had a large white four wheel drive pickup truck with high plywood sides and a bumper winch that he used in his junk hauling business. His last car was a brown 4 door 1974 Dodge Coronet, which he was still using at the end of his life.
So who was Reimut? A complicated man, smart but unsophisticated. Singne described him as
That's a very fair description. I saw his tenderness through his love of pets. He always had a cat, either his own or various mooches who would wander in through an open door or window. I remember his dogs, too. My favourite was Hanse or Hansie, a huge German shepherd he first met when he had a basement suite in east Vancouver in 1973. The dog was with him in his second Lucas Rd. house, but I think it belonged to a young relative of his east Vancouver landlord. Later, he and Joanne took in an abused dog when they lived on Number 9 Road, and this fall he told me he had been dog-sitting in his place on Pine Street for his neighbour, Franka.Brilliant in his way, very independent in his thinking, anti-authority and unconventional, opinionated and eccentric, abrasive and tender.
Reimut admired Greenpeace and would sometimes tell me what its founder, Bob Hunter, was doing. When he came to my concerts, or concerts by my friends and relatives, he was always full of compliments and never critical.
Reimut was tall with a medium build, and his bottom ribs stuck out a bit. Mom thought the deformation was from rickets, a childhood condition that is caused by malnutrition. I'm not sure she had any basis for thinking that, though. I think Reimut was physically healthy until his sixties, but catching a cold would floor him, cut he would take megadoses of Vitamin C tablets to get over them.
Reimut looks very young in his grade 6 class photo,but he'd skipped a grade and was probably only 11 in that picture. In high school his blond hair was short, but in the early 1970s he grew it out (men had been wearing long hair since the early 1960s). He often wore "J.C. water walkers"(open-toed sandals) and loose shirts in the 1970s, and I seem to recall he usually wore thick wool socks with the sandals. He may have worn a tie-dyed shirt from time to time, Singne did a lot of tie-dying when they lived together. Singne says he tried pot but didn't care for it, and I know he never experimented with hallucinogens or hard drugs. Alcohol killed him, but I don't recall ever seeing him blotto or even tipsy. When we were younger, he usually drank beer, but later he took to Ouzo, a Greek liqueur. When he lived on Pine, he made you-brew beer, and I sometimes had one when I dropped by.
Reimut was a good student, skipping a year of elementary school and representing our high school on the CBC Television show Reach for the Top. He went to B.C.I.T. after high school, and I think he liked it, because his glowing description made me decide to go there myself, but he didn't finish.
Before Anne and I married, we shared a house at 701 Lucas Road with Reimut, Singne and six tomcats. Singne still lived at the nursing school residence but spent her time off at the house. The toms fought a lot and marked territory inside the house. Anne and I didn't stay long, moving out soon after we married. Singne took leave from nursing school when Mom was dying, bringing her to live with her and Reimut where they cared for her until she died five weeks later. That was the summer of 1974.
Singne returned to nursing school after Mom passed away. I think that was when her close relationship with Reimut ended, although they remained good friends right to the end of his life.
Reimut's parents grew up in Germany under Hitler and Reimut was born in Hamburg. He didn't tell me much about his parents, except being bitter about his father. (update - see the sections above about his parents)
A few years ago, he told me how cruel his father was to his mother, and told me his father hadn't returned from the war until 1948 or 1949, in time to father Reimut and abandon them. This is not entirely correct. Horst returned to Germany in 1947, and in October 1951 came to Canada, bringing his family over in April 1952. Mr. and Mrs. Lieder separated in 1959 and Luise brought Reimut to Vancouver when he was nine. Horst's memoirs say he quit his job when Luise garnisheed his wages. Nice guy, huh? Money seems to have been very important to Horst, his memoirs mention money several times. When his stepfather Ernst died, his estate was left to the three grandsons. He understood why his sister Traute didn't get anything, but he seems to have begrudged being left out while Reimut and his cousins got their inheritances when they reached the age of majority.
I liked Mrs. Lieder, and we often had long talks when I was a teen. Well, she talked, sometimes for hours, and I listened and nodded and tried to reassure her that he was a good fellow and would turn out okay. She was very strict in her thinking, very Teutonic, very caring, very insecure and very suffocating. I never heard Reimut speak civilly to her; he disliked her very much, but she loved him, she could not understand why he rejected her and she worried about what would become of him.
I don't know when Mrs. Wolter, Reimut's maternal grandmother, came; Singne tells me she had a place nearby, but I remember her name was written on the name card on the Lieder's door.
I think Reimut was bullied before he grew tall. When I first saw him he was probably in seventh grade, and my friend threw rocks at him as he rode past on his bike because his clothes looked funny (he wore lederhosen) – he was probably the only kid in the West End who wore short pants, and kids are cruel.
Reimut played trumpet, tuba and sousaphone in our school band. He's the younger tuba player in this picture, the older one is the school library teacher, Hank Penner (four or so King George teachers played in our band). Singne is in the middle of the front row, and I'm on bass clarinet at the near end of the second row.
I'm told Reimut played bugle in Vancouver's Remembrance Day ceremonies at the Cenotaph when he was a Royal Canadian Air Cadet but that was before we became friends. 
From around 1968 until the early 1970s, Rye played sousaphone in the Delta Community Band in Ladner. The horn had fallen off a firetruck during a parade, so was full of dents, but he enjoyed it anyway.
I gave Reimut an antique Courtois cornet before the fire because he seemed unhappy. I thought it would cheer him up to play again, and joining a band would be both good therapy and a way for him to meet a lady. He seemed happy to still be able to play a few notes, but I don't know how much progress he made; everything burnt up in 2003 before I had a chance to hear him.
A few years ago Reimut told me he had wanted to play trombone in high school, but his arms weren't long enough and the band teacher put him on trumpet instead. That would have been the band teacher before our musical mentor, John Fearing, who was so important in all our lives and who arrived at King George when Rye was in Grade 10.
After he told me about having wanted to play trombone as a kid, I offered to get him one and have him join my Ellington band, but his IBS wouldn't let him be away from home for very long. That was before 2010. Last summer, 2014, my son gave me his trombone to pass on to Reimut, but Rye wasn't keen on taking it, so I gave it back to my son, and his son is now learning to play it.
Most of our group had paper routes after school, Rye delivered rubber stamps for B.C. Stamp Works on Seymour Street. Once, my old battered bicycle was stolen from the basement of my building, but Reimut found it in the alley behind BCSW and returned it to me. There was no reason to steal the bike, it was a standard (i.e., no gears), with a coaster brake and butterfly handlebars, and the top tube or crossbar was broken where it met the head tube. This must have been 1965 or 19666, since I broke the bike walking it over a curb when it had a several very full canvas sacks of Saturday Sun papers hanging from the seat. I broke the bike while I still had a Sun route, and that ended when they made me a submanager when I turned 15.
Reimut's light-blue 10-speed was very much state of the art in those days, with black tape wrapped around his racing handlebars. We were always tinkering with our bikes; for some reason I think he reversed his handlebars so he could sit upright and still steer. I can see him now, though, riding through the West End, sitting straight up, waving his arms and clapping his hands, grinning at the wind in his face. Once we rode across the Lions Gate Bridge, through North Vancouver and back across the Second Narrows (now Ironworkers Memorial Bridge), a trip of about 22 kilometres. Nowadays everyone cycles long distances, but in our little world in those days, long bike rides were unusual, particularly when your bike didn't have gears.
When I was in grade 11 or 12 we both had Province routes to deliver six mornings a week. We were supposed to start at 4 or 4:30 a.m. but when Reimut was late, I'd ride my bike over to wake him up since he'd sleep through wake-up calls. He would have finished high school by this time, and likely had already left home, because I seem to recall knocking on his window at Cypress, not on Nicola. If he'd still been on Nicola St., Mrs. Lieder would have heard the phone and woken him up.
My route had 250 or 300 customers and as I recall, as Rye says, he had two routes, which combined gave him the biggest route in the province. Each route was about 3 blocks long, mainly just highrise towers between Denman Street and Stanley Park, and he delivered 500 - 600 papers each morning. We carried huge key rings so we didn't have to buzz the building managers to get in. I used a bike for my papers, but Rye used his car so, unlike me, he never had to go back to the shack for a second load.
Delivering papers in those buildings was a breeze. You'd have maybe 30 or 40 or 50 customers in a building, so you'd take an armload of papers up up the elevator to the top, and run down the fire stairs, zigzagging through the halls to drop papers at each customer's door. Each building probably took about 10 minutes or so, and if the floor lobbies were small, you could use the elevator down, leaning out to chuck papers to customer doors. I'm not sure which was faster... A lot of these buildings had nylon carpet, so when it was cold and dry, we'd get static electricity shocks every time we opened a metal fire door. Crane flies were new to Vancouver then, and often we'd have to brush these weird long-legged insects off the key holes of the building entries.
Collecting was the worst part of the job. We had to collect door to door every month and we'd often be walking around in the West End with pockets full of hundreds of dollars in small bills and coins. That was a lot of money in those days, but Vancouver was safe and we didn't worry about being robbed. I don't recall what a monthly Province subscription cost in the late '60s, Singne thinks it was $1.80 a month. Each month The Province sent us a bill for the $1.40 wholesale cost of our papers, and we made a profit only if we collected the $1.80 from each customer. Unless a customer skipped or was a deadbeat, if we didn't collect, the shortfall came out of our profits. Collecting from hundreds of customers was tedious and usually took 5 or 10 evenings every month, but Reimut was very organized and business-like, right down to leaving bills for the customers who weren't home.
After B.C.I.T., Reimut worked as a draftsman for Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, and he left home, moving into a basement suite near 15th and Cypress. There, he became good friends with Garry, who lived in the other basement suite.
I don't think Reimut had any furniture there, except a mattress in the sleeping alcove. I remember everyone sat on the floor during his parties.
After a year or two, Garry, Reimut and another buddy, Ray with his girlfriend, Michelle?, rented a house near Rupert Street, which they, oops!, burnt down. (Update: in his interview, Reimut said they'd turned off the stove pilot light, but at the time he told me the fumes were ignited by the pilot light on the hot water tank, which was in the kitchen.). I remember walking through the ruins and seeing a huge jiggly yellow blob in a charred wooden frame in a corner of a blackened living room. It had been a water bed.
Rye spent the whole summer after that fire living in a tent beside the Cheekye River between Alice Lake Park and the Squamish Highway, collecting Unemployment Enjoyment. It was down a short B.C. Hydro power line right of way service road. While there was plenty of tall grass, the trees were cleared away on both sides, and the road was very up and down, full of potholes, loose gravel and big boulders just waiting for an oil pan to crack.
Instead of using the showers at Alice Lake beach or campground, Reimut would skinny dip in the park in Stump Lake. The park was not as well-used then as now, so there was little likelihood of being seen by park users, but Reimut wouldn't have cared anyway.
Reimut told Franka he was 19 that summer, but I am pretty sure he was 22. I date it 1972 because Anne and I rode my 1971 Kawasaki motorcycle up the Squamish Highway two or three times to visit. I didn't get the bike until August or September 1971, when I bought it from Ray, the fellow who shared the house with his girlfriend, Reimut and Garry. It was before the fire.
The Kawasaki was a street bike, so getting in from the highway was not fun, but that was okay - we were already numb from 50 miles of boneshaking by the bike, and I remember my throttle hand was a claw by the time we got there. Another reason to date it after 1969 is his car. His Riley's high suspension would have been able to handle that road, but the Mercury he had in 1969 would have bottomed out.
Returning to Vancouver that fall, Reimut rented a basement suite with a German family in the East End, and became friends with their young relative, Wolfgang and their dog, the aforementioned Hanse. Sometime in 1973 Reimut asked me if Anne and I would share a house with Singne and him, and we moved into an old farmhouse at 701 Lucas Road, Richmond, at the corner of Gilbert. Moving day was in October or November, in pouring rain. Rye backed the rented truck up to the porch and we ran 2x12s across to carry Singne's upright piano in without hauling it up the porch stairs. Those planks bent so much as we crossed that I thought they'd break.
After Mom died, Reimut moved to a bungalow up the road at 768 Lucas. He and Singne were still together, I think, and that summer they drove across Canada in his MGB.
At 768, he hung a 4x8 sheet of plywood from the living room ceiling, building a model train track which he could raise and lower with pulleys. It was still there in late 1976, for he took a picture of me standing under it with my baby daughter on my shoulders.
Reimut never liked working for anyone else, and for most of the 1970s he drove a taxi, eventually buying his own cab in Delta. He smashed up half a dozen MacLure's and Richmond taxis, but he never considered those accidents to be his fault. I think they were, morally if not legally, because he always overestimated other drivers' ability to react to his abrupt, aggressive movements such as u-turns and red-light left turns into one way streets. He was upset at being hauled off to jail for unpaid parking tickets once, but I don't imagine he would have come to the cop's attention if he'd been driving normally.
When he drove for the city taxi companies, airport trips were the best, so he spent long hours sitting in “the weeds” for his turn for a fare into town. I worked night shift in a hotel near the airport in those days, and he'd stop by once in a while to shoot the breeze. I think we hired him to drive our airport shuttle during the busy season, and he might have been doing that when I left my job there.
He used to talk about some of his cab trips - he had the occasional big fare from Tsawwassen to Kamloops or Kelowna, and Delta Sunshine had a contract to take train crews back and forth between the Fraser Valley and Roberts Bank, big money. He was something between amused and astounded to see trains moved back and forth to let the crew members on or off, rather than have the crew walk to their train cars. I think he thought it was like the mountain coming to Mohammed rather than Mohammed going to the mountain, but it makes sense, since those coal trains are nearly a mile long.
After Reimut and Singne parted in 1974 or 1975, he continued living at 768 and Christine entered his life. She writes
When I first met Joanne, she was living with him at 768. So far as I know, this was his last long relationship. They moved to a larger house on McKenzie Road, south of Steveston Highway, which they shared with others, then they bought a little rundown house on a large property near the north end of No. 9 Road in east Richmond. The land behind the house was strewn with huge chunks of broken concrete rubble several feet deep. Reimut did a lot of work fixing the place up; the last time we spoke he told me he rebuilt the entire front wall and I remember seeing him doing other renovations when I'd visit, although it's hard to remember what they were. Their home was beside a CN Rail track, and when CN needed to clear land across from them for a siding expansion, Joanne arranged for CN to dump many truckloads of rich, fertile soil on her property, covering the rubble to make a field for planting, gardening and raising chickens.I met Reimut when I was just a teenager in the 70’s and we ending up sharing a home for a brief period while I ensued my schooling to become a nurse. He introduced me to driving taxi and also ended up being my boss as he had owned the taxi cab.
I think it was during these years, the mid to late 1980s, that Reimut's drinking increased, and their relationship ended probably around 2000 or 2001, when he moved into the Pender Street studio.
Reimut enjoyed woodwork and tinkering with cars. He made Anne a coffee table once for her birthday, and he made me a chess table. He also built furniture to order, and he built us a pair of wall units for our sound system and liquor cabinet. In recent years he earned money doing renovations and this past summer he told me he made somebody a butcher block. 25 or 30 years ago I hired him to build our sundeck, but usually we just helped each other out of friendship and he enjoyed building things outdoors. We built my picket fence together, and while it isn't straight, it's still standing. He often helped me with my car, too.
Reimut probably started professional photography after 1974 and while he was still driving taxi. He took our wedding photos that year, and we may have provided the film, since it was never clear who owned the negatives. I'm pretty sure he didn't want to be paid so I doubt if he was in the business by then. He didn't have a darkroom at 701 Lucas, and he would have created one when he turned professional.
When he bought into Delta Sunshine Taxis, he noticed there was no Car 1, so he appropriated that number over the protests of the other fleet owners. He must have owned two cabs, because we have a picture of Christine, Anne, my baby daughter and me beside a Chevrolet Delta Sunshine taxi with a dent in the side and the number 82 painted on the hood.
He was not a conformist by any means; he was probably the first Vancouver area cab owner to use a 1975 Volkswagen Rabbit as a taxi; all the taxis in those days were big cars. He was still at 768 Lucas during these years; his bedroom was a few steps up from the living room, above the garage which was his woodworking shop. He kept his taxi(s) at home, and his drivers were his friends, particularly Bob and I think Sean. They were often hanging around when I'd show up.
After selling his taxi business in 1979 or 1980, he hired himself out to haul junk and rubble in a big four-wheel drive pickup with high plywood sides. I think he had it before leaving 768, and I remember seeing it at No. 9 Road.
It may have been around this time that he turned to photography for his livelihood. He did a lot of commercial photography, including high quality scenic photos to be used as wallpaper murals in office buildings and he was proud that a series of his pictures were used by the B.C. Liquor Control Board as anti-drinking poster ads in its stores. He took nude and semi-nude photos too, which he called boudoir photographs, for ladies to give their partners.
The bedroom in the No. 9 Road house doubled as a studio, but to get there, customers and models had to drive for miles along the Fraser River dyke from either east or west, and there were no buses. This led him to rent a two-room studio in a turn-of-the-century commercial building on West Pender St. in Vancouver. The studio was on the third floor with a massive steel door. His desk, filing cabinets and such were in the reception room, and the huge studio proper overlooked the street. A fashion designer's workshop was down the hall, so there were always young ladies passing his door who were potential customers and models. The studio was fully outfitted with lights, light umbrellas, a mattress for the boudoir pictures, and pull-down backdrops. He made a darkroom to one side where there were two or three large utility sinks.
When Reimut and Joanne separated, he moved into the studio. It was not zoned as living accommodation, so he always worried the building owner would find out he lived there. He used the public toilet on the floor below, cooked on a hotplate and showered in his darkroom sinks. He got a deal on his rent as building manager, responsible for light maintenance, collecting rents and finding new tenants, although that caused him grief after the fire.
Reimut enjoyed knowing all the free parking places near his studio, and he loved to find a parking meter that was out-of-order because he could park there a long time. If he was ticketed, he enjoyed being able to have the City cancel his tickets because the meter was broken.
After Anne and I started our family, and after Reimut and Singne split, we didn't see him so often, but we'd visit once in a while. As our daughters grew older, I became less comfortable with his boudoir photographs, some of which were on his walls, and I consciously distanced us from him, so we didn't see him often while he was at No. 9 Road or West Pender.
In July 2003 the Pender St. building was destroyed by fire and Reimut lost everything – personal possessions, cameras, photography equipment, business records, his enormous image bank and even the cornet I had just given him. He was devastated and I don't think he ever recovered from the trauma. He told me the fire started when a tenant on the main floor ignited some spilled hashish oil, and he was very critical of the firemen. He was sure the building would have been saved if they had followed his advice to go in from the back alley. The fire caused him even more stress when a tenant sued him over the fire. The suit was eventually dropped, but he wouldn't have been able to pay damages even if he'd been found liable.
While I mostly have good memories of Reimut, sometimes he was a jerk. I took my first new car, a '74 Ford Maverick, over to show him. Instead of the normal nicey-nicey things a person says to a friend with a new car, he kicked the front bumper and said, "Five mile an hour bumpers, eh?" He couldn't have known that I'd still remember that moment 40 years later. My brother-in-law Ron has a similar story: when his son showed Reimut his new radio-controlled model car, Rye put his foot on it and it was crushed. I'm sure he didn't mean to wreck it, he would have just been trying to play, but this sort of thing sticks with you. He was socially awkward too. One friend spoke about going to a restaurant with him, when he held up a piece of meat on his fork and loudly complained "you call this well done?" That was so typical of him. I never heard him tell an off-colour joke, but his attempts at humour were often awkward and just didn't go over.
We took Reimut in after the 2003 fire, but he was not an easy house guest and he wasn't going to be able to get his photography business going again living 45 minutes out of town. He found a hut on Pine St. between 11th and 12th Avenues which appealed to him. He recently said he picked it because it was not attached to the main building and he wouldn't have to worry about another fire. In any event, I gave him a little money to cover rent, smokes, booze, groceries, and gas for a couple of months until he could get back on his feet, and we fixed him up with a cellphone.
Here he is, standing in his Pine Street doorway looking toward his car, in 2012 (screen shot from GoogleStreetView). The place is tiny, about 10 x 20 feet, but it has a living room, bathroom, kitchen and an attic for his bedroom. Most importantly for Reimut, the door opens to the street, allowing him to make many friends in the neighbourhood. 
He outfitted the downstairs room as a studio, with backdrops, light umbrellas, and so forth, but the photography business has changed dramatically in the last 10 years with the proliferation of digital cameras, and his business never recovered. It is probably during this period that he began offering his services as a “professional intuitive serenity counsellor, with over 30 years experience in counselling and coaching others.” I'm told he has helped people, and I know he also made many good friends during those years.
Our lives went in different directions after my family and I spent a couple of years in Ottawa. We would often have him over at Christmas or Thanksgiving and I'd drop in to see him when I was in Vancouver, and he'd usually ask Singne and me to spend an evening near Christmas with him. It was snowing too heavily near my house the last time (2009?), so I was unable to get there.
We often spoke on the phone and kept in touch by email until 2010. That spring, I was worried about upcoming surgery and a member of my family was ill too. When he called to tell me about his counselling venture, I told him I thought what he was doing was dangerous. He was taken aback and pressed me to explain, but I couldn't articulate my reasons and I hung up. That was unkind, and it wasn't until I learned he'd been in hospital last spring that I called to apologize. He was happy to hear from me, and our friendship restarted where it had left off.
We spoke and traded email jokes often. I seldom go into the city, and I regret never making it in to see him again before he was taken to the hospital again. I phoned his nursing station daily but he was unconscious the first few days. On the Saturday the nurse said he was awake, and I had her ask if he wanted me to come see him. She told me he squeezed her hand four times for yes. I went in on Sunday, but he was heavily sedated still and didn't react to my voice. I visited twice more, but he was unconscious both times.
While Reimut was in great spirits after his first stay in the hospital, his B.C. Med had lapsed and he received a huge bill for his hospitalization. B.C. Med wouldn't cover him and because he wasn't a Canadian citizen, wouldn't let him sign up again without a permanent resident card. Having become a landed immigrant before PRCs were invented, he couldn't get one because he needed other documents which he'd never had or which were lost in the fire. I did a little research for him and found out how he could get a replacement landed immigrant certificate to use to get a PRC. I don't know if he followed through, and it makes no difference now.
When Reimut mentioned having been in contact with his father's other children, I got the impression this was just in the last little while. I've learned now that he has been in contact with them for some time, that his cousin in Germany came to visit in the 1970s and the 1980s, that he and Singne visited his maternal uncle when they drove to Ontario in 1974, that a half-sister came to see him last summer, and that his father had tried to contact him more than once. He was not alone in the world after all.
One way or another, Reimut was unhappy for years. He found it very difficult to cope with his mother when she was disabled, and it was only with his friend's help that he was able to sort things out when she died. After 2003 he lived hand-to-mouth, could barely manage his debt, and always had difficulty with bureaucrats. The fire devastated him, and being sued made things worse. He smoked heavily. He seemed happy about being able to stop drinking after coming out of hospital the first time, but I'm told he began drinking again, and that is what killed him.
Our conversations often started well, but would soon turn to doom and gloom. We traded a lot of jokes by email, we could laugh together and enjoy each other's company, but his problems were always on the radar.
Reimut was my best friend, other than my wife, for nearly 50 years. It's hard to lose my oldest friend, but I'm glad his troubles are over now.
David
2015-01-22