When the phrase came up in a crossword I was working on, it evoked a memory from Totem Park Residence at UBC. New to the city, I was living on scholarship money supplemented by funds advanced through the newly rolled-out Canada Student Loans program.
Even so, I couldn't quite make ends meet. As it happened, these ends included a Spanish guitar I'd seen at the Mediterranean Guitar Shop on West Tenth. After obtaining an emergency loan from a friend to buy it, I got a part-time job in the cafeteria kitchen to earn what I needed to pay her back.
Los Guitarreros de Mallorca, Palma, Mallorca, read the black hand-inked label. That instrument was one of the most thrilling purchases I ever made, and I have it downstairs still. Back then, I learned a few chords, carried it everywhere, and sang folk and protest songs every chance I got.
Sixty-seven was the summer of love, and that fall I started university. Once I had the guitar, something about the zeitgeist made me do it -- I embroidered the Latin phrase for "love conquers all" on a sweatshirt. Amor vincit omnia was the word order I used; I can't recall where I got the information, as I never did study Latin at university.
That baggy shirt was okay to wear around the rez, but it was a mistake to wear it to my kitchen job. To me, it was just an abstract foreign phrase, a stance on life that was lauded by my generation. But to one of the full-time kitchen workers, a middle-aged foreign man from a European country, it apparently meant something else.
Devoid of English, he waylaid me after work one day, and I had to dodge around the sofas and chairs of the lounge to get away. Needless to say, I never wore the shirt again.
A small loss of innocence.
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