Re: “University fight nothing new,” Letters, November 7
Anyone interested in bringing back a university to Nelson needs to reckon with something theologians call a locution, uttered to me by God in the spring of 1965: “The university is going, but the movies are coming.”
This is the first time I have made this statement generally public.
My spiritual advisers know all about it, of course, and I was also moved to mention it to Nelson newcomers Joy Barrett and her husband Craig Mackenzie, shortly after they settled here so Joy could take up her cultural office with the city.
Craig is a feature filmmaker, and I presume the new movie theatre city council has just approved of will be interested in showing his work.
The first stage of fulfilling the locution had to wait until 1986, when Steve Martin and Christine Lahti came to Nelson to make Roxanne and Housekeeping respectively. There have been a number of films made in the area since. Obviously God was not lying, although if I had quoted him aloud at the time, most people would have thought I was nuts. This was well before Vancouver became Hollywood North.
Besides, there was something much more serious for a theologian to deal with in 1965: the wretched state of the leadership of the Roman Catholic diocese of Nelson and so many of its priests, and worse than that, the sluggishness of the Vatican and the police in dealing with the worst of these problems.
I think Mr. Jeanes has just as much history to learn as he insists has Mr. Paolozzi, whose original letter I read with much interest.
Ken Lamb
Nelson