The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 6

The VANCOUVER SUN: May 1, 1973 'v if 4. I Vincent Massey Raymond Massey PAGE Sill I iff 4 eoffirey Massey 1 he name is familiar IMAGES $4, jr wmm. Clyne had the jitters. In its half-finished state, he kept muttering: "What on earth is this? Like most people, he now loves it.) The Erickson-Massey firm dissolved "amiably" in '72. The dissolution coincided with Geoff's successful bid for an aldermanic seat, but one had nothing to do with the other.

(Although in partnership, he could not have run for civic election. "How can you say to a partner and 40 employees, who are largely involved in institutional work, that they can't have anything more to do with the city? You can't be on council and be asking for concessions for clients at the same time, (a) You wouldn't, (b) You couldn't. My firm is doing nothing in Vancouver If suddenly handed unlimited power and funds, Massey would get a rapid transit system in motion immediately. And open up the waterfront: "You might as well be living in Toronto. You don't see the mountains, you don't see the water.

The waterfront is completely lost to the public because of the railroads. Of coursej relocating railroads is a lengthy business." He would legislate better designs and outlaw "all those crappy buildings" that go up. "At the moment we can't do any better than make the very worst projects mediocre." Like most sensibilities, a sense of style is usually instilled when you're very young. Because his Canadian-born father moved to London the only stage for a serious actor Geoff was born in England. And like most English boys he was settled in a boarding school by the time he was eight.

Raymond Massey had his own repertoire company, and was considered by theatre, people to be very avant garde. Soon he was making an equally forceful impression on Hollywood and, at 12 years old, Geoff was crossing the Atlantic alone on majestic ocean liners to spend summer holidays with his father. Britain. is overloaded with great family names. France has hers, and even the United States can muster a few.

In Canada, the great family name is Massey; perhaps the only which conjures up such immediate and diverse forms of recognition. When you hear the name Massey, you. may think of Massey synonymous with farm machinery. Or a distinguished movie star: Raymond Massey. Or the famous governor-general: vinceniriviassey.

Geoffrey Massey is the first-born son of Raymond Massey and nephew of Vincent Massey. He has capitalized on his own talent, never his last name. People all over the world who follow architecture know, about the stimulating, magnetic designs which came from the firm of Erickson-Massey. People in Vancou- ver know Geoff Massey as an outspoken alderman and vice-chairman of civic development in the new council at city hall. But many people never associate Geoff Massey with that Massey family, because he's never pushed it.

Raymond Massey. is one of the world's best known actors. His son Geoff, at 49, is appearing in front of the. camera for the first time in his life. The film is for one of several groups hotly bidding for Vancouver's third television outlet.

A scene is being filmed on a large yacht out in English Bay. The water is calm, but suddenly, freakishly, the big yacht tilts and terrifyingly keeps plunging over. With nose barely grazing the water, one can't help but glance up at the star to see how he's reacting to this unscripted potential disaster. Geoff is very cool. Like his father's, Geoff Massey's face could have been carved out of the side of a mountain.

Raymond was equally formidable as Abe Lincoln or an Arab villain. He was granite perfection, a characteristic which, in itself, doesn't usually produce Star quality. John Wayne has flat feet. Marilyn was sexy, but also possessed a quality as tender as a milkweed pod. And across If--' ir i ii wi i mr i architect-alderman turns actor ited that other majestic backdrop, Government House, where his Uncle Vincent resided as governor-general.

His memories of that gentleman in office are somewhat muffled, although he did enjoy his visits as an exercise in a radical departure of lifestyle. "He was terribly remote and stiff when he was in office. It seemed like he had been born in pin-striped pants. I remember him constantly rushing around with five minutes to get into white tie and tails and get his shoes shined to be in the tight place at the right time." His uncle may have been in the right place at the right time, but Geoff would never convince the Government House butler that he was a true "When you arrive at Government House, the butler takes your bags and unpacks them which I always found infuriating and a terrible invasion of privacy. Anyway, the butler came up to me, very discreetly, and said: 'Sir, I'm afraid I can't find your I confessed to him that I don't wear pyjamas.

A look of absolute horror came over his face. I'm sure he never forgave me." He never really knew his uncle until he retired. "He changed completely then, and I became much closer to him." While Vincent Massey was governor-general, Geoff had one of those wonderful, idiotic go-arounds with the government. He still treasures his stack of correspondence. He was due in Europe in two weeks, and discovered he had let his passport expire.

He would simply renew it or so he thought. Prove you're a Canadian citizen, said the passport department. "I pointed out that my original passport proved I was a Canadian citizen. That doesn't count, they wrote back. I dashed off another letter saying that by -Paul Rockett Photo in a commercial film virtue of serving in the armed forces I was a Canadian citizen.

Not good enough. I told them that I had lived here for the past 12 years and that my father, Raymond Massey, was born in Canada, which was a well known fact. Not good enough. That my uncle was governor-general of Canada also a well known fact. Still not good enough.

"My father's birth certificate had been lost or burnt or something, but he finally dug up a letter from the mayor of Toronto wishing him godspeed when he went to France in 1915. We sent the passport office that and they finally realized how ridiculous the whole thing was and sent me my passport. I could just see myself taking the citizenship exams and learning who the prime ministers and the fathers of Confederation Geoff sees his father once or twice a year, in Hollywood or wherever. One idly wonders what Raymond Massey's reaction might be to his son's performance on screen. This film he is in will never be seen by the public but, like his father, Geoff is loaded with what movie directors excitedly call "screen presence." Geoff Massey: architect, politician, fledgling actor.

What do you want to do next? "As the saying goes, you only live once," he answers. "You have 60 years of productive life and then you're on the decline. I want to do as much as possible. I'd like to sail around the world. I wanted to be in politics.

I want-" ed to be an architect. I'd like to make movies, write or direct. Maybe, I'll get a chance to do all of them." He pushes his sunglasses on top of his head and flashes a lopsided movie star grin. "But I definitely don't want to be an actor." GEOFFREY MASSEY one of the most memorable experiences of my life. These perfect models of 18th-century Paris.

They were all so real." In an English school, being the son of a famous movie star didn't have the notoriety or ego-building influence it might have somewhere else. At Stowe, everybody was the honorable son of lord somebody or other. To be the son of an actor in such a rarified ambience was, as Geoff piquantly puts it, "a little beneath the pale, to tell the truth." In British tradition, Geoff was closer to his nanny than anybody. His mother an artist and his father separated when Geoff was VA. He met his mother for lunch once in London when he was 25, and has never seen her since.

Meanwhile, back in Ontario, the family farm machinery business, Massey Harris, was flourishing. Raymond been only briefly involved, packing shell cases during the early part of the First World War, then firing them in France during the second half. The elder brother Vincent stayed on with the firm until he was appointed first Canadian ambassador in Washington, and then Canadian high commissioner in London. (He ran once for political office, and was soundly defeated.) Vincent was later appointed Canada's first native-born governor-general. It was Vincent who persuaded their father to let Raymond enter the theatre.

"My grandfather," says Geoff, "was a very puritan type, who didn't think it was fitting to go on the stage. My uncle had a long talk with him, and told him how desperately my father wanted to be an actor. My grandfather finally relented, and said it was okay providing Raymond didn't act on Sundays." Geoff became a Canadian citizen when he joined the army in '42, and later vis Dark prelude to Watergate Geoff Massey's extraordinarily handsome and chiselled countenance comes an unexpected, vulnerable, lopsided grin momentarily frozen as this boat plunges over. And when he puts his sunglasses on top of his head and his hair sort of curls around them, one can only tentatively ask: "Why on earth didn't you ever want to be a movie star?" The big yacht slowly recovers and rights itself. "I never, ever, wanted to be an actor," Geoff answers.

"I remember my father telling my brother and sister: 'Unless you want to act with a passion, unless it is something you must do, don't do I never had that overwhelming urge. Maybe it's because, if your father has done extremely well, you wonder if you'll match his performance. So you want to try something else." The something else, of course, was architecture. "Some people are born to be architects. It is their destiny.

It really wasn't that way with me," he says with characteristic modesty. "I might have been other things. What other things? I'm riot sure, but certainly not an actor. I simply chose to be an architect." In 1946, after a four-year stint in the Canadian army, and then the paratroopers, he enrolled at Harvard, and in '48, graduated from the Harvard School of Design. He worked in Montreal but somehow never felt comfortable there, and moved to Vancouver in '52.

Although he was doing admirably on his own, in '64 he joined Arthur Erickson to create the fabled partnership that began with the Simon Fraser University design competition. We all know the spectacular designs which followed: SFU, of course, the Man in the Community Pavilion at Expo, the Canadian Pavilion at Osaka, the massive MacMillan Bloedel building in downtown Vancouver. (When the MB building was going up, it was one of the rare times in recent years that J. V. James Eayrs' observations the next two decades was to make much of America's overseas operations resemble less the work of a reputable foreign office than the work of some global Mafia.

There had persisted at the end of the Second World War, as there had at the end of the First, that attractive streak of idealism which had caused Herbert Hoover to exclaim "that through three hundred years America had developed something new in a way of life of a people, which transcended all others of history." But the descent Into the gutter, so long delayed, was swift when once begun. The U.S. policy community eagerly accepted counsel from hard-nosed strategists from Harvard that if it hoped to prevail In the struggle with communism for hearts and minds and vital interests, it should solicit "advice from the underworld, or from ancient despotisms." Once endowed with advice from both underworld and ancient despotism, the U.S. policy community made up for lost time. Its repertoire of dirty tricks included all that money could buy; and no underworld gang, no ancient despotic court, had a greater slush fund at its disposal.

So spying, bribing, blackmailing, murdering, became standard operating procedures. Presidents differed in their degree of interest, in and awareness of these dark facets, of their foreign policies. (Ike didn't want to know, JFK was fascinated.) But none tried to put a stop to them. As involvement in Vietnam grew more and more inextricable, dirty tricks became more and more excusable. Abnormality became the norm, exceptions found themselves the rule.

The dirty tricks were meant to stop at America's edge, okayed for export only just as the films produced by the U.S. Information Agency, however instructive or diverting, might not be screened for an American audience at home. But they could not stop at America's edge any more than whiskey during prohibition, heroin today. If spying, bribing, blackmailing, murdering, could be justified by America's noble ends Introducing the refreshing He hung around movie sets like The Shape of Things to Come, and Tale of Two Cities. The presences of Leslie Howard and Orson Welles were overshadowed by the magnificent sets.

"I will never forget The Shape of Things to Come. Here in this huge studio they had built a world of the future it was incredible. Maybe that's when I first started thinking about being an architect. "Visiting the set of Tale of Two Cities, which my father also starred in, was abroad, could they not be Justified by no less noble ends at home? And what end more noble, what end more compelling, than to frustrate the deliverance of the great Republic into the hands of those who, on their own admission, stood ready to legalize pot, supply abortion on demand, soak the rich, disarm in a hostile world, bring America's mission in Southeast Asia to a craven and dishonorable close? Such was the line of argument which swayed those Republicans who concluded sometime between George McGo-vern's sweep of the Wisconsin primary in April 1972 and the rolling of his bandwagon for nomination that any means were justified to stop such a man with such an outlook from becoming president of the United States. The means included sabotage of the democratic process.

For was not such a man with such an outlook as much an enemy of the people as any foreign leader in any foreign capital with aggressive designs upon their country? Such is the logic that led straight to the Watergate, and as such logics go there is much to be said on its behalf. Such logics, fortunately, cannot travel very far. They stumble upon and fall over their own premise in this case, the premise that in national security policy, ends justify means. The great Republic is now in a mess without a like in its long and largely honorable history. Who are the would-be saboteurs of its democracy? Every passing day identifies culprits higher up the White House line-of -command.

The president himself is no longer immune to a charge of which there can be hardly any graver. If Richard Nixon knew that his closest aides and associates the trusted Orange County minions were as ready to subvert an American presidential election as the CIA is ready to subvert elections in banana republics or emerald isles, he should be impeached. If Richard Nixon did not know, he should resign. Any enthusiasm for either of these outcomes is quelled by the reflection that his constitutional successor in both cases would not be the leader of the opposition but Spiro Agnew, vice-president of the United States. People are said to get the government they deserve: watching the gathoring storm over the White House, that seems somehow too harsh a verdict.

In May, 1952, George Kennan went to Moscow to assume his ill-fated ambassadorship. (Stalin was to declare him persona non grata, he quit Russia under a cloud.) It was a frigid season of the Cold War, and to the surprise of the newly-arrived ambassador, the quarters in Spasso House, his official residence, did not appear to be under electronic surveillance. Technicians were summoned from the United States to give the place a going il. a i uver. jeigiuug uie composition oi a dispatch so as to activate whatever bugging apparatus the Soviets might have installed, Kennan watched the experts as they searched the building room by room.

They located nothing. "I droned on with the dictation," Kennan records in his memoirs, technicians circulated around through other parts of the building. "Suddenly, one of them appeared in the doorway of the study and implored me, by signs and whispers, to "keep on, keep going' "Centreing his attention finally on a corner of the room just below a round wooden Great Seal of the United States that hung on the wall, he removed the seal, took up a mason's hammer and quivering with excitement, extracted from the shattered depths of the seal a small device, not much larger than a pencil, which, he assured me, housed both a receiving and a sending set, capable of being activated by some sort of electronic ray from outside the building The device and its ingenious housing were duly sent back to the United States. The Eisenhower administration decided to display them to the world for whatever propaganda value might accrue. Its representative at the United Nations, Henry Cabot Lodge, produced them before the astonished gaze of the Security Council and the averted gaze of Yakov Malik, as further evidence of the deceit and perfidy of Soviet international behavior.

One up for the Free World. That the Soviet Union's embassy in the United States might have been under similar surveillance is a thought that does not appear to have crossed George Kennan's mind because in all proba-. bility it wasn't. There had not yet developed within the Central Intelligence Agency that "Department of Dirty Tricks'? which over Try Cool Spring, the light beer that really refreshes without filling. Get yourself a taste of honest refreshment for a change.

by Labatts..