A Story of Vancouver in the ‘70s, part 6

That memorable night in the ‘70s began with an invitation to dinner at Colin and Diane’s new place. We hadn’t seen them as often as we did when they showed us around Vancouver in the early days but we were still friendly. Diane and Christine came up with some interesting schemes when they got together. 

The new place was on 12^th Avenue. It was a flat in a low rise building just down from city hall, not an area I was very familiar with. It seemed like a pretty good part of town. We found their door and rang the bell. There were footsteps and then the sound of a door chain being released and then another and another. Chris and I exchanged puzzled looks as we waited for the door to open. Then there was Diane’s smiling face and there were hugs all around. 

Chris asked her about the locks. Diane shrugged, “Lot’s of crime in the area,” she said. We had a great evening eating, chatting and playing a game. But, as I sat there I started to feel uneasy, like someone was walking across my grave. Was it the thought of all those locks to keep out intruders or was there something else that had me rattled? 

The feeling didn’t go away after that night. From remarks that she let drop I knew that Chris was uneasy about something as well. The feelings festered until we came out and discussed them. We both felt that something bad was going to happen. We had to get out of Vancouver. So that was how we ended up in Calgary.