Circa 1976 — Left, smoking a cigarette, filling in as head photographer, is ex Vancouver Province photographer Ross Kenward who died yesterday in New Zealand. Ross left the newspaper during the long strike of 1978 to shoot film for CBC and eventually ended up back in his native New Zealand to work for TVNZ where he won a number of awards. I first met him at the dress rehearsal for a play while shooting freelance for the Vancouver Sun. It was a easy assignment for me but not for Ross as his Province supplied cameras fell apart before our eyes including the barrel of one lens completely unscrewing itself, almost falling on the floor as he focused. Ross was constantly late for work and the two way radio message from his car, “I’m on the bridge”, which we would hear about 15 minutes after his scheduled start, became a running joke as for a long time the boss, Don Mcleod, assumed this meant the Granville Bridge about two minutes from the office but we, the photogs, knew it could have been any bridge, say the Second Narrows, the Lions Gate, or even the Pattullo Bridge, all of them a half hour to an hour away depending on traffic. I missed him when he left to shoot film. The Province newspaper missed him.
The photographer in the background is Dave Patterson. The picture was taken in the Province photo department office at 2250 Granville.