Reflections On This 2012 Mother's Day

Sunday, 13 May 2012

Reflections On This 2012 Mother's Day

Welcome to my brand new blogspot.

Mother's Day has always been a reflective day for me. Having lost my mother several years ago and recently helping friends cope with the losses of their mothers, this day inevitably came to a full circle in many ways.

I would like to dedicate my first post to my dear and great friend, Steven Bortnick, who passed away on Mother’s Day, May 12^th, 1991. The many years that I was blessed to be his friend were the absolute best times, which I fondly remember to this day. We met when I moved to Montreal’s east end and he happened to be my next door neighbour. One day he leaned over from his balcony and said “Hi, I’m Iki!” in that elfin voice of his and the rest was history.

Steven was born on April 17^th, 1954 in Montreal, Quebec. Throughout his life, he was known to his close friends as Iki or Iki Elfin. For the first five years of his life, he lived with his grandmother, whom he fondly called “his mother”. His French Canadian mother, Charlotte, regained custody of him shortly thereafter and brought him to Georgetown, Ontario, where he lived and graduated from Georgetown District High in 1971. Steven had an uncle, Yves, whom he called his “brother” and who lived with the Bortnick family for many years.

Steven’s father Steve was an explorer geophysicist and in his 20s Steven would accompany his father to work in the great expanse of bush of Northern Ontario as an instrument operator helper. Steve taught his son all the tricks of the trade and this eventually became Steven’s trade. Every fall, Steven would depart to work up north with his dad, returning in the spring to enjoy the Montreal weather and summer festivities.

Steven certainly lived up to his Aries sign! He was magical, gifted and his lust for life sizzled. He was unstoppable when he was “revved up and ready to go”. He had a passion for music and his vast vinyl collection rivaled anyone’s at that time. The first thing he would do when he got back into town after working up north was to hit the numerous Montreal record stores and buy up hundreds of dollars of LPs. He would spends hours mixing his music onto 90 minute cassettes, which was de rigeure in the 80s, hand draw the original cover art and gift them to his family and friends. One of his favorite things to do was take black and white self-portraits in the St. Mathieu metro station photo booth (that was the best one in town, he insisted) and hand decorate them for his cover art.

Steven also enjoyed the Montreal nightclub scene and would spend hours ripping up the dance floor in Montreal's many night clubs partying the nights away with his friends. Over the years, he had also become a self–taught professional photographer specializing in black and white self-portraits and would take his camera with him everywhere he went just in case there was a photo op. The photos displayed here are but a few of his works taken between the late 70s and 80s and represent a small fraction of his photographic legacy.

Steven passed away at the St. Luc Hospital in Montreal on Mother’s Day 1991, his mother at his side. His last words to her were “It’s Mother’s Day today. So was yesterday”. He confided to his mother that his greatest fear was “to be forgotten”. By publishing this blog in his memory, we, his friends and family have ensured that he will never be forgotten. Thank you to his family for allowing me to publish his photos. We love and miss you, Iki.