The Yellow Door was a bustling, three story, greystone house on a street lined with dozens of them. It however, was a world apart from the others. The Yellow Door "housed" a lot of diverse things. Chuck Baker and his wife Kathy lived on the third floor. Chuck was kind of the manager of the whole affair. He and Kathy were Canadians but sympathetic to the plight of American war resisters. The second floor was a library and the offices of The Student Christan Movement of McGill University. Father Roger Balk was pretty much the Lord and overseer of it all.

Now, it was the basement of The Yellow Door that actually gave The Yellow Door it's name. It was a coffeehouse, The Yellow Door Coffeehouse. During the day it served a 35 cent plate lunch to all comers. In the afternoon it played host to a casual gathering of pseudo-intellectuals, would-be philosophers, poets and the like who amassed to play bridge, chess and hearts and debate the world's problems over coffee and hot apple cider. At night it championed local folk singers and occasionally a touring up-and-comer. The first floor of the house was were most of the activity during the daylight hours took place. It was made up of "offices". That is, what was once a living room, parlor, dining room, kitchen and the like, had been converted into rooms of an office in nature and each housed a different social serviced type group or organization. Planned Parenthood, Legal Aid, etc. One of those groups was The Montreal Council To Aid War Resisters.

My first contact with The Council came in the form of one Bill Mullins. A bearded, bespectaled "hippie" some years my senior who had all the bedside manner of a doctor who also owned a funeral home. The absolute last things in the world that a nineteen year old who had just traveled a thousand miles to a foreign land where he knew not a soul wanted or "needed" to hear, were the exact things Bill Mullins said to me. "You can't stay here...You don't have enough education...You don't speak French...You have no trade...You'll never get Landed Status here in Montreal...You'll have to go to Calgary." He served up misery on a platter with a ho-hum, who-gives-a-shit attitude more befitting an army drill sergeant than a respresentative of a major anti-war movement organization. Fortunately for me and all of the others who would follow me to that address on Aylmer Street, Bill Mullins days were numbered. He was headed elsewhere and he was just marking time until he got there. If he had ever possessed the passion of a man in defiance of a nation it had long since abandoned him. There have been times when I have looked back on that day and recalled the numbness of the moment. I remember thinking that if I were the one behind that desk I would certainly try out a more positve attitude on those who sought my help in such a trying time of their lives. Little did I know that my chance to do just that was closer than I ever would have imagined.