Gabe Khouth
Gabe was fond of telling a ghost story. It involved staying in a haunted hotel in 2013 on one of our motorcycle journeys together. He had got out of his bed in the middle of the night, walked to the bathroom on the other side of the room, noting I was asleep in mine, then turned the light on to be shocked: I was in the bathroom, standing in front of the mirror and turned to him mechanically, as though an automaton, without a word. Gabe, half asleep, went back to bed to wait his turn, before he realized just what happened. He would tell that story by campfires, while editing our latest motorcycle ride video and over a pint. I wasn’t in that bathroom. What Gabe saw was an illusion, or perhaps, a spirit.
We first met in 1988 at an audition for a film called Terminal City Ricochet. We were both sixteen and auditioning for the part of a rebellious skateboarder. Gabe got the part. It had been a first film audition for me, whereas Gabe had been at it for a little longer. We both had the same agent in Vancouver, where I would soon move, deciding to go up for more acting work. In 1989, after several auditions and callbacks, I got the part of Peter Andersson on a CBC-TV series called Northwood, and I found out I’d be working alongside Gabe Khouth. How lucky I was!
We would become friends as we found ourselves on set together a great deal. In 1991 we would be roommates, renting a main floor of a house near Grouse Mountain, while we worked on Northwood and auditioned for what else we could. We decided to take a road trip to Los Angeles in my VW Golf, not yet twenty, where we enjoyed the freedom of the open road. Although later on, we would travel the open road together using a different mode of travel.
In 2000 I was living in the same house in East Vancouver as Gabe, when I decided to try something new. The British Columbia Safety Council was offering a three-weekend motorcycle skills course. Training for the first two weeks would take place at an old airplane runway at Boundary Bay near Tsawassen and the third weekend would be out on the open road, on their motorbikes, when we’d have our skills test and, ideally, walk away with our Class 6 motorbike license. I regularly reported to Gabe about my progress, the ups and downs (much of which I describe in Nearly 40 on the 37) and the thrills and spills. I passed my test and came home one day with a battered Yamaha Seca 400. This got Gabe interested, and a little while later he’d be riding a yellow Buell.
When my interest in motorcycling turned to riding further afield then to work and back, exploring the province by motorcycle, I bought a Kawasaki KLR650. Gabe soon after found a Ducati Monster and would turn up at my house (by this point we were both married and living in different domiciles) wearing a one-piece black riding suit and looking pretty spiffy and speedy. My garb of choice was a hi-viz yellow/green jacket and black riding pants. You could say we had our own styles.
But even though we did have our differences, we kept getting together and going for rides, usually up the Sea-to-Sky highway, or concocting better ways to document our rides on video, either by GoPro or Sena 10c or even more primitive methods. Gabe was a talented videographer. If he hadn’t been so successful as an actor, I think he would have made a great D.O.P. for film and TV. He was always thinking about the shot; about how he could communicate what he was seeing, and the mood behind it, visually. He was a great talent, in so many ways.
This visual documenting would eventually materialize into our YouTube channel Open Road MC. The medium gave us an outlet to upload our motorcycle travels, sometimes done together, other times due to family commitments or other scheduling roadblocks done separately. But it was always creative, and out of the ordinary. I remember how YouTube frustrated both of us, had us puzzled over why product videos and over-the-top crass stuff got so many views and ours were modestly attended. But, hey, sour grapes aside, our videos were pretty good. We put so much of ourselves into them, and our differing personalities came through, as did our friendship, which lasted for over thirty years.
People ask me about him and our friendship sometimes, and there are times that I wonder why we clicked so well. He came from the tough side of Vancouver, me from the comparatively genteel surroundings of Victoria. We had both become motorcyclists for our own reasons, but we both enjoyed riding and I think this drive to ride fuelled our friendship well beyond when I split from acting years ago. We also both had kids of our own and parenting became a topic we would talk about.
We had several regional motorcycle adventures, but our lengthiest had to be our Sunshine Coast ride over a weekend in April 2014. We rode to the end of Highway 101, to Lund, and stayed overnight in the historic part of Powell River, at the Old Courthouse Inn right in front of the pulp and paper mill that put Powell River on the map. The inn was the old courthouse, police station and jail, converted into a place to stay for travellers potentially interested in exploring the old part of the town, including the Patricia Theatre, the longest running single-screen movie theatre in Canada. Our room in the inn did not suit our attire as we removed dusty riding gear amongst dainty Victorian-era trinkets. We also knew it was haunted, and you already know the ghost story that Gabe and I would talk about for years after.
One telling of it, at the blazing fire pit of our campsite at Alice Lake north of Squamish while motocamping, was so vibrant, as Gabe told it to the camera we’d brought. He was a consummate storyteller and we had many laughs telling stories together. Many of those stories happened without a camera being switched on, and so will remain between us. Such is the nature of travelling with a partner.
I can still hear him say it with a grin:
“Let’s ride.”
I miss you my friend.
