4@ - Friday, January 4, 1991 - North Shore News An orphanless Christmas Is a truly sad event I HAD intended something serious. The Implications of Reunification for the Turkish Guest Workers of West Germany. An Examination of Stephen Leacock’s Report on the Banana Riots in Trinidad. The Effects of Sludge on the Sewer System of the District of North Vancouver. But something even more serious turned up. Rather, didn’t turn up. William Littler Didn’t Turn Up on Christmas Eve. This takes some explaining. Soon after I arrived in Van- couver in 1963, a poor immigrant boy from Ontario carrying a cou- ple of worn suitcases and a few tattered clippings, I was taken in by Roy and Margaret Peterson, a warm-hearted, easily duped couple in West Vancouver who already had four small children but who regularly found a place at the table for their adopted son, me. I was 28 at the time. However, Llooked much younger. I suppose that leaning up against their door and crying my little eyes out, in- variably around supper-time, created that effect. Roy and Margaret were and are world-class people. Roy, of course, is the Vancouver Sun’s cartoonist and truly one of the besi at his craft anywhere, whose credits include winning the Mcn- treal Salon in Expo year, beating a couple of thousand cartoonists from around the world. Margaret is a top wife and mother and runs the family business on the side, carefully en- suring that Roy doesn’t cut his drawing hand on any broken bot- tles of single-malt Scotch. Soon after we met, the Peter- sons generously invited me to their home on Christmas Eve, knowing that a poor retreaded bachelor is never So likely to die a starveling in a snowdrift as on that festive occasion. And where does William Littler come in? Well, wherever there is a good meal, essentially. Littler, known across the gourmet world as Willy the Lunch, was the Sun’s music critic when I arrived. Also a bachelor. And with an even more forlorn look than I could muster at my best. Somewhere around 1965, the Petersons were incautious enough to invite Littier, me, and yet a third bachelor — Finley Russell, one of Roy’s oldest friends who in fact looked upon us as latecoming interlopers with even grosser ap- petites than his own — to their Gordon Avenue house for Christmas Eve. After that, they couldn’t break us of the habit. Littler moved away to become the Toronto Star's music critic, sometime lec- turer at York and McMaster universities and the Royal Con- servz’ ory of Music, CBC com- menta or, and owner of a house in Toronto’s Casa Loma district that is so palatial it was once used as a set for an ambassador’s resi- dence in a television series. But say this for our Littler. Big though he has become, he has never forgotten a free lunch. No, the lad has come back to his roots, and the incredible spread put on by Margaret and her now-grown family (a fifth child, Geoff, came along after Finley, Littler and me), every Christmas Eve for a quarter of a century. Somehow, Littler always finds some convincing professional reason to be in these parts, 3,000 miles from Toronto, on the old Dec. 24, The Whonnock Fife & Drum Band. The Oregon Mar- ching Barber Shop Quartet. The Veterans of the Spanish-American Trevor Lautens GARDEN CF BIASES War Kazoo & Harmonica Or- chestra, Such intensely significant musical aggregations have drawn his critical attention, coincidental- ly in December when the night air is clearest for fully appreciating them, every year for a quarter of a century. Except this time. What happened to him would make 2 novel. An inveterate traveller, Littler insisted on arranging to cross the Wild West from Chicago by bus and train. Everything went wrong. In Wyoming, it was so cold — 10° below zero F — that huge trucks were stalled along the highway like carcasses, their diesel fuel turned to jelly. Littler’s bus hit one of them. It was full of cattle, which had frozen to death. In Salt Lake City, the wind-chill factor drove the effective temperature down to a murderous minus 70° F. The Red Cross set up emergency cots for stranded travellers. The fastidious, bespec- tacled Littler preferred to stay at a first-class hotel. He missed connections al] over the place and suffered from revolting contacts with ordinary people, like the 15-year-old drug addict who insisted on telling him the story of his life. Littler arrived at his mother’s Vancouver home at 112 p.m. Christmas Eve — too fate for the Peterson’s glorious nosh-up. We of course knew nothing of this. We were too busv lamenting a double blow. For Finley, who is the oldest Christmas Eve orphan of us all, didn’t show either. Bog- ged down with family duties elsewhere. “To absent friends,’’ said I, raising my glass, a tear trickling down my furrowed cheek. ‘*‘Ah, well, more for us. Has your beautiful daughter Lisa made her famous pumpkin cheesecake again this year, hmmm?”’ You can see I was devastated. My wife, children and ! did our best to make up for Littler’s absence, But that's a big mouth to fill. And without Finley, the spark plug of all those Christmas Eves, the eating was hardly interrupted by conversation. Why wasn't Joy Metcalfe around to record this wrench in a great West Vancouver tradition? New press council directors named THE B.C. PRESS Couiicil recent- ly elected tvo new directors and re-elected two others for two-year terms. The newcomers are former Vancouver alderman May Brown, a public representative, and Carol Murray, publisher of the Cran- brook Daily Townsrnman. They succeed Jean Turnbull of Van- couver, a public director, and Iris Christison, publisher of the Prince Rupert Daily News, whose terms Jim Cuthbert Happy New Year To All Thank You For Your Heartwarming Support Wishing You Peace, Joy and Health in 1991 expired Dec. 31. The two have served on the board of the council since it was formed in 1983. Re-elected to the board were Peter Faris of Nelson, public director, and Susan MacDonald, special projects editor at the Pro- vince newspaper. Other continuing directors are, from the public, retired rear- admiral Robert D. Yanow of Vic- toria, chairman; J.J. Denholm of Vancouver and David R. Williams of Duncan; and from newspapers, Roy Nagel, editor of the Prince George Citizen, and Clyde Wicks, publisher of the Nanaimo Free Press. The council’s main purpose is to consider complaints from the public about the press that have not been resolved between com- plainants and the newspapers in- volved. Complaints must be about editorial matters. 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