4 - Friday, June 8, 1990 - North Shore News

Why not speak ill of the dead?

A BUNCH of us were talking the other day about the dead.
This brought up the question of whether we should speak ill
of them. I say we should, if they are the undeserving dead.

By the undeserving dead, ] mean
people who, when alive, did not
seem especially deserving. OF
course few of us are, like my own
sainted self, completely deserving,
quite without fault or pustule, But
we are a select and exquisite mi-
nority. I am not speaking about
us.

(By the way, ! have told my wife
that when I die, I want her to ad-
vise my friends that they should
feel free to weep and scream and
grind their teeth, moaning an ir-
reparable loss: ‘‘Trev’d like it that
way." Just in case you may have
any thoughts of attending, and had
pictured a wake featuring a merry
jazz band and kegs of beer.)

But, getting back to the
undeserving, and whether we
should speak ill of them: I don’t
mean just out-and-out rotters. I
mean that if a serious undeserving
quality exists in an otherwise pretty
standard-issue human being, we
should speak perfectly ill of that
dead person’s undeserving quality.

For example, the late Quebec
premier, Rene Levesque, doubtless
had many attractive attributes,
though I wouldn’t have wanted to
kiss him — if Levesque ever kissed
anyone between cigarettes. But he
was sufficiently undeserving that [
spoke very ill of him when he died.
He had, people seemed to forget,
wanted to break up my country, or
said he did.

(If he didn’t really intend to,
which has been speculated upon,
so much the worse: he therefore
cruelly riled up people who

1700 CAPRI BOWRIDER

thought he meant it.)

So when Levesque died, I found
myself paddling furiously
upstream in a torrent of national
tears, crying out: ‘‘Fools! This

garden of
biases

Trevor Lautens

scoundrel wanted to destroy
Canada, and you're lamenting
him! What a bunch of knackerfess
numbs! Save your tears for a war
hero, or an honest woman who
brought up six fine children, not
one of whom became a lawyer, on
a washerwoman’s income!"’

What especially annoyed me was
discovering that Ontario, my home
and native province and supposed-
ly Canada’s heartland, wept even
louder than the others.

Then it occurred to me. Of

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course Ontario looked upon
Levesque fondly. When he won
Quebec for the separatist Parti
Quebecois in 1976, he seni one or
two hundred head offices in Mon-
treal scurrying for Toronto. He
threw more sweet corn into the
trough for Hogtown than anyone
in this century. Ontario should
have erected a golden monument
to him.

But Levesque is just an example.
What brought this subject to mind,
and from mind to the paper you
are holding, was the aforemen-
tioned group of people (go way
back to the first sentence) talking
so respectfully of someone dead.

My thoughts strayed to one of
those respected, honored dead —
still eulogized, years after his
death, in the city that he dominat-
ed as a great columnist, an out-
standing newspaperman.

And how he treated a raw,
unknown, fourth-string newcomer
of a columnist who shyly peeped
over his horizon. Me.

By the way, I wouldn’t bother to
try to identify him. I go way back
in the newspaper business, despite
my amazingly youthful looks. I
first began writing for a daily
paper around 1946, aged 11 or so,
and my first regular column — on
sports cars — began well over 30
years ago and half a continent
away.

So don’t think you can put a
naine to this legendary columnist
— who, after all, was oniy a
legend in his own city. Which is
the fate of even the best-known
newspaper columnists. Nobody
knows you 50 miles from town.
But there — there, in his kingdom
— he was monarch of all he
surveyed, and of all who surveyed

the paper's readers.

I was, in contrast, a cipher.

But someone thought I could
write. Let us not pause to praise
that wise editor’s insight,
foresight, and hindsight. Let us
just recail that he said: ‘*You’ll get
an extra $20 a week. Okay, $25.
It'll run Fridays.”"

And where? Put it this way. The
nether parts of that column came
within approximately two inches of
the lordly position occupied by the
great columnist’s masterful and
widely-read prose.

As that first Friday nervously
approached, the great columnist —
who knew everything in town —
naturally got to know about my
virginal appearance so close to his
own robust reportage.

And he came over and examined
me. After a few moments — there
was little to see — he began to talk
to me about it.

“I hear you’re going to write a
column,’’ he observed.

1 allowed that that was So.

“Pretty good,”’ he said. He
named certain other staffers, of
much greater age, experience, and
accomplishment, who had unszc-
cessfully petitioned the editor for
such a column.

} conceded that I was unworthy.
We talked for several minutes.
He, the columnist known by every

sensate person in town. I, hardly
known even by those on staff.
And, as I was painfully aware,
very unlikely to win a popularity
contest with them, many of whom,
I gleaned, would be crazed with
resentment when my timid little
piece appeared on Friday.

The great coluninist continued
to talk quite affably. At last he
stirred to go, the city thrown back

on the coverlet of night, awaiting
his discoveries and revelations.

And what kind, parting word
did that great cofumnist have?

He leaned forward with gritted
teeth and said: “‘1°ll Kill you."’

Then he turned and was gone.

And at that moment, all was
revealed. He was a great colum-
nist. Not then, not afterward, did
the mild-mannered newcomer ever
approach his lofty position. [t was
absurd to imagine that the
neophyte was even a tiny threat.
Yet the great columnist — for all
his attainment, the praise heaped
upon him, the promotion, the big
name, the big money, the big ex-
pense account — was wretchedly,
miserably insecure.

At that moment I promised
myself that — though it had been a
dream for years — I would never,
never become a great columnist.

And F’ve been as good as my
word.

Trevor Lautens is a Vancouver
Sun columnist.

e

Wiateo

Correction Notice
| Love Ya, Dad
Flyer appearing June 6

Page 8 — Turbo Jet 11

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