Nicol and His Brush with Me
In 1978, I was working for a multicultural-multilingual radio station in Vancouver. We called ourselves “cosmopolitan.” Our competitors called us “the ethnic station.” The popular Chinese and Italian language programming earned the money; shows and music in other languages were tolerated on air as long as their producers covered expenses, and English programs were aired begrudgingly to satisfy government regulations.
All this created an apathetic situation within which I had lots of freedom to propose and produce programming in English as long as I did it at no cost and if I did the work outside normal hours and on my own. When the professional development and personal agenda opportunities in this became evident to me, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to use this as an excuse and way to meet Eric Nicol.
I was in my late twenties, about the same age as grad student Nicol had been when attending the Sorbonne and collecting material for The Roving I, when I contacted him through his newspaper The Vancouver Province. I assumed Nicol would not know our radio station let alone our program and was surprised when he agreed and graciously invited me to his Point Grey home to record the interview and spend the afternoon with him. I can’t recall what he said in detail, but I know my questions were biographical and simple and that he was friendly, comfortable, and impressive to me.
He said as I left that he had never had a better time “installing tiles.” I wasn’t sure what he meant, smiled thinly, and ended my encounter with a confused look and awkwardness. Years later, I recalled the comment and realized for the first time that he was referencing the name of the radio show for which I was preparing my piece: “Mosaic.” I had never mentioned the name of the show to him. I guess he had checked me out. He was a creative writer and a humorist, but also a journalist who did his homework.
Maybe a Billion Laughs - Eric Nicol
When Eric Nicol died in February 2011, obituary pieces talked routinely about his shyness and penchant for privacy. Some said that by the 1970s, his proclivity for puns and sense of the absurd were viewed as dated and an echo of a bygone era with little connection to post-1960s modern readers. None of this resonates with my encounter with him, my recollections of his work, and what I consider the evidence.
Nicol remained popular and kept writing, laughing at himself, and publishing to the very end of his long life despite a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in his final days. He was building on a mountain of humorous achievement.
Nicol was born in Kingston, Ontario in 1919; yet it is hard to think of him as anything other than a citizen of B.C. and Vancouver where he lived almost his entire 91 years and where he achieved icon status as an extremely popular newspaper columnist.
I read his pieces religiously when I lived in Vancouver in the 1970s. His column came out a few times a week, making the days without it a little darker than those when it appeared to sweeten the coffee and lighten the morning routine. He once estimated his newspaper career output at around 6,000 individual columns. When his readership in the many tens of thousands is applied to a very conservative multiplier of two or three laughs per published column, it is easy to suggest that Nicol induced hundreds of millions of human laughs. Maybe a billion when you insert the impact of his plays, radio scripts, and books and the recalling and retelling of his quips and jokes. It is not a bad legacy and illustrates why Nicol was and is someone to admire.
I read his pieces religiously when I lived in Vancouver in the 1970s. His column came out a few times a week, making the days without it a little darker than those when it appeared to sweeten the coffee and lighten the morning routine. He once estimated his newspaper career output at around 6,000 individual columns. When his readership in the many tens of thousands is applied to a very conservative multiplier of two or three laughs per published column, it is easy to suggest that Nicol induced hundreds of millions of human laughs. Maybe a billion when you insert the impact of his plays, radio scripts, and books and the recalling and retelling of his quips and jokes. It is not a bad legacy and illustrates why Nicol was and is someone to admire.
Nicol was not a satirist in the sense that most of us know the term. Proudly apolitical, he was cheerful in the execution of his wit and avoided anything mean spirited. He managed to be engaging, amusing, and enlightening by using his humour for emphasis and illustration as he communicated the simple truths of the everyday with thoughtfulness.
But more than a humorist, he was an erudite master of many techniques and a multi-layered practitioner of the craft of writing. He defined himself as a writer writ large. Despite his addiction to whimsy and comical musings, he did not want to be remembered as solely a humour writer and took pride in the impact of his serious pieces which included a well referenced history of the City of Vancouver and high profile advocacy against capital punishment. The latter effort brought him a journalistic badge of honour in the form of a contempt of court ruling and fine. His talent as a writer manifested in other formats including plays, notably Like Father, Like Fun, which was well received in Canada despite an unsuccessful brush with Broadway in 1967.
A few of Nicol’s forty or so books such as the one published just months before his death, Script Tease (2010), are cast as reflections upon the profession of writing and a guide to young writers.
This last book presents some of the standard fare of creative writing courses in an effective Nicol-like way. But those looking for a comprehensive handbook or roadmap to a writing career might be disappointed. The premise of a textbook on writing serves primarily as another prop for Nicol’s humour. His only instructive messages are that a career in writing is not an easy way to make a living, that writers are in general a boring, introverted, sorry lot, and that commercial success often falls upon the vile.
Still, his thoughts on writing are worthy of study. In fact, reading his books can be among the best exercises for aspiring writers if only it reminds them to not take themselves and their craft too seriously, to keep their pecuniary expectations in check, and to try to have fun.
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Eric Nicol was the first person to win three Stephen Leacock Medals for Humour, and he was awarded the Order of Canada in 2001. In 1995, Eric Patrick Nicol he became the first recipient of the annual George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for an exemplary literary career in his beloved British Columbia.
This link is among the best of those that reviewed his life and career after his passing.
Trivias Humorous - Ojibway Melody Trivia
Click for Review of Ojibway Melody
1947 Leacock Medal Winner
TRIVIA
- Harry Symons, born in Toronto in 1893, defined himself as an athlete for the early part of his life. He was an internationally competitive sailor and a football captain, who played quarterback for the Toronto Argonauts as well as for the University of Toronto varsity squad and other teams that pioneered the sport in Canada.
- When WWI broke out in 1914, Harry joined up to eventually serve in three army divisions in Europe before finally transferring to the Royal Flying Corps in August 1916 where he flew the celebrated Sopwith Camel scoring enough victories to place him in the war’s flying “Ace” category.
- Despite serving in the war and many years in the militia, he never wrote about his experiences, the military, or even aviation, compelling historians to describe his heroic exploits as virtually “unknown to all but the most diligent researchers” even years after his death in 1961.
- Ojibway Melody, written in 1944-1945, only mentions the war-time context obliquely and very lightly twice.
- Despite serving in the war and many years in the militia, he never wrote about his experiences, the military, or even aviation, compelling historians to describe his heroic exploits as virtually “unknown to all but the most diligent researchers” even years after his death in 1961.
- Ojibway Melody, written in 1944-1945, only mentions the war-time context obliquely and very lightly twice.
- Despite his writing successes, Harry was considered primarily a career executive in the insurance industry, Vice-President of Confederation Life. But he was not an insurance businessman. His expertise and his responsibilities with the company rested in managing real estate holdings.
- Harry and his wife Dorothy had eight children. Their son Tom Symons is better known than his father within most academic and Canadian history circles. Tom was the First President of Trent University, a founder of Canadian Studies as a field, and Chair of the Ontario Heritage Trust. Tom Symons: A Canadian Life, (Edited by Ralph Heintzman, University of Ottawa Press) a book published in 2011, featured contributions from many leading politicians, writers, and scholars.
- Harry Symons’ family has possession of the original sculptor’s cast of Stephen Leacock’s face in profile used to mint the physical Leacock medals.
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| Link to Book on Harry's Son |
- Harry wrote articles for many years, including pieces throughout the 1920s for the Toronto Star Weekly, under a nom de plume.
- Harry met his wife Dorothy at a convalescent hospital for Canadian soldiers in WWI England established by her father, the wealthy Canadian lawyer and businessman William Perkins Bull. Other patients at the hospital during this period included Flying Ace Billy Bishop and future Governor General Georges Vanier.
- Harry met his wife Dorothy at a convalescent hospital for Canadian soldiers in WWI England established by her father, the wealthy Canadian lawyer and businessman William Perkins Bull. Other patients at the hospital during this period included Flying Ace Billy Bishop and future Governor General Georges Vanier.
- The first edition Ojibway Melody carried the marks of both the Copp Clark Co. and Ambassador Books, but it was, in fact, self-published and Symons held the full copyright. The former firm did the printing, and the latter was the distributor.
Click for Review of Ojibway Melody
Click for Review of Ojibway Melody
Copyright - DBD - What's So Funny?
Sources
Thanks to Professor Tom Symons for granting me access to his Fonds in the Trent University Archives,which hold a typed draft of Ojibway Melody,correspondence,
and other peronsal materials sourced for the above.
Trent University Archives, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Fonds Symons, T. H. B., 1929- 01-003
(Box 4 Folder 6. Harry Lutz Symons Biographical Sketch)
Also CAHS Journal, Vol. 2, No. 4, Winter 1964, Canadian Aviation Historical Society
and other peronsal materials sourced for the above.
Trent University Archives, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Fonds Symons, T. H. B., 1929- 01-003
(Box 4 Folder 6. Harry Lutz Symons Biographical Sketch)
Also CAHS Journal, Vol. 2, No. 4, Winter 1964, Canadian Aviation Historical Society
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