Ray Guy (1939-2013)

On Tuesday of this week, May 14, 2013, the wonderful Newfoundland Humorist Ray Guy passed away from cancer at the age of 74. 

It was the very day that I finished reading his 1977 Leacock Medal Winning book That Far

Greater Bay. I learned about his death after I finished writing my Canus Humorous book review and started googling for trivia about the author.

This is the second time this has happened since I started this project, and it is getting eerie as well as sad. Max Ferguson passed away within a couple of weeks of my reading his 1968 Leacock Medal winning book And Now Here’s Max. 

This thing of meeting people through their books, getting to know and like them, and then finding out they are no longer with us - all within a matter of days - is an unexpected and very trying part of this Leacock Medal reading adventure.  Perhaps, it is the time period I have been reviewing to this point: Leacock Medalists between 1947 and 1977.  They are all getting up there in age or already gone. As the year progresses, the authors are more likely to be younger, healthier and with us.  I hope.

My normal Canus Humorous routine is to read a book, make notes, write a book review, scan the book cover as is my privilege as a book reviewer and pretend literary critic, draw a copyright free amateurish portrait, and then look for trivia about the author.  After I have assembled all this, I usually save it all in a file for eventual blog posting according to my preordained schedule. 

Against this scheme, Ray Guy might not be appearing on this blog for a few months. 

But I am posting it now semi-officially (no link on the Home Page yet) because of his passing.

Here are some links to Obits

CBC

The Telegram

and the Great Newfoundland Daily Fort McMurray Today

My Review of That Far Greater Bay

Parody - Tribute to Ray Guy: Culturally Sensitive Stakeholder Relations

Harry J. Boyle Trivia

Click Here for Review of Homebrew and Patches

Harry J. Boyle was born in farm country around St. Augustine, a tiny village, little more than a cluster of homes at the intersection of two rural roads near Goderich in Southwestern, Ontario.

Like the boy at heart of Homebrew and Patches, he was educated at the continuation school in a slightly larger town near his home.   For the real life Boyle, it was the high school in Wingham.  Later he attended   St. Jerome's College in Kitchener.

But even before college, Boyle had started what would be his very long career in the media.   At sixteen, he was hired on the staff of Radio Station CKNX in Wingham and started freelancing as a writer.  While still in his teens, he published his own magazine and worked as a newspaper stringer for papers that included the London Free Press and the Toronto Globe and Mail.  Even after his radio career took off, he continued contributing to newspapers with personalized commentaries including those presented in a weekly column in the Toronto Telegram that ran for over ten years starting in 1957.

His media work did not pull him away from the farm entirely.  His first assignment with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, after joining it in 1942, was as farm commentator.   Later he was promoted to the CBC network’s post as Supervisor of Farm Broadcasts followed by positions of Programme Director of the Trans-Canada Network, Radio Network Supervisor of Features, Programme Director for Radio and Television for the Ontario Region, and Executive Producer for Television.

All this time, he kept writing.  He not only produced books of intertwined essays like Homebrew and Patches, but novels and scholarly articles.   He had about a dozen books under his belt when he won his first Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour for Homebrew and Patches in 1963.  His second win came in 1975 for a novel, The Luck of the Irish.

In 1968, he moved into the federal public service with his appointment to the Canadian Radio Television Commission (CRTC).  He eventually became Vice-Chairman and then in 1976, the year after that second Leacock Medal win, he was appointed CRTC Chair.

Boyle also served as a faculty member at the Banff School of Fine Arts and as a member of the Ontario Arts Council, 1979-1982. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1978.

Harry Boyle, born in 1915, died in Toronto on 22 January 2005. He married Marion McCaffrey in 1937, with whom he had two children

Click here for Review of Homebrew and Patches