Three-time Leacock Medal winner
Eric Nicol
(The Roving I
(1951), Shall we Join the Ladies (1956), and Girdle Me a Globe (1958).
This is an interview
with British Columbia writer Tom Hawthorne about the three-time Leacock Medal
winner Eric Nicol (The Roving I (1951), Shall we Join the Ladies (1956), and
Girdle Me a Globe (1958)). Tom has written about sports, Canadian
history, and the lives of many interesting Canadians. He is a multiple award
winner for his rich and moving obituary profiles. One of these was about Eric Nicol,
published in The Globe and Mail in 2011. Eric Nicol was also featured in
Tom Hawthorne’s 2012 book, Deadlines, Obits of memorable British Columbians.
Of a specific interest with
respect to this interview is the book Tom is just completing, entitled The Vilest
Rag You Can Imagine. It's a 100-year history of the celebrated University
of British Columbia student newspaper, The Ubyssey, the venue of the
birth of Eric Nicol’s career as a humorist: a career that lasted some seven
decades, produced over forty books, and six thousand columns.
DBD
Tom, thanks so much for
doing this. You’ve probably guessed that I'm a big fan of Eric Nicol’s and am grateful
for any opportunity to talk about him.
Is it fair to say that
you're an admirer as well?
Tom
Hawthorn (TH)
It is. You know, I can remember coming across Eric Nicol
books in the library when I was still in elementary school. I'm sure I was
attracted by the Peter Whalley drawings, who was his kind of a partner and
always illustrated the books with funny cartoon kind of things.
And you know, I don't
have a really great memory as a boy of reading him. But I personally showed up
at UBC when I was 17 years old, we had just moved from Montreal, I knew nobody
on campus, there was 23,000 people on campus. I worked at my high school newspaper;
I'd worked on my CGEP paper for a couple of months. And I thought, well, the
only way I'm going to meet anybody is to go to this, maybe go to the student
newspaper. And then I saw in that student handbook that they handed out that The
Ubyssey Newspaper and it described all these people that had worked there
in the past Pierre Berton and Eric Nicol and Joe Schlesinger and, on and on the
list went. And then at the bottom, there was a little sentence saying many of the
student newspaper people ended up getting jobs at the daily newspapers in
Vancouver.
Ah, hah! There's my
future. So, I would work there at The Ubyssey because that's where Eric
Nicol has got his start.
DBD
Oh, really?
I obviously knew that
you had an association with The Ubyssey, but I didn't know that the link
to Eric Nicol was actually part of the attraction for you. Pierre Berton was
also another Leacock Medal winner.
TH
Yeah, I've always thought that Pierre Berton had a lot to do with Nicol being on
the student newspaper.
I just want to paint a
picture of the campus back then in the late 30s, early 40s.
Nicol was born to English
parents, and they live on the west side of Vancouver, they get through the
Depression. I think his father loses his job at a brokerage firm just as Nicol’s
going to university. Nicol was only able to attend because of winning YWCA
bursaries and in fact there was one that he didn't get, and then the student
who was supposed to get it couldn't take it - probably entered the army - and so
Nicol got it and was able to continue his studies. So, he does two years on campus,
and nobody knows him. Did they know him
in his French classes? I have my doubts.
You know, Nicol was a painfully shy guy in a lot of ways. I think one-on-one
I've heard he was quite wonderful to meet but I think he was that British - probably
from his parents - very reserved style and didn't make friends easily. And he
didn't contribute to the student newspaper’ til the third year, his third year
of studies and keep in mind, the campus now is huge. There’re more than 30,000
students at UBC in Vancouver alone. In 1940, they set a record for enrollment
and there was, you know, fewer than 3000 students.
So, it's a pretty small
community. And even in that milieu, he didn't really make friends. And what he
did is one day he shows up and he drops off anonymously, they had a column in
the paper called Chang Suey. And it was anonymous. It wasn't written by a
single person, and you could probably tell if you read it regularly, that it
was written by a number of people. And it was done in kind of a parody of
Charlie Chan movies and described thinly disguised characters on campus, you
know making fun of professors and administrators for the most part and he
dropped off one anonymously, it would have been a sensation. And people finally
figured out it was Eric Nicol. And
Pierre Burton, who was senior, one of the two senior editors at the paper,
tracks him down and says, “Hey, we want you to write a regular humour column for
the student newspaper called The Mummery and we're giving you this
byline Jabez, which is a very, very, very, very, very, very minor character in
the Bible. And you know it's apparently a
Hebrew word for you causes pain or some such, and Nicol starts writing this
thing, and people love it.
DBD
So that was Berton's idea: the byline as well as trying to recruit this funny
guy?
TH
Apparently yes. It was
all Pierre Berton. Berton’s time on
campus. It's funny because he's best remembered now as a popular historian,
nonfiction writer, but when Berton was on campus, and Berton came there from
the Yukon, he was 100 per cent intent on getting a job with the Vancouver daily
newspapers. That is why he went to UBC.
You know, it was a bit
of a closed thing at the student newspaper, and it was hard to be seen as one
of the guys, and he's given terrible assignments when he first started. So, he
made up a story. He would admit this
later, and when you read it - it was pretty clearly a fictional account of
being beat up or religious students being beat up by other students. But it put him on the front page. And so,
this was Berton – it was kind of living his fantasy or 1920s Chicago newspaper
man if there was no news create the news. And so, he did the same with Eric
Nicol. He obviously recognized the talent in Nicol and recruited him to the
paper. Nicol only gets a byline not under his real name in the paper, even
then.
I went back to look and
even the first one is an account of a museum on campus, a natural history
museum, and the first Nicol byline in the paper and it is written in a first-person
account I saw this, I saw that lots of the humor that we associate with Nicol
in it.
Obviously very talented,
and Berton encouraged him in the paper. I thought Berton decided to try and
write a funny book himself because his recruit Nicol had won three (Leacock
Medals).
Pierre Berton had
enough of an ego that I think it just kind of got to him. “Well, I could win it
- if my young recruit Eric Nicol has won three of these Leacocks, I can win
one.”
DBD
Berton always intrigued
me from that perspective. His Leacock winning book was a collection of
newspaper columns. And my conjecture was that once he decided he wanted to be
considered a serious historian and journalist, he suppressed the humorous
inclinations he had. But his stuff is pretty funny. A talented writer, and if he wants to apply
the skill to a specific object such as humour, it doesn't surprise one.
So, Eric Nicol, shy
guy, did you ever meet him?
TH
No, I never got a
chance to meet Nicol.
DBD
I actually did. I spent
an afternoon at his Point Grey home in 1978, I believe. And I remember him being
low key. I just remember him making me
feel really comfortable. And, and afterwards realizing, and this is, you know,
way before the Internet that he'd done a lot of research about me before I
actually came to his place. But very
pleasant and not inconsistent with what people say about being a shy person.
So, it's easy to
imagine, super shy, even submits his first column anonymously, but then he has
some positive feedback and success. And he's hooked on this as a vehicle to
interact with the human race, I guess. Write humour.
TH
Yeah, that's a very
good way to put it.
So that's it. And
especially, I think, under a byline like Jabez, he doesn't have to worry
about bumping into somebody whom he has made fun of on campus. He's got those
light touches already. So, I just printed out the first one he wrote, which
appeared on September 24, 1940.
“Once upon a time,
long, long ago, before anyone had ever heard of Hitler, or Mussolini, or Lifebouy,
there lived a very plump man named Emperor Concertinas the Colossal who commuted
between Rome and Cleopatra, and it goes on like that. And it's just soft, funny
and clever. And I can imagine that just because of the sensation on campus to
pick up this free student newspaper. You're
in the middle of a war, although the war hasn't, you know, there's nobody on
campus has died yet. And they're in your free student newspaper is these
witticisms. I can only imagine the students reading parts of it aloud, just
like I did, saying you gotta see this, and it did become a sensation for that
year and a half.
And you know, I think
for Eric, it was probably, you know, that twice a week chance and you stretch
the muscles, and you discover you can do it. And I think it was writing that
student newspaper column that really set him up for an entire lifetime of
writing in actually the same approach.
And also, when he was
on campus, he started his first play, you know, he already graduated. I don't
think it was until after his graduation (that he finished).
DBD
During his undergraduate years?
TH
He probably wrote it
when he was an undergrad. But it didn't get produced until he's already done
with campus. And it was called her “Science Man Lover, or the Birth of a
Nation,” and the UBC players club was probably the hippest thing happening
on campus. And then the second biggest thing would have been the student
newspaper. There were tons of groups and the only other one that he belonged to
was Le Cercle français because he was a French student. You know he'd take part in conversations with
the other French students.
But he was not, you
know, I don't think he was recognized at that time, or at least for his first
three years as anybody at all. He was just
kind of a quiet figure. He comes a little bit out of his shell, I guess, in his
senior year.
DBD
You suggested that that was the pattern that he followed for the rest of his
life. You mentioned that it was in the context of the war. And he did join, I
think, the Air Force for the latter part of the war. He had something like a PR job in Ottawa, I
think?
TH
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. You know, he says as
it's typical for people that weren't sent overseas, that he'd had a good war.
You know, he fought the battle of Ottawa or whatever bureaucracy he had to deal
with. And I think during the war, and while he wasn't certainly, you know, entertaining
the troops was always a popular thing. And he wrote, I think he wrote small
little scripts along those lines.
DBD
Yeah, so then his first Leacock Medal-winning book was The Roving I,
which he did as a collection, I guess, of columns he wrote as a student working
on a doctorate at the Sorbonne, and it was kind of charming. I was thinking a
lot about his non-frontline war experience, making it easier for him to go to
Europe and see it through rose-colored glasses.
Have you ever had a chance to read The Roving I.
TH
Yeah, a number of years
(ago). And, Dick, I think you make an incredible point there. To understand the fact that to go to Paris in
45, 46, 47 for a guy like Eric Nicol, who didn't see action, is an entirely
different experience than somebody who had been in the war. And that's
reflected, I think, in The Roving I. And it's important to keep in mind that Nicol
avoided seeing the savagery of war. So, for him, it's much easier to imagine
the Paris of the 20s, and more of an innocent thing. And I think there's an
innocence there to Nicol and his humor all the way through. And it's hard to
imagine him maintaining that or entertaining that if he had seen wars service.
DBD
He did have a serious side. All
references to him to make mention of court case where he was found in contempt
of court over a column about capital punishment. I think that was in the 50s.
Are you familiar with that case?
TH
Yeah, it's an amazing
case for, you know, because we do kind of think of Nicol as just a humorist. But
his humor, I think, is really rooted in a humanitarian sense, in the sense of
equal fun at the foibles of a pompous, and but mostly, and often his own and
ordinary people's own discomforts. In
today’s parlance, he didn't punch down, he punched up or at himself.
But this moral standing
also made him deeply offended by capital punishment. He just really despised
the notion of capital punishment. The state putting somebody to death, and
there was a case in 1954, where a 19-year-old fellow named William Gash was
convicted of bludgeoning to death a 45-Year-old, and there may have been some
kind of turf dispute or whatever. The
younger man killed the older man, was convicted and sentenced to death. And after
the conviction in The Province, Nicol wrote this allegory in which he
confesses his guilt before God for his responsibility as an unwilling
accomplice in the execution of the young Gash.
It was a scathing critique, very cleverly done, I thought. But the judge
in the case, who I also have to point out was a UBC student in the 20s, found
the column to be quote “exaggerated, heavy handed and contemptuous of the Gash
jurors”, who had been described by Nicol as the 12 people who had planned the
murder. And so, the paper was fined 2500 bucks and Nicol was fined $250, for
contempt. And that stood. And it was a
very serious thing to be found in contempt of court.
I should point out that
Gash was not executed. In fact, he got a stay of execution, less than a week
before his scheduled execution. And, you know, I hope Nicol found some comfort
in that – that this column which undoubtedly caused him great grief, at least
led to what he would have found to be a more just outcome.
DBD
Yeah, interesting, because it would have been in the height of his popularity,
or at least if you measure it by his three Leacock Medal wins in 1950s. I think
he was inclined to describing himself as a journalist, which I can understand
him thinking that is a more honorable profession than a humour writer. But he
was pretty solidly somebody like to make jokes.
DBD
Yeah. You know, I don't think his columns often interviewed anybody, which is the
essence of journalism, which is talking to others. And I don't have the sense
that Nicol did that. He may have
considered himself a reporter because he used shoe leather, you know, he
observed and he walked around, and that. But he obviously, clearly lived in his
head more than soliciting from other people.
There's a quote about
him that, you know, where he wrote himself about what it was like. He says, “in the eyes of Canadians, writing
humor is like an illicit love affair, it is excusable provided you don't make a
habit of it, or accept payment for what you've done.”
So, he felt like maybe
he wasn't accorded respect, or he was a little embarrassed that he was a
humorist, “I want to be regarded as a journalist.”
It's hard to say.
DBD
I've heard similar
comments, although maybe not as witty, from other humour writers who feel like
they're relegated to the children’s table at any CanLit events or living in the
basement of the CanLit outhouse. But I
guess the seduction of trying to make people laugh is something that overpowers
that.
It's hard to describe
to anyone, particularly under 30, with the waning of daily newspapers just how
big a profile Eric Nicol had in his day in Vancouver in British Columbia. And I
don't know if you would consider taking a stab at it, maybe just even in terms
of his output, longevity of his career.
TH
Yeah.
When we were talking
about the capital punishment, he risked a lot in that column because he was
really coming to the fore in the middle of the 50s. He had one Leacock award,
two more were to come, his plays were being produced in Vancouver.
He was very much of
Vancouver and very much of the west side of Vancouver - kind of that genteel
treed streets, British sense of humour. Vancouver doesn't get credit for being
as cosmopolitan a town as it was even back then in the 40s and 50s. People
forget, it was a port city, pretty hard scrabble downtown, lots of loggers,
lots of pubs, the site of lots of immigrants but Nicol’s from the west side,
fairly comfortable, bourgeois background, and that was the humour he expressed.
And as you know as the City of Vancouver came out of the war and became more
prosperous, he just probably was the best-known writer in town. Pierre Berton had left for Toronto by then, to
make his fame and fortune.
I think Eric Nicol was
very much celebrated. You could hear him on the radio, you could see him on stage,
not himself performing, but others performing his humorous works, he had a
daily column, and everybody had a daily newspaper, and many households got all
three of the daily newspapers. And then after the News Herald folded, both
of the daily newspapers The Sun and The Province, and Nicol was
in The Province, five days out of six that it published. Like he was
always there. So, he was a very, very prominent figure in Vancouver. He fell
into trouble of course, when they tried to export his humour elsewhere, and
very famously he wrote a play called Like Father like Fun, which is just
a great title and was a big success in Vancouver and ends up going to Broadway
but as soon as it heads off to New York, they start tinkering with it. They
don't like the sense of humour in it, the director and that, and they're
changing the script. Nicol has in mind
Don Rickles; people remember him as a very acerbic comic. That's the humour and
the comic he had in mind in the lead role, not quite as acerbic as he would be
later known on television, but a pointed character. But unfortunately, Rickles backs out so it's
just chaos on the stage, on the day of the first production, Nicol and the
director have a screaming match. I'm not
sure if Nicol sits in for the actual first performance: he suspects it’s going
to be a disaster. And it was a terrible disaster. Clive Barnes in The New
York Times called it, “a non-play about non-people as flat as Holland and as
sparkling as mud … opaque mediocrity, harmless and witless.” It must have been
a death for Eric Nicol to read that review.
It opened on October 6,
1967, and it closed on October 7th.
It is like a notorious Broadway flop.
DBD
Well, as always, he was self deprecating, but particularly so in reference to
his career as a playwright. But I don't know through certain lenses, you could
see him as quite successful having these plays produced in BC and running for
some length of time.
TH
Totally. I mean, you
know, if the Devil is listening, I'll sell my soul for a Broadway production.
He did get it to
Broadway, but it must have, you know, so painful to read that. You know, he
later wrote a whole book about it, A Scar is Born. Another great title
on his part. And he also wrote, “I and Abraham Lincoln should have stayed out
of the theatre.”
Which is a very good
way of dealing with it. And he did keep up writing, he continued being a
playwright. But that was, that was just his one real shot at the big time. And
he didn't blame the failure on himself. Like he knew that play was funny
because it had been funny in Vancouver, and it was totally the fact that they
messed with it on Broadway.
DBD
Well, I think we can
all be grateful that he stayed at it. He sure loved Vancouver; it permeates
most of his books. You have two of the
Leacock Medal winners about travel abroad, but it was always from the frame of
somebody who was intending to go back to Vancouver someday.
TH
Yeah, that's right. You
know, I know in your book, you describe it. It's so typical of Eric Nicol that
while in Paris, he takes a side trip to Florence. He dismisses the Uffizi Gallery in a
paragraph, but then spends like two and a half pages, trying to describe how to
eat spaghetti.
I think that’s typical
Eric Nicol, like a man out of place. I think
he just really relished that kind of opportunity to be the fish out of water,
trying to deal with a new circumstance.
DBD
Yeah, I sure have
missed him. But he had 41 books, and in preparation for our conversation, I was
rereading them again and realized, well, he never really went away.
You just have to dig
out the books, and there's enough volume there to keep me busy for the
foreseeable future. You mentioned, oh, The Scar is Born, and how he
managed to apply his humour to his failure on Broadway. But it was really
particularly impressive that he was doing it in the last stages of his life.
His last book, I think even you mentioned in your writing about him, was
written while he had Alzheimer's.
TH
Yeah.
Again, I think it was
that discipline from student newspaper days. You got two columns due, you got
to write them. Then he's on the daily paper. He's got to do five a week. I just
think for him it was like breathing. He had to write. He described later in life that, you know,
sometimes he would prime his pump. A favorite of his was those early Woody
Allen books to just try to get his mind in that place. His daughter used to
describe that she didn't see much of her father at home during the workday. And
her father was at home, except in the upstairs office, and he would go up there
and dutifully crank it out.
And you know he lost
his Province column without any fanfare, which I think was a great disservice
by The Province newspaper. If I was running a newspaper and Eric Nicol
was still willing to be writing, I would be happy to have him.
DBD
Tom, do you have any speculation as to why they low-balled his retirement?
Maybe they were embarrassed: they were getting rid of him or there was an
awkwardness around it.
TH
You know what? Newspapers ended up being run by very
unsentimental people who are not very good at journalism. And that's true of
both The Sun and The Province. And that's what happened to Eric
Nicol. They just said, “Why are we
paying this guy, he's not making me laugh.” You know, Eric Nicol never had a contract. It was
just this kind of gentleman’s agreement for more than 40 years. Nicol never took holidays because he was
always afraid that he would be replaced. And he was very badly treated. He's
not the only one - that happened in the great Roy Peterson. That fantastic cartoonist with The
Vancouver Sun had the same ending as well, like one day, they just told
him, “You're, you're done. We're not paying anymore.” You know, Peterson drew a
beautiful cartoon kind of summing up his career, and they wouldn't publish it.
It's a reflection of
what has happened to both those newspapers. They no longer have hold on the
city that they once had. You know, I mentioned coming to Vancouver in the late
70s. Everybody read the paper, or at least one of them. Today. No. Not at all.
Doesn't matter what's in them. Doesn't matter what's not in them. You know, my
line has always been a newspaper’s death is death by suicide. They've kind of killed themselves. And you
know, it's reflected in how they would treat an Eric Nicol. At the very least, if you're going to force
somebody into retirement, make a splash and sell a few papers and let the guy
go with some dignity.
But as you mentioned,
you know, he's badly treated and what did he do? He just keeps on cranking out
these books and, you know, all the way through his 80s. And into his 90s, he
was writing books. And he was suffering
from mental lapses. He was still writing, still finding humour, and humour is usually
about suffering. And Eric Nicol liked to write about that.
That's finding the humorousness
in the pain of being alive was what he would do, just like a fish out of water,
the ordinary embarrassments of day-to-day life and that kind of thing and it
never left him. He was writing right up
to the end.
DBD
Two things. When you mentioned Roy
Peterson, it's funny because when I was living in Vancouver - was there 10
years and 70s, early 80s - and the first thing I would look at in the Vancouver
Sun was the Peterson cartoon and the first thing in The Province
would be Eric Nicol’s column.
Do you think that Nicol
still has a robust profile within the BC writing community? You know, he won the Woodcock award in mid
90s, but it's been ten years since he passed away.
TH
It is. And you know, and by the time he died, he had
been forgotten essentially. So yeah, I
think he has a very low profile. He didn't at first, and won what's now called
the Woodcock Award, which is very prestigious for lifetime career achievement
in writing. But no, there's a handful of humorists who certainly know who he is. You know, Mark Leiren-Young who also won a
Leacock and was a Ubyssey person as well and undoubtedly was at the
paper in part because Nicol had been there, and Pierre Berton before. And so,
and then I live in Victoria, we have a really terrific humorist who writes for
us named Jack Knox, and much in the same fashion of Eric Nicol’s on everyday life. And Steve Burgess, who's another humorist
whose work I really enjoy writes for the Tyee.ca. But there are so few humorists
that can make what is laughably sometimes called a living at humorous writing. So,
and then Nicol’s time had passed, even by the time of his death, I think essentially,
he had been forgotten. His peers had mostly died before he did. And, you know, accounts
I read of the memorial service, not that many people were there, which is great
for him and his family that he lived long. But that is what happens - there's a
certain time when somebody passes, their death will get a lot of attention. And
as they live longer, and their peers disappear, they get less attention when their
own time comes. And then that's what happened with Eric Nicol.
DBD
His eastern peer Gary Lautens passed away with a heart attack suddenly in his
early 60s. And I think there was like thousands of people around the Toronto
Star building, lining up to sign the letter of condolences. It was I guess
the prime time for pass.
TH
Yeah, precisely. Eric Nicol, you should have died in 67.
But, of course, both of
us are glad that he didn’t.
Much better somebody
die and have outlived all their peers than have them passing at the height of
their powers.
DBD
Yeah, he was, as you mentioned, he was never sort of mean spirited. His works to me, and I know I'm a subset of
humanity in this regard, are still funny and impressive. But much has been made
of how that gentle style sort of went out of favor I mean.
I don't know - do you think
there would be a niche market for somebody that - you mentioned two humorists
that are contributing out there now – but in the social media world, so cruel
and crude at times, I keep thinking, maybe it’s a nostalgia that is unrealistic,
but I keep thinking maybe there's a niche for that kind of humour now.
TH
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, those two fellows I mentioned, Jack Knox
and Steve Burgess, I think are right out of that Eric Nicol (mould). I think you could draw line through them from
Eric Nicol to today. So, and they both are really readable and funny. I enjoy
them. They have an audience now. Is there enough money to be made doing that? No, I don't think so. Jack Knox is a regular
employee of the Times Columnist here in Victoria and doesn't just write
humour. He regularly writes very serious columns as well. He’s an excellent
columnist. And Steve Burgess, I think, has to hustle and
always has as Eric had. Nobody's out
there handing out big gobs of money to gentle humorists, which is too bad. I
also don't think that there's huge gobs of money for the acerbic, nasty, mean
humorist either. It's just always a reflection of the comedy business. You know, a handful of people get to make
movies and make a lot of money.
Explain Adam Sandler.
And, and most don’t, and
so it's, you know, in some ways I think the humorists, they've got this unlucky
crown where, as you know, humour writing is really hard; it's really, really
hard to write one funny line never mind a funny column, never mind a funny
column day after day after day. So that's, that's the burden that you carry,
and then there's no reward for it if you manage to pull it off.
DBD
Tom, you've done a wonderful job in articulating the nature of his work and
career there, I retreat into fact-based writing (myself) just because I tried
to justify my contributions to the literate world with a few bits of
information. But I am in awe of somebody
that can pull the humour out of things like riding a bike or buying a shoe,
some of the columns Eric Nicol wrote. That's
fantastic, Tom, I really am indebted to you for sharing some reflections on
Eric and also the two humorists you mentioned.
Maybe this podcast will serve to promote them. And sometimes because I’m a fan of Eric Nicol,
I sometimes think his life might warrant a biography. But then when I stand
back from it - his life was pretty tame, you know, I'm sure next to some heroic
people and people that have had really big traumatic lives would be kind of tame,
and so my conclusion on that is, his life really was in his writing. It's
expressed in his books and maybe yours - the Ubyssey book - is it in the
near future? The last I read it was
still in the last throes of being written,
TH
Yeah, I'm still
finishing it up. Everything's curtailed because of the pandemic, and delayed
and, you know. I'll be touching base
with the publisher to see if they're still interested in it. So, the book is a
biographical history of that student newspaper, which has just these incredible
writers that come through it. Just imagine being on a student newspaper staff
you got, starting with Pierre Burton and Eric Nicol, and John Turner's there,
and then Joe Schlesinger and Allan Fotheringham, all these writers, but there's
also been these other characters that I was not familiar with. There was a reporter from the Ubyssey
that ended up fighting in the Spanish Civil War and got killed in Spain. There were a number of Ubyssey
students who lost their lives in the Second World War. And on and on. There was one Japanese Canadian student who
contributed to the Ubyssey who ended
up going to Japan before the outbreak of war and ended up serving as a
translator in the Japanese army, was captured by the Soviets, and went to a gulag,
and managed to teach himself Russian, so he could act as a translator, which
made sure that he got enough food to not starve to death. And then he fled and returned to Tokyo and
became the Associated Press Bureau Chief in the 1960s. Just an incredible
character out of Vancouver that nobody's really familiar with. So that's, I’ve
been putting together all these anecdotes and biographical histories of people
that, you know, they really share in common, only the fact that in their time
on campus, however short or long, they had contributed to this student
newspaper.
DBD
Student newspapers across Canada and elsewhere are a wonderful platform for
people to find their feet and, I guess, get a taste of journalism.
TH
Absolutely, it's the
place to make your mistakes. That’s for sure.
Mistakes if you made on a daily newspaper would probably end your career.
On a student newspaper, you’ve annoyed some professors, and maybe caused a
ruckus. Yeah, no, you're exactly right.
It is a great training ground. It is a place to learn the craft.
DBD
Well, thanks a lot,
Tom. And I love your writing, the personalities in sports and, of course, the
obituaries but the obituaries being testimony to the worth and nature of
people's lives. I think that's great. And I'm sure that when they rhyme off the
list of great writers from the Ubyssey in the future years is going to
be close to the top of the list.
TH
Wow, that's very kind of you. hope I live as long as Eric Nicol did. I would love to see my 90s.