After I kick the bucket, I want Tom Hawthorn to write my obituary.
He's the master. He brings the dead to life. Hawthorn is to the obit what Harvey Lowe was to the yoyo. Or Babe Ruth to baseball.
Trouble is, obituary writers don't get the respect they deserve.
"As you know," Hawthorn told me over a coffee, "traditionally in the newsroom, the obit writer is the lowest of the low."
Journalists, as a rule, dislike doing obits. Writing about dead folk is not considered a prestige gig. In his novel The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman writes of Arthur, a spectacularly lazy obit writer whose desk is moved from the water cooler because no one can be bothered to talk to him.
Hawthorn is no Arthur. He's the opposite. His newspaper obits are so compelling, so beautifully crafted, Harbour Publishing decided to compile them as Deadlines - Obits of Memorable British Columbians.
The launch for this, Hawthorn's first book, happened at McCall Brothers Funeral Home. The unorthodox venue wasn't entirely a publicist's whimsy. The funeral parlour was designed by the late John Di Castri, whose obit is in Deadlines. Di Castri was a fascinating guy - a self-made architect who brought modernism (think flat roofs and glass walls) to ye olde Victoria, where tweedy citizens still genuflect at the altar of mock Tudor-ism.
The 38 obituaries in Deadlines offer a cross-section of humanity. Some are important folk like Di Castri. Deadlines is also peopled with lesser-known lights, including scoundrels and eccentrics.
There is one bona fide villain: Gilbert Paul Jordan, a notorious serial killer known as the Boozing Barber. Jordan paid victims to consume fatal amounts of alcohol. Most were aboriginal women. I didn't know he'd died in Victoria in 2006. Hawthorn happened to spot the 32-word death notice that, of course, made no mention of his crimes.
Ever hear of Spoony Singh? Me neither. Born in India, Spoony built a sawmill in Esquimalt and operated a logging camp near Port Alberni. He had a hankering for cheesy showbiz ventures. He built an amusement park, then opened a wax museum in Hollywood.
Once, Spoony talked Louis Armstrong into posing beside his waxy faux twin.
Hawthorn got that story by scrutinizing the Los Angeles Times. He came across Spoony's obit and noticed a passing B.C. reference. Sensing a story, he sleuthed out this colourful character's Vancouver Island history.
He's a writer who knows how to entice a reader.
Here's Hawthorn's first sentence: "Spoony Singh drove a gold Cadillac and preferred a Nehru jacket to a business suit." How could anyone not read on?
And here's how he begins an obituary of Jeani Read, a Vancouver journalist: "Rod Stewart greeted her at the door to his hotel room clad only in underwear and a sexy, pop-star pout."
As an obit writer, Hawthorn dealt with his share of weeping widows and disgruntled family members who wouldn't talk. Most people are surprisingly happy to reminisce, though.
He's clever with anecdotes and the single, telling detail that sums up a life in a line. What truly makes him a superior writer, though, is his awareness that one person's story can be a microcosm for a much larger one.
One of my favourite obits in Deadlines is that of Harvey Lowe. Born in Victoria in 1918, he became a yo-yo superstar. Lowe was a world champion who performed some of his 1,000 tricks on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. He toured England and France in white tie and tails.
Hawthorn tells how Lowe, a well-known personality in Vancouver's Chinatown, came publicly to the defence of a Vancouver MP. In 1958, Douglas Jung was contemptuously dismissed by a Canadian senator as a "Chinaman." We realize Lowe's tale (he was the first Chinese-Canadian to host a radio show) is also a story about overcoming racial prejudice in this country.
A pleasant, self-effacing fellow, I sensed Hawthorn is more at ease asking questions than answering them. He told me he grew up in Montreal and Toronto, a kid who loved newspapers. Young Hawthorn would arise at 5: 30 a.m. to deliver the Montreal Gazette, then do the same with the Toronto Star in the afternoon.
His father was a shipper for a Montreal lingerie company. An intelligent, well-read man with ambition, he attended night school, took a degree, then became a high-school teacher.
When Hawthorn was 17, the family packed up and moved to the West Coast.
"We came to Vancouver like a family of Okies," he said, smiling. "Sight unseen. No money. Drove across the country to get a new start."
Upon their arrival in 1977, newspapers reported the death of Jack Wasserman, the legendary Vancouver Sun columnist and radio/TV personality. Wasserman was commemorated with a bronze plaque on a downtown street known as "Saloon Row."
"I thought, 'If they're honouring journalists in a place called Saloon Row, I'm in the right city,' " Hawthorn said.
He became enamoured with the notion of becoming a newspaperman. Hawthorn edited the high-school paper, then became editor of The Ubyssey, the University of British Columbia's student newspaper.
At age 19, Hawthorn landed a job as a weekend reporter at the Vancouver Sun. He started skipping his university history classes, devoting himself during the week to The Ubyssey. After his second year he dropped out of school, knowing his future was in newspapers.
He had stints working at the Sun and later the Times Colonist, but wrote mostly for the Province. Today he's a freelance writer.
Hawthorn is a journalist's journalist. He has a reputation as a "nice writer," someone who knows how to deliver a well-written, well-researched story that resonates. Because Hawthorn is clever at crafting a tale that reads like a short story, I'd pegged him for a voracious fiction reader. Not so, he said. He's mostly a nonfiction guy.
He still writes the occasional obit for the Globe and Mail. But these days, Hawthorn's main ambition is to write non-fiction books. He's working on A Greater Share of Honour, about two best friends who were hockey and football teammates at McGill University. Both enlisted during the war - one died, the other lived.
In typical Hawthorn fashion, it's really a human story about a universal subject: war's terrible toll.
Of course the big question is, will Deadlines finally get obituary writers the respect they deserve?
I like to think so.
"Everybody's got a story to tell, right?" Hawthorn said. "And [writing the obituary] is the most intimate relationship you can have with somebody who's no longer there."
