GLADDING
GLADDY
GLADSTONE
GLASBY
GLAVIN
GLAZIER
GLADDING o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-07-26 published
FOLLETT,
Michael
Peacefully, at the Freeport Health Centre of Grand River Hospital,
surrounded by the love of his family, Michael died on Thursday,
July 24, 2003. He was 59 years of age.
Beloved husband of Sheila; loving father of Amanda and Andrea
FOLLETT; step-father of Christa and Jodie
HOY,
Grant,
Carolyn
and Susie PARKS.
Pappy to Roelien and Danielle
PARKS. Brother
of Peter (Lisa), and stepsister Lynne (Sandy).
He was predeceased by his wife
Mary
(LEVOIR,)
August 12, 1996,
his parents John and Margaret
(TAILOR/TAYLOR)
FOLLETT and stepmother
Peggy FOLLETT.
Mike was well known in the business community. He was Past President
of Kitchener-Waterloo and Area Chamber of Commerce, a member of
The Conservative Business Association and the Kitchener-Conestoga
Rotary Club and served on the board of the K-W Art Gallery. Mike
is a member of St. George's of Forest Hill Anglican Church. He
founded and operated Michael Follett Consulting Inc.
Friends are invited to share their memories of Mike with his
family at the Edward R. Good Funeral Home, 171 King Street South,
Waterloo from 2-4 and 7-9pm on Sunday. A service to celebrate Mike's
life will be held at St. George's of Forest Hill Anglican Church,
321 Fischer Hallman Road East, Kitchener on Monday, July 28,
2003 at 1pm. with Reverend Mark
GLADDING officiating. A private family
interment will be held at a later date.
In Mike's memory, donations to the Grand River Regional Cancer
Centre would be appreciated and can be arranged through the funeral
home, phone (519)745-8445 or www.edwardrgood.com
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GLADDY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-09-20 published
GLADDY,
Dr.
Percy
Vaughan, B.Sc., M.D., (F.R.C.SC)
On September 16, 2003, in his home on the shores of Lake Huron
with his family, Percy died, at the age of 76, after a life filled
with integrity, hard work, dedication and achievement. He leaves
his dear wife, Alexia, and beloved children, Geoffrey, Sarah
(Jonathan), Jennifer and Rebecca, and cherished grand_sons Alexander
and Daniel. He was predeceased by his parents, Arthur and Nellie,
and brother, Leo. Born and raised in Sarnia, Ontario, Percy was
a graduate of Queen's University (Meds '50), with postgraduate
training in Canada and the U.S. in Obstetrics and Gynecology. A
lifelong student of medicine, Percy practiced medicine for over
45 years in Sarnia where he served his community and positively
touched the lives of many mothers and their families. He was
instrumental in setting up the first Emergency Physicians' Service
at St. Joseph's Hospital which provided 24-hour emergency care
for the residents of Sarnia-Lambton. He also set up the first
mother-baby wellness clinic in Walpole Island to provide pre-
and post-natal care. For service to the First Nation community,
he was given the honorary name Mshkikiiwnini (Indian Doctor).
A skilled physician, he will be remembered for his strong moral
code, humour, warmth, availability and concern for others. In
his career and personal life, Percy was guided by his Christian
faith, especially during the last difficult days of his illness
and he remained true to himself determined, strong and willing
to do the work to survive. He had great love for his family and
was the proud father of four Queen's graduates. His example and
principles will remain to inspire his children and all who knew
him. He received excellent medical care and his family wishes
to express their appreciation to Dr. D.
PAYNE,
Dr.
F.
SHEPHERD,
Dr. G. DARLING, Dr. D.
BROWN and Jennifer
HORNBY, Princess Margaret
Hospital, Toronto, and Dr. V.
BALACHANDRA and Dr. R.
GARRETT,
Sarnia. Percy's family is grateful for the support and care extended
to them by their many relatives, Friends, and especially Helen
PARADIS.
Cremation has taken place with arrangements entrusted
to McKenzie and Blundy Funeral Home and Cremation Centre (519-344-3131).
A memorial service to celebrate Percy's life will be held at
11: 00 a.m. on Saturday, September 27, 2003, at Grace United Church,
990 Cathcart Blvd., Sarnia. In lieu of flowers, Percy's family
kindly requests that expressions of sympathy be directed to the
Lambton Education Foundation (Dr. P.V. Gladdy Scholarship), 200
Wellington Street, P.O. Box 2019, Sarnia, Ontario N7T 7L2 or to
the Lambton Hospitals Foundation (Building Fund
Dept. of Obstetrics and Gynecology), 89 Norman Street, Sarnia, Ontario
N7T 6S3. Messages of condolence and memories may be left at www.mckenzieblundy.com
A tree will be planted in memory of Percy
GLADDY in the McKenzie
& Blundy Memorial Forest. Dedication service Sunday, September
19th, 2004 at 2: 00 p.m. at the Wawanosh Wetlands Conservation
Area.
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GLADSTONE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-04-17 published
The duke of hernia surgery
Working at the Shouldice Hospital in Thornhill, Ontario, he claimed
never to have seen two hernias alike and perfected a technique
that reduced hospital stays
By Bill GLADSTONE
Special▼ to The Globe and Mail Thursday, April
17, 2003 - Page R9
Nicholas OBNEY, who performed more than 32,000 hernia operations
during his long career at the renowned Shouldice Hospital in
Toronto and Thornhill, Ontario, once told a television interviewer
that he had never encountered two hernias the same.
Dr. OBNEY joined the Shouldice Hospital in 1946 and was its chief
surgeon between 1965 and his official retirement in 1988. He
continued working for several years thereafter "because his heart
was here -- it was his whole life," said hospital spokesperson
Daryl URQUHART. "He was so dedicated to his patients that he
couldn't stop coming in."
The celebrated herniologist, who died in Thornhill, Ontario,
at the age of 84, was on call all the time. He read every patient
history before assigning them to his team of surgeons.
At his busiest, he averaged five or six hernia operations a day,
six days a week, and usually performed the hospital's most difficult
cases himself. He is credited with perpetuating and improving
upon the pioneering medical techniques devised by his mentor,
hospital founder Dr. E. Earle
SHOULDICE, who died in 1965.
A hernia is a protrusion or displacement of an intestine or other
internal organ through the muscular lining of the cavity in which
it is located. Surgeons have referred to the Shouldice method,
which uses natural tissues to strengthen the lining, as "the
gold standard by which all other hernia repairs should be measured."
The original Shouldice Hospital was located in downtown Toronto
but expanded northward in the 1950s into a white colonial-style
mansion acquired from the estate of former Globe and Mail publisher
George McCullough. The downtown facility was eventually closed
and the Thornhill property later expanded into an 89-bed facility
with six operating rooms, in which about 7,500 procedures are
performed each year.
Until American insurance rules changed in the 1980s, nearly half
of the hospital's patients came from the United States, including
as a 1982 profile of Dr.
OBNEY in People magazine noted --
several entertainment celebrities and even a state governor.
A photo accompanying the People article showed Dr.
OBNEY helping
a patient step down from the operating table. As the article
noted, most patients receive only a local anesthetic and walk
away from the operating room on their own steam.
As opposed to the treatment they might receive in a general hospital,
patients at Shouldice are encouraged to become active almost
immediately after surgery. (A second photo in the People spread
showed Dr.
OBNEY golfing with six bathrobed patients on the hospital's
putting grounds.) Shouldice officials assert that most patients
recover much more quickly than those who have hernia repairs
elsewhere, and are usually discharged within two or three days.
According to senior surgeon Dr. Michael
ALEXANDER,
Dr.
OBNEY
taught him to abandon the practice of inserting a nasal-gastric
tube into patients, which "used to be standard procedure for
every patient having such an operation.
"He said, 'Don't put one of those tubes down, wait for the patients
to declare themselves to see if they have a problem with nausea
and vomiting.' And out of 300 patients, we never put a tube down.
In fact, when that tube is put down, there's a much higher chance
of lung complications."
The proven success of such pioneering methods has attracted scores
of visiting doctors to the hospital from all over the world,
Dr. ALEXANDER said.
Dr. OBNEY "did so many operations, he used to get a feel for
the patient, which can only happen when you do thousands. He
had a strong intuitive sense -- he had it by pure experience.
I can't think of a case where he was wrong."
Few surgeons could ever hope to match Dr.
OBNEY's record of 32,000
hernia operations, Dr.
ALEXANDER said. "Can you imagine that
many people? You'd have to fill up Maple Leaf Gardens, empty
it out and fill it up again."
Born as an only child in the Ukrainian village of Ronaseowka
in 1918, Nicholas's parents brought him to Canada when he was
9, and settled in Toronto's west end. As soon as he learned English,
he began to excel in school -- Charles Fraser Public School,
then Parkdale Collegiate. His father, a machinist, borrowed $300
to pay for his tuition to the University of Toronto medical school,
from which Nicholas graduated in 1942.
Interning at Toronto General Hospital, he entered the Royal Canadian
Medical Corp, where he encountered one of his former university
instructors -- E. Earle
SHOULDICE -- acting as an army surgical
consultant attempting to reduce the number of men rejected for
military service because of hernia conditions. Dr.
OBNEY assisted
in that effort, and in 1946 joined the newly established Shouldice
Hospital at the corner of Church and Charles streets in Toronto.
"He started working with Dr.
SHOULDICE as an understudy and Dr.
SHOULDICE showed him his method," said his daughter, Dr. Jeannette
FROST. "
Then together they improved on the technique."
According to family and colleagues, Dr.
OBNEY disliked travelling,
especially by air, and attended relatively few of the many medical
conferences at which he was asked to speak. He once went to a
conference in Los Angeles by train, and came straight home when
it ended a few days later. Another time, persuaded to speak in
Australia, he agreed to fly there but not to stay even one day
more than necessary before returning home.
He enjoyed spending time on the family's 25-acre "hobby farm"
in what is now the Beaver Creek industrial area of Thornhill.
When the land was expropriated about 20 years ago, he and his
wife felled all of the property's 16 trees: The family still
has no shortage of firewood. Aside from being extremely economical,
he was known for his plain tastes in food and his perfectionism.
His hobbies included military history and classical music.
He was highly organized and "ran the hospital like clockwork,"
according to retired supervisory nurse Brenda
OWENS, who was
also his cousin.
"He was always so approachable, he seemed like a volume of knowledge,
he did his work quickly and accurately, and he expected the same
type of behaviour from his staff."
In 1998, the American Hernia Society awarded Dr.
OBNEY with a
plaque that cited him as "an unselfish master surgeon" known
for "his generosity with knowledge and encouragement to visiting
surgeons."
Nicholas OBNEY died on February 15. He leaves his wife of 59
years, the former Stephanie
KASYN; and his daughter Jeannette.
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GLADSTONE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-05-21 published
A character in life and work
Toronto-born actor played supporting roles in hundreds of films
and television shows, including the cult-hit sitcom Mary Hartman
By Bill GLADSTONE
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail Wednesday, May
21, 2003 - Page R5
As a genial, six-foot, balding performer who wore a trademark
mustache and glasses, Graham
JARVIS was not the leading-man type.
The Toronto-born actor from a privileged background, who died
last month in California at 72, courted but never achieved stardom
and instead gained a kind of small-roles fame by appearing in
hundreds of supporting parts in film and television productions.
Mr. JARVIS took character parts in films as diverse as Alice's
Restaurant, Cold Turkey, Middle Age Crazy, Silkwood and Misery,
and a similar assortment of television shows including Star Trek,
ER, Murder She Wrote, Gunsmoke, The X-Files and Six Feet Under.
His first role was as an understudy in a mid-1950s Broadway production
of Tennessee Williams's Orpheus Descending, and his last was
as the grandfather in an episode of the television series Seventh
Heaven, which aired four days after his death in April.
He is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Charlie Haggers,
the devoted husband of a country singer in the 1970s television
sitcom Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. "Nobody outside the business
knows my name, but it doesn't bother me," he told an interviewer
in 1982. "Fans still know me as Charlie, years after we went
off the air. Fans went nuts over that character for some reason
and I love the guy myself."
A scion of the historic Toronto family for whom
JARVIS
Street
is named, Graham Powely
JARVIS was also the grand_son of John
LABATT
Jr., who built up the famous Labatt brewery. A strain
of theatrical talent obviously runs in the Labatt blood: His
cousins include two legendary theatre personalities -- nonagenarian
actor Hume
CRONYN and Broadway producer Robert
WHITEHEAD, who
died last year.
It was Mr.
WHITEHEAD who helped Mr.
JARVIS attain the gig in
Orpheus Descending and an audition at the Barter Theatre in Abbingdon,
Va., where he trained for three seasons. Mr.
CRONYN also helped
him land a Broadway role, Mr.
JARVIS said in 1982, adding that
he rarely liked to mention the celebrated theatrical connections
within his own family.
"This is the first time I've let this information out because
I've tried not to trade on it," he said. "But I guess I've been
around long enough now not to worry about it."
His father, an investment banker who was instrumental in founding
what is today known as Scotia McLeod and was later president
of Labatt, moved the family to New York when Graham was 5. He
was sent to Bishop Ridley College, a prep school in St. Catharines,
Ontario, and later to Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
A confused dropout at 23, he found work on the midnight shift
in a penny arcade on 42nd Street in Manhattan. Then a friend
invited him to watch an off-Broadway troupe in rehearsal and
a light went on in his head. "I can do that!" he told himself,
and he never looked back.
"Graham was such a great character actor because he could just
go into character," said his niece, Sandra
JARVIS of Toronto.
"He was just brilliant that way. You'd be having a conversation
with him and he'd just don a role, and it would take you a second
to realize that Graham was now acting. Anyone who knew him well
could just see this glow in his eyes -- this glint that told
you he knew he was having fun with you."
"He loved acting," said his friend, actor Wil
ALBERT. "
When
he was acting he was like a little boy going to the candy store."
Mr. JARVIS was a graduate of the American Theatre Wing acting
school as well as of the Barter Theatre. He was an original member
of the Lincoln Center Repertory Theater and a veteran of many
Broadway and off-Broadway productions.
His first film role (in Bye Bye Braverman, 1968) enticed him
to move to Hollywood, and he soon landed the part of the narrator
in the stage production of The Rocky Horror Show at the Roxy
Theatre on Sunset Boulevard.
Television producer Norman
LEAR spotted him there and eventually
recommended him for Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Mr.
JARVIS also
appeared in the show's sequel, Forever Fernwood. Another memorable
role was of John Erlichman in Blind Ambition, a well-received
1979 television miniseries about the Watergate political scandal.
Relishing the idea of free airfare to Toronto where he had family
and Friends, Mr.
JARVIS took occasional work from the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation. Former Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
producer Ross
McLEAN once told of auditioning him as a talk-show
host, but felt his bald dome would need to be covered. Mr.
JARVIS
owned a hairpiece but had left it in California.
"Makeup pulled 20-odd rugs out of storage," Mr.
McLEAN wrote.
"Everything he tried on looked absurdly out of place." Ultimately,
Mr. JARVIS arranged for his L.A. agent to go to his house, find
the hairpiece and rush it to Toronto.
"The rug made it on time," Mr.
McLEAN noted, adding that "I
have rarely seen a less convincing thatch of regrouped Hong Kong
hair." In short, Graham
JARVIS looked best -- and did the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation audition -- as himself.
In a 1980s television series called Making the Grade, Mr.
JARVIS
played a buck-passing inner-city high-school principal who didn't
care that a student couldn't read. In real life, however, he
worked as a volunteer to teach literacy skills to young offenders.
"It was really fascinating to hear him talk about it," said
his wife, JoAnna. "He felt they couldn't read because they couldn't
speak -- they were speaking a street patois. He went back to
college to get his teaching certificate so he could do this on
a regular basis." Active in civic politics, he pushed for handgun
control and helped voters get to the polls on election day. He
also sang in his church choir and worked in its Sunday school.
"I think the consensus among almost everyone who knew Graham
is that he was a very warm, enjoyable man," said actor Jerry
HARDIN, a friend for almost 50 years.
"You came away feeling he was a good human being if you had any
contact with him. He was very empathetic. He had compassion for
people's difficulties and problems, and he would help them if
he could."
Friends and family also recall his storytelling skills and his
joy at giving visitors detailed historic tours of New York and
later Hollywood. By all accounts, he was a humble man.
"He didn't think he was nearly as successful as he was," said
Barbara WARREN, a niece. "He was always extremely surprised and
delighted when people would stop him on the street and ask him
for his autograph.
"He loved to deliver the lines and get the shock on your face,"
Ms. WARREN said. "You never saw him poise himself, he just
walked right in as if he was that person."
Mr. JARVIS died at his home in the Pacific Palisades area of
Los Angeles on April 16. Besides his wife, JoAnna, he leaves
sons Matthew and Alex in California and sister Kitty Blair in
Toronto.
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GLADSTONE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-06-07 published
Bureaucrat 'invaluable' to ministers
Analyst was a key negotiator in talks that led to the formation
of the World Trade Organization in 1995
By Bill GLADSTONE
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail Saturday, June
7, 2003 - Page F11
Gerry SHANNON could have been a professional hockey player like
his father, but decided instead to play in a much bigger arena.
Mr. SHANNON went on to become a top career public servant who
helped to formulate the federal government's policies on international
trade. At one time, he held the No. 2 posting in the Canadian
embassy in Washington and was a key negotiator in the talks known
as the Uruguay Round, which led to the formation of the World
Trade Organization in 1995.
Mr. SHANNON, who died recently in Vancouver at the age of 67,
is remembered as a fair, tough and passionate trade-policy analyst
who was a trusted adviser to ministers in the successive cabinets
of Pierre TRUDEAU and Brian
MULRONEY in the 1980s.
"Gerry was a larger-than-life character," said Peter
SUTHERLAND,
a former director-general of the World Trade Organization. "He
played a crucial role in the conclusion of the Uruguay Round.
He had a belief in the multilateral system that he combined with
an intense Canadian patriotism. His personality was also a factor
in bringing peaceful resolution to difficult negotiations."
"He was a straightforward guy -- you always knew where you stood
with him," said Marc Lalonde, a former Liberal finance minister.
"He was a man with a very solid judgment. He was a good team
player in that regard, the kind of guy you would want to have
as a senior public servant."
Born in Ottawa in 1935, Mr.
SHANNON received an early lesson
from his father -- hockey player Jerry
SHANNON, who played for
the Montreal Canadiens, Boston Bruins and other National Hockey
League teams -- on the necessity of appearing strong, no matter
what. Once, after a puck knocked out the boy's two front teeth,
his father shouted, "Get up, son, shake it off!" Young Gerry
did so and stayed in the game.
The same spirit of toughness also probably helped him cope with
the death of his mother when he was 10.
Despite an offer to try out for the Bruins, Mr.
SHANNON took
his father's advice and went to university. Graduating from Carleton
University's school of journalism, he worked as a reporter for
the Sudbury Star for several years before lifting his sights
once again. He wrote a foreign-service exam and was accepted
as a diplomat in 1963. "He realized that being a small-town reporter
was great and he enjoyed it, but he wanted to be involved in
the big world," said his wife, Anne Park
SHANNON.
His first posting was in Washington, where, despite any formal
training as an economist, he handled matters of trade and economic
policy. "He was good at pursuing Canadian interests with the
Americans.
They liked him," Ms. Park
SHANNON said. "He was very
affable and very good at just getting to the essence of things."
He also served as Canada's senior foreign affairs representative
in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia, and as ambassador to Korea,
one of Canada's youngest ambassadors at the time.
In the mid-1970s, at the height of the Trudeau era, he became
director of commercial policy for the department of external
affairs. After several years, he returned to Washington as the
embassy's second-in-command at a time when Canada's national
energy program generated heated discussions.
Recalled to Ottawa about 1982, he became the assistant deputy
minister of finance for the Liberals, then deputy minister of
international trade for the Progressive Conservatives. In these
capacities, he advised Mr.
LALONDE and Tory ministers Michael
WILSON and Barbara
McDOUGALL.
"He was a very professional public servant, he had a sense of
professionalism, he had a very good mind, he was tough, and he
understood very well the role of the senior public servant, "
Ms. McDOUGALL said. "He never tried to be the minister and he
was a straight shooter, which many of us appreciated when we
realized that this was the exception and not the rule.
"I worked with a lot of great public servants, but he was certainly
right up at the top," she said.
Anne Marie
DOYLE, who worked extensively with Mr.
SHANNON in
various government departments, recalls that he would go out
on a limb for employees when he thought that they were in the
right, and he possessed "iron in his spine" that made his superiors
respect him as steadfast and trustworthy.
"He had this phenomenal gift -- the ability to take a very complex
problem, see to its core and express it in just two or three
very articulate sentences so that someone like a minister or
prime minister would have found him just invaluable," she said.
"They would have his complex briefing and he would say, 'Well,
Minister, what it boils down to is just this, ' and it would
be just brilliant."
Mr. SHANNON was "one of the giants of Canadian trade policy of
the '80s and '90s," said Bill
DYMOND, executive director of
the Centre for Trade Policy and Law at Carleton University. "The
politicians trusted him because he was blunt, honest and loyal
to the government."
Known for his enthusiasm and for being indefatigable on the job,
Mr. SHANNON performed an astonishing array of official duties
while in Geneva from 1989 to 1995. As Canada's chief negotiator
for the Uruguay Round, he developed a binding dispute-settlement
system that was hailed as a major breakthrough. He was Canada's
first ambassador to the World Trade Organization as he had been
to its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
As an occasional ambassador to the United Nations, he gave to
its committee on disarmament the "
SHANNON mandate," a significant
negotiating protocol still in use today.
Mr. SHANNON was known as a loyal defender of Canadian interests.
Soon after leaving government in 1995 to work as an international
trade policy consultant, he wrote an article for The Globe and
Mail on Canada's seemingly never-ending softwood-lumber dispute
with the United States.
"We always get roughed up in dealing alone with the Americans
on issues they deem to be critical to them," he observed. "They
simply have too many guns and they persevere until they win."
Mr. SHANNON enjoyed hiking, gardening, opera, travelling, dogs,
crossword puzzles and playing hockey.
He and his wife moved from Ottawa to Victoria about a year ago
with the intent of retiring there. He was sick only a few weeks
before he died on April 26.
He leaves his wife, Anne Park
SHANNON, and sons Michael and Steven
from a previous marriage. He also leaves a sister, Carol
SCHWARZ,
of Ottawa.
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GLADSTONE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-07-19 published
He gave his city artistic merit
Windsor gallery's longtime director built a fine collection in
his pursuit of 'communal pride'
By Bill GLADSTONE
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail Saturday, July
19, 2003 - Page F9
Canada's art world is lamenting the end of an era with the demise
of Kenneth
SALTMARCHE, founding director of the Art Gallery of
Windsor, who died in Toronto on July 3 at the age of 82.
An accomplished artist, Mr.
SALTMARCHE ultimately made his greatest
mark as an arts administrator and is being remembered as one
of the last of a dying generation of artists-turned-gallery directors
who revitalized the art scene across the country.
Hired in 1946 to oversee operations of what was then the Willistead
Art Gallery in Windsor, Ontario, he transformed the facility
from a room on the second floor of the municipal library into
a leading regional institution that possessed an astute collection
of nearly 3,000 works by the time he retired in 1985.
"The gallery really had a very simple and rather primitive beginning,
and he built it from absolute scratch, from zero," said Bill
WITHROW, former longtime director of the Art Gallery of Ontario.
"I was always impressed with that fact."
As a collector, Mr.
SALTMARCHE is remembered for having "a good
eye" and for acquiring many works by artists initially considered
out of the mainstream, such as Harold Town and Prudence Heward.
Over time his judgment was proved sound as a favoured artist's
reputation would soar, along with the market value of his or
her works.
He concentrated on attaining both historical and contemporary
Canadian works, including numerous canvases of the Group of Seven,
thus laying the foundation of the gallery's present collection
of more than 5,000 pieces.
"He often collected against the current, which means you can
make a dollar go a lot further," said David
SILCOX, managing
director of Sotheby's Canada. "He bought people when they weren't
popular -- he was very intelligent that way."
Alf BOGUSKY, director of the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery,
calls the collection Mr.
SALTMARCHE assembled a "magnificent
accomplishment" that reflects "the beautiful story of the development
of Canadian painting, as represented by the earliest formal portraiture
by British and French artists right through to the contemporary
period of the Seventies."
Known for his energetic vision, Mr.
SALTMARCHE had a knack for
drumming up community involvement through innovative programs
such as Art in the Park, now a long-established annual event
in Windsor. Aided by his wife Judy, he made the gallery a vibrant
centre of cultural life and charmed volunteers and patrons alike
to new heights of involvement and philanthropy.
Aware of the advantages of being situated at Canada's southernmost
border point, he cultivated friendly relations with the Detroit
Institute of Arts, situated across the river and a few city blocks
away, even sending over exhibitions of Canadian art. In the mid-1950s,
he scored a major coup by persuading his U.S. counterparts that
a key work languishing in their collection would have a much
more appreciative home in Canada.
As a result, the Detroit Institute of Arts donated A Side Street
Group of Seven stalwart Lawren Harris's celebrated 1919 painting
of a snow-covered Toronto street -- to the Willistead gallery
as a gift in commemoration of Windsor's 100th birthday. (Tom
Thomson's 1914 painting Algonquin Park came into the gallery's
possession in the same period.)
When nine previously unknown early 19th-century watercolours
by early bureaucrat-painter George Heriot appeared on the market
in 1967, Mr.
SALTMARCHE was determined to acquire them despite
their "distinctly Old Master price tag" exceeding $45,000. He
quickly raised three-quarters of the sum from Windsor residents,
then convinced the Canada Council into making an exceptional
grant of $10,000 to complete the purchase.
Mr. SALTMARCHE saw collecting as "an art museum's primary function,"
and once wrote: "Communal pride -- whether civic or national
in scale -- is engendered by the owning of works of art of outstanding
value and is a completely natural reason for assembling a permanent
collection."
He struggled with the library board for years to make the gallery
an autonomous institution, and his eventual success was seen
as a milestone by directors of other regional galleries. In the
early 1970s, he moved the gallery into a historic renovated brewery
building. It later ceded those premises to the province (for
use as a casino) and moved into a prominent new downtown building
in 2001.
Born
September 29, 1920, in Cardiff, Wales, Kenneth Charles
SALTMARCHE
arrived in Windsor with his family at the age of four, and moved
with them to the village of Vienna, south of London, Ontario,
during the Depression. It was in Vienna's one-room schoolhouse
that he encountered the travelling exhibition of Group of Seven
reproductions that inspired him to dedicate his future to art.
"He always told me that seeing that show was the pivotal point
in his passion for art," said his son Noel.
A graduate of the Ontario College of Art, he began programming
at the Willistead Art Gallery about 1946; he also began to write
art and music criticism for the Windsor Daily Star and painting
landscapes, still lifes and family portraits. In 1947, he married
Judith DAVIES, and they had Noël and his twin brother David two
years later. His family often joined him on painting expeditions
around the world, some of which resulted in solo exhibitions
of art.
He was a member of the Order of Canada and held an honorary law
degree from the University of Windsor. As well, he was the founding
president of the Ontario Association of Art Galleries and a founding
member and past president of the Canadian Art Museum Directors
Organization.
Soon after Judith died in 1992, he painted a series of watercolours
"and that was the last work he did," Noël said. Afflicted with
senile dementia, he spent his last years in several retirement
homes and then a nursing home, Castleview Wychwood, in Toronto.
Predeceased by brothers Ronald and Leslie as well as his wife,
Mr. SALTMARCHE leaves Noël and David, daughters-in-law Deb and
Anita, and four grandchildren, all of Toronto.
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GLADSTONE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-08-13 published
Jim NOBLE: 1924 - 2003
Toronto beat cop who went on to become a deputy chief was 'one
of the most highly respected operatives in the history of Canadian
justice'
By Bill GLADSTONE
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail Wednesday, August
13, 2003 - Page R5
He was a gentleman cop who rose through the ranks of the Toronto
police force to become deputy chief. Jim
NOBLE, who devoted 37
years to Canadian law enforcement, has died at the age of 78.
Mr. NOBLE's career was marked by an almost continuous advancement
through the ranks. As a divisional detective, he worked on a
gamut of crimes that included "housebreaking, frauds, sex offenses,
robberies -- a little bit of everything," he once explained.
Later promoted to the homicide squad, he investigated more than
100 murders. He was known for his painstaking legwork, his meticulous
attention to detail and his uncanny ability to weave an assortment
of disparate clues into what he once called "a nice rope of circumstantial
evidence."
He eventually headed the homicide squad, where up-and-coming
detectives like Julian
FANTINO, the current police chief, worked
under his command.
"He was one of the most highly respected homicide investigators
that the Toronto Police Service ever had," Mr.
FANTINO said.
"I always found him to be of impeccable integrity and a man of
very strong character and loyalty to the profession."
"He was one of the guys that knew all the answers,"said Walter
TYRRELL, a retired deputy chief who also once worked in homicide
under Mr. NOBLE's command. "If you needed advice, Jim was the
guy you would go to."
Mr. NOBLE was promoted to inspector in 1973, staff superintendant
in 1974 and deputy chief in 1977. He retired in 1984 with 61
letters of commendation in his file.
Besides homicide investigation, he was an expert on deportation
and extradition and lectured on those subjects at police colleges.
An outspoken critic of what he saw as an overly-liberal legal
system that put the rights of criminals above those of law-abiding
citizens, he once penned an article titled "The Pampered Criminal."
Convinced that the immigration department was equally soft on
criminals, he helped spurred the government into tightening up
the process by which criminals are deported.
"He was really upset with the system," said his former partner,
Jack FOSTER, a retired staff sergeant from the detective branch.
"He felt they were too soft on immigrants. We'd go to all the
trouble of a deportation hearing, they'd escort a guy over to
the United States, and within an hour he'd be back on our side
again."
Born in Whiteabbey, near Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1924,
James Melvyn
NOBLE came to Canada with his family at the age
of four and grew up in a working-class neighbourhood on Toronto's
Shaw Street. After grade 12 he entered the Royal Canadian Air
Force and earned his pilot's wings, but, to his immense disappointment,
he never served overseas. Leaving the Royal Canadian Air Force
in 1946, he began looking for "something with a little bit of
action, a little bit of excitement." When his father, a carpenter,
suggested that he apply for a position with the police department,
the 22-year-old laughed -- hard -- but agreed to talk to a friend
of his father's who was a police inspector. After two lengthy
discussions, Mr.
NOBLE was ready to "give it a try."
For six months he pounded a beat in a police uniform. Then, paired
with a partner in a patrol car, he worked a graveyard shift and
became familiar with the "usual cases -- fights on the streets,
drunks, domestics, robberies." Often, after an overnight shift,
he would be obliged to make an appearance in court the next day.
Promoted to detective in 1957 and to the homicide squad in 1961,
he once explained that he'd watch for certain telltale signs
in an accused upon introducing himself as a police detective:
"a darting of the eyes, the mouth becomes dry and there's a wetting
of the lips, a throbbing of the artery in the neck. The person
gets pale, he's trembling."
He was often amazed at how readily criminals, once apprehended,
will confess their misdeeds. "There's almost a compulsion of
people to confess, especially in murder cases," he once said.
"It makes them feel that they have salved their conscience to
some degree by telling about it."
In one of many infamous cases that he handled,
NOBLE solved the
murder of an 89-year-old female doctor, Rowena
HUME, who was
viciously beaten to death by a derelict who had stayed at a Salvation
Army shelter and whom she had hired to do a few odd jobs. Two
days after the murder, having followed a series of clues, Mr.
NOBLE nabbed the suspect on a downtown street; the man blurted
out a confession almost instantly. Mr.
NOBLE was also part of
the gruesome homicide investigation involving the notorious Evelyn
DICK of Hamilton, Ontario
Mr. FOSTER, who was paired with Mr.
NOBLE for about eight years,
recalled that though he took his job very seriously, he also
"had a good sense of humour -- he enjoyed a good laugh."
On one occasion, after a painstaking, six-month investigation
into a complex case of insurance fraud, the duo were finally
ready to collar the perpetrator, a well-known socialite named
Irene.
"I remember Jim and me driving up Yonge Street to make the final
arrest, and he was singing, 'Irene, Goodnight, Irene,' " Mr.
FOSTER recalled. Irene, needless to say, was convicted.
For all of Mr.
NOBLE's acumen as an investigator, however, not
all of his professional faculties were in operation the day he
and Mr. FOSTER visited a Yonge Street ladies' wear shop to check
into a routine fraud. Getting back into the patrol car, Mr.
NOBLE
commented on how attractive he had found the store manager and
that he wished he could get to know her better.
"But she's probably married," he lamented.
"Jim, what kind of detective are you?" Mr.
FOSTER said. "Didn't
you notice that she's got no wedding ring on her finger?"
"No, I didn't. I guess I was too busy taking notes."
Mr. FOSTER insisted that Mr.
NOBLE, then 35 and single, make
the requisite follow-up call on his own. He did, and he and the
store manager, Barbara, were married in 1961.
Although he could play rough when the situation demanded, Mr.
NOBLE was known as an impeccable gentleman and a guardian of
old-fashioned standards and family values.
He once upbraided some bikers for using profanity in the presence
of their girlfriends; the biker girls explained they weren't
typical ladies but seemed touched by his courtesy all the same.
According to his daughter, Elaine
NOBLE Tames, Jim
NOBLE rarely
spoke about his professional life at home.
"Being in a house with two ladies, the typical gentleman side
of him would say, 'That's not the sort of thing to discuss with
your wife and daughter,' " she said.
Mr. NOBLE was the subject of a cover story in Toronto Life magazine
in 1972 that used him as a prism through which to view the entire
police force. The article described him as "gentle, thoughtful
and courteous," and noted that, except in target practice, he
had never fired the snubnosed Smith and Wesson.38 revolver that
he wore on his right hip.
American authors Bruce Henderson and Sam Summerlin devoted a
chapter to him in their 1976 book The Super Sleuths, and described
him as "one of the most highly respected operatives in the history
of Canadian justice."
"He was the embodiment of professionalism in everything he did,
and that was the standard to which he held other people," Mr.
FANTINO said.
Jim NOBLE died in Toronto on July 15, leaving his wife
Barbara,
daughter Elaine and sister Pat
WILKINSON, all of Toronto.
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GLADSTONE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-09-05 published
A life cut short by severe acute respiratory syndrome
The only doctor to have died from the virus in North America,
he was a caring professional and a loving family man
By Bill GLADSTONE
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail Friday, September
5, 2003 - Page R13
As the only doctor in North America to die of severe acute respiratory
syndrome, Toronto physician Nestor
YANGA may have gained more
prominence in death than by anything he had accomplished in life.
He was a dedicated general practitioner, church volunteer and
family man who was passionate about everything he did, according
to Friends. A former president of the Canadian Filipino Medical
Association, he loved dancing, gardening and spending time with
his wife and two sons.
In the early days of the city's outbreak of severe acute respiratory
syndrome, as doctors were still scrambling to identify and contain
the alarming new disease, a patient turned up at Dr.
YANGA's
east-Toronto clinic who was a family member of one of the first
carriers in Canada; two more family members came to see him two
days later. In medical parlance, all would be known as "super-secretors"
for the highly virulent and infectious strains they carried.
"He saw them in the waiting room and told them they'd better
go to the hospital," said his friend, Dr. Bina
COMENDADOR, a
Richmond Hill, Ontario, psychiatrist.
Shortly afterwards Dr.
YANGA came down with a slight fever, then
a dry cough. When the symptoms worsened, he visited a newly instituted
screening centre for severe acute respiratory syndrome and was
told to get to Sunnybrook Hospital right away. "Being the doctor
he was, he drove himself to the hospital and he never came out,"
Dr. COMENDADOR said.
He died after a four-month struggle with the disease on August
13 at the age of 54. He was the 44th severe acute respiratory
syndrome victim in the Toronto area.
An estimated 2,000 people, including many provincial dignitaries,
medical professionals and members of the city's Filipino community,
paid their last respects to Dr.
YANGA at a funeral in Toronto's
St. Michael's Cathedral. In eulogies, he was depicted as a hero
who had fallen on the front lines of medicine's unrelenting battle
against illness of every kind.
"He contracted the disease while caring for one of his patients,"
said Dr. Larry
ERLICK, president of the Ontario Medical Association.
"It's a risk that physicians face every day."
As if to underscore that risk, two of the three doctors who worked
with Dr. YANGA in the Lapsley Family Doctors Clinic were also
infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome last April; one
remains hospitalized while the other is still too weak to resume
his medical duties; the fourth recently reopened the clinic and
is struggling with a fourfold increase in patient load. As well,
two nurses in the Toronto area have died of the virus after caring
for severe acute respiratory syndrome-stricken patients.
Born in Malabon, the Philipines, on October 8, 1948, Nestor
YANGA
studied medicine at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila
he specialized in surgery and graduated in 1975. He emigrated
to Canada in 1981 and was married the same year in Toronto, having
met his prospective bride, Remy, during a visit two years earlier.
Passing a rigorous set of medical exams in Canada, Dr.
YANGA
interned at a Newfoundland hospital for two months, then at two
hospitals in Toronto. Intending to become a psychiatrist, he
studied at McMaster University and at the University of Toronto,
but withdrew in his third year, telling Friends he preferred
to practise family medicine.
Toronto psychiatrist Dr. Dulce
BISMONTE recalled that Dr.
YANGA
had inspired her to enter psychiatry and that she was very saddened
when he told her he was leaving that field. "He was so compassionate
and caring, he would have made an excellent psychiatrist," she
said.
As a general practitioner, Dr.
YANGA got to know many of his
patients as people and often spent more time with them than strictly
necessary, to the occasional consternation of patients in his
waiting room. Any annoyance would invariably melt away, however,
as the meticulous but easygoing doctor would bestow a similar
level of care and warmth upon each waiting patient in turn.
"He was the kind of person you could respect and really care
about, and I think his patients felt that too," Dr.
COMENDADOR
said. "He would make you feel that you were special and that
you were the most important patient."
Dr. YANGA sometimes assisted with surgeries at Centenary Hospital
and worked as a volunteer at the sexual assault clinic at Grace
Hospital. He and his wife were also dedicated members of the
Filipino-dominated charismatic Catholic group Bukas Loob Sa Diyos.
Having performed in his youth with a dance group, which toured
all over Southeast Asia, Dr.
YANGA retained a passion for ballroom
dancing, which he did with his wife, and line dancing, which
he did apart from her, with others. "Nestor loved to dance,"
Dr. BISMONTE observed. "He might have been on the chubby side,
but he was a very graceful dancer."
He was, above all, a consummate family man who always reserved
plenty of time to be with his family and usually took them with
him to medical conferences at resorts. "His loss is a tragedy
to his family as well as to all of his patients, and I don't
know how we're going to overcome it," Dr.
ERLICK said. "He had
a huge following and it's hard to replace a physician like that."
Nestor YANGA leaves his wife
Remy, sons Nelson, 20, and Ronald,
16, brother Emmanuel and father Lauro, all of Toronto.
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GLADSTONE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-11-15 published
Sculptor 'entirely original'
A wood carver from a young age who made many public works, he
was befriended by the Group of Seven and later carved their tombstone
epitaphs
By Bill GLADSTONE,
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail Saturday, November
15, 2003 - Page F10
A Canadian sculptor who as a young man was adopted by the Group
of Seven has died in Toronto. E. B.
COX, who prided himself on
achieving artistic and commercial success without ever taking
a penny in government grants, was 89.
Mr. COX was a young associate, of some of the Group of Seven
with whom he went on northern sketching trips; A. Y.
JACKSON
once complimented him on his "good sense of form." He later carved
their tombstone epitaphs.
A wood carver from a young age, he came to master stone and even
the delicate art of faceting and carving precious stones; he
also tried metal, ceramics and glass. Because he liked to work
fast, he pioneered the use of power tools to quicken the chiselling
process, a technique that purists initially disdained as a form
of cheating.
According to one 1990s guide-book, he had "more sculpture on
view in Toronto's public places than any other single artist."
His 20-piece Garden of the Greek Gods, originally installed in
the 1950s on the Georgian Peaks near Collingwood, Ontario, was
later relocated to the far more populous grounds of the Canadian
National Exhibition near the Dufferin Gate. The only fully human
representation in the group, an 11-foot-high statue of Hercules,
was carved from a six-tonne piece of Indiana limestone -- "the
biggest piece of stone used by a sculptor in Canada," according
to friend and patron, Ken
SMITH.
Among his many other public works are a fish fountain for a courtyard
at the former Park Plaza Hotel, a stone bear for the Guild Inn,
a stone Orpheus for Victoria College, lavish countertops and
railings for historic bank buildings, a large seated lady for
McMaster University and whimsical creatures for a school yard
in Milton, Ontario
Having mastered big, he also excelled at small: He used to claim
that he invented coffee-table art. He carved little totem poles
to put himself through university, and became known for his small
bear sculptures, which he sold at popular prices, especially
at Christmas. "At university, I damned near starved," he would
explain. "I don't believe in starving artists."
Influenced by Iroquois and West Coast Haida art, he focused on
bears, beavers, birds and other animals as well as human torsos,
masks and heads; he often caught the animals in quirky fluid
poses and never failed to capture their essential natures. He
once crafted an all-Canadian limited-edition chess set for the
Hudson's Bay Co., with beavers as pawns, coureurs de bois as
knights, Indian princesses as queens, and so on. He was "the
great bridge between aboriginal art and modern art," according
to Mr. SMITH and others. A picture book about him, featuring
an essay by Gary Michael
DAULT, was published by Boston Mills
Press in 1999.
"He was entirely original," said Toronto sculptor Dora DE
PEDERY-
HUNT.
"Absolutely nobody else did what he did. What style he had was
entirely his. I call him a real good sculptor, a real good artist."
The younger of two brothers, Elford Bradley
COX was born on July
16, 1914, in Botha, Alberta., where his family made a short-lived
attempt at farming; he learned to carve by watching his maternal
grandfather whittle kindling by the fireside. He persisted in
sculpting even though his pious father was vehemently opposed
to the creation of "graven images," he told Toronto Life magazine
in 1997. The family returned to Bowmanville, Ontario, where E.
B. spent most of his childhood, and where his mother died suddenly
after an epileptic attack when her favoured son was a young teenager.
When it was time for him to go to university, "his father sent
him off with $5, a suitcase and a wish of good luck," said Kathy
SUTTON, the younger of his two daughters.
Studying languages at the University of Toronto from 1934 to
1938, Mr. COX was befriended by German professor and painter
Barker FAIRLEY, who introduced him to A. Y.
JACKSON,
Fred
VARLEY
and Arthur
LISMER of the Group of Seven.
Mr. COX started teaching languages at Upper Canada College, but
soon left to join the war effort as an intelligence officer,
interrogating prisoners of war in Europe.
Afterward, he resumed teaching at Upper Canada College, and devoted
part of a summer to a school canoe trip on the Mississauga River
the next summer he escorted a group of boys on an even more adventurous
trip down the Churchill River in the barren lands. "That was
just unheard-of in those years," recalled Terence A.
WARDROP,
who joined that expedition and became Mr.
COX's lifelong friend
and solicitor. "It was a big trip and it was almost historic
the rivers and some of the lakes were unmapped in 1948."
Quitting his teaching job in 1949, Mr.
COX married the former
Betty CAMPBELL, bought a farm near Palgrave, Ontario, and discovered
that he could survive as a full-time artist. (Although he considered
government subsidies poisonous, he once applied for a government
grant to study Canadian stones suitable for sculpting -- and
was turned down. "I did my stone research without their damn-fool
money," he told The Globe and Mail in 1970.) Moving to a rural
property in north Toronto and later to a Victorian house in eastern
Toronto, he separated from his wife but remained on excellent
terms with her and their daughters.
Being partial to pranks, he once purchased a canoe for his wife
as a gift and, to achieve maximum surprise, paddled it to the
dock at the family cottage in a rented disguise. Along with his
love of humour, Friends recall his sharp wit and his ability
to cut through social pretense. "He said he wanted his gravestone
to read, 'I told you I was sick,' " recalled art dealer John
INGRAM. "
That's what I remember about him -- his great sense
of humour and just what a wonderful compassionate guy he was.
He tried to give this air of being an old curmudgeon, but in
fact, he was anything but."
Becoming a mentor to many young artists, Mr.
COX generously shared
his tools and experience with them. "He didn't have much mentoring
when he was learning to be an artist -- people didn't help him
so he took the opposite tack," said his daughter Kathy.
Always enthusiastic and full of ideas, he was usually in his
workshop early in the morning -- and kept on working even after
losing his sight in his final years. His home was full of fine
sculpture and painting, including a portrait of Mr.
COX by Mr.
FAIRLEY that hung over the mantel. "It was a lovely place, and
by the time you got out of there, you were in a buying fever,"
Mr. SMITH recalled. "E.B. himself was part of the fun of buying
stuff. People were just charmed by the atmosphere he created."
He was also famously not particular about the prices he asked
from genuine admirers of his work.
As for his art's place in the world, he was confident it would
last, at least in the physical sense. "We'd have these long philosophical
talks about whether there was an afterlife and what legacy to
leave behind," friend Eric
CONROY recalled. "He'd say that his
stone works would be there long after Rembrandt's paintings had
crumbled."
E. B. COX died in Toronto on July 29, leaving his wife
Betty,
daughters Sally
SPROULE and Kathy
SUTTON, two grandchildren and
two great-grandchildren.
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GLADSTONE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-30 published
Diplomat shaped cultural policy
Art-loving ambassador to Moscow and Bucharest also served as
Trudeau's press secretary and as a director of the Canada Council
By Bill GLADSTONE,
Special▲ to The Globe and Mail Tuesday, December 30, 2003 - Page R7
Peter ROBERTS, a former press secretary to Pierre Trudeau who
served as Canada's ambassador to Moscow and Bucharest and as
director of the Canada Council, is being remembered as a major
shaper of Canadian cultural policy and a late representative
of an older generation of broadly based, multitalented diplomats that has all but vanished from the scene.
A native Albertan, Mr.
ROBERTS died in Ottawa on November 21
after a varied career that stretched over four decades and included
stints in Washington, Hong Kong, Saigon and Brussels. He was 76.
As assistant undersecretary of state responsible for cultural
affairs from 1973 to 1979, he helped Ottawa develop protective
policies toward the domestic film and book-publishing industries,
and was instrumental in drafting the government's nationalistic
Bill C-58, which applied tariffs to American magazines sold on
Canadian newsstands. He also helped to establish the National Arts Centre.
"He was a superb civil servant because he had a capacity to listen
to ministers, understand their viewpoints and help them achieve
what they wanted to achieve," said John
ROBERTS (no relation,)
who was Secretary of State when Peter
ROBERTS was undersecretary.
"But at the same time, he had an extraordinary passion for the
arts and for culture. So he did have his own ideas about things
that should be done. He stimulated you to think and to adapt your thinking."
As ambassador to the Soviet Union, Mr.
ROBERTS took a keen interest
in George COSTAKIS, a former junior employee of the Canadian
embassy who had spent a lifetime amassing an outstanding but
illegal collection of modern art, both Russian and international.
Mr. ROBERTS helped arrange a major exhibition of the collection
at the Musée des beaux-arts in Montreal and later wrote a full-length
biography, George Costakis: A Russian Life in Art, published by Carleton University Press in 1994.
Raising Eyebrows, a book of memoirs and character sketches, was
published in 2000. He also wrote a book-length profile of former
Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, whom he met often during
his posting in Bucharest from 1979 to 1983, and who was executed
in 1989. The book, Revenge on Christmas Day: Fact and Fiction in Bucharest, is slated for publication in 2004.
"Peter was a multifaceted person who bridged the cultural world,
the literary world, the academic world and the world of the foreign
service," said Allan
GOTLIEB, a former ambassador to Washington.
"If you go back to the golden age of Canadian diplomacy, you
find examples of these very broadly engaged minds. Peter joined
a little later, in the 1950s, but he still seemed a part of that era."
Peter McLaren
ROBERTS was born in Calgary on July 5, 1927, and
grew up in Lethbridge, Alberta. His father was a locally stationed
federal tax official, his mother a schoolteacher. A brilliant
student, he earned an M.A. in English literature from the University
of Alberta in 1951, as well as a Rhodes scholarship that enabled him to study for three years at Oxford.
Afterward, he went down to London with a group of Friends, including
Mr. GOTLIEB, who convinced him to write the Canadian foreign-service
exam. He did so on a whim -- and passed. He taught English literature
for a year at Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec, and joined the foreign service in 1955.
Initially stationed in Ottawa, Mr.
ROBERTS began studying German
in anticipation of a posting in Bonn or Vienna. "The department
had just then begun to realize that it was an advantage for a
foreign-service officer, and for Canada, if the officer knew
the language of the country where he or she was working," he noted in Raising Eyebrows.
"I hear you're learning German," the personnel manager remarked to him one day.
"Yes."
"You must be interested in languages."
"Yes."
"How'd you like to learn Russian?"
Several months later he travelled by ship and train to Moscow,
where he served as third-in-command of the Canadian embassy from
1955 to 1958. He was posted to Hong Kong and Vietnam in the early
1960s and
to Washington for the rest of that tumultuous decade.
In 1970, the Prime Minister's Office essentially borrowed him
from the Department of External Affairs, as it was then known,
so he could serve as assistant press secretary to Prime Minister
Pierre TRUDEAU.
Returning to Canada after a nine-year absence
that had included a dreary stint working for the North Atlantic
Treaty
Organization in Brussels, Mr.
ROBERTS showed up for his
first day of work -- just as the Front de libération du Québec
hostage crisis was erupting. Marc
LALONDE,
Mr.
TRUDEAU's principal
secretary, asked him to represent him at a strategy-planning meeting with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
"I had been long enough in diplomacy to know that this was a
situation in which one did not speak without instructions," Mr.
ROBERTS would recall. "I had no instructions, and I hadn't the
faintest idea what the prime minister's views were on this abrupt
development. I promised I would listen, make notes, report, and
phone everyone. That I did, but I was glad that I had not ventured
to predict which way
TRUDEAU would jump. It was only a few days
later that the troops were in Montreal, suspects rounded up and
in jail, the War Measures Act proclaimed, and the prime minister
saying to the press, 'Just watch me.' By that time I was veteran and expert."
After that baptism by fire, Mr.
ROBERTS became full press secretary
and met daily with Mr.
TRUDEAU, often advising him on issues
that the Prime Minister may have considered unimportant, and
sometimes having the sobering thrill of hearing his words repeated
verbatim to reporters later in the day. It was Mr.
ROBERTS himself
who announced the Prime Minister's marriage to an "incredulous"
press gallery on March 4, 1971, and the birth of a son on Christmas Day.
External
Affairs reclaimed Mr.
ROBERTS in 1972 and parachuted
him into the cultural division of the Department of the Secretary
of State. The new assistant undersecretary awoke at 4 every morning
and studied for three hours before going to work, but even with
a "marvellous staff" who "filled in for me when I was stupid
or ignorant," he sometimes found the learning curve excessively steep.
"Gradually my diplomatic experience came into play," he would
write. "Diplomacy is partly a matter of faking. If you don't
know the answer, if you don't know who someone is, don't let
on. Smile enigmatically, and change the subject to the situation
in Peru. I did a lot of that at the Secretary of State."
Mr. ROBERTS learned Romanian before becoming that country's ambassador
in 1979, and found that the effort had been worthwhile because
it gave him exceptionally good access to Mr. Ceausescu, who seemed
flattered that a Canadian could speak his language; the leader
would dismiss his retinue of advisers and translators and meet
with Mr. ROBERTS alone to discuss a variety of political issues
ranging from the situation in Poland to the situation in Quebec.
Mr. ROBERTS enjoyed the meetings but understood that he was dealing
with "the most desperate dictator and tyrant in Europe" and one who was becoming increasingly unhinged.
Among the visitors to Bucharest during that time was Allan
GOTLIEB,
by then undersecretary of state for External Affairs, who recalled
being feted with Mr.
ROBERTS by their Romanian hosts at a deluxe
and crowded restaurant, where they washed down wonderful steaks
with equally wonderful wines. The next evening, seeking a place
for dinner, he suggested they return to the same establishment.
"He told me, 'It's not there any more -- it's not real,' " Mr.
GOTLIEB recalled. "He said, 'They opened it just for you.' He
took me back there and it was all boarded up. There wasn't a
soul there. It was like one of those Russian Potemkin villages you hear about."
As Soviet ambassador, Mr.
ROBERTS joined Prime Minister Brian
MULRONEY's entourage for the funeral of general secretary Konstantin
Chernenko in Moscow in 1985. Like most other world leaders present,
Mr. MULRONEY was keenly interested in meeting the incoming general
secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev, and so was "predictably enraged"
when the appointment was abruptly cancelled because an inept
bureaucrat had overfilled Mr. Gorbachev's daybook with appointments.
Persuading Mr.
MULRONEY to be patient, Mr.
ROBERTS quickly convinced
the Soviets to rectify the error, and the meeting occurred in the Kremlin as originally planned.
Six months later, Mr.
MULRONEY expressed his gratitude to Mr.
ROBERTS by summoning him back to Ottawa to head the Canada Council.
Fascinated as always by the Soviets, Mr.
ROBERTS was reluctant to go, but realized he could not refuse.
"He was sad because Gorbachev had just come to power, and things
were just beginning to show signs of change," recalls his wife, Glenna
ROBERTS.
"He left with a great deal of regret, because he was really interested in seeing those changes."
Mr. ROBERTS retired from the Canada Council in 1989 and was an
adjunct research professor of political science at Ottawa's Carleton
University from 1990. He was diagnosed about 10 years ago with
the cancer that increasingly incapacitated him over the past year.
He leaves his second wife Glenna, children Frances and Jeremy
and their families, sister Mary, stepchildren Graham, Brendan and Hannah
REID.
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GLASBY o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2003-04-30 published
William
James "
Alvin"
GLASBY
In loving memory of William James "Alvin"
GLASBY who passed away peacefully
at Mindemoya Hospital on Friday, April 25, 2003 at the age of 86 years.
Predeceased by his beloved wife
Elaine (née
SLOAN.)
Loved by his
children Dorothy of Little Current, Edward and his wife Diane of
Tehkummah, Lorraine and her husband Roger Pyette of Manitowaning and
Janet (predeceased.) Dear grandfather of Tracy and Vickie
PYETTE,
Dianne and her husband Neil
DEBASSIGE and Carolyn
GLASBY.
Fondly
remembered by sisters and brothers Norma
JOHNS (husband Harold
predeceased) of Sault Ste. Marie, Marion
ELLIOT/ELLIOTT (husband Howard
predeceased) of Mindemoya, Lyle (wife Rosie predeceased) of Spring
Bay, Eldin of Providence Bay, Harold and his wife Shirley of
Sudbury.
Will be missed by in-laws: Helen
HANN of Mulberry, Indiana
Echo and Ray
McFAUL of Havelock, Phyllis and Jim
MUNRO of Kagawong,
Stan and Ada
SLOAN of North Bay, John and Evelyn
SLOAN of Kincardine,
Murray and Sheila
SLOAN of Rossland, BC and Jacinthe
SLOAN of
Montreal. Uncle of many nieces and nephews.
Visitation was held at Mindemoya United Church from 7-9 pm on Sunday,
April 27, 2003. Funeral Service was held on Monday, April 28, 2003
at Mindemoya United Church. Burial in Mindemoya Cemetery.
Arrangements in care of Island Funeral Home, Little Current.
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GLASBY o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2003-05-14 published
GLASBY
-In memory of my grandfather, Alvin.
Grandpa Alvin is so awesome,
When he smiled, it looked like a big blossom.
When he smiled at me,
He made me feel, like I was really free.
Grandpa Alvin like to farm and have a great time,
He liked to sit down and write a perfect rhyme!
He really has a great mind,
He really was one of a kind.
Grandpa was kind and generous to us all,
But when he passed on, our world felt so small.
I really enjoyed his thoughts and caring,
I really enjoyed the way he was sharing!
Grandpa liked potatoes and meat,
He really liked desserts that were sweet!
He hated pasta, he hated macaroni,
But he really did like fried bologna.
He liked to do work on the farm,
Everybody knows he would never do any harm!
He was very stubborn and strong willed,
His life was long and adventure filled.
This poem is in memory of William James Alvin
GLASBY.
Love your granddaughter Tracy
PYETTE.
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GLASBY o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2003-06-11 published
Norma V. JOHNS (née
GLASBY)
In loving memory of Norma V.
JOHNS (née
GLASBY) who passed away peacefully at
her home in Sault Ste. Marie on Saturday, May 31, 2003 at the age of 80 years.
Beloved wife of Harold
JOHNS (predeceased,) mother of Dennis
(predeceased) and his wife Aurora, Tom and his wife Linda, Larry and
his wife Marlene,
Mary
Ellen and her husband David
PARNIAK, and Roger
and his wife Karen. Also survived by many grandchildren.
Norma was born and raised in Mindemoya, the daughter of the late Fred
and Nettie
GLASBY.
She will be fondly remembered by her sisters and
brothers and their families: Alvin and his wife Elaine (both
predeceased,) Marion
ELLIOT/ELLIOTT and her husband Howard (predeceased,)
Lyle and his wife Rose (predeceased), Eldin and Harold and his wife Shirley.
Funeral service was held on Wednesday June 4 at the United Baptist Church
in Sault Ste. Marie. Interment in Greenwood Cemetery in Sault Ste. Marie.
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GLAVIN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-08-11 published
GLINSKI,
Oscar
Born August 31, 1918, died August 8, 2003. Predeceased by wife,
Irène. Greatly loved by daughters Eva
GLAVIN (Dennis), Anne
MOFFATT
(Allan) and grandchildren Brandon and James. Will also be missed
by Mike, Debby, Hannah and Sam. Oscar was a dashing naval Commander
who lived life with charm and style. He is fondly remembered
by family and Friends. Cremation by Trull Funeral Centre. Private
memorial celebration. Donations may be made to: Polish Combatants
Association, 206 Beverly Street, Toronto M5T 1Z3.
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GLAZIER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-08-20 published
ECCLES,
Cissie
Born in Brierley Hill, England, died at Sunnybrook Hospital,
on Monday, August 18th, 2003, in her 92nd year. Beloved wife
of the late Harry
ECCLES. Dear mother to Anne
GLAZIER and her
husband Peter, Peter and his wife Jennifer. Proud grandmother
to Jacqueline, Andrea, Christopher, and Gillian. Great-grandmother
of Michael. Friends may call at the Trull ''North Toronto'' Funeral
Home and Cremation Centre, 2704 Yonge Street (5 blocks south of
Lawrence), on Friday from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. A Funeral Service
will be held at St. Timothy's Anglican Church (Ridley Boulevard
and Old Orchard Grove), on Saturday morning at 11 o'clock. Following
the service, a reception will be held in the ''Soward Hall''
of the church. Interment York Cemetery. If desired, remembrances
may be made to the charity of your choice.
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