SNOW o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-02-13 published
Gordon Kenneth
FLEMING/FLEMMING
By Jack FORTIN
Thursday,
February 13, 2003, Page A30
Musician, husband, father. Born August 3, 1931, in Winnipeg.
Died August 31, 2002, in Scarborough, Ontario, following a stroke,
aged 71.
Gordie FLEMING/FLEMMING was a remarkable music talent, known internationally
as a master of the accordion, especially in the jazz idiom. He
was a life member of Local 149 of the Toronto Musicians' Association.
In show-business vernacular, Gordie was "born in a trunk." He
began playing accordion when his older brother gave him lessons.
His musical ability was such that he began performing publicly
at the age of five. His schoolteachers often saw him being whisked
away in a taxi to perform at theatres and radio stations in Winnipeg.
By the age of 10, he was a working member of various bands in
that city.
In 1949, Gordie lost his accordion in a fire at a Winnipeg hotel.
With the insurance money, he headed for the bright lights of
Montreal where he soon became an important part of that city's
musical life. His accordion ability was complemented by the fact
that he was also a gifted arranger and composer.
He had a marvellous ability to improvise and could string out
complex bebop lines, leaving his listeners in awe. He often slipped
a jazz phrase into ballads or commercial tunes, confirming that
jazz was indeed his first love.
One of Montreal's busiest musicians, he wrote for local orchestras,
shows, radio and television. He had perfect pitch and often wrote
without reference to a keyboard. He was at home in every type
of music from classics to jazz. For several years, he worked
at the National Film Board as a composer and musician.
In Montreal, Gordie performed with many show business headliners:
there was a wealth of home-grown talent in Montreal, such as
Oscar PETERSON and Maynard
FERGUSON, as well as other jazz musicians
who were beginning to be noticed.
Gordie had said that when when he first heard bebop it was like
entering another world. As his career indicates, he had no trouble
in that world. He worked with many personalities including: Charlie
PARKER, Mel
TORMÉ, Hank
SNOW, Lena
HORNE, Englebert
HUMPERDINCK,
Dennis DAY, Gordon
MacRAE, Cab
CALLOWAY, Nat King
COLE, Cat
STEVENS,
Rich LITTLE, Billy
ECKSTEIN, Pee Wee
HUNT, Arthur
GODFREY and
Buddy DEFRANCO.
He also performed with Tommy
AMBROSE,
Allan
MILLS, Wally
KOSTER,
Tommy HUNTER,
Bert
NIOSI, Wayne and Shuster, Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation jazz shows with Al
BACULIS, and many other Canadian
jazz musicians.
On Montreal's French music scene, Gordie performed on radio and
television with Emile
GENEST, Ti-Jean
CARIGNAN,
André
GAGNON
and Ginette
RENO. He was a featured soloist with the Montreal
Symphony Orchestra on several occasions.
Internationally, Gordie toured France in 1952 and performed with
Edith PIAF and Tino
ROSSI. He had the honour to perform for former
prime minister Pierre Elliot
TRUDEAU at a Commonwealth Conference.
He participated with other top Canadian musicians in a Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation tour to entertain Canadian and the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in Europe in 1952 and 1968.
For me, a memorable experience was playing in a group with Gordie
for several winters in Florida. A popular member of the Panama
City Beach family of musicians, Gordie looked forward to his
winter trek south. Many of the American musicians will miss him,
as will the many snowbirds who looked forward to hearing him
each year.
His extensive repertoire allowed Gordie to author a book called
Music of the World, in which he wrote the music to 280 songs
from more than 30 countries.
Gordie leaves his wife of 47 years, Joanne, and seven children.
Jack FORTIN is Gordie's friend.
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SNOWIE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-01-09 published
Last fighter pilot of the Great War
Canadian aviator, a bankteller in peacetime, was 'just doing
his duty'
By Allison
LAWLOR
Thursday,
January 9, 2003, Page R7
Henry BOTTERELL, the last of the fighter pilots that fought in
the First World War, has died in Toronto. He was 106.
Mr. BOTTERELL, who up until in his late 90s was swimming almost
every day, died peacefully at the Sunnybrook Veterans Hospital,
now part of Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre,
on Friday, less than two months after celebrating his 106th birthday.
One of 16 surviving Canadian veterans of the First World War
profiled in a Globe and Mail series in November, Henry
BOTTERELL
was believed to be the last fighter pilot from the 1914-1918
conflict, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Mr. BOTTERELL declined to take part in the series of interviews,
but at a special air-force celebration four years earlier he
recalled his days as a fighter pilot.
"I had good hands," he said then. "I didn't have the fighting
acumen of some, like Billy
BISHOP. I was just a bank clerk. I
wasn't one of the very best, but I had my share of action."
On August 29, 1918, Flight Lieutenant
BOTTERELL flew his Sopwith
Camel over Vitry, France. After dropping four bombs on a railway
station, he was heading back to his airfield when he encountered
a German observation balloon. He fired 400 rounds into the balloon
with his aircraft machine gun.
With the balloon ablaze, the soldier leaped from the basket and
opened his parachute. As the flaming remains of the balloon fell
to the ground, Mr.
BOTTERELL had enough time to swing around
and shoot his enemy, but didn't. Instead, he snapped him a chivalrous
salute before heading back to base. The moment was captured by
aviation artist Robert
TAILOR/TAYLOR, in his painting Balloon Buster.
"He was an adventurer," said Jon
STRAW, a friend and former director
of the Great War Flying Museum in Brampton, Ontario Mr.
STRAW
is also working on a book on Canadian pilots who served in the
First
World
War with Allan
SNOWIE, a retired naval aviator who
is now a pilot with Air Canada.
Like many of the veterans from the First World War, Mr.
BOTTERELL
didn't consider his war efforts to be heroic.
"He didn't think it was any big deal, he thought he was just
doing his duty," Mr.
STRAW said.
In 1916, Mr.
BOTTERELL was working for the Bank of North America
(now the Bank of Montreal) when his older brother Edward, who
played football for the Toronto Argonauts, was killed overseas
by a sniper. A few months later, Henry, then 20, enlisted with
the Royal Naval Air Service and was sent to England to train
as a fighter pilot.
His sister, Edith, who worked as a secretary for an admiral at
the time, had helped him get what she thought would be a safer
assignment in the war. But that didn't prove to be true. At one
point in the war, new pilots had a life expectancy of three weeks.
Mr. BOTTERELL's flying career got off to a difficult start. Engine
failure caused him to crash on only his second takeoff in September,
1917, at Dunkirk, France. He suffered head injuries, a fractured
leg, and broken teeth and spent six months in hospital. He was
eventually demobilized as disabled and discharged. But he later
re-enlisted and qualified as a fighter pilot again and returned
to France in early 1918.
His flight log reveals that he was attached to the 208th Squadron
serving in France from May 11 to November 27, 1918. His records
show that during that time, he flew patrols and fought over places
including Serny, Estrées and Arras. He then transferred to Belgium,
according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Wing
Commander
Neil
MEADOWS, the commanding officer of Royal
Air
Force 208 Squadron, said in his condolences to Mr.
BOTTERELL's
family that Henry "remains, an inspiration to our trainee pilots.
I do feel that we have lost a tangible part of what we are, and
what we aspire to be.
"Undoubtedly, he did not view his actions as out of the ordinary,
but his courage and dedication to duty are an example that I
hope our trainees will emulate in their own flying careers,"
he wrote on behalf of the squadron. "I am sure, therefore, that
his spirit will live on with the young pilots that continue to
serve on 208 Squadron."
During his war service, Mr.
BOTTERELL flew a variety of planes,
but the Camel, which got its name from the hump created by two
machine guns imbedded under its cowling, was his favourite. He
had one particular close call, when on a flight a bullet ripped
through his ear and smashed his goggles.
"I went out like a light for a few minutes, and I recovered just
before I crashed," he once said.
Henry
John
Lawrence
BOTTERELL was born in 1896 in Ottawa to Henry
and Annie BOTTERELL.
His mother raised him after his father died
of pneumonia when Henry was a young boy. Henry attended Lisgar
Collegiate Institute in Ottawa. An athletic young man, he played
football like his older brother and remained physically active
throughout his life.
"He was a loner," said his son Edward
BOTTERELL, adding that
his father enjoyed sports he would do alone such as swimming,
cross-country skiing and sailing. In 1919, he returned to Canada
and to banking as an assistant chief accountant. He remained
with the Bank of Montreal until his retirement in the 1960s.
As a souvenir from the war he brought back a Belgian fence post
that had snagged the wing of his Camel on a low-level flights.
It is now in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.
In 1929 he married and moved with his wife Maud to Montreal.
They raised two children before his wife died in 1983 after suffering
several strokes. During the Second World War, Mr.
BOTTERELL commanded
an Air Cadet Squadron, in Quebec, though he himself never took
to the air. After returning home in 1919, he gave up flying.
In 1999, Mr.
BOTTERELL was the guest of honour at a mess dinner
commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Air
Force. That same year he celebrated his own 102nd birthday at
a hotel in Lille, France, where he and other Canadian veterans
were marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the War.
Despite his failing memory, his son Edward said his father was
"moved by the experience."
Mr. BOTTERELL is survived by daughter Frances
MARQUETTE of Houston,
Texas, and son Edward
BOTTERELL of Mississauga, Ontario
Henry BOTTERELL, aviator and banker; born in Ottawa on November
7, 1896, died in Toronto on January 3, 2003.
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