3.17 a.m. There comes a time in everyone’s life, if it goes on long enough, that you’ll be brought face to face with the possibility that it makes perfect sense for someone to wonder whether or not you might be dead. I can’t remember when it was — quite a few years back — that I received a communication, probably an email, though it might have been via a friendly pigeon, from the Alumni Association at the University of Winnipeg (B.A., 1976) inquiring if the information they had on file for me was current. I answered that it was and, in short order, received a reply to my reply saying they were glad to hear that, for they had seen an obituary commemorating a departed soul with whom I must have held in common a name or some other shared identifying particular and, with nothing more than due diligence in mind they were checking to be sure they could continue to send along their quarterly pleas for funds with some hope of a favourable outcome. You never know when a stone, if persistently and efficiently wrung, will produce blood. The email would have been addressed to Dr. Bill Richardson, which would not have pertained to my qualifications (none) for taking my own pulse to determine with certainty my viability. I am Dr. Bill because I received an honorary doctorate — I can’t remember of what, Law or something similar — from the U of W in, I think, 1998. The reason cited for this distinction, for which I remain amazed and grateful, was my heroic efforts in water abatement during the dangerous floods of ‘97. Anyone would have thought I’d been the last one left sandbagging late into the night, or had donned hip waders and saved puppies floating by on tree stumps or had imperilled my index finger by using it to plug a dike. No. All I’d done was to contact Peter Gzowski, whom I knew very peripherally, to suggest that his show, Morningside, which had a huge audience, should do a fund-raiser for flood relief. He took the idea to his producers and they made it happen. I dialled a number from Vancouver and planted a notion. That was the extent of my action. Never have I been so well-rewarded for so slight an effort.
I had to speak at the convocation. Tom Jackson, the actor, singer, and activist was the other honouree, if that’s the right word. He spoke first, eloquently, exercising to great effect his intelligence and his beautiful baritonal range, about alienation and disenfranchisement; spoke about how, as a child growing up in the Inner City, he had played on the lawns of the University, and had never imagined it as an institution he might attend, let alone be called on stage and conferred with such an award. Then I took to the podium and free-associated about how nervous I’d been about having to put on the ceremonial regalia because I look bad in all hats. There may have been a hurried conference among the senators and other potentates about whether I should be stripped of my title. It stood, even as I stumbled. I remain Dr. Bill Richardson, a fact I keep to myself on flights, lest I be called upon to administer the Heimlich manoeuvre or remove a plantar wart using something other than a hex and the penny I preserved when they went out of circulation for this very reason.
I think that was the occasion, all those decades ago, when I met Neil Besner who for many years taught English at the University of Winnipeg. The introduction would have come via Carol Shields. She was then the Chancellor, and his friend. He has written about her, and Alice Munro, and Elizabeth Bishop, among many others. Neil — I should say Dr. Besner — also has a fond rapport with Marta Dvorak, the Canadian scholar and professor in Paris, a great Mavis Gallant (MG) authority, to whom I spoke a few weeks back. It was Dr. Dvorak who reminded me that Dr. Besner had written one of the first full-length academic studies of MG, The Light of Imagination: Mavis Gallant’s Fiction, UBC Press, 1988. It’s a reworking of his PhD dissertation: his is an earned doctorate. “You must contact him,” Marta said. I did, and I’m so glad of her recommendation.
We spoke yesterday afternoon. Neil was at his summer home on the shores of Lake of the Woods, with its wonderful views of water and islets, the fish jumping — a welcome sight to someone who’s, as he is, a keen angler — and I was in my apartment in Vancouver, with its inspiring laneway outlook on the Dumpster and recycling bins, a welcome sight to someone who’s, as I am, an enthusiastic hoarder of alley finds. We talked about how he came to write about MG, about meeting her and her somewhat — at the outset — forbidding manner; also, her ultimate kindness. We also spoke about Neil’s new memoir, Fishing with Tardelli, just published by ECW Press. He read from it, very beautifully. I await my copy with impatience.
Zoom is a great abettor of such meetings, but isn’t universally tender in its ministrations. There were occasional moments of freeze-up and contraction, as we’ve all seen happen. If you find them distracting you can simply avert your eyes; it is, when all is said and done, a radio interview with images, some of which have about them the suggestion that the special effects department worked on this segment after a three-martini lunch.
My thanks to Dr. Neil Besner and, as alway, to you for reading and watching, xo, Dr. B
Grief, Memory, Three O'Clock in the Morning: My Mavis Gallant Centennial Diary, June 29