On this first day of spring, 2021: enjoying re-reading Irving Layton's Waiting for the Messiah. Layton writes,
The importance of Montreal to me as a poet cannot be over stressed. The city gave me the confidence, the tools, the stimulating friendships and rivalries. It gave me a literary milieu comparable to what Paris had given the American expatriates, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. In the early forties, it was in Montreal where Canada’s first sounds of poetry were heard.
Back walking to Meadowbrook Golf Course a few days ago, it is a favourite walk because for a few minutes you feel you are in the country. It's + 11 C today, overcast, and rainy; it's not spring yet but we are moving towards spring and all that means (more walks, gardening, birds in the garden and bird bath, longer days, no winter coats or boots, and so on). Two Russian girls were walking ahead of me and this reminded me that there are many Russian immigrants who live near here. I was walking through Montreal West and just as I turned the corner to walk to the golf course a man said Good Morning; this is a community where people say hello to strangers. Maybe there is some winter left but this rather mild winter will soon be over. Unlike some, I believe in the predictable life, I like where I live, I like the people who live here, I like the most conservative, quiet, inward life that is possible in today's world.
There seems to be a lot of interest in Percy Leggett these days, mostly by his family members. It's good to be eccentric, it will get you remembered. But I am not sure eccentricity is for all of us. It requires a large ego and a reduction or leveling out of one's interests and beliefs; health could be one of these beliefs and Percy was a health fanatic, living separate from society and wearing shorts all year. But people are attracted to folks like Percy Leggett, they might think he has found some meaning to life that they do not have or they are amused by him. Percy was also a publicity hound, not by chance was his photograph featured in newspapers but by his choice. It's good to have an eccentric in the family, it's not so good to be that eccentric; someone like Percy would dispute this because he is an eccentric and wouldn't doubt for a minute the rightness of his way of life. .
My in-laws built a house in the Spanish Banks area of Vancouver in the early 1970s; back then it was all UBC professors and a few eccentrics including the Hermit who lived under a tarp across the road from the concession stand on the beach. If anyone has a satellite photo of this area you can see the tarp. I don't think anyone knew where the Hermit came from or who he was, you'd see him walking in the area, sometimes picking up litter from the streets. Eventually the old inhabitants moved out and their houses sat empty, sometimes for years, until some rich bastard built his mansion there. Anyhow, one day my father-in-law was out foraging for stuff in one of these empty houses, as collectors of junk are wont to do, and he came across the Hermit who asked him if he is needed food. This is the only time I know of the Hermit speaking to anyone. After that episode my father-in-law would say the hermit is the happiest man in the world, and thereafter he was referred to with some added respect. On some rainy days and rainy months I'd look out the window and wonder how the Hermit could stand living outside, I like my creature comforts. One day I was in line at the old Safeway on W 10th Avenue and the Hermit was ahead of me, buying oranges and pipe tobacco. We all figured that someone deposited money into the Hermit's bank account and this kept him going. I think he must have died about ten years ago.
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| This is Butters outside our front door, early January, 2021 |
I made this video almost eight years ago, it shows when all four of us (Susan, John, Paul and myself) from our office at Champlain College in St. Lambert met together for an office reunion. The video is Paul recounting his latest travels, as he used to do every September when we returned to work. Those were the good old days!
Excerpt of an article by Paul Wilson, published in the Hamilton Spectator, 12 March 2016.
Percy Leggett — 1892 – 1965
With a reputation for hurling bricks through liquor store windows in various communities in Ontario, Percy Leggett rolled into Hamilton in the late 1950s calling himself the country's oldest beatnik. Through the '60s he was well-known in the community, walking the city in shorts in all seasons, telling people that his care-free lifestyle and non-conformity would allow him to live to be 100. "When I got my pension I resigned from the human race," he used to say." Clothes confine...let the air get at you, massage you. "
He was frequently featured in The Spectator in articles, photos and even cartoons on the editorial page. He became the talk of the town after a well-publicized dustup between Percy and the Over Sixty Club that kicked him out because his shorts were too revealing. Then one summer day in 1965 he decided Hamilton was too hot, smog-ridden and full of conformists. So he gathered up his stuff in a cart and headed northward. But sadly, in June 1965, he was hit and killed by a station wagon just outside of Orillia. He was 74 years of age, more than a quarter century short of his centenarian goal – but a non-conformist right to the end.
Source of photo of Percy Leggett:
