What did I absorb about theatre by being around all this activity? We helped the producer with the poster run. We heard Eric House say he couldn’t stay with Straw Hat because Stratford offered him so much money. Even though we also heard Donald say he had raised salaries, to thirty dollars a week I believe. I met the directors they brought over from Britain: John Blatchley, Pierre Levebre, and Peter Potter.
I have a vivid memory of waiting for Nathan Cohen’s radio review of the opening of the second season at Stratford. All the critics had raved about the first season and we were primed to hear even greater enthusiasm for the second. We gathered around the radio at the cottage in anticipation — people did that in the days before television. Cohen’s review began like this, “There are two stars still shining at Stratford. . . .” The first was the design of the theatre. The second may have been Shakespeare. He went on to slam pretty well everything else. Even though I had no direct involvement with Stratford, I feel shell-shocked to this day.
Meantime, the tradition of my acting in one play a summer with the Straw Hat Players continued, the final two being A Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by the British director and teacher John Blatchley, and Ten Nights in a Barroom, a melodrama directed by Robertson Davies. The first rehearsal of Dream revealed a number of changes that were happening in the theatre at the time. Blatchley began with what seemed to a boy of fourteen to be an endless talk about Shakespeare and the play, its themes and place in Shakespeare’s development. Directors did not normally talk about the play in summer stock; they got on with it. Of course, now I would love to be able to go back and hear his talk. Conflicting approaches to the work emerged during the first read of the play. While some of the actors continued with the old-school method of acting full out at every opportunity, others, George McCowan in particular, read in a flat monotone, waiting I presume for inspiration to move him later.
George McCowan should have been Canada’s first truly major director. Expert in almost everything he touched, he could drive the Port Carling road at breakneck speed without ever hitting a bump, parallel park a canoe, and excel academically. A friend once asked him to write his French exam for him. George was a little hesitant as he didn’t take French, but in the end, agreed. He read over the texts the night before the exam, went in the next day, forged the signature, and wrote the exam. All would have been well except that he got such a high mark that suspicions were aroused and he was soon outed. Suspended from university for a year, he went to teach at Pickering College, a prestigious boys’ school north of Toronto. He was weak in only one area of activity. He was not a very good actor. So what did he do? He decided to be an actor. Within a few years, though, he turned to directing, doing a wonderful production of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll at the Crest, as well as work at Stratford. But soon television took him and he ended a too-brief career directing episodic television and drinking himself to death.
I could sense my career as a boy actor coming to an end at the first rehearsal for Ten Nights in a Barroom, directed by the soft spoken, gentlemanly Robertson Davies, long before his rise to fame as the author of Fifth Business. When he called for the young boy — I forget the character’s name — he gamely hid his distress as I stood up, and up, and up. Murray had not warned him that I might be a shade taller than he would have preferred. But he remained kindly to me throughout, even when I sang flat in the company song. We would work together again years later when we presented his play A Jig for the Gypsy in Lennoxville.
Despite all this summer activity these were the dark years of my life in the theatre. After the move to King City — an ambitious moniker for a hamlet with two general stores, a bank, a couple of churches, and a gas station — my father commuted to his law office in Toronto, and I suspect he had the road pretty much to himself. Meanwhile Ashe and I travelled to the Aurora District High School each day, an hour on the bus in each direction. A fish out of water? A square peg trying to fit into a round hole? Whatever, my three years in King/Aurora were disappointing, to put it kindly.
Schools in Ontario were still municipally rather than provincially funded in those days. We went from the well-supported and high-end Forest Hill education system to a rural high school. My younger brothers even went to a one room elementary school, where, lucky for them, they had an exceptional teacher. Our high school teachers were not exceptional but, in fairness, they had the serious challenges of large classes, mixed abilities, and variably motivated students. Artistic pursuits and philosophical discussions were rare, though there was a good band. Cadets and football moulded the male tribe. I hated cadets, and being two years younger than my classmates I was too light for football. NHL hockey was a common interest, though I was on my own on the school bus defending Maurice Richard against the legion of Gordie Howe fans.
Not only was the school an artistic wasteland, but I was isolated from the city, always dependent on a driver. We did a couple of one-act plays with the Latin teacher — yes, we took Latin — and I was always asked to read in Shakespeare class, but that was about the sum of my theatrical efforts during those three bleak winters.
Not that drama was entirely lacking. One day our history teacher asked the class about the Reformation. This was the same teacher who had whacked me on the head earlier in the year when the textbook I had ordered had not yet arrived. (I understand schools now provide textbooks.) Attempting to show up our ignorance of the Reformation he said to the class:
“If you had been living in the fifteenth century, you would all have been Catholics. Right?
(Pause)
“Anyone here who wouldn’t have been Catholic in the fifteenth century?”
To be honest, I didn’t remember when the Reformation was, but I still didn’t think I would have been Catholic. I timidly raised my hand.
“What? You wouldn’t have been Catholic in the fifteenth century?”
“I don’t think so, sir.”
“Come up here. Stand here.”
He demanded I stand beside his desk at the front of the room.
“You know all Christians in the fifteenth century were Catholic?”
Lying, I said, “Yes, sir.”
“And you wouldn’t have been Catholic?”
“No, sir.”
Astonished, he replied, “Aren’t you a Christian?”
“What do you mean by a Christian, sir?”
Well, that did it. He began to splutter and foam at the mouth.
“Well . . . well . . . well, someone who follows the teachings of Christ.”
“I guess you had better count me out.”
I returned to my seat.
Well, talk about letting the cat among the pigeons. Many of the female students took pity on me and tried, unsuccessfully, to save my soul. “Don’t you believe in God?” they would ask. I didn’t really know whether I was an agnostic or an atheist in those days, but I did know I wasn’t a Christian. Our English teacher had made it clear that the opposite of a Christian was a pagan, but I didn’t think I was that either. But whatever I was, I was an even stranger presence in the school than I had been before.
But suppose I had told my half crazed history teacher that I was a Christian. Would anyone ask where my Christian belief came from? Yet from the point of view of science or reason, wouldn’t that be a better question? Surely nonbelief is the default. A religious belief, or myth dare I say, is an add-on, something one learns from one’s elders. I did learn one similar myth as a child and was devastated when I found there really was no Santa Claus. But the myth of a personal god never really took with me. After all, where is the evidence?
Or maybe, unlike Mulder, I just don’t want to believe.
We mocked our history teacher and others of his generation. What fools they were! In the arrogance of our childhood it never occurred to us to ask why they were like this. Why was the history teacher marginally insane? The rumour was that he had a plate in his head from the war, but that only added to our sense of his ridiculousness. What he may have
been through in that war was not only beyond our comprehension, it wasn’t even something to be wondered about. No one suffered in the war movies or radio plays, which made war seem more like a football game. We never wondered about the women either. Why was Mrs. Cameron, the French teacher, so abrasive and erratic? It never occurred to us to ask what happened to Mr. Cameron. The war years were a secret held close to the chest by those who had been there, a gulf between them and us. Had they been more forthcoming about their experiences, would their descendants have been more reluctant to lead us into war after war?
I was to catapult out of Aurora High School on the strength of a lie. I was told, and believed, two lies that changed my life. One might even have saved my life.
I was not much of a student at Aurora High School though I did accidentally stand sixth one year. “Tends to let work slide” was a charitable criticism on many report cards. I did what I had to do, but that was about it. Grades were very different in the fifties than they are now. A first class mark was 75 and over. A B was 66 to 75. If one had an average of 66%, one didn’t have to write the final exam. I was pretty good at getting 67%. Occasionally I would misjudge and have to write a final.
But I knew this would all have to change when I got to Grade 13, a grade that no longer exists in Ontario and never did exist in the rest of the country. Grade 13 had roughly double the volume of work of the earlier years. One needed nine courses to pass. And the entire mark was based on one departmental exam, while the marks one received during the year from one’s own teachers mattered not at all. I loved this system. It was fair, it was clear, and the teachers were now on my side. They were my coaches, not my judges. Of course, that’s all changed now. My history teacher, the one who whacked me on the head because I didn’t have my textbook and taunted me for not being a Christian, gave me a 66 at Christmas. I scored 95 on the departmental exam. The chemistry teacher gave me the course syllabus. What a novel idea. Tell the student what he needs to know. I worked through the syllabus and scored another high first. The geometry teacher, and principal, who had belittled my proposed reforms when I ran for Head Boy and got forty votes to my opponent’s 350, had surmised I would be lucky to pass. Another first.
So what was the lie? Grade 13 is really hard.
Many students take it in two years and most never make it through at all. If you hope to pass in one year you will have to work very hard. Well, I took this to heart. I knew I could goof around in the earlier grades, but when I got to Grade 13 I would need to be disciplined and keep up with my work. And so I did. When we got our first marks back at Christmas I held my breath hoping that I had passed most of my courses. My jaw nearly fell off my face as the marks came in. The marks, except for history, were amazing. Not only was I passing, I was in scholarship range. Keep it up and I would win scholarships to university. I did and I did.
Now if someone had told me Grade 13 was pretty easy . . .
What was the second lie?
It takes only three days to quit smoking. Well, if you believe that you will believe lots of weird things, like aliens abducting humans for example. More on that later.
At any rate the three years of isolation in the wilds of rural Ontario would soon come to an end. There was light on the hill and I was approaching it. I could see it, fear it, and long for it. And in the fall of 1958, I entered it, the University of Toronto. I didn’t realize it as I entered the door of the Sir Daniel Wilson Residence, but I would soon enough. I was home.
How did I know I was home? Besides the fact the university was home to Hart House Theatre and Robert Gill, who had directed me as a child and was still the resident director? One day as I was walking through the small foyer of our residence house, a voice called out from the common room, “Do you believe in God?” Surprised, I turned and hesitantly admitted that I didn’t. “Well, come on in!” The voice was that of second-year student John Woods, who would later be a philosophy professor at U of T and president of the University of Lethbridge. Soon I was in the company of older students whose brilliance and curiosity inspired me for life.
It is astonishing for me to discover that now university residence is limited to first or sometimes second year students. Exposure to senior students in a residence setting was one of the highlights of my educational life.
My life had turned a corner. I was in an intellectual and artistic home.
U of T and Summer Stock:
Getting Started
The Sir Daniel Wilson Residence at University College, one of the four arts colleges in 1955 making up the University of Toronto, was a modern yellow brick building on St. George Street at what was then the western edge of the campus, and was to be my home for the next four years. Prior to its opening in 1954, university college men lived in two residential houses. Of course, men and women were not in the same residences. After all, they had different needs and rules. The men needed maid service and were free to come and go at all hours. The women made their own beds in Whitney Hall and had an 11 p.m. curfew on weeknights. No one seemed to find these arrangements strange at the time.
The college clung to other traditions perhaps not fully appreciated by the students. Dinner at Sir Dan was intended to be a formal affair with a high table, the saying of grace, and waiter service. The students all arrived at 6:15 wearing the prescribed academic gowns and ties and entered the hall together. But what actually is a tie? Does a shoelace around the neck count as a tie? We followed the letter of that rule far more than the spirit. And sad to say, the quality of the food seldom matched the pretension of the occasion. It was not unusual to finish dinner, return to the house, ditch the gown and tie, and head across the road to the local greasy spoon for an edible meal. This was in the days before McDonald’s and Burger King, when you could still buy a decent meal at a low price in a family run local restaurant. Paradoxically the local greasy spoon was named McDonald’s.
The students from the old 5 Wilcox residence had all moved into Jeanneret House, one of the six houses of the Sir Daniel Wilson Residence. They brought with them a sense of community and an intellectual curiosity that I was fortunate to share. Each student had a small private room. It was the common room on the ground floor that provided a focus for the house. I think I learned almost as much in the common room as I did in the college next door. If you had to watch television there was one in the basement. No one did, except during the World Series.
I remember our don, Ian MacDonald (who later became president of York University, which did not then exist), saying that if he were starting a university the first thing he would do is provide a library. The second thing would be a common room. And only after that would he add classrooms and teachers. Of course, we young men talked about sex a lot, but we also discussed philosophy, religion, politics, and science. Senior students mixed with freshmen. It was a lively time.
Many years later, in the heyday of The X-Files, I did speaking tours of North American universities. I was astonished and distressed to see how universities and university life had changed. For one thing, no one studied what we studied: English, philosophy, history, mathematics, science. I would ask students what subjects they were taking. Communications, women’s studies, air conditioning — subjects that didn’t exist in our day. One business school I spoke at even had a course in golf. Apparently the golf course is where business is really done nowadays. No wonder I stayed in the arts. The last time I played golf I shot 120 — for nine holes. Recently at a convention in London, the lovely PA who was assisting me mentioned that she had two university degrees. Wow, she didn’t seem like the academic type, so I asked her what her degrees were. Public relations and cultural management. Good for her. She will probably find work in the new economy, but her university life must have been very different from mine. We couldn’t care less about preparing for a job market; we were there to learn, to think, to be “better people.” It’s not for me to say whether universities have improved over the intervening decades, but they certainly have changed. Does anyone still
say, “They were the best years of my life”?
The common room, that focus of my student world, seems to have disappeared altogether. And residences are generally limited to first or sometimes first and second year students. But my education came from the senior students I lived with. Well, I guess the job training is better now.
The Christians in Jeanneret house had the hardest time. At least, the serious ones. We were, after all, a group of high-minded intellectuals with no room for faith. As I had discovered in Aurora High School, agnostics and atheists were a rare and suspect breed in Ontario in the mid fifties. It would be a long time before Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett made nonbelief respectable. We became a support group for our questioning minds. Christians were wimps. Heck, they didn’t even smoke.
Imagine my shock to discover that John Woods — who would one day be president of Lethbridge University, our lead atheist, the one who would sing anti-Christian songs in the middle of the night on Bloor Street, who had more arguments for the nonexistence of God than I had ever imagined — returned to the Church. At a lovely dinner with John Woods and his charming wife Carol in 2008, he told us he had returned to the Catholic Church. Carol had taken instruction so their marriage could be accepted. And he no longer smoked. On that, we agreed.
But, truth to tell, I did not register at the University of Toronto for its common rooms, and not primarily to study philosophy and psychology, which I did. I went to the University of Toronto to become an actor. That may seem odd now. In Canada now there are acting schools everywhere one looks. Anyone who can speak English or French, and even some who can’t, can get into an acting school somewhere in Canada. But in 1955 there were no acting schools in Canada. None. Some people became actors just by finding a way to do it, the John Drainies and Christopher Plummers; some went to foreign lands, usually England; and others, many of us, came to the University of Toronto to work with Robert Gill at Hart House Theatre. My generation included Donald Sutherland, Fred Euringer, Jackie Burroughs, John and Marielaine Douglas, Meg Hogarth, and directors Leon Major and Kurt Reis.
Where There's Smoke...: Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man, a Memoir Page 4