‘THEY DON’T MAKE ’EM LIKE NICK ANYMORE’
Friends of the incomparable Auf der Maur gather to pay tribute again every five years
It was 20 years ago: St. Patrick’s Basilica was packed to the rafters with a crowd of more than 3,000 paying their final respects. The scene following the funeral was bedlam as police had to cordon off streets to make way for a boisterous procession — led by a Dixieland band — as it snaked its way west to Crescent St., where much tippling would take place until the wee hours of the next day.
A sendoff for a hockey star, singing vedette or mayor? Not quite. This outpouring of emotion was for a character unlike any to have made his mark in town: Nick Auf der Maur, Montreal Gazette columnist, former downtown city councillor, muckraker extraordinaire and boulevardier nonpareil.
Auf der Maur passed away at 55 on April 7, 1998, after a bout with cancer, and was laid to rest six days later.
As has been the custom every five years since his death, a group of friends gathered to remember their buddy at Winnie’s, where Auf der Maur’s trademark Borsalino is encased in glass.
But this gang is, sadly, a fastdwindling one. Gone are such Auf der Maur cronies as Mordecai Richler, Ted Blackman, George Balcan, Gordon Atkinson, Richard Holden, Irwin Steinberg and so many others.
Fast-diminishing, but dedicated nonetheless. Former broadcasters Brian Stewart and Patrick Oliver flew in from, respectively, Toronto and Vancouver for the occasion. It was a shorter trek for hometown filmmakers Brian McKenna and Stephen Phizicky as it was for ex-CJAD boss Rob Braide, Carl Dettman, Doug and Shelia Muncey, Tony Macklovitch and Ziggy’s bartender Elizabeth Sharp.
And, of course, overseeing proceedings as usual was Nick’s favourite mixologist, the semiretired Margo MacGillivray — who did a stirring rendering of Morning Has Broken at his funeral.
Consensus was that Montreal could use a spit-disturber like Nick at city hall now. He would have had a field day with our over-the-top 375th anniversary bash and its cement stumps and E-race nonsense — much as he had with the overspending of the 1976 Olympics here. He would have likely been fired up as well with the coming partial closing of Mount Royal to traffic.
But consensus was also that the world Nick left was so different from today’s that he might have had a hell of a time adapting to this new reality.
Good-humoured, excessively astute and bright as he was, there was nothing politically correct about the man.
He was a devilish figure: a prodigious tippler, a fancier of stinky Gitane smokes and an indiscriminate, though equal-opportunity, butt-pincher — regardless of gender; no one within range was immune.
In addition to his penchant for Borsalino headwear, he also favoured Donald Duck ties.
He invariably wrote his columns on bar napkins and phoned them in at deadline — to the chagrin of editors.
Yet he was a friend to so many from so many different walks, and he was the go-to guy for those journalists from outside Montreal who wanted the lowdown on the city.
He was also one of the few anglos with street cred among francos. As the late Quebec premier Claude Ryan once put it: Nick was the only anglo who could fill a hall east of the Main.
Though he was against the re-naming of streets for deceased city icons, he likely would have been amused that the lane without a name — adjacent to Winnie’s — was to be dubbed Ruelle Nick-Auf-der-Maur in his memory.
“I don’t know how Nick would have survived in this era,” MacGillivray said. “He marched to the beat of his own (drum) and would have probably found himself out of sorts in the world today. And I don’t know how someone accustomed to writing stories on cocktail napkins and calling them in would have adapted to current technology.”
“Most people tended to know Nick as a bon vivant and a drinker and an entertaining guy, but perhaps what people didn’t know about him was that Nick was so incredibly smart,” Phizicky said.
“I’d like to think that if he were still around, he’d be in his usual corner at the bar here, giving quotable opinions as he always did.”
“I’d like to think that Nick would have thrived on one level in this era: as a great urban journalist,” noted Stewart, who was a Montreal Gazette reporter before moving on to the CBC.
“He loved this city and never wanted to live anywhere else.”
“I think Nick would have prevented the election of Donald Trump,” Phizicky cracked. “OK, maybe not, but he would have lapped up all the news about him. He would have also called out our local politicians.”
“Nick and I were born 10 days apart and we were in the same maternity ward,” Stewart recalled. “He used to tell me we might have been switched at birth … I used to worry how I would break that to my father.”
“But most important, Nick had this great smile, and no matter how badly you were feeling, he would make you feel better,” Phizicky said. “They don’t make ’em like Nick anymore.”
In paying tribute to Nick, McKenna softly quoted late American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay: “My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night; but, ah my foes and oh my friends, it gives a lovely light!”
Cheers, Nick.
He marched to the beat of his own (drum) and would have probably found himself out of sorts in the world today.