CRITIC CELEBRATED
NEWSPAPERMAN BECOMES THE NEWS WITH AWARD IN HIS NAME
Max Wyman’s first gig at The Vancouver Sun in 1967 was as a medical reporter, filing little “zippers” that ran at the bottom of the front page.
Wyman worked at night, and when the paper’s classical music writer, Bob Sunter, came in, they would often get into it.
“We’d argue about the opera and music,” Wyman said. “That got around, so when he moved on (to the CBC), I got one of those famous little notes on green paper saying ‘Know anything about opera? Mac.’ ”
Mac was Alex MacGillvary, The Sun’s features editor. And suddenly, Wyman had his dream gig — arts critic for Western Canada’s biggest newspaper.
“Stu Keate was (publisher),” said Wyman, who turns 78 on May 14. “He decided that the arts was important, culture was important. So we were the first section to get a cover and lots and lots of space, acres of space.
“We covered everything. Everything professional in theatre and music, dance, visual arts. It was a wonderful time. The Sun sent me off to Stratford and Shaw (in Ontario) every summer for the opening weeks. They sent me to Europe for the summer festivals one summer.”
Wyman not only became a local fixture, he earned a national profile as a dance critic, writing books on the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, ballerina Evelyn Hart, and Canadian dance. In 2001, he was named to the Order of Canada.
His stature is such that local philanthropist Yosef Wosk has decided to endow a new award for arts criticism in his name.
The Max Wyman Award for Cultural Commentary will be a “biennial award celebrating critical writing and commentary on the visual, performing and literary arts.” The first recipient of The Max will be Max himself, at a ceremony at the Vancouver Playhouse on April 18.
“I was gobsmacked,” Wyman said with a laugh. “But also, I was really delighted, you know? Somebody comes and says they want to name an award after you, for something you spent your life feeling is important? Wow!”
The ceremony will be 50 years to the day of Max Wyman’s first shift at The Sun. But he had a whole other career behind him in his native England.
Wyman was born in Wellingborough, a market town in Northamptonshire. His father was a union organizer.
“He was a strong social activist all his life,” Wyman said. “I think that’s where I got a lot of my social concern from. I could sing The Red Flag by the time I was five.”
After a brief spell at university he worked for a series of provincial papers before hitting London’s Fleet Street on a lowbrow tabloid called Revellie (“It printed tasteful pin-ups for the men and outrageous stories for the wives”). Next was TV Times, where he interviewed celebrities.
“I became very involved in the TV and music scene in the early ’60s. ‘Happy and laughing with the stars,’ that sort of stuff,” he said.
“I had the first interview with Lulu, went on tour with the Beatles. (I was) locked in dressing rooms with them and everything. Carried Ringo’s drums into the hall.
“Of the four of them, Lennon was the surly one, the least able to get along with. George was the one I liked best, we really got on. McCartney was a bit standoffish. But McCartney was reading Chekhov and Faulkner backstage during the gigs.
“It was an interesting time. You name it, in early ’60s in London I was right there. Roger Moore and his girlfriend gave me a ride, when he was doing The Saint, in his sports car, the Aston-Martin. I was squeezed between the two of them, it was a two-seater.”
In 1964, he married Austrian dancer Anna Fladnitzer, who had two kids.
“We were forever going to Austria because she wanted to see the mountains,” he said.
“So we looked around the world to see where there were mountains. There were three places. Hong Kong, where they were having riots. Rio, but my Portuguese wasn’t good enough to get a journalistic job. And there was Vancouver — so we came here.
“I sent a note to The Sun telling them I was God’s gift to journalism, and (the editor Erwin) Swangard said, ‘Don’t bother, go to Toronto.’ ”
Undeterred, the Wymans took the boat to Montreal and the train across Canada, arriving in Vancouver on a rainy Sunday.
“The following day, I went down to the paper and said ‘I’m here,’ ” Wyman said. “And they’d just fired somebody, so I got a job.”
Max became one of the Sun’s stars — in 1973, the paper ran a full-page promotional ad for his column titled “Musically Speaking, Wyman Knows The Score.”
His marriage to Anna Wyman broke up, and he started dating another Sun critic, Susan Mertens. In 1979, she got a journalism fellowship and the paper gave her the OK to study at Cambridge in Britain. But when Max asked to go with her, they turned him down, so he quit and took a job with the rival Province.
“I joke about it being 10 years in the gulag, but it was a wonderful time,” he said.
He eventually came back to The Sun to start up the Saturday Review section.
“What a gift, to be given a weekly magazine to run at the back of a daily paper,” he said. “It was one of the most joyous times of my life, to run that thing.”
Unfortunately, he had a heart attack in 1997. He chronicled his recuperation, then retired from the paper in 2001 and went to work with the Canada Council and UNESCO.
“It’s all volunteer. Canada Council, UNESCO — you get an honorarium, you don’t get paid,” he said. “You get travel.”
Wyman and Mertens have been living in a stunning waterfront home in Lions Bay since the mid-’80s. In the early 2000s, he was talked into running for mayor, and successfully steered the town through the expansion of the Sea to Sky Highway for the 2010 Olympics.
Unfortunately, in recent years he has had more health issues. He’s been quietly battling lymphoma for four years, and had another heart attack last year, which required them drilling through the buildup in his arteries.
“They had to drill to get at it,” he said. “Talk about hard-hearted critics.”