Brian Brennan unveils Alberta’s Rogues and Rebels
Brian Brennan explores colourful characters who ignored the rule book
Clyde Gilmour, the Calgaryborn music-loving broadcaster best known for his half-century on CBC Radio, got his start in newspapers.
In fact, in the 1930s he applied for a job at the Calgary Herald. He had been a stringer for the Herald in Medicine Hat and was hoping to come here full time. But on the day of his interview, his watch malfunctioned and he arrived 45 minutes late. He didn’t get the job.
“After that, he always wore two watches,” says author Brian Brennan, who includes the anecdote in his new book, Rogues and Rebels: Unforgettable Characters From Canada’s West (University of Regina Press, 240 pages, $24.95). “He said, ‘I’m not going to make that mistake again.’ I thought ‘This is a delightful, surprising tidbit that I want to include.’ ”
Gilmour, who hosted Gilmour’s Albums on the CBC from 1956 to 1997, is one of 32 historical figures profiled in Brennan’s new book. When held against the life and times of some of the more colourful characters he writes about — mysterious B.C. cult leader Edward Arthur Wilson, a.k.a. Brother XII; Saskatchewan-born war correspondent Gladys Arnold or iconic wrestling promoter and trainer Stu Hart, for instance — this delightful tidbit about Gilmour’s life-lesson in punctuality may not seem all that enthralling.
But it fits into the approach Brennan takes with the new book, offering profiles that not only celebrate the larger-than-life aspects of his rogues and rebels but the “little surprises” as well.
Dublin-born Brennan worked as a journalist at the Calgary Herald for 25 years, starting on the police beat before moving to entertainment reporter, drama critic and, eventually, a columnist specializing in feature obituaries. The latter was good training for Rogues and Rebels, Brennan’s 11th book and a sequel to the similarly themed 2002 collection, Scoundrels and Scallywags.
For the new book, he digs up some obscure characters, including Bloody Caesar cocktail co-inventor Claire Hedwig Chell and Winnifred Eaton Babcock Reeve, a writer who found fame under a Japanese pen name writing romance novels in New York before moving to Morley with her rancher husband to live a decidedly less glamorous life. He also writes about those who have come to symbolize the maverick, applecart-tipping nature of western Canadian history: Tommy Douglas, adventurer Morris (Two- Gun) Cohen and Nellie McClung.
But even when writing about well-known figures, Brennan illuminates more obscure aspects of their lives.
Take Ralph Klein. We all know about the long-serving right-wing politician who once drunkenly berated homeless people and handed out “Ralph bucks.” But fewer people remember his contributions as a journalist, which is what Brennan focuses on.
“He was a bit unorthodox in the sense that he wasn’t waiting around for media opportunities to get his stories,” Brennan says. “He was hiding in closets in city hall and listening in on incamera meetings and rummaging through garbage.”
Brennan says what links all 32 of these characters is their insistence on ignoring the rule book and ability to “disturb the universe.” Most of them are figures Brennan admires, although not all come off as particularly admirable.
There were few redeeming qualities in Manitoba’s Jack Franchenko, a murderer and career criminal who killed a bank manager in 1913. The chapter on Roy Farran focuses on the former solicitor general of Alberta’s alleged involvement in abducting, torturing and murdering a 16-year-old boy in 1947 while serving in what was then British-ruled Palestine. After researching the once-lionized missionary Archdeacon John Tims, Brennan discovered he was actually loathed by the natives he attempted to convert.
“Some of them did turn out to be a little less savoury, shall we say,” Brennan says.
Through it all, his writing is informative but concise, factual but entertaining and often quite funny.
“It goes back to my journalistic training,” he says. “In many instances, you had to tell the story in 750 words. So if I’m getting 1,500 and 2,000 words, that’s a bonus.
“I like the cutting-to-the-chase aspect of it. I don’t have to drag it out with extensive prologues and introductions and that sort of thing before getting to the meat of the thing. I like getting to the story right away.”
Some of them did turn out to be a little less savoury, shall we say.