SHIRTLESS JOE
By Mark Walma
Chapter One
If you have spent any part of your life as a denizen of a
small, Canadian town, you will know that the local
newspaper – the Leader, the Post, the
Times, the Herald, the Banner,
the Derby, the Reporter, the
Chronicle, the Beacon-Times-Herald,
whatever name its masthead proclaims – is the core of the
community’s intellectual and social world. On its pages,
the soul of the town is set on display in tiny black type
for all to see and read.
So it is with Miller, a small community at the entrance to
Ontario’s near north, whose population in winter stands at
no more than 8,000 but which swells during the summer,
cottage months to as many as 16,000 or more. “The Gateway
to the North”, it calls itself, and has done so ever since
the old grey fox, George Knudson, was mayor, the winter
population stood at 900 and horse-drawn carriages carried
the city folk up in springtime from the newly paved roads
of Toronto.
The Miller Daily Herald building stands three
storeys high, still the second tallest edifice in the
downtown core – after the Grand Hotel on Kent Street, of
course, with its copper dome and its $20-per-hour room
rentals – towering over the bustling businesses of William
Street, First Presbyterian Church (built in 1914, 20 years
after Knox Presbyterian over on Adelaide, making it, in all
honesty, Miller’s second Presbyterian Church) and the
Sutter River that winds from north to south through town,
sweeping briefly west to pay homage to the Herald before
washing back south east toward Sutter Lake.
Up until the dawn of this latest century, the Miller
Daily Herald had employed a group of aging but still
active local reporters who knew the town like the backs of
their liver-spotted hands and could dig up the dirt with
the best of them. Every day, five days per week, the Herald
printed between 16 and 24 pages of local news,
entertainment and sports, with advertisements from just
about every Miller business that wanted to stay in
business. This journalistic bee-hive was augmented every
Wednesday when the paper printed its famous “Second
Section”, four pages of the most fascinating of small-town
news, the writings of amateur, community correspondents
from the even tinier towns that hung like satellites in
Miller’s orbit.
Where else were the locals going to be able to find out if
Mabel Hickson’s son, Gordon, had finally taken a break from
his busy life as a paralegal in Alberta to pay a
long-awaited visit to his mother? And what other
publication would answer the township’s latest burning
question: who was driving that late model brown
foreign-made compact car that was seen by several farmers
moving at a disrespectful speed down Watson’s Lane toward
Nestleton last Saturday afternoon? (It was Elmer Landry’s
daughter, Emily, up for the day from Hamilton, her first
visit in almost seven years, though Elmer would not divulge
to the Herald correspondent the reason for the visit nor if
Emily has finally found a father for her two little ones).
And by the way, readers were thrilled to find out that Gina
Green finally tried that much-written-about pecan-and-date
pie recipe sent to her by her cousin in Saskatchewan, to
great success according to house guests Tina and Bill
Meyers, though Terry Green did admit in a later edition of
the newspaper that there may have been a little too much
cinnamon after all.
Like most small-town newspapers, one of Miller’s leading
families owns the Herald, in this case the Bork
family, of pulp and paper and, more recently, Church
Envelope fame, headed up at the turn of the century (the
21st century, in case you, like so many others, tend still
to think of 1899-to-1900 when you hear the phrase “turn of
the century”) by the illustrious matriarch, Muriel Agnes
Penelope Bork. At 83 years of age, Miss Bork is as vibrant
and lively as she was when she was a girl of 20 (whether
that is a compliment to her vitality today or an insult to
her youthful turgidity back in 1943 I hesitate to comment)
and she runs the Herald with an iron fist.
The paper has done terribly well under Miss Bork, driving
circulation up by 1998 to all time highs of 5,000 copies
sold per day in winter, 5,500 with the town’s expansion
during the summer. Advertising rates dance on the waves of
success and the newspaper’s revenues have started to
challenge those of the Herald Church Envelope division, an
enterprise that Miss Bork herself had started 30 years ago
and had since built into a national concern, supplying
specially printed, high quality collection envelopes to
churches across the nation. Always one to spot a potential
market, the matriarch had given her permission for the
Herald Church Envelope division to start accepting orders
from Baptist, Anglican, and even Catholic churches in 1995.
Sales have never been better.
So, flush with the success of this liberal-minded largess
in her Herald Church Envelope division, Miss Bork decided
to change newspaper policy in the year 2000 and require
that the Herald’s reporters cover significant
local events that happened to have the temerity to take
place on a Sunday, even if they had to leave their pews in
Knox or First Presbyterian churches to do so. No out-dated
widow she, Miss Bork had, more than three years earlier,
allowed the Editor, one Mickey Shaftsbury, to hire the
paper’s first female journalist, Annabelle Grace Bork, and
just 18 days later gave grand-niece Annabelle her gracious
permission to wear slacks on the colder winter days.
The Sunday change came after the local infirmary, Bork
Memorial Hospital (named for the current matriarch’s own
mother, Agnes Penelope Muriel Bork), burned to the ground
on a sunny Sunday afternoon, to the stunned fascination of
more than 2,000 on-lookers, none of whom carried pad, pen
or camera for the Daily Herald, since those pious
Presbyterians refused to leave their afternoon bible study
to pursue the story. So, while several thousand Millerites
could describe the rapid evacuation and slow collapse of
the venerable building in vivid detail, and many hundreds
offered vivid, crisp digital images of the incineration on
their own personal websites, Monday’s Herald led
off with a long article about the upcoming summer fair,
complete with file photos of the previous year’s event,
limiting coverage of the demise of the local hospital to
four lines in a box at the bottom of the front page.
And so Miss Bork ordered the rules changed, modern woman
that she is, and the four veteran reporters quit en masse
in protest (and, perhaps, exhaustion, since their average
age, not including Annabelle, was, by that time, 72 short
years), leaving the Herald on a two-week hiatus
while replacement scribes were sought. Editor Shaftsbury
took it upon himself to go in a new direction, advertising
the positions in the Globe and Mail and the
Toronto Star newspapers, attracting applicants
from across this broad and beautiful country, and injecting
new blood into the paper and the town with the hiring of
three young, inexperienced, college-trained city kids into
the reporter roles, alongside Annabelle who agreed to stay
on for a spell to acclimate the new arrivals and to provide
a sense of continuity to the enterprise.
The newspaper was revived with this new blood and, even
though these handsome, well-educated children knew nothing
about life in a small town like Miller, they made up for
their ignorance with exuberance, dedication and a
willingness to go to events on Saturdays, Sundays and even
during weekday evenings, when the more mature former
journalists of the town could usually be found at the
curling club, the temperance league or peacefully in their
beds.
Summer circulation rose even further, as cottagers and
townspeople alike found well-written items of interest to
them, written in modern language and short sentences,
accompanied by visually interesting, well-composed
photographs that were often in focus. Rarely had any
newspaper in Canada seen such a significant change in so
short a period of time.
And so, when one of the new reporters took advantage of
winning an Ontario Community Newspaper Association (OCNA)
award for an investigative story into the funding of Mayor
Eldridge Binghampton’s last campaign, the first such OCNA
award in the century-long history of the Daily
Herald, to compete for and win a position with a
big-city paper in Kingston, it should prove no surprise
that Editor Shaftsbury received the matriarch’s permission
to seek a replacement, once again, from outside Miller.
Competition was fierce but one candidate stood out, head
and shoulders, above the others. A graduate of the best
journalism school in the country, with a master’s degree in
literature to boot, Harold Walker had the skills, talent
and personal charisma that the Herald was looking
for. The fact that he was away in the nation’s capital, on
a two-month internship with that model of journalistic
savvy, the Ottawa Citizen, and so could not
actually come to Miller to conduct his interviews did not
dull the excitement of the Herald gang one bit –
they found him charming, well-spoken and witty on the
telephone and were amply impressed by the portfolio of
articles and photographs he had sent them, and by overnight
courier of all things, to review.
Sight unseen, Harold won the position. Editor Shaftsbury
sent along an employment contract via regular post and
everything was signed, sealed and delivered in the space of
a fortnight. The Daily Herald had its new reporter
and all that was left was to wait anxiously for another
three weeks while Harold finished out his time in Ottawa.
The appointed day finally arrived and Editor Shaftsbury
came to the office extra early that fine May morning to
make sure everything was just so when his new pride and joy
first walked through the front door, up the long flight of
stairs, down the narrow hallway and into the editorial
offices of the Miller Daily Herald. As an extra
measure, to make sure this sophisticated new addition to
the team recognised that the Herald was a serious,
professional publication and that its owner and editor were
both knowledgeable people of the world, Editor Shaftsbury
arranged that Harold would be ushered straight-away into
Miss Bork’s professionally decorated office, where he would
find his new bosses sipping expresso in fine, urban and
urbane style.
The time of arrival was arranged to be 10 a.m., well after
the morning’s paper had been put to bed and onto the
presses, so that Miss Bork and Editor Shaftsbury had every
chance of setting a proper scene. At 9:55, the Editor
knocked lightly at the door to Miss Bork’s office, listened
for the cough and the raspy invitation to enter, then swept
importantly in to place the steaming beverages on the desk
between them.
The matriarch wore her finest modern business attire,
purchased not four years before in Miller’s best shop for
women’s clothing, Bolingbrooks of Miller, run by the chic
and elegant Mitsy Holingbrook, a close personal friend of
the matriarch, who, while she spared no expense for the
comfort of her clients and the quality of her wares, felt
no inclination to spend the extra $200 required to correct
the error that her sign-maker had made when she first
opened the shop. Miss Bork had even gone so far as to dab
lipstick around her mouth and rouge across her cheek so
that she had the air of a dashing young career woman out
for a business lunch. Editor Shaftsbury had also gotten
into the spirit, dusting off his funeral suit and best tie,
his hair neatly trimmed and mustache shaven back into a
debonnaire shadow of its former self. His good eye
glistened with anticipation.
A tap at the door interrupted the silence between them and
both immediately took up their still-steaming cups and
raised them to within an inch of their lips. Miss Bork
coughed and bid the knocking party to enter. The door moved
slightly and a small, startled face thrust its way into the
room.
“Harold Walker has arrived, ma’am, Mr. Shaftsbury, and is
here to see you as requested,” Bess said, her eyes wide,
her voice shaking.
Miss Bork sat back into her chair, the coffee still close
to her lips. “Well, Bess, show the man in.”
The timid woman withdrew her face and pushed the door fully
open. Into the space stepped a man, a tall man, a handsome
man with a smile extending from one ear to the other, whose
deep brown eyes glistened. A man carrying a handsome,
black-leather briefcase in his left hand, his right hand
extended in a friendly fashion toward them as he took one,
two, three steps into the room. A tall, handsome,
brown-eyed, briefcase-carrying black man named Harold
Walker, the newest addition to the Daily Herald’s
editorial staff, as witnessed by the signed and sealed
contract he carried in his valise.
Miss Bork suffered her first heart attack in the seconds
that followed and Harold Walker’s welcome to the Miller
Daily Herald got lost in the ensuing panic. Bess came
to fetch Harold from the bedlam and brought him back,
instead, to the editorial office to meet his new
colleagues.
Meanwhile, Miller’s medical corps swung quickly into
action, sirens screaming as they made their two-block way
down Kent Street from the newly-built Bork Memorial to the
offices of the Daily Herald. With remarkable
efficiency, dexterity and strength, the two young man
whisked a portable gurney up the stairs and into the
office, attached various wires and monitors to the
faltering and faintly matriarch and then ensconced her in
the wheeled bed. Editor Shaftsbury managed to insert his
240-pound, black-suited bulk between the camera Alexandra
Benjamin now brandished, in the name of capturing and
reporting the news for tomorrow’s paper, and the matriarch,
to ensure that the unconscious woman was able to escape the
building photographically unscathed.
Harold dropped himself into the seat Bess indicated,
settling his handsome face into his slim, well-formed
hands. He found himself alone in the editorial office:
Bess, the administrative assistant, had gone to the coffee
room to boil some water, an excellent idea in every medical
emergency, not just when a baby is about to make its way
into the world; Alex Benjamin, as I mentioned, was
attempting to carry out her journalistic duties in the
office of the matriarch while her two colleagues, Kevin
Tracey, replacement for the aforementioned but recently
departed Annabelle Bork, and Russell Banks, had already
left the office to pursue the news, wherever and whenever
it might take place.
I’ve made an impact already, Harold thought, lifting his
face from his hands and surveying the room. He saw what any
sane, objective, educated observer would have seen: a scene
from the 1960s, with linoleum of that era, faux wood
panelling on the walls and office furniture of tepid
quality and advancing age. I’ve made a mistake, was his
next thought, as his fingers slid across the most modern
item in the room – an IBM Selectric typewriter, the best in
the business when it first appeared in the window of
Robertson’s Office Supplies sometime in the late 1970s. His
gaze searched for a computer, even one, but found instead a
rotary phone and an ink blotter with an image of Expo ’67
imposed in the background.
But he’d accepted, he’d given up his apartment in Ottawa
and signed a lease here. He was stuck – a man of
considerable honour, he would live up to his commitments,
give his all for the employer to whom he’d assigned himself
and take the future as the future came.
So he sat and waited.
Little did Harold know that an emergency meeting of the
governing minds of the Miller Daily Herald would
take place that very afternoon in Room 515A of Bork
Memorial Hospital, where the matriarch was making a rapid
recovery, without surgery of any kind. The attack had been
mild, a warning at most, and Miss Bork was ready by 3 p.m.
to meet with Jeffrey Johnson, senior partner of Johnson,
Thompson and Robinson, the most prestigious law firm in
town, Reverend Leonard Overfield, octogenarian pastor of
Knox, and Reverend Nathaniel Brock, pastor of First
Presbyterian, a group collectively known as “the Board”.
The matriarch demanded to know how such a travesty could
have happened. After brief discussion, it became clear that
the blame fell entirely and solely on the Editor Shaftsbury
who had once again overstepped his authority and taken
liberties with his position with the newspaper. Editor
Shaftsbury, by that point, was already back at the paper,
planning out the next day’s edition and attempting to deal
with his newest employee.
Mr. Johnson then reviewed with the Board the contract the
paper had signed with the surprising Mr. Walker and was
forced to admit that the document was flawless in every way
and, as a result, completely and unalterably binding on the
company. When Reverend Brock had the audacity to suggest
that, since Mr. Johnson had himself drafted the said
contract, perhaps it would be wise to have it reviewed by
another lawyer in town to see if, in fact, it was so
perfectly designed, Reverend Brock was subjected to a stern
look from the matriarch, a derisive snort from the said Mr.
Johnson and a look of abject pity from his elder colleague
of the cloth.
“I have nothing against the man, I assure you I do not, but
it is absolutely clear to me that he is completely
unsuitable for this task in this town,” Miss Bork said, her
tone betraying only slightly the peevish turn of her mind
on the subject. “Not everyone in this community is, I
regret having to point out, as broad minded as I am – can
we not simply terminate this man’s employment on account of
his clear unsuitability for the task?”
“Now, Muriel, please let us not be hasty,” responded the
elder clergyman, his voice seeming to emerge from this
considerable nose rather than from the thin-lipped slit he
thought of as his mouth. “We do not even know if the lad is
a Christian.”
Mr. Johnson, accustomed as he was to dominate any
conversation of which he is a part, yet cognizant of the
fact that the Bork family and its corporations were the
single biggest client his firm served and the town offered,
sat forward in his wooden chair, careful not to touch the
hospital bed as he sliced the air with his ever-proffered
index finger as he spoke. “Reverend Brock’s opinion aside,
we must understand that this young man has legal rights
and, if he chooses, could make it quite messy for the
newspaper.”
“So what do you propose we do?” Miss Bork said.
“I would recommend that he be given a chance to perform the
duties for which he was hired,” Mr. Johnson responded, his
eyes alight.
“But, in this community, I fear I must agree with Miss
Bork. Very few are as liberal and open-minded as the
members of this august committee,” Reverend Brock
interjected. “He will not be welcomed; he will fail
miserably.”
The smile on Mr. Johnson’s face added considerable light to
the hospital room. “Indeed,” he said, the smile
illuminating his voice, “he will.”
A creaking sound emerged from the matriarch, the ominous
sound of her chuckling. “And when he fails,” she said with
considerable glee, “we will have grounds.”
“Indeed,” said Mr. Johnson, his short, stubby fingers now
entwined on his lap. “Unassailable grounds.”
Reverend Overfield made a motion with his grey haired,
sharp-nosed head that appeared to be some mixture of a nod
and a shake while his younger colleague continued to seem
startled by everything he was hearing.
And so the Board made its decision and Editor Shaftsbury
was given instructions to treat his new reporter with all
the kindness and respect that he would offer to any other
recently-arrived employee. But, and they made this very
clear, Harold Walker was to be assigned the most
challenging, most difficult of stories to cover and to be
sent where he would be least welcome.
_________
To read more about Harold Walker's first challenging
assignment, please e-mail me at mark.walma@gmail.com.