THANK YOU, JACK RABINOVITCH
By and large, Canadians agree that it’s a good thing to draw national attention to our best writers and to celebrate their work. Monday night, my wife Mary Hughson and I will attend the Giller awards ceremony in Toronto, as we always do. It’s a prime-time televised gala event: lots of schmoozing, a great meal and absolutely the best gossip in town. However, this year will be a sadly different affair for me because Jack Rabinovitch, the event’s founder, died in a tragic accident at home last August.
When the Montreal Star folded in 1979, a number of talented journalists and editors — people like hockey writer Red Fisher, current Habs live blogger Michael Boone and restaurant critic Helen Rochester — came over to work for the Montreal Gazette.
Doris Giller was one of their number and became our revolutionary new books editor. She, along with Mordecai Richler, Nick Auf der Maur, Claude Arpin, Beverly Mitchell and Ian Mayer, were members of a loud and lively crew that hung out at the Montreal Press Club. Then Doris began spending time with some interloper named Jack Rabinovitch, who was not even a media type, but a businessman of all things — very suspicious. Compounding Jack’s sins in our minds, he stole Doris’s heart and her hand in marriage and carried her off down the 401 to despised Toronto.
In the end, we forgave Jack for stealing Doris away because he made her happy and they had a wonderful marriage. (Throughout their life together, she fondly called him Creepy.)
Doris left us in 1993, far too early. When she knew she was dying, she insisted that Jack get himself a dog to keep him company. He got a large and lively Bernese Mountain Dog that he named Lady, in his wife’s memory. Wanting to do something special to honour Doris, Jack and Mordecai Richler, pals from their Baron Byng High School days, dreamed up the Giller literary competition as a tribute to her. She would have loved the whole thing: a grandiose event devised by Mordecai and financed by Jack to celebrate the best in Canadian literature.
When visiting Toronto, I often stayed at Jack’s place and our friendship evolved. In time, I came to regard him as a surrogate father, as my own had died in 1986. Last week I turned 75, without the traditional birthday phone call from Jack. Damn.