Jeremy Brown
It’s likely most of you have never heard of Jeremy Brown; although seniors from the Greater Toronto Area may remember him as a newspaper columnist and radio personality. But it was in neither of those capacities that Jeremy came into my life.
As I arrived home from work one evening in late 1969 or early 1970, the phone in our hallway was ringing. (Only one telephone in most homes in those days, and it was usually centrally located). When I answered it, the conversation went something like this.
“Hello.”
“Is this Lyman MacInnis?”
“Yes.”
“I hear you’re very argumentative.”
Never one to pass up an opening like that, I snarled, “What the hell do you mean I’m argumentative?”
“You’re just the guy I want.”
The caller, of course, was Jeremy. At the time, he was producing the CBC TV game show Fighting Words, hosted by the legendary arts critic, Nathan Cohen. I became a panelist on the show, and Jeremy became a friend.
Jeremy, in addition to being a fine writer and broadcaster, was a visionary. For example, in the early 70s he suggested closed-circuit TV cameras be placed on the major arteries in the Greater Toronto Area, with the images being made available to all radio and TV traffic reporters rather than each outlet having its own aircraft and ground spotters. Today, half a century later, that’s how it’s done.
Late in his life Jeremy fell victim to Parkinson’s disease, but fought it like a wounded lion, refusing to give up an activity until he absolutely had to. And he fought it ferociously until the day he died.
Of all Jeremy’s interesting attributes, the most fascinating was that although he had a very bad stutter, when he sat in front of a microphone or picked up a telephone the stutter disappeared.
Ed Boyce
Some time in the mid 70s I gave a talk on executive compensation to a fairly large audience in Toronto. After the question period I was approached by a confident-looking, well-dressed, sophisticated gentleman who handed me his business card and said he wanted to talk to me about the possibility of his company becoming a client. As the crowd had pretty well disbursed, I suggested we have a coffee and talk about it right then. He agreed.
Ed Boyce was the vice-president of human resources for a company called MDS (medical data services), at that time one of Canada’s most successful public companies. As it turned out, a number of their senior executives (including Ed) did become clients.
Ed is one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever known, and certainly one of the most interesting.
At age 35 he became provincial superior of the Redemptorists order of priests in Canada, a very senior position within the order. Many Catholic pundits felt he was well on his way to becoming a very young cardinal, and some even predicted he could be the first pope from the Western Hemisphere. But he left the order and became a business executive.
Ed explained to me that he had reached a point where he felt he could accomplish more by making a lot of money in business and using it for good works than he could as a clergyman. I can attest that Ed did make a lot of money and did use most of it helping others.
When Ed and I were having our coffee that day he mentioned he knew I was from PEI and told me that in the early 60s he had been the parish priest at the Holy Redeemer parish in Charlottetown. I told him that had been my wife’s parish.
“What was her name?” he asked.
“Anne Affleck,” I replied.
“I remember her well,” he said. “She was a very impressive person.” I assured him she still was.