My former colleague, the late Dave Bonham, was the most open-minded person I’ve ever known. He hated any form of confrontation and always sought compromise. He and I were disagreeing over something at a committee meeting and Dave said, “We’re not that far apart, Lyman.” I replied, “Dave, we are diametrically opposed!” “Well,” he suggested, “that’s not that far apart.”
I was filling in for Ed Needham on his evening phone-in show on CFRB in Toronto. The call screener told me there was an elderly lady on the line who had a raccoon problem. I took the call. She told me her son-in-law had trapped a pesky raccoon and released it in a wooded area about a mile away, but a couple of nights later it was back in the rafters of her carport. She asked if I knew anywhere the raccoon could be released from where it wouldn’t come back. “Sure,” I said, “just take it to the other side of the 401.” (The 401 is the busy multi-lane highway that runs through the northern part of Toronto). The rest of the callers that evening demanded, variously, my banishment from the airwaves, my arrest, my dismemberment, my being abandoned in the middle lane of the 401, and according to the call screener, other suggestions inappropriate to be aired. Realizing there was no point in debating the issue with humourless people who didn’t realize I had been facetiously kidding, I just listened politely to each, thanked them for their call, and moved on to the next one.
The late Don Harron was the wittiest person I’ve ever known. Don (as his Charlie Farquharson character) and I did a number of radio and TV shows together. This incident took place on Wally Crouter’s morning show, also on CFRB, which at the time had the largest “morning drive” radio audience in North America. There had been a federal budget the previous afternoon, and Charlie was asking me questions about income tax changes; he was the wit and I was the straight man. However, one question Charlie asked gave me what I thought was an opportunity to one-up him. It went like this. “Tell me, Limey (which he always called me on air), was there anything in that there budget about bank ruptures?” “Ah, Charlie,” I smugly replied, “you mean bankruptcies. A bank rupture is when someone blows up a vault.” He didn’t miss a beat before retorting, “That doesn’t bother me, Limey, I’ve got no-vault insurance.” That was the first and last time I tried to match wits with Don Harron. (I always found it interesting that even when Don was performing as Charlie Farquharson on radio he wore his trademark cap and moth-eaten sweater, and needed an audience of three or four people in the control room where he could see them through the glass and gauge their reactions.)
Another Don Harron anecdote. I had a brush cut from the age of 10 until I was 34, so for the first few years I knew Don he had never seen me without it. One evening, shortly after letting my hair grow, Don and his wife, the wonderful singer, Catharine MacKinnon, were at our place for dinner. I was surprised that neither of them commented on my hair, but I decided to say nothing about it. As we were saying good night at our front door, Don shook my hand and said, “You know, Lyman, parting is such sweet sorrow..”
I was in a cubicle in the men’s room at TransCanadaPipeLines (where I was working at the time) when there was a tap on the wall from the adjoining cubicle. “Yes?” I responded. “Do you have any extra toilet paper in there?” a voice asked. Unfortunately, there wasn’t. “Sorry,” I replied, “there isn’t.” All was quiet for about a minute and then the voice asked, “Do you happen to have change for a twenty?” I just had to meet this guy, so after washing my hands I hung around until he emerged. His name was Chester Wing, and we remained good friends until his untimely death in mid-life while awaiting a heart transplant.
It was a hot, sunny day in the summer of 1958, just a bit west of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, when I entered the Trans-Canada Highway from a gas station exit where there was a yield sign. There was a car coming, but I knew I had ample time to pull out without interfering with its progress. As soon as I did, the oncoming car sped up and a red light started flashing. The unmarked RCMP vehicle pulled me over. A young officer bent down to my open window and asked, “Didn’t you see the yield sign?” I assured him I had. “Then why didn’t you yield?” he asked. “Because,” I replied, “I chose not to.” “What do you mean you chose not to?” he snarled. I answered,“The sign means ‘yield right of way’ doesn’t it?” “It does,” he acknowledged in a more reasonable tone of voice. “Well,” I said, “I can’t yield something I don’t have, so therefore I must have had the right of way. I chose not to yield it. If you had run into me I’d be in the wrong, but you didn’t, so my choice not to yield was appropriate.” Still bending down he asked, “Are you serious?” “Sir,” I told him, “I’m serious enough to fight a ticket all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.” He stood up, took off his hat, paused for about ten seconds and then said, “I’m not getting into this crap,” walked back to his car and drove off.