Don’t know Jack? Here’s your shot to bone up on city’s busiest buccaneer By: David Sanderson Posted: 11:29 AM CDT Friday, Aug. 11, 2023 Last Modified: 12:09 PM CDT Friday, Aug. 11, 2023 Updates

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/08/2023 (1074 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

July marked 20 years since the release of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, the movie that introduced the world to Captain Jack Sparrow, a fictional scallywag portrayed on the big screen by Johnny Depp.

To say the Sparrow character went on to become a pop culture icon is putting it mildly. Not only have the five films in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise collectively reeled in close to $5 billion at the box office, in 2016 a 46-year-old woman traded “I dos” with Sparrow’s ghost, on a boat off the coast of Ireland, six months after she “met” the swashbuckler in a dream.

Yo, ho, yo, ho, it wasn’t a pirate’s life for her; she filed for divorce 18 months later, arrr-guing the two were no longer compatible.

Closer to home, Todd Douglas has spent the last nine years impersonating Jack Sparrow at everything from birthday parties to restaurant launches to Blue Bomber games to bar mitzvahs.

Douglas, who grew up in St. Boniface and has worked as an actor, standup comic and voice artist, recently arrived for a scheduled newspaper interview at a St. Vital watering hole posing as the affable scoundrel, right down to a shoulder-strap bandolier, leather boots and a half-dozen bead-strings clipped to his hair and beard.

Yes, he ordered rum.

During an hour-long chat, scores of people seated on an outdoor patio flocked over to greet Douglas, who bills himself online as Jack in the Peg. So, too, did a tiny visitor from the species Passer domesticus.

“Oh, look; a sparrow coming over to say hello to the king of the Sparrows,” he said, breaking into an English accent identical to the one Depp adopted for his depiction of Captain Jack, once described as a “macho but effeminate drunk clown, with rock-star sex appeal.”

“It’s the same thing where we live,” piped in Corinne Bremmer, Douglas’s partner who often accompanies him bedecked as Scarlett, a red-headed “wench” played in the Pirates movies by Lauren Mayer.

“We’ll be sitting in the living room, watching TV, and suddenly there will be all these birds on the window sill, I guess wanting ‘Jack’ to come out and play.”

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Douglas couldn’t recall the last time he went out for Halloween when Bremmer suggested they do just that in October 2014, six months into their relationship. He agreed it sounded like fun, only what would he don as a costume? Owing to his longish brown hair and dashing good looks, Bremmer proposed he go as Jack Sparrow.

His response: “Who the heck is Jack Sparrow?”

“I should have left him then and there, but I didn’t,” she says with a wink.

Rather than fire up some popcorn and view what, at the time, were four Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Douglas spent an hour studying online images of Sparrow, to gain an idea of what he’d require in the way of a suitable get-up.

He obviously nailed it; seconds after he-as-Jack and Bremmer-as-Scarlett strode into a social hall on the north side of the city, a person selling silent auction tickets announced, “I think we know who’s going to win for best costume.”

The pair received an identical reaction two hours later, when they popped into a Royal Canadian Legion, on their way home.

Douglas headed out as Sparrow again the following Halloween, only that time his ensemble was more authentic, as were his mannerisms.

“By then I’d become hooked on the (Pirates of the Caribbean) movies, and had memorized all of Jack’s best catchphrases and one-liners,” he says, rising from his chair to loudly announce, “Stop blowing holes in my ship!”

“I can’t tell you how many hours I spent freeze-framing this or that scene, to help imitate the way Jack sounded, the way he moved, the whole nine yards.”

Figuring you can’t have too much of a good thing, even in the pirate-verse, Douglas was soon heading out the door dressed as Sparrow, whether it was to grab a bite with friends, or to fetch a few items at the grocery store; that despite the fact it took him up to four hours — a number that has since dropped to 90 minutes — to get his hair and makeup (that isn’t a real scar on his right cheek) just so.

It never failed; faster than you can say “shiver me timbers,” complete strangers were approaching him to ask if he was available for kids’ birthday parties or backyard get-togethers with friends, especially if a swimming pool was part of the mix. He was compliant to a fault.

As his calendar filled up more and more, however, he started thinking he should test the waters, so to speak, by charging a nominal fee for his services.

One of the first things he did was reach out to Denise Pearson, a Vancouver-based Sparrow lookalike who was already being hired for private gigs under the banner Denise Does Johnny, for a few tips.

‘She told me whatever I did, don’t just be Jack, but make the role about you, too.’–Todd Douglas

“She told me whatever I did, don’t just be Jack, but make the role about you, too,” he says, adjusting a red bandanna tied around his noggin.

“I took her advice to heart, which is why you’ll often see me with a big smile on my face when I’m posing with somebody for a picture, instead of looking mean or stern, the way the real Jack would.”

While COVID-19 didn’t do raiders of the seven seas any big favours, things are back to normal pretty much; or at least as normal as it gets for a person who tools around town in a silver Buick with a placard reading “part-time pirate” taped to a backseat window.

In the last two years, Douglas has been an invited guest to the Red River Exhibition, Gimli’s Icelandic Festival and — who didn’t see this coming? — Folklorama’s Caribbean pavilion.

Additionally, he has travelled to Kenora on several occasions, to mingle with customers at the Boathouse Waterfront Eatery, which overlooks Lake of the Woods.

From time to time, local bands such as the Biivers and Nazeem & Harris have even invited him onstage to perform a number or two. As Sparrow, he does a “mean Gord Downie,” he allows, but interestingly, his go-to Tragically Hip cover is New Orleans is Sinking, not Nautical Disaster.

There is also a charitable side to his endeavours. Upon learning a 13-year-old boy in Ontario named Jack was living with a rare disease that required him to receive blood transfusions twice a week, he posted a video of himself donating blood. He encouraged others to do likewise. (The younger Jack personally thanked Douglas on Instagram, going so far as to add a pirate-flag emoji at the end of his message.)

“Everybody loves Jack, from tykes to teens to seniors,” Bremmer says, reaching for his hand. “And what I love most is that he’s so giving with his time.

“There have been occasions when we’ve walked around The Forks dressed up, just for the fun of it, and he’ll spend an hour, two hours… however long it takes, to make sure everybody who wants to get their picture taken with him has that opportunity.”

One more thing; if you think a person who’s spent close to a decade parodying a pirate is a salty dog through and through, think again. The next time Douglas sets sail on the open sea will be the first time.

“I stuck my toes in the ocean when I visited California a long time ago, but aside from a ferry ride in Seattle, no, I don’t have any ocean tales to share with you,” he says, before going back into character, to instruct those seated around him to “drink up me hearties.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca