He was a charming rogue and a dear friend to all of us

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/01/2002 (8655 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ours was a friendship conducted almost entirely in dark hotel bars, knees knocking under tight tables, clouds of cigarette smoke suggesting a privacy that didn’t really exist. Peter Gzowski was a rogue and a flirt, a first-class, indiscriminate romancer who charmed as instinctively as he breathed.

But every time there were strangers who felt they knew him, listeners and readers who would crowd the intimate tables further, offering back pats and handshakes, telling their stories as though they were just picking up the thread of a previously interrupted chat.

And they were, because Peter belonged to all of us and he taught us to listen, to enjoy his love of words and his gift of language. He defined what it was to be Canadian and, much more, he gently led us to a pride and recognition of our own incomparability.

He once joked that Morningside was “the only program in the world that will tell you what to do if you are charged by a muskox.” True, but he more accurately described the show as “a kind of village bulletin-board to the nation.” It was all that and much more. He brought the best of Canada to us and made us believe in our inherent decency.

Peter was our dad, our avuncular friend who would push up the sleeves of his shapeless sweater and dive into a conversation that would take us to Inuit throat singers, political leaders and the women at home in tiny villages who were experts on life as it is really lived. He made it all seem interesting, taught us that the most ordinary people can be extraordinary if we take the time to hear their hopes and secrets.

We met years ago in the bar of the Hotel Fort Garry, an interview that grew into a friendship. We’d met through our words a decade earlier, I sending him missives from the Caribbean to be read on Morningside, he reading the letters on-air. We were both a bit smitten by the time the dishes were cleared and the sky had moved from brightness to shadow that first day.

He was lit from the drinks and the open adulation; I was captivated by a hero and didn’t hide it. This was Peter’s immense power, his voice as familiar as a lullaby, the laugh we’d all heard hundreds of times as we came to life over morning coffee.

He knew how to value his listeners, to make each of us feel as though his program was really just a conversation between friends. For three hours, as we cleaned up the breakfast dishes or drove to work, as we moved by rote through lives that sometimes lacked spark, we were wrapped in his voice. You couldn’t feel lonely listening to Peter, just sorry he didn’t live next door.

The consummate newsman, the aging Peter rarely gave a glimpse of the battles he’d fought as he moved from the Moose Jaw Times-Herald to the Toronto Star to the managing editor’s office at Maclean’s, a job he held when he was just 28. To become an institution, he’d had to develop the instincts of a street fighter.

He reigned over the airwaves for 15 years as host of Morningside and followed that up with his own books, columns and a fierce philanthropic streak. He knew everyone, had heard their stories and seen them plain and simple, was able to name-drop with abandon, something he usually resisted. His gift lay with the common touch, a way of submitting his own astonishing intellect and turning the mike over to the voices of others.

As he became ill, as the smoking that had defined him consumed his energy and stole his very breath, he lied and fought and valiantly pretended nothing was wrong. Weak as a kitten one night, he claimed pneumonia had laid him low. He coughed wetly, thin shoulders shaking, eyes averted.

When the confession finally came in a poorly lit bar after the cigarettes, when he declared what was obvious to everyone who knew and loved him, he seemed seeped in shame and sorrow. He was skeletal, fingers bony and trembling, and he knew he was dying.

But that voice, that voice that seduced and sparkled and comforted, filled the bar with strength and eventually laughter. People turned and smiled at the man who discussed Saskatoon jam and referendums with equal passion. Everything was going to work out fine as long as we heard that voice.

And now he’s gone, and the voice that helped English Canada define itself has been silenced. One more drink and we’ll turn the lights out. Here’s to you, Peter.

We’ll miss you, my friend.

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lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.ca