When I was earning my B.A. in English, it was commonly held among my professors that Ernest Hemingway had a terse, lean prose style, and that he'd developed it while stringing for a newspaper in his early twenties.
What they didn't tell me then—and what I'm not sure they knew—is that the newspaper Hemingway wrote for was the Toronto Star.
Now, Hemingway didn't live in Toronto for very long. He was here for only a few months—just long enough to work up a genuine dislike for our city—before moving to Chicago, and then, eventually, to Europe, where he spent some time as a foreign correspondent, still for the Star (though maybe not exclusively, I'm not sure), before returning Toronto briefly in the interval before his fiction career took off.
But before he left Toronto the first time, he wrote this excellent column about a night he spent at Massey Hall with then-mayor Thomas Langston Church. It reminds me a little of the blowback from Rob Ford's graffiti photo op this past Thursday.
(Reprinted with absolute disregard for any copyright that may apply. He's been dead for fifty years, so please don't lawyer up on me. I steal because I love.)
Sporting Mayor at Boxing Bouts - The Toronto Star Weekly, March 13 1920
Mayor Church is a keen lover of all sporting contests. He is an enthusiast over boxing, hockey and all the manly sports. Any sporting event that attracts voters as spectators numbers His Worship as one of the patrons. If marbles, leapfrog, and tit-tat-toe contests were viewed by citizens of voting age, the mayor would be enthusiastically present. Due to the youth of the competitors the mayor reluctantly refrains from attending all of the above sports.
The other night the mayor and I attended to boxing bouts at Massey Hall. No; we didn't go together, but we were both there.
The mayor's entrance was impressive. He remained standing for some time bowing to his friends and people who knew him.
"Who is that?" asked the man next to me.
"That's the mayor," I replied.
"Down in front!" called out the man next to me.
The mayor enjoyed the first bout hugely. During it he shook hands with everyone around him. He did not seem to know when the bout stopped, as he was still shaking hands when the bell rang for the end of the last round.
Between the rounds, the mayor stood up and looked over the crowd.
"What is he doing—counting the house?" asked the man next to me.
"No. He is letting the sport-loving people look at their sport-loving mayor," I said.
"Down in front!" shouted the man next to me in a rude voice.
During the next two bouts the mayor recognized a number of acquaintances in the crowd. He waved to all of them. He also shook hands with all the soldiers in uniform present, shaking hands with some of them two or three times to make sure.
Scotty Lisner was taking a bad beating in the next bout. The mayor's eyes never strayed to the ring, but he applauded vociferously—whenever the crowd did.
He turned to his right-hand neighbor.
"Lisner is beating him, isn't he?" said the mayor.
His neighbor looked at him piteously.
"I thought Lisner was the better fighter," said the mayor, satisfied, looking eagerly around for someone to shake hands with.
At the end of the fight the referee consulted with the three judges and hoisted a hand of Lisner's opponent as a sign of victory. The mayor stood up.
"I'm glad Lisner won!" he remarked enthusiastically.
"Is that really the mayor?" asked the man next to me.
"That is His Worship, the Sporting Mayor," I replied.
"Down in front!" yelled the man next to me, in a rough voice.
It looked as though the mayor enjoyed the last bout best of all. Of course, he didn't see it, but he discovered several people he had not shaken hands with, and also there was a great deal of booing and cheering. Sometimes the mayor would absent-mindelely boo when the crowd cheered but he always righted himself instinctively at once. He seemed able to shift a boo into a cheer with the same ease and grace of shoving a Ford into low gear.
At the close of the fights the Mayor absent-mindedly said, "Meeting's dismissed," and dashed for his motorcar, thinking he was at a City council meeting.
The mayor is just as interested in hockey as he is in boxing. If cootie fighting or Swedish pinochle or Australian boomerang hurling are ever taken up by the voters, count on the mayor to be there in a ringside seat. For the mayor loves all sport.
See? Antagonizing mayors is nothing new for the Star. They've been at it for at least ninety years.
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