When I was a youngster I read Bill Smiley’s weekly column and I thought he was a cranky old guy and terribly crude. In the 1970s, Bill’s columns appeared in 150 newspapers across Canada.
In 1974, Bill was honoured as most outstanding columnist by the Canadian Community Newspaper Association, which described him as Canada’s most-read columnist. He typed out a column every week for 31 years until 1985.
Bill Smiley was born in Perth, Ontario. He was a fighter pilot flying Typhoon aircraft during WW2. He was shot down during the war and spent time in a German prison camp. When the war was over he went into the newspaper business as part owner of the Wiarton Echo. He wrote a salty type column and it caught on with readers.
When he sold the paper after 11 years as publisher and editor he went to university, got a degree and became head of English at the high school in Midland, Ontario.
I thought Bill was crude because he often referred to his wife Ivy (known to her friends as Susie) as the old battle-axe the old lady and the old girl . He whined about his son Hugh and his daughter Kim. He complained about so many things, including his arthritis. But in recent years I’ve come to enjoy Bill’s columns. I’ve read many in past issues of The Renfrew Advance. I have to admit he was a darn good writer compared to other writers featured in weekly newspapers back in the 1960s and 1970s. Most writers were too wordy (rambling on) but Bill was right to the point. He didn’t beat around the bush. It was said he wrote the way he talked. Bill would certainly be criticized by females today if he wrote his witty but cantankerous column in this age of political correctness.
In one of his columns Bill wrote the following: When I’m 85 I want to be known as that old devil Smiley who pinches your bottom every time you pass his wheel chair.
The old devil didn’t make it to 85. He died in 1987 at the age of 67.
I read a number of his columns last evening from 1967 to find one that the editors would surely frown on today. Bill wrote an entire column on his daughter Kim’s 16th birthday. Here are a few sentences:
Ah, I shouldn’t be cynical about my baby. She’s the only one I have. Thank God. She’s been causing me painful pleasure since the day she was born. Any normal kid, as you know, is born at 4 a.m. Kim popped, literally popped, into the world at noon. And my wife has never forgiven me.
The Old Girl began to grunt and groan about 4 a.m., but didn’t want to disturb the doctor’s sleep, and told me it would be about 24 hours before anything happened. She knew all about it, having already had a son, who took about 36 hours getting out of the nest. I knew from nothing.
So we drove sedately to the hospital about 9 a.m., and booked in. She suggested I go to work, as there was no point in hanging around hang-doggedly. I phoned the hospital at noon to ask if it was OK to drop in on my wife and hold her hand. The nurse chortled, Congratulations! You have a fine baby girl. And the kid has been getting me in dutch ever since.
Of course, Bill loved his wife and kids and they were good fodder for his columns. Readers, what are your memories of Bill Smiley? Did you enjoy his columns or was he too cheeky?
