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Paul Quarrington (1953-2010)

In July 0f 2004, I contacted Paul about a 'celebrity' drive profile in the National Post. We sat down over some coffee in the outdoor patio area of Timothy's on the Danforth. He talked about some of his best 'auto-memories' and also about his writing and music. Here is the feature I wrote which I think captures to some extent the wit and humour that bubbled forth so naturally from Paul. The second time we met was during the Toronto Get Lit/Doors Open event at the Royal Ontario Museum in May of 2009. I believe he had already been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer but because I was only a casual acquaintance, of course he did not mention it. When I was fortunate enough to have one of my books in a bookstore, I'd usually find it rubbing shoulders with Paul's numerous titles because we had the same initials.

Writer Paul Quarrington whose novel Whale Music won the Governor General’s Award in 1989 was in a Subaru race with his brother Joel.

It had nothing to do with speeding along some road testing the All-Wheel Drive (AWD) capabilities of their Subaru Outback vehicles. No, it was all about one-upmanship, sibling rivalry, that kind of thing.

“My brother started this Subaru Outback thing,” says Quarrington. “He had one that I quite admired so I got one that was slightly better than his, then he got one that was slightly better than mine but then I didn’t get one that was slightly better than his and he got another one that was slightly better than his older one.”

Quarrington still owns his 1996 forest green Subaru Outback that he bought used (coming off a two-year lease). He’s documented in non-fiction books such as Fishing with My Old Guy, and most recently, From The Far Side of the River, some of his off road (and on road) adventures in search of the perfect trout stream or fishing hole.

That off road capability was at the back of his mind when he selected the Outback and that its AWD would prove handy during the winter.

“I did like the idea of a little more security in the winter. The All-Wheel Drive is always there. I remember in the winter of ’99 when we had all that snow. I was really the only one who could go anywhere. For parking, a friend of mine said you just plough them (the Subarus) into a snow bank.”

The other interesting automotive anecdote about Quarrington is that while he was growing up in the Don Mills area of Toronto, his parents (who were psychologists) drove a flashy red Ford Edsel.

“I think my mother’s parents gave us the car after they were done with it. It was in good shape; it had the push button transmission. You’d still occasionally see other Edsels on the road. Their drivers would wave to you. My understanding was that the Edsel was a very good car but just a little too luxurious for the time.”

Quarrington used to sit in the Edsel and pretend to drive it.

“Then once (I was around ten years old) I kind of released the brakes, put the car into neutral and it started rolling. I think I jumped out and tried to stop it with my hands. It eventually ended up across the street on the neighbour’s lawn.

He confesses that he and his friend, Pat Murphy actually failed the 180-day written test the first time they sat for it. Once Quarrington passed that hurdle, he took a drivers’ education course and his instructor was Leroy Napoleon LeBlanc. He swears that the name isn’t invented though it sounds like could be a character from one of his novels. Perhaps Home Game, in which freaks go head to head in a baseball game against a bizarre religious sect, or possibly the novel King Leary (a fictional look at a King Clancy-like figure and the world of an old time hockey).

He admits getting serious about cars and driving not to impress the girls but to actually lug around the amps, drums and guitars for his four-member band.

“We had a group, Manure it was called, and it’s embarrassing to have your parents drive you to a gig and so I think that was the basic motivation (learning to drive).”

The teenage blues musicians would play at high schools, weddings, and church dances and travel as far away as Lake Scugog.

“(Once) we rolled a pickup truck we borrowed. Some of this stuff one is hesitant to talk about. Murphy and I liked to enjoy varying the speedometer. That was something we had too much affection for.”

The importance of music in his life led him to eventually write the novel Whale Music (a film of the novel was made starring Maury Chaykin) and which roughly parallels the troubled career and times of the Beach Boys and in particular Dennis Wilson.

“I’m fond of Whale Music because I’m fond of the main character Desmond. In the book, Desmond’s brother Danny had a thing for cars, and he got into trouble at a quite young age for stealing cars. He had this sort of rock ‘n’ roll alter ego. His name was Stud E. Baker.”

Quarrington says he first began writing novels when he was around eight years old and some of his earliest influences range from Superman comics (especially the Bizarro alternate universe stories) to television comics such as Red Skelton. Later, he was attracted to the work of writers such as Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan.

His most recent novel is Galveston, in which one of his characters recalls watching the devastation caused by Hurricane Hazel when it hit Toronto in 1954. This character meets up with other ‘weather tourists’ down south to experience Mother Nature at her worst.

Quarrington was part of the writing team on the television hockey series, Power Play, and he also wrote scripts for the series Due South starring Paul Gross. He’s also a filmmaker and is working on a script called A Drive to the Airport.

“I want to rehearse with the actors then hide the camera in a car and send them off. “

He jokes that he can’t say how long the film will be until he shoots it. “Well, it depends on how long it takes to drive to the airport and what the real traffic is like that day.”

His latest musical group goes by the name PorkBelly Futures and its most recent CD is called Way Past Midnight.

One final Quarrington car story involves the first car he ever bought, a rusted out Mustang dating from the early ‘70s, and of course, his brother Joel.

“When I wanted to get rid of that car, my brother Joel also had a cat he wanted to get rid of, so we took out an ad somewhere that said ‘get a cat and a car as a bonus’. So then this woman called, she wanted a cat and her boy friend worked in a body shop so that’s how we unloaded both at the same time.” No money changed hands.