The following is a re-print of a past column by former Advertiser columnist Stephen Thorning, who passed away on Feb. 23, 2015.
Some text has been updated to reflect changes since the original publication and any images used may not be the same as those that accompanied the original publication.
It is safe to say that few people under 35 have ever heard of H. Gordon Green.
In the prime of his career, in the 1960s and 1970s, he was one of the best known journalists and radio commentators in Canada.
H. Gordon Green was a native of Arthur Township. The oldest of eight children, he was born in 1912, and came of age during the Great Depression. His childhood and adolescent years would inspire his writing during his adult years.
Despite his fame, and his later residence in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, he never lost interest in his old home town. He returned frequently to renew acquaintances and view the changes in Arthur.
As a youngster, Green was something of a dreamer. He could be a good student when he applied himself, and spent more time than other boys his age reading books and papers. When he was 17 he left home to work as a farm hand. He would later boast that his first employment earned him 50 cents a day plus board.
Green was a restless young man, with a growing streak of ambition. Tired of listening to his complaints about the boredom and dull routine of farm work, his grandmother gave him $300 to attend Normal School, as teachers college was then known. He successfully completed the one-year course, and then spent three years as a country school teacher.
He soon grew impatient with the classroom. Concluding that he “wasn’t going to get very far on a salary of $525,” he took up work as a door-to-door salesman, first selling fruit trees, then insurance, and finally encyclopedias.
As the doors slammed in his face, Green thought about more desirable ways to earn a living. He purchased a beat-up typewriter, and began churning out stories and sending them to various magazines and papers. Those efforts earned him a drawer full of rejection slips. As with his salesmanship, his writing was a total failure.
Out of cash, Green spent a few months as a hobo, drifting from place to place, not entirely sure of what he was seeking. Eventually he landed in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and found work at the University of Michigan. He enrolled, studying literature and journalism.
Shortly after he began his university studies, Green sold his first story to the Toronto Star Weekly for $50. In the late 1930s that was a fortune, especially to someone who had been struggling for years. That was the first of many sales during his student years.
His freelance writing paid all his tuition and living expenses. Convinced that he could support himself by quickly cranking out stories, Green went to Montreal, and enrolled in studies with the intention of becoming a medical doctor. His childhood as an impoverished farm boy and the adventures of the 1930s had already left their impression. His prime goal was economic security. He believed that he could earn a living as a doctor no matter what else happened.
His McGill career was short: he dropped out to join the army. After the war he joined the staff of the Montreal Star. Editors there were familiar with his freelance writing. They assigned him to the Family Herald, the Star’s weekly farm magazine that was once a fixture in nearly every rural and small-town household.
Though still in his 30s, Green had honed his style by then. He had worked up a down-home writing style, both earthy and folksy, and firmly rooted in the 1920s and 1930s. He struck his readers as a much older man, with strong opinions laced with nostalgia for a time that had passed, but was still within memory.
Green soon rose to be editor of the Family Herald, a position he retained for almost 20 years, until the paper ceased publication. Though secure financially at his desk and typewriter in the late 1940s, Green was still restless, and fearful that bad times might return. He bought a farm at Ormstown, an hour’s drive south of Montreal. Eventually it grew to a 500-acre spread.
In 1950, he began to import hardy belted Galloway cattle from Scotland. In 1951, Green was a founder of the American Belted Galloway Breeders Association.
His careers as an editor and gentleman farmer were not sufficient to satisfy Green’s desire for long-term security. As well, he was becoming something of a celebrity, a role he enjoyed immensely. In the 1950s, he appeared frequently on various CBC radio programs as a commentator and panelist. He also returned to the classroom. For a time he taught English at the Chateaugay High School, and he was also a part-time faculty member of Dawson College in Montreal for several years.
His radio career eventually evolved into a short syndicated commentary that was heard over dozens of radio stations. Green relished his radio nickname: “Radio’s Old Cynic.” Though in his early 40s, he posed as a pipe-smoking old curmudgeon, extolling the sound values of the good old days.
As a teacher, Green was a figure no student could ever forget. He often appeared in the classroom in farm clothes, and punctuated his lessons with barnyard terms, to the delight of students. He paid no attention whatsoever to the prescribed curriculum. On one occasion he brought a truckload of sheep to the Chateaugay school, and instructed his pupils in the art of sheep shearing. Despite his unconventional methods, he still managed to instill an appreciation of good writing in his students.
Yet another field beckoned to Green in the 1960s: politics. In 1962 he accepted the nomination of the New Democratic Party in the riding of Wellington North. Local New Democrats rejoiced at their high-profile candidate, and many people joined the campaign based on Green’s personality. He pulled the largest vote ever for the New Democrats in North Wellington, but he was still a third-place showing. Voters returned incumbent Marvin Howe with a huge majority.
In the late 1950s Green published the first of a small shelf of books. That first effort was The Silver Dart, about the first plane flown in Canada 50 years earlier. In 1962 he co-wrote a memoir with Frank Selke, Behind the Cheering.
In centennial year 1967, there were two books: A Heritage of Canadian Handicrafts, in cooperation with the Federated Women’s Institutes, and perhaps his best known work, Professor Go Home. In 1968, at the peak of his fame, McClelland and Stewart issued a mass paperback edition of his 1962 book, A Time to Pass Over.
The latter two enjoyed good sales, but did not become staples of Canadian literature. Green was at his best in the short column, not in a book-length piece, where his nostalgic tone struck many readers as forced and tiresome.
Following the demise of the Family Herald, Green wrote a weekly syndicated column that appeared in a large portion of Canada’s weekly papers, including The Wellington Advertiser and The Community News in Drayton. That, with his radio pieces, maintained his reputation with country people across Canada.
In 1982, the Toronto Star approached Green for a column in the paper’s Saturday edition. By then the old Star Weekly, which had published many of Green’s pieces over the years, was shut down. The Star Weekly had appealed to Green’s natural audience. He was leery of writing for a big-city daily, whose urban readers might not care for his style.
In the end, the money was too good, and Green accepted the assignment. He quickly developed a large new following, though some readers criticized his old-fashioned and unsophisticated ideas.
A new regime of editors cut Green’s Star column in 1989. Readers howled in protest, and kept up a barrage of letters and phone calls for weeks. Star editors eventually bowed to the wishes of readers, but Green held out for three months, eventually returning for a higher salary than before.
In 1991 H. Gordon Green was hospitalized with cancer. He died on Nov. 3 of that year, at the age of 79. His last Star column appeared the day before his death.
His final visit to Arthur had been in May 1990, for the centennial reunion of Arthur District High School. Green left a wife, and six kids. Thousands mourned his death. Fellow Arthurite MPP Ted Arnott delivered a tribute in the Ontario legislature.
*This column was originally published in the Wellington Advertiser on Jan. 12, 2007.