Like most people my Uncle James was a mass of contradictions.
If you phoned him in the morning you would find yourself speaking to a shy man, a man more used to his own company than making conversation.
If you spoke to him in the afternoon — when he had loosened up a little — he would talk your ear off. Eager to spout opinions, favour you with ditties, and make random pronouncements.
“Men are the devils of the earth and animals its tortured souls,” he would declare. Or “treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.”
A trait perhaps inherited from his father, James Harrison Sr., who, disillusioned by the hardships of the Depression, would come home tipsy and argue aloud with God in the kitchen late at night.
A splash of colour in Uncle James’s childhood of making do and frequent moves and careworn parents offering little affection.
It may have been the greyness of his early years that made Uncle James so sure there was something better. It may have been his father speaking to an unseen power that made Uncle James believe in the scope of life, all its possibilities.
Something beyond toiling at Pearson airport while it was under construction or working at the DEW line, a place that could chill a man, body and soul.
But even the high Arctic couldn’t snuff out the spark in Uncle James. It was Barb who fanned the flame. Barb McKnight, whom Uncle James met in middle age and triumphantly married.
For Barb was what he liked to call “...a bourgeois lady of the highest calibre,” a prize he had long pursued and would pursue again when later he was widowed. His way of resolving the problem of his lack of education, a shortcoming (in his eyes) of which Uncle James was painfully and unnecessarily aware.
Yet, James reasoned, if a woman with a university degree took him as her partner then surely it must mean he was her intellectual equal, he could shine in her reflected glory.
And shine he did. Travelled with Barb to Europe and marvelled at castles and statues and fountains and music and the beautiful footwork of Lipizzan horses.
And although they returned each time to their modest home on an ordinary Orillia street in his mind Uncle James wandered leafy avenues and stately homes and palaces.
When Aunt Barb died life turned grey again, the days uneventful, the hours lonely. But Uncle James was no quitter, no matter his age. There had to be other women of the highest calibre out there somewhere. He would join an online dating service, Plenty of Fish or Misty River, and find someone to marry.
He would battle through the pandemic, chomping at the bit until he was vaccinated, and get himself, at 91, back in the dating scene.
For despite his preoccupation with money and success, and despite his often critical attitude toward his siblings (who perhaps reminded him of his early days and a version of himself he sought to escape), Uncle James never stopped searching for warmth and love, never lost his boyish charm or his capacity to giggle, and more significantly, his innocence.
Never suspected, for instance, that in 40 years of marriage he may have been more happily married than his spouse. Or that the women he later met on dating sites, all of whom tactfully declined any serious involvement, may have grown tired of hearing that the Samoyed is the best breed of dog, or how poverty-stricken Orillia is, how devoid Canada of fine architecture and castles.
May have wearied of being reminded that Uncle James was blessed by divine providence on account of being a choir boy, or of solving the same riddle again and again, or of listening to yet another ditty.
Nor did it occur to Uncle James that there are predatory women who might scan the obituaries looking for recently widowed men, especially those elderly and childless. That a woman of that ilk might phone a lonely man up out of the blue and suggest they meet for coffee, and befriend that vulnerable man with a view to parting him from his money.
We didn’t have the heart to enlighten him. It might have made him feel stupid, or made him lonelier, it might have darkened the last of his days.
A mistake some may say. Yet it turned out that until the end of his days Uncle James still believed in tomorrow, was still convinced that love was just around the corner. At nearly 92 was alight with life and hope.
And although it may not have been the kind of academic achievement he aspired to, and gave him no recognized status in the world, in his own way Uncle James died a remarkable man, a character of the highest calibre.
Kate Grigg is an Orillia artist and former columnist with The Orillia Packet & Times.
