Thursday, December 20, 2001
The facetious Foth - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- The book jacket says that Allan Fotheringham, though living in Toronto, “longs for British Columbia.” He once wrote this town’s most-talked about column, doing-so rather controversially until he fled the Vancouver Sun in 1980. He went on to cover Ottawa, cozying up to the Mulroney’s when he scribbled for the Southam chain, the Financial Post and Sun Media. Having gotten a little too snug with Mila Mulroney, he went to Washington where Dr. Foth covered Uncle Sam’s Reagan and Bush administrations. For the last 26 years he’s been occupying the back page of Maclean’s, where his writing and Roy Peterson’s cartoons are the first page read each week, even if readers have to go to the back first.
Recently he resurfaced as a regular columnist at the Toronto Globe and Mail, where he belongs. A member of the Central Canadian ‘Establishment’ is he. The tyke from Hearne, Saskatchewan is a legend now at 67, though he does maintain a healthy diet of column-writing, travelling, sherry and controversy. Even if he longs for beautiful, British Columbia, we’d be a little sceptical in taking him back.
His latest effort is a book entitled Fotheringham’s Fictionary of Facts and Follies. Chock-full of anecdotes, stories and Foth at his wickedly witty self, the book is set up like an encyclopedia or compendium of sorts. Alphabetically you can read anecdotes, opinions on and humour on some of the personalities that have graced our consciousness over the last thirty odd years. From Mulroney to Trudeau, Bill Bennett to Gordon Gibson, Jack Webster to Conrad Black, Fotheringham has something witty to say about at least one of them.
This dictionary of sorts (ah, I just got why it’s called a fictionary!) is a great cull of some of the finest Fothisms to have graced some of our more “important newspapers and magazines of our day” (Another book jacket quote). For the uninitiated Fictionary is a fun, fascinating look at Fotheringham and the mind that was assigned to him in that hamlet called Hearne. Turn to the ‘H’ section and on page 140 under the heading ‘Hearne, SK’ you’ll read: “People from Hearne are called Hernias. In fact, the town is so small we couldn’t afford a village idiot -- everyone had to take turns.” Having consumed Foth’s columns for a few years now, and having bought his last book Last Page First (which was a collection of his Maclean’s columns), I can’t help but note that I’ve heard that one before, a few times in fact.
Columnists, as he writes are of the highest calling. Perhaps he is trying to be funny, but he’s probably one of the reasons I’m plying his trade in these e-mails. Column writing is a neat thing, because you needn’t be consistently original or good. Fotheringham is an example of that. This book is an example of that. Regular Fotheringham readers will recall some of the stuff in Fictionary, so in actuality this book is for people wanting to find out what the fuss is about.
On John Crosbie, the colourful Newfoundlander: “For a chap who was the most intelligent man in the Mulroney cabinet, John Crosbie said some awfully silly things. His problem: the over-serious lad learned to love the roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd.”
The Canadian Dollar? Foth sez: “Known on Wall Street as the Hudson Bay peso.”
The National Post’s Robert Fulford? He’s only the “reigning intellectual in Canadian journalism.”
Joe Clark is branded ‘Jurassic Clark’, whilst Pierre Elliott Trudeau is ‘Pierre Elliott Himself’.
It’s a good book for those in dire need of political humour, but some of the anecdotes and stories recounted are from old columns, thus are printed often out of context. Like when he writes that “Johnny Carson, the noted one-liner, is an expert on tennis and alimony. He plays hard at both.” I have the feeling this is from a Fotheringham column circa 1970s. It’s gotta be. (Fotheringham’s blurb in the book on Jack Webster, is word for word the column he wrote in Maclean’s when Webster died in 1999.)
But whatever the case, I admire a lot of scribblers and Allan Fotheringham is on that list -- somewhere high for sure. Fotheringham’s Fictionary of Facts and Follies is entertaining. Published by Key Porter, it sells for $34.95.
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An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .