Sadly, for the second week in a row, I must announce the death of a long-time friend… “Mac” Williamson from Baltic’s Corners. Mac died peacefully at home this past Saturday. While not a resident of the hamlet, Mac had many close ties to Dunvegan. And he helped out with our rural mail route, both as the ergonomic assistant and a replacement carrier, in the decade before our post office was shuttered for good.
Mac and his partner, Brenda Kennedy, moved here from Montreal in 2000 to the farmhouse they had bought in 1994, a property that had been severed from Stanley MacCaskill’s farm south of Dunvegan on County Road 30. Mac was not a native Montrealer. He was from out west — Edmonton, Alberta, to be exact — were he studied performing arts in the late 1960s, before moving east to Montreal at the start of the 1970s. There he put his theatrical training to work by landing a position as a stagehand with Champlain Productions out of the CFCF Television studios. The 1970s in Canada, and many other parts of the globe, were turbulent times. The October Crisis, riots and high youth unemployment all led to the introduction of a unique job-creation program in the spring of 1971 by the Liberal government of the time: Opportunities for Youth (OFY). Colin M. Coates in his 2016 paper, Canadian Countercultures and the Environment, wrote that the program was designed “to occupy the nation’s youth and thereby cool the social climate.” What made OFY grants unique, and also controversial, was that the program funded projects proposed by young people themselves.
One of the submissions that received OFY funding in 1973 was a ten-minute puppet theatre production that Mac Williamson was involved with entitled The Saga of Smokestack Charlie. As you may recall, in the days before global warming… and the ‘Population Bomb’ and ‘Next Ice Age’ scares that preceded it… air pollution was the crise de jour. Smokestack Charlie was the cautionary tale of an factory owner who finally saw the light and ceased his evil, polluting ways. Mac and his fellow puppeteers performed 100s of shows for impressionable schoolchildren, in both English and French, across Montreal, the Laurentians and the Eastern Townships.
As the 70s drew to a close, the grants that sustained Smokestack Charlie and other similar initiatives dried up and Mac became a restaurateur. At its original location across from Montreal’s McCord Museum, “Bojangles” was primarily a vegetarian eatery. I’m not sure why, but after a number of years, the restaurant moved to MacKay Street, below St. Catherine. Well ahead of the fusion curve, the menu at the new location was a Californian/Mexican mix of soup, sandwiches, burritos, desserts and cocktails. I believe Mac exited the food service industry around 1986 and returned to broadcasting, working on game shows and newscasts with CFCF and Skydome baseball and Grand Prix racing events with Dome Productions. For a few years after moving to Baltics, Mac continued as a media production freelancer. But, as the 21st century began to unfold, Mac reinvented himself as a carrier of the Royal Mail… first as a part-timer, and finally with a route of his own.
I’ve heard it suggested that Mac was bitten by the hoarding bug. But I shall remember him fondly as more of an eclectic collector. He took immense pride in a lifetime accumulation of stuff that stretched from red velvet curtains from the long-demolished Capitol Theatre in Montreal to vintage Japanese motorcycles. Kenyon Township has long been the safe haven of unique individualists. And, while not born and raised here, I would definitely include Mac Williamson’s name on this list. His ready smile and genuine love of life brightened the day for all those whose paths he crossed. Terry and I thank you Mac, and extend our sincere condolences to Brenda. As we used to say in the 60s… Peace!
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