A Valediction:
Forbidding Mourning
Remembering a kickass editor
Ben Poggemiller, Staff
I remember Evan Johnson. He was a great editor and a gentleman to boot, except when you made him angry.
Did I ever tell you about the time I made Evan angry? I ate his lunch out of the Manitoban fridge. He came in an hour later and checked the fridge. He started swearing a blue streak and throwing staplers around. I said, “Evan, what’s wrong?” He looked at me with ice in his eyes and said, “Nothing that 1200 volts won’t fix.” Then he chased me around University Centre with a leopard-print Taser for over half an hour. He didn’t even know it was me that ate his lunch.
If Neil Diamond were to write a song about Evan, it would be called “Never in Blue Jeans.”
He used to sit in the corner of the Manitoban office for hours and calculate how he could sneak around the place and kill each person without the rest noticing.
A friend told me that Evan took an accounting class for the fun of it. He would walk in late every class and sit down in the front row. Every time the professor would ask if there were any questions, Evan would put up his hand and state a fact about macaws. “Macaws eat clay to detoxify themselves,” he said one day. “Macaws stay as mates until one of them dies,” he said on another, and I’ll be damned if he didn’t come up with a new one every class. The professor usually ignored him, but this is what happened during the 28th class: the prof asked if there are any questions and Evan put up his hand and said, “Macaws can reach flight speeds of up to 35 miles per hour.” The professor had had enough and said, “Why do you keep talking about macaws?” So Evan stood up and looked the professor straight in the eye and said, “Damn fine birds, aren’t they?” and walked out of the classroom and dropped the class the following day. That’s the kind of guy Evan was.
During Manitoban staff meetings he would sit there with his headphones on and not respond to anyone. One time after a meeting I walked over to him and asked him what he was listening to. Without a word he handed me the headphones and I put them on. He had been listening to a recording of himself yelling in gibberish. All that time I think he was just waiting for someone to ask him what he was listening to.
Evan has nine kids, one for every province. He once told me, “I’ll be dead in the ground before I recognize Newfoundland.” Maybe he will now.
He once got a jukebox to work just by hitting it. He never tried it again for fear of losing consistency.
He modelled his life on “The Boxer” by Simon and Garfunkel.
His favourite film of all time was Bicycle Thieves, except he hated the fairy-tale ending.
He had his compassionate side, though. He nursed an injured squirrel back to health. He watched the squirrel plummet to the earth after perchance spying an acorn that may not have been attainable. He fed it milk and crushed iron pills for three months before the squirrel was back to face-clawing health.
In the words of Donne:
“As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No . . .”
Goodbye, sweet prince.
