What Timothy Findley Taught Me

Unfortunately, it isn’t often that a major biography of a Canadian writer is published. Such a book takes years to write and costs the author a great deal, not only in work time but also in research trips and other expenses.  And the possible income from writing such a book is hardly likely to cover those expenses, for Canada is just too small a book market.

One hope is that an academic, with a good salary and access to research grants, will take on the task.  And we should be grateful that Sherrill Grace, a University Killam Professor Emerita at the University of British Columbia, has just now published Tiff, a biography of the late Timothy Findley (Wilfred Laurier University Press).  I haven’t seen a copy yet but I’m looking forward to reading it.  For I was just one of many writers whom Findley felt obliged to help at the start of their careers.

I first met Tiff, as his friends called him (although I was too shy to), when he was the University of Toronto Writer-in-Residence.  It was 1979 and, an undergrad in my fourth year, I dumped onto his desk a two-hundred page manuscript of connected short stories about the street I grew up on. I’d written it while taking my third year abroad in London and now here was a chance to have a real writer, whose latest novel The Wars I greatly admired, actually read them.

And he did.  Findley’s secretary at the university made an appointment for me to see him.  Shaking with nerves, I knocked on the door and entered.  There he was, with his sweep of white hair and deep theatrical voice as he urged me to sit down.  I don’t remember exactly what he said, other than to praise the stories and and offer other encouraging words.  Actually, he didn’t just offer words.  He said that he would tell his literary agent about me and that I should send her my manuscript.

I did send the manuscript and I did try to contact the agent—several times, in fact—but the agent never replied.   Still, it meant something to me.  And Findley had another suggestion, too; that I turn my manuscript into a television script for the CBC.  Findley himself had written a number of CBC dramas and he gave me the name of a contact there.  I was a doubtful, not having the slightest idea how to write such a script, but I thought it would be interesting to try.   I sent it to the CBC and this time I did get an answer, a very polite rejection.

Findley kindly kept in touch for a few years after that, mostly by sending Christmas cards.  But his attempts to help me weren’t over.  In 1985, frustrated by my abject lack of success, I self-published a small chapbook containing two short stories.   One of the people I sent it to was Tiff.  I didn’t expect to hear from him, but about a week later he telephoned to say that he was going to mention me during an interview on a CBC television program.

Mention me?  When I’d published almost nothing?  But he did.  The interviewer asked him what young writers the audience should look out for.  Findley mentioned another writer who had published a real book (alas, I don’t remember the name) and then he mentioned me.  “A very, very fine short story writer,” he called me.  I could hardly believe it.

As I mentioned, I was only one of many young writers helped by Timothy Findley.  He was generous in his judgment of our work and in his efforts to help us.  When I finally had my first book published in 1990, the publisher emblazoned the back cover with Findley’s words. 

Few writers have the public profile, the success, or are as beloved as Findley was to his readers.  But now that I am an established writer of sorts, I’ve tried to take the lesson of Timothy Findley to heart.  I fear that I’m not quite so generous, but I do read the work of young writers when I can.  I offer encouragement and suggestions while trying to be realistic.  And every so often I do more.  Not long ago I read a novel by a young writer that I thought was very good.  I wrote to my own literary agent about it and she, I’m glad to say, did respond.  Now the manuscript is in the pile on her desk. I don’t know if anything will happen (as I told the young writer, I have no schlepp), but if it does the young writer really won’t have me to thank.  He’ll have the late, great Timothy Findley.