POSTING #74

Stories about Assorted Celebrities: Prime Minister St. Laurent; Duncan Hines; The Mystery Man in the Hotel Room.

I have been mulling over the word 'celebrity' lately. It used to mean, of course, a person who was well and favourably known.

Now the poor word is getting pushed, pulled and stretched.

It sometimes seems as though anyone who has had Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame, is automatically a celebrity whether the fame is due to a crime, outlandish behaviour, or whatever.

And now 'celebrity' is being used to cover the state of being well known as in: "He has celebrity.", "He wants celebrity," "He uses celebrity well."

Oh well, English is an elastic language. What can one do?

Here are some stories about people I have come in contact with who were legitimate celebrities.

Prime Minister St. Laurent

The General Election in June of 1949 was Mr. St. Laurent's first campaign as Prime Minister after he had succeeded Mackenzie King. His campaign organizers seemed eager to expose him to as many people as possible so they arranged whistle-stop tours of many centres in Canada, including my home town, Arthur, Ontario.

There was a good-sized crowd at the Arthur Fairground waiting for the Prime Minister to arrive. He was obviously running behind time and we waited.

Then we saw a cavalcade of dark autos led by Dad in his black and white Ontario Provincial Police car. Dad had 'picked up' the Prime Ministerial entourage in a nearby town, escorted them to Arthur, and was going to take them on to the next town.

The Prime Minister, his wife, the local candidate and assorted officials mounted the platform. (I was impressed by Mrs. St. Laurent who was dressed attractively in navy and white and smiled pleasantly at the crowd.)

Mr. St. Laurent's speech was short, avuncular (it was during that campaign that he was nicknamed 'Uncle Louis") and demonstrated that this person with the French name spoke English as though it were his mother tongue (which in fact it was---someone once asked how he had become so perfectly bilingual and he replied that it just occurred, When he spoke to his mother he spoke English and to his father, French.)

The ceremony was soon over and the Prime Minister and his party moved to their cars. I saw Mrs. St. Laurent walk over to Dad and say something. I saw Dad nod, and wondered what she had said.

Then the cars moved off for the next location.

That night Dad told us what had happened. When he had 'picked up' the Prime Minister's party, in I think Fergus, the organizers told him that they were running late and could he please 'step on it'. Which he did, although Dad didn't like driving fast.

Apparently, Mrs. St. Laurent when she spoke to him asked him if they could drive a little slower on the next leg of the trip.

Dad was very happy to obey.

Although a lifelong Conservative supporter (he didn't of course show his political views in public because of his job), Dad was, I think, impressed by the Prime Minister and his wife.

But I am sure he voted for the Conservative leader, George Drew.

Mr. St. Laurent won the election easily, being returned to power with a huge majority.


Duncan Hines

During two of my high school summers in the early 1950s, I worked at the Royal Dairy in Guelph helping make ice cream (my brother Jim who was in charge of the ice cream section had helped me get the job).

During that period the Royal Dairy obtained a license to produce a premium ice cream named after Duncan Hines, and Hines himself came to Guelph to promote the product.

Younger readers may not know much about Duncan Hines, apart from the cake mixes that still bear his name (but no longer his picture---that was removed when he died). With your permission I will digress a bit to fill in some of the history.

Hines, who was born in 1880 in Kentucky, started travelling all over the US in 1900 as a salesman on behalf of a Chicago printing company. In an era before travel guides, he kept very precise notes on which restaurants and hotels treated him well or badly.

He decided to self-publish these notes in the form of travel guides. The guides were a great success.

In 1936, he published "Adventures in Good Eating". the first of what was to become a series of best selling cookbooks.

An entrepreneur, Roy Park, contacted him in 1947 and suggested that they form a company to take advantage of the Duncan Hines reputation by lending the name to foods and food-related products.

The company flourished and both men became millionaires---that was when being a millionaire really meant something.

That brings us to the visit by Duncan Hines to the Royal Dairy. Brother Jim always kept the ice cream room spotlessly clean but we gave everything a special rub on the days before the Hines visit.

Hines, who was in his early 70s, had the look of a man who liked food---not obese but 'comfortable'---and people. He shook hands with Jim and nodded in a friendly way to the rest of us. And after a short look at the ice cream machines was on his way.

The Duncan Hines ice cream and sherbet flavours were more expensive than normal products of the time but were rich, creamy and quite delicious. Jim remembers that the recipes that came from the Hines organization were excellent and easy to work with.

I remember that brief encounter with a celebrity but I also remember an article that appeared in the Guelph Mercury, the city's daily newspaper, following the visit. In an interview with one of the paper's reporters, Hines talked about food.

When asked what he liked to have for breakfast, he said corn flakes---nothing strange there.

With ice cream!

I don't know whether this was a way of plugging the Royal Dairy's new Duncan Hines ice cream or whether he was serious. Sometimes when I have nothing better to do I try to figure out how one would eat corn flakes and ice cream.

Do you let the ice cream melt until it is like a thick, sweet cream, or do you take a spoonful of ice cream covered with crispy corn flakes and munch it down?

I know.

I don't have enough to do.

I should get a life.

At another point in the interview he talked about European cuisine. He was not complimentary. He said that when in Europe he always asked that the meat be well done, because, as he added, you never know what animal it is from.

As I remember the 1950s, 'well done' was the secret to 'good home cooking', whether it was roast beef, steak, carrots or asparagus.

It may be that Hines was just reflecting the prevailing North American view, rather than any real concern about what animal the meat came from.

I remember hearing people say in the 1950s, when they saw a rare roast of beef, "It needs a Band-Aid".

Anyway, Duncan Hines died in 1959, a very wealthy man.

The Mystery Man in the Hotel Room

In the 1980s I was working for Employment and Insurance Canada and involved in an effort to introduce more sophisticated performance measurement in our organization.

One of my staff and I flew to Winnipeg to speak at a conference of officers from the Manitoba region about mission statements, objectives, goals and all that good stuff.

Arriving late in the evening after a full day of work in Ottawa, we were 'dismayed' (that's a polite way of putting it) to learn that the hotel was full and had no record of our reservations. We checked with the Government's travel service and they said that the hotel had confirmed the reservations.

"That doesn't matter", the clerk said, "we just don't have any rooms. I'll try to find you rooms in another hotel."

It has always been my experience that no hotel is ever fully booked---there are always a few rooms that the manager keeps available for unexpected celebrities or whomever.

Working on that assumption and to make a long story short, we created quite a fuss (e.g. "We will recommend that the Canadian Government never book here again", "We will sleep in the lobby if necessary" and so on.)

Finally, the clerk found two rooms, on the same floor.

My colleague opened his door and found a larger-than-normal room. He was delighted.

I carried on down the corridor to my room, stuck the key in the door, and as I did so thought I heard a TV playing.

Curious.

I pushed open the door and there was a dark-haired man sitting at the dressing table, naked to the waist, looking at me.

I apologized and quickly shut the door.

Back in the lobby, I slapped the key on the desk and told the clerk there was someone in the room.

"No, it is not possible", he started to say as he rifled through some papers, then he finished, "Oh my god, I gave you Jean Beliveau's room. (I later learned that Beliveau was in Winnipeg for a sports dinner. For non-sports fans, I would just say that Beliveau spent 18 full seasons with the Montreal Canadiens---that's a hockey team--- and had an amazing record of 507 goals and 712 assists in regular season games.)

Vanquished, the clerk gave me a luxurious VIP room.

The next morning I started my speech to the performance measurement conference by telling about bursting in on Jean Beliveau.

A wit from the back of the room shouted out, "Well that's appropriate. This whole thing's about goals, right?"

That got us off to a good start.

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See you on June 27th for Posting #75 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.