WONDERFUL ENTREPRENEUR EVEN WHEN FISH FIBBING
I was not yet 3 but I do have faint memories of the King touring Riverdale Park on a warm May day in 1939. Walter Oster was just a few days old but he remembered too. After all, he ended up with the King's name.
Those in Walter's circle know the story but most readers would be baffled when his obit appeared listing his first names as King George Walter. It was just one of the ways Walter was unique.
His mother Pauline and his father Michael had dithered over the name for days. Finally his mother appealed to a nurse she liked about what she should call the baby. And the nurse without thinking long said why didn't she call him after the King who was making headlines throughout the country with his royal tour.
So she did. But Walter never used it all, although he could act like a king in an argument and my, could he ever be stubborn when he thought you were full of .....
I met Walter and his gracious Mary on a trip to China in 1985 organized by that grand Grit, David Smith, and his friend and law partner, Jeff Lyons, who I always liked even as he descended into being one of Ontario's political pariahs.
Mary announced during the trip that I really wasn't the jerk she had thought, which was good enough for Walter who took me for decades on great adventures even when we got skunked.
Walter ran the Sportsmen's Show, of course, and the fishing derby on Lake Ontario, and fine seafood restaurants. It had all started, he said, when as a kid, he had been thrilled to catch a sunfish in Grenadier Pond.
Many years later, Walter and I organized a city fishing derby at the pond. The Sun rented out simple fishing rods - we actually gave them away to the kids - and Walter and I caught some fish in advance, tagged them with the names of Sun personalities, and released them in the famous pond. The tags were worth prizes of a few dollars each but one was for $50.
(Oh yes, the fish with the Downing tag was not caught but was found floating belly up. I always thought that Tiny Bennett, our fishing expert who didn't like me intruding into his area, was responsible.)
One high point of my work years was to come back on opening day of the fishing derby to Pier 4 and walk through the pointing Saturday crowd carrying our catch. And then to the round table on the second floor of the vanished restaurant - done in by the stupid Harbourfront bureaucrats who should have treasured Walter rather than given him a hard time.
We would dine with the guest of the day, who may have been a cardinal or premier, and wish that the day, and the food, would never end.
I can remember being part of a double-header, what we called it when the boat had two salmon on, and while manoeuvring to a deck corner to get anchored to land a 27-pound chinook. I was slammed by Toronto chief Julian Fantino, who was also playing a fish. He said mischievously later that he really hadn't intended to bodycheck me that hard.
Walter had great relations with the police, the Church, politicians and celebrities who flocked to fish with him. It didn't come easily either. He had to work at climbing out of his neighbourhood of Cabbagetown (some still grew cabbages on their tiny lots) through drafting blueprints to construction to owning restaurants, golf courses and even a hotel.
I often wondered during his long volunteer career as board chair of the giant convention centre whether his directors knew about his flamboyant bursts.
For example, he raced cars on a Canadian circuit until he was 44 - which just happened to be his final car number.
He bought a special anniversary Rolls Royce and one day on a jaunt to Montreal, with a friend at the wheel who Walter sponsored in racing, was roaring down 401 at over 160 km/h. They were pulled over by an OPP constable who said he just wanted to look at the legendary car. (Fantino would not have approved even though Walter was a buddy.) Walter pointed proudly to the plaque on the dash where the company said how special this car was, and no ticket was issued.
Walter each year took a group on great fishing in remote spots ranging from Costa Rica to the territories. One January, fourteen of us fished for peacock bass on the Rio Negro, the tributary of the Amazon a long plane ride from civilization.
We lived on a river boat and each day paired up with guides in small boats and spent 10 hours fishing for the bass and cursing the piranha when they chomped our bait. It was jungle furnace hot and you dripped with sweat. Sadistically, I returned to a topic that often bugged Walter because I observed, as a good swimmer and with sons who were lifeguards and SCUBA divers too, that I thought it astounding he couldn't swim.
Here was a man who was one of the faces of fishing in Ontario, if not the country. He had spent much of his lifetime on water, and not just when playing golf. Yet he couldn't swim.
I stopped the kidding when Walter started negotiating with the guide about how much it would cost to get him to throw me into the biggest blackwater river in the world and let me make my way back to the mother ship through waters that featured caimans bigger than the ones that one daredevil on the crew wrestled one night while we held the lights.
Ironically, for a man who had presided over the best seafood restaurants in the city, with a loyal staff who spent their lifetimes working for him, Walter had a thing for fish and chips. Now his food was superb. He made sure his staff bought the finest giant shrimp. He paid extra for his fries which were coated, I think, with egg whites. He could have those shrimps or fries or tender lobsters whenever he wanted, but he and I regularly searched for good fish and chip restaurants in humble corners of his city.
In my case, I suspect it was nostalgia because of the little fish and chip shop just south of Gerrard and Greenwood that had been there for decades. The Downings often went there just along the lane from our big doctor's house in those faded years to bring back the treat, back when royal tours were huge news and King George Walter was born.
Back when fish and chips came wrapped in the big sheets of old newspapers and were priced as a bargain meal for the many who didn't have the money to eat out.
When Walter presided genially at Pier 4, with much of Toronto ambling below in the weekend sun, he let everyone order from the menu but me. The waiter would bring me two succulent pieces of fish in their heart-stopping jackets of deep-fried batter, or even, if Walter decided I hadn't been too much of a pain in the ass and my catch had been smaller than his, three pieces ... and mountains of fries.
And then we would all eat like a king!
