Saving words

Roger and Pat Whittaker enjoy a concert at the United Church in Wellington recently.

Finding hope amid the darkness

It began with a violent crash. Roger Whittaker was cycling along The Donway West in Don Mills on a July day in 1973. He was struck by a car and thrown brutally to the pavement. Six long weeks would go by before he was well enough to leave St. Michael’s Hospital. He had suffered severe trauma to his head. When he awoke, he had no memory of the accident.

But he was soon back to work. Too soon, according to his wife, Patricia. The effects of the accident lingered. He became easily frustrated. He endured deep and dark bouts of depression. He quit his job. His marriage fell apart. It was during these dark days that Roger immersed himself in poetry— writing, reading and collecting. He accumulated a vast collection of Canadian poetry. He wrote a children’s novel.

He turned to words to express his restlessness in this excerpt from Insomnia:

I fling myself against the window,
yell, “let me on your back
we must skirmish with the dawn’
the night stares back

In words, he also found peace, comfort and diversion, such as in his poem The Sky.

The sky is on a blue beach
basking around a fluffy
white cloud it’s unrolled
as a mat to lie on

Roger’s father was an economics professor who suffered debilitating asthma. Roger was born in Edinburgh, but his family soon departed for South Africa—looking for a less humid climate to permit the elder Whittaker to breathe easier. The family eventually moved back to Scotland. But by 1939, world events prompted the Whittakers to migrate to the U.S. The family moved around considerably, with his dad taking teaching jobs in London and the University of New Brunswick before settling in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Roger studied journalism at Colorado State University set in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. He found a job with the Kamloops Sentinel. Then across the country to the Saint John Telegraph-Journal. He moved west, taking a job with the Peterborough Examiner under then-editor Roberstson Davies. In 1956, he headed further west, joining the Winnipeg Free Press.

That is where he met Patricia. A year later they were married. While with the Free Press, Roger began filing stories to the Toronto Star on a freelance basis. In 1959, the Star lured Roger to Toronto, hiring him as copy editor. He would also write feature stories. Pat found a job with the CBC—the Star would not hire married couples in those days. They had two children and settled down to domestic life in Toronto.

This was smashed on that day in 1973.

From this dark time emerged his passion for poetry. He always had a unique way of putting words to paper, recalls Patricia. Much of his poetry then was serious. All-consuming. Some poems found their way into small publications—most were for his own purpose. A form of therapy.

Not all his poetry is as serious. Roger has a penchant for puns—the pun gene, Pat calls it—that runs through conversation and the written word. Neither is there a single thread running through his poetry.

“It mostly comes from his imagination,” says Pat. “Things that pop out of his head—anything from an item in the daily news to something that happened in his life. He has a gift of sounding and thinking about words.”

There was more unbearable tragedy to follow. In time, however, Roger and Pat re-united. They moved to Wellington in 1992—operating a B&B, the Rose and Thistle, for a time in the village. It was here that Roger found the Open Floor sessions, evenings in which writers— both accomplished and aspiring—came to read their work aloud.

Roger will be honoured on this Saturday at 2 p.m. with a celebration of his poetry at the Wellington Library. Members of the community will be reading his topical, poignant and challenging verses.

“This time. it will be Roger on the receiving end,” noted his friend and Open Floor colleague, Roz Bound. “Longtime friends and those encountering Roger’s quirky poetry for the first time will enjoy an entertaining afternoon of conversation and the pleasure of celebrating a man whose integrity, wit and determination shines through in his poems.”