For his very first summer job, Canadian icon Graham Greene mowed a Hamilton cemetery’s lawn at the tender age of 10.Illustration by The Globe and Mail. Source image: Getty, Supplied
Before he found acting in his mid-30s, iconic Indigenous actor Graham Greene worked endless jobs across many industries. But did he enjoy any? Or at least learn something? Surely not at this summer gig, his very first (and very unofficial) landscaping job: mowing the lawn at a Hamilton-area cemetery at the tender age of 10. As we learn in this sarcastic, sardonic chat for the latest instalment of The Globe’s “How I Spent My Summer” series, the 72-year-old Order of Canada member reminds us that sometimes a job’s best lesson is that that job sucks.
I grew up independently wealthy with a chauffeur, so I didn’t ever have to work. I’m kidding! I was as poor as can be. If I needed shoes or a new winter coat, I was expected to earn my own money and buy it myself. Maybe kids today don’t do that, but it was no big deal to me. Kids don’t even tie their own shoelaces any more.
I was about 10 or 11 years old, I suppose, when I got my first job: mowing lawns at the church cemetery. I was out there, walking around looking for work, and just knocked on the church door – a Presbyterian church, I think, and one that I didn’t even belong to. I said to the reverend, “Your cemetery needs a lawn boy. You interested?”
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Probably because I was the first kid who asked, he said, “You’re hired,” and showed me where the lawnmower was kept. It was an old piece of junk, a push lawnmower, but at least a gas-powered one. I don’t think anyone would give a kid these days a gas-powered lawn mower, but this was the sixties. Things are too complicated now. But yes, if a 10-year-old knocked on my door today with the same questions, I’d say, “Here’s the mower and here’s your gas. Get busy.”
The reverend paid me five bucks for three hours of work, which back then was pretty good. Every other week he gave me a bank draft – no, he didn’t, of course, he gave me cash. Nothing about the job was official. But I must have done it good enough because he had me back every Saturday for a couple of summers.
The cemetery was about two acres, I think, so every Saturday I’d spend a few hours circling around the grave stones. It’s just like going around a tree or anything else. I knew most of the names on the stones; these were all local families so I might know their kids or grandkids. I didn’t stop to talk to anyone, though. I wasn’t even thinking about anything. I was just mowing the lawn.
If I got too warm, I’d stop and sit in the shade and have a drink of water then go back to work. If it rained, I’d take the day off and stay home. The reverend looked out the window sometimes to see if I was slacking off, but really, I could do whatever I wanted. I was the head guy with 500 people under me.
Did I learn anything? Like how to walk a straight line? No, I didn’t learn a lesson. Oh, the joy of it! Wonderful! I was skipping along behind the lawn mower singing trah-la-la-la-la! No, it was just a job. I didn’t like it or dislike it, but maybe I liked having something to do. I wasn’t in school and I didn’t play baseball or anything – actually I hated sports, so as for how to use my Saturday, it was fine. The worst part was starting and the best part was finishing.
I’ve never liked work, to be honest. Over the years I worked in tobacco fields, cherry orchards and raspberry fields. I was a carpenter, a welder, a carpet layer. I did all that stuff and lots more; none of them were any good for me. I don’t like to work and I like to sleep in, that’s why I became an actor. You wait in the shade until it’s time to go stand on your mark and say a few words. Then, they take you back to the shade and give you water and food. It’s the life of a dog and it’s great. Maybe I want to be a dog.
As told to Rosemary Counter