Raconteur, pilot, biker, race-car owner, mechanic, golfer, artisan, salesman, publisher. Born July 17, 1927, in Collingwood, Ont. Died July 10 in Sault Ste. Marie of kidney failure, aged 82.
Paul Wilson was never at a loss for words. He had a story, often more than one, for every occasion and delighted in the telling. And what a bank of life experiences he was able to draw from.
With his father away at war, his mother shuttled the family between their Stayner, Ont., home and Toronto. In high school, Paul was commanding officer of the cadet corps, excelled at track and field, hockey, rugby and gymnastics, and played clarinet in the band.
When the family moved to Montreal he went to both Sir George Williams and McGill universities. He joined Delta Upsilon, played semi-pro football for Rockland and was a proud member of the militia, from which he retired as a major in 1963.
More importantly, he was playing the piano when his sister brought home her Macdonald College roommate, Carol Richardson. Paul and Carol were married in 1952. The birthplaces of their children - Sue in Montreal, Eric in Winnipeg, Grant in Oakville, Ont., and Diana in England - were a map of the peripatetic life they led. They were all tested by the tragic death of Grant in a boating accident in Sweden in 1983.
Paul worked in a number of sales jobs before landing in Southam's national office in 1962. Soon he was dispatched to open an office in London, leaving behind the parts of two MGs that he had been trying to meld into one.
In Vancouver, where he was ad director at The Province, he donated his latest car project, purchased for its straight-eight engine, to the British Columbia Institute of Technology.
While publisher of The Owen Sound Sun Times, Paul continued judo training to brown belt but found a new passion in flying. He soon had his licence and a Cessna 172, which was later traded up to a 210. Carol, studying to be his navigator, took her pilot's licence as well and as co-pilots they spent many happy hours in the air. After one harrowing flight south from Tuktoyaktuk, NWT, they were forced by weather to land on an emergency grass strip. Paul switched off the engine, pulled his cap over his eyes and told Carol to wake him when the weather cleared.
Southam called Paul to Toronto to be vice-president of marketing, but after five years, he and Carol decided they were small-town people and transferred to Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., where he was publisher of The Sault Star until his retirement in 1992.
Age finally forced the sale of the aircraft and the last motorcycle. Paul had more time for golf and took up rock cutting and polishing and wood carving. With his enlarged heart and kidneys failing, he rejected heroic medical interventions and died quietly in his sleep, very much on his own terms.
By Clark Davey, Paul's colleague and friend.