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Below is the National Post's obituary for Donald Jack, reproduced with permission of J. Kelly Nestruck/National Post
Humorist created bumbling flying ace National Post Wednesday, June 11, 2003 Page: S11
Donald Jack, one of Canada's most beloved humorists, died last week at the age of 78 in England.
Mr. Jack was the author of the popular Bandy Papers, a series of comic novels about the bumbling First World War flying ace Bart Bandy, for which he won three Stephen Leacock awards for humour."Most writers of light comedy tend to be quite serious people with a lugubrious view of the world," said Doug Gibson, Mr. Jack's long-time friend and editor. "Don, in fact, was a hilarious guy. You could tell where he was by following the gales of laughter."
The son of Scottish parents, Donald Jack was born in Manchester, England, in 1924. He served in the RAF at the end of the Second World War, where he gathered information for his books, and immigrated to Canada in 1951. Once in Canada, Mr. Jack enrolled at the Canadian Theatre School in 1953, but he soon abandoned acting and embarked on a career writing film scripts at Crawley Films and the National Film Board. He also wrote for such CBC television dramas as GM Presents and Folio. In 1961, Mr. Jack branched out into playwriting with The Canvas Barricade, which became the first Canadian play to have its premiere on the main stage at the Stratford Festival. He followed it up with Exit Muttering in 1962, a comedy about a businessman and the three women in his life.
In 1963, Mr. Jack wrote his first novel, Three Cheers for Me, the fictional memoirs of Bartholomew Bandy, a First World War pilot from the Ottawa Valley. In the introduction, he writes he had discovered the manuscript in an attic in Etobicoke. Many reviewers believed the memoirs were real. Three Cheers for Me was an international success and won Mr. Jack his first Stephen Leacock medal. The New York Times praised the book, writing, "Donald Jack has as light a touch with this fragile art as his hero has on the throttle of a Sopwith Camel."
Ten years later, Mr. Jack approached Mr. Gibson, now president and publisher of McClelland & Stewart, and asked if he would be interested in publishing a sequel to Three Cheers for Me. McClelland & Stewart published the second Bandy book, That's Me in the Middle, and the rest of the eight-book Bandy Papers series. The most recent Bandy book, Hitler vs. Me, was published in 1996. McClelland & Stewart recently began republishing the entire series.
In 1981, Mr. Jack, whose father was a physician, wrote Rogues, Rebels and Geniuses, his only non-fiction book, a funny and irreverent history of medicine in Canada.
When his wife became ill, Mr. Jack returned to England in 1986. After she died, he stopped writing for several years. He was working on the final book in the Bartholomew Bandy series, to be called Stalin vs. Me, when he died. Mr. Gibson is looking into editing and publishing the unfinished manuscript. Mr. Gibson, who compares Mr. Jack's writing to that of P.J. Wodehouse, says his friend of 30 years brought joy wherever he went. "His own hilarious blunderings, I'm sure, inspired his affectionate portrait of Bartholomew Bandy, one of our greatest comic characters."
Mr. Jack is survived by two daughters and six grandchildren.
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