The late Greg Clark was a Canadian humourist and storyteller, besides being a very dedicated fly fisherman. Greg spent many pleasurable hours with a fly rod. He once wrote: “I know nothing as instantly pleasurable as the bulge and boil of a trout rising to a fly, with the immediate consequence of the curiously senuous tug on the rod tip.” As well, Greg originated the deer-hair nymph and even named the Mickey Finn streamer, created by John Alden Knight (who originated the solunar tables used by fishermen all over North America). Greg described his wish to be buried in a favourite fishing hole in a story “Everybody Happy” (co-authored by Charles Vining):
" I want to be dressed in my fishing clothes, waders, and jacket. Then I want them to lay me out with a rod in my hand and all my other rods and flies and reels spread around me. Then I want them to cremate me and all my things and put the ashes in the centre of a great big concrete boulder. The boulder will be dumped in the Hawthorn pool on The Mad River (Greg’s favourite spot to fly fish). My fishing friends will come along and see the boulder and say, ‘There’s Greg out there – let’s try a cast there.’ "
Greg Clark was too famous and his life was too full to do him justice in this small space. Suffice it to say he was a man who had his priorities straight. He loved people, good talk, good fishing, good whiskey, and good tobacco. He won the Military Cross in World War I at Vimy Ridge yet never let the horror he experienced dull his appreciation of life. He knew everybody who was anybody in Canada and the English speaking world. He was a legend in his own time and one of the most widely read and best loved men in Canada.
Hemingway worked with him at the [Toronto] Star and said of Clark, ‘If he has a weakness it is having too much sense. He writes the best of anyone on the paper.’
He was born in Toronto in 1892, the son of Joe Clark, editor of the Toronto Star. He began his writing career as editor of Varsity, and in 1911 started as reporter on the Star. In 1916 he joined the infantry, rose to the rank of Major, and was awarded the M.C. Resuming his newspaper career he became a staff writer on the Star Weekly and joined cartoonist James Frise in producing a feature that ran for nineteen years.
During the Second World War he was war correspondent with the First Canadian Division in Sicily, Italy and Normandy. He was awarded the O.B.E. With Frise he moved to the Montreal Standard in 1946, and afterwards became associate editor of Weekend Magazine. He died in 1977.
Couple more Greg Clark quotes:
“A sportsman is one who not only will not show his own father where the best fishing holes are but will deliberately direct him to the wrong ones.” —from a speech by Greg Clark to the Empire Club of Canada in 1950
“Fishing is the least objectionable way of doing nothing. It is the only sport in which you can build a reputation founded entirely on your own say so." - Greg Clark