A GRAND OLD TALE ABOUT A GRAND OLD POL, AN EARLY EXPERIENCE WITH BEATLEMANIA, AND MORE MORIARTY
Vol. 1, No. 33
In this edition, your reflective correspondent shares a story once told by his grandfather, recalls a time 60 years ago when we were all younger, writes about owls, and shares another excerpt from The Casefile of Jay Moriarty.
This week: a 6-minute read
TORY PLATFORM, GRIT LUBRICATION
From 1934 to 1942, Ontario was governed by the Liberal Party under the leadership of one Mitchell Hepburn. It was the last time the Liberals would run the province until David Peterson came along in 1985, a span of 43 years and 13 consecutive provincial elections won by the Conservatives.
Yet Mitch, the MPP for Elgin County, was a popular guy, and the only Liberal premier in the 20th Century to win consecutive majority governments. He was by all accounts a convivial fellow, a teller of off-colour stories and a gifted orator. Liberals loved him, Conservatives like my grandfather Lyell McConnell, a farmer in the eastern part of Elgin County, respected him, though they’d never vote for him.
Grandpa had a favourite story about Mitch Hepburn which he told with relish whenever he had a new audience, including his grandkids. It went something like this.
It was, if recollection is accurate, during the 1938 election campaign. Ontario was just beginning to shake off the last remnants of the Great Depression after a lot of lean years. Mitch was campaigning at an auction yard near St. Thomas, his hometown, before an audience of farmers and city folk alike, supporters and opponents. He spotted a giant manure spreader nearby and clambered aboard so his audience could both see and hear him.
“Well,” said Mitch, “this is the first time I’ve ever had the opportunity to speak from the Conservative election platform.” The crowd roared. Yet there was one Tory-minded wag who was about to do him one better.
“Then throw ‘er in high gear, Mitch” shouted the local lad, “because she’s never had a bigger load on!”
McCONNELLs, BEATLES, AND D.C.
Speaking of my grandfather Lyell, he had a brother Harry who was born while the family lived for a New York minute in South Dakota. That made Harry an American citizen and he was therefore drafted into the U.S. Army in 1917 to fight the Huns. After he was demobbed, Harry lived in Toronto for awhile, then married an American girl, Laoda White of Bryant, Ohio, and lived the rest of his life in Alexandria, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. He worked for the U.S. government.
We mention this because of our next story.
In December 1963, Marsha Albert, a 15-year-old living in Silver Spring, Maryland, also a suburb of Washington, D.C., was watching Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News when he aired a segment about a musical phenomenon in England known locally as Beatlemania. The segment played some of the Beatles’ music. Marsha was instantly hooked. She wrote a local disc jockey, Carroll James at WWDC in Washington, asking, “Why can't we have music like that here in America?”
James arranged for a friend, who was a flight attendant for BOAC, the British airline, to bring him from England a copy of the Beatles’ latest release, I Want To Hold Your Hand. Then, as he prepared to play it on his show, he invited Marsha in to introduce it on the air. You can hear Marsha’s intro here.
The radio station’s switchboard was quickly flooded with calls wanting more, and Beatlemania in North America was officially launched.
By the next month, Capitol Records had rushed the release of the Beatles’ first U.S. album Meet the Beatles (in Canada, it was called Beatlemania), which was somewhat surprising because they had been dragging their feet on promoting the band up till then. Within two months, the album had sold 3.5 million copies.
It was a timely development for television variety show host Ed Sullivan, who the previous November booked the then-unknown English band for three appearances the following February. Those three Sunday-night shows, aired on CBS and the CBC in Canada on Feb. 9, 16 and 23, garnered the largest TV audience in history, 73 million viewers. It was a record that wasn’t broken till the MASH finale in 1983.
Two months later, in April 1964, our family was in Washington, D.C., visiting with Uncle Harry and our cousin John (Aunt Laoda had died 18 months earlier). It was John who took us to a local record store to check out this new Beatles’ album. Our sister Barb was the one who actually bought the record, but really, all four siblings claimed ownership. It’s still in my record collection to this day, and I’m playing it while writing this.
FALSE GASLIGHTING
“There is no such thing as ‘gaslighting.’ You made that up.”—Our son Mac, speaking to the latest development in the evolution of language
DO GEESE GAGGLE?
Speaking of language, this was brought to our attention by keen-eyed reader Doug McKinnon of Mississauga, Ontario.
Most of us are familiar with the anthropomorphic (look it up) nouns ascribed to the collection of various animal species. You know, a herd of cows, flock of chickens, school of fish, gaggle of geese, pride of lions, murder of crows and so on.
Here is one that may have escaped your attention. It speaks to a collective of the loudest, most dangerous, most obnoxious, most viciously aggressive and least intelligent of all primates. We’re speaking of course of a parliament of baboons.
Well, OK, we inadvertently just gaslighted you, but only after some customary fact-checking revealed a parliament refers to a group of owls—presumably because they’re supposed to be wise. Smirk. Personally, we liked the parliament of baboons better. Feel free to insert your own joke here.
THIS WEEK’S SHAMELESS PLUG
What follows here is from Jay Moriarty vs the Machine God, the sixth book in the series The Casefile of Jay Moriarty. As we mentioned before, the author is Kit Walker, a.k.a. Carson McConnell. The entire collection can be found on PayHip. This particular book, all 51 pages, sells for $1.99.
In this scene from page 10, Sebastian and Jay are visiting Sebastian’s cousin Julia and her daughter Patience in Herefordshire. They travelled from London because Julia asked for their help. That night, after Patience has gone to bed, Julia opens up about the recent death of her boyfriend.
“Haven’t been sleeping much,” Julia muttered into the rim of her wineglass.
Moran’s weight shifted against Jay as he swung his legs around to plant them against the floor. He leaned forward, all the easy contentment of the past few hours slipping away. “What happened, Jules?”
Julia’s eyes stayed on the wineglass as she lowered it to her lap. “It went bad with Brandon,” she said. “He lost his job. Started drinking more. A lot more. Things got … violent. So I called the police on him.” The wineglass rose again as she took a long, deep drink. “Only they let him go. Didn’t tell me they were doing it, just … released him. And he came back here.” She took a shaky breath. “He had a gun.”
“Christ.” Moran’s voice was a hoarse, horrified whisper. “Jules—”
“I did what you always said to do.” Julia, bizarrely, sounded as if she were trying to reassure him. “I’d had the locks changed already, so he couldn’t get in. I hid in the bathroom, down away from the windows. Called 999.” She blinked rapidly, fingers tight around the glass. “Brandon kept screaming at me to open the door, and then he … he shot himself. Right on the doorstep.” She sniffed. “One bit of luck, at least — Patience wasn’t here. She was out with some friends.”
Moran’s expression was blank, his hands clasped tightly in front of him. Jay followed his glance toward the sliding doors, out into the dark of the garden, and immediately caught his train of thought: if Julia’s boyfriend had thought to circle around and shoot the glass out, she might very well be dead.
Julia downed the rest of the wine and set the glass firmly on the table. “I’m going to bed.”
Moran answered with a wordless nod, not taking his eyes off her as she withdrew to her room.
Sebastian’s eyes finally moved from the ceiling to Jay’s face. There was a mute terror in them that Jay recognized — it was the same terror that overtook him when Jay was in danger and Sebastian couldn’t do anything about it. “This shouldn’t have happened,” he said.
“I know.” Jay leaned up to brush his lips against Sebastian’s. “So let’s find out why it did.”
Well, that’s it. Until next week. / T.
© Terry McConnell, 2025
Please note: Artificial intelligence was not used in the preparation or writing of any part of this newsletter.