Goodbye to Paul Valliere

           

            On Saturday morning I got the surprising and sad news that my friend Paul Valliere had died late Wednesday or early Thursday. I had just spoken to him on the phone on Tuesday because he’d called me about a week before but I'd been too busy writing an essay to get back to him. He said that he’d called me from a poetry slam that hadn’t started yet at the Drake Hotel and wanted to ask me what he should expect. He told me he’d really enjoyed the slam a lot and that there’d been an open stage portion as well, so he got to read something. We usually met once a month at the Plastiscene Reading Series but I’d missed the last two because of essay deadlines. He told me that he’d gone to the October instalment but had found it disappointing because they’d changed the open stage format to one poem, rather than whatever one can read in three minutes. He said to the hostess that he’d brought two short poems and she allowed it, but the way she’d said, “Make it quick!” didn’t make him feel that it was a very welcoming atmosphere. So after he’d heard Michael Fraser read, he didn’t stay. He told me that he hadn’t bothered to go in November. I said that I’d be going in December, so he said he’d probably go then. As he often did when we discussed open stages, he reminisced about the Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy, the reading series that I used to run and host. He said he would like to find something as open, relaxed and welcoming of poets as my event had been. He then asked if it had been twenty years yet since I’d started it. I told him it had been twenty-two. He reminded me then that there was still a chance to prepare a reunion for the twenty-fifth anniversary in 2018. I told him I’d give it some thought. I guess I’ll have to think even harder about it now.

            Paul started coming to the Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy I think around 1997 or 1998, and became a weekly member of the family. His daughter Rosalind started coming as well. Paul came to my poetry slam and even came to the yoga classes I started teaching in the west end.

            After the Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy died I fell out of touch with Paul and a lot of other people for about ten years, but tracked him down on the internet and we reconnected after I told him about the Plastiscene Reading Series. He had had a major loss during the time we hadn’t been seen each other. In the fall of 2009, Paul’s son, Alex, who had been living with him, caught some people that had broken into their house and Alex was murdered when he tried to stop them.

            Paul Valliere maintained his positive outlook on life despite the horrible loss of his son, but this was the way he had always lived his life. He was born Paul Valyear, but later adopted and became Bill Rundle. When he began sharing his poetry and writing, he adopted the pen name, Paul Valliere. Another example of his uncommon positivity can be found in his response after another man made his wife pregnant. Paul adopted and raised Daniel as his own child.

            Paul Valliere often asked me for advice on his writing and I was a harsh critic. He tended to accept the first draft of anything he wrote as the finished product. I advised him that trying to polish his work by rewriting pieces would help him to improve better than just writing one poem after another. I told him that he wrote poetry like Ed Wood made movies but he took that as a compliment. I thought his short stories were far more interesting than his poetry. Though they could have used fine-tuning as well, they were quirky, imaginative and had a natural flow to the dialogue.

            I only had one opportunity to see Paul in action in his secret identity as Bill Rundle, chimney expert. He and his son Daniel were going to be destroying the chimney of a building on Harbord, near Spadina, but it was next to an alley and they needed someone to direct traffic away from falling chunks.

            On my way there, along Harbord, I heard two beeps as a beat up old pick-up truck with a ladder tied to the back passed me. Although I’d never seen Paul/Bill’s truck before, I knew it was him behind the wheel.

            We met at about 8:45 behind the work site. Paul had brought his dog, Kira along. Luckily she was wearing a muzzle because when I went to pat her she tried to bite me. I’d patted her a couple of weeks before at Paul’s apartment, but I guess the context was different, plus I had been sitting down before, and threat perception probably changes according to how tall the animal we are encountering happens to be.

            Paul/Bill’s son arrived in a fairly new four-by-four, which when parked beside Bill/Paul’s old pick-up, illustrated the difference between their two personalities. Paul/Bill was a “let’s play it by ear” type of guy, whereas Daniel is a perfectionist and wants to have a plan for success. Paul/Bill had promised me fifty dollars cash for my help, but ended up giving me eighty. I don’t know what I did for it but it was nice to have it and kind of fun to hang out with Paul Valliere in his secret identity.