Paul Quarrington

38
Paul Quarrington bigraphy, stories - Canadian writer

Paul Quarrington : biography

July 22, 1953 – January 21, 2010

Paul Lewis Quarrington (July 22, 1953 – January 21, 2010) entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia. was a Canadian novelist, playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, musician and educator.

Stage

Quarrington’s work for the stage includes Dying is Easy, The Invention of Poetry, Three Ways from Sunday and Checkout Time. He was a long-time board member of the Toronto Fringe Festival.

Music

Quarrington collaborated with the band Rheostatics on the Whale Music film soundtrack, including a songwriting credit on the band’s most successful hit single, "Claire".

Quarrington was also the lead singer/guitarist for the blues/roots/country ensemble Porkbelly Futures. Their first CD, Way Past Midnight was released in late 2005 by Wildflower Records (owned by singer Judy Collins) and spent six months on the "Americana" charts. Their second CD, Porkbelly Futures, was released by Cordova Bay Records in April 2008. It contains many of Quarrington’s original compositions. His songwriting was also featured on the last CD put out by Porkbelly Futures, titled The Crooked Road which was recorded and released after his death, and features a photograph of Quarrington on the back cover. Quarrington’s solo CD called The Songs was recorded just prior to his death and was released posthumously in June 2010, also by Cordova Bay Records.

He participated in the collaborative "Canadian Songbook" tour in 2008 with Murray McLauchlan, Stephen Fearing and Catherine MacLellan.

In their teens, Quarrington and Hill also occasionally performed together as a folk music duo, billed as Quarrington/Hill. Paul and Martin Worthy achieved number one hit status with their tune "Baby and the Blues" in 1980.

Cinema and television

Quarrington’s adaptation, with director Richard J. Lewis, of Whale Music was nominated for numerous Genie Awards, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, in 1994. Actor Maury Chaykin won best actor for his portrayal of the drug-addled Desmond Howl.

He won the Genie Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1991 for Perfectly Normal, a comedy that combined ice hockey and grand opera.

Quarrington has also worked in the television industry, acting as writer and/or producer on such shows as Due South, Power Play and Moose TV, the latter winning Best Comedy from the CFTPA Indie Awards 2008.

Awards

King Leary won the Stephen Leacock Award in 1988, and Whale Music won the 1989 Governor General’s Award for Fiction.

Galveston, published in the United States as Storm Chasers, was nominated for the prestigious Giller Prize. He lost to Alice Munro — which, Quarrington stated afterward, "was hard to feel upset about. It’s like losing to Chekhov."

In February 2008, King Leary was put forward by Dave Bidini as one of the five books considered on CBC Radio’s Canada Reads. Bidini ultimately prevailed, and King Leary was named the book that everyone in the nation should read.

His short film Pavane, adapted from his novel The Ravine, garnered a Remi Platinum Award Houston’s WorldFest, was juried in several other US festivals, and was broadcast in Canada on Bravo!FACT Presents and CBC Reflections. He and the creative team for ShowCase earned the CFPTA Indie Award for Comedy for the series Moose TV.

In 2009, the Writers’ Trust of Canada awarded Quarrington its Matt Cohen Prize for a distinguished lifetime contribution to Canadian literature.. cbc.ca, October 19, 2009.

On June 10, 2010, Quarrington was posthumously awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by Nipissing University. His daughter Carson accepted the award on his behalf.

Novels

Quarrington’s novels are characterized by their humour (King Leary received the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1988) although they address serious subjects. His protagonists are largely emotionally crippled antiheroes who have withdrawn from society; typically, in Quarrington’s work, an agent of some sort — a young woman in Whale Music, ghosts in King Leary, a hurricane in Galveston — challenges the protagonist’s carefully ordered life and draws them back into the fold of humanity.