Bill Hartley did one thing that probably no other Montrealer ever did.He got drunk with one of the greatest poets celebrity alcoholics of the 20th century: Dylan Thomas.
Hartley, who died about five years back, was best known as a cameraman for Pulse News.
But back in university he was a promising poet who crossed paths with the legendary Welsh bard after Thomas gave what must have been an amazing reading at McGill University on February 28, 1952.
Dylan Thomas was 38-years-old at the time and had recently penned his famous Do not go gentle into that good night not long before.
His rocky relationship with wife Caitlin was also the stuff of legend, the most tumultuous relationship involving a drunken Welshman this side of Richard Burton-Elizabeth Taylor.
I've made a few cursory attempts to find any sort of write-up concerning Thomas's elocution at McGill but I've never gotten around to looking it up in the McGill Daily.If anybody with a bit of time and access to such publications has a bit of time to spare, please let me know if there was any written reports on the poetry reading.
Thomas was a literary rebel, a pre-rock rock star with adoring fans.
At one previous university reading, Thomas, when asked to explain the meaning of The ballad of the long legged bait, replied, "It's about a giant fuck."
After his reading at McGill Thomas went for a tipple at the Cafe Andre on downtown Victoria St., not far from the Roddick Gates. The joint was then informally known as The Shrine and Thomas, to the shock of nobody, drank in excess.
Hartley, before he died, recounted the evening as best he could to me.
“He was completely, utterly out of his mind. He slurred a lot. He didn’t make much sense sometimes. But I found him a likable man, very articulate.”
Thomas also liked Hartley enough to anoint him his local successor.
But William Hartley ended up ditching poetry for a steady paycheque hauling cam for CTV.
Thomas died on November 9, 1953, about 500 days after his Montreal visit, in New York City, of drink, famously mouthing the last words, "I've had 18 straight whiskies, I think that's the record."
The centenary of Thomas' birth takes place next October.