Paul Quarrington

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

Born in Toronto as the middle of three sons in the family of four of Bruce Quarrington, he was raised in the district of Don Mills and studied at the University of Toronto but dropped out after less than two years of study.

He wrote his early novels while working as the bass player for the group Joe Hall and the Continental Drift and as the guitar accompanist for Cathy Stewart, a Canadian singer who was popular at the time.

One of his novels, Whale Music, was called "the greatest rock'n'roll novel ever written" by Penthouse magazine.

His non-fiction books and journalism were also highly regarded – he earned or co-earned more than 20 gold awards for his magazine articles alone.

Quarrington's most consistent musical colleague has been Martin Worthy; their friendship began in high school.

He was also a high school friend of songwriter Dan Hill, with whom he reunited toward the end of his life to collaborate on musical projects.

Quarrington collaborated with many artists (a defining element of his overall body of work) who achieved recognition in their respective disciplines.

These include Nino Ricci, Joseph Kertes, Dave Bidini, Jake MacDonald, John Krizanc, Christina Jennings, Judith Keenan, Michael Burke, Peter Lynch, Ron Mann, Robert Lantos and many others.

Quarrington/Worthy, a duo with musician Martin Worthy, had a #1 hit on RPM's Adult Contemporary charts the week of January 12, 1980 with their song "Baby and the Blues".

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.

Between the publication of his first and second novels, Quarrington also competed in the 1981 Three-Day Novel Contest, writing an unpublished manuscript called The Man Who Liked to Fall in Love.

Quarrington's novels are characterized by their humour (King Leary received the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1988), although they address serious subjects; reviews of his writing have often noted that his books regularly contain elements of both tragedy and comedy.

Perfectly Normal opened the Toronto International Film Festival, at that time called Festival of Festivals, in 1990.

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

Quarrington's film adaptation of Whale Music, cowritten with director Richard J. Lewis, 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.

Their first CD, Way Past Midnight was released in late 2005 by Wildflower Records, and spent six months on the "Americana" charts.

During the promotional push for his 2008 novel The Ravine, Anne Collins, his longtime editor at Random House Canada, told Quill & Quire that "Paul uses a comic approach to deal with incredibly sad and troubling and tragic material."

His protagonists are often faded former celebrities in the worlds of sports, music or film, emotionally crippled antiheroes whose personal demons have led them to withdraw from society.

Typically, in Quarrington's work, an outside agent of some sort – a young woman in Whale Music, ghosts in King Leary, a hurricane in Galveston, an overtime hockey game in Logan in Overtime – challenges the structures of the protagonist's life and sets them on a path to moral, spiritual and personal redemption.

His novel The Ravine was published in March 2008.

At the time of his death, Quarrington had completed a short film adaptation of the work (Pavane, 2008) and was collaborating on a television series adaptation of that novel, which he claimed to be semi-autobiographical.

"It's about a writer who squanders his talents in television, drinks too much, screws around and ruins his marriage," Quarrington has said.

"The reason it's 'semi-autobiographical' is the guy's name is 'Phil.'"

During his time, Quarrington has been an influential figure in Canadian literature, not only as an author, but also through his participation in teaching (Humber College and University of Toronto), publishing circles, organizations and events.

He befriended many Canadian writers, including Timothy Findley.

Quarrington and Findley held a mutual admiration for each other; when asked to provide a review quote for Home Game, Findley blurbed that Quarrington was "an extraordinary writer with a rare gift for pulling unique characters out of funny hats".

As a youngster, Quarrington came from a very musical background, and this showed consistently in his writing.

Although most of Quarrington's biggest successes were as a writer, he reportedly considered himself a musician who also wrote rather than a writer who also made music.

While writing a review blurb for Leonard Cohen's book, The Favourite Game, he admired Cohen's "poetic craftsmanship."

Another time, in typical whimsical Quarrington fashion, he declared, "I seem to like authors named John – John Fowles, John Gardner, John Irving. John Gardner is my favourite – he's sadly not so well known these days."

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.

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.

In their teens, Quarrington and Hill also occasionally performed together as a folk music duo, billed as Quarrington/Hill.

Hill had also auditioned for Quarrington's garage band PQ's People.

Their second CD, Porkbelly Futures, was released by Cordova Bay Records in April 2008.

It contains many of Quarrington's original compositions.