| I first met Parker while I was working at a book warehouse in Toronto in the 1980s. He was always neatly dressed and groomed, always with a smile, absolutely no pretensions about him. He was one of those quiet men who seem out of place in a world of excessive ambition and uncontrollable egos, who enter, pass through, and leave this world with out a ripple. He was to some, a loser. Parker used to play bit parts in television programs, always the wino, or drug addict, the old man with nothing to show for his life. He was typecast and he hated it, tried to avoid all contact with CBC. I didn't see Parker for years until I saw his obituary. I never knew that he painted, nor that he had affected so many besides myself. I thought of all the bankers from Bay Street, the braggard atheletes, the blustering poets, who die, are mourned for a day, then forgotten. That thought has tempered my own ambitions. I don't say that Parker has made me a better person. But he has made me respect the qualities of the quiet man. |
