Ed Mullaly introduced our new Honorary Member at the opening plenary
of the Halifax Conference:
It is rare, at this -- our plenary
indulgence -- that we have the opportunity to listen to someone who was
ten years old at the time of Confederation. A man who watched
his own father fight beside Joseph Smallwood. A man who, while
foreign born, has never needed a passport to travel to Canada. (We
could almost say "the man for whom the Learneds were named" – but that
would be pushing it.)
Born in Newfoundland in
its pre-confederation days, Walter Learning spent his youth in that colony
of unrequited dreams. He journeyed from Quidi Vidi to the University
of New Brunswick in the late '50s, in search of Philosophy.
With his Master's degree in hand, and by now possessing all the confidence
of a Christian holding four aces, he next migrated to Australia in search
of a PhD. Back from Australia, with his PhD all but complete, Walter began
his Professorial career at Memorial. Shortly thereafter, he was lured back
to Fredericton – where he took over the Beaverbrook Playhouse in
1968, launched Theatre New Brunswick (which is still touring the province),
raised serious money to renovate the Beaverbrook Playhouse, founded
TNB's on-going Young Company, and changed the face of professional theatre
in New Brunswick.
During his decade
running TNB, Walter expanded his professional career as an actor, director,
and administrator. He also met, became close friends with, and collaborated
on three play scripts with Alden Nowlan: Frankenstein, The Dollar Woman,
and The Incredible Murder of Cardinal Tosca.
Finding it too easy
to run just one touring company, he moved to Ottawa in 1978, where he headed
the Canada Council's Theatre Section for four years. When the Siren
call of the sea once more became too strong to resist, Walter left Ottawa.
Possessed of a curiously faulty sense of geography, he headed west. He
took over the Vancouver Playhouse for the next four years -- leaving in
1986, he says, to "avoid the fur-lined coffin" of complacency. Yearning
to be surrounded once more by salt water, he accepted the Artistic Directorship
of the Charlottetown Festival – where he remained for five years --
years highlighted in the press by his Romantic attempt to rub the innocence
of Anne of Green Gables against the sinful pelvis of Elvis Presley.
Following a few years of working freelance as an actor, writer, and director,
Walter stopped off at UNB for an honorary degree, and then returned to
Theatre New Brunswick in 1995, to lead it through to the end of the century.
More recently,
Walter has once more taken up the life of a travelling mountebank: directing
and acting from sea to sea and (most winters) on to Australia. Squeezed
in between his theatrical gigs, he finds time for golf. Thus balancing
a life of theatrical seriousness with one of low comedy.
Walter
has had (in Lady Bracknell's restrained phrase) "a life crowded with incident"
– about which we'll hear more at Friday's banquet.
In his career to date, he has worked long and hard as an actor and director
in the theatrical trenches. He has done more than his share of administration.
He has contributed to the body of our dramatic literature. And he continues
to labor daily in the strange and wonderful world of Canadian theatre.