On finding a definition for a character

The other day I overheard someone say, “He’s some character!” It was only later I learned they were speaking about me.

It got me to thinking about characters and how they got to be one. I suppose there are good characters and bad characters. And people don’t usually get to know they are characters until they are old and eccentric and don’t care very much what people think of them, or whether being a character is an asset or a blemish.

Often appearance -- a long beard, baldness or kinky clothes -- and personality traits -- complainers, bullies and egoists -- are enough to get one into the dingbat and fruitcake category.

Almost any woman who is first to step into roles usually reserved for men are undisputed characters. Early Canadian feminists like Manitoba’s Nellie McClung or Agnes Macphail, the only woman to be elected to the Canadian parliament in 1921, and Charlotte Whitton, Ottawa’s colourful mayor, were certainly characters, as were the American Amelia Bloomer, and Hetty Green, one of the richest financiers in the United States in the early 20th century. Yet Alexa McDonough, the talented politician, is not a character, at least from my perspective.

Dictionaries don’t help very much in defining characters as they have a host of words to describe conditions and circumstances, although “a person marked by notable or conspicuous traits” seems to fit. My dictionary of synonyms offers: “awful, bad, mean and nasty” and a corresponding clutter of complimentary definitions of the same word.

Comes down to perception

It really comes down to perception; how one feels about people. I remember hearing my parents referring to various citizens as characters, and in retrospect I can remember dozens of people in the ‘20s and ‘30s whom I thought to be different, and therefore characters.

Almost every old person was a character. Probably because times were changing rapidly and old people generally resisted change and were perceived as characters because they didn’t think the telephone and the motorcar would last.

Acadia University campus was abundant with characters. A few people will remember Doc A (Archibald) and Dr. Hutchins, Dr. Chickie Hill, Dr. Dadson, Dr. I. B. Oakes, then the oldest living graduate of Acadia, and even Dr. Patterson, the president (especially when he drove his car), all of whom made up a group of loveable eccentrics.

The town itself was not wanting for characters to chortle over. Ada Welch and Katie Weston were characters. The former, attired in a clean apron and sneakers, walked into town from Gaspereau every day, and Katie roamed the dykes and woods to gather mushrooms and berries to sell.

Chief-of-police Freeman Crowell was feared by small boys who pilfered apples from low branches over the sidewalk leading to school. Mrs. Herb Johnson, the iceman’s wife, hosted many card parties and could always be found sleeping on the guest’s coats in an upstairs bedroom. Sammy West, the father of the West sisters, including Gladie I, the indomitable Grade 6 teacher for more than 50 years, was so bow-legged you could drive a truck through them, or so it seemed to Robbins Elliott, who tried it with his cart.

Plenty of characters, for sure

Sammie Horne, the tailor, was a character, and so was Angus Elderkin’s father, who hired men one summer to convert the sluice adjacent to the dump on Main Street into a public swimming pool. Rosie Archibald, the English teacher, was not reluctant to chastise anyone who split an infinitive. Bea Rockwell, daughter of Honk Rockwell, proprietor of the Acadia Villa Hotel, played the piano at early meetings of the Rotary Club.

Everyone knew Charley Delahunt. He carted trunks and merchandise from the rail station to the hotels and sample rooms. Avery Rogers was a beloved, non-descript character decades later.

Arthur Young, who provided the town with Saturday night baked beans and brown bread at the corner of Main and Elm, was a character, as was his brother Cec, who ran the Palms, now Joe’s Emporium.

Tommy Hutchinson, the taxi man, Hughie Watson, the confectioner, and Jack Lynch, who sold “pie, apple pie and pie” in a little restaurant on Main Street, and Billy Oliver, the father of the Rev. Dr. William Oliver, probably never thought of themselves as characters, but they were.

We all remember the characters of fiction. Charles Dickens probably produced the greatest number of traditional characters: Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Oliver Twist, Squeers, David Copperfield and Fagan, and don’t forget Madame DeFarge, who knit as she watched the heads fall from the guillotine in the Tale of Two Cities.

Captains Ahab, Queeg and Bligh were characters in their own right. And so was Rip Van Winkle, and perhaps even his dog. I always thought of Huckleberry Finn as a character, but for some reason not Tom Sawyer.

I don’t mind being a character, but if I am, I hope I’m a nice one.