About 10 years ago, I got to interview Jackie Burroughs, who died yesterday at 71.
She was performing in a play called Chéri at the Tarragon. I barely remember the play – it was based on the life and work of the French writer Colette – but I do remember that it was sexually frank, adventurous and full of poetry. All adjectives you could use in describing Burroughs in person.
She would have been about 60 then, but she seemed half that age. More than any other grand lady of the Canadian stage and screen, she had an ability to seem both old AND young at the same time.
In person she had a bird-like presence – thin limbs, still lean and muscular from early dance training – but she was hardly fragile. In fact, she seemed totally at ease in her body. That strong jaw and those unmistakable cheekbones bespoke a strength and determination. Her gritty, husky voice suggested late night adventures and decadence. And something about her brown eyes – always looking at me directly, so alive – gave me a glimpse of what it must have been like to know her in her prime.
Of course, I felt like I already knew her via her TV and film work, where most roles exploited her feisty spirit: the stiff Aunt Hetty in seven years of Road To Avonlea the stalwart wife in John And The Missus the self-assured photographer who falls in love with Richard Farnsworth’s charming bank robber in The Grey Fox. I wish I had seen her at Stratford and Shaw her last film was Small Town Murder Songs, recently debuted at TIFF.
The real revelation for most people was her Genie Award-winning turn (one of three she earned in her lifetime) for A Winter Tan, which she also directed and wrote. She played the real-life character of writer Maryse Holder, a chain-smoking, sexually adventurous woman who met her death at the hands of one of her anonymous encounters, with a fierce openness and courage.
During our interview, she totally charmed me, asking me as many questions as I did of her, wanting to make it a conversation, not merely an interview. “Don’t call me Ms. Burroughs,” she demanded. “I’m not that old. Jackie.”
Over the next couple of years, we’d run into each other, between shows at a theatre or film festival, comparing notes about what was good. When I asked once if she was busy, she cackled and said, “You bet – weddings are expensive,” referring to her daughter’s upcoming nuptials.
The last time I saw her perform onstage, it was in a most unlikely place, although considering Burroughs’s spirit, maybe it wasn’t so unlikely after all. She was the special guest in a Pride Week edition of Bitch Salad, a monthly night of comedy aimed at the queer community featuring funny women.
Knowing that most people would know her as the prim and proper Aunt Hetty from the Lucy Maud Montgomery-based series, Burroughs read from the so-called “hidden lesbian diaries” of Montgomery. The writing (by Burroughs, of course) was hilariously over-the-top, and she made every juicy double and triple entendre throb with Sapphic sensuality. It was a great piece of self-reflexive performance art, a first-rate artist sending up her persona and simply having a good time.
Of course she got a standing ovation.
Oh, Ms. Burroughs – Jackie – you, your art and your invincible spirit will be sorely missed.
