I was sorry to hear last week about the death of Stan Persky in Berlin, where he had been living for several years. (Appreciations here and here) For many years Persky was one of BC’s finest writers: humane, intelligent, witty, tolerant; a voice so unlike those that fill the media these days. The Globe and Mail called him a “Marxist intellectual”, which he may have been, but that suggests someone who was doctrinaire and difficult, and I always found him to be neither.
We met on only one occasion so I cannot claim to have known him but our paths crossed several times in different ways over the years. First of all, in an introductory philosophy course at UBC in 1966. It was taught by the legendary Bob Rowan (well, legendary to me and to many students who were exposed to his informal, probing style of teaching). Stan was also in the course. A bit older than the rest of us, he sat in the front row and conducted what amounted to a semester-long philosophical dialogue with Prof. Rowan which the rest of us were lucky enough to listen in on.
Later, in the 70s and early 80s, while I was living in Ottawa I used to listen to CBC radio while I worked. That was when another legend, Peter Gzowski, hosted his morning show, This Country in the Morning, later Morningside. As I recall, Gzowski convened weekly panels from different regions of the country to discuss what was going on in their neck of the woods. (This was when the CBC still thought it was its job to try to explain Canada to itself.) The BC panel included Stan (I’ve forgotten the other two contributors) and I listened religiously to find out what was happening in my native province. As a homesick wet-coaster living in exile, it was Stan, poking fun at the pompous right-wing politicos who ran the province at the time, who kept me connected to the politics and culture of the place.
After I moved back to BC in 1987 we shared a platform once. He was promoting one of his books and I one of mine. We spoke briefly and I sensed that he was not much interested in the thing that interested me, Canadian history. But I didn’t hold that against him. On other topics, especially when he drew on his long experience as a teacher to write about education, I found his writing to be approachable, lucid and smart. As I say, his voice will be missed.
Stan Persky was 83.