Lost Albertans

When Alberta Report folded last year I wrote a few paragraphs about freelancing there and, in particular, my experiences with then-senior editor Terry Johnson.

Late last week Colby Cosh posted an obit for Terry Johnson:

...Terry died of a heroin overdose March 29 on Vancouver's East Side. He was 44.

All things considered, he did well to make it so far. Terry was so defenceless against the basic demands of life that he never, to anyone's knowledge, owned a winter coat during the time he lived in Edmonton. A fellow housemate made an annual ritual of frogmarching him to the barber to get his Karl Marx beard and his spirit-of-'68 hair hacked at. No piece of furniture in the common area of the house lacked for holes made by his cigarettes. He had the barest acquaintance with bathing and probably none, in his adulthood, of dentistry. He made do, defiantly. Somehow he acquired a whole wardrobe of other people's clothing; one got the distinct impression he didn't get it from Goodwill or Value Village, but that he just somehow gravitated home from the pub wearing a bowling shirt with "Larry" on the breast pocket.

I would've put Terry at around 40 when I met him 13 years ago. Whether it was his lifestyle or his Encino Man shag that made him seem so much older I'm not sure. He wasn't the kind of editor that groomed his freelancers, but he gave me a couple of decent breaks and he was certainly unforgettable.