Stuart McLean delivered a Christmas turkey to my home: B.C. music teacher
'He kind of alluded that someone else cooked the turkey and he just delivered it'
With the passing of the CBC's Stuart McLean, a music teacher from Vancouver Island is fondly recalling the time the Canadian storyteller delivered a turkey to her home.
Not normally someone who enters contests, when Maureen Garry heard about the Vinyl Café Christmas competition in 2008, she though it might be just up her alley.
After all, she had a musical background and the contest involved rewriting the lyrics to a Christmas carol.
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As a devoted fan of the Vinyl Café, the prize was also quite enticing — having Stuart McLean deliver a cooked Christmas turkey to her home in Greater Victoria.
Garry admits that she actually came in second place when she rewrote the lyrics of "Let it Snow."
"I pulled in some of the stories from the Vinyl Cafe Christmas, so the ferrets ... and gravy on the light bulbs ... and Dave, [the fictitious owner of the Vinyl Café], cooking the turkey," Garry said.
"I was in second place, but the person who won wasn't able to accept, so I won the delivery of the turkey from Stuart McLean." said Garry.
McLean and his long-time show producer, Jess Milton, showed up at Garry's house with a fully dressed turkey in December. The pair were in Victoria for a Vinyl Cafe Christmas show.
Garry describes McLean as "very personable", and says the host of the much loved radio show stuck around to share stories and more.
"We have a tradition of hiding a Christmas pickle and somebody has to find it on the tree. So he hid the pickle for us that year, and we gave him some Rogers Chocolate from Victoria and it was very nice."
He was a genuinely nice human being
In a reference to the kitchen misadventures of the Vinyl Cafe character Dave, apparently McLean confessed to Garry that he had nothing to do with preparing the prize.
"He kind of alluded that someone else cooked the turkey, and he just delivered it," Garry said.
Reacting to the news of his death at the age of 68, Garry says she was very, very sad.
"I just met him, so I didn't know him, but he seemed like a genuinely fantastic person, who really had the concerns of other people in mind when he did his work and when he talked to people.
"He seemed to love Canada and Canadians. I just thought he was a genuinely nice human being."
