Our friend Chuck wrote newspaper columns, magazine articles and books; he was a disc jockey, news reader and host of a quiz show; he played Scrabble at the international tournament level; and he created crossword puzzles and anagrams. "Saturday Night" was pleased to publish his anagram of "Robertson Davies." It read "Read it over, snobs." David Letterman received his anagram of "Late Show with David Letterman." Chuck rearranged the letters to spell "Love that lewd, twisted hair, man!" In short, Chuck Davis did what Myles Murchison, another excellent and protean wordsmith, called "the heterogeneous other work necessary to stay afloat as a writer in Canada."
Chuck's magnum opus, his version of Balzac's "Human Comedy," was a history of Vancouver, in which he hoped to cram every known and obscure fact about the city and its inhabitants. It was an heroic undertaking, but some of us wish he had taken time off to write what might have been more entertaining: his autobiography.
He ended a magazine column aptly titled Wordbrain with these lines: "A Great Mystery, this placing of words. And when I've figured it out, you'll be the first to know."
We'll be waiting.
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