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They say J.K. Galbraith died the other day but I don't have to believe it if I don't want to.
I met him one day years ago on "Canada AM", CTV's breakfast TV show, when I was its first host, back in 1972.
He was a human Sequoia, a soaring almost seven footer, stem to gudgeon.
Standing side by side, me a shrimp, he a Goliath: I was Mutt to his Jeff.
A Canadian by birth, an American by adoption (another one of those damn snowbird runaways), he was a gigantic genius of the dismal science.
Actually he was a battle-axe. Long gaunt body like an axe-handle. Thin, pointy, wedge-shaped skull like an axe-head.
His huge schozz protruded like the prow of a China Clipper.
I interviewed him trying to pin his ears back, to prod and pry and challenge:
"How come you talk about wages and prices and supply and demand, and never about profits?"
Quick as a flash, the riposte: "I accept the rebuke!"
How the hell do you handle that!
Shortly after that the interview collapsed, and as we stepped off the podium and into the gloom, he looked down at me from his Empyrean height and said:
"You remind me of Muggeridge!"
Now there's a rare compliment. The best I ever had.
He didn't deserve to die. None of us do. What a waste -- to die.
During my life I have had many rewards: my one-of-a-kind track record as a weather forecaster and a TV performer, the Order of Canada, the Broadcast Hall of Fame, the Chinese Web accolade (the "world's first Weather Entertainer"), but John Kenneth Galbraith's words will always be the summit of my Everest.
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