It was an unlikely combination.
Nancy grew up in a little town in Saskatchewan when life was simple and carefree. She became a lawyer like her Dad. We lived on the same street, and went to the same school, the same church.
Bruno was an actor and a communicator. He did a talk show on radio, a cooking show, and a comedy series on TV. He was well-read, well-spoken, and could keep up with the best of them. And as Nancy was one of "the best of them", we can only imagine how lively their daily conversation would have been.
A passionate, lusty, irreverent Italian and a proper, anglo-saxon intellectual - hardly a love affair one would expect to succeed. But it did.
One of their favorite things in life was food. They knew all the chefs, knew who did the best pasta, the best lamb, the best seafood. They loved their own kitchen too, and hosted many gatherings where food was the defining feature.
They even planned to write a cookbook. They talked about it a lot - even had the publisher lined up. Bruno would pick the recipes, and Nancy would do the organizing. Together they'd decide which of their personal stories to include with each recipe. It would reflect their relationship, and signal the start of the retirement phase of their lives.
And then he died. In her arms, after breakfast one day. They had been together for 24 years.
Nancy eventually wrote the cookbook - an absolute gem of a book. Recipes, great stories of people, lots of pictures. Nancy ponders how Bruno's decisions in the kitchen reflected his whole way of living, and influenced her own take on life as time went by. As the saying goes, he "lived large" and people like that can't help but enlarge the lives of everyone around them.
Bruno Gerussi was probably best known to Canadians as the star of the "Beachcombers" TV show.
After his death, Nancy became a Supreme Court Justice in British Columbia.
Not bad for a girl from small town Saskatchewan.
Bruno would be very proud of her. We all are.
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Wow, this is a great post. I didn't know Bruno Gerussi was from Yorkton. Or was it when you lived in Regina? I loved the Beachcombers. It was definitely a Canadian hit! I also love cookbooks. I find myself reading them like coffee table books! Just working on my novel this afternoon. Have to write the storm scene now. Did Merv like my reference to the Beaufort Wind Scale? I bet he knew about it.
ReplyDeleteChar
We often saw Bruno around Gibsons and because it's very much a working town the locals didn't make any kind of a deal about him. And he, in turn, didn't appear to put on "actor airs", I think he was thought of as just another local. They had a beautiful home on the bluff that overlooked Gibsons harbour and I would think they had a nice life there. They did seem like an unlikely pair, but obviously it worked well. Wayne always wondered if he would recognize Nancy, but we never did see her out and about with him...she was probably working!!
ReplyDeleteI think Wayne would recognize Nancy in a heartbeat. She still looks the same. When the cookbook came out, we had gathered here for the 2002 AGM, and we emailed her a congratulations letter. I have the cookbook here and I hope you can see the pics sometime.
ReplyDeleteThere's 3 pics of Jacquie Vaughn (Sims) too, so I'm sure she and Nancy are still close. Linda golfs with Jacquie a lot in Collingwood!