I put this off as long as I could. So did Bill.
It was obvious some of his directives were not getting through and that his relationship with the press was going bad, but he didn’t know why or how and couldn’t believe it was happening, untiL something happened that he could not ignore. He had issued warnings before but this, whatever it was (I don’t remember), was too much, a blatant refusal to carry out an order that affected the Festival, not to be ignored.
Bill had a long meeting with the person and made it clear that his services, or lack thereof, could no longer be ignored and that he must leave. That was a Friday, set deliberately on Bill’s part so as to give the man time to go home for the weekend and talk it over with his wife. When he returned on Monday morning ,he called in at Bill’s office and asked what it meant, did Bill really mean what he said? (Like,what part of leave did he not understand?)
That’s when Bill knew there would be real trouble. His big mistake was not realizing that not every marital relationship was like ours. He had expected that the man would go home and tell his wife and they would have time to discuss what to do. He didn’t do that. Bill wondered how on earth the man could live a whole weekend with his wife without telling her. And then to come back and ask if his boss really meant it, after repeated warnings, that he was no longer required, that he was through, done, finished.
Ooops.
That was when the you-know-what hit the fan. The man went home and told —The Beacon Herald and rallied his defence—no—attack. He was a Home-Town Boy, Stratford born and bred. How could an outsider do this to him, after all he had done for the Festival and the town? Suddenly Bill was an enemy of the people. So were we, his family, by association. Petitions were drawn up and signed by different organizations ordering Bill Wylie to leave town. Members of my church choir, with whom I sang every week, and who were teachers at our kids’ school, looked somewhat shamefaced when I showed up for choir rehearsal that week. Kids in that school shouted at my kids in the hall to go back where they came from. I wonder where they got that idea? The other man, also a Home-Town Boy, the one who had claimed the credit for some of Bill’s promotion ideas, also rallied round his '‘boyhood friend”? The bookstore owner must have sensed more support from the town than from the Wylies and threw in her defence of the H-T Boy.
We toughed it out.
The Festival Board supported Bill. They knew little of what had gone on behind the scenes but they were satisfied with the results: a European tour, increased productions and sales, great publicity and —a budget in the black. Somehow The Beacon Herald figured that out, too, and published an editorial apologizing for its doubts and its errors—before Bill died, I’m happy to say. Others followed—after the obits. People have asked me since, how was it to live in Stratford? Well, I wouldn’t want to die there.
But i have never lost my love for the Festival nor for the wonderful people who create miracles for us every season, never more so than this year when the lights didn’t go up. It was, and still is—will be again—a Magic Time.