MY BIG BROTHER STUART

        STUART MALEY MCKINLAY: Eulogy

Photo montage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbKgGjof2RY

One of Stuart’s literary heroes was Sir Walter Scott. He could quote him with ease. “Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land.”[1]

Though native to Ontario, born in 1953, Stuart echoed Scott’s words about Scotland, “This is my own, my native land.”

Stuart’s parents had five children: Fearghas, then Stuart, Neil, Catriona, and Mhairi. Fearghas, the eldest, accompanied our parents to Canada as a two-year-old around 1950, where, subsequently, Stuart, then Neil were born. Eight years later the family returned to Scotland on a ship called the RMS Carinthia. Stuart recalled that there was a marble under the floorboards that could be heard through the night rolling from one side to the other as the ship rocked. Catriona then Mhairi were added to the family in Scotland.

Catriona once remarked to Stuart that he and Fearghas were “D.P.s” meaning “Displaced Persons”. Stuart got beaten up in primary school because of his accent. Forced to say “twenty” (he pronounced it à la Canadian), punched and told with derision to say it again. One wonders if his latter years focus on French was an echo of Canada – he talked more than once of having a French-Canadian pal when he was young in Canada.

Stuart grew up in the Vale of Leven, attending Jamestown Primary School and then the Vale of Leven Academy. He’d often lament about failing the qualifying exam (the “quallie) at the Jamestown school. He hadn’t noticed there was another page!

Also, Alex Rannie, the Vale of Leven Academy’s Headmaster, had applied the old adage to him, that, “Good for nothing comes to nothing”, saying that young men like him and his fellow students would never amount to anything; that he should know his place in society.

Stuart’s mum had to argue with Rannie to get him into the “girls” secretarial class to learn typing and shorthand. Catriona says, “I recall that Neil Yeaman remarked that ‘Stuart had the right idea, whilst we were all chibbing lumps out of wood in the Tech department, he on the other hand was spending 2 hours a week in a class full of girls’, duh!”

Stuart went on to become a newspaper man, first with the Lennox Herald in Dumbarton, and then with The Herald in Glasgow, where he was a Features Editor and Chief Sub-Editor.

Meanwhile back in Canada. Stuart was given the honour of helping his big brother Fearghas build a sledge. Stuart said,

 

Fearghas, Stuart & Rusty

            I had to kneel on the frozen tundra and hold in place the recalcitrant components struggling to make their slippery escape from your cheerfully demented designs while you banged them into a likely shape this way and that way and this way again, while my knees became the glacial centre of my tiny universe. Frozen. Inanimate. Pain. And still the thing wasn’t finished. Every bid to depart was halted. Wait. Soon. Hold That. Shut Up. Wait. Finally, an approximate finish. I could go. And off you raced to the undulating slopes of Syfor’s Farm. I couldn’t walk. But, later defrosted, I got a shot on the back of the sleigh! Yippee![2]

 

As we were growing up, Stuart went from putting on puppet shows to running printing presses. He even built the fastest bogey in the Jamestown Big and Wee Terraces. He would come flying down Auchencarroch Brae with his wee brother, Neil, on the back hanging on for dear life!

Over the road from where we lived, was a field full of giant thistles, running alongside the River Leven. It was there that Stuart would become the proverbial warrior poet. He shaped an iron pipe into a sword, a “scimitar”, as he corrected me. He became like something out of the Braveheart movie, beating back the invading English as he chopped down the thistles. He called his sword, sorry, his scimitar, “Thistledown.” See how his poetic mind worked?!

Though he made use of slings and slug guns, he was becoming slightly more civilised upon our flitting to Tullichewan (housing scheme) around 1965, where he built a lifelong friendship with Billy Scobie.

He became interested in a remunerative enterprise of printing business cards and the likes. It was then he began putting his poetic writing skills into practice, publishing a few sheets of a wee weekly newspaper, illustrated by Scobie, with the snazzy name, Agenda.

Later, he married Linda Conn, who gave birth to their only child, Sharon. He returned to Canada around 1978, intending to bring his wee family over once he had secured a job with the Toronto Star or one of the other big dailies. His Toronto Star application failed only because the guy about to hire him lost his job!

He went back to Scotland, after which, the family spent some time in England. Subsequently, Sharon married Ross Pollock, giving birth to Mathew, Stephanie, and Dylan, Stuart and Linda’s three grandchildren. Tragically, Sharon passed away at age 27, and Stuart’s marriage to Linda ended in divorce.

Stuart & Neil

        Stuart was a brilliant oarsman with the Loch Lomond Amateur Rowing Club, an expert in the single sculls. In later life he would beat himself up upon being reminded the way he had treated some of the scullers he competed against, on the likes of the River Clyde at Glasgow Green. When in the lead, he’d often stop, wait for his opponent to catch up, look at him, smile, and then overtake him, completely psyching out and thus demoralising his competition.

“Good for nothing comes to nothing”? Stuart went on to become such a kind, gentle, generous, loving, caring and sensitive man. And, with his charmful wit, with ease, he was able to bring out the best in others.

Working for The Herald, he moved to Byres Road in Glasgow, where he met Anne, who was to be his beloved partner for the rest of his life, yeah, even unto death. Stuart wrote in an email about one of his dreams,

 

Hooray, Anne and me are off to her beloved Borders tomorrow, Tuesday, for lunch at Traquair House and a walk around the Tweed at Peebles. Thinking of flogging one of our flats and buying a wee place there, say around Melrose (just love Trimontium and the Eildons). Never happen, probably, but one can dream of leaving Glasgow if for no better reason than it is full of, well, er, footbally Glaswegians.

 

Stuart was a great guy to have a pint with (or a cup of coffee). Because he knew them well, he was able to intelligently interact with literary works, from giants like Leo Tolstoy to comedy relief artists such as Spike Milligan.

When it came to classical music, what most of us knew only as The Theme for the Lone Ranger, Stuart knew as Gioachino Rossini’s William Tell Overture. What we would call the Tune for the Hamlet Cigar Advert, he knew as Johann Sebastian Bach’s Air on a G String, played on piano by Jacques Loussier. Yet, Stuart never came across as a show-off with his erudition and massive ‘thesaurus-ian’ vocabulary. He could meet you on the same level wherever you were at, whether discussing those verboten subjects such as politics and religion, or cats and dogs, current events, or simple complaints about the weather.

The one huge blackhole in his massive intellect was football! Here is a sample of Stuart’s understanding (or lack thereof) of the world game,

See Amazon

It is a game apparently of two halves, I’ve noticed, the halves and the halve-nots, in which a complex chain of conventions serves to add piquancy to what would otherwise seem the straightforward propulsion of the revered leather sphere into the elusive onion bag (I’ve listened to reports). I hadn’t seen a football until I was six, fresh off the boat from Canada … As a child, I was as a newcomer somewhat fazed by the altering directions of play, having been assigned only to guarding a goalmouth which was defined by a half-brick and a discarded Eldorado wine bottle.[3]

            Neil Yeaman, Catriona’s late husband, would take Stuart to watch Hamish McKinlay, Neil’s son and Stuart’s nephew. Hamish played forward for Clydebank. Even with Neil’s patient coaching, apparently Stuart never got a handle on the game’s basics!

It was with the illness and subsequent death of Sharon back in 2000, that Stuart began considering the deeper things in life, such as checking out the claims of Jesus Christ. He became a believer.

  For those of us who are Christians, Jesus has taken the sting out of Stuart’s death. When the fiery darts of his death enter our minds, they’re immediately extinguished by the living water from Christ. When we were kids a docken leaf cured a nettle sting. More so, the balm of the Gospel soothes and then heals the pain of the death of a loved one.

Yes, we grieve Stuart’s passing but are comforted in the knowledge that now he gets to see the face of the resurrected Jesus. He also will meet his mum and dad in Heaven; his daughter, Sharon, too! He gets to mingle in Glory with all the Christians who have gone before us. Because of Jesus, we will meet each other again. And we look forward to the resurrection of our bodies on the Last Day.

Yes, there’s a shock with the realisation that Stuart has left us. But comfort comes from knowing that he is safe in Jesus’s arms. For “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints” (Psa. 116:15).

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[1] Walter Scott, My Native Land. Faint allusion here to the Canadian National Anthem, “O Canada! Our home and native land…”

[2] Stuart McKinlay, “Time To Go Home: To the Back of Beyond”, The Time Horse: Life, Laughs, Lows, & Literature, by Neil Cullan McKinlay, Stuart McKinlay & Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh, 2022.

[3] Stuart McKinlay, “Football Crazy”, The Time Horse: Life, Laughs, Lows, & Literature, by Neil Cullan McKinlay, Stuart McKinlay & Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh, 2022, 46.