William Burrill has been a popular character on the Toronto scene for more than twenty years. However, unlike many before him, Burrill has avoided the pratfalls of becoming a local eccentric. Instead he has kept himself busy with a dizzying mix of projects.
Most renowned as one of eye magazine’s creators, he is also a former mayoral candidate, the creator of Burrill-Palooza (a fund-raising concert featuring local Toronto musicians of various musical styles), and the world famous biographer of Ernest Hemingway’s Toronto years.
eye magazine, now ten years old and unfortunately just as stiff and serious as its major competitor Now, was a great experiment in Toronto journalism.
It aimed to be a haven for an alternative voice in a time when the term “alternative” didn’t bring to mind images of thirty-something men striking cock rock poses while whining about their angst.
Burrill hired many of the writers with the deliberate goal of avoiding anyone from the Star in his search for new and interesting voices. His advice to his novice charges to write in any style they wanted has remained an important element in his own work.
“I was doing stuff there that I couldn’t get away with in the Star. Although they did bring me back when the Post started—they’ve been fairly good at letting me have a fairly off-the-wall voice. I can’t say ‘fuck you,’ (but) on the other hand you don’t really have to say fuck you in a column.”
During his years at eye, Burrill wrote many memorable columns. One on a fart artist or Petomane from the time of the Moulin Rouge comes to mind. Still, the most famous pieces are likely those he wrote during his run for mayor. Starting out as a joke candidate, Burrill played up his relation to Pierre Trudeau to the hilt, posing for pictures paddling a canoe in a fringed jacket. However, his hatred of Mel Lastman became more and more justified as he watched Lastman stumble his way through the campaign. Eventually, the gag just didn’t seem as funny anymore. He found himself running his campaign in earnest, attending all the debates as well as creating plans to improve Toronto; whatever he could to take down Lastman. Amazingly for an inexperienced politician, Burrill managed to finish fourth in a race of twenty.
“When you start out as a joke candidate in an election against mayor Lastman, quite early on you realize the ironic twist is the joke candidate is Lastman. The guy’s stunned.”
However, while Burrill was inexperienced compared to his competitors in the mega-election, he was not a complete neophyte. Several years before he had proved his political prowess promoting the “beer ballot,” whose main goal was to extend bar hours.
This goal gave the party a popular following that most politicians only dream about.
“We went down at closing hour, which was then one o’clock. We went just after the bars were kicking everybody out and I was on a megaphone going, ‘If I were your mayor you’d still be drinking! It’s one a.m.: do you know where your beer is?’ All these people just converged and took over the whole street—’Yeah, he’s right, where’s our beer?'”
Always remembering his time as a young writer, Burrill is quick to help out the many amateur writers who contact him every year for advice (or in this case, interviews).
He sits down with them, dispensing advice and encouragement without sounding condescending. His most important tip is to simply accept the way you write, not to try to second-guess yourself and attempt to write in a “normal” fashion. His own attempts at “discipline” nearly destroyed his whole process.
The other invaluable suggestion is to work on developing an ear in much the same way you would to learn a new language.
“Sometimes some total idiot at a bar will say something and it just strikes you the right way. Not that you necessarily agree with him, but that is something I can use. You can never stop learning you have to keep learning and filling your brain.”
