Born to be wildly enthusiastic

Full-hearted family man, actor, photographer, teacher, motorcyclist lived life at full throttle

By: Jen Zoratti

Bernard Boland was a true renaissance man.

He was an actor, voice artist, photographer, narrator, French teacher, man of faith, motorcycle enthusiast, meticulous record keeper and pen pal. He was a father, stepfather, grandfather and husband.

In a darkened theatre or the insulated booth of a recording studio, Boland inhabited so many other roles. He starred in many French-language productions at Théâtre Cercle Molière, English productions with Shoestring Players and in fringe plays.

“With Da Capo Studios, I have given voice to a Victorian Santa, Charles Darwin, a Japanese dry-cleaner and innumerable other characters,” he wrote in a bio for an upcoming production.

You may have seen him in commercials. And if you visit the Nonsuch at the Manitoba Museum, that’s him, offering narration for the exhibition.

Boland died on Canada Day. He was 90, though, for him, age was mostly just a biographical detail.

In a season of life when many people decide to slow down, Boland did the opposite. His third act was rich. He kept acting. Through theatre, he met his beloved wife Joan Wilton, whom he married at 77. He kept up with his photography. He stayed active, swam and played water polo.

“He still wore his Speedo right up until the end,” says his daughter, Lisa Boland, with a laugh. “It was always a running joke, because Joan would say, ‘Bernard, why don’t you do a nice pair of shorts?’ He’d be like, ‘Nope — too much drag.’”

Boland went on one of his many trips back to his home country of England just two months before he died. He was riding his motorcycle the day before he collapsed. And when he suffered the cardiac arrest that would ultimately end his life, he was working out at the Reh-Fit Centre as he’d done three days a week, every week.

He embodied that Henry Thoreau quote about living deep and sucking out all the marrow of life. “I wonder what new things I might experience as I go on into my 90s?” he mused in his bio.

For all his adventurousness in other spheres of his life, Boland was also a man of habit. Reh-Fit was every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon. He would eat the same thing for breakfast. He’d have regular lunches with Lisa at Fionn’s and would always order the same thing — the Jameson honey garlic chicken bites and a water — and he always remembered whose turn it was to pay.

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Boland was born in Burnley, Lancashire, England on April 10, 1935, son of Michael and Margaret, younger brother to twins Anthony and Francis. His was a strict Catholic upbringing in a working-class Northern family.

Francis was killed in a car accident when he was in his early 20s. It was a crushing formative experience for Bernard, who would go on to name his son after his brother. Francis had a military funeral and, for the rest of his life, Boland would struggle hearing Taps.

Boland had his own brush with death in the early ’60s. He got into a bad motorcycle wreck in Europe when he blew a tire at speed.

“He still had back problems, throughout his life, from that accident,” Lisa says. “But the man just was like the Energizer Bunny. I mean, he had prostate cancer when he was 59, had a radical prostatectomy, never needed chemo or radiation, and that was it. It never came back, it never spread.

“And then, you know, lived another 31 years.”

Boland was a French teacher in the English school system until 1968, when he emigrated to Winnipeg with his first wife, Lynn, whom he married on Easter Monday 1965; his son Francis, who would have been two; and six-week-old Lisa, whose leaky Pampers put a bit of a damper on the voyage. (Infants would be suspended from cots on airplanes in those days, and baby Lisa was above her dad’s head.)

Boland taught French at St. John’s High School in Winnipeg from 1968 until his retirement in 2000. Several years after their arrival in Winnipeg, Bernard and Lynn split up. He had the kids on Wednesdays and Sundays. (In 1979, Boland remarried: he and his second wife, Anne Maxwell, were together until her death in 2009.)

“He instilled a great love of reading in my brother and myself,” Lisa recalls. “We would go to the Cornish Library on Wednesday evenings, because he was living on Furby, and to what was then the Centennial Library on Sundays and be let loose in the children’s section.”

“He was never angry, or loud, and he was always quite wise — which was impressive as a child,” Francis says. “He was like the go-to person. ‘Talk to your dad.’ That’s one of the things that saddens me, because I’ve now lost that.”

Boland was active in theatre during his time at St John’s High School, and those two worlds often overlapped.

“There were lots of times when I was a little kid that my sister and I would be dragged along to the school play,” Francis says. “We’d be perched up in some bleachers while he was directing and working on the play, and Lisa and I would be given crayons and books to write in.”

In addition to his work on the stage, Boland was tapped to do narration and voice acting work, especially later in his life.

“He had a very mellifluous speaking voice,” Francis says. “His accent was beautiful because it was Northern England tempered by 50 years of Canadianness, but not going into full ‘How you doin’, eh?’ His voice was beautiful.”

He also recorded texts for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.

“He quite often was called upon to put super random things, like German textbooks, on tape, because he was fluent in English, French and German,” Lisa says.

And because he relished all roles, he was also a standardized patient for medical students at Health Sciences Centre. “Probably a year before he died, he got called upon to do the same sort of thing, but at St Boniface University, so en français,” Lisa says.

Boland’s talent was also put to use in his spiritual life. He was a lifelong churchgoer, attending St. Alphonsus when he first came to Canada, then St. Ignatius followed by St. Andrews when he moved to River Heights, where he lived from 1972 until his death.

“The church would get him to do readings almost every week,” Lisa says.

Boland’s passion for photography is as decades-spanning as his passion for acting. He loved nature photography, in particular, and would often turn his photos into greeting cards.

Later in his life, he amassed what he affectionately called the Little Old Ladies Club.

“He loved making greeting cards. Absolutely loved it. And he somehow ended up with this sort of following of little old ladies,” Lisa says. “He would print out a whole bunch of little note cards, and he would write, you know, what he had been up to, and what his family was up to, and what his kids were up to, that kind of thing. He’d have this huge stack of envelopes in the car that were all stamped and ready to go.”

There’s so much about him that his children will miss.

“His voice,” Lisa says. “His hugs, he gave very good hugs. And his advice. He was always a good listener.”

In addition to a golden throat, Boland had incredible grey eyes, Lisa says.

“He had this particular way of looking, and he had a lovely twinkle in his eye,” Francis says. “He made you understand, with a simple look, that he understood and felt for your pain.”

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca