Witty and Wise

Her writing was gorgeous, and so was she. Her words came, not trippingly, but precisely. Clear, fresh; on the rocks with a twist. She liked to set the scene in a first paragraph, and she could put you exactly where she wanted you to be.

Here she is musing on style and class in the Toronto of 1971:

One day last spring, I was standing in the reception area of a fashionable hairdresser’s in midtown Toronto, waiting to pay my bill ($12 for a stark haircut that made me look exactly like one of the Presbyterian aunts I’d spent most of my life avoiding looking like). Ahead of me in the line was this very slick, chic lady of maybe thirty-eight or so dressed exactly as such a lady should be when she is going to spend the morning at the hairbenders (that’s what chic ladies call all those rickety-cheeky Cockney boys who’ve taken over big-time women’s barbering in the last half-decade) and then on to luncheon with an old friend from...