Conrad Black and Nature Boy

Conrad Black was in the news again at the end of the year, this time for being one of the Big Events of 2007. Lord Black’s conviction on fraud charges in a United States court was the Big Event. It seems as though every Canadian radio and television news personality has offered an opinion on Conrad’s state of affairs and a judgement on his misdeeds. Countless comparisons have been drawn between him and other convicted fraudsters who headed major corporations and were caught misusing company funds. Every scandal from Bre-X to Enron has been dredged up repeatedly, and, if that weren’t enough the proud Lord of Crossharbour has been personally compared to not only gangsters, con men, mountebanks and extravagant ne’er-do-wells, but compared as well to the idle potentates and arrogant aristocrats of Europe and the Middle East, a Canadian born cross between Louis XV and King Farouk with a hint of Czar Nicholas thrown in.
I believe those comparisons miss the mark. Instead, I would compare Lord Black to the late Paul Desnoyers, formerly of Winfield, B.C. I wrote about Paul twenty years ago, the week he passed away, in a column for the Winfield Calander. I am not sure that Lord Black wouldn’t prefer to be compared to King Farouk than to Paul, who in the ‘70s and ‘80s was known locally as Nature Boy. Both Paul and Conrad came from wealthy, Eastern establishment families. Both were intelligent and well educated and valued the fine arts. I don’t know how well Conrad plays the piano, but I interrupted Paul late one afternoon at the keys of the old upright that stood back stage in the auditorium of the high school where I taught. He was playing Chopin dressed in his usual attire: baggy cut off khaki shorts, a tattered wool sweater, wool socks and running shoes overlaid with rubber galoshes tied on with twine. I suppose his clothing is an indication that here were a few differences between himself and Lord Black.
Like Conrad, Paul marched to his own drummer. He didn’t care what anyone thought of him; he chose to follow principles that he believed were correct; he was his own man. I admired him for that. When he died, I wrote that the world was a better place because of men like Paul who provided proof that it is possible to live a life free of the constraints of day to day life that often seem oppressive to all of us. Conrad in his own way demonstrated the same proof. Others may live lives of monotonous drudgery and repetition, but Conrad existed in world of dazzling extravagance and brilliant wit, a rarified atmosphere where the great and mighty wielded fortunes and power in an unending display of ego and will.
Now, found guilty by a jury of his peers in Chicago (unfortunately it wasn’t a jury of his Peers in London), it will be interesting to see how Conrad reacts to his incarceration. I believe it will be with the same elan as the French count at the time of the Revolution who tidied himself fastidiously as he was being carted off to the guillotine by a screaming mob. What difference, another, younger nobleman asked, did he think any of those pathetic efforts of grooming made in the face of certain death? “Ah, my friend,” he replied, “when death is all there is, how one dies makes all the difference.” Conrad will manage to serve his time like the self-made nobleman he is, barely bothering to acknowledge the rabble who trundle him off to his prison cell. He has crafted his life to his own design and will see it through to the end, just like Paul did.
When the RCMP found Paul one November morning he was wrapped up in his sleeping bag beneath his favorite grove of trees. They said he had a smile on his face. I will be curious to see if Lord Black will be able to maintain his smile.

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