Paul Pospisil - The garlic guru

Jeff Green | Sep 20, 2019

Paul Pospisil – the garlic guru

Readers of this paper may have noted that two weeks ago we published a photo from the Verona Garlic festival that included Paul Pospisil, who attended in order to participate in the handing out the Eastern Ontario Garlic awards, one of  the many initiatives that he started up as part of his decades long work as a promoter of home grown garlic. In the article that accompanied the photo, it was noted that many had been surprised to see him since he had been ailing. The article did not get into detail, but Paul was not ailing, he was dying from pancreatic cancer.

A week later, we published his obituary. He died just three days after that photo was taken. The fact that he made it to the Verona Garlic Festival was a testament to his tenacious efforts to promote local agriculture on all levels, from people who grow 100 garlic bulbs a year for personal use, to those who grow 5,000 for sale.

I once attended a garlic summit at Beaver Pond Estates, more as a writer than as a garlic grower, and could tell that Paul took garlic growing pretty seriously, that he was committed to teaching and to trying out different strains to see what can be grown in our local climactic conditions. A lot of his insights were the subject of articles in the Garlic News, which he published with his wife Mary Lou, and in other materials that were produced over the years.

He was pretty exacting about garlic, so much so that a number of people, including some pretty successful garlic growers, were happy to visit him and ask questions online or over the phone, but did not really want him to visit their garlic patch, for fear that it would not live up to his standards

I also knew Paul as a stalwart volunteer with the Maberly Fair Board. He showed up in our office semi-regularly with posters and flyers to go in the paper. He was not a man who was shy or insecure with his opinions. He was quick witted as well, and all of that makes from someone who is entertaining to talk to, about any topic. We did not agree politically on a lot of issues, and he often shook his head at the editorial stances I took in the paper, but rather than being offended by them I think he just found them amusing.

“I’m sorry about this because I like you,” I remember him saying, but you couldn’t be more wrong about that,” I remember him saying. I don’t remember the issue that he was talking about but I remember the tone of the conversation. He was lighthearted but uncompromising.

He wasn’t that lighthearted when an attempt was made by the Ontario government to tax him for his small maple syrup shack under “commercial industrial” instead of agricultural. He fought that pretty hard and eventually they backed down, certainly over small scale syrup operations like his.

Paul Pospisil was one of the people that make this area an interesting place to live. With his wife, Marylou, he made the most of a beautiful piece of land that does not fit neatly into either the category of agricultural or recreational, and worked with his neighbours and with a national network of lovers of the stinky rose, and participated in community life on his own terms.

We know only aspects of people that we meet, and Paul Pospisil had a vast set of family and community connections that I know nothing about, but even with a few dozen interactions, short conversations really, over 20 or so years, you get an impression, a sense of the person.

Like most of us who live here for long enough, whether we were born here or came later, Paul eventually became what I like to call “local colour”.

And there is a bit less colour locally now that he is gone.