Quotations from Chairman Lamport

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

In his time, Allan Lamport was a member of the Provincial Legislature, a
controller and Mayor of the City of Toronto. He resigned from the latter
position to accept the newly created office of Chairman of the Toronto
Transit Commission—the well-known and much-maligned ttc. In 1972 he
retired from public life, never to be forgotten: “Lampy” left his
mark on the city he had served, and on the language he had mangled.

As Samuel Goldwyn was to Hollywood, so Allan Lamport was to Toronto.
Who but Allan could have uttered such immortal phrases as “I deny the
allegations, and I defy the allegators”; “It’s a long lane that
has no ashcans”; or simply “Oh, go sit on your head”?

This tiny, vest-pocket volume is “A Little Red Book” (although it
is actually purple)—one of a series in which John Robert Colombo, that
indefatigable snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, attempts to assemble
the “essential wisdom of great men and women.” In the case of
Canada’s King of the Malaproprism, he seems to have succeeded. To read
is to chuckle. How many of us could say, with Lampy, “When I sat down,
there was an uproar of applause”?