Everyman Jack Knox shares tales of extraordinary Islanders in new book

Jack Knox, the self-styled consummate everyman, has spent his career telling the stories of extraordinary Islanders.

Those stories, dripping with rich detail and human emotion, transport readers to a solitary lighthouse off Vancouver Island, to Juno Beach on D-Day, to a sparse jail cell, and to a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.

Some of the people featured in the veteran sa国际传媒 columnist鈥檚 third and latest book, On the Rocks With Jack Knox, lived lives that seemed ripped from a Hollywood movie script: A man who survived an atomic bomb, a woman who fired a machine-gun into the bushes to scare away bandits, an adventure-seeking couple who rowed from Europe to Central America and a man who took cookies from Hitler.

Others are everyday people who didn鈥檛 realize they had a story to tell until someone started to listen.

鈥淭here are people walking by you every day who鈥檝e got these fantastic stories within them and you鈥檝e got no idea,鈥� Knox said.

Take, for example, Rudi Hoenson, a Victoria philanthropist who has given millions to local charities but was less public about what he witnessed while a prisoner of war in Nagasaki in 1945. It took Hoenson two years before he decided to tell Knox what he saw when the atomic bomb detonated over the Japanese city.

鈥淲ith Rudi, he鈥檚 a humble guy and he thought he might sound like he was showing off,鈥� Knox said of the nonagenarian鈥檚 initial reluctance. 鈥淗e did not want to gain any sort of cachet from such horror.鈥�

Whether it鈥檚 a prisoner of war or a prisoner doing hard time for murder, Knox treats these human-interest stories with a reverent attention to detail and a writing style that is innately personal.

For Knox, who has worked for the sa国际传媒 for 30 years, 20聽of which were spent as a columnist, the book is more than an anthology of his best and most heart-warming columns. It鈥檚 a way to circle back and reconnect with the people who shared those remarkable tales, Knox said.

鈥淚 got to follow up on stories that had slipped away over the years.鈥�

A chapter called 鈥淭he Veterans鈥� chronicles the lives of Islanders who served in the Second World War, stories Knox wanted to 鈥減reserve in amber.鈥� Even decades later, their memories are vivid with images of sinking ships, hails of bullets, bodies strewn across the battlefield.

鈥淚t took so long for so many of them to open up and once they did, I didn鈥檛 want those stories to be lost,鈥� Knox said.

Unlike the first two books, Hard Knox: Musings from the Edge of sa国际传媒 and Opportunity Knox: Twenty Years of Award Losing Humour Writing, this book likely won鈥檛 be nominated for a Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour (although it has already risen to second place on the sa国际传媒 Bestseller List). There are funny bits, but not every story has a happy ending and not every person is a sympathetic character.

鈥淭here are inspirational stories within the book, but this is not a book of inspirational stories. There鈥檚 some very sad, troubled people,鈥� Knox said.

He talks candidly to a man imprisoned for a drug-fuelled killing about the revolving door of the criminal-justice system.

He evenly recounts Oak Bay resident Richard Reiter鈥檚 former life as a member of the Hitler Youth and soldier of the Waffen-SS. That Knox and colleague Dave Obee, now sa国际传媒 publisher, sat down to talk to a former Nazi enraged many people when the article was first published in 2005. 鈥淭hey thought we were glorifying the guy. I never saw it that way,鈥� Knox said. 鈥淗e had an interesting story to tell and he didn鈥檛 do it in a way that made himself look good. He just told his story.鈥�

Knox said his job lets him sit face-to-face with people with whom, on the surface, he has nothing in common.

Knox, who describes himself as 鈥渄ead average,鈥� said he likes 鈥渇inding out about people who aren鈥檛 like me.鈥�

Many of the stories come from the far reaches of Vancouver Island, places on the rugged west coast that most city-dwellers or suburbanites will never visit.

鈥淎nywhere on Vancouver Island is an easy day鈥檚 drive but you might as well be on the other side of the Earth in some places,鈥� Knox said.

That includes the story of Terry and Ray Williams, the last Indigenous people to live year-round in Yuquot, a community on the edge of Nootka Island. Their life free from Starbucks and Big聽Macs is grounded by the 4,000-year-old tradition of their ancestors and entangled with the founding history of British Columbia, as the tiny island became a strategic location for the international fur trade.

Some of the dispatches from the wild west coast were a result of an ongoing project called The聽Other Island, which saw Knox and sa国际传媒 photographer Debra Brash cast a light onto people and communities that were quirky, interesting and off the beaten track.

鈥淒isplaying an unpretentious manner, people were at ease and were comfortable engaging in conversation with him,鈥� Brash said. 鈥淚 think people who lived in many of the remote areas wanted a keeper of their stories because their way of life was changing rapidly.鈥�

鈥淲e started poking our nose in the far corners of Vancouver Island and we came up with a lot of stories that surprised us,鈥� Knox said. 鈥淥n the Island, one story leads to another story.鈥�

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