'Dear Arthur', 1950

Arthur enjoyed his first instance of celebrity when, in 1950, at the age of eight, he appeared in a syndicated comic strip titled 'Dear Arthur' about two active and inquisitive young men. This sparkling feature was drawn, in part, by his father, Samuel, a commercial artist in Toronto. Arthur was described as a blonde terror, guaranteed to disrupt the peace and calm of any household.

At a very early age, Arthur discovered the principal passion which dominated his life: classical music performance. He also took up his chosen instrument: the flute. Growing up in Toronto's downtown Annex district, he attended Huron Street Public School and then Harbord Collegiate Institute where he played the flute in the school's band and organized chamber music concerts with fellow students. At the time of his graduation in 1961, Arthur was the first flutist with the Royal Conservatory Orchestra. Later in the 1960s, while a graduate student at the University of Toronto, Arthur joined a unique Toronto ethnic music group founded in 1956, the Shevchenko Musical Ensemble. He was very proud of performing on flute at numerous local concerts over several years, and most especially at both the Kiev and Lviv National Opera Houses in Ukraine. Recordings that he preserved on both reel to reel and cassette tape of this Canadian orchestra were some of his favourite musical performances.

At home from Harbord Collegiate, 1959

After receiving his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Toronto, he began studying in 1966 in the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research (BBDMR) on College Street, Toronto, where he got his Ph.D. in physiology and endocrinology in 1973. As a historian with a great interest in Toronto's architectural heritage, he was heart-broken when the BBDMR closed in 2014 and the building was later demolished. After post-doctoral fellowships at the University of California at Irvine and the University of Toronto, he began his widely varied career in 1975 as assistant professor and researcher in advanced endocrinology at Queen's University, Kingston, a position he held until 1982.

Upon arriving in Kingston, one of the very first things he did was to seek out classical music on the local radio stations. The Queen's University radio station, CFRC, seemed to offer the best programming but, still, he was disappointed at their selection of music and broadcasting style and knew he could do better. He contacted the station and was taken on as a volunteer broadcaster where he used his already large collection of vinyl recordings to share his extensive knowledge of classical music, the result of a lifetime hobby as a collector of antique, rare and obscure recordings. Over his lifetime Arthur accumulated more than 7,500 hand-picked vinyl recordings of classical performances, in both 33 1/3 and 45 rpm formats, with a special emphasis on his favourite conductor, Bruno Walter, and his favourite composer, Gustav Mahler. For good measure, he added another 8,000+ classical recordings in other formats: cylinder, 78 rpm disc, reel to reel tape, cassette tape, cd and dvd.

By 1982, while working on a project commemorating CFRC's 60th anniversary, he became the radio station's official historian and in 1984, after a six-month stint at the CBC in Ottawa hosting Shelagh Rogers' popular "Mostly Music" program, he became CFRC's full time Program Director. After leaving his Queen's University teaching position, he was able to devote full attention to classical music programming, while at the same time managing the classical music section of downtown Kingston's most prominent record store.

Where Arthur ruled the classics section

A life long friend from this period in Kingston, Pamela Cornell, writes: "When Arthur worked at House of Sounds on Princess Street, serious music lovers in Kingston relied on him to advise them on must-have recordings. His weekly program on CFRC had a sizeable audience. Student broadcasters depended on him to guide them through the extensive record library and to train them on the technical equipment. He loved communicating his enthusiasms and was delighted when others shared them." CFRC described Arthur's Sunday afternoon presentation, 'Classics by Request', as their most popular programme by far.

Off and on for nine years, Arthur delved into the history of radio at Queen's and in Kingston, pushing back its origins to 1902, which made it one of the earliest radio stations in Canada. He initiated an award-winning series of broadcasts titled "Queen's Radio Oral History Project", a 24-hour audio documentary assembled on 24 ten-inch reels of audio tape, which collected the stories of many people who had been active in the early years of radio. The broadcast became the basis of his 650-page book, published in 1991, titled "In the Shadow of the Shield: The Development of Wireless Telegraphy and Radio Broadcasting in Kingston and at Queen's University 1902-1957." It is widely considered to be one of the best all round histories of early radio in Canada.

At the console of CFRC Queen's Radio, wearing his 'In The Shadow of the Shield' t-shirt, 1991

I first made Arthur's acquaintance in 1983. As secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Antique Phonograph Society, I processed his membership application from Kingston and then began a lengthy correspondence with him. We met for the first time in the late 80s when he came to Toronto for a CAPS meeting. In 1992, my wife, Betty, and I made a pilgrimage to Queen's University, my alma mater, and discovered Arthur holding the fort alone at House of Sounds. He was so tickled at my buying his recently published book that he generously plied me with freebies from the store - record dusters and record cleaning solutions.

Looking ever professorial at a CAPS meeting, 2014

In the late 1990s, Arthur left Kingston and CFRC and returned to the family home in Toronto, 514 Brunswick Avenue, to look after his aging parents. Arthur became more heavily involved in the activities of the Canadian Antique Phonograph Society and revelled in the other great passions of his life: researching and writing. He gave presentations at CAPS' meetings and published numerous articles in its quarterly publication, Antique Phonograph News. In early 2000 he became APN's permanent copy-editor. Betty, Arthur and I formed an effective writing team. Betty became a master at research, able to hunt down obscure references for Arthur's articles, and I provided the technical support with the graphics and photographs and posted the finished articles on the CAPS web site. He was a little timid about driving his Toyota in Toronto, so we would ferry him to meetings and to antique shops and fairs.

Arthur didn't suffer fools lightly. He had a brilliant mind and could converse easily on many topics. He was very firm in his opinions; his standards with music and writing, especially, were extraordinarily high. He could be critical, some might say overly critical at times, when friends and colleagues were not giving their best. But his goals in writing were always clarity, accuracy and completeness. One of his favourite tactics was to track down a living descendant of the subject of his research. This paid off in a big way when he contacted the daughter of Luigi Romanelli, leader of Canada's most popular dance band orchestra on radio, in concert, and on record in the 1920s and 30s, and unearthed previously unknown 78 rpm recordings by the Romanelli Orchestra. As copy editor of CAPS' magazine for more than 20 years, many authors benefitted greatly from his careful and detailed editing of their articles.

Among his many skills and projects, Arthur was also a cemetery operator. On February 6, 1912 a group of immigrants from the Ivansk region of Poland came together in Toronto and formed a small religious group led by his grandfather. They bought a house at 37 D'Arcy Street to serve as a house of prayer and acquired a cemetery, a section of Roselawn Avenue Cemetery in Toronto. At his death, Arthur was the President and Secretary-Treasurer of Congregation B'nai Moshe. He is buried in B'nai Moshe Cemetery beside his mother, father and numerous Zimmerman aunts and uncles.

Rest in peace, Arthur. We will never forget you.