David Bridges
I am personally a fan of graveyards. A place of peace for both the living and the dead. One thing I’ve always found curious is grave markers. From the most plain to the most intricate. The shape usually doesn’t matter that much, but instead, one blank space or dash between dates means and represents an entire lifetime.
That being said, a few years ago, I saw online a photo of a Pictou graveyard with a statue of a clown as a grave marker. I thought, “how bizarre.” What was their dash? What was their blank space? Who did it belong to? It turns out the grave belongs to the underrated Nova Scotian icon George ‘Twitter’ Johnston.
The clown that marked his grave has unfortunately disintegrated and disappeared, but the story of Nova Scotia’s acrobatic travelling pantomime who found himself under the marker in 1962 remains.
“There isn’t anybody that would know him by George Johnston,” explained Beth Henderson of the Pictou Historical Photograph Society. “If you were to ask anybody in Pictou about George Johnston, they would just look at you.” She said if you were to say ‘Twitter’, you would get a much more excited and informed response about the local legend.
Twitter was a man of small stature, at five feet two inches (some records add on two more inches, likely due to personality) with a slim build. He was noted to be handsome with an equally beautiful wife Hazel. They lived on Front Street in Pictou and made a life by having the most interesting one possible.
When Twitter was young, he started training in acrobatics. He didn’t have access to such professional gyms as expected but instead started at the local tannery. Henderson filled me in on some details of Twitter’s life.
“Back in the day when he was young they had a tannery in Pictou and they used to burn a lot of bark to tan the hides for leather. He would go down to this area and he would practice his acrobatics on the bark.”
After the bark days, around 1906, Twitter started performing pantomime, mostly touring the United States. He cemented his start in a bump act with an acrobat, where he would do falls and tumbles to entertain the crowd. He would grow from there and work in San Francisco with a barrel act doing jumps and somersaults out of large barrels. He joined the circus for a short time, including shows with Barnum and Bailey and the Ringling Brothers.
He didn’t always tour alone. His wife and children would join him on his travels to performances in the United States, especially in Florida. It wasn’t how everyone in Pictou was making their money or what most Nova Scotian families did together, but it’s what the Johnstons did.
As Vaudeville acts fell away with the emergence of radio, Twitter toured in carnivals, especially around the Maritimes. This included the Bill Lynch Show, owned by a fellow Nova Scotian, that still runs today. Twitter’s career of acrobatics, stage shows and clowning spanned 50 years.
An impressive man from Nova Scotia, but not just defined by his career.
Twitter entertained friends, family, and anyone that came across him and did so with kindness. He cared about his lifelong community of Pictou and in war times raised money for Victory Bonds.
One story Henderson recounted that spoke to his personality was his mode of transportation.
“When he used to take his kids to the beach he had a hearse, an old hearse, and he’d pile all the kids in the back and take them to the beach.” I’m sure Twitter had follow-up jokes on that one.
At the time of Twitter’s death, he had been recounting an autobiography to broadcaster, photographer and columnist Roland Sherwood. He was halfway through when he passed away. The unfinished draft has never been found, though Sherwood intended to one day publish the story.
Twitter left us with more than just his story with his dash between dates. He left us with words written on his grave’s epitaph. “To talk beneath the moon. To sleep beneath the sun. To live in a land of going to do, and die with nothing done.”
An intriguing statement to leave behind that could have many perspectives.
Maya Kensington
