For almost 92 years, Jerry Trainer always had a book on the go.

He read cowboy novels, hard-boiled detective mysteries, biographies, histories, epics, poetry, romances, cookbooks and classics. He read about style, social justice, travel, science, language, writing, cooking, technology, politics. He read about writing. He read about reading.

This lifetime of literary exploration gave him a rich vocabulary, a profound zest for life and strong, informed opinions tempered by an open mind and an irrepressible desire to learn.

True to his Irish blood, Jerry also loved to tell stories, and that’s probably our greatest shared memory of him. He relished sprinkling in the crucial details. He always painted vivid pictures through his recollections, whether of his youth growing up during the war, his life on the road, or the chapters of his career. He could take a listener into the spitting fires and din of the Collingwood Shipyards; through the star-lit streets of 1960s Toronto in the back of his cab; around the twists and turns of his life as a travelling publisher’s representative; into the very heart of his constant, everyday discoveries, inventions and innovations.

In his stories as in his life, he lived with confident swagger, and even in his old age he cut an unusual figure with his gold earring, flatcap, black leather jacket, dark glasses and wry wit. He was a man who eschewed the mundane, and who lived by his favourite saying: Dress with panache, and act with chutzpah!

Jerry passed away on March 19, 2024. He is greatly missed, and he is mourned and fondly remembered by family, by new friends and old friends, and by his community. His beloved wife, Leona, predeceased him.

“When I enter God’s house tonight, I shall wave one thing in salutation, across heaven’s blue threshold. For there is one thing I have left, void of smear or stain, and I take it with me despite you. My panache!” — Cyrano de Bergerac, Act V, Scene VI

This obituary is a paid notice.