Remembering Gary Reineke, the man who knew how to enter

iPhoto caption: Photo of Gary Reineke courtesy of Allegra Fulton.

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/By Layne Coleman / Nov 7, 2024

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There’s one shot that will always be with me when I think of the Canadian west. It’s Gary, in a tall hat, riding a wagon into town in Phillip Borsos’ masterpiece The Grey Fox. Gary seemed to belong out west. When he entered a story, you wanted to fall down the rabbit hole behind him.

Gary Reineke made an impression. The eye naturally went to his long face and aristocratic nose. He was tall. He didn’t shrink himself, or try to look shorter. 

Gary was American, and that was very much part of his charm. He had a kind of Mayflower spirit, a midwestern man with an unusually high regard for acting. I knew him for a long time, and spent countless nights around tables enjoying his company and storytelling.

But the deepest part of him was gathered around the loss of his wife, Brenda Donohue, who died at the tender age of 29. Brenda loved and enjoyed Gary in a way that made her early loss to cancer impossible to recover from. Gary was like a tree, a plant that lived in the sunshine and water of her attention. Brenda was one of the first and brightest stars of Toronto’s theatre community — when I first met Gary, he told me the story of her cleaning out what would eventually become Toronto Free Theatre, and then Canadian Stage. He was good at describing the amount of garbage that had to be removed, and how the theatre, scrubbed and gleaming, reflected Brenda’s glory.

That was a theatre origin story, but it was also a construct for Gary to show his love. It had an effect on me where I began to think in some way that Gary was talking about himself — that Brenda had cleaned him out from clutter. Men often wait for the right woman to renovate the house of their being. 

When Gary laughed, it would temporarily send all the darkness running.

Gary’s grief added a new dimension to his work. You knew as an actor he was showing you something deep inside him, some big bang of pain and loss. When he laughed, it would temporarily send all the darkness running. Of course, it would always return, making Gary’s audience long for that laugh once more, aching to see that happiness return. You wanted to drag him to the sunnier side of the street and chain him there, never letting him go back to the shadows.

It was remarkable to spend an evening with Gary. It was a cycle where you experienced the whole of him, and you knew that nothing revealed him so much as this loss. The grief at his core was the stage he acted upon. He gave magnificent performances in theatre and film (and at parties), and to be his friend was to be witness to the volcanoes and hurricanes of culture behind him.

Gary couldn’t abide a bad show. This was a man who looked imperiously down his nose. You knew judgment was surely there at the tip, and that it would not be forgiving. He couldn’t stand a bad actor.

That said, Gary was someone who remembered the highs, not the lows. I saw him once in a two-week workshop of The Drawer Boy at the Blyth Festival — he was playing Angus. He was awakened by theatre — given his experience of the Vietnam War from his time in the U.S., it seemed a story Gary was destined to tell. Theatre rescuing a soul that was lost to itself. 

When The Drawer Boy was finally produced, it was because I’d seen him and couldn’t forget him or the play. The play ended up being a vehicle for Canadian actors to shine over many productions and years. When I think of it now — and I saw it many times, and in various parts of Canada — I’m astonished that Gary never got to play that same part again.

Gary couldn’t abide a bad show. This was a man who looked imperiously down his nose. You knew judgment was surely there at the tip, and that it would not be forgiving. He couldn’t stand a bad actor.

When you saw Gary in a role, you remembered him. Not necessarily the story, or the production around him. Gary would become fixed in your mind, and there he would continue to grow. 

I never knew his biological family, so I can’t say much about that part of his life. His family that I knew were Tim and Martha Leary, who Gary bought a house with, and they lived as a strong presence together and welcomed so many of us in the community to sit around their love as if it were a fire. Martha was like a sister to him, and Tim a brother. 

I met Gary because of Clarke Rogers. Clarke was the first director of Judith Thompson’s The Crackwalker, and in the 80s was artistic director of Theatre Passe Muraille, where he had many hits. Gary and Clarke together were a treat — they argued nonstop about everything, and yet never lost their tempers. When Clarke had his first daughter, Joslyn, he asked Gary to be the godfather, and I’ve never seen a man approach that role so fully and sincerely — Joslyn suffered the tragedy of losing her father at a young age, and so her relationship with Gary was an important one. Gary loved Joslyn and spoke of her often. She was the child he never had, and so Joslyn’s life excited him and comforted him. He loved her unconditionally and would light up in her presence. 

In her early 20s, Allegra Fulton became one of Gary’s great loves. To me, they seemed drawn to each other because they loved acting in the same sort of way. For them, acting was among the highest callings. They each had a way of crawling inside an audience and taking them on a journey that felt as if no one might possibly know anyone as well as they knew the characters they were playing. Allegra was a loyal, beloved friend — she stayed with him, and organized him through many cranky years of pain and creeping dementia. She learned to laugh rather than cry, and was always 100 per cent present with him when she was in his company. All those who loved Gary owe Allegra an enormous thank you.

I visited Gary a few times at Casey House, where he was staying while Allegra waited for a bed to become available at an appropriate long-term care home. At Casey House, a remarkable institution, Gary told me stories of his youth I’d never heard before. He spoke with clarity for the parts of his mind he was losing. He recounted to me the epic journey he took to Baltimore, where he was to be drafted to the army before heading to Vietnam. He talked of the long, lonely bus rides, and his fears. He spoke eloquently about what it was like to be in a suburban Baltimore high school, standing naked with 200 other young men, a doctor marching between them, examining them. 

That doctor determined Gary not fit for service. Gary had no money, and he had to walk for miles to find a bus station, knowing he could return home and that he wasn’t going to die. At least, not in that terrible war.

Gary was one of the best. I know those who remember him from his performances will recall his talent, his originality, and they’ll feel the backdraft of his absence. 

I couldn’t remember him speaking more clearly in all my years of knowing him. I remember bringing him to Saskatoon, where he astonished the audience, and I watched from the stage as the city fell in love with this man, who represented to them someone they felt knew them and forgave them for their secrets. Gary taught me the stage was a place to bring everything about yourself and use it for good. No matter if you were playing a villain or a hero or misunderstood, alienated human — you had to love the character.

On the last night of his life, Allegra and Joslyn sat with him, laughing like sisters, sharing how important he was to them, and also how funny he remained despite suffering so terribly. He was eager to exit this world.

Gary was one of the best. I know those who remember him from his performances will recall his talent, his originality, and they’ll feel the backdraft of his absence. 

You’re still growing in my mind, dear man. There was nothing quite like you when you made an entrance. I see you always in my mind’s eye — entering.

WRITTEN BY

Layne Coleman

Layne Coleman was lucky enough as artistic director of 25th Street Theatre in Saskatoon, and Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto, to hire Gary Reineke as an actor. Gary always made his directors look good. He was a director's dream come true.

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