Singing Window Washer's Sad Tale

PETERBOROUGH, TORONTO: Even in death, Lorne Clapper did not exactly go quietly into the night, with police and paramedics arriving at his home not far from the Comstock Funeral Home where he was laid out last week when, truth be known, he had already been dead three days. In the end, therefore, only the coroner was truly needed, not a parade of ambulance and police vehicles. But that would not be in context with his life. Quiet is not a word to describe Lorne Clapper. Foul play, of course, was never out of the realm of possibility when it came to Lorne Paul Flint Clapper - brother to five, uncle to 27 and great uncle to four - but this would not be the case for the odd and often controversial little man best known here as the Singing Window Washer. Instead, he died, at 41, of natural causes.
Christmas, especially, won't be the same. Four Christmases ago, I found him outside the Nutty Chocolatier on this city's main drag, a funky Christmas hat on his head and a battery-powered Happy New Year button twinkling away on his jacket - squeegee in hand, a pail of soapy water at his feet, Bubbles-esque glasses perched on his nose - cleaning the confectionery's windows and singing Christmas carols. O Come All Ye Faithful, he was singing that morning. He sang so loudly, in fact, that he once had hot water poured over his head by an above-store apartment dweller annoyed by his operatic talents, as well as the Christian hymns that often had made-up lyrics.
"I sometimes have trouble remembering the right words," he admitted back then. "So I just sing whatever comes to mind."
Four days earlier, as the news hook for tracking him down, he had been punched out by a 46-year-old Peterborough man who apparently didn't appreciate his singing of Joy To The World.
Lorne Clapper got punched out a lot, though, but he also punched back - sometimes in response to an insult, sometimes for little or no reason at all - and, because of this, and because of various stints in jail, he was a bit of a dilemma to the townsfolk here. Some supported him because of his perceived mental health issues (he told all who would listen that he was a severe epileptic, and would often feign seizures), while others wrote him off as nothing more than a common criminal.
There was very little middle ground when it came to Lorne Clapper, the Singing Window Washer. And that was the quandary.
At this visitation last Sunday, however, the crowd was already well out into the street when the doors to the Comstock Funeral Home finally swung open. Clapper's father, George, had gone to his son's home and retrieved his squeegee and pail, and had placed it at the head of the casket to symbolize his son's best-known role. "He had a rough life," the father said. "But he wanted to be on his own, despite the problems he faced." Lorne Clapper, Grade 3-educated, living on a disability pension, was actually born with spinal meningitis - the epilepsy was a cover, his father said - and, as a result, he had a shunt running from his brain, and a pump to drain the fluid.
"That's why he sometimes acted the way he did," said his father. "But he didn't want anyone to know." Complications from spinal meningitis can include hearing loss or deafness, brain damage, loss of vision, and hydrocephalus, an abnormal buildup of water on the brain. Perhaps if his detractors had only known. Add up the complications and it helps explain Lorne Clapper.
It was an eclectic crowd that came to the funeral home last Sunday to bid farewell to arguably one of Peterborough's more colourful characters. There were well-dressed men and women from the business community, blue-collar types, street people, the working poor, welfare recipients, old vets with poppies in their lapels and even a couple of leather-clad members of the Bikers' Church. The entire social spectrum had come to pay their respects, but not a word concerning the turnout for his funeral was published in the local newspapers. On a bulletin board, next to Lorne Clapper's blue wooden casket and his squeegee and pail, were photographs of Lorne Clapper as a boy - one of him beaming ear-to-ear with a freshly caught walleye and another of him, bare-chested and in swimming trunks, proudly holding a blue ribbon he had won for coming in second in a swim contest. It was a Polaroid shot. Written across the top were the words, Special Olympics, 1985, and, down below, were the words Merryvale School. Back in 1960, the Merryvale School in Campbellford, where Lorne Clapper's family still lives, was one of the first educational projects taken on by what was then called the Ontario Association for the Mentally Retarded, and was described as the first school for "intellectually disabled children" in Northumberland County. It was the last school Lorne Clapper attended.

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