The stage was set with his memoir Human Beans, but the tale of the wild and weird adventures of Ron Pumphrey really begins right here and now . . .
Ron Pumphrey came to public attention seemingly from out of nowhere. This mystery man, who is still larger than life, had a veritably unknown past until the release of Human Beans, the first in this autobiographical series. Now that friend and foe alike have taken a peek into the formative years of this Newfoundland icon, both can agree that Ron’s was a childhood like no other. His story continues in Proper Gander, beginning with the end of his childhood years and delving headlong into the rebellious years of puberty. World War II comes to Bell Island, Newfoundland, and at the same time, young Ron Pumphrey fights a war of his own when strong Catholic conscience and the passion of youth collide for good or ill.

Careers adventurer Ron Pumphrey was born in Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, in 1931. He was, variously and sometimes conjunctively, surface-mines labourer, amateur boxer-wrestler, salesman, journalist, editor, radio talk-show host, television news writer and amateur performer, books editor and publisher, writer and performer of three long-playing recordings (LPs). He founded two bay newspapers and two capital city monthly magazines, was a city councillor, a commercial investigator, a minister, and perhaps the province’s first private public relations man (“PR With RP”). A lifelong student, he’s a certificate holder in beginners’ law, in coastal navigation, and in writing, and the motivational sciences. He has studied in day schools, night schools, nighttime universities at home, on the mainland, and in the United States. Noted as a hard-working, hard-playing individualist, Ron worked in Jamaica with the Kingston Daily Gleaner (where his sense of humour resulted in his getting a job when literally none was available), was for a short time a stringer for the New York Times, and, in Toronto, was a full-time employee variously with the Stock Exchange, Dun and Bradstreet, Flash Newsmagazine, and British United Press. His hobbies are educational pursuits, political and other news analyses, philosophy, and watching his weight come and go. His children (by his late wife, Nellie Dwyer of Bell Island) are Heather, Ron Jr., Helen “Nellie,” Steve, John, Shawn, and Ian, who live in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, the Yukon, and Denmark. He lives with his wife and companion of thirty-two years, writer-activist Marilyn Tephi Duffett, in a cottage built onto (not into) the slope of a high hill, in Quidi Vidi Village, hard by Ye Olde Inn which keeps his favourite brew on order. He spent the first dollar bill there, when “the tav” opened in 1977. It’s in a glass-fronted frame on a wall near the bar.

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