Paul Hiebert was a chemistry professor, a student of languages, a poet, a comedian, and a friend. He is a Manitoba legend.
Who is Paul Hiebert?
Ask anyone who attended the University of Manitoba around the middle of the twentieth century and you will find out. According to my husband, he was the greatest chemistry professor who ever taught engineering students. According to me, he was the greatest comedic poet whom I was priviledged to know.
He was born in 1892 in the little Manitoba town of Pilot Mound and died in Carmen, Manitoba, in 1987. His first publication, Sarah Binks, won the 1947 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humor, the highest honor available to Canadian humorists.
Hiebert loved to entertain. On the long streetcar rides to the university, he delighted students and professors alike by reading the latest "bad poems" of his "Sarah Binks, the Sweet Songstress of Saskatchewan." Sarah was Hiebert's mouthpiece in the same way that my cat Dusty expresses my ideas in articles which I publish in her name. To Hiebert's audience, Sarah became a real person, and she was presented as such in his lectures.
The Love of the German Mother Tongue
Hiebert was the kind of unassuming person who did not stand out in a crowd by anything except his lack of height, but when he read from his Sarah Binks, he became a giant in the eyes of his audience. I have rarely in my life laughed more heartily than in his lectures or in my private conversations with him.
Being of Mennonite background and upbringing, Hiebert spoke German before he even heard English, and he studied German seriously before he turned to chemistry. He and I shared a love affair with the German language. Mind you, true to his sense of the absurd, shortly before his death, he shared a secret with me. Knowing that I spoke French, he whispered to me that he really was French-Canadian and that his true name was Hébèrt.
More on Hiebert and his Sarah Binks
Paul Hiebert, a Manitoba Legend
Sarah Binks, Sweet Songstress of Saskatchewan
Sarah Binks Translates Heine
About Sarah Binks, AKA Paul Hiebert
