TORONTO—Last week, award-winning writer and musician Paul Quarrington died of lung cancer in his home at the age of 56.

Since being diagnosed with cancer last spring, Quarrington focused his energy on a multitude of projects including his first solo CD, a third album from his band PorkBelly Futures and a memoir, Cigar Box Banjo, to be published by Greystone Books according to an article on CBC.ca.


An accomplished magazine writer, he won or shared four golds and a silver National Magazine Award and was nominated 15 times. Outdoor Canada editor and friend Patrick Walsh says the high caliber of writing Quarrington brought to the magazine will be sorely missed. “He had such a unique writing style, was often funny without trying to be funny,” says Walsh. “He won a gold National Magazine Award in 2000 for humour and when he went to the podium he said, ‘I wasn’t even trying to be funny’. He had such a rare insight into the human condition that came out in his writing.”

Fellow writer, collaborator and friend Jake McDonald says he will remember him not for the awards, but for the person he was. “He wasn’t Paul the artist or the musician,” he says. “He was Paul my buddy. He left before it was time to go, with a great crash of cymbols.”