Farewell Faye Leung (1931-2024)
It ain't over 'til the Hat Lady sings...
From hat to vest: Faye Leung, Mark Leiren-Young, Karin Kalyn (stage manager for Local Anxiety), Darron Leiren-Young (Local Anxiety fan & benefactor); Dean Leung & Kevin Crofton.
My comedy partner, Kevin Crofton and I were attending the launch for the Vancouver International Comedy Festival when the most recognizable woman in BC walked into the tent and introduced herself. I saw the hat before I saw her - because the hat, as always, was impossible to miss.
Kevin and I were there to plug our political comedy duo, Local Anxiety. Faye Leung was there because in the early 1990s, Faye Leung was everywhere. She claimed the spotlight after ending the reign of BC’s most bizarre Premier, wild Bill Vander Zalm and she loved that spotlight.
I’d spent years mocking the Zalm, so I introduced myself to the giant killer and she made her an offer I couldn’t refuse. She wanted to join Local Anxiety. On stage. Leung sang a song I wrote for her to the tune of I Shot the Sheriff. Her gleeful, high-pitched, playfulness earned us national media coverage for: I Fought the Premier.
She was charming, funny, spoke faster than any human I’d ever met and called me so frequently after our on-stage adventure to pitch wild new schemes that I found myself investigating how “call block” worked in an era long before that was an easy thing to do.
I’m going to dip into BC political history for a moment to offer some context for Leung. Don’t worry: unlike political history anywhere else, BC’s reads like it was scripted by the writer’s room for a hit sitcom.
Zalm was the Rob Ford of his day - except much funnier, because instead of cocaine and bitterness, Zalm was fuelled by religion and ego. Zalm gained national notoriety because he and his wife lived in a fairy tale castle in a biblical theme park they’d built and called “Fantasy Gardens.” He was infamous for mangling the English language, creating policies out of thin air and being anti-science before it was trendy. Zalm would have ruled Twitter.
The Premier from Fantasy Gardens was forced to resign just before the end of his first term. He should have been forced to leave in cuffs because he gifted BC’s most valuable real estate to his biggest campaign backer for fire sale prices. But, by BC standards, that was business as usual.
Zalm was evicted from office because he made a much smaller real estate deal in a hotel room… in his underwear… handing over an envelope stuffed with $20,000 in US hundred dollar bills to a Taiwanese billionaire. Faye reported this to BC’s conflict of interest commissioner after the Premier apparently neglected to pay her commission for brokering the sale of his biblical theme park. As Shakespeare wrote… Hell hath no fury like a real estate agent scorned.
Faye’s fame levels shifted over the years, but when she was in a room you knew it - and not just because of the wild hats. She wasn’t just larger than life, she was larger and louder than several lives.
The last time I saw her in person was at a convocation event at Simon Fraser University back in 2013. She was in the audience and, as always, harder to miss in a venue full of 1000 people than the actual star speakers. I was older. I’m not sure she was. She asked me about getting together to sing again because, of course, she did.
Thank you, Faye. And just for you… “I fought the Premier. But I swear it was in self-defense…”
Faye Leung sang her last song on November 1, 2024 at the age of 92. In case you’re curious - and you should be - here are a few more stories about her.
Faye Leung and I at Simon Fraser University - 2013
Here’s a lovely piece by Vancouver Sun columnist, Vaughn Palmer
In appreciation of Faye Leung, the relentless nemesis that felled a B.C. premier: Vaughn Palmer: The flamboyant top realtor brought down Premier Bill Vander Zalm and dogged him for years
And one of the stories on Faye’s comedy debut - from The Globe and Mail.
She was a wonderful bit of BC folklore. Thanks Mark!