File under: lying can be fun

Here's what we really need today, election day -- something totally different: the tale of Mr. Kosmos Kagool. Kozie exists because of journalist Clyde Gilmour (of the MotherCorp's "Gilmour's Albums" fame).

"In the 1930s [Gilmour] saw a movie in which a hideous witch by the name of Kagool was burned to death in an African volcano," notes Knowlton Nash in his book of recollections and recent history, "Cue the Elephant: Backstage Tales at the CBC."

"Gilmour thought it would be amusing if the witch had a son named Kosmos Kagool who lived in Chilliwack, British Columbia, was a member of the junior board of the Board of Chilliwack, and was engaged to a nice, dull girl. Gilmour brought Kosmos Kagool to life by slipping his name into the papers as having attended social functions and meetings. He signed Kagool's name to petitions from time to time and put it in the telephone book. By listing Kagool's name at his own address, 'I would get through the mail,' Gilmour says, 'two free razor blades, two bars of soap instead of one. This adds up in a year.'

"He even used Kagool's name once as a byline on a story in the Vancouver Province. The story was one Gilmour had written when he was still in the navy and couldn't use his own name. The managing editor of the rival Vancouver Sun called the Province to ask who the new reporter was. 'He's good, and if he's got guts enough to use his byline, then I've got guts enough to use mine," said Hymie Koshevoy, who later became a columnist. [There's another lovely Hymie K. story here.]

"Kosmos Kagool had a particularly heroic war. 'When hostilities broke out,' says Gilmour, 'Kagool became an object lesson to all young men in Canada by joining all three forces simultaneously. Each enlistment was duly reported in various newspapers, and he made appearances on different occasions, with his rank rising and falling unpredictably.... I once got his name in the Vancouver Province as Admiral of the Fleet... I later learned the top navy brass spent hours trying to track him down so they could honour him in the mess. I managed to get word back to them that he was on a secret mission for Churchill personally and couldn't see anybody.' When a new city hall was opened in Johannesburg, South Africa, newspapers in Vancouver and Chilliwack noted that 'Kosmos Kagool of Chilliwack, B.C., was one of those present.'"