Jonathan Mallov.Courtesy of family
Jonathan Mallov: Saxophonist. Accountant. Father. Canadian. Born Aug. 16, 1950, in Syracuse, N.Y.; died June 7, 2020, in Halifax from a stroke; aged 69.
The car picked them up somewhere in the Midwest – Jon and the friend whose name is now lost to memory. Two longhairs, circa 1970, headed for San Francisco.
They got in the car. “Hey, man, thanks.” The driver had a certain look to him. But beggars can’t be choosers when they’re thumbing rides on the Interstate, still 2,000 miles from California. Jon noticed there were no keys in the ignition.
They drove several hundred miles. The man was out of it, stoned, and for a time Jon took over driving, afraid they’d get stopped by the cops. Somewhere in Wyoming, the driver ditched the stolen car. Jon and his friend found another ride and made it out to San Francisco, Haight-Ashbury, the counterculture.
A son’s memory – the black box years of his father’s life.
Jonathan Mallov and his older brother, Joseph, were born to Samuel and Charlotte Mallov, children of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Jon was on the quiet side, but harbored a non-conformist streak. He took up the saxophone, but was kicked out of band in high school for refusing to cut his hair or wear a white shirt. He listened to Bob Dylan and Jefferson Airplane. During college at the University of Michigan, he played bass in rock bands, protested the war in Vietnam and went to Woodstock.
In 1973, Jon made the decision that would define the rest of his life: He moved across the border to Kingston to study for an MA in philosophy at Queen’s University. There he met his first wife, Ruth, a Nova Scotian.
After completing his MA, he switched paths to accounting, eventually moving back to Syracuse, N.Y., where he and Ruth had three sons, Ian, Ross and James. In 1988, they moved to Ruth’s hometown of Truro, N.S., where Jon worked as an accountant at Burchell MacDougall Law and they had two more sons, Stephen and Daniel.
To get a rise out of his children, Jon would say, “There’s been no good music since 1972!” But his tastes continued to evolve: He developed an appreciation for the country music of George Jones and Emmylou Harris. His primary passion became jazz, especially 1930s and ’40s bebop, cool jazz and big bands.
Jazz drew Jon often to his two favourite cities, New York and Montreal. With his second wife, Sherri, he would scout out shows at the Upstairs Jazz Club in Montreal or at a club in New York. He continued to play, too, bringing his sax to office Christmas parties and playing at the Economy Shoe Shop bar in Halifax. After he retired, despite the effects of Parkinson’s disease, he sat in with bands at the Great British Grub café in Truro.
He was always a devotee of the great hard-boiled mystery writers, especially Raymond Chandler. He tried his own hand at writing after he retired in 2017, completing The Deal, a detective novel set in 1930s Montreal, which he had started submitting to publishers before he died.
A Rooseveltian progressive with a sixties social conscience, Jon always felt politically more Canadian. He became an unlikely hockey fan when his sons took up the game, describing a moment of epiphany sitting in the stands: “I suddenly realized – this is why people like this game.” In 2008, he finally became a Canadian citizen at a swearing-in with Sherri.
Jon’s hitchhiking trip to the San Francisco counterculture was only a visit. But through the familiar arc of career and family life, he maintained a progressive ethos and a devotion to reading and music.
He leaves his family and a large collection of books.
Ian Mallov is one of Jon’s sons.
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