Nathan Divinsky - Full page in The Globe & Mail today

[Larry Bevand]

An excellent obit on Nathan on page R8....can someone link this up please :)

[Gary Gladstone]

Re: Nathan Divinsky - Full page in The Globe & Mail today

http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servle...ory/BDA/deaths

[Mikhail Egorov]

Re: Nathan Divinsky - Full page in The Globe & Mail today

http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servle...ory/BDA/deaths

Thanks Gary,

Thanks for the link. It is very unfortunate that Nathan passed away this year, even though I never knew him.

This article was a nice read. I did find his following comments kind of amusing: "people who end up in chess organizations are relatively weak players who have no great satisfaction from other forms of life. They're essentially incompetent."

I wonder if he was referring to people, who end up in Canadian chess organizations, or in general.

[Jonathan Berry]

Re: Nathan Divinsky - Full page in The Globe & Mail today

D.A. (Dan) MacAdam founded Chess Chat.

I did find his following comments kind of amusing: "people who end up in chess organizations are relatively weak players who have no great satisfaction from other forms of life. They're essentially incompetent."

He could have been talking CFC or FIDE. I don't remember hiim ever attending a BCCF meeting. Maybe off his radar. But the good news is that he was even more derisive of (Canadian) politicians, calling them "third-class charlatans" ... (or was he talking about FIDE chess politicians. I don't remember who called them scoundrels, but lovable scoundrels, but it might have been him)

[Mikhail Egorov]

Re: Nathan Divinsky - Full page in The Globe & Mail today

D.A. (Dan) MacAdam founded Chess Chat.

He could have been talking CFC or FIDE. I don't remember hiim ever attending a BCCF meeting. Maybe off his radar. But the good news is that he was even more derisive of (Canadian) politicians, calling them "third-class charlatans" ... (or was he talking about FIDE chess politicians. I don't remember who called them scoundrels, but lovable scoundrels, but it might have been him)

It is irrelevant, if Nathan was derisive towards (Canadian) politicians, or not Who isn't derisive towards politicians today anyway. :)

What is bad news, is Nathan is derisive towards chess organizers in Canada and maybe elsewhere as well. What is even worse, it is now published for everyone in Canada to read about it. I do not think this is the way to promote chess in Canada!

[Gordon Taylor]

Re: Nathan Divinsky - Full page in The Globe & Mail today

The obit says "He founded and edited the magazine Canadian Chess Chat for 15 years." I'm pretty sure he didn't found CCC. And I suspect Macskasy did more actual work on CCC than Divinsky did.

[Jonathan Berry]

Re: Nathan Divinsky - Full page in The Globe & Mail today

I suspect Macskasy did more actual work on CCC than Divinsky did.

I did some work on CCC, and I took away the opposite impression. However, we were at UBC at different times, Gordon, so workloads might have changed. I carry the impression of Divinsky in his office, smoking a cigar, writing (both he and Macskasy did their work longhand, perhaps most of the work was done by the typesetter) at quite a clip and producing stacks of material to be published over the months and years ... But it is more of an impression than of a memory. Since they weren't much for signing articles, if we want to be scientific about it, we can weigh the year that Divinsky took a sabbatical (that's when I did the work for CCC, perhaps 1972-73) against the other years. It seems petty to question the amount of work that these two men did now; they could have been out skiing and yachting in paradise! I jest only a little. I recall that Macskasy was a champion swimmer in the old country.

[Kenneth Regan]

Re: Nathan Divinsky - Full page in The Globe & Mail today

Fantastic obit---really tells the stories, though I feel a great unmentioned debt is owed to organizers who are also fans of the game.

My item in the other Divinsky thread, telling of my staying in his apartment in London before Game 11 in 1986, does correct "1986...rematch...took place in Moscow" to "...took place in London before switching to Leningrad." As my dad used to say, another good story ruined by an eyewitness. Checking old albums, I took many photos of the Oval Test and one faraway flashless picture of the game, but none of Divinsky or any other players.

[Gordon Taylor]

Re: Nathan Divinsky - Full page in The Globe & Mail today

Well, as indicated, that was only my suspicion. But I recall once being in the office of Dr Macskasy and seeing somewhere those peculiar old diagram kits that CCC used. Now making diagrams back in those days was real work. I also recall seeing some of Macskasy's work on his stamp collection. They were presentation sets for stamp conventions and were very clean and precise, suggesting a skill set useful for magazine production. Dr Divinsky did good work for chess in keeping CCC afloat during those years but he did not found CCC, and that's the point I mostly wanted to make.

[Jonathan Berry]

Re: Nathan Divinsky - Full page in The Globe & Mail today

Well, as indicated, that was only my suspicion. But I recall once being in the office of Dr Macskasy and seeing somewhere those peculiar old diagram kits that CCC used. Now making diagrams back in those days was real work. I also recall seeing some of Macskasy's work on his stamp collection. They were presentation sets for stamp conventions and were very clean and precise, suggesting a skill set useful for magazine production. Dr Divinsky did good work for chess in keeping CCC afloat during those years but he did not found CCC, and that's the point I mostly wanted to make.

The point that he did not found CCC had already been made in this thread, complete with the name of the person who did found it.

I rather regret that I don't remember the details of Chess Chat production, or maybe I never witnessed them. John Prentice had a print shop. The text of the issues was typeset by somebody at the print shop. Hmm. Later with the CFC I used a non-photoreproducible blue pencil to mark instructions, but something tells me that Chess Chat used a red pencil, and I imagine it wielded by Divinsky. Dang. Obviously I witnessed something, but what? It was only 40+ years ago. Anyway, the diagram blanks were also made in the Prentice print shop. They consisted of the diagram itself (with hatched rather than toned dark squares, an important point for the printer) and a bunch of pieces on appropriate backgrounds, all with glue on the back. So (and I made hundreds of such diagrams) you cut out each piece, moisten the back, place it on the diagram and then micro-adjust the position, hopefully so that the hatching lines up. Layout artists had special tweezers for this, or you could use stamp tongs, why not? It was all very well to have a good eye to line up the hatching, but the true artistry in the process was to put the correct amount of moisture on the back of every piece. Too much moisture and the piece floats on the board. Squeezing out the excess moisture, or even leaving it in place, risks wrinkling the board or minor running of the ink. Not squeezing out the excess moisture allows the piece to move radically or to be wiped away. Too little moisture, and the piece dries on the square but does not bind. Almost inevitably, in handling, the piece detaches later, and when it appears in print, a piece is missing. Too little moisture = too much neatness = missing pieces, was the prime danger.

Diagrams may be added or subtracted for page layout. Finally, they are moistened and glued to the copy, which is then photoreproduced at the print shop.

Diagrams used to be a hurdle. I remember that Vlad Dobrich, Larry Buchan and I discussed diagrams at length at Chess Canada in Toronto. Transfers (think Letraset) were a huge advance, eliminating the vagaries of glue. Funny, I don't remember if chess diagram production ever had something like Meccanorma.

It could be that Macskasy did the diagrams himself. Or he could have had the help of local players. There was certainly a range of consistency in the Chess Chat diagrams. One of the Chess Chat diagram artists was so whimsical about (not) getting the pieces straight on the squares, that it made me laugh. Ken Morton, Bruce Harper, Paul Brown, Bill Macskasy, Peter Biyiasas or ... might remember the details better. Harper, incidentally, had "perfect pitch" for layout, and I like to think that I wasn't too bad either.

[Larry Bevand]

I received the following from Ron Csillag

Dear Mr. Bevand

Thanks for posting my obit on Nathan Divinsky at ChessTalk. I want to make you aware of some errors that crept in and I hope you can post the following on the blog:

Dr. Divinsky died June 17, not June 12 as printed (a correction ran in today's Globe). Also, the 1986 rematch between Kasparov and Karpov took place in Leningread and London, not Moscow (information I pinched from a British obit that contained other errors). And I understand Dr. Divinsky was not the founder of Chess Chat.

Thanks
-Ron Csillag
Toronto

[Gordon Taylor]

Re: Nathan Divinsky - Full page in The Globe & Mail today

The point that he did not found CCC had already been made in this thread, complete with the name of the person who did found it.

Right you are, and t'was you who made it! Didn't notice this the first time through. But your MacAdam factoid did appear above the quote. Who writes above the quote?

[Jonathan Berry]

Re: Nathan Divinsky - Full page in The Globe & Mail today

diagram blanks were also made in the Prentice print shop. They consisted of the diagram itself (with hatched rather than toned dark squares, an important point for the printer) and a bunch of pieces on appropriate backgrounds, all with glue on the back.

A few hours after writing that, I was walking on Commercial Street, and who should I spy but Glen Beaudin, local journalist, chess player and organizer. It had been years. Here is a condensed version of our conversation.

J - Where are you living these days, Glen?
G - Timberlands.
J - Oh yeah, I know a guy who used to live at Timberlands. In 1953. In fact, you know him, Bill Parker, he used to work at Harmac, in the control room.
G - I remember, he was an Engineer.
J - No, he was an Artist, he learned on the job.
G - He was a steamfitter.
J - And a chess player. In the 1950s, he was maybe the fourth best player in Nanaimo. Fred Schulz, Dave Shiu, and Jack Patty were ahead of him.
G - Jack Patty? He's from Nanaimo? He showed up at the club a couple of times recently. I didn't know he was local [...]
J - Bill Parker and Fred Schulz founded the Nanaimo Chess Club in the 1950s.
G - No, there was a chess club in the 1930s.
J - Maybe they re- founded it, eh?
G - Yeah. In the 1970s, Fred Schulz gave me a list of chess players from the Nanaimo Chess Club from the 1940s. There were maybe 60 names, members. I tried to contact them, and some were still around. But the way we got players out was through the chess column I wrote in the mid 1970s in the Nanaimo Times. If it appeared in the Thursday paper, lots of people showed up at the club. But when I let it slide, attendance went back to normal. Somebody gave me diagram sheets. Actually, I think it was you. I don't remember the occasion.
J - Did I mail them to you?
G - No it was in person [they turn out to be the Chess Chat diagrams. The Prentice print shop had printed a many-lifetimes supply, so this wasn't "stock" to be squirreled away.].
G - You'd cut out the pieces, wet the glue on back, and then put them on the diagram. But you needed to put on enough water so that they wouldn't stick too soon. For example, if you put a piece on the wrong square and it stuck there, what would you do? At first I tore them off, but the guys at the Times told me that the roughened paper made ink marks appear. I got good at using liquid whiteout. I called the column Chesstalk.
---
I hadn't thought about glue diagrams in decades. I write about it in the morning, then unbidden in the afternoon it arises again. Both times on Chesstalk. File that with your funny coincidences.