Morley Torgov was proof that you are never too old to become a published writer. The Toronto lawyer wrote from an early age but only published his first book, a memoir titled A Good Place to Come From, in 1974 when he was 47 and had been practising law for more than 20 years. He went on to publish seven novels, all of them marked by his sense of humour; his later work, particularly his detective novels, were historical fiction.

Mr. Torgov was born on Dec. 3, 1927, in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., where his father Allen Torgov ran a women’s clothing store and the family lived in an apartment above the shop. Allen Torgov was born in Russia and served in the Russian army for two years in the First World War. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, he slipped into Romania and somehow managed to buy a ticket for Canada.

Mr. Torgov’s memoir details his childhood growing up in Sault Ste. Marie’s small Jewish community in the 1930s and 40s. His father worked harvesting wheat in Saskatchewan, teaching Hebrew in Winnipeg – where he married Sarah Jane Colish, the sister of one of his pupils – and then sold suits to miners in Timmins, Ont.

Of his father’s arrival in Sault Ste. Marie, he wrote: “The Algoma Steel plant there was taking on hundreds of immigrants from Italy and the Slavic countries. The town held potential riches for a clothing man who didn’t mind working eight days a week, could communicate in the foreigners’ lingo and was fast with a tape measure.”

As this excerpt demonstrates, Mr. Torgov’s voice was witty and droll. In 1975, the book won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour; it was later adapted into a series for CBC television. He won the Leacock award again in 1983 for his comic novel, The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick. A film adaption of the same name later premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Mr. Torgov died on July 19 at 98.

At his funeral, his son-in-law Douglas Steinberg, a screenwriter, said Mr. Torgov always had a sense of humour, even about himself.

“Morley was once flown out to Winnipeg to serve as its Jewish book fair’s guest speaker, where he was wined and dined. After all, he was an award-winning Jewish novelist, the new Mordecai Richler of Canada, or as Morley dryly self-deprecated, ‘world famous in Canada.’”

When Morley was nine years old, his mother died at the age of 34 and he was raised by this father. Allen Torgov loved his son, but he could be cranky, eccentric and given to outbursts of foul language. Tales of those traits filled Mr. Torgov’s short stories. But his memoir also highlighted his father’s affection, such as an incident when the younger Morley is embarrassed by the fact that his father kissed him while boarding the train to Toronto for a buying trip.

He was a brilliant student and left Sault. Ste. Marie to attend the University of Toronto, graduating in 1950, and then earned a law degree at Osgoode Hall Law School. While there, he met Anna Peral Cohen and they were married in 1952.

He was only ever seriously ill in the last three months of his life, with one exception, when he contracted West Nile virus in 2013. He wrote a humorous piece about that in The Globe and Mail.

“I survived (no, this piece is not written posthumously). Unfortunately, however, my ability to render a full account of what followed that might be of service to modern medicine is hindered by the fact I was comatose during the crucial first couple of weeks of the three months and two days I spent in hospitals,” wrote Mr. Torgov.

He had a wide, eclectic range of interests and an active social life. He belonged to the Lunch Bunch, a group of friends who met in downtown Toronto every weekday at one o’clock in a food court they nicknamed the dungeon.

“Morley was a charter member. We were originally six but usually there were eight to 10 of us,” said Henry Campbell. “We talked about everything and the only rule we had was we didn’t talk shop. Morley was always part of the conversation because of his terrific sense of humour, and he was writing feverishly in those days so we talked about that, events of the day and we told jokes.”

He wrote at night and on weekends. His day job was as a partner in small firm in downtown Toronto, where he worked on everything from real estate to corporate law. And when it came to his artistic life, he also seemed to do everything.

“My father was a very creative man. He was always writing even before he was published, such as one-act plays with a friend of his. He was a fantastic cartoonist. Doing cartoons and on family birthdays, he would draw on a piece of cardboard that came from the laundry with his shirts,” said his daughter Sarah Torgov, who is an actor.

“Morley was also enthralled by classic cars, sculpture, literature, paintings, Woody Allen, Philip Roth, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Mel Brooks. He read practically everything. The New Yorker, always, from cover to cover,” said Mr. Steinberg.

Sarah Torgov said her father was a news junkie and kept up on current events. His family knew not to phone him when he was watching the evening news.

“I describe Morley as a Renaissance man,” said his daughter-in-law, Carrie Schipper. “Classical music was his passion. When you walked into his apartment, he was always playing classical music, but he also could keep up with contemporary music. I mean, if you talked about Drake, he knew who Drake was, and he loved Bob Dylan. He went with his family to see Tina Turner in 1980 at the Royal York.”

Mr. Torgov married his love of classical music with his fiction through his character of Hermann Preiss, a detective living in mid-19th century Germany. In one novel, The Mastersinger from Minsk, the detective pursues a famous composer.

“In 1868 the plot revolves around Richard Wagner, opera master, world class womanizer and well-known anti-Semite,” wrote reviewer Jack Batten in the Toronto Star. “Is he also a murderer? That’s the question for Preiss in Torgov’s new book.”

Although Mr. Torgov wasn’t terribly observant, most of his books dealt with Jewish themes. One that did not was Stickler and Me, reviewed by Sharon Abron Draches in The Globe in 2002.

“This is a switch for Morley Torgov – a coming-of-age novel for young adults and teens focusing on intergenerational relationships, particularly between grandparents and grandchildren, as well as the inner workings of the legal profession,” wrote Ms. Draches. “Torgov believes that Jewish writers in Canada have not received the readership and appreciation they deserve. I mention this because in the current offering, there is not an ounce of Jewish content.”

Mr. Torgov loved the cinema, and most Saturday nights he and his wife, Anna, would go to the theatre complex at the Manulife Centre in Toronto. He was also an aficionado of vintage movies and modern comedians.

His daughter and son-in-law, who live in Los Angeles, once got him tickets for a taping of Seinfeld. He was over the moon.

Morley leaves his wife Anna Pearl; his daughter Sarah Jane Torgov and her husband Douglas Steinberg; his daughter-in-law Carrie Schipper whose husband Alexander, Morley’s son, died in 2009; and his four grandchildren.

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