Cam Cole's Farewell to Edmonton

Farewell, Edmonton; Journal sports turns the page as columnist Cam Cole leaves for Toronto
The Edmonton Journal
Sun Aug 2 1998
Page: D1/ FRONT
Section: Sports
Byline: Cam Cole
Source: THE EDMONTON JOURNAL

The danger, of course, is that this will come out sounding like one of those stories your father tells you, like: when he was a kid, it was a two-mile walk to school, uphill both ways.

Or he was 14 before he found out potatoes weren't meat or his parents used to have to tie a porkchop to his forehead so the dog would play with him.

Yes, this is one of THOSE -- a reminiscence -- except there is no hardship in it, anywhere.

It would have been easier to leave Edmonton and this newspaper if there had been even a little. Even the slightest cause for complaint. Or if The Journal had finally caught on to me.

But for 23 years, give or take a few months, I've been getting away with the most amazing scam --in fact, reflecting on the enormity of it now, I'm surprised Peter Pocklington and I didn't get along better.

The truth is, The Edmonton Journal has been paying me to do this. And apparently would have been willing to keep on doing it if our mother ship, Southam, hadn't decided to open up a new national newspaper and offer me the chance to run away and be a pioneer.

I resisted at first, on the grounds that you can't have better than the best job in the world, but the national paper hired a bunch of writers I revere -- like Roy MacGregor and Christie Blatchford -- and then paid them to tell me great whopping lies about how important I was, and naturally, I believed them.

So I am doing what all swelled-headed people do: moving East.

"How can you do this?" my friends ask me. "You're a Westerner. You heard what Slats said about the humidity in Toronto, the traffic, the cost of living."

I know all that. But as I waffled over the decision for three or four months, I kept getting signals that maybe this was, in some ways, a logical time.

Eras were ending around here and new ones starting.

Ron Lancaster, one of the CFL's greatest raconteurs and most decent guys, was gone, and it was going to be tough establishing that kind of rapport with anyone else.

The Oilers' new owners and the Alberta Treasury Branches ended a long, painful epoch by effectively removing Pocklington from our daily lives -- and as much as things are bound to be quieter with Glen Sather and Jim Hole as the front men, somehow I suspect it will also be a little less fun than it was in the days when Puck and a few of us nattering nabobs of negativism were at war.

And my kids were getting ready to change schools and any minute now the world's greatest neighbour was about to start finishing his basement and asking me to reciprocate for all the backbreaking jobs he's helped me with over the years.

But what really cinched it was, I can't live in a town without Cujo.

Good thing he didn't sign with Buffalo.

* * *

Growing up in Vegreville, I had a Journal paper route and ...

Nah, that was David Staples' farewell column and his sounded better than mine.

OK. True story. I was living in a 9x5-foot broom closet, paying $35 a month rent in an old frat house behind the Garneau Theatre, when sports columnist Wayne Overland, the meanest son-of-a-gun who ever sat behind an Olivetti-Underwood typewriter, called at Christmas of 1975 and told me there was an opening in the Journal sports department.

From the first night -- I wrote about the Louis St. Laurent Barons who seemingly hadn't won a high school hoop game since Louis himself was prime minister -- to the minute I sit here writing this, I have been unable to think of sportswriting as a job.

It's been like winning the lottery and getting to do what you want to do.

There's no sense trying to name all the people to whom I owe my thanks for making it that way.

But I have to mention Clare Drake, a legendary coach and a world-class human being who gave me my first glimpse of a hockey team, built on integrity, that was greater than the sum of its parts.

And Frank Morris, who babysat me on many a cold sideline from Golden Bears to Eskimos.

And Jack Parker and Hugh Campbell, who buffaloed everyone into believing they were just a couple of stammering, simple guys who happened to be around dynasties -- when the truth was, they still know more about winning than all the rest and can make me laugh harder with a dry one-liner than anyone.

And Glen Sather, the smartest hockey man out there who taught me to survive intimidation and not back down, a lesson which was very useful in dealing with his former boss.

In the process of packing the other day, I came across an old bound copy of The Gateway, circa 1974-75, the U of A campus paper of which I was sports editor, and it reminded me that at the time I was trying to figure out what kind of real job a guy could get with two more years of school and an arts degree with majors in psychology and Canadian history.

In a bottom drawer, I found a mint-condition 1981 Edmonton Drillers soccer jersey with the name Haaskivi on the back -- a parting gift from Finnish midfielder Kai Haaskivi; a garment which, his critics would say, was in mint condition because it had rarely been perspired in.

But he was a pistol, that cocky Finn. Sports always comes down to people, to characters. And even as I ponder writing for another publication, in a different city, I am still amazed at how lucky I was not to have to get that real job; amazed at how many characters, how much rich story material, Edmonton has provided.

Where I'm going, they can afford better talent, but they can't buy what Edmonton has: a closeness, a sense of mission, a self-fulfilling expectation of greatness.

I'd like to say that the sports figures I will remember best are the dazzling performers, but the fact is the eloquent ones always appealed to me more. People who could express emotions, analyse a game in a few crisp quotes on deadline, or sit down and talk about life in bright colours for 15 minutes in an airport, or a hotel lobby or at an off-day practice.

So here's to Rod Connop and Blake Dermott, to Tommy Scott and Rick House and the late John Mandarich. Here's to Kevin Lowe and Craig MacTavish and Doug Weight and Teddy Green. Here's to Haaskivi and Hans Kraay, to Kurt Browning and Mike Slipchuk, to Trevor Kennerd and Terrible Ted Olson and Scotty Olsen -- and to Wayne Gretzky, holder of a thousand courts, unabashed gossip, sports fan.

* * *

That my bosses at The Journal have given me unlimited opportunities to travel all over the world and write about great events goes without saying, but not without appreciation. To publisher Linda Hughes: sorry about the travel budget. To editor-in-chief Murdoch Davis: sorry about that Pocklington mess.

I've never had another employer in my entire adult (there is some debate about this) life for the simple reason that of all the newspaper people I know, no one has had less to whine about, or a better job description, or a finer group of writers to work with.

So thanks, Barry Westgate, for the column and the confidence, and Jim Matheson, my old roomie and a consummate pro whose work ethic is staggering, and Ray Turchansky, host of a hundred parties and one lump-in-the-throat farewell bash, and Norm Cowley, who chose fatherhood over ambition, and John Korobanik and a dozen deskers, none of whom could get me to write short. And John Short, advisor and loyal supporter, and Curtis Stock, Edmonton's finest golf writer, and Wayne Moriarty and Peter Collum and George Ward and ... I'm going to have to stop here, because if I name Joanne Ireland and Mark Spector and Robin Brownlee and Marty Knack, I'm going to have to go all the way back to Shoes and Buckets and then everyone's going to know how old I am.

I'll miss this amazing sports town and the readers I got to know -- and who indulged me my flaws and my blind spots -- over those 23 years. I'll miss the good guys in the Edmonton media, people like Ernie Afaganis and Al McCann and Wes Montgomery and Tiger Goldstick and Billy Warwick, who made me feel like part of the family long before I'd earned it, and Bryan Hall, who has worked very hard for a long time to keep people from finding out that all that blowhard bluster is an act. Or not.

And Terry Jones who, regardless of which paper signed his paycheque, was first a pal and a drinking buddy, and who devised the rather transparent scheme whereby I would argue to travel to events because he was going to cover them, and vice versa -- and in the end, I got more travel than I needed, whereas to this day, the only reason he ever comes home is to get his laundry done.

That's as close to goodbye as I can manage.

I hope I will still have the opportunity to talk to you, now and then, in the pages of The Journal, but just in case I don't get this chance again: thanks, Edmonton.

It's been a heck of a ride.