Keen Crusader

Keen crusader; A life in journalism; On radio and in print, Eddie Keen made his mark as a feisty champion of the public interest
Edmonton Journal
Sun Mar 30 2008
Page: E3
Section: Sunday Reader
Byline: David Staples
Dateline: EDMONTON
Source: The Edmonton Journal

EDMONTON - Eddie Keen, the renowned Edmonton columnist and radio commentator, is 74 now, retired in the town of Smoky Lake, and has little interest in making his opinions known on any matter of public interest.

"There's a time to shut up," he says, "and I did yap for 40 years."

Keen started his career as a reporter and editor at the Edmonton Journal in 1953, but ultimately found that work to be unsatisfying: "I kept thinking that what we were doing was irrelevant, covering press conferences and speeches in the legislature and all this stuff. To me, we were missing something. But I couldn't articulate it and I didn't articulate it until I got on to the radio. And then I knew what was wrong.

"There are people living in slums and the slum landlords are getting away with it. People are being screwed with the car market and in business and there's political corruption and nobody seems to be talking about it or care."

In his prime during the 1970s and 1980s there was no more popular or vocal commentator than Keen at CHED radio and the Edmonton Sun.

Among Keen's accomplishments, he broke a major scandal involving odometer tampering by prominent Edmonton auto dealers in the 1970s and led the campaign to appeal the life sentence of Ross Davis, who was in jail for stabbing to death his stepfather, Frank Koble, after Koble sexually assaulted Davis's sister. A five-year campaign by Keen led to solicitor-general Robert Kaplan granting Davis a pardon.

In 1994, Keen retired to a farm outside of Smoky Lake, which he and his wife Shirley turned into a bed and breakfast. In 1998, he wrote of retirement: "Life simplifies, priorities change, interests develop, the pace slows, the end of the journey is in sight, and we have the blessed time to prepare."

In 2000, Eddie and Shirley bought a house in the town of Smoky Lake, renovated it, and now live there.

"I was walking down the street the other day," Keen says, "and two women came up to me and looked at me. 'Are you Eddie Keen?' I said, 'I used to be.' "