That's a wrap! Barry Westgate's career

THAT'S A WRAP!
The Edmonton Journal
Sun Oct 25 1992
Page: B1
Byline: BARRY WESTGATE Journal Staff Writer
Source: THE EDMONTON JOURNAL

So, here we are, finally. After more than 30 years, this Edmonton Journal career is a wrap. As they say in the movie business I covered for so many of those years - it's a take. "Cut and print!"

Thirty years! Who'd have thought.

Certainly not me, back on that first day, Feb. 12, 1962.

Then, the new job meant only one thing. It had to last until I could get a "foothold" in Canada - and could stop worrying about perhaps having to prematurely pack up and go back to New Zealand.

The $65 a week I would be making as a reporter would . . . well, what did I need, six months? At the time - being so palpably "new" in the new land - it seemed like a lot to hope for.

Now it is almost 31 years on. I guess everything turned out for the best, after all - in the long run.

In three decades of several different kinds of Edmonton Journals, under six publishers and a variety of senior editors, through a long list of varied responsibilities, in three buildings and with some incredible changes in technology, perseverance is probably the best word for it.

But now it's time to go.

For people in this business they love, knowing that is not always the easy part.

***

When I started at The Journal, milk was still being delivered door-to-door by horse-drawn cart. There was one nightclub and no entertainment allowed in taverns and lounges. There were only two amateur theatre companies. The city had just one pizza joint.

There were no Sunday movies or shopping, or sport or entertainment that could be charged for. The first high-rise apartment block had just been completed and stood alone on 110th Street, north of the High Level Bridge.

It was still some time before the boom that, when it began in earnest, would cause the comprehensive metamorphosis of a city to run rampant, through the '70s and on into the '80s - until Edmonton was transformed into a vastly different place.

From covering Theatre For Children Saturday mornings at Victoria Composite High School, to six seasons on Broadway and one in (London's) West End, it's been quite a ride. From sitting in on a city's "growing up" to mingling with movie stars at world premieres, writing about the Edmonton Eskimos or listening to Muhammad Ali's special inner thoughts, it has been very special.

I was there, right there, when Joe Shoctor decided there would be a Citadel Theatre.

Likewise, pen in hand, I was listening when artist Len Gibbs talked about taking the plunge and quitting an ad agency career to pursue the risky dream of becoming a full-time artist; when Buddy Victor and Al Osten introduced something new called Weight Watchers to Alberta; when Mel Hurtig stopped being a bookseller in his unpretentious little Jasper Avenue store and started out on bigger things to do with the conscience of a country.

"Thanks again, Barry," Gibbs would write, a while after becoming established as one of the outstanding Canadians in his field. "You know, if it weren't for guys like you, I don't think I would have been able to make it as a full-time artist."

Somewhere along the way there also was a note signed by Frank Sinatra, thanking me for a review. At least Frank wasn't threatening my kneecaps - which is something Johnny Wayne of Wayne and Shuster seemed to have in mind during our celebrated countrywide tiff years ago.

In that vein, country singer Hank Snow once sent a telegram promising to shoot me the next time he came to town. We later made up. Not so the hundreds of hurt teens and teenies who inundated this newspaper with letters of outrage after I had made one of my more "celebrated" critical announcements in a column of the time.

The Beatles, I had written, along with repeated put-downs of that whole musical syndrome, were no more than a "passing fad."

"If I was your kid I'd run away before I was 10," wrote one youngster, unhappily. "Just thought I'd let you know how much I hate you."

On a more down-to-earth front, as Social Credit attitudes and politics were going out of vogue, we were right in the fight for more liberal liquor licensing laws, for freedom of choice on Sundays, for a more realistic approach to film censorship.

We sat in at Tita's, the long-gone restaurant operated by Rudy Tosta and Sal Acampore, when Topless made its debut in Edmonton. When the acclaimed film A Clockwork Orange was banned in Alberta - an act of myopia that might have been the straw that finally broke the back of archaic attitudes toward censorship - it was off to Vancouver to write about a legitimate film work in which outmoded government interference was preposterous.

I wrote on, through the years, as an entire downtown was transformed into steel, concrete and glass. Stood by, in fact, barely raising a murmur in print, as historical gems whose loss we now loudly lament fell to progress's wrecking ball.

On the other hand, positives in reporting sprang from the initial window of opportunity here for major-league hockey, when Bill Hunter spoke for the World Hockey Association.

"It's the biggest thing to hit the sports scene in 1,000 years," Hunter told us back in 1972. "The kind of people who believe World Hockey won't go are the same people who believe the world is flat."

That was Bill. They don't make 'em like that, anymore.

Amongst the daily doses of tip and conjecture - back in the days when every facet of city life wasn't covered as closely by the media as it is today and you could get a "scoop" or two - there was a comment in 1973 about a "Strathcona historical group" seeking money from city council and approval in principle for "preserving the character of the Strathcona area."

When only $4,000 was forthcoming, a spokesperson was moved to comment, "If no major funding is in sight, then to heck with them."

Obviously, clearer and more determined heads eventually prevailed in Old Strathcona.

Out in the wider world of entertainment for so many years there were many special moments - far too many to dwell upon here.

But in 15 years of reviewing and writing about movies, getting to rub shoulders with childhood cinema hero John Wayne in the historic Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard is something to single out.

Though it wasn't exactly "rubbing shoulders." The Duke was big. Tall, wide, thick, hands like . . .

Well, he was just BIG, that's all!

Then there was a memorable dinner in the storied Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Centre, right after the world premiere of My Fair Lady, with Rex Harrison in the next seat and Audrey Hepburn across the table.

Speaking of childhood favorites brought to real life, there was a rare interview with Moe, Larry and Curly, the Three Stooges. And, as precious to me, some wonderful dialogue from Bill Kenny, the original signature alto of The Inkspots.

That was at the Kingsway Inn, back in the '60s, when manager Jim Gregg was one of the first people in the city trying to make it in the very early days of better lounge-dining room licensing regulations.

Of the group of gracious big-name personalities encountered along the way, a couple of names come particularly to mind - Muhammad Ali, who in private moments was an intriguing antithesis of his bombastic "`public" persona, and opera superstar Beverly Sills.

Ah, yes. Beverly Sills.

Dinner in a small spaghetti house on West 58th with Sills and various members of her family, prior to her coming here to sing Lucia Di Lammermoor with the Edmonton Opera Association, was a memorable experience.

At Venus Continental, after "convincing" nine-year-old daughter Muffy that she couldn't have a hamburger in a pasta joint, and showing off the holes in the knees of her panty hose from "flopping down all day" at rehearsals for a production of Lucia, Sills the prima donna was actually Sills the real person, warm and friendly.

"Nine times I auditioned for the New York City Opera," the new superstar had said, finally having negotiated a long and frustrating road. "I don't get discouraged. The chip on my shoulder just got bigger and bigger."

About an invitation from opera lover Burt Lancaster to do a filmed version of Manon:

"He said they'd photograph me through a gauze screen. I figured maybe they should use heavy bandages."

That's Beverly Sills. Warm, down-to-earth, real. Very, very special.

Also worth recalling are sharp quotes from three satisfying interviews from the racially and integration-conscious '60s.

From Harry Belafonte, the first time he was in Edmonton:

"Individuals might have pointed the guns at Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy, but 200 million Americans pulled the trigger.

Prejudice is the culture and makeup of man.

"The great American triumph in anything is its muscle, its power, its capacity for violence.

"We are always flexing our muscles. The national psychology has never been able to understand that it has to find other solutions."

From folk singer Miriam Makeba, her South African passport at the time confiscated:

"When I sing `Where shall I go?' I mean it. Where indeed? I can't go home. They won't let me. And home hasn't been so kind to members of my race.

"Wouldn't it be nice, just once to be able to catch a plane and go home; without having to be told what to do, where to sit and eat, who to talk to.

"I don't expect it will ever come to this - not in my lifetime, anyway."

From David Baldwin, the actor brother of James, here for a Citadel production of In White America:

"When a child comes out of school at the age of 17 and cannot read or write something is definitely wrong. I was taught to despise myself.

"I was called Little Black Sambo and told that I climbed trees. I was taught a whole lot of dirty things, and I'll never get it out of my system. The destroying starts from childhood."

There are other quotes, if not quite of the same import.

"It's letting the people know that the kid is grown up and not wearing white shoes anymore," Paul Anka told me in 1967, of his comeback tour in Canada.

"We got nothin' else to do," an old and tired Louis Armstrong said, about just going on and on.

"Now what girl would live with 114 people," impressionist Rich Little quipped, about his bachelor status, while we rode in from the airport one day.

From 74-year-old Jack Benny, one long-ago Klondike Days, after borrowing my pen to sign an autograph for a seven-year-old: "This kid has followed me around for years and years and years."

For a clash of city hall "titans," we were there - a year or so ago, now - when Bill McLean described fellow alderman Ed Leger, long a self-appointed watchdog for untoward practices, as "a frustrated kind of Sam Ervin looking for a Watergate."

Always quotable, even in later years - when he was desperately trying to hang on as the last of a breed passed over and given up on by this helter-skelter-for-profit town - was promoter Nick Zubray.

"Listen, I was on the square," Nick had said, not long before he died, referring to a much earlier plan he had had to establish the first local nudist colony.

"You come into this world naked, you gotta go out naked."

And so he did - left out and disappointed, passed over and sadly alone.

When ace morning man Bob Bradburn left CJCA to switch to the fledgling CHQT, CJCA's program director Harry Boon hastened to pick up the telephone to inform me, assuredly, "He's making a big mistake."

Some mistake. Bradburn will have been at CHQT 20 years this coming February.

It wasn't "work," not at all, to talk to all of these people and so many more; or to be on the scene for many of the happenings and decisions that have shaped the city of today.

It wasn't work to interview Tim Finn of Split Enz, he being a fellow expatriate from the same small New Zealand town (pop. 5,300), and just a tot in short pants when I left for Canada; or to wade through many drinks one very long night in the old Shasta lounge with Nick Reynolds, Bob Shane and John Stewart of the Kingston Trio, as we celebrated the birth of Stewart's first child.

What am I going to miss? Not much. No. It is time.

"Thrilled to see Westgate back in his regular spot, right where he belongs," someone kindly wrote, when the city column resumed in 1989, after I had spent many years "in from the cold" in various supervisory roles, particularly sports editor and news editor.

That was nice, but it was a different around-the-town beat I came back to.

For one thing - be it sports, business, entertainment, whatever - the incredible "winning streak" this city has been on for so many years now, had taken a lot of the "fun" and "spontaneity" out of most things.

And certainly changed the way things are done.

There were few "colorful characters" left on the streets; no downtown storefronts at which to chat with familiar faces.

None of the old bistros and restaurants remained, those that had been the daily forums for "business," both political and corporate.

These days, the wheeling and dealing, the "moving and shaking" - so to speak - is mostly hidden away, up there somewhere behind impassive glass and concrete.

Some things don't change, though.

After a column a year ago critical of the Osmond Boys at the Klondike Days exhibition grounds, a petition of complaint arrived from Calgary signed by 429 youngsters.

And there is still the fan mail.

"I seldom read your column because I have difficulty deciding whether it represents the ramblings of a fool who has occasional wise insights, or the musings of a wise man who occasionally babbles foolishly," advised one letter, a little while ago.

"I would ignore you except you have a public voice."

Not any more. Not after today.

It's time to go; time to climb off a roller-coaster ride that has been a pleasure, thank you - and often a whole lot of laughs, too.

Someone else from the negative side of the ledger once wrote that "too often the writing reflects the inadequacies of the writer." This with the admonishment to my bosses that it was time for a change, that "much would be gained by striking out afresh in this field."

That was in 1964.

Well OK, I agree. Finally, I do.