Final Edition; From paperboy to columnist, 'routes' in journalism run deep
The Edmonton Journal
Wed Jul 29 1998
Page: B1/ FRONT
Section: City
Byline: DAVID STAPLES
Column: David Staples
Source: THE EDMONTON JOURNAL
The clock said 3:48 a.m. I went downstairs and wondered for a moment: Is it there?
I Iooked on my front porch. No, it wasn't. A moment of disappointment, but what did I expect? It was still too early for the newspaper to have arrived. It would be here soon, though, I knew that. Indeed, today, it was my task to help deliver it, which is why I was up so early.
I was a paperboy for three years when I was a teenager. A few weeks ago, I decided I wanted to go back to my home town of Devon and help deliver the paper on my old route. You see, this is the last time I'm writing this city column in The Journal. I'm moving on to write for Southam's new national newspaper as the northern Alberta and Territorial correspondent. Before taking that step forward, however, I wanted to step back for a moment, to get back to my roots in this business, to walk the tree-lined streets of my old route where the newspaper first started to open up the world to me.
Most people pay directly these days, so you rarely see your paper deliverer. But on my old route of 55 homes, only two customers paid ahead. The rest I had to visit every week, knock on their door, interrupt their supper, their television, their relaxation, and ask for my $1.25, or whatever it was.
Two images stick out in my mind from that time.
One: the Ashtons' house had a particularly beautiful sounding doorbell. One day, I rang the doorbell to collect. No one appeared to be home. The lights were off. For whatever reason, I just kept ringing that pretty-sounding bell, daydreaming for a moment. After about five minutes of ringing, a very tired and ill-looking Mrs. Ashton came to the door in her housecoat. I was mortified. But the poor woman wasn't angry. She, too, was embarrassed, believing, I suppose, that somehow I had found her hiding out and wouldn't leave until she paid her bill.
Two: the one place I dreaded calling on most of all. In that apartment lived an old man who had a deformed face, a slow shuffling walk, slurred speech and stumps for hands. Most likely these were war wounds, but I couldn't see a brave soldier, only a hideous-looking, frightening fellow.
It was good for me, though, to meet such a man, and to deal with everyone else on the route. It helped me to break out of my little world of friends and family, to go into strange homes, if only for a moment, and see how other people lived.
Bundles of ink-scented Journals used to be dropped at my house for delivery after I came home from school. Now the paper is dropped early in the morning at a central point. A person needs a car to pick them up and do the job. The work is done almost exclusively by adults, men and women like Gary and Roselien Anderson of Devon, both in their 50s, both with other full-time jobs. Gary is a mechanic, Roselien an LPN.
"That's a licensed practical nurse?" I ask.
"No,'' she laughs, "a low-paid nurse."
Gary and Roselien do my old route, starting work at 5 a.m. Gary drives a truck, Roselien a minivan. Each takes a bundle of papers, then heads out. I go with Roselien, taking turns with her dropping papers on doorsteps, in mailboxes and behind screen doors, taking care not to scatter the sections.
When I delivered papers, only a few houses on each street didn't get The Journal. Now fewer houses on each street subscribe. The Journal used to be the only kid in town, says Dave Reidie, who runs the newspaper sales department here. There wasn't any other daily paper and there were only two TV stations. But now the market is clogged with papers, magazines and specialty TV channels.
Even so, more than 120,000 homes still get the Journal delivered each day (with another 30,000 or so sold in stores), and Reidie says home delivery numbers are going up across the country the past two years.
The Devon route pays Gary and Roselien Anderson about $230 a month. The customers pay them $15.23 a month, a reasonable price in my mind, but then I grew up to love the paper and idolize newspaper and magazine journalists.
In my paperboy days, I started reading Journal sports columnist Wayne Overland, and my subsequent heroes in journalism were often, but not always, sports writers as well.
Eddie Keen. Terry Jones. Earl Macrae. Bob Greene. Gary Smith. Jimmy Cannon. Studs Terkel. Frank DeFord. Curry Kirkpatrick. Mike Royko. Allen Abel. Cam Cole. By way of their written words, all these journalists became welcome friends in my home.
From Smith came deep and touching psychological profiles of famous people. From Greene, extraordinary tales about ordinary people. From Cannon, a kind of column writing that is close to poetry. From Terkel, people talking about themselves in their own moving words. From Cole, a smart, funny and highly readable discourse about my favourite Canadian teams and athletes.
I've written this column since 1992. If anything, I've learned not to measure myself against my heroes. I'd never win that way. I had to find my own way. In the end, I've come to enjoy the work.
Newspapering is a great job, especially for a young person. It allowed me to meet and interview people I'd never otherwise have met, from the artists like Norval Morrisseau and Alex Janvier to the lady who had taught her magpie to speak, from sports heroes like Wayne Gretzky and Elvis Stojko to the crotchety, old ex-U.S. infantryman who was gunning down his neighbours' cats in Lamont and boasting about it.
Newspapering has shown me much of the world. Newspapers bring the world to you.
Today's newspaper, like all newspapers, will be gone as soon as it's read; discarded, recycled, forgotten.
But that one moment each day when the paper arrives at your house, well, it is a very welcome and interesting friend indeed. And it's been my pleasure to be that friend to some of you for a time.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Journal of the 1950s by George Stout
'50s newsroom full of clattering typewriters and calls for 'Copy!'
Edmonton Journal
Tue Nov 11 2003
Page: C8
Section: A Century On Your Doorstep
Byline: George Stout
Dateline: EDMONTON
Source: The Edmonton Journal
EDMONTON - Halfway through The Journal's first century, in the early 1950s B.C. (Before Computers!), news coverage of Edmonton events was a basic routine. It was performed day after day, just as it was the world over and as it had been for decades.
The city editor was in charge of the local news staff, consisting of reporters and photographers assigned to "beats" covering all of the major agencies and departments operating in Edmonton. Separate staff members were assigned to the sports, women's and business sections.
The heart of the daily operation of the newsroom was the "desk"; around it was the "rim," where the "chiefs" sat. In addition to the news editor, Don McDougall, there was the telegraph editor, Homer Ramage, in charge of handling the world news coming over The Canadian Press teletype machines, his assistant, Stan Williams, the city editor (myself) and assistant Norman O'Dell.
The newsroom of those days was a noisy place, filled with the clatter of ancient Underwood and Remington manual typewriters as reporters came in from their beats and wrote up the news stories they had picked up on their rounds.
The dean of long-service reporters in those days, Tom Mansell, would peck out the latest moves of the provincial Social Credit government. Ace police reporter Eddie Keen would detail the latest from the crime and traffic fronts, and Ron Hayter would bring in the word from City Hall, the mayor and council.
It was in the '50s that a young Bill Newbigging joined the staff as a "cub reporter." He learned the trade so well he later became publisher.
As deadlines neared, cries of "Copy!" added to the din as copy boys hurried from reporters' desks with the first "takes" of their stories for the first edition. As city desk received them, editors would check them, write appropriate headlines and "catchlines" to identify the story, then send the copy by pneumatic tubes to the third-floor composing room to be set into type.
As the day progressed, the editors conferred on the major stories of the day, their placement and "play." Charts -- called "dummies" -- of Page 1 and the page for local news would go up to the composing room for the makeup men to place the columns of type into the page forms.
In the meantime, as type was "set" on the linotype machines, it would be placed in a metal tray, inked, and a "gallery proof" printed. It and the original copy were sent down to the proofroom adjacent to the newsroom. There, a group of proof readers would scan it for errors and return it to the composing room for correction before the type went into the page form. A second corrected proof was sent down for recheck. In more recent times, with the advent of computers and spell-check, proofreaders were deemed redundant and eliminated for a time, but as their value was appreciated, they have returned.
As press time approached, telegraph and city editors would go up to the composing room to supervise the story placement in their pages. It was there that the skill of reading type backwards was learned!
For most of its century, The Journal was an afternoon paper -- it's only since the '80s that it has been a morning publication. In the '50s the staff worked basically morning and afternoon, with night assignments to cover evening meetings or events. Thus the desk crew would await the first edition coming up from the press room about 11 a.m. Revisions and late-breaking stories would be added for the home edition. The morning edition was timed to catch trains and buses to district points and also for street sales.
Until the end of the '50s, the process of getting the flat forms of type onto the giant rotary press in the basement required massive pressures. First, a large, soft matrix had to be embossed by forcing it down onto the type. Then this "matt" was baked hard, inserted into a half-cylinder form and molten metal extruded into it to make plates to fit onto the letterpress for printing.
As the giant rolls of newsprint paper roared through the maze of plates, they were trimmed "on the fly" and passed into the folder to emerge as the daily papers ready for the readers.
By the early 1960s, the hot metal days began to give way to modern advances.
Now as pages are made up in the quieter facilities in the Journal building downtown on 101st Street, they are transmitted to the printing plant at Eastgate, where the large offset press does a superb job, particularly with the quality of photographs.
Edmonton Journal
Tue Nov 11 2003
Page: C8
Section: A Century On Your Doorstep
Byline: George Stout
Dateline: EDMONTON
Source: The Edmonton Journal
EDMONTON - Halfway through The Journal's first century, in the early 1950s B.C. (Before Computers!), news coverage of Edmonton events was a basic routine. It was performed day after day, just as it was the world over and as it had been for decades.
The city editor was in charge of the local news staff, consisting of reporters and photographers assigned to "beats" covering all of the major agencies and departments operating in Edmonton. Separate staff members were assigned to the sports, women's and business sections.
The heart of the daily operation of the newsroom was the "desk"; around it was the "rim," where the "chiefs" sat. In addition to the news editor, Don McDougall, there was the telegraph editor, Homer Ramage, in charge of handling the world news coming over The Canadian Press teletype machines, his assistant, Stan Williams, the city editor (myself) and assistant Norman O'Dell.
The newsroom of those days was a noisy place, filled with the clatter of ancient Underwood and Remington manual typewriters as reporters came in from their beats and wrote up the news stories they had picked up on their rounds.
The dean of long-service reporters in those days, Tom Mansell, would peck out the latest moves of the provincial Social Credit government. Ace police reporter Eddie Keen would detail the latest from the crime and traffic fronts, and Ron Hayter would bring in the word from City Hall, the mayor and council.
It was in the '50s that a young Bill Newbigging joined the staff as a "cub reporter." He learned the trade so well he later became publisher.
As deadlines neared, cries of "Copy!" added to the din as copy boys hurried from reporters' desks with the first "takes" of their stories for the first edition. As city desk received them, editors would check them, write appropriate headlines and "catchlines" to identify the story, then send the copy by pneumatic tubes to the third-floor composing room to be set into type.
As the day progressed, the editors conferred on the major stories of the day, their placement and "play." Charts -- called "dummies" -- of Page 1 and the page for local news would go up to the composing room for the makeup men to place the columns of type into the page forms.
In the meantime, as type was "set" on the linotype machines, it would be placed in a metal tray, inked, and a "gallery proof" printed. It and the original copy were sent down to the proofroom adjacent to the newsroom. There, a group of proof readers would scan it for errors and return it to the composing room for correction before the type went into the page form. A second corrected proof was sent down for recheck. In more recent times, with the advent of computers and spell-check, proofreaders were deemed redundant and eliminated for a time, but as their value was appreciated, they have returned.
As press time approached, telegraph and city editors would go up to the composing room to supervise the story placement in their pages. It was there that the skill of reading type backwards was learned!
For most of its century, The Journal was an afternoon paper -- it's only since the '80s that it has been a morning publication. In the '50s the staff worked basically morning and afternoon, with night assignments to cover evening meetings or events. Thus the desk crew would await the first edition coming up from the press room about 11 a.m. Revisions and late-breaking stories would be added for the home edition. The morning edition was timed to catch trains and buses to district points and also for street sales.
Until the end of the '50s, the process of getting the flat forms of type onto the giant rotary press in the basement required massive pressures. First, a large, soft matrix had to be embossed by forcing it down onto the type. Then this "matt" was baked hard, inserted into a half-cylinder form and molten metal extruded into it to make plates to fit onto the letterpress for printing.
As the giant rolls of newsprint paper roared through the maze of plates, they were trimmed "on the fly" and passed into the folder to emerge as the daily papers ready for the readers.
By the early 1960s, the hot metal days began to give way to modern advances.
Now as pages are made up in the quieter facilities in the Journal building downtown on 101st Street, they are transmitted to the printing plant at Eastgate, where the large offset press does a superb job, particularly with the quality of photographs.
Marc Horton on how wrong columnists can be
How wrong columnists can be
Edmonton Journal
Sun Nov 2 2003
Page: 45
Section: A Journal Century
Byline: Marc Horton
Dateline: EDMONTON
Source: The Edmonton Journal
EDMONTON - Journal columnist Barry Westgate, movie reviewer, man-about-town and social commentator, knew a bad thing when he saw it.
And the Beatles were bad indeed.
"Who are these talentless upstarts calling themselves the Beatles?" he asked in a Feb. 14, 1964 column, just as Beatlemania was sweeping the Western World.
"And why should I use space here to discuss their dubious worth? Why?"
But Westgate wasn't finished. The Beatles would get more than a brief dismissal.
"Because idiocy of present society demands that I notice them," he said, answering his own question.
"Not through any remarkable talent has this occurred, but rather because teenagers everywhere have become hysterical about these mop-headed showoffs and the impact has reached the supposed adult levels of society."
Enough you say?
Not at all. When Westgate hit his stride, there would be no stopping him.
"Let us hope," he continued, "that the fame that has spread so hysterically, fanned most recently by Ed Sullivan, will just as quickly die. These four from England have no music that distinguishes them from any other mediocre teen band.
"It is my regret that the current world of popular music is dominated by rubbishy songs and a type of mass teenage hysteria," he said, reaching a hysterical level of his own.
"The Beatles, by their obvious musical ineptitude, are a sad, sad commentary on just this.
"May someone step on them quickly."
Whew.
Mind you, Westgate was not alone.
Art Evans, The Journal's page one columnist, agreed.
"The Beatles have to make the loot now," he wrote the same day as Westgate's attack.
"They never know when their popularity will fade as quickly as it rose. Even now, at this very moment, four bald-headed young lads -- lonely, poor, obscure -- may be faithfully rehearsing their act in the dingy back room of some squalid dance hall."
Like Westgate, Evans didn't know when to stop.
"The Beatles will soon be done, but if they have wisely banked their earnings they will be able to laugh all the way to the barbershop. If they have always wanted to take music lessons and voice training, they'll have the money to do it. So good luck to them."
Publisher Basil Dean took the larger, longer view in his editorial page column, although he found the Beatles to be more wholesome than Elvis Presley and his "orbiting midsection."
"I do not willingly watch or listen to the Beatles," he wrote, "but occasionally I am unable to escape from the sound of a radio or television set on which they are performing. They do not appear to sing; they bellow. But what is so new about that?"
Whenever a columnist poses a question, you know an answer will follow almost immediately.
"Some time ago, probably no later than the Edwardian era, popular songs were sung by people with good voices," Dean answered.
"They then stopped being sung; they were crooned.
"Then the crooners went out of style and we came to boogie-woogie and jive.
"And now the bellow.
"It has all been an orderly and logical progression, steadily downward. Perhaps, mercifully, the next phase will be songs which are rendered in absolute silence."
No one listened to the newspaper's advice.
Edmonton Journal
Sun Nov 2 2003
Page: 45
Section: A Journal Century
Byline: Marc Horton
Dateline: EDMONTON
Source: The Edmonton Journal
EDMONTON - Journal columnist Barry Westgate, movie reviewer, man-about-town and social commentator, knew a bad thing when he saw it.
And the Beatles were bad indeed.
"Who are these talentless upstarts calling themselves the Beatles?" he asked in a Feb. 14, 1964 column, just as Beatlemania was sweeping the Western World.
"And why should I use space here to discuss their dubious worth? Why?"
But Westgate wasn't finished. The Beatles would get more than a brief dismissal.
"Because idiocy of present society demands that I notice them," he said, answering his own question.
"Not through any remarkable talent has this occurred, but rather because teenagers everywhere have become hysterical about these mop-headed showoffs and the impact has reached the supposed adult levels of society."
Enough you say?
Not at all. When Westgate hit his stride, there would be no stopping him.
"Let us hope," he continued, "that the fame that has spread so hysterically, fanned most recently by Ed Sullivan, will just as quickly die. These four from England have no music that distinguishes them from any other mediocre teen band.
"It is my regret that the current world of popular music is dominated by rubbishy songs and a type of mass teenage hysteria," he said, reaching a hysterical level of his own.
"The Beatles, by their obvious musical ineptitude, are a sad, sad commentary on just this.
"May someone step on them quickly."
Whew.
Mind you, Westgate was not alone.
Art Evans, The Journal's page one columnist, agreed.
"The Beatles have to make the loot now," he wrote the same day as Westgate's attack.
"They never know when their popularity will fade as quickly as it rose. Even now, at this very moment, four bald-headed young lads -- lonely, poor, obscure -- may be faithfully rehearsing their act in the dingy back room of some squalid dance hall."
Like Westgate, Evans didn't know when to stop.
"The Beatles will soon be done, but if they have wisely banked their earnings they will be able to laugh all the way to the barbershop. If they have always wanted to take music lessons and voice training, they'll have the money to do it. So good luck to them."
Publisher Basil Dean took the larger, longer view in his editorial page column, although he found the Beatles to be more wholesome than Elvis Presley and his "orbiting midsection."
"I do not willingly watch or listen to the Beatles," he wrote, "but occasionally I am unable to escape from the sound of a radio or television set on which they are performing. They do not appear to sing; they bellow. But what is so new about that?"
Whenever a columnist poses a question, you know an answer will follow almost immediately.
"Some time ago, probably no later than the Edwardian era, popular songs were sung by people with good voices," Dean answered.
"They then stopped being sung; they were crooned.
"Then the crooners went out of style and we came to boogie-woogie and jive.
"And now the bellow.
"It has all been an orderly and logical progression, steadily downward. Perhaps, mercifully, the next phase will be songs which are rendered in absolute silence."
No one listened to the newspaper's advice.
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.
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.
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.' "
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.' "
Eddie Keen's recollections, Part 1
BY EDDIE KEEN
************
Logophobia
When the first policewoman was hired by the city police, the chief issued an order that there was to be no more foul language in reports so as to not offend the woman.A very colorful cop named Sam Donaghey covered a fight outside the Coffee Cup Inn one night...He wrote, observing the chief‘s edict, that the fight began when one combatant told the other “to go and partake of sexual delights with himself.”. Another cop wrote that during a safecracking, the thief had “excruciated” himself on the floor.
**********
Calling Card
The superintendent of detectives looked angry when I checked in with him one morning...what’s the problem I asked...
This, he exclaimed, pushing one of my “Eddie Keen Journal Reporter” cards across at me...It had been found on top of a safe blown the night before.
************
Logophobia
When the first policewoman was hired by the city police, the chief issued an order that there was to be no more foul language in reports so as to not offend the woman.A very colorful cop named Sam Donaghey covered a fight outside the Coffee Cup Inn one night...He wrote, observing the chief‘s edict, that the fight began when one combatant told the other “to go and partake of sexual delights with himself.”. Another cop wrote that during a safecracking, the thief had “excruciated” himself on the floor.
**********
Calling Card
The superintendent of detectives looked angry when I checked in with him one morning...what’s the problem I asked...
This, he exclaimed, pushing one of my “Eddie Keen Journal Reporter” cards across at me...It had been found on top of a safe blown the night before.
********
Entrapment
The chief called me in one day, looked very angry... when I inquired, he reached into his desk, and pushed an envelope across..."What’s this you little SOB?” It was a City of Edmonton police dept. envelope. I had used it to send 10 sold Irish Lottery tickets to an address in Montreal...In those day, a round up of lottery ticket sellers was akin to today’s roundup of drug dealers...In fact I had written a story about 231 people charged in one province wide round up of such felons... I had received an envelope at the Journal with the tickets and simply sold them to staff...the chief called in the deputy, what should we do...well I was charged with the crime of illegal sale of lottery tickets...my day in court produce much hilarity except I took it quite seriously..I was fined $10....Years later, Bill Newbigging, who worked with me on the police beat and eventually became publisher of the Journal, was having a drink at the Greenbrier with an RCMP undercover cop.He asked Bill how I had made out on the lottery case.He then revealed I had been set up and mailed the tickets directly to an undercover cop in Montreal.
David Staples: Opening Statement
Many of us have worked in the Edmonton Journal newsroom over the years. This blog is a place where former editors, reporters and columnists can talk about their time at the newspaper.
If you're in any of those categories, and still feel the need to type, please contact me with your own stories about working at this paper and I'll post them.
If you're in any of those categories, and still feel the need to type, please contact me with your own stories about working at this paper and I'll post them.
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