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| Ministry Of Transport James Snow Cutting Frank Miller's Tie At Huntsville Overpass Opening |
THE APPLE DOESN'T FALL FAR FROM THE TREE - THE CURRIE BOYS MODERN DAY NEWS HOUNDS
NOTE: ON SATURDAY, DURING THE ANNUAL STREET SALE, HERE IN GRAVENHURST, WE HAD QUITE A FEW CELEBRITIES DROP IN......THAT WE CAN'T NAME BECAUSE THEIR PRIVACY IS PROTECTED IN OUR SHOP. WE'D LIKE TO SPILL THE BEANS, BUT THE REASON THEY'RE OUR GOOD CUSTOMERS, IS BECAUSE OF THE FACT THEY CAN SHOP ANONYMOUSLY FOR OLD RECORDS, VINTAGE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND ANTIQUES WITHOUT BEING HASSLED BY AUTOGRAPH SEEKERS. THE AGE OF TWITTER, ETC., CAN CAUSE PROBLEMS FOR US, IF SOMEONE WAS TO, WITHOUT OUR KNOWLEDGE, REVEAL A CELEBRITY IN OUR STORE, AND CASUALLY INVITING FANS TO ATTEND AT THAT MOMENT. WE COULD BE IN REAL TROUBLE THAT WAY, SO WE HAVE EVEN PREPARED TO CLOSE THE SHOP ENTIRELY, UNDER CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES., AND THE VISIT BY CERTAIN CELEBRITIES. AND BY THE WAY, WE DON'T ASK FOR AUTOGRAPHS EITHER, BUT IT IS OPEN TO ALL OUR VISITORS TO SIGN OUR GUEST GUITAR, WHICH IS BASICALLY A JUNKER INSTRUMENT THAT'S GOOD FOR WRITING ON.
EVERY NOW AND AGAIN HOWEVER, THERE IS A CELEBRITY WHO WALKS THROUGH THE DOOR, WHO IS OKAY WITH A LITTLE EXTRA PUBLICITY, AND WILL EVEN ASK ONE OF THE BOYS TO TAKE A PHOTO OF THEM; WITH THE SHOP AS A BACKGROUND. FAIR ENOUGH. BUT ON THE WEEKEND, IT WAS KIND OF HUMOROUS TO AN OLD NEWSHOUND LIKE ME, WHO WORKED THE MUSKOKA BEAT FOR QUITE A FEW YEARS.....WHEN ANDREW CAME TO TELL ME HE HAD JUST TAKEN A PHOTOGRAPH OF MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT, TONY CLEMENT, HOLDING A SPECIAL EDITION, "KITTY KAT" PINK GUITAR, WE HAVE ON CONSIGNMENT. I IMMEDIATELY OFFERED HIM THE NEWS, THAT HE HAD JUST TAKEN A NATIONAL PHOTOGRAPH, OF INTEREST TO CANADIANS SEA TO SEA......AND TO BOOT, ON TONY'S CAMERA / PHONE. I ASKED HIM IF HE HAD ANY IDEA, HOW ALL US OLD REPORTERS, FROM MY VINTAGE, WEARING DOWN THE OLD SHOE-LEATHERS, WOULD HAVE RECKLESSLY CLIMBED OVER EACH OTHER, TO GRAB A SHOT LIKE THAT......WE COULD FLOG TO THE DAILIES. WHEN PAUL RIMSTEAD WAS A KID, GROWING UP IN BRACEBRIDGE, HE COULD THINK OF NOTHING ELSE, BUT BEING A REPORTER FOR THE NATIONAL PRESS. HE USED TO DRIVE AROUND ON HIS BIKE, FOR HOURS ON END, WITH A PRESS BADGE ON THE FRONT, AS A STRINGER FOR THE ORILLIA PACKET AND TIMES. HE WAS LOOKING FOR THE BIG NEWS BREAK. ANYTHING. AN ACCIDENT, A FIRE, AN EVENT OF SOME MAGNITUDE. BUT RIMSTEAD WOULD HAVE RECOGNIZED THIS TONY CLEMENT MOMENT, AS SOMETHING THAT WOULD HAVE MADE AN INTERESTING FRONT PAGE PHOTO, OR BETTER STILL, A PAGE THREE COLUMN. "MP LOOKING FOR ROCK BAND TO JOIN. TIRED OF POLITICS." I'M JUST IMAGINING HERE WHAT FUN RIMSTEAD WOULD HAVE HAD WITH THIS TINY BUT SIGNIFICANT NATIONAL MOMENT.
WHAT MADE IT NEAT FOR ME, WAS THAT ANDREW WAS ASKED TO SNAP THE PHOTO, IN HIS SHOP, AFTER AN ENJOYABLE CHAT ABOUT MUSIC WITH THE MUSKOKA MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT. HE SCORED A NEWSMAKER AND DIDN'T EVEN KNOW IT. BUT IT REMINDED ME OF MY OLD DAYS, WORKING WITH OUR FEDERAL AND PROVINCIAL REPRESENTATIVES, WHO TREATED ME PRETTY WELL. SO I JUST HAPPENED TO HAVE SOME COPY TO SHARE, ABOUT THOSE MANY MILES TRAVELLED IN MY YOUTH, LOOKING FOR THOSE NATIONAL STORIES....THAT NEVER CAME.
BY THE WAY, THANKS SO MUCH TONY, FOR DROPPING IN TO SEE OUR BUSINESS, AND TWITTERING THE NOW FAMOUS ANDREW CURRIE PHOTO. HE'S MADE DAD SO PROUD. HOWEVER, I'VE MADE IT CLEAR TO HIM, THAT HE SHOULD KEEP HIS DAY JOB.......AS A BUSINESS OWNER.....AS REPORTERS MAKE ABOUT A QUARTER OF WHAT HE DOES SELLING VINTAGE INSTRUMENTS.
I AM TOLD THAT TONY CLEMENT TWITTERED ABOUT SPENDING A FEW MOMENTS AT OUR SHOP, WITH A PHOTO TO PROVE IT.
MY JOB WITH MUSKOKA PUBLICATIONS WAS TO SHADOW THE BIG GUYS
I started in the reporting business in January 1979. I had just opened a small antique business in Bracebridge, finished up a local history research project for the Muskoka Board of Education, helped launch the Bracebridge Historical Society, and Woodchester Villa and Museum, and framed my degree in Canadian history from York University. It didn’t prepare me for the mitt full of hockey score sheets tumbled onto my desk that first week, on the job in the MacTier office of The Muskoka Lakes / Georgian Bay Beacon. It was my job, as a rookie and only reporter, to decipher the scribbled scoresheets and make them into sports page summaries. As you could hardly read the scribbling, I made a lot of spelling mistakes with player names, and heard about every one of them an hour or so after the paper hit the newstand.
My other job was to chase fire trucks. I had once owned a Polaroid camera but the toughest thing about that was affording and then re-loading the film. The boss handed me a 35 mm Minolta, some film, and sent me off down the highway to get a couple of accident-scene flicks. Talk about experience by immersion. I screwed up the hockey scoresheets for the first ten editions and messed up a lot of film. They didn’t have a line-up of second-string reporters, in the wings, so I guess it was a case of putting up with the misadventures, due to lack of available personnel. They probably figured the local kid would stop screwing up sooner or later. If he could graduate university he could figure out how to use a camera.
I got to stand in cold arenas, along stretches of local highways covering weekly traffic accidents, spent quality time dancing around weaving and bobbing firemen, at house and brush fires, and sat in a stupor for four and five hours at council meetings, trying to find a few newsworthy items for the front page. At one Muskoka council, hell, they used to ask my opinion on decisions they seemed reluctant to make. I wasn’t sure I was entitled to an opinion but I played along. I got myself in a lot of messes back then, like not knowing the difference between receivership and bankruptcy, which very nearly got the newspaper in hot-water when the story came out about a local businessman in peril. And then there was the reality, that in the middle of phone interviews or typing the big news stories of the week, I also had to tend the office supply portion of the MacTier business. You know what? University hadn’t prepared me to handle one blessed moment of my new job. I’m not sure where one would attend, to learn about puking discreetly, while at an accident scene, never missing any of the important actuality. Many times I had to exit quickly to gain composure, in order to come back to the scene for important photos and to make notes. I used to run back and forth to the nearby bush to regain composure. I’m so glad the emergency personnel didn’t pick up on this.......and if they did, they saved it for station house anecdotes.
Every time I heard that town siren I got queasy. I saw some terrible things out there on the road. At times you wanted to scream along with the victims, or plug your ears.....and I’m sure all the first responders felt that way a lot. The first head-on collision I went to, on the Highway 69 “S” curve, put me on my ass in the first two minutes on-site. A car had smashed head-on into a tractor-trailer and the debris field was massive.....the odor of burning fuel toxic. But it was the sound of the man trapped in the car that made me sick to my stomach. When they put the jaws of life to work, the release must have caused him severe pain because the scream was blood curdling. I was down more than I was up at that accident scene. The firemen didn’t know whether I was a casualty of the accident or the rubber-legged reporter.
I had never thought much about my own transition in the business, to be able to tolerate such horrible scenes. One afternoon, a few years later, I had to attend an accident in Muskoka Lakes. Two people had been ejected from the car, and when I got there the bodies were covered with a yellow tarpaulin. There were three reporters from the press at the scene.....(we all had emergency scanners at our offices), and one of them was a new girl who had never attended an accident before. She was acting pretty tough and I knew it was a front for being scared. She went on and on about stuff, while my mate and I stood reverently to the side. Then a substantial gust of wind lifted the tarp, exposing the two deceased on the tarmac. From rosy cheeked and bubbly, she went ashen to nauseous, and also disappeared into the woods behind. While you never get used to it, or at least I didn’t, there was a point of traverse between covering council happenings to road carnage that seemed a well trodden down and familiar path. It was a job. Like all jobs, some aspects just suck. I didn’t hate the calls as much as when I had begun.
I remember being at one terrible accident and looking down, at one point, watching a stream of blood washing against my shoe. It was then that I saw a distraught friend running to the scene, falling and screaming up to the wreckage. I had to leave. It was the last accident scene I photographed. I knew both of the young people killed. I was a writer, not a reporter.
When I got to follow M.P.P. Frank Miller, and M.P. Stan Darling around West Muskoka, it became a welcome reprieve. Both politicians were gentlemen and they treated the press with respect. Frank had known my father Ed for years, and was always kind to me at the plethora of “grip and grins” we covered most weekends. There were ribbon cuttings, anniversaries, birthdays, speaking engagements, club events, and wherever these two representatives showed up, Ted wasn’t far behind. The publisher sent me a list of events on Friday afternoons, and I was to notch every single event. We’d use those pictures over three editions if necessary....but by golly, I never took one of those glad-handing pics that it wasn’t eventually used for some purpose. As I wasn’t a very good photographer, some were a wee bit out of focus.
I’ve written about this before but I can’t forget how both Frank and Stan helped me keep my job. First of all, I didn’t pick up photo-taking easily. I endured many misadventures that, in those days, didn’t rear-up until the Monday afternoon, before press day, when the films were developed. By then, finding out that my flicks didn’t turn out well, usually left us high and dry. I learned how to bracket my photos so I could use different light settings to get at least one usable photo, at the very least. The publisher gave me permission to shoot as many photos as it would take to eliminate the pre-publication panic. Frank, in particular, seemed well aware I was going to screw something up, whether it was a battery failure on the flash unit, or the loss of a pen, or notepad, or something else. So after awhile he would actually talk to me before the group photo, to see for himself what was likely to happen that particular day. Frank would go so far as to help me set up a photograph, and pull every one together into the frame. He’d even help me get all the correct spellings of the folks in the photograph. I don’t know how many times in those years, Frank was my crutch, and photographic assistant at the same time, as he was the event’s special guest....the Member of Parliament.....and the Treasurer of Ontario. I wonder how many other reporters could claim to have had such an important man as an assistant.
Stan Darling was much the same. He was brilliant at public relations.....and had perfected this social aspect of his job. Admittedly he was also concerned about getting good press photos for the regular newsletter (of which I had many published over the years) and he figured the only way to get them from me, was to offer some photo direction and suggestions. Stan was a motivator, no doubt about it. When he thought it was time for the group photograph, no matter whether the host or subject of the party was ready or not, Stan, with a booming voice, would get every one’s attention. I was the first to catch the wink of Stan’s eye that it was time to get to work. Both men had busy Saturday schedules, and on many of these junkets, I’d be with them at two or three other events on the same day. Stan would organize my photo for me, if the others didn’t show the initiative. He was as photogenic as a million dollar model, and he always knew how to look good in a crowd. Stan got to know how many shots I needed to fire off to get some good ones, and it was only when I nodded that he broke rank, donned his fedora, and offered his thanks for the invite.
Frank always had a hard time getting out of events because he loved to talk with folks, some he had known for decades. There were times when I’d have to tap his shoulder to remind him that I was heading down the road for another grip and grin, and that both of us were running late. Stan would already be there and be impatient for “Scoop,” (that was me), to get there as well. While they weren’t always at the same event, I’ve got to tell you, it was great to get so many usable shots on the indoor circuit. I’d gladly fob-off the snowmobile races and ice fishing derbies for the Stan and Frank crawl through my region.
One day, early on in my first year reporting, I met Frank at a local diner in MacTier, about a half hour before the next photo shoot. I’d stopped for something to eat but realized I was short of cash. Frank asked me to join him for lunch, on his dime, and I’m not sure if it was a burger or hot dog, but by golly it was delightful either way. He impressed me because he was just an average guy doing his job for constituents and the province. Frank was a smart businessman and a straight-forward politician. He was immensely patient with me when we were working on an interview. But he took time to chat with a cub reporter and seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. Actually I think we talked about his son Norman, now our Muskoka MPP, who I’d been to England with, as part of John Rutherford’s famous BMLSS Concert Band of 1974. I’d also played hockey with his son Ross, who I believe was a not-so-bad goalie.
Point is, I felt truly honored, to have had these opportunities, over so many years, of getting to know both Frank and Stan. We shared a lot of cake, cookies, coffee and time out on the hustings, especially at election time. While I didn’t start-out enjoying these ventures, because they were (at times) terribly boring events, gradually I came to appreciate time spent with two local political legends. These were well respected elected officials, I can tell you, and every event I went to, was greatly enhanced the moment they walked through the doors. While I probably expected them to be demanding and a tad cranky with their weekend workloads, they were anything but impatient or uncaring to anyone involved. Even when I suffered equipment failure, both gents were abundantly patient and obliging. Frank would even remind me not to forget my cap when we were about to leave an event.
I only have one regret and it was quite accidental. It is the reason I would threaten to fire any reporter who screwed with copy, as a lark, or made sport of photo orders to get a laugh. It happened a lot and sometimes the joke made its way to print. I’d had taken a series of photographs of Stan at the Rosseau Fall Fair one year, using a motor wind to get shots of the MP enjoying a hamburger....while the chef looked on. I had about a dozen good ones to use, and I thought it would be great to run three or four small, closely cropped shots, on page two of that coming week’s Herald-Gazette. My idea was to use one of him approaching the burger, then biting into it, and then looking satisfied after the first bite. Well, some clown in lay-out thought that switching the order would be neat. So instead, they changed the order I had numbered them, so that the “bite shot” ran as the first of three. Then the look of satisfaction, and then third in the row, was of Stan looking at the burger with a puzzled look.....as one might, who has just bit into something dreadful, or a mouthful of the chef’s hair. As they howled about the sequence on the layout table, Jesus I didn’t think they’d wind up that way in the paper. The publisher hadn’t quite expected it either, and as they were close friends, old Ted had to make a phone call of clarification. Stan, as usual, wasn’t perturbed because the photos were clear and posted with prominence. He didn’t seem to upset about it, but I did suggest I’d make it up to him somehow. I was laughing too hard to fire anybody that day.
The best candid shot of Frank, as I’ve written about before, was at a Huntsville overpass opening. Jim Snow, then Minister of Transport, pulled me aside and told me he was going to take the ceremonial scissors, and instead of cutting the ribbon, would snip off a portion of Frank’s new tie. Jim was a wonderful character, full of interesting stories, and had the kind of twinkle in his eye that meant, to me, he was serious. He let me know that he’d do this on the count of three. Sure enough, on three, with Frank staring at me, Jim dropped the ribbon, grabbed his tie, and took the scissors to the tip as promised. I got the shot. I sort of expect, with Frank’s expression, he knew his associate was up to a prank. Now this was my kind of reporting, all of it memorable and social. There were many times reporters were not treated very well but with these folks, every event they attended had a goodwill attached that was genuine. Including ribbon cuttings like this one.
Knowing Frank back then got me close, for many candid photographs, with Cabinet Ministers such as Frank Drea, Roy McMurtry, and Premier Bill Davis. With Stan and Frank I got a chance to get close to Princess Margaret and Lady Sarah, when they visited Muskoka in the early 1980's. There were many other photo-shoots that Frank and Stan afforded me, over their years in office, that gave me many good front pagers.
I got over the funk of that first year, as an unhappy single guy, in part, because I was occupied with interesting work. I know it may sound overly sentimental, to afford Frank and Stan credit for my recovery, but it was venturing out with these gentleman, into areas and social circumstances I’d never known or experienced in other ways, that was illuminating at a most important time in my writing career. The fact they didn’t blow me off as a rookie reporter was a start. I’m pretty sure in the highly competitive media scrums, newbies don’t get many helping hands to keep their jobs.
Just a bunch of neat memories now. Good for the boy’s scrapbook.
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