This column is the last I will pen as a full-time editor and writer. Friday is my last day on the job after more than 11 years at The Advance.
I am officially retired, bringing to an end 40 years in newsrooms from B.C. to Nova Scotia and back to Barrie. Actually, my last day was scheduled to be Monday, June 30, but who wants to spoil a terrific Canada Day long weekend? I plan on playing hooky that day. What can they do? Fire me?
While I will be leaving behind the daily deadlines at the Word Factory, I will not be abandoning my mission to bring a little laughter into your lives. The new editor (Lori Martin, a longtime fixture at The Advance) asked me to continue my weekly (or is that weakly?) musings about life as I see it. So I’ll be back in this spot from time to time.
Friends and co-workers at The Advance threw a shindig for me last week at my favourite watering hole, the Bull and Barrel pub, and presented me with a set of new golf clubs, which my golfing partners assure me will not improve my pitiful performance on the links. I intend to prove them wrong.
At the party, some of the staffers correctly mused that I must have witnessed a lot of change in our industry over the years. When I started in the darkroom of the Northern Daily News in my hometown of Kirkland Lake in January 1968, digital photography was something from a science fiction story.
Our computers were called Underwoods and the only electronic gadget in the newsroom was a teletype machine that connected us to our bureau in New Liskeard, 50 miles south.
Downstairs in the composing room, the production of the newspaper depended on dozens of men working at clattering linotype machines, turning pots of molten lead (no health hazard there!) into solid lines of type.
Today, we produce stories and photos electronically and have them available for you to see on our website in minutes instead of hours or days. And we realize that for thousands of readers, sitting down for a coffee and a scan of the newspaper is still the most comfortable way to catch up on the community news. Let's not forget it's still an ideal way for us to get those 10 pounds of flyers through your front door.
If there's one thing I enjoyed the most about the last four decades (there has been so much, it's not easy to choose one) I believe it is the education I received through this career. Through interaction with the famous, but mostly with everyday folks, I could count on routinely learning something I didn’t know.
That doesn’t make me smarter than you, but I’m tough to beat in a trivia contest.
• This week I lost a friend. The irreverent, hilarious comedy genius George Carlin died Sunday at age 71.
He wasn't a personal friend. He didn't know I existed. But he once spoke about me in what I like to think were affectionate terms.
I was in Las Vegas 20 years ago and abandoned the Blackjack table for a couple of hours to catch Carlin's nightclub act. Feeling a little like one of the Rat Pack, I surreptitiously slipped 20 bucks to the tuxedoed door goon in the hope it would get me a good seat. I obviously overtipped, because Carol and I, along with a few friends, were seated at a front-of-the-house table only large enough to hold five drinks and a candle and I was able to rest my arm on the stage. The stage was empty but for a water jug, a glass and a stool.
As a pony-tailed Carlin, dressed in a black turtleneck, entered stage left to begin his routine, I started laughing. He walked to the front of the stage, peered at me and told the audience something like this: "Folks, if the rest of you have as much fun as this guy is already having, it's going to be a great show."
He was right. It was.
If you liked George's sense of ridiculous, his disdain for the establishment, his "hippy-dippy" way of looking at life, I need not elaborate. If you didn't, too bad for you. He was trying to tell you, 'Don't take yourself too seriously.'
You should have listened.
