In some ways, it seems like an eternity. In other ways, it seems like the time has flown by.
In either case, the reality is it’s been 40 years as of Oct. 29 since I started full time in the media business as the sports editor of the former Cowichan Leader newspaper in Duncan. I was only 24 at the time in 1983 so the math certainly adds up to make me 64 now.
I had dabbled in newspapers and radio before that time. I actually wrote my first articles for the Ladysmith-Chemainus Chronicle as a 20-year-old in 1979 while trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life after withdrawing from UBC in October of that year.
The editor of the Chronicle at the time, Bryan Goulding, asked me to write some articles and he’d look them over and offer me some pointers. I did that, covering weekend sports around the Chemainus area (mainly hockey at Fuller Lake Arena that included my brother Doug’s rep team in his pre-NHL days) and before too long I was hired part-time for the Chronicle.
It was a great opportunity for me to gain some experience and in due course I also had Chemainus community pages within the Chronicle added to my duties. That included entertainment such as Sandra Heydon’s famous Chemainus Hospital Day shows and other community features as well as keeping up on the sports.
Since I was still part-time I decided to take a broadcasting course by correspondence from the Columbia School of Broadcasting in Vancouver. I always kind of had my heart set on being a hockey play-by-play announcer, the next Danny Gallavan, if you like (you’ll have to look that name up, young people).
After completing my course, I left my Chronicle position and got a summer job with CKAY Radio in Duncan. I read the morning newscasts and worked with news director Brian Small while also writing the sports stories to be broadcast on the station. Sales associate and sports guru Dave Rubenstein, whom I’d known well from my Junior B hockey playing days at Fuller Lake, would grab my copy and make a guest appearance to read the noon sports report.
Following the summer, my position was extended and also included DJ shifts as required. I continued to do sports interviews, covering such memorable times in the Cowichan Valley as the 1982-83 Cowichan Thunderettes girls basketball team that won the provincial high school championship. That team was just honoured Nov. 18 as part of the North Cowichan/Duncan Sports Wall of Fame ceremony.
I’d only been at CKAY for about a year and a half when Cowichan Leader managing editor Gord Woodward came calling. He wondered whether I might want to go back to newspapers and become the sports editor there.
The difference in the money at the time was significant so I jumped at the chance and abandoned my path toward becoming the next great hockey broadcaster. Little did I know at the time my tenure with the Leader and subsequently the News-Leader and eventually the News Leader Pictorial would last for 32 years, most of it as sports editor, but with added entertainment and news responsibilities in later years, until the paper closed in 2015 following a strike that started in December of 2014.
After that, the other Goulding, Warren, recruited some of the remaining News Leader staff who wanted to continue in the business for his independent Chemainus Valley Courier. He later started papers in Duncan (Free Press) and South Cowichan (Echo) that I worked for until he sold to Black Press in 2017.
The Courier was retained, but not the other papers and I became the editor of the Courier and the sole reporter, with support from within the network, that continues until this day.
It’s been an interesting ride, especially the 32 straight years in Duncan. I met so many people I consider friends today and I have probably forgotten a lot of things I’ve written about over that long period of time.
Particular games are as vivid as the time they happened. One such example is the 1993 B.C. Hockey League finals when I traveled to Kelowna to cover the Cowichan Valley Capitals in game four against the powerful hometown Spartans with a lineup that included eventual Vancouver Canuck Bill Muckalt.
The Spartans won the game easily 9-3 and the series, but it was a memorable experience. I got to combine my broadcasting background with newspaper reporting after getting asked to do the colour commentary on the radio broadcast of the game with Roger Knox, who just happens to be a Black Press reporter in the Interior.
So many stories, so many incidents, so many snapshots of my life really have melded together to this point after four long decades. I wouldn’t have traded it for anything since I have been there for some of the valley’s greatest sports highlights and found I possessed more of an interest in news and being an editor in later years than I would have thought.
Time Isn’t On My Side, or for Mick Jagger, either, but these Days Of Our Lives are always worth recounting for so many reasons.
