Ink In My Father's Hands
Thursday, December 18, 2014
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| Nick Rebalski - Ian Mulgrew - December 18 2014 |
The English man of
pink complexion was the editor-in-chief of the Buenos
Aires Herald. I was in his office in the late 90s. My father had written for
the paper in the late 40s. I asked the man, whose sad face
reminded me of the Graham Greene’s protagonist in The Honorary Consul, about my father. I wanted
him to find any vestiges that my father may have left. He explained that in the
40s reporters had no bylines but he invited me to check the micro-fiches. He was
right; I did not find my father. I spoke with the editor after who told me that
he was about to go home to England
after a longish stint in “the Argentine”. To me he seemed a lonely and
alienated man in a foreign country even though his Spanish was perfect. I got
the impression that as soon as he arrived home he would feel as alien and would
never find his home except from a bottle.
Neither of the two men sitting with me at
Trees (a coffee shop on Granville very close to the Vancouver
Sun office) today in any way reminded me of the English man in Buenos Aires. They
reminded me though of his sadness, perhaps a futility that whatever it was he
had done for the Buenos Aires Herald was in vain.
I had looked forward to meeting up with Vancouver Sun editor Nick
Rebalski and Sun Columnist Ian Mulgrew. The former is extremely serious, by
nature, the latter likes to guffaw.
I had looked forward to the meeting (and I
was not to be in the least disappointed) because even though I have never
worked for a newspaper I have that ink in my blood that somehow transferred from
my father’s hands to my face when I was a boy. I know that when asked by the
publisher of the Buenos Aires Herald if he wanted to be the editor, my father (who
may have been under the influence of Old Smuggler Whiskey) threw an inkwell at
the man and his chance for promotion was dashed in black.
Here in Vancouver I wrote often for the Vancouver Sun
and the Georgia Straight. In the early years of the internet when somehow my PC
was incompatible with the Sun’s Macs I sent essays to Nick Rebalski (he was a
very good and kind editor to me) in an early form of an email program called
Eudora. This was just fine for Rebalski.
My favourite moment in my shadow career as
a would-be newspaper man was one day, early in the morning in the late 90s when
John Cruickshank was the Sun’s Editor-in-Chief. I had gone to hand in some
stuff to Mix Editor David Beers (now editor of The Tyee). I ran into
Cruickshank who put his arm on my shoulder and told me, “Alex come into my
office.” We walked through the whole Sun newsroom. In his office Cruikshank
told me, “I plan to unleash Beers on the whole paper so that he can Mix it. Mix
has been a success.”
Of course that never happened. Cruickshank
was sent to the Chicago Sun Times as Publisher and Beers was left to float and
the Mixing of the Sun never happened.
Now at the end of 2014 I feel a nostalgia
for something that I really never had. Talking to Rebalski and Mulgrew (one of
if not the best tenacious columnist of the Vancouver Sun) I was jealous of that feeling,
the real one of working for a big city newspaper.
No matter what eventually happens to our Vancouver Sun, Rebalski
and Mulgrew will have experienced that thrill of writing today and anticipating
that tomorrow. With CNN’s constant “breaking news” there will never be any more
tomorrows.
After parting with Mulgrew, a laughing Mulgrew
who might just take a vacation in Uruguay soon, Rebalski told me he
was going to Sikora’s Classical Records to find something for his wife. I
accompanied him.
At Sikora’s there were three attendants at
the front counter and only one possible customer. There were now three. Rebalski
found something. As he was getting ready to pay, the door opened and fine, tall
gentleman that I know walked in. It was Don Stewart the owner of Macleod’s
Books. I was suddenly hit by the irony that in a shop that was now stocking LP
Records we had a record seller, an obsolete photographer, a journalist and a
bookseller. I mentioned this. One of us then said:
We are trying to stay above water on a
sinking ship that is doing so in a diagonal like the Titanic.
Fortunately all four of us have seen better
times and better times can be savored and never forgotten or taken away.
