The death of Jim Robson last week brought an understandable outpouring of tributes, from TV from the Olympics to news outlets across Canada. It’ll likely continue next week, when Hockey Night in Canada is back in business, when the Vancouver Canucks resume their dismal season.
My hope for several years was that he would live long enough to see “his” team win a Stanley Cup. At 91, he gave it a pretty good shot, a better shot than the Canucks did.
Jim Robson was revered far beyond his circle of friends. How revered? As Olympics broadcaster Kyle Bukauskas was on his way to catch his flight to Italy, he knocked on the door at Robson’s apartment, wanting to meet his idol — for the first time. They talked for an hour and Jim, self-deprecating as always, was stunned and touched. It’s worth noting there was, at the time, zero indication he would be gone eight days later.
After his death, Jim’s son Mike received a call of condolences from Wayne Gretzky. Also in touch with the Robson family was America’s most prolific (all four major sports) play-by-play man, Kenny Albert. They’d been friends since meeting at Madison Square Garden when Albert, now 58, was 10 years old. Michael Bublé said thanks, first on TV, then in a full-page newspaper ad,
None of this celebrity, the status nor the associations, fazed Robson. A member of four halls of fame (two hockey, one lacrosse, one broadcast), he was regularly surprised to be recognized. In a business that generates enormous egos, he was devoid of one.
However, there more to Jim Robson than his fame.
He was a man who bought and delivered towels and bars of soap to less-fortunate men on Vancouver’s poverty-stricken downtown east side, and almost nobody knew.
He was a broadcaster who could’ve missed being “Jim Robson” after applying to be the voice of baseball’s Seattle Pilots. While he never knew how close it came, the Pilots lasted one season before becoming the Milwaukee Brewers. The next year, along came the NHL Canucks.
He was a raconteur even without a microphone. Last month, in a waiting room for cancer patients, he mesmerized half a dozen complete strangers, regaling them non-stop for 10 minutes about a remote part of B.C. he knew well, stopping only because it was his turn for radiation.
He was loyal and respectful. Last summer, he was moved to learn his plaque at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto hung next to that of his friend and fellow encyclopedic hockey historian, Dick Irvin.
He was fortunate and he knew it, married for 68 years with four children and fuour grandchildren. He never needed glasses nor hearing aids. The first time he was hospitalized since his birth in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, came just before his 90th birthday. How many people go 90 years between hospital stays?
Today, with some “new” friends, he might be dancing with Betty White, shadow boxing with Muhammad Ali, trying to convince Al Capone to go straight, shooting pucks at Jacques Plante or taking vocal lessons from James Earl Jones, the ultimate broadcast voice. They celebrated the same birthday, and Jim Robson remembered them all… every January 17.
