There is a theory, if you follow emotional intelligence or neuroscience, that it takes six seconds to manage anger…to create compassion…to change the world. On a snowy January night in Montreal — all January nights in Montreal are snowy — Henry Boucha changed the world in six seconds. In the […]
Bob Dunn – Distant Replay
How being in the sports media gave one writer & broadcaster the opportunity to interview sports personalities he never imagined he’d even meet in places he never imagined he’d be. These will be his stories about their stories — or just about them — from the pages of his past, while working out of Montreal, Winnipeg and Vancouver in the 60s and 70s.
Next month will be the 66th anniversary of an event that changed, or at least impacted, my life. A plane crash, on a wintry December night at the top of a British Columbia mountain, forever sealed the mountain’s name in my mind. Mount Slesse. The death toll was 62 crew […]
Pele. Maradona. Ronaldo. Eusebio. Kaka. Zidane. Neymar. Socrates. Soccer is full of great players known by one name, many of them Brazilians. Sometimes, even people who know nothing about soccer have heard of them. By the time the current World Cup is over, Canada could have one of its own. […]
There are people who think I covered the 1950 Grey Cup, the last time the Toronto Argos and Winnipeg Blue Bombers met (I didn’t), and some who think I remember it (I don’t). If I had, it would’ve been my second-best memory of the year, the first being the birth […]
On Sunday, Mike O’Shea will coach his 151st Canadian Football League game, all with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. On the other bench, for B.C. Lions head coach Rick Campbell, it will be his 149th game. O’Shea is hoping to be like Campbell. That Campbell is Rick’s father, Hugh, the only […]
The boy was about 10. Sports consumed him, sometimes at the expense of school. This time of year — when early fall becomes early winter – was compelling. Baseball was wrapping up, hockey was winding up and football was playoff time. The boy loved it. Television was new. World Series […]
From first to worst. That’s me this week. I covered the “first” game the Vancouver Canucks ever played in October 1970, so I feel entitled at least to address the plight of the “worst” for a team so many Canadians love to hate. The new worst was last Saturday’s 5-1 […]
This was the week 41 years ago — perhaps even the day, depending on when you’re reading this — that the Montreal Expos completed their one and only trip through the baseball playoffs. It became a day for the city’s baseball fans to remember where they were when. When…was October […]
In my final season as a baseball writer, my newspaper — the Montreal Star — was on strike. I was also freelancing for Montreal radio station CJAD, writing scripts for Expos Manager Dick Williams to read after every game, followed by an on-air conversation the next morning. The strike that […]
His name was David Green, and probably still is. He was the Canadian Football League’s outstanding player and I was going to impart some football wisdom — in my world known as wise and useless media advice — that would serve him well. “David,” I recall saying (approximately), after we’d […]
Reminiscing about the 1972 Summit Series has ended. Until the next “hockey anniversary” of when Canada met Russia, it’s likely to be ignored, and by then great hockey coaches from both sides will be gone, and forgotten. Two were not involved in the Canada-Russia Series but should’ve been. One, Anatoli […]
When the current big-league baseball season ends, no longer will you see pitchers indefinitely throwing to hold runners at first base, as they often do. No more wondering why the second-baseman is playing right field while the shortstop is on the wrong side of second base. Forget about going to […]
