The man who introduced me to sports broadcasting is a member of the Northwestern Ontario Sports Hall of Fame. His name is Ken Nicolson and they called him Friar because when he did Robin Hood Flour radio commercials in his home town — then Fort William — he was accused of looking like one of Robin’s merry men, the portly Friar Tuck.
Friar (Nicolson, not Tuck) and I met in 1967, probably in some minor-league hockey arena or curling rink, after he joined a new station, CFRW in Winnipeg, as sports director. He was a one-man sports department and when CFRW broadcast Canada’s National Hockey Team games a year later, he needed a colour commentator. For whatever reason, perhaps because by then we were friends, he chose me.
Actually, maybe the reason was practical.
Friar did most of the talking, as play-by-play men do, so it was logical he would receive most of the royalties paid by sponsors. And he did. Friar was paid $10 per game, and I was paid $5. True story, of course. Big-time radio, right?
Ken Nicolson went on to become a legend. He’s in the Northwestern Ontario Hall of Fame as a builder for football, which he played in high school until diabetes cut short his career at 17 and a sport he broadcast for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers for three seasons. He’s also a Hall of Famer in Manitoba, but for hockey as the first and best Winnipeg Jets’ play-by-play man, starting with their inaugural game in the World Hockey Association, against the New York R…aiders!
When Bobby Hull joined the Jets and made the WHA relevant, Friar’s future was secured. He and Hull were friends, but it was another hockey legend, John Ferguson, who became Friar’s buddy and ultimately one of his pallbearers. Nicolson died 28 days before his 50th birthday. I’d known him half his life. In the end, he had a massive heart attack and by then diabetes had taken his kidney and three toes.
I was always indebted to Friar, and not just for becoming my best friend, nor because later in my professional life, sports broadcasting became my full-time occupation. He’d also tipped me off about a story I wrote that was a candidate for a National Newspaper Award — more about that in another Distant Replay – and when I was putting together a staff of sportscasters in Montreal, it was Friar who told me to hire Chris Cuthbert, a young up-and-comer from Kingston.
There was more to Nicolson than hockey. He loved and covered all sports and as a foursome we often spent Saturday night dates…curling! The day I was married, it was Friar who got me to the church on time. He was my best man and his wife, Margaret, was my wife’s matron of honour.
And his signature sign-off said it all: “If you can’t play a sport, be one.”
