THE BEST KIND OF MAVERICK
Former Edmonton Journal publisher Pat O'Callaghan's words live on in memoir
CALGARY Alberta is used to mavericks — all those unbranded yearlings roaming the Prairies. But even in Calgary I’m not sure we have ever become adjusted to the genuine human kind, even though we tolerate them when they aren’t too brash, too bold or too pugnacious.
Former Calgary Herald and Edmonton Journal publisher J. Patrick O’Callaghan was all that and more. As I wrote in the forward to this book based on his memoirs: “Pat O’Callaghan accepted little at face value. In him burned the heart and soul of an Irishman who was always up for a fight, whether it be with a premier, a prime minister, or his God.”
Among those maverick men and women who forge their own way through life, he was iconic. Pat’s memoirs, from his papers donated to the University of Alberta, will be published this month, nearly 20 years after his death. The book is called Maverick Publisher: J. Patrick O’Callaghan — A Life in Newspapers.
And while the title suggests personal history, there is so much more. Almost no notable Canadian figure from Brian Mulroney to Conrad Black escapes his comment.
In these memoirs he takes no prisoners — no politician, malcontent, advertiser, oil company executive, blowhard, or self-important panjandrum is spared. Just about the only people who don’t come in for skewering are his staff. He fiercely defended them and we all loved him for it. (Here was a man who had the company’s lawyers handle the immigration problems of one of the Calgary Herald’s night cleaning staff, someone whom too many executives would not even deign to notice.)
Few were prepared for an Irish maverick by the name of Jeremiah Patrick O’Callaghan, who came to Alberta in 1959 from England — with a brief stop to learn “Canadian” ways from Robertson Davies, then editor of the Peterborough Examiner — to become managing editor of the Red Deer Advocate. From that moment on, it is clear he made a study of Canadian newspapers and shares it all in these memoirs.
Known to all and sundry as Pat, he served as Edmonton Journal publisher from 1976 to 1982, then moved on to the Calgary Herald in 1982.
Pat left the Herald almost seven years later, having shaken up what was later dubbed “the velvet coffin.” In doing so, he infuriated many, thumbed his nose and his fountain pen filled with peacock-green ink at all and sundry, ran a one-man show and, in the bargain, endeared himself to his staff.
He died in 1996 at the young age of 70. But his words live on.
Perhaps his most “memorable” pronouncement followed the massive majority the late premier Peter Lougheed, recorded in the 1979 election when the opposition was reduced to a pathetic five seats — four Social Credit and one NDP.
Then publisher of the Edmonton Journal, Pat writes: “I declared The Journal to we the ‘unofficial opposition’ and we took that role seriously. There were those — mostly Tories — who regarded this as an arrogant assumption on my part. They may well have been right. But my fear was that the newspaper, supposedly the surrogate for the public, had no other choice without running the risk of letting Alberta drift through that period of government with no more than yawning tokenism where democracy was supposed to be.”
Maybe the comment most of today’s Albertans should cling to in the face of our dismal economy comes from a 1982 speech he made to the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce: "The future for Alberta was unparalleled in its magnificence if we could only cope with the prospect instead of being frightened by the weight of the immediate problems.”
I doubt Pat was ever frightened.
Catherine Ford is a retired Herald columnist.