National Post (National Edition)
The marvellous Mr. Meeker
In the older, gentle-paced, non-gnarly days of 40 and 50 years ago, when we were neither blessed nor burdened with the internet and its many voices, and for that matter were not yet even acquainted with the dubious luxury of 24-hour cable news and its howling anchors, it is but a truism to say much was calmer.
Sometimes it took whole days for news to reach you about something that might make you angry, and even then, unless you painted something on a roadside rock, there really weren’t a lot of options for people to broadcast their outrage or apprise their enemies of their rage.
How uncluttered they were is exemplified by my first days at CBC Television in St. John’s, Nfld. Hired in the summer, I was about to be one of the on-air bunch to staff the first full-hour of local news running on a daily basis — a whole hour! And twit that I was, I can still feel the tremors I had as launch day approached, over how — even with the merciful heavens looking on and cheering, the most “story rich” population in all of North America and the combustious Joey Smallwood as premier (who generated news when he inhaled) — we could hope to fill a full hour.
Let me wind this up, for it is all a prelude and wistful digression, by letting gentle readers know that there was always an hour’s worth of news on hand, and many more hours in every outport and town from St. John’s to Corner Brook. Indeed, we could have gone full-day cable news without rerunning a headline or running a single time-filling panel.
Just a year or two later, that show, Here and Now, hired a broad-shouldered man with a signature voice, a fondness for writing TV scripts in longhand and who possessed a nuclear core of personal enthusiasm that I have never witnessed even in near measure in anyone since.
This was the incomparable Howie Meeker. And as I recall from our first encounter, the only thing broader than his shoulders was his smile.
The good and kindly Howie Meeker died on Sunday at a fully earned 97 years old. It was like Meeker, if I may be allowed a slight playfulness, to go for overtime. Whatever he put his mind to, he gave it all that he had, and then found some extra to add. It is quite a thing, even for an old man, which is what I am, to contemplate a person who has lived through all the years and tumults of the world since 1923. What a multitude of experience he must have gathered over nearly 10 whole decades.
He had been on Hockey Night in Canada for a while when he came to CBC with his distinctive voice — highpitched, excited and sprinkled with the vilest of obscenities, such as “Golly Gee Wilikers, Jiminy Cricket,” and when he was really on a rip, “Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat.” And he had won great acclaim for his innovative analysis.
Bruce McCurdy of the Edmonton Journal, who was coached by Meeker as a kid, describes it best: “Meeker would introduce a new level of hockey analysis, using replays from a camera that was set up somewhere in the rafters to get the full view of the ice surface, and exercising his groundbreaking telestrator to review the flow of play.” In showing all that was going on in a play, no one has bettered Meeker.
His popularity spiked after he covered the famed Russia- Canada Summit Series. He went over there well-known and came back famous, but unchanged. He was the least lazy person I have ever known, running the hockey school, the local broadcast, flying all over the country giving talks and managing a sports store in St. John’s.
The numerous eulogies that rightly followed his death give the details of his storied career. For my part, all I’d like to do is pass on how absolutely and remarkably pleasant, engaging and kind he was. He was at one with those calm times I referenced earlier, a person who added a welcoming favour to any gathering, and was contagious in his optimism and unquenchable cheerfulness.
I only knew him for a brief time towards the end of his two-decade sojourn in Newfoundland, and that was a long while ago. Yet when the news of his death came over the weekend, I recalled his presence as vividly as yesterday, because of how singularly generous and friendly he was. Outside of his various careers — player, MP, broadcaster — and even to those who could claim limited acquaintance, such as myself, he was most striking purely as a person. To meet him was a gift.