CAPITAL COOL
Making Ottawa proud
When I moved here 30 years ago, it was said that the best thing about Ottawa was the fast train to Montreal. There was some truth in that joke.
Back then, the city had few outstanding restaurants and there weren’t enough cultural attractions and events for a capital city. Shopping was dismal, too.
Now there’s great food in most neighbourhoods, and the shopping has improved so much that there’s no longer any reason to search out the outlet malls and department stores in Syracuse or Rochester.
Ottawa has improved culturally, too. When Steve Martin played the jazz festival last summer, he gave a shout-out to the National Gallery.
Before his show at Bluesfest a few years ago, James Taylor took his kids to the War Museum. They had a great time, he said.
Every cool city also needs great characters to enliven the civic landscape — politicians, entertainers, gadflies who know the city.
I’d say two of Ottawa’s most amusing and provocative characters are Dean Brown and Gord Wilson, the pair who handle the radio broadcasts for the Senators’ games on TSN 1200.
Brown and Wilson are the ideal antidote to hockey analysts on TV, those solemn dudes who carry on like they’re discussing the reparations clauses of the Treaty of Versailles, and not a simple hockey game.
If Brown and Wilson have a credo, it’s that their broadcasts should be irreverent — fun and informative.
When the Sens played the Columbus Blue Jackets, Dean mentioned that Columbus defenceman James Wisnieski’s family had developed the “Whizzinator” — a urinating device used by cheaters hoping to beat drug tests. That got my attention. Moments later, Brown clarified that the station’s “crack research team” had found the Wisnieski/ Whizzinator connection to be untrue.
During a game against the Minnesota Wild, Brown said the Wild’s winger Justin Fontaine was related to Johnny Fontane, the wedding singer in The Godfather. The crack research team disproved that one, too.
Brown loves puns and wordplay. He refers to Blackhawks player Johnny Oduya as “How do you Du-ya.” In Brown-speak, Hawks centre Marcus Kruger is “Freddy,” a reference to the Nightmare On Elm Street villain Freddy Krueger.
When the Sens took on the Edmonton Oilers, Brown pointed out that Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, known to fans as “RNH,” sounded like “a diet supplement.”
Brown and Wilson also have a running gag about the station’s “global headquarters” — variously located in Istanbul, Nanaimo and Brisbane.
Brown is deft when it comes to colourful descriptions. After Sens goalie Craig Anderson made two great saves in succession against the Winnipeg Jets, Brown said, “He’s kicking them out like a Pez dispenser.” Legendary sportscaster Danny Gallivan would be proud of that one.
The byplay between Brown and Wilson comes across as genuine affection between friends. When Wilson made a less than insightful remark during one game, Brown shot back, “Thank you, Captain Obvious!” Yet Wilson always holds his own in the snappy banter department.
Brown never crosses the line in his pronouncements but sometimes he erases it. The Dalai Lama gave a lecture at the TD Garden in Boston this month, hours before the Sens took the ice against the Bruins. Brown remarked that he last saw a llama at a petting zoo in Carp.
It isn’t all wisecracks and oneliners in the broadcast booth. When Sens goalie Robin Lehner started against the Bruins a mere 48 hours after his son was born, Brown and Wilson had a thoughtful discussion about the changes parenthood brings.
Both said they were so happy and distracted when they became fathers for the first time, there’s no way they could have gone to work.
The Sens lost that game, thanks in part to Erik Karlsson’s off night — he was on the ice for all four goals. Still, as Brown and Wilson predicted, Lehner, 23, was arguably so jazzed by becoming a dad that he didn’t play his best.
Brown and Wilson do get giddy at times. When Brown described one player cutting “a minidoughnut” on the ice, Wilson broke in with a little “Mmmm, doughnuts” riff, Homer Simpson-style.
When the laughter subsided, Brown said, “We may not be good, but we have fun.”
He’s wrong there. Brown and Wilson are as good as it gets.