The joy of the journey
A journalist never forgets her first byline.
While culling through boxes of memorabilia from my past one night this week in an effort at pandemic productivity, I encountered one of those odd moments of synchronicity when the universe seems to be sending some message to be made sense of in these days that too often feel nonsensical. Or maybe the universe just wanted to make me smile and bask in the blessing of doing work I have loved for so long.
In this case, I came upon the clipping of my first byline published on the front page of the Brantford Expositor almost to the same day, some 44 years ago — May 6, 1976. At that time, I had completed high school early and was four months into my first newsroom job, working as the Expositor’s “copygirl” — a glorified Girl Friday — in the months before starting university.
The headline on the article: “Darryl Sittler — ‘my hero’ ” The article, almost as cringeworthy as that headline: a personal piece on meeting the then-Toronto Maple Leaf hockey star at Brantford’s annual “Great Men of Sports” dinner.
“It’s no wonder that Sittler is fast moving into that elite class of the superstar and becoming somewhat of a hero — especially to devoted Maple Leaf fans like myself,” I wrote after reminding readers of Sittler’s records made and records broken, including having scored 10 points in one game against the Boston Bruins some three months previous, on Feb. 7, 1976.
“With these facts in mind, I attempted to interview Darryl Sittler, who, if anything is my hero and the only reason I was brave enough to invade the all-male press conference held prior to the Great Men of sports dinner on Wednesday,” I wrote.
Oh, that girlish voice. That fan-girl enthusiasm. That naivete that knew nothing about journalistic ethics and journalism’s conflict of interest rules in asking Sittler for his autograph and telling readers I had done so. That girl had so much to learn. That girl has never stopped learning and hopes she never will.
I was not prepared to interview Sittler or anyone else that night. I was at the gala sports dinner at the behest of the Expositor’s then-sports editor — the legendary Ted Beare (Teddy Beare), who was appointed to that role in 1953 and spent 43 years managing the sports section and writing an award-winning column. A kind and generous man, and one of my first mentors, Beare died in 2011.
Beare had first interviewed Sittler, with teenage me standing by in awe. Then, to my surprise, Beare informed the Maple Leaf forward that I too would interview him.
I stumbled my way through, learning that Sittler’s favourite hockey team when he was boy was the Montreal Canadiens; his favourite player, Jean Beliveau. He revealed to me that his Grade 8 guidance counsellor had discouraged his hockey dreams, telling him that his chances of ever making it to the NHL were practically nil.
As we know now, that guidance was entirely offside. Sittler is a Toronto hockey legend, a fan favourite whose No. 27 jersey was retired in 2003. He played in the NHL from 1970 to 1985, serving as captain of the Leafs. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1989 and ranks as one of the NHL’s 100 greatest hockey players of all time.
And that fan girl wannabe journalist who wrote that breathless prose? She went on to report and edit for six Canadian daily newspapers, edit a book of award-winning Canadian newspaper journalism, launch websites for two Canadian media companies and teach journalism at Ryerson University, all before embracing the opportunity to serve the Star’s readers as public editor.
Had you told her all that was ahead for her in May 1976, on that day when she wrote her first real newspaper article and waited for the first copies of the newspaper to roll off the printing press, she would have been gobsmacked.
I still am, actually. Seeing my first newspaper byline, knowing that the thrill of writing words others might read never grows old. I feel such gratitude for having the privilege of this enduring passion of working in journalism all these years.
In another moment aligned with this week’s synchronicity, the night before I found the file folder with my first byline, I had turned back the corner of a page of the novel I was reading, “I See You Everywhere” by Julia Glass, after coming upon a sentence that resonated deeply with me as someone who found her life’s work at such a young age.
“It’s always amazing to me when people find the thing they were meant to do as soon as they grow up, they stick with it and their passion never fades,” Glass wrote.
This is the point where I should pull this column together with some greater point about changes in the news industry over these decades and the grim reality that the newspapers I fell in love with are facing the greatest financial challenges of my lifetime at a time when the need for trustworthy news and information matters so much.
But I think you know all that. So instead, I just want to thank you for letting me share a magical moment of serendipity and an enduring memory of joy with you at a time when we all need to find the joy in our lives. Kathy English