Cameron was ‘like a father’
Beloved Rangers caller honoured by hundreds at visitation
We are Rangers Nation. And on Thursday night we held a state funeral for our most beloved citizen.
Don Cameron, the gentle man with an electric enthusiasm for the Kitchener Rangers hockey team whose games he called for half a century, died last week. He was 82.
At 4 p.m., four hours before tributes started, people were lining up on the red carpet that led to his casket where he lay at centre ice in the Kitchener Aud.
They came by the hundreds. They knelt in front of him to say one last goodbye.
A candle burned nearby. His trademark tartan cap and radio microphone were on a side table.
The flags of Canada and the Rangers stood behind him and there were two huge bouquets of flowers in the Rangers colours: red, white and blue.
The stories overflowed. “It’s like losing a part of the family,” said Laurie Kaufman.
“The organization was one big family. They were all his children.”
Kaufman was a billet for 20 years. The young players, aged 16 to 20 from as far away as Russia, the United States, Thunder Bay, stayed at her Kitchener home all season.
They’d be homesick sometimes, she said. They wouldn’t want to admit it, but they’d get quiet.
Don and his wife, Carole, didn’t have children. But for all those players, he was “in some way, like a father or a grandfather,” Kaufman said.
When they had to go on the road for games, Cameron would go too.
On Sundays, while away from home, he would share a cab with one of the young players to go to and from church.
It was a small but important gesture of comfort.
The magic of Cameron, many people said, was how quiet he was — just a normal guy who enjoyed good Scotch and a good party — yet he brought those games to life in vivid detail.
Several people talked about how they used to bring transistor radios into the arena just to get Cameron’s unique blend of joy and passion. The game was unfolding in front of their eyes, but they still wanted to hear him tell it.
Gord Dearborn would watch the games on TV but listen to Cameron on the radio — until the two media went so badly out of sync with one another, he had to give it up.
“He was as enthusiastic when the visitors scored, almost as much as the home team,” Dearborn said.
Sometimes he wouldn’t even know which team had scored because Cameron was so sportsmanlike.
Sports can be ruthlessly tribal. Cameron celebrated everything else about it.
Don MacDonald, a friend, recounted how one of his sons was a weak swimmer when he was younger.
He would be upset, when competing against two other swimmers, that he would be the slowest.
“Don’t say you came last,” Cameron would advise the boy. “Say you finished third.”
That built up his confidence, and he improved significantly.
Sport can build self-confidence. It also can bring people together.
The Rangers are celebrated here for the excitement of all that young talent, straining to get to the big leagues.
But also, the organization makes itself part of the larger community. There is the Teddy Bear Toss in December, when fans throw stuffed toys on the ice that are later donated to needy children.
There is the February potato blitz when cash and bags of potatoes are collected to feed the hungry.
Cameron could be counted on to stand at the arena entrance, holding the bucket for cash for the food bank, said Rangers past president Craig Campbell.
Sports are for everyone and not only the athletically gifted. Cameron understood that too.
Kaufman couldn’t stay for the tributes later on Thursday evening, because she’s involved with Buddy League Canada.
It’s a Cambridge-based baseball league for special-needs children and adults with physical and cognitive disabilities. They had a practice that night.
She showed me a video of some of the children, in wheelchairs, hitting the ball with a bat and then laughing in excitement as they were whisked around the bases by siblings and friends.
If he could have seen her slip away, I know Cameron would have approved.