The many families he helped bid him ‘farewell’

The Max Keeping service had just ended and Tony Sullivan, 59, was climbing into the cab of his five tonne truck, a light rain falling in the desolate parking lot of the Canadian Tire Centre.

Three flags hung at half-mast, soaked, a lousy morning delivered in October’s gloom.

“I’m just an average working Joe,” he said, explaining how he was midway through the day’s deliveries, but felt the need to park the rig and pay homage inside. A Newfoundlander like Keeping, he believes they shared the same sense of community, bred on the island.

In a small place, especially an outport, you always helped your neighbours, he said. If kindness wasn’t a good enough motive, try survival. “That’s the way we were brought up.” Years ago, people didn’t have mortgages, he said, because neighbours helped build one another’s houses.

“All for a scoff and a scuff,” said the native of Calvert, Nfld., an expression referring to a big meal, followed by music and a dance. “Bet ya Max would know what that means.”

One of the striking impressions from the hour-long commemoration to Keeping on Tuesday was the degree to which he had built and nurtured these various “families,” many interconnected, during a 40-year broadcasting career. There was the CTV or CJOH crowd, the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario bunch, the Ottawa Senators contingent, the plain old viewers, the Ottawa Valley crowd, the political posse, his own complicated family of sons and grandchildren, and leaders in philanthropy and business, social work or entertainment.

Is there another person in this town who could attract Eugene Melnyk, Lloyd Robertson, Alex Munter, Jeff Hunt, Sen. Jim Munson, police chief Charles Bordeleau, Alfie, an MPP, a mayor, an exmayor and a rabbi to his funeral?

Keeping died Oct. 1 at the age of 73. When he went off the air in 2010, he had been a news anchor for 38 years and, literally, was a household name, in a house called Ottawa. His story is all the more remarkable because he was a self-made man, with little formal education, who early in life drank with some abandon. Keeping came from the coastal town of Grand Bank, was largely raised by his older sister and started working in newspapers at age 16, arriving in Ottawa in 1965 at age 23.

He did so much for CHEO, the hospital named a wing after him. The miracle might be where he found time.

Hunt, the owner of the Ottawa 67’s, spoke of the first time he met Keeping. It was 1998 and he was closing the deal to buy the team from Earl Montagano when he met Keeping in the owner’s box. The broadcaster would become a regular at games.

“He’d come right over after the newscast, " said Hunt. “He’d sit in his familiar seat and he’d work the crowd more than I did. You’d think he owned the team.”

Along the boards sat the Dunlop family. They’ve known Max for about 20 years. Mother Carol, 55, had twin daughters 25 years ago. One of them, Delaney, has cerebral palsy and, from the age of two, the family had frequent involvement with the Easter Seals organization.

In those days, fundraising was critical to a parent coping with a special-needs child. Max always seemed to be around, said Carol, showing up at fundraising bow-lathons in Kemptville or at a rappelling event (called Drop Zone) in downtown Ottawa, the last time they saw him in 2014.

“Anywhere people were trying to help others, you’d bump into Max,” said Carol, a single mother who raised her children on a limited income. “Oh, my goodness, so down to earth. He’d walk into a room. He’d come up to you, shake your hand and talk to you like he’d known you for 10 years.”

Tuesday was a dignified affair that, great temptation aside, did not descend into the maudlin. TSN anchor James Duthie, a CJOH graduate, injected humour, as did Mayor Jim Watson.

There was a touching tribute from Max’s adopted son, Shane Holley, who cared for Keeping during his prolonged cancer battle. A granddaughter, Lisa Meikle-Sigouin, spoke affectionally about their regular Saturday morning outings to dance class, which later morphed into trips to see acts like the Rolling Stones or 50 Cent.

“Nothing Grandpa did was conventional.”

Holley made reference to Max’s myriad “families,” right back to his early Ottawa Valley connections to the likes of Mac Beattie, the once prominent band leader who died in 1982.

His “chosen” families, said Holley: they were the lucky ones — absolutely, for wasn’t the embrace all the more willing?