Introducing Province columnist Wayne Moriarty
Iowe my career to the classifieds of this newspaper. I had just graduated from university when an ad seeking a junior reporter with the Medicine Hat News caught my attention: “No experience necessary.” I had the perfect resume. The managing editor of The News at the time always hired his raw charges out of Vancouver. He had a little someone on the side here. (At least that was the rumour.)
His interviews were arranged, two per hour, starting with the most promising applicant in the morning and working through the less-promising applicants as the day went on.
Mine was the last interview of his day.
I didn’t get that job, but within a month, the managing editor of The News was back in Vancouver dangling a career in front of me. I bit. Best bite ever. Journalism has taken me around the world; as well, it has afforded me the great fortune of working in many fine Canadian cities: Regina, Edmonton, Windsor, Victoria, Calgary, Winnipeg. My oldest daughter once rhetorically quipped: “We’re like Gypsies, aren’t we dad?”
Twelve years ago, I was appointed editor-in-chief of The Province. Big honour. A mentor and dear friend of mine, Michael Cooke, once worked here as editor-in-chief. This was also the place where Jim Taylor, Eric Nicol, Jeani Read and Clancy Loranger made magic out of a bunch of words.
About a month ago, I stepped down as editor of The Province to have a go at writing a column — making my own magic. I’d written occasionally over the years, maybe a column every three months or so. But now — well, now it’s going to be three columns a week.
My column will run in print Wednesday, Friday and Sunday; and, of course, will exist with an assortment of added bells and whistles in cyberspace for a digital eternity.
As for what you can expect by way of content, I’m not much of an angry guy, so I will resist too much finger-wagging and fulminating. That said, I’ll have a voice and if something strikes me as, well, wrong, I will not be above unleashing a little hyperbole and venom.
Mostly, though, I want the column to be a curious mix of profiles, observations and opinions about where we live and who we are. In the coming weeks, I will venture to tell the secrets of the Picasso exhibit at VAG, profile the life of a crane operator, introduce you to a madein-Vancouver chauffeur service built on the Uber model and float the notion that maybe, just maybe, it’s time to shut down large parts of Stanley Park to vehicle traffic.
This will all be fun for me; I will do my best to make it fun for you.
If you want to tell me stuff or if you want to ask me stuff, you can phone my cell at 604-50. … Oh, wait, that’s the mayor’s cell. Mine is 604-8186052. If email is your preferred method of calling me an idiot, I’m at wmoriarty@postmedia.com.
And finally, there is that magnificent site of so much hand-holding and Kumbaya, Twitter. There I can be reached at @editorinblog.