COMFORTABLY HIMSELF
Dutchy was a laughing Labrador retriever of a man
Ask anyone and they’ll tell you: Darren Dutchyshen was a giant. They might mean the comic-book muscles he sculpted in his garage or the local gym, where he’d take time between sets for every admirer. They might mean his broadcasting legacy. Dutchy hosted TSN’s “SportsCentre,” the nation’s flagship highlight show, for almost 30 years and a whole generation grew up with the fresh-faced joker from Porcupine Plain, Sask. And, boy, would he say some stuff.
“He was just so authentic, and it gave him a little bit of extra rope,” says Jennifer Hedger, his co-host for years until Dutchyshen had to step away in December. “And he hung himself a lot. Like, he would take that rope and he would hang himself for the joke.
“He lived on that line between ‘that’s cool’ and ‘no, you can’t say that on national television.’ Absolutely straddled it his entire career. And he was at his best when he was totally nudging up against it, and he loved living in that space.”
More than anything, when people call Dutchy a giant they might just mean the person: a man who was so loud, so charismatic, but who, as his colleague Gino Reda puts it, would also listen to you so intently that you felt like the most important person in the world. Darren Dutchyshen died Wednesday at the age of 57. He was diagnosed with cancer in 2021 and it had already spread. He had three children and a wife from a previous marriage.
And at TSN, which is more of a family than most workplaces, the loss was crushing.
“There’s nobody more loved in our newsroom than that guy,” said Dennis Beram, Dutchyshen’s producer for almost his entire TSN run, fighting back tears. “He treated everybody unbelievably. Like, if they were right out of school and nervous around him, he made them comfortable. I’ve been joined at the hip with this guy for 30 years; everything I’ve done in my job is around him. Oh my god, what a man.”
Hedger remembers how Dutchy would make friends with everybody. He would walk into any crappy dive bar in Canada and people would yell “Dutch!” but he’d also stride through security to greet the prime minister at a Grey Cup, or past bodyguards to introduce himself to Drake during the NBA Finals.
And in life and on TV, Dutchy was just so ... comfortable. The art of great television is to be authentic, and Dutchy was more comfortably himself on air than anyone I have seen in Canadian television.
“We always say you tried to be yourselves on TV, but we’re more polite professional versions of ourselves, obviously,” says TSN’s James Duthie. “But besides off-colour stories, he was exactly, exactly himself. And it was a grind, man. For him to do that 30 years and coming every night like it was the greatest f---ing job in the world is unbelievable.”
Dutch was plenty off-colour on air in ways nobody else could get away with, then or now. He was the guy who called a play involving baseball’s Edgar Renteria and yelled out, “Renteria ... Renteria ... GONEeria!” (He got a call from the bosses the next day.) He was the one who, when the Vancouver Canucks’ Daniel Sedin had a kid, said, “I don’t want to start any rumours, but he looks an awful lot like Henrik.” He was the one doing SC with Duthie, as Duthie did a segment featuring words his nana never said. And Duthie said “Bootylicious,” and Dutchy said, “I’ll tell you one thing she said: Dutchylicious.”
“And I said: Dutch, this is my dead grandma, man. And he goes, ‘Well, she wasn’t then!’ On air!” says Duthie.
“If I said that, it would just come across really weaselly, but he just had a way of laughing about it afterward so you know you were in on the joke, and you know he didn’t really mean it.”
Dutch’s off-camera jokes were more inappropriate still. He would come in every Monday with a joke and repeat it everywhere, all over the building — from makeup to the newsroom to audio to the cafeteria. And if it didn’t land, he’d come up with another one. When he met you, he’d find out which team you liked so he could rib you about it if they ever lost a game.
It was never mean, never malicious. He just wanted to make people laugh. As TSN’s Craig Button put it: “He championed everybody. It didn’t matter if it was your first day in the building ... he championed every single person that was in his orbit, everybody. He wanted everyone to win.”
Dutchyshen was the biggest, most enthusiastic 15-year-old boy in the country: a winking, laughing Labrador retriever of a man. He was the guy you meet at the bar that starts a conversation and has you laughing until you fall off the stool. He was the dad who didn’t shut up about his three kids: Tyler, Brett and Paige. As Duthie puts it: “I felt like an uncle because he just talked about them non-stop every day.” Dutch was a most Canadian man, and he was fun.
Then came the cancer in 2021. His back had hurt all summer, and when it was diagnosed it had already spread to his spine. When he came back to TSN in 2022, he and Hedger had a moment on air.
“Dutch has been so influential on so many people in this country, from people wanting to get into the business to people just feeling like they know him,” says Hedger. “People we work with at TSN — kids, adults — just there’s literally thousands of people that would like to say thank you to him that, you know, will never get the chance now.
“And I’ve lost enough people in my life to know that I don’t want things to get left unsaid and ... I really wanted him to hear it. I wanted everybody else to hear, to see him hear it, that he is the best that ever did this job. I just thought it was important to say it out loud.” Hedger chokes up a little. “We had an extra year of him on the desk. And there was no greater gift for me than working with a guy who had every reason to be having a bad day, and he never had a bad day.
“And the perspective that I gained, you know? There was no more gossiping at work, there was no more bitching about stupid things — how long the show’s gonna be tonight, does the weather ever suck today, how much is the price of gas? None of that stuff matters when you know that you don’t have a ton of time left, and you just want to spend it doing what you love. And he loved hosting ‘SportsCentre,’ he loved being with the guys at TSN, he loved giving the highlights, and I will always feel so blessed for that year.
“And then the cancer came back and it was in his lungs, and it was bad. And it was fast. It was really fast.”
Dutchyshen and TSN’s Kate Beirness have been a couple for a long time, after Dutchy’s first marriage, and they went on a European trip while he still felt good enough to do it. Things turned; they had to come home early.
“I’ll tell you what, I respected (Beirness) as a broadcaster, but the amount of respect I have for her for what she’d been through the last three years, to go on the air and be a pro the whole time, unbelievable,” says Duthie. “She’s an unbelievable person.”
Near the end, Dutchy still made people laugh. Duthie asked him if he wanted anything from the Super Bowl and Dutchy texted: “Yeah, bro, go to the cancer-free store and grab me one of everything. I’ll etransfer you the dough.” Near the very end, Dutchy said: “Make sure my obit’s better than Bob Cole’s.”
If other people said that, you might get mad. But if you knew Dutchy, you knew he meant it with the greatest respect. He was just being comfortably himself.
“I never saw the man become jaded. Not with the industry, not with his diagnosis, not with everything he was going through,” says Button. “To not become jaded, I would say it’s pretty close to being impossible. But I never saw that from him, never.”
He was Canada’s buddy, Canada’s pal. The people who knew him will tell Dutchy stories and laugh for years. He was a giant, they’ll say, wiping away the tears.
‘‘ Dutch has been so influential on so many people in this country, from people wanting to get into the business to people just feeling like they know him.
JENNIFER HEDGER