Memories will
Some unique characters as well
Ivers Kelly
Ivers Kelly didn’t wear a gun to work, but he did come with a legendary story: Before he got a job at The Sun, he had murdered his wife with an axe.
That was the story, anyway. As it turned out, he was charged with the attempted murder of his wife in Toronto on Dec. 21, 1947. Kelly was convicted of assault causing grievous bodily harm and, on April 28, 1948, he was sentenced to two years less a day in prison. When he got out, he landed a job at the Edmonton Bulletin and, on May 25, 1950, he landed a job at The Sun, where he remained until he retired in 1977.
“He was religion editor in the old tower,” says retired Sun news editor Bill Rayner, 87. “He was way up on one of the top floors, and he would say, ‘ Come up and see me and God sometime.’ ”
Kelly was a rather fierce looking fellow.
“He had a very distinctive face,” says former Sun reporter Tom Barrett, 57.
“He kind of looked like one of those Shar- Pei dogs, the jowly ones, bulldog-y. But he was a very mild- mannered guy. You could never sort of believe that this guy had supposedly killed his wife with an axe.”
Kelly did have some idiosyncrasies, however.
“He had a regular habit of chewing copy paper,” says retired editor Bruce Smillie, 82. “He stuck it into his mouth and would chew away for hours.”
Copy paper was a type of cheap paper reporters would type their stories on. Legend has it that one day, Kelly accidentally grabbed the main headline for the front page and ate it.
John Olding
Editors did all sorts of things to reporter’s stories in the copy paper era. The most respected, and feared, copy editor in recent times was John Olding, a gruff, no- nonsense sort who never met an adjective he liked. He was an incredible editor, but if there were any problems with your story, God help you.
Tom Barrett found this out on his first day at The Sun in 1975, when Olding called reporter Wyng Chow over.
“This surly looking guy with a black beard yells ‘ Chow! Come over here!’ So Chow gets up and drags himself to the city desk. [ Olding] starts going ‘ rrrrr, your [ bleeping] lead [ paragraph] is down here, rrrr, you buried your lead, rrrrr.’
“Wyng’s going ‘ I don’t feel that way.’ They’re getting louder and louder, going back and forth at each other, yelling. Finally Olding stands up and grabs Chow’s copy, throws it on the floor and stomps on it.
“I’m sitting there thinking ‘ Oh my God, wait ’ til he gets hold of one of my stories. He’ll stomp on me, he won’t bother with the copy.’ ”
Deni Eagland and Dan Scott
You could write a book of stories about The Sun’s photo department, particularly where the late Deni Eagland and Dan Scott were involved.
Deni and Dan both had cabins on Mahood Lake by Wells Gray Provincial Park in the Cariboo.
“Deni had some very bad luck, and every time he’d go on vacation, particularly with Danny, there’d be a fresh set of stories about their misadventures,” says Sun photographer Ian Lindsay.
One of the classics was when they blew up their boat while fishing with dynamite.
“They were clearing stumps or trying to move rocks, and had some dynamite left over,” explains Lindsay.
“The way Deni used to tell it was, they took a stick of dynamite and threw it in the water and rowed like mad [ to get away]. There was this little hiccup in the water, and they rowed back looking for the fish that it should generate, and there weren’t any.
“They had four sticks of dynamite left, and they realized that if they tried to double the amount, and it still didn’t work, they’d be out of luck, because they’d only have two sticks left. So they decided to go with all four.
“That produced an explosion which swamped or broke the boat and left them swimming in the water.”
Dave Buchan
The mother of all great Sun photographer stories goes to the late Dave Buchan. Buchan was a legendary tippler who was “hired and fired many times” from the 1930s to the 1970s.
Back in the ’ 30s, ’ 40s and ’ 50s, downtown Vancouver was filled with underground bootleggers and speakeasies, and Buchan was a frequent visitor.
“One day [ Buchan] went into this bootlegging joint and was having his morning drink when somebody came in and shot up one of the patrons,” relates retired Sun photographer Ray Allan, 87.
“Dave got the hell out of there and ran back to the office. They said, ‘ We’ve been looking for you Dave, there’s been a shooting up in that bootlegging joint.”
So Buchan went back to the bootlegger’s he’d just left.