by Ron MacLean
I’d had a kick blocked earlier. One of our own guys ran from right tackle, behind the centre, to cover the left flank, and he wound up so close to our placeholder, Pat Quesnel, that the ball hit him. When I lined up that final kick, I thought, “Make sure you clear the line of scrimmage!” So I took a little power off to ensure a high kick.
And I kicked it pure. Struck it so sweetly, it soared. We were mesmerized, watching it go right over the right upright, 21 yards deep into the end zone. It was ruled wide.
We were all slow to pursue the Delburne receiver, who picked up the ball and ran back with it. Marty Vellner just missed tackling him in the end zone for a single, and the win. I had drop foot from practicing so much—I couldn’t run him down. The Delburne kid ran it back 131 yards for a touchdown. There was nothing wrong with the hold, the snap or the kick. But I missed. It can happen.
It was one of those moments that would shape my actions forever. To this day, my bosses and producers are always all over me to be tougher in my questioning. I’m tough with guys like Gary Bettman, but not with athletes. When athletes screw up, I have no desire to ask them to review their performance. I know how badly they want it. Why make them squirm?
6
ROMMEL LIVES IN STETTLER
I had no ambition to get into the broadcasting industry. It wasn’t something that I chose to go after. It found me.
I remember being in a lawn chair in our backyard in Red Deer in 1976, when I was sixteen, lounging in the sun, when my dad came out and said, “Ronnie, there’s a Martin Smith on the telephone for you.” Martin Smith was the program director at Red Deer’s main radio station, CKRD. I picked up, and Martin told me that a pal of mine named Bernie Roth, who worked for him, was sick. He said Bernie had told him I had done some high school radio club stuff during noon hours, and he’d recommended me because I was the president of the students’ union and the class clown. Martin said, “I need somebody to do some operating. It’s a very simple procedure—you push a button at the top of the clock once an hour. You’ll have no trouble figuring it out, and we pay $27 for a nine-hour shift. Would you be interested?” That was big money at the time.
CKRD-FM was a CBC repeater station. At the top of the clock they paused for station identification, and they needed a kid to flip the bar that took the network station offline and put the local station online. I would press a button to roll the cartridge with the voice-over—”This is CKRD, 99.9 megahertz in Red Deer”—and then flip the lever back to rejoin the network. And for that I got three bucks every hour. I was like a kid in a candy shop, and totally in awe of the AM disc jockey who would occasionally walk by.
I had been planning to become a teacher, like Ed Shields, my Grade 7 teacher. Ed was a New Yorker, and he taught in Red Deer. On the first day of class, he laid out the curriculum. “We’re doing this, this, this, and spelling …” We all groaned.
“What? You don’t like spelling?” he said. “Well, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll give you a word and if you can spell it, we won’t do spelling this entire semester.” The word was Albuquerque. Fortunately, one of my classmates had been to Albuquerque that summer. Ed kept his word. I respected that, and was intrigued with how he grabbed hold of us. That moment was gold.
So that was my goal—finish high school and pursue an education degree. But after I finished my first shift at CKRD, Martin called and said, “Can you work every second Sunday, three to midnight?”
Five months down the line, CKRD found out they were shy of their Canadian quotient of news, weather and sports, so I was promoted to newsreader. I would rip headlines off the wire service (no rewrites) and stumble through them. In the winter of 1976, Lyudmila Pakhomova and Alexander Gorshkov of the Soviet Union won the ice dancing event at the World Figure Skating Championships. Trying to say their names was painful. I was already butchering every other word.
During my first year, a farmer from Stettler, Alberta, came in, opened up a briefcase and showed me two Lugers. He said, “You know, Ron, Rommel lives in Stettler.” I didn’t know if the guy was crazy or what. He didn’t seem crazy. He said, “What happened was the SS all got out of town and moved to different parts of the world, and Rommel ended up in Stettler. I’m his neighbour, and this is Rommel’s gun.” I didn’t even know if it was an authentic Luger. I told my bosses, and they figured he was looney tunes. But I’ve always wondered about it.
I might have been awful at the job, but they knew I would always show up, so they offered me a chance to be a disc jockey on the weekends. Ken Nichol—a great guy, a broadcaster at the station—gave me some pointers while he walked me through the job. He told me how often to say your name and mention the call letters of the radio station, and how to announce the record artists. It was a formulaic format. Twice an hour, you would do a public service announcement and the weather, and right out of the newscast you were to run an old hit and a Top 30 hit song.
My first shift as a DJ was 11 a.m. on a Sunday. The newscast ran, then a commercial, then the weather, then, “Now back to more music on 85 CKRD.”
Billy Joel’s “My Life” came on, and I cued up Chuck Mangione’s “Feels So Good.” I sat there looking at the clock and practising what I was going to say. “That was Billy Joel with ‘My Life’ on CKRD. It’s 11:08 and I’m Ron MacLean.” “That was Billy Joel with ‘My Life’ on CKRD and I’m …” I was absolutely scared skinny. Billy Joel ended. I turned the microphone on and glanced at the clock. It said 11:10, not 11:08, and it threw me. “It’s eleven o’ ten … er, o,’ … and that, er … that was Billy Joel …”
I was off to a roaring start. But I’ll never forget the feeling of flipping the microphone on for the first time and thinking, “Well, now what?” There’s nobody there, just a metal wall in front of you. So when I was on the radio, I always tried to visualize the listeners. You wouldn’t know if a joke was funny, because there was no feedback. That was really awkward. For the first few times on air, after having the gift of the gab all my life, I had nothing to say.
During Grade 12, when I had my own all-night shift on weekends, my high school buddies would come down to the station. They were always a little gunned after partying. At two or three in the morning, they’d press the light at the back door and I’d let them in. We’d gather around in the little studio and I would try to keep them quiet long enough to introduce the next song. We had a lot of laughs.
I thought that the radio job would last just the summer, but my marks fell dramatically that last semester—not bad enough to prevent me from going to university, but I sort of lost the desire to go. I started to feel the radio bug. My teaching aspirations were kaput. I always thought teachers made your life, but I realized DJs make your day.
Besides, I was fixated on music. My favourite thing to do early in my career was to choose the music. Life was simple and happy when I did those overnight shifts. The sun would come up and I’d be playing nice songs on the radio.
From Grades 6 to 12, I spoke at just about every graduation, usually as the class historian or emcee. But I started to hate it because I was full of trepidation. I’d feel brutal about having agreed to do it. I worried about how I would do. It was probably normal apprehension, the kind of reasonable fear that we all have. Everybody wants to be loved.
By eighteen, when I entered broadcasting full time, I began having anxiety attacks. They would come at crunch time. I remember the old building where we worked, down on Gaetz Avenue in Red Deer. I would go down to the bowels of the basement, where the washroom was, lean over the sink and try to compose myself. I was nervous about my shift. I couldn’t wait for the day when I would be confident about going on the air. I knew that time would come, but I was so scared. It was a tough time, due to all the internal churning. I’d tell myself, “You’re eighteen years old, and you’ve made your choice. You’re going to do this. You can’t go on making $600 a month forever. So you’d better work at it and try to establish yourself.” I sensed that this was my opportunity. I constantly told myse
lf, “Don’t blow it.”
Fear would descend at the craziest times, and it could be crippling. One of the worst attacks happened during my first on-location broadcast in Red Deer. I was set up on the second floor of a plaza at a stereo shop. The DJ threw to me for a sixty-second live hit. “Here’s Ron, live on location at …” and I couldn’t get through it. I had to abort about thirty-five seconds in. I was breathless, my heart was racing, pounding so hard it was lifting up the fabric of my shirt. I was absolutely petrified. I thought, “Oh God, what am I going to do?” I was scheduled to do four sixty-second hits an hour for the next four hours. I had to fight my way through the rest of that day.
I moved to full time in June, just before graduation. I had a daily 8 p.m.-to-midnight shift, and the Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning shifts. I tried to improve the rapport I had with my listeners. I looked at it as if I were a doctor who works on his bedside manner. The disc jockey has the opportunity to entertain and to educate, but most of all he can give you companionship. Because I was an only child, I thought it was important for people to have company. If you do it right, you’re good company. DJ-ing was a neat thing to do for a living. I loved it, but I wasn’t very good at it.
I continued to study and work at it. Man, did I work at it. I took a little Johnny Carson, added a bit of Wes Montgomery from CHED in Edmonton and CFAC Calgary’s Ed Whalen, sprinkled in a little Billy Joel and blended all of it into this new sensation—me! The result was brutal. I chirped like Beaver Cleaver sucking on a helium balloon. I had been a singer until I hit puberty, and then I had a terrible voice, very squeaky. Age and experience have managed to improve it. I don’t smoke, which is too bad. It would have given me more resonance.
Mark Summers, the DJ who worked the shift before mine, would always turn over the mic and, off air, would set me up for my shift with the words, “All right, my friend, be great.”
I cringe now, but, inspired by Mark’s kindness, I used to end my show with “Thank you for being a friend.” I figured no one would notice I’d stolen the line from the hit song by Andrew Gold. The Golden Girls, which had that song as its theme, was still six years into the future. In my mind, I was John Tesh meets Dan Rather, with a terrific signature sign-off.
I was totally oblivious to my limitations. By 1979, I thought I might be ready for the big time. I often listened to my favourite station in Edmonton, 630 CHED, which had a rock format. The star of the station was morning man Wes Montgomery. I adored him. There was also a very good DJ named Bruce Bowie who did the noon-to-3 p.m. shift. I decided to send them a tape for feedback. I secretly hoped that once someone at CHED heard it, they would be so impressed they’d pass it on to the station manager demanding that I be hired at once. I was too intimidated to send it to Wes, but I respected Bowie and aspired to be like him, so I mailed it to him with $10 and a note thanking him and suggesting that he could use the money to buy himself a bottle of wine.
Bruce wrote back. He gave me a lot of great advice regarding connection, communication and brevity. He added, “Ron, your work is technically sound, but nobody in this world is that nice.” And he returned the money, saying he did not drink. Bruce was right. In trying hard to engage the listener and sell myself with cheeriness, I came off as a phony.
Early in my radio career, I would pore over newspapers, trying to look for inspiration from stories. I needed song introductions, and I have never been very interested in pop culture, so it was a real struggle to create dialogue. I knew some DJs used the weather or “universals,” which were what we called tidbits of information that we all connect to. So I would read the papers and see the headlines. I noticed that the headlines were often puns.
Throughout junior high school, I had a classmate named Ray Blair. Ray struggled with reading but was a masterful wordsmith. I always thought that was interesting. He was a guy who could barely read and yet had an amazing command of language. He loved toying with words. Instead of “drink,”
he would say “swig,” and then turn that into “schwig.” He had a relentless fascination with the sounds of words and their meanings. It became a huge part of my high school days, matching him stride for stride.
We both played hockey. We weren’t always on the same team; he was an adversary and a really good one. Ray was a much bigger guy, stronger and tough as nails. I was captain and a blabbermouth. One time, I was going back to chase the puck while playing the point on a power play. Ray was right behind me. He could have killed me, but as I touched the puck, he didn’t hit me—instead, he quietly said “Bang.” It sent chills.
The way Ray played with words got me interested in puns. He loved to pun and was constantly punning—we called him the Prince of Puns. For example, we always used to talk about what to do on weekends. So he might say, “There’s beerly anything going on.” And I’d ask, “Rye not?” To which he’d reply, “Let’s head to the liquor store, just in case.” I’d say something like, “I can’t give it a shot right now, my day is all bottled up.” And he’d shake his head, “That’s a foamy excuse.” We’d go on and on, trying to top each other.
Ray’s an oil field consultant today, but after high school he worked at an auto body shop. I asked him about it, and he said, “How hard can fixing a frame that’s bentley be?”
7
ONE IN SIX BILLION
I made a good living at CKRD—7,200 bones a year—and I was living at home. I didn’t need more money. I saved, and by the time I was twenty-four, I figured I could afford to move out and get married.
Cari Lynn Vaselenak (Vaselenak is Slovak) and I had been going out together for seven years, starting June 22, 1978, when she was in Grade 10 and I was in Grade 12. Cari was beautiful.
Before she even knew I existed, I used to sneak looks at her all the time. She had big, dark eyes and a smile that lit up a room. In 1983, when the movie Flashdance came out, I couldn’t believe how much Cari looked like Jennifer Beals. Cari was cool and a really good basketball player. Even her dad, John, was cool. They called him “Hondo.” He’d played baseball in the minors and scouted for the Cincinnati Reds and the Pittsburgh Pirates.
In the late winter of 1978, before we started dating, the boys’ and girls’ teams from Camille Lerouge High were at a basketball tournament in Drumheller. I was in Grade 12 and a point guard. Cari was one of two Grade 10s called up to sub in with the senior team. She played guard, too.
The guys were staying four to a room in two adjoining rooms. We’d smuggled in a bunch of beer. Our coach, Bruce Buchanan, knocked on the door and the beer was quickly stashed under beds, in suitcases, behind curtains and in the toilet tank. Later that night, we partied, and most of the players from both teams showed up, but we kept it down, so it was no big deal.
The next morning, we got up and the guys wanted to get rid of all the empties, but I said, “No, no. Let’s put them back in the cardboard, stack them neatly on the coffee table, and the chambermaid can turn in the empties. It will be like a tip.” So that’s what we did, and then we went off to play basketball.
Unbeknownst to me, someone had gotten a little carried away and driven a headboard through the drywall. The hotel owner showed up after the game to claim damages. He said we had been partying up a storm and wrecked the room, and he had cases of empty beer bottles to prove it. So now we were in trouble. Our school decided to expel all team members from sports for the rest of their high school careers. In Cari’s case, it was very bad news because she still had two years left.
I was student union president, so I went to our principal, Ray Killeen, and said, “Look, Ray, it’s bad, no doubt about it, but let’s make something positive out of this. To make amends, I’ll apologize to the entire school at an assembly, and the teams will sell chocolate-covered almonds to raise money for charity.” And I phoned every parent of every player, taking responsibility and explaining what and how it had happened. “This is Ron of the Camille Lerouge basketball team, and here’s what happened. We were bad to do it, and we took advantag
e by wrecking the room, but we’re going to make amends by raising money for charity, and I hope you’ll forgive and support us.” Cari’s dad, John, took her out for a walk around the block and told her, “Don’t worry about this, Cari. It was more important you were part of the group. It’s good to be popular. It’s good that you were included. I’m not mad at you at all.”
In the end, we were allowed to finish the season, and in fact, we won the zone, the Central West Alberta Schools Athletic Association title, and Cari continued as a star player on the school team until she graduated. I can’t believe we were able to weasel our way out of that predicament.
My nicknames were Thumper and Bunny because of my front teeth, and I was a member of the radio club, which in Cari’s eyes was a step up from the debate club or the chess club. I thought about her a lot and wanted to ask her out, so I hinted around. I’d give her rides home from school and joke with her at parties, but I wasn’t on her radar. My best buddy, Todd Swanson, has a sister two years younger named Val, who was one of Cari’s friends. Val and Todd tried giving her the full-court press. They told her she should consider me as a potential boyfriend. But she had no interest.
I intuitively knew that this girl was for me. I’d go out of my way to spot her at school, and I used to estimate where she’d be and at what time so that I could intersect with her. She lived in a community adjacent to where I lived, and there was an ice cream store nearby on the corner of 39 Street and 40 Avenue. I had an innate sense of where she might go. For instance, about half an hour after her basketball practice I would stroll over to the corner for a cone and she’d be there. I’m not sure whether I was plugged into her somehow or whether I was just good at calculating the odds, but I bumped into her a lot.
She seemed to like my company, but still did not look at me romantically. I kind of gave up and settled for hanging around her. Then, in the spring of Grade 12, I was recruited by the radio station to do this fashion show, modelling graduation suits. During the show, I met a lovely girl who went to another high school. I needed a date for graduation, so I asked her to go with me. This seemed to pique Cari’s interest. She told Val that if I asked her out, she would probably say yes.