WE WERE MATES AT A MOST DANGEROUS TIME - EACH OF US WANTED A BETTER LIFE - IT TOOK TIME - BUT IT WAS FOUND

TO THE FAMILY OF JOHN BLACK.

THIS MEMORIAL TRIBUTE, TO MY OLD NEWS-BUDDY, WAS WRITTEN FOR HIS FAMILY, ABOUT A TIME THEY MAY HAVE HEARD ABOUT IN HIS REMINISCES, BUT POSSIBLY NEVER UNDERSTOOD, IN ACTUALITY, HOW IMPORTANT JOHN BLACK WAS TO ALL OF US……HOW HE MADE US LOOK BETTER IN THE PRESS, BECAUSE OF HIS ALMOST UNBELIEVABLE STANDARD OF DOING THINGS RIGHT……ALL THE TIME. BUT ONCE OUR NEWSPAPER WAS "PUT TO BED" THE AMIGOS WERE NOT ONLY A MUTUAL ADMIRATION SOCIETY, IN AN ANECDOTAL WAY, BUT FRIENDS WHO HELPED PULL EACH OTHER FROM THE MOMENTS OF DESPAIR…..WHEN FROM TIME TO TIME, WE GOT DISCOURAGED AND DEPRESSED. WE LIKED THE POTENTIAL OF OUR CAREERS, BUT THEY NEVER LIVED UP TO WHAT THEY COULD HAVE BEEN, UNDER DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES. TOUGH GUYS, WE DIDN'T CRY ON EACH OTHER'S SHOULDERS, BUT WE HAD TEARS, SOME TIMES, WHEN WE TRULY MISSED THE COMFORTS OF FAMILY…..A SIGNIFICANT OTHER, CHILDREN, THE DESIRE TO SKIP THE PUB AND HEAD HOME FOR A NICE, QUIET EVENING OF SNUGGLING WITH LOVED ONES. FOR QUITE A FEW YEARS, WE HAD DOUBTS ABOUT THAT EVER HAPPENING, AS WE HAD IMAGINED IT, AS LONELY GUYS PONDERING THE MEANING OF LIFE. BUT EVENTUALLY, WE REPORTER-KIND FOUND LOVE WITH CARING, NURTURING PARTNERS, WHO HELPED US SHAKE-OFF THE BAD HABITS WE HAD ACQUIRED AS ROVING NEWS HOUNDS; HAVING EXPERIENCED LIFE AND DEATH ON THIS DAY TO DAY EXERCISE, OF PUBLISHING COMMUNITY NEWS. MISERY AND JOY COMPRESSED, COVERING OUR REGION FOR THE WEEKLY PRESS.

I HAVE WRITTEN QUITE A BIT, RECENTLY, ABOUT MY DAYS AS EDITOR OF THE FORMER HERALD-GAZETTE, IN BRACEBRIDGE. I WILL HAVE MANY OCCASIONS, WHILE WRITING ABOUT SOMETHING CONTEMPORARY, WHEN ALL OF A SUDDEN, A CIRCUMSTANCE, A SONG ON THE RADIO, OR SOME OTHER OUT-OF-PLACE REMEMBRANCE, WILL TAKE ME BACK TO THAT OLD GANG I USED TO WORK WITH, AT MUSKOKA PUBLICATIONS. IT WAS ONLY TWO WEEKS AGO, THAT I WAS WRITING A SHORT TRIBUTE PIECE ABOUT BILL ALLEN, THE GENERAL MANAGER OF NUMEROUS REGIONAL PAPERS, INCLUDING THE BANNER AND THE EXAMINER, WHO HAD JUST RECENTLY DIED THE RESULT OF HEART FAILURE. BILL AND I WENT AS FAR BACK AS THE MUSKOKA LAKES-GEORGIAN BAY BEACON, OF THE EARLY 1980'S. JOHN BLACK CAME A COUPLE OF YEARS AFTER THIS, AND THE NEWSPAPER FAMILY WAS RICHER AND MORE INTERESTING BECAUSE OF HIS EMPLOYMENT.

JOHN'S LONG-TIME FRIEND, FRED SCHULZ, PHONED US ON TUESDAY EVENING, APRIL 17TH, TO LET US KNOW HE HAD RECEIVED WORD, JUST THEN, THAT OUR MUTUAL BUDDY HAD PASSED AWAY AFTER A SHORT ILLNESS. WHAT IS IRONIC, IN A TRAGIC WAY, IS THAT SUZANNE (MY PARTNER) AND I, HAD BEEN AT FRED'S HOUSE THE NIGHT BEFORE, TO LET HIM KNOW HOW SICK JOHN WAS…..AS WE HAD JUST HEARD THAT MORNING, HIS ILLNESS WAS VERY SERIOUS. FRED AND I WERE PART OF JOHN'S WEDDING PARTY. IN FACT, JOHN HAD BEEN THE PHOTOGRAPHER AT MY WEDDING, AND THE FAMILY PORTRAITS ON THE WALL, HERE AT BIRCH HOLLOW, WERE TAKEN BY JOHN BLACK, ONE OF THE FINEST PHOTOGRAPHERS I'VE EVER WORKED WITH IN THE PRINT MEDIA.

JOHN WAS A JACK OF ALL TRADES AT THE HERALD-GAZETTE, WHERE WE FIRST MET-UP, BACK IN THE EARLY 1980'S. HE WORKED AS A NEWS PHOTOGRAPHER AND IN THE PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT. HE WAS A MOST AMAZING TECHNOLOGIST, AT THE TIME, BECAUSE HE COULD FIX MOST OF THE EQUIPMENT WE HAD, IN PRODUCTION AND UPSTAIRS; ESPECIALLY WHEN OUR MDT TERMINALS WOULD CRASH. I DON'T KNOW HOW MANY TIMES JOHN CHASTISED ME FOR SPILLING COFFEE INTO THE KEYBOARD, AND NEARLY CAUSING AN ELECTRICAL FIRE. BRANT SCOTT AND I HAD BEEN QUITE HAPPY TO USE OUR ANTIQUE TYPEWRITERS, LIKE THEY DID IN THE NEWSPAPER BIG LEAGUES…..LIKE YOU SEE IN THE OLD MOVIES, LIKE "THE LOST WEEKEND" WITH RAY MILAN. ACTUALLY, WE KIND OF LIVED THAT TYPE OF LIFE BACK THEN, WHEN SPILLING A COFFEE INTO THE KEYBOARD WASN'T AS BIG A DEAL, AS THE LATE NIGHT NONSENSE WE'D GOT UP TO, SOMEWHERE, WITH SOME CHARACTER, GIVING US A NEWS INTERVIEW OVER A HALF DOZEN BEER. JOHN HAD GREAT SENSITIVITY WHEN WE WERE HUNG OVER. IF OUT AND AROUND, JOHN WAS WITH US, TO IMPOSE HIS SENSIBILITIES. HE DROVE. HE WAS THE GROUNDED, LOGICAL ONE. WE NEVER KNEW WHEN TO GO HOME. ON MANY OCCASIONS, IF IT HADN'T BEEN FOR JOHN, WE MIGHT NEVER HAVE MADE IT BACK TO THOSE MDT TERMINALS AT ALL…..IN ORDER TO SPILL COFFEE INTO THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE.

John had a wry sense of humor, and he could pull the most amazing practical jokes. He was serious at his job, but never so consumed, that he couldn't find something humorous to bestow upon the "half-nuts" of the writing staff, trying to meet deadline. John would flop down, in a chair beside my desk, during a hectic press day, when everybody seemed to hate everybody else, and smile at me with such benevolence, that I'd have to ask, "What have you done to me now John." You see, when John appeared mildly exasperated, but still possessing enough fortitude and optimism to smile, before giving me bad news, I at the very least, felt he would never hand me a conundrum he couldn't offer a companion solution. He was always toting along plan "B" and "C", so that, while ticked-off with the course of events that day, I would beg John to employ whatever counter-measures were necessary, to get us out of the jam. I could write a book about the thousand and one times, John Black saved me from my own precarious miscalculations. I couldn't possibly tell you how many times, he'd arrive at my desk, with his face redder than a baboon's behind, to tell me he had just spoken….ever so politely, to the advertising personnel, and that it was likely he would be fired before the end of the day. Well, that never happened during my years at the paper, because I would have quit alongside John, and I think others would have followed. John was too important to us, as a kindred spirit, to not have him there to sort the problems. Even the ones we got ourselves into. Brant and I could do that at any moment of the day. So John was kept busy in this regard.

One day, and I think it was a Monday, as we were getting things ready for Press Day, which for us was Tuesday, and the paper hit the newsstands on Wednesday mornings, I got one of those precious calls from John. The kind of call you expect will have a twist of irony, a trace amount of levity, and John's trademark spin on anything serious. "Ted. I've just had a cow on my lap." I started laughing. You know the kind. When you're tired and frustrated, and someone will say one thing that you can't help but find hilarious….even if it's borderline tragic. "Ted? Are you there?" "I'm going to be late getting back to the office. I just hit a cow." I think, on that day, he had to tell me three times, before it sank in, that this wasn't one of John's little anecdotes, to lighten my day. He'd been coming back from Bala, where he was taking photographs, and came upon a cow in the middle of Highway 169, and it was too late to miss the stray bovine, that had wandered through an open gate….or a hole in a fence. But no kidding. He was covered in cow. Bastard that I am, all I could say was "Well bring us back some meat." I don't ever remember asking John if he was okay. Just about grabbing us hungry staffers some road-kill steaks. The accident could have hurt him badly. The Volkswagon, I believe, suffered a great deal of damage and its windshield, if memory serves. John made the most out of the story for years after. "How do you like your steak John," a waitress would ask at the old North Villa Restaurant, in Bracebridge. "Not on my windshield." Of course it was a set-up so he could explain how he had once been face to face with cow lips.

As is the case so often, in these old relationships that have suffered from the melancholy of nostalgia, there are many things I would have liked to have said to John before he passed. I will say them to the family, as they are the keepers of the flame now. John exemplified what it meant to be a best friend. He helped my mother-in-law, Harriet Stripp, and I, produce our book, "The Legend of Tall Pines," back in the mid-1980's. Suzanne's mother was gravely ill at the time, and he offered to help put our little text of short stories together, for the price of a few pints of cold ale, and a handshake. I never thanked John as I should have, or intended, because shortly after, Harriet passed away, and we were thrust into a different environs, and by selfish pre-occupation, we forgot our debt of gratitude owed Mr. Black for helping us out. On one winter morning, while I was working at home, at Golden Beach, in Bracebridge, my car battery failed, and I had to ask John for a favor. We had enough money to buy formula and diapers for our new-born son, and I asked if he could possibly travel the five miles or so, to give me a lift to Bracebridge. The man had to come on his lunch break, to get me, and you know, I didn't even have enough money to buy him a coffee as thanks. But I never forgot the man's boundless sense of propriety and friendship, and I bet everyone who called him a mate, could attest to exactly the same embrace of kindness…..even at times when he was stressed himself with his own personal problems.

One day, when he was helping Suzanne and I move from a house on Quebec Street, in Bracebridge, to our first family home on Ontario Street, he arrived at the door with a terrible look of distress on his face. He was almost crying. I asked him what had happened on the short jaunt from one house to the other. "It's you pine cupboard Ted. Did you really like it?" Before I could answer, he said, "I'll help you re-build it." The hundred year old cupboard had toppled out of his truck on the way down the legendary Tanbark Hill, by the former Bracebridge High School. Well, seeing as John was working without compensation, what could I say. "John, do you know how many thousands of pine cupboards there are out there? Don't worry about it." We both went back and began picking-up splinters off the hillside. Good times.

On one other memorable occasion, at Suzanne's family cottage, on Lake Rosseau, while having a small staff function, John thought it would be funny, to play a little practical joke on fellow photographer Tim DuVernet. Tim had arrived at the dock by sailboat. Later in the day, as the party was winding down, John wondered what it would look like, if he was to run an old work-sock up the mast, as if it was the "working man's Jolly Roger." It was a pretty crazy sight and Tim was not amused, particularly as it was jammed there, fluttering in the breeze. Tim had to have the boat towed home that day. John was very apologetic and it was the first time I'd ever seen him, perplexed about fixing the problem. He wouldn't have done it, unless he had been sure he could yank it back down, after the laughter had subsided. On this day, all his Macgyver tricks wouldn't work, and all we could do, as a group, was stand on the end of that dock, saluting the sock, and sailboat as it disappeared over the horizon.

When I heard from Fred Schulz, last evening, about John's passing, I immediately sent word to Brant Scott, about the terrible news. For many years we were the Three Amigos, and we had many enjoyable road trips together. We could finish each other's sentences, and know precisely when it was time to regenerate our enthusiasm, with a wee pint and a chat, for what we knew intimately, was a job that was killing us slowly. I think we all pondered, on those late nights, sitting at the Riverside Inn, listening to Keith Lumley playing the piano, whether we'd ever find true happiness…..as it had always seemed to evade us in the past. The true happy ending, is that the Amigos found the respective soul-mates, and had wonderful family lives, with kids and pets and wonderful little homesteads…..the kind we had always thought about, but couldn't imagine happening any time soon. But it did.

John Black loved his family. Of this there is no doubt. And his legacy of kindness will never be forgotten, by those who got to know just how warm that spirit was….that he so generously shared, for oh so many years. Thank you John. You enhanced our lives more than you ever knew.