Joe McWilliams
Even in sleepy little Slave Lake, Alberta, you will occasionally cross paths with a celebrity. Or sort of a celebrity!
It’s not that big of a deal looking back on it, but at the time it’s fun, adding a bit of spice to the weekly routine. Plus, it gives you something to talk about at the coffee shop.
Those tidbits are worth more than they sound, as most coffee shop regulars will probably agree. Once you’ve been through the weather and the roads, you can run out of anything interesting pretty fast.
So, for instance running into former elite curler Pawl Gowsell one day in Slave Lake was good for an anecdote or two. How I knew it was Gowsell I can’t remember. He was looking after the installation of new sewer lines in a section of southeast Slave Lake, in the post-wildfire rebuild that was going on down there. Somebody at the town must have told me his name – probably Brian Vance – who would have been the Town’s CAO back then.
I was introduced to the guy – a middle-aged gent in a hard hat, who bore no resemblance that I could see to the long-haired free-swinging Calgary curler who was turning heads at the Brier back in 1980 or thereabouts. He didn’t win, but he was World Junior Champion twice.
One tale I heard about him was he had pizza delivered right out on the ice in the middle of a serious bonspiel. The story goes that Saskatchewan skip Larry McGrath’s final rock picked on an olive, losing him the game. That sounds unlikely; it’s easier to believe that Hec Gervais said of Gowsell, “with a shave and two haircuts, he’d be alright.”
Anyway, there wasn’t much to the encounter. I asked him if he was ‘The’ Paul Gowsell and he said he was.
Another fun encounter was with Jim Cuddy, of Blue Rodeo fame. He was in town in 2012, part of a relief project dreamed up by the producers of some Ontario-based TV show. I was there to take pictures of the show for the paper, and before it started somebody asked me if I’d like to talk to Jim, one-on-one.
“Sure!” I said. “Why not?”
We had a nice chat. I didn’t take notes. He had his guard up a bit, which I suppose you need to do when you’re famous and don’t know what sort of a journalist you are talking to. I think I softened him up a bit when I mentioned having read about him in Dave Bidini’s book The Tropic of Hockey.
Bidini’s amusing tale had to do with playing rec hockey in Toronto with a bunch of entertainment biz people, including Cuddy. There isn’t a milder mannered or nicer guy in music than Jim, Bidini said, but he can really lose it on the ice.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Cuddy to me, grinning. “Dave embellished that quite a bit.”
I told him we had oldtimers hockey in common and that seemed to break the ice.
Later, speaking to the crowd during the show, Cuddy said something to the effect that in spite of the disaster, Slave Lake was lucky to have had a visit from the Stanley Cup, and the Royal Couple, Will and Kate.
“We didn’t even get a Royal Visit in Toronto!” he said.
At that point, I hollered: “Or the Stanley Cup!” which drew a fair-sized laugh.
“Geez,” said Jim. “I was talking with him earlier and thought he was a pretty nice guy!”
Well, somebody had to make that wisecrack! It was me!
Have a nice week!