Greg Douglas was introduced at a Toronto Sports Hall of Fame dinner back in the 1960s as the youngest sports editor of a daily newspaper in Canada. He was 18 at the time.
David Johnston quarterbacked the Sault Collegiate Wildcats to fame and glory in high school football during the late 1950s – beating the cleats off Michigan teams as well as bringing home the NOSSA hardware in Northern Ontario high school playoffs.
Now let's fast-forward to the present day. Within the space of two weeks, both men will have reached heights in their chosen careers that neither of them could possibly have envisioned back at a time when access to the Michigan Sault was by car ferry, local entrepreneur Jim Hilsinger was still a Toronto-based Coca Cola salesman and kids were able to get up close and personal with the animals at the Bellevue Park Zoo.
On Sept. 16, Greg was inducted into the British Columbia Sports Hall of Fame as a media representative, taking his place among such luminaries as boxing's World Welterweight Champion Jimmy McLarnin, Olympic Gold Medalist and Canadian Senator Nancy Greene Raine, B.C. Lions Grey Cup winning quarterback Joe Kapp and former Vancouver Canucks captain Orland Kurtenbach.
On October 1, David will be sworn in as this country's 28th Governor General since Confederation, replacing the popular Michaëlle Jean who, after close to five years as the Queen's representative in Canada, will become a UNESCO special envoy to Haiti, her native country.
I couldn't be prouder of these two guys if they were my brothers. Hey, wait a minute, one of them is! I'd love to be able to say that I taught baby brother Greg all he knows about sports, but that would be stretching things a bit. To be honest, I never did get the hang of stickhandling a softball across the blueline for the winning touchdown or dribbling a puck across home plate for a strikeout.
For that matter, David – or Davey as we called him in high school – was one of a band of brothers (before the term was invented by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks) back at the late, lamented Sault Collegiate Institute. Davey and I were in the same home room pretty well all through our five years at SCI and, being the cornballs that we were, we belonged to a loosely-based fraternity called the Great and Holy Order of the Paramecium Watchers Association – or GHOPWA for short.
Our one claim to fame was that whenever one of the group of about eight of us stood up in class and gave the Roman salute while shouting G-H-O-P-W-A, the rest of us had to follow suit or be drummed out of the club. I'm ashamed to say we only pulled this stunt in classes where we knew the teachers were too ineffectual, or too good-natured, to do anything but hand us a detention. We would never have dared to try this in Bill "The Slash" McGauley's home room.
It was all good clean –if dopey – fun compared to some of the antics high school kids get involved in these days. To us SCI innocents, "drug" was the past tense of "drag", as in: "He drug his baby brother to the Princess Theatre for the Saturday matinee. (With apologies to a terrific English teacher Glenn Cond!)
I toyed with the idea of flying to Ottawa for next Friday's vice regal ceremonies where I would stand up in the public gallery, arm extended, and shout out: "G-H-O-P-W-A" to see what Davey's reaction might be. But I don't relish the idea of the Governor General's Foot Guards using me for target practice on the grassy knoll outside the Parliament Buildings.
If there is one trait that Greg Douglas and David Johnston have in common in terms of career success, it's dogged perseverance. From the time they were kids, they seemed determined to climb as high as they could in their chosen careers – and kept a clear focus on their goals.
Our house on Bellevue Avenue in the Sault's Monterey Gardens subdivision was thrown into a tizzy one day back in the mid-1950s when the Grade 8 guidance teacher at Francis Clergue Public School phoned my parents to tell them Greg was being stubborn.
At that time, there were only two public high schools in the Sault – SCI and Sault Tech. Those who chose to attend Collegiate had the option of going to university after getting their five-year Honours Graduation Diploma. The four-year course at Tech prepared students for a job in the commercial world or as a tradesperson. The guidance teacher, backed up by Principal Keith Wilson, wanted Greg to go to SCI and then on to university, saying he had the brains for it (which came as a surprise to his older brother!).
But Greg dug in his heels. He wanted to become a sports reporter and sports reporters had to know how to type. SCI didn't teach typing, so he was going to Tech and that was that. No amount of pleading, cajoling or threatening could deter him from this decision.
After his four years at Tech, Greg got slightly sidetracked when our Dad convinced him that he should apply for a job at Algoma Steel. Dad had gone through the Depression and the Second World War and a secure job was on the top of his list of life's achievements. Greg ended up in the Purchasing Department, stamping invoices, and hated every minute of it.
To keep himself from going bonkers, he convinced sports director Harry Wolfe at Radio Station CKCY to let him moonlight from his day job by doing the late-night sportscast. They paid him the princely sum of 12 1/2 cents a show and for the "privilege" of being on-air, he had to clean up the studio each night at 11:15 p.m. – sweeping the floors and taking out the trash.
Before long he was offered a job in the sports department at The Sault Star – at a considerable cut in pay from his Algoma Steel job – and he grabbed it. Within a year, the old sports editor moved on and Greg took over the helm. Within a few years Toronto came calling and he moved to The Big Smoke to work for Broadcast News, radio arm of The Canadian Press, Canada's national newswire service.
Beyond his wildest dreams, Greg eventually had to make a choice among three job offers – from the Hamilton Spectator, The Toronto Star and The Vancouver Sun. Since The Sun offered him both the baseball and hockey beats, he was soon winging his way to the west coast, where he's been ever since. When the Vancouver Canucks got the nod to enter the National Hockey League, Greg was offered the position of public relations director, and later added the title of assistant to the general manager to his job description.
After 10 years, Greg went back to his first love as a sports reporter/radio and TV commentator, adding sports promotion to the mix. Today, he writes a Saturday sports column for The Vancouver Sun and a wintertime "Snowbirds" sports wrap-up for California's Desert Sun. He also handles public relations and marketing duties with Hastings Park Raceway. Somewhere along the way, he picked up the sobriquet "Dr. Sport".
Davey Johnston took the other of the two high school options and attended Sault Collegiate where he immediately showed the kind of get-up-and-go that would catapult him into the career stratosphere. In addition to his talents on the football field, he played hockey, basketball and volleyball. He was selected to represent Sault Ste. Marie at a gathering of secondary school students at the United Nations and served as student council president while racking up top marks in pretty well every subject he took.
In some circles, this high level of achievement would have branded him as a nerd or a know-it-all, but he was so damned likeable that only the most small-minded of his fellow SCI students of those bygone days would begrudge him the success that has culminated in the lofty position he will assume on Friday.
After graduation from SCI, Davey went to Harvard on a hockey scholarship and lived in the same residence as the late Erich Segal, author of the best-selling book and movie Love Story. Davey wound up in the book as the captain of the Harvard hockey team who slams the protagonist, Oliver Barrett IV, into the boards during a practice for calling him a “f***ing Canuck."
After Harvard, Davey completed his law studies at Cambridge and at Queen's University. He taught law at Queen's and the University of Toronto and was the University of Western Ontario's Dean of Law from 1974 to 1979. This led to his appointment as principal and vice-chancellor of McGill University and then of the University of Waterloo – the position he relinquished to become Governor-General.
He is the recipient of a dozen honorary degrees, has written almost as many books as Stephen King and has moderated a couple of prime ministerial debates. More recently, he was asked by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to set the guidelines for the Brian Mulroney/Karlheinz Schreiber dog-and-pony show. Oh, and along the way, he managed to woo and wed the Sault's Sharon Downey, who is no slouch in the academic department in her own right, picking up a few degrees that include a PhD in Rehabilitation Science from McGill.
Davey as of a week Friday will be addressed as His Excellency while serving as the G-G and will be referred to as The Right Honorable for the rest of his life after he leaves the vice-regal office.
Our SCI music teacher, the late David Warner Smith, used to have a slogan attached to his bulletin board that said: "Big shots are just little shots that keep on shooting." Dr. Sport and Your Excellency, you've proven to be a couple of real sharpshooters – and you've done the Sault proud!
This article appeared in Sault This Week on September 22, 2010
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