Jim Taylor greatest sportswriter of his generation
I read the many obituaries for Jim Taylor with sadness. Canada has lost the greatest sportswriter of his generation and several others, and for all of the compliments he has received as both a writer and a man I feel he has been damned with faint praise. That being said, there is an error in his obits that would have annoyed Jim greatly and he would want corrected.
Jim Taylor never worked for the Victoria Times Colonist. He was hired straight from the Victoria High School Camosunette by Jim Tang at the Victoria Colonist, and left before that great publication was merged with the Times. My own father, who worked at the Colonist for better than a quarter century, sat in on the interview and was assigned to mentor young Jim as he learned his profession. One must assume they got along, because Jim blew off a couple of Hockey Night In Canada telecasts to fly home for Dad’s funeral.
But I digress. To best describe the relationship that existed between the two newspapers I must quote Jim Taylor himself, in the wonderful obituary he wrote for Dad. “At the Colonist,” he recalled, “we knew we were put on Earth to kick the Times’ butt every morning, and we did.” Having grown up around the Colonist newsroom I am prepared to swear that this sentiment was shared by every one of the amazing journalists who worked there, and by none more than Jim Taylor.
We all have Taylor stories. Mine is about the time I was visiting the newsroom and a story came over the teletype. Younger readers might want to Google that word. Having been there enough to know how things worked I tore the story off the machine and took it to Jim Taylor at the sports desk, because it was a roster of the team Canada was sending to the Isvestia tournament in the days before the fall of the evil empire. (Some might need to Google that, too.) The players were from teams that had not made the NHL playoffs and their minor league affiliates.
Jim took the list from me and read it, looked at me and them read it again. “These guys are so unknown their own dogs bark at them!” he said. That was his lede the next morning, in the Victoria Daily Colonist, gone like Jim and most of the great newspeople who worked there, but not forgotten. Rest in peace.
David Lowther (son of Bruce)
Mesachie Lake