Goodbye Jim Coleman:A Sports Columnist Legend
by:Louis Cauz
Republished
with permission from Canadian Thoroughbred
On a chilly morning at
Woodbine in March, 1966, Jim Coleman introduced a Globe and Mail
reporter to a world that the revered and legendary sports columnist
had chronicled with marvellous humour, wit and insight for decades.
Meet me in the backstretch kitchen and I'll introduce you around,
said Coleman, whose tales of larcenous characters and backstretch
skullduggery had entertained newspaper readers across Canada.
Sharkey Bianco, wearing a white fedora and a pinstripe suit with
large lapels, operated the kitchen. He acknowledged Coleman's
visit. Sharkey could have come off the set of "The Sopranos".
The crafty Cuban-born jockey Avelino Gomez stopped at Coleman's
table. As did Patsy Santo, Centrefield Willie and a long-time
associate of Coleman's, Morris Fishman, a former jockey, pugilist
and owner of a successful gambling house who, in the 60s, owned
and trained thoroughbreds.
Who better than Coleman to introduce a "green" reporter
to the backstretch and the intriguing, colourful world of thoroughbred
racing? A dapper gentleman, Coleman had been doing this for his
readers with love and devotion since 1931, the year he began
his journalistic career with the Winnipeg Tribune.
On January 14th Canada's premier sportswriter died of heart failure
at age 89 in a Vancouver hospital. He'd been in hospital since
January 4th, recovering from surgery to repair a broken hip.
His son, Jim Jr., had seen his father the day before he died.
He looked great and was up and alert. I think his heart just
gave up.
Coleman, who wrote his columns while chomping on a cigar, refused
to retire from his job at the Vancouver Province. He worked to
the end - his last column appeared the day he died. In their
last conversation Coleman asked his son to bring a typewriter
to the hospital so he could keep writing. He never did join the
electronic age, pecking out his column, Memory Lane, on an old
upright Underwood typewriter.
He was a modest man who had friends in high places and low and
never put himself above or below any of them. His lengthy career
earned him countless honours, including the Order Of Canada as
well as induction into Canada's Horse Racing Hall of Fame, the
Canadian Sports and Newpaper halls of fame and the media divisions
of the football and hockey halls.
Born in Winnipeg in 1911, Coleman credited his father, a former
newsman who had risen in the ranks of the Canadian Pacific Railway
to vice-presidency, for his lifelong love of sports - especially
horse racing, hockey and Canadian football. He lived in the posh
suites of hotels from Vancouver to Montreal and often travelled
in a private rail car to the track at Saratoga Springs, N.Y.,
and World Series' baseball games in Detroit, St. Louis and Chicago.
I was the product of my father's indulgence, he once said. He
was a great sports fan.
Author of three books, A Hoofprint On My Heart, Long Ride On
A Hobby Horse and Hockey Is Our Game, Coleman's 70-year writing
career enabled him to regale readers of the Vancouver Province,
Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Bulletin, The Canadian Press, The
Globe and Mail and the chain of Southam Newspapers.
Coleman was educated in a private school in Victoria and McGill
University, where he learned how to drink and play poker.
At the age of 10 he made his first visit to a racetrack when
his aunt, Ella Grant, took him to Brighouse Park on Lulu Island
in Vancouver. She put up a $2 place wager on a horse he selected
from the program, Mineral Jim, who finished third in a photo-finish.
Coleman thought he'd won. But he was hooked. In Hoofprint On
My Heart, Coleman explained, ... you may be wondering how anyone
can get hooked on horse racing at the age of 10 or so and then
go through an entire lifetime without shaking the habit. ItÆs
easy, really. All you require is the spirit of perseverance.
A notable drinker in his younger years ù he swore off
booze in the late 1950s he once wrote, I lived two lives. One
the newspaperman who drank too much but who usually managed to
complete his work; the other the escapist who spent much of his
time in a dream world populated by horses, horsemen, gamblers,
bookmakers, touts, caries, stock hustlers and oddball sports
promoters, most whom were no better than the Good Lord intended
them to be.ö
A Westerner at heart, Coleman was really a Toronto guy. However,
he enjoyed poking fun at easterners who controlled the major
sports establishments. His chief target of criticism in the 1940s
was the Ontario Jockey Club, which finally opened the KingÆs
Plate to westerners and Quebeckers in 1944. He owned a Plate
entrant in 1947, Leonforte, a horse that provided him with numerous
columns of the despair owners might encounter.
Coleman joined the staff of The Globe and Mail in 1941 and stayed
in the east for more than 40 years. He left the morning newspaper
in 1950 and went to work at Thorncliffe racetrack in the Toronto
suburb of Leaside. When E.P. Taylor bought up the thoroughbred
tracks in Ontario, he was hired as the OJCÆs director of
publicity, a job he held until 1962. He was ectastic in 1965
when Whistling Seas became the first western-bred to win the
Plate. Coleman also had a stint as a member of the Ontario Racing
Commission.
Coleman's prose and association with the colourful characters
of tracks in Winnipeg, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Fort Erie
and Toronto and the denizens of the world of boxing produced
purely Damon Runyanesque material for his readers.
He attracted notables and some of lesser reputations. A partial
list of his cronies and the characters he brought to life in
his columns ranged from The Good Kid, Deacon Jack Allen, Morris
Fishman, R. James Speers, Doc Hodgson, Big Jim Fair, Irish Davy,
Middle Of The Road Red, Chatahoochie Smith, Michigan Ike, Montreal
Red, Whittlin' Knifong, Helen The Booster, Doug Ness, Whittier
Park Slim and The Caviar Kid to High-Ball Kelly. Some weren't
associated primarily with horse racing, but they were woven into
the rich colourful fabric of the sport.
In the obituaries following Coleman's death, his contemporaries
in their tributes and eulogies described him as a very passionate
Canadian; humble, honest, classy and gracious.
Milt Dunnell, former Toronto Star columnist and a friend of Coleman's
for 55 years, said ôHis passing is a great loss to Canadian
journalism and especially to Canadian sport, but we have the
satisfaction of having enjoyed him for more years than most people
in our trade are permitted to operate.
Coleman enjoyed and glorified the underdog; a racetracker down
on his luck; the longshots with the courage to overcome the odds
- a 20-to-1 nag; a team down four goals or three touchdowns.
In my copy of A Hoofprint on My Heart, his inscription reads,
"To Louis Cauz - May You Never Bet On Odds-On Favourites"
Jim Coleman.
Louis Cauz is Managing Director of The Canadian Horse Racing
Hall of Fame and Archivist/Historian for The Ontario Jockey Club
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