Ed Tait

Read into this what you will, but Ed Tait’s career in the newspaper business officially began on April Fool’s Day, 1987.

Call it fate, call it luck, call it whatever... but it was in the spring of ’87 when Tait - then a student in the Creative Communications program at Red River - got wind that someone from the Winnipeg Sun sports department was leaving. Cutting class, Tait headed home, pounded out a resume on an old Underwood typewriter and asked for a meeting with the managing editor.

The next day he was offered a two-week trial gig and on April 1 was hired.

Tait spent eight years at the Sun, including six years as the beat writer covering the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, before being hired as the columnist at the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix in 1995. Almost one year later the Sun came calling asking him to return as a columnist and, eager to get back to his hometown, he agreed.

In the spring of 1999 - on the same day he attended Cactus Jack Wells’ funeral - Tait was asked to join the Free Press as a football writer and he’s been documenting the ups and downs of the Blue Bombers since.

A past president of the Football Reporters of Canada, a member of the Manitoba Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association Media Roll of Honour and the 2010 Gibson’s Finest Canadian Football Reporter of the Year - as voted by his peers - Tait has covered every Grey Cup since 1990, two Super Bowls, three World Junior Hockey Championships, two Stanley Cup playoffs, the infamous Mike Tyson-Evander Holyfield fight in which Iron Mike gnawed on his opponent’s ear and the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010.

And he’s absolutely loved every nanosecond of it all.

Born in Winnipeg, Tait has also lived in Minneapolis, Stellarton, N.S., Halifax, Split Lake, MB and attended high school at Nellie McClung Collegiate in Manitou, MB. He has a BA in Political Science from the University of Manitoba, is married to Kathi and has two sons, Wyatt and Finley.

Ed Tait on Twitter: @wfpedtait

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca