BRANDON-- He's got stories. Oh man, does Fred McGuinness have stories.
There's the story about his first job as a CPR telegraph operator at age 15, and how he thought he'd found his true love in an unseen operator in another prairie town.
Fred McGuinness at home near Brandon. It was going to be a Christmas tree farm, but Fred couldn’t bear to cut the evergreens.
McGuinness clacked away sweet nothings to that person, who went by the name Brenda, trying to arrange a tryst. That is, until he discovered it was another male operator putting him on.
"He kept me going for six months," said McGuinness. "I was totally deflated when I found out."
You want a sign-of-the-times story? McGuinness tells of standing in a grocery store checkout line recently when a cellphone rang and the whole lineup of people started fishing through purses and pockets to see if it was their phone.
Then there are his stories about chauffeuring Tommy Douglas around rural Saskatchewan in the mid-1950s, when that province was celebrating its 50th anniversary. Douglas was premier of Saskatchewan at the time and introduced health care in Canada.
"The wit, and caring, and strength of personality of that man. He was almost impossible to believe," McGuinness says. But listening to Douglas's jokes was torture. "He'd get up before an audience and say, 'A couple from Broadview that I know moved out to the West Coast and he took up golf and she took up going to auctions. And once in awhile he will wake up in the middle of the night and yell, 'Fore!' and she will wake up and yell, "Four and a half!'"
McGuinness about 1970 in his office at the Brandon Sun. He came to the Sun in 1966 after working for the Medicine Hat News.
Says McGuinness: "He had unbelievable corn."
At age 87, legendary newspaperman and author McGuinness is still telling stories.
He's been writing for newspapers for more than half a century, since he broke in with the Medicine Hat News in 1955. He joined the Brandon Sun in 1966 -- he was born in Brandon -- and still writes a weekly column 43 years later. "He's got legions of readers, that guy," said Brandon Sun managing editor James O'Connor.
While at the Brandon Sun, McGuinness also wrote for Reader's Digest for a dozen years. He hosted the former CBC weekly show, Neighbourly News, for about 10 years until its cancellation in 1987. Neighbourly News was broadcast weekly at 8:30 Sunday mornings for 44 years.
After that, McGuinness syndicated a Neighbourly News newspaper column that ran in rural weeklies across the Prairies. Problems with his eyesight forced him to stop in 2001.
Over the course of his career, he became what sounds like an oxymoron today -- a famous rural media personality. He helped bridge the chasm between "the hicks and the slicks," as he put it -- rural and urban people, in case you didn't guess.
He's written about a dozen books, including Manitoba: The Province and the People, for which he won the Margaret McWilliams Medal for best Manitoba history book.
He also wrote prairie essays for 17 years for CBC Radio's Morningside with Peter Gzowski, some of which were put in book form in Letters from Section 17 (Great Plains Publications). Gzowski once called McGuinness "the master of the anecdote."
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Please see MCGUINNESS B2
Today, at his age, "it's anecdotage," cracked McGuinness.
"Look for an old geezer with the walking stick and a hearing aid," he said over the phone, when it was arranged to meet at the Victoria Inn restaurant in Brandon.
He calls his infirmities, "my impairities." "I can't see, I can't hear, and I can't walk," he groused. But he can write. He can't stop. "I'm a compulsive writer," he said.
He reads on the computer--and he still reads a lot--by jacking the font to a size 60--about six times the print size you're reading now. He has macular degeneration: the loss of vision in the centre of the visual field.
As for his hearing, it got so that every diner in the restaurant probably heard the reporter's overly-loud, oft-repeated questions.
"Do you get a lot of e-mail?" he is asked at one point, on the subject of reader reaction.
"Oh, yeah. Quite heavily female."
"No, e-mail. On the computer."
McGuinness laughed. "Both. I bet it's been a long time since you've had a letter in the mail on a hand-written envelope. I still get them and a lot of people just leave them on the desk of the Brandon Sun."
"The Voice of the Prairies," as he was called when he received the Order of Canada in 2004, is now "just old Fred," he claims.
Don't believe it. He's called far worse on occasion.
Like when he waded into the recent controversy over abortion activist Henry Morgentaler being awarded the Order of Canada. McGuinness, to the surprise of many, publicly applauded the decision. He grew up the only male in a household of women and absorbed many of their feminist views, he explained.
Readers gave McGuinness a tongue-lashing. Brandon has one of the highest concentrations of evangelical Christians, according to the Canada census. McGuinness was even yelled at in a coffee shop.
McGuinness smiles impishly about it. He's an old newspaper man and, to him, that's like getting a pat on the back.
"That's OK," he says. "I want a reaction and I get it."
Not that he would say something just to get a rise from people. It's more difficult to be outspoken in a small community than in a large urban centre.
But with McGuinness, one gets the impression that even the most heated arguments are just a mispronunciation or verbal slip away from turning into a belly laugh and a handshake.
"He is just a fine, fine gentleman, a real people person," said Jim Lewthwaite, Brandon Sun city editor. "Even now, he's still sharp and will come into the newsroom at least once a week and give me a news tip or a tune-up (on journalism)."
McGuinness learned to be the man of the house early. His father died when Fred was 12 and "it was as if a light had gone out in my life," he told University of Manitoba historian Gerald Friesen, in a 1981 interview for the Manitoba Historical Society.
He was the only boy in a household of seven women: his widowed mother, five sisters, and a maid. "I was raised in a Protestant nunnery," he jokes.
A maid? "A maid in those days was a country girl whose family can't afford to feed her....Brandon had a maid in just about every household," he explained.
He felt lost without his father and couldn't focus on school. He scraped through Grade 7 but it took him two years to pass Grade 8. He failed Grade 9 and quit school, taking the telegraph job in Brandon.
He joined the navy at 18 when the Second World War broke out in 1939. He was injured and spent a year in the hospital in a body brace. He needed two canes to learn to walk again. He attended old St. Paul's High College in Winnipeg and graduated.
It was in 1942-43, while studying pre-med at University of Manitoba that his life took a detour that eventually landed him in journalism.
Another story. "The first day I was handed a note to go to the office of the dean. I thought, What's this? He wanted me to be a speaker for the war finance committee to promote war bonds."
McGuinness was chosen partly because of his war experience and his visible injury, but also for his commanding voice. He initially wanted no part of the dean's plan but at $8 a speech, well, no one said Fred McGuinness ever refused a chance to make a buck.
He gave speeches in aircraft factories, Winnipeg downtown offices, and the grain pit of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange.
He also realized the field of medicine wasn't for him. He got a job with the federal government as a speechwriter. The Saskatchewan government began looking for a writer who was also a good public speaker, to run its 50th anniversary.
Writers tend to be poor public speakers. The Saskatchewan government couldn't find a single candidate in its province. It was McGuinness's war bonds experience that got him the job.
That's how he got to know Tommy Douglas. Then, as the term position neared its end in 1955, the Medicine Hat News offered McGuinness a writing job. He was on his way to being a journalist. "The matter of public speaking made the difference," he maintains.
Oratory and writing have always gone hand in hand for McGuinness. Many former journalism students in Manitoba will remember McGuinness as a guest speaker. Many will also remember his dictum: "There's no such thing as a boring story, only boring story tellers." Be interesting!
"The thing noticeable about Fred is his absolutely distinctive voice and manner of speaking. He was stopped many times in airports because people had heard him on Peter Gzowski and recognized him by his voice," said Tom Mitchell, Brandon University head of archives.
His columns today are different than most others. A McGuinness column can change subjects rapidly, and leap-frog from one lily pad to the next, each paragraph a new lily pad and new subject.
One column began about waking at 3:15 a.m. and "having to go down the hall." "If, on your way back to bed you say to yourself, 'I think I'll check my e-mail,' then it is confirmed: you are an electronic addict." From there, he covered text messaging, pointless cell phone calls, the Canadian Wheat Board, the Royal Winter Fair, and memoir writing, which he still teaches, all in 600 words.
A McGuinness column is always open to anecdotal interruptions from life.
One column started describing about an archaeology dig in southwestern Manitoba. But halfway through the column, after having visited the dig site, Fred wrote that he found himself covered in woodticks
He removed 19 of them and thought that was all of them, but two days later discovered a tick the "size of a small blueberry" nestled in his navel. This reminded him about the son of a publisher of the Carman Valley Leader who went on a camping trip, felt something peculiar inside his pajama, and groped in the moonlight in search of a flashlight. He found a woodtick "attempting to get into that tiny opening in the head of the penis."
It was vintage Fred McGuinness--a story about archaeology sidetracked by woodticks and their fondness for male pudenda.
Asked if he ever contemplated starting a blog (online journal), McGuinness says he has, if only to rail against Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
With that statement he breaks old pal Gzowski's motto to never let the audience know where you stand on issues. McGuinness believes that's also the key to success for long-time CNN television talk host, Larry King.
But it's too late for McGuinness to start muzzling his opinions. He views Harper as a Reform Party holdover in sheep's clothing. McGuinness bristles at Harper's vendetta against the Canadian Wheat Board. It took the courts to force Harper's government to stop.
"(Harper) views the Canadian Wheat Board as socialism. But I tell you it was people working together that settled these Prairies," McGuinness said.
(On the Liberals, he wished the party had put out a "Dick and Jane reader" on its carbon tax proposal long ago.)
The anti-Harper talk seems strange considering McGuinness resides in Conservative Party heartland. Brandon is solidly Conservative, except for East Brandon, which votes NDP provincially. Rural southwestern Manitoba elects Tories sight unseen.
So how does that jive with McGuinness being a major voice for Prairie people?
McGuinness doesn't pander to his audience, said Lewthwaite, who edits McGuinness's column. "You sometimes think of these small daily columnists who are pretty right wing and you can tell they're playing to their constituency. Fred's just not like that. He rises above the pettiness of that," Lewthwaite said.
"He loves to tweak noses," said Lewthwaite. But he doesn't offend. "He takes his hardest shots at public figures, without demeaning people who believe in those public figures."
Even so, McGuinness is not a political writer. He writes "more on life and times, than on politics," Lewthwaite said.
McGuinness doesn't disagree. "I get so mad at young journalists who think writing about politics is everything."
One McGuinness trait is always wanting to know where people are from. "He calls me 'The Pride of Deloraine' because I'm originally from Deloraine," said Lewthwaite. "And he will latch on to that and any news tip or any information about Deloraine he will make sure I know about it."
Fred and wife Christine live on a 32-acre parcel of land just west of Brandon. It was intended to be a Christmas tree farm but when the time came they couldn't bring themselves to cut them down.
Even at the age of 87, McGuinness cannot stand to be idle. He can go on and on about the great waste of human resources when people spend gobs of time in front of the television.
Don't get him started on the media's treatment of rural Canada either. "We've come to a transition in which the cities are the focus of media attention, and rural society is pretty much forgotten," he maintained.
He has met and known the likes of Tommy Douglas, John Diefenbaker, and Queen Elizabeth II but they aren't necessarily his favorite interviews. "Fred finds characters more interesting than famous people," said Mitchell.
"His interests are without limit, particularly when it comes to rural Canada. He's a natural born journalist down to his toenails," Mitchell said.
"I greatly admire the man," said Lewthwaite. "He's always got a twinkle in his eye. He really has a marvellous sense of humour."
Said Lewthwaite: "He has keen interest in everything still. He's still offering news tips and editing tips. He's never lost that."
bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca
Fred McGuinness was born in Brandon on Jan. 31, 1921.
Quit school in Grade 9 and worked as CPR railway telegraph operator.
Enlisted in the navy in 1939 during the Second World War.
Attended St. Paul's College on his return.
Worked on Saskatchewan's Golden Jubilee from 1952 to 1955.
From 1955-65, he wrote for the Medicine Hat News, and became vice-president and publisher.
From 1966 until the present, he has written for the Brandon Sun and served as vice-president and publisher.
Received the Order of Manitoba in 2002, and an honorary law degree from Brandon University.
Received the Order of Canada in 2004.
Some Fred McGuinness anecdotes:
* On former CBC Radio host Peter Gzowski: "I'll tell you something that Gzowski did that no one else every did. He introduced you to a whole bunch of little towns and interesting people in little towns, and he got away from the Toronto, and Montreal, and Vancouver. He became the king of rural life, as far as I was concerned."
* On his exclusive meeting Queen Elizabeth II, when McGuinness was part of committee that planned her visit. "When she found out I was a beekeeper, she just took me over to a table and we had a private chat because she was a beekeeper. The other (committee members) couldn't believe it. She wanted to know if I had any seven-banded Italian honey bees."
* McGuinness once wrote of a woman in Hudson Bay, Saskatchewan (near the Manitoba border) who was celebrating her 73rd wedding anniversary. He asked her why, in these modern times, she never divorced. "She said it was funny he should mention it. She said, 'I never, ever thought of divorce. Mind you, I often thought of murder.' "
* On former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, whom McGuinness got to know as a backbencher:
"When he got up in the House of Commons, his forefinger seemed to stretch about three feet long," when he pointed it at the opposition Liberals, said McGuinness. "I thought he was a warm, warm person and I couldn't vote for him because he was so erratic."
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