Patriot Hearts

by John Furlong

  Less than a month later, on June 4, my father was felled by a heart attack.

  He lapsed in and out of a coma. I remember sitting at his bedside by myself and praying that I could have one more conversation with him. He stirred and looked at me.

  “What are you doing here?” he said in a whisper. “Don’t you have things you should be doing?”

  It was so typical of my dad. Don’t you have things you should be doing? Which meant something better than sitting in a hospital waiting to talk to him, preferably something that would help me get ahead in life and make me a success. During an earlier talk my father had said to me, “We sent you to good schools. We taught you the difference between right and wrong. You know that when something isn’t yours you shouldn’t take it and if you break something you should fix it. But all these values together aren’t going to make you a success. What’s going to separate you from the others is how hard you are prepared to work.”

  I will never forget that.

  My father died the next day, June 5, 1974. He was buried beside my cousin, Siobhan. And there would be few days in the following years when I wouldn’t see something, or hear someone talking, that didn’t make me think of him. I missed him terribly. He was just 63 years old when he died. It would take me a long time to stop feeling angry that my father’s life had been cut so short, that he’d been robbed of an opportunity to enjoy life after working so hard for so many years.

  Not long after my father’s death I was enticed by an unexpected offer. A recruiter from a high school in Prince George, British Columbia, had come to Dublin in search of someone to set up an athletic program. I was a young teacher with just two years’ experience. The job intrigued me. My cousin’s death, followed so closely by my father’s, had left me feeling a little empty, and open to new adventures. I was definitely receptive to the idea of leaving Ireland after what had happened a couple of months earlier.

  I decided to take the position, thinking I would return to Ireland in a few years.

  IT WAS A FALL DAY in 1974 when my wife and I bundled up our son and daughter and boarded a plane to Canada.

  I don’t recall much about the long haul over the Atlantic other than looking out the window occasionally at the great white expanse below and pondering just how cold it was going to be when we landed. I spent part of the flight second-guessing my decision. At one point, I pretty much convinced myself that I had made a colossal error—and I had dragged three other people along with me on this misadventure.

  But it was too late to obsess about that. Our plane touched down in Edmonton, and we approached a customs agent with our passports and a letter of introduction from the school I would be working at. I will never forget the parting words of the man who interviewed us. “Welcome to Canada,” he said as he handed me back our documents. “Make us better.”

  Soon I was in Prince George starting a new life. My job offered plenty of challenges, but I dove into it with everything I had and made some real headway in getting an athletic program up and running. I had only been at the school a couple of years when I received a call about a position with the city as director of parks and recreation. Compared with what I had been doing, this was a big leap. The city owned arenas and tennis courts among its many recreational properties. I would be in charge of them all. And I would have to deal with unions almost daily. I was 26. I got the job.

  If there was a highlight from that time it was in 1978 when I received a call from someone in the provincial government. He wanted to talk to me about the Northern BC Winter Games, which had been started a few years earlier. The Games bring together athletes from across the north to be part of a friendly competition. The government rep asked me if I’d lead a committee to restructure the event, with an eye to moving it around to different communities. In the three years since their inception, the Games had been held in Fort St. John twice and were heading for neighbouring Dawson Creek, provided we could get a new structure in place. So I took it on and with a few colleagues overhauled the structure and set the new course. It was a lot of fun.

  Prince George later followed Dawson Creek as host city, and I was handed responsibility for staging those Games. I desperately wanted the Games in my adopted city to be a success, but I didn’t have a clue how to do it. It was all learn as you go. Two months before the Games were to open, I decided to phone Iona Campagnolo, who was the Member of Parliament of the northern B.C. riding of Skeena. She was also minister of amateur sports. To my surprise, the minister took my call and when I asked her if she’d consider coming out to open the Games later that year she didn’t hesitate to say yes. I couldn’t believe it.

  It got better.

  A day or two later, the minister phoned back. “John,” she said, “how would you feel if I brought the prime minister along?”

  I nearly dropped the phone. The prime minister was Pierre Elliott Trudeau. I might have been relatively new to Canada but I was aware of Trudeau’s star power; most everyone in Europe was. He cut quite the glamorous figure. Now he was going to be coming to this event that I was organizing. At the time, Trudeau was dealing with any number of issues. There were loud noises emanating from Quebec about separation. I didn’t fully understand the debate, and I couldn’t figure out why anyone in any province would want to leave this amazing country.

  Over the next couple of months there was lots of communication with Iona and the Prime Minister’s Office. Trudeau wanted to make a speech to help launch the Games. He wanted to skate with the athletes one day. He would need to be briefed on what the Northern Games were all about and why they were important. That would be my job.

  The big day arrived, and I was directed by the Prime Minister’s Office to go to such and such a room at the Inn of the North hotel. I was sitting there by myself when the door swung open and in walked the prime minister. He shook my hand and we made small talk for a couple of minutes before I started filling him in on the brief history of the Games. He was warm and funny and personable. I, however, was an awestruck wreck who couldn’t believe to whom he was talking. I remember thinking about my father and wishing he was still around so I could tell him this story.

  After about an hour we walked to the hall, and the crowd was already on its feet. I was behind the prime minister feeling like a 3-million-dollar man. We bounded up the stairs of the stage, and before long I was introducing the guest of honour. I remember acknowledging the problems in Quebec and saying that Trudeau never had to worry about anyone in this part of the country wanting to leave Canada. I even got a bit of a cheer for that line.

  Soon it was Trudeau’s turn to speak. He’d only been speaking for a few minutes when I was left flabbergasted. His speech touched on almost all the points I had raised during our hour-long meeting, during which he barely took a note. As I listened, I remember thinking I’d never met a smarter person.

  A month later I got a letter thanking me for helping him out with his speech and the trip. The letter included a picture of the two of us, taken while I presented him with a token of our appreciation. Only much later did I realize the impact his speech had had on me. I’d never heard someone in such command of an audience before. He didn’t have a line written for him, yet the crowd was enthralled. I eventually realized his secret: he spoke from the heart. He talked about the country, his country, and the need for all of us to band together if we were going to be a great country.

  I matured 10 years from my Trudeau experience alone. Part of it was listening to him talk; part of it was the pressure I was under to get right everything connected with his visit. And certainly part of it was the enormous responsibility I had at the age of 28, organizing such a huge undertaking. I got a headache on the second day of the Games that has never gone away. It got so bad at the time that I was admitted to hospital, where doctors tried to break up what they told me was a massive migraine. Now I carry medication everywhere I go to manage the headache pain. Most days it’s tolerable; some days it’s terrible. But it is always there, a constant r
eminder of a heady time in my life when it all started.

  SHORTLY AFTER TRUDEAU’S visit I moved to Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island, to take the job of regional director of parks and recreation. The centrepiece of the region’s recreational properties was a new multiplex in Nanaimo called Beban Park. It had an ice rink, swimming pool, playground and tennis courts, among other amenities. It was losing money by the sackful and had become a bit of an albatross for the city. It was my job to turn that situation around.

  I figured it would take an entrepreneurial spirit to accomplish this goal. I quickly concluded that we needed to be in the marketplace competing for various entertainment acts that were coming to town. And if I could up the ante a bit and somehow convince bigger names to visit our blue-collar town, we could really turn things around. I didn’t know a thing about staging concerts but I would find out, and before long we were attracting the likes of singers Johnny Cash and Glen Campbell.

  My biggest early coup was landing the Beach Boys, whom I booked to play at a local car racing track. We had to build the band a $25,000 stage, a lot of money at the time. Still, the concert made a six-figure profit, and I was learning a lot about the entertainment business.

  I also got the city involved in the fight business, another thing I was clueless about until I started doing a bit of homework. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, cities around Canada were staging amateur boxing events called So You Think You Are Tough. There was a kid from Nanaimo who had built up a bit of a legend and had turned professional. His name was Gord Racette. A real-life Rocky, Racette was a security guard by day and a serious brawler by night. He had had success at the professional level in fights throughout the Pacific Northwest, and his exploits were often written about in the local paper. I’m not sure where the idea came from, but I pitched a crazy notion to Racette’s manager, Tony Dowling: a fight between the reigning Canadian heavyweight champ at the time, Trevor Berbick, and the hometown hero, Racette. We would stage it at Frank Crane Arena, and it would be a smash success. At least in my head it would be.

  But I would need to convince Berbick’s camp it was a good idea and not something that would sully the boxer’s reputation. I thought a hefty paycheque might persuade him. So I jetted off to Halifax to meet Berbick’s people, knowing that I was completely out of my league. We met at a local hotel and I laid out my proposition: Berbick would get $100,000 and Racette, $30,000. Berbick’s camp said no deal and ranted on and on about needing more. I wasn’t prepared to offer a cent more, so I figured I’d flown across the country for no reason. After hours of high drama and banter, I told them I was sorry we couldn’t make a deal and left. It was around 4 AM by this point and I had a flight in five hours. I decided to hop in the shower to wake up. I wasn’t in it five seconds when there was a loud knock on my door. I grabbed a towel and answered it. Standing there was one of the guys who had been in Berbick’s room, a six-foot-five-inch bruiser himself. He said Berbick’s gang wanted to talk again.

  I went downstairs and Berbick’s lawyer started haggling again over the take. I said, “Look, I told you that it was my best offer and I wasn’t kidding.” With that I got up to leave. Berbick walked over to the table, grabbed the contract and signed it. “We’re on,” he said.

  I couldn’t believe it. Nor could most of the people back in Nanaimo when I phoned with the news. The fight sold out within hours, and folks still talk about it today. Berbick won by a TKO in the eleventh round, and after it was over he knew he’d been in a battle.

  BY THE SPRING of 1982, the economy had gone in the tank and mill towns like Nanaimo had been particularly hard hit. The chamber of commerce decided to put on a forum for local business in an attempt to get people inspired about meeting the challenge the recession was posing. The chamber approached me, of all people, to be emcee and a keynote speaker. They asked me to talk about “what it took to be a winner.”

  I was petrified. I had never given a major speech in my life. The night before I had stomach pains I was so nervous. I jotted down some thoughts on little cue cards, and before I knew it I was walking onstage to face 600 people, many of whom I knew were skeptical about my ability to say anything remotely motivating. After three minutes I noticed something—the place was completely silent. I took this as a good sign. They were listening. I told them that as a group we had to stop thinking we were all doomed because the economy was bad. It meant only that we had to work harder and be more creative. No one was going to drive up and dump a load of money on our lawns. We were going to have to find ways to create that money ourselves.

  Forty minutes later, I was done and found myself awed by the reaction of the audience. I received a standing ovation. It was a big moment for me. Looking back, I have no doubt that listening to Trudeau speak had helped me immensely. The lessons derived from his speech were universal. Speak about what you know. Speak from the heart. Speak with passion. Little did I know that my talk in Nanaimo would be the first of thousands I would give over the coming years.

  Outside of work, I was pursuing the sport of squash with the kind of focus and enthusiasm I had brought to Gaelic football, basketball and handball back in Ireland. I kind of stumbled upon squash. While working in Prince George, I decided to give the game a try, and it had grown on me to the point of addiction.

  By the time I got to Nanaimo with more losses than wins under my belt, I had set a goal of becoming Canada’s national squash champion for my age category. I went at my training hard, often playing six or seven hours a day. I would go to the local club and play the top five guys one after another. On May 2, 1986, the day Expo 86 opened in Vancouver, I took the court in the men’s final of the national squash championship in Vancouver. As was often the case, I wasn’t the most talented or naturally gifted player in the tournament, but I wouldn’t allow anyone to work harder. As usual, that well-worn philosophy paid off.

  My involvement in the Northern Games, plus connections I made through squash, helped to get my name known in amateur sport circles. Shortly after arriving in Nanaimo, I got a call from the provincial government asking me if I’d consider taking on a role with the B.C. delegation for the Canada Games, which were being held that year in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The position was assistant chef de mission. My job was to help the chef de mission, doing a lot of his grunt work so that he could concentrate on overall strategies. It wouldn’t exactly turn out that way.

  The chef that year began exhibiting some rather odd behaviour and suffered nervous exhaustion. It became clear to many of us with the B.C. delegation that he was in trouble, and it was agreed that he should return home. This meant I was now the chef de mission, whose job it was to ensure that our B.C. team had what it needed to perform at its best and that the many needs of the athletes were being met. I had never done anything remotely close to this in my life.

  I relied on instinct. It ended up being an incredible learning experience on many levels. Ontario and Quebec edged British Columbia out by a hair to win the Games.

  In a nutshell, I had been thrown into heading up an athletic delegation with no previous wisdom to draw upon. On the positive side, I did learn a lot about the Canadian amateur sports system: how it was structured, who made key decisions. I would end up being part of the B.C. delegation at the next six Canada Games.

  In late 1987, I left Nanaimo to take a job with the Arbutus Club, a private recreational club in the affluent west side of Vancouver. I had been headhunted for the position and was ambivalent initially about sitting for an interview. But curiosity took me to the club, and before meeting with the hiring committee I walked around the premises. I was shocked at their condition. This was a place that once had a reputation as one of the best private clubs in the country. But as I toured the facilities I saw a club in decline, one that was dull, dated and in disrepair. And I told the members of the committee exactly what I thought.

  I got the job.

  It didn’t take long for me to realize that the place was being scammed by some of the staff. The food an
d beverage section was losing buckets of money, and when I read the financial statements the figures didn’t add up. Something was going on. I hired a private investigator to go to our lounge and watch the bartender. Over a period of three hours she caught him stealing 18 times. So I fired him. When I went to the club on weekends I noticed there were always fewer staff than there should have been. I uncovered a scheme whereby a couple of guys from the maintenance crew would come in and punch the clock for five or six others who were at home. So I fired them too. Not a lot of fun.

  My biggest challenge was persuading the board that the club needed a new vision and a major multimillion-dollar facelift. It was time to stop putting good money after bad. I campaigned hard for a new direction. After exhaustive discussion and debate over 18 months, we organized a members’ meeting where my proposal was to be debated and voted on. It was one of the largest turnouts in club history, and by the end of the night only 11 of the 950 people who cast a ballot voted against the new direction.

  We soon went public with our plans and let it be known we were looking for new members. Within days, people started arriving at the club to join. All our renovations were paid for with cash from our membership drive. During my time there, the club won several industry awards and was able to substantially hike its membership fee to maintain the premier services we began offering.

  My time at the Arbutus Club taught me about building a vision and getting people to believe in it. It provided me with some real insights on consensus building. The Arbutus Club was full of wealthy, powerful people who were all wildly successful. These were serious people who were used to getting what they wanted. When it came to running a club, they all had different ideas about how that should be done. It was my job to navigate through those murky waters.