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| Geoff Lane and student Corey McCrindle in the newsroom. |
Louis Shalako
LANE, Geoffrey Helliar
- Peacefully at his residence on Tuesday, August 28, 2012, Geoff Lane passed
away at the age of 83. Beloved husband of Ilse Lane (nee Knight). Loving father
of Stephen Geoffrey Lane and Marcus Ashley Lane. Cherished grandfather of Morgan
Ashley Lane and Zachary Andrew Lane. Geoff was a dedicated family man,
journalist, educator and sailor who delighted in taking family, friends and
students on his sailboat. He was passionate about world affairs, communications
and the world of nature.
A simple obituary, in twenty-five words or less, can tell you an awful lot, and at the same time, virtually nothing, about a man’s life.
I know so little about
him. It seems presumptuous to write
about Geoff, and yet he had a huge influence, on my life to some degree, and so
many others, but also to my attitudes and my way of looking at things. Facts, in
particular.
In a recent column for First Monday, veteran journalist Dan
McCaffery mentioned Geoff Lane, Lambton College and the RTJ, (Radio, Television
and Journalism Arts) course, where he attended in 1971 according to the story.
Lambton College was officially dedicated in 1969, and there is in fact a
cornerstone marking that occasion.
It is unclear to me if
Geoff created the RTJ program from scratch. If so, he would have had help. In
the very first year they would have had teachers for Broadcasting, Graphic
Arts, Photography, English 101, and
they would have all had to work together in order to have everything ready for
that first class.
Geoff came to Sarnia
from the Detroit Free Press. He was the editor of the Sarnia Observer for many
years. He was very British. Yet I can’t say for sure where he was born. I do
not know where he was educated—one can almost
assume it was not Oxford or Cambridge, to say that he studied at an industrial
college in London or somewhere in the heartlands would only be a set of
assumptions. I would like more information than that.
As for why someone
would emigrate from the U.K., that is somewhat easier to guess.
After the Second World
War, Britain was bankrupt. Unemployment would have been high. A real block to
employment for the young and inexperienced would have been created by the
demobilization of hundreds of thousands of service men and women. It takes time
to switch from tanks and aircraft to consumer goods. It takes time to pay off a
huge national debt. It took time to create the modern social welfare state, in
the meantime, things were not very good. The motivation would have been there.
This was a disciplined young man, and one must also assume that as a young
person alive during WW II, Geoff would have been reading the daily papers. He
would have listened to the BBC on the radio, sitting around in the front room
with the rest of the family…all of this would have been up close, and very,
very personal when V-1 buzz bombs are falling down from the sky.
It was not something
you could ignore, and we might also consider the likelihood that all the male
figures in his life had served. He
had a lot to live up to, if you take
my meaning.
This is pure speculation on my part. I have no real facts. Memory is a reconstructive process, and it is hardly accurate in that sense.
But. You don’t edit the
local daily without some strong element of self-control. Geoff had a story, he
probably told it to every first-year class he taught. He had been in the Royal
Army. It was 1948, in Palestine, and he was part of a detachment of troops
detailed to escort the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem down to a ship in Haifa
harbour, which would take him to safety in Cyprus or somewhere. It was a
dangerous time. The situation was fraught with danger, what with the creation
of an Israeli state, with Arab and Jewish terror gangs, and the U.K. troops slated
to withdraw. This kind of experience, military experience, is one of the keys
to understanding his character. He was there, it was a part of history, and it
was the birth of a nation, for better or worse, one which still dominates the
headlines of today.
It was an important
story, and that is why he told it.
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| A modern college or university newsroom... |
Did Geoff love his
students? Dumb question, but I think he just loved people. You have to have a
reason to choose journalism as a career, and that one’s a big plus. It was a
kind of service. In December of 1983, knowing that I was having money problems,
Geoff went to the Bursar’s office and came back with a cheque for $500.00. My old man was so impressed, he gave me
$500.00 for Christmas so that I could stay in school.
That only lasted so
long, and at the end of January, Geoff made a couple of phone calls.
A weekly in Dresden was
looking for a reporter, and I drove down there, and showed the editor a few
samples of my work. All of which came from the Lambton Leader, the student
newspaper published by the good old RTJ program. Well, they couldn’t really use
me, (I had zero experience), but the gentleman made a couple more phone
calls…Ted Cranston, the publisher of Cash Crop Farming Publications, would give
me an interview. First thing Monday morning. Located in Delhi, Ontario, they
had three weekly papers and two or three small industrial magazines. The rest
is history, and this story really isn’t about me. A journalist does not inject
himself into the story. It’s not all
about me, in other words.
Anyhow, chalk one up
for the old boy network.
Trouble is, there’s
more. On our class trip, the whole bunch of us boarded a couple of passenger
vans and headed for Detroit. Our first stop was to watch a taping of Kelly and Company, a syndicated local
production of Channel 7, WDIV as I recall. It was a live audience. At some
point, it was giveaway time. We were told to check the number under our seats.
Mine was Number 51. And I had won a gift certificate from Hudson’s, a high-end
department store, for a Seiko watch, valued at $140.00 U.S., in 1983 dollars no
less. So, Geoff takes the whole darned busload to a store in Southfield,
Michigan, where I ran in, got my watch, and ran out, and then it was a quick
stop at the Renaissance Centre, running around, riding the elevators, and goggling
like tourists, (or school kids), and then over the bridge to Windsor, where we
toured the Windsor Star among other places. Yeah, when they called my number,
the co-host, Marilyn Turner, came over. I stood up and told her I was part of a
group from Lambton College…and it was, quite a group, as a ragged cheer rose up
through the crowd and kids were chanting ‘Louis…Louis…Louis…yay’.
I guess maybe that’s
why Geoff did it—that and a few other reasons, one must suppose.
Where did Geoff meet
Ilse? Did they emigrate at the same time, or did they meet in North America. If
nothing else, these are good questions. How did they end up in Detroit, how did
they decide to come to Sarnia. Why did Geoff leave the Observer? My instinct,
rather than my recollection, is that the paper changed hands, in which case a
change of management, editorial and otherwise, would be de rigeur for any new owner…
Geoff would have been
editor while Lambton College was being built. The whole community college thing
was a new initiative, and would have been front-page news when Sarnia had a
population of 50,000 people, not counting Point Edward and the old Township of
Sarnia. It would be an opportunity, and then there is that sailboat. Teachers
have the whole summer off, and he had a young family…the man was nothing if not
intelligent.
Journalism is the first
draft of history, and Geoff certainly knew that. There is also that work-life
balance, and he knew that too.
One of our first
assignments was to pick a story from the daily news and write our own version
of it. I picked a story of a ship collision in the St. Clair River. I don’t
think too many people phoned first-hand sources, no one went around with their
camera and got their own head-and-shoulders shots. It was September or October
and we were a bunch of first year students. With several local papers and radio
stations, the evening news out of Windsor, London, Detroit and Toronto, the
basic facts were clear enough…I don’t recall too many of the details, perhaps
it was the name of a ship or the captain or whatever, but something struck me, and I wrote it as a humorous story. Geoff
hauled me aside the next day, and politely informed me, “We don’t make fun of death and destruction.”
That’s fair enough. I
had never seriously considered a career as an anchorman on the evening news.
Unlike some of the other males, I wasn’t too interested in being a DJ on the
radio—those guys mostly dropped journalism within three weeks, even though
writing for the news and having some regard for factuality might have been
helpful in the local radio industry. The daily grind of community journalism is
more work than play, (I suppose I could have done it), but the truth is, I just
wanted someone to teach me how to write a story. I wanted to write books, and
the RTJ program was at least something—it was at least relevant, and if nothing
else, you get paid a little money to go to school and then you have a reason,
to write a story. There is also someone who will read it, and a bit of feedback
from someone other than your mother is extremely helpful. Geoff knew that about
me—he told me once, “You need to get some criticism from someone who doesn’t
love you—”
I grinned and nodded,
understanding exactly what he meant. It wasn’t exactly an unspoken message. He
wasn’t all that interested in reading my fiction,
ladies and gentlemen.
Can’t say as I blame
him for that.
He had a saying.
“Check your sources.”
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| Marc's Facebook page is not very active, but we have reached out and may get more info. |
This was amply
demonstrated to me one day. I have no idea of whether Geoff was pissed off at
me, or whether he simply picked one student in any particular class, and ran a
bit of a game on them, and relying on us to talk about it. But. It went a little bit like this. The college was bringing in
paid parking. One dollar a day, one can imagine the controversy at the time. I
am being facetious, but young people being what they are, students being
generally broke as they are, but the school paper had some obligation to cover
it. Geoff asked me to go next door—literally, the very next door down the
hallway and talk to Tom Neal. A school has a faculty. It has an administration,
and it has those people dedicated to plant and property. Simply put, the
college president doesn’t necessarily decide who gets the snow-plowing and
grass-cutting contracts. Tom Neal was one of my mother’s cousins, (it’s a small
town after all), I knew that much, and he worked in that particular department.
So, with trusty pen and
notebook in hand, I went next door. There were a few glass-fronted office
cubicles at the back of a larger space, there was a male sitting there at his
desk, and the sign beside the door said ‘Tom Neal’.
The gentleman had
reddish hair, blue eyes and at least something,
of a family resemblance. I sort of figured this had to be it. I knocked,
introduced myself, and proceeded to talk to him, and read off my half a dozen
questions or so…
My little story
appeared in the paper. Several days later, in our regular journalism lab, a
very hands-on course it was, the phone rings and Geoff interrupts himself to
answer it. He says it’s for me. The other students have no idea, of course—but
then, neither did I.
I am speaking to Tom
Neal. He thanks me for the story, that’s all right I tell him. He says he
agrees with everything in it. Huh? Only real problem is, he doesn’t remember
speaking to me. He does not recall any such interview. He has no idea of who
the hell I am—and what’s up, exactly. All you can do is to apologize. To offer
to print a retraction. He says—essentially—what’s the point, and in fact we
never did print any sort of retraction, apology, explanation. I have no idea of
what really happened there. I have no idea, to this day, of who that other guy really was. Maybe there really
was no other guy, and maybe it was just a very hands-on kind of lesson.
This is what I meant
when I spoke of facts in the first
part of this story.
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| Ma'at, wearing the Feather of Truth. |
What the hell is a
fact. A fact is whatever some person says is a fact—a fact is a matter of
opinion, on some level. There are no universal truths.
***
Geoff had a thirty foot Grampian sailboat, tied up at the Sarnia Yacht Club. It is true, it was something of a tradition to take out the graduating class, those of us, who were left.
The attrition was
something in that course. A first year class, on day one, might number up to
thirty or more students. By day two, five or six were already gone. Two weeks
later, you were left with a couple of dozen, by the end of the year, less than
twenty. The second year class rarely started off with more than a dozen
students, but by this time, simple persistence and stick-to-it-iveness had come
into play and a good six or seven of us went out on the boat with Geoff. It was
a warm, sunny, late spring day, with a light wind out of the northwest and just
a nice chop to the water.
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| A Grampian 30. |
I remember Geoff opened
up a little panel, pressed a button and the auxiliary motor started up. One or
two of us cast off the lines. This is how we backed out of the slip and
maneuvered out of the harbour. This is how little I knew about sailboats. It
had simply never occurred to me before—well, you learn something new every day,
right.
I had, actually sailed
a boat before, a thirteen-foot dinghy, and after a while, it was my turn to
take over the tiller. I had a couple of the more attractive young women crank
on the windlasses, tighten up them sails, and heeling over about as far as she
was going to go, we set sail for the Bluewater Bridge and home.
Looking at the
speedometer, a large, nautical gauge on the bulkhead where a small door led
below, she was reading nine knots, which I reckon was about as fast as that
thing ever went.
He gave me a little
nod, which is about as good as it ever gets when you think about it…as for
people, either you love them or they suck, big-time. The choice is yours, and
make of it what you will.
As for Geoff, he served
the higher goddess. Her name was not Money, or Power, or Rank or Privilege. Her
name is Truth, ladies and gentlemen.
Her name is Truth.
END
Images: top photo by
Louis Shalako, taken in September or October 1983. Students from Getty Images.
Grampian 30 by Ahunt. The image of Ma’at, the Egyptian Goddess of Truth and
Honesty, is in the public domain.
Louis has a free
audiobook, A Stranger In Paris, an Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery.
Louis has ebooks and paperbacks available from Amazon.
Thank you for reading.
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| In this email, I refer to Chris Cooke as editor of the Sarnia Observer. This is incorrect, he was editor of the Sarnia Gazette. A little help is important in a news story. Writing fiction, I am entirely on my own. |
I've been thinking about this story
for two or three months. I am writing it one sentence at a time, the subject is
important on some personal level, and it's worth doing well. It's non-fiction
and some semblance of facts might be helpful...especially as it's a tribute to
my old journalism instructor, who passed away in 2012. I had planned to attend
the funeral--that's the day my brother called, a bit of an emergency, and I had
to go to London to help him move out in something of a hurry. I was a little
pissed off, but there was this young woman, and I was sort of wondering if
she'd turn up at the funeral. (I might want to leave that part out.)
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