ALEX TSAKUMIS IN 24 HOURS ON WALTER G.

Hug 'em For As Long As You Can

By A. G. Tsakumis
‘Rebel With A Clause’

You’d think that by the beginning of a new year we’d get a fresh start, something hopeful. But like an ominous opening gun, the sonorous blast sees the Middle East, specifically Pakistan, soulless and absent of it’s greatest leader; we’ve received yet another body bag from Afghanistan; our economy looks to take a bit of a spill thanks to a looming American recession; Stephane Dion and his party snatchers, on suicide-watch, continue to make noise about tripping an election he will surely lose for them; and, of course, Citizen Sham continues his empty public relations shell game that he hopes will return him to an Olympic podium.

I could have written for you about anything, but you’d have been left, proverbially, looking at this page glumly, that with last year in our rear view mirror, nothing has changed…much.

In the smattering of news in the waning days of 2007, though, a light, as bright as the North Star.

Walter Gretzky, announced Ottawa, will be invested a member of the Order of Canada.

I wasn’t sure whether I’d over-imbibed or over-eaten the night before (occasionally both), but I thought my heart was going to pound out of my chest with glee.

If there was ever a symbol of a real Canadian treasure, Wally has to be it. Born in hard-scrabble Ontario to immigrant parents from Belarus and the Ukraine, he worked his way through life with a purposeful, decent, honest disposition that belied the tough times that then made equal men break. Such is Mr. Gretzky’s significance to this country, that in providing for a family of seven and having survived a near fatal accident as a telephone line man for Bell Canada, where he toiled for over three decades, he persevered to build a backyard rink in old Brantford that would eventually gift us with our most spectacular and graceful athlete ever, his son Wayne.

But what’s the real significance here, you ask?

Since 1991, when Mr. Gretzky suffered a brain aneurysm, all the ensuing recollections of him by his family and friends told of man who was ‘there’. No manufactured excuses to miss any of the kids’ practices or activities, no whimpering about how hard-done life was so that he’d rather recline on his couch at home than be ‘there’.

No amount of money could ever replace the wealth of love he felt for his wife Phyllis or his five children. He could be tough, but in a way that his love of family was never over-shadowed.

Mr. Gretzky was once asked about how he inspired his superstar son, and he said, “You know, Wayne did it all, I was just there to tell him how to do it a little bit…and I hugged him, ‘cause you gotta hug your kids for as long as they’ll let you..that’s the most important thing, I was there.”

So for every muddy-faced, teary-eyed kid stuck at center-field long after all the other parents have collected their brood; for every one who was ever told that Dad couldn’t make the game because he had some meeting; for anybody who ever felt a father’s dispassion: you can think of Walter Gretzky, national treasure, just standing ‘there’ and you can pretend he was there for you.

Me? I’m off to hug my son and daughters…for as long as they’ll let me.

Happy New Year, finally.

A. G. Tsakumis is our bi-monthly editorial writer appearing in this space every second Friday.