An eye for an I

Funny how your life’s calling comes about. I was ten, doing my morning ablutions on the junior dock at Camp Nagiwa, run by the Guelph YMCA. Junior because it was smaller than the main dock and the water was shallower.
Lathered with soap, I dove in and felt my head scrape a rock on the bottom. I stood up, bleeding profusely. Someone got me to the camp’s nursing station then by car to Coldwater, Ont., where a doctor put in stitches.
I returned to camp but spiked a fever. My mother drove from Guelph to bring me home. Family doctor Frank Farmer came a-calling, looked at my head, and asked my father for a pair of scissors. “Shouldn’t we worry about infection?” my father asked. “Too late for that,” said Farmer, snipping the stitches. The pus oozed, proving his point.
During my next few summers at Nagiwa, YMCA director Ernie Berner always announced there should be no diving off the junior dock. “If you want to know why, just ask Rod McQueen.” I loved to tell my tale.
But there was another moment I remember as even more meaningful in my life. The day I got my stitches, I was bandaged and resting on a couch near the dining hall. Another camper had just swum three miles from Severn Falls to the camp. Amidst all the adulation enfolding him, he came over to see me: the hero visits the fallen. I revelled in such attention from the star.
Since then I have spent my life trying to get people’s attention. That’s why I started writing, first in high school for the local paper. At Western I began writing for The Gazette in my first month – one-inch briefs used as fillers followed by longer profiles. I held various jobs after university all of which involved writing: some speeches for Robert Stanfield, opposition leader in Parliament, and Ced Ritchie, CEO of the Bank of Nova Scotia. Next was Maclean’s. I was business editor, then managing editor, where you don’t get to write.
I finally got myself focused by writing freelance articles in the 1990s as well as books, of which I’ve authored a few. I continue to write blogs like this and regular bi-weekly columns for the Saturday Toronto Star. And I owe it all to that swim hero’s visit. As well as readers who spend a few minutes with my poor prose.