Ted Blackman had a gruff exterior and a kind heart.

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This article was originally published on Policy Magazine.

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20 years ago this weekend, on October 2, 2002, we lost Ted Blackman, the most talented sports columnist of his generation at The Montreal Gazette, who became a legendary voice on Montreal morning radio.

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Ted left us too soon, he was only 60 years old when he passed away, a victim of the good life who, as he acknowledged, did very well. In his later years, he calmed down, but in the end the damage was done.

As a sportswriter and columnist, he could do it all, beginning with the Montreal Expos in their memorable inaugural season of 1969. They played at Jarry Park, a makeshift home for the major leagues until the Olympic Stadium was finally completed for the Montreal Summer Games. 1976. .

It was a summer, and a season, for the ages. And if Expos fans wanted to know what management was thinking and what the players were saying behind the scenes, they just had to read Ted’s coverage in the Gaz every day. Although he was only 20 years old at the time, he owned the story. And when Dink Carroll retired as a Gazette sports columnist after several decades on the job, Ted was the only logical choice to succeed him.

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I was then a junior reporter in the sports department, fresh out of Loyola College (now part of Concordia University) in that celebrated summer of 1969. My subject was college sports, which would never have appeared on the “rest page.” ” from the sports section. , except the McGill Redmen emerged as a soccer powerhouse that fall, going all the way to the national championship before losing the Vanier Cup.

I was also assigned to the desk, where I often handled Ted’s column for the first edition, or his baseball history for the local edition. Where he might have lorded it over me as a 21-year-old, he never showed anything more than collegiate courtesy and personal kindness. That was “Teddy Bear,” as he was known, for a gruff exterior but a gentle heart.

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Ted also enjoyed nights out with “the boys,” whether it was at the Montreal Press Club after hours at the old Mount Royal Hotel, or just watching a hockey game at a place like Colonial Tavern. In those days, only beer was sold in taverns and women were not allowed in, no wonder they all went broke, as they should have.

By the mid-1970s, Ted had also become a familiar morning radio voice, doing sports on Montreal’s top-rated English-language morning show with George Balcan on CJAD. More than a decade later, when he left to become a morning announcer and program director for rival CFCF radio, he convinced me to co-host a mid-morning talk show with Pierre Bourgault. He was supposed to be a federalist versus a separatist, but instead of arguing and yelling, we had spirited but cordial conversations. Of course, hardly anyone listened, and before long we were cancelled. And Ted then found his way back to CJAD, where he was Balcan’s kindred spirit until George’s retirement at the turn of the century. (And fittingly, they were inducted into the station’s hall of fame together in 2015.)

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Of all his great work as a sports writer, none stands out more than his coverage of the famous Canada-Russia hockey series in September 1972, while Terry Mosher writes Montreal to Moscow, his wonderful new book of cartoons, sketches and stories from Aislin on the series that took the country by storm and changed the game forever.

Ted and Terry were in Moscow along with Gazette executive editor Denis Harvey and photo editor George Cree. But it was Ted, as a writer, who captured the drama. From the struggles of the first four games in Canada and the fifth in Moscow, which he saw Team Canada trailing three games to one, with one tied, and needing to win the last three games on foreign ice to salvage the series. Which they did, with Paul Henderson’s three straight game-winning goals, including the tiebreaking one with 34 seconds remaining in Game 8, perhaps the most famous goal in hockey history. Mosher devotes two pages to excerpts from Ted’s post-game player quotes. And in those days, reporters would do one-on-one backstage interviews and work from handwritten notes. As Ted wrote: “Yvan Cournoyer, who scored the equalizing goal, slumped in a corner of the room, exhausted. His only words explained his performance and the enormity of the series: ‘I’ve never felt so much pressure in my life,’ said the guy who helped win six Stanley Cups.”

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And Ted managed to file the whole story in time for the first edition. He wrote the best stuff, at the speed of wire service.

When Ted died, The Gazette ran a number of tributes, including my column that ran the morning of his funeral.

Before the service, we were outside the Erskine and American United Church on Sherbrooke Street. The great Jean Béliveau, whom I had the privilege of calling a friend, came to say that he had seen the play. Then we walked into the church together, and Big Jean joined me in the last pew, where reporters always sit at funerals.

A couple of minutes later, a well-known Habs ticket scalper walked past us, walked to the front of the church, and took a seat right behind Ted’s family.

Rob Braide, who had been director of programs at CJAD, had the last word on the matter.

“Only at Ted’s funeral,” he said, “would the scalper have a better seat than Jean Béliveau.”

just perfect.

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