TED BYFIELD, OCTAGENARIAN

My old mentor, boss and pal Ted Byfield turned 80 on July 10th and son Link and daughter-in-law Joanne threw a party for him at their acreage on the weekend previous. It was a pleasant outdoor event, interrupted periodically by those wonderful Alberta summer thunderstorms that snap, crackle and pop for a half hour, then dissolve into golden sunlight. There were not the media and political celebrities that populated Byfield parties of yore (they have been dying off), but there was a smattering of judges, businessmen and some Alberta Report and St. John’s School alumni. A big hunk of beef was roasted in foil in the embers of an open fire, and much was drunk. Amiable anecdotes were told, mostly concerning Ted’s relentless indomitableness as a publisher, as a leader of boys on canoe trips, as a sailor, and as a raiser of funds. A couple of speakers compared him to William Buckley. Ted’s younger brother John, a retired oncologist from Los Angeles who looks like a cross between Ernest Hemingway and Santa Claus, rambled comically and almost coherently about his and Ted’s doubtful consanguinity and their diametrically different politics. Ted, who looks 10 years younger than his age, told a couple of his own anecdotes before he and Virginia left early to drive back to Edmonton (Ted habitually retires at around 9 and rises at 4 to work on the history book.) The closest we got to media celebrity – if one discounts a brief appearance early in the evening by Lorne Gunter - was an email, read by Link, from Maclean’s publisher/editor, former National Post editor and Alberta Report alumnus Ken Whyte. This is what it said:

The Hinton train disaster happened on a Saturday morning and by mid-day I was flying by helicopter to the crash site for Alberta Report. I spent the day wandering around the wreck and then took a late greyhound back to Edmonton, arriving at about five in the morning. I slept for a few hours, and went to the office and stayed there all day Sunday and straight through until Monday morning, writing our cover story.

Ted came into the office early on Monday and I was the only one there. He said, man, you look awful, let my buy you breakfast. So we went over to the Mayfield inn and ordered breakfast and talked about the train crash story. After about ten minutes or so I noticed over Ted’s shoulder a guy sitting at another table, glancing at us nervously. I figured he was one of the legion of Byfield fans and I wasn’t at all surprised when he finally got up the courage to walk over to us, holding out his hand, saying hi to ted.

Ted looked up, smiled, didn’t have a clue who the guy was, and said hi in turn and shook his hand. The guy introduced himself to me and then says to Ted, thanks for agreeing to have breakfast with me this morning – you remember we’re scheduled to have breakfast this morning, right?

“Of course,” Ted lied. “Sit down.”

We had breakfast, the unknown guy – I can’t remember if he was an investor or a supplier -- did most of the talking. When Ted and I finally went back to the office, Ted asked to see the cover story and I gave it to him. He read it quickly, said he loved it, but that he wanted to change the lead. I was really fond of my lead. I’d spent most of Sunday night working on my lead. It was a description of the scene of the crash as seen from the helicopter -- the face of a victim had been visible in the window. Ted said just leave it with me, and I did. I went in the back took a nap and when I woke up the story was in production with Ted’s lead, all about the history of trains, with lots of train jargon, and a discussion of how trains were supposed to be the safe way to travel, and how no one expected an accident like this could ever happen. I was disappointed that my lead was cut in favor of his, but I was too tired to fight, and it was his magazine.

A few months later, I’m in a bar with Ric Dolphin. We got to talking about big stories and I mentioned that I’d worked on the Hinton train crash story. Dolphin says, “oh yeah, I remember that story. You worked that story? That was a good story. Yeah, I remember it had a great lead.” I was flabbergasted, and slightly offended, but a day or two later, I went back and read the train crash story again. Dolphin was right. It had a great lead.

Happy Birthday, Ted. I have to be in Banff tonight to ensure that my little brother finally makes it to the altar, otherwise I would most certainly be there with the Byfield clan to celebrate the dawn of what I trust will be your most productive decade. I miss you and think of you often – for me, you’ll always be the master.

As ever, Ken Whyte

At 80, Ted has lost none of his mastery over the language – as I rediscovered while working for him on The Christians, the 12-volume history of Christianity that will be Ted's most fitting swansong. He still rewrites leads, still makes them better, and he still infects those working for him with the sense of fun and discovery that he has always brought to his endeavours, and which so impressed and influenced us young reporters lucky enough to pass through Alberta Report in the Eighties and Nineties.

I came to work for AR in 1980 from a crappy little Thomson daily in southwestern Ontario. Ted paid almost twice as much, but demanded more than twice as many hours. Somehow, you didn’t mind. Early in my tenure, late into a Friday drinking and dope-smoking party at the house I shared with a couple of roomies, I got a phonecall from Ted. “Dolphin,” he said in the Bogart-like rasp we reporters came to know and imitate. “There’s been a tornado down near Medicine Hat, I want you to get on a plane first thing in the morning …” Hungover as hell, I somehow I managed to make the PWA airbus from Edmonton to Calgary, then some little puddle-jumper to Medicine Hat, then a rental car to the village of Hilda where the tornado had touched down. It was not a major disaster. Some CP grain cars had been blown off their tracks, and few shacks had been demolished, and debris had been blown through some windows, narrowly missing an occupant or two. The fire chief handed me a beer and drove me around in a pickup to view the carnage. I did some interviews, took some pictures, then drove back to the Medicine Hat Airport only to find all flights were grounded due to recurring stormy weather. I was therefore forced to drive the rental Ford LTD back to Calgary at around 100 mph in order to make the last PWA airbus back to Edmonton. I arrived at Alberta Report’s ratty west Edmonton offices in the small hours to find Ted waiting. “Wake me up when you’ve written it,” he said, pouring some Canadian Club into my coffee cup. I spent the next four or five hours on my old Underwood typewriter - it would be several years until we advanced to Commodore 64s - banging out a story, and woke up Ted at around 7 am to edit it “Good work, Dolphin, now go get some sleep. I’ll phone you if I have any questions.” He probably re-wrote my lead; I can’t remember. I do remember thinking, though, that I sure as hell wasn’t working for the St. Thomas Times-Journal anymore, and that that was a good thing.

I would spend six years at AR, and cover far bigger stories than a minor tornado touchdown in Hilda. I would sail with Ted in his 42-foot sloop, The Credimus, from Panama City to Grand Cayman. I would compile and publish a book of Byfield’s columns (The Book of Ted, Keystone Press, 1997). I would help him write and edit portoins of the 12-volume Alberta in the 20th Century history book series. I would accompany him on his marathon walks the length of Edmonton’s river valley (ending at the Beverley Crest Hotel tavern.) I would drink countless beers and whiskies with him, and ward off countless attempts to bring me around to his way of thinking on the small matter of Christianity. I would come to love Ted like a father and as a friend. But it had all started with that little tornado in Hilda and the three words with which he greeted me on the Monday morning following when I arrived back at my desk: “Good story, Dolphin.”

Happy birthday, Ted. I have a feeling there will be a few more yet. I sure hope so.