In his movies, John Wayne usually portrayed a man of few words. He was like that in real life too, and I once experienced it firsthand. I was representing Junior Achievement of Canada at a Junior Achievement of America fund-raising luncheon in Washington, D.C. John Wayne was the guest speaker. On the program his topic was listed as “Volunteerism.” After an unnecessarily long and boring introduction by a US congressman, Wayne ambled up to the lectern, leaned into the microphone, and said, “Volunteering isn’t something you talk about; it’s something you do.” He then went and sat down. At first, the stunned audience didn’t quite know how to react, but quickly realizing those ten words really said it all, and that we would never forget his message, we gave him a standing ovation.
Hockey star, Bobby Hull was also known for his prodigious strength. One summer evening, Bobby, his promotions manager Lester Stanford and I were walking along a street in mid-town Toronto where there was some construction going on. There were odd-looking concrete forms laid out along the edge of the sidewalk. They were about ten inches wide, ten or twelve feet long and a couple of inches thick. Bobby stopped and said, “I wonder what those look like on the other side.” Lester and I each took an end of one and were struggling to turn it over when Lester exclaimed, “Look!” I turned to see Bobby, with his arms extended straight above his head, holding one of the forms while casually examining its underside.
The foregoing anecdote notwithstanding, I’m not sure Hull’s feat was the greatest show of strength I’ve witnessed. Lorne Keefe was a legendary PEI strong man. My colleague, Mark Ladner, and I were walking down Richmond Street in Charlottetown, each toting a briefcase, when we saw Lorne coming toward us carrying two bags of cement, the total weight of which would be at least 150 pounds. Mark said, “Let’s stop and talk to Lorne and see how long it’ll be before he puts down the cement.” We talked long enough that Mark and I had to set down our briefcases, but Lorne still effortlessly held the two bags of cement. He was still holding them when Mark and I ran out of things to talk about, picked up our briefcases, and continued on our way.
Another Bobby Hull anecdote. One evening we somehow found ourselves in a palm reader’s salon in Chicago. Although I took a pass, Bobby readily coughed up the money for a reading, which they invited me to sit in on. The palmist would point to a line on Bobby’s hand, make a dramatic prediction, and then even more dramatically ask, “Do you know what that line is?” Bobby invariably admitted he didn’t, and she invariably described what manner of life-line it was. However, after making some lengthy and profound prophecy based on her reading of an unusual-looking line on his hand, she again asked him if he knew what that line was. This time, Bobby replied, “Yeah, I know this one. That’s where Johnny Bucyk stepped on my hand one night in Boston.
Most people were aware that the late Celtic singer John Allan Cameron was a well-educated man with an incredible command of the English language. (He also spoke fluent Latin). He was performing at the famous Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto and a drunk sitting at a front-row-centre table was giving him a hard time. An annoyed John Allan, having heard enough, stopped in the middle of a song, gestured to the band to stop playing, leaned down with mic in hand and asked the drunk, “Do you know what you are?” The drunk replied in a confrontational voice, “No, what am I?” John Allan answered, “You’re a contumacious recidivist.” The drunk (as was probably the case with everybody in the club except John Allan) having no idea whether he’d been praised or insulted, shut up for the rest of the night. The first thing I did when I got home that night was consult my dictionary.
I had just finished negotiating a new recording contract for Canadian country singer George Fox with Warner Brothers. Stan Kulin, the president of Warner Canada, shook hands with George and said, “We’re really looking forward to advancing your career, George.” With a straight face George replied, “Well, if you can be half as successful with me as you’ve been with Bugs Bunny I’ll be very pleased.”