Hockey crooner staying in Canucks’ corner ice man Richard Loney expects to be singing O Canada for many years to come Evelyn Jacob SPOTLIGHT FEATURE IGHT NOW he’s peas, the most heralded HB 6 oof singers perform. ing to packed audiences of 15,000 cheering fans. The only trauble is, he keeps getting interrupted by air horns and screams of blood lust before he can even finish a sang. But Canucks’ nationai anthem singer Richard Loney doesn't real- ly mind. ‘4t doesn’t bother me. | just wish they'd sing along more,” Loney says of the boisterous Canuckleheads. Loney has sung at practically every Canucks home game since 1971, What with performing for the B.C, Lions, at baseball games and for business conventions, he figures he’s recited O Canada at least 1,000 times. When we met two weeks ago in his west side Vancouver home, the silver-haired jocular vocalist predicted Vancouver would take Winnipeg in five games and Calgary in seven. Goad thing he sticks to his night job. Apart from feeling the stress from a fan’s standpoint, he wouldn't mind if every Vancouver series went to seven games, “My wife says | plan my entire ygar around the hockey sched- ule,’ he laughs. “‘In the begin- ning | was so excited | thought, ‘Gee. I'd pay them to let me sing.’ " He pauses for a moment and adds: “You'd better not print that.” One of hockey’s most gifted crooners, Loney is:a former Sutherland Secondary school teacher and past member of the Vancouver Opera chorus. His ca- reer with the Canucks, now enter- ing its third decade, began soon after the team started playing their o8c each - rp Pace ¢ first games at the Vancouver Col- iseum. He had had a passion for the game all his life; as a kid he joined the Junior A Buffalos and played left wing for the UBC Thunder- birds while he was completing a teaching degree. But having too small a build and “not being good enough” cut short any hope of going profes- sional. Music, an the other hand, had always been more accessible, Loney joined MUSSOC and later Theatre Under the Stars, capturing miner walk-on roles. He even took a year out to study voice in Lon- don, England with opera singer Joseph Hyslop, but his love of teaching brought him back to Vancouver. Two years ago, Loney took early retirement after teaching at Sutherland for 20 years. He remembers how his love of the game infiltrated the classroom: he and his students, he says, formed a fan club called the Canuck’s Cor- ~ ner where they would regularly pin up newspaper stories and photos of all the players, He would even take some of his students along with him to the games “provided they got their essays in on time,” he laughs. It became more than a fan’s relationship when, in 1971, Loney approached sports columnist Greg Douglas who was doing PR for the team. “| went to the first four or five games ano heard different people singing the anthem. Juliette sang the very first game. | remember NEWS photo Mite Wakefield O CANADA has been good to Vancouver Canucks national an- them singer Richard Loney, who has sung at almost every home game since the early '70s. its ITALIAN © TERRA-COTTA | THES. [_ they put a fan between her and her gown and it was blowing all over the place, It was really quite dramatic. “Then, ail of a sudden it twig- ged —~ | thought, ‘Why can't! do this?’ Douglas invited him to come down and sing a few games, and the rest is history. “tt's unbelievable, | know,” Loney says of the last 20 vears, sounding somewhat flabbergasted himself. “There have been some amazing moments and some bad times, too; some nights | would get so wrapped up with the team, | felt bad when they did bad, until 1982 when they went to the (Stanley Cup) finals. I'll never forget the noise and the towel waving.” In the past 20 years there have deen lots of highs and the occa- sional low, like the time when he was unmercifully booed during the anthem. It was at a Canadiens-Canucks game played just after then-prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau's in- famous one-finger salute to the West. “That night," Loney recalls, “when I started singing the french verse of the anthem, a chorus of boos came from the ratters. It was unnerving, but f plowed on. | really think the whole thing was silly, but there was such an anti-Quebec feeling a the time,” Loney has definite thoughts on how national anthems should be sung: with dignity. And equally definite thoughts on who should and who shouldn't sing them. “Former Montreal Canadiens vocalist Roger Doucette was wonderful," he says. ‘Pop singers get asked to sing it ~ Whitney Houston did a fabulous job, Bryan Adams hasn't done it but he'd be good. But with others who don’t have the voice to carry it off, | think it’s unfair. Like Ro- seanne Barr, for example. She's not a singer, That was kind of a disaster.” That's not to say that each of his performances has been flawless. loney confesses to having lip- synched O Canada a couple of times — once when he came down with a nasty case of laryngi- tis. But as long as he has a voice to: sing and Vancouver has a hockey t See Loney page 38 Brake Shop : Py ns DAVE SEYMOUR MANAGER Over 2,000 shops in North America SHOP HOURS: 8:00-5:30 MON.-FRI. 8:00-4:30 SATURDAY. 800 MARINE, N. VANCOUVER _ 986-5361 ee Ne NN he ee SECOND SHOCK GFF OR STRUT {in stock) OFFER EXPIRES MAY 31/93 minas: i VALID AT N.VAN, LOCATION ONLY l pIsc i BRAKES ! INCLUDES Ls + instalation of pads or shoes {. * resurface drums or roters i OFFER EXPIRES MAY 13/93 VALID AT N.VAN. 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