Doug Collins ® get this straight @ THERE ARE three names in the newspaper game [ have respected above all. One was Bil Connor, the Daily Mirror as “Cassandra” Marys claimed him for a higher life. Scott, probably the Sun's best-ever writer. who wrote for until an excess of Bloody The second was Jack And the third was Stuart Keate, the former Sun publisher. It is miserable having to use the past tense for Stu’’. But on Sun- day, at the age of 73, he left us to join the others. We knew some time ago he was writing bis last story, bur it was still a shock to hear he had gone. | never Knew anyone on the paper who didn’t fike him. I first saw him in 1952 when | was bumming around for a job and he was publisher of the Vic- toria’ Times. Most publishers would have said they were too busy to see the likes of me. He didn't. ‘Come on in,"’ he said. “There’s nothing here,’’ he observed cheerfully. ‘‘We’re overstaffed already. But do you like fishing?’ Having once caught a trout, | said | did. Whereupon he called the Campbell River paper, which had been looking for some cheap labor. Alas, that opening was closed, too. But Stu briefed me } about the press in the West, and was kind and encouraging. Twen- ty years later when he hired me for my second tour of the Sun, I ask-$ ed him how the fishing would be. He grinned and said it would be as good as I wanted to make it. In 1952 he has already been to the top as a senior editor for Time magazine, but had given that up to come back to B.C. for less money. But that was Stu. Job satisfaction and his beloved West came first. ‘He was one of the few true liberals, meaning he could go with Ithe hippies or with the hounds, and he had a stable of writers that} ranged the whole waterfront and back alleys: Bob Hunter, Allan Fotheringham, Mac Reynolds, Jack Wasserman, Denny Boyd and all kinds of other riff-raff, like me. But he could write rings f around the lot of us. He had the magic light touch. No one ever had to read a sentence of his] twice. His prime quality, however, was quiet courage. When the gladiators are battl- Banner Barrymore Bentley Burlington ing things out, you see, it’s all very well for the spectators to call for more blood. Their job is to cheer or vive the thumbs down signal. Which is fair enough, But every time his paper comes out it publisher gambles that someone hasn't made a mistake that will land him in the glue. (it needn't always be a mistake, dither. When ‘Cassandra’ called Liberace a fairy, it cost the Afir- ror’’ $22,000 in the libel courts, plus large costs. Yet Liberace was what Cassandra said he was.) Stu Keate wanted the stories and wasn't scared of defending them, When TV critic Lisa Hobbs wrote about CBC ineptness and called a senior CBC official a liar, there was an I 1-day trial! and the Sun lost. But the CBC didn't ex- actly win, being awarded a con- teuptous $1 damages. When Moira Farrow discovered that car dealers were ‘'bugerng automobile sdles rooms and listening to customers’ reagtion to sales’ pitches, the dealers couldi’t bully Stu by boycott, in spite of their vinangial clout. They cancell- ed their advertising. But the stories ran, It was the same when the university establishment waxed hairy about Sun stories on ex: cessive salary awards at UBC and professorial cheating. Stu had been on the board of governors and had many friends there. The university president: damned the paper in a public speech, but that didn’t worry our man either, “1m interested in facts,’’ he replied. “Show me where we're wrong.”’ Or, as he once put it to some big- gie who wanted his son's misadventures covered up: “You keep your son’s name out of the courts and I'l keep his name out of the paper.”’ He retired from the Sun the day before the disastrous strike of 1978-79 began, and the paper has never been the same. 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