aTaylor-made homecoming

By Andrew McCredie

missociate Editor RudrewOnszews.com

fg iM Taylor is a great mpeliever in the “What mf?” school of writing.

mB Asin “What if the Lone

manger had been married?”; What if race horses could alk?”

For three decades Taylor

Menswered the great “Whar 3?” for a loyal legion of Wancouver newspaper readers Bs one of the premier sport Folumnists in the city.

jem But last year, the “What

suas” became “Where'd he go?” as Taylor lost Manis Vancouver market when the weekly Sports

. pri of which he was associate publisher, fold-

; ike a Canuck third period. Taylor found mimself a stranger in his home town. “People stop me on the street and say “Why

Mid you retire?,"” he was saving just the other

May in his Cautfeild home’s livingroom. “That lort of pisses me off.”

Anyone who knows Taylor would chuckle

mc the thought of him retiring, piddling around is backyard pond and pushing a wheelbarrow Ml of manure among the coforful flower beds. mam At age 60 he is far from logging off and Exlicking off the laptop for the last ame. For the Sepast year he has been cranking out the columns three a week — for publications in the Sun

iedia Corp. chain of papers.

. “If you take Calgary, Edmonton, Ortawa, cronto, Regina and Victoria, I’ve probably fot more readers now than | had (as a fancouver newspaper columnist),” he says of

@he fleet of papers that float his “What ifs?”.

§ But he misses writing for a Vancouver audi- nce: “So much stuff that I would be all over is bf no interest to the people I’m writing for.”

(More’s the pity. Imagine the “What ifs” of e Canuck goalie do-se-do? And what if Porey Hirsch learned to be a defenceman?)

_ He’s also been hard at work on his second

~

FIWOOK

compilation of columns, pub- fished just last month by Horsdal & Schubart. Year Mean I Get Paid To Do Thist picks up where his first Greatest Hits package left off. The 1993 Forgive Mr My Press Passes presented the cream of the columnist’s crop from the late seventies and eighties at the Vancouver Sun and Province. The new sott cover book includes columns trom the Province, Sports Only and Sun papers written over the past few years.

For Vancouver fans who have felt an empty feeling at the Morning kitchen table. since Taylor “retired,” You Mean 1 Ger Paid To De This? is the steak and cugs breakfast to beat all.

The book is set up in chapter format with cach section devoted to a sport or subject. Chapter headings include Leek, Ma, Um a Jockwatcher!, Skategate (the Uarding- Kerrigan saga), Radical, Eh¢ (the CFL), and Lights That Flicker and Die (boxing).

“Pye never written a book that wasn't pre- sold,” Taylor says of the book-writing busi- ness, “It’s not like there’s a lot of moacy in it, unless you're Danielle Steele or someone like that.”

What if Jim Taylor was thac"?

Unlike some of Taylor’s wilder “What ifs?”, the prospect of him as a successful writer out- side the sport arena is quite plausible. Ask him and he'll tell you flat out he’s already there.

“[’'m not a sports writer. | don’t like to be called a sports writs. I am a writer who hap- pens to be writing about people who happen to be playing sports. And ifs sport were to fall in a hole tomorrow, I would grieve and then | would walk across the city room and write something else.”

Of course like all ink-stained columnists, he has written plenty else in his newspaper career,

Sports 3 columnist ~: fim Taylor

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JIM Taylor has carried the bail as one of Canada's best humourists for the past 30 years. A new compilation of his sport columns hit books last month.

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