Scott Young was my hero

For some, Scott Young was just the father of rocker-musician Neil Young.
However, for countless Canadian newspapermen and women he was a hero -- a handsome, even debonair and principled individual, who died last Sunday at age 87 in Kingston, Ontario.
Besides a distinguished newspaper career which stretched from the Winnipeg Free Press to the Canadian Press to the Toronto Telegram and Maclean's magazine and two stints with the Toronto Globe & Mail, he also managed to provide young and old readers alike with some 45 books, including such scintillating novels such as "The Flood," two Arctic thrillers, "Murder in a Cold Climate" and "The Shaman's Knife" and 1984's "Neil and Me," about his relationship with his famous rock 'n' roll son.
However, it was his writing, which struck me as brilliant, for I was his copy editor during his brief days as sports editor with the late and great Toronto Telegram.
It was almost with bated breath, this cynical newspaperman waited for his column to arrive by bus semi-regularly from his farm near Peterboro, Ontario.
However, he did start, literally at the bottom and worked his way up, as he once told the late Peter Gzowski in a 1994 Morningside program. Briefly this is the non-verbatim dry conversation that they had:
Gzowski: I want to know about the Snake Room at the Winnipeg Free Press?
Young: I was a copy boy when I started at the Free Press and that only lasted about five weeks. I then used to go out on my days off and find a story and write it. I did that for a week before I became the most junior in the sports department and as soon as the guys found I could operate and help them out when they drank too much, they tended to lean on me quite a bit.
Then Young continued, "Bowling alley proprietors would come in with a bottle of whiskey and they would all go in in what we used to call "the Snake Room." It was sort of a cubby-hole in the Canadian Press quarters of the Winnipeg Free Press. It was sort of a place to store paper. If a softball team or someone wanted publicity, they'd bring some booze up for the sports guys as they used to call us and everybody would repair to the Snake Room, except me and I would be left writing the guys' columns for them and that's how I learned the business, you know." There was a long pause and then he continued:
Young: The Snake Room -- it used to amuse me, like how I learned what raw whiskey did to my stomach. (This veteran) went across the street and bought a steak sandwich, and they didn't even give him a discount because he didn't have it cooked. He brought it back and put it on a clean piece of white paper and poured some rye whiskey on it and it all turned brown. And then he said 'that's what happens to your stomach when you drink rye whiskey without water,' which we were all doing , of course.
Gzowski: Do you think we all really drank as much as we did when we were young newspaper guys, telling these lies now that we are old ... how did we ever get the damn papers out?
Young: Maybe, we didn't drink as much as we thought we did ... I think we drank more than we thought we did ... but we were all able to handle it better."
Gzowski then praised Young for his story about "escaped German prisoners at Antler, Ontario."
Young showed his ingenuity by occupying a bedroom and listening to conversations coming through what had been a stovepipe hole. "I would lie on my back and pretend to be asleep and listen to army officers and searchers discussing the search."
In a June 14 Canoe news story, George Gross, the corporate sports editor, was quoted as saying, "We have one or two classes of sports journalists in Canada and Scott Young is on or near the top of Class 1. He was a classic writer. Where I would treat someone in my column with a sledge hammer, Scott would do it like a surgeon."
However, there was another side of Young, little known to most, but certainly evident among young sportswriters such as myself.
"There are always a lot of young people in the newspaper business who need support," he was quoted as saying during a Sports Media Canada dinner honoring him eight years ago. "They need somebody to tell them they are doing the job right. The most kick I got out of the business was when somebody was doing a good job and I could tell them that. There aren't many individuals like Milt (Dunnell) and Trent (Frayne) and myself that have done it all. We really did it all. We did the dirtiest jobs and the best jobs. I think there is a process. If the senior experienced guys are willing to sit down with the younger guys and bolster them up, it would be of great service."
On a personal note, I had the privilege of visiting Young's farm at Cavan, near Peterboro, and also at his Toronto home, where the elite of the Canadian sportswriting fraternity such as the late Jim Coleman gathered. One of the most remarkable things during time with this modest man was music, featuring his son, Nei1, was piped into every quarter of the house.
During his career, he covered both news and sports for CP, and reported on the Second World War from London, and as a sports columnist he wrote about the Grey Cups, World Series, Stanley Cups, the Olympics and appeared on Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts
A major dispute within the Globe and Mail concerning "unattributed quotes." in 1980 angered Young so much he left the newspaper business. "Dick Doyle phoned me. We were pretty good friends -- besides being the boss and I the slave-- and he said, rather bitterly, 'I suppose you're going to work for the Toronto Sun,' and I said, 'I'm never going to work for another newspaper again as long as I live and I haven't."
However, he continued to re-issue such classic hockey paperbacks for kids such as "Scrubs on Skates," "Boy on Defence," and "A Boy At The Leafs' Camp."
He was married three times and had a total of seven children and step-children.
Peterboro mayor Sylvia Sutherland said, "Right until the end he was a very gracious man. He had been ill for a number of years, but he was still the same sweet Scott. He loved to talk about the old days in journalism and it was fun to do that with him."
Yes, he truly was one of a kind.