Author Archives: Ryan Van Horne

Crosby has found his fame, alright

This article was written in 2003 for a website that never paid me for the story — although they put the story on their site. That website is defunct and it serves them right.

I was thinking about this story the other day as I thought about the pratfalls of freelancing; I’d thought I’d dust this story off and post it here on the blog for posterity.

Sidney Crosby is on his way to hockey fame
By Ryan Van Horne
Sidney Crosby. Remember that name. If it isn’t a household name in your home, it will be soon.

The precocious 16-year-old hockey player plays for the Rimouski Oceanic of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League and has already grabbed the attention of Wayne Gretzky, who has tabbed Crosby as a likely candidate to challenge his scoring records.

“It was a huge compliment,” Crosby said. “But there isn’t going to be another Wayne Gretzky and no one is going to break his records. For him to say that though, I’m doing something right and I just want to keep doing it.”

Crosby has dreams of playing in the NHL, but he’s so close to realizing it that he doesn’t talk about it.

“I don’t think that far ahead,” Crosby said. “I just want to enjoy it. The older guys, they say enjoy it while you can because it goes fast.”

“It’s serious hockey,” said Crosby. “A lot of people are going to go on and play professional hockey. It makes you want to play that much more.”

Crosby’s immediate success in major junior surprised some, but not his former midget coach, Brad Crossley, who coached him with the Dartmouth Subways in 2001-02. That was the year Crosby skated into the spotlight at the tender age of 14 by leading the Air Canada Cup in scoring, garnering most valuable player honors and leading Dartmouth to a silver medal. He was the youngest player at the tournament and it was the best finish yet by a Nova Scotia team at the Canadian AAA midget championship.

“He’s a revelation to everyone else, but he’s fitting in just the way I expected him to,” Crossley said. “He just has the ability to raise his game to another level and he has an innate understanding of what’s going to happen a play ahead. He’s head and shoulders above everyone else.”

Crosby has a passion for the game that he inherited from his family. His dad was a major junior goalie and a draft pick of the Montreal Canadiens and his uncles and cousins also played high-caliber hockey.

They introduced him to hockey, teaching him to skate when he was three. Crosby started playing when he was five.

“He just loved it,” his mother, Trina Crosby, said. “It was like he couldn’t get enough of it.”

But it’s not unusual for kids to start so young, or show such zeal. What makes Crosby special is that he combines skill and a strong work ethic. Take it from Michael Chiasson, a teammate of Crosby’s for seven years. Whenever Crosby would invite Chiasson and his other friends over, it was never to play with toys or video games.

“It was always hockey,” Chiasson said. “He was always the hardest worker on and off the ice. He always thinks he can do better. He wants to improve his game even if he’s on top. There’s been all kinds of people who are good hockey players who have hit the wall, but I knew Sidney wasn’t going to.”

Hockey isn’t the only thing at which Crosby directs his energy; he is also a straight A student.

“He’s an amazing role model,” said Karen Dale, the vice-principle at Astral Drive Junior High School in Cole Harbour. “He’s kind to people. He was really kind to students in the learning center and to special needs kids.”

Despite the prestige of being featured on Hockey Night in Canada and written about in Sports Illustrated, Crosby remains humble and Dale doesn’t see it changing.

“He is one of the nicest kids I’ve ever seen go through here,” Dale said.

Though he had his share of fans and supporters, Crosby wasn’t really appreciated in his hometown. So when the opportunity came for Crosby to move away at the age of 15, it wasn’t a difficult decision and he left to play for Shattuck-St. Mary’s, a prep school in Faribault, Minn.

“It was good for him,” said Trina Crosby. “He developed as a hockey player and as a human being.”

After that season he was picked first overall by Rimouski in the QMJHL draft. It was the first time a Nova Scotian has been selected first overall.

He’s not all grace, though.

“He’s got more grit than Gretzky and he’s not scared of the corners,” said Dennis MacInnis of the International Scouting Service. “He reminds me of Peter Forsberg. He’s got that grit that you don’t normally see in a finesse player.”

MacInnis and ISS rank Crosby as the best prospect for the 2005 NHL draft.

“There’s nobody that brings everything to the table that he does,” said MacInnis. “He’s truly a special player.”

Sage advice from Henry Ford

One of things I’ve never enjoyed doing as an employee was promoting myself; and because I didn’t enjoy doing it, I was never very good at it.

Now that I am in business for myself, I have no choice. Some say nothing concentrates the mind like a deadline, but making the mortgage payment and feeding six kids sure does. Trust me, I’ve faced both challenges.

As much as I enjoy the freedom of being my own boss, I have had to learn to continuously promote myself to generate cash flow. This blog is part of that and I’m always looking for opportunities to get my name out there, sometimes for free, and sometimes for a fee; it’s just something that I have to do now.

As Henry Ford once told his dealers, the secret to success is thus:

Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise.

That quote has since been attributed to Ted Turner and Peter J. Laurence, and some internet sites will tell you they coined the phrase. However, as a wise man named Abraham Lincoln once said:

The trouble with quotes on the internet is you never know if they are genuine.

How can we be sure, then, that Ford coined the phrase in the first place? Well, a reference to a printed source always helps. See here.

Regardless of who said it, though, it’s good advice.

A missed opportunity

John Swinimer took what might be described as a belligerent attitude during media interviews today as he pulled his son, William, out of Forest Heights Community School. See story here.

Offered an olive branch by the South Shore School Board, his actions, tone and words are very un-Christian and indicate that this dispute is unlikely to be resolved. I certainly hope I’m wrong about that, however.

Mr. Swinimer claims that his children are bullied in the school because they are Christians. If that’s the case, it should stop. But as the story by Bev Ware of the Chronicle-Herald indicates, there are also some valid concerns about William Swinimer’s behaviour at the school. If the actions described by the other students are true, that behaviour should also stop. Bev is a former colleague of mine and is an excellent reporter; kudos to her for getting more details and providing some vital insight to this story.

An honest and candid exchange of ideas that are not offensive to others lies at the very heart of freedom of expression. Shame on anyone who wouldn’t want to participate in that.

The Jesus T-shirt

A student at Forest Heights Community School in Chester Basin, Lunenburg County, has been suspended for wearing a T-shirt that says: “Life is wasted without Jesus.” (See story here.)

Asking the student to remove the shirt did not work and William Swinimer has defiantly refused to comply with the request to not wear it to school. (See story here.)

The Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative Party today called on Education Minister Ramona Jennex to intervene and overturn the decision of the South Shore School Board to suspend the student. To support their argument, the Tories cite Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which states:

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
But the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are not absolute and this is an important factor in this case. Section 1 of the Charter establishes that there are limits.
1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

The term “reasonable limits” is the crux of the debate. Some have argued that this T-shirt’s message is possibly hate speech or, at the very least, is disrespectful of other religions and should be curtailed. This is not merely a declaration of faith by a Christian, it is a condemnation of non-Christians.

As my old constitutional law professor used to say in class: “The right to swing one’s fist ends at another person’s face.”

I can’t help but wonder whether we would be having this same debate if a student wore a T-shirt to school that read: “Life is wasted without Allah.”

I’m not a devotee of any religion, but I support religious freedoms for those of every faith. This T-shirt crosses the line, though, and I do not condone intolerance of other religions.

New Waterford jobs not exactly as advertised

On Monday, the NDP government announced it was moving jobs from the city to rural areas to fulfill the commitment that they had made in this spring’s Throne Speech.

In three separate announcements, they announced that 93 jobs involving three departments would be moving. Two of those were straightforward. Agriculture jobs were moving from Halifax to Truro while Fisheries and Aquaculture was moving some jobs from Halifax to Digby-Clementsport and some to Shelburne County.

Here is what the news release from the Department of Justice said about the transfer of its maintenance enforcement jobs to New Waterford.

“Service is currently delivered online, via telephone and in five locations around the province.”

It boasted that 25 jobs would be moving to Cape Breton. When combined with the 11 already in Sydney, it would amount to 36 jobs for New Waterford. Left unsaid in the release is the names of the communities where those maintenance enforcement staff are employed and their current staffing levels — with the exception of the 11 staff in Sydney.

Here are the rest of the numbers:

  • Dartmouth, 11
  • Halifax, 8
  • Kentville, 8
  • Amherst, 6
  • New Glasgow, 3

The eight staff at the Department of Justice offices on Terminal Road in Halifax will not be moving as they need to remain in Halifax to be close to Finance staff.

The 17 staff in the rural communities of Kentville, Amherst and New Glasgow were part of a planned consolidation with the 11 staff in urban Dartmouth. Premier Darrell Dexter said consolidations such as this have — in the past — normally involved staff moving into the city.

So, of the 47 maintenance enforcement jobs in the province, 36 will be in New Waterford. Of those 36, only 11 are currently in the provincial capital.

That the NDP chose to make a planned consolidation take place in New Waterford instead of the Halifax Regional Municipality is fine. The only people who object to this appear to be the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union, but the government should have been more forthcoming with the details.

Sometimes, PR people are reluctant to “get down in the weeds” by providing too many details. In this case, because the consolidation of the maintenance enforcement jobs had not been previously revealed, these details were relevant and should have been part of Monday’s announcement.

Capers get testy in the House

Tempers flared yesterday in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly as Liberal MLA Geoff MacLellan questioned Public Service Commission Minister Frank Corbett about moving civil servants out of Halifax to rural communities.

MacLellan represents Glace Bay and is happy the Department of Justice is transferring 36 jobs to New Waterford, but the Liberal Rural and Economic Development critic wants details about the costs associated with the move.

The province says it will be “cost neutral” while MacLellan wondered if the price tag makes the moves worthwhile. It’s a fair question, but until the government knows how many people are going to move with their jobs, it’s difficult to determine what the cost will be and whether the move makes sense on a balance sheet.

Corbett, who is the MLA for Cape Breton Centre which includes New Waterford, got a little testy when MacLellan pressed him on claim there would be future savings to make up for the initial costs.

“This is a cost neutral move, Mr. Speaker,” Corbett said. “There will be costs in the front end when people are moving, but I’ll tell you what’s not cost neutral. When the Liberals closed the pits in Cape Breton and sent them out to Alberta and points west. That wasn’t cost neutral, that darn near killed our island.”

That, of course, was a reference to the Chretien Liberals selling of Devco — then Canada’s largest underground coal mine — which led to massive layoffs.

By the end of his comment, Corbett’s voice had reached a crescendo and sparked applause from the NDP caucus, yelling from the opposition benches, and drew MacLellan to his feet.

It was then that the Gentle Voice of Reason from Whitney Pier, a.k.a Speaker Gordie Gosse, stepped in to defuse the dispute between the MLA from New Waterford and his counterpart from Glace Bay.

“Order!” Gosse pleaded and then waited. “Let’s just take a short little deep breath. Relax, OK? It’s becoming a bit heated in here, so I’d ask the members to take a deep breath so we can continue a good debate in the chamber in a nice Parliamentary way, alright?”

The Speaker did the right thing to settle things down, but might have made history as the first Philadelphia Flyers fan to break up a fight.

Cynicism over decentralization

On Monday, the Nova Scotia government announced plans to move 93 civil service jobs out of Halifax and put them in job-starved rural communities. The plan fulfilled a commitment made by the NDP government of Darrell Dexter in its Throne Speech earlier this spring.

It was modest beginning for the bureaucratic diaspora. While Dexter says there could be more to come, this is it for now. The jobs will provide economic stimulus to communities hit hard by job losses and attempt to be more fair in spreading the wealth created by good-paying civil service jobs. While it makes sense for many of them to be in Halifax, many can just as easily be in other communities.

One such service is the maintenance enforcement division of the Department of Justice. The work done by this group is done mostly over the phone and online. Their office could be anywhere in the province, so the NDP have decided to move it to New Waterford, a community that has been suffering for a long time but recently took it on the chin. Last year, 80 jobs left town when a call centre closed and, earlier this spring, Nova Scotia Power announced the seasonal shutdown of two generators at the nearby Lingan power station.

So, it would take a cynical, cold-hearted observer to begrudge New Waterford the 36 jobs it’s going to get when the maintenance enforcement staff move to town. Since New Waterford also happens to be in the riding of the NDP’s Deputy Premier, Frank Corbett, that had some wondering if that’s the only — or at least a main — reason why the jobs went there.

So, while opposition parties and media alike ridicule Monday’s announcements as being insignificant, some still trot out the question of patronage. As Nova Scotia pork goes, these 36 jobs are a pretty meagre portion. If it is patronage, it’s hardly worth the hassle because the NDP earned very little in the way of praise for this move and others like it.

Athletes and brain injuries

I thoroughly enjoyed writing my first article for a national magazine.

I wrote a Science of Sport feature for Sportsnet Magazine on a new medical device called the Halifax Consciousness Scanner. Basically, it’s a brain scanner that measures how well your brain is functioning.

There are many athletes suffering concussions, especially hockey players, but there are none more famous than Sidney Crosby. What happened to Crosby is an example of why there needs to be a profound shift in the way brain injuries are diagnosed in sport.

On Jan. 1, 2011, Crosby collided with David Steckel of the Washington Capitals late in the second period of the Winter Classic. He was woozy as he skated to bench and missed the rest of the second period. Presumably, he was examined during the second intermission and NHL.com reported that he “toughed it out” and returned to play in the third period.

On Jan. 5, in a game against the Tampa Bay Lightning, opposing defenceman Victor Hedman hit Crosby from behind and Crosby’s head struck the plexiglass. Hedman was penalized and — astoundingly — Crosby was out on the ensuing power play and did not miss a shift in the third period.

As Dr. Ryan D’Arcy suggests in the story, a player’s brain function is altered after a blow to the head. Although they might not have a concussion, they have an injury that requires healing. A second hit, compounded with the first, can cause a more serious injury than either would have on its own.

Many believe this is what happened to Crosby. In two consecutive games — five days apart — Crosby suffered two blows to the head and was not taken off the ice because trainers had to rely on a crude behavioural test known as the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS). Studies have shown that the GCS can fail to detect a concussion 43 per cent of the time. Considering such a high failure rate for a major brain injury, one can’t help but wonder how poorly it detects more subtle brain injuries.

After the second hit, the all-star centre missed a combined 101 games and some wondered if his career was over. Players, teams, and the league need to take a close look at the potential of the Halifax Consciousness Scanner as it goes through clinical trials.

I thoroughly enjoyed writing this piece. I learned a great deal researching it and I loved the challenge of having to write a complex story in just 450 words.

Click here to read the story.

Freelancing and loving it

I was a journalist for many years — almost 20 — when The Halifax Daily News went out of business in February 2008.

Faced with the options of moving away to stay in journalism or remain in Halifax and try to make a go of it part-time, I chose the latter. With a great gig at CBC Radio and my severance package, things were looking fine for a few months. But with six kids and a mortgage, I was a bit concerned about having a steady income. I was on the back-fill list at CBC Radio and there were no prospects for steady work after the summer vacation season and no full-time jobs on the horizon.

I didn’t want to move away from Halifax because it would have meant moving away from two of my kids from a previous marriage. Needing job security, I decided to switch careers and applied to Communications Nova Scotia, the provincial government’s communications agency. I learned a great deal working in the field and learned a lot about health care and energy, but it was evident almost right away that it was not the right fit.

Unable to get back into a shrunken journalism job market in Halifax, I stayed with the province for almost three years until my contract expired — ironic considering I took that job for the security. I considered going the freelance route in March of 2011, but I was concerned about being able to make enough money. I backed away from open door of the plane, stowed my parachute away, and took another contract with the Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation as something called a Responsible Gambling Officer.

I realized that I was getting farther away from what I wanted to do — write — and write about things that I wanted to write about.

So, at the end of January, my contract at the Gaming Corporation expired and as the final weeks slipped by, I stopped looking for an acceptable job and started thinking about how to make the kind of job that I wanted.

I talked it over with my wife and she supported me; we agreed to give it two months and then we’d re-evaluate. By the end of my third week as a freelancer, I was going flat out and I haven’t looked back. I’ve even had to turn down some work — something you never like to do as a freelancer — but I had to in order to honour commitments that I had already made.

Bob Dylan once said: “A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.”

I’m doing what I want to do. I don’t know if I’m a success yet, but I’m enjoying it and I wish I had done it sooner.