It was classic Gerry Furney, the never-ending mayor of Port McNeill. When asked what celebrations were planned for the August visit of National Hockey League star Willie Mitchell and the recently won Stanley Cup, his answer was simple: "Whatever we do will be in accordance with the wishes of Willie and his family."
No hyperbole. No boasting. No vain attempt to share in a Mitchell family moment. No bid to spin some of that glory into his political orbit. Just good old Port McNeill respect and gracious recognition of the Mitchell family's long journey from north Island early-morning hockey rinks to a Hollywood ending in Los Angeles.
When Willie takes the Stanley Cup to Port McNeill, Furney will lead the town's celebration. But he won't hog the spotlight. He knows where it should shine and he's the kind of guy to make sure it falls where it should - on Willie Mitchell and his family. If this sounds like an unusual attitude for a politician, it would be for most. But not for Gerry Furney.
He's what you might call homespun. He arrived where he is, a successful businessman and chief magistrate of a small municipality, after a long journey started close to 60 years ago in Cork, Ireland. It was in 1954 that he and school chum Tom Murphy left Cork to find fortune, if not fame, in London. From the great metropolis, they wandered around Europe working at whatever job they could find until they saved enough to take passage to New York.
The story has been told before - and many times - about the travels of the two young men who eventually found themselves in Toronto with a "great adventure" job offer to drive two convertibles from a Toronto dealer to a Vancouver showroom. With that task completed, they answered a store-window advert offering "work in the woods."
With a whisper of Irish as soft as the mists of Cork, he still tells the story of how they applied for jobs, were signed on as "chokermen," handed tickets for passage on SS Catala and told to report dockside for a 7 p.m. Saturday sailing for Port McNeill.
In 2010, he told Catholine Butler, writing for The Celtic Connection, "conditions in Port McNeill were about as primitive as they could get -. We soon found out that the job of chokerman was the lowest job in the woods - and also the most dangerous." The other thing discovered quickly was that Port McNeill was just a logging camp with a population of between 120 and 150 loggers lodged in bunkhouses.
There were bets that the two young Cork men wouldn't last three weeks, but they defied the odds and by 1959 had saved enough money to make a trip back to Cork. There was never any doubt that he would return to Port McNeill. In 2011, he told a Globe and Mail reporter how in his early days there he had one day sat on the beach looking across a blue ocean with a green forest backdrop. "It was like going back in to the story books I'd read about explorers in the Canadian wilderness -. I thought, 'this is it' - I had landed in paradise."
Gerry was lucky. When his wife, Carmen, agreed to share life with him on Vancouver Island, she too fell in love with Port McNeill, grown now to a community of 3,000 - including a trio of NHL players' families.
Bob Skrlac was a winger with the New Jersey Devils; Clayton Stone is with the Minnesota Wild; and Port McNeill's favourite hockey-playing son Willie Mitchell, who played for the Vancouver Canucks before being traded to the Los Angeles Kings, who defeated the Canucks en route to winning the Stanley Cup.
I'm sure that while Mitchell and the Stanley Cup will, and should, be the great heroes in August, Skrlac and Stone will get honourable mentions. Mayor Furney and Carmen were hockey dad and mum. Although their offspring never came close to the NHL, they know what it takes to get there.
Furney, who writes poetry for people who don't usually read poetry, has a book of them entitled Popcorn for Breakfast. A poem with same name reads in part: "Our closest rink was a thirty-mile drive/Be on the ice at five fifty five."
It describes arriving at the rink before daylight "just as five kids are beginning to snore," of waking them up, hustling into the dressing room and onto the ice and then, with rink concessions not yet open: "I sit in the bleachers watching them play, eating cold popcorn for breakfast."
Willie Mitchell would appreciate those lines, as would his parents and every other couple with hockey offspring. In August, there will be a lot of memories in the room when Willie and his family walk in with the Cup - and a joyful feeling that they triumphed together.
It's the kind of community Port McNeill is. It's the kind of mayor Port McNeill has. It's a family affair, and Mayor Furney has promised it will be.
Les Leyne is on holiday.
