I met Billy Warwick my first night as a working journalist, covering an Alberta Junior Hockey League game between his Sherwood Park Crusaders and some forgotten rival. I was completely new to sports writing. I'd never seen a junior hockey game before, but it was good one, with the Crusaders putting up a fight until the final minutes. At the buzzer, very unsure of myself, I wandered down under the stands in the direction of the dressing rooms, hoping for a friendly face to explain to me what had happened on the ice so I could write a decent story and stay employed at least until my first paycheque. And there I found Billy, or rather he found me.

 

His wasn't a friendly face. He was steaming, and though I'm a few inches taller he backed me against the wall, poked his finger in my chest and looked down at me with fierce red eyes. "Are you the new reporter for the Sherwood Park News?" he screamed. I was too stunned to respond, and he wasn't waiting for an answer. He blasted the referees and the cheap-shot artists on the other team before turning his guns on the County of Strathcona, which operated the arena in which the Crusaders played. The arena had been cold that night, as it was most nights, and Billy preferred to blame uncomfortable seats rather than his team's losses for another night of poor attendance.

 

The headline the next day was something like, "County freezing hockey out of Sherwood Park says Warwick." It was a minor scoop, my editor was pleased, and I got to cover a whole season of the hapless Crusaders. Many a night I saw Billy frustrated. One evening in St. Albert he climbed the chicken wire behind the opposition net, trying to get over the boards and onto the ice because a referee or an opposing player had set him off. Another time, after the Crusaders had blown a two-goal lead in the third period on home ice, I stood patiently in the empty parking lot as he jumped up and down on the black ice, a new obscenity flying up every time he landed.

 

But there was a lot more to that season than Billy's explosions. He is a different man away from the ice, extraordinarily gentle and considerate, and we became friends. I was lonely in Sherwood Park, and Billy very generously made a habit of inviting me over after games. Sometimes I'd just follow him home, invited or not, and we'd sit in his kitchen reviewing the game and eating ice cream. He told me stories about the 1955 hockey series in which his Penticton Vees beat the Soviets in the first of the great Canada-Russia matches. He told me about growing up in Saskatchewan, and how he and his brothers, one a world-class boxer, one an NHL rookie-of-the-year, would fight all the way to the bus stop every morning, and then fight all the way home at the end of the day. He told me how their father was a man so powerful he'd once beat a bull senseless with a two-by-four. I came to worship Billy.

 

The following summer his wife, Jacqueline, made a long trip to Ontario to visit her family. Billy is lost without her so I got a lot of invitations to golf. We had beautiful weather – a long series of warm sunny evenings with few mosquitoes. We'd walk through his back gate to the local course. I remember being impressed with his patience, how he'd stand on the fairway hole after hole, talking into the trees where I searched for another lost ball.

 

One of those nights on the golf course he helped me deal with my first little career crisis. A recruiter for a real estate firm had approached me. There was nothing more on offer than an entry-level sales position, and I had no interest in sales, but I was flattered by the approach, mostly because I'd always had to apply, if not grovel, for jobs. I asked Billy what I should do. He talked me through it, asking me if I'd really given the newspaper business my best shot, reminding me that being a journalist wasn't so much a job as a free ride through the more interesting parts of life. In the end I stuck with the paper, and the Edmonton property market went into the tank and stayed there for at least a decade. I'll never be able to thank Billy enough.

 

I left Sherwood Park a year later, and I haven't seen as much of the Warwick’s as I'd like since then, but I think of them all the time. Billy's voice rings in my ears whenever I watch a hockey game. I recall the kindness he showed me early in my career and try, never with enough success, to follow that example.

 

I also think of him every time I see his admirable little magazine, Billy's Guide. There have been few successful publishing ventures in Alberta over the years. This one is a triumph and now, in its twenty-fifth (27^th) year of operations, it can be counted as a true Edmonton institution.

 

Congratulations, Billy, on this remarkable achievement, and thank you for being a great friend to Sherwood Park, to Edmonton, and to me.