Brian Williams won’t like this column. It’s about him.
The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games is Friday evening in Paris — a time check of six hours away, nine in Vancouver — and I can’t think about another Olympic beginning, another ceremony, another chance to go live to the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium or any other venue without first thinking of the legendary Williams and all he did for CBC and every other network that was fortunate enough to employ him.
No Canadian — not an athlete, not a coach, not a gold medal winner — came to symbolize everything that was good and bad, right and wrong, controversial and spectacular about the Olympics more than Williams has.
He won’t talk about that now at age 78, he doesn’t want attention 12 years after he hosted the Games for the last time in London, but as the days grow closer to Paris, he hears questions more often in the grocery store or on the street or anywhere he happens to travel across the province.
Why aren’t you in Paris, they ask? How many medals is Canada going to win? What about Summer McIntosh, is she really that great? And about this basketball team with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, how good can they be?
Williams loves to talk Olympics. As he sits in his office talking on the phone, he says he is surrounded by Olympic history books. He was a history major way back when in his university days. He never stopped studying in all his years of being the central face and voice of Olympics in Canada.
You got to know how much Williams meant and has meant to Canadians if you ever had the opportunity to travel with him. Or eat in a restaurant with him across the country. And watch the people fawned over him.
Before dinner was over, you had met the chef, the owner, the owner’s children, and just about everybody sitting around you before the pasta was even served. If you flew with him, and I did on occasion although it was never planned that way, the Air Canada people would drool over him as he was checking in, immediately bumping him up to first class if he wasn’t already travelling that way.
One time, I was behind Brian in line flying out of Switzerland at the end of the 1992 Winter Olympics, and the Air Canada people were giving him the first-class treatment and he turned to them and turned to me and said: “I’m not going to get bumped up unless you bump up my friend.”
Turned out, that was the first time I had ever flown first class.
You don’t forget how that happened or why that happened or the influence that Williams has had on the Canadian public over the years.
People still do impressions of Williams, the way they did impressions of the late Bob Cole. “It’s Noon in Toronto, 9 am in Vancouver, you’re looking live…” The time check. Just about everybody did a Brian Williams time check. It was part humour, but mostly it was respect.
Time has changed over the years. Scott Russell has become the voice of the Olympics on CBC, as part host, part reporter, part amateur athlete advocate in a country that tends to ignore the amateur athletes. Russell has been at this most of his career and he is planning to retire after these Games. He seems too young to be doing that.
I’m barely dealing with Williams not being on my screen as chief Olympic host, that it is difficult to consider Russell moving on. Time moves quickly in the television world but sometimes it moves just as slowly. Sometimes you get a Brian Williams and you want to hang on to him forever because it just feels right, feels comfortable like a pair of shoes or a couch you can’t give up on: But for the 17 days of the Games, I still want to hear him, still want to know what he thinks, still want him to say what other broadcasters will not.
I want the issues of the Games talked about in the ways of Williams.
All this kind of talk embarrasses him, if only slightly. How many of us can walk any street in Canada, be recognized, and then be identified for his work on the Olympics? Williams did a lot of major broadcasting in Canada, from world junior hockey to Grey Cups to Blue Jays baseball but everything always goes back to the Olympics.
His true passion. And in doing so the country loved him back.
“Did you know the modern Olympic Games started in 1896?” Williams said, reciting the history. “And the Paris Games, for the first time, were in 1900. Those are historical Games. That was the first time women ever competed.
“I think there were 22 women and almost 1,000 men in Paris. And then they hosted the Games again in 1924.”
Those were the Johnny Weissmuller Olympics. He won three gold medals in swimming. Later he began famous for playing Tarzan in the movies.
Hang around Williams long enough and you’ll hear all of it. And you want to hear it, because he’s saying it, in his unique way.
The way a country became comfortable and captivated with him on the screen. When Williams worked Opening Ceremonies in the past, he often did them with news anchor Peter Mansbridge. That was the CBC way. Pair your best news anchor with your best sports anchor. And the combination worked perfectly well. Even when I was at Opening Ceremonies, I often wanted a CBC television in front of me. I wanted to hear what I was missing in the stadium.
Times have changed over the years. Entertainment, especially in U.S. broadcasting of the Olympics, has become paramount. Mike Tirico will host the Opening for NBC along with Peyton Manning and Kelly Clarkson. A quarterback and a singer who hosts a talk show.
That’s the new world south of the border. When it comes to Olympics, I like the Canadian way.
“It’s an honour to still be talked about, recognized,” said Williams. “It means a lot to me. I’m sitting here in my library at home and I have Olympic books everywhere. I enjoyed doing it. I enjoyed the preparation. To me the Olympics was all about preparation.”
And about delivery. To us. And nobody delivered it better in Canada than Brian Williams did.