Happy Trails

Best retirement wishes to my boss Dan Leger, who revealed today he was stepping down as director of news content for the Chronicle Herald after something like 35 years in the business. Dan will continue to write a weekly column for the paper when he's not pursuing his twin hobbies of sailing and fighting crime.

Dan was an incredibly supportive boss though he clearly was prone to some mental gaffes as he hired me and all. To mark his retirement I thought I'd relay this anecdote about him even though I wasn't there to witness it and for all I know it's apocryphal (again, Dan hired me even *after reading this blog.* What a guy.)

Once upon a time there was a Chronicle Herald columnist named Peter Duffy who wrote about Coronation Street and gas being too expensive and shit like that. As a young reporter working for the rival newspaper I was pretty sure he was the worst writer in the province, but lordy did some people ever love him. He was apparently the highest-read columnist in Nova Scotia, which I blame on grandmothers.

One time the Herald ran a front-page story with a necessary and relevant quote that contained swearing; I can't remember the details. Duffy - ever the champion of mindless political correctness - penned a column harshly criticizing his own paper for printing cuss words and not treating their audience like five-year-olds as any decent, family newspaper should.

Duffy apparently walked into work the next day with this coy, canary-chomping grin expecting his boss, Dan, to be all offended and mad. When Dan didn't say anything Duffy flat-out asked him. Dan shrugged him off by saying "Peter, I'll defend your right to print whatever insipid thing you choose."

Here we see a great example of the old adage: "If you don't agree with freedom of speech for those you suspect to be borderline mentally incompetent then you don't believe in it at all." Happy retirement, Dan. I know you'll enjoy it.

Oh, and what ever happened to Peter Duffy? Don't worry, after he retired from the paper Mayor Peter Kelly went on to hire him as his speechwriter so now the taxpayers pay his salary! What a world! And just because I can never resist a chance to repost this, here's a link to Duffy's two most infamous columns wherein he claims, in all seriousness, to have been anally raped by a ghost.