The Day John Candy Came to Town

The documentary about the life of the late John Candy, I Like Me, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last week. It will also be shown at the Calgary International Film Festival later this month and then it will be on Amazon Prime in October.

I met John Candy years ago. Before that day was over, Candy had managed to get the TV blackout lifted on a CFL game. Here's the story behind it.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Walter Gretzky!

It was a Thursday in July of 1991 when word came out of nowhere that John Candy would be at the radio station the next morning to promote the football game between his Toronto Argonauts and the Edmonton Eskimos.

I say “his” because Candy was part owner of the team along with Wayne Gretzky and the then owner of the Los Angeles Kings Bruce McNall (before he did jail time for fraud.) I didn’t know it at the time, but Candy had already done barnstorming tours to hype Argos games and would do it several other times that season. We were told that joining Candy would be Wayne’s father Walter, who was making the trip out west with Candy and the team.

At the time I was News and Public Affairs Director at 96 K-Lite Radio in Edmonton. Having a celebrity in the station was not a big deal. Musicians, athletes, actors, politicians and others were through the station every week, but hey this was John Candy!

I wasn’t alone in my excitement as others working at the station started drifting into the newsroom early on that Friday morning before the 7:30am arrival and camped out there. Fortunately, the newsroom was the biggest room in the building.

Just a few minutes after 7:30 the door to the newsroom opened and Candy announced “Ladies and gentlemen, Walter Gretzky!”

Everyone in the newsroom had a great laugh and the show was on. Of course it was Candy everyone had been waiting to see.

Can You Bring Me an Ashtray?

I introduced myself to Candy and told him I would help him make a couple of appearances on our radio station. We planned to have him chat on-air with our morning man for a few minutes and then talk about the game with our sportsguy Morley Scott, who’s now the play by play voice of the Edmonton Elks.

First though I realized that I needed to find an ashtray for Candy. Almost as soon as he walked into the newsroom he lit a cigarette. Remember this was 1991 and smoking was still allowed in many offices. The problem was, we had banned it from the radio station not long before. I wasn’t about to tell John Candy to put his cigarette out, so I got one of the newspeople to pull an ashtray out of a coffee room drawer where they had been stored for the last few months. I found out that morning that Candy was a chain smoker.

After doing the two radio hits, Candy signed some autographs, and posed for a few photos, including the one of the two of us at the top of this blog.  Then Candy said to me “You have an AM station too don’t you? Could I talk about the game there too?” It surprised me because I assumed he wanted to get on his way, but I was thrilled he wanted to do more.  CFCW was our AM sister station and Morley got him lined up to do the same thing on the AM side that he had done for us. Our studios had broadcast lines to CFCW in Camrose where we did the sports and traffic from each morning.

Once again, it was pure John Candy and hype for the game that would feature the Eskimos against the Argos with their flashy rookie Rocket Ismail.

Candy and Walter Gretzky were at the station for just over a half an hour. Off they went to another station and as I remember it, Candy went golfing after that and had the TV cameras following him around the course. John Candy had made the game something everyone wanted to see.

That night I was shocked the game was on television in Edmonton. In those days, CFL games in local markets were blacked out. You couldn’t watch Eskimos games from Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton because the teams wanted to sell more tickets. At the time, ticket sales provided a larger percentage of revenue than they do today.

Now, here’s the part of the story most people don’t know about. John Candy was the reason the blackout was lifted.

Around 15-minutes before game, Candy walked up to Eskimos General Manager Hugh Campbell in the Green and Gold Room at the south end of Commonwealth Stadium and asked if the TV blackout could be lifted. A shocked Campbell told Candy no, of course not. Candy took a step back and waved an arm to the packed stadium with about 60,000 people and replied “Why not? Hugh, I think you owe me.”

Before the game started, the blackout had been lifted.

He Was No Shower Curtain Ring Salesman

Less than three years later John Candy was gone.

He died on March 4, 1994, which ironically was also a Friday. He was in Mexico at the time filming Wagon’s East. He had died in his sleep and the cause of death was a heart attack. He was only 43.

I remember the sadness I felt when I heard the news that he had died.

I also thought back to my short encounter with him. While most people think of a big, loveable, Del Griffith-type character, the John Candy I met that morning was a very different person. The person I met was sharp, motivated, driven and a businessman who wanted to sell tickets to get people to see the team he was so proud of and to promote the CFL.

He was tremulously accommodating and generous with his time, but he was also there to promote the game. He was on a mission that morning. It was a business trip.

I heard at the end of the season, after his Argos had won the Grey Cup beating Calgary, Candy sent the CFL an invoice for $250,000 for his promotional efforts. The invoice was a surprise to league officials and was never paid, but Candy was probably worth every penny and likely a lot more.

Watch the trailer here for I Like Me.