Jim Taylor
Jim Taylor - Sports
reporter Daily Colonist Victoria 1954-64; sports writer Vancouver Times 1964-65;
Daily Colonist 1965-66; sports reporter/columnist Vancouver Sun 1966-79; sports
columnist Vancouver Province 1979-96; syndicated radio commentator; author of
nine books including two on the CFL Dirty 30 with Jim Young 1974 and The
Edmonton Eskimos: Inside the Dynasty with Dan Kepley 1983; member of media
section Canadian Football Hall of Fame; lifetime achievement award from Sports
Media Canada 2000; contributor Frosty Forst morning show CKNW Vancouver early
2000s
*****
Can there be any
Canadian sporting event that has not been documented, dissected, decried or
described via the witty and precise words of writer, columnist and broadcaster
Jim Taylor?
He began his sports
writing career at age 17 with a part-time writing job at a Victoria newspaper
and went on to become a popular and, at times, controversial sports columnist
for newspapers in Vancouver and, later, as a nationally syndicated columnist
with the Calgary Sun. He has written nine books, including works about hockey
great Wayne Gretzky, football player Jim Young and Man in Motion, Rick Hansen.
He also serves up daily sports commentary on a major Vancouver-based radio
station and remains a prolific and high-profile figure in Canadian sports
writing.
*****
Jim Taylor began his
newspaper career in 1954 as a part-time sports reporter at The Daily Colonist
in
*****
"Man in
Motion" was co-written with sportswriter Jim Taylor whose own daughter
Teresa had become a quadriplegic in 1976 at age 14, as the result of a skiing
accident. Hansen and Taylor verbally agreed to do the book together on the
night before Hansen's world tour began.
*****
Jim Taylor, Sports
Writer and Author/Columnist
Widening the
spectrum Jim tells us of his wide-experience gathering years as first a copy
boy, then general reporter and shortly thereafter a sports writer, then
columnist. For 30 years Jim Taylor continuously entered the Colliseum of Sport
almost daily and absorbed and wrote countless stories about the rise and fall
of sporting greats in all fields. and, not only the individuals but the growth,
sales and reconstruction of the sports teams that in themselves provided, over
time, many other stories.
*****
Jim Taylor is a true professional,
humourous, yet extremely knowledgeable and definitely on the list of
He began his newspaper career in
"I wrote for the Colonist at night
for a year and then delivered it in the morning," he recalled. "Then,
heading into Grade 12 and suspecting there might be homework, I wrestled with
my first major decision: write or deliver? Writing was fun, but subscribers
didn't give tips at Christmas. Delivering was easy, but paper boys didn't get
into games for free.
"So, I ditched the paper route, a
decision I never regretted because, really, how many 63-year-old paper boys are
out there?"
Two days after graduation, Jim moved into
the sports department full time and stayed -- 10 years. After a year with the
new
Over the years, he has been a traveling
companion of various Canadian national teams and has written eight well-read
sports books including: "Dirty 30" with Jim Young of the B.C. Lions;
"Inside the Dynasty" with football star Dan Kepley; "From
Backyard Rink to the Stanley Cup" with Walter Gretzky; "Man in
Motion" with Rick Hansen; "Larianov" with the former Soviet star
Igor Larianov and "Gretzky" an authorized pictorial biography of the
Great One. He also published a pair of collections of his columns: "Forgive
My
Jim also has a syndicated radio commentary
show and was part of a one year venture with the now-defunct weekly Sport Only,
published in
Even though he refers to his age as
advancing years, Jim still likes to laugh and lampoon. But, going back to when
he was 19, in his weekend Colonist Record column, he reviewed Heartbreak Hotel
and wrote that this Elvis Presley kid wouldn't last six months. He remains
unrepentant. "So, it took a little longer than I thought," he says,
"But is the guy dead, or isn't he!"
"I never wanted to be a
sportswriter," he laughs today. "I've never played on an organized
team of anything. My heroes were humour columnists, people like Eric Nicol and
Art Buchwald. I was going to write stuff just like them. But the job came open
and my high school journalism teacher accepted it for me and told me he'd kid
my ass down to the newspaper if I didn't take it."
"My teacher said: 'You can write.
This will get you in the door.'
"In my mind that was all it was -- a
temporary thing until I got a chance to write the stuff I wanted to write. And
I got lucky because I kept looking for and writing the oddball, funny stuff in
sport, and most of it was awful, and nobody fired me, or shot me, or told me to
cut it out.
"In fact, they encouraged me, even
hauled me out of sports to do the offbeat cityside stuff. They let me write a
column when I was nowhere near ready, and lived with it while I learned to do
it properly and, almost incidentally, to discover that writing sports was the
best job in the world!
"I don't think in terms of
sportswriters. We are writers who happen to be writing about people who happen
to be involved in sports. Athletes get their rush from playing. I get mine
sitting in press row and watching Mike Tyson chew Evander Holyfield's ear and
knowing I've got 10 minutes to write it. That's my
The gifted