Pat Slattery
Dec 1951 – Top Dog Magazine
***
Pat Slattery, a former sports columnist and men's fashion
columnist for The Vancouver Sun and a North Vancouver
district alderman for nine years, died Saturday November 12/88 in
Mr. Slattery is survived by his
wife, Doreen and three children.
Born and raised in the West End, Mr. Slattery was taught how to
swim by legendary
In a 1985 article, Mr. Slattery recalled: "The present is
nothing like the past. But when you have lived through the changes, memories of
He joined the Canadian army in 1942 as a private with the
Mr. Slattery was discharged as a major in 1946 and rejoined the
Vancouver Sun, working first in the public relations department.
He later become a sports editor and columnist and wrote a
popular weekly golf column called Opening The Face.
Doreen Slattery, his wife of 36 years, recalled that her husband
always said that when he first joined the newspaper as a copy-runner in the
1930s, he was told the job might not last long.
He was one of the first journalists in the country to write a
regular column on men's fashion. Mr. Slattery, known as a dapper dresser, often
acted as a moderator at fashion shows and was sought out by politicians wanting
tips on how to dress properly. He started writing fashion column in 1962 and
continued for more than 25 years.
Mr. Slattery actually retired from The
In 1966, Mr. Slattery was first elected alderman in
One of his main areas of interest as an alderman was in
providing recreational opportunities for young people on the
"That is really what kept him going: trying to provide
recreational activities for young people," Doreen Slattery said.
A service will be held at
***
More than 350 people
crowded into West Vancouver United Church Wednesday afternoon for a memorial
service for Pat Slattery, a former sports and men's fashion columnist for The
Vancouver Sun.
Mr. Slattery, who died Saturday
afternoon at 76 after a lengthly illness, was fondly remembered by Rev. John
Gouws during the service attended by many newspaper and media colleagues,
political associates and long-time friends.
Rev. Gouws recounted to those paying their last tributes to Mr.
Slattery how the newspaperman retained his hopeful and positive attitude and
keen interest in sports despite his illness.
During a recent visit to his bedside in
Gouws asked him if he wanted to say a prayer. Mr. Slattery
nodded yes but kept one ear listening to the game and one ear to the prayer.
Then, just as Gouws said "Amen," Mr. Slattery
countered with "They scored."
Penchant for good clothes
"In my experience, I think he would like us to remember him
with a smile," Rev. Gouws said.
After the service, his wife and family welcomed and shared a few
words with those in attendance as they left the church.
Former
Once during a golf tournament in
"And the second one was just as sartorial as the
first,"
A colleague of his during part of Mr. Slattery's nine-year stint
as alderman, she recalled his good-natured but firm advice to rookie aldermen.
Mr. Slattery had a 47-year career with The
Others in attendance included Vancouver Sun columnist Denny
Boyd, outdoors writer Mike Cramond, restaurateur and former Vancouver alderman
Frank Baker, former B.C. Lions president Ralph Henderson, former B.C. Lions
coach Annis Stukus, former sports broadcaster Bill Good Sr. and Black and Lee
tuxedo rental founder Blackie Black.
***
Denny Boyd –
I met Pat Slattery at the fights in 1952 and it was a moment not
to be forgotten.
Working in Victoria, I was of course familiar with his byline on
the Sun sports pages but I had never met the man until my paper sent me over
here to cover the Golden Gloves at the old Exhibition Gardens.
I fancied myself as something of a snappy dresser in those days,
but when a colleague introduced me to Slattery at ringside, I gaped at his
outfit and I suddenly felt like a huge gravy stain.
Slats could do that to you.
When his son Paul called me at home Saturday afternoon to tell
me that his dad had passed away that morning, it was no shock. Seventy-six
years of looking good is a hell of a run and the idea of Slats in one of those
drab hospital gowns with the strings in back was unthinkable.
Slats had been terribly sick. The previous Saturday night, at
the Lions-Blue Bomber football game, I was sitting with retired newsies Jim
Coleman, Bill Good Sr., Eric Whitehead and Jim Kearney, whose ages add up to
The Restoration Period and all Slattery contemporaries.
Paul Slattery stopped by the table to say his dad was back in
hospital. I told him to pass on best wishes from the boys from The Home.
According to Paul, the message got a trace of a smile from Pat late last week.
That's to the good because life was pretty much an amusement to
Slattery except, of course, when he saw a Sun reporter wearing brown Hush
Puppies with grey flannels, in which case he would groan audibly. He was not
above bracing any one of us with a despairing look and a remark like,
"Green tie and blue shirt? How, um, interesting"
Slats created a journalistic reputation without being a
racket-busting reporter, graceful writer or visionary editor. He was a
competent golf writer and he could put pages together, make the trims in the
backshop, match the cutlines to the pictures and get the pages to the pressroom
within deadline.
But he created himself, as an enduring journalistic character,
when he became our men's fashion writer in 1962, one of the first of that ilk
in the country.
He was a natural for it because I have never met a guy who wore
clothes better than Slats did. He had the natural well-groomed and barbered
look of a
While most of us can spend 30 minutes selecting and dressing in
the morning and still look like a ransacked closet when we get to work, the
never-aging Slats always seemed to have just shrugged into the right outfit.
Lint and Slattery never met. Senior assistant managing editor Alex MacGillivray
says that Slattery was the first man he met who knew how to shoot his cuffs.
And it wasn't as if Slattery was paid to look good. Through all
the years he wrote his men's fashion column, it was a sideline. His main job
was as page make-up editor, requiring him to go out half a dozen times a day to
the domain of the greasy shirts and lurking ink smudges and work with the
printers putting the pages together.
Incredibly, he'd come back unscathed, his shirt still a blinding
white, his tassled loafers still gleaming, the creases in his trousers always
sharp enough to slice rare roast beef.
(It's ironic that one of the first clues that Slats might have a
brain tumor was the fact that he began to have trouble buttoning his shirts
properly.)
As the late Hy Aisenstat made an entire generation of Vancouver
people more demanding of restaurant services, so, perhaps, did Pat Slattery
make men think about dressing better, even though the market did not always
endorse his opinions.
Haberdasher Barron Lee recalled yesterday how he and Slattery
went 10 years without speaking, after Slattery suggested to his male readers
that they buy their suits in
"It took me 10 years to forgive him for that", Lee
said, "I finally ran into him at a Little League game and we had a laugh
about it. I didn't always agree with him, but Pat was a force."
There will be a memorial service for Slats Wednesday afternoon
at West Van United and I suspect that all his old newsroom, pressbox and Army
cronies will be there in force.
And I'd bet every one of them is fretting about not having a
thing to wear, which is not a bad legacy for Slattery to leave behind.