S2: Episode 18: Kevin Shea, Best Selling Author, Hockey Historian and Instructor

"Love what you do and do what you love.." aka: "Dig what you do and do what you dig!"

Working at the Hockey Hall of Fame, authoring books or working with, and promoting  rock musicians , Kevin's career is the very definition of eclectic. As so many of us do, he made it happen by pursuing his passion. 

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Thank you Jann Danyluk, Career Resilience.

Transcript

  | 00:06 | Welcome to season two of Career Resilience, where we talk with people about their career path and their career journey and maybe we can all learn from each other. My name is Jann Danyluk and I'm a human resources consultant sent in London, Ontario, Canada. I work with Ford Keast LLP, providing human resources advice and counsel to my business clients. I also support people through individual one on one coaching and helping with career development.

 | 00:33 | I hope you will enjoy our series where we talk with ordinary, extraordinary people. We get to hear about interesting journeys. We get to talk with people about failures, successes, advice and counsel to us as we develop our own careers. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with these people, and I hope you will enjoy listening to it. And now for some logistics, please subscribe on YouTube. Or if you're a listener, please follow me wherever you get your podcast.

 | 01:01 | And if you have a chance, I hope you'll visit my website. Careerresilience.com welcome. My guest today is Kevin Shay. Kevin, welcome to Career Resilience. Well, thank you for having me, Jan. This is a real thrill for me. Thank you. It's great. And Kevin, where are you located?

 | 01:32 | I'm in Tobacco, Ontario, actually, just the west side of Toronto. Okay. So thank you for being here. And I wanted to start out by saying that if someone asked me what I do for a living, I would say I'm a human resources consultant. So if someone asks you, Kevin, what do you do for a living? What is your answer to that? I wish I had a stock answer, Jan, but I don't. But I'm a researcher at the Hockey Hall of Fame.

 | 02:01 | I've got a more official title than that, but I oversee the education program here. I'm a researcher. I oversee all the publications. But beyond that, I'm an instructor with Seneca College in Toronto, and I'm an author. And I'll have my 20th book published this fall. Wow. Does that feel very well to you? Oh, yeah. If I was to think back to a young boy sitting in high school trying to figure out what I'm going to do for a living, to think that someday I'd be able to be able to talk about careers that I've had with great passion.

 | 02:37 | And being able to write 20 books is just beyond comprehension. It's incomprehensible right now, let alone thinking about what I would have thought as a youngster. Yeah. Let's break some of this down, because this is all about Career Resilience. That's what we like to talk about. So when you were growing up, when you first got out of school, what sort of work did you get into? When I was in high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do for a living. Not a clue.

 | 03:06 | I was a very good student, pretty shy, didn't have a great deal of confidence. And yet I belide that with the fact that I was the student Council President and all those sorts of things, but I didn't know. And finally a teacher that I had, in fact, a French teacher of all things, not even a guidance teacher, sat me down one day. We just were chatting and asked what I want to do very similar to you. And I didn't know. And we talked back and forth. He said, you should get into communications in one way or another.

 | 03:35 | So I thought, well, that's an admirable position, I guess. Let's go from there. But what I really want to do is be a hockey player. Oh, okay. So were you quite good at playing hockey? I was good, but a couple of things held me back. I wasn't very big, and I wasn't nearly as good as people who make it a profession from there. So I had to think about what I could do at that point. I thought about maybe doing play by play hockey, play by play.

 | 04:04 | And that's when I joined the University of Windsor to take communications. I thought that might be an angle to get into, but it opened all kinds of doors and opened my eyes as well to other possibilities. There you are. How long before you got really involved with hockey? Oh, boy. It's an interesting question. So I have all these passions.

 | 04:31 | Music and radio and hockey are my three major passions outside of family. And so it was a long time coming before I got into hockey, and it was a very circuitous route. So during University, I got my communications degree, and I started off in the radio industry. I did that for a number of years, chased the brass ring, moved from Windsor to North Bay, back to Windsor to Montreal to Ottawa.

 | 05:02 | And when the station the radio station I was at was going to change format from a top 40 station to the music of your life station, meaning Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra and things of that sort. I realized that wasn't an area that I was particularly interested in pursuing any further. So a record company came along and said, you'd be a great guy to work in records. And I had no inclination whatsoever.

 | 05:30 | But I went for the interview and surprise to me and everybody else, I got the job, and I did that for 20 years, too. So I worked in the music industry for 20 years. What does it mean to record? Sure. I started off as the Ontario promotion representative, meaning that I would take the music that we were releasing on our label to radio stations, to the video channels that were just opening up at that time to the newspapers to get interviews.

 | 05:56 | And when the artists were playing in Ontario, I was to take them to their interviews or to make sure that they were attended to, attending their concerts, et cetera. And I went from being the Ontario promotions representative at BMG Music used to be called RCA to Warner Music, where I became the national promotions director and oversaw all of the reps across the country. And then I went to MCA Records, which is now called Universal, and became the vice President of promotion and publicity.

 | 06:25 | And then I went from there to a record company called Attic Records, a large independent company no longer existing. And I was the vice President of promotion and publicity there as well. So again, just reinventing myself along the way and changing that brass ring. Okay, so I have to ask you, what is it like to know famous musicians? What are they like? You know what funny you would ask that? So I'm a non drinker, non smoker. I don't mess around.

 | 06:56 | I'm loyal to a fault, and I don't know if that's a fault, but here I am in an industry that's well known for partying and womanizing as far as the men go and drugs and things. So I was the outlier from that. But I think that that was part of my I'll say charm, but I don't mean that in a bragging sort of way. I think that was part of my modus operandi. And I think the artist really appreciated the fact that I was there to do a job.

 | 07:26 | I could have some fun, we could laugh and go from there. But I was a little different than most people that they were meeting along the way. So from the craziest rock stars, Guns and Roses and Motley Crew and these kinds of bands that are what we would call hard rock or metal to the most wonderful artists, the Whitney Houston. When I say wonderful, I mean musically, but they were wonderful, too. Whitney Houston, the late Kenny Rogers, late Whitney Houston, too.

 | 07:57 | Holland Oaks. I ran the gamut of the kinds of artists that I dealt with, and they were all very good to me, and I made it a wonderful career as well. So interesting, Kevin. My goodness. So crazy. So crazy. Stay on that. But let's move into hockey now. So somehow something happened, and you went into what, writing the hall of Fame? What? Well, there's two stories here to tell you.

 | 08:26 | So when I was at the last record company, it's a bit of a story, so bear with me. But it was called Attic, as I had mentioned. And the boss came to us and said, look, we would like all of you to see if you can come up with a couple of different ideas of revenue sources, and the best idea gets, I think it was $500 and the gold record for the Wall of their choice. So I put a couple of suggestions in, and one of them was music that you would hear at a hockey arena, a compilation of songs that you would hear during hockey games.

 | 09:00 | The Hockey song by Stomping. Tom Connors. 50 Mission Cap by the Tragically Hip. The final countdown by Europe. It goes on and on. So I brought that forward. I won the contest, as it were. And so I thought, okay, it was just the idea that I had to worry about. But then the boss said, okay, Kevin, make it happen. It's like, Jeez, I don't know how to make it happen. Okay?

 | 09:25 | So you use your sources, you use your network and find out how you license tracks for a compilation album. And that was fine. That was fine and very fun. But then I had to come up with a concept and a cover. So I came up with the idea of contact, like a body check or players running into each other or that sort of thing. So I wanted to get a photograph for the front cover of the CD compact disk. So I contacted the Hockey Hall of Fame.

 | 09:56 | And it was just the most fortuitous situation ever. So while I was there looking at pictures of body checks, I saw a pile of photographs on the boss's desk. And so I picked them up and, oh, my goodness, that's Sweeney Schreiner. Oh, that's Mel Sudden Death Hill. Oh, my goodness. And I rattled them off and they said, Wait a minute, wait a minute. How do you know these guys? I said, Well, I'm just totally into it. They said, this is the file of photographs that we can't identify.

 | 10:27 | I said, well, hang on here. And I think I got 17 out of 20 there. And they said, look, would you ever volunteer here? I said, I'm a vice President of a record company. I just can't. But then I thought, okay, hang on. We're at summer hours, Friday's afternoons. I'm off at 01:00. I come over to the Hockey Hall of Fame every Friday at 01:00 and put four or 5 hours. And they said, we'd love it. Oh, my God. So I did that. And then just the timing was extraordinary.

 | 10:56 | One day, the boss or the boss from the Hockey Hall of Fame called and said, Look, I know you're probably not interested, but we've got an opening here for someone to help us with our database and with our photo identification and things like that. I know you're going to say no, but I have to at least ask you, you're not going to believe this, but the record company I was with went bankrupt yesterday. And so when can I start?
 
| 11:23 | And Jan, that was the beginning of the hockey career through the most fortuitous and extraordinary circumstance. And I'm still here now. I did take the hiatus for a number of years. I kept a contract with the Hockey Hall of Fame. You know, Kevin, that's very interesting what you just said. One of the things that stood out to me was that even though you had this full time, high powered job, you said, yes, I can work part time for you, and I can volunteer.
 
| 11:51 | And so that's sort of combining your passion with a foot in the door it was exactly that. Jane, that's been the story of my life is following my passions, and this was an opportunity here. I never thought I'd work in hockey. For me, it was just a great pastime. I like to watch the games. I like to play occasionally I read incessantly about hockey, but I never thought about working in the game. And here I am working in the game.
 
| 12:21 | Yeah. So I just quickly wanted to touch on you teach a course as well? I do. I actually teach two courses through Seneca College, and they both are Hockey Hall of Fame courses, but they're about hockey history, diversity, the evolution of equipment, the evolution of rules and things of that sort. It's a credit course that's offered through something called Ontario Learn. That is so interesting. I would love that course. You know what?
 
| 12:52 | I assumed that the vast majority of the class would be those gentlemen who are in the firefighter’s course or something along that line. And I would have to guess that it's probably 60% male, 40% female. But I'm also surprised at the number of new Canadians who are part of it, whether it's because they want to learn more about Canada's culture or are hoping that it's going to be an easy course. I don't know.
 
| 13:20 | But it's a really interesting course, and we've been doing it since 2003. Oh, that is just fascinating. Yeah. Wow. So let us turn over then to the fact that you're an author as well and you're coming up to your 20th book. So how did that start to happen? Well, again, I guess being in the right place and having a pretty good network and following my passion once again, I've got two particular buddies who are great friends, and we go out all the time.

 | 13:55 | And especially back in those days, we were all single and hanging out, probably having dinner together at least once a week. So we would exchange gifts at Christmas time. And that was great. And did that for a number of years. In one particular year, they said, look, we've gone together. This is my friend Kim and Steve. Kim and Steve said, we're going to go together and get you a gift this year. I said, that's wonderful. Thank you. We went to the restaurant and there was a huge box sitting there. It was ridiculous.

 | 14:25 | Of course, everybody in the restaurant wanted to know, what is this guy getting? Well, I opened it up and it was filled with pads of paper and pens and pencils and at the floppy disks, which kind of gives you an idea of the timing. This was a book writing for Dummies. And they said, look, we sat at every one of these meals and heard you tell your stories. You're writing a book this year. I said, guys, I can't write a book. Come on. They said, you're writing a book this year.

 | 14:55 | So I thought, well, maybe I can. I don't know. So I put together a proposal and sent it off to every publisher I could find. I went to the library and wrote off the spines of books, all the names of the publishers, and pursued them and got rejection after rejection and ignored by all the others. And one guy got in touch with me and said, I really like your passion, really like your writing. I don't want your book, but I think you'd be great for a book that we have already signed and are going to be putting out.
 
| 15:26 | I said, wow. So we had lunch, and we agreed that we would go forward with it. And then he said, Listen, can you write the book in a month? I said, sure. I had no idea. I said, sure. So you have to remember, I was working full time at the record company at the time. So it's not just nine to five. I'm out in a number of evenings, but every evening that I could.

 | 15:52 | As soon as I got home, I'd go down to my office and work away until I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer, get up early, do a little bit more, do it all over again on the weekends. It'd be six in the morning till two in the morning. And I wrote the first book. And what was it? It was called Setter Ice. It was about the story of the Smith family. Con Smyth owned the Toronto Maple Leafs from 1927 through until about 1961.

 | 16:21 | His son, Stafford Smith, owned it with Harold Ballard for about ten years. And it was supposed to go to a third gentleman named Tom Smith. But he got very ill, and Harold Ballard kind of pushed him out of the picture as well. So I was writing about the Smith family. Well, if I can just veer off for a second. It was a wonderful situation. I got Wayne Brett Steeler right before, and it looked beautiful. And it was written. It was Typed in blue ink.

 | 16:51 | But as soon as I opened it up, I thought, Wait a minute, hang on here. And I couldn't believe the number of typos I found. And I'm so anal when it comes to this. I went back to my manuscript. They were right. But Jean Belvo, who played with the Montreal Canadians for 20 some years, was not spelled J-E-A-N. It was John and Tom Smith's great friend Doug through the book was Dog. And there's a trophy called the JP Pickle Award.

 | 17:23 | And in the book it was the JP Pickle Award. Oh, Jan. So I called the publisher. It was probably 11:00 at night. Said, you got to pull them out of the stores. He said, we can't, Kevin. They're already there. What's the matter? I told him about all the errors, and he admitted to me that, in fact, I was about the fourth or fifth author that they hired for this book. And that's why there was such a short lead time because the others had tried and they gave up on it. It was too difficult to book to do.
 
| 17:52 | And so that's why I only had a month to do it. And he didn't have time to send it off to the editor. He ran it through spell check and accepted some of these suggestions along the way. That turned out to be erroneous, but it ended up being a best seller. And it was the start of a strange start, but it was the start of an author's career. Maybe nobody noticed that it was John Bellevo. Oh, no, Jan.

 | 18:21 | No. Every review was this is a great story, but too bad the guy can't write or well, this is a wonderful book, but boy, oh, boy, where the heck is the editor? So everybody noticed it. Every review made comments about problems in the book. Wow. So just quickly, you've collaborated on quite a few books. So when it says, like the hockey player's name with Kevin Shay, is that a heavy duty collaboration?

 | 18:55 | Are you with the person a lot? Oh, God, yes. So just as an example, there was a hockey player during the 1970s named Derek Sanderson. He played with the Boston Bruins. He played with a number of other teams, too, but he won the Stanley Cup on two occasions with Boston, and he lived just the wildest life. He was quite a partier and a womanizer. And in fact, he ended up during his career losing his house and living on a park bench in New York.
 
| 19:24 | Well, I spent I don't know, I would guess probably did 100 interviews of an hour to 2 hours with him. And then there were several in person meetings, both at his home in Boston and then in Ontario, too, in Toronto and then up in Perry Sound when he would go there to visit his friend Bob. You spent an awful lot of time and it was great fun, but a huge amount of work because all I do is let's get the typewriter sorry, the tape recorder going and let them talk.
 
| 19:58 | And then I have to transcribe and write and proof and spell check and fact check and all of these things. So it's a great deal of responsibility. But it's his name on the book because it's his story. So he gets the upper hand, of course, as he should, and receives more of the money. But the person who does most of the job is the ghost writer or the co writer, for sure. Yeah. And in doing all these over the years, did you ever have any collaborations where you thought maybe I have to give up?

 | 20:31 | Very recently, I didn't think that I had to give up, but I was told I had to give up. There was a gentleman by the name of Corey Hirsch. There is a gentleman named Corey Hirsch. I thought this was a special book. He played in the National Hockey League. He was a goaltender, but mental health challenges forced him to give up the game. And so I thought this was an important book to write. And so I worked with Corey on it for better part of two years.
 
| 20:59 | And we did it, and I did. I mean, the hockey part was relatively easy, but I didn't know a great deal about obsessive-compulsive disorder, for example. So I studied and met with professionals and took courses. And his obsessive compulsive disorder was the most unusual one. And it's not the washing of hands and counting that I thought it would be. In fact, it delved into a much darker place.

 | 21:27 | So I wrote the book, and he and I were very pleased with it. But then he came back and said, you know what? I'm going to find another person to do the mental health part of it. I just think I need to find somebody who's much more involved. So, Kevin, I'm telling you all the details that I probably shouldn't. But anyway, so you'll still receive the percentage that we agreed to in the contract, and you will receive consideration inside the book, or at least accreditation inside the book.
 
| 22:02 | But I'm going to have this other gentleman's name on the front of the book because the publisher didn't have any more money to pay him as well. And that was his role that he said, Listen, I'm not writing it unless I get my name on the book. So they didn't want to put two names. They didn't want Corey Hirsch with Kevin Shay and this other gentleman. They wanted one name. So that won't be book number 21, unfortunately. But it was a book that I worked a great deal on over the last little while. It happens. I bet you learned so much through that process.

 | 22:33 | And it occurs to me, every book you write, the research that you have to put into it, your brain must explode a little bit. But I love it so much, Jan, that I just revel in it. I love the research, actually, Candidly, much more than the writing itself. It's fascinating. Now, the mental health research was entirely different. If I have to research hockey, that's something that I'm very comfortable with. I'm at the Hockey Hall of Fame.
 
| 23:02 | I've got access there to get into the mental health aspects that I needed to with Corey Hirsch were an entirely different animal. But having worked in healthcare in the past, I had some openings there, some people that I knew I sat with some doctors that I had worked with to tell me more about it and his specific kind of OCD and depression as well, candidly. And it wasn't something that I was totally comfortable with. But because I worked so hard at it, researched it, I felt that I had portrayed it properly.

 | 23:34 | But I think it's hard to put it on paper when you haven't been through it yourself. Perhaps so Kevin, in all these books you've written, have they all been collaborations or have you written any Kevin Shay? There have been a number that have been Kevin Shay, but a great number of them. Any of the autobiographies I've written about players have been partnerships. And then I wrote the 100 year history of the Toronto Maple Leafs, their official Centennial publication.

 | 24:04 | And it was so huge that I brought on a partner to join me on that one. I could write the hockey history quite well, but I wanted someone to write what was going on in the city, the country and the world during the same era. And that was his area of expertise. He's a history major, actually, a doctor at Guelph University, and that's his area of expertise, and he really helped with that.
 
| 24:33 | So then I could marry what he contributed with my hockey stuff to put the publication out. So I don't think that writing any book is easy. I can't even imagine. I can't imagine it the skill and the discipline that it would take. But when you write a book that's just you no collaboration at all, is that easier? It definitely is, because first of all, you've got all the say at that point, and you're dealing with a publisher, so it's not exclusive to any extent.

 | 25:07 | But I can work at my own temp, at my own speed. I don't need to worry about marrying somebody else's contributions with mine. I don't need to worry about are they coming through with what they need to do? I've run into that a couple of times with people who promised the world and delivered nothing or very little anyway. So I really prefer to write on my own. But having said that, there's some comfort in knowing that you can cover extra bases with having somebody else do it.
 
| 25:35 | And if you're working with a sports celebrity, you automatically are partnering with them that way. Yeah. Do you go after them or they come after you? At this point, it's been a mix of the two. The last little while, they've come after me, which is a very flattering thing at that point. In the early days, just my earliest example, there's a gentleman named Ron Ellis. He's retired now, but he worked at the Hockey Hall of Fame. And so because we were colleagues here, I approached him at one point and said, Ron, have you ever considered writing a book?

 | 26:08 | And he said, Well, I've thought about it, but there are so many hockey books out there, I don't know that I can offer anything different than everybody else. And I said, well, that's fair. But I had known that Ron had gone through a period where he had to leave the League for a couple of years because of depression. And so I thought that might be an important part to talk about. And he said, Well, I've never talked about it publicly, but if you think it would help people. I'm there with you.

 | 26:35 | And so we made the decision, and the book sold originally as a hockey book, and it did quite well. But all of a sudden when we started getting reviews and interviews to talk about Ron's depression and how he handled it and how somebody who is playing at the National Hockey League level can step away from the game because they just don't feel that they can compete anymore. And that's when the book took off in large part, and we sold a great number of books.
 
| 27:04 | Not that that was the important part, but the fact is we got the message out there, and it was really an important one for Ron and certainly for those who read the book or heard about the book, it's hard to imagine the strength it takes to step away from the game, whatever your game is, right? To make that gap for healing and not even knowing that you're going to feel better is pretty tough stuff. Kevin, have you ever thought of writing fiction?

 | 27:34 | My wife, funny enough, suggests that I should write fiction. She knows that hockey books in general probably sell a good one who's going to sell ten to 15,000 copies, so it's not a great deal of copies that are sold, and as a result, there's not a great deal of money in them. And she knows that the amount of time that I put into them, I'm making pennies by the hour. It's not about money for me by any means.
 
| 28:00 | But she thinks that because fiction sells so much better than nonfiction for the most part, unless you're a celebrity or something of that, then she thought that I should do that, but it just doesn't interest me at all. I've got a couple of books in the back of my mind that I'd like to get to some day and move forward that way. It's just such a passion to sit in my office and work away researching and writing, like I said before. Yeah. So you do the thing that you love now.

 | 28:30 | Are you a reader yourself? I totally am a reader ton. But it goes back to when I was a youngster. I was a reader when all of my friends were certainly not especially the guys. The girls seem to read much more than the guys, but I read sports books at the time. I think what I took out of them was certainly a love of the sport itself, whether it be baseball or hockey or whatever.

 | 28:58 | But the books that were out at the time were about people who had risen above challenges. Roy Campanella of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who was paralyzed in an accident while he was a major League player, and how he was able to accept that and move forward and things of that. Those are the kinds of books that I was reading. So I think that's where I got my passion for telling a story. So I don't think that I'd be doing my due diligence if I didn't say to you as an author, what is your process?

 | 29:32 | Boy, that's a very good question. So for the most part, what I do is research heavily for the longest time. Certainly if I'm dealing with a subject, I sit with them and try and find their voice. And it comes to me as we do our interviews as well. But I need to sound like they talk when I'm writing it. And it may not be the way that I speak.

 | 29:57 | The Derek Sanders when I mentioned before, the expletives are not the way I speak at all, but all of a sudden I had to write them that way because that's the way he talks and people would identify him that way as well. I spend a great deal of time getting to know the person I'm either dealing with or the person I'm researching, trying to find every angle I can find, and whether it's through Newspapers.com, books that have been written previously. Certainly the Internet now is very handy that way.

 | 30:27 | I want to go in well versed and then start to talk to the subject or start to write at that point. I've tried different things. I've tried to be ultra-creative when I've written, but I find for me, I try and take the best story that they have best anecdote they have or that I could find about the person or the subject and start the book that way and then go chronologically from there and then wrap it up nicely.

 | 30:55 | It just seems to be a much more comfortable read that way than be bouncing back and forth between time frames or about between personal life and professional life or whatever. It works for me. Yeah, you have that process. So in all this, in the Hockey Hall of Fame, in teaching and writing and collaborating, how have you had to be resilient? The world has just changed so much.

 | 31:24 | So if I go back to working in the radio industry, I bounced from city to city to city because I wanted to rise through the ranks to get to the biggest station possible. Went from Windsor, where I was born and raised, to North Bay smaller market, but one where all of a sudden I became special K to start your day, never having been on the radio before. And then back to Windsor. And my dream come true, working at a station called CKLW, which is a big radio station in Windsor, or was it's no longer there?
 
| 31:57 | And then to Montreal, a big top 40 station, one of the top ones in North America. And so just rising through the ranks, and then all of a sudden to find out that the station I was at was changing format, I had to reinvent myself. And I worked in the music industry, same thing. I rose through the ranks trying different things and went from Ontario promotion, rep as I mentioned to vice presidents and all those sorts of things. The last one went bankrupt.

 | 32:23 | All of a sudden, there I was without a job and very fortunate for me. I got the job at the Hockey Hall of Fame shortly thereafter. I left after a couple of years, I guess four or five years, because I was following my father. My dad had died of cancer, and I thought that there was something more important for me to do out there. And as an HR representative, Jan, you're going to hate me for this, but bear with me.

 | 32:54 | I was still working at the Hockey Hall of Fame at the time, but I started to send off blind resumes through websites, didn't do a whole lot of research because I had a really good job and whatever. But I just thought, hey, if it lands and sticks somewhere, it's something I at least can consider. And the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation in Toronto, they're raising money for cancer research, contacted me right away and said, Listen, Kevin, your timing is impeccable.

 | 33:23 | Our media representative is going on maternity leaves shortly, and we don't have anybody yet. You're a veteran. You seem to know what you're doing. Would you come in for a conversation? And by the time I got home, I had the job offer on my computer. And so it worked out. But I'd never worked in health care in the slightest. I didn't have a clue what I was doing, so I had to reinvent myself.

 | 33:47 | But I also had to be entrepreneurial and realized that I had to use my strengths, my network, by my opportunistic side of things to try and find ways to get the message out. And very pleased I was there for eight years. One of the things that I was able to do was start an event called Road Hockey to Conquer Cancer because there are walks the weekend to win women's cancers.
 
| 34:16 | I did it every year, raised money, but it didn't speak to me. The ride to Conquer Cancer. I hadn't ridden a bike since I was 18. And here I was, whatever I was at the time, 55 or something like that. No, 52. There were so many different things that way. So at one point, they said, Kevin, what kind of an event would speak to you? And I said, well, hockey? And they said, yes, of course. And they said, well, can you come up with an idea? And I struggled over and I came up with a number of different ideas.

 | 34:46 | And then Nancy, my wife, said, you know what, Kevin? Why are you struggling so much to try and put it on ice event together? What about road hockey? Everybody knows how to play road hockey. You don't need equipment. You don't need to be good. You can have co-op teams or co Ed teams. Rather, you can do all kinds of things. And that's what we did. And through ten years, we raised $25 million. It was something very special.

 | 35:14 | And then shortly thereafter, they got rid of the Department. And so I was without a job again. But because I'd been working with the Hockey Hall of Fame all along, by way of contract, I still had done it through my time at the Princess Margaret. They offered me a job to come back. And here we are today. Yeah, I think that's really interesting that the word you use the most is reinvention. And I love that because I know it's sort of regrouping.

 | 35:42 | I understand we have to regroup frequently in life, but reinvent takes it up that whole other level. So in that feeling, that way about reinvention, was that exciting? Was it? Oh, my gosh, I've got to have a job. Was it put food on the table? Was it, oh, I wonder what's going to happen next. So how did you feel about each of those times? Terrified. Every single time. Every single time.

 | 36:09 | I grew up in a family where Mum and dad both worked the same job for the entirety of their lives, their professional lives. And although I knew that the world was changing, I'm not really one to embrace change. If it's through me, that's fine. But when somebody else tells me I have to change, that's a whole different matter. I was scared and nervous, but there was some consistency through the whole thing.
 
| 36:39 | If you know how to do publicity, if you know how to do promotion, you can do it. Whatever the product is, whether it's music, whether it's health care, whether it's cancer research, whether it's hockey, it's a different product. And I was passionate about all of them, so I wouldn't say it was ever easy by any means. And especially when I went to the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation, the learning curve was 180 degrees. It was crazy.

 | 37:08 | But you use your network. You ask your colleagues to help wherever possible. You keep your chin up, your smile on your face, and somehow you get through it. It's funny, isn't it? No matter what, we're all paddling under the surface, right? Of course, Jan. Yes, absolutely. We look cool and confident on the surface, but underneath, you're exactly right. Boy, will put that expression. Yeah, it's so true.

 | 37:37 | Now, you have won various. Several awards. I wanted to ask you about the one in particular, the outstanding contribution to advancing hockey research. Tell me about that one in particular. Wow. Thank you. There's an organization I belong to called the Society for International Hockey Research. They go by the acronym SIHR. So, sir, it's just something I've been involved with.

 | 38:06 | I think about it. It's like the Trekis of hockey. Most of us sit in our basement and we have our expertise, and when we delve into it, we delve into it big time. And so I've got my areas, and all the 500 other members of this organization from around the globe have their areas of expertise, too. We band together mostly electronically, to be able to share stories, to share information, to ask for help on various things.

 | 38:38 | And we also get together twice a year. In fact, it's this weekend, Ironically, we're getting together in St. Catherine's to have our annual meeting and we'll do presentations and that sort of thing as well. Anyway, through the years, I guess they felt that I had contributed a fair bit to hockey history, preserving hockey history, whether it be through the books or things I'd written on websites or presentations I had made or whatever it happened to be that they thought. But anyway, I was selected that year and was given that award.

 | 39:09 | It's a one time award and a most special award for those who are in this particular organization. So I wanted to turn to my three questions that I had asked you to think about. And the first one is, what is the best advice that you've received about your career and why? We have a mutual friend who sadly, we lost last October, gentleman by the name of Cam Gardner. And Cam was so important to my life from early on, when I was a teenager, not knowing what I wanted to do.

 | 39:43 | I was a member of Junior Chief. But when I was there and I was talking about how my guidance counselor not my guidance counselor, actually, my French teacher had given me some career advice and thought I should get into communications. I believe it's your husband, Dan, who suggested to me, well, you should talk to Cam Gardner. He's on the radio. He's on CKW radio every night. Wait a minute, there's a radio announcer who's here? Yes, he's a staff member.

 | 40:11 | So I very shyly went up to camp and said, Listen, I wonder if I can talk to you about radio? And he said, sure. He said, what do you want to know? I said, Well, I don't know anything, but it might be something that I'd be interested in. So he took me to a restaurant that evening. We had a hamburger together, and he gave me the advice that has stayed with me through my entire life as well. And that's to love what you do and do what you love.

 | 40:43 | And we've talked about passion a great deal through our conversation here, Jan. And that's where I learned that don't do a job that you're not going to be happy with. Don't do a job that you're dreading going to. And you can hardly wait to leave. If you can do something that you're passionate about, it'll fill your soul. You'll do a better job with it as well. And so that's the advice that can give me back when I was probably 17 years old, and it stayed with me through my entire life to this moment.

 | 41:12 | Yeah, that is life shaping advice, isn't it? It sure was. Love what you do and do what you love. In fact, if I can just step in for a second. Jan, you have to think that it was the 1970s. So, in fact, what he really said was do what you did, what you do. But I know that really what he was saying is do what you love and love what you do. And that's what it was. So that was the Sage advice for my dear, dear friend Cameron.

 | 41:43 | Rest in peace. May he rest in peace. Kevin, what I like about that, too, there's a little nuance in there that I wanted to bring out, and that is love what you do. Because sometimes we get into jobs and we think, I'm not sure I'm loving this, but if we throw ourselves into it and we give our all, it gives that back to us so that passion can grow. Yeah. You need to find your joys as part of the job.

 | 42:14 | Not every part of every day is going to be glorious and bouquets of flowers at your feet as you're walking out the door. Some are very difficult. There will be times where you hate your job. But the fact is when you're in a career, when you look at the bigger picture, that this is something that I really feel that I can add value to, this is something that I really enjoy. I really enjoy the people around me.

 | 42:43 | I really enjoy the tasks that I've been given or the tasks that I've taken on. And so you find your joy, but you have to accept that not every day is a joy. Some days you'd rather be sitting at home and just the way it goes. But you realize that I've got a job, I got to go back. And sure enough, the next day the sun is still shining, the job is still there. And, Geez, it's a whole lot better than I thought about last Thursday or whatever it happens to be. Exactly.

 | 43:13 | My second question is, is there a book that you've read that has influenced you in particular? This goes back to an earlier part of our discussion. There's not a book per se, but it was the books I was reading as a youngster and through my life as well. These sports books. I read a ton of different kinds of books. So don't let me be pigeonholed as a guy who is that narrow.
 
| 43:40 | But it's these success stories, the way that people circumvented challenges in their life that really motivated me. And I mentioned that Roy Campanello won for an example. But there's so many others that I read through the years, and I find those are the kinds of books that really are important to me, ones that have a message that are just beyond wasn't I a great hockey player, wasn't I a great baseball player or whatever it happens to be, but that they've got a message that has come through, what they have learned through their careers as well.
 
| 44:11 | So while I wish I had one particular book that I've picked up and read cover to cover that really helped motivate me. It's these little snapshots from each of the books as I went along that really motivated me and really gave me my passion as well. I think that's so true that we can read so many books and have a ha moments in this book and then an AHA book, whether it's actually fiction or nonfiction. Absolutely. You're absolutely right, Sam. That's exactly it. Aha moments are exactly what you pull out of the books that you most love.
 
| 44:43 | Yeah, exactly. Okay. And the third, what advice would you give your younger self, Kevin? Well, I've thought about this a great deal, too, and it goes back to what your husband, Dan Daniela taught me in life and what my friend Cam Gardner did as well. And that's two if you're going to do something, do it all out. Don't do a half ass job. You'll excuse my expression. Just go to it.

 | 45:10 | Show passion in the things that you do, do what you dig what you do and go from there. I wish that when I was an early teenager, I don't even know if that's a proper expression when I was young. Anyway, I wish I had some kind of a focus on something I wanted to do when I was 1314. Like a lot of my peers, mine didn't come until later. But thank goodness it did come along. And you find things in the most unexpected places in my career, but also there, too.
 
| 45:40 | So nobody gave me career advice per se. I guess Cam did with his expression, but it was watching my mentors, your husband, Dan. Danleck, for example, watching Cam, watching other people through my career, really watching how they did things, how they were successful, how much joy they took in the job, too. And it engaged me. I was able to absorb it.

 | 46:07 | I don't know if that's the right expression, but it really engaged me and made me realize that for me to be successful in my chosen field, whichever happened to be that particular time of my life, I needed to work really hard. I needed to be someone that everybody enjoyed working with. Not every day is going to be great, but somebody who you want to be a good colleague with and you want to be able to contribute something. And that's whether it's a legacy or not. But it's certainly a legacy from the part of your career that you have, too.

 | 46:37 | So it's just using the network and enjoying what you've seen and taking the things from your mentors, too. Yes. That's amazing. Those are my questions for you, Kevin. Is there anything that you want to wrap up by saying, no? I don't really. But I've enjoyed this so much. Jen, I love what you're doing, and I wish you and I spoke about this several months ago, and I didn't introduce myself to your website until very recently, as you know.

 | 47:09 | And I love what you're doing and I love the stories that are coming out from people People that I wouldn't necessarily have interaction with on a day to day basis. So I thank you for that and I thank you for making me think about some of the things we've talked about here, things that I haven't really put into a capsule. I know sometimes I was a little bit verbosed and I apologize to you, but I just really appreciate the fact that we could share some of the commonality of AHA moments and passion and things of that sort and hope that anybody who's watching Might get a little bit of motivation from our conversation today as well.

 | 47:44 | Thanks for saying that. This is my give back project because I've had a great career. I've had horrific moments of absolute horror movie moments and I've had the heights moments that I appreciate. And if we can give ideas to other people from things that we've learned, Then we've done our job because I think it's Our job is to share with each other, to support each other and help each other out.
 
| 48:14 | And that's the whole point of this podcast. And you mentioned people like my husband Dan and you mention Tim Gardner, A very close friend to all of us and how blessed we are to have had those people share with us in their lives. Right. So we're just very blessed. Thank you, Kevin. And to our viewers and listeners, thank you so much for joining Kevin and I as we talk about hockey today and for the people that are actually watching who watch us on YouTube, I'm actually dedicating this really cozy sweater I'm wearing today to a hockey look.

 | 48:50 | Kevin, just for you. Thank you. And I'm wearing a blazer Because I wanted to wear a look for you. I'm choosing, so please follow me on YouTube watch there. And if you're a listener, Just take a listen wherever you get your podcast. This has been a great conversation. So much to sort of dig down into and think about and I hope you will do that and until we meet again, thanks so much.