by Myles Murchison » Fri Feb 24, 2012 12:06 pm
The first time I met Frank Callaghan, I was in the agency business, presenting a marketing campaign for CKLG, proposing that we portray their disc jockeys (Boss Jocks) as flower children, emulating the Beatles and the Monkeys, both sensational rock icons at the time.
The LG management was unsure. It seemed a "little out-there" for them. They were looking for something a little more traditional. "Emphasis on news and sports, maybe." Yawn.
Then, from the back of the room, a voice boomed. Frank Callaghan, the station's Program Director and Protector of the station's intergity, spoke. "I LOVE IT," he said. Confident. Direct. No ambiguity. That was his style, his character, as I came to learn, but that day I just wanted to hug him.
The deal was done. The campaign ran with much success. CKLG owned the youth market for years to come.
Later he was my boss at CKLG but gave me a lot of freedom, a long leash to create meaningful spoken-word community program the CRTC was insisting on. The station's licence was endangered and Frank was open to new ideas and initiated many of them. People didn't work for Frank, they worked with him. He understood programming just as he understood people and particularly the station's audience, and he was very good as getting us all on the same page. For most of us, it wasn't a job but a way of life and Frank modeled that attitude.
Decades later when Frank's radio days were over, he turned to a new medium and he was the first person I'd come across who really understood the Internet. He had a genius for it. He devised HorseBC.com, an inter-active directory and service for the local horse industry, which, as he calculated, was a very fertile market. (There are more horses-to-people per capita in Langley than any place in North America.) The site prospered immediately. Somebody finally knew how to make money on the Internet and it was Frank.
At the time, at my request, he was generously mentoring me in the arts of Internet programming as I learned to build and maintain sites of my own. He wished he was twenty years younger, he would tell me, for he foresaw the medium's incredible promise.
As video was introduced to the Internet, he focussed on recording horse show events and shot and packaged private videos for thoroughbred sales, a niche industry in which horses are sold for tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, with sales often based on Frank's video package.
Partly to pay him back for his advice and help, but mostly just to get the chance to spend more time with him, I frequently visited his townhome and prepared dinner for him in those years.
That's when I saw his Horseman-Of-The-Year Awards. He literally had rows of them. Did he know horses? He raised them, trained them, showed them, and knew more about them than anyone I knew. In fact, he just loved animals of any kind. He even feed his dog at the table from his own fork. Who could forget that?
Later, when I started writing THE YEAR AFTER CUSTER, an historical Western − I wanted real West accuracy − Frank generously agreed to read the text and copy edit on all matters to do with horses and firearms. Nobody could have been a better choice. "I don't mean to get picky," he'd say as he made his corrections and observations. I said, "Please get picky as you can." Who else would know the weight differential between a mustang and an Appaloosa? How to load a paper-wrapped shell into a Sharpe's Buffalo Rifle? Or the difference between Texas and shotgun chaps?
The book's first draft was finished last summer and we hadn't talked for several months. When I looked him up again to show him a final copy of the book and its cover, I discovered Frank had died months before in September. I was shocked, of course. Saddened. Sorry I hadn't been at his funeral to honour him, for I do honour him.
Beyond his generosities to me, he was a true innovator. He understood media − the old and the new kind − just as he understood men. The way he lived his life was a model for me. I learned from Frank Callaghan, and I thank him sincerely.
If there is a horse heaven, I know he's in it, and, when the time comes, I hope we get a chance to sit on together on the corral rails and shoot the breeze. I'd guess he's still got a lot to tell me.