I had only to come up with a compelling idea for a story in order to receive permission to go—to Israel, to Japan, to Africa, to Central America, to Scandinavia, to Rome, and to more other places than I have space to list. Star photographers and I travelled deep into the territory east of James Bay with Aboriginal hunters tracking caribou in the depths of winter while we did a story on the James Bay hydro project. We flew into the Sinai Peninsula and slept on the mountain where Moses is traditionally said to have received the Ten Commandments. We travelled to Central America to report on Canadians working with children orphaned by war. We spent time in San Francisco with the world’s first all-gay police squad, and we went fishing for Arctic char out on the ice beyond Baffin Island with an Inuit Anglican priest. We spent time with film director Franco Zeffirelli while he made his epic Jesus of Nazareth in the Moroccan foothills of the Atlas Mountains. Anne Bancroft and the other stars were eager to discuss Jesus with a former teacher of New Testament in the long breaks between scenes. One day, during a shoot in Meknes, a small Biblical-looking town, there was a sudden downpour and I found myself sheltering in a doorway with Bancroft and Zeffirelli. We had a lively discussion. Zeffirelli told of his difficulty in maintaining a sense of majesty or divinity in the Jesus character while at the same time portraying him as human. “He cannot yawn or burp,” he said. Bancroft, who was surprisingly well informed about the Gospels, had some challenging questions, such as why no actual description of Jesus’s appearance or mannerisms seems to exist. It was a very stimulating half-hour before the rain ceased.
Money was no object in those heady days of the 1970s. For my first trip to London, the secretary for the Insight section, which at the time included the religion pages, decided I should stay at least one night at the Dorchester Hotel. She seemed very pleased with herself when she told me. I had no idea at the time that it was considered at the top of London elegance or that such notables as T.S. Eliot, General Dwight Eisenhower, Sir Winston Churchill and a host of others had at various times regarded it as home. The Queen, when she was still Princess Elizabeth, and Prince Philip had announced their engagement there, and today it remains the first choice of Hollywood film stars and leading politicians from all over. Situated on Mayfair’s stylish Park Lane and overlooking Hyde Park itself, it is in the very heart of London. I was naturally more than pleased to be able to tell the cabbie at Heathrow the name of my destination.
However, pride indeed goeth before a fall. When the cab pulled up in front of the hotel, a doorman wearing more gold braid on his hat than a rear admiral, stepped smartly down the front steps and opened the cab door for me. I was suddenly somewhat self-conscious. My one suitcase had seen much better days and in fact was of lowly origin to start with. In short, it was cheap and old. The doorman whipped it out of my grasp and turned to lead me up to the entrance. Suddenly, to my dismay, the handle came off in his hand and a sort of yellow, fluffy stuffing burst out of it. The unfortunate suitcase landed on the edge of one of the steps and popped open, spilling the entire contents—socks, underwear, shirts, everything—all over the entrance. Red-faced, I hurriedly grabbed the bits and pieces and packed them away while wilting completely under the scornful eye of my former helper. I could tell he wanted nothing more to do with me and I avoided him thereafter by using another door. I changed hotels the next day.
Writing for the Star, one had the rare privilege of meeting and speaking with all the great spiritual leaders of our time, from the Dalai Lama to Billy Graham, Malcolm Muggeridge, three Archbishops of Canterbury and so many others. In many ways it was like a dream fulfilled. The most striking thing about the Dalai Lama was the great aura of calmness that radiated from him, as well as his constant smile and his deep humility. Muggeridge was noted not for humility but for his rapier wit, his ability to communicate through shock (he once told a Toronto audience that the two symbols of today’s culture are “the raised fist and the raised phallus”) and his fervent approach to religion.
Although he is now well over ninety, when most people think of Billy Graham they conjure up a tall, craggily handsome man standing at a podium with a large bible in his hands. His face is earnest, the eyes commanding, as he urges the crowds at his feet to make their decision for Christ. With the choir singing softly over and over again, “Just as I am, without one plea,” he presses his broad brow into his hand and stands seemingly lost in prayer. And the people stream forward by the hundreds.
Having been at many of his crusades both in Canada and abroad, I too can picture him that way. But it’s not the first image that springs to mind. Instead, I see him during his last crusade in Toronto. Wanting to get an edge on the competition, the Star had sent me to Minneapolis to travel with Billy to Toronto for the week-long series of sessions at Maple Leaf Gardens. We had already become good friends over the years, and as usual he and his staff proved very gracious indeed. I had a long interview with him in an airport hotel in Chicago, where we stopped over to enable him to be present at a crusade his brother-in-law, Leighton Ford, was conducting in Cicero. Then we sat together during the flight from O’Hare to Pearson airport. It was interesting how patient he was with all who wanted his autograph or to shake hands with the world’s best-known preacher. Several people on the plane, including a nun in very traditional black garb, interrupted him. He even autographed a cigarette package for a young woman who said she had nothing else for him to write on.
In an earlier book I told the story of once interviewing him at the boardwalk of the Beach area in Toronto, and of how the photographer attempted a very creative photo while I was busy speaking to the press officer. He asked Billy to remove his socks, roll up his pant cuffs and walk on a slimy concrete breakwater. He wanted to show Billy appearing to walk on water. Once the press officer and I realized what was happening, we quickly put a stop to it. The photos had already been taken, but Graham simply asked for assurances that we wouldn’t do anything “unwise” with them. They never ran in the paper, although they probably still remain somewhere in the Star’s photo files.
Since then I’ve always remembered Billy Graham with a chuckle. He was one of the best-dressed and most admired men in America, and the most famous of all contemporary evangelists, but to me he’ll be remembered with his pants rolled up, a stub of a hot dog still in his hand, graciously accommodating an overzealous photographer by doing his best to walk on water. Even at that time I differed greatly from him on matters theological, but he will always rank highly in my esteem for his integrity and humility of spirit in the face of fame.
As is the case for any would-be objective journalist, I wasn’t always welcomed in certain places. As the Star’s first ombudsman, the late Borden Spears, once told me, “Your beat causes more reaction than the crime reporter’s!”
I once was sent to interview the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was at that time the Most Reverend Michael Ramsey. He was in Toronto giving an address to the Canadian and Empire Clubs at the Royal York Hotel. Next to His Holiness the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the 63-million-member Anglican Church, is undoubtedly the most prominent of all Christian leaders. Those who occupy this ancient position are nearly always distinguished scholars and have the bearing proper to such an exalted ecclesiastical rank. Like the Pope, they live in a palace—in this case Lambeth Palace—and are treated with extraordinary tact and respect even by those who have no religious faith.
Ramsey was to me the quintessential Archbishop of Canterbury. His bald dome of a head was covered with fly-away wisps of white hair (it was said that even as a student he had looked ancient); his great hook nose was set between two darting bright eyes that seemed to pop out from under a thick thatch of eyebrows; he had a broad figure and a booming voice. He seemed a character ready for the stage in a real-life drama about a sturdier, bygone time. Added to his physical appearance were certain eccentricities of manner and character that he seemed to exploit. For example, he had cultivated a way of stuttering slightly when he spoke. Many English aristocrats and leading academics have affected this speech defect as a method of lending importance to their words. When someone of note stutters, it has the effect of keeping people on the edge of expectation—their attention is much keener. Ramsey was interviewed once on CFTO television in the early 1970s, on the usual topics one discusses with a world religious leader. When he was asked what he thought of the current “sexual revolution,”