KEELEY
KEENAN
KEENBERG
KEEPING
KEELEY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-31 published
KEELEY,
Joyce
Kathleen
Phillips (née
PHILLIPS)
Died peacefully at noon on December 30 at Sunnybrook Hospital.
''Joycie Girl'' was the beloved wife of Gerry
KEELEY, mother
of Kate and Doug, and 'gaga' of Ollie, Sam and Matti. She was
the daughter of Kathleen
NESBITT and Heber
PHILLIPS, and sister
of Bobbie and John. We will all remember Joyce as the girl who
never missed an important putt or a good party, and brought joy
and Friendship to everyone she met. She was an amazing mom and
grandmother. A memorial service will be held at Morley Bedford
Funeral Home, 159 Eglinton Ave. W. (2 stoplights West of Yonge
St.) in Toronto at 1 p.m. Monday, January 5th. A reception will
follow immediately at the Badminton and Racquet Club at 25 St Clair Ave. West.
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KEENAN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-06-23 published
A remarkable life, and a friend to all
By Eric DUHATSCHEK
Monday,
June 23, 2003 - Page S1
Nashville -- Roger
NEILSON's legacy in hockey will endure because
he coached 1,000 games among eight National Hockey League teams,
because he was an innovator and because he served as a mentor
and a tutor to others during a Hall of Fame career.
But the contributions of
NEILSON, who died Saturday in Peterborough,
Ontario, at 69 after a lengthy battle with cancer, contain a
vibrancy matched by few others because of the countless Friendships
he developed during his lifetime.
The proof of that came in June of last year when a dozen of his
closest Friends organized a tribute to
NEILSON. It was held in
Toronto, a day before the National Hockey League awards dinner,
to make it easier for people to attend, which they did. More
than 1,300 people were there.
NEILSON was responsible for helping several players and coaches
get to the National Hockey League, including Bob
GAINEY,
Craig
RAMSAY and Colin
CAMPBELL, players on the Peterborough Petes
junior team that
NEILSON coached in the 1970s.
Among those who benefited from
NEILSON's guidance was Florida
Panthers coach Mike
KEENAN.
Scotty
BAUMAN/BOWMAN, the Hall of Fame coach,
recalled Saturday how
NEILSON talked him into hiring
KEENAN,
who had also coached the Petes, into running the Buffalo Sabres'
minor-league affiliate in Rochester, New York in the early 1980s.
"Roger didn't have any enemies,"
KEENAN said. "He lived his life
in a principled way. He had a great deal of respect for people
and found goodness in all of them. He was very unique and all
of us were blessed to know him.
"I'm saddened by his passing, but to me, this is a life to be
celebrated, a life that was so influential to many of us."
NEILSON had an endless fascination with the rulebook that forced
the powers in whatever league he happened to be coaching in to
revise and clarify each loophole he probed. For a penalty shot,
he would put a defenceman in the crease instead of a goaltender,
instructing the defenceman to rush the shooter as soon as the
latter crossed the blueline, to hurry him into a mistake.
Once, when his team was already two players short with less than
two minutes remaining in the game,
NEILSON kept sending players
over the boards, getting penalties for delaying the game. The
strategy worked, taking time off the clock and upsetting the
other team's flow. At that stage of the game, it didn't matter
how many penalties
NEILSON's team was taking. If a coach tried
that tactic today, the opposition would be awarded a penalty
shot.
NEILSON, whose last job was as an assistant coach with the Ottawa
Senators, coached his 1,000th National Hockey League game on
the final night of the 2001-02 regular season, temporarily filling
in for Senators head coach Jacques
MARTIN.
NEILSON was involved
with a dozen National Hockey League teams in a series of different
capacities, including his eight different turns as a head coach.
In 1982, he took the Vancouver Canucks to the Stanley Cup final,
his one and only appearance in the championship series as a coach.
The Canucks were swept by the New York Islanders.
It was during that playoff run that
NEILSON placed a white towel
on the end of a stick, a mock surrender to the on-ice officials.
In 1999, NEILSON was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a form
of bone cancer, and needed a bone marrow transplant. He also
developed skin cancer, the result of a lifetime of being outdoors,
in the sun, usually in raggedy old shorts and T-shirts, with
a well-worn baseball cap perched on his head.
"He put in an incredible, inspiring fight with an insidious disease,"
said KEENAN, who added that
NEILSON kept in constant contact
with his mother Thelma, after she was diagnosed with pancreatic
cancer.
"They found strength in each other. That's the type of individual
Roger was. He'd reach out and touch somebody who needed help.
He was deathly in pain the last few times we spoke, but he would
not let it influence his life."
The high regard for
NEILSON was clear during the tribute for
him last year. Former coach and Hockey Night in Canada analyst
Harry NEALE, who worked with
NEILSON in Vancouver, was the master
of ceremonies. But he was so overcome by emotion so many times
that he let his good friend Roger steal the show.
NEILSON's self-deprecating sense of humor surfaced when he scanned
the crowd and suggested that everyone he'd ever said hello to
in his lifetime had turned up for the event. He quipped that
at $125 a ticket, it must be an National Hockey League production.
What other organization would set the price so outrageously high?
NEILSON's health was deteriorating this spring, but he managed
to accompany the Senators on the road for their second-round
series against the Philadelphia Flyers. The Senators pushed the
eventual Stanley Cup champions, the New Jersey Devils, to seven
games in the Eastern Conference final before being eliminated.
NEILSON's speech to the team before Game 6, with the Senators
trailing 3-1 in the series, was cited by the players and the
coaching staff as the inspiration for their comeback against
the Devils.
"The only sad part is we weren't able to win a Stanley Cup for
him this year," Martin said.
With his health failing,
NEILSON asked
BAUMAN/BOWMAN to be the keynote
speaker at his annual coaching clinic in Windsor earlier this
month.
"I talked to him only a week ago,"
BAUMAN/BOWMAN said. "I said, 'The
coaches in the National Hockey League are getting blamed a lot
for the [defensive] style that teams are playing.' I said, 'You
should blame Roger
NEILSON because he's the one training all
these coaches.'
"Roger was a special person. The people that follow hockey know
what he went through. I truly think he battled it right to the
end and it was hockey that probably kept Roger going." eduhatschek@globeandmail.ca
Remembering Roger
NEILSON
"The coaches in the National Hockey League have been getting
blamed a lot for the style of game the teams are playing. I said,
'You should blame Roger
NEILSON because he's training all these
coaches.' "He battled right to the end. Hockey and life for Roger
were intertwined. That probably kept him going to the end. He
never got married. He was married to hockey."
Scott BAUMAN/BOWMAN
"All the awards he won this year tell you about his hockey career's
innovativeness and what kind of person he is. Some people are
going to remember Roger for nothing to do with hockey just because
of what a humanitarian he is. He put up an unbelievable battle.
From when he found out how sick he was, if had happened to most
people, they would have had their demise many months ago. He
fought hard."
Jim GREGORY
"I know I haven't met a person who could equal Roger's passion
for hockey. The honours bestowed on him in the past year, the
Hockey Hall of Fame and the Order of Canada, did not come by
accident. He has done so much for so many kids and I will always
remember that legacy."
Harry NEALE
"He's an individual we can all be inspired by, by his ability
to deal with some difficult situations in his own life. He has
such a high level of respect for human beings. "He was fortunate
in way he lived his life. It was impacted by his faith and his
religion. He observed those principles on a daily basis, things
most of us have a hard time dealing with. He saw the goodness
in everyone else."
Mike KEENAN
"He did a lot of work at the grassroots level with his hockey
camps, coaches' clinics, his baseball teams, his summer programs.
He wasn't really in it for himself very much. "It's a word you
use too often to make it special but in his case he was unique,
he really was."
Bob GAINEY
"Hockey has lost a great mind, a great spirit, a great friend.
The National Hockey League family mourns his loss but celebrates
his legacy -- the generations of players he counselled, the coaches
he moulded, the changes his imagination inspired and the millions
of fans he entertained."
Gary BETTMAN
Life and times
Born: June 16, 1934, in Toronto.
Education: Roger
NEILSON graduated from McMaster University in
Hamilton with a degree in physical education.
Nickname: Captain Video because he was the first to analyze game
videos to pick apart opponents' weaknesses.
Coaching career:
NEILSON coached hockey teams for 50 years. He
was a National Hockey League coach for Toronto, Buffalo, Vancouver,
Los Angeles, the New York Rangers, Florida, Philadelphia and
Ottawa. The Senators let him coach a game on April 13, 2002,
so he could reach 1,000 for his career. He was an National Hockey
League assistant in Buffalo, Chicago, St. Louis and Ottawa.
Major Honours: Elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in the builders
category last year. Invested into the Order of Canada in May.
Tributes: ESPN Classic Canada will air a 24-hour tribute to
NEILSON
beginning today at 6 p.m. eastern daylight time. The programming
will include a profile, footage from the famous white towel game
during the 1982 Stanley Cup playoffs and his 1,000th game behind
the bench.
Funeral:
Services for
NEILSON will be held at 2 p.m., Saturday
at North View Pentecostal Church in Peterborough, Ontario (705-748-4573).
The church is at the corner of Fairbairn Street and Tower Hill
Road.
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KEENBERG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-01-27 published
Mary KEENBERG
By Jonina WOOD
Monday,
January 27, 2003, Page A16
Wife, mother, grandmother. Born July 4, 1913, on a train passing
through Fort William, Ontario (now part of Thunder Bay). Died
September 26, 2002, in Winnipeg, of natural causes, aged 89.
I first met Mary
KEENBERG in 1999 at the Manitoba Club in Winnipeg.
With its Edwardian oak-panelled walls, deep chairs and old-world
ambience, it was the perfect setting for Mary. She half-rose
from her fireside chair to greet me -- a tiny, elegant, perfectly
coiffed woman who smiled a warm welcome. Sweet-hearted yet somewhat
imperious, she was a master of the quick quip. "We're the long
and short of it," she once pointed out to a crowd, getting a
huge laugh as I stood a full foot taller than she. But the meeting
at the Manitoba Club had a deeper significance.
Mary was born on a train. Her parents, newly arrived from the
shtetls of Russia, were on their way to a whistle stop in Saskatchewan
called Mikado. They were part of the waves of immigrants inspired
by Prime Minister Wilfrid
LAURIER's international appeal to come
settle Canada.
So they did. Mary's father, Maurice Max
BURTNICK, opened a general
store. To a brood that already included Tony, Sasha and Mary
were added Louis, Polly, Harry and Allan. The sudden departure
of Mary's mother left Mary to care for her younger siblings.
This she did with a fierce and protective love that would come
to be one of her defining character traits.
Mary was younger than most when she graduated from Grade 12 with
the highest grades in all Saskatchewan. She taught Grades 1 to
12 in a one-room country schoolhouse near Canora, Saskatchewan,
biding her time until she was 18 and could enter nursing at the
General Hospital in Winnipeg. Once again, she graduated with
the highest marks in her class.
With little money and the tough, physical demands of nursing,
life cannot have been easy for her and it was during this time
that she lost her much-beloved sister Polly in a fire back home,
a tragedy which created a lifelong wound in Mary's heart.
Meanwhile, on a happier note, there was a young, Jewish doctor
in the small Manitoban town of Baldur named Abe
KEENBERG.
Dr.
KEENBERG was very busy (and also perhaps a tad lonely, the story
goes), so one day he called his younger brother Lou who lived
in Winnipeg. "Lou," he said, "I need a wife. Do you know any
nice Jewish nurses?"
Lou soon invited Abe to meet Mary. It was a match. In 1938, they
were married at the Royal Alex in Winnipeg. They formed a loving
and effective team, first taking up residence in Glenboro, Manitoba,
and then in 1945 moving to Winnipeg with their new son. Here,
Mary took on what would become her life's passion: the fledgling
state of Israel.
With her own children, she was equally zealous. If Patty or Ron
came home with an A, Mary wanted to know what happened to the
"plus." If ever they were taunted as Jews, they were to fight
back. In the
KEENBERG home, there was honour in a bloodied nose
won fighting against racial slurs of any kind.
Tiny, but with the constitution of an ox, Mary was awhirl with
her work, her children, her travels with Abe, and her Friends.
When Abe died in 1987, she bravely carried on although devastated
by his passing. She filled her time with work, bridge (she was
an ace), and she was a friend to her grandchildren -- Megan,
Kathryn and Adam.
But she was often lonely. She missed her Abe and was anxious
to join him. This determined woman, who had fought her way from
poor beginnings to membership in the Manitoba Club, was weary
toward the end. Yet she was ever ladylike, ever gracious, ever
the warrior.
Jonina WOOD is Mary's daughter-in-law
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KEEPING o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-01-25 published
'Death has never fazed me'
Joyful teenager taught children and parents how to live with
cancer
By Michael
VALPY
Saturday,
January 25, 2003, Page F11
Cory MAESTRELLO didn't just have cancer, he was a philosopher
of cancer. This week he left life celebrated, something he would
have considered appropriate for every young person inflicted
with his disease.
He was a month short of his 18th birthday. He believed cancer
was a gift that had enriched his life.
He died remembered for his infectious enthusiasm, his joy, his
grin, his insights into living with a terminal illness, the love
he showed to other sufferers, his toughness and his inclination
to do impromptu Riverdance imitations in hospital elevators.
On Tuesday afternoon, lying in a hospital bed in Sudbury, Ontario,
with pneumonia, he told his father Art: "I'm going to beat this."
He was dead a few hours later.
His Sudbury high school, St. Benedict Catholic Secondary School,
cancelled exams, declared a "Cory Day" and allowed its students
to go home.
The lead singer of a student band in which he had once played
composed a song for him. Students from high schools across the
city turned up to sign a Cory poster in St. Benedict's chapel.
CJOH-Television, the Canadian Television Network outlet in Ottawa,
broadcast a 3½-minute tribute to him on its 6 o'clock news, part
of a documentary-in-the-making of his life that now will never
be completed. The station's vice-president of news and public
affairs, Max
KEEPING, was to attend Cory's funeral mass today.
Many members of the Ottawa Senators hockey team planned to attend
a memorial service for him at Ottawa's Children's Hospital of
Eastern Ontario.
Parents of other children with cancer being treated at the hospital
were devastated by the news that he had died, said palliative
care nurse Marilyn
CASSIDY. "
There have been so many families
calling."
Cory had befriended and counselled them. He had taught them,
parents and children, how to live with cancer and the process
of dying.
Interviewed last November for a Globe and Mail Focus article
on how to live life at the edge of death, he said: "Death has
never fazed me. The only thing that's fazed me is not getting
the chance to live this life . . . and I've lived more in two
years [with cancer] than most people will live in their entire
life, and I appreciate that."
Cory MAESTRELLO, the
son of a retired mine worker, revelled in
living for his last two years.
"I feel there's a path out there for me," he said. "Be it by
God or whatever the higher power is, I always feel there's a
path set out for me."
He visited with dying children in the hospital, even after doctors
told him that he himself was beyond treatment. He spoke at dead
children's memorial services.
He approached Mr.
KEEPING last year and asked if he could appear
on CJOH's annual fundraising telethon for the hospital. Mr.
KEEPING
agreed.
Cory was on air for an hour, talking about what it was like to
have cancer and showing photographs of Serge, his closest friend
at the hospital, who had died. Mr.
KEEPING called his presence
"compelling."
Cory said excitedly afterward: "Working on the telethon was a
blast. The words that I said helped people. It's given me the
tools to help people. I don't care if I die tomorrow."
He talked to his Globe and Mail interviewer about the joy he
felt with life. "Your very best day is probably my worst day,"
he said.
He talked about the importance of each day. "I always let everyone
know I love them," he said, "just in case I don't get the chance
to. I've got to say everything that I need to say today. I may
not be here tomorrow to say it."
Said Ms. CASSIDY: "
You sometimes found yourself asking if he
was too good to be true. He was the real thing, big-time. He
was a very special kid" -- a hero to other youngsters with cancer,
she said, who faced his own adversity with inner strength and
inner ability.
Cory and Max
KEEPING became Friends after the
CJOH telethon.
The station executive took him to Senators' games and introduced
him to the players. People introduced to Cory rarely, if ever,
forgot him.
He had a delightful, buzzy energy, with an intelligence that
measured off the Richter scale, said Nic
BATTIGELLI, one of Cory's
St. Benedict teachers who gave a eulogy for him at his funeral.
He was charming, and attractive to girls -- frequently girls
older than himself. Mr.
BATTIGELLI recalled him taking a beautiful
Grade 13 student to an event while he was still in Grade 9.
Mr. KEEPING recalled taking Cory to a party for his 30th anniversary
as a television broadcaster just before Christmas (Cory was living
at the children's hospital's Ronald McDonald House; he went home
to Sudbury at Christmas and never returned).
At 2 a.m., Mr.
KEEPING suggested to Cory that it was maybe time
to to leave. Cory replied that there were still two people at
the party, and as long as someone was partying, he wanted to
party.
Mr. KEEPING said: "I feel so good that even in six months this
kid could teach me how important today is . . . that what's important
is what you do with today. He turned on a light and, I know I
shouldn't say this, but the light's gone out. It's sad for me.
But how enriched I've been -- and I said that on air."
Mr. BATTIGELLI and Cory had developed a bond even before the
boy was diagnosed with cancer. Cory wanted to become a teacher,
and told Mr.
BATTIGELLI shortly after he met him: "You're the
teacher I want to be."
Mr. BATTIGELLI said Cory, as a 14-year-old Grade 9 student, asked
to join an anti-violence peer-meditation program the teacher
ran at the school, and later asked to accompany Mr.
BATTIGELLI
on a similar conflict resolution project he had started in a
nearby first nations community. He said Cory was superb at it.
"He just was a kid who was not a kid," Mr.
BATTIGELLI said. "I
think God has truly picked up an angel. God sends us signposts.
I think he will be my guardian angel for the rest of my teaching
career."
St.
Benedict principal Teresa
STEWARD/STEWART/STUART, when she cancelled exams
this week, said: "This is a time for Cory."
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