Don Gibb sent off into retirement in grand style
The Don Gibb era as a journalist, editor and journalism professor came to an end Saturday night (Nov. 1) when the Ryerson Journalism Alumni Association sent him off with a retirement party that adopted its own moniker, the Gibb-fest.
And what a fest-ive event it was before 200 of Don’s friends, family, students, former students, colleagues and faculty who bought $75 tickets to pay tribute to a guy who has touched the lives of thousands of people as an educator and journalist.
After everyone was seated, Don, who had officially retired as a Ryerson prof at the end of August, made his grand entrance into the crowded ballroom at the Delta Chelsea Hotel in Toronto to the tune of Roy Orbison’s “Only The Lonely”, a song he had sung for years (always badly) to unsuspecting first-year students and others. (Message to Don: Don’t quit your day job. Oops, too late!).
Always the showman during the song, he put on dark Orbison-style sunglasses and played air guitar, while basking in the adulation and applause of the dozens of guests.
The night took off from there.
Emcees Ann Rauhala (a Ryerson journalism professor) and Don McCurdy (a former editor in Kitchener) first took their shots to lead the parade of roasters and toasters who then came to the microphone or sent video tributes.
Among the memorable ones:
Prof. Rauhala conceived an idea of everyone wanting to be a little like Don by having all 200 guests hold up to their own faces a black and white photocopied cutout face of Don, much to the real Don’s astonishment and amusement. Imagine 200 ghostly Don Gibb look-alikes filling a hotel ballroom. It was eerie. The back of the cutout’s face had some space for a message to Don for a special memory book. Many guests doodled on Don's mask, adding hair, tattoos, etc.
Prof. Joyce Smith adapted an old Eartha Kitt standard “Santa Baby” and recast it as “Donnie Baby”. She has a talent as a cabaret singer, Joyce that is.
Vancouver Province political columnist and humourist Mike Smyth appeared as Don Cherry, complete with loud jacket and Cherry’s mannerisms and insults of the status quo.
Four Journalism Course Union students—Seema Persaud, Kristy Thomson, Amanda Cupido, and Robyn Urback--who had Don as a teacher in their first years read a poem about what it was like to have Don as a teacher.
Professor John Miller, who as journalism chair had hired Don in 1988, sent an amusing video in which he took viewers on a tour of the faculty offices corridor, now called “Gibb-Way”, and then into what he described as now a shrine, Don’s old office. The “shrine” included a box of Tim Hortons’ timbits left as an offering and an urn allegedly containing Don’s toenail clippings, now considered a physical memory of Don.
Prof. Suanne Kelman was at her mischievous and droll best with a video revelation of some pranks she had played on Don and about which she was finally confessing the truth and expressing her “regret” for her actions.
Don and former student Michael Annecchini, who had performed together in the past, reprised a karaoke number to the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann.” Annecchini has quite a good voice. As for Don, well…
Don’s wife Barb, whom he met when he was a student at Ryerson, surprised him by arranging for a video photo collage of Don’s childhood, youth, and career. The audience gasped at pictures showing Don with hair.
There were tributes and roasts from journalism chair Paul Knox; former chair Vince Carlin; former student Jennifer Quinn, now based in London, England; former London Free Press colleague George Hutchison; Globe and Mail deputy editor Sylvia Stead; Tyler Forkes of alumni relations; and lifelong friends Martin Elliott and Wes Keener.
Even Ryerson president Sheldon Levy sent a written tribute.
A touching video was submitted by former student Suzanne Ma, now studying at Columbia University. She spoke about Don’s caring nature and the lessons that she had learned from him on how to be a great journalist. Jamie Maraucher, another former student now working for the CBC in B.C., sent a video tribute.
Don had the last word, of course, and while he was appropriately irreverent at the outset, he took the time to acknowledge in some fashion every person in the audience as being special to him, including former students from his first class (1989) and those who will graduate in 2011, Don’s last class of students. There were at least 20 of them at the fete on Saturday.
The breadth of the guest list was not lost on Don who said later:
“I saw my life's many stagesunfold in front of me through so many friends -- my family, my former neighbours in London, Ont., former colleagues from The London Free Press, people I had hired, my amazingfull-time faculty, part-time faculty and staff friends, people for whom I had done writing and editing seminars, journalists from The Canadian Press and The Globe and Mail and my studentsfrom the 20 years of classes I taught at Ryerson.
“My students have becomemy wonderful -- and huge -- extended family. I have been to some of their weddings, have mettheir children and still get together for lunches and dinners and coffee. How many people in their jobs getsuch a chance?”
Don valiantly held his emotions in check for the most part, even as the evening wound down. But he had his moments as the magnitude of his send-off hit him and he had to step back and collect his thoughts.
“Oh, what a night,” he said. “Pretty overwhelming.
"“What can I say? I'm one lucky guy who was allowed to take his passion for his craft and teach a new generation of writers to develop their own talents – and find the passion.”
Message from former student Suzanne Ma.
View the DON GIBB YouTube VIDEO