COMMENTARY: YOUR FIRE

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You wanna talk about a blast from the past?

This week I heard from my old buddy Clarence Iron. This month he’s going to be broadcasting the Flames & Oilers game from Edmonton in Cree. (Apparently it’s history-making, although I can’t believe it’s never been done till now).

Clarence and I first met way back in the summer of 1993. Prince Albert was hosting the North American Indigenous Games and I was covering them for CKBI, while Clarence was broadcasting the events on MBC. We became fast friends.

He was doing play-by-play of everything from basketball to rodeo and I clearly remember thinking, “Not only is this guy doing it well, but he’s making it entertaining!”

I was sitting right beside him in the broadcast booth, taking it all in.

Iron brought me on his radio show this week to thank me for – way back when – returning the favour by inviting him into the P.A. Raiders broadcast booth that following winter. I was the 20-year old Voice of the Raiders at the time.

To be honest … I don’t really remember doing that … but Clarence does and says that’s where he first got interested in hockey broadcasting. On a cold night in the Communiplex over 30 years ago.

And then over the years we lost touch. In our chat on the radio this week Clarence spoke of getting out of the radio business, working for a time in Oil & Gas, but battling Addiction and living on the streets of Edmonton, Medicine Hat and Saskatoon before getting into Recovery, working his way back, and now will be calling the Oilers & Flames likely just blocks away from where he was homeless.

I said maybe I should be interviewing Clarence about his story!!

But no, he said he reached out because that invitation to sit in on a WHL game decades ago meant so much to him and it lit a fire that never went out. And now he’s reaching the top.

Perhaps that’s the moral of the story.

Don’t ever let anybody – or anything – snuff out your fire.

That’s today’s Rod Pedersen Commentary

(The Rod Pedersen Show airs daily at 12 pm & 5 pm on Game+TV, WQEE Radio, Podcast & YouTube Live)