I have no riches and fame & fortune have never come my way. But I have had my share of brushes with fame. Nothing major, I mean, I haven’t rubbed elbows (much) with the rich and famous, but my path has crossed the paths of some folks of varying spotlight brightness.

When I was a kid, I went to school with someone who is now a member of the very successful Newfoundland folk band Great Big Sea. Sean McCann was in my class from grades 2 through 5, played on my cousins’ hockey teams, and his mom taught me in elementary school. I was also once on a flight with the guys from GBS. They were in business class and I was back in cattle class. I didn’t have the nerve to go up to them googly-eyed, “Hi Sean, remember me?”

Then, there’s Anna McGoldrick. In grade six, I think, I was in the glee club. Our class was asked to play backup for her in a show at the Arts and Culture Centre in St. John’s. Val de reeee, val de raaah, val de reeee, val de ra ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Sometime after that there was a show at the Memorial Stadium in St. John’s. They had a couple of soap opera stars there, Mitch Blake played by William Gray Espy and Kitt Holloway played by Bradley Bliss, both on Another World. Mitch was the sexy hunk of the show at the time having an affair with Rachel, and Kitt was the pretty blonde married to Joey Perrini, played by Ray Liotta. My mother and Aunt Jean went down there and brought a few of us kids along. Well, during question and answer period people lined up at the mics to ask questions or make comments. There was a fairly steady stream of star-stuck women saying “Can I come up and give Mitch a kiss.” Of course he obliged. Then one brave soul got to the mic and in his deepest, thickest Newfoundland accent said, “Is Kitt givin’ out any o’ dem kisses?” She was not quite so willing as Mitch to expose herself to public mauling so she said, “Only if you are 12 or under.” Although I was 14 at the time, I allowed my aunt and mother to coax me to the mic. “H-h-how about a f-f-fourteen year old?” “C’mon up here, I’ll kiss you!” So, I got to kiss Kitt Holloway! Move over Ray Liotta!

In 1984, Pope John Paul II came to St. John’s, Newfoundland. That was a big deal there. They anticipated that 250,000 people would show up at the park grounds around Quidi Vidi lake. That’s impressive given that there was only about ½ million people in the province at the time! Now, just because I was in the crowd I don’t think that it was a brush with fame, otherwise I’d be mentioning every concert I ever went to. But this was the Pope! Besides that, one day while walking downtown a news crew stopped me and asked what I thought of the Pope coming to St. John’s. “Well, I t’inks it’s great, right. I mean, it’s not all dat often we gets someone like da Pope comin’ to St. John’s. I definitely be dere, fer sure.” I made the 6:00 news with that eloquently stringed together group of words. Keeping with the religious figure theme, a few years earlier, I had met the Archbishop Alphonsis Penney when he did mass the 25th anniversary of the church we went to, St. Joseph’s. I was an alter boy at that mass. Little did I know at the time that Monsignor Jim Hickey, who also served as a special guest at that mass, would earn infamy in Newfoundland for being one of the most aggressive sexual predators of young boys in the history of the archdiocese. Don’t worry… I wasn’t a victim. Lucky or ugly, I guess.

Shortly after that, when I was 17, I was able to sneak backstage at a concert featuring two Canadian bands Harlequin and The Tenants. The girl I was dating at the time had been to the concert the night before and she and her friend had gotten back stage passes. After the concert, the three of us went backstage. The girls flashed their passes and I just kind of walked in with them. When I walked in, both bands were there sitting around drinking beer, putting their guitars away etc. The bassist for The Tenants points his finger at me and says “Hey you!”. My heart stopped. “You want a beer?” So, I sat backstage and had a beer with the bands. Later, I walked downtown with that same guy, Lewis Mele, to show him where Garbo’s bar was. It was on my way, and it was cool to walk along with a member of the band. He asked me to go in to the bar, but I was too young and broke to tag along. What a wimp, wha?

In and around that same time I managed to hook a summer job as Buster the Brookfield Ice Cream Bear. They hired two of us for the gig, but the other person’s father died suddenly and I wound up being the only one. So, all summer long, I rode around town with radio DeeJays, dressed in a polar bear suit going to corner stores and events giving out coupons for free ice cream. That suit weighed a freakin’ ton and was hot as hell! It was a pretty good gig and it paid well. I’m allowed to use the word “gig” for a job because I have such an affiliation with the musical community, you know… To make things interesting, one of the DJs, Ken Venus (yes, that was his REAL name) told the kids, on the air, that Buster was the world’s only moon-walking polar bear. Be sure to ask Buster to moonwalk for you! Asshole. However, that during those months, I was the celebrity. My fifteen minutes!

Several years later, I was doing a lot of traveling for work. During those travels, I crossed paths with two stars. While in New York City in November of 1999, I decided to walk through Macy’s department store. There, stood at an elevator, was William Hurt waiting for an elevator. I just kind of gawked at him with the same jaw-dropped expression I had the first time I walked down Broadway looking up at the skyscrapers. On another occasion, I was bumped from a flight in Halifax. As a result, the airline gave me access to the executive lounge. In there I sat next to a very upset Anne Murray. She apparently had left her eyeglasses in her hotel room or something and was quite distraught. She was complaining to the guy with her (husband? manager?) so I just sat back and pretended not to let it show that I recognized her.

There you have it… the summation of my celebrity sightings. You folks out there… what brushes with greatness have you experienced?