MR. MOVIES

Ian Caddell’s legacy as film critic and industry promoter

Following his death, filmgoers and producers lauded his efforts to foster a strong local film industry. A “remarkable man,” an “incredible legacy,” said some commentators. “Friendly, funny, generous, affable, and genuine,” said others. “Unbeatable in Trivial Pursuit,” someone quipped. “Inviolate integrity and wicked humour,” commented a notable filmmaker. The Province said he was one of Vancouver’s most “enthusiastic chroniclers.” The Globe and Mail said “he brought to his journalism the accuracy of a trivia buff and goodwill of a movie fan.” Georgia Straight publisher Dan McLeod called him “one of our greatest unsung heroes.” The Vancouver Film Critics Circle, an organization Caddell helped found, renamed its achievement award after him for his solid contribution to the B.C. film industry.

As a prolific writer, Caddell travelled to many film festivals and regularly interviewed the stars; he is said to have interviewed Meryl Streep 20 to 25 times. “He hated films that put children in jeopardy,” recalls Reel West publisher Ron Harvey, who describes Caddell as a “powerhouse writer” whose “kids were everything to him.” Son Nathan, who has followed in his father’s journalistic footsteps, says that “movies that pulled at the heartstrings were his favourite stuff.” But Caddell could be critical as well, once taking Steven Spielberg to task for not mentioning the role of Canadians in the Normandy invasion in Saving Private Ryan. In a review of Serpico, possibly his first for the Peak back in 1974, he revealed that same boldness and honesty, along with a caustic sense of humour.

Clearly, Caddell proved an indispensable guide to the best that the silver screen had to offer. But for the SFU community, perhaps equally memorable was his time on campus as Peak editor in the mid-1970s and as alumni president in the late 1970s. More recently he made appearances in communications classes as an experienced and talkative guest editor. “He was a great resource to parade in front of third-year students,” recalls instructor Bob Mercer (BA’94), once Caddell’s editor at the Georgia Straight. “In class, Ian spoke loudly and quickly and got a lot of laughs. It was apparent that he was smart and passionate and not a bullshitter.”

Two years after graduating, Caddell returned to campus as the alumni association’s president – one of the youngest ever – and then served on the executive board until 1981. Like everything he undertook, he embraced the task with enthusiasm and the vigour of a professional fight promoter. “We were a bit of a renegade group,” remembers Shirley Carter (BGS’76), who succeeded Caddell as president.

“We put on one big dance which was probably the introduction of James Byrnes [the popular blues singer] to the Vancouver music scene,” Carter adds. The association also planted the seeds for what became the Diamond Alumni Centre and encouraged the creation of alumni associations in other countries. Carter remembers Caddell as being a talker, a political activist who leaned to the centre-left, and “very much a ladies’ man.” She describes him as “gregarious, effervescent, very strong willed,” and a man who “knew what he wanted.” He could be “extremely charming,” she says, “but he could also be very miserable if things didn’t go his way.”

According to his friend and former roommate Chris Gainor, one of Caddell’s proudest moments while serving on the alumni association was participating in a conference in February 1981 that celebrated the achievements of leftist poet and scholar F.R. Scott, a founder of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF, forerunner to the NDP). In attendance were Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and Senator Thérèse Casgrain, an early feminist and one of Scott’s fellow CCFers. Wherever he lived, Gainor recalls, Caddell proudly displayed a photograph of himself with Trudeau and Casgrain taken at that event.

“He was somebody who really benefited from going to SFU and that was a time when SFU certainly was transforming itself,” says Gainor, a former editor of the Ubyssey, the Peak’s arch rival publication. He credits Caddell with playing a small role in that transformation. “He was quite pleased to do the alumni association work and he put a lot of energy into it. I think in that way he was able to give back a little to the university.”

Gainor lived with Caddell and two others in a co-op house in the late 1970s. The two student journalists bonded after a Canadian University Press conference in 1976 and continued to share an interest in politics throughout the years. Gainor describes his friend as a “real character” who thrilled at competing on a TV show called Trivia, where he could share his encyclopedic knowledge of sports, politics, movies, popular culture, and music: “he could do this Name That Tune stuff.” Gainor also admired Caddell’s talents as a promoter, skills that were developed while Caddell worked on film promotion at Famous Players, a film distribution company. Like Carter, Gainor recalls that “women found him very attractive.”

Rolf Mauer, another co-op house roommate and now the publisher of New Star Books, agrees, suggesting that “what charmed the women was his energy. That charmed everybody.” But Mauer also says that what truly distinguished Caddell was his range of knowledge. “He knew a lot about a lot of things. If you ran into him at a party the chances were very good that he would share an interest with you...and he would share your enthusiasm.” For Mauer, Caddell was “garrulous and passionately interested in everything.” Simply put, “Ian’s trick was always that he made you feel like an interesting person because he was interested in what you were interested in.”

Mauer and Caddell were fellow sports enthusiasts. Mauer laughs about the time the co-op house predicted that a hockey scoring record would be broken by the Boston Bruins. The house proudly beat out all the sportscasters and Caddell was ecstatic. He was a New York Rangers fan as a kid – one of his heroes was Andy Bathgate – and he played street hockey with Montreal Canadiens coach Toe Blake’s son Bruce. So he was well schooled in the sports world, cheering for his hometown Montreal Alouettes and Expos, and eventually extending his allegiance to the Vancouver Canucks and, of course, the Clansmen.

Marc Edge (BA’78) boasts that with Caddell as sports editor, they “put out one of the best sports sections the Peak has ever had.” That was in 1973. In the fall of 1974 Caddell and Eileen Eckert, who also attended SFU, were elected co-editors. With typical Peak sassiness, they warned the campus community that “recruiting [of volunteer staff] will start soon” and paraphrased the wartime slogan of Prime Minister Mackenzie King: “Conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription.” Use of the phrase underlined Caddell’s life-long interest in Canadian history and politics.