How did it get to be Wednesday already?
I had Monday off from work (I'd booked it because I thought it would be good to have a day home with Sam after the wedding we were scheduled to attend) so I think that is making the working week days sort of fuller than normal.
While I was home on Monday, I heard the sad news about Rick Wright passing away. As you know, Mark is a massive Roger Waters / Pink Floyd fan. I called him to tell him the news and while neither of us were as fond as Rick as we were of Syd (aah, Syd!), it was a shock more than anything. I suppose, fortunately for him and his family, his illness was relatively short.
This morning, when I arrived at work, with my cup of tea in hand, I clicked onto our local newspaper's website. Once again I was shocked by what I read, Hal "Moose" McCarney, had died. Unlike Mark, I had never met Rick Wright but I did know Mr McCarney. I think that anyone who worked at Queen's and had anything remotely associated with Football knew him. He was a wonderful guy, truly. He'll be deeply missed.
We just finished watching a really lovely tribute to him on the local tv news. His death has left a massive hole in the hearts and minds of many of us in the Queen's community and certainly, in the town of Gananoque.
Former Gaels coach McCarney dies at 81
Posted By THE WHIG-STANDARD
Hal Mccarney, among the most loved and respected persons in the history of Queen's University football and an exceedingly successful Gananoque businessman, passed away yesterday.
McCarney, who was hospitalized with a broken leg at the start of this year's football training camp, took a turn for the worse recently.
He was 81.
"Queen's has lost a great Golden Gael and I have lost a good friend," the football team's head coach Pat Sheahan said of the Gananoque native who starred as a player (1949-51) and coached for better than two decades, including 21 campaigns as the late Frank Tindall's assistant.
"Being in Hal's circle these past nine years has been such a great privilege and a pleasure for me," added Sheahan, recalling countless "fireside chats with the burly, affable man.
"He had a very intuitive sense about when myself and my coaching staff needed a little pep talk.
"He still came by a couple of times a year with 10 or 12 trays of lasagna for the players and took great pride in that. He did his best to maintain that all important link with the past and wanted the players to learn that their connection to Queen's was not just the four years they play."
McCarney, who owned Gananoque Boat Line and several other businesses in his hometown, suffered abdominal pains and underwent surgery while recovering from the broken leg.
Sheahan said McCarney was supposed to be released from hospital on Sept. 6, "the day we played in Guelph. He left instructions to be released in time to get home and watch us play on television or be kept in hospital so he could watch from there. So Hal set the parameters for how the hospital was to deal with his release."
Funeral arrangements are pending.
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