Recycling is good, right? Well, recently I heard from the son of the man this post is about. He found it on an old blog I kept a number of years ago. On rediscovering the blog I found a number of pieces I wouldn’t mind reprinting here, and what better to start with than this tribute to one of the few men I could ever say I truly hated. And almost loved.
This post was written in 2004 in memory of Jim’s death two years earlier.

Rochedale College. But that’s another story.
It’s almost two years now since Jim Mackin died.
Mackin, of course, was the controversial, obstreperous, exuberant publisher of The Outrider, Toronto’s first newspaper for the homeless. I don’t really know why I’m thinking of him again, except that my wife and I recently passed by the old Rochedale College building where The Outrider offices had been.
Jim and I met in 1994 when I joined with him in the early days of The Outrider, where I also got to meet and work with Rod Goodman of the Toronto Star and his wife Jan Hayes of the Globe and Mail. It was an exciting time and a great learning experience – on many levels.
Ours was a complex relationship. Part mentor, part father-figure, he was, for a time, the most important man in my life. On the other hand, I never knew when he was lying and when he was telling the truth; although the way to bet was on the lie. But Jim, along with his staff, succeeded in putting together the most widely popular “homeless” paper in Canada. It was Jim’s brilliant idea that while the paper was meant to help the homeless by providing a source of income, the content should be accessible and interesting to the public at large — in other words, to the people actually buying it. To this end we covered general news, unusual news, and peppered the publication with unique features. Among these was: “Al the Alien,” who looked at society from a uniquely outsider viewpoint; “Blaise Meredith,” advertising pundit and satirist; and “Dumpster Dan,” a supposedly homeless restaurant reviewer who based his reviews on the refuse tossed in the restaurant dumpsters. (“I wouldn’t recommend the salmon, since most of the ones thrown out are only half eaten, but the spare ribs would seem to be delicious since there’s nothing but bones left in every instance.”)
We knew we’d made it when we were parodied by Frank magazine.
And then it came crashing down.
At the height of The Outrider‘s success, with a major advertising company creating a city-wide campaign for the paper, Jim indulged in a series of firings, and some very questionable activities involving finances. When I stood up to him about the firings (I was Assignment Editor) he fired me as well in a pique. The upshot was an abrupt end to my return to journalism — a goal I’d had since having to give up my column in the Welland Tribune back in 1975 — and my wife and I almost lost our apartment.
He was one of the few people (perhaps the only person) in my life against whom I ever held a grudge.
I swore I would never talk to him again.
Nor did I. Until he found my e-mail and contacted me many years later.
He said he was dying.
Such was his reputation that I doubted him. When I wrote to a few others who had shared in the “Jimmy Mackin Experience” they too doubted him, and warned me not to get involved. I wrote back anyway and, after a time, finally arranged to meet him. Despite my anger, and despite my best intentions, I really couldn’t keep away. Jim has always been a likeable cuss – sort of like James Mason with Sean Connery’s voice.
We met at The Daily Express, a coffee shop across the road from the old Outrider offices, and as soon as I saw him I knew his story was true. He really was dying. And as far as he was concerned, I was one of his best friends.
Sad to say, I probably was.
During the last months, as Jim steadily lost his battle against cancer, I came to know him from a new perspective: part P. T. Barnum, part Tony Robbins. He was convinced right up to the end that there was a gold mine in the old Outrider, and even sold me the rights and title to the newspaper for a dollar (which he then gave back telling me to give it to the first homeless person I met – which I did).
And whatever had passed between us in the past, in the end I’d have to say that he died as a friend. A difficult friend to be sure, but a real one.
I miss him.
Even though life is easier without him.
———
For anyone interested, the basic story can be read in The Ryerson Review of Journalism (“Street Fight“). I must, however, point out a few peculiar inaccuracies. For instance, David Paddon, who appears in the article, was unknown to the rest of us. Not only was he not Assignment Editor (it was a small office — I would have noticed someone else sitting at my desk), but he also didn’t craft the JobsOntario grant proposal, which was in fact entirely the work of Jack Mersereau and Frencesca (can’t remember her last name). In fact, Paddon’s entire “career” in the Outrider was a fiction he created for the Ryerson journalist’s benefit — yet another reminder not to trust everything you read in a newspaper or magazine.)
MikeWJ
December 20, 2010
You’re a better man than I am because I’m rarely able to love anybody against whom I hold a grudge. I’ve got a major grudge festering right now, in fact, and it’s keeping me awake at night, as I plot my wicked revenge. I know this is wrong, of course, but I have trouble stopping, perhaps because the object of my hate hurt my son, and in a terrible way.
Still, it’s funny how time and information can change our view of somebody–transform them from the devil into a demon, or from a demon into a wicked troublemaker. I’ve had this happen to people I’ve known, and I hope that if anybody is holding a grudge against me, they’ll give me what I currently seem unable to give to others: a break.
A wonderful post. Thought provoking and bittersweet, as well as instructive.
Frank Lee MeiDere
December 20, 2010
It’s hard to hold a grudge against someone who considers you one of their best friends. Disarming, to say the least. And too, because of Jim I ended up going back to university. He was dead-set against it, but Barbara made me fill out the forms for OSAP and line up a full-time course-load, telling me I could always cut down or not go when the time came. I couldn’t see the point. The paper was garnering praise, publicity, and McCann Erickson had a major (and very clever) advertising campaign laid out for us. In short, there was no place to go but up. Still, Barb decided it would be a good idea if I had a backup plan, so I filled in the forms. And a couple of weeks later was fired.
There were actually a couple of elements involved in that. The first was Jim’s sudden dismissal of most of the news staff, and the other was the fact that I’d stumbled upon what looked to be some serious jiggering of finances, some of which came from the government. I called him on both, which resulted in what “doing the right thing” generally does — except in movies. When he fired me Rod and Jan (the Toronto Star and Globe and Mail editors) quit in protest, and the paper essentially folded from there. He tried to keep it going but the back was broken and, not to put too fine a point on it, he’d lost the talent that gave it its special zing.
We suddenly had no income, lots of rent, and a rather unsupportive apartment superintendent. We managed to hang on until the OSAP came in, and for a while I scrambled to find another job. I did manage to grab the coveted position of “mud mixer” for a company that makes clay figurines, but of course it was too good to last.
The part that hurt worst was that I’d been put in the position of whistle-blower and effectively pulled the plug on the very thing I loved most. For that, I figured I could never forgive him.
But then running across him some ten years later, dying of cancer yet still filled with endless ideas and enthusiasm, and counting me as one of his best friends — with absolutely no idea that he’d done anything wrong. Well, as I said — disarming.
Still, and I don’t want to sound ghoulish, I’m happy I don’t have to put up with him any more.
MikeWJ
December 20, 2010
“I did manage to grab the coveted position of “mud mixer” for a company that makes clay figurines, but of course it was too good to last.”
*laughing* All the good jobs vanish. And if there’s one thing I’ve NOT learned over the years, including recently, it’s that it never pays to be whistleblower.
Frank Lee MeiDere
December 21, 2010
Maybe we have to learn to play a different tune.
Shelley
October 17, 2012
I enjoyed your story about Jim. It was somehow validating.
Frank Lee MeiDere
October 17, 2012
Did you know him?