I can't believe it has been 25 years since we lost John Candy.
I have been a fan since the early days of Second City Television, when Candy's talent shone through in characters like TV personality Johnny LaRue, Melonville Mayor Tommy Shanks and clarinetist Yosh Shmenge.
I loved him in "Uncle Buck," "Home Alone," "Summer Rental" and my all time favourite, "Planes, Trains and Automobiles"; but I really fell in love with John Candy, in the platonic sense only, when he agreed to be interviewed for a "Biography" segment to be broadcast on the Weekend edition of CTV National News.
It was November 1993, and Candy's first foray into the field of directing. The movie was called "Hostage for a Day" and was being filmed in Aurora, Ont., north of Toronto.
I didn't know what to expect, when CTV cameraman Anthony Steward and I arrived at the set, but Candy was disarming, and bowled us over with his charm, his kindness and his down to Earth personality.
He also made me giddy. I couldn't stop laughing.
We talked about our high school years; his interest in journalism; he had enrolled at Toronto's Centennial Community College and we traded stories about the people we knew at university. He went to McMaster in Hamilton, while I graduated from Toronto's York University.
We shared common interests in the arts, theatre and journalism, which took us in very different directions; he was on a career trajectory that for me was larger than life; although he left me speechless with his admission that he was a fan of my work.
I only spent a few hours with John Candy, but there was enough of a connection between us, to make me feel overwhelming sadness, when I learned of his death three months later, while he was on vacation in Mexico on March 4, 1994.
Today we remember John Candy and smile.
