It was late September or early October, and I can’t recall whether it was 2003 or 2005. I know for certain it wasn’t 2004 because the National Hockey League wasn’t playing due to its lockout. The dates don’t really matter now.

What was important then, and now, is that a letter on B.C. Lions letterhead arrived in an envelope bearing a Lions logo. It was typewritten in black, but there in blue ballpoint was Bob Ackles’s signature at the bottom. I can still see the letter, and I wish now that I had saved it.

The president and CEO of the Lions was taking me to task for a column I had written in the Straight weeks earlier. The thrust of my column was that Ackles should use his tremendous clout gained in the decades he’d been a power broker in the Canadian Football League to move a Lions game scheduled for B.C. Place Stadium the same night as the first Saturday night game of the new Vancouver Canucks season. I reasoned that the Canucks would sell out their game and the Lions would lose out at the gate as a result.

In those instances where the two teams had conflicting home-game schedules, the Canucks would always put 18,000 people in the seats at GM Place, but the Lions always had room for more. Without a conflict, some of the hockey fans would likely buy a ticket for the football game. So even though the Lions schedule was released first, they were the ones who had the most to gain by getting away from going head-to-head with hockey. I was merely offering some free advice.

Ackles didn’t want any and let me know in no uncertain terms.

Line by line and point by point, Ackles countered my suggestions in his letter. And, as always, his arguments were sound and accompanied by facts to strengthen his position. He wasn’t going to back down from a scheduling conflict with his sporting cousins across the street, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let a fledgling columnist tell him when and where his football team should take the field.

That was the Bob Ackles I will always remember: fiercely proud of and loyal to the football team he was associated with for more than 50 years and ready to defend both the Lions and the CFL whenever necessary.

What I’ll always remember about our little spat is that the next time I ran into Ackles, he didn’t snub me or hold any kind of grudge. Instead, he approached me asking if he could join me on my radio show to take the debate to the people.

As much as Ackles understood football, he understood the art of selling football even better. And he knew that by taking to the airwaves to debate the subject, he’d be getting 15 minutes to sell more tickets.

I had the good fortune of interviewing Ackles dozens of times on the radio. Virtually every request to have him as a guest was accepted. In a hockey-first market like this one, Ackles had the foresight to realize that every time he was on the radio it meant the topic would be football and not hockey.

Because of that, it was almost commonplace for Ackles to do interviews while on holidays, while out for dinner with his wife, Kay, during business meetings, or between flights at an airport. I remember him stepping off a flight from Toronto late one night, retrieving my request for an interview from his voice mail, and then joining me from the baggage-claim area at YVR to talk football.

Ackles was a master in making people feel the same way he did about the Lions all these years. And it’s such a shame that he’s gone at the young age of 69.

When the Leos got their hands on the Grey Cup in 2006, that evening in Winnipeg was clearly the pinnacle in Ackles’s rebuilding and rebranding of the team that was on life support before he returned to the scene in 2002.

But as much as he loved sporting the championship ring from that achievement, his proudest moments in recent years were likely the four near-capacity crowds under the dome for four consecutive western finals, from 2004 to 2007. Ackles loved a full house, and through all of his hard work in the office and in the corporate community, he made the Lions and the CFL relevant again.

On game nights, Ackles was in his element. He was down on the field, and he was up in the suites. He was cruising through the press box, and he was out on the plaza shaking hands with the ticket-buying public. It often seemed as if there six of him, but, of course, there was only one Ackles. And while there will one day be another president of the B.C. Lions, there will never be another Bob Ackles.

There’s bound to be much discussion about permanent and lasting memorials to a man who was short in stature but who was larger than life. But in the meantime, there could be no better tribute to the man who gave his life to the B.C. Lions than filling the dome for the team’s next home game on July 18. He’d love it.

It’s a wonderful thing that B.C. Place Stadium will soon be fitted with a retractable roof. However, it’s unfortunate it can’t happen sooner than 2011. When the dome is open, you just know that Ackles will be looking down from above.

And he won’t care what’s going on next door at GM Place—because to Ackles, B.C. Place was always the place to be.

Jeff Paterson is a sportscaster and talk-show host on Vancouver’s all-sports radio, Team 1040. E-mail him at jeff.paterson@team1040.ca.