Royal visit by Prince William and Kate stirs memory of unemployed man who took his sons skiing

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      Listening to the breathless media accounts of the latest royal visit to Canada, I'm reminded of an amusing article written by former Straight staffer Verne McDonald

      In 1998, he covered a visit by Prince Charles and his two sons to Vancouver and Whistler.

      I'll include a passage frm Verne's piece to demonstrate that not much has changed over the past 13 years.

      This is what it is like to cover a major war or a federal election campaign, except in this case we were covering an unemployed man taking his sons skiing. Never mind, this was a story. We in the brigade are journalistic professionals. We all have to work on the assumption that all the newspaper readers and television watchers the whole world over are on their deathbeds and have made a dying request to hear what the princes are doing. Expiring minds want to know.

      Then there's this gem:

      As I was leaving, a schoolgirl erupted in tears and I was almost caught in the resulting stampede. Four photographers spotted her at the same time, and the sound of their motor drives alerted the pack instinct in more than three dozen journalists who had spent the morning interviewing each other for lack of anything else to do.

      In seconds she was surrounded eight deep, with one man at the back of the crowd leaping up and down with his camera screaming, “Sod the questions! Ask her later! Pictures first!”

      They had their story, and I had mine. My hitch in the royal household press brigade was over.

      Verne has always had a way with words.

      Follow Charlie Smith on Twitter at twitter.com/csmithstraight.

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