David Betts: The Canadian Angle

David Betts had a solid grounding in journalism by the time he arrived at Reuters London in 1964. His native Halifax, Nova Scotia, was a busy news-town, with a major port not untouched by disaster. The great harbour explosion that levelled much of the city and killed 2,000 people back in 1917 set the pace for a later 20th Century that brought Battle of the Atlantic drama, notorious riots on V-E Day and more.

Thus, there was nothing historically bland about Halifax as young Betts took up newspaper work in 1956. Awaiting him was plenty of rough-house ice hockey to enliven the sports pages, plus Gaelic-flavoured politics and a lively social scene befitting what in effect was the capital of a three-province Canadian region called “the Maritimes”.

David was also a stringer for CBC public radio, which served him in good stead as Reuters Audio’s editor-manager years later.

From Halifax, he transferred in 1962 to the Toronto headquarters of The Canadian Press and learned his “wire-service” fundamentals there under the autocratic sway of a dynamo named Gillis Purcell.  “GP” ruled “CP” for many years, building it up to the true status of National News Agency.

GP’s eccentricities were legion - notably a hyper-sensitive eye for sexual double entendres. Certain words in any form were banned from CP copy, “lay” most conspicuous among them. As a result, wreaths had to be “placed” and foundations were never “laid”. Moreover, GP insisted that references to limb amputations had to specify whether the “cut” took place above or below the knee or elbow. This reflected his own wartime loss of a leg from above the knee. 

So Dave Betts perforce possessed a keen editorial alertness on making his 1964 departure to Reuters from Toronto. Reuters, incidentally, was referred to by code in CP’s on-wire messages. The code-word was “Cousin”, while a second international partner, AP, was coded “Brother” (no slight intended to the Old Country ally). 

In any case, DB chose “Cousin” for what turned out to be his permanent career segment, about which much is already known to his Reuter contemporaries. On the London social front, he and Patricia entertained handsomely at their attractive home in Islington after some good years in Bromley, south London. But they still had a Canadian residential connection during and even after the initial retirement period in Sturminster, Dorset - an inherited house in the tiny Nova Scotian community of Wallace. There, the couple would spend several weeks every year, immersing themselves in what must have been the Canadian equivalent of life with the Archers. Singing in the church choir, for one thing, was a delight. 

Latterly in Wallace, they joined their daughter Lisa - locally resident but still carrying her Equity actor’s card - who proved herself adept at everything from duties with the Wallace fire brigade to her additional role as a professional builder. These days Lisa serves as Village Administrator for the neighbouring municipality of Pugwash. During the Cold War, Pugwash became a rallying point under industrialist and native son Cyrus Eaton for international nuclear-peace activists.

The Betts’s son Luke is currently a newspaper publisher and head of a digital advertising firm in Mexico following time spent on a Toronto daily. Dave’s late brother Donald was Dean of Arts and Sciences at Dalhousie University in Halifax. A second brother, Andrew, survives.

Among the retired Dave’s amusements as a part-time denizen of rural Nova Scotia was monitoring the often exotic regional radio scene. A favourite station transmitted from the nearby province of Prince Edward Island, dubbed “Spud Island” for its vast production of potatoes. In this case, the erstwhile head of Reuters Audio wasn’t impressed with the pronunciation of personality names from abroad by station newscasters. One victim, according to Dave, was former Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.  Ignominiously, he became Gouge Whitlam in Island radio parlance - as if, commented DB, poor Gough hadn’t suffered enough being dumped from power 40 years previously.

During a holiday visit to Halifax in the early Eighties I met up with Dave, who was home to see relatives. We went to a drinkery at the imposing Lord Nelson Hotel. There we chatted and quaffed the delicious Haligonian ale, Keith’s, at the bar, behind which a large TV carried an American NFL football game. Suddenly on-screen was a close-up of a presumably star player, face half-concealed by his spaceman’s helmet as he loomed massively and menacingly above us.

Then an identity caption flashed out. “MANFRED PAGEL,” it read! We were incredulous.  “Not the Manfred Pagel,” we chorused. No, of course it wasn’t. Nor were we hallucinating. Instead, we were seeing an improbable namesake who had crashed the violent realm of the National Football League. Our Manfred Pagel had recently been made editor of Reuters World Service and doubtless was busy an ocean away with his non-violent new duties.

But back to the melancholy year 2014: The recent move by Patricia and David from agreeable Sturminster to distant Dornoch came as something of a surprise to myself and others. But it’s explained in part by the fact that a Betts family forebear was a 19th-Century migrant from Dornoch to Nova Scotia.

Dornoch, an hour’s drive north of Inverness on Scotland’s east coast, is the site of a notable golf course and Dave, though never a golfer, was signed on as a “social” member following his arrival from Dorset.

In this and all other respects, he and Patricia had looked forward to a happy time in their new location as they celebrated his 78th birthday on October 18. Some of their belongings were still not unpacked and Patricia fretted about this, to be assured by her husband that there was time aplenty for such chores.

But three days later he died and on October 29 a Church of Scotland funeral service took place in Dornoch Cathedral, culminating in the strains of a lone piper playing David’s own set of pipes. The shocking suddenness of the turn of events is all the more reason for expressing solidarity with Patricia, Lisa and Luke in their loss. ■