By Tim Baines • Postmedia
During Neil Lumsden’s regular phone conversations with his good buddy Doug Falconer, the call would end with, ‘I love you brother.”
Love. Such a beautiful word. When it’s too late, we wish we’d said it more.
Falconer, a Hall of Fame football player (with a Vanier Cup and a Grey Cup) and movie producer who worked with stars like Nicolas Cage, Geoffrey Rush, Donald Sutherland, Kiefer Sutherland, Susan Sarandon, Demi Moore, Aaron Eckhart, Mel Gibson and Tommy Lee Jones, died Sunday in Kingston at age 69.
Devastating. Crushing. Shocking. A guy who was all about the Happily Ever Afters, a free spirit who inspired people and made a difference in the world is gone. Suddenly. He had it all – the good looks, the charm, a successful career. If you met Doug Falconer, you didn’t forget him – he was a man full of effervescence. He lived and loved his life, in itself a movie script where he dated a Miss Grey Cup, a Cosmopolitan cover girl and a Playboy playmate before settling nicely into a 30-year marriage to ex-wife Louise. Falconer also absolutely adored his daughters, Quinn and Taber.
There was a bond between Lumsden and Falconer – football teammates with the undefeated 1975 University of Ottawa Gee-Gees. So many good players and good people came from that team. And friendships endured – a love for each other, a brotherhood that was forged on and away from a football field.
Lumsden got a call earlier this week telling him of Falconer’s passing.
“I was in shock,” said Lumsden. “It was like somebody kicked me in the (groin). I just couldn’t believe it. We all know people who have been sick – friends and family – sometimes they’ve died. But when you get a call out of the blue … it’s like, ‘Holy crap, what’s going on here?’
“That love you have for others doesn’t have to be restricted to your family. He told me and I told him and I’m sure it was the same with some of his other close friends. I was real lucky to call him a friend, a great friend.”
The two often reminisced about the good old days, sharing stories and laughing. And they talked about one of Falconer’s greatest gifts to uOttawa – the creation of the 1881 Football Alumni Association which provided a bond to the Gee-Gees legacy.
“Whenever we got on the phone, it was like a Neil and Doug talk, it could have been a podcast for crying out loud,” said Lumsden. “The trust people had in Doug’s enthusiasm was contagious. I loved his directness, I loved his passion for things.”
“He was fun loving and generous,” said Tom Casagrande, chairman of the 1881 alumni group. “Everything he did was in the interests of how he could help people. He went at everything with all he had. If things were getting delayed for whatever reason, he wasn’t afraid to rattle a few sabers. Every organization needs somebody like that. He was a larger-than-life character, just an amazing guy. He’ll be greatly missed. Everybody loved being around him. I loved the guy.”
Years earlier, as a uOttawa student, he was a party waiting to happen.
“I was a hippie, the pot-smoking kid on the team,” Falconer told me in an interview a bit more than a year ago. “(Gee-Gees coach) Don (Gilbert) would have to come over to 656 King Edward Ave. on Mondays to see if I was still alive. I just loved it all. I was experiencing life.”
But, damn, he was not only the coolest kid, he was a helluva football player. A defensive back with the Gee-Gees, he was drafted by the Toronto Argos, then claimed on waivers by the Rough Riders. Falconer played in Calgary in 1977-78. He was dealt back to Ottawa, but was released. He wound up his career with Saskatchewan and Montreal.
With $1,000 in his pocket, he headed to California in 1981. He found a job selling ink toner, using a fake name – Ben McBride. He began acting, just missing out on the lead in an HBO series, The Hitchhiker. He thought he had a big role, in Nightmare on Elm Street 3, that also fell through.
“It was devastating,” Falconer told me. “I was thinking, ‘This f—ing business sucks.’ I’d get to the final five, it’d be me, Richard Gere, Tom Berenger, I was at that level. I was one of the last guys for Miami Vice — the role went to Don Johnson. It was one after another, that’s what the industry is, it’s rejection. My wife was pregnant, I had to work.”
So he sold cars and made $200,000 a year. In August of 2000, he was playing roller hockey at the beach. He felt intense pain in his chest and drove six blocks to the hospital.
“I was 48, I had captained a world championship (inline hockey team), I was celebrating the fact I had just outlived my father,” Falconer told me. “There was a heavy pain. I thought, ‘What the f–k was that?’ I sat down by the wall, I wasn’t feeling well. As soon as I tried to get back into the game, I didn’t feel right, I knew something was wrong.”
The surgeon told him it was called The Widowmaker, a massive blockage of the main artery.
“If I hadn’t gotten to the hospital when I did, I was absolutely done,” said Falconer. “When I came out of that hospital, the sky was never bluer. I felt like the luckiest guy in the world. I called up my twin brother Don, ‘Donnie, you need to go see a cardiologist.’ He blew it off. Months later, the same thing happened to him and he died.”
Falconer moved back to Ottawa in 2016 after living in Santa Monica for 35 years. Born in Calgary — his mom was Mavis, his dad Don served in World War II, then Korea. The family moved to Vancouver, back to Calgary, to Regina, then to Base Borden, an hour north of Toronto. After hitchhiking across Canada, he did his senior year of high school at Kingston’s La Salle Secondary School. To his friends, he became Hollywood.
“Look at the pictures, look at the Fu Manchu,” said Lumsden. “Look at the pictures when he was doing some modelling. He was Hollywood. He’s been Hollywood since he was 17.”
As a producer, his films – which have included Daughter of the Wolf, Wander and the upcoming Dangerous – have been nominated for several Canadian screen awards. He loved music; he recently wrote the theme song for Dangerous, with Johnny Reid singing lead.
It’s not easy to say goodbye, it never is. To my friend Doug: “Lots of peace, love and Imagine, too.”
VIA: https://ottawasun.com/sports/football/cfl/peace-and-love-loss-of-ex-ggs-football-star-movie-producer-doug-falconer-is-crushing
Photo by Errol McGihon
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