Barre Campbell, a former sports journalist, says his “mouth and keyboard” have been used a lot over his career. He’s also a member who continues to work, which is allowed and encouraged by the association.
Of Barre Campbell, you can truly say, “In the beginning was the word.”
As Campbell himself says, “My mouth and my keyboard have been used a lot throughout my career.” The public has known this Federal Retirees member perhaps most prominently as a sports writer for eight years with the Ottawa Sun, where he covered the Canadian Football League, junior hockey and Triple-A baseball, among other sports.
But once those aspirations were dusted and done, Campbell turned to media relations for sports organizations in Ottawa. He began as director of media and public relations for the Ottawa Lynx Baseball Club. He later filled the same role for the Ottawa Renegades Football Club.
Still moving upward, he later became manager of media relations for the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group, which included, among other things, communications for the Ottawa Redblacks of the CFL and the Ottawa 67s of the Ontario Hockey League.
You might call that a career, but Campbell proved professionally footloose, next taking over senior communications positions for the City of Ottawa.
Topping everything off, he has for several years now been manager of media relations with Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the Canadian Coast Guard.
It has been a career of incessant writing, interviewing and managing, and training the staff that have helped him exercise his manifold responsibilities.
And if you’re truly curious, you might want to know that he’s recently taken on responsibilities as a reader of scripture at St. Patrick’s Basilica on Kent Street. Some would say this is the Word writ large.
“I enjoy this a lot. The basilica is right next to my workplace on Kent Street — so close I can leave my office and be in there in four minutes.”
Of course, none of this would have happened if Campbell weren’t good at his wordsmithing. He suspects it helps to start early — which he did. He remembers receiving a used typewriter from his father when he was in grade school. That typewriter was put to good use after he and his brother attended a wrestling card at the Winnipeg Arena.
“I loved wrestling, and I wrote up an account of that wrestling card — and my dad ripped that sheet out of the typewriter, read it, and said, ‘Pretty good. You might be the next Jack Matheson,’ one of the best sportswriters in Winnipeg.”
The family moved a lot because his father’s career as an RCMP officer required frequent moves from posting to posting. When Campbell was in Grade 10 in Fredericton, N.B., he learned that the local newspaper, The Daily Gleaner, was looking for a high school sports correspondent. “What they wanted was basically someone to cover high school sports for publication in the paper. It was perfect for me.
“I had loved sports since my father started taking me to Winnipeg Blue Bombers games when I was five. I grew to love all sports. And now I was writing about them. That’s kind of how I got into it.”
He acknowledges that he’s a bit of a serendipitous member of Federal Retirees. “To be frank, I don’t quite remember exactly when I signed up, but it was no doubt at some sort of talk on retirement strategies.”
But he’s fully on board with the association’s mandate. “In my communications work, I’ve seen just how hard people in the public service work. And I think anything that helps government retirees with planning for the future and providing a one-stop resource for information is a good thing.”