Pic from Calgary Sun
The Calgary Sun 11/4/05: Tom McCamus
Gretzky’s toughest goal
Stacy Shaikin
Calgary Sun
November 4, 2005
The Gretzky family stickhandles through life and death.
FATHER KNOWS BEST ... Tom McCamus, left, plays Walter Gretzky, and Kris Holden-Ried, right portrays the Great One, Wayne Gretzky.
Imagine waking up from a coma and not remembering your son, the greatest hockey player that ever lived, set more than 50 records in the NHL and won four Stanley Cups in the 1980s.
When Walter Gretzky’s aneurism caused a stroke, that’s exactly what happened.
The Walter Gretzky Story: Waking Up Wally, based upon Walter’s book, Walter Gretzky: On Family, Hockey and Healing, dramatizes the struggle by the father of hockey great Wayne Gretzky to regain his life and memory after suffering a brain aneurysm in 1991 just as he was settling into retirement.
“The first time I saw it, I cried,” Walter Gretzky said. “It was very difficult to watch.
“Some of the things I saw — I didn’t know I was quite like that — but to see it being acted … it must have been terrible for my wife and the rest of my family.”
Director Dean Bennett says it was a challenge to find the right actors to portray Walter and Wayne Gretzky.
“We searched the country until we found Kris Holden-Ried (Wayne) and Tom McCamus (Walter),” Bennett says.
McCamus met with the elder Gretzky and videotaped him so he could capture the essence of Canada’s favourite father.
“He’s a remarkable man,” McCamus says. “He’s just as nice a guy as you would think.
“The difficulty was replicating the level of frustration he had.”
Holden-Ried’s challenge was portraying a Canadian legend — a task made even more difficult because he could barely skate.
“The day after getting the part, I started with a hockey coach,” Holden-Ried says. “First I learned to skate.
Then we’d go more script specific, studying and practising slap-shots, stopping pivots, skating backwards, etc.
“I didn’t know if should take the role,” he says. “I didn’t want to mess up playing Wayne … he’s an iconic figure.”
One of the highlights of the shoot for the actors was reproducing Wayne’s retirement game in Madison Square Garden, which was shot in Edmonton’s Rexall Centre.
“Three thousand volunteers came out to fill the stands in Edmonton,” Holden-Ried says.
“They were cheering for him through me. It was very moving and very emotional, I was blown away. Going through the same hallway he did, meeting all the same workers it was like I stirred the ghost of 99 walking through there.”
The Walter Gretzky Story: Waking up Wally airs Nov. 6 on CBC at 8 p.m.
© The Calgary Sun
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