Page 92 - A Visit with Ray "Mac" MacDonald: In Honour of the 50th Year of CJFX Radio

ISSUE : Issue 64

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1993/8/1

until 1971--I had no sense of who I was and I had no confidence... poor self-esteem. I just wasn't in control of my life. Someone else was calling the shots in my life and I went on from there. You can't love others if you can't love yourself and you can't do what you want to do if you don't know who you are. But then you have to accept the person you are. You know, you look in the mirror and you see yourself, and who's better qualified to be yourself than you? So I don't try to be anyone else. (But it takes a lot of courage to be yourself.) It might take courage but in the end it is very freeing. Because I don't have to impress anyone, and I don't say that to be arrogant. I don't say I should go into a no- smoking place puffing on a big ci? gar, or go to my child's graduation wearing hip-rubber boots. I don't believe in doing that. People who do that are just looking for attention. But you can just be yourself and be honest and you don't have to tell any lies that way. It's the man in the glass--that's the guy you've got to please. And stay loose, you know? After all, what is important? The older I get, the more I realize that there are not many things im? portant to stand in line for. So, when you distill it, what really is important? (You tell me.) What's important to me? Peace is important. Good humour is important. Family goes with? out saying. Enough to get by on and maybe a little extra to give away. Because you can't take it with you and you sure as hell can't send for it when you arrive in-- wherever in hell it is that you're going. (Let's hope it's not Hell.) I don't be? lieve in Hell! (I don't either and I'm not sure that I believe in Heaven, either.) Oh I...! I believe that a lot of people are going to be surprised because I be- I MJA Ray and Betty MacDonald lieve that you go into Heaven the way you are on Earth. I think that's the way you go into eternity. In other words, if you don't like it here you won't like it there, either. A lot of people say it's like going on a trip to the Skydome. You plan for it and you work for it and so all the way up to Toronto we fight. We argue, we lie and everything else. But when we get there we're all going to be happy for some reason. Bull roar! We're not! I mean, I think the way you go through life is the way you go through eternity. I don't fear. I have a great awe for The Almighty, but I don't have any fear of a policeman or a scorekeeper that is going to get even or any of that stuff. I am what I am and I try to do my best each day. I have fallen short many times but take it or leave it. That's the way I am. That's it, that's all. Our thanks to Marjorie MacHattie, who interviewed Ray MacDonald and others at CJFX, preparing for this article. Marjorie is the Public Rela? tions Director for Theatre Antigonish. Thanks to Gail MacDougall, sportswriter for The Casket, for the photo? graph of Kell's Angels, and to Peggy Maclsaac for the snapshots from Bernie MacIsaac's s'lbum. Jason Hatcher of Sydney took the photo? graphs of Ray MacDonald in the studio, and of Ray with his wife Betty. MABOU GARDENS Cape Breton's Largest Full-Service Garden Centre Grand Lake Road SYDNEY • 562-6000 Buy All Your Garden & Gift Needs COMMITMENT TO CAPE BRETON

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