HOW SWEET DADDY SIKI FOUND SWEET HOME
- 10/17/2006 (6:20:16 am)
- Canadian Media
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Thanks to Mike Informer for link to this article:
How Sweet Daddy found sweet home
NEW RECRUITS | Thanks to demographics, vets from the U.S. and other nations living in this country are now allowed to join the Royal Canadian Legion. By Kenneth Kidd
Sweet Daddy Siki is sitting at the far end of the dance floor, his back to the stage and a jumble of stereo equipment, CDs and binders in front of him.
His once famously blond mane is now white, though it's still as thick as it was in the 1960s, back when Sweet Daddy was topping wrestling bills with the likes of Whipper Billy Watson, Lord Athol Layton, Gene "Big Thunder" Kiniski and The Sheik.
He can still look fierce when he wants to, but Sweet Daddy mostly cuts a serene figure these days, sitting there in jeans and a blue denim jacket with "Okay, I Overreacted" stitched onto the front left pocket.
It's a Saturday afternoon at the Duke of York tavern on Leslie St., and Sweet Daddy's doing what he's been doing here for the past 14 years. "Okay, we're going to call up Norm," he says into the microphone.
"I'm ready, Sweet Daddy," says Norm, sporting a Leafs jersey, "whenever you're ready."
With that, Sweet Daddy cranks up the music and Norm, karaoke-style, starts belting out "Losing My Religion" by R.E.M.
About a dozen regulars are soon mingling like old pals, taking turns with "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" (Neil Sedaka), "You Are My Sunshine" (Jimmie Davis) and "Mother-in-Law" (Ernie K-Doe) — chestnuts all.
And every now and then, Sweet Daddy himself will take to the floor, mic in hand, his soft, high voice covering tunes like The Drifters' "Up on the Roof."
As a disc jockey and karaoke warrior, Sweet Daddy has worked his share of Royal Canadian Legion halls. And his old pal Stewart Collett, a karaoke regular, has often taken him along as a guest for events at Collett's own Legion branch.
So when Sweet Daddy, a Korean War veteran, said a couple of years back that he'd like to join the Legion, he seemed like a natural. "I said, `no problem,'" recalls Collett. "`I can sponsor you and I can get the (branch) president to second you.'"
There was, alas, one big problem: Sweet Daddy might be famous, a vet and a long-time Toronto resident, but he remains an American citizen. He just never figured it made any kind of urgent difference.
Not so at the Legion. Under its long-standing rules, only British Commonwealth vets and Canadian citizens could qualify for full membership. Sweet Daddy was welcome as a guest only.
The rejection outraged Collett, an Australian by birth who was raised in England. He was soon penning letters of protest to Royal Canadian Legion headquarters in Ottawa, little knowing that he and Sweet Daddy were wading into an already fierce debate within Legion ranks about who should qualify for membership.
At the Legion's 2004 national convention, delegates had voted down an Ontario proposal to let American vets living in Canada become members.
But the American vets and their supporters did have one big trump card: demographics. For years, the Legion has been losing members at the rate of 15,000 a year, as veterans inevitably pass away. The current membership: 405,000 across the country. With each passing year, it seemed harder for many Legion members to square those dwindling numbers with rules that automatically rejected an obvious and eager pool of would-be recruits.
Nor were Americans alone in wanting to join. "There's a branch in Quebec with French and Belgian people who want to join," says Karen Mackerous, membership director at the Legion's Dominion Command.
And so, with little fanfare, the Legion used its most recent convention this past summer to create a new membership category for the likes of Sweet Daddy: "affiliate non-voting." It's open to any veteran from a country allied with Canada in past conflicts, a definition that would, at least in theory, mean that a World War I veteran from Japan could now join.
"We're not saying U.S. specifically," says Mackerous. "It could be someone from Ecuador. But it will open the door to a lot of Americans."
Later today, Branch 101 of the Royal Canadian Legion, in Etobicoke, will hold its first initiation ceremony under the revised rules, which kicked in on Oct. 1. And Sweet Daddy will be the star initiate.
"I think it's a great thing," he says, "because usually Canadians and Americans are always on the same side."
And, no, he doesn't mind being just a non-voting member. "It's okay with me," he says. "That way, I don't have that responsibility." Or, as Collett puts it: "He's as happy as a you-know-what."
Texas-born, Sweet Daddy served as a corporal with the U.S. Army in Korea, though he arrived just as the truce that still divides the peninsula was being signed. He ended up on patrols and guard duty.
"I have never seen night to be so dark, where you can put your hand in front of your face and not see it," he recalls. "You could hear something in the bushes all the time, but you couldn't see.
"I was there for two Christmases. I thank God I didn't have to fight. Maybe I wouldn't be here today."
When he got back, he finally launched the wrestling career for which he'd been training, and ended up in Toronto for a bout in 1962. He never left. "When I first came to Toronto to wrestle for (promoter) Frank Tunney, I fell in love with this city," says Sweet Daddy. "During those years, you couldn't be in a better place."
The city became his base as wrestling took him to bouts all over North America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
But it was during a Montreal fight, not long after coming to Canada, that he picked up the sobriquet that would mark his career. The announcer was just about to introduce a certain Reginald Siki when an adoring woman at ringside stood up and yelled "Sweet Daddy."
The announcer took the cue and the name stuck, although the newly minted Sweet Daddy just had to embellish that further, becoming in more exalted moments "Mr. Irresistible Sweet Daddy Siki."
"That woman did me a favour, because it made me a few more bucks," Sweet Daddy says. It also fit with the persona he'd quickly develop. "I used to say, `I'm a lady's pet and a man's regret.'"
He was still wrestling into the 1980s, then switched to training would-be wrestlers before developing a parallel career as lead singer with his own country-and-western band, The Irresistibles. That eventually morphed into a job as DJ and karaoke specialist, and he now has a digital repertoire of more than 30,000 songs in just about every style imaginable. Well, almost every style: he doesn't play much rap music, a topic that rouses the kind of fierce disgust he used to love parading around the ring.
"Who do these people think they are that they can talk about women like that, using the N-word and all that garbage?" says Sweet Daddy. "I think it's degrading."
But his temper soon subsides and the equally familiar twinkle returns, not least on the topic of his age. He pretends to get agitated, waving his hands.
"Oh, no, no, no, no," he says, his Texas twang thickening. "Everybody wants to know. People come, they say, `How old you Sweet Daddy? I won't tell anybody.' I say, `Well, why do you want to know? So you can tell somebody?'
"I never tell 'em. It's one of those things. They start dating you."
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| TONY BOCK /TORONTO STAR |
| Former wrestler and Korean War veteran Sweet Daddy Siki, who works as a disc jockey and karaoke specialist, performs "Up on the Roof" at the Duke of York pub. |
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