When well-known Cape Breton hockey veteran Bruce Campbell got up on stage in Montreal recently and traded in his stick for a microphone, the man he was singing to was shocked. “I said to myself, ‘I knew him as a player. I knew him as a coach,’” said Dany Dubé, who coached the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles with Campbell during the team’s first season in Sydney in 1997-98. “But wow - I never knew him as a singer!” As the most remote team in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League at the time, head coach Dubé and assistant coach Campbell spent many hours together on the bus. Campbell recalled that they started each trip with Willie Nelson’s hit, “On The Road Again.” “A lot of people don’t realize that I do like to sing, and I do actually practice a little bit,” the 68-year-old resident of New Waterford, N.S., said on Wednesday. So, when the popular Quebec television show En Direct asked Campbell to sing to his old coaching partner on a Saturday night broadcast earlier this month, he had no problem picking the tune. “And I actually changed some of the words to, ‘The life I love is coaching hockey with my friend’ instead of ‘The life I love is playing music with my friend,’” Campbell said. Campbell said he was surprised how comfortable he was singing in front of a live TV audience that averages roughly 1.4 million viewers per episode. He added that the reunion with his long-ago coaching partner was worth the trip to Montreal in itself. “When we got to meet afterwards it was kind of emotional,” Campbell said. “We actually both got a little bit teared up because you go back a long way and who would have thought that I would be singing for Dany Dube in his honour?” As for what Campbell’s old friend thought of his performance, Dubé said, “Listen, Bruce… When you’re ready for the tour, I want to be your agent.” For more Nova Scotia news, visit our dedicated provincial page
