My Mother The Bookie

About the Book

Introduced to Thoroughbreds in his teens, Ted Beare developed a life-long passion for horse racing and for all other sports. "My Mother the Bookie" traces his career at the tracks and in arenas and baseball parks while serving as a sportswriter with The Brantford Expositor for 43 years. He gives the readers an inside look at the games that they can't see from the grandstand, peeks into a newsroom, writes about the characters he has met, including bookies and bootleggers, and discusses the changes he has seen in the news business, among them the lifting of barriers that kept women out of the locker room. Ted writes about local sports heroes as well as such internationally famous stars as Joe DiMaggio, Muhammad Ali and Satchel Paige. And he watched Wayne Gretzky grow from a kid in Brantford to become the greatest hockey player of his generation.

About the Author

About the author: Ted Beare joined The Brantford Expositor newsroom in 1950 as a general news reporter and assistant to the sports editor. In 1953 he was appointed sports editor and served in that capacity until his retirement in 1992. During those years, writing a daily column, he was witness to almost every major sports event in Brantford and to such national or international events as the World Series, the Stanley Cup finals, the Grey Cup finals, a world heavyweight championship fight and the Kentucky Derby. He won four Western Ontario Newspaper Association awards and was runner-up on two other occasions. Since retirement, he has continued to write, freelance, for newspapers and magazines, and is the author of a book entitled "Brantford: Sports City."