Saturday 14 September 2013

History that I know


Just like that girlfriend we all had in our early teens; the one that made us dream but never even kissed us (my girl's name was Carol and I still have bittersweet memories of her blue eyes and sulky smile), I am still going to dance around the ITKF subject for at least one more post.  This particular story will give everyone a bit of a background on the current ITKF disaster. This post might just give the reader some insight into what is going down today. History repeats itself, especially in the karate world.

Today's entry is all about the Saskatchewan Karate Association and the part I directly played in a major association split that divided the active karate clubs in Saskatchewan pretty much down the centre. Indirectly my actions also eventually led to the failure of the Traditional Karate Canada Association and, truthfully, the current ITKF melt down. That's right: it's all my fault and I don't even do karate anymore.

The history of the SKA is absolutely entwined with Rick Jorgensen and the establishment of Midwest Karate Regina. When you study the SKA you are looking at the legacy of the single minded dedication to karate by a few determined individuals, of which Rick Jorgensen is basically the last man left standing.  He is the quintessential survivor: he has outlasted, outwitted and outplayed so many of his competitors and colleagues that smart money will always bet on Rick. He might just surprise all of us this time too.

Way back in the mid-seventies, right after Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris had basically made everyone want to take up "kung-fu fighting", Regina, Saskatchewan was just like the wild west when it came to martial arts. Big boned red-neck boys straight off the farm wanted to learn to kick like "Kato" and be as tough as Chuck. Store-front start-up clubs with no credentials and colourful gi's were popping up everywhere.  "Freedom Karate" was downtown in Regina, situated in a homely little store front with linoleum laid on concrete floor, poster laden white walls and a couple of home-made makiwara. The Sensei was a competent but ageing Dutch gentleman of unknown karate lineage who taught a eclectic form somewhere in between karate, tae kwon do and kung-fu.  Flashy board breaking and big kicks were the order of the day.  This was the first club that Rick attended as a teen, but even then he knew it was not the "real meal deal". 

Rick and another guy, the wild Dr. Dick Jack, were always on the prowl for more karate instruction. Rick picked up a copy of Nishiyama's text on Shotokan karate and the two of them realised they had stumbled on exactly what they were looking for. They searched around (difficult to do back before the Internet) and found an affiliate club of Sensei Nishiyama way down in Minneapolis- St Paul Minnesota run by Robert Fusaro. The two karate disciples started making the ten hour pilgrimage to Mineapolis regularly,  returning to disseminate new ideas after each round trip.  Pretty soon, Freedom Karate started becoming a Shotokan club. The old Dutchman was progressively marginalised, eventually completely retiring with some hard feelings about the time Rick earned his Shodan under Sensei Nishiyama. The club eventually folded and was reborn as "Midwest Karate Regina" at its present location (1100 Broad Street, Regina). Rick and Dick immediately started lobbying the Saskatchewan government for public support and recognition under the banner of the Saskatchewan Karate Association.

In the early years, Rick was rarely home (amazing that the man had any children or marriage at all) between running his own public relations firm, teaching at the dojo, travelling and attending seminars for his own benefit, and then travelling within Saskatchewan to develop the membership of the newborn SKA.  After Dr. Jack died in a motorcycle accident, the SKA was pretty much a one man show for many years. Without Rick's constant efforts, it is doubtful whether the SKA would have ever been formed. 

In 1996 Rick Jorgensen moved away and left the SKA and Midwest Karate, but maintained his direct ties to the association as technical adviser to both the SKA and Midwest Karate Regina (as far as I know the constitution of Midwest Karate still states that ownership of the club automatically reverts to Sensei Jorgensen if they ever dismiss him as technical director).  The relationship was contentious since former students were now full instructors and understandably resented his hands-on approach to management.  Many of those troubled relationships remain problematic to this day; one of his direct students played an active part in the recent ITKF split, signing the declaration of formation of the New ITKF (centred out of that historical Mecca of traditional Japanese karate, Geneva Switzerland.).

In 2009: the grey hair tells the tale: old, past my prime and ready
to retire.  Probably should have retired at 3rd kyu.

 Unfortunately, 1996 also marked the year that Rick's senior club Sempai moved on to greener pastures, leaving the club in the hands of a 22 year old fresh Shodan aided by some resentful kudansha who had been passed over in the succession for leadership.  This is the club I joined as a lowly 3rd kyu, full of my own ideas and not necessarily interested in listening to a kid almost half my age. I loved the club but, not surprisingly, the club did not love me. Hence, I earned the nick-name "The Human Punching Bag" since I was everybody's favourite target. I still wear three surgical scars from surgery needed to repair the punishment doled out to me because of my independent spirit.

I earned my Shodan by 1998, training mostly on my own because by that time the youthful head instructor had written me off as a monumental pain in the ass.  Eventually the head instructor moved on (because even karateka have to grow up and get real jobs) and that left the club with....me and one other Shodan to keep the wheels on the bus.  We essentially were the last men left standing after everyone else got bored and moved on to other toys. 

2009: I made it to Nationals for one reason: only one team
entered Team Kata at provincial level. This is the reality of
dividing associations: the tournaments become jokes where everybody
gets to be a champion.

All this prequel is to explain how I, a junior Shodan of mediocre skill levels, ended up as the president and key instructor of the venerable and once great Midwest Karate Regina.  It took twenty-five years to hit rock bottom, but I can confidently say that under my leadership that club was as far down as it could get; a band of merry fools led by the clumsy village idiot.  The year was 2005 and there was about to be an earthquake in the SKA.

Now the fun starts.

 In 2005,  the SKA spring tournament was also the occasion of the Annual General Meeting and the bi-annual executive elections.  I had nothing to do with the politics of the karate association and while I understood there were some conflicts occurring, I thought they were all pretty trivial crap that could be solved over cold beer and hot wings.  I did not typically attend tournaments; I can waste time and die of boredom without wearing white pyjamas and dealing with screaming kids for twelve hours in a cold school gymnasium.  About a week before the tournament I received an unexpected phone call from Rick Jorgensen just after class at the dojo.

 Rick told me that the upcoming elections were pivotal for our club (I could not see how, but if he said so, then it must be true) and he expected every club member possible to attend. Oh, and by the way, all active members were also required to vote to re-elect the current SKA president.  I guess Rick did not see any problem with vote rigging within a supposed democracy. It bothered me but, on the other hand, I remained a junior Shodan who was struggling just to keep the old club afloat so I did not need to alienate the official examiner and technical director of the club by questioning his word. I agreed to spread the word and attend the meeting myself, despite the fact that the tournament  and meeting were in a small town three hours away from my home.

On my arrival at the meeting, it was immediately apparent that Rick was not the only politician intent on rigging the election.  The rented hotel ballroom was packed with people; the meeting was probably the most highly attended AGM of the SKA ever. The crowd appeared to be pretty much evenly divided down the centre aisle: gi clad competitors and well known karateka on one side and a bunch of new recruits nobody knew or had ever met on the other side of the room.  The newbies seemed to be a mixture of soccer-moms and ageing farmers, all coming from the local farming district. Some of the strange mixture might have been involved in karate, but I am not sure how since a large proportion of the gathering seemed dependent on canes or walkers to remain upright.  I was not sure what the hell was going on, but since I was essentially apolitical and busy just following orders, I shrugged and sat down with my club members to watch the fun.

It was fun. In fact the entire meeting was downright comedy.

After the call to order,  the agenda and minutes of the last meeting were read followed by a short intermission to prepare the ballots for the elections.  Having downed three or four cups of coffee, I thought I should go "water the horse" in the break. I headed for the men's room just down the hall from the ball-room. There was a line-up for the urinals and I ended up standing just behind the incumbent president, an accountant by profession and just slightly older than  myself.  Snickering, he turned to me and said "Well I guess old Wilf pulled a fast-one on all of us this year. Looks like he is going to win this election.  The devil is always in the details".  Puzzled, I asked him what the hell was up.  He then explained to me that Wilf, the sensei who lived in this particular town, had been challenging for the position of president of the SKA for years. This year he had "home town advantage" and had signed up an entire truckload of SKA "associate members" using a little known loop-hole in the SKA constitution.  These were family of active karateka that, for a minimal donation ($5.00), could become active members of the SKA. Most importantly, each new supporter now had a vote at this AGM.  Sensei Wilf had grandmothers, aunts, aged second cousins and probably a couple of suckling babies signed up as "associate members".   While my club and I had been coerced into attending and voting for Sensei Jorgensen's favourite, Wilf's club had been paid to attend (word has it that Wilf himself had signed up the associate members and paid the fee, but nobody actually ever saw a cheque for those dues either before or after the fateful meeting).  The entire voting process was going to be a fraud. So much for democracy in karate.

The issue behind the entire attempted coup was the rather large operating discretionary fund the current executive had amassed.  The incumbent, cautious as all accountants are, had a policy of keeping at least $50,000 dollars in the accounts at all times, This represented a minimal operating budget for the SKA for one year. His thoughts on this were that the association was absolutely dependent on the government and in a unstable economy, one can never be assured that your special interest funding will survive government cut-backs. Dave, the president, always wanted a "one year rainy day fund" against that possibility.  Wilf, on the other hand, thought we should blow that budget on television advertising, and hope to refill the accounts with new memberships.  Wilf had arranged a sweet-heart deal with a local television studio (basically a tiny sound-proofed garage with a few outdated cameras and volunteer cameramen) for the  commercial taping and hoped to use the money to pay for TV slots.

 I am not sure that Wilf understood that 50,000 dollars was only going to afford the SKA a couple of late night slots when only ageing insomniacs, crazy spinster cat-ladies and fat custodians are watching television.  For all that money each club might garner two or three new students for about two months (about the time to the first grading, right?)

When I returned to the ball room with my newly enlightened view, I could see that the emotional timbre of the entire meeting was ratcheted right up to the breaking point. The balloting system was not quite ready yet (in normal years a simple show of hands was more than sufficient as long as everyone could count their ten fingers, with fingers left over) and I was pretty uncomfortable with the entire situation. I thought what both Wilf and Sensei Jorgensen had done was pretty dishonest and dishonourable, so I tried to find some way to mitigate the impending fraud.  I stood up and demanded that each candidate for president make a speech detailing why he thought he should be elected president. The entire room fell silent and stared at me, no doubt waiting for me to crawl back under my rock and disappear.

Time ticked, bladders filled (under the scornful spotlight, my bladder felt completely full again!!) and finally the two candidates stammered in agreement. Dave stood up and told us that he intended to continue to manage with fiscal responsibility as he always had and that he intended to lobby the entire association to put in a bid to the ITKF to hold the 2006 World Championships in Saskatoon. It was short, sweet and to the point.

Wilf reluctantly stood up, told us all how dedicated he was to the SKA, how he had been there right from the start, and how he was disturbed at the falling membership in all the clubs. He felt that the large operating fund should be utilised for advertising and not sequestered.  And, oh yeah, that idea of world championships was a good one too.

The speeches did not give any of us much to work with, but at least the ballots were ready by the time the two had blundered through impromptu stump speeches.  Blank sheets of paper were passed around, followed five minutes later by a couple of greasy baseball hats to collect them.  The counting process was done, then redone, then repeated twice more over the next twenty-five minutes. The results were read quietly and with a couple of pregnant pauses.

 It seems the incumbent had successfully defended his position...by two votes.  Then the loud arguments about election fraud started and the distinct possibility of fist fights in the aisle came to the front.  Wilf's wife was swearing like a drunk, long haul trucker and a robust and angry fire-fighter from Saskatoon was standing up looking to hurt the first son of a bitch that glanced his way. I looked around (but not at the fire fighter, who was standing directly behind me, goaded on by his shrill and combative girl-friend) and realised that the votes coerced from my club, had tipped the scales in favour of Sensei Jorgensen's candidate.

I could see what was going to happen now, having stood on the sidelines of several association blow-outs.  Wilf was going to pick up his marbles and storm away from the playground to find a game he could win by his own rules.  If Wilf left the SKA, several hundred paying members and the substantial government support those members brought would go with him.  I heard grumblings from our side like "good riddance" and "don't let the door hit you on the way out".

 A person really has to ask themselves how karate people manage to be so short-sighted. The long term repercussions of an association split were going to be devastating to the SKA and all of it's affiliated clubs. Our funding would be cut, not to mention our tournaments would become shallow-end farces where everyone gets participation ribbons and nobody can actually claim excellence. I felt obliged to try to stop the impending doom since I had was a pretty pivotal pawn on the board.

 I stood up again and immediately nominated Wilf for the position of "Vice-President", hoping to salvage something from the wreckage.  Wilf, typical of most of the childish buffoons I have met since getting involved in karate waved the nomination off, a smug little smirk on his face as he looked in my eye and shook his head.  Wilf had already made contingency plans in case his procedural trick failed.

There really is a point that "standing on principles" is a foolish approach. Certainly it is important to have unassailable principles, but in the real world where compromises are essential for the operation of any cooperative enterprise, you need to pick your battles. The karate culture is so damned rigid in its principles that we have become comparable to the suburban housewife who would burn down the house rather than just repaint the kitchen.  We destroy our associations over bruised egos and inferred insults, failing to realise that the rank and file karateka who pay the bills and keep the associations functioning have no clue about the issues and just want to have fun pretending to be the new Bruce Lee.  Hell, half the karateka I have met do not even know there are hundreds if not thousands of different styles and schools out there.

Wilf left that meeting soon after the voting ended and a week later his entire organisation joined the provincial association of Manitoba, the province directly east of Saskatchewan.

So the fun at this meeting did not stop there and I should expand the tale a little because it will lead into the next blog post perfectly.  It has to do with the 2006 ITKF World Championships in Saskatoon.


Until the SKA AGM of 2005 I had no idea that Saskatchewan had been suggested as one of the possible hosts for the ITKF World Championships.  It sounded pretty exciting to me when I heard about it and I thought it was a great idea; Saskatchewan handles big events such as national and international sports championships with a practised ease rarely shown by much larger markets. There is a real sense of community in the province and the people welcome visitors gladly and with excitement.  Within Saskatchewan, Saskatoon was the obvious front-runner for the venue; the ITKF club in Saskatoon, Midwest Karate Saskatoon, was large, highly competitive and led by the single most charismatic Sensei I have ever met.  I was appalled when I heard that the club was waffling on the idea of hosting the ITKF Championships.  What I considered a golden opportunity, they appeared to consider a major imposition.

Well, one thing veterinary medicine has taught me is that if you want a big dog to eat something, just offer it to the runty little mutt from next door first and that dog will practically trip over himself to empty the bowl.  No matter how reluctant a diner that dog might have been five minutes before.

 I used the same strategy on my colleagues from Saskatoon.  I stood up and, to the crowd's dumbfounded astonishment, I told the entire meeting that if  Saskatoon was not up to the task, I would offer up Regina as a better venue.  I am pretty sure I pissed everyone from Saskatoon off and over half of my own club executive.  I know my club secretary, a self-important national competitor best known for winning championships by getting her opponent disqualified (by mercilessly pounding her opponent's fists to pulp using only her nose), just about peed her gi trying to distance herself from my suggestion.

Of course I had no intention of ever actually holding any ITKF World Championships in Regina. Hell, most people of the world have trouble finding Saskatchewan on a map, much less Regina (the town who's name rhymes with fun as Mick Jagger once quipped).  My dojo was tiny and barely surviving financially and sadly, I was pretty much the senior belt in the club.  Even provincially, the only reason I was allowed to attend any tournaments without paying entry fees is because they needed someone to carry the matts into the gymnasium.  If Regina was to hold any competition larger than a shopping mall hamster race we would run out of officials when the ticket taker needed a bathroom break.  But just like my ruse with the big dog and the small mutt, all I had to do is make Saskatoon think I might be serious about taking their bone and I would get them to enthusiastically defend that bone with all their strength. Just to push the issue a bit farther, I actually assembled a 120 page bid proposal over the next week and couriered it up to the executive meeting called to deal with the election fall-out.  The results were predictable: Saskatoon happily informed Nishiyama Sensei that they were interested and eager to host the 2006 ITKF World Championships within a week of that executive meeting.

One thing you do learn when you play politics (even though I really was just fooling around and poking the grizzly bear for kicks): you learn who your real friends are and who you can trust.  My club secretary was so upset that I even suggested Regina could host the World's that she spent much of the week prior to that executive meeting calling whomever would listen and telling them that I was just a raving ass hole and that I had no support for our bid from anyone in our club.  She never once approached me to ask what the hell I was doing, but then I probably would have kept up the pretence because I always knew she had her own agenda.  I don't known if I have ever told anyone besides my wife what I was up to, but then I never really trusted any of them then and they don't really matter much to me now.  Saskatoon ended up holding the championships.

And that leads us to the story of how the Traditional Karate Canada association (TKC) self-destructed. Here is a little hint: its all my fault.







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