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Everyone in Canada loved John Candy, it seemed — and it often seemed he loved them all back. But his deepest affections were reserved for his family and his hometown football team. The following is an excerpt from “Year of the Rocket: John Candy, Wayne Gretzky, a Crooked Tycoon and the Craziest Season in Football History.”

They were the most unusual group ever to own a Canadian Football League franchise — maybe to own any sports franchise: Bruce McNall, the rotund rare-coin trader and owner of the Los Angeles Kings hockey team, his star player Wayne Gretzky, and the comedian John “Uncle Buck” Candy.

The announcement of their acquisition of the Toronto Argonauts in February 1991 was heralded as a new and better era for the CFL which then, almost as much as now, seemed to be on nearing extinction. Said one observer: “The king of comedy, the king of hockey, and the guy who owns the Kings — it’s a powerful group.”

Dubbed “the Three Amigos” by newspaper writers, McNall, who owned 60 per cent of the club, and Gretzky and Candy, each with 20 per cent, appeared together for an introductory press conference and again months later to announce that they had signed Notre Dame prospect Raghib “Rocket” Ismail for a stunning $4.5 million a season, more than any football player had earned in any league, including National Football League MVPs and Super Bowl stars.

The owners arrived in Toronto aboard a tricked-out Boeing 727, in the company of comedian Martin Short, actor Jim Belushi, Oscar-nominated actress Mariel Hemingway, “The Breakfast Club” icon Ally Sheedy, and “Slap Shot” star Michael Ontkean, for the Argos’ season opener on July 18 at SkyDome. That was the same season opener where the surviving half of the Blues Brothers, Dan Aykroyd (his partner John Belushi having died in 1982), flew in from Europe with the complete cast of the Elwood Blues Review for a one-off performance.

Each of the Three Amigos professed commitment to the club, and each did his part on its unlikely road to a Grey Cup championship that year, but one gave far beyond the others.

John Candy was the guy nervously pacing the sidelines at each game, sweating over every play. He was the owner trotting onto the field, against protocol, to tend to an injured player. The owner who swept the floor of the locker room, and was often the last to leave, long after the players had cleared out. The owner who never said “no” to anyone who wanted a moment (or 10) of his time. The owner who, more than any other club owner in a century and a half of Toronto football, genuinely loved the Argonauts.

John Candy was all of the above, and so much more, during the three years in which he held a minority stake in the Argos. He had paid his friend McNall a million dollars for his 20 per cent, and brought far more than a million bucks’ worth of value to the franchise and the entire Canadian Football League. Thanks in large part to Candy, fan interest exploded not only in Toronto but across the league. The Ottawa Rough Riders franchise was saved from bankruptcy, and the league found new partners and, more importantly, new money in the United States. It was nice work from a Toronto kid whose rise to global acclaim, mostly for playing lovable losers on TV and in the movies, never got in the way of his abiding passion for his city’s football club.

On his first visit to the team’s office after the ownership change, Candy met with a small group of employees who had no idea whether they still had jobs. “It’s all going to change for the better,” Candy reassured them. “We’re family, family, family.” He immediately started establishing relationships with the Argo players, as well. “Hey, you’re Carl Brazley,” Candy said to the defensive back. “Man, you’re great.”

Candy called guard Dan Ferrone: “I know you’re one of the captains and I want to tell you, I’m so excited to be a part of your team.” Later, when Ferrone suggested it would be nice to have a cappuccino after practice, Candy had a cappuccino machine installed in the locker room.

Offensive tackle Kelvin Pruenster introduced himself on the first day of training camp in 1991. “Kelvin, of course I know who you are,” a beaming Candy replied. The new boss was “like your fan instead of the other way around,” Pruenster says. “He was just thrilled to be part of the guys.”

Countless others had a similar experience. An offensive lineman during his high school days, Candy naturally gravitated to members of that position group. But he also hung around with the quarterbacks and the defensive linemen, spending “quality time,” in fact, with almost every player on the roster.

Linebacker Prentiss Wright, a reserve who played only a couple of games in 1991, was popular among teammates for raps featuring his nickname: “It was Big P!” In the locker room when Candy was around, teammates would chant, “It was J.C.!” Candy would then perform a version of Wright’s rap.

When he was in California between games, Candy frequently called equipment manager Danny Webb at home to inquire about the health of injured players and muse about the next game. While players warmed up on the field, Candy, chain smoking, would pace nervously in the locker room, talking strategy with Webb. “This is a big game,” he’d say. “Someone’s got to step up.”

Candy’s nervousness was exactly what many hard-core fans experience. He lived and died on every play, and yelled at referees when calls went against the Argos. “It wasn’t just for show,” says kicker Lance Chomyc. “He knew what calls to argue.”

If a play went bad, he’d sag, says tackle Chris Schultz. When the team lost, Candy was devastated. “You can’t fake that.”

His co-owner Gretzky says Candy loved the Argos unconditionally. “He loved the players; he loved the coaches and the trainers.” Candy was so smitten that he frequently treated large groups of players to dinner and drinks, and even invited some to his farmhouse in Queensville, north of Toronto, where he would cook for them. Gretzky tried to tamp down his partner’s enthusiasm: “John, there’s a hundred players. We can’t have a dinner every night.”

But to Candy, family mattered more than anything. A devoted husband and father, he always put his family first, says daughter Jennifer. But he also considered the Argos family, and the team ranked second, well ahead of his Hollywood career. “At that time in his life,” adds son Christopher, “he had a cartoon show, a huge acting career, a radio show, and he was producing films. All top-level stuff, but it was pretty obvious that he really loved what he was doing with the Argos.”

The Argos naturally became intertwined with Candy’s family life. Jennifer and Christopher, along with many cousins and friends, were driven down from Queensville to each home game during the summer months, watching from a private SkyDome box their dad spent hundreds of thousands of dollars renovating. To celebrate the birthday of Candy’s wife, Rose, the extended family had an annual “Rose Bowl” game at the farm. Kids and grownups suited up in Argo jerseys and played for either Jen’s Mighty Unicorns or Chris’s Terminators. Candy played nose guard, counted steamboats and rushed Pruenster, who played quarterback.

John Franklin Candy was born in Newmarket, north of Toronto, on Halloween in 1950. He grew up in Toronto’s working-class Danforth community and attended Neil McNeil High School, where as a tall, husky lad, he played centre and other positions along the offensive line and dreamed of someday playing for the Argos. “I wanted to be like you,” he once told Argos legend Pinball Clemons, but a serious injury ended that hope: “I lost a kneecap,” he often said years later.

With football off the table, the naturally hilarious young man with the ultra-expressive face turned to acting. He landed roles in a few television commercials before joining Chicago’s Second City, a theatre group specializing in improvisational comedy. He was among the group that started a Second City branch in Toronto in the mid-1970s, and achieved low-key fame on a televised sketch show called “SCTV” that portrayed the programs and personalities of a local TV station in the fictional town of Melonville.

The cast initially included seven brilliant talents: Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Dave Thomas, Andrea Martin, Joe Flaherty, Harold Ramis and Candy. Apart from Ramis, who as head writer had less screen time than the others, each developed a series of memorable characters, and none moreso than Candy. He created Melonville’s eccentric mayor Tommy Shanks; horror-show host Doctor Tongue; fishin’ musician Gil Fisher; sycophantic talk-show sidekick William B. Williams; polka king Yosh Shmenge; and his most brilliant creation: the hard-drinking, monogrammed-robe-wearing playboy, Johnny LaRue, who hosted manon-the-street interview segments on Street Beef. “SCTV,” which had begun as a low-budget production on Ontario’s Global TV network, eventually landed a late-night weekend slot on NBC. It received 15 Emmy nominations and two wins, both for writing, with Candy among the team of writers.

After receiving favourable reviews for supporting roles in two movies, “Stripes” and “Splash,” Candy moved wife Rose and young children Jennifer and Christopher to Los Angeles in 1986. His Hollywood career ignited the following year thanks to star turns in “Spaceballs” and “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” “Uncle Buck,” perhaps his most popular role, followed in 1989. Candy became one of the highest-paid actors in show business, often receiving more than a million dollars for a top-billed role. He didn’t always choose films wisely, featuring in many duds. But his appearance on screen, often as a buffoon with a big heart, was invariably appreciated by audiences. His career eventually spanned 40 films.

While firmly ensconced in Hollywood, Candy’s roots remained deep in his hometown. He brought his young family home each summer to Queensville. That made getting involved in the Argonauts logistically convenient, although it required putting his acting career on hold — which he did for virtually all of 1991. When Candy bought into the Argos, he immediately knew “it would be the perfect use of his celebrity, goodwill, and public persona, as well as his capital,” says longtime friend Dan Aykroyd. “He got it right away. He was all in on this.”

Candy was full of ideas for promoting the team, sometimes calling Argos executive Suzan Waks in the middle of the night to excitedly run a new scheme past her. Gretzky said Candy always had “about two hundred marketing plans and schemes going.” Bret Gallagher heard some of them soon after meeting Candy for the first time.

Gallagher had happened to bump into an acquaintance, Brian Cooper, in downtown Toronto. Cooper had just been hired by the new owners as the Argos’ executive vice-president. One of his priorities was staffing up the organization. Chatting on the street, Cooper offered Gallagher a job in promotions and marketing. Gallagher, working in TV production, had aspirations of moving into the world of film. After mulling over the fact that one of McNall’s companies had produced successful motion pictures, including “War Games” and “Mr. Mom,” he called Cooper and accepted the offer.

Cooper told Gallagher the Argos had booked Candy to appear on the youth-oriented MuchMusic TV network, and “the only one he wants to talk to is your brother.” Bret Gallagher’s brother Dan was a bandanna-wearing game-show host and veejay on Much. With long, curly blond hair that sometimes took the form of a mullet, he was often compared to Candy because of his rotund shape and wisecracking persona. Bret called Dan, who raced to the Much studios to interview one of his heroes. There, Bret introduced himself to Candy as an Argo employee. “You work for us?” Candy asked. “Yeah,” said Bret. “I got hired like two hours ago. And Dan’s my brother.”

Candy seemed bowled over by the coincidence. After the interview ended, he invited Bret to join him in a waiting limousine. Gallagher’s head was exploding. “What am I doing here?” he wondered.

The limo dropped the pair off at the Four Seasons Hotel, Candy’s “home” whenever he was in Toronto. In the hotel bar, Candy started talking “a million miles an hour” about his ideas for promoting the Argonauts. Gallagher scribbled notes while the pair talked deep into the night. A day or two later, Gallagher and Candy headed to the airport for a flight to Ottawa. Gallagher had not flown much in his life and was boggled to board a private Gulfstream jet that had previously been used by Chrysler executive Lee Iacocca. Candy’s next stop after Ottawa was Vancouver. Candy made it clear that Gallagher was to join him. “I’ve got to go to work,” Gallagher insisted. “No, no,” Candy replied. “This is work. This is what we do.”

After the Vancouver news conference, the Gulfstream flew Candy to Los Angeles. Gallagher hopped a commercial flight to Toronto, where he met with Cooper, the man who had just hired him. “You’re his guy,” Cooper said. “He wants everything to flow through you. But you’ve still got to do your other job.” Gallagher’s other job was director of promotions for the Argonauts. That made him responsible for halftime entertainment as well as the team’s ad campaigns. But in many ways his biggest role was as Candy’s majordomo.

Everywhere Candy went around the CFL in 1991, Gallagher was by his side. Candy, Gallagher, and sometimes Cooper flew (or drove, in the case of Hamilton) to every city the Argos visited in 1991. McNall was also present on occasion, and once or twice Gretzky made an appearance, but this was the John Candy show. Candy knew, says Gallagher, “that promotion of the games was his end of the bargain. He knew to create the hysteria and the circus to get that turnstile going.”

Candy and Gallagher would arrive in town two days before a game. After a night in the hotel bar — “I’ve never seen anyone party as hard as John Candy did,” says Saskatchewan Roughriders president Phil Kershaw — they would drag themselves out of bed at 4:30, hop into a limo and make the rounds of every radio station and every breakfast-television show in town. “Buy tickets, buy tickets,” Candy kept repeating.

Behind the scenes, Candy lobbied the home team’s executives, usually successfully, to lift the local TV blackout of the next night’s contest. “Why not give people a chance to see the game?” he asked in the “Calgary Herald.” “Why not give them the option and they see that it is fun and maybe they’ll go down?” Candy’s efforts, and the Argos’ decision to televise all of their 1991 home games in the Toronto market, were the beginning of the end to a decades-old policy that prevented fans from seeing their team play at home unless they bought tickets.

As exciting a brand of football as the Argonauts played, as star-laden as they were with Rocket Ismail, Matt Dunigan, Pinball Clemons and D.K. Smith, Candy was the primary attraction in 1991. “When John started coming down the tunnel (at a stadium), you would hear this roar as people saw him coming in,” says Pruenster. “The whole stadium would erupt. The Canadian love of John Candy was way more than any kind of rivalry that might be going on in the game.” Candy would keep an eye on the game while kibitzing with spectators, and occasionally high-fiving members of the Argonauts.

Sometimes he got swept up in local traditions, like in Edmonton when he went for a ride around the stadium on the miniature fire truck that was a fixture at Eskimos games. Gretzky saw this on TV and called Candy, afraid his partner had put himself at risk. “Don’t worry, Wayne, I’m OK,” Candy assured him.

At the same game in Edmonton, two Argonauts were injured on a single play. With medical staff attending to one of them, Candy said to equipment manager Danny Webb, “Let’s go.” The pair ran onto the field to carry the injured Brazley off. This prompted a stern lecture from Argo brass about the ramifications if Brazley had been seriously injured.

Through all the road trips, Candy got to know more and more Argonauts. A handful got especially close to him when he got the brainwave, after an exciting early-season win in Regina, to fly a few players home on his private jet. Paul Masotti, Andrew Murray, and Lance Chomyc got the word: “You’re not flying home with us tomorrow. You’re flying home with Candy.”

Gallagher asked what food they would like catered for the flight. Perogies, one of Candy’s favourite dishes, were ordered, but that barely scratched the surface of the flight’s offerings. Candy broke the ice on board by ordering a double shot of his usual rum and Diet Coke. “The size of a pint glass, cut crystal, gold fittings, everything,” says Murray. “The flight attendant is coming out with 15 different forks and knives. Which ones do we use to eat the Hollywood star food? We (normally) ate Kraft Dinner and sandwiches and pizza. “All John wanted to talk about was what was it like to play in the CFL, because that was his dream. All we wanted John to do was regurgitate all of his skits from Second City. He did every Second City skit — everything.”

It was a dream for “three Canadian boys who grew up watching SCTV and knew all the characters,” adds Chomyc. “We’re doing the voices along with him because we remember these sketches.”

Hours of frivolity later, the jet landed in Toronto. The Argo players disembarked on the tarmac at a part of Pearson airport that caters to charter flights, without a clue how to get to their cars. It was just as well — they were in no condition to drive anyway.

The Candy that Argo players and thousands of fans were exposed to in 1991 was the antithesis of a guarded, egotistical celebrity. He was shy, humble, genuinely interested in others. “A lot of times you meet celebrities and maybe for their own self-preservation they have a mask, or they put a wall up,” says Waks. “You’re only going to get superficial. That was not John. He was genuine.”

“When you were with him,” adds Clemons, “it was like there was no one else in the world. He gave you his undivided attention. He would ask you real questions. He wanted to know about you. He was just so incredibly kind and human and loving. One of the greatest human beings I’ve ever met.”

Kelly Ryback, who spent years wearing the costume of one of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ two mascots, introduced himself in street clothes to Candy at the 1991 Grey Cup. “Hi, I’m Buzz, the mascot,” he said. Candy’s response: “You’re doing a great job.”

Jo-Anne Polak, then general manager of the Ottawa Rough Riders, recalls going to the hotel gift shop during a CFL governors meeting. A woman working there pulled out an “autograph book that was probably 30 years old” and asked Polak if she could get the actor’s signature. Polak returned to the meeting and asked Candy to sign the book. “We can do better than that,” he whispered.

Polak led Candy to the gift shop. The store clerk nearly fainted. “It was the greatest moment of her life,” Polak says. “He stayed there for almost an hour and a half. She had him calling her mother, her daughter. He sat behind the cash selling stuff. People would come in to buy a newspaper, and then it was absolute shock. He just loved being able to do that. It wasn’t about him; it was that he got a chance to make all these people happy. That was John Candy.”

Candy signed thousands of autographs in 1991, including hundreds at a preseason fundraising event in Ottawa. “It was just, ‘Uncle Buck! Uncle Buck!’ He stayed until the very last person in the building got an autograph.”

Ironically, for a man who exchanged cordial conversation with virtually everyone he encountered one-on-one, Candy was shy, and prone to severe anxiety attacks. While he was able to handle being the centre of attention at games and other CFL events, he tried to avoid being spotted when out in public. “I called him the one-person Beatles in Toronto,” says Bob Crane Jr., son of the “Hogan’s Heroes” star. Crane worked for Candy in many capacities, and was with him on most of his forays around the CFL. “We couldn’t go anywhere without people coming up to him. You could not hide him.”

Once, while Crane was in California, Pruenster — who had become Candy’s personal trainer — filled in as his bodyguard/assistant on a movie shoot in Calgary. The six-foot-three Candy’s weight fluctuated up to 350 pounds, but even at his slimmest (275), he was a big man. Pruenster, who stood six-foot-six and weighed close to 300, would position himself to block people from seeing his friend. “If we walked in formation towards people, nobody could see him,” Pruenster says. “He stayed off my shoulder on a diagonal. He was a big man, but with a big winter coat I could block him out. I was like a walking wall.”

With time on his hands one day, Candy told Pruenster he wanted to personally buy gifts for Rose and the kids, rather than delegate the task to an assistant, as usual. Pruenster figured it was possible. It was midday on a weekday, so shopping centres would be empty. “As long as we get out of the mall between 2:30 and 3, before the school day ends, we’ll be fine,” he said. The pair went to a shopping centre. Candy wore glasses and a hat trying to look less conspicuous. Pruenster started regretting his decision when a store clerk screamed, “Oh, my God, it’s John Candy!”

Nobody heard her, though, and Candy began shopping. He told Pruenster he was having a fantastic time. “Do you know how long it’s been since I could do this?” Unbeknownst to the pair, Calgary’s schools closed early that day because of a winter storm. Shortly after noon, “it looks almost like an avalanche of kids pouring into the entrances. There’s thousands of kids and people in this mall, and we’re trapped in this store.”

Pruenster desperately summoned their car, but before they could get out of the store, “some 14-year-old girls see him, and screaming starts. Everyone in the mall hears it and their heads all swing around. And then everyone starts screaming: ‘John Candy!’ Hundreds of high-school kids. We’re in this little shop and they’re like 20, 30, 50 feet thick. “John’s trying to be nice because they’re little kids. We’re stuck. The crowds are getting worse and worse. They have their pens and papers out, pulling on his jacket. Some of them are crying, they’re so excited. John looks at me completely panicked. We just started shoving through people and kids.”

Pruenster found a security guard who escorted them to the mall’s exit. Pruenster got chewed out later by Crane, who would never have allowed Candy to make such an outing. “What started out as a great thing, with John getting his gifts, turned into that,” Pruenster says with chagrin.

Candy’s boyish enthusiasm around the Argos tended to overshadow the serious role he played on the team and, indeed, in the CFL. One of Candy’s first official acts as part-owner of the Argonauts was to attend a governors’ meeting in Regina. It began at 7 a.m. in a hotel meeting room.

Candy, as usual, had been out late the night before, drinking and smoking in the hotel bar, surrounded by fans. But he was on time for the meeting, and stunned by the breakfast offering: rolled slices of salami and roast beef. “I didn’t know when you came to these meetings, you get cold cuts for breakfast,” he told his fellow CFL executives. “This is fantastic. Is this a Regina thing? Is this a CFL thing?”

(Candy offered a somewhat more jaundiced recollection several months later when he met with reporters during Grey Cup week. “There was warm Diet Pepsi on this bare wooden table, and rolled ham and rolled roast beef,” he said. “I thought, what the hell is this? ... Where is the real meeting? Then they said, ‘We’d like to welcome the McNall group’ and I realized, oh, my God, this is it.”)

Candy sat through 10 hours of discussions and surprised executives of the other teams with the depth of his commitment, as well as by flicking rolled-up pieces of paper at the heads of unsuspecting governors.

“The funny man, it turned out, was dead serious about Canadian football,” wrote journalist Stephen Brunt the following November. “(He) was as in love with the game and respectful of its traditions as any of the (governors). But he also had ideas — big, shake-off-the-cobwebs ideas — and in a few short months his point of view would become the league’s point of view.”

The biggest idea was to expand the CFL. Candy and McNall wanted the league to grow beyond eight teams, and ideally beyond Canada. Candy volunteered to become head of a committee to explore the possibility of expansion. Asked a month later how he had ended up as the committee’s chair, he joked, “I was last in the room.” But the day he took on the role, he was bullish on the notion of expansion: “We have to explore it; it’s the future of the league.” He dismissed opponents to a U.S. rollout as “bleeding-heart nationalists who fight for the Canadian game but never buy a ticket to see it.”

That wasn’t the only time Candy demonstrated an acid tongue. At the CFL awards show before the 1991 Grey Cup, Candy made a surprise appearance on stage, carrying a sign bearing the phone number for Argo tickets. Bantering with host Dan Gallagher, he said: “There’s a few media people that I would like to see eat a lot of crow. And I’ll cook it.”

One of those media people was likely John MacKinnon of the Ottawa Citizen. When MacKinnon asked what qualified the actor to be placed in charge of expansion, Candy fired back. “It’s called show business, you know,” he told the columnist. “It is a business.”

Just as crucial to the CFL’s future was Candy’s role in saving the Ottawa franchise. On one of his early promotional trips to the city, Candy had been informed by Polak, the Riders’ general manager, that her club’s ownership consortium of small-business investors was about to walk away from mounting debt. “I’m going to help you out,” Candy assured her. “I’m going to be there to help you.” Three weeks after the season opened, the ownership group pulled the plug.

Polak, who had stashed things required to stage a game in the trunk of her car, in case door locks were ever changed, swung into action. The league officially took over operation of the team, but Polak was doing most of the work. Candy was by her side at each step. “I was feeling completely under siege,” she says, “and he came to help me and help the league.”

The biggest thing Candy did was find a buyer for the Rough Riders. After reading about the McNall group’s expansion dream, Bernie Glieberman and his son, Lonie, had become interested in putting a franchise in their hometown of Detroit, Michigan. Lonie, a 26-year-old, had fallen in love with Canadian football by watching games beamed across the river by Canadian TV stations. “We don’t know when expansion is going to happen,” Lonie was told by CFL commissioner Donald Crump, “but Hamilton is available.”

Glieberman started thinking about buying the Tiger-Cats, another failing franchise, and moving it to Detroit. He attended several Ticats games and began discussions with David Braley, then the Ticats’ owner. Word of this got back to Candy, who called Lonie. “Why aren’t you guys looking at buying Ottawa?” Candy asked.

“The league office directed us towards Hamilton,” Glieberman replied.

Candy was exasperated. Why weren’t league executives working harder to find a buyer for the Rough Riders? he wondered. “We’re paying the bills for Ottawa. All the teams are.” Glieberman told Candy his goal was to own an American team.

“We’re going to expand to the U.S., and we’ll grant you an option for Detroit if you guys will take Ottawa,” Candy replied. “Ottawa is a great market, it’s a beautiful city with a lot of history.”

Bernie Glieberman flew to California a few days later to meet with Candy. “My dad was a little skeptical of it,” Lonie says, “but John Candy really sold him. He came back a much different guy towards the CFL. John had really inspired him on what this league could be, what the opportunities were and how it was really undervalued. From there, we had no more talks about buying Hamilton.”

The Gliebermans’ purchase of the Riders was negotiated with the McNall group, not the league. “We met at Bruce McNall’s office several times. We started going to Argo games and meeting people in Toronto. The league office (had little involvement) with the whole Ottawa purchase.”

Candy and McNall eventually got their way on expansion. The Sacramento Gold Miners joined in 1993; by 1995 the league had five teams south of the border. Expansion came to an end when the 1995 Grey Cup champion Baltimore Stallions were forced to leave town after the NFL’s Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens.

In Wayne Gretzky’s eyes, there’s no question about it: Without John Candy, there might be no Canadian Football League today. “He’s a Canadian icon that people idolized and loved, and he went to every game. He genuinely loved every bit of it. John Candy put his heart and soul not only into a city but into a country. He would rather go to Saskatchewan to an Argo-Roughrider game than do ‘Uncle Buck 2.’ That’s how much he loved it.”

Candy’s tenure as owner began with a splash: the signing of Rocket Ismail, the Blues Brothers, and a Grey Cup win in his rookie year. But the team struggled to repeat its success in 1992 and by 1993 was bleeding cash. Ismail was released from his contract that year to save the Argos money. Team suppliers were waiting months to be paid. Bruce McNall was going broke and would eventually wind up in jail for fraud.

In February 1994, Candy was in Mexico shooting a movie called “Wagon’s East” when McNall finally found a buyer for the team. The actor was in costume, wearing a scruffy beard and a big cowboy hat, standing on a dusty desert plain when he took the call from McNall’s business manager on a large satellite phone.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say the colour went out of his face, but it was close,” says Bob Crane Jr., who stood nearby as Candy absorbed the news. “This was a cold, corporate, ‘we’re dumping this.’ He deserved better than that.”

Candy briefly toyed with the idea of putting together an ownership group of his own. “I still believe in the Argos,” he told Bret Gallagher. The actor called a journalist he had befriended to say he was trying to keep control and promised to call back as soon as he found out whether his efforts were successful. But he apparently couldn’t find a partner with deep enough pockets, and despite Candy’s high earning potential couldn’t afford to take the lead himself.

A week or two after he learned the team was being sold, any hope Candy had of continuing with the Argonauts in any capacity was moot. On the morning of March 4, 1994, one of his aides went to the actor’s trailer on the set of “Wagon’s East.” When Candy didn’t answer the door, the aide broke in. John Candy was on his bed, dead of an apparent heart attack at the age of 43.

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