| Oct 29, 2009


Back to HomeFeature Article - October 29, 2009 Geminis Come to ArdenBy Jeff Green

The Duthie family have been on Big Clear Lake for a long time.

Sheila Duthie has been coming up to Arden in the summers since she was a baby, and Jim ever since he met Sheila. Their summer home in Arden was the only permanent home the Duthie’s and their three children had for many years because they kept moving across the country following Jim, who was an RCMP Officer.

(Sheilla and Jim are now permanent residents of Arden, where they are fixtures in the local scene, with Jim being the top drummer in town)

So it is fair to say that their son Jamie is an Arden boy. Especially since Jamie has made good.

Better known as James Duthie, Jamie has finally won a Gemini Award as the top sports Anchor in Canada, after being nominated 7 times.

James Duthie brings wit and knowledge to his job as the host of TSN’s hockey coverage week in and week out, and his long deserved Gemini Award, which was stolen several times by the CBC mafia and given to Ron Mclean and others in past years, will only be one highlight of this winter.

In February, James Duthie will be the afternoon host of CTV’s Olympic coverage from Vancouver, (a job that Ron Maclean had when CBC broadcast the Olympics)

The Gemini award caps off a charmed carreer for Duthie.

His father Jim recalls that Jamie has “been a jock almost since day one.”

His spent his early ears in Victoria, where soccer was the dominant sport with a season that ran from September to May. When the Duthies moved back to Ottawa “Jamie was two years ahead of all the soccer players, and two year behind all the hockey players” jim said.

He played soccer with the Gloucester Hornets until he was 17 and also started playing flag football and golf.

He went to Carlton for journalism and while at school was a summer fill in at CJOH TV, where he was offered a job upon graduation.

He drifted to the sports department CJOH and then got a job offer in Vancouver with a new CTV station.

“I think he would have stayed in Vancouver, but he was offered a job at TSN in Toronto, and with his love of sports it was the place to be,” said Jim.

At first he worked on SportsCentre, the sports news show, and then became the Anchor of the CFL broadcasts before becoming the host of the NHL on TSN, where he still is today.

He suffered greatly during the hockey strike a few years ago, being forced to cover golf, which involved travelling to the Open Championship in he UK, and Augusta, Georgia for the Masters. One of the highlights of the strike year for James was an hour and half dinner with Arnold Palmer.

Even with all the travel, James and his wife and three children join the family back in Arden during the summers and over Christmas almost every year.

The next time he comes to the lake, maybe Jamie will some hardware to show off to his proud parents.

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