In his declining years Jim Coleman observed that offbeat racetrack characters were an endangered species. Following his death in January at age 89 they may now be officially declared extinct.

Once, a surprisingly long time ago, he wrote, “I have so many graves on which I must place flowers. This is the penalty which I must pay for getting into this racing game too young and outliving the men and horses who enthralled me. One by one they went and they left me here alone.”

And now Coleman, the last of his kind, is gone too, the victim of a heart attack in the hospital while recovering from surgery for a fractured hip.

Coleman was the Canadian answer to American humorist Damon Runyon, romanticizing about such colourful backstretch individuals as The Flea, Doc Burns, Yum Yum Dominic, Noodles, Doc Ronald, Banjo Jack, Chicken Pie and even the recently departed Gyp The Blood. He made them come alive in his 1971 book ‘A Hoofprint On My Heart.’ It was the Northern version of Runyon’s Guys and Dolls, starring Nathan Detroit and Nicely Nicely singing, “I’ve got the horse right here…”

But James A. Coleman himself may have been the greatest character of them all.

Canadian football and Canadian hockey were Coleman’s other passions, but his first and most enduring love was horse racing and the people who populated that curious domain.

He was born in Winnipeg in 1911, the son of what he laughingly referred to as “rich but honest parents.” His father D.C. Coleman would eventually become president of the Canadian Pacific Railroad and Jim and his younger brother Rowan spent their formative years in the 450-room Royal Alexandria Hotel. Their mother had drowned at a CPR resort in Invermere when Jim was eight and their father indulged them to excess.

Children dream of model railroads but the Coleman kids had the real thing. Their father took them via private railway to hockey, football and baseball games, to championship fights and to racetracks. These jaunts were disguised as business trips, but coincidentally there was always a sporting event at the end of the line.

The compelling opening chapter of “Hoofprint” is centered around a hypnotic visit to sylvan Sarartoga in upper New York, where the memory of horses working in the morning mist remained indelible in young Jim’s mind’s eye. “There wasn’t a race track from Florida to Vancouver Island that we didn’t visit,” wrote Coleman.

While attending a private boys’ school on Vancouver Island he learned that two plus two could equal $9.50 and $4.60 on those days when he augmented his education at the two Victoria area tracks – The Willows and Colwood. He landed his first full-time newspaper job with the Winnipeg Tribune, but soon moved back to the West Coast to work for the Vancouver Province in 1935. He jumped to the Edmonton Bulletin, the Edmonton Journal and then back to the Province.

In 1941 he took a temporary job with Canadian Press inToronto and ended up staying in the East for 42 years. He quickly caught on with the Globe and Mail, writing a sports column six times a week.

While his family background allowed him to mingle with the upper crust of Canadian society, it was the bottom half he gravitated towards when he began writing. “I like the kooks,” he said. “Where else could you find them but by working for a newspaper.”

Whether he found the kooks or the kooks found him is a moot point. He had the same effect on the weirdos as a full moon. When he used to check into the Vancouner Hotel in the old days they would be there to meet him – Doc Burns, Sidney Mole, alias The Flea, Yum Yum Dominic and Noodles.

Burns, a Hastings Park tout, always had his hand out for $5. One time he informed Coleman, “I need ten.”

“Ten,” cried Coleman. “I’m only a poor columnist.”

“I know,” replied Doc, “but I hear you have been syndicated.”

He took a circuitous route before he became the country’s only syndicated sports columnist. After eight tumultuous years – that is to say he was drinking a lot – as columnist for the Globe and Mail he suddenly quit in 1950. He quickly got a job as publicity director for Thorncliffe Raceway. He stayed for two years and then was lured away by E.P. Taylor who was consolidating several small tracks under the banner of the Ontario Jockey Club with Woodbine the centerpiece of the new empire.

In 1962, with Woodbine humming along smoothly, Coleman decided he needed a change of scenery. He had quit drinking four years previous and was looking for a fresh challenge. Old family contacts came through for him and he landed a position as columnist for the Southam chain, a job that lasted until 1983.

Southam had papers across Canada and Coleman’s popularity was enormous. Because he was born in the middle of the country, had spent a lot of time on the West Coast, and was now living in the East, he brought a unique national flavour to events such as the Grey Cup.

He always managed to find time to go to the racetracks, even when he was traveling in Europe covering Canada’s hockey adventures.

Former Hastings Park general manager Merv Peters still chuckles about the time that B.C. racing officials suspended a jockey for life in 1968 “for attempting to predetermine the outcome of a race.” In his column Coleman wondered what the sentence would have been had the poor jockey been successful. Hanging maybe.

After leaving Southam because of company restrictions on age he worked two years as publicity director for Stampede Park in Calgary before coming back to the Coast with third wife Maggie, an ardent sports fan and a Vancouver native.

Jim continued to work, writing a flashback column in The Province and a once-a-week nostalgia piece. He worked for two reasons. One, he needed the money because two divorces had cost him a bundle and he only had a modest pension. Two, his warm personality required the company of people, particularly newspaper people.

When he sat down in the cafeteria in the old Pacific Press building on Granville Street he would immediately be surrounded by fellow workers who loved to discuss last night’s hockey game or maybe hear a story that happened 70 years ago.

His eyes had seen Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig hit home runs; Jack Dempsey throw his right; Ty Cobb slide into second with spikes high; Howie Morenz shoot the puck and Fritzie Hanson run for touchdowns. And he had felt the intoxicating magic of mornings at Saratoga.

The only time his voice lost its ever-youthful strength was three years ago when his eldest son Dalton died of a heart attack. He took a long time to recover, but recover he did. Up to his last waking hour in hospital he was anxious to get back working at his old Underwood typewriter.

He leaves behind a son, Jim Jr., a daughter, Ann Ballard in England, wife Maggie, five stepchildren, five memberships in Halls of Fame, and an Order of Canada.

In his 1990 autobigraphy, “Long Ride On A Hobby Horse” he wrote, “Even today in the era of instant global communications, the racetrack is one place where, still, you can escape from the real world.”

It’s now a world that’s lost its greatest escape artist.