‘Always be positive’

Marketing exec, musician, outdoors enthusiast put a positive spin on everything

By: Jim Timlick

With the Winnipeg Jets ranking as one of the top teams in the National Hockey League this season, it’s a near certainty this city is going to experience another fabled Winnipeg Whiteout come April.

Sadly, one of the architects of the whiteout campaign won’t be around to cheer on the team when the playoffs get underway.

Madeline Hanson was the vice-president of marketing for the Jets when the idea for the Whiteout was conceived in April 1987 in the lead up to the team’s opening round playoff series with their archrival Calgary Flames.

Hanson passed away last August following a bout with ovarian cancer.

While the Whiteout has endured to this day — with The Hockey News once dubbing it a bucket-list event for hockey traditionalists — its success was anything but guaranteed. Hanson first brought the idea to the club after it was pitched to her by Rod Palson, a partner and creative director at Palmer Jarvis Communications. At the time, the Jets had a shoestring marketing budget and little time to put a promotional plan in place.

Even Hanson herself had some early concerns about the campaign, recalls her sister Michele Liebrock.

“There was this energy, this excitement. But there was also some nervousness about whether it would work or not,” Liebrock says.

Those doubts quickly faded as thousands of white-clad Jets fans made their way into the old Winnipeg Arena to cheer on their team — a tradition that continues 38 years later at the Canada Life Centre.

While she was always reluctant to take any credit for the idea, its enduring legacy was a source of pride for Hanson, her sister says.

“It’s like any little thing you do, it became a big thing, which was pretty exciting. She was pretty proud of that,” says Liebrock.

“But you know what was interesting? Unless somebody had known about it, she wouldn’t really talk about it. If you were to have a conversation with her and talk about her past, she wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, by the way, I did this.’ She was very humble about her accomplishments.”

After graduating from Neepawa Area Collegiate Institute in 1975, Hanson began studying at the University of Manitoba, where she graduated from with an education degree in 1980. She soon realized teaching wasn’t in her blood and instead decided to pursue a career in sales and marketing.

Hanson joined the Jets in the late 1980s after someone mentioned the organization had an opening in sales and she should apply. She worked her way up to corporate sales before being promoted to vice-president of marketing, a post she held until the team was sold and moved to Arizona in 1996.

Liebrock says while her sister took pride in what she accomplished with the hockey club, it was the relationships she built with co-workers and clients that provided her with the greatest satisfaction.

“I think her time with the team, she saw it as a family, that it was an extension of herself. The people that she met and the people she worked with, she felt very loyal to,” she says.

“She was extremely loyal. I think one of the things that motivated Madeline her whole life was building relationships with people.”

One of those people she built a relationship with was Val Brakel, who started off as a receptionist with the original Jets before joining the club’s sales and marketing team where she served as Hanson’s assistant for five years.

“She always had a great sense of humour. No matter how stressful things were getting, she’d always put a positive spin on things,” Brakel says of her former boss. “I don’t think I ever saw her get angry. She just kind of took things and whatever came up, good or bad, put a positive spin on everything.”

Hanson was also a mentor to Brakel, who laughs while recalling her nerves about meeting Guess Who singer Burton Cummings prior to a performance at a Jets game. Hanson encouraged her to relax and be herself.

“She definitely helped me to be a professional,” says Brakel. “She would say when you were meeting with new clients, speak your opinion positively, but hear the other team out first and then interject; make your notes and always be positive. Don’t criticize, but be positive about things.”

Although Hanson appeared confident and outgoing to those who knew her, she wasn’t always like that. Liebrock says her sister was a shy youngster.

“I think she actually had to work at that,” says Liebrock, laughing. “It’s kind of amazing when you think of the jobs she did. But she also believed in the things she was doing, so if she that faith in what she was doing, she could do it.”

While the sale and subsequent relocation of the Jets had a profound impact on Hanson, she embraced it as a chance to explore new opportunities with her husband John Green.

The couple decided to take a cross-Canada road trip during which they fell in love with the Okanagan Valley. In 2002, they moved to Kelowna where Hanson’s sisters Michele, Patricia and Suzanne and brothers Neil and Carl were already living.

It was an ideal location for the avid outdoors enthusiast and nature lover. Hanson could often be found cycling, hiking or skiing with family members or bird watching at one of the many parks near her Kelowna home.

Liebrock says her sister’s love of nature was rooted in their hometown of Neepawa. The family never owned a car, which meant they walked everywhere and that helped develop an appreciation for the great outdoors.

“Everything we did, we walked to do it,” Liebrock recalls.

“When you’re in a small town, you grow up with a lot of things around you that city kids don’t have. You play outside, you do a lot of outdoors stuff,” Liebrock says. “(Madeline) especially loved horses. We lived close to what was called the fairgrounds and she would go down and feed the horses all the time. And she would adopt any little cat that came into the neighbourhood. She had this tender side to her.”

Hanson was also passionate about the arts. She began playing the piano as a child and continued until shortly before her death. She was such an accomplished pianist, in fact, that famed Canadian composer Remi Bouchard composed a song for her. She was also a gifted visual artist and created sketches and watercolour paintings that adorned her home.

Hanson spent countless hours volunteering with multiple charities, including a Kelowna cancer centre. It was partly because of her experiences there that, when she began feeling weak and was having trouble standing, she was able to determine she was suffering from an autoimmune disease known as dermatomyositis.

Tests later proved it and doctors provided a diagnosis of ovarian cancer soon after. Despite aggressive chemotherapy treatments, Liebrock says her sister never complained about how she was feeling during that time.

“Even when she was sick, she still presented strong,” she says. “She didn’t want anybody to talk about her being sick. She was always concerned about everybody else and what was going on in their life. She was just so strong through it all.”

Despite her health struggles, family remained at the forefront of Hanson’s thoughts. She organized and paid for a family reunion she hosted at a Kelowna resort just six months before her passing. It was attended by all of her siblings as well as their children and grandchildren.

“Family was absolutely everything to her,” Liebrock says of her sister, who was the youngest of six siblings born to Charles and Leila Hanson. “Everything we do now, we feel like she’s with us because of all the little things she did. She was beautiful. She just had this aura of beauty that lit up a room.”

fpcity@winnipegfreepress.com