The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Your Turn -- Your Superstition

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

After months of heavy-duty Your Turns, time for something a little lighter this week. Do you believe in superstitions, and if so, what's your own superstition? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

And hello there, Peter Ransbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of the bridge. It's Thursday. That means your turn. And can you believe what we're talking about today? Superstitions. That's right. Coming right up.

Okay, so how did we get around to talking about superstitions today? Well, it was one of those decisions that we decided over last weekend. You know, the agenda is. being pretty heavy for the last, well, at least the last year, whether it's elections or fights with Donald Trump or whatever. How about lowering the temperature? Why don't we just have one week where we can have fun? So the question was, and we primed it by telling you a couple of stories about superstitions of,

I mean, we are in the Stanley Cup playoffs, superstitions that some famous hockey players have. like Bob Yor didn't wear socks. Sidney Crosby won't talk to his mother on game day. Those kind of things. So the idea was, what are your superstitions? Now, we had a limited time because this is a short week, right? We had a limited time to get your entries. But nevertheless, you sent some in.

we're going to get to them, but I want to give you some famous ones too. First of all, Pablo Picasso. Picasso, really hear what his superstition was. He refused to throw away his old clothes, his hair trimmings, or his, yikes,

this is bad. He refused to think throw away his fingernail clippings. All of that out of a deep-seated fear that losing them would mean losing his creative essence. No, really. I don't know, I'll never look at a Picasso the same way. Just wondering whether there are any fingernail clippings in there buried under the paint. Coco Chanel, iconic fashion designer.

also lived with a Duke in Scotland. They built a kind of a modern-day castle up in the Highlands, not far from where we have our little place that we escape to every once in a while. It's not a castle. But I've been out to where Coco Chanel lived, and it's in ruins now. There's nobody there. It's all boarded up. But it's spectacular.

and it's a beautiful part of the highlands. You know, the hills in the background, there's a little river running in front of it. I've walked the grounds. It's, you know, one can only imagine the place. Now, Coco Chanel was, you know, a story in herself. And if you don't know her story, look it up because it's fascinating. Anyway, she was an iconic fashion designer.

she always wore a specific number of pearl strands and strictly refused to launch any of her new collections on a Friday. She wouldn't do that. She wouldn't launch a new show of her clothes, her designs on a Friday. Alfred Hitchcock, the movie television director,

Master of Suspense. He had an intense phobia of eggs and would completely refuse to eat them or even have them in his presence. God, I love eggs. Love eggs. Hitchcock didn't. Okay, some more modern. Once, Taylor Swift. She's obsessed with the number 13.

She weaves it into her career milestones, award seating, and music releases. Keith Richards. Rolling Stones He requires This is good This is a good one I didn't know this Never heard this

And I will never look at Keith Richards In concert the same way again And I've been to A few Stones concerts And they're They're still like whatever it is They're now in their 80s It's still quite something

Anyway Keith Richards Requires A Shepherd's Pie At every show and he fiercely insists that he be the first person to cut into the pie's crust. Now, tell me you won't look at Keith Richards differently now. A few more sports figures. Serena Williams.

She relies on the same pair of socks throughout an entire tournament and make sure to bounce the ball exactly five times before her very first serve. Okay, like she does wash the socks, right, between each game? Let's hope so. Michael Jordan. Okay, I'll remember Michael Jordan. Incredible NBA career. Legendary athlete would wear his old UNC, University of North Carolina,

college practice shorts, underneath his official Chicago Bulls uniform for good luck. Really? Now, when you watch those highlights of Bulls games, you look at that differently too. Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, was known to walk barefoot around the Apple grounds, company grounds, and consistently wore the same, exact same, black turtleneck and jeans, to simplify his routine and embrace mindfulness. Now, this is like the sock story on Serena Williams. Does this mean that he wore the actual same black turtleneck

and the same pair of jeans every day? He must have washed them occasionally. Okay, here's the last one before we get to yours. Harry Truman, okay, former president of the United States, He became president in, I guess it would have been April of 1945 when FDR passed away. So Harry Truman was president when the war in Europe ended. Harry Truman was president when the United States dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He kept horseshoes close at hand.

excuse me going so far as to install a horseshoe pitch outside the Oval Office and mount one over his office door for good luck yeah, it used to be a big deal, you used to see horseshoes in a lot of different places and there was often over a doorway.

I don't know, maybe you still do. I just haven't seen any. But Harry Truman believed in horseshoes. Okay? So there's a little history for you. Okay, we're going to get to yours. As I've said before, on more than one occasion, my friend, colleague, and co-author of a number of books,

including one that comes out this fall, the noble profession, it's a book about teachers. It's a tribute to teachers, really, and you're going to want it. I showed you on my feed the, cover, the book cover. It's not coming out until November, so there's no access to the book yet. You can pre-order through the publisher, Simon & Schuster, and we're happy to take your pre-orders on that

because there will be a rush on them when they come out in November, right, just before Christmas? So you want to get your order in early. Hint, hint. Anyway, Mark, who helps me go through these letters every week, send me a note saying, you know, because it was a short week, we have time. Let me tell you about one of my mother's superstitions. This is Mark's mother. So here's his letter. That's his first letter to your turn.

But he has every right to. Why not? my mother was very superstitious. She must have learned them from her mother, who was born in Eastern Europe in the late 19th century. For example, she always insisted that there'd be a red ribbon on a baby's carriage and crib to ward off evil spirits.

But the nuttiest one had to do with sewing. If she noticed a loose button on a shirt I was wearing to school, she'd want to sew it tight before I left the house. We'd be in a hurry, so she would do it while I wore the shirt. But she insisted that while she sewed, I had to put my finger in my mouth so she wouldn't sew up my brain. I'd protest that it was crazy,

but she wouldn't fix a button unless I complied. Nice. Rory Richardson. writes from Calgary. My superstition is that if I'm thinking about a big game or an election the night before and I wake up calm and peaceful, it's a sign that my team or the party I voted for is going to lose. Here's hoping for restless nights ahead. Go Habs go.

Hell, that first Habs games tonight. Hence Carolina. It should be interesting. Constance Menzies. She's usually in Manitoba, but for some reason she's writing this week from Vancouver Island. Though maybe not a superstition per se, I must have everything in order before I start any project. My desk, kitchen, sink, dishwasher, my car, my laundry, and closet before I dress. My shop kitchen and so on.

Even here in our cottage rental on the ocean. keeps me sane and organized. You know, I kind of hinted the other day of what my superstition is. It's funny. It's like, it used to be when I was doing the national and big specials, election nights and things like that. The last thing I'd do before I'd leave either my house

or my apartment or the hotel I might be in, before I went to the studio, I would get to the door, open the door, turn around and look back in to the room, and try to imagine the room in that moment exactly as I saw it and remembered it. So I would see it again when I came back later that night. And for some reason, I felt that gave me good luck. It's a superstition that it gave me good luck that it would be a good show. and if I forgot, I might be halfway to the studio.

And I turn around, come back and do it. Just to maintain that. I did that for years and years and years. And I still do it now when I have a speech. You know, and whether it's in my hometown or whether it's on the road, I still do the same thing in a hotel room. Don't know why, don't know how it started, I just started. Well, guess who's writing?

Marilyn Wallace in Fannie Bay, British Columbia. I only step on a way scale when certain conditions are met. First thing in the morning, before I've eaten or showered. The scale must be absolutely level. Not a stitch of clothing. The results are immediately removed. unexpectedly my doctor recently wanted to record my weight. I panicked.

What? With all this clothing on? I said? It was a small consolation when he assured me he always deducts five pounds. Oh, you got a good doctor. My guy doesn't do that. Frank Padisi in Toronto. My superstition is a family birthday cake superstition.

The first cut must be made by the person whose birthday it is. While doing that the wish is silently made, however, for the wish to come true, the person whose birthday it is cannot pull out the knife from the cake. Over the years, this superstition seems to honor and draw our family together. Okay. Tom Wallace in Winnipeg. I've worked in emergency services in one way or another. for the past 28 years. On shift, when there was a lull in calls for service,

the last thing you should ever say is, hey, it's kind of quiet tonight. You were almost guaranteed the remainder of a shift you would never forget. It's silly and it's baseless, however, it was one of the few things you could control so long as everyone understood the assignment. Laura Plant in Chilowack, BC. I always knock on wood, or my head, if no wood is available, to avoid tempting fate if I say something about a potential bad situation.

It helps me be grateful for what I have and to recognize that I only hope for good things to happen for me and those I love. Knock on wood, that's wood. My mom used to do that all the time. and the whole knock on her head thing if she couldn't find wood. Jessica Kirkpatrick in Norman Wells, Northwest Territories. Six or so Christmases ago, my now mother-in-law gave me, as a stocking stuffer, a spatula that says, made with love on it.

Somewhere along the way, a superstition cemented itself. If I want a new recipe to turn out well, I have to make sure, the Made with Love Spatula is used during the production process. Don't lose it. Jason McGraw and Fredericton. My superstition is not saying that the habs will win the cup. I'm not sure why I think it's a jinx. Maybe I think being cocky should bring bad luck.

Okay, so we won't say the habs are going to win the cup. Now, you know, of course, I'm from Toronto. Well, I'm not from Toronto, but I live in Toronto and Stratford. And I'm a Leafs fan. And a lot of people in Toronto are not Habs fans. Okay, Josh Winters in Surrey, BC. Being raised in a religious family, superstitions weren't really allowed. But my chosen family had a New Year's tradition.

After waking from some degree of drunken stupor, Bob would open the back door and yell, Get out! To send off the bad things from the previous year. Then he'd open the front door and smile. Come on in, welcoming into good. I still do this every New Year's day, much to the chagrin of my condo neighbors.

Most condos only have one door, but clearly. Josh's condo has two doors, at least. My wife likes to bang pots on New Year's Eve. And I guess that's in some way the same thing. Should go out on the front porch to bang a pot. At midnight. Don Dufour in Ottawa, as a retired pension administration consultant and project manager,

I've always had a pension for knowing dates, deliverables, and keeping schedules organized. Around our home, we have several. calendars, home office, kitchen, garage, basement. And when the end of a month arrives, I do not flip to the next month until it has actually arrived. I feel something awful will happen if the calendar shows June while we're still in May. Patrick Chung in Toronto. On the eve of Lunar New Year, my family takes out all the garbage to welcome the New Year. But on New Year's day itself, we keep the garbage and most importantly we never sweep or vacuum the floor.

We want to keep all the luck inside the house. So if you happen to visit an Asian family on the first day of the year, don't be surprised if things look just a little bit untidy. Patrick Talon in Lorraine, Ontario. When I was growing up, my friend's mom, who was Scottish, told me he was bad luck to enter a building through one door and leave through another. You had to go out the same door you came in. Now, I have no idea where that came from, but it stuck with me. To this day, I still try to leave by the same door I entered. Okay, that's interesting.

That's a superstition I hadn't heard of before, but I get it. Here's the last one before the break. Dan Tessur in Prince George, BC. I've been doing full-contact medieval combat for over 30 years and roller derby since 2015. My superstition is I never practiced right before traveling for a competition or battle. I don't want to get injured

at a practice right before the very thing I've been preparing for. So I take those scheduled practices to mentally. prepare. Okay. Good luck. Medieval combat. I wasn't aware that happened. But I am now. Thanks to your turn. All right. We're going to take our break. Then we'll come back with a random ranter because it's Thursday and he's here and he's anxious. He's got something to say about homelessness. and I think you're going to find it, well, you find it interesting. You may not agree with it, or you might agree with it. But it's a new angle to a troubling story.

We'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge for this Thursday. That means your turn and the random ranter. You're listening to us on Series XM, 17. 67, Canada Talks. Glad to have you with us on that, or you're listening to us on our podcasts, which is available where all good podcasts are found. Okay, random rancher time.

I told you what his topic is, homelessness. Let's see what he has to say on that subject. Homelessness is not a monolith. There's a million different ways life can go wrong, and none of them are simple. Homeless people all have unique stories that carry with them different challenges. And for many of those people, the simple act of putting a roof over their head solves nothing. In fact, it may actually create more problems.

Now, that's a bit of a bold statement. So let me wind that back a bit and talk about my experiences. I volunteered in a soup kitchen every Sunday for six years. There were drug addicts, sniffers, alcoholics, the schizophrenic, the bipolar, the physically disabled, the learning disabled, the used, the abused, and the unloved. There were single parents, battered spouses, people with HIV, hepatitis, and cancer. There were young people aged out of foster care and all kinds of people on parole. Now volunteering put a real human face on the problem for me. It challenged my beliefs and exposed a lot of my misconceptions. I remember thinking, why don't these people just get jobs? And then I quickly realized

that that was just an entitled attitude of someone that had never interacted with the homeless. Because in reality, the majority of the people I formed relationships with were far too damaged and unstable to hold down a job. I mean, in the six years I volunteered there, I never came across the Hollywood scenario of someone who just needed a roof over their head to turn their life around. What I experienced was a lot of people in serious need of support and a community racked by violence and victimization. It left me believing that while everyone is deserving of a roof over their head, not everyone deserves to choose the type of roof. Now that might offend some people, but the status quo is getting us nowhere.

We can't continue to excuse the problem, ignore the problem, or condone the problem. Not all homeless people are created equal. Some we can help, and some sadly, we can't. I mean, there's a significant portion that are a danger to themselves and to everyone else out there, including first and foremost other homeless people. If we want the situation to improve, then we need to start weeding out the dangerous elements and placing them in some kind of institutional care, as in mandatory rehab, some level of supervised care or frankly, prison. I mean, we can't continue to condone open drug use on the streets.

We can't afford the crime that comes with it or the stress it. puts on everything from small businesses to schools, the police and fire, the public transit, and the health care system. I mean, who are we serving by letting this go on? The drug cartels? The Narcan industry? It's certainly not the communities where it's happening. And it's not the homeless themselves who are living and dying out in the elements. And look, the homeless aren't all criminals and drug addicts, but crime and drugs play a huge role in this. not just with the damage they cause, but with the precious resources they consume. Resources better spent on people who can be helped, but who right now are being lost in the shuffle

of what is a very ugly and dangerous deck. Look, if you just take someone on the street and stick them in an apartment without providing proper and abundant support, all you've done is move the problem from under a bridge and on to someone's doorstep. And all I'm saying here is that before we do that, we need to consider the impact that action will have on the greater community. I mean, imagine you're a single parent living in subsidized housing, and then all of a sudden, someone comes along and plops a raging meth head in the apartment next to you. How's that helping anything? Look, I like to think of life as a ladder. Some of us are near the top, and some of us are near the bottom.

We can all go up or down or even fall off. Well, the homeless have fallen off, and it's our job as a society to get them back on the ladder. But we're not solving anything if we're doing that to the detriment of everybody else on those bottom rungs. And that's what we need to think about, because if we make it worse for the people struggling to hang on, we've not solved a thing. We've just created a feedback loop of poverty, crime, and damage. disorder. Now, I know the ranter has been thinking about that one for a while. He's mentioned it to me a couple of times, and I wasn't sure exactly how I felt about it. I'm still not sure. But like so many things that happen on this program, it's given pause for thought. And we can

all think about that one. I know some of you already have got your minds made up about that. Others may want a little, like me, will want a little more time. So there you go, the random renter for this week. Let's get back to a few more superstitions. And we're going to go back to some famous ones. Because that basically concludes what you heard in the first half of the program, basically concludes some of your thoughts that made it onto the program this week. But these are interesting because

I don't know. I never knew these. Who wrote this famous line starting one of the great pieces of literature of the past few hundred years goes something like this.

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Or is it the other way around? Who wrote that? Where did it come from? Which book was it in? Tale of two cities. Who wrote it?

Charles Dickens. Now, Charles Dickens wrote a lot of great stuff, but I'm not a fan. Because Charles Dickens went after my hero, John Ray, one of the great explorers of our country. Scott, who ended up in Canada, worked for the Hudson Bay Company at one point,

did a lot of walking. He walked like incredible distances. A lot of it across northern Canada. And he's the one who first came up with the proof of what actually happened to the Franklin expedition. But because it involved some of the Franklin survivors eating some of the dead to try and keep them alive, they all perished in the end. But when Sir John, or not Sir John, John Ray should have been knighted, but he wasn't. And John Ray came back to England with that story.

People were horrified. No British person would ever do that. And Charles Dickens led the charge against John Ray and basically successfully ruined his reputation. But of course, later, it was proven that John Ray was right. Charles Dickens was wrong. Didn't seem to hurt the sales of Dickens' books, though. Anyway, why am I telling you that?

Because Charles Dickens actually had a really interesting superstition. He always carried with him a navigational compass. Always, at all times. And why did he do that? Because every night when he went to sleep, He always wanted a face north while he slept. A practice he believed improved his creativity and writing. So there's something about Charles Dickens.

She just may not have known. Audrey Hepburn. Now I know some of you're going, who's Audrey Hepburn? Well, you'd have to be pretty young not to know who Audrey Hepburn was. She's on the great actresses of our time, one of the most beautiful actresses. of her time. She was a screen legend. She was a humanitarian, and she was a fashion icon.

She lived from 1929 to 1993. She had a fascination with the number 55. She requested the number for her dressing room on almost all her movies. It had first been her dressing room for a couple of her classic films, Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany's. and so she liked that, and there was a lucky number 55 for her. Theodore Zeus Geisel. You knew him and know him today as Dr. Zeus. Live from 1904 to 1991. And I would guess that most of those who were listening, they read Dr. Zeus to their kids,

and some of the others who were listening, were read Dr. Zeus to them by their parents. he kept an immense collection of nearly 300 hats. When facing writer's block, the place Dr. Zeus would go was his secret closet, where he would choose a hat to wear until he felt inspired. So that's the trick. Get a collection of hats.

And when you're not inspired to either write or think or sing or whatever it may be, podcast. Get a hat. Ella Fitzgerald, the great American jazz singer, lived from 1917 to 1996. She suffered from stage fright. Hard to believe, but she did. John Chilton, who's a jazz historian and a musician, who played alongside Ella Fitzgerald,

recalled that Ella would go through a sequence of movements on the same spot on stage prior to every performance in what appeared to be a ritual, which he believed calmed her enough to perform. Let's get a couple more. The Chilean American author Isabel Ayende began writing her first novel on January 8, 1981. What had started as a letter to her grander, who was dying, eventually transformed into her book, The House of the Spirits. I ended now begins all of her books on January 8th.

That's her superstition. Initially, it was out of allegiance with her first book, but now she says she does it because she can be in solitude, since everyone knows she is not to be disturbed on January 8th. is another author, James Joyce, Irish novelist, 1882 to 1941. He was nervous about a poor response to his epic novel, Ulysses. Did I read somewhere that that's coming out as a movie? Anyway, James Joyce had worked on it intensely.

He chose his birthday, February 2nd, 1922, as the day to publish his masterpiece. Two copies of the book arrived in Paris by train on this day, one for Joyce and one for his bookseller. Shakespeare and Company. Lucky number two, work well for Joyce. Ulysses is now a classic. Ludwig von Beethoven. The master composer, Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770 to 1827,

Rosa Dawn and Woodward immediately get to work. That's not unusual. That's what I do every day with the podcast. But according to Beethoven's secretary, coffee was the most important item in his diet, and he prepared it very methodically, counting out 60 coffee beans per cup. His routine sustained nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas, and an opera. 60 coffee beans per cup. So I've got to try that. Maybe I'll just sit there and write music,

even though I've never written music before. But if you take 60 coffee beans per cup, apparently that's what you get. And not only that, it's incredible music. It's operas, sonatas, and symphonies. Salvador Dali. The Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali, 1909, considered himself to be very superstitious and carried around a little piece of Spanish driftwood to help him to ward off evil spirits.

Known for his idiosyncrasies, he nearly suffocated once while giving a lecture in a diving bell, helmet, and suit. Okay. I don't know what that has to do with the driftwood, but that's for. fine. Well, there you go. And I thought we wouldn't have enough to fill our slot with superstitions. But we did. We had to go to the history books for some of them. But you delivered as you always do, and I know I didn't give you much time. I'll certainly give you time next week. You can be thinking about it this weekend. Because it's the last week of May. Can you believe it's the last week of May next week? So it'll be an Ask Me Anything week.

And you can ask me anything. I will try to answer it. The normal rules and conditions apply. 75 words or fewer. Name and location are a prerequisite. Have it in by 6 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday. And you write to the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. Please don't say anything until next week.

because it just clogs up the bridge mail system, such as it is. Anyway, that'll be an ask-me-anything-week next week. Thanks for dropping a line, as many of you did this week, even as I said, in the reduced time slot. Tomorrow it's good talk. Chantelle and Bruce will be here. And as we always say on Thursdays, there'll be lots to talk about on Friday morning,

as there always is, and they love talking about it. All right then, I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.