The Current - Bob McKeown retires after five decades

Episode Date: November 29, 2024

As a child Bob McKeown dreamed of winning the Grey Cup and being a reporter like his dad — both dreams he achieved. As the Fifth Estate host prepares to retire after 53 years in journalism, he looks back at a career that includes being punched in the face at an interview, bitten by a shark on camera and threatened with prison time for his work.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current Podcast. The list of awards and accolades is impressive enough. Multiple Emmys, Geminis, Michener Awards, prestigious citations for decades of excellence in journalism, and the latest, handed out just a few weeks ago, the Order of Canada. Bob McKeown is

one of our most respected voices in journalism. This eminent correspondent in the U.S. was renowned for his award-winning coverage of historic events, including the Gulf War and the World Trade Center attacks. Since returning to Canada, this CBC, the fifth estate co-host, has presented countless in-depth investigations.

Your Excellency, Mr. McEwen. All that hardware doesn't entirely speak to the essence of Bob McEwen, though. He is a giant of Canadian journalism, literally. He's 6'2", which is fitting for a football player with the Ottawa Rough Riders in the 1970s, where he also won a Grey Cup and was an all-star offensive linesman. After 53 years, though, as a journalist, Bob McEwen is retiring, and we are delighted to have him with us in studio. Bob, good morning. I should point out that 6'2 is not a giant in Canadian football.

It's a giant in journalism. Figuratively speaking. Congratulations on a great career. Do we say congratulations when it comes to retirement? This is an interesting thing. I've been struggling with that, Matt. I don't know. I mean, I'm very appreciative of those people who have, but I'm not sure where it goes after that. So I sort of say thank you for your kind words. I'll let you know what I go to next. How did this all start for you? I mentioned you're playing football and then broadcasting is part of this as well, right? You had a spot on CBC Radio at the time. Yes. If you asked me when I was in kindergarten at Broadview Avenue Public School in Ottawa what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said I want to be a reporter like my dad. My father was a parliamentary reporter for the Montreal Star.

He did radio programs for the CBC. He made documentary films for the film board. So many of the things that I've ended up doing, he did first. But beyond that, I wanted to be an Ottawa Rough Rider. You know, it was 1A and 1B. So somehow I have arranged both. It's neat to think, I mean, when you were playing, there was a sports column that you're doing on CBC Radio.

Is that right? I signed an ACTRA contract, a freelance contract, for three appearances on their afternoon radio show. All in a day. All in a day. Which exists to this day. It was for anything, but sports commentary is how they rationalized it. I preferred the anything angle, to be honest.

I wanted an in to CBC Radio. And that was my entree. Having had that in, the Fifth Estate launches in 1975. How do you go from playing sports and being a commentator and more on CBC Radio to being an investigative journalist? I became the substitute host for CBO Morning, the morning show, and Daybreak in Montreal, the morning show. And that, of course, led just to all kinds of places. At the time when I joined the Fifth Estate, I did a weekly, hour-long television show in Quebec called Quebec Report, which was the fifth estate of Quebec for all intents and purposes.

So I was trying to prove my worth in other ways than pontificating about the Montreal Canadians. We heard in that citation for the Order of Canada that you have had this career that has been here, but it's also been in the United States. You had a big move down to the United States to work for CBS News and covered some huge stories when you were down there. There is a moment that I think a lot of people who have followed your career and even people who haven't will remember from 1991. Have a listen to this. Connie, we're following the Allied convoy into Kuwait.

We're a number of miles inside the southern border now, along the main road heading north to Kuwait City. The Allies that we were following were somewhat behind the American invasion force yesterday. They're mostly Saudi troops. They came through about noon or early afternoon Sunday. We followed them overnight during the dark. And as the sun came up today, we see that where we are now, we're surrounded by armored vehicles.

There are also men scouring the desert for mines and they go off periodically. What's going on there? We were, as I tried to explain, in the procession that was going along the side, the coast of the Persian Gulf, heading into Kuwait as American and allied troops rousted the Iraqis from where they had been for a number of months at that point. This is the Gulf War? Yeah, the first. The first Gulf War.

Gulf War. And well, I'll just take a step back. When I was at Yale, I had a friend whose name was Art Kaminsky. And that name became well known in television circles because Art became the agent to the stars, to the news stars. Name a news figure from that day.

And Art represented them. Art represented them. Art was a pal of mine. So when I realized that I might want to look to the south and a little farther afield in my career, I called him up and we had a meeting. And the next week, I got an invitation to go and talk to the people at CBS News in New York. So that was the entree there. At that point, I had just finished a project, a freelance project with my wife that we were doing for the United Nations. And it took us to Kuwait and Yemen and Saudi Arabia and

many of the locations that I would have to go to if I were going to cover the Persian Gulf War. So I went to the people at CBS who didn't really know me. I went to them and said, I've been in that area for a number of weeks recently. I know the topography. I know the geography. And I also have done, at this point, months and months, if not years, of live broadcasting. And they went away. They huddled for a while. This was immediately after Bob Simon had disappeared. Bob Simon, the great CBS war correspondent who was captured in the workup to the Persian Gulf War.

And they needed somebody to take his place. work up to the Persian Gulf War. And they needed somebody to take his place. So I had positioned that, knowing it or not, I had positioned myself exactly to be asked by them to go back to where Bob Simon disappeared and retrace his steps. I mean, the positioning, we just heard it in that clip as well. You were in the right place at the right time.

The story goes that they cut away, CBS cut away to some other reporter, and then the Pentagon and the White House get on the phone and say, put him back on so we know what's going on. I wasn't there when the phone call came in. Somebody else got the phone call. I was in the Gulf, but I am told that that happened, yes. Why did you come back to Canada? I mean, that's people, the United States is this huge market, those, and you're down there working at that level. They're superstars sort of a family adventure. It was just something that we didn't think we should turn down, but we thought it might happen sooner than later that we'd want to come back home. And

we had bought a house up in Quebec in the Gatineau Park near Ottawa. And we wanted to go, we bought that house to go and live in it. The plan always was to go back home. And so that I could work for the CBC. Because that was my journalistic home as well. But it's also coming home is a big thing. I mean, it really matters to be back home.

Yeah, and I appreciate the question. I've heard it in recent days from a number of people, and it always takes me aback because I know that in these circles, news magazine circles, the Fifth Estate has a real position of eminence and always has. The fact that I came from there was a huge credo for me in the eyes of almost everybody at CBS and NBC with whom I worked. So why wouldn't you come back, right? Exactly. I mean, one of the reasons why The Fifth has that reputation is because of the stories it tells, but also the fearlessness with which those stories are told. And the way that you would go to get the story, perhaps from people who are not interested in telling you the story.

One of the things that you do very well is what is known as an unscheduled interview. This is not booked in someone's diary. It is when you approach somebody who is perhaps unsuspecting, maybe a bad guy, cameras are rolling, you roll up and you just start asking questions. The person might try to get away, the person might be walking away, the person might be saying,

absolutely not, I'm not talking to you, and you keep talking. Here's an example of that. Is that him? Hi, I'm Bob McKeown from CBC News. We're very much hoping you'll sit down and talk to us. Not a chance. Let's talk to you about your life in Mexico,

about your pardon, about what Theo Fleury and other players say are hundreds of sexual assaults for which you have not been tried. Would you care to comment on any of that, sir? No, I wouldn't. I'm impressed that you found me, but not that I've been hiding.

How long have you been here? I work here. We're very much hoping to talk to you. Absolutely not. Describe what's going on in that clip. We had gone to Guadalajara, Mexico. We were doing a story about Graham James, whose name is well known. Former hockey coach who was charged and accused of sexual assault. And convicted.

Who was a coach in Alberta and Manitoba. Graham James traveled with players named Theo Fleury and Sheldon Kennedy. Both became NHLers. Theo was a star, a superstar in the NHL. So we wanted to talk to Graham James. He did not want to talk to us. And we found that he had been pardoned in Canada and had gone off to Mexico. So we went to Guadalajara, and we had an idea where he might be. But it took us about a week or two, actually,

to pinpoint it. We were outside his hotel room every day. And then, well, you heard it. Is that him, is the question, which is a very often asked and really welcome question when you've been waiting a couple of weeks for somebody. He was, in fact, coming back from the laundromat.

He had been away for a while and he had taken his linens to get washed. You have one chance at an interview like that. It's not like you can get a do-over. How do you prep for something like that, knowing that you're going to roll up on this person and ask them the question that people, the audience is wanting you to ask? Yeah, the question's the easy part, because we've been immersed in this story for months at that point. So we knew what we wanted to ask him. And the first thing is always, will you talk to us? We also knew he didn't want to talk to us. So the problem becomes, how far do we go to try to get him to talk to us?

How much more can you get out of him and how long can this go on? Yeah. In any event, Mr. James was very polite, which that's really sometimes a surprise but always welcome in these things. always welcome in these things. This is, you know, the currency of the realm in investigative journalism is often the spontaneous interaction. That's what I call them. People who haven't done as many may call them jumps. Doorstopping.

Ambushes. I think that sets entirely the wrong tone on both sides of the equation. You know, you certainly don't want somebody thinking of it as an ambush when they're the ambushee. You're coming up to ask questions. Yes. And I see no reason why we can't be absolutely polite and level-headed and frank about what we want to hear from them. Because it's their story even more than it's our story. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news.

So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts.

What is it about hockey that interests you? I mean, you've done a number of stories, and the Fifth has done a number of stories, in terms of wrongdoing in our national pastime. What is it about that that intrigues you? First and foremost, Matt, it was that no one else had done it really when we started a number of years ago. It was Canada's national sport. Every Canadian kid in some way, shape or form is exposed to this. Yet

there are so many who don't have their coaches or their administrators or whoever protecting their interests. Let me ask you about Peter Nygaard, which is an incredible story, partially because this is an investigation that goes on for something like 10 years, but also the stakes of this investigation are really high. Yeah. Right. He took you to court. And again, the stakes and the implications of this were very personal. Tell me a little bit about Nygaard and what it was about that investigation. He's, for people who don't know, this former fashion mogul convicted of sexual assault. Why was that so important, that work so important to you at the Fifth?

so important to you at the Fifth? Because he was emblematic of a category of people, establishment figures who have used their wealth, and they're always wealthy, and they're always men, to get their way, to prevail over usually young women who they want to take advantage of. But as I mentioned, the stakes personally were high because he went after you for libel. And this is criminal libel. Yes.

And so if his efforts to prove that had been found successful, it's not like you get a slap on the wrist or get a fine. You could have gone to jail. Yes. In fact, explicitly would have gone to prison. Yes, in fact, they explicitly would have gone to prison. Prison, not jail. Prison. And yes, and we knew that.

So in the face of that, why would you continue your investigation? You could say, you know what, I'm not going to prison. This is not worth it. Because the authorities weren't. We started this investigation, and Nygaard is still behind bars, as you and I, not too far from where we're sitting right now in the Metro Detention Center. He wasn't being pursued by the authorities in Manitoba at that point, which was the germane issue, because that's where he was and where these offenses had allegedly taken place. The authorities in Manitoba had us charged through criminal libel for about a decade

for reporting what we believe and what we're certain Peter Nygaard did. For telling his story on the air, we were pursued by the Manitoba authorities for 10 years. Eventually, finally, they came to reason and withdrew the charges, and Mr. Nygaard's been behind bars ever since. Is that search for accountability? I mean, you've mentioned that a few different times. When it came to hockey, when it comes to this, we'll talk in a moment about football. Is that the thing that has driven you through this work? Looking for that sense of accountability? It's certainly one of them. We've got a motto that

we put on the logo for our 50th anniversary, and it's 50 years uncovering the truth. So part of it is revealing, but yes, absolutely. My old colleague, Eric Malling, who was the best journalist of this sort ever in Canada, his motto was, afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, which wasn't his. He didn't conceive of that, but it was the way he did his job for the Fifth Estate. And something that you've inherited. Yeah. He sort of considered me to be his little brother, and I took that as high praise. I mentioned football.

I have a card in front of me. Look at this. It's a Bobby Kuhn trading card of you with a handsome mustache. Look at that. It's definitely a collector's item. Soup strainer there. It is definitely a collector's item. You, in addition to playing football, were part of a

documentary from 2016 called A Story from the Field. Have a listen to this. This is one of the most difficult fifth estate stories I've ever had to tell because I'm part of it. For five years here at Lansdowne Park, I played for the Ottawa Rough Riders. So I'm a member of that generation of Canadian Football League players, now in the shadow of the condition called CTE, which links blows to the head, which we all got plenty of in the CFL, and dementia in later life. So in a way, this is my story too. You and I have spoken about this on the air in past. You have been very critical of the CFL, the Canadian Football League, and leadership within the CFL when it comes to what you say is a lack of support for players

who deal with the effects of concussions and linking the hits to the head to CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Why is it that you, I mean, you said in that little clip there that this is in many ways one of the most difficult stories you've had to tell. Why is this something that you have pursued with such figure? Well, in part, Matt, because so many of my teammates have obviously suffered from it. And a number of them have died from it. that Fifth Estate documentary, we open it with the publicity shots, not unlike the one

you've got of me in front of you, except everybody's dead in them. And that hasn't been addressed. Still. Yeah, still. Now, I don't want to blame the soon-to-be ex-commissioner of the CFL, Randy Ambrose, because it's a huge undertaking to try to, in some way, safeguard the future, the cerebral future of hundreds of Canadian Football League players. But if you're the commissioner of the Canadian Football League, that's your job. And precious little has been done by Randy Ambrose or anybody, frankly, to do that. Now, in the NFL, you can point to things that they have done,

but at the cost of probably literally billions of dollars. I was going to say at the pointy end of many lawsuits. You yourself decided, and you wrote about this for CBC, and we talked about this, decided to donate your brain to concussion research. Yeah. Is that in part why you wanted to do that? Because you feel like there are answers that need to be found? Yes, absolutely. And if I'm asking, maybe even demanding that the CFL take this more seriously, of course, they should expect the same thing or more or less the same thing from me. Now, I want to use the brain as long as I...

Hopefully that donation will not be imminent. Yeah, exactly. But I want to, and my retirement may be a good opportunity to do this, I want to make this better known than I have already, if that's possible. Do you worry about the future of the work that you have done for so long, the future of investigative journalism? We see there are news deserts, there are, it feels like it's happening on a weekly, daily basis where people are laid off in this industry, programs are closed. Those who are trying like you to find those answers find themselves looking for new employment.

Do you worry about the future of investigative journalism? Oh, of course. And that I think is, I hope, is part of what this documentary, 50 Years of Uncovering the Truth, will uncover. Because it's expensive work and it's hard work and it takes time and- But it's the gold standard of investigative journalism. I don't see how you can call yourself an investigative journalist or even a journalist

and not do that kind of work, not point out what's going to happen if we keep going down the road we are. What's next for you? What are you going to do now? That's a rude question. It's the question a lot of people want to know. They've seen you on television for years.

I'm one of the people who want to know the answer to that question. Right now I can tell you it will fall into one of or three categories. One, a book, of course. Two, I have a film that I made 30 years ago that became sort of the quintessential documentary film about the National Hockey League. It was called The Boys on the Bus. Followed Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier and the 1987 Oilers to their Stanley Cup that year. and Mark Messier and the 1987 Oilers to their Stanley Cup that year. And since COVID, when there were a number of documentaries that started to get traction, and one of them was Last Dance,

which was a documentary about Michael Jordan and the Bulls. Since then, I have had amazing response from people who want to partner with me to make a series out of the boys on the bus. So that sounds like much more fun than writing a book, frankly. Or putting your feet up and relaxing. Yeah. But number three, my wife, Sheila, who's literally the first person I met on my first day at the Fifth Estate, and to whom I've been married for 40 years, deserves way more of my time than I have been able to give her having this schedule. So I'm going to have to consult with her before I answer your question.

So the story, this is how we'll end, is the story about Sheila is that on your first day at the Fifth Estate, you were told by one of the hosts at the time, Adrienne Clarkson, her advice was don't date the staff. You did not follow that advice. I'd already met Sheila. If you've met Sheila, you'll know what I mean. She was a member of the staff, an associate producer at the Fifth Estate. Our families had known each other. My dad, as a journalist, had done a magazine article on her dad, who was the youngest MP ever in Canadian history at the time. And we had a number of other ties, mutual friends.

So once I got to know her, it was clear that our futures were entwined. You don't seem like the retiring type, but you deserve to be able to put your feet up and do whatever you want after a career like this. I've always enjoyed our conversations and I look forward, when that book comes out, we will have you back.

In the meantime, Bob, thank you very much for this. And thank you, Matt. Final story Bob McEwen is part of is called The Fifth Estate, 50 Years of Truth. It airs tonight at 9 p.m. on CBC Television and CBC Gem. And it's also on The Fifth Estate's YouTube channel. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.