Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Bruce Dowbiggin: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1575

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

In this 1575th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Bruce Dowbiggin about the American election, Donald Trump, Pierre Poilievre, vaccines, his new book Dead With It, and more. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, The Advantaged Investor podcast from Raymond James Canada, The Yes We Are Open podcast from Moneris and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail]

Welcome to episode 1575 of Toronto Mike, proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times and brewing amazing beer. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta Enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. The Advantage'd Investor podcast from Raymond James Canada. Learn how to plan, invest, and live smarter. Season 7 of Yes We Are Open, an award winning podcast from Monaris, hosted by FOTM Al Greggo. RecycleMyElectronics.ca, committing to our

planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. And Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921. Today, returning to Toronto Mike is Bruce Dobigan. Welcome back, Bruce. Good to be back. This is my fifth time on the show. But who's counting? You should get a, you're telling me you need a jacket

or something, is that what they did on SNL? I was just about to say, if you do five, don't you get a gold jacket or something? I remember when Tom Hanks got the jacket. This is going way back now, but yeah, that was a big deal. John Goodman, Steve Martin, of course, these were the five timers club members

on Saturday Night Live. You should have something like a hoodie or something. You know? You know what? I need a clothing sponsor. Let me see what I can do. Maybe Great Lakes has a hoodie or something. You know? You know what? I need a clothing sponsor. Let me see what I can do. Maybe Great Lakes has a hoodie for the five timer club, but it's good to see you, man.

It's good to be seen. Nice to be in Toronto and it's absolutely splendid day today. It's like Labor Day weekend out there. It's so warm. No, it's like 22 degrees today. Like shorts weather, insane for November. So I wanna, off the top, I wanna timestamp the episode. Yes, sir.

Cause I don't know when people will listen, but they're welcome to listen, you know, five minutes after we take our photo by the Toronto tree. But today, Bruce Dobe again, is November 5th, 2024. And tell us, you're a political junkie, tell us why that's a significant day. Election day in the United States. Absolutely presidential election. The most consequential.

Why did we book this for tomorrow? Not that we will know, like who knows what we'll know tonight when we go to bed. I completely forgot. I completely forgot. Are you here? Are you in Toronto tomorrow? I am. Okay.

Get out of here, Bruce. We're doing this tomorrow. I probably have the day, the morning open tomorrow too, but yeah. Cause you picked, uh, you picked, you know what? Depending what happens tonight, I might have to call you back to discuss, but, uh, off the top, what are your feelings? Uh, what is your crystal ball say about what will happen in the U S of a, in this election? I have feelings, but I don't have details.

And I was supposedly a reporter when I was younger. So I don't want to make predictions based on feelings. But you're not a reporter here. You're here as citizen Bruce. There's gonna be a lot of splaining to do on one side or the other, because I've been following all of the polls and the reporting.

And it's clear that sort of, you know, the mainstream polling that supports the Democratic Party is behind them. There are people who are supporting the Republican party and Donald Trump. The problem with this election is that neither side has left themselves any place to back up. Like everybody's pushed their chips in.

You've probably played some poker late at night. Sure, yeah. It gets to that. You're all in, right? There's that final FU thing where everybody puts it into the middle. And they don't have anywhere to go after this. And so it's going to be really interesting, scary.

I don't know what it is. We could have a whole lot of superstar media people move to Canada. That's what they keep saying anyhow. Well, and it's not as easy as they think it is, right? Like I've talked to people who have made the move and they're like, oh, this wasn't quite as easy as I thought it would be.

It's a quite a process to become a, to come to move to Canada. We're different. I mean, uh, what's the name? The, the, the comedian, the American comedian, uh, who's from Missouri. Anyhow, she talks about Canada being America's attic. And, uh, well she says you stick your head up and say, Ooh, look at everything up here. Well, there's some stuff over there and this is kind of nice, she said, but do you want to live in an attic? The fastest route I think is to marry a Canadian.

And that's not that, it's also not that easy. Nope. You know, they want, they want video proof that when you make out, you enjoy it. Like there's a. Well, you know, not to be a cynic, but I think if you come across rocks and road in Quebec these days, they'll take care of you.

And you can certainly have the equivalent of being a citizen. Oh my goodness gracious, Bruce. Okay, so a lot of ground I want to cover because I want to get back to this, but you are, as you mentioned, off the top. I think it's your fifth visit. Yes, sir. You're a multi-time guest, Bruce Dobigan. And I just thought about that name, Bruce.

Okay. Then I started thinking, oh, tomorrow night I'm going to see Bruce Springsteen live in concert for the very first time. My first Bruce Springsteen concert is tomorrow night. Are you going to catch Bruce while you're in town? So I'm Sunday. You saw it. How was it? The guy is 75 years old. Yeah. The guy I was with who took me to the concert is 79, just four years difference. And Springsteen just doesn't stop for three hours. Isn't that unbelievable?

You know, usually you go to a concert and the song ends and they meander around, they tune a guitar, they do this, they do this. He just does one right after they boom, boom, boom, boom. Just absolutely spectacular showmanship. The music, everybody knows the music. Yeah. I wish I had the concession for artificial hips and knees

in the crowd. It's a plus 50 crowd that's there. But they're all into, you're gonna, I'm presuming you're a Springsteen fan. Well here's the thing, so I am of an age where my introduction to Bruce Springsteen is born in the USA. Okay, so that's like, that was because I was listening

to a lot of top 40 as like a 10 year old. And it's, you know, there was a lot of born in the USA. Okay, so that's like that was because I was listening to a lot of Top 40 as like a 10 year old. Yeah. And it's you know, there was a lot of born in the USA on Top 40 radio when I was 10 years old. So that's my Bruce introduction. Glory days, you know, born in the USA, dancing in the dark. The video of Alex P Keaton's girlfriend in it.

She'd go on to being friends Courtney Cox. That was the Dancing the Dirk video, but all that, and that was pretty cool. But it wasn't until fairly recently that I embraced 70s Bruce. Because I missed 70s Bruce, and I didn't really go back to it till recently. So I would say now I'm a big Bruce Springsteen fan. A born in the USA is about a third into his career.

It's at a point where he starts to know who he is as a megastar. I'm old enough that I was working at U of T at the newspaper out at Arendale, which is now U of T Mississauga. I was the entertainment guy. And I got the Wilde Innocent in the East Street Shuffle. I had no idea who this guy was or whatever.

And in some respects, I think it's still my favorite record because it was before he got John Landau. John Landau, and I'm not gonna knock John Landau. He made him into a superstar. He said, here's your sound, here's what you're gonna do. And there are songs on The Wild Day Innocent and The East Street Shuffle, which aren't perfect, but it sort of encapsulates the energy, the wordplay,

and it's kind of Springsteen from himself as opposed to the other ones, which are a little more produced. But he's fantastic. I just, he was a guy who I've, I think I've seen him now four times in various places. I think Calgary once, Toronto three times. And he just, he kind of like a signpost in your life

when you saw him. And he took showmanship for rock and roll at a time when everybody was sloppy and they, you know The guys seemed buzzed all the time or it was or is it Van Morrison and okay. I played 91 minutes I'm out of here, right? I mean he raised the bar in a way that that just was really really great And I you know, I've obviously been a fan of his for a long time listen to everything He's done every TV or radio show that I go on when they're introing me, they play a Bruce Springsteen clip.

They need music, they do a Springsteen. Right, okay, now do you know Brad Fay? Are you friendly at all with Brad Fay? So Brad Fay tells me he's seen Bruce over 100 times. Oh, there are people, yeah. When you think about that, and I know that you're right, there are people. I saw Fish, you know,

Canada Cavs saw Grateful Dead 100 times, no problem, right? They tour of the band. But I just think that's remarkable that Brad Fay has seen Bruce Springsteen live 100 times. There's lots of people who've done that. The woman who was serving in the box, I was in a box watching the- Look at you, who was that 79 year old

who took you to a box? The guy who can afford to have a box. I'm impressed. At Scotiabank. I'm in the 300 level, but happy to be there. We were right, and we were behind the stage. Well, when you see it tonight, look back behind the stage and up at those boxes.

That was you. We were right next door to Austin Matthews' box. And I'm sure if he was in town, we'd have spent the concert with him. Anyhow, that's where we were. And the young woman who was serving in the box, she said that her father has seen him over a hundred times. There you go. And I think that's a we were. And the young woman who was serving in the box, she said that her father has seen him over 100 times. And I think that's a bit much.

As much as I love him, it's like a box of chocolates. The first few are fantastic. But if you eat the whole box in one go, I don't know. It's like a religion, right? It's like you're following the congregation or whatever. The United States of Bruce Springsteen. Well, and he was, the reason he was loved was at a time when there was a lot of negativity and pessimism

in the United States coming out of Watergate, coming out of the Vietnam War, all sorts of stuff. And it was very easy to dump on America and to be anti-American in your expressions and in your music. And he made it, he made the sort of middle class male experience good again. He made it fun. And yeah, I just, I was grateful to him to do that.

And then of course, disco came in and pushed him aside a little bit for a few years, but you know, he's abided. What's the saying? Abide with me, that's him. Yeah, and fun fact, I think you'll know the answer. This is a trivia question I drop with any Springsteen head who's in the room. He has written only one song that reached number one

on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. Can you name that song he wrote that went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 charts? Blinded by the Light? Correct, okay, good for you. Everybody starts running through, they think dancing in the direct, they start running through the Springsteen charts.

He didn't record it either. The hit, the hit was Manfred man and his Manfred man got it. Not a Bruce, but you know what though? I'm impressed. I've sent to that stuff. Okay. So no, good for you. Now, uh, I'm curious as a Bruce, so we're going to do a little Bruce talk off the top. We'll call this Bruce cast as a Bruce. Do you grab it? Like if you, if there's a great musician named Bruce, do you gravitate? Like if there's a great musician named Bruce, do you sort of like them a little more because you have the same first name? A little bit, I was curious about how he got his name.

His background is Italian and Dutch. The Springsteen's a Dutch name, I think. And that was his father's side. And I think his mother is Italian and he grew up on the Jersey shore, which doesn't seem very Bruce-like. Honestly, I don't know where that's coming. Now, my best friend for years was a big concert promoter here in town,

a guy named Rob Bennett. Oh, he so I will. I want to ask you about Rob, because I read your book, which we're going to talk about later. Deal with it. The trades that stunned the NHL and changed hockey. And early on, if I call it up, I don't have my glasses on. But you dedicate this book to his memory, gone too soon.

Yeah, he died of ALS last year. We were best friends from, we met when we were working in 1974 at the LCBO for Christmas, and we were obviously best friends. And Rob got into promoting through the U of T, he used to promote concerts at Con Hall. At his peak, he was doing the Molson Amphitheater. And one of the tours he did, he had lots of tours,

but one of the tours he did was with Springsteen when he was doing his Tom Jode thing. And so Rob took him across the country. And he, I may have said this before, one Sunday night I was of course working at CBC and I was doing 6 and 11. and I get a phone call from Rob and he says, get down here quick. I said, Rob, it's like 11, I got two shows tomorrow,

I can't do it. And back and forth we go and I said, I just can't do it. And so the next day I said, well, what was the big fuss? He said, oh, we were going out for dinner with Springsteen. So I passed on Springsteen. Anyhow, on the same tour, and this is indicative of Bruce Springsteen who washow, on the same tour, and this is indicative of Bruce Springsteen, who was a very natural kind of guy.

So anyway, he goes to Montreal with Rob, and I guess it's an off night, and they're going around, Rob is showing him old Montreal, and I think they go into a couple of clubs, and he stands at the back and listens to people. I don't think he went up there and sang with anybody. In any event, he's making the scene, et cetera.

And they're walking around, and it's late at night and he says, what's that funny thing up in the hill? And he said, oh, that's Mount Royal and that's the cross. Oh, let's go up there. So Rob gets in the car, he gets a cab or limo, whatever it is, they go up there. And there were a couple of other friends with him. And they have a snowball fight

with Bruce Springsteen on Mount Royal. I mean, how real is that? How real is that? Love it so much. So that's my anecdote about Bruce Springsteen as a natural man. Natural man. So I'll see him tomorrow for the first time. And his daughter I should say by the way. Who is it? Equestrian? Equestrian. Yeah Olympian. Where I live in Calgary is right across the highway from Spruce Meadows and she comes over there. I don't think he goes, I think he's only been once to Spruce Meadows

and Patty, his wife has gone typically, although I think she's ill right now. So I don't think she came this season. So yeah. He flies back right after the show, you know, they don't stay in town. Well, I was gonna ask, cause that's Sunday you saw him, right?

And I'm seeing him Wednesday. Well, there was a few days between Sunday and Wednesday. I learned that in junior kindergarten, maybe earlier. And I was wondering, because Max Weinberg played the horseshoe. Like, so he stuck around and played the horseshoe. And shout out to Robert Lawson, who was on this program. He got to meet little Stevie, because he wrote a book about Stephen Van Zandt. And I just, if anyone's looking for more on Stephen Vansant, find the Robert Lawson book. It's very good.

And I saw a photo of him and Stevie, you know, having photos and Stevie signing the book and all this. Isn't that documentary on, on Stevie Rob's in that documentary or Robert Bennett? No, no, Rob Lawson, Robert Lawson, a fair bit. Yeah. Okay. It's on HBO or something. So just so you know, if you do, you would never,

you're a, I trust you, I like you, you're a recognized award-winning journalist, but if you did tell a fib on this show, Robert Lawson jumps out of the bushes and fact checks you, just so you know. So he's the official fact checker of the Trump Mic. Okay, I'm pretty sure it's him that's in the documentary. Okay, I'll find out.

It's a Toronto guy for sure. I remember saying to my wife, oh, I know that guy. Okay, maybe. Well, we'll confirm that later. He'll fact check this fact about him. So, okay, one, before we leave Bruce Springsteen, because I got a few more Bruce hits and then we're gonna get into this thing.

This is all pre-show. We're just warming up here. Tom Wilson, great FOTM. He was in Junkhouse to, I don't know if you were a Tom Wilson fan, when it comes to music. So he tells an amazing story. It's in his first appearance on Toronto Mike. Go listen to that he talks about meeting Bruce Springsteen at Massey Hall and

Staring at Bruce Springsteen's tits. Those are Tom Wilson's words. I call the story Bruce Springsteen's tits It's an unbelievable story highly recommend to you Bruce all the story Bruce Springsteen's tits. It's an unbelievable story, highly recommend to you Bruce. The thing I couldn't take my eyes off during the concert, I kept going back to, and you just mentioned, is Steve Van Zandt. Because of course I'm just a soprano. Silvio.

Yeah, Silvio. I'm a soprano's junkie. Me too, but. And I'm just thinking of one of the unlikeliest careers in all of show business. I mean, the documentary talks about his music stuff and how he and Springsteen got there. And literally, they just saw him, Chase, David Chase,

just saw him doing, I think a present. The Rascals. Yeah, he was inducting the Rascals into the Hall of Fame. And he said, that guy, I want that guy. Of course, Van Zandt showed up and what? And I'm sure you know this fun fact that he auditioned to be Tony Soprano. Yes, yes.

Which is like, well, they made the right call there, but he's such a good Silvio. I don't think there was a Silvio character originally. They wrote it for him. They wrote it for him because they liked him so much. And I just couldn't take my eyes off. And of course you got the bandana thing going on. You know, and he often, especially in the earlier seasons,

he'd break into his Godfather impressions. Right? Like every time I pull away, they suck. Okay. Bruce Springsteen, another Bruce. Yes. And I'm going to just drop three names. These are FOTMs also named Bruce.

And I'm just curious if you have any thoughts on them or any relationship at all of these people. So the first Bruce I'm going to reference because today is the anniversary of his Toronto Mike debut five years ago today. Bruce Arthur. How, what does Bruce Dobegan think of Bruce Arthur? Well, personally or professionally? Professionally.

Okay, both. Well, professionally, I'm totally, I'm totally at the opposite end of the political spectrum from it. Right. And he works at the Toronto Star and he's doing what the Toronto Star is paying him to do. And that's, I understand that. I understand that. I totally disagree with him about a lot of stuff. I'm not a Toronto liberal anymore.

I was when I was younger, but not so much anymore. You moved to Calgary. Now for people, there's five episodes of Bruce Dobe again on Toronto Mike's. We don't have to cover this in too much detail, but you currently live in Calgary and how long have you lived in Calgary? Gosh, it's now almost 25 years. I moved in 1998. Got a job offer to go out there and I said, yeah, well, I'll grow a third eye too.

What do I want to leave Toronto for? And for the first 10 years, it sort of felt foreign. And then after 20 years, you fly back in and you look down there at the prairie and you see the mountains and you go like, this is kind of where I belong at the moment. I don't know if that's going to change. So your thoughts, so you mentioned, you know, Toronto liberal and Toronto star and, and so you were kind of in that mold when you lived here and then over time living in Calgary, your thoughts and perspectives on things politically shifted.

I think that I'm, I think that I'm a 1970s liberal, large L liberal. I just think that the whole scene has moved to the left. I don't think that my values have particularly changed, but the whole movement towards all sorts of extreme radical positions and stuff, that's not the Liberal Party. That wouldn't have worked in the 1970s for the Canadian Liberal Party. And I certainly don't count myself a liberal now.

The prime minister is way out there on another limb. And I don't think I'm necessarily a Pierre-Paul L'Hiv lover. Most of what I do is I try to watch the way politics are covered in Canada and the United States and critique that. Because none of the politicians are perfect. I don't have a vested interest in any of them. I'm not going to be any better off or well I might be worse off if Trump loses and they and they shut down Elon Musk and X I might lose a platform there but by and large

I just try to watch hoping yeah and yeah well gosh just the whole idea of freedom of the press and where we've gone. And it's really quite interesting that we've gotten to this point in this election where they've talked about it's either or. And Musk says, I think I'll be in jail six months after if Kamala gets elected. And Trump says, you'll be in my cabinet. It's a real either or thing. And in any event, I just I watched mostly that and how the media covers politics.

And that's that's what really sort of intrigues me. And I try not to be too invested. Certainly people are Trump lover, Trump lover, this and that. Well, you know, people are surprised I have you in my basement for like whatever. We're going to chat for 90 minutes or something today. And I actually am surprised they're surprised only because and I think I tweet I Tweeted something to this effect just before you arrived when I said we were gonna be live streaming at live trontomike.com Is that I do read what you write not the public broadcaster?

Is that the name of the sir? Yeah, so I'm I've it I've subscribed to the RSS feed and I read what you write and more often than not I passionately disagree with everything you wrote but I defend your right to say it and I'm open to having a civil Discourse on the topic or even though we're on different ends and I might be more aligned with Bruce Arthur than I am Bruce Dobegin I'm Happy to see you and have a chat not just about hockey and not just about Alan Eagleson, which we'll cover later in this conversation, but what's going on right now with Donald Trump

and Pierre Poliev and everything. I feel like we can have civil discourse even if we aren't aligned. What was the title of the column when I was here the last time? I wrote a column after the last time I was here. The headline was, why did you have him on? That was the headline.

Oh yeah, right. But I do, I get a lot of like- I respect that. And I'm like, well firstly, I have on who I wanna have on. Like I don't answer to anybody. This is not the public broadcaster either. And if I wanna talk to Bruce Dove again, so what are you in town for?

Like what brought you to Toronto? You're a Calgary guy and you're here in the big smoke. Well, I'm doing a little bit of a tour for my book, Deal With It. the trades that stunned the NHL and changed hockey that I co-wrote with my son, Evan. So I want to talk about this book in a moment, but I will tell you that for a period of time, I had copies I gave to guests and many, many notes of people saying they love the book. And one guy I want to shout out, I took a note.

I want to shout out, you know, you mentioned not the public broadcaster. Well, a guy who worked many years for the public broadcaster is Robert Fisher. I know Robert. So Robert got a copy when he visited his episodes epic. I don't use that word lightly. Got to listen to the Robert Fisher episode of Toronto Mike. He's told me multiple times what a big fan he is of deal with it. The trades that stunned the NHL and change hockey. He loves it. I've seen on Facebook he's been posting about it. Robert's a great guy. We had two people named Robert Fisher in the newsroom at the same time.

And did he tell the story? I don't know. Oh, I tell it now. I can't remember. It was another guy was Robert Fisher and Robert, your Robert Fisher. Yeah. Had a reputation as being a really great, terrific journalist and was well respected, etc. And the other Robert Fischer really wasn't highly respected in the newsroom. And so everyone called him fake Fischer.

And they say, is fake working tonight? And nobody wanted to work with the guy because he wasn't particularly reliable. One had to go. Yeah, well, I know that I think the fake lasted well longer than Robert. Robert I think retired. Well, Robert was at Global, he went to Global.

And there was a whole like scandal when he exited Global and then he re-emerged with CBC radio. Yeah, he's a wonderful guy. We disagree on politics. He's a liberal, a small L liberal, and I disagree with that, but that's with some of those things. But the essence of it is that he and I disagree, but we can talk. And that's all he really wants. Well, that's all some of those things. But the essence of it is that we, that he and I disagree,

but we can talk and that's all I really want. That's all we're doing today. Cause we will talk about deal with it. And I want to talk about Alan Eagle's speech again. Free speech is not for what you like. It's for what you don't like. You, you, you allow free speech because you have to hear things you don't like from time to time. Now there are things that obviously are beyond the pale, but by and large, if you want to sit there and tell me how the camel Harris is a wonderful person, I respect your right to say that and where you go. Uh, and hopefully you will say the same thing about me when I talk about, you know, Pierre Paul, you have, as opposed to Trudeau, whatever that's,

that's what makes free speech. That's how we got here. But free speech, but you moments ago, you referenced, uh, you said the name Elon Musk and you mentioned X, which, uh, if it's okay with you, I'm calling it Twitter. Okay. So, uh, Twitter, why so bitter? Cause X is a stupid name and Twitter was a great name. And, uh, it's not like it's a person. That's your only complaint. Yeah. X is a stupid name. I liked Twitter. I still call it Twitter. Whatever. I still tweet I don't X when Elon Musk

On his platform, which he paid good money to own so his right a billion How many 44 wasn't a four? No 44 way overpaid. Okay, well the time. Okay. Well, yeah, I can't remember anymore, but he sure did. So he overpaid for this platform, but you know, you can, you can, you don't have to be Robert Lawson to go through the tweets from Elon Musk to see these, many of these tweets are bald faced lies that are amplified on his platform. Like freedom of speech is one thing, but when he's using his popular social media app to amplify complete inventions, like pieces of fake, I didn't document it, but they're, they're

bald faced lies. They aren't even debatable. You must just one, which one? Just just one. Give me just one. I have to go. I mean, you're a fool. You're a fool.

You will force me onto X to find the Elon Musk feed, which I'm trying to avoid today. But I mean, you're not cool with lies, right? You're just telling me you have the right to have an opinion, opinions are opinions. But when you state something as fact, which is easily disprovable, you're not cool with that, right, Bruce?

Well, some things were lies, and then they became the truth because times changed. I mean, Galileo was lying about, about the sky, the sky, the star. Well, then, then he was, then he wasn't, uh, there's, there's a bunch of things that were lies, uh, that were perpetuated on online that are, are now that we know it to be true. I mean, the whole thing about the, about vaccinations, we were told that that would, we'd need one, maybe two, and we'd be free for life. And our prime minister told us all

those things and they were lives. Yeah. Okay. He's, he's a politician. He's, he's, he's got, he's got a right to lie. They all do, but the truth comes out eventually. Thank God about, about things. And I think we have to, you have to reserve the right for people to disagree about something contentious, really contentious like that. I know, but with science, these things do change, right? As we learn more about this virus we hadn't seen before. So Will, is it fair to say you're not getting, cause I have an appointment on Thursday.

I made sure it was Thursday, so it didn't mess with my Bruce Springsteen concert, cause I know you can get some effects, but I'm getting the double shot power. I'm gonna get the flu shot and the COVID 19 vaccination on Thursday. Is it fair to say you're not participating? You know what I think of that? That's your right. God bless. I will not take it anymore. I had two of them. And within three months I nearly died of a pulmonary embolism, double pulmonary embolism.

So you connect, I'm glad you survived. Blood clots are something that seem to be endemic to this. But you're talking to a guy who had a blood clot on his brain. Yep. And I'm still getting the vaccination, so. No, and again, you're right. If you think it makes you feel better,

that's what's most important. See, what I'm doing is I'm trusting in the overwhelming percentage of medical doctors who say this will help you to get lesser symptoms and have less effects from COVID. I've I know people who have had long COVID and it sounds horrific.

And if I can avoid that, I think I'll be better off. So to me, I treat it like I would treat, I just turned 50. So the dog, I go to the doctor, what does that mean? He goes, she said a couple, two things, basically. Pull down your pants. You now get a colonoscopy. And I said, I actually got one when I was 49. So I said, okay, I'm clear for 10 years.

I did that one. And then she said, well, if you pay out of pocket, you can now get the shingles vaccination because it's free when you're 65. but it's from 50, you can get it, but you got to pay on a couple of hundred bucks a shot or something like that. Ontario, it's free. It's not free in Calgary. The shingles after 65.

Yeah. Now we had to pay through our insurance. Okay. Another reason to live in Toronto. Well here in Ontario, a 65 plus, I think you get the, the shingrex. They call it, but, uh, to me, I asked the doctor, I just, I trust my doctor and I said, uh, would you recommend I get it now that I'm 50? And she said, uh, yes, because you, you don't want shingles. So I, so basically I'm,

I will get that as well. She put a chicken pox on your, yeah. Yeah. Then you need to do this. Cause it means you've got the virus somewhere in you. Yeah. So I don't want shingles. So I will get this vaccination. It's like two shots over six months. I can't remember, but I'll pay out of pocket for that. Cause I don't have, I don't even know.

I don't even have a insurance when it comes to, to, to meds. So I will do that. Cause I put that in the flu shot. I will get it. Cause my doctor recommends a flu shot and I will get the COVID vaccination for the same reasons. So your opinion on this is to each his own, just don't mandate it.

This is the first door beginning. It's like the mask thing. It's like the mask thing. When I still see people wearing masks, walking on the street, God bless them. If you feel that makes you better, that's fine. Just don't tell me I have to wear a mask unless you can give me absolute proof that this is the reason that

That will that will save me and of course that that that just didn't work out My take is not as far from yours as you'd imagine except I do give a lot of space for like this unknown virus That's starting to overwhelm the system. Maybe the system is flawed But regardless like in that period of time I'd rather exercise on the side of caution and I feel like that was the right move at that time. I forgive people for the first three months of it the panic I understand the panic I mean they used the panic to intimidate our Prime Minister and the President of the

United States the health care people said this could be the Spanish flu hundreds of thousands of people die whatever but after that I think we started to know enough about it that we didn't have to let people die, old people die in old folks' homes and not have their families there. Somebody put them on the phone when they died, etc. I'm with you. Yeah. And the lockdown stuff, people coming from the airport and being stuck in a hotel for three days with people in hazmat suits and all that, you know, way too far. My concern was, because the kill rate, I'm just going to sound terrible in my head as I form it. I realize this is going to sound callous here, but the kill rate wasn't high enough for this

measure. What are you going to do when you get a real, a real virus that's, I don't know, knocking out 20% of people who get it or something. Like, where do you go from here? You kind of shot your load there, and now it's like people are gonna resist it next time and won't do it again. Well, it doesn't mean you're skeptical about all vaccines. I take vaccines.

I've taken vaccines and I will continue to take ones that have been proven to work. Okay, pull down your sleeve, I've got a surprise for you. Oh, God. I just vaccinated Bruce. Ouch, that hurt. But I'm prepared to take each one at its value and see what happens.

This one, unfortunately, and you know, I was following it from a sports point of view. And the people at the NFL who were in charge of the NFL's health, they were talking about the PCR test. And this thing fried me. Two years into the virus,

we still had people coming on saying, I'm this morning, 1100 new PCR positives. When they knew, when they knew that most of them were false positive, that you couldn't get sick and you couldn't pass it on, but they weren't telling people that at the point at which they knew it. And we panicked everybody.

And so it made it easy to get, you know, do stupid stuff. That's what bothered me. Look, you're made it easy to get, you know, do stupid stuff. That's, that's what bothered me. Look, you're talking to a guy who, uh, one day I woke up and learned my kids couldn't play and I had pretty young kids at the time. They couldn't go to the playground and play on the slides in the swings. Okay. So a lot of people, like you bike a lot, you're this bleeding heart lefty or whatever. But I was like, no, outside my thought through the whole time based on the science I understood from the experts I listened to was go outside. I was, I was thinking we should have school outside. Like I don't want my kids zooming

in for grade one. There was nothing worse than a kid zooming in for senior kindergarten. Okay. I had to witness it. Can we all put on maybe a thick sweater and a jacket and a snow suit and can we have classes in the park outside or whatever? Like move it outside. That's those are my feelings about it too. And we, again, we knew fairly early on the kids were not vulnerable to this. There were going to be children who died of it, but not in any numbers to justify what the social remedy they were worried.

They'd bring that home to grandma. I think was a bigger concern. Fat people apparently died a lot more of COVID. But nobody ever said anything about it. In fact, they were the biggest morbidity, it was in fat people. But nobody ever said, oh, you're a fat person, lose weight. But they did tell you to go into your house, put a mask on and don't talk to your family.

And if your father's dying, you can't go see him. And so there was, again, we were just making it up as we went along. And what concerns me is that some people have seen how that they can work public opinion and panic people. And there are some people out there who I think might want to do that on some other causes. What I like, Bruce, about live.toronamike.com, I'm not sure when I brought that into the fold. Shout out to Ian Service, but maybe it's new for your appearances, possibly. I don't know. But you get real-time feedback.

So I just want to read a couple real quick. So Moose Grumpy, I'm just going to read verbatim and you can respond to Moose Grumpy live at live.torontomag.com. Seriously, Bruce? Vaccine denier? It was an evolving situation. How were they to know how many we needed at the time? So that's a reference.

You said Trudeau lied when he said you only need a couple of shots, but it was evolved. I agree with Moose that you don't know what you don't know until you know it. Right. That's not a lie. President Biden said, if you take to that, you won't need any more, et cetera. I'm just saying this is the information we got. And for grumpy, I agree with them. I mean, we didn't know in the early part, but we were told things that they knew

not to be true, not to be true in terms of how reliable the vaccine was. Is that Robert Lawson coming in from the bushes? Okay. So I don't want to, to, to re-litigate the whole thing. We won't re-litigate it. I'll just read. But as social engineering goes, it was quite an interesting experience. Well, Andrew Ward says if it makes you feel better and makes you feel better as a quote, I guess you just dropped a come on, do better. That was Andrew.

And then Burlington Rob says seatbelts used to be optional too. And you can smoke all you want knowing it might give you cancer. We always think we went too far after the F in fact, you swearing Rob, that's not like you. He says life is making it up as you go along. Anyways, we'll move on from the vaccination. Seatbelts are proven to work. That's why I use them. Oh yeah. Oh, listen. Somebody tells me to do that and tells me not to smoke. Do you wear a bike helmet? I agree. Cause that's a legally optional thing. I don't bike anymore. You don't bike anymore. But in my days of biking around Toronto, this is the mid seventies, I wore a toque in the winter and a baseball hat in the summer. Oh yeah. Well, and the, when I was biking in the eighties and nineties, I never touched a helmet either. It's wild when I think back, but, uh,

and now my kids would put the elbows, my grandkids is elbow pads and knee pads. I was down in new New Brunswick with my three grandchildren down there. And it's like, you know, bundling them up in the, in the, the, the, the, the suit of our packaging, no, the packaging with the bubbles in it, you know, Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, um, to each to each his own, as we say, but the helmet for kids is, is mandatory according to the bylaws. But okay. So it's proven to work. And I'm going to zip through because Bruce Arthur got us on a tangent there, but I just curious, are you aware of radio veteran Bruce Barker? Yeah, I know. Barks.

Very well. Barks. FOT. I'm going to, I'm Ryan. This is Bruce cast. I haven't even moved on yet, but so Bruce Arthur. Oh, and you know, you mentioned you disagree with him on, uh, like politically, but, uh, what do you think of him?

Personally, have you never had any fisticuffs? Cause I know that gentle kind of guy as far as far as I remember. Well, you know who wants to beat them up? Uh, I would pay to see this tilt. I think my money might be on Arthur, but Strachan, Al Strachan, Bruce Arthur. There is a great Canadian sports media rivalry. So I've told you this story before. Tell me there are four conservatives in the Canadian sports media.

Can I name them? Can I name them? Bruce Dobigan, Steve Buffery, Al Strachan. I'm not sure who your fourth is. and two of them aren't talking to each other Well, actually I talked to Strack if he would talk to me and the irony is I think I said you're on your shit list, too Oh, everyone who's the fourth. So, um, who's the fourth? I'm trying to remember It'll come to me. It might be Jennifer Hedger from what I've been reading. Oh, maybe, possibly, possibly. I don't know Jennifer personally. But so any other funny part about Strach is,

is that he moved in about, I don't know, 100 paces away from our place down in Florida. And so I see him out on the golf course. I remember now. And he studiously avoids me. His wife is very kind and very nice to us. And my daughter got married a Labor Day weekend here in Toronto.

She got married to Eric Duhatschek's son. What a small world. I know. So Eric and I laugh about how small the world is. Eric is kinda, he's between me and Strack. I mean, he communicates to me what's going on with Strack. He's like the linchpin there or something. One of the loveliest great people in media.

He's a political guy. He really is a political and wonderful, has good things. Is he the Steve Paken of your friends there? No, because Steve Paken would be the Steve Paken of your buddies. Well, I'm seeing Pake on Friday. But yeah, Pake is one of those guys who's just amenable to everybody.

And the list of people. But he has to appear that way because he needs to moderate these debates and. Sure. OK, so I did text. I will tell you, I texted this morning, Steve Pagan, Mr. Dobegin is my guest at 1030. Do you have a message for me to convey to him? And the reply I see is, hmm, thinking.

So he's you know, he's I was 1035. So here we are at 11 o'clock and you never came out. He couldn't come on pagan. He's probably busy. We did today a big day for some reason. This is something going on today. I can't remember. We'll get back to that.

We did an immortal issue edition of this show. I have, yes. I'm trying to remember. He was Frank Sinatra. He was Sinatra. Tony Bennett. You were Tony Bennett. And who was better?

And who was better? It was a great episode. And I re redistributed it when Tony Bennett and who was better and who is better? I was a great episode and I read Redistributed it when Tony Bennett passed away and it got like a second life. Oh great. It is very very great tribute there I'll see Steve on Friday morning. Okay. He was at tmlx 16 at GLB brew pub and that was on October 21st and it was great to see Steve Steve Pagan there I don't think he can make TMLX 17, but Bruce, if you're in town visiting, if you, but yeah, but there's one coming up on November 30th.

I don't know if you'll be in Calgary or if you'll be visiting in Florida. Okay. You'll be in Florida. That's a long way to go to get your free Palm of pasta and your fresh beer from Great Lakes brewery. I've got, yeah, we're, we're here for, or house sitting in Toronto for two weeks, house sitting a dog and a bird. going, yeah, we're here for, or house sitting in Toronto for two weeks, house sitting

a dog and a bird. And then we're going to- What does that entail exactly? You got to clean that cage once in a while? This is a bird that whistles. If you're happy and you know it. I can't believe it. You take the sheet off in the morning and this damn bird starts singing.

At least the sheet shuts that bird up. That sounds fun until you're trying to get some sleep. Yeah, that's true. No, she, well, it's Otis the bird, and Otis goes to sleep at night, but he whistles. Was Otis named after Otis Redding? I don't know what the Otis reference was. My daughter-in-law named him. She got him, and now her parents take care of Otis

most of the time, because she has my granddaughter to cope with. Now, shout out to Barks. We mentioned him and then my final Bruce FOTM, okay? This is the whole list. So to review, Bruce Dobegan, Bruce Arthur, Bruce Berker, excuse me, and Bruce Croxen, who helped,

he founded Lavalife, made some big bucks and he became a dragon on Dragon's Den. So I don't know if you've met Bruce Croxen. And there's a Bruce that I've been trying to get for years now, but has alluded me somehow. So I'm gonna put this into the universe. If anyone out there can get a message to Bruce McCullough from Kids in the Hall.

I'm trying to get Bruce McCullough on Toronto Mic. Yeah, that'd be great. You ever met Bruce McCullough? No, no, but I used to be friends with, oh gosh, and I forgot which one of them he was. Mark McKinney. No, no, but I used to be friends with oh gosh, and I forgot which which one of them he was Mark McKinney. No, no, no, no Dave Foley no Kevin McDonald no Scott Thompson. No one of them. Well, maybe you know, I think I've named them all No, I'm thinking of somebody in another comic group Anyhow his daughter and my son were going to elementary school together and we would be there in the park in the parking lot every day waiting for our kids to come

out and we chat with them. Okay, but not memorable enough. Mr. Canoehead, that's not kids in the hall. That's four on the floor. No, the frantic. The frantic. It was the frantic. Okay. They were great too, actually. I love the Mr. Canoehead stuff. Okay. Diamond Dog writes in, does Bruce think the MAGA movement is hurt by its loyalty to Trump? Wouldn't the policies they stand for be better served and represented by having a less off putting leader? And does peer poly have actual policy solutions beyond

slogans and memes? We already know what the problems are. So take a moment and respond to Diamond Dogg who's listening. I don't think Diamond Dogg's on the live stream, but we'll hear us later. What was the first part again? Does Bruce think the MAGA movement is hurt by its loyalty to Trump? See, the misunderstanding that liberals have about MAGA

is that somehow Trump has forced his values on them. But what I try to explain is that the base has felt about all these issues for a long time, but they allowed the Republicans to nominate stiffs like Mitt Romney and Bob Dole and people like that. They've always felt this way about the border, about security, about foreign wars, et cetera. And when it came to the 2016, 2012 election,

the Democrats made Mitt Romney out to be like an axe murderer. Oh, he had a dog on this roof. Oh, right. And the insurance, he didn't give insurance to some woman who died of cancer. And so a lot of people in the base of the Republican Party say, OK, that's enough. We're not going to nominate nice guys anymore.

We're going to nominate somebody who will fight on our behalf. And Trump didn't believe in any of these things. If you go back 15 minutes before he said he believed in them And Trump didn't believe in any of these things. And if you go back 15 minutes before he said that he believed in them, he didn't believe in them. But what he did recognize is that no one in the Republican Party was willing to take all of those issues forward. So the border, well, you know what, they are the border,

the foreign wars, tariffs, China, et cetera. Nobody wanted to take them. Marco Rubio could have been the president of the United States if he just decided to do that. But the Republican party, the mainline Republican party was too aligned with DC and all the values there. So Trump picked up, he's a carny, hey, I'll take that. He became president by espousing maybe five

or six different issues. So the base defines Trump, not the other way around. Would they like somebody who's a little bit more polished, who everyone would love? Yeah, yeah, probably. But nobody else was willing to do this, to go bare knuckles with the establishment in Washington, the intelligence establishment.

Look what they've done in terms of charging them for all these things. Who would, knowing that in advance, who would go into this? But Trump was just goomba enough to do it. So I just think the misinterpretation of Trump is, is probably. People just don't understand how he came to be and what his significance is. And there will be a MAGA movement.

Well, maybe there won't be tomorrow. There will be a MAGA movement or I presume after Trump is gone and it will be people like JD Vance and people who will take it forward. I'd love for Vance to be the guy who's running this time for the Republicans. I think he's much more intelligent and he articulates the same stuff. But again, we have a guy who I heard like double down on the they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats thing, even after he's just punking you. He's just punking everybody. So if they lie, it's punking. I just want to understand. And your sense of humor. I mean, obviously, you guy says all this outrageous stuff and he punks the daylights out of it.

And then the left spends, MSNBC spends a week talking about this and doing his bidding. I mean, it works for him because he gets you talking about what he wants you to talk about. Would I say those things? No, I wouldn't say those things. Dale Cadeau is listening. So Dale Cadeau says, I just think I tweeted something like, make sure you tune in for Bruce. And then he said, certainly will. It's a most interesting day tomorrow for a chat.

So he tweeted that obviously yesterday, but shout out to Dale Cadeau, who once, uh, came over, uh, Luke causes son, Matthew cause in, in gifted Matthew cause some expensive wine, I believe, when Matthew Cause was on Toronto Mike. So he kinda, he came out of the bushes with wine in his hands. Dale's a good man. Dale's a good guy, Dale. So is Matt.

Matt's a good guy, yeah, of course. Dale's a good guy, and Dale, I know your mom's in Streetsville. If you're in town November 30th, just to put a highlight on this, everyone's invited. Even you, Dale, even you, Bruce, I know you're in Florida, you won't be there, but your son could come out.

It is Palma's Kitchen in Mississauga and Palma will feed you, Palma Pasta will feed you, and I'll bring some fresh beer from Great Lakes. We'll do a live recording, get everybody on the mic and say hi, have a festive spirit in the room. Well, he'll come for the beer. My son will come for the beer. Come for the beer.

Heck, the Palma pasta meal is delicious and you can choose from the hot table what you want and yeah, he'd love it. That should be your slogan for this. Come for the beer, come for the pasta, stay for the tape measure. That is yours, Bruce. Thanks for mentioning the Ridley Funeral Home tape measure.

Measure what you wish with that. So it's just, thank you Ridley Funeral Home. Life's Undertaking is the name of Brad Jones' podcast. And you should subscribe and listen because Brad talks about life and death and he normalizes it all. Cause Bruce, here's a fact. I know you almost died.

I was gonna say, so did they put you on blood thinners? Oh yeah. I still am. Yeah, me too. I tried to get off. You know, we have that blood thinners? Oh yeah. I still am. Yeah. Me too. I tried to get off. You know, we have that in common. There you go. I don't know what they told me. I tried to get off too. What happened when you went off? Did you have an episode? I didn't, I didn't do anything until I talked to the doctor at the clinic in Toronto and Calgary goes on Matley for a year. So there's like, and I, I phone up and I said,

well, I'd like to find out, can I get off of the blood thinners? And she's, well, wait, wait till she comes back. So a year later, she comes back and I said, I'd really like to get rid of them. And she says, well, in your case, 30% of the people who've had what you've had go off and they die. That's a high number.

That's way higher than COVID-19 kill rate. So, and again, you're talking about science and medicine. I was willing to take that advice. So I'm still taking them. Okay, so I'm glad you listened. Okay,. So similarly I was on blood thinners because I had a blood clot on my brain. How did you develop it? You probably told this story before. Well, I don't mind sharing it because it's very easy. Basically I had four days of the, of a headache where it was like compression all around, like where my hands are, which people can't see in the podcast, but

complete compression for four days and I kind of Was plowing through it thinking it's a migraine and then I was coming to my my wife thought like we had all these theories and Finally I talked to my doctor brilliant Mike on day four of this headache that wouldn't budge I don't get migraines typically so it was really strange But I was still biking through it and swimming through it and recording. I did episodes of Toronto Mike with this blood clot pain order. So day four, I talked to my doctor and she says, Mike, I remember this very clearly. She said, my worry is you've got bleeding on the brain. I would sleep better tonight. If you went straight to emergency, she said,

I'm going to fax over a wreck thing. So they know what's coming. And I went straight over to St. Joe's emergency and the guy like literally the emergency room doctor was kind of chuckling a little bit like oh it's probably a migraine but to make your doctor feel better I'm going to get a CAT scan and we'll see what's going on there. Like an hour later he calls me in a room and he looks kind of nervous and he goes I'm so sorry I was very wrong you have something it's very rare he gives me the proper name I can't remember

pulmonary, whatever. And he goes, uh, it be, and I'm like, I'm not sure what we're saying here. And I'm kind of trying to process in real time. And then he explains, I have a blood clot on my brain and I need to go into the stroke ward now right now. Like I'm not going home that night. I'm going to go to the stroke ward because a stroke, I'm in very high danger of having a stroke from this blood clot in the brain. And I went to the stroke ward because a stroke, I'm in very high danger of having a stroke from this blood clot in the brain. And I went to the stroke ward and spent the night anyway, I never had a stroke. So there's the good news, but I did get put on blood thinners. And then after a while, this hematologist, the story's boring me because maybe because I've told

it too many times, but the hematologist tested me for every test they have. So very, I think she's very good at her job, but every test that they have to see what clotting disorder I have. And I tested negative for every single test they have. And then of course they start looking for other things like cancer and all these things. They're searching for what it is. They found nothing. So she says, you can stop. This is after many months. She says, you can stop taking the blood thinners. Now you test the negative for everything. It was just like one in a million fluke or whatever. And then like literally like, I don't know, six weeks after I stopped taking these

Blood thinners. I got another blood clot and then she said Okay, you've got your second blood clot you you have something that causes blood clots, but we don't have a test for it yet We're built. We're inventing new tests all the time, but you will take your blood thinner. This is her word Indefinitely. Yeah, and I feel like that's code for forever. Yeah, so I take two pills a day for the rest of my life I guess I don't want to belabor this but I was in the same denial thing as you your denial So this is a guy thing, right? So my wife had had her knee done and I was supposed to be the nurse carrying her around whatever all that sort of stuff and it's getting close to Christmas and

You know at this point I was on I was on High blood pressure medicine and it makes you dizzy once in a while. Anyhow, so I'm taking care of my wife and then one day I'm walking up the stairs and I walk into the washroom and I literally, I faint and I fall to the floor and I bang my head on the floor and I wake up and there's my wife looking at me

like, what's the matter? I said, oh, I just must be the stupid high blood pressure things. And I get up and I go into wife looking at me like, what's the matter? I said, oh, I just must be the stupid high blood pressure things. And I get up and I go into the living room and I faint again. Wow. And I'm like, and I'm worried about it, but I'm thinking I'm a guy.

It's these stupid pills. Cause I've felt this way before. So a short story long, I spend like you did. I spent the next week taking care of my wife, spending Christmas doing things near as Eve, New Year's Eve day. I'm sitting there in my office and I said to my wife, spending Christmas doing things. New Year's Eve, New Year's Eve day, I'm sitting there in my office and I said to my wife, I said, call them, call the EMS, I can't do this. And they showed up and they did the oxygen test. And you're supposed to be at

least 92, 93, 94. I was 85 or 86. And I had the firemen over here and I had the EMS people over here, wrestling for the honor of taking me to the hospital. And I had that experience that you had where I thought, oh, well, I'll just give me some medication and I'll just go home today because it's the holidays, it's New Year's Day. And they said, you ain't going home. And you guys should to do, right? Yeah, I had a life.

How long did you stay in the hospital? Well, so I stayed for four days and then I went back because I, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was sitting there, I think two days later, my wife sprayed something, I can't remember what she sprayed in the house, and all of a sudden my system went into panic and bang, right back in there for five days.

And I said to the guy, I said, I don't wanna be in the hospital. The guy in the room next to me, it's the same room, he's dying. Okay, so just on that note, I'm in the stroke ward that night, and I biked to the hospital. Like I felt great, except I had a headache.

I just had a headache. And they shot me full of something that got rid of the headache. So literally I felt 100% like I'd never felt better in my life. And the guy beside me took, I heard him take off his diaper and take a piss on the floor. Like that's, and then the nurse said, I like you because you're my only patient who's mobile. Like everyone had mobility issues. If you have to go wash them, they're going to help get you to the washroom. I anyways anyway so I totally relate to that whole I wasn't allowed I wasn't allowed to get out of bed I was I was bad rest strapped you down while I was in there and and so any other guy next to me literally he's dying and and I could he's coughing whatever all night and I said to the guy in the morning it

was a male nurse I said I got to get out of here said just give me the pills I'll go home I'll be a good boy I'll take the pills he said if you go home right now you're gonna die and I said well I guess I'm, I'll be a good boy, I'll take the pills." He said, if you go home right now, you're going to die. And I said, well, I guess I'm in the hospital for a few more days. And I, I was for a few more days. And when they released me, uh, my daughter picked me up and the, the, the doctor said to my daughter said, you know how close your father came and this is radio, but you know, I close my fingers are together.

Well just, you know, should it have happened, I would have done a lovely tribute for you in the Toronto Mike defeat. Okay. There would have been a, we lost the great FOTM. This is 2022. So, and since then nothing, but yeah, I want to get off the pills. I don't like taking pills. I don't have to,

but I will take pills that work. Well, it sounds like you have to take, yeah. It sounds like you're not against science when it helps you. You just don't like being told what to do with masks and vaccinations. Just tell me, tell me what the proof of what, why it against science when it helps you. You just don't like being told what to do with masks and vaccinations. Just tell me what the proof of why it works and why it doesn't.

And I'm an easy guy to please. But you do acknowledge that, you know, science evolves, right, as we learn more, as they discover, as the hematologist, as they invent new tests and the hematologist can test for different genetic, there could be different evolution of your treatments. I have a friend who's a radiological interventionist.

He's a Canadian guy from Kingston, and he works in a hospital in Huntsville, and he's got all this machinery that Siemens and Phillips has invented, and if he gets you in the morning, because you're talking about strokes, if he gets you in the morning, he will literally go through your blood system

and remove clots in your brain, and you will walk out the next day as if nothing really happened. So I am completely open to the idea that science is evolving and then it will get better. Give me that guy's number. Well, it's too late for you now. Well, now apparently my only concern now is don't crash your bike because you'll bleed out internally. Like this is the whole thing. Don't cut yourself and don't get, you know,

and they, I don't know if they told you on the blood thinners, no more contact sports. Did you get that messaging? Like I can't, they don't want me playing a pickup game of ice hockey. Yeah. Yeah. No, that well, because you got cut with a blade and also, uh, I guess trauma to the body. Internally you bleed like, in fact, my doctor said, cause it's only a matter of time. I've been biking like crazy for over a decade and it's only a matter of time. I, you do crash your bike, even if you're careful. So, cause I bike a lot. So when I do crash your bike, even if you're careful, because I bike a lot. So when I do crash my bike, he said go straight to ER. He said go straight to ER when you crash your bike.

So it's like every single day I'm like, okay, will today be the day I gotta miss my recording with Bruce because I'm in the ER. So. Well the difference between you and me is that you're 50 and they look at you and say, well he's a healthy guy, we should tell him not to do this and this and this because he might think he's healthy. I'm 70 years old and they look at you and say, well, he's a healthy guy. We should tell him not to do this and this and this because he might, he might think he's healthy.

I'm 70 years old. They looked at me and they said, I don't think we have to tell him not to play industrial hockey anymore. No moshing for you. No, no, and no touch football and none of those things. If golf and swimming can kill me, then I guess I'm gonna die.

Those are your sports, absolutely. My activities to keep you from. Swimming, I always say that, you know, if worse comes to worse, I'll just swim every day. It's the best. That is the best. Right. And you know what? I found these headphones that now work underwater. You know, the T bone things that put the sound through your cheeks. Yeah. I'm going to ask for more info on this later because I love to swim.

I would swim more except I spent too much time on the bike and now I got a kayak and I've been out kayaking. Like it's like you only have so many hours for these leisure activities. People don't know that you weigh 300 pounds. It's amazing. It's all muscle though. So in terms of, we're talking bodies and science. So one of the things that I find gross about the, the, the Republicans in the U S again, I don't have a vote. I'm not American. I live here in Toronto. So I'm just watching as like a, you know, because it affects me and because it's like you're the

pimple in the back. What is it when you sleep with an elephant, when they roll over? No, when they sneeze? What's the expression? You catch a cold, right? Okay. So I'm watching very closely and I have a vest in it. But what are your thoughts, Bruce Dobe again? And I promise we'll turn to other topics soon. Body autonomy. So just strictly on the fact that I keep hearing rhetoric about a nationwide ban on abortion. Like what are your thoughts on a woman's body autonomy and that movement in the United States?

Well, there isn't a national ban on it. No, no, it's state by state right now. What Roe v. Wade said, and they looked at the Constitution and said this is a state's rights thing for them to decide. And so each of these states is allowed to decide. And what's interesting to me is that some of the most conservative states that you would have thought would say absolutely not

are in fact passing laws that give women bodily autonomy. And you know, I'm in the, if you look at the polling, that 12 to 15 week region, that seems to be a point at which a lot of people would support, you know, some sort of abortion law. So 12 to 15 weeks, that's what they have in Europe. This is also what gets me about Canada and the United States. Europe has laws about abortion, when you can do it, when you can't. And it seems like we're locked into this whole,

nothing or everything thing. So I would like to see something in around that level. And it looks like a number of states are starting to move in that direction. Do I wanna say Kansas or Missouri? One of them anyhow, which is a conservative state has rejected like a six week law and all type of thing. I would like to see it go that way.

I understand the Christians and people who feel the sanctity of life. I understand their feelings on it. I also understand that women's autonomy, et cetera, that the women should have the say about it. Although it's all sort of undermined by the fact of getting back to the vaccines. Yes, women can't be told what to put into their body

unless it's a vaccine. We had that whole contradiction. Oh, by the way, you have to take the vaccine or you're gonna lose your job or you're gonna lose whatever. So I mean, there was a kind of a mixed signals. But at least that wasn't gender-based. Yeah, but you know, listen, I grew up in the era when the laws came in and you could have abortion.

And I can remember one of my friends in high school, he and his girlfriend, obviously she got pregnant and we all had to pony up money and we drove him to New York state so that his girlfriend could have an abortion. That's, that was the way things were in the sixties but it has evolved a lot from there. I think there was a sensible middle.

I wish they could find it without my help. But right now it's just, wow. Any politician who takes this on to his career or her career can end really quickly. So there's a sort of a thought out there that possibly there are women married to, you know, Republican men who are maybe with pollsters and you know, publicly saying they're gonna vote Trump.

You're gonna do this. Well, let me ask. And then there is this floating that when they're in the privacy of the voting booth and your private vote that the vote for Kamala Harris for president. This happened in 20... Any pregance to that? No, I think this happened in 2020 and 2022. I don't think there were women who told pollsters that they were going to vote for Trump and

then they changed their mind. I think a lot of them actively considered it. They had husbands who were going to vote that way. But I think a lot of women and pollsters will tell you when especially 2022, which is the midterms, went into the poll booth and said, no, I can't do it. And so they changed their vote. And that will be something that will be really interesting to see the numbers on this coming out.

This is the Democrats big thing. Oh, there's a whole wave of women out there who we don't know about who aren't reaching polls. Because of course, on the Republican side, I think somewhere in the neighborhood of about 16 to 20% of Republicans will not respond to a pollster. So they don't really know what numbers they've got

on the Republican side because by and large, they're hostile to the pollsters. But if this huge group of women emerges, we could see a whole change in the election. And believe me, this is a cultural clash between educated white women who seem to be dominating the thought process in the Democratic Party and the traditional kind of Republican male oriented party that it's been. So before I move on because I am moving off Trump now got a lot of ground to cover if he leaks into future you know convos

here we'll see. But can you make a prediction? Because I think it'd be fun to have you time stamped at 11 23 a.m. Where we have no results in at this point, of course. But someone's gonna listen tomorrow. Maybe we'll have a lot more info at our disposal. Hopefully, make a call, man.

Let's have a prediction from Bruce Dobegan on this American election. Honestly I don't have all the information for what you just said. Of course not, it's a guess, a prediction. Well there is a thought that there are a lot of people who are the illegal immigrants who have gotten the ability to vote and that they may be a factor in this election. Are they eating the cats and the dogs Bruce? I need to know.

I love the music videos, come on you have to love some of the mashups. They're eating the cats and the dogs, Bruce? I need to know. I love the music videos. Come on, you have to love some of the mashups. They're eating the dogs. The cats and the dogs. Anyhow, the pollsters who I like and trust say this is razor thin. And again, for people, Canadians, we don't understand this, but it's 50 separate elections. Each state has electoral college votes. And that's why this is saying, well, she leads them by two points in the general election.

Doesn't matter, it's state by state. So it will come down to Pennsylvania. And what I'm hearing is at least from the early voting, the pre-voting is that the Republicans have done really well and there seems to be an enthusiasm gap on the Democrats side. So right now I would say 55-45 that Trump will be elected.

So you're predicting Donald Trump returns to the White House? And here one of the things that's interesting about it and one of the reasons I don't want to say conclusively is that the betting market, because I gamble, like I'm a sports gambler, I gamble, I bet on games, I'm a sports gambler, I bet on games, I'm not a gambler particularly, but the betting markets are completely for Trump. It's like almost 60% in favor of Trump. So why did they see something?

Why are they willing to put their money behind something that nobody else sees? I don't have an answer to that. I think it's really interesting and they've usually been right, the betting markets. Okay, stay tuned. Stay tuned. And tomorrow you'll be back tomorrow.

Bruce will be back tomorrow to discuss the results. Might have to get you in here at 10.30 tomorrow morning here. So I've already made my call on a toast. What do you think the electoral college is? I think, and I don't have the numbers in front of me. I was on the side that you're at. 270 is the number. Okay, so I think that it't have the numbers in front of me. I was on the side. It's 270 is the number. Okay. So I think that it will be a convincing victory

for Kamala Harris. This is what I predict. I think so Kamala Harris. She gets the rust belt and she rolls. She's going to, yes. She'll definitely win Pennsylvania. And I think when all the math is done it'll be a convincing win.

And of course I believe that Donald Trump will say the election was rigged and it'll be a shit storm until inauguration as we have sort of a repeat of 2020. Do you feel, Bruce, before I move on, I am moving on now, do you feel like the 2020 election was rigged? I feel like because of COVID,

it was different from any election we'd ever had before and the Democrats knew how to work the changes better than Republicans. You mean mail-in balloting? The mail-in balloting, the ballot harvesting, all of those things. I'd seen... What does that mean harvesting? Ballot harvesting means you go into an old folks home and you get all the people there and you give them the ballots and you harvest them all and they're going like I don't know who should I vote for and you basically harvest them all and if there's somebody there who you don't like their vote oops you lose that on the way to the polls. I don't want to get into the to the illegal stuff particularly there's lots of anecdotal material there were 18 bellwether states that always went a certain way in elections Trump won 17 to the 18

and somehow lost the election so that raises some. But at the end of the day, it was about a different style of voting in America. Right. And the Democrats understood how to make it work. They'd been making it work in California for a while in advance. I said that to people. I said they're going to do it on the national level if the Republicans aren't ready. So the Republicans deserved a lot of the things that happened to them in 2020 because they just weren't ready for what COVID did to the voting. Now California, interesting state to mention only because if you exclude some of those landslides like Reagan second, his second term was like, I think he won every state

except Minnesota or something like that, Ronald Reagan. So there's been some waves or whatever, but typically California goes Democratic party. Lately. Yeah. Okay. It used to be a conservative state for a long time was a conservative state. But in pretty like lately like we're going back now I mean I'm trying to remember the last time Republicans won. It might have been Reagan. I don't know. Was Reagan the last time that California went red? Probably. Well Schwarzenegger got elected governor as a Republican. So yeah, in terms of voting, maybe that was a little bit different. But yeah, definitely.

But they do say, now not that, cause popular vote does not matter because obviously it's electoral college, we all know that. And we're similar system, I feel we're similar. Like you can clean up in Toronto and still lose the, you can get devastated. Like, Pierre Poliak could theoretically get zero votes

in Toronto and still have an easy majority when we go to the polls next year. You're saying that Toronto could dominate an election. You're saying this to an Albertian? The opposite, the opposite, right, the opposite. The opposite. And I think, you know, Doug Ford learned he could be premier without having many seats

in Toronto as well. It's fascinating what he's doing too, looking at it from the outside. I have so many places I wanna go and I I do want to get to hockey here, um, to put a boat where it was okay. Cal. My point on the California thing is because California like they could call it now. I know the polls don't close till eight o'clock, but you know, if CNN, you know, I don't even know if they're open yet in California,

cause it's only eight. Yeah, you're right. It's eight, three, but they could call California for Harris now. Like it's, that's a foregone conclusion. You know, New York and California going seven electoral college votes. Like it's done. So that's done. And they say because of that, there's a lot of people in those states that, uh, then they don't really have a need to vote. Like they don't like that.

Whereas we're in swing States. It's like, you gotta get out pencil. You got it. Your vote's going to matter. You know, your swing state, but in California, New York, they're already going to Harris, so there isn't that same, you know, compelling motivation to get out pencil, you got to, your vote's going to matter. You know, you're a swing state, but in California, New York, they're already going to Harris. So there isn't that same, you know, compelling motivation to get out and vote. So there are a lot of,

like there's millions of people in those States who won't cast a ballot, but would have if it would have made a difference, but they don't feel it matters. There's sort of California's on three levels and you're absolutely right. The presidential thing is no, there's no point voting for the California Senator. It's going to be a Democrat, there's no point voting for the California Senator. It's gonna be a Democrat, there's no point. But there are a lot of congressional districts that have traditionally gone Republican,

which have gone Democratic recently, which might be in play. So for people in those congressional districts, there is a reason to vote in them. New York State is also a little bit more diverse. Upstate New York is more Republican. Downstate, of course, as we know, is as blue as you can get. So, but yeah, it's really interesting to see how close the voting margins are going to be. We would not be surprised to hear later on that,

like I think the last time, maybe 40,000 votes spread over five states is, you know, just to get back to the thing about 2020, you have to admit that you get to midnight and Trump is leading in the five swing states and then all of a sudden, whoops, we halt the vote. But we know why, right? There's a reason, it's the mail-in ballots that had to be counted. No, no, they stopped the vote because they told us live,

in live time, they told us that they had a water main break in one of the states and something else in another state and they literally suspended the voting for three or four hours and then all this other stuff came in and there was hardly any Trump vote in it. You know if we saw that being done in Chile if we saw that being done in in Botswana we'd sort of say that that kind of stinks a little bit right he got no votes after all of the mail-in votes. So it's- But you, okay, but you're, cause you're such a bright guy.

The, you, you would acknowledge that the mail-in ballots are gonna, are gonna heavily favor the democratic party, particularly cause the rhetoric from Donald Trump in 2020, which was COVID times, was line up and vote. Don't, don't do the, even though Donald himself does a mail-in ballot, which is interesting, but he was basically telling the MAGA people, the Trumpers, not to do mail-in ballots,

and the opposite was true for the Democratic, yeah, the opposite was true for the Democratic message. So we can kind of, if it's close and the mail-in ballots have to be counted, you could call that for the Democratic party, just using reason, like leaving any bias out of the equation Five separate states. They're all the swing states

They were all the ones that he was trailing in even the New York Times had had Trump leading in Georgia at Midnight on that night and then all of a sudden everything changes and I'm look there's nobody more democratic than the New York Times So I just think that that stinks that stinks. But I can't tell if you're saying it was rigged or not. Like, I mean, do you, but you do you think 2020 was a fair election? What's that old expression about? It's not justice be done, but justice be seen to be done. Elections are like that. Elections have to have to be seen to be have been done. And again, COVID scrambled the rules for everything.

I understand the confusion. I understand why people defend it. I understand why people oppose it. But just some of the things that happened were really out of character. We'll see today. And your guy lost. Not my guy.

I'm not an American. I read the, not the public broadcaster. I feel like there's a strong rooting interest for Donald J. Trump. I really have an antipathy to the other side, I guess is probably the best way to say it. I really have an antipathy towards the modern Democratic Party. And if the alternative is the Republican Party, believe me, there's some people there who I'm not so fond of either. Mitch McConnell. Well, shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. It's only a matter of time for Mitch there, I think. But okay,

so we never answered. I'm moving off. I know I checked my watch to Ridley Funeral Home. It's only a matter of time for Mitch there, I think. But okay, so we never answered, so I'm moving off. I know, I checked my watch to see what time it was. If Brad Jones had- But you also did Mitch in the funeral home at the same time. Right, that was intentional. So Diamond Dog, though, I'm moving off Trump now. If you bring him up later, I'll revisit Trump.

But I'm gonna be tuned in. So I don't get MSNBC. I don't get, I mean, I don't subscribe to CNN. I don't subscribe to Fox news. So I don't subscribe to any American news outlet, but what I tune into it at nine o'clock is I find it. I just, I just like the presentation. I just want the facts and I, I enjoy my PBS. I'm a PBS guy tonight. You're, what are you going to be watching? Are you going to be flipping around? Like what's your go-to? Are you going to be Fox News? I'm staying at somebody else's house and I've got to go look

and see which ones. Oh! I don't even know if they have any. Maybe they don't subscribe either. I don't. They're liberal people. They're very liberal people. Are they news junkies? Yeah. Okay. They probably do have the news center. But I don't think they'll have Fox because I like to go around. The other thing that's going to come out of this election is the decline of mainstream media as a force in our lives, the way it used to be, that the internet, and this is obviously something that you're very fond of, that the internet, the social media world has really passed it by as a place for discussion

of political stuff, cultural stuff, et cetera. You are now able to accumulate millions of people to a podcast, things that the that the the broadcasters, the traditional broadcasters have always dominated. They have competition now. And Joe Rogan on one side and. Yeah, Rogan endorsed Trump yesterday. I want to think of who one of the liberal guys is that has huge numbers

with the podcast, whatever there. But that's that's one of the things that's happened is the the status of traditional media and I would include the CBC and CTV here in our country has has been eroded and we have a different way of conducting political discourse in our lives now that we didn't have before which is why I'm I understand you're upset with with with didn't have before, which is why I'm, I understand you're upset with, with, with, uh, Elon Musk, but I think that you s- you still need to have all of these voices out there. And to get elected now, you have to get social media on side with you. All right. So to answer Diamond Dog's question that was not about mega, not about Trump, cause I've

moved off of Trump and mega, I'll be tuning in tonight. PBS will be seeing what happens. I'll see what I know when I fall asleep at whatever 1130. Maybe I'll have Bruce back in the basement tomorrow to talk about it all. But you did not address this line. I'm going to... I'm sorry. Does Pierre Pauliev have actual policy solutions beyond slogans and memes? We already know what the problems are. So Diamond Dog, not... Is it his real name? Are they eating the Diamond Dogs? I don't know, but do you have a?

I have a thing about people who go on social media and have aliases, you know, I like when they reveal themselves. I do, you do. Well, it's pretty easy to find out who you are, even though you do have an alias, but my name's out there if you wanna get at me. The thing about if I'm Pierre Pauliev and

the polls tell me I'm going to get 220 seats and Trudeau is going to get bumpity bump, I'm saying as little as possible, I'm not boxing myself in on positions, I'm not giving them a lot of material for which to go at me. As a political reality, I don't want to give them that stuff. That's politics. And it's one of the things about why doesn't he go get his security clearance? It's because he doesn't want to be held responsible. He doesn't want them to say well now, you know, what's in the security thing How can you say those he just wants to basically say, you know what?

This is your this is your circus you and the NDP you keep doing what you're doing He doesn't want to get he doesn't want to get put into that position. And because of all the American political stuff, it's after people have missed that Danielle Smith got a 91% approval in Alberta, shocked that she got such an approval. And she's basically come out and said, we're not gonna cap our emissions, we're not gonna do any of that stuff,

we're gonna continue to drill and we're gonna continue to sell our oil, which is a real confrontational position vis-a-vis this liberal government. So Paul Yev, that allows him to stand to the side a little bit and let the premiers fight the fight for him. I wouldn't get involved. I know I promised myself I'm done with Trump, but Rob Pruss took, you know, Snoop says the

fact checking. So the 2020 claim, he wants me to address this and I feel I owe it to Rob because he was here on Sunday. Was it Sunday for Toast? He's been here recently. It was a great episode. Maybe it was Saturday. I can no longer remember, but he writes in, okay.

So the claim that you're referencing is that on election night in 2020, a burst water pipe at a ballot processing site in Georgia's Fulton County allowed workers to steal the election from or I think you mean I don't know if you said that but this is the quote allowed workers right allowed workers to steal the election from former president Donald Trump AP sorry this is not snobs this is dissociated press can we still trust Associated Press not really but that's Associated Press? Not really, but that's okay. Okay, well I'll continue.

Voice of authority, yeah. False. A water leak briefly delayed ballot processing in Atlantis State Farm Arena early that morning. Unrelated surveillance footage from the late evening showed workers removing ballot containers from under a table after confusion arose about when work was ending for the night. This was the subject of false claims that if that it did, I can't even speak. It depicted workers pulling out quote suitcases of illicit votes, but investigators later determined it was part of normal ballot processing and there was zero evidence of improper ballots.

I'm just throwing it out there because people are like, Oh, I didn't know about this. When I say about the pipe leak, what I'm saying is in real time, that's what we were told by the major networks. That was why the, the, the delay. So in real time, we were told that there's some sort of pipe leak. What it turned out to be later is irrelevant because that's what we were told in real time. And as for the, you know, all the innocence of the ballot, they started, they kicked

the GOP scrutineers out of the room. They started putting a barricades around the voting counting area where people counted the votes and they got rid of the scrutineers. I'm not saying that something funny happened. I'm saying that if you were going to do it, that's one way you would certainly do it. Okay, but am I right that even if Georgia went to Trump, the Electoral College still favored Biden in 2020? I don't have the map in front of me, but I have this thought memory because of the other swing states that went to Biden. Yeah. Okay, so enough about it. Probably Georgia, the worst thing about Georgia for the Republicans was that they lost both Senate seats.

Okay. All right. Now, you know, you did a little Pierre Poliev there, but just a question for you as a guy who's a political junkie, should a premier of a province, so you mentioned your Alberta premier a moment ago, but should the premier of a province be passing laws that mess with municipal bike lane plans? Like of all the things that belong to a city, right? When I think about it, my

garbage collection, whatever my, the water, like there's certain things. Oh, this is a city's responsibility to me. And I'm trying to remove my bias as a guy who uses our bike lanes every single day. But to me, bike lanes is such a Toronto, like sorry, not Toronto, a municipal thing. And the Premier getting involved in that to me makes no sense. And I'm just curious your thoughts on that. It's, I mean, he's playing politics with the city

and how the rest of the province feels about Toronto and bike lane, whatever it is. I have, listen, I'm not a constitutional scholar. I can't tell you where he has the right to do that. But this is something that happens, for instance, in Quebec politics. For people who don't know Quebec politics, it's often really good politics

for the premier of the province to campaign against the island of Montreal versus the rest of the province. And this is a little bit of what he's doing. Listen, the optics of it, there's a lot of people who are saying, absolutely get rid of these stupid bike lanes. I mean, the strip along Bloor just north of Queens Park.

This is the other problem is this is all around Queens Park where he does business all the time. It's probably irritating him. Some of the bike lanes there are maybe a little intrusive. He should stay in his lane as we say, okay. But he probably does have the right. I wouldn't have advised him to do that. I would have said, come out and say,

I don't think they're a good idea. The idea that you're going in. Now the problem is- Like he lost the mayoral. He did run to be mayor when his brother was sick. That's right. He lost that election. John Tory won that election.

The problem is the city's broke. It needs the federal, it needs the provincial government funding for a lot of stuff. It gives him an entry into getting into places. Maybe he shouldn't necessarily be, but I understand the politics behind it. Okay. So in my brilliant podcasting excellence, I'm going to segue to sports by asking you for your take on Rogers buying out Bell in the M L S E shakeup. Okay. So I know you wrote about this on your, your blog that I read, but did you disagree with that column too? No, because, well, no,

I didn't disagree with that. It's one of those rare moments where I said, Oh, Bruce, Bruce still has it. He hasn't completely lost his marbles. What is your take here? Is this good for the fans? Is this indifferent? Is it bad? Rogers will basically own all the major sports teams in the city of Toronto. Yeah. I don't like that. We're seeing this concentration even more. So at Calgary, for instance, it's the same thing that the Calgary flames own all the teams there. And I think if you get a bad management group, it means you get five people get the disease as opposed to just one at a time.

Um, I have to be careful. My son works for, for bell and, uh, bell has been really good to him. So I'm not, you know, I don't want to say anything here. That's going to get my son fired or anything. Um, we just have to imagine the outrage of your son got fired because of comments his dad made on Toronto,'d? Nobody would care. I would root for that headline. I'd lean in.

Nobody would, nobody. I'm not gonna say anything that way. I think it's an inevitability that we're headed there for this kind of concentration. The question is, you know, these are two phone sales companies. These are companies that really make their money selling phones. And oftentimes I think they haven't had people in place

who know the business. And the Blue Jays are a perfect example of Toronto sports these days. Now it used to be that Bob McCown ran Toronto sports. If he was down on somebody, that was trouble for them. And Bob's not around anymore doing that sort of thing. But if he, while he's got his podcast, speaking of strokes, office game.

Well, but he's, he's doing his podcast, whatever. But the blue, the management of the blue JCs days, it's just, you know, I, I can see why he's pleasing the MLSC people or his owners, rather the rod, the, the sports net people, I can understand why he's pleasing them. He got the redistricting of the arena, the stadium, all that sort of stuff. All of those things he's done a really good job on Shapiro. But the team stinks.

And absolutely. And you had a Greek Canadian guy who was here. Now granted he walked away, but they certainly didn't hold on to him. And he hasn't done bad things in Atlanta. I just felt like he was- He's done very well. He's made the playoffs, I think every year since he left. Yeah. But you have, with all of the teams in Toronto, we have a problem, which is that the metropolitan area is so big, uh, that when things go against you and the public gets against you,

it's, it's, it's really, you know, it's, it's, it's a tsunami that develops and too many of the people who run the teams have been kind of susceptible to that. I was driving here listening to what's going on in Chicago about the quarterback that they've got now, Caleb Williams. And there's only one team and it's a metropolitan area of eight or nine million people. And the dynamics are really, really tough for it. And so Toronto, you know, it's a very tough place to run it.

And I feel just at MLSC, the way it's constituted right now, it's just a little too corporate. Interesting. Now, this Leaf team, which has, you know, consistently underwhelmed in the playoffs when it matters, you know, this team has never won a third round because when they won the Stanley Cup last, there was no third round.

That's right. So in the history of this franchise, they've never won a third round series, which is kind of wild when you sit back and think about that because the team's actually a little not a great start, but it is a skilled, it's a good team. I think it's, I think the Leafs are a good regular season hockey team. I think where they fall off the tracks is in the playoffs, which unfortunately that's really all that matters. And the Raptors are a hundred percent rebuilding now, but we do have a flag that will fly forever from 2019. Okay.

That was wild. So, you know, I'll never forget 2019. I think the Argo, they had a playoff game, the Argos the other day, and I just tuned in for the fourth quarter because they were, they, there was like a hundred points scored in that game. It was wild. 58 points or something. 58 to 38 highest scoring playoff game ever, but they were not close to selling out BMO field. And when you can't sell out a winner take all playoff game, I think you've got this beautiful weather to beautiful weather. And they had a whole upper deck on one side.

They didn't even sell tickets for that. Like it was a lot of empty seats. I'm like, what's going on here? All this is to say that the blue J's okay. The blue J's seem to be onto something and then made a bunch of series of decisions that made this team not only a poor performing team, but very difficult to like. I find the Jays, I found myself rooting against the Blue Jays last season. Like this is, I need changes and I didn't get any changes. I was rooting

for it. So it's like I rooted against my team because I didn't want that administration back in charge of, I didn't want the Cleveland duo back. And of course they're back. So, uh, I guess I got to root against them again next season. But yeah, so things are kind of bleak right now in Toronto sports. I think that, I think the Maple Leafs have a chance to win the cup this year. They're very similar to Edmonton and I follow obviously being in Alberta. Okay. I watched a lot of Edmonton playoff last year. Cause my wife was in the game. They got within a game. It was that close.

And I think the Leafs could have that kind of a playoff series. Uh, if, if, if everything goes right, I wrote a, and this is not in defense of the Maple Leafs or their management or anything, but I wrote a column the other day that we're all deluded into thinking that it's still a six team or 12 team NHL, the odds of winning in a 32 team league are infinitesimally worse for you. And so we have to get the perspective

that if you get into the semifinals, into the final four of the NHL, if the Leafs get, and they've been there occasionally, they haven't won, but if you get- But not since the early 2000s. But it's a huge accomplishment to get that far. And for, not just the Leafs, but every fan, because it's so difficult to do these days

with all those teams. So I think we have to be a little more forgiving of the Leafs if they only get to the second round or the third round and understand the odds against you getting that far. And I think they have elements there. They're like Edmonton, that they've got too much money invested in the forwards and not enough in the backend.

They're trying to address that. They've got one of my favorite guys, Chris Tanev. I love Chris Tanev. Started in Vancouver when I was covering the Canucks and then of course he was in Calgary. But they've improved a little bit. But the two teams are kind of like similar to each other and you need everything to go right.

You can't have your guys get hurt. But I think that this is still a good chance for the Leafs to win this year. And the other problem that you've got when you've got a team like Edmonton or Toronto is they know that these games in November and October, just get through them. It's just a get through them sort of thing.

I remember the Blue Jays years, that the early part of the season was painful because they knew they were all marshaling. They said, look, I'm not gonna sell the farm early in the season. Same thing with the hockey team. We can't sell a farm. These veterans know that it's hard for a Barube to get these guys to, to play

balls to the wall right away because they know that they have lots of time. And I know Barube from, from Calgary when he was there, I think he's a good coach for this group. Yeah. I think you might be right about that. And, uh, one thing that surprised me was I was pretty sure Marner would be traded for some, you know, backend support. Some, some, I thought they would. I really was surprised because I know you can't, you can't get rid of Tavares. He's,

he's on the other side of his career. Pretty good. He's done. Yeah. You want to keep Boston Matthews. You, I feel you want to keep Nylander. That's exceptional value. So to me, the odd man out just based on, you know, process elimination is, okay, you got this, this great skilled player, Mitch Marner, this should be worthy of some blue line help and building out the back end. And I was surprised that he's back. That's all I'll say there.

He reminds me a little bit of the, of the late Johnny Goodrow. Goodrow had all the same knocks against him. He, he seemed to have gotten it all together in his last year in Calgary, and then like went to Columbus for reasons best known to himself. I have to tell a very sad story.

Yes. We were talking about Eric DeHartjeck, and we were having the rehearsal dinner on the Thursday night of the week before the weekend of Labor Day. My daughter was getting married on the Friday. We had a lovely meal at an Italian restaurant down near Front Street,

and we were coming out and somebody came up to us and said, Johnny Goudreau and his brother had both been killed, and they were on their way home from a rehearsal dinner. And they had a wedding the next day. Their sister was getting married the next day. And they were cycling. We just looked at each other

and couldn't imagine anything worse. How does that happen? Couldn't imagine anything worse. And here we were gonna go the next day. How blessed we were, how lucky we were so far that this thing was gonna go through. Anyhow, the Goodrow thing is interesting too because he went to Columbus and frankly,

I don't know what the hell he was doing there. They weren't gonna win, he was gonna get his money. But one of the things about the book, Deal With It, is that segue. We're talking about it right now, yeah, deal with it. And it's my first self-published book segue. We're talking about it right now, yeah, deal with it. And it's my first self-published book, and I've done it again with my son, Evan,

who works up at TSN. The great thing about self-publishing is that as soon as I saw that, that unfortunately Johnny and his brother were killed, I was able to go back into the file, change that chapter so it reflected the reality, and was able to, I don't know if this book has the, has it, but yeah, this was probably printed before the good Joe's passed away.

All the books that are coming out now, right? Courtesy of our publisher. It's like a software patch. Absolutely. And, but traditional publishing when I did like in exact science, he said, segueing to another book, the previous book, which was about the six drafts that we picked that were the significant ones. They wanted them the, I'm not mad at them, but they wanted the copy in April, May, and you couldn't touch it until October. And if things changed,

the Johnny Goudreau died in the middle of that waiting period. You couldn't do anything in your book. Look stale at the end. It's very, this is a problem with modern publishing is they have these long printing details. With doing on Kindle, I did this one on Kindle, but there's other good people, literally the minute you decide, okay, we're ready to go, you print it, you go on Amazon, you put your book on various places,

and they're ready to sell. Speaking of Steve Pagan, he writes here, and I'm looking at the foreword, the dynamic son-father duo of Evan and Bruce Dobegin tell the stories behind the stories of these noteworthy trades and more in the pages of this book. They are two of the most astute hockey observers

on the scene today. And I wouldn't trade their insights for anyone else's. See what he did there? He brought back trade. So he's a clever boy. He's clever. I got to, he's, he's going to do well. He's a clever boy. He's clever, he's gonna do well, he's gonna do well. My buddy Murray.

In the new country. So, right. Murray, who I'm gonna see at Bruce Springsteen tomorrow night, Murray's got three stickers on the back of his car, he lives in the junction, so maybe this car has a, he's a huge Dolphins fan, he's got a Miami Dolphins logo. He's got that quote from Born to Run,

tramps like us, baby we were born to run, like that's on the back of his car, and he's got a Toronto Mikephins logo. He's got that quote from Born to Run, uh, tramps like us, baby, we were born to run. Like that's on the back of his car. And he's got a Toronto mic'd logo in the back of those are the big three for Murray, Bruce Springsteen, the Miami dolphins, and Toronto mic'd and Murray, uh, went to Sherway gardens. He said, he brought three of his friends with him so that you could sell four books. And he had a, he was showing me the pictures that he took with you at Sherwood Gardens. Shout out to Murray.

I showed up. This is about the fourth or fifth signing I've done and usually it's gradual, people come by, you might sell a few books here, a few books there, you talk to a lot of people. I get there, 10 to 12, I'm not supposed to start anything until 12 and Murray and the guys are there and they're absolutely, it's like a pep squad.

They're so excited and I'm excited to see them. And they all bought books. We had a great old chat. Thanks to them and then of course they told about their relationship with you. They said they're the support and FOTM. Oh yeah. And if you, because sometimes he gets called in

for emergency plumbing problems because he's a plumber and you know, he told me if he couldn't make that, I was actually gonna get you to sign a book for Murray, the book I have in my hand, because like I said, I was giving them away to guests for a while and they were all well received.

And I appreciate that. Well, yeah, look, it was fun to do. I forgot to send the invoice, so I'll give it to you before you leave. I forgot to- A little word of mouth, yeah. So let me ask about that because the book is great because you know, you know, as a Toronto guy, you know, I go straight to the,

let's talk about the Gilmore trade or whatever, but a lot of people, you didn't read the Frank Mahavlach one first? No, no, I didn't read, you know, he's I'm a 90s guy. Okay. I'm only 50. Come on. But I'm curious about the whole self publishing thing. So this is, is this the first book you've self published? Yes. So what are like is this the first book you've self published? Yes. So what are like, what are the nuts and bolts of this? Like, are you in a, a Google doc or are you in like a word doc hammering this out with your son?

And then like, like what, can you give me the nuts and bolts? Oh, the misery. Now you're producing the book was fine because we've done books, we did the book before and I've done books before. We get it all done. And we using the Kindle templates, I go to put the file, I think I did the file as a pages file and then I converted it to Word.

Oh, because you're an Apple guy. So I had it as a Word file. I converted it because I know nobody uses pages, it's useless, but that's what I write. And we had it in Word and I kept trying to put it into the template that they had. And because my artist, as you can see from the cover here, we did a nice job.

He had done all this stuff, and I'd already put the cover in, and I'd said, okay, here, and I find out it takes me, I'm telling you, when things go sideways in text stuff, it just drives you crazy. It took me two days to figure out that this was seven by 11 and I kept trying to hammer my form into the template that was six by eight. And I'm going like, it wasn't working and all this stuff.

It took us forever to figure out that. And then I had another problem that I didn't understand with the pagination, which is page numbers on every page, how that gets done. So I was literally incorporating the number onto the page. You were like hard coding it in there. Oh yeah. Rookie mistake. So every time we change something then, I mean, I wasted so much of my life doing that. But the next time you write a book, you got all that ironed out,

you live and learn and you, you learned a lot about,. I was just curious how this how it all works because I mean yes you're talking about Kindle but I'm holding an actual physical you know this looks like it was printed by a major uh yeah publication. This is a real deal man and and now people tell me. Nice glossy cover it's all good yeah. Murray and the guys we were talking to him the other day the thing they like that I like too is the bigger format, bigger print. He's here to read. Well, that's why you saw me. I was going to read from it. I'm like, these guys came out.

Yeah. So are you wearing contacts? How do you get to your age about any glasses? Oh, no, I work. I wear cheaters. I got my book. When you read, OK, because this is a new thing for me. So I'm still the novelty of it all. Because until basically until I turned 50, I never new thing for me. So I'm still the novelty of it all. Cause until basically until I turned 50, I never needed glasses for anything.

And then now it's like, is that a six or a five? You know what I mean? And it's like, Oh, now I'm making mistakes. So wait till you're 70. Well, hopefully you get to 70 driving bikes around Toronto. Anything could happen. But especially cause they're gunning, because of the rhetoric from Doug Ford,

I feel, and I felt this, I feel like his, he's created this polarization where I think motorists are gunning for me now. Like I don't think they're sharing the road because it feels like it's us versus them. And I'm a motorist too. I don't think they hate you any more than they did before. Okay.

Which is to say that I think they resented you some of this stuff about Mark my words. Yeah, go ahead. No, I was a bike. I rode bikes in Toronto for years. And I understand people who cut you off. I understand all of the indignities that are, and now they push you into puddles and you got to go on the side where the, the, the, where the potholes are. Yeah, exactly. I understand all of that stuff. So I'm, I'm a little understanding of, of, of bicyclists,

but some of them have an attitude. Of course. So as if some motorists don't have an idea. One time we got, Oh, I, do you stop at every stop sign? And I was like, okay. Like the motorists I see on the quiet streets are, you know what I mean? The rolling stop, like, please, like, let's, let's face it. Some cyclists are going to do a rolling, you know, look, you know, use it. The way I operate here is if i'm not talking about major streets, okay like blue or whatever i'm talking about smaller streets Basically stop signs turn into yield signs And and a red light turns into a stop sign basically if there's no cars around this is called the idaho stop And you also have the problem that of course you're right here on lakeshore with tracks and oh my god. Well that you have to get you get across perpendicular I

mean I bike with my daughter my eight-year-old and I bike to school this morning so it's like yeah these are the lessons I'm and I'm like if it ever rains oh I see you know you're just taking I didn't I didn't go to school I dropped her off and we lock up the bikes and she goes it's going I'll pick her up I'll pick her up later but basically it's like yeah these this is the black ice of the neighborhood these these streetcar tracks. And you got to cross perpendicular and you got to slow down. I w I'll just move off the bike lane thing,

except to say that if they do rip up the blue or bike lanes and it sounds like that's what they're going to do, I will take the lane. Like I've been typically a guy who will be take my one, you know, my little sliver of the right side and go alongside the vehicles in the right lane. I'll, if I feel like, no, not and go alongside the vehicles in the right lane. If I feel like, nah, not anymore. Now you took out my bike lane, I'll take that damn lane. You can go 20 clicks an hour behind me if you want.

That's where I'm at. We're having exactly the same debate in Calgary. They've done all the same things with the roads, et cetera. There's the same bitchiness about it, complaints about it. And we have people who bicycle in much worse weather than you do, believe me. We have some real keeners. Well, I mean, we do snow here, Bruce.

You lived here a long time. There will be ice and snow at some point. We have snow, but we also have minus 40 some days, you know, where your lungs just crystallizes, your breathing, so anyhow. So I hear, I get reports from Edmonton all the time, and I'm like, oh, really? So did you enjoy the Doug Gilmore chapter?

Did you? Yeah, so it's, I think you're a great writer and I think you and your son are like a dynamic duo and I look forward to more, like more sports books from you guys, cause they're sort of thinking man sports, thinking person, why am I genderizing that? Come on, Mike, come on. Thinking person sports books.

And if I can just like ignore the fact that you think something was suspicious about the 2020 election and you don't wanna get a COVID vaccine or whatever, I think you're a very effective and smart sports writer. Well, I've always tried to be. I tell a story about when I was hired to do CBC at six, the executive producer, Howard Bernstein phoned me up and he said, I'd like you to host

the six o'clock show. And I said, well, Howard, I've never done TV. Ah, no, we'll teach you how to do it. We'll teach you how to do it. Okay, well that's fine. And I said, well, why me? I mean, there's guys across the country who all want the Toronto six o'clock show.

This is the pinnacle. You're hiring a guy who hasn't been there. He said, I'll tell you why. He said, when I drive to work with my wife, who also worked at CBC, always when the sports cast would come on, she'd turn off the radio. And she left the radio on to listen to you doing sports.

He said, that's what I want. Wow. So I think that was my niche, and maybe it is my niche that I'm trying to be intelligent about. I, Bill James and people like that had a big influence on me, that you can be smart about it and that you don't have to do the bromides and all that sort of stuff.

I'm not trying to knock old, old timey sports guys, but I just, I just thought there was an intelligence that you could bring to it. And what we try to do with each of these chapters is deal with it. The Gilmore chapter starts with Cliff Fletcher starting the Atlanta Flames. Now, how does that arrive in Toronto? Well, it goes through the whole process of him building the Flames, going and getting Doug Gilmore from St. Louis. Cliff comes to Toronto, Gilmore plays out his welcome in Calgary

and ends up in Toronto. And then we chart what happens after the trade because of course the Gilmore trade, as good as it was, the Leafs didn't get the cup that they were hoping for. So we try to do soup to nuts. And I also try to think, and you're a perfect example of this, with each one, there are generational trades in your life.

Like the Frank Mahovlich trades for people that age, man, that was, they traded Frank to Detroit. You know, he's playing with Gordy and Alex and that was huge for people. And so- And you're so right about the generational thing because I was like, when Gretzky was traded to the Kings, like that was an earth shattering, oh my God.

So that was like the first big thing, big hockey trade sort of. And there's a, you know, you talk about that of course. So the Gretzky trade, because I'm doing quick math in my head, but I'm like 13 years old or something like that, 13, 14 years old. Like that was monster.

And then for me personally, as a diehard leaf fan But you know the Gilmore trade I still remember hearing the announcement in the car And it was like so that was that was massive too So those are like two kind of things but what I liked learning about in your book is like it's like having more appreciation for like the Esposito trade Right like this is the stuff that I missed made Bobby or right if you were there at the time You know there were great teams that Canadians were a great team like this is the stuff that I missed. It made Bobby Orr. Right. If you were there at the time, you know, there were great teams, the Canadians were a great team,

but the Bruins were a super team. And you know, it was the sixties too. It was Joan Namath. It was a sexy time for sports. Right. And they, they put up offensive numbers that nobody had seen before the Bruins. And they were swagger and they fought and they just,

anyhow, they made, they made the, that made the Bobby Orr team into a, into a great team. And we follow it through because Phil then gets After having been told by Harry Sinden, you're always a Bruin Philly traded him a month later to the Rangers So we follow Phil to the end of that and we show you what happened with hodge and Stanfield the other guys in it And just trying to put perspective on each one of those things. So you know what happened? So it's well done and I would say and, and I'm curious, like, so it, I think it was Steven Brunt who told me, uh, but would you have a relationship with Steven Brunt? Yeah, I know. I've known C for years. We used to do panels

on pick and show. I could see that. Yeah. Um, Stephen would be again, another of the guys, our generation of guys who came in who were interesting, I don't say educated, but thoughtful people. And Stephen, that was always his thing, was a kind of a thoughtful approach to sports. Well, I like the way you write about sports, but I also like the way Stephen Brunt writes about sports. I like the way Gare Joyce writes about sports. I think I'm interested in a more like-

That was a different generation. We came on the heels of the Jim Hunt generation of people who were, and again, I'm not knocking shaky in those guys and all of them, but they were doing a job the way they saw it. And, and our, ours was different, you know? So I brought a brunt because he told me, you know, if you, if you write a hockey book, all your sales happen for Christmas, basically.

So, okay. So I'm just trying to, so, cause I was giving these out, you know, months ago, I was giving out deal with it. So is it sort of like, you get it out early so that the low-hanging fruit falls and then the push comes because you know if you everybody's gonna be buying a gift for a hockey fan in their life in this country at least and Deal with it the trades that stun the NHL and changed hockey is an ideal gift for a hockey fan Yeah, and you know who buys hockey books by the way, can I guess I bet you're gonna guess it go ahead Well, I would I'm gonna think the hockey books by the way? Can I guess? I bet you're gonna guess it, go ahead. Well, I would, I'm gonna think the hockey books

are bought by children, like for their dad. And I say that again, I should say for their parent, because I know a lot of women like hockey books, but let's face it for their dad, okay? That'll get me in trouble, but it's true. And their grandfather, their dad, and you tell me now what your answer was. That's my first thought. Women and wives buy them because they don't know what they have to give their husband,

their father or whatever their uncle. And when I was at Sherway, the Sherway Indigo the other day, I think we sold about 20 of these ones and I would say 18 of them were ones that were going to be gifted to somebody else. So when I inscribed them, I was inscribing them to somebody else. Okay. So how are, so how are sales going and how can somebody buy this remotely here? Because are you doing any more live appearances? I'm doing, hopefully next week, the NHL alumni luncheon. We're gonna be there, Terry Harper's gonna be there.

This is all in connection with the hall of fame weekend that's coming up here. But everything's new, You're asking me questions. Yeah, you're in Uncharted Waters here. So hopefully we're going to sell some books there. But is that fun to sort of tow your own now that you're kind of... I think that would be exciting to like, you're not relying on some publisher. You're doing this yourself. If I was 50, this would be easier. I'm 70 and I'm saying, wow, all this stuff.

But your son's there to support things here, Evan. We're finding out how it works. We brought it out in the, in the spring last year to take advantage maybe of some playoff stuff. Uh, we're now trying to do it. I've, I did, uh, a bookstore, the chapter is down in Fredericton where my younger son lives. I've done a few in Calgary. Uh, I've had lots of good media from, from my friends and I'm most grateful to that. But mostly we're selling through Amazon.

So go amazon.ca. Yeah, amazon.ca and just put under the book section, just put deal with it, it comes up there. They're great about shipping. If you become a prime member on Amazon, they'll ship for free. They get the stuff there pretty quickly. Also, I have a book site called bruce dobiganbooks.ca

and it has all of my titles going right back to the first one, Defense Never Rests, which I think was 1993, the first book that I've come out with and all of the books including the one I did with Tony Comper, the CEO of BMO that came out a couple of years ago, was short long listed for the business book of the year. So they're all there but But anyhow, if you want to get it, that's the best way to do it. I'm just learning, Mike. I just try to find out how this thing works. And it's really tough to get your name above the title for people to pick it up. Right. Because where they put it in Indigo, for example, at Sherway, where they put the book is massive, right? For people who don't know, by the way,

when you walk into a bookstore and you see the latest, whatever it is out in the front, somebody's book, Brian Burke's book out front, the publishers have paid for that location. But that's huge because you're an indie self-publishing, you don't have a budget for that. No, we don't, and so we're behind the eight ball. But I will say- That's why I didn't send you an invoice

when I was promoting your book. And thank you so much. And I meant that sincerely, but the trick behind this is to try to get the store general managers on side with it. And I will give credit to the Indigo people. They have a consignment section now in almost all of their stores for independent publishing.

And they were most happy to have me sign at Sureway. I was just up at Square One and I'm going to Yorkdale and we're gonna hopefully get some availabilities there and get the things in with consignment. But it's tough. And if you're self-publishing too, you'll sell most of your books through personal appearances. So if you're going to like,

I'm gonna do this luncheon next week, or you go to a speech, whatever it is, I sell them through my pro shop at my golf course. I have them put them on the counter. Hand selling is the way to do it when you're doing your own. So Payken and I have this idea, if you'll ever stop working for a living

and stop trying to do every- What day is it? Hold on. Every freaking thing under under the gods game earth is we was we want to go and do a ham and egg tour together and do our old double play combination. And we just need somebody who can organize a little bit of a tour for us so we can go to speak some libraries, speak to some bookstores, speak at some clubs, and we'll just go there and we'll bring our own books and afterwards sell them. I've got one of those little boxes now that you know you can do the credit card thing on. Okay good, look at you, you know you could write a book about this process of self publishing your book. Yeah it's been

it's been large mostly good and and I've learned things now. I'm right now I'm trying to talk to a friend of mine who is a golf course architect, not architect but superintendent and I want to do a book about the grass and golf, a theme book about grass and golf. Okay, a lot of golfers need gifts for the holiday season as well. Well, I did a book about the stick in hockey. One of my most popular books is called The Stick,

and it literally is about everything to do with sticks from forest to the wood we have in Canada, et Right. And I'd like to do that about golf. Now sticks aren't made of wood at all. Nope. They're made even my 10 year old stick is not made of wood. They're made in a lab. Do they break as often as they used to? He doesn't play hard enough. That's what I tell them. Like why haven't you broken a stick yet? But it is house league. It's house league 10 year old. So the guys hack your stick. That's used to be how you broke them. Right?

Well, those players have gone on the trip, triple eight. Like I feel like the house leaguers that are left at 10 are the guys who aren't. What does it cost for a graphite stick these days? Uh, I should know this off the top. My kids, it was just bought. This one was on sale at Costco for like 60 bucks, but I think they're like a hundred bucks, I think typically for, but, uh, yeah, I know that's why we don't want to break it too often.

Brendan Shanahan told me a funny story because he grew up in this part of town. Mimico guy. Yeah. Yeah. And he had three brothers and he was the right-handed shot. They were all left-handed shots and his dad used to go to the Canadian tire and he go to the back of the Canadian tire store where apparently they would throw out stuff into, into the bin and he would go and he would get the straight blades cause he didn't want to pay for anything else and so he'd pay the Canadian, this is the story he told, he'd pay the Canadian tire manager for four sticks and he insisted they all be like the straight blade and so that's how Brendan got to be the kind of player he is.

Very interesting story. Now I randomly picked up the book just now. Still like Brendan? Has he soured him somewhere in Toronto? He, you know, he spends the cap. The way I always look at it is like, you know, I don't know, the Maple Leafs spend the cap and are they, they're a bit top heavy and they're not having, they've only won one playoff round in the Shanahan era, but they only won one playoff round since 2004. That's 20 years now. So in the last 20 years won one playoff round since 2004. That's 20 years

now. So in the last 20 years, one playoff round. So I don't have like, like playoffs or everything in hockey as the president's cup means nothing to me, like nothing. Are people mad at him? I think people are a popular guy going into, yeah, no, without a doubt. The results are not much better than they were with, you know, when Fennuff and Kessel were your guys, right? So I think playoffs are everything. I think I feel like every year we say, okay, one more playoff round and we're going to judge them on this. But I feel the same way about Shapiro and Atkins, where it feels like for a few years

in a row that, okay, that's enough now you've had enough time to look what you've done. And this last year was so disappointing and it's terrible. They were just sellers at the deadline, of course. Anything that they could. Yeah, it was a death march. It was so sad. And I tuned out, just I was out. Like I didn't watch any.

I watched once to see if I could witness the second no hitter in franchise history. I tuned in. That's what it takes to get me to tune in now. Are you pitching a no hitter with in the ninth inning? Okay, let me see what's going on here. The great thing about living in Calgary is the Blue J game comes on it

Just after five so by seven o'clock you can tell which way it's gone And you can have a rest of your life whereas here in Toronto of course you've committed your whole evening You know you're sorry so I picked up the book and I see I'm on the chapter you mentioned about Frank Mahavale It's the big trade from from Detroit to amazing. He's an amazing man Amazing and people always think of him as a leaf. He had two fantastic two and a half fantastic years in Detroit, but specifically in Montreal. He was brilliant in Montreal did everything they wanted to. They didn't put any stress on him. Frank Mahavlich got got, you know, worn out by by punch him like and my friend Karl Brewer was

another victim of punch him like, and we sort of explained the ups and downs of Frank here in Toronto and why the trade had to be made at the time and yeah, again, for me, I was 13 when that trade happened, no, 14 I guess, when that trade happened and to Detroit, because I was a Red Wings fan, it was like, maybe we'll win, maybe we'll win, you know. Well, one name that's jumping off the page here is Harold Ballard

And on the live stream Andrew Ward says, can you ask Bruce? about Harold Ballard's role in Toronto trades So I mean I one of the trades because I was a kind of a huge least fan at the time We it gets referenced a lot is Kordic for Cortinal this trade gets, you know Chatted about a lot and, you know, Gord Stehlich has been in this very basement multiple times, basically telling me that he was told to make that trade because the,

the coach wanted to get tougher and they wanted Kordic or whatever. So shockingly. So, you know, I can only imagine, uh, Harold Ballard, the Curb-O-Vers trade was worse. Right. Well that was, cause that ended up, that pick was, could have been Lindoros, but actually ended up, in my opinion, I think a better player throughout his long career, Scott Niedermeyer, am I right?

That's what I said in my book. Yeah. In the book, when we do the book about inexact science, we talk about that, you know, the foibles of Toronto trading, et cetera. But I wrote a column a while ago for people, and I hate to get back to it, but I said if you're trying to understand Trump,

go and read and watch Harold Ballard. Because Ballard, that was the whole Ballard thing. He'd get up in the morning and find a way to rattle pots and pans. He'd call up Milt Donnell and he'd say, I'm gonna trade him, I'm gonna fire this guy, whatever. And the rest of us in the media would all have to follow in.

He'd say outrageous things at press conferences, terrible things, you know, the day that we went down there because they had to admit women into the dressing room and he wouldn't let our reporter in there and he stands out in front of the thing. He says, you can't have women in there, those guys are naked in there. Have you seen, Salman, have you seen what it looks like?

You know, that clips on YouTube because you can Daniels. Yeah, I had it. Yeah. And he shared it with me and I put it on my YouTube. And it's like one of my most popular videos is him describing that women can't be in the maple leaves dressing room because Borey a salmings member is like a third arm or whatever he was referring to. Oh yeah, no, no, but that is so Trumpian, right? What did he do? The other day he was talking about Arnold Palmer Schlang, you know? That's the two guys, they understand how to manipulate media in a way that's both nefarious

but also amusing at times. Sure, but one of them owns a hockey team and a CFL team, et cetera, and the other wants the nuclear codes. That's true. Harold was more important. Now that you mention it. Absolutely. In Toronto he sure was.

He was the president of Toronto. Oski Wiwi for Harold there. But you see the difference there, right? Cause this image, this whole thing, he was given the microphone oral sex in some footage I saw the other day. And some of the, you know, he talks about the member of the girlfriend and all this like stuff that,

you know, I think my, I would be disappointed if my 10 year old were that immature at this point. But you know, Harold Ballard never sought to be a public in public office as far as I know. Well, he sought the public spotlight for the most high profile team in the country, which is very different, which in Canada is not much. Had we been able to vote out Harold Ballard, we'd have voted out Harold Ballard here a long time ago.

But he was, he was just a fascinating guy to be around. And we all, we all envied Milton L because he got all the scoops. We couldn't get anything out of him. And I'm sure Gordy has told you all this stuff. Gord's done, has told you all this stuff that went on behind his scenes. And his brother too has been over and fleshed out. He's a Bob Stehlich as well. Well, Bob's been on too?

Yeah, Bob came over. Wonderful guy. I'm kind of very interested in all the Harold Ballard stuff. Harold Ballard greater than Donald Trump, my opinion. So here, Bruce, on air. On air meeting here, okay? Believe it or not, the listenership will be very surprised to know I

Wanted to spend some time Getting into the details Alan of Alan Eagleson. I have audio clips pulled you should see the homework I've done you you know you you I Wanted to ask you about Russ Conway and I wanted to talk you mentioned Karl Brewer moments ago And I have so many know in Carl Brewer moments ago and I have so many you know in Susan Foster and his partner and all this is here your role everything I have the clips and stuff but here's what I'm gonna ask you so I'm gonna look into your eyes okay can we push this to your next

appearance so this is another reason for you to come back but for real I feel like a little bit of Charlie Brown trying to kick a football and I'm Lucy. And I don't know how many times you've come over to talk about Alan Eagleson and completely just, we talked about everything else. And the next thing you know, we're at the two hour mark. And I'm like, I can't keep going. I gotta do something else.

My wife asked me, what are you gonna talk about this time? I said, well, I think he wants to talk about Alan Eagleson. I did. So that's not a lie. That's not a lie. Cause I believed it to be true. That's what George Costin was talking about. Disinformation was disinformation or misinformation. So we will dive deep into the Alan Eagleton story. And if we delay this enough, it could coincide with his passing. Who knows? How old is Alan Eagleton today? He's old enough to die. Right.

Like maybe that'll be it. But of course we have a geographical issue that I really, I don't feel like zoom in with Bruce Dobe again, if I could just be patient and get him in the basement. I'll probably, probably be back in the new year. I may have to fly in. I've got another project I'm working on. I may have to fly in in January. So January, Alan Eagleson in January and we'll do it up proper.

I don't want to jam it into the last five minutes here, but I got to say. Great stories. And I can't wait to get the full story. We're going to do it justice. So the Alan Eagleson deep dive with Bruce Dobigan will happen in January, 2025. If there is a January, 2025, because who knows what's going to happen tonight. Well, with you and me, who knows?

And enjoy the concert tomorrow. I can't wait. I also thought it's interesting timing, because as you know, this was originally gonna be November, 2023. Yes. And then hernia, I think he had hernia. I wanna sing the Weird Al Yankovic parody

of Living in America by James Brown. Living with a hernia. Okay, so they delayed it a year. So I've had these tickets a long time, but it's interesting how the timing is that this is Bruce's first show post-election. Bruce is very politically engaged. Yeah, very interesting.

Depending how things unfold here, it'll be interesting what Bruce, what mood he's in, what he has to say, the vibe of the place. Just another kind of layer. You mentioned it's Sunday. He said, Tuesday's a big day for my country and here's a song that he wrote about it. And it was a bit like a folk song.

I didn't recognize too much about it, but anyhow, he's so he's into it. I just, for all of these people, I just wish I didn't have to see them now and see politics at the same time, all the actors, all the people who've taken. Are you saying stick to sports? That's the stick to sports, stick to music. I just have my dreams. I just have my image of how much I loved Robert De Niro and people like that. And I just can't watch him anymore.

I like them to be themselves. Like, uh, I can separate. I won't, I won't stop listening to a musician I like because I find out they're like a Trumper, like I don't have that in me or whatever, but I don't think they need to stick to music. Like I don't, I'm okay with my athletes speak out the head coach coach of the Spurs when he speaks his mind on these topics, I'm interested in hearing it. That's my call this week talking this week about Popovich and some of his opinions on stuff and is, was the, was the Colin

Kaepernick episode commensurate with the, with What's the Name from the 49ers wearing the MAGA hat the other night. Always interesting to read what you have to say even if I don't agree. So Bruce thanks for this visit we'll do it again in January I really want to get into this. I'll talk to Paegan on Friday and we'll discuss what it's like to be on the show. I'll do that and what do you call a ham and eggs tour whatever you're gonna do? If you know if somebody I can be on that tour like you can you could we could Be on that tour. It's something knows how to organize it somebody in this listening audience Yeah, would be willing to put together something like that. We'd be willing to do it. We're not asking for much money to sell books

and that And by the way speaking of selling books Go to Amazon dotca and pick up multiple copies of Deal With It, The Trades That Stunned the NHL and Changed Hockey by Evan and Bruce Dobigan. Forward by Steve Pakin. Buy multiple copies for all the hockey fans in your life, regardless of gender. Everybody will enjoy this.

We have lots of women come to the store the other day for books. Absolutely. All genders love hockey. So pick up a copy or two for the holiday season gift giving time. I'm going to try and do a signing in Florida too. Oh, I forgot to give you a gift. That wireless speaker is so you can listen to episode five, season seven of Yes We Are Open. Al Greggo, he visited with Amy Sarasani. Amy Sarasani from Shooters Family Golf Center and Restaurant. This family transformed a modest driving range into a beloved community hub serving Winnipeg for the past 31 years and counting. So subscribe and enjoy Yes We Are Open with your new speaker, Mr. Dobegay.

Do you still have chairs by the way? No. Those chairs have been here for many years thanks to Blue Sky. And that brings us to the end of this possible. That's Great Lakes Brewery. You've got that beer for you, Bruce, courtesy of Great Lakes. Palma Pasta, you've got a lasagna in my freezer. RecycleMyElectronics.ca, that's where you go to find out where you drop off your old electronics, your old cables. Put in your postal code, keep those chemicals out of our landfill. Raymond James Canada, Minaris, you're subscribing to Yes We Are Open, and Ridley Funeral Home,

you've got your measuring tape. See you all, maybe tomorrow when I make Bruce come back and talk about what the hell happened tonight. We'll see if anything goes down. If there's anything to report on, it may not be over until Thursday. So stay tuned, stay safe, see you all then. You