Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Chris Mayberry: Toronto Mike'd #871

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

Mike chats with Chris Mayberry about his 40 years in radio.

Good morning, this is Chris Mayberry, Key590 Sports. Welcome to episode 871 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. 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. StickerU.com. Create custom stickers, labels, tattoos, and decals for your home and your business. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville.

Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921. And Mike Majeski, or as I call him, Mimico Mike. He's the real estate agent who's ripping up the Mimico real estate scene. Learn more at realestatelove.ca. I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me this week is 40-year radio vet, Chris Mayberry. How are you doing, Mike? Nice to meet you.

And you've told me already, I'm allowed to call you Mabo. Yeah, along with the rest of the world. Where does that nickname come from? I mean, obviously, you're Mayberry. It just was a natural, I suppose. Yeah, it started in high school. My best friend, his first name is Jim.

And he had this penchant for picking nicknames for just about everybody he knew. Right. And he didn't have one for me. picking nicknames for just about everybody he knew. And he didn't have one for me, but I said, why don't we all call you Jimbo? That sounds like a pretty good name for you. He said, well, why don't I call you Mabo? That's where it started, and it's stuck forever. And the rest is history, as they say.

Nice to meet you, man. Yeah, pretty much. Pleasure to meet you. 40-year radio event, but you're happily retired now is that right i am for almost four years uh i spent 25 of those 40 at the canadian press at uh broadcast news as it was called for about half of my time there and it was the national audio arm of the canadian press and And it allowed me to travel and see the world and cover sports. And for a sports reporter, it doesn't get any better than that. It was great.

Well, that's like a teaser because I'm going to dive a little deeper into all that for sure. But I'm glad that you're enjoying retirement. I have some audio evidence that you're not very good at retirement. you're not very good at retirement. So I'm going to, I, I got recruited by the local community radio station here in Stouffville initially to do play by play of the junior a hockey club here, which was great fun and did that for a couple of seasons.

And when COVID hit the chairman of the board said, you have newscasting experience, correct? And I said, yeah, well, you know, a little bit. And he said, well, how would you like to put together some COVID reports that will run on the station twice a day? And I said, sure, why not? You know, there's no cake involved. And this is all voluntary volunteer stuff. But what's the name of the station?

This is literally like a Stouffville station? Yes, it is. Yeah, it's 1029 on the FM dial, and if you get very far past Main Street, it'll fade out. But we're also online, and it's whistlefm.com, and it's a pretty good station, really, for a bunch of volunteers. I love it because I love radio being hyper-local. I think the best is live and local for radio, and that's the spirit right there. So I love that. I wonder if we could coax Stouffville resident Jeff Merrick into having a show maybe on that station.

That'd be awesome. Yeah, for sure. There's a lot of people here in Stouffville that are involved in hockey and sports. Brian McFarlane lives here. Okay. I just had him on Toronto Mic at 89 years young. He just made his Toronto Mic debut. Yes, you did. He was fantastic. Yeah. Oh, he's a great guy.

And he, you know, until COVID hit, he would basically be at Tim Hortons every morning at seven o'clock for anybody who wanted to drop on by and have a coffee with him. And he'd spend some yarns about the hockey night in Canada days. And, uh, just, just a wonderful gentleman. Great guy.

I'll bet you at that Timmy's that's where you get the, the stories he was too smart to tell on my program. So I feel like if I had known he was like holding court there, like I just come over with my phone, record the convo, get the real talk out of, uh, that would work. He, uh, youvo, get the real talk out of Brian. Yeah, that would work. You might have to hide it in your back pocket, eh?

But yeah, you'd get some stories that you probably wouldn't normally put on Toronto mic. Well, let me ask you about, you know, what you had done. I think it was yesterday. I was reading your tweets, but did you get your second vaccine shot yesterday? We did. My wife and I both got our second shot. We originally had a Pfizer back in April and we're scheduled for our second Pfizer shot on, uh, I think it was a August 8th or something like that. But we got a chance to move it up. We had Moderna yesterday and, um,

now we're, uh, two weeks after, I guess, we get it. We are considered fully vaccinated. But any side effects? Because I'm speaking to the day after. I do know I was, I mean, I also mixed and matched. But I went AZ and then I went Pfizer. Okay. And both times I had, I would say, like, I'm not complaining because it's well worth it.

And this is not me, you know, bitching and complaining about it. But I got knocked down pretty good both times I had, I would say like, I'm not complaining because it's well worth it. And this is not me, you know, bitching and complaining about it, but I got knocked down pretty good both times, but you sound pretty good for a guy who had his, he sounds like you're doing all right the day after. I'm fine. My, my arm is very sore today and I got a mild headache. My wife, on the other hand, she works from home. She's just in the other room. And, but she had the chills and went to bed early last night. And, you know,

that's my, that was my second night, both times. So the second night, both times I had those like fever dream chill nights, which are like wild. Like when usually when you're, you got the flu or something and, uh, again, not complaining, but I'm not even sure I'm a hundred percent yet, but I'm just glad to hear that you're doing all right there. Yeah. No, all's well. So, okay. Where do we begin with you? Let's begin in the beginning. Let's go back to the

1970s. So there's a lot of ground to cover here. But maybe in the very beginning, like when did you decide you wanted to become a broadcaster, go into broadcast journalism? I was always fascinated by radio. I can remember we had a cottage south of Windsor down Colchester Way, Harold, and it was right on Lake Erie. And we were about a mile from the transmitter towers for CKLW, which reached, I forget how many states and provinces and whatnot. The big eight was just a giant in the 1960s. And I was fascinated by that station, by the announcers on that station and whatnot. And on rainy days, I'd retreat into my bedroom and just turn on the radio and I'd pretend I was an announcer.

radio and I'd pretend I was an announcer. How I got into the news and sports angle, I started thinking, because I love both ends of it, you know, and I started thinking, if I make a career out of this, I'm not seeing too many quote-unquote disc jockeys who are 60 years old. They're all young. And I thought, the news and sports guys, they are still 50, 60 years old. And I thought maybe if I go that route and I loved sports, I was just an absolute sports fanatic. And if I went that route, maybe my career will last longer. And that's why I went into broadcast journalism as opposed to just the regular radio. Man, that big eight was so influential. Like when I hear these stories, I mean, I'm thinking, who are the names I always hear about?

Dick Smythe was there. Dick Smythe was there. Mark Daly was there at some point, for sure. I'm sorry? Mark Daly at some point. Mark Daly was there, yes. A very funny, funny newscaster who really got into the uh the 2020 news

thing was grant hudson he was a tremendous writer and they would do things they would do outrageous newscasts you probably heard this you know 10 toes peeping out of the body bag stuff like that you know he had one he had one i almost drove off the road in laughter and it's not it wasn't a funny story but just the way he did it detroit in those days had um these competing furniture corporations. There was Art Van. There was Mr. Belvedere, who was a construction guy, and his commercials would have this guy behind a desk saying, we do good work.

There were rumors that there was mafia money behind all of these guys, and I have no idea if that's true or not but um Joshua Doerr was one of these furniture guys and his commercials were everywhere if you listen to Detroit radio at any time you'd hear uh you've got an uncle in the furniture business Joshua Doerr Joshua Doerr you couldn't go five miles driving in your car, listening to the Big Eight without hearing that. Well, one day they found Joshua door, poor Joshua door stuffed in the trunk of a Cadillac, all air conditioned with I don't know how many bullet holes. And so that was a big story. Grant Hudson treated it this way. He went on the air and right off the bat, he said,

it this way he went on the air and right off the bat he said you've got an uncle in the furniture business well not anymore wow and and knowing the history of uh of joshua door and the commercials i i had to pull off the side of the road i was laughing my head off once in a while so basically you know hearing this uh you know uh young maybo is basically like i i can do that essentially i would like to do that so where do you go like is there you go to school for that i suppose yeah i uh i i was born in windsor grew up in london and uh fanshawe college had a broadcast journalism course, a two-year course. It was an exceptional course. And I hit it at the right time. There were a lot of people on radio who were just retiring, sort of like that first, second wave type of thing.

And they were crying for new talent. And a lot of us got jobs, those of us in the second year. And we never graduated. We were hired out by stations, you know, February, March, April, and I was one of those lucky ones, and I got hired at CKWW in Windsor. The news director was a fellow by the name of Neil Thomas, who had a lot of experience. He worked at CKLW, worked in Houston, and wonderful, wonderful gent, and learned more in three months working with him than I did, you know, almost two years at Fanshawe because he had real-life experience. Not that the instructors did not, but when you're working together

with somebody in the same newsroom it uh it basically works that way and uh uh and i was only there three months and i moved back to london to do sports at cksl because i had done some stuff in my two years at fanshawe the sports director at cksl was a fellow by the name of John Hancock, who still to this day works at CBC out East. And he would hire two or three of us to cover local sports. So every Friday night he'd, he'd have me out at the London gardens to cover a London Knights game, gather tape, you know, do a report for the station, that type of thing.

Zero dollars. You know, it, it, he didn't pay a thing, but I didn't care. The experience was what I thought I needed. And, and then he went off to Hamilton in that summer, just basically three years after I got out of college and they hired me to be their sports director. So here I am three months out of college, two and a half years out of high school, uh, doing local sports in my hometown, pretty heady stuff. You know, it was, uh, it was great. And, and I was there for three and a half years and worked with some wonderful people. Uh, Peter Garland was our morning guy. He was one of the funniest folks I've ever met. Uh, great guy. He went on to a CFPL later on in, folks I've ever met. Great guy. He went on to CFPL later on in,

in, in his career in London. At the very tail end of my time there, I, I worked with Larry Silver, who is a Toronto legend. Sure. CFTR. And might be the funniest person I've ever met. He would, he would say things like this. Evelyn Macko told me I should get Larry Silver on the program and she's a big Larry Silver fan. Oh, sure. Of course.

And right. The Wacko Macco, as I call her. Yeah. I got to do that. I mean, you know, I got to get Larry Silver on the program. But you won't regret that. That's for sure. Funny story about Ev.

Yeah. We, she was at CFTR, of course, for all those years. And I was at Key 590. And we knew of each other we had never met really i never met evelyn mackle and i have the utmost respect for i think she was just one of the greatest uh newscasters of that era and a mutual friend of ours eric thomas and i know you know baseline radio yes absolutely he's one of my very best friends also CFTR I was a big Tom Rivers fan uh one of the best the absolute best but ET uh I think it

was his 60th birthday uh he and I as it turned out were born like five days apart and uh down in the Niagara region where he lives he his wife threw a 60th birthday party. And I, of course, was invited, went down. And that's where I met Evelyn. And I think I spent two hours of that party just talking with her and talking over life and, you know, work experiences. And it was great. She's a marvel. Yeah, I know. And what a voice, too.

I will say, she was scheduled to kick out the jams, which is somebody people do their second time on the program. And it sounded like she was actually just too busy. So I think she was too busy to make her return. But there is a great episode. I'm just checking out what number it is. 334 of Toronto Mic'd. Check it out. It's Eve Toronto Mic'd. Check it out.

It's Evelyn Macko. And it's absolutely fantastic. I was going to ask, were you ever invited to those? There's these radio, pre-COVID obviously, but these events would take place like at Roy Thompson Hall with all the radio vets would kind of collect for lunch and for networking and stuff. Yeah, no, I really wasn't.

And I think part of that might have to do with the fact I was at the Canadian Press for so long. Because when you go basically to the wire service, you become somewhat anonymous. You're not on private radio. You're not on the air every day. You might be doing a voice or from some game somewhere. But you're basically sitting at a desk pounding out sports breaks,

things that move on the wire. And so you're... You're not on the click. Now, Mabo, your internet is a titch wonky there i'm hoping it corrects itself just because i don't want to miss any of these great stories here but can you can you still hear me okay that's uh that this technical issues happen in the uh the age of the zooms here so i'm just going to take a moment here, wait for that to correct itself, and we'll get Mabo back ASAP.

I'm going to ask Mabo. Actually, I'm going to ask him because I'm hoping he listens still, but I'm going to ask, so he'll be back. But if Donabee, I'm wondering if Mr. Donabee is listening, if he can add Chris Mayberry to the invitation list and get him at the next,

whenever COVID ends and hopefully it ends shortly. But if John Donabee can get Chris Mayberry on the guest list, I think that would be a great thing for Maybow here. So while we wait for Maybow to connect and we got a lot of ground to cover, I'm going to thank StickerU.com for their partnership. StickerU.com is where I got these great decals behind me. If you're watching on the Facebook feed, I have the

Toronto Mike stickers that I will, I literally, I'll bike them to people if they're within the appropriate distance. And those are quality stickers and they last. And I think my guest yesterday said it's going on the back of his car. That was Paul Burford, who created Just Like Mom. So check that out. We recorded in my backyard yesterday. Big thanks to Paul Mopasta. If Chris Mayberry were here, then we wouldn't have this internet problem. And he'd get a large meat lasagna.

Ask Peter Gross, most delicious lasagna you'll ever buy in a store. Thank you, Paul Mopasta, for your support. Mimico Mike, he's here if you have any real estate questions, if you're looking to buy and or sell in the next six months. He's been ripping up the Mimico real estate scene, but he's more than just Mimico. Go to realestatelove.ca, reach out to Mike, and just tell Mimico Mike that Toronto Mike sent ya.

And of course, Great Lakes Brewery. Couldn't do this without Great Lakes. I wish I were having a cold one on the back deck with our guest, Chris Mayberry today. What a fantastic family-run, fiercely independent, fresh craft brewery. Much love to Great Lakes. I got to talk to them about hosting a TMLX in late August we'll see

if that is doable and of course Ridley Funeral Home pillars of the community since 1921 now I will just let the listenership know and I will make a decision later how much editing I do in this part but Chris uh has not reconnected yet to his Zoom. Sometimes that means power outage. I can say I've been there where the power goes. Essentially, now you've got no Wi-Fi and you're kind of dead in the water till the power comes back. So that is something that happens. You know, it's not beyond the realm of possibility here. It's also possible he realized, oh, this is nothing special. I'm out, peace. But I don't think that happened.

So we will give Chris a moment to reconnect. I will just check my email here. Here's a play-by-play for the Facebook viewers because obviously they'll be seeing all this. Let's see if I have an email from Chris. Not yet. So hopefully he connects in the next couple of seconds because I gotta ask him

he's got some interesting people he went to school with and we gotta get him to CKEY obviously this is I got some great clips of Mabo and CKEY or as he calls it EY this seems to be what the he calls it, EY. This seems to be what the insiders call it, EY.

Me referring to it as CKEY reveals myself as A, not an insider, and B, too young to remember the heyday of EY because I was listening to 680 CFTR at the time. So no sign of Chris yet. I'm just going to take a timestamp note of the edits here. 20 minutes in. Okay. His internet crashed, but he'll explain himself when he gets back in.

Well, you'll hear the same ding I hear. So you're going to hear a little dinning. And that means Chris has returned compelling stuff here. But, you know, 40 years in the industry industry we got to capture all these radio stories and uh it's worth the wait I would say by the way if you're a fan of Pandemic Friday we're live in my backyard tomorrow that's Cam Gordon and Stu Stone and myself and we we're kicking out, we call it Women Who Rock, but you can imagine it is rock songs we love from women. And we have a very special guest who will kick out the first jam.

And I just heard the bell. Chris has returned. Let's hear what he has to say. Mike. Hey, you're back. I'm glad you're back. I'm so sorry. Our internet crashed. I have no idea what happened. Well, hey, that's beyond your control, my friend. I forgive you. You are forgiven. So thank you. So what I did is I took that opportunity to thank the sponsors of the

program who helped to fuel the real talk. And believe it or not, minimal edit required there. So we're glad we're back in business here. So where were we? I wanted, I did want to ask you something here about Fanshawe College. So firstly, are you telling me you never got, you never got the diploma? You never finished Fanshawe? That's correct. Yeah. No, never did. Wow. This is scandalous. But I'm curious, like, could you shout out some of the talented classmates you had in your time at Fanshawe? Scott Metcalf, who I'm sure you're aware of. Scott Metcalf just retired, right? Yes, he did.

And about a year ago, he gave a long heads up. I'm retiring. And I think he might have given the heads up pre-pandemic. But he did agree to come on Toronto Mic'd after he was done with radio. So I have to follow up with him to make this happen. But I know Bob Weeks has been in my backyard. And I've heard nothing but good things about Scott Metcalf. So I would say he's definitely a future FOTM.

I hope so. Scott's one of the finest people you'll ever meet. FOTM. I hope so. Scott's one of the finest people you'll ever meet. He was from Chatham and his, I think his cousin, Bob Smith, who went on to have a pretty lengthy, good career in Toronto, in London television. They're related. I'm guessing they're cousins, but I'm not sure. Well, I'll find out when he's here. I'm going to find out for sure. guessing they're cousins but i'm not sure anyway i'll find out when he's uh when he's here i'm gonna find out for sure yeah yeah please do and uh uh two very funny guys uh there were times we would uh i think scott came up to me one day i said uh what time we're gonna get out of here class today i said i don't know 3 3 34 he said uh we're going to detroit and so down we went uh to see a red wings game

at old olympia stadium and uh and you know popped on back that night because it was only a two-hour drive so it uh we had lots of fun with scott and bob and uh leslie jones uh who went on to have a very nice career at ctv uh was i think a year behind me. And, uh, yeah, there were, there were some very talented people that came roaring through Fanshawe. And you burned through it, but your time in Windsor there at, uh, CKWW, uh, is that where you worked with FOTM Kevin Shea? Yes. Yes. Uh, what a talented guy and what a,

what a Prince of a person he was. He was doing a Sunday evening show. And he went by the name of Harvison Northgate. And he would play all these novelty hits from artists like Nervous Norvus and things like that. And they were really off the wall stuff. And he had an hour long show. And I was doing news on on sunday evenings and uh we'd take off and we'd go for a bite to eat after our shift every sunday and uh that's where i got to meet kevin for the first time it's funny you say that uh because i

mean it sounds like kevin shea was could have been our dr demento here but uh he had a relationship he had a personal relationship with weird ale weird ale Yankovic when he was working for the record companies. Like, I don't know that. Yeah. Like, I'm pretty sure I'm now when he was here, I know.

Cause even though his, we, it's funny, we focused on hockey, but the best stories were like, you know, him chaperoning Weird Al Yankovic around town and stuff. And I think Motley Crue,

maybe I hope I have the right hair metal band, but I think it was Motley Crue, but Kevin Shea, shea you know you know some people are like a hockey guy but no man this guy talk music with this guy this is the guy for music so did everything i you know he was it was a music company executive for so many years and you know and an announcer on radio and an author and uh you know his work with the hockey hall of fame the bill barilko historian yeah yeah that's right and uh you know uh his books are are great and uh just uh just a great guy and i uh i i was really happy i touched base with him again after all these years that i hadn't seen him you know so yeah he's a sweetheart he's a sweetheart uh now tell me though uh what causes you I think it was 1980 but you head east to Ottawa what brought you what

takes you at Ottawa I um I was working uh a split shift at uh CKSL that was uh the new owners wanted wanted the sports guy to work a morning shift and an afternoon shift. And I was still covering games at night. And I was starting to drag a bit on the air because I wasn't getting enough sleep. And I basically said to them, I said, you know, you got to cut me some slack in one way or another. You get me off the afternoon shift or you don't have to cover these games. I said, well, yeah, I do. You know know i've spent three and a half years covering local sports i think that that's sort of what's behind what i do is a very serious approach to to local sports in london and uh of course they

were all from toronto so you know they were they were sort of they all came in sort of six months before i left as the new regime of CKSL. They did very well. They took the station to number one. But I wasn't particularly happy. So I left and a fellow from Ottawa, CKOY, name escapes me right now, senior moment. He came in and filled my spot and there was an opening in Ottawa. And I got a call from

the sports director there and he said are you at all interested in you know in coming to Ottawa I said well I'll send you a tape and you know give a listen they hired me over the phone which was you know pretty ego-inducing stuff I'll tell you because I hadn't met them I hadn't you know done anything to them so I showed up and uh I worked another three almost four full years at CKY slash CKBY. BY was the country station and uh a year into that I got to do play-by-play of the Ottawa 67s for for three seasons and uh that was more fun than I can I can ever tell you it was something I always dreamed of doing and uh I wasn't the best in the world at it that's for sure than I can, I can ever tell you. It was something I always dreamed of doing. And I wasn't the best in the world at it. That's for sure.

But I sure had fun. Well, I was going to ask you if there were ever any thoughts of maybe doing that, like becoming, you know, what we have today with like a Chris Cuthbert or somebody like that. Did you ever consider pursuing play by play? I had. And I think if I'd remained single, I might have done that, but I met my wife in Ottawa, and we got married and settled down, and I thought, well, I can't really sort of take her around the world for possible play-by-play jobs, and I have to be

honest. I mean, Chris Cuthbert is a tremendous talent and there were others like him the guy I replaced in Ottawa and it was only because our station got the rights is a fellow by the name of Dave Schreiber and Dave Schreiber was known as the voice and he was the voice of the 67s for a lot of years and CFRA got the rights back after the three years we had them and he went on and and did them again and he was a play-by-play guy that that I certainly couldn't touch I was not in his league so at that point I was also doing news and sports at at CKOY and I thought well let's continue to do that. Then we moved to Toronto.

Cheryl said to me after we got married, I'll follow you anywhere, just don't take me to Toronto. I'm not a big city person. Then six months afterward, I got a chance to move. They were both McLean Hunter stations. It was a move within the company that got me down to CKEY. Okay, so we're getting you to CKEY here, but I do like this progression, right?

Cause you're, you know, London and then to Ottawa, then Toronto. That's, that's like, that's a bigger market each time, right? Yes, that's right. As it turned out. Yeah. And Ottawa was, was great fun. And one of the reasons was we got to travel as a, you know, the play-by-play of the 67s with brian kilray yes who was that hey uh just a second i can no longer hear you no longer hear me okay now you're back you yeah there was about eight seconds of silence there but you were talking about brian uh brian

kilray um hockey hall of fame uh and is the answer to a great trivia question he was the he scored the very first goal in the history of the los angeles kings okay wow he was a career yeah career minor leaguer and when the nhl expanded to 12 teams in 1967 uh he got picked up by the los angeles kings he scored their very first goal but is it that is a good trivia question. I love first goal. Great stuff. And he's still with us, Keller is. But riding the buses with him was just a great experience because he had so many stories from his minor hockey days,

minor league hockey days. And I know every, I know, because I sat right behind him on the bus. You know, traditionally the coach sits on the first seat on the right if you're looking forward. And I sat right behind him on the bus. You know, traditionally, the coach sits on the first seat on the right if you're looking forward. And I was right behind him. And so I got to hear his musical taste. I know every syllable of every Anne Murray song, every song, because he was Anne Murray's biggest fan. Wow.

Wow. And, and then one year we got, he got, I guess, for Christmas, all these little tiny little portable televisions with a, with an antenna. And this, this was sort of big in the, in the eighties, right. A tiny little screen, but he just thought this was the greatest thing. And he was a huge Dallas Cowboys fan. All right, Chris, we're having one more of those internet garb. You know what I'm, I're having one more of those internet garbles. You know what? Yeah. I'm having, I'm getting a thing.

My default microphone is changing. I'm going to just make an adjustment if I can. Yeah, go ahead. Because, yeah, that's happened a few times now. So let's take your time there. I don't want to do that. I'm going to disconnect. Okay.

All right. This is, that's okay. I like showing people how the sausage is made. So this is all good. So can you hear me now? Yeah, I will say this. I can hear you now, but it doesn't sound as rich as before. But so now you're just using your built-in microphone on the laptop. Is that right? It's a combination microphone camera okay uh so what you see me at it's it's all it's all one so it's it's not the microphone that uh the big mic was okay you know what if you can if you project it's okay if you project towards it uh i

can you you know it's fine i can uh i can talk a little bit more like that how's that yeah we're gonna we're gonna well it's fine it's fine. It's yeah, it's fine. I'm as long as I can capture the stories, I'm a happy guy here. Okay. Sorry for all the problems here. I usually use this just on my zoom meetings with friends. But I thought for this, I would use the big microphone, but it keeps switching between that and the other one. And I know if I disconnect the one on top of my computer,

then you won't have any video of me. So I don't know whether that's important or not. No, if I had to choose, obviously, I would sacrifice the video for the better audio. But at the same time, if this is what you use when you chat with buddies on Zoom, let's just rock with this. I'm okay with this.

This is okay. Okay. Okay. So what I'm hearing here is the Ottawa stint was well worth it because you met Cheryl and you guys have been together married, what, 38 years now? 38 years. Back on June 11th, we just celebrated our anniversary. So congrats. That's amazing. Thanks. And thank goodness you got the call to head east and you passed that audition. So that all works out. And she doesn't want to move to Toronto.

She says, I don't want to go to the big city. And of course, you end up going to CKEY in Toronto. So how did you work that out with Cheryl? You gave her the puppy dog eyes and she said, okay, let's go for it. I think it was something like that. If I ever had any doubts that she loved me, she did follow me to Toronto. And now, of course, she loves it here. It didn't take long for all the things that Toronto has to offer to woo her.

Now, I'll admit to you that I'm a tiny bit young for the heyday of CKEY. And again, when I'm a kid, I'm listening to all hits CFTR. But CKEY is a big deal. Let's set the table for Gen X and younger here. Like 590 CKEY,

because today people think 590, that's where CJCL is. But of course, that moved from 1430 many decades ago now. But tell us, like, how big a deal was it to get on the air at CKEY? It was a tremendous deal. CKEY had a, you know, a very rich history in the Toronto market. They, you know, when I got there, their news department was, oh boy, I'm trying to think how many people we had in there.

10, 15. Wow. You know, in a newsroom, in a radio newsroom. And it was, yeah, it was something. And we had, we had, one of the people, one of the, one of the most fascinating gentlemen I've ever come across is Jim Hunt. And shaky was the morning sports guy there. It was the sports director. And, uh, and I did afternoon sports and, uh, Brad Diamond did, uh, did a weekend sports. We had a three-person sports team

on top of everything else i mean stations now don't most stations don't have a sports person at all but uh but shaky some some great stories with him i remember one time not long after i got there there was a boxing match aaron priorryor from Cincinnati, who I think only lost once in his career, came up to fight Nicky Furlano, the local Toronto guy. And they had, it was a varsity stadium. And a few days before they had the official weigh-in and, you know, in the news conference to set all the particulars up. So I'm there with Shakey. And Furlano comes in with his entourage and whatnot. And then Pryor comes in with his two or three people.

And one of his bodyguards was literally one of the biggest men I have ever seen in my life. And he did not have an ounce of fat on him. Just this huge hulking man with a permanent scowl on his face. And Jim, I don't know whether you ever heard him or knew him or- Here's how I know him. I know him quite well from co-hosting Primetime Sports with Bob McCowan.

Oh, of course. How silly of me. That's right. Yes, yes. Well, you know what kind of voice he had, that sort of high-pitched voice. And he would end it with, what, all the time?

So I'm sitting there and they're asking all these questions and uh of the two boxers and i get a little elbow in my my side and it's shaky kind of like wait for this this is going to be good puts his hand up guys sir wait how is the big guy is he gonna fight i want to see him fight why what do you think maybe i'm gonna see the big guy fight well the big guy just threw daggers at us and the guys are any more serious questions it turns out we covered the fight and uh the big guy who uh all of a sudden was sitting right in front of us we thought oh we're dead it turned out he was the nicest guy ever every you know two minutes you guys feel all right? I say, whatever's fine with you, pal.

You can't judge a book by its cover. That's awesome. That's awesome. It was great. But this makes me wonder, I can't imagine as a guy, I was pretty much a kid of the 80s, but I can't imagine a big boxy match

at Varsity Stadium. That this happened and it was a big boxy match you know adversity stadium like this whole that that this happened and it was a big event sounds yeah interesting i forget what it drew i don't think it was anywhere close to a sellout uh boxing you know it was post george chivalo uh it was sort of going through a i guess a renaissance period in Toronto where they were trying to do some big fights and and get interest going again and uh all of a sudden Aaron Pryor dropped in our lap and you know he was he was on the comeback trail because he'd uh uh he had retired I think for a couple of years and it was his first fight back and it was rather entertaining fight of memory

serves I think Pryor put Furlano down once or twice in the first round, but the fight went the distance. Pryor won easily, but it was quite an event. Yeah, just interesting that happened. I suppose I could imagine a big fight, maybe Razor

Ruddock or something at Maple Leaf Gardens or something, but this whole idea of a big, a big boxing match at Varsity Stadium is sounds interesting to me. Yeah, it was, it was a perfect summer night as I recall. And it was, you know, Varsity of course was such an intimate facility and, you know, nothing like it is now with the tiny small place with the track and

whatnot but it was it was the original varsity stadium that great cups were held in and uh it was uh it was it was a fun event i enjoyed that cool now yeah the gym shaky i'm sure you could probably do a whole hour on shaky but uh yeah because i do remember so i will again i know he wrote for the sun but my family got the star delivered like I hardly saw the Sun it's like I had to catch up on all these Sun guys and then I did listen to a lot of sports radio for sure and so I would hear him with like I said Bob McCowan on primetime sports and always quite the quite the just quite a character like I kind of miss these characters we would have on the radio you know what I mean like I don't even mean to discredit anybody currently on the radio, but everything to me,

to my ears, again, my aged, my, my 40 something year old years. Now there just seems like everything's kind of proper and safe. And it's just, where are those characters?

Like, that's why I like podcasts like Hebsey on sports. Cause Hebsey's a character. Like I just, great character. Yeah. Or even I used to do this show. Now it's in on hiatus due to one of the members of this show,

but it's called Gallagher and Gross Save the World. And it was John Gallagher and Peter Gross. And I loved it so much because these characters together, I wish it was still going on. We got to get Gallagher to get back on that bus. But bottom line is, it's like my ears are craving the characters that would be like a Jim Shakey hunt, and I can't find them anymore. I don't know whether that's a reflection of the corporate world we live in. Probably, because they're probably, you know,

you never know what a character is going to say next or do next. It's much safer to have just like a, you know, a proper broadcaster who you can, you can kind of rely on not to be controversial, if you will. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I think that's, I think that's what corporations, I don't know, let's face it, corporations own all the radio stations and now you don't, you don't have the maverick owners of various stations anymore.

And I, I think, I think that's got a lot to do with it. I think, well, you know, I don't want to turn on the radio every morning and worry if I'm going to, you know, and I think that's their approach. Unfortunately, I agree with you. I think I miss the characters too. And if you don't have, you know,

interesting personalities and characters, well, I don't know about, okay, I can speak. I have a 19-year-old and a 17-year-old who wouldn't know a radio. Like, they wouldn't, like, they've never dialed in a radio station, but they have their headphones on even when they're sleeping, really. Like, they're always on their head, and they're always listening to either music which they're streaming through apple music or something or they're listening to podcasts of personalities that they like like those are the two things they're always or watching youtube shows or whatever especially my daughter but the like there's no there's no radio for them no and uh more's the pity pity. Radio won't survive unless it starts getting younger audiences again. And I think that's a sad byproduct of the fact that they're all corporate owned now, because you don't want any surprises on the morning show you don't want anybody saying anything that would be let's face it you say anything anymore and uh you're gonna upset someone and uh all of a sudden here come the letters and uh you know oh we gotta call you in on this and maybe give you a two-week

suspension well you know who wants to go through that and uh so personalities and uh the characters are turning to podcasts and uh or, or they, they don't feel the thumb is down on top of their neck, uh, when they go on, you know, turn a microphone on. Right now, uh, before we talk more about CKY here, do you want to hear a little Mabo from, uh, this is like a minute or so. Here's a little, uh, but a minute or so. or so. Here's a little, about a minute or so. Good morning, this is Chris Mayberry, Key590 Sports.

Red Sox and the Mets for the World Series. Eh, Mayberry? Yeah, you bet. Well, I hope you didn't bet. At least not on the advice from yours truly. I was just kidding. Yeah, that's it, kidding. The Red Sox are yesterday's news, having folded in four, and the Mets will be history too

unless they can come up with a two-game winning streak on the road. Dodgers beat them again yesterday in New York, 7-4, the difference being a Kirk Gibson three-run homer in the fifth. Los Angeles leads three games to two, with the rest of the series set for Dodger Stadium. Gibson might be out of action. He suffered a hamstring injury in the ninth inning yesterday while the bozos at Shea actually cheered his misfortune.

The Dodgers do get Jay Howell back tonight. His pine tar suspension was reduced by a day. NHL, Calgary won the Battle of the Winless, beating Detroit 5-2. Sean Burke and the Devils shut out the Rangers 5-0. Islanders beat Vancouver 3-2. Winnipeg turned up the turbo boost in the second half and beat Edmonton 21-17 to move ahead of Hamilton into second place in the CFL East.

NFL, Philadelphia beat the Giants 2413. Randall Cunningham had three touchdown passes and they found cocaine and David Crudup's body. He is the Atlanta defensive back who died of a heart attack yesterday morning. It's 735 with the clouds starting to break up out there. The full forecast right after this. And now Cadet. Wow. Okay.

Is that the season? I don't know if you'll remember, but is that the season Kirk Gibson hits the walk-off? The home run in the World Series? Because they allude to his hamstring injury. Yeah. I think that's the year. I'm trying to remember. 87?

I think that might have been, yeah. Because they went on. Yeah, I think that's because in my mind now I'm hearing Vin Scully call the, uh, call the Kirk Gibson walk-off. Uh, and he does it on, you know, he's got the one, the bum leg or whatever. I think it might be, that might be the season that we're listening to there. Yeah. And two great calls of a home run because Vin Scully did the televised one and he let the crowd take over and it is only Vin could do because he was absolutely the best. Right.

Jack Buck worked on radio and, uh, he had a great call of that too, because after the ball went into the stands, he said, I don't believe what I just saw. No, absolutely. And I know his son has borrowed that. I think like, yes, on occasion. Yeah.

Yeah. And then he's got the other one. Jack had the other one, a see you tomorrow night. like whenever a team would come back and win a game six to force a game seven or whatever. See you tomorrow night. And I know his son did that once too, and you get the chills actually, but wild.

Love it. See, a good play-by-play, that could have been you, my friend, if things had just broke a little differently here. No regrets. No regrets. I wasn't in their league i really wasn't i know that uh when we talk about ckey you refer to it as ey uh i should ey is this this would be the the way you would refer to it uh you know as an insider or someone who was more i guess more like an insider thing uh just ey and uh um it became it was cky and they became key 590 when

they went all oldies right and uh we had we were the envy of many in in toronto at that time because the station you go to many stations and there's groups here and there's groups there we had one clique and everybody was in it uh it was it was remarkable we uh the morning show was first john rody and then mike cooper and uh myself uh tom auto did news and uh uh lynn thomas did traffic and john and uh jim elder was our producer well we still meet uh two or three times we're now on zoom two or three times four times a year and then usually once in the summer when kovat's not wow and coops coops back on the air uh because he's he's back on uh chfi they're doing it with maureen holloway yes that's right yeah uh he and mo are doing that and he's he's's having fun again. And Coop's just,

just a wonderful guy. He was married to his high school sweetheart for so many years and she sadly passed away of cancer a few years ago. And you know, when I reached out to him, I think she was sick and I think it was just a bad time for him to do something like this because he was going through that. And I wonder if maybe I should revisit Coop appearing on Torontoonto might i feel like i need to revisit that with him now i think that would be a great get i'll uh if you like i can uh broker that deal i would love it now john

roadie if i tell me if i'm wrong john roadie wasn't he the the voice of like much music like the voiceover guy on much music uh i's possible. I don't know that. I really don't know. I feel like he's like that big booming voice you'd hear on MuchMusic, John Rohde. But again, maybe next time you're having a Zoom with him, ask him if that's him. I think it's him. But anyway. I'll try.

I'll be honest with you. Rohde, and we love him, sort of disappeared off the face of the earth. I think he went into some sort of computer programming thing not long after he left radio. And I think Jim Elder keeps in touch with him, and I'll ask Jim, because we haven't seen John in many years, and I would love to get back together with him

because we had lots of fun with him. It's interesting, yeah, it's interesting because how that happens. Like yesterday in my backyard, I had this gentleman named Paul Burford and he created Just Like Mom and he produced Just Like Mom. Oh, really? Yeah, he was thick as thieves with Fergie Oliver, speaking of these great broadcasters.

There's a name I haven't heard in a while. Yeah, it's funny. This episode is great because we have this old blue g audio and everything but for like they would golf every single morning fergie oliver and paul burford they were very close and then i just asked like like how's how's fergie doing today i know he's still still with us uh disappeared as well like like just sort of disappeared and uh paul's not even sure where he is but this is what happens with time marches on and sometimes people you're tight with go off in different directions. Two or three years ago, um, each November, they have a, uh, sort of a get together with

all the old sports people and they hand out some awards and whatnot. And, uh, I saw him at that. And that was, uh, we had about two or three minutes of Fergie. I haven't seen you in decades. How are you? You're looking great, you know, and the usual exchange when you haven't seen somebody in a while. And so it was great to see him again, you know. His daughter is on the shopping channel, I believe, like as an on-air host, I believe. Yes, I believe.

Friends of the family. Apple didn't fall far from the tree. That's right. That's right. Although, yeah, it's funny. If you want to know what ends Just Like Mom, it's basically a divorce. It's so, Just Like Mom crumbles because, of course, Fergie was married to his co-host, Catherine Swing, who is a former Miss Canada and mother of the woman who's on Shopping

Channel. Okay. So, I think so. Actually, because Fergie's got kids from two different marriages, so I get confused. So, I don't know if that's true actually but the uh yeah the divorce basically ends the run of uh just like mom so there you go but okay there's your inside info but back to ey yeah uh okay so tell me a little more because this is where you get to cover like some pretty exciting uh like you get to cover leaves jays and argos 1985 is the first that

would come to mind because the blue jays were in their not first pennant race but the first one they won and they got into sort of mid-september and it was pretty obvious that they were either going to win the division or they were going to take it right down to the final weekend. And there was this rush by basically every Toronto media to have somebody cover the Jays, not just at the X, but home and away. So CKEY, along with News Radio, which was the audio arm, and EY was the flagship station, they me on the road uh to cover the Blue Jays and the first stop was New York uh this would have been a four game series in early September and the Yankees were about the only team that was going to catch him right and this was the this was the the weekend series with Mario Dowd butchering the national anthem I don't know

whether you've ever heard about that, but during one of those, but the thing I'll never forget from that, it's a four game series and the Jays owned by Labatt in those days would bend over backwards for the media. They rented a bus just for the media to take us from our Manhattan hotel up to Yankee stadium and back. And they have to go through some pretty wretched areas of New York to get

there. But we get there. And if you're familiar with the old Yankee stadium teams, team buses would pull up and there'd be a walkway for the players to get off and walk into the stadium. And I was, you know, lined off and fans would come and heckle them on each side of the gates that they'd be yelling. Getting off are these 20, 30, 40, 50, 60-year-olds, many of us who look like we haven't missed a meal ever, carrying our briefcases and laptops or, I guess, what, portable typewriters, I guess, is what they were back in those days.

But the New York fans didn't clue in that these were not the Toronto Blue Jays. And there was one guy I'll never forget. His voice, you could hear him over and over again. He got pointing at us going, yes, season's over. It's over. You're going home. Yes, season's over. And it was, it was perfect New York.

And it was something I'll never forget. It was, it was so great. And then we went on and the jays took three or four from that series and we were the traveling road show for a while and uh we got to milwaukee um for a weekend series a little later on in september and the old press box at uh at county stadium was the main press box for the print media and underneath it was an auxiliary press box for any of the overflow or you know members of the electronic press if you will and that's where we were and on the Friday night it was a little chilly but a beautiful evening but Milwaukee and County Stadium in

particular pretty well known for its bratwursts and we kept going back time and time again and apparently at one point during the the broadcast i guess was ctv decided from the centerfield camera to show the press box and all the overflow crowd and uh the fact that the Toronto media were, you know, here in full force and they panned the radio end of the media. And every single one of us, according to my wife, had a bratwurst. She said it was the most disgusting thing she'd ever seen. Oh man, that's a great story. And that, that, that 80, that drive of 85 is. Yeah. The drive of 85. And we were in the playoffs with Kansas City and up three games to one. And we were all convinced we were going to Los Angeles for the World Series because they were up 3-1 on St. Louis.

And it turns out it was St. Louis and Kansas City, two teams from Missouri. Louis and, and, uh, Kansas city, two teams from Missouri. And I forget who penned the headline, but I thought it was just brilliant when we realized it was going to be the Cardinals and the Royals and the world series. One of the papers had, Missouri loves company. That's great. That was pretty brilliant. I, I, this is all very vivid memories for me. Cause I was like, literally if the game wasn't on television, then I was listening to, uh,

CJCL the music of your life, and 1430 to hear Tom and Jerry call these games. And then Scott Ferguson with the out-of-town scoreboard, I remember. This was a big deal for me. And I remember vividly, and especially that, I think it was a Saturday. It was on TV, too, because I got to watch it when Doyle Alexander, and we went, I think it was 5-2 but George Bell on his knees Tony Fernandez running out to

give him a high five and he oh and I still remember because I was a big George Bell fan but and I was also very young at the time in 85 but I just remember thinking just make sure you've caught that easy fly ball before you it's because it looks in real time like he's dropping to his knees before he catches it of

course he catches it then drops to his knees. But I just remember thinking, you know, you've got to catch that ball. But amazing, like amazing time. And again, yes, that was not the year for us because George F. and Brett. And I still remember Jim Sundberg with the bases loaded triple. Oh, off the top of the wall. Yeah. Oh, my God.

It's all coming back. But I remember Al Oliver had a heck of a playoff. I remember Al Oliver stepping up. He did. Game two, he won basically all by himself. And Scoop. And he was a funny guy in the clubhouse. Scoop was a good guy. I remember because I used to get the Panini sticker books.

And I remember he won a batting title. I think he won a batting title at the Expos like earlier in the decade, but no, it's fun reminiscing about 1985 because to this day, that is the most success in terms of wins in the regular season. That's the most successful Jays team ever. Is that 85 days, 99 wins.

Never topped that. Yeah. Never. So amazing. Now, and you get to go, you get to go to spring training in 86, right?

Spring training in 86, where George Bell decided he did not want to be a DH. And he and Jimmy Williams, who was taking over from Bobby Cox, who had left, they got into it pretty good. Was that 86? Why does my brain think that was 88? But you would be right, because George Bell's MVP of the American League in 87. You're right. I'm sorry. Yes, that's correct. Remember, I'm a big George Bell fan.

My ear's confused. That's right. You're right. So 88 is when Jimmy wants to put him as DH, and George makes a stink about it. And then George Bell, I remember the opening day of 88, not 86, but in 88, the opening day, I believe that's when George

hits three home runs in Kansas City. I remember that day very well because it was in Kansas City, so I wasn't at the game. But I did my morning sports run. I had to run someplace downtown to interview Liz Manley, who was just coming back from the World Figure Skating Championships with a silver medal after getting a silver medal at the Olympics. And for some reason or other, the timing of that didn't work, and the interview was postponed until that evening. And so I went home and watched the Jays and watched Bell hit his three home runs and then darted back out to interview Liz Manley

and got a few hours sleep somewhere in there. Amazing, amazing. That's always fun when you hit three homers in opening day because then you can extrapolate and say, look, he's on pace to hit 650 homers. Amazing. Okay, so you're rocking and rolling here at CKEY, but you alluded to it earlier when you talked about broadcast news.

But what is the big career change that happens for you in 1990? One of my bosses at CKEY was Al Gibson, who was the news director and a fine man, fine gentleman and excellent journalist. He had left to take over as the news editor. They had a new news editor at BN and his sports guy retired. And we could almost see the writing on the wall at CKEY. They had let a few people go. They were going to go to a country station and um the long-term future for our morning team uh if you read the tea leaves uh wasn't going to be very long and uh so al recruited me to be the sports director at broadcast news and i jumped at it and i i was fortunate too because i think within two months uh they let everybody go from the old p590 regime.

Timing is everything. So timing is everything. That is such a smart move. More lucky breaks in my career than you can count. And then, so Broadcast News, this is the audio subsidiary of the Canadian Press. Canadian Press, yep. And at this time, you get to do some fun, like you get to work some Molson Indies and stuff with CJCL during this time, right? Yeah, I remember Joe Bowen was sick one time for a Leaf broadcast. And I got this panic phone call from Al Davis, Alan Davis at CJCL. And he said,

I don't know you, but I know you have played my play experience. Actually it wasn't Joe. Joe was doing television. It was, it was Kenny Daniels and Kenny had come down with a bad throat and I know, you know, Kenny, I know you've had him on. Yeah. Good friend of the show. Probably listening to us right now. There we go. And love Kenny, just a great guy and he's uh you know he's been entrenched with the red wings for so many years now but he had come down sick and so they needed a backup guy to fill in if kenny couldn't make it right so i forget what they paid me a

handful of bucks he's i know you've done play by play i said yeah yeah i did junior hockey and whatnot he said can you come down to the gardens tonight we'll pay you sit in the side booth and if kenny can't make a go of it you're the guy i said of course yeah wow so yeah and uh as it turned out kenny croaked his way through the game and managed to make it without without having to resort to the bullpen but that close that yeah that close to be doing a leaf game i would have been something man i would have been something, man. I would have been something. But Alan and I kept in touch. And in June, I got another call from him. And he said, we're carrying the Molson Indy.

And we want you to call a game, call a race. And I said, well, flattered. I've never called an auto race in my life. Oh, don't worry about it. You know, we've got tapes of you. We heard, and we think you can do it. So I ended up calling the race with Tom Sneva, uh, the great racer from, uh, you know, the seventies and eighties and, uh, Indy 500 champion. And in the pits was Howard Berger and I, how he's great friends of both of ours I know and a fellow by the name of Dan Shulman who had just come in from Barry and I didn't know him but we had sort of heard

a couple of things he'd done and I didn't know Dan at all but he was so good in the pre-race stuff I thought oh this is somebody that IndyCar has and, you know, brings along for the series. So I asked him one time, I said, you know, pardon me. You work with IndyCar and you traveled around. He said, no, I'm just up from Barry. And so I find it fascinating that of all the roster people on that, that Molson Indy that I was the one calling the race and Dan Schulman was the one in the pits when really it should have been Dan Schulman calling the race. Well, you know, earlier we talked about, uh,

Vin Scully calling that a home run by Kirk Gibson on one league. Okay. But you know, Vin's retired now. You could put forward a very legitimate argument that the, the best play by play guy working today is Dan Shulman. Yeah, I wouldn't argue with that at all. He could do radio, he could do television, and do them both peerlessly. But can he do them both at the same time? That's the eternal question. It was great. I missed that question.

Oh, I was going to say, the great question of the moment is, can you do both at the same time? Can you effectively call a baseball game for television while you're also calling effectively a game for radio? This is the great question of our 2021 season here, because that's essentially what Dan's been asked to do. And as good as Dan is, and he is, like I said, he might be the best in the business. That is an impossibility because you call television differently than you call radio i don't think it's an impossibility um it might be

an impossibility with more than one person in the booth because then you start getting into conversations about somebody's pitch rotation or yeah and then pitches are missed. Then Scully, as we were talking about, for years on Dodger broadcast, would do the first three innings on radio and television, and then the last six innings on television only. And if you ever saw some of those televised broadcasts, you could tell the difference between the bottom of the third and the top of the fourth.

But you make a good point. Dan needs to be, you know, with difference between the bottom of the third and the top of the fourth. But you make a good point. Dan needs to be, you know, with Dan and Buck, for example, that's where it falls off the rails for radio because there'll be, you know, Buck especially, who's great at what he does, but he's a great television guy and he tells a good story. But meanwhile, three or four pitches have gone by and the radio listener is clueless to that. Yeah, indeed. I, you know, I like Buck. He's a great guy, but he's not a radio broadcaster. Right. And when the Jays are at home and they don't have Dan's experience to help that out,

Buck either hasn't been directed to make a change or not thinking about it. I don't know. I'm not, you know, I'm not there. I'm not in his head, but the thinking about it. I don't know. I'm not, you know, I'm not there. I'm not at his head, but the radio broadcast suffers. I mean, not only just our pitches missed, but things like how's the infield playing, you know, they got a shift on the shift, right? Double play depth. Is the wind blowing in from left, right out? Things like that that you would get on radio that you don't get on television. Yeah. And maybe we were

spoiled having tom and jerry for so many years because i say so but uh it's wild that you worked with a young dan shulman who had only very shortly before given up on his dreams of being an actuary so uh yeah that's right i heard that broadcast yes, uh, just to wrap up the, there's a lot going on. You were at, how long were you at, uh, broadcast news there? Uh, broadcast news and Canadian press. I was there for the last 25 years. Uh, but we had some, I got to cover Olympics and boy, I'm going to tell you that was, that was something else. Uh, the Albertville Olympics had a million stories and uh

i don't have time for any of them but uh obviously i make time for a good story that is uh that's my mantra here one one of the um one of the great success stories for canada and alberville was currently gardner winning the downhill which was somewhat unexpected uh she was a top five, but there were others that were considered much heavier favorites to win gold. And one of the great moments of any of the things I ever covered was in the mix zone afterward, where they bring the athlete over and we're sort of standing there out in the old open with our mics and notepads and whatever. And the Canadian Olympic association person with her, the liaison,

suddenly rushed up to Karen Lee Gardner with a telephone. And it was her parents in British Columbia, who I guess had seen the race, but I'm not 100% sure. But all we could hear was Karen Lee's, and she was almost in tears. In fact, she was in tears at one point. And I just remember her holding up the phone going, mom, mom, I won. I won. And for the sheer emotion of that was just to, to be there and see that was, uh, it was remarkable. And, uh, one of my very favorite moments. Well, I get the, uh, the goosebumps just, uh, thinking of that moment. That's amazing. So you got to go to four Olympics and you got to, I mean, the Jays end up winning a couple of World Series while you're there. Wow. And then you got, I mean, great cups, global curling, you're basically lumped in with the Canadian media type of thing. And in Barcelona, which was unbearably hot and humid, we had sort of a media village and there was a building for each country's media. So it was the Canadian

media, the Australian media, you name it. And one of the things that made the heat bearable was once we got out of the media compound, they had a 24 hour bar where you just sat around with picnic tables. And so it would cool down to maybe 35 at night and none of these rooms were air conditioned wow so with no breeze nothing so you you get back and you're working 18 hour days when you're at the olympics you're you're at the media center or at an event and going back and forth between that and we'd get a bus back to our compound and we would just gravitate to the bar because what's the point of going and, you know, sitting in bed and not being able to fall asleep. Maybe after two or three beers, we might be able to fall asleep. Well, one night in the second week, we've been doing this for like 14 straight days.

And we said, OK, we all need a night away from this. that we all need a night away from this. We're walking toward our media housing area, right past the 24-hour bar. And whoever was on the left of the line started drifting over. And we said, no, no, we promised. We're not going to do this tonight. And then two or more people, three,

yeah, heck with it, hell with it, we're going to have a beer. So that was great. And the people you meet, Christy Blatchford was always covering these games. And great story about Blatch, back from Albertville again. When you covered something at Albertville, nothing was close. And the hockey team practiced and played their games in Mirabel, France, which was about 30 minutes by the crow flies, as the crow flies, but a two and a half hour drive through the switchbacks and mountains and whatnot. So we'd finished practice one day and we're all heading back and waiting for the bus. And Blatch says to me and Larry Tucker from Calgary, I got the Sun car.

You guys want to ride back? Oh, God, god yeah for sure so we're riding back and poor Tuck he's in the back seat on his little laptop trying to hammer out uh a column and Blotch and I we don't care she punches in a Johnny Rivers tape and the two of us through the switchbacks are singing Johnny Rivers songs to the to the as loud as we could and T Tuck's going, guys, guys, I need to ask. Screw off. You will do it when you get back. So, yeah, we had a lot of fun with Blatch.

Hey, if you're looking or you or the listenership are looking for some good Blatchford stories, I recommend the Al Strachan episode of Toronto Mike. Because Al lived with Blatchford for a while and they were tight. And Strachan pays proper tribute there, so definitely check that out for sure. What happens in 1994?

Broadcast news, what happens? 1994? Oh, when the Olympics in... Oh, well, I was thinking that... Oh, the end started being dissolved yeah right uh it um yeah canadian press decided that for branding purposes um they would

eliminate the name broadcast news and basically merge all the departments together so all of a sudden I was basically a one-man show at that point for BN sports so they moved me over to CP sports or they wanted to meet me to be a sports writer well I never from Fanchon I never had any training in terms of writing a newspaper piece how much went in how what kind of different leads my writing is all for broadcast it's a totally different beast um short to the point get the story out and whatnot and uh so i'm looking at this as how much do i put in what's important to take out what's uh and saying, well, we'll give you some training. Well, as it turned every day, they had a training session. Some big story would break and it never happened.

So I gave it a shot and I was miserable as all get out. And an opening came up on the news side to be one of their anchors. And Canadian Press to this day does radio newscasts. anchors and canadian press to this day does uh does radio newscast so i um i left and i i went to uh to do uh to do uh news and sports for uh for uh cp on their broadcast and anchor and it was uh and still some writing but uh it was it was a change and it was one i needed because I I I love radio I'm a radio guy right uh I um I admire print reporters and journalists and uh columnists like some of the people I worked with at Olympics uh Terry Jones uh Cam Cole guys like that who are just you know unbelievably gifted writers I was not in that category I was I wasn't even gifted let alone unbelievably gifted uh so I was not in that category. I was, I wasn't even gifted, let alone unbelievably gifted. Uh,

so radio was my love radio is where my talent lied. So what's all that's, uh, that's where I went over there. Awesome. And you do, I guess, 11 years anchoring these Canadian press newscasts and then now, is this a real retirement? Like this is an actually like you, you were ready to retire or was this a, uh, one of those media retirements you hear about where someone taps you on the shoulder and says you're

being retired yeah no it never worked that way but i i realized about 2015 2016 they decided at cp that they wanted to uh not go live with the newscast because satellite costs were getting exorbitant through the roof. So basically what they do now is they prerecord the newscast and upload it. And I was never comfortable with that to me. Radio's one advantage for news was immediacy. Something was happening. You turn on the radio. I know that sort of died with the first Gulf War when CNN became radio with pictures live, you know, but for the longest time, that's what it was. Well, they weren't doing that anymore. And I came

across a situation where American Pharoah won the Triple Crown, the US Third Red Triple Crown, which not only would be my lead story on sports, might have been my lead story on news and i think it would have been that day i can't remember if it was a slow news day or what but i had to make sure my newscast was uploaded at either quarter two or ten to the hour right and i think it was five to seven when the race was won and their Pharoah won. So everybody listening to me coast to coast in Canada on the Canadian press network would not have heard, not only have not heard that American Pharoah won the triple crown, but I couldn't even mention the Belmont stakes because if you mention it, it's like, well, the race is over, who won?

So that didn't sit at all with me. This all comes back to what we said off the top because I'm going to play a clip in a moment of you on 102.9 Whistle FM in Stouffville. I'm going to play it in a moment. But we talked about the two best things about radio, live and local. And yeah, if your news isn't live, that's a great example, the American Pharaoh story, where the listener is not served, is not served by that being uploaded, I don't know

how many minutes earlier. Yeah, a great example. Yeah, I think if you're listening to a newscast, no matter where it is, I think it has to be directly from the mouth to the microphone to the speaker and out uh in real time and I don't know I uh obviously I was you know I put up my objections to it when they first did it but money talks and satellite costs were exorbitant. And, you know, Canadian Press at the time was sort of a nonprofit. It was a co-op. It has changed now. It has ownership that is trying to make some money. But when satellite costs went up, you know, they said, well, we can't afford to go in

the red. So this is what we're going to do. So it sounds like your decision to, you know, step down and enjoy retirement is based on principle that simply you didn't, you didn't agree with the direction you were being told to go. Yeah, that, and there was one other thing I, I had cut back to a four day work week just to smell the roses. And I I'll be the first to admit, I've had mental health problems in the past and, thought this would help me and it did and at the time a fair bit after the American Pharaoh but a few months later I started looking at my finances how much I was bringing in per month and I thought what would I get with my pension, my old age and Canada pension?

It turned out it was costing me money to go to work. And I thought, you know, with parking, with gas, with everything else. And I thought, oh, no, no, no, I'm stepping aside. That's a no brainer. You might as well start a podcast, right? If you're if you're. Yeah, yeah. I have no idea how to do that.

And I admire those who do like yours, which is one of the best ones ever. Thank you very much. Thank you. So you, we talked off the top, you're enjoying retirement now, but you did come out of retirement. Not like you said, it wasn't for cashola, but it was for sort of, it sounds like it was to be a part of the community radio station that you've got going on there. Do you want to hear a little bit? This is you on the Stouffville station during the pandemic here. So let's listen to that. This is the day rents are due for many across the country and for those workplaces that have not qualified for financial assistance from the federal government, a day that creates angst. For those in that situation, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland says communication is the key between renters and landlords. For others, health is the main worry. Here in Ontario, Health Minister Christine Elliott says when it comes to residents needing operations from non-COVID issues, critical needs will come first, like heart and cancer surgery. Students who collect emergency financial

aid will be required to confirm that they are looking for summer work. Ottawa says they'll be connected with a government job bank to help employers struggling with shortages of labor. Some good news for race fans. NASCAR will resume its racing season without fans starting May 17th at Darlington, and that includes the May 24th Coca-Cola 600 in Charlotte as scheduled. But the Little League World Series has been cancelled for the first time. Chris Mayberry, 1029 WhistleFM.com News. There, that's an authoritative news voice. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. It was a labour of love for uh for me to do that uh

that stuff with whistle and uh i was on the board for a couple years and uh it's uh very rewarding to uh be part of your local community doing stuff like that well mabel uh if i missed anything significant this is your moment here because i thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm glad we ironed out a couple of those, you know, the internet connectivity issue and it sounded fine in this other microphone we used and we didn't have to worry about it switching. So I'm glad we made that change there. Fantastic. I thoroughly enjoyed this, but is there anything you'd like to share with the listenership before we say goodbye? Mike, I'll leave you with one more memory from one of the Olympics in 1992 in Albertville.

It took forever to get anywhere because the venues were so far apart. But the one great thing about it was the way the French ran the buses and whatnot. If a bus was leaving at 2.38, it left at 2.38. If it was supposed to arrive at 7.17, it was there. So there's one day where Canada wasn't going to win any mainstream medals,

but I've got a senior moment now, not synchronized swimming, but skiing. Oh, like, not synchronized swimming, but skiing. Oh, like I know, I know the X games. This is the X games type stuff. Is this, or it was a demonstration. Gotcha. So there were a couple of Canadians that were, that were freestyle skiing and we're, we're, we're going to do pretty well. Right. So I went out on the bus and i was the only canadian the only member of the media on this bus and it was like a two and a half hour bus ride

to get to this thing that went off in the middle of the afternoon and it was just i thought what a waste of gas there's this bus driver this honking bus and me and so we went back canada won a medal at it we did you know the report whatnot. I get back and we're coming back into Albertville and it's dusk. The sun has just set. It's in the French Alps. It's gorgeous. Wow. You've got the radio on playing nothing but French music.

It's beautiful. It's just, I mean, I don't really understand it. And one French song fades out and fading in was James Brown, like a sex machine where that came from in english the whole you know and and faded it out back to beautiful french music so you just had to sort of picture this bus traveling up and down the switchbacks through the mountains of france uh and this french music being interrupted by James Brown. That's the most surreal moment I can ever remember.

Mabo, again, this was a great chat. Thoroughly enjoyed the romp down memory lane, captured some great, fantastic stories. And I wish you continued enjoyment of this well-deserved retirement. And again, happy anniversary to you and Cheryl. Mike, thank you so much. And believe me, it's an honor to be on your uh your podcast it's uh it's one of the great listens uh you know that anybody can can do and uh always a great couple of hours to listen in to you

and that brings us to the end of our 871st show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Chris is at Maybo01. So M-A-Y-B-O and then 01. Is that right, Chris? That's correct. Yep.

Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery, they're at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Sticker U is at Sticker U. Ridley Funeral Home, they're at Ridley FH. And Mimico Mike's not on Twitter. He's on Instagram

at Majeski Group Homes. See you all next week. This podcast has been produced by TMDS and accelerated by Rome Phone. Rome Phone brings you the most reliable virtual phone service to run your business and protect your home number from unwanted calls. Visit RomePhone.ca to get started.