Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Christmas Crackers, Vol. 2: Toronto Mike'd #412

Episode Date: December 17, 2018

Mike and Ed Conroy present Retrontario Christmas Crackers Vol. 2 featuring Consumers Distributing, Uncle Bobby, A Very Brady Christmas and a tribute to The Voice, Mark Dailey.

The following program contains adult situations. Coarse language. Tasteless behavior. Disturbing scenes. Bad jokes. Unnecessary crudeness. Full frontal nudity. Bodily fluids.

Violence. Sexually explicit behavior. May induce nausea. Incontinence. Gratuitous sex. Oral discomfort. Oral discomfort. Scenes from Baywatch. nausea, incontinence, gratuitous sex, aural discomfort, oral discomfort, scenes from Baywatch, run-on sentences, assholes behind the glass, drunken genital exposure,

and does not reflect the views of the producer, director, often online editors, light, sound, makeup, graphic design, station network affiliates, maintenance staff, executive offices, any associated business or clergy. No animals were harmed in the making of this show viewer discretion is most definitely advised Welcome to episode 412 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Propertyinthe6.com, Paytm Canada, Palma Pasta, Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair, and Census Design and Bills. I'm Mike from TorontoMike.com and joining me for Christmas Crackers Volume 2 is Ed

Retro Ontario Conroy. Hello Mimico. Hi it's not Mimico man. This is New Toronto here buddy. Watch it buddy. Welcome back Ed. Thank you it's great to be here Mike. I can't believe we're doing a Christmas show already. It feels like five minutes ago we did the last one. It does it does. I can't believe we're doing a Christmas show already. It feels like five minutes ago we did the last one. It does. It does. I can't tell you how much I anticipate. I'm going to try to tell you how much I anticipate these episodes. It's like a whirlwind of nostalgia, like often and fast and comes at me. And I honestly, it's exciting to me that we're going to like stroll down memory lane. Amazing.

Yeah. Well, it's a blast to be amongst fellow nostalgic people. You called me once you called us nostalgia merchants. Merchants. Or even perhaps more correctly, we are nostalgia drug dealers. Oh, yeah. And, you know, the first one's free. And the more you take, you got to go deeper and deliver a bigger hit. Right?

So. I'm your mama. I'm your dad. Okay. I won't continue with that one. But absolutely. No, absolutely. And, like, right off the bat, I got to ask you, though, about feedback from the first

one. That was, like, almost exactly a year ago because I ago because I just tweeted the one year on this day thing. Almost a year ago. And the feedback I got, and let me know what you heard, but the feedback I got was just off the charts, man. People loved it. Yeah. A lot of people reached out about that one.

I think Christmas time, just by its very nature, is a nostalgic time. You remember a lot of Christmas past, and it was a good excuse, I guess, to break out some of the bits and bobs that I come across during the calendar year that fit into that silo of Christmas fun. And don't let me keep you any longer.

Crack open a fresh can of Great Lakes. Can we? Actually, open the bottle. What is that? Winter ale? Winter ale. I've been waiting all year to come back and sample the winter ale. Winter ale is amazing.

I'm going to enjoy it as well. You see I got the two glasses. You can pour me a glass. And bumping away in the background there is the holly ridge strings version of jingle bells which is a nice little uh christmas ditty and uh holly ridge is that uh is there any nostalgic significance to holly ridge which is a good good jam you know what they're holly ridge was sort of like classic session musicians and it's what people probably refer to as elevator music um and yeah i remember going to like simpsons and the eaton center in the 80s and this is the kind of stuff they would

be cranking over the uh over the pa i mean nowadays you're gonna hear mariah carey and all this kind of thing you're gonna hear chfi or chum but back then it was this kind of stuff so you're right i worked in a grocery store at the Galleria Mall for five years. And we were playing soft rock hits or whatever, like top 40 soft rock stuff, maybe some James Taylor, but that kind of stuff. But at what point did Muzak go from the elevator music to James Taylor?

Do we know? Well, I think it was just economics, right? I mean, the record companies made a lot more money by licensing the hits than they did these sort of cheap-ass sample packages, right? Makes sense to me. But they live on on Toronto Mic. They live on. I want to say congrats to you, my friend, because I heard you on the Mighty 1010.

Oh, right. That was like a real shift. Tell me what happened there. Yeah, it was awesome. You know, I've been a panelist on the Jerry Agar show on 1010 for about a year. And Jerry and I had been doing these sort of historical segments. We did about 30 or 40 of them, but we chalked up quite a few. And the station manager, Mike Bendixon, asked me, you know, would you be interested in guest hosting?

And I said, absolutely. Where do I sign up? And it just so happened that Barb DiGiulio was filling in for Evan Solomon for three days. And so I got to guest pilot the night side. And what was really funny was, you know, it's a three-hour block. So I think they were kind of like, you know, can you handle that? Like three hours? And I said, are you kidding me?

I go and bang out these Toronto Mike episodes that are like six hours long. And, of course, there was no crispy boy GLBs to help me through. But, man, the three hours just flew by. And it was great fun. Thank you for listening. I was going to say, you could do three hours on Elmer the Safety Elephant if you had to, right? Of course. It was funny, too, because I didn't make

a big deal about it on the Retro Ontario socials because I didn't want people to think that I was going to be talking about Elmer for three hours or playing the Edison Twins theme song or something. Heaven forbid. Heaven forbid. As much as I would love to do that, I mean, it's News Talk 1010, right? That's too good for 1010. We're talking about

geez, that week was the week that the St. Mike's thing kicked off and I'm taking calls from people. I mean, it was trial by fire, but I had so much fun and I hope to be asked back to do it again. Now, at least that show, though, that's the Barb DiGiulio, like 7io like seven to ten right yeah that's a bit lighter fare like it's not all about city council and no it's not like transit the morning grind

with uh more and more yeah by the way agar um a little a mutual friend i won't name this individual believes that agar heard you on my show and that's what inspired agar to get you on his show and what do you think of that it's totally possible i you know the first time i was on agar was talking about the skydome and domer the uh the skydome mascot of course the franklin wannabe you well they were both made by nel manor right but yeah that's something for sure that you and i riff on a lot what What are we listening to here? This is from a really fantastic compilation of Christmas classics done in a reggae style called A Very Reggae Christmas. I highly recommend it.

Some of the artists on it are guys that came from Jamaica, ended up in Toronto. There was a lot of them. But yeah, this thing turns up in thrift stores quite a bit on vinyl. It's always nice to have bumping in the background. Very nice. I like the thought of we associate here in Toronto, of course, Christmas is cold.

It's winter. But I like you throwing a little steel drum or something. A little reggae sun splash. I'm all for that. I'm all for that so the 1010 could we call that a tryout? do you think Ben Dixon wanted to hear how you sounded carrying a three hour show? yeah I mean for sure I think a lot of it too

is not even just the presentation it's the homework it's the being able to you know work with a panel of guests and take calls so I think yeah for sure it was a trial I, you know, work with a panel of guests and take calls. So I think, yeah, for sure it was a trial. I know, you know, radio, as you know well, is a lot of moving parts and things move very fast. And people coming in and out and musical chairs.

So, yeah, I mean, who knows? But it was a wonderful experience. And I'm glad you listened, man. All right. You know, real talk here. So let's start off of a bang any truth to the rumor i heard that uh mark weisblot uh is banned from 1010 have you heard this at all wow right into the into the big ones uh well of course i was uh excited to use mark when i got on nightside because i, you know, you have to do three or four, sometimes five calls, interviews with experts. And I forget the exact story, but it was one that would have been perfect for him.

So I suggested it to the producer. I said, you know, 1236. he's kind of in the doghouse because of some tweets about, I don't know, making fun of the weekend guys or something. And I fought the good fight. Now, it turned out that I think the producer was maybe just being a little bit extra cautious. I think there's no issue with Wise Blood.

He's not in a book or something? No, no. There's no black book. No black book, okay. As it turns out, I think everything's cool. But, you know, these Twitter guys, yourself included, you gotta watch your P's and Q's, man, because you put something out, you think it's so funny.

But then you're not being authentic, man. Okay. These people need thicker skin, I'd say. You're in the public realm. It's a business, man. And, you know, you've got to be careful. Okay. I know. I know.

I've got to be careful for sure. Remember, I'm the guy who had John Moore booked for my show and then he got pulled from me because PR said no. Yeah. Well, look, Bell, I mean, it's the largest media company in Canada, right? They don't mess around. They don't mess around and they own all that much music, archival stuff, so you got to play nice sometimes. Got to play ball.

Got to play ball. All right, because 1236, Mark Weisblatt, figured I'm banned as well. And I noticed I didn't get the call from Eddie C. I would have called you. No byway discussions? No. Unfortunately, I missed that byway renaissance by a couple of weeks. But no, are you kidding me?

If there had been something, if there had been a sports story, anything that was in your wheelhouse that I know of, you're cool and the gang. All right. I'm just doing the tough stuff up front because it gets easier. This is the holiday season. So there might be a 1236 band. There's probably not a Toronto Mike band, but I won't know. No, there's no 1236 band.

No 1236 band. Okay, good. That's fake news. By the way, speaking of 1010, I was at Great Lakes Brewery for their Christmas market and I bumped into not one, but two personalities from 1010. First, J Mad Dog Michaels was there with his son. Nice.

Took a selfie with him. And then as I'm wrapping up to go, because Santa was there, not that he's a 1010 personality, but Jim Richards came in. So Jim Richards. So there's a great relationship between the 1010 people and Great Lakes Brewery.

Oh yeah. I mean, they had their own brew, right? There was a 1010 brand. Absolutely. It's a fun station, man. I love going in there. I love the personalities. It's really a great group of people. You could not ask for a cooler group. No, good to hear, good to hear.

By the way, the winter ale is fantastic. What do you think? Oh, it's going down a charm. I only, well, you have six cans here as well. So that beer's going home with you, Ed. If it makes it through this episode. If it makes it, then I'll see if I can top it off. That's right.

That's right, especially if those questions get even tougher as we progress here. But enjoy that. That's courtesy of Great Lakes Brewery of course Great Lakes Brewery is a fiercely independent craft brewery located here in Tobacco did you know of course Ed you know this 99% of all Great Lakes

beer remains here in Ontario I did know that yeah absolutely at 1% we send it off to Halifax and that's it no one else gets any Great Lakes. There's another gift for you. This is a new thing because you come on regularly, but you have not yet received a free lasagna.

Wow. And you got two kids, right? They are going to freak. But does the little one eat regular food? How old are we talking now? He's almost two. Isn't that funny how it is with like, they're not your kids. You just assume they're frozen in age or something.

Yeah, totally. I wish they were really. Two? Two? Yeah. That baby just popped out. Well, almost two years ago. That's amazing.

Yeah. That's amazing. So you're going to have leftovers. Hebsey was here earlier today because he was on episode 401. He got his palmma Pasta lasagna and he was telling me today how damn good it is. It's really, really, really amazing and tasty.

So take that home with you. Thank you. That'll feed the whole family. Enjoy that. That's courtesy of Palma Pasta. They have four locations in Mississauga and Oakville. They are Mississauga's best fresh pasta in Italian food. But heck, I'm going to say GTA.

I'm not even going to restrict it to Mississauga because here we are in Etobicoke, and that's where I go to get my Italian food. So go to palmapasta.com for a retail store near you and enjoy, man. And if you're catering an event during the holidays or, heck, my wedding was catered by Palma. So contact Palma Pasta for some great Toronto Mike rates on your catering event. So enjoy that lasagna. Enjoy the beer. As a little teaser for what's going to come up. So yes, this is the Christmas Crackers Volume 2, and you have some great tidbits. But there is something else that's going to happen in this episode that I'm looking forward to. But let's let Brian Gerstein from PSR Brokerage, let's let him tease it first.

Hi, Ed. Brian Gerstein here, sales representative with PSR Brokerage and proud sponsor of Toronto Might. Now is the time to have me evaluate your home or condo if you're looking to get on the market in the new year and the upcoming spring market. Call or text me at 416-873-0292 to get started. Ed, I'm mixing things up as normally I ask the guest a question, but this time I want to comment and you can pick up on it after. When I moved here at 25 years old from Montreal, the most Torontonian thing there was for me without question was Mark Daly, who depicted what life was like on the mean streets of Toronto and City TV did it better than anybody else. Mark was so much more than the voice. He was a welcoming committee of one to everything that is so great about Toronto.

In other words, our Statue of Liberty for newcomers. Oh, that's brilliant. Could not have put it any better myself. Agreed. And I threw him a note yesterday that that whole, the Statue of Liberty for newcomers, I like that. That's brilliant. I mean, City TV in general was like a shining beacon, right? I threw him a note yesterday that that whole, the Statue of Liberty for newcomers, I like that. That's brilliant, yeah.

I mean, City TV in general was like a shining beacon, right? I mean, it did welcome everybody, no matter who you were, in to be part of their story. But Daley was the voice, so of course he was the Statue of Liberty. So tell us what will be part of this Christmas Crackers Volume 2 that ties in nicely with Brian's message. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, of course, Christmas Crackers, we've got some seasonal stuff. One of the things I've come across this year, which is quite brilliant, is some of the Christmas tapes that used to get shown at the Chum City Christmas party. So you're well-versed in these things. They were very infamous. People mainly remember the Speaker's Corner outtakes.

Now, we won't be playing any of that because it's really useless without pitchers. You just use your imagination. And I'll come back to that as soon as you finish this point that ties in nicely with that. But they would do fun stuff. And of course, they had Daly do some faux voiceovers. So I found some of these and they're just brilliant. So I thought, definitely going to play that. And then on December the 6th, you know, it's a sad anniversary. That was December the 6th, 2010 was the day that Mark Daly passed away. And I think about that every year, obviously, because he remains a huge part of my life. I spend so much time going through old tapes and hearing his voice almost

every day. But also the very next day on December the 7th, 2010, was the day that I met my wife, my future wife. And it was at young Dundas square. So it was right at where city TV was at the time. So I think about him always at that time of year. And I thought I had been wanting to pull together all of this fantastic Mark Daly stuff and sort of throw it out there. And I could not think of a better place to do it than with you. Um, because it's a, it's an amazing story and hopefully your listeners and people checking this out maybe will learn some stuff they didn't know about Mark Daly from this. Now because you sent me the audio clips ahead of time and I had to load them in the soundboard, I could tell the listeners right now they're in for

a treat, man. I've been hyping this up on Twitter and there's no one who could do it the way you could do it. Like you really are. And this is a big city. A lot of, you are the, forget nostalgia merchant. You are the definitive, you're the go-to guy.

There's no one else I would call. If I had a 10, 10 show, I'd be calling Ed Conroy. Uh, every, and this is why I don't have a show. I'd be talking about Mark Bailey and city TV,

every episode with retro Ontario. And then, uh then Ben Dixon would be like, Mike, we got to mix it up. Well, thank you, Mike. That's incredibly generous. And the feeling is mutual. I adore coming here and talking about this stuff with you. And you're the best host in the city.

So let's mix the magic. That's because I gave you the winter ale. You got me going on the ale. By the way, recent episode was Joel Goldberg. Well, it was really Ziggy, but Joel likes to tag along for those things. So Joel was on very recently, and I told him this story,

and I'll just share it now because you brought up those outtakes. I was all set. So you were at the first TMLX. TMLX 1, you came with Joel, actually, and it was great to see you there. And I missed you at TMLX. TMLX 1. You came with Joel, actually, and it was great to see you there. And I missed you at TMLX 2, but then I was planning a TMLX 3 that would be taking place like this week, actually. It would be this week. And you were a key part of my planning. to kind of present to us some of these outtakes, Speaker's Corner outtakes, and some of these Christmas videos they would show at like City TV thing.

Like this was my vision. But you are a very busy man because you're working on the Moses Project. Yes. No, I remember talking to you about this a few months ago and full disclosure, I said, I know what's going to happen. We're going to get into December,

and everything goes nuts. The week before Christmas, are you kidding me? There's so much going on, and I didn't want to commit to help you with something and then not be able to deliver, and this would have been a pretty serious undertaking. But let's be honest here. The Speaker's Corner outtakes, they sound so exciting when you hear about it.

When you watch it. This is not going to sell TMLX 5. Okay. No. You're committed to doing this at some point. I want to do this next December. There'll be a big room at Great Lakes. Everyone will get a free beer. There'll be food from

the food truck. I think by then they'll have a kitchen built in. I think they're working on something there and we will all socialize and maybe have live music but then at some point we'll all watch a um a video which will be uh we'll all take a communal experience we'll enjoy these old city tv uh videos together and you'll you'll be there uh maybe i don't know if ziggy will be there she didn't commit to it yet, but Joel will be there and other people who

worked at 299 Queen will be there. And I think this will be like great fun to do this next December. Okay. So if you're healthy. Put it in the calendar right now. I'm going to obviously we'll confirm a date later.

So TMLX3, which I hope you can make, will be on the patio in June. In fact, we're going to try to get Electric Circus back, the drink. Oh, amazing.

Because Joel made a special request and Troy Birch at Great Lakes says he's going to try to accommodate if they could brew some Electric Circus beer for the, yeah,

for TMLX3 in June. TMLX4 will be in December 2019. Ed, you have to be there. We're going to watch these outtakes together. Okay. It'll be great fun. So none of this, oh, it sounds great, and then it's underwhelming.

No, it's not that it's underwhelming, Mike. It's that it's homeless people blowing each other at Speaker's Corner. I mean, let's be honest. You don't think there's that it's homeless people blowing each other at Speaker's Corner. I mean, let's be honest. You don't think there's an appetite for homeless people blowing each other at Speaker's Corner? After a few moments, it gets old, but sure.

Well, we'll all be in it together. Okay. I like the sound of that. And before, we'll have to play Mark Daly alerting everybody that viewer discretion is advised. By the way, where did that come from, that opening? That was from a Christmas reel. They started it with that.

And the Baywatch reference obviously dates it Where did that come from, that opening? That was from a Christmas reel. They started it with that. And the Baywatch reference obviously dates it because they did a spoof of the intro to Baywatch with all the City Pulse people, which is brilliant. We could definitely show that. Okay, well, you've got a year to put this together. So, you know, even if it's 45 minutes, it'll be great. Whatever we can come up with here. I can't wait.

That's TMLX 4 because TMLX 3 will be in June. Okay, and by the way, I have something big time planned for number three, but I'm not ready to reveal it, but it's going to be like incredibly exciting. You have to take my word for it. By the way, how is the Moses project going? It is incredible, Mike. You know, we had hoped obviously it would have been ready going into the new year, but as you can imagine, the layers of content and revelations that, you know, somebody myself who thought that I had a pretty good handle on everything that man had achieved in,

in his very short life, uh, it just keeps getting bigger. Well, he's a BFT, a big fucking deal. The biggest, frankly.

Uh, and I'd say, do not say that lightly. Um, so yeah, I mean, I keep uncovering stuff that he did at CBC in the 60s and things that happened, channels that he was trying

to get on the air that never actually happened, which that's as interesting to me as the stuff that actually did happen. So we're trying to make this the definitive deep dive on his career up until 2003 when he left Trump City. But hopefully very shortly I will keep you posted.

And maybe when it's live I could even come on and we could do a little tease for that. Well, you know what I was going to say. For sure. You know what? I've decided to extend an invitation to Moses. He can come to TMLX4 in December and watch those outtakes with us. All right, Nostalgia Merchant. Let's take us back on this day in 1992, this exact day in 1992,

Brian Mulroney signs the North American Free Trade Agreement. That was on this day in 1992. Wow. And I took a, do you remember the debates, like when John Turner and Brian, of course, there's some epic moments from that, but let me just play a little bit of John Turner at the debates there.

We built a country, east and west and north. We built it on an infrastructure that deliberately resisted the continental pressure of the United States. For 120 years, we've done it with one signature of a pen. You've reversed that, thrown us into the north-south influence of the United States, and will reduce us, I'm sure, to a colony of the United States, because when the economic levers go, the political independence is sure to follow. Mr. Turner, with a document that's cancelable. There you go, man.

That was John Turner. John Turner overdrive, as we like to call him. You know, that's back when, if you became leader of the Liberal Party, you were virtually guaranteed to become a prime minister. Well, that's still the case. No, because we had a couple in a row. Stéphane Dion never became Prime Minister. Michael Ignatius. So now you can recently point

to a couple of Liberal leaders who never became Prime Minister. But yeah, John Turner had a cup of coffee. I almost called it, what do we call it again? Not Sussex Drive? What do we call this? 24 Sussex Drive? That's right. Yeah, absolutely. So that was Remember the Time. And Remember the Time Not Sussex Drive. What do we call this? 24 Sussex Drive? That's right. Something like that.

Yeah, absolutely. So that was Remember the Time. And Remember the Time is brought to you, Ed, by Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair. They've been doing quality watch and jewelry repairs for over 30 years. You actually recently, earlier this episode, you mentioned that you would go to Simpsons and Edens and, of course, another department store from our youth.

In fact, it was around until very recently, a Sears. And whenever you went to a Sears to get your watch battery replaced or your watch repaired or whatever, that was actually fast time doing the work. Oh, wow. Yeah, they just couldn't call themselves fast. This is a really cool story because they've been around 30 years. They were forced, like the contract said

they had to be called Sears Watch Repair or whatever. And then Sears ups and kind of leaves them and they have no like bricks. They have no outlets, no bricks and mortar store, 30 years experience, best show in town. And they have to kind of like start from scratch,

which is really unique, I think. Yeah, that's a great story. It's a really, really cool story. And they just opened a new location in Richmond Hill. They got a bunch of locations now. So go to FastTimeWatchRepair.com for a location near you. And if you mentioned that you heard about them

on Toronto Mic'd, you'll get 15% off any regular priced watch battery installation. That's unheard of. Milan says that they never do that, but here you go. So, please support the sponsors of Toronto Mic'd because they fuel the real talk. Here it comes.

What are we listening to, Ed? Wait for it. Wait for it. Wait for it. Live it up. Live it up. Live it up. You've got to. You've got to live it up.

The mighty live it up The Mighty Live It Up, which was a kind of news magazine program that aired many, many years on CTV. The reason I brought it was the last time I was here, we did a great episode about sort of the best Canadian television theme songs. And we played Science International, better known as, oh, geez, what was the other name of that?

It was the show about the future. And it has a really great Moog sort of synthy intro. And you got it mixed up with Live It Up. And then I had an oh, shit moment of, oh, my God, how did we not have Live It Up? And then I had an oh shit moment of, oh my God, how did we not have Live It Up? And that was sent over by a listener of Toronto Mike, who's also a friend of mine, Rick Ambrozek. So thank you, Rick, for sending us Live It Up. Oh, is this Rick's TV?

Rick's TV, the one and only. The OG internet. I'd say he's a big number two in the nostalgia books, right after Ed Conroy. Dude, when the internet first landed, okay, like the Stone Age, Rick's TV was like the first time that I saw somebody on there talking about TV Ontario and read all about it and things like that. And so I got to know him quite well

and he's an awesome guy and I know he loves your show. So big ups, Rick. Oh, no, most def. And yeah, totally. I exchanged the odd email with Rick and yeah, I remember his site from back in the day because I was

one of those early guys of a website. We called them personal homepages. You might write something about before there was a blog, I would write things and then I would delete them and write new things. I didn't archive anything. And I might write one day, I might write about read along

or read all about it or today's special or whatever. Of course, I was a big polka dot door guy. I might write about polka roo or something. And then there wasn't a lot of stuff like that out there, but there was Rick. Yeah. Amazing.

Yeah, no, he was crucial, I think for me, in the formation of Retro Ontario. So is it fair to say possibly if there's no Rick, there's no Retro Ontario? That would be fair to say. Then get out of here. I'm bringing Rick in here. What are you talking about? He's the OG, like you said there.

He is the OG. You should have him on, man. Is he like a Toronto guy? Oh, yeah. Yeah, he lives in Toronto. I'd have him on. He's a sports guy too, man. You guys would be Toronto guy? Oh yeah. Yeah, he lives in Toronto. I'd have him on. He's a sports guy too, man. You guys would be like blood brothers right away.

Is he a sports line fan with Jim Taddy and Mark Hebbs? I am sure. Hey, I'm sold, man. I'll have Rick on. Are you kidding me? Stop. I'll have him on right now. I'll pause this show and go pick him up, okay? I want to thank two more sponsors before we get to the Christmas.

Census Design and Build. They provide architectural design, interior design, and turnkey construction services across the GTA. Please visit censusdesignbuild.ca to schedule your zoning and cost project feasibility study and tell them Toronto Mike sent you. And it's the holiday season. We're all having to buy stuff for people who don't need any more stuff. This seems to be the way of the world. All I want

is a good, you know, retro tune and some nostalgia. That's what I want. But you're probably needing some help paying your holiday bills. What I do is, first of all, the convenience. I pay all my bills with Paytm. Paytm.ca, download the app for your smartphone, but they pay you to pay your bills. There's no surcharges or cost here, but they give you money every time you pay your bill. You can use that money towards rewards and other bills, but here's a way to get $10 right now,

10 bucks right now, when you make your first bill payment with Paytm, use the promo code TorontoMike, all one word, and you get $10 in Paytm cash right away. Ed, please wait till after the show

before you do that. I know you want your $10. Haven't you got your $10 by now? Come on. You only get to do it once, I'm pretty sure. But absolutely, enjoy that. And what did you crack open there?

A little bit of the red leaf. Hebsey was on for, I mentioned he was on for 401. It's all about Hebsey. And I gave him his assorted six-pack of Great Lakes, and he said, Mike, could you get me six red leaf? Oh, that's his favorite? Yeah. Nice.

And I said, let me see what I can do. And I made a trip to Great Lakes just to get him a six-pack of red leaf, and's his favorite? Yeah. Nice. And I said, let me see what I can do. And I made a trip to Great Lakes just to get him a six-pack of Redleaf. And I gave it to him just today. He took it home with him. Oh, nice. Enjoy the Redleaf. Absolutely. Cheers. Absolutely. When it comes time to pay Santa,

we'd be glad you shopped with the lowest prices are guaranteed. Consumers distributing. If you ever find a lower advertised price, we'll beat it by 5%. Save up to $20 on these Casio wrist controllers. These watches operate on selected TV, VCR, and cable converter boxes. Save $10 on the new Casio Magical Lights keyboard. 32 keys light up through two autoplay modes.

Lowest Christmas prices and the 5% promise. We've got it. can you believe that mike a watch that controls your vcr can you believe we live in a world where such a thing is possible i i i dude that hearing that ad i was a big fan of consumers distributing like getting the catalog and circling the things i wanted and there was a location on Dundas. Dundas between like Jane and Runnymede. And I can see it now in my mind's eye on the north side. I don't know what's there now.

Maybe it's like a beer store or something. But the consumers was there. And I remember you go in there with your little pencil or whatever, like those pencils you see at Ikea now. And you fill in your thing. And then the conveyor, just like a beer store actually.

Yeah, totally. Totally like the beer store. If you were were lucky because it wasn't always guaranteed that's right uh if you were lucky your product would roll in these conveyors there was nothing more exciting for a kid than that no i mean the the fascination continues i think with consumers distributing a lot of it is the fact that they died sadly right before the internet came and Amazon came and you think if they had just managed to scrape through those few couple of years, they could have been the Amazon of Canada because it was the same concept. I rank very highly for Google searches for consumer distributing in Toronto.

Oh, I bet. And I see lots of comments. I get an email every time there's a comment. So I get it all the time. Somebody should go to that thread. It's lengthy. Former employees are disclosing their criminal activities. You know what I mean? And it really does, if you just read this thread,

you would leave thinking that that place was allegedly mismanaged. For sure. Yeah, something weird happened. And even, it's funny, years and years ago, I wrote a long story about the history of consumers distributing for BlogTO. And they ended up having to turn off the comments. This was back in the day before the comments were Facebook. It was actually hosted on the site. And this didn't happen very often, but occasionally if things got rowdy, they just turned, the comments just disappeared. But occasionally if things got rowdy, they just turned, the comments just disappeared. And supposedly, again, allegedly some guy bought Consumers Distributing, the name, and he was going to bring it back.

And he was going around threatening lawsuits like everywhere. And he threw one at BlogTO because they had this article which had other people probably telling those same stories. I mean, my experience with consumers was always toys. It was G.I. Joe or Star Wars or He-Man or Transformers. And they were notorious for never having the right one. And you'd be like, hey, here's my first choice. Here's my second choice. Here's my third.

And then it would be like, okay, we don't have any of those. So you're going to have to get the female G.I. Joe character or something that as a 10-year-old you were like, but we still loved it. And I think the catalog, you nailed it, man. Obsessing over that catalog in the pre-internet era, it's hard for the kids to understand or appreciate that. But yeah, I don't know. It has a big, warm, Christmassy glow.

So I saw that ad. I thought it was good for this. And what I liked is, I remember some of the brands there, like I think Citizen, It has a big, warm, Christmassy glow. So I saw that ad. I thought it was good for this. And what I liked, because I remember some of the brands there, like Citizen, is that a brand from there? And is it a realistic brand? Or no, it's a Radio Shack brand. Yeah, that's Radio Shack.

I get confused sometimes. But do you remember a brand called Candle? There's some really low budget, I don't know if it was made in China, I don't know. But like clock radios, or I was a big fan of music, right? So like little boom boxes, which we called, not very politically correct, we called them ghetto blasters.

Ghetto blasters. But this was everything. And if you could get like a cool new tape deck or whatever, especially if you had the two cassettes and you could do the dubbing. Oh yeah, that was revolutionary. And you must have seen, I'm sure it came up in the comment comment section that the most popular item on there was basically a vibrator um and it was called something more exotic it's called a toothbrush it was called like the personal back massager or something oh that wasn't a back i remember this if that wasn't a back

vibrator and there's all these great stories of people that went in there that were embarrassed about ordering it and whatnot. But anybody that worked there knew the number off by heart. It was like number 90765. But they knew it off by heart because it was so popular. That's hilarious. Yeah. That's tremendous.

But long before Sesame Street, Barney, and Dora the Explorer, there was the Uncle Bobby Show. Unscripted and adored for thousands of kids growing up in the 70s and 80s, it was the best part of morning television. One, two, three, and there. Happy birthday to you. What do you think they're singing? Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. And it was a show revered by Uncle Bobby's fans.

Uncle Bobby is Bobby Ash, and today the 80-year-old is living in Elliott Lake in northern Ontario. After the show went off the air in the 70s, Ash toured with his magic show, and 10 years ago retired to the north. And I used to love children as an audience because if they don't like you, they'll tell you we don't like you. If they do like you, they'll, you know, love you to death. And Ash did not do it alone. That's where sidekicks like Bimbo the Clown came in. Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo I had a table and a duck and a chicken and a black ball and I did two hours every day,

two hours live. Now Ash's focus has shifted from bimbo to writing books. He went to the counter and gave a snort. Oh, my goodness, he said. And thanks to the Internet, he's keeping in touch with many of his fans from years gone by. And now I'm in touch with her on the Internet in Hong Kong. And Uncle Bobby has a message for all his viewers. Thank you very much for watching, of course.

Thank you very much for watching the show. Hey, blow us a kiss. Give us a wave. We'll see you all again. Everybody wave. Okay. There we are. Close the door, Frank.

There it is. It wouldn't be a Retro Ontario episode if we didn't talk about Uncle Bobby. That is correct and i would be remiss if i didn't tell you a very funny story uh earlier in the year um i was invited to be a guest on richard krause's new show pop life yes which is a brilliant little show that he does for ctv uh and it's filmed at the agent court studios uh in scarborough the infamous agent court studio so i was so excited as you might imagine to go there and i didn't know who else was going to be on this panel i knew it was about nostalgia of course that's that's why he invited me on um but lo and behold i get there and who's in the green room, but Snake from Degrassi.

Oh my God, yeah, Stefan Brogan. Brogan, yeah. Yeah, of course. Stefan Brogan. And man, I mean, he was just the nicest dude. And it was kind of surreal because in my mind's eye, I still see him as the teenager from junior high, but he's grown up now and he's similar vintage to me. And we were just talking about how cool it was

to be at the Adrian Court Studios. We're talking about they filmed the movie Network, big scenes from the movie Network there and Definition and Littlest Hobo and all these things. And then, of course, I say, well, man, Uncle Bobby used to film here. And he goes, dude, you know, I'll tell you something crazy. Uncle Bobby was my bus driver when i was a kid wow and that to me we've heard that from others well yes leave a fem cut didn't she say

that uh i don't know if it was her but okay certainly this comes up a lot of course and it was at a time it was considered maybe an urban legend that he also drove the bus but no he actually did that in he did uncle bobby in the morning and he drove the bus in the afternoon because he didn't make as much money as tv people do now and you know there's all these horror stories of people as uncle bobby himself said when kids don't like you they'll let you know um people throwing projectiles at him or being mean to him or whatnot but to me it was like the ultimate canadiana like snake from de grassi was on a bus driven by uncle bobby that's peak canadiana uh unbelievable and that little clip we played i i don't know who uh blessed them uh put that up on youtube but it was from the

early 2000s uh when he was still alive and it's it's worth looking at because, I mean, it's kind of sad. Uncle Bobby's got his pants like pulled up under his chin and he's in this tiny little apartment with this absolute piece of shit computer and he's so excited that he's writing emails to Hong Kong. I heard that.

It's really weird. But he sounded pretty good. He was 80 in that clip. He was 80. And he died at how old? 82? He died a couple of years after that clip. But I cut it off before the end.

What was really brilliant is they went back to the newsroom and the hosts at the time were all saying, oh, yeah, wow, that's great. And they actually put his email address up on the screen and said, if you're a kid that wants to talk to Uncle Bobby, you could grow up with him, send him an email. They would never do anything like that now, but in the early 2000s,

that was still part of the game, you know? No, for sure. And that's amazing, that clip. And it is off, like often I'll get tweets or I'll get emails or comments about like Uncle Bobby. And I think people really appreciate

the Uncle Bobby stories that you bring to this show. Was it the Halloween story we got last? The Dutch door. And of course, and we have to mention it or we're not doing our job here, but if people haven't heard

the first Christmas Crackers or whatever, we shared a few times, we shared the story of Uncle Bobby's trailer in the aging court, right? And of course, we always have to point out now because there's similar few times we shared the story of uncle bobby's trailer in the aging court right oh yes and of course we always have to point out now because you know there's similar um children performers in england for example where the performer was interested in the kids and we need to be very clear here uncle bobby was interested in the moms that's right that's a very very important

distinction absolutely and you're right people get it sort of mixed up in their head and they think he was a nonce, but he wasn't. He was a horny male that was into the moms and he managed to, you know, drive a bus, do a kid show, and get a lot of action

in his shagging wagon. Yes, the shagging wagon. So hats off to the man. Yes, absolutely. Don't confuse your stories. And of course, it also gets blurred with the Just Like Mom

super cut, because that was aging court too, the Just Like Mom super cut because that was aging court too, the Just Like Mom stuff. But we're here talking about Uncle Bobby who liked the motorboard story. I can't remember.

Is that from you? Yeah, that was the last time I was here. That was from a kid who totally happened to his babysitter's mom. What a legend. Yeah, these stories.

Look, as long as I'm out there digging this stuff up and I hear an Uncle Bobby story, I always file it away for the next time I'm on Mike's program. And to the best of our knowledge, of course, all the moms in the shagging wagon were consenting. Oh, yeah. It's all good here.

I mean, the thing, too, we posted a picture of him to promote this show, and somebody said they could smell the booze off the picture. And I mean, that's the other amazing thing, is that the guy was a full on like hardcore alky and he stunk of scotch. Everybody that remembers him talks about this. So the fact he was pulling ladies that were a lot younger than him with scotch and cigarette

breath is even more remarkable. Okay, let's listen. That is amazing. Let's listen to this clip from Uncle Bobby and then we'll come back and talk about that album cover that we're referring to there. Right. Every Christmas since then, all the people agree has been just a bit better

for Arlington's tree. And I have heard them say, when they've spoken about him, that Christmas just wouldn't be Christmas without him and when it comes round as it does every year his wonderful tree is the first to appear And the children all dance round the house built of logs, calling out Christmas greetings to Arlington Blocks. And he answers each one as they pass with the call, Merry Christmas to you!

Merry Christmas to you. Merry Christmas to all. Yeah, so that is from a very, very, very rare LP that was put out. That was the Uncle Bobby Christmas record. And I will say I was a tad disappointed because when I found it i was like this is the gold mine because on the cover uncle bobby's holding up these big candy canes and and elmer the safety element elephant is sitting next to him and bimbo's in the background and i thought

it's gonna have all this stuff what it actually is is him reading this really lame story which is kind of a rip-off of A Christmas Carol about Arlington Blogs' Christmas tree. Like no cameo from Bimbo? No, there's no cameo. And it's actually quite short. Did Elmer talk? I don't remember Elmer talking.

Yeah, he did. Oh, yeah, he did. And yeah, of course, if you watched his program, he had all these characters, including Blinky would come on his show all the time. And so, yeah, the record was a little bit of a disappointment. That said, it's a Christmas record by Uncle Bobby.

We had to play a little bit. And the cover is worth its weight in gold. The cover is so cool. And so you tweeted the cover and so people should go to follow you anyways on Twitter at Retro Ontario. Only one O in Retro Ontario. We won't go into that.

But this wonderful record and that picture, is that like late 60s? Yeah, it's like 69. Yeah, 60s. That's the shagging wagon. So amazing, amazing cover. And yeah, you can smell the alcohol.

It's like a scratch and sniff. Yeah, totally. Amazing find. And he's rocking it. You own this now. Yeah. No, I found. I'd been looking for it for years. I knew it was out in the wild. I love his cardigan game. He rocks. He's

like a challenger to Mr. Rogers in the cardigan game. And he had big fat tie, you know, big ties. He was a styling dude, for sure. You mentioned Blinky. Yeah, I had a really great Blinky experience

I wanted as well to share with you, because I know you're a fan. Because I love Blinky. Yeah. It's such a fun memory of Blinky. It's a fascinating thing. And I think, too, part of my interest in him, you know, Michael, I'm going to go there.

I've never told this story before, um, in, in public. When I was a child, uh, I think I was four. My parents took me to the Santa Claus parade and my mom put me up on top of a, of a newspaper box. So like a Toronto sun box or something so I could get a good view and i don't remember this but supposedly when blinky came by and this is in his yellow paper mache nose era when the eyes moved and he spoke it sort of stopped because you know the parade goes and fits and spurts yeah so blinky kind of stopped right next to me and uh i pissed my pants man like full on. Just shows you're human, Ed. You're a human being. My parents got me out of there. And it was like, okay, that really scarred me. And my dad was friends with a lot of Toronto policemen from that era.

And he knew a policeman that somehow had a connection to the the yard where blinky was sort of looked after and so one afternoon he said look ed i mean this was a very important life lesson you've got to face your fears so he came and picked me up and drove me and i'll and i this i remember going into this giant garage and there's like hundreds of those plymouth fury Fury yellow Toronto police cars. And way, way at the back, I can see Blinky just sitting there. And we start walking down and we're getting closer and closer. And I just stopped and I was like, I can't do this. I freaked out. And I actually, it's so embarrassing. He took me home. And so, you know, my whole life, I guess, I've kind of struggled with this weird obsession with Blinky. And so about two months ago,

my daughter goes to school now in Scarborough, a wonderful school called Fairmount, and they did their fall fair. And we rolled up and fucking Blinky's there. And I lost my mind because he's, it's so rare that you see him, right? He still comes out. The eyes don't move anymore.

The eyes don't move. And what was really upsetting to me, and I've said this to a lot of people, is that there's no context. He apparently goes to fall fairs and various events, which is awesome, but there's no little video

or booklet or something. Because he doesn't talk anymore. And he doesn't talk. So for people our age, it's great. We're like, oh yeah, it's Blinky. I remember what he was about. But kids are looking at it and they're like, what is this poor man's car's piece of shit?

But what was really funny was, I'm not kidding you, the people in charge of Blinky at school fairs, it's like the Torontoonto police services b team like there was this dude that i'm not kidding was like 100 years old he looked mummified he was wearing a police uniform but i'm positive he was retired and he was directing this lady that looked like she was 10 years old uh backing a van up that blinky was on a trailer behind right and they were futzing around for like 45 minutes and he was going no no a bit to the left no no a bit to the right no no and i'm just trying to take a picture and i said to the to the boy like uh

are you gonna park at some point so i can get a picture of my daughter and he just totally ignored me so i mean the whole experience was was rather surreal but wonderful to see blinky out in the field you know oh first of all took great courage to share that story so in hearing you tell the story like you were kind of traumatized by blinky and then you tried to face your fears but nope like you had this like internal like uh uh protective mechanism that kind of kind of clicked in here which, which is kind of good to hear. Like you had the sense to know that this is unnatural. This is an unnatural event.

Stay away from this. But that took a lot of courage. But now I'm actually thinking like there's a documentary here. I know you just met Blinky again. He's a shadow of his former self as as I've written, and as you noticed. I'm surprised he even comes off the trailer now. Oh, no. He just sits on the trailer.

And he doesn't blink. He doesn't talk. He doesn't talk. It's kind of sad. It's like his corpse. It is. It's like they're wheeling. It's like weekend Blinkies.

Yes, weekend Blinkies. That's what we can call the movie. But, you know, it's almost like there's something there. Like, you know, it's almost like there's something there. Like, you know, you're a shadow of your former self. There's Blinky, the guy who just came in. Yeah, no, it's weird. And, Mike, to bring it into current events,

because I'm a big fan of tying the past as much as we can to the present, you know, the Toronto police have a real image problem. I don't need to tell you that. I mean, we hear time and again there's all kinds of issues with people's relationship with the police and when blinky in his heyday was visiting schools and talking and going on uncle bobby yeah a lot of that was about building a rapport with the police so that of course young kids are like oh that's officer john and he's friends with blinky and blinky's gonna teach me how to be a safer

person so it was a net positive and it breaks my heart to see what's happened and not i'm not saying bring blinky back and all the problems will go away but it's just one small piece i think they could be doing a much better job with absolutely now remind me is elmer run by the police like who runs elmer elmer in his heyday was run by the ont? Who runs Elmer? Elmer, in his heyday, was run by the Ontario Safety League, but he was mates with Blinky, right? You'd always see Elmer, Blinky, and Barney Beaver, who was the TTC safety mascot. And does Murphy the Moler fit into that?

Inintentional way. I think I have a couple years on you, but do you remember getting the Murphy Moler button at school? Oh, stickers, man. Murphy the Moeller, there's a great video you should check out on YouTube from the Ontario Archives. They actually have a YouTube channel, and they put up this little cartoon of him,

and they talk about an acid trip to, like, grade three, you know, in the 80s, getting those stickers and the toothbrush. Yeah, yeah. So I was going to say, like, if you had, so name them again, like the Superforce, if you're putting together the nostalgia Superforce for, like, yeah. So I was going to say, if you had, so name them again, like the super force, if you're putting together a nostalgia super force for guys and gals our age

or whatever. Elmer for sure, the safety elephant. Blinky the police car. Yeah, Barney the beaver was the TTC guy. Barney the beaver for sure. He still goes

in the Santa Claus parade, but again, kids are like, who's that? There's no real context. Is Elmer still kicking? Elmer was, no, not really.

I mean, he was redesigned there's a website that's out of date but you remember the the crux of elmer was that every school had an elmer flag yeah but and if you had an accident that's right mass well you lost the flag you lost the flag so i'm gonna have my ass no it was like you know 10 days since the last accident like that kind of psychology and it was brilliant it worked because kids are like oh my god if i fuck up and the school loses the elmer flag i'm going to be castigated so it worked for everybody it's a sad thing that it's gone but hey it's gone do you remember inner city balloon day uh this is a quick aside before we get back to the

holidays but you remember inner cities had a so This was many, many years in a row at my primary school where we would, I guess for a dollar you'd get a balloon and you'd put your contact information on the balloon and we'd all go into the schoolyard and we'd all release our balloons at the same time. So hundreds of helium-filled balloons

would be released and then if somebody, let's say somebody in, I'll make up a place, somebody in, I don't know, Detroit finds your balloon, they'd write you a letter and say, hey, I found your balloon here. That's so cool. Yeah, and you'd say,

oh, my balloon made it to Detroit or whatever. And at some point, this was meant to raise money for like, I want to say, for like for music, musical instruments or some kind of artistic programs or whatever it was anyway i have such vivid memories of inner city balloon day and

all these balloons and at some point this uh somebody realized i think that they were like polluting mother earth with all these balloons here and maybe fish were choking on it who knows what was going on ducks were dying who knows. Who knows? But it's long gone. But this was a big deal in the late 70s, early 80s. That's really cool. I just remember that since we were going down memory lane there. Okay. Now, let's play another

vintage ad here. This year, everybody came back for Christmas. Everybody? What's the problem i'll tell you what the problem is you're not the real cindy you're a fake i didn't really want to come home for christmas do you think that everything's okay with the kids are you that blind you don't even recognize your own daughter seems like old times doesn't it it's your great being home mom please don't ask us to start at the beginning here's a story this is a very special christmas no it's

not it's a very brady christmas Eight Sunday on City. Nobody does it better. Isn't that wonderful? I like that it's become self-aware. I like it. That was great. Yeah. Well, I guess now is as good a time as any to kick off our tribute to The Voice, the one and only Mark Daly. It's funny when, you know, there's been a lot of memorials this year to obviously Roger Ashby. And, you know, people saying there's nobody that's ever going to get an opportunity to do 50 years on radio now. So he's like the last of his kind. And I think the same obviously said about Mark's work in that there's nobody that's ever, I don't care if you're a vlogger or a YouTube star or what, there's ever,

ever going to get the opportunity to become the voice of the city of Toronto. So, you know, we should pay our respects. C-K-L-W That does it for Big Tom Rivers. 1971. Hank O'Neill starts a brand new year next. C-K-L-W

For the last time this year, I will say to you, Rock on, mother! Ladies and gentlemen, the beat goes on. C-K-L-W The Motor City So, C-K-L-W. I'm sure you know a bit about that radio station, Mike.

Known as the Big Eight. The Big Eight, operating out of Windsor. Just to back up a little bit, so Mark Daly was born in Youngstown, Ohio in 1953 and he was very passionate from a young age

about three things. Law enforcement, broadcasting and trucks. He loved trucks. He loved driving trucks. He loved talking about trucks. And when he was a teenager, this is a fascinating story. He worked as a agent of the Tri-County Drug Squad. So often you'll see when you read about Mark Daly, he was a policeman. He never was actually like a policeman on the beat. He was basically an undercover 21 Jump Street kind of guy. And he was he was working with the Ohio Police Department. And he gave this great interview in the late 70s where he said basically he gave it up because his friends disowned him. And they're like, you can't do that. And they called him Marco the Narco. they're like you can't do that and they called him marco the narco uh and he realized that was gonna kill any social life he had so he got out of it he remained fascinated by law enforcement

and obviously kept close friends with people in law enforcement but he started to focus on his broadcast career so he had his inaugural radio stuff was the smaller stations in ohio so wytv wnio but his big break came at cklw the big eight which was in windsor now a little bit about cklw uh there's we could do a 10-hour show about the historical importance of cklw but i don't if you remember when wise blot was here a few years ago you and uh and him and myself did a show about Chum, the Chum Requiem. Of course. And Wiseblood did a brilliant little bit explaining the format, which was invented by a man named Bill Drake that was called the Boss Radio or Drake format. And that was basically produced

so tight where you just had jingles and on-air DJs and music. And it was like there was not even a millisecond of dead air. It was you turned on that station and it grabbed you by the balls and you never changed the channel. It was an incredible format. So the Big 8 used that format. And because they were broadcasting at 50,000 watts, it was an incredibly powerful signal. So even though it's based in Windsor, most of their listeners were in Detroit, but they were also hitting Ohio and parts of New York, parts of Chicago. And there was a person that worked at CKLW by the name of Rosalie Trombele, and she's famous because she was playing a lot of Motown. So this is in the late 60s. And again, this is a great Canadian story.

It doesn't get as much attention as I think it deserves. Everybody knows Motown now. Everybody thinks that, you know, happened organically in America. Of course, those records were being produced in Detroit. But the only stations that were playing them in America were very low frequency, sort of specialized African-American channels. And so nobody was really hearing it outside of scattered geographical areas. So CKLW is playing Gladys Knight. CKLW is playing all of these great Motown records and people are hearing it in Cleveland and in New York. And Motown blows up basically because of a

station in Windsor. So magnificent station. They also had a little bit later this fantastic format of news called 2020. And the 2020 format was 20 minutes after the hour, 20 minutes before the next hour. And it's kind of considered the first tabloid radio news. So it was very salacious and it was very much focused on the obscene amount of murder and mayhem that was happening in Detroit at the time. And that's where Daly started and that's where he honed his craft. It's a remarkable piece. Anybody interested, check it out. There's a CKLW fan page on Facebook that has a bunch of air checks.

And that was from 1973. And if you know Daly's work, that sounds like it could have been from 93 or 2003. I mean, he had it right from the get-go. And I love the floater. Oh, yeah. I mean, it was very graphic and very film noir is the word that is used about 2020 news.

Dick Smythe, he's another guy from 2020. Dick Smythe was from 2020, absolutely. And of course, because the station was so recognized, it was getting a lot of attention. And the other thing important to note is that Daly was embedded in Detroit. Even though he worked for a Windsor station, he was covering the beat in Detroit. And this is a time when there was 800 homicides a year. And Daly would talk about how he'd go on shift. And by the time he'd

come off his shift, there had been eight murders. So he got a real taste of mayhem and murder and gangs and gun violence in Detroit, cut his teeth there. And it's interesting. I don't know, Mike, if you in the future, when you have guests that know a bit more about this is where it gets a little bit weird for me. I know that in 1974, he gets a call to go work at CHUM okay makes perfect sense uh we know tom rivers was at chum tom rivers was at cklw the same time he was there um but at some point around then as well he worked at q107 and he was the very first news director of q107 so i don't know donna b would know me donna b would know for sure it's it because i tried to investigate that. There's nothing online other than the mention of him being the first news director. But we know he became a big deal at CHUM. And he also became,

obviously in Toronto, he became friends with a man by the name of Glenn Cole. Now, Glenn Cole, you might remember, was the assignment editor at City Pulse on City TV. And Glenn Cole was an ex-Mountie, ex-RCMP. And again, this ties back to Daly's friendship with the law enforcement community. So he would go hang out and go to bars and go to dinner with cops and RCMP. And that was the kind of people that he liked to hang out with. so he got to know glenn cole and glenn cole said shit you you got to come and work at city pulse you know we have we're moses wants to reinvent news the way that news in toronto is reported and they already had jojo chinto so they already had you know a fantastic sort of beat guy who who knew the streets of toronto but they were like you covered detroit

and you got to come to toronto so in 1979 he comes to work at city tv police have charged two of the men 39 year old ronald oswald of scarborough and 38 year old nicholas seculitis of walmer road with conspiracy and 12 counts of robbery and using firearms through witnesses and a bank photograph recently police had released these composite drawings of the two bandits noted for their and 12 counts of robbery and using firearms. Through witnesses and a bank photograph recently, police had released these composite drawings of the two bandits, noted for their aggressive, threatening style. They often mentioned they had come from the swamp, which we took to mean either Vietnam or prison.

The swamp gang dried up yesterday around 2 p.m. when two men grabbed nearly $3,000 in a robbery of the Bank of Montreal at Leslie and Nymark. The two men fled toward a nearby getaway car behind the plaza staff sergeant frank craddock was one of five hold up squad officers who met them with pointed shotguns in the squad we are all very professional people and we know how to handle and deal with these type of situations and uh it was a very tense moment but uh there was no uh problems with the arrests, and everything went very well. Later, police picked up 34-year-old Robert McMillan of Whitmore Avenue and George Zolas, 33, of Scarborough.

They're each charged with just several of the 12 stick-ups. Police also seized two vehicles. They actually belonged to two of the accused. Police note that nobody ever saw the getaway cars because of the threats made by the bandits in the banks. All four appeared briefly in provincial court in North York this morning and were remanded in custody. The Swamp Boys stayed in their own neighborhood since last March 19th.

They hit about a bank a month all east of Yonge Street, mostly in Scarborough, with brief appearances in Markham and Pickering. The hold-up squad traditionally clears most of the financial institution robberies every year, and they're well on the road to doing it again. They've cleared up 82% of the cases with arrests and charges this year in fact they've cleared up 37 cases in the last two weeks some of those from 1982 mark daily at the hold up squad office city pulse so yeah i mean so hard-boiled and he at the time would you know he's rocking this fedora he had his raincoat on and he was actually his nickname

amongst the toronto police department was the inspector because he would show up at these whether it was a bank robbery or a homicide and often people that obviously didn't know who he was because this is still the early days they thought he was a cop right because he kind of acted and talked like jack webb right? He's like the guy from Dragnet. He's just business. So he had this incredible relationship with the police department and they trusted him. They would tell him stuff and then they'd say, look, you can't report this. We're not going to tell you this on the record, but that would help in his reportage. And again, this was all very crucial in the early days of city pulse

to give that credibility so it's like if you um wanted to know about crime in toronto you knew jojo chinto and mark daly were like the best reporters covering these things but not good enough to know if swamp boys meant vietnam or prison well either one's pretty terrifying, right? Also interesting around this time, there was a horrible event that happened in Toronto in 1980. You might remember it. There was a police officer by the name of Michael Sweet who was murdered when he went. He took a call.

He was just about to go off shift. He got a call that there was a robbery in progress at a bar on queen street so him and his partner went these two low-life guys brothers uh shot michael sweet and he died. And Daly was apparently at his desk on Queen Street 99. And he was the first one on the scene and there was no other reporters there. And for the rest of his career, he always talked about that night being the most heinous crime that he had ever seen. And this is a guy that was in Detroit when 800 people were dying a year. And it's remarkable because I also interviewed Gord Martineau a few years ago, and I asked him throughout his whole career, what was the hardest story that he ever covered?

And he said, without a doubt, it was the murder of Officer Sweet. And Daley talked about it always for the rest of his life. And it was just an absolutely horrible thing. And up until then, we were known as Toronto the Good. And a lot of people talk about that night in 1980 as being when we stopped being Toronto the Good. Yeah, it's a tough one. You know, he was the only guy that of all the newscasters in Toronto at the time that had that kind of support and access to the Toronto Police Department. He also started up an organization which is still, called Crime Stoppers.

And that was, again, kind of taking the City TV ethos, which was, you know, engage viewers to become part of the story. So, I mean, people call it a snitch line, but the idea of Crime Stoppers was that you might know somebody that's involved in these things, so, you know, call this number and help us catch the bad guys.

So, yeah, I mean, I'm sure you remember when Mark Daly passed at his funeral, the majority of people speaking were police officers, including the chief at the time. So let's get to a much happier time, 1983. Two incredible things happened to city tv in 1983 very important uh groundbreaking things happened number one they started to say everywhere okay up until that point they just used to say that you're watching toronto television but they started they actually started it on city pulse they said city pulse was everywhere and then not long after city tv was everywhere and then number two the guy who did all the voiceovers on city tv was nobody can

remember his name i've tried to look him up he was just you know he did his job he was fine he went on holiday and they needed somebody to do a voiceover for a movie and somebody said why don't you ask mark to do it because he's got this baritone voice and apparently daly said oh you know i'm so busy i'm doing all this stuff get somebody else he really was not into doing it. And they said, no, come on. So they did a little test. And here's a great, amazing, rare little thing that I found, which was the very first test of Mark Daly's voiceover skill. So what we're going to hear first is it was for a spot for the movie of the great movie of this particular night, which was the fall of the house of usher

and the first part you hear is the regular guy doing the voiceover and then they got mark to do the same script and see if you notice the difference it's like the pepsi taste test challenge here tonight at eight from the mind of edgar allen poe comes this house of horror. The house where the Lord of Darkness reigns and where murder becomes pleasure. Robert Hayes, Charlene Tilton, and Martin Landau, The Fall of the House of Usher, tonight at 8. Tonight, from the mind of Edgar Allan Poe, comes this house of horror. The house where the Lord of Darkness reigns and where murder becomes pleasure. Robert Hayes, Charlene Tilton, and Martin Landau.

The fall of the House of Usher tonight on Great Movies. So yeah, there's a great great story that Mark Daly used to tell about how he got a note from moses like from moses's office and the headline of the note said a star is born because moses didn't like these guys that were doing the voiceovers before because they were just totally conventional and it's actually in, I don't know if you've ever seen it, but Joel directed this brilliant 90 minute sort of a dinner slash roast when Moses left Trump in 2003. It's called Moses TV. And it's basically all of

his friends and coworkers standing up and telling stories about him. And Daly stands up and says, I remember the night when you know i first went on and i got this telegram from moses saying a star is born because that voice represented to moses that kind of it was like a disembodied voice that had so much emotion and it was exactly the kind of stuff that moses wanted on city, but he hadn't been able to get. And again, you got to remember, we're going to play some more clips, but at this time, they didn't advertise the fact that it was Mark Daly. Now, eagle-eared viewers that watched City Pulse probably made the connection, oh yeah, the guy talking about movies is the same guy doing the crime but the idea was it was meant to be a secret

so here we have a short clip of city pulse and and the trademark everywhere city pulse everywhere and then the station id from the corner of x and x climbing higher to see the light. This is city TV everywhere. And you know, the everywhere stuff of course is to this day, the number one thing people remember about city TV. And they still say the station retired it however many years ago, but it is

forever linked to that station. And I believe that is because at the time it gave City TV this connection to viewers, as Brian so eloquently said from the beginning, that no matter where you were in the city, you would see an ID that would say it's, we're at the corner of Bathurst and Bloor. This is city TV everywhere. We're, you know, wherever, everywhere.

Who retired it? Do you remember? Well, Rogers, Rogers retired it not long after Mark Daly passed away because I guess they thought it was so linked to him. But I, like many other decisions they made,

I don't agree with that um and it's unfortunate but that being said i mean daly clearly was having so much fun doing these because he didn't always say everywhere in the same way right one of the things that cracks me up about say news talk 10 10 i don't know if you hear when they have their reporters. Oh yeah, Siobhan wants to go 1010. Newstalk 1010. They say it in these kind of weird ways, which is cool because it registers. But Daly never said everywhere the

same way twice, which, man, he must have done thousands of those. Thousands and thousands. And, you know, I'm forever finding new ones. And clearly, as the years went by, he got more and more experimental. They were kind of very standard for the first 10 years. And then you get into the 90s and they kind of go crazy. But clearly, we're still in sort of mid-80s here. And

Daly becomes the de facto voice of not only City TV, the programming, but also he starts doing commercials. And one of the things that I remember being so funny about the 80s was you'd see a movie commercial like Nightmare on Elm Street coming to the Eaton Center. But then it would be the American commercial. But then at the very end, it would be like Dave Duvall or somebody from the channel that was airing it that would be like now playing at a theater near you right so of course daily does it it's like a depth charge It's time to come out of the cold and into BOLORAMA, where you're always assured of a warm welcome. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So this winter, meet your friends at BOLORAMA.

For reservations, call U-BOL. That was for Mark Weisblatt, by the way. He loves those things. What's the story on Bowlerama? The final location is shut down? The Bathurst one, yeah. Again, I think Mark and I communicate about this quite a bit because

it's like a real end of an era but it's not really being recognized as such for some odd reason. It was just last year. I think it was last year or two years ago. Again, I'm having trouble of whether it was a year ago or two years ago. It's just like the age of your youngest.

But there was a Dundas Street location that I used to go to all the time that shut down and now there's, I don't know, a condo is being built there. But yeah, the Bathurst location, I think it just closed its doors this week last week I think yeah I mean it's sad I think bowling is a casualty of devices and short attention

spans and it's just not the thing that we all used to go and do to kill time and it takes up a lot of space I think it's sort of like a golf course like hey that's a lot of space you know totally totally I think we had a now playing in there oh yeah here's It's sort of like a golf course. Like, hey, that's a lot of space. Totally, totally. I think we had a Now Playing in there. Oh, yeah.

Here's a Now Playing, of course. Now Playing at a theater near you. Consult local listings. It's funny, too, because the levels that the commercial play at are low. And then it's like daily thing comes on and it blows the speakers. Well, that's it. I'm on my toes this episode. and then it's like daily thing comes on and it blows the speakers well that's it that's it i'm on my toes this episode because i have to if i have that like i give myself two seconds to adapt

is this going to be one of those quiet ones i gotta jack up or one of those screaming somebody's listening now like on a i don't know a jog or something they're having a heart attack oh it's like a screamer video on youtube so this next one i love and i'll tell you a funny story is that this was the clip that uh when when mark passed away city tv to the to roger's credit they did a wonderful wonderful memorial uh about him and they showed it that night on city pulse and they left it on the website for years and years afterwards it's it's not anymore, but it was there for a long time. And they took clips off of my YouTube channel, which was awesome. I was so happy that they did that because again, nobody there at the time would have known where to find any of this stuff. And of course... But that is, think about that for a moment,

okay? So you're archiving the history of this station, and then when they want to share old clips, they don't go into their own library or whatever. They go to you, who spent all that, like for love of the game, you've spent all that time archiving the clips, and they play your YouTube clips from, yeah, that's sort of bizarre. No, I was so thrilled because I thought

this was a really good polaroid of when mark started to get kind of playful with with his voiceovers and and i i'm sure i told i don't know if it's the last time or two trips ago here we talked about the bob segherini story with the cats and he was the host of late great movies and he got fired and so daly took over obviously he's hosting it as a voice but he did these intros and that's when he really was let loose because great movies was on in prime time he had to be somewhat conventional but once you got past midnight and you're showing b movies porkies porkies and the like he had much more license to be funny blue lagoon exactly or or the the daryl hannah grease movie i forget what that was called but yeah a lot of a lot of movies we watched as teenagers

um but this this little clip that we're going to hear next is is just so perfect it's a classic mark stay with city tv as we take you away from all this regular programming stuff to show you what television really can be. Oh, I'm sorry, I was reading the wrong copy. Late great movies are next. From the City Pulse newsroom, this is Toronto Television. City TV, everywhere. You're about to enter the vast world of late great movies. Big deal, right?

Tonight, we're repeating a movie we had about a month ago because we feel like it. And I like it. Audie Murphy stars. Remember him? In Showdown. Murphy stars. Remember him? In Showdown. But Ed, this was the character that drew me to, that made this my station. Totally. Totally.

And it's funny, Moses has a fantastic quote that I just found recently where he talks about, back then people chose their television station, it was almost like a fashion statement, right? It's like, you know, some people choose to wear Club Monaco because it says something about them. People chose to watch City TV. It was like a statement almost like I watch City

Pulse News. I don't watch CBC News, you know? And I think for sure that character that Mark embodied, that irreverent wit and humor of making fun of these things that were ludicrous. But when they show a shitty movie on CBC, they act like it's a great movie. So it was so refreshing. And I think tons of people were watching it just to hear him make fun of the movies right oh for sure um so yeah you know i mentioned many times i spend a ludicrous amount of time going through these old home recorded vhs and beta tapes that thankfully survived the years people kept them and now they they donate them them to retro Ontario. And I love, even though I've got a million of them to find another great movies intro with

Mark Daly saying stuff like that, it's still a buzz. Um, and now we get to the part of the story where it's really interesting because it's now the eighties, mid eighties and Trump city, uh, is starting to create new channels.

And obviously the big one. But I think I might have one more trailer. I think I have one more in the queue. Oh, yes. How could I forget? Before you get there. Yes. Let's play those other movie trailers.

Well, my little cousin. Tonight on Pervert Playhouse. You say you're from St. Alphonse and you claim to be my cousin. I'm sorry, I don't remember you at all. Who are you? He's a smelly old man with a dirty little plan. I don't trust him. I wouldn't either after what he did to Buffy last night. How can you imagine?

A mother waiting night after night. Well, I bet that's not the only pipe getting smoked around here. Hey, Buffy? I believe someday you will be alone. Kissing Cousin, tonight on Pervert Playhouse. Everything seems completely different to me today. Tonight on City, Wank Week continues. With another chicken choking classic.

A movie? He's on a double date with the Palm Sisters. A lot of things about me you don't know anything about. Things you wouldn't understand. Ha ha! Stand up! Err! Ah! Best life.

All right. Congratulations to you, too. Pocket Pool Pee Wee, brought to you by Handy Wipes. Tonight on City. Where's Jessica? Sunday, Hall's Well that ends in the well for poor Southern trash. My baby, she fell out of the well! Help me! Get her now!

And every asshole and his dog shows up. The world's attention is riveted on the fate of a brave little girl stuck in an abandoned eight-inch water well. At least the little tramp had a well. When I was her age, I would have given my left nut for any type of hole to play in. Please don't let my baby die. Why? You've got your mind set on a sequel? Everybody's meal ticket Sunday.

Tonight, he's a pussy-chasing, dry-humping hound of love. We don't want any kind of dog. We want Benji. You leave my sweetie-peetie alone. Benji finds a girlfriend girlfriend they go out for a few drinks then he takes the bitch home where they do it doggy style sex police will benji be neutered what's that it's a dog fuck you i'm chasing tail quit fucking the dog you can't lick benji that's

his job a family classic tonight i. I caught on, though, the well one, and I'm like, the tramp, and I'm like, no, these are not real. No, those, of course, were for the Christmas party.

Just so good. Obviously, better with the visuals, too, but you get the idea. Wank week. Very subversive. Wank week continues here on City TV. Yeah, so we all know and love the movie voiceover stuff, the City Pulse stuff.

The next clip, you know, it's a little bit of a, not a little bit of a point of contention, but, you know, I loved Christopher Ward's book about much music. I think it's brilliant. It's absolutely the most brilliant book about that point in time. However, it does not mention Mark Daly once. And I thought that was a terrible oversight, but it's an understandable oversight because I guess the people that were working on air at Much Music, they didn't think about the promos.

And as a viewer, when Much Music started, it was a pay TV channel. It wasn't on basic cable. So all I remember of Much Music in the early days was seeing commercials for it that were voiced by Mark Daly. Hear Much Music, coast to coast across Canada, in stereo, 24 hours a day. Top music videos and much more. Rock news, contests, concerts, specials. Coming to you every day of the week is everything you need. Hard rock and roll, hard rock and roll. Much Music. For less than the price of an album, it's yours. Much Music. All music, all the time time on the nation's music station much music

get yours now you know that made me want to buy much music just his enthusiasm um yeah and it you know as years go on much music is no longer pay it's on basic he's still doing all of the promos and you know a fellow as a fellow hip-hop fan i'm sure it was always funny to hear him talk about chabba ranks and big daddy kane and people like that this christmas we've got the perfect gift idea to give or receive three months of much music the nation's music station and And the official Much Music sweatshirt. All for only $24.95. Get three months of concerts, contests, rock news, and the best video music in the country.

Live every day in stereo. This Christmas, give Much and the official Much Music sweatshirt all for just $24.95. Call your local cable company for details. All for just $24.95. Call your local cable company for details. Can I tell the people you're wearing a City TV sweatshirt? I'm repping a City TV sweatshirt that I created as a collaboration with a great guy called The Store, The Store, The Store. I don't know if you've heard of him.

He's kind of like, I call him the Banksy of renegade t-shirt designers in Toronto because nobody knows who he is. I collaborated with him, but I never met him in person. I don't even know what his name is, but he creates these t-shirts out of vintage brands. So he did like a Becker's shirt and he did a, you know, Byway shirt and all this kind of stuff. And he reached out to me. I've said, I love what you do. And would you like to collaborate on something? And we threw around some ideas. We said, let's do a City TV shirt. My only caveat was, let's do a Channel 79 City TV shirt

as opposed to a 57. But yeah, I figured I'm repping the station. I got to wear the shirt. But you got the everywhere in the arms. But everywhere doesn't debut until, you don't hear Everywhere on 79. You did, yes. Did you?

Because 79 did not become 57 until fall of 83. So there was about six months of Everywhere on 79. Oh, I thought I had you there. No, come on. I got to wake up really early in the morning. That's great. Anyways, we'll have a photo together afterwards and let people see the... So he's like, I never even knew about this guy. Yeah, so he's kind of an Instagram guy.

I think that's his only social presence. And he does runs. They're limited, so there's only like 50 of each shirt. And he'll announce, I'm here on Sunday, and it's like first come, first serve. But absolutely, he did a consumer's distributing like hoodie, you know, like just cool shit. How have I never heard of this

guy? Like I feel ignorant. No, I mean, look, it's underground. It's for the kids, right? Because the kids are like they don't tell me and I'm like, yeah, I'm too old for that. But really, for the kids, this consumer's distributing Yeah, because it's like crazy old shit, you know?

Video 99? It's like the kids buy it to be irrelevant or to be irreverent. It's like ironic or something. And then we buy it for nostalgia. Because we're like, I want to wrap a Byway shirt, you know? Oh, that's funny. Yeah, so we're still talking much music. I think wrap a byway shirt. That's funny. We're still talking much music. I think we have a clip of him saying some funny names. Here we go. Coming up on Munch, Saturday Master T and Roxy

kick it into full effect on your one and only weekend dance fix, Extend the Mix. And on Soul in the City, Michael Williams shares the floor with the irrepressible Johnny Gill. I'm gonna hit the floor, no kids in the candy store. Later, Roxy Music give you more than this when they're featured in the spotlight. More than this.

Then catch live coverage via satellite from Ottawa with Steve, Erica, Ziggy, and Master T as they try to make much out of the events leading up to the choosing of a leader at the Federal Conservative Leadership Convention. Take me to your leader. Put some new provisions in place and move ahead. See, you know, we talked about this last time, but where else were you getting Master T, Extend-a-Mix, and then politics? You know, it's so great. Was that Denise Donlan's doing?

Was she a big... I think she was a big part of that for sure. But it also fit into Moses's idea that music was just a part of life and you had to focus on the important things like politics. You could make politics interesting by having Ed the Sock or Master T

go and interview people that wanted to be prime minister. Let me share with everybody that I received a note from Master T just last week and he says he's definitely coming on in early 2019. So Master T, you can

hook me up with some good audio for that. Oh. Buddy. That'll be fun. So we're now in full everybody knows Mark Daly's voice. He actually starts to get credited on the fun. So we're now in full, everybody knows Mark Daly's The Voice. He actually starts to get credited on the show. So when Speaker's Corner would end and the credits would roll,

the very first credit would say The Voice, Mark Daly. Well, Toronto, that's all for this week's show. Remember, talk is deep. So come on down to 299 Queen Street West. Drop in a loonie and speak your mind. You can win great prizes and all money goes to charity. Until next week, I'm Mark Daly. I always love that jazzy theme song.

I love this show. Like I would watch on the weekends. I'd watch Speaker's Corner and I would go over to Queen and John and stick a loonie and try to get on Speaker's Corner. Did you ever get on? No, I never got on. weekends. I'd watch Speaker's Corner, and I would go over to Queen and John and Stickaloonie and try to get on Speaker's Corner. Did you ever get on? No, I never got on. That you know of. Oh, that I know of.

Right, right, right. Now, do you remember who gave out the prizes on Speaker's Corner? I'm going to guess it was Q107's own Jennifer Valentine. Valentine, yeah, good man, of course. Yeah, Speaker's Corner, my God, what an institution. Another thing that everybody still talks about, that why did they get rid of it? There's never been a good answer.

And did Rogers get rid of that, too? Yeah, oh, yeah. And their excuse was that they, I mean, of course, they had to move out of 299. But, I mean, can you imagine if they put one at Yonge-Dundas Square? What kind of entertainment would we be looking at? Is it possible?

Again, I'm equally in love and hate with Bell Rogers. I don't have any affiliation at all. But because it was a Moses thing, they kind of wanted to sanitize it a bit and maybe just, is there anything there that there's some things, these are Moses things and we need to lose the past to stamp our own identity on this station?

I don't think so because Moses left Chum City in 2003 and Rogers didn't acquire them until almost five years after that. It still ran after Moses left. I think, to be honest with you, it's a mundane reason. It was money. It was just another line item that the bean counters are like, why do we need this? People have the internet now.

You know, YouTube was active. Blogs were active. And they thought nobody gives a shit about this kind of stuff anymore. But I don't believe that for one minute. It was a differentiator. Like, what was the difference between City TV and CTV?

Well, these things. Yeah. You know what I mean? The nuances, absolutely. Right, absolutely right i'm still mad that they canceled silverman helps okay oh well it's funny mike because when i was researching speaker's corner there's a brilliant article floating around that was written by rob salem another amazing guy i don't know if he's ever been on here no i should get you should get him on he knows a lot of cool stuff. He wrote an article basically saying, I can't believe that Rogers canceled Speaker's Corner.

And then at the end of the article, he's like, if you weren't angry enough, they also just canceled Silverman. So Silverman and Speaker's Corner both were axed at the exact same time. And around that time, I think maybe Ed's night party or something,

like a lot of these kind of cool things kind of got it at the same time period. For sure. Now, the next clip is another great thing that that rogers killed which was the new year's eve party at nathan phillips square i don't know if you ever went to one of those watched it on tv many times though right it was just a great thing to have on rock and ronnie uh would have the fur fur jacket to the coat on. And he looked exactly the same, right? Every year. But yeah, I went once and I don't think I had a very good time,

but it was a cool thing that you'd have on the TV on New Year's Eve if you were at a party or something. And I think too, it made rock stars out of a lot of these City TV much music hosts because Gordon Martineau or Mark Daly And two, it made rock stars out of a lot of these City TV Much Music hosts. Because Gordon Martineau or Mark Daly would go on the stage and it would be like thousands of people screaming. That must have been a real buzz for them, I'm sure, to go from the studio to that kind of environment. It's the biggest. It's the best. It's the only New Year's Eve bash you'll want to be at this year.

But City TV brings you live performances by Cassandra Bassick. TBTBT. And John James and the Mothers of Hope. Gord Marko and Monica Neal host as the City of Toronto. Golden Griddle and City TV present the 9th Annual age very well, I guess. TBTBT. I seem to remember that. One Hit Wonders, I think.

It rings a musty bell. And then, yeah, we're now in the late 90s, and there's this massive explosion of digital specialty channels, which, of course, Moses and Chum City had more channels than you could believe. They were theme channels, niche channels. CP24 was known as Cable Pulse 24. And as you remember, it was the City Pulse gang doing it 24 hours a day. And, you know, everybody knows CP24 now,

but it ain't what it was when it started. CP24, Greater Toronto's number one news channel, can now be your first pick. Make us your default station on your digital cable box. Just simply hit the setting button twice on your remote. Follow the instructions on the general settings screen. Scroll to viewer, power on. When the list of channels appears, simply highlight 24 and accept.

Be in the know instantly. Whenever you push the on button, easy access to the GTA's number one news channel, CV24. It's that simple, man. Not complicated at all. I think there's a Simpsons bit where they're like, oh, it's that easy, and it's a bunch of convoluted instructions. And I feel like that was like satire. If I had my consumer's distributing watch that could set my VCR time.

Casio. But yeah, I mean, I don't know if you remember it, Mike. I was at uni at the time, but I definitely remember there being a buzz about all these new channels. Because growing up, everybody knew somebody who had a satellite or whose uncle had a satellite, and they got all these funky channels. But suddenly in Toronto, we had all these channels. Another great one, when it started, was amazing, that was a Chum City channel, was the Space Channel. Andum city channel was the space channel and the space channel was called the imagination station and it was a moses original because he was like we're gonna

show the science fiction shit like star trek and all that but we're really gonna focus on science fact so they had tons of great you know documentaries about science and about the future and time travel and they took it seriously now it's just a dumping ground for, for junk. Um, but yeah, I mean, Mark Daly was repping space in the early days. science fiction series. Man to them is just a work machine. Where are you from? Famous for its infinite flexibility. You'll never control the Cybermen. I am the leader now. You will be exterminated.

Shall I fire, Commander? Doctor Who. Weekdays on Space. The Imagination Station. You know that reaction you had to Blinky? That's my Doctor Who. Weekdays on space. The Imagination Station. You know that reaction you had to Blinky? That's my Doctor Who. It's my Doctor Who story. Because it came on TV Ontario.

Right, after Polka Dot Door. And it would seriously traumatize me. And even hearing it now, I have this guttural reaction where I don't like it. Yeah, well, it's just weird. The British people that made Doctor Who, especially the people who did the sound, the monster voices and stuff,

they were on a next level, man. They did some weird stuff. Now, we'd be remiss when we're talking about science fiction to not celebrate Mark Daly's tremendous contribution to Star Trek. Of course, city TV showed Star Trek,

the next generation and all that, all the other shows in the nineties. And he used to have a special name for city TV when he would promote Star Trek. It is my moral duty to protect mankind from whatever devious plan you have in mind. Saturday city probably presents the season premiere of Star Trek The Next Generation. History has to fulfill itself.

I'm going back to the 19th century to get the capital. Do you know me? Very well. If we can get back there and destroy that site, it might put an end to that time traveling. Power up the photons, Mr. Wolf. Data's fate awaits him in the season premiere of Star Trek The Next Generation

Saturday at 7 on your Federation station. No Federation Station. Perfect. And of course, they showed the last episode of Star Trek TNG at the Skydome. And they had all their personalities, including your friends Humble and Fred, dressed up in Star Trek costumes. And Monica D'Ole was dressed up like Deanna Troi. Oh, Monica. Wow. I'm never going to forget that night. I do remember

maybe it's you actually sharing footage of this on YouTube and revisiting it and like, did this really happen? But yeah, it happened. It was a crazy like a Lollapalooza for nerds. The other one I always remember is the Cheers finale.

Okay. But do you remember? No, we're getting into the Mandela effect now. You're the authority. I'm listening

closely. But I remember a station, whatever station broadcast that show, I don't know if it was global or

whatever, you'll remind me, but didn't they have a public viewing of this in like a Skydome type of facility? Tell me. No, I'm glad you brought this up

because this is a bit Mandela effect. I've had many people over the years contact me about that exact subject because I've written about the Star Trek Skydome thing, but I've had people claim that the Cheers finale was shown in Skydome and that the Seinfeld finale was shown at Skydome. I can't find evidence of either.

Seinfeld, I don't remember. I would remember that because I watched Seinfeld. But cheers, there was something. What was it? Dude, a lot of people think that. But I invite your listeners, if somebody was there. But I think maybe it happened and then somehow it was undone in the past. You know of the Mendel effect, right?

You know this idea. Yeah, is this the Berenstain Bears thing? Yes, Berenstain Bears is part of it. It's this idea that there's people time traveling and messing with the timelines back to the future style, but it's only affecting- But the Berenstain Bears example is stupid, okay? It's always been-

It's the weakest one. You're right. And I think that, okay okay there's a lot of people for example if i remember this correctly they remember a a sinbad movie about a genie or something but it's there it's basically there was a movie with shack as a genie and then our people are like yeah slightly misremembering so you're right maybe there was never a cheers public viewing as i recall and maybe i've taken the star trek next generation memory which is real and somehow it got its lines crossed it's yeah well it's it's super weird

because and all of the mandela effect examples are weird because it's not just one person like you could forgive one person for saying i'm pretty sure this thing happened but when you have large groups of people that swear down Berenstain Bears was spelled a certain way or that the Sinbad movie was at their blockbuster, it's a little weird. I'm not willing to just write that off and say that's bullshit.

It's interesting. The origin of the term is because a bunch of people remember Nelson Mandela dying in prison, which is a weird thing. Which is strange because that did not happen. No. Very interesting. Well, we're still on the topic

of interesting science and time travel and whatnot. Tour of the Universe, the groundbreaking ride that was at the base of the CN Tower that was the vision of Moses Nimer. Of course, he gets Mark Daly to do the voiceover on the commercials this is the central scrutinizer announcing the world's newest travel opportunity

tour of the universe blast off from the new spaceport at the base of the cn tower participate in the wonder and excitement of a shuttle trip to the solar system. Round trip regularly, $7. Now only $4 for adults, $2.50 for smaller earthlings. Call CP Interplanetary at 363-TOUR now. That's dirt cheap, man. I know. And what, did you ever go on it?

Yeah, I do remember going on this. It's lasted me a lifetime of memories for two dollars or whatever whatever but even back then that's a sounds like a good deal to me it was no it was and unfortunately I think that's what killed it was because it was only one simulator they could only fit like 40 people on at one time if you go to Disney World you go on the Star Wars version and it's the same people that built star wars one that built the tour one they've got like 10 of them going at the same time so the economics make sense but uh yeah tour the universe man how long was it there it was there

from 86 to 92 so a fair chunk of time by the end see, what's sad to me is I went probably in 86 or 87. Yeah, me too. By the end, they actually had actors in costumes like aliens and space police. And they actually were doing scripted interactions where there would be a storyline going on, like an alien smuggler was trying to escape. And it all tied into this Moses idea of the living movie, which was that you paid your money to go on the ride, but you also were in the middle of basically a movie that was unfolding. And he also had a play at the same time called Tamara.

And in the play, you went to a house and people in the play where actors were going into different rooms and you'd follow certain actors around. It was an absolutely amazing concept. Obviously, we go into great detail on his biographical website about the living movie. And you can read lots more about that when we go live. Hey, yeah, this Moses project you've been working on, how often do you get FaceTime with Moses? I see him on the reg. I see him on the reg. You know, it's always incredibly humbling and I'm always kind of like pinching myself that I'm actually sitting in his office and I'm saying things and he's laughing.

You know, it's surreal, but it's great. And I think he likes what I do for him. He should like what you do for him because you do great work and he should come on Toronto Mic'd. And you like what you do for him because you do great work and he should come on Toronto Mic'd. And you know what? Tell him if to make him comfortable, tell him you'll be there beside him. You can

both sit here and I can bring Ziggy in too if you want. Well, that would be more useful than me being here. I've got the extra mic. See, this is the fourth mic now. So we're getting, you know, we're now into the late 90s. And here's my personal connection with Mark Daly.

When I graduated from college or from university, you know, I had aspirations of being a filmmaker. That was I wanted to go make movies. And, of course, it's a tough racket. and I was doing, I was actually working for the OPP because the OPP would make these short films about certain subjects and I got this one about gambling addiction and it was so hard to write. It was probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life was research gambling addiction

and it was so depressing and it fucked up and I had no understanding of it and it's funny, I think your best episode i had no understanding of it and it's funny i think your best episode of this year of course was peter gross and i i came away from that episode with a much better understanding of it but it was something that was so alien to me and so writing the script and we had this older british lady who was basically going to be the voiceover for this, this 20 minute,

uh, documentary about gambling addiction. And it was like the driest shitty, boring thing. And then I'm sitting with the people at the OPP, they're agreeing that it's not working. And they said, well, we could get somebody else to do the voice. Uh, uh, what about Mark Daly? And I was like, are you kidding me? Like you can get mark daly like yeah mark daly i mean he's a friend of the opp he does all of our like car chase documentaries and all so holy shit i went back and i started rewriting the script because i'm like i want mark daly to say you know these lines that i'm writing it became this it suddenly like the the project became a lot punches it up it punched it right up and um i took great pleasure in putting in my friends names and all this to see so we could hear mark daly said now i've threatened to put this

garbage online i i haven't yet it's it's kind of, but here's a little clip from it. This was done as a scene about how gambling addiction can spiral out of control. These were all names and pictures of my friends and my brother. This is Pete. He owes Dutchie 100 bucks. He doesn't have the money, so he borrows 100 bucks from Paul with some interest. Now he owes Paul 130 bucks, and he still doesn't have any money because he's gambled that all away, so he borrows $150 from Trav, again with some interest.

After another losing night, Pete now owes Trav almost $200. What will he do? When will he stop? So, you know, I got to work with Mark Daly. And you got to direct him personally. No, I just, it was, you know, I faxed him a script. Okay. And then he sent me a little digital audio tape. And then we synced it up to the visuals. But I spoke to him on the phone.

I went for a coffee with him. And he was just the most lovely man. Like everybody says, he was just the nicest guy. No vibes at all. And I'm sitting there going, I'm so sorry to bother you with this garbage. Like, this sucks. This is a waste of your time. But he was this guy that was so involved in policing and law enforcement.

And he said, no, gambling addiction is a very serious problem. And Mike, to tie this back to what we were saying earlier about the issues of policing in the 21st century, Mark, because of his experience in Detroit and seeing all of that horrible stuff up close, he really believed that it was very important for the public to have a good relationship with law enforcement. And if he could be a bridge because he did have that local celebrity, he was more than happy to do that. And he didn't even get paid to do this. That's what was so crazy. Wow. He did it as a volunteer.

Now, we're winding down here, although these next couple of clips are pretty epic. But I should let you know that when I was promoting that this was happening, that, you know, Ed Retro Ontario Conroy was coming over and we were going to do a Mark Daly tribute, if you will, retrospective. I started hearing, you know, these people would like the tweet and stuff. And I saw these interesting people like, you know, Ziggy thought it was tremendous. And then Cynthia Mulligan was liking the tweet. And a whole bunch of people who worked with the man were just so

delighted to hear this was happening because it's true. Everybody who seemed to come into contact with Mark Daly left with warm, positive feelings about the man. Everybody kind of loved the guy. And that is so rare in this industry where people are

backstabbing and there's all kinds of drama and there's all kinds of bullshit. This was an old school, like a Jack Webb, like a dragnet guy. He had it. He knew how to use it. The funniest shit about him is how he would mess with the young guys coming in, the new journalists, and he would sort of make up stories and he would push it to see at what point would somebody say did that really happen like come on dude so i love that that he was he had this incredible sense of humor um you know i know you have people on here all the time and roamer people that worked with him and i love that you ask them about uh stories of him because i you know i think

it's very important that we celebrate, we continue to celebrate his contribution because clearly it touched so many people's lives. Absolutely. And I will continue to ask that question. I promise you that. Nice. Did you want to, you have a ripping friends? Yeah. So, you know, this was always funny too. you get into the early 2000s and mark daly in addition to voicing all of these channels and all of this extracurricular police stuff he actually becomes a voice talent for cartoons and he does a ton of stuff for nalvana who's kind

of like our walt disney so he's like a voice on beyblade and Stormhawks and Metabots and all this crazy shit that, you know, unless you had a kid at that time or you were a kid at the time is probably meaningless. But there's this show called Ripping Friends, which, I mean, you watched it with your kids. I watched it with my oldest. The whole thing was just fart jokes all the time. But we have this little clip to give you a sense of his voice work as a cartoon guy i know how to defeat stinky butt how man how the secret lies in this can of beans enough of the riddles man spit it Spit it out. Easy, fella. While we were fighting, I planted a miniature camera on Stinky Butt,

and I've been watching him in his lair. The reason he didn't finish us off was he couldn't. He ran out of gas. Stinky Butt needs fuel in order to feed his unholy arsenal. This is where he gets his power. See where this is headed? Yeah, go on, Craig. I'm with you.

Crazy show. I remember watching. In fact, I wrote about it because I was so excited that Mark Daly was on the darn show. I think I wrote, James and I are ripping friends. It's like an entry I wrote on TorontoMic.com way back when. But yeah, I watched that show. It's remarkable. And I think too, when he passed, it was just such a shock because he had gone through treatment before

and he'd done a segment about it for the City Pulse News. And then he announced, I think it was in September of 2010, that it had come back and he was taking some time off. And then the news broke two months later, three months later that he was gone. And I think the whole city was just absolutely in shock because he was so young and he was so ubiquitous in all of our lives. And I don't think, as I said earlier, that we'll ever have a character quite like that that does have such an effect, where I guarantee you, if you went out onto Lakeshore right now and stopped 10 people,

probably eight of them would know exactly who you were talking about. Absolutely, absolutely. Absolutely. How old was he when he passed? He was 57. Wow. Wow.

Yeah. I know. It's crazy. So, yeah, I think now is probably a good time, speaking of Mandela effect, to get into the conspiracy theory about Mark Daly and his involvement in a certain Rush song. Maybe we should set it up before we play it

so people know what to look out for. The song is called Subdivisions. It's from 1982, I believe. It's a brilliant song, an absolutely brilliant video. One of the first videos I remember. Totally. And I think revisiting that video now, it really

captures that kind of weird early 80s, grey, overcast, hanging out in video arcades, everybody smoking butts, everything being kind of dirty. It really captures that vibe, the song

and the video. But I always, when I would hear that song, you hear Mark Daly saying subdivisions. Okay. I just thought that's what it was. It always seemed like that's what it was. And then the internet comes along and people start arguing and saying, no, it's not him. And he would say that he got asked about it all the time. And he would say, no, it's not me. It's Neil Peart. Or the story was always changing. It was somebody else. It was somebody else.

But let's play it. Play it out. It doesn't start popping in until, I think, past a minute. But let's see what your listeners think. We'll be right back. Thank you. A momentary border, an insulated border Between the bright lights and the far-run men I know Growing up it all seemed so unsighted Opinions all provided, The future pre-decided. Detached and subdivided in the mass production zone. Nowhere is the dreamer.

All of this gets so unknown. Something in my schoolhouse. In the high school halls In the shopping malls Come from the big castles In the basement bars In the muscle cars We come from the big castles And the escape might help And I'm 100% sure that's Mark Twain. Totally.

It totally is. Totally is. And it comes back later, so I'll just bring it down and we'll chat a bit about this. And maybe if you hear it's coming in like five seconds, wave at me, okay? I'll bring it back up. Well, funnily enough, there is a guy called Scott Simpson, I think. He is a blog. And a long time ago, he actually met Mark Daly and asked Mark Daly to say subdivisions into his recorder.

Right. And he did all this full-on JFK, back and to the left, Zapruder footage style analysis, and he proved definitively that it is Mark Daly. My ears, I don't even need his analysis. I know. I mean, I can hear it.

There's no one else with that timbre. And why wouldn't it be him? So that's where it gets interesting, and I'll tell you my pet theory. I think we can drop it down. I mean, it's on YouTube. What do you mean there's a YouTube out there? This is the definitive.

Okay, I can bring it down. But I'll bring it down nice and low so it doesn't. But let me hear you. Yeah, I mean, my theory nice and low so it doesn't, but let me hear you. Yeah. I mean, my theory on this is that, you know, music rights and publishing rights is a swamp. Okay. Talking about Vietnam or prison. And I don't know what exactly happened if they made an arrangement. I don't think for a moment that Mark Daly went into a recording studio and said subdivisions.

I think it was sampled from an episode of City Pulse because this is early 80s is right around the time that really the cost of sort of kit samplers really came down. And Rush used samplers a lot. It's sample, you know sample a drum or a certain thing and people were sampling television, right? They would record a movie and they'd take a sample from a movie and they'd use it in songs. And the interesting thing about City Pulse back then

is it would air, there'd be the seven o'clock, the 10 o'clock, but then it would be, that night's episode would be repeated the following day in the morning. So if Rush is sitting around seven o'clock the ten o'clock but then it would be that night's episode would be repeated the following day in the morning so if rush is sitting around and they've got a song and it's in you know gestation and they they want to call it subdivisions and holy shit the crime reporter just said subdivisions we got to get that on tape and sample it. They would have known to record it the next day.

And you see, this is all before Biz Markie and the whole Paul's Boutique, all the issues about copyright clearance. So I think they sampled it illegally, didn't get any kind of sign-off from Daily. Whether he would have known it was him, but he was such a playful guy, he denied it. He said it was multiple people over the years, but 100% it's him.

It reminds me a little bit about, okay, so I was a big Maestro, I still am, a Maestro of Fresh West fan, and his second album, Black Tie Affair, I think it was called, there's a song on that album in which there's a sample of a much music piece that has Michael Williams in it.

I think he's talking about Maestro or whatever. And uncredited or like, again, not cleared at all. And I remember watching much music one day and Michael Williams referenced this and said that it would have been nice to have been asked or something like that. But yeah, so that was the thing to do, man. You sample some Moses property. Wild West. And it's so like, you know,

we played those clips earlier of Mark Daly's delivery when he was reporting on crime stories. And, you know, subdivisions is a word. You wouldn't think, you know, you and I aren't going to be saying a word like that. But guy recovering crime and trauma. Yes, and it does now that you say that. And I'm so glad that you said that,

because now it does sound like it's part of a new story that he's reading. For sure. Yeah, City of Problems. For sure. So, you know, maybe at some point, Geddy will come out and just say, okay, Jesus, you got us.

We sampled him. When Geddy comes on Toronto Mic'd, I'm going to just look him in the eyes and say, is that Mark Daly, yes or no? He's going to tell me the truth. Real talk. I'm going to get the answer here. Man, I miss Mark Daly.

And sadly, like you said, we lost him eight years ago. But that was a tremendous retrospective and tribute to the man. Well done. Thank you so much, so graciously, for allowing me to come on here and for us to enjoy and your listeners to enjoy this incredible body of work that we keep uncovering. And there's lots more to come.

When can we look forward to a Retro Ontario podcast? I'll have my people call your people, okay? They can have, honestly, in 2019. Come on. Enough is enough. We need to hear more of this. And that brings us to the end of our 412th show. You can follow me on Twitter.

I'm at Toronto Mike. Ed is at Retro Ontario. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Propertyinthe6.com is at Raptor's Devotee. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair is at Fast Time WJR. And PayTM is at PayTM Canada.

See you all next week. And happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.