Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Dan Matheson: Toronto Mike'd #951

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

Mike chats with Dan Matheson about his years covering sports at CFTO, hosting NHL games, the '87 Canada Cup and Olympics for CTV, anchoring the news on CTV News Channel and co-hosting Canada AM.

Toronto Mic is brought to you by the Yes, We Are Open podcast, a Moneris podcast production, telling the stories of Canadian small businesses and their perseverance in the face of overwhelming adversity. Subscribe to this podcast at yesweareopenpodcast.com. What up, Miami? Toronto. Welcome to episode 951 of Toronto Mic'd. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery.

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and decals for your home and your business. Palma pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Ridley funeral home pillars of the community since 1921, and Mike Majeski of RE-MAX Specialist Majeski Group, who's ripping up the GTA real estate scene. Learn more at realestatelove.ca. I'm Mike from torontomike.com, and joining me this week is Dan Matheson. This week is Dan Matheson.

Dan, nice to meet you. Nice to be met. This is a lovely part of the city that I have never been to. You got lost coming. We won't disclose the specific location, but basically you're in the southwest corner of Toronto. And is it fair to say that once you get down to Lakeshore and south, this is unfamiliar territory to you. Totally, totally unfamiliar.

Yeah. Well, now I'm going to excuse you for being a little bit late because... Four minutes! We have very strict guidelines here, Dan. But I will say, I wasn't that familiar with this neck of the woods either

until I moved here eight years ago. And now it's like this like hidden gem in the city. It's like, I don't want to leave because you're right on the... You're right on the... On the water. Waterfront trail and you hidden gem in the city. It's like, I don't want to leave because you're right on the waterfront trail and you're right by the lake. And it's like a sort of cut off from the city, but you're still in the city.

It's kind of neat. I dig it. And it's quite green. Yeah. Well, we've had some lovely weather lately. It is very green. We got a couple of big parks nearby. And my friend, you're a toronto guy so just what

neck of the woods what neighborhood did you uh grow up in oh well i'm an army brat so i i grew up all over the country uh in the states a couple of times i didn't move to a city until i was 15 and the city was Toronto. My father was posted to Downsview Air Base. It used to be an air base. Sure. And then from there, they went off again to Virginia, leaving me to go to university all by myself. Oh my goodness. Yeah.

Okay. What did you go to? U of T? Where did you go? No, I went to Yorkie Porkie. I started at Glendon right which at the time was uh college belang and the belang part really pushed me out so i ended up at the uh at the main campus okay the windy one and it was funny my best buddy my best buddy in rock and roll

we just loved rock music okay he dragged me to to see Led Zeppelin that I'd never heard of before. Wow. I know. I don't know what year that was. 70, 69, something like that. Okay, because this is the 50th anniversary of Led Zeppelin IV, so it would have been before that, I'm sure. Yeah.

It was a long time ago. Anyway, he dropped out of school. And, of course, getting an education, military people pound that into their kids because they say there is no money in what i do like don't do this right find find a get an education find some skills make some money right and i was a little appalled at his his choice what he did was he dropped out to take one of those quickie broadcasting courses i don't know if they even exist in the city anymore, but they used to be,

you too can be a radio and TV announcer. And I couldn't believe it. He got a job. He got a job up in Lindsay. Have you ever had a job in Lindsay? No. That's near Peterborough, right? Yes.

It's on the edge of the Kawarthas. The Kawarthas, right. And so here's the king of rock and roll going to Little Lindsay with 13,000 people. Right. And he's the overnight country western jock. Oh. Baby, if you've ever wondered. Yeah, you go where the gigs are, right? You go where the gigs are.

And if you have to put a cowboy hat on, that's what you do. I'll tell you that most recently, I don't know if he's retired yet, but he's been a news announcer for CBC Radio for years and years and years. What's his name? Dwight Smith. Dwight Smith. Okay, shout out to Dwight Smith,

the rock and roller. Okay. And did you enjoy the Led Zeppelin show? Oh, yes, I did. I did very, very much. I still like those guys, actually. He's a golden god. That's what I've heard.

Yeah, and the guy on, like, the guitar player's not bad. Oh, yeah, the Page, right? Yeah. He's all right. You know, I feel blessed to have seen the original drummer, too, because that guy was something else, something else. Man, yeah. Anyway, I finished my degree.

I mean, I was one of those guys back then that thought, man, if you get a degree, you're going to be golden. And I ended up going to the same radio station that my pal was at. I was hired because I- In Lindsay. He was still there. Did he pull strings? He said, hey, my buddy Dan needs a gig. I don't think so.

Wow. I don't think so. But I went there as a news guy. And I'll tell you how weak the news department was. After three months, I was named the news director. Wow. Yeah. And I was, what, 23 or four years old.

Okay, so let me ask you this right off the top, Dan. Here we are in 2021. Could that happen today? I don't think so. I don't think so. I mean, the way you worked your way up through the business when I was a young'un, it was very different than it is now. It's just different.

Are there even like in small markets like Lindsay, do they even, like, don't they just maybe, maybe they have like a a city hub that sort of farms things out to them like do they even have like a news department in lindsey now i will tell you that that i've been retired for five years right and the last five years of my uh career i told all my kids my kids are the kids that supported me in what I did at work. I said, get out of this business. I said, it is dying and it's going to start to rot. And of course it's very different than it was then. Well, this is a good segue because just before you arrived, I got a phone call. So I got a call from somebody you might know, Dana Levinson. Yeah, I know Dana. Now,

Dana was going to record at 2 p.m today for her podcast i produce her podcast it's called on the dl and it's very good and you should go on it actually the uh she called me with no voice at all like she's lost her voice she can't record anyway that's a tough one in radio yeah and uh she also she's on tv still she's got a new like cp24 gig or something and And I said, hey, you know who's coming over in five minutes? I said, Dan Matheson. And she said, you're a lovely guy to say hi and that she loves you.

Like she had all these great things to say about you. I'm wondering now, because Dana in 2019 walked away from her like 19 year CTV Toronto gigs, SIFTO as you kids would call it now uh did you tell dana to get out of the industry or maybe you influenced her because she she did she she left the uh the role she had there for 19 years well i i don't think i had it you know what i had influence on her tell me we parked side by side in that massive cft parking lot. I don't know how many people. Is that an Asian court?

Yeah, right across from Scarborough Mall. Right. Yeah, it's a lovely neighborhood. But anyway, the land was really cheap when they bought it. And it was right across from E.P. Taylor's Farms. The racehorses from. Oh, right. Yeah, sure.

But that was back in like the 60s. That was before me. You know, that aging court, that piece of real estate comes up a lot on this show. I had, we were just talking about, Jane Eastwood was on. I think she was my last guest. And Jane Eastwood was talking about being on Bizarre.

They were when John Biner was doing Bizarre up there. So like all these, and then you hear about Super Dave Osborne and we talk a lot on this show about Just Like Mom. And Paul Burford came on. Taga, you have any Just Like? You got any Fergie Oliver stories for me? None that I could tell you. No, no, no.

I've got lots of Pat Marsden stories I want to tell too. Oh my goodness. Those are the stories I need. So okay, so we're going to walk through it, and any stories that are fit for public consumption, please feel free to share. But Dana said hi. And I also want to give some love to FOTM Jeff Hutchinson.

Because Jeff came on the program. Now, he couldn't come in person. So he didn't get all the gifts you're going to get. He's in PEI. But then I guess he connected us. And it's a great privilege to have you here today, Dan. And we're going to talk about your career and everything. But maybe I'll give you a couple of gifts right off the top here since you're staring at it all.

Okay, where do I begin? Fresh craft beer from Great Lakes Brewery. There's a six-pack for you. That's lovely. You take that home with you, buddy. Thank you very much. It was worth the drive. Is that legal?

Yeah, as long as you don't drink it on the drive home, it's legal. I think that's the rule. So you can bring that home. I also have uh and here's a question i should have asked beforehand but i'll do it now live because what the heck uh are are you a vegetarian or do you consume a cow yeah i do okay and that's your own choice but i do have a meat lasagna frozen in my freezer right now delicious when you make this up you're gonna love to love it. It's from Palma Pasta. So I'm giving you a meat lasagna on your way out. That's an empty box, but I'm going to fill it

before you leave, I promise. Thank you. It's no smoke and mirrors here, Dan. This is the real deal. Okay. Cooking is what I do now. Oh. Honestly, I want to get your review of this

because, you know, people make their own lasagna and nothing beats that. But in terms of a store-bought lasagna, I'm told that you cannot do better than Palma Pasta. Well, very good. Well, thank you very much. And there's a Toronto Mike sticker for you from stickeru.com. So that's a little memento.

Is it magnetic? No, it's a sticker, my friend. So we're going to put it on the back of your car before you drive away. And since we're giving out the gifts two more gifts i'm going to give you before we uh dive in here i'm going to give you a uh wireless speaker branded moneris branded wireless speaker and i'm giving that to you because with that speaker you can listen to the yes we are open podcast which is hosted by fotm al grego al's been traveling the country interviewing small

Canadian businesses, and then he tells the story of their origin, their struggles, their future outlook. And if you're a small business owner or entrepreneur like myself, you'll find the podcast helpful and motivational. Again, everybody can subscribe to Yes We Are Open by going to yesweareopenpodcast.com. And that's a small looking package there, but I've sampled one. Sounds good. Big sounds going to come out of that. So last but not least, my friend, I'm going to send you an email that lets you spend $75 at chef drop.ca.

Like this is just amazing Toronto restaurants and, uh, and chefs. And if you're in Southern Ontario, you can get this delivered right to your door. Go to chefdrop.ca. If you're listening to my voice right now, you can save $50 when you spend 100 on your first order by using the promo code FOTM50. So FOTM50 saves you 50 bucks. Thank you, Chef Drop. That's delicious. I'm going to keep you well fed,'m gonna keep you well fed dan so you're in lindsey and you're like the news director and you're just a young man so tell us how you parlay that into your uh your career with uh ctv well uh my first lucky break was my guy that dropped out of university to go to radio my next next lucky break was, uh, but seven months later, I was pretty disenchanted with small town radio.

There's a little bit of talent, but there's a lot of people who are just happy to be on the radio. I've heard this. Yeah. Well, it's true. Well, Freddie P real quick here,

as I was actually also talking to Freddie P this morning because I produced the Humble and Fred show, and Fred Patterson was the program director at The Wolf in Peterborough, and he tells a story about how a lack of motivation, he describes it, where these people had been there forever and they didn't really feel like changing, and he found it very challenging

when he was program director of that station in peterborough so i was living in an old victorian home you know with a big brand out the front it was lovely and the guy who owned it was probably the only guy at the station that made money he was the engineer at uh ckey in toronto monday to friday and then he came up and did the engineering on the weekends at CK. What was this one? Gee, I can't even remember now. Anyway, it doesn't matter. And I came home one night from work.

Yes. And sitting in the den was the young woman who did the boat reports in the summertime. Okay. And I think she was called Heidi Heidelberg, you can guess, who sponsored the boat reports. She was like in high school. She was just a very young woman. Right.

But she was very sweet, and she was there waiting for one of the guys to come back. And I said, oh, like he's run off to Bob Cajun or something. So I went into the stash, into the fridge, and I had one-fifth of the fridge. There were five of us. Right. And so I gave her a beer, and I had a beer.

And she was a world-class beer drinker. Honest to God. And she, I mean, anyway. Well, do you still know her? You can pass on this well actually i i do have um you know a fast forward world class like what are we talking because i know i know my limits and i live within it but what are we talking here i've never well i never experienced her finding a limit i just anyway she was lovely her real name was Moira. And so I'm talking to Moira, and she was the only person I told,

the only person, because I'd had a whole beer, and now I was feeling loose. I think I'm going to go back to school because I can't live like this. First off, I was making $391 a month. And even in that time, that's not a lot of money, right? I have to do the inflation calculator here. No, loading trucks at Eaton's,

I made $500 a week or something. Yeah, anyway. A lot more. Now my mind, the way I think about salaries back in the day is I think about the movie Going Down the Road

because I just re-watched it when Jane Eastwood was coming on and I think about what they were making, you know, what they were making, setting up the pins in the bowling alley

versus bottling the ginger ale in the plant. Like, it's giving me this like frame of reference. But yeah. So Moira, who I hardly ever saw, to be honest, I mean, she went straight to the boats and got them up the Kawarthas. Right. And then I wouldn't see her for months at a time because they're not boat reports in the wintertime. Anyway, I didn't see her for the longest time. time because they're not boat reports in the wintertime anyway i didn't see her for the longest time and i got a call in the middle of the day i also did a split shift in radio like nights and early mornings those are terrible right oh my god they yes they shorten your life and it was the news director at ckvr channel three in barry said, I hear you want to be a sports guy.

And I had told Moira, I'm not good enough to crack into a major market now because I look too young and my voice is still boyish. Right. And I said, maybe sports. Maybe sports they would consider me. And I still have breathy tones. I mean, I can hear you in your mic.

There's no breath marks in yours. There is breath marks in my voice. You can hear it. Okay. Yeah, interesting. By the way, you said, I still have that boyish voice myself. I'm still waiting.

Let me know when that kicks in. Well, it may not be the voice that's boyish. It may be the guy inside. And the boy inside the man. Anyway, Moira had been hired to do one of those, back in the 70s, woman's afternoon show, you know?

Like a Sally Jessie Raphael type thing? No, no, no, no. More about... Like the Deanie Petty show? How to cook things, how to sew things. Okay, a city line maybe. Well, anyway.

I'm trying to... it's the kind of show that is not available anywhere today gotcha and so she dropped my name because she said he's a real nice guy and he's he's really smart and you won't go wrong so i went over there and i uh i walked into a television station for the first time in my life, and I did an audition also for the first time in my life. Right. And they offered me the job as a sports guy. CKVR. Yeah, yeah.

And I was there for a year, and I made a lot. I had a lot of skills to make up in television. And back then, I mean, we're talking early 70s. Right. There was no cable TV. It was all like you got seven channels in Toronto. Right. And you couldn't get Kitchener, Barrie, or Peterborough.

But the only time you'd see those stations is if you went up to, you know, Coorthes for Peterborough, up to Muskoka for Barry. Anyway, some of the guys in the newsroom at CFTO came down and told Pat Marzen, you should look up this kid in Barry because he is perfect for us. He's really good and he's young and blah, blah, blah, blah. Because they were getting rid of their kid at CFTO. Who was their kid? Yeah mark olson okay i was he wasn't there a very long time okay i don't know what happened

there but um so i'm sitting in the newsroom one day at at ckvr and typing away and the the office was long and thin and everybody's desk faced the same wall. So there was like seven desks in a row. And I'm way down the end because I'm the sports guy. And the guy at the other end is the guy that answers the phone. And the phone rings, and I don't even listen to the ringing of the phone. But he picks up the phone, and he talks, and he says, one moment, and he says, Dan, line two.

I think it's Pat Marsden. Wow. Because you know Pat's voice when you hear it, right? Yeah. Do you do an impression? No. No. No, I can't do it.

No, I can't. I can't get down there. Right. But Pat is one of the all-time characters in broadcasting. That is interesting. Now, I wish I could go back in time and have this podcast and talk to Pat Marsden. I'd love to capture those stories.

I'll give you one story. There's got to be something you can give me that's fit for public consumption. Okay, here's a story without any foul language. Well, I don't mind swearing. I'll make this quick. Once upon a time, CTV and CBC showed up to broadcast the great cup game. I remembered hearing about this.

Yes, it was true. Yes. And because CBC was older and more venerable and had more money, they always did the second half and CTV did the front half. But anyway, when we are on the road, where was it? It was Calgary this time. Yeah, it was Calgary. And you have way more in common with the guys that do your same job at CBC

than you do with your own people. Right. Right? So every night in the little two-block Chinatown in Calgary, everybody would assemble at these massive round tables, and I couldn't tell you all the names. And then a lot of the guys are behind the scenes and the producers and stuff. But everybody has a great time.

And we'd be there all week. They'd send you there all week for a half a football game. So Pat Morrison, who was a world-class liver-upper. So I hear. Yeah, it's true. In the middle of the Yeah, it's true. In the middle of the week, it was one of those Chinese restaurants where you can eat upstairs or downstairs

and they had big round tables. But during the week, when they had fewer people, they closed the upstairs. So Pat is having a great time and then he had to go to the washroom. And the washroom is upstairs. So he goes upstairs

and does his business and he walks out of the washroom. And the washroom is upstairs. So he goes upstairs and does his business, and he walks out of the washroom, and he thinks, oh, man, I'm just going to sit down for a second, you know? Well, guess what? He falls asleep. He falls asleep. He wakes up at 3 o'clock in the morning, and there is nobody in the building.

And all the flashing red lights are on with, the, you know, the burglars. So, and he's not really thinking too well at the moment. So he decided, okay, he phoned the cops on himself. He phoned the cops and they came and they got him. And they said, you know, I'm very sorry, Mr. Marsden, but we do have to take you down to the station and log this. And he said, oh, okay. Well, all right, you know i'm very sorry mr marsden but we do have to take you down to the station and and and log this and and he said oh okay and well all right you know and he gets there and they say okay now you can be off on a bond uh but it's a hundred bucks or something it's something it's very small

amount of money for a guy like that lived the way he did sure but he didn't have any cash who's he going to phone at 3 30 a.m in calgary so he phoned the only lawyer he knew who was in calgary this this guy came in he did not uh he did not live in calgary and it was a guy who would go on to be a prime minister of Canada. Oh, can I guess? Sure. John Turner. No, no, no. The wrong party, actually. Joe Clark. No.

Gosh, you're all around him. Brian Mulroney. Yeah, I was actually going small, and then I was going to work my way up. Okay. So that's the kind of stuff that Pat did. Okay, there's footage of the Summit Series, one of the games in Montreal, the 72 Summit series, where you can distinctly see Brian and Mila Mulrooney at the game.

I just think he's just there. Like when you watch the documentaries, oh, there's the future Prime Minister Brian Mulrooney. And this will all come up later because that guy's son was on, well, what came after Canada AM. So it's all going to come full circle at some point. Yeah, I know that guy's son. Do you think that guy's son is going to end up in politics?

Do you think that's the natural next step for Ben Mulroney? Well, I would guess not. I mean, once you're an entertainment reporter, you're tarnished. Is that right? Yeah, that's mean, once you're an entertainment reporter, you're tarnished. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. Because you're entertainment. Okay.

But if it was hard news, he'd be okay, right? If it was harder news. Yeah. Okay. But maybe he can overcome it. I don't know. I can tell you that the Mulroonies were involved in one of the most embarrassing moments in my career.

Well, please. Well, once upon a time, there was a game between uh the nhl champions and um an all-star team from uh the rest of the league okay and the game was held in ottawa in that dinky arena the one with uh only like six rows of seats on one side. Oh, that's where the 67s played, right? That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, yes.

I've been there. So we're there, and the Mulrooney show, while he's prime minister, so the prime minister is sitting right in the middle with Mila, and you can't miss him. It's a small, it's a very intimate building, right? Yeah. So everybody knows they're there. And Johnny Esau was the, uh, he was the head. I don't know what his title was,

but he was head of CTV sports. And he came to me, he says, I want you to go up there. I want you to go up there and interview the Mulrooney's. And I'm saying, John, we, we don't have enough cable to get up there. I said, have you worked, worked this out with the truck? He says, I'll make it work. So anyway, he gets back to me. He says, and by now he's like a little breathless.

Yeah, yeah, okay, we're going to go up there. We're going to go up there. So now I'm going up. Now, we don't have wireless anything, right? Right, nothing wireless. That's right, nothing wireless. Cable, it sounds easy, you know, but the cable puller is like lifting 120 pounds, right?

And we're going, it's heavy cable. We're going uphill. We're going all the, and now the whole building is watching us, right? Because we're going up, up, up, up. And I got a camera guy with me. Now I get to their row. They've seen me coming. And I've, I've dealt with, with the prime minister on, on several occasions.

So, I mean, he knows who I am. And I get to the end of the, he's in the middle of this long, I don't know, I got to go over 12 rich people. And they're not young. Right. And there's a lot of furs going on. And, oh, it's like, pardon like pardon me sorry ma'am oh sorry sorry sir but thank you thank you for you know and i got to within about six or eight feet of the prime

minister right i'm out of cable oh you're waving him over well you know what? I didn't do that. I stopped and I looked back at my guy and my guy's like, you know, that's all I got. Right. And I turn around and bless his heart, Brian came to me. Good move by BM there. Okay. Bailed you out there. Okay.

And you know, that arena you're describing, that's where, you know, in the early days of the Senators, well, when they came back, whatever that was, early 90s, they played their games there. Like I said, while they were building that Corral Centre, and now it's the Canadian Tire Centre, but they would play their home games there, which was obviously not ready for NHL prime time.

But hey, you do what you can, I guess, when you're building your new stadium. Okay, so we've got you in your CKVR and Pat Marsden calls you. And what does he say to you on that phone call when Marsden calls you? Well, do you swear? Yeah, yeah, you can swear on the show.

I hear that, swear away. I answer the phone. I say, Dan Matheson and he says first off i'm not giving you a fucking job he didn't even say it's pat marsden right because he didn't have to you know he had that voice tally yeah and so and then he said um he said i haven't seen you yet i haven't seen you i want to see you i want to you know i want you. I want to see you. I want to, you know, I want you to come down and see me and, uh, we'll put you in the studio and we'll see what's going on. I said, and he said, honestly, all the guys here, like all the, all the technicians, all the

guys with, we were back in film back in those days, right? This is early seventies, right? They're coming down from Muskoka telling me you're great and I want to see for myself so um I did wander down and have a a chat with him and did a little studio thing with him okay and almost um three months to the day after he called me he phoned me to offer me a job hey and is this is this wide world of sports what is the gig that he's offering you here? Oh, I'm the third guy in a three-man sports department. Fergie Oliver was number two. Right. So Pat did suppertime, Monday to Friday.

Fergie did nighttime. And I did reporting during the week. And I did Saturdays and Sundays. Okay, gotcha. And do you have any relationship at all with Fergie Oliver these days? Oh, I have not seen Fergie for like ever. I really don't know what he's doing.

Well, okay, because Paul Burford, who is very close to him and they co-founded Just Like Mom and worked together quite a bit. Burford was telling me he also has lost complete contact with Fergie. So it sounds like, I hope he's doing well, but Fergie's not in contact with many of his old pals. Well, last I heard, and it was, you know,

somebody was guessing he was living in Florida. Oh. So that could be true, because he used to go to spring training every year. Sure, sure he's doing. And, you know, in the old days, which is when I was in sports, sports was really the sandbox.

You know, they'd send you down to spring training for three weeks three weeks oh my gosh in march yeah you know i i was it sounds like and again i mentioned freddie p earlier but i was chatting with bruce dobe again the other day too and it sounded like there was a lot of like be it from you know breweries there just was a lot of money flying around to kind of, that you don't have that money flying around in 2021. The budgets have all been slashed and cut and are bleeding out essentially.

Yeah. Well, TV's not making a lot of money. Is that the internet's fault? Of course. I know. By the way, is that a great disruptor, that internet or what?

Is it going to stick around? Yeah. Everything's going to be streaming. And if you look at news departments everywhere, everywhere, they're full of young people, like fresh young faces that wouldn't have been on camera so quickly in the old days, and all the old guys are gone. But is that because we all will work for far less money

as young up-and-comers than we're willing to work for as like a, you know, a 40-year-old? You know, you obviously know the media. Well, let's hear from you. Like, I mean,

maybe this will come up organically later in the show because we'll talk about your retirement. But, so, okay, so let's work our way through here. So we have you, when,

when do you work on a wide world of sports? Is that in, when, when does that happen? Well, if you want a quick timeline, 76 July is when I arrived at CFTO and Fergie was in Montreal at the Olympics. Right. So it was me and Pat. So I got trial by fire because I did all the night shows, all the weekends, and did all the reporting. So actually, it was good for me. That was good for me

to get my feet wet with everybody. And you know what Pat did? I'll tell you what he did. He was a smart guy. Yeah. He took me to the Argos and introduced me to the head coach and to the couple of standout

players that were there. Sure. He introduced them to me so that I am now Pat. When I show up, I have Pat's, you know. You're like a surrogate or whatever. Exactly. Yeah. Beautiful.

Like by proxy. This is Pat by proxy. That's right. Here's a great story. This is the kind of thing that would happen. You may recall this if you were a Leaf fan when you were a little kid. Ian Turnbull had, I think, five goals in one game for a defenseman. Do you remember that?

I only remember this from the history books, though. Oh, okay. All right. All right, so Ian Turnbull was a kind of a, a quiet surly guy, you know, and you know, I don't, I don't mind that if that's who you are, you know, and after the game, hardly anybody's there to, to get his take on things. Right. So there's a mob at practice the next morning and he's saying, no, no after practice and of course he hops the boards runs away and leaves everybody in the lurch right and so i have to go back and tell pat that i don't have ian turnbull and pat always said you do i said i'm not going to tell you

what to do you do what is of the most interest to the greatest number of people. Right. And it happens to be the Leafs, you know, through. Of course. Yeah. And Ian Turnbull is the story today. Right. And I had to tell him that he jumped the boards and ran away.

And I don't know how he got out of the building. So Pat phoned. Stan Obodiak was the Maple Leaf Garden PR guy. Stan was a very quiet, timid guy. And Pat bullied Ian Turnbull's phone number out of him. Wow. And then he phoned Ian Turnbull. Wow.

And he gave him a rocket. Like just, and I think his last line was and i hope your your fucking restaurant goes tits up like jesus what a different era like when you think about it the way they protect and coddle these players in the pr and you know you can't you get it's just just it's the fact you could call him directly and you know rail him as a member of the media is amazing. That's amazing. That's an amazing story. Well, I think he was the only man in Toronto that would have done that. Because he didn't have to show up every day at the Maple Leaf Garden.

Okay, help me out because I want to know, in this era, we're in the mid-70s now. So you mentioned it's Pat, Fergie, yourself, Dan. Who was the equivalent for, let's say, CBC? Brian Williams. Brian Williams. The time in Toronto right now is 1040. Yeah, Brian. Brian, okay.

Do you remember Brian? Brian's been here. Oh, okay. First of all, do I remember Brian? Brian's been here. Oh, okay. First of all, do I remember Brian? He's still active. So Brian, I'm a big fan of Brian because I love Olympics. And Brian, for most of the Olympics of my life, was the host. And it was quite a, actually, when I asked Brian to come over

and do what you're doing right now, the deep dive, he checked the list and he saw his good friend Dave Hodge on the list. And he phones up Dave. You know, Brian likes to, he phones people because he phoned me a few times just to thank me and all this thing. So he phones up Dave Hodge and just says, I got this invitation. I'm going to do my Brian Williams.

Sounds not very good, but I got an invitation from this Toronto Mike. I see you're on the show. What do you think about me doing Toronto Mike? And Dave Hodge says, do it and thank me later. That was the line, I think. And Brian came over and it was fantastic. So yeah, so Brian is like the

CBC sports equivalent to like the Pat Marsden event at that time. And I'm trying to, I don't even know what's going on in 76, but like is City TV up and going? Do they have a sports department yet? Well, they didn 70, I don't even know what's going on in 76, but like is City TV up and going? Do they have a sports department yet or? Well, they didn't, I don't recall when they really, I mean, they were famous for the Baby

Blue movies. That was pretty much all they were famous for. I don't think they even had newscasts in the early going. Yeah. When does Gord Martineau show up? I'm trying to. Oh, I know that. When does he show up? Well, because Gord Martineau came to CFTO from Montreal.

Right. In the year that, the first year I was there. Okay. So that would be in 76 to 77. So I worked, if I had worked for Fergie, for example, Monday to Friday nights, I would work with Gord and Dave Duvall. Dave Duvall. Dave Duvall, the god.

Is he a good guy, Dave? He seemed like a very approachable, personable guy. Yeah. I mean, he's still with us. Is it too late for me to get Dave Duvall on this program? Do you think I could get him maybe even a Zoom or something? What do you think? You probably could.

You probably could. He was really, really good at what he did. And he didn't play outside the lines, but he did do the board from behind. Do you remember? Yeah, he had to do it backwards. He had to do it backwards, and nobody could say, I could not do that.

Not easy. Yeah. Not easy, but okay. So Gordon Martineau, he's also been here, and we had a pretty good chat there. But so I'm just, okay, so I'm thinking sports-wise, what about Russ Salzberg? This is before his era, I'm thinking. Maybe that's early 80s.

I don't know. I'm here now just thinking about the sports guys at City TV, but I won't waste your time as I jog my memory. Okay, so wide world of sports. Okay, I did my first wide world of sports in 77. I started in 76 at CFTO. Right. And in 77. I started in 76 at CFTO. Right.

And in 77, two things happened. I got the finger from Johnny Esau, who was running CTV, and he wanted me to do some of the, I won't call them third. They weren't the premier product. They were dirty thirds, like boat racing and stuff like that. My very first one was Aquarama. Wow, what's that? Well, it's water skiing, and it's actually just a display. It's not anything.

Anyway, so I started doing that. So I was getting some skills at that. At the same time, I was hired by Canada AM. I was the first guy to do sports was hired by Canada AM to, I was the first guy to do sports casts on Canada AM. So I did a 7 AM and an 8 AM. And I did that for two years. So now I'm working Monday to Friday on Canada AM,

Wednesday to Sunday at CFTO. So for two years, I worked every day of the week. Oh my goodness. But you didn't burn out, didn't you? Neither did you fade away because you kept going. And back to Canada AM though, because at some point, and I guess this is not till the mid-90s, but at some point you're actually a co-host of Canada AM.

You get the big seat, right? Yeah. Now I'm going to just read a nice comment that came in before we talk more about... Is it from Valerie? No. This is from someone who calls themselves Seismo Allegra. And Seismo Allegra says, Was Canada AM as fun as it seemed to us?

It always seemed like the gang was having a blast. Maybe now's a good time because also Mike Rogotsky also chimed in to say, Many fond memories watching him on Canada AM. Did he prefer working mornings or evenings? So what if, Dan, what if you just, well, you can answer Mike's question there, and maybe you could just dump, tell me everything about, you can, about Canada, working on Canada AM. Well, Canada AM is way too early in the day.

And it just beats you up physically. early in the day and it just beats you up physically um i got up at 3 15 and i would be picked up at 3 45 so i'm showered and shaved by then right and do you know why we get limos because you're working while you're driving i'm guessing you're doing some kind of no to make sure we show up that's when you have to do your prep but no it's to make sure the bodies are there because you can't get you can't get a body at six o'clock in the morning right you can't get somebody else to do your job right but here's my question before you go too further what time would you be going to sleep so that you could wake up at 3 15 you know i haven't talked about this for a very long time.

It used to be all people asked me about. Right. Because that's normies. It's fascinating. Like my alarm, I was up before my alarm, but my alarm goes off to make sure I'm up to get the kids up to get them to school and everything. My alarm goes off at 7.25, okay? Which is not, most people are probably having their lunch much earlier than that, but that's

the time my alarm goes off. So I can't imagine. I really, like, I have difficulty wrapping my head around the 3.15 because I wanted to watch Canada versus Mexico last night, and that was a 9 p.m. game. And how do you do things like that if you're waking up at 3.15? So what's a typical bedtime for you in that era? 9, 9, 9.30.

But I would sleep in the afternoon. And when I say sleep, like like i'm an old guy now so i can fall my fall on the couch and sleep for 12 15 minutes it's beautiful i mean i'm a big napper now but then i 45 50 minutes for a sleep and you're groggy and you'll want a coffee and you're dragging your butt and it's not a great lifestyle you do nothing fun for five days a week now i'm telling you all the bad stuff right but the good stuff is the show itself was amazing because i mean i've i've talked to prime ministers i i talked weekly i think with brian tobin when we had the fish war, the turbot war.

That may be before your time. But remind me. Yeah, but remind me. Brian Tobin was the Minister of Fisheries. He was from Newfoundland. He was quite a character. He became the Premier of Newfoundland. And anyway, the Europeans were fishing our turbot, which I had never heard of before.

But anyway, all the bands came in. Sure. And everybody sang and played live. Nobody insisted on tape. Right. And it was fantastic. Shania Twain, I'd never heard of her when she came in the studio. This was before she was like a huge star.

Right. And so I interviewed her three times. And the third time she didn't wish to perform at eight in the morning. And of course, you know, she's a big enough star that she could come in and just talk. Right. But that's what happens with people. Amazing.

Now even help us with some name, name dropping of people you worked with on Canada AM. And basically, yeah. So who would be your hosts on Canada AM in the beginning and then as you proceed there? Well, Norm Perry was the male host for a very long time. I don't know, about 12 years. I don't even know how many years. I think 22 years I was on Canada AM.

Wow. Norm Perry was there for the first 12. And then we had two famous boys. I'll do the boys first. John Roberts. Wow. Who was a VJ, if you may. He was the first?

Well, he was tied with Christopher Ward as the first VJ. Yeah. And he had a magnificent voice but do you think okay i always wonder about jd robbins because now of course where is he now fox news now and he has a long time at cbs and of course yeah he wanted the dan rather job i'm sure and then he didn't didn't quite get that but my question for j how did he segue because he basically he segued you witnessed this the the pivot if you will uh rock and roll guy uh to serious news guy like not many can make that move i would think but he pulled it off john roberts was uh oh by the way his real name was robert's son but there was a famous sports columnist who was his uncle john robertson oh

so he didn't want to get confused so he just he just chopped off the sun so that's a fun john roberts he was um he was doing a swing through the states he was in florida and when his wife was held up at gunpoint in their driveway for the second time she said john i'm going home i hope you come with me but i am taking the kids and going home so john did the smart thing and went home and so he he got lucky there was an opening just then when he came back and the network wanted him and And so there he is, the host of Kennedy M. Well, I had this thought in my head if Bob Cole were narrating that moment when John Roberts' wife came in,

they're going home. That's right. They're going home. Yeah, that's exactly what happened. And John was a big, big talker and he was one of those guys that always wanted to tell you everything he had learned overnight. And so the questions would be really long.

And the answer would be in the questions as well. So that made him an interesting person at that job. Anyway, then he poofed off. And after him, got keith back right and keith i'm going to tell you something about keith tell me you know him about dateline right oh remind me he's the voice of dateline right you don't you've never seen dateline no i have seen dateline of course this is like this is sort of like 2020 one of those types uh news news well it's almost always about it it was a perfect wedding.

And then, of course, she kills him. Of course. It's all about... Yeah, I've seen my fair share of Dateline, for sure. That's Dateline. And Keith Martin, just to make out the right guy, this is the stepfather of Matthew Perry. There you go.

And Matthew Perry's mom is the, what, Trudeau's former president? Suzanne Perry. Suzanne Perry, who then made the switch to yeah so it's all coming look at this connect how come everything's so connected dan what's going on there's a small country yeah and it's good it feels every more the more episodes i do the smaller this country gets by the way keith morrison was a magnificent broadcaster he could do absolutely everything he's tall good looking a magnificent voice gifted

voice right very smart a spectacular writer and he he was the first person we ever heard do scripts like this it's a very big gun it shoots big bullets but you know that's very effective right it's very effective when you oh it's a very large and it's a that that means nothing to people so but he's never been happy in any of the places he's been for three four months he always wants something over there right that shine yeah there's, grass is always greener. And he wanted Lloyd's job. He wanted Lloyd's job, right. So you may have heard that story.

Eventually, it was, it got, at the highest level, the highest level was aware of all this tension between the national news anchor and the anchor of Canada AM. And so they couldn't keep both. That's the, uh, that's the goods you're delivering right there. Because, and, and, and back to Lloyd Robertson for a minute, uh, he, he chose to retire, right? Like that wasn't one of those, cause I, sometimes I, uh, we were all sold the, uh, retirement

story. And then we find out years later that, oh, by the way, they would have been happy to keep going. That wasn't one of those, because sometimes we're all sold the retirement story, and then we find out years later that, oh, by the way, they would have been happy to keep going. Like Roger Ashby is a good example. Roger Ashby retired, but he didn't want to retire. He was retired, but they spin it as retirement. But Lloyd Robertson wanted to retire, do you know? Well, when you retire at 82, I mean, seriously. Well, Bob Cole didn't want to retire,

and he was older, I think, when they retired him. Well, you get retired. Right. I mean, I was one of 300 that were retired all at once. Right. That was the biggest. Anyway, I had a glorious foursome to go to South Carolina over the winter.

Tom Kennedy. Tom Kennedy was pulled aside and told you're no longer wanted. And he was demanded his pass to get into the building. And he said, no, I've got a piece to finish tomorrow for W5. And he got up and left. And they let him back in the next day to finish his piece. Okay. Now, just since we're jumping ahead here, because I want to ask you about some Olympic stuff,

and I definitely want to talk to you about the NHL broadcast that CTV had. So this day we're speaking of, this is November 17th, 2015. And this is a, you mentioned this, this mass firing uh, firing, I guess is, can I use that term termination? That sounds so terrible, but, uh, of, of people, scores of people were let go on that day. And that's the day your employment, uh, uh, whatever we call it, Bell Media, CTV, it was terminated that day. And, and you're telling me you're in good company. It sounds like hundreds of good people were let go on that day. And was that a cost-cutting day? Was that just simply a day where they were going to cut costs and you

were one of the numbers in the ledger that was going to go? I'm a cost. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can tell you I was making, from 1998 on, I was making $229,000 a year a year and in 2015 i was still making the exact same amount of money and i could be replaced by younger prettier people uh for less money a lot less money yeah yeah they put um they they bounced uh valerie in the spring and then i worked with every woman reporter uh in at the network for the summer and then they bounced me at uh in september and lisa and rod stepped in so right, well, you know who Lisa is. Well, Lisa took over for Lloyd in the big chair. Well, that was years later. Oh, yeah, of course.

That was years later. When Lloyd does eventually. And Rod, by the way, is quite the FOTM himself. And he, I was actually recording with Hutch. So I was on the recording with Hutch when I saw my Twitter feed to my right. I saw Rod's tweet that he was no longer with the company,

so to speak. And that was a surprise because he was there so long. But not because of cost cutting. We're kind of used to this now. Michael Landsberg or all these larger salaries are being moved out for smaller salaries. That's right.

And you don't want to cut the salaries of the executive people. No, they don't. No, you don't. But Dan, real talk here. That sucks because, you know, you said that number, and that number was much bigger,

obviously, in the mid-90s than it was in 2017 because of cost of living had gone up quite a bit in that time period. But still, that's a good salary. I would think 200 plus is a good salary today. You know, I still that's a good salary uh i would think uh 200 plus is a good is a good salary today you know i think that's uh the fact that you worked hard through many years to get yourself to

that point where you could command such a salary and then that puts the big target on your back it's like are we supposed to um artificially keep our salaries low just so we don't get the target on our back like that sucks because naturally you want to make as much as you can. Like, it seems like it's counter is like, Oh, I want to demand a bigger salary. But then once you do that,

you know, essentially in this day and age, your, your days might be numbered. That sucks. Well, don't go into, don't go into television.

I mean, seriously, not in news anyway, become a, you know, I don't know, be, be an executive, be somebody who doesn't get fired. So anyway, here's what happens. Jack, Jack Fleischman, he was a longtime producer at CTV News.

He was a business partner of a couple of people. And then he was told to build a business station and he built a network, a business network. Right. He's very smart guy, very hardworking guy. He was let go. He was in the foursome, Tom Kennedy, you know, big, good looking guy, very eloquent, a new, but you wouldn't know he was a new once he's left the island, you know, for a couple of weeks. And Mark Sextrom, uh, who was a longtime producer of news. And we're sitting around down in South Carolina, four guys who were four of the 300. Right. And

Mark said, you know what, fellows, we're really lucky. We are the only generation that grew up with television, went to education for television, and then worked our entire careers in television. That won't happen again. That won't happen again. How has retirement been serving you here? Like, are you enjoying it? Are you enjoying not having to, you know, work for a living?

Well, I was very happy the first few months of not working, but it was an odd feeling. Like, I felt strange, but also I was quite okay with it. I mean like I felt strange, but also I was, I was quite okay with it. I mean, I was 65, right? I was 65. I had just gone in two months earlier to tell my producer, you know, your bosses can't talk to you about retiring anymore, like legally. And I said, I'm going to give you a heads up. I, I think I'm going to go at 67. Like when I wrote... Oh, so you were within two years of going anyway, but instead the way you went,

I'm sure they had to... I got way more money. Right? So you scored. Oh, I got lots of money. Yeah. I mean, here's a little quick story. David Schultz was here

talking about how he worked for the Globe and Mail and he was in a meeting and they were talking, the guy said, okay, for this period of time, we're offering buyouts like X dollars per year of employment if you want to do early retirement.

And Schultz said he had trouble restraining his happiness. Like he was jumping up and down and smiling because he was like, I can cash out now with a big chunk of money. And he was so excited

that that happened. So looking back, you speak to this, not me, how do do i know but it might be a fantastic like one of the great things that happened to you is that is what happened on november 17th 2015 oh yeah i got uh shortly afterwards i had cataract surgery got that fixed uh got a new hip i got a hip. So my golf swing is much better than it used to be. No, I worked really hard. I'm not going to downplay how difficult the road was. It was very difficult when I was working seven days a week,

very hard in the home life. And then I was on the road doing hockey games, two games a week, all winter. And it was never a home game because it was a beer fight between, well, you know who the beer companies are in Canada. And we had a Carling sponsor. So the only building we could go into during the regular season was Le Colosse in Quebec, which was a lovely place. Great food. Okay, wait, explain this to me. Hold on. Are we referring to the mid-'80s when CTV had the NHL broadcast?

That's right. Okay, okay, because you were the host of that. I was going to ask you about that. Okay, so what is it? Regular season games on Friday nights, and there were some Sunday afternoons apparently. That's right, yeah. And a bit of the early playoffs, I guess.

No, no, we went right to the final a couple of times. Okay, okay. So, I mean, looking back, I don't quite remember the CTV NHL broadcast, but I was pretty young, I'm sure. And my team didn't have a lot of playoff experience. Still doesn't, by the way. My Leafs are not normally represented there.

Okay. So, you're telling me that because of Carling, you couldn't, you couldn't, tell me, you couldn't go to buildings owned by like Molson or Labatz? What are we, what are you referring to there? Yeah, well, it was Molson back in the day. Right. I don't know.

Frankly, I don't know what it is now. But we also had games that nobody wanted to watch. That was the problem. We did games in american buildings okay and hopefully at least one canadian team but not always so if you've got minnesota and you know san jose how many canadians want to watch that oh yeah there weren't well back then there's no san jose so like really you're looking at like minnesota versus st louis or whatever like a norris division without the leafs basically how they bore us in the norris is what we said in the mid-80s here.

So, wow. Okay. But what was it like? Was it hosting? Like, your career path, you could have been the Strombo of 2012. Like, what was it like hosting the NHL broadcast for CTV? Well, it was fun. It was exciting.

Dan Kelly was our play-by-play guy, and he had the most, I mean, the guy was about 5'5", both ways. And he had the biggest rip, snort, and voice I've ever heard. His voice was the only one that could cut through crowd noise after the Blackhawks had scored a goal at home right the horn would go and also was the loudest building period right yes chicago stadium was and uh his voice he could continue right through it amazing unbelievable and uh so he was he was fantastic and i learned a lot from him i mean you know what he used to do in the morning? Tell me. Every morning at the hotel, we all straggle in for breakfast, and he's getting all the papers, and he's not reading the sports so much as he's reading the stats,

which you don't get anymore in the papers. Like the box scores? Yeah. Right. That's right. And hockey has something similar, right? Yes. And if he saw somebody got a second assist in every,

and he'd look at every game, every game, and it might be, you know, who knows which team, a team that nobody in Toronto would care about. Right. And he'd say, I don't know this kid. I don't know this kid. So he picks up the phone and he calls the team. And of course he's Dan Kelly.

So they'll talk to him and he'll say who is this guy is he just up for an injury or is he is it no no he's going to be so he would have something to talk about about this guy when he finally gets around to that and he also knows every player in the league like there's 600 players in the national hockey league when i when i started doing hockey my, this was my limitation. Yeah. I knew every Leaf because I was at the Leafs every week for years. But I knew two or three stars from each other team.

And I was way behind on the league. Kelly, the best I felt doing hockey was when Kelly told me at the end of the season, kid, you caught up with the league. So I, Kelly, the best I felt doing hockey was when Kelly told me at the end of the season, kid, you're caught up with the league. It's true. Cause back then, like the Hartford Whalers, for example, you knew, you knew a few of the stars, you might know the goaltender, Mike Louis, as I recall, but you sure, you sure didn't know who was playing on the fourth line for the Whalers day in and day out. You're right. And that's an amazing story. And this is where,

so you get that experience hosting these NHL broadcasts in 84, 85, and then 85, 86. And then one of the greatest tournaments of my life, because I was too young for the Summit, I wasn't born actually, for the Summit Series. So for me, that 87 Canada Cup, that was massive. That goal is still in the echelon of great canadian goals uh gretzky to lemieux and you were the uh you were the host of that

coverage of the 87 canada cup that it was really interesting because uh the last game was in hamilton yes and the dressing rooms and and the hamilton arena it's not quite as fancy as some of the big NHL arenas. And there's this concrete floor around the arena on one side, and there's a door that goes into the Canadian dressing room, and about 40 feet. What's that in meters? Oh, man, I don't know. Okay.

I can Google it. 15 meters away is the Russians. And, you know, if you've hung around hockey teams, they put these big tables outside their door so they can cut their sticks and wrap their sticks and do those things to their skates. So it's like the same team, right? The Russians are there. The Canadians are there.

It's like the same team, right? The Russians, they're there. The Canadians are there. Except Mike Keenan had Bruce Springsteen pounding, pounding in the dressing room. On the music, not the man. Yeah, boom, boom. That's right. It wasn't a private show.

And the Russians were absolutely silent. Like there was no chatter from them. They didn't talk to each other. It was really weird. It was weird. Yeah was weird yeah that's that era of course where there were no russians in the nhl yet and they were very very mysterious and kind of yeah behind the curtain and in but but a true team right this is a team that would play together all year round versus uh canada where we would cobble together the all-stars

from the nhl and say okay you guys play together now. It was quite the disadvantage, really, when it came to international hockey at the time here. So the 87 Canada Cup, that's iconic. We have the big goal. And then your Olympic history. You got the Calgary Olympics in 88, and you're in Barcelona for 92, and you're in Lillehammer for 94.

What are your key memories from those events? Okay, Lillehammer. Yeah. February in little hammer. Yeah. February in central Norway. Okay. The sun gets up at about 10 and goes down at about 3. Oh. Honest to God.

Right. It's like, it's the nighttime Olympics. And I was doing, okay, my shift was I was doing like kind of the replay in primetime, right? So I'm working from roughly two in the morning. I was live two in the morning to five in the morning, something like that. And I would get back to a ski lodge. That's where I was staying at a ski lodge. It was quite pleasant.

Everything was wood. everything was wood everything was wood and then about an hour later all the fans would come walking by going to the ski hills banging those damn horns those clanging things right cowbells cowbells cowbell gotta have more cowbell yeah it's olympics i mean unless you are buried in the olympics it's it's a real slug fest because you don't know any of the sports and you don't know any of the athletes so it's it's i take an entire year of studying right every day on olympics before the olympics begin so remind me who would who would be the Canadian stars of the 94 Lillehammer Olympics? Speed skaters, probably. But do you remember who was, do you remember at all who we're looking at then?

No. No, okay. No, I don't remember. Barcelona, of course, was August and it was like 92 Fahrenheit every day. Wow. It was the sweatiest Olympics for me. And it was the first time, in fact, the only time that I would walk past a manned tank

and a machine gun nest to get to work. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That was in 92. 92. And in the International Broadcast Center, the IBC is always, it's 50% American, and then every other country is the other 50%.

Gotcha. And it's kind of fun because you're meeting people that do the same thing as you from all around the world, and they're all into sports and stuff like that. You look like you're willing to jump in here no no no uh i'm gonna let you finish that thought and then i'm gonna talk about the uh the the second olympics canada has ever hosted in in 88 right because uh calgary yes calgary um you were you were talking about barcelona there yes i i was going to say in

barcelona they made the same mistake i just just happened to see it and hear part of it. The same mistake everybody makes. You've got, I don't know, let's just say 2000 people in the building every day. You've got them captive. So you're going to have a really great restaurant and you want to show off your own cuisine.

You know, the Spaniards are very proud of, well, the Catalonians. Sure. They want to show it off. And nobody wants to sit for two hours. Nobody wants to sit for lunch, period. Right. Everybody works 12, 14 hours a day.

It's like a slugfest for a month. And I'll tell you who made out like a bandit, was way down at one end of the building, kind of out of the way, there was a little pizza place. And what this guy did was he hired local university students that could rollerblade. Or maybe it was roller. I feel like it's roller blade in 92 that i think that would be yeah so if if the guy at the far end of the ibc wanted 15 pizzas they'd be there in 20 minutes smart because they could cook them in 15 and you know roller blade man can fire it down there in no time and and the restaurant goes you know nowhere very smart uh calgary uh what i remember from

calgary is that canada doesn't win a gold medal how desperately like did you guys want to see a canadian gold medalist at that that those games or did that matter to you i would think that would be a high on the desired list is let's let's get a gold on Canadian soil. Well, professionally, it's not. It's not on your must-have list. I mean, as a Canadian, you want to see Canadians do well. But it would help the coverage. I would think it would help the coverage because it sure helped the 2010 coverage where there was so many gold medals for Canada.

We own the podium, as they say. But Calgary, I mean, the big story as I remember now is Liz Manley finishing second because I guess Katharina Witt won the gold medal for East Germany. But yeah, so tell me what you can about the 88 Olympics in Calgary. So are you alluding to the opening show? Just every, well,

I'm trying, remind me. We, CTV, as a network, we had a colossal dropping of the ball okay remind me in the opening show well it was everybody was angry everybody was upset everybody was unhappy from the top to the bottom and the guy the executive producer of the whole thing you know hung it around his i do know right right up to lloyd lloyd was like aghast he was he had been brought down he was on his knees like wow you know and and now let's go out to figure skating and no it's not ready it's not ready oh well then let's go to speed skating no no no no no no just fill time for two minutes and then there's nothing to say you know and so you get a vamp but yeah it was horrible talk about

the weather it was horrible we got better and better as the as the time went on the other two were perfectly fine right but we had entered by 88 we had entered a new era of capability with television and we had not kept up oh so technologically speaking uh ctv had some catching up to do well here here's an example of what happened uh i don't know if you've seen all the equipment that's used in television you had videotape machines and all this. It's all very complex. And the executive producer had arranged to have all this state-of-the-art new equipment from a Japanese manufacturer of repute.

I've forgotten actually which one it was. Was it Sony? I don't know. I don't know. I do not remember one it was. Was it Sony? I don't know. I'm guessing. I don't know. I do not remember who it was. But to save money, we had the equipment brought in like two or three days before the Olympics started. They should have been using the equipment at hockey games and football games and, you know, golf and whatever else they wanted to do. Right.

And so the tech guys couldn't run the, they didn't know how to run the gear. I'm not kidding. Wow. Yeah. It was awful. You know, you call that a clusterfuck. Is that the term?

I've heard that one. All right. We're going to pause. I have some more to cover here, Dan. This has been amazing. I love the stories here, but I just want to tell, well, I want to say thank you to the good people at Ridley Funeral Home. As I mentioned, they're pillars of this community. They've been here since 1921. And you can go to RidleyFuneralHome.com to learn how you can pay tribute without paying a fortune. They're good people. without pain of fortune. They're good people.

Speaking of good people, Mike Majeski of Remax Specialists Majeski Group. I want to get these details right because this is awesome. Mike has reserved 200, 200 beautiful full-size Christmas trees. And you can have one in exchange for a donation to the Daily Bread Food Bank. So this is like a win-win

because he's given you a tree and you're giving back to a very important cause, especially at this time of year, Daily Bread Food Bank. If you are interested in this wonderful idea that Mike's pioneering here, write him an email right now. It's mike at realestatelove.ca. Just put Christmas tree in the subject line so he can organize his emails and get right back to you. line so he can you know organize his emails and get right back to you he just needs to know uh the day you like best for picking up your tree in mimico because that's where you're going to pick it up in mimico it is either going to be november 27 and 28 from 9 a.m to 1 p.m or it's going to be

december 4th and 5th from 9 a.m to 1 p.m jump on that there's only only 200. They're beautiful, full-size Christmas trees he's got. And the Daily Bread Food Bank could use your help. And last but not least, if you're looking for an inspiring podcast, I recommend the CEO Edge podcast from McKay CEO Forums. Nancy McKay has fireside chats with executives and thought leaders. Always inspiring. I post a new episode on torontomike.com every single week, but subscribe to the McKay CEO Forums podcast CEO Edge. I highly recommend it. Okay, Dan, so we kind of covered, we talked about your sports.

We talked about the Olympics and we talked about the NHL broadcasts and of course the Canada Cup. Woo-hoo, still a great memory of mine. I want to congratulate you because you did earn a 1997 Gemini Award. Where is that Gemini right now? It was just a nomination.

Oh, you didn't win. Oh, it's a nomination. I didn't win. But you know what? Here's something you'll... This is something you'll like. Apropos one of your sponsors. Yeah.

When I was in Lindsay on radio. Yeah. The highest rated part of the day was 1230 PM. The in memoriams. Oh, yes. You used to read the obituaries. That's right. I heard about this.

Uh-huh. And go on, because then I have a funny little anecdote about, we're trying to bring that back here on Toronto Mic'd, but please continue. Well, the obits were done live until one day. There's a story here. Yeah, it wasn't me though. I had nothing to do with it.

All right, tell me what happened. Well, someone was starting, got the giggles. Oh, no. Yeah, you can't read the in someone was starting, got the giggles. Oh, no. Yeah. You can't read the in memoriams and have the giggles. Was it a funny name, maybe? I don't know. I don't know.

Something he had for lunch, maybe. Dick Asman passed away. Now, we here on Toronto Mic, once a month, Mark Weisblatt from 1236, the newsletter, Mark Weisblatt comes over and we do have we do have a sponsored by Ridley Funeral Home and we do discuss sort of not only the big stars in the media who passed away that past month but the lesser known

names you might not be familiar with. It's really fascinating. We dive deep into those who passed away the previous month. And in fact did you know and you might have known this did you know Tom Gibney used to be like a car jockey for a car dealership? Did you know that?

Mm-hmm. See, that's a fun fact. I mean, it's sad that Tom's passed away, but yeah, he just dug doing it. And he did it after his, was he retired? When he was alive and doing World Beat News at CFTO, he was known as the game show host from Calgary.

That's where he was found. Found. And he appears in, is it broadcast news? What's the, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. What movie is that? Is that broadcast? No, that's not broadcast news. That's, this is where I have to Google it

because unless you can come up with it. No, I'm working on it. Okay, what a famous line, what a famous movie. Okay, and of course, it's Network. Oh, Network. Yes, and Network was filmed in your studios there, right? Yeah, and they're used to me. He's in that movie. Yeah, Network. Yes, and Network was filmed in your studios there, right? And Gibney's in that movie. Yeah, briefly.

Yeah, he introduces the guy, you know, I won't spoil it, but it's a great movie. And yeah, it must have been interesting seeing a big film like that that's kind of filmed in your newsroom, right? And in the studios. There used to be so much studio work production, but now it all comes... People won't watch poorly produced stuff anymore.

So it can't be locally. It has to be done by the big people with the biggest equipment, and everybody is top-notch. Netflix and Amazon Prime are taking all of that away from television. Well, that's a shame, I guess, but you just got to up your production values.

You got to just up your game. Is that right? No, it's an era that has passed. You just can't afford it. You can't do it for the... We used to have Sesame, not Sesame, what are they called? The Muppets came up and did a couple of specials in studio one at one time yeah the studio one in in cfto was the largest uh studio in north america i think i'm not surprised that included hollywood

and that i mean i think i hear shows let's say like i don't know the johnny cash show or like, I think Kenny Rogers had a show. Like I'll hear about these shows and then I'll find out, oh, they did it in aging court or whatever. And then we did allude earlier to Bizarre and Super Dave Osborne. And, you know, we talked about the local ones, you know, like, like, like just like mom or whatever, but Uncle Bobby. Yeah. Okay, do you have any, here, we are mildly fascinated on this program with Uncle Bobby because he would drive a bus, and meanwhile, he was like, for my generation, this is our guy, you know, the bingo,

the birthday clown and Uncle Bobby, but just, did you have any interaction with, I think his name was Bobby Ash, but any interaction with Uncle Bobby? No. Never crossed paths with Uncle Bobby? No. Okay.

I was a workaholic. I was in the newsroom or in the studio or on my way home. Well, here, let's close with, we didn't talk about you anchoring the news on CTV News Channel. So you did that, well, that's, what is that? You did that for, I think, 14 years or something like that. Does that sound about right? But do you start after 9-11 or what is the, like, cause you started in September, 2001.

Uh-huh. Um, yeah, that was an odd time for me because I was fired by the, um, the guy who was very briefly the vice president of news. And then I was offered, until I found a job, I could work on the cable side. And the cable side, of course, isn't like 15 minutes. It's 15 hours. And it goes on and on and on.

And the cable side people told me, all right, well come, come for a couple of days, just come in your jeans and, and we'll get you up to speed on the computers. So I came in on the first day and got up to speed. And the next morning, now I'm, now I'm sleeping in. It's fantastic. Everybody's gone. The kids have gone to school. I, i flick on the tv i make some coffee and i'm looking at these these pictures of what's happening in downtown manhattan wow and the phone rings and it's the guy at work he says we want you to get here and bring a tie wow so that was my first day on cable news all i had in my notes was that you started in

september 2001 and you can't speak to any news person who was on the air in september 2001 without talking about that story but that's your first day in cable news and i'm sitting there uh at my my kitchen island you know flicking from one network to another to see what they're doing. And I don't know if you remember this guy, Aaron Brown. Aaron Brown was killing it. He was awesome. He had just switched networks. I think he went to ABC.

And he was working mostly on a balcony out on some building where you could see the rubble behind him. He was unbelievable. And then I never heard of him again. I don't know what happened to him. I'll have to look that up because I don't know either. But I, so, so who was on the air when the, because of course the first, when the plane, the second.

Lisa and Rod. Lisa and Rod, right. Were the first CTV people on the air. Wow. Okay. And what happened that night when you went home? Like, how do you decompress after that day of work? I don't know how you do that.

I don't know. I never, you know, you have to leave it. You have to leave it behind. It's like a lot of people have jobs where they see trauma and, you know, you're buried in trauma and something like that. Many days you don't see any trauma, but you just have to leave it behind you. Yeah, like I guess like an EMS person or something.

Yeah, if you bring it home with you, then you've got big, big problems to deal with at some point. But what a terrible day in news. And Dan, please, if you have any, this is your chance, if there's any story you were, on your drive here, you were like, I want to tell this story

and then you realize you haven't told it yet. This is the time, my friend. Although now hearing that you like your rock music, at some point you need to return to kick out the jams. This is what people, so the first time we do, this is an intensive deep dive. I don't know how you feel about it,

but we just kind of covered the great career of Dan Matheson here. And the next time, we catch up at the beginning and then we play your 10 favorite songs of all time. And you just basically tell us all why you love that song. It's really an amazing second appearance on Toronto Mic'd. And I hope you're down for that. But are there any stories you were like, i gotta tell this this story when i'm on toronto mic'd uh and and then if there if there's not uh you alluded just before i pressed record you were telling me you weren't quite sure what this was about i'm just now naturally curious

whether you enjoyed yourself and how it went for you um yeah this was this was pretty good. Thank you very much. I don't like particularly talking about myself a lot. I think of myself as a conduit. That's what I did for a living. Right. And I'm pretty proud of my body of work. You know, I think I was a responsible journalist. I think I did the best I could. I worked really hard.

I spent a lot of time. And so when I stopped working, it was lovely. I mean, I like not working. Right. And I'm glad I did work. So I think maybe the worst moment of my career was the opening of the olympics in calgary and that was an 88 that was scalding moment well there are a lot of eyeballs on that one right this is one of those moments where you can't like hope nobody noticed but but the hockey games were great we

did we did really well we did really well i can tell you a couple funny stories here um as as the host of a hockey game you open the show and you're in a studio which is actually a dressing room you're in a dressing room with like a banner behind you right right and when you've when you've thrown it upstairs to dan kelly ron roosh was part of our telecast and brad brad park was part of our tele brad park and i played racquetball in every NHL city we'd go to. And I could beat him because he had bad knees. Right. But he was a very imposing character.

I was about to say, oh yeah. So after the opening, I'd go walk about through the building and I could go all through the building and check to see what the popcorn was like or what the, the, the, the coffee was like. Coffee's routinely pretty brutal. But when you come out of the dressing room and you start walking around to where the stairs are, there are more dressing rooms and more, uh, there's Zamboni entrances in every corner. And as I'm walking by the Zamboni corner, I see two guys in trench coats.

And as I walk closer, I recognize them as close protection Maudis who we would see every now and again. Like if somebody was from the Israeli government was there, you know, the Mounties would have a protection for them. And they're obviously looking kind of officious. So I'm not going to go over and say hello, but I just kind of give them a little nod and a little wave,

and I keep going. We just, you know, recognize that I recognize them. And then one guy goes, dan dan and i said yeah yeah he said come here come here he says the boss wants to see you he wants to meet you and so i go walking down the zamboni and now it's dark like you know you can see the ice surface in front of you but that's the only thing that's lit and as i get get, I get down, it's, this is the first time I met Brian Mulroney. Wow. So the prime minister of Canada called me over.

Right. I mean, I'm thinking, wow, this is, this is really something. And do you know why he was there? Uh,

no. He was having a smoke. Having a dart, as we say in Canada. Uh, do you ever tune into your morning? Like this is the, the Canada AM of course,

no longer with us as we dove deep into that story with Jeff Hutchinson. If people want to hear more about that. He was actually, he announced his retirement, Jeff. And then I guess they, they ended up ending the show

like just before, but he had like a bit of a farewell tour before they kind of canceled Canada AM. Kind of interesting timing there. But do you ever tune into your morning and no compare and contrast no no no i'm uh you know what's here's what's funny i was always a huge reader i would read a novel a week and that wasn't for work that was for fun for pleasure yes and um I had lots of favorite authors. And then when I transitioned to cable news, I had to read a lot. I had to come up with the league again, right? Right.

So I have to know what's going on in the stock market. I have to know what's going on in the States. I have to know what's going on in the EU. And I really got off on that. I really enjoyed that. And I watch American cable news. Okay, so we're talking like CNN and MSNBC and you tune into Fox News as well? You tune into all of them?

Well, here's what, yeah, I tune into all of them. Excuse me. I just had something in my throat. On January the 6th, I was watching MSNBC and Trump is having his speech and MSNBC is not carrying it. It's in the background. They're talking. I go to CNN, the same thing, but I knew where I could get it. Right. So boom, Foxy. And there it is. And it was remarkable to me how from the beginning of Trump's reign, nobody would even whisper the word lie. Yeah.

The president lied. Nobody said that. It took them months and i think there was a guy in montreal who who adds them all up he started adding them from the very first time and uh i can't recall his name i'm sorry about that but he feeds the american networks with how many lies well you know did that in fact cnn ended up hiring him was It was the Toronto Star's Daniel Dale was keeping a tally of like, I know he was doing that. And then CNN scooped him up, actually. But yeah, tracking the lies. Yes. The lie tracker. They're, oh my God, when you go in the South, they are so angry.

They are so angry at you and me for the lives we live. We are the problem. We are making America poor again. It's odd. It's very odd. Yeah, that's, yeah, What a tinderbox that is because you mentioned the insurrection there. Do you wish you were on the news?

Do you wish you were on a news channel that day covering that kind of event? Mike, I'm happy retired. All right, so final question here, Dan. Amazing. But this comes in from Boris and maybe the answer is Pat Marsden. We'll hear from you in a moment,

but he just wants to know who is the biggest personality you ever worked with at CTV slash CFTO? Well, Pat Marsden wouldn't be fourth, that's for sure. Harvey Kirk. Harvey Kirk. Harv was beloved.

And when I came there in 76 to see FTO, Harvey was a solo doing the national news. And then Lloyd came over from CBC. Right. And, um, it took a while for people to warm to Lloyd because he, he felt like an interloper,

but you know, we, we came to, uh, to call him uncle Lloyd. Harvey Kirk was also also there were people oh yeah don't worry because i can i control the music dance i can always bring it down here but yeah we're not being played off i thought you were uh there was indeed um a news reader at ctv very talented guy who kept a bottle of booze in his desk and had the odd pop.

And he was the only guy I ever saw that did that. Apparently that was kind of a 50s thing. That might relax you, right? I would think that would be sort of like similar equivalent today might be you're going to smoke some weed or whatever on your smoke break to just chill out. No, you have to learn how to do it yourself. You do. You have to control your breathing.

Right. I'm still working on it, Dan. Dan, what a pleasure, my friend. I'm going to get you that lasagna out of my freezer. And then before you drive off, we got to get a photo by the tree. There's a spot we take our photo. And I can't wait to share this episode with all the FOTMs. Thanks for doing this,

man. Thank you. Had fun. And let me know if you want to return and maybe next summer, for example, we could kick out the jams. You could kick out some Led Zeppelin with me. How about it?

Well, my favorite band of all time is the band. Okay. Well, I love talking about the band. Great to can con there, except for, yeah,

leave on helm is the only American in that band, right? They're all Canadian. So yeah, let's do it. And the great history, too, of Rompin' Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan. Oh, man, we gotta do that. Can't wait. And that,

that brings us to the end of our 951st show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Dan, are you anywhere people can follow you? No. No. So you can't follow Dan, but you can hear him here on episode 951 our friends at great lakes brewery they're at great lakes beer chef drop is at get chef drop manaris is at manaris mckay ceo forums they're at mckay ceo

forums palma pasta is at palma pasta sticker you is at sticker you ridley funeral homer at ridley fh and mike majeski of remax specialist majeski group is at majer U. Ridley Funeral Home are at Ridley FH. And Mike Majeski of Remax Specialist Majeski Group is at Majeski Group Homes on Instagram. See you all next week. Because everything is coming up rosy and gray. Yeah, the wind is cold with the smell of sun. This podcast has been produced by TMDS and accelerated by Roam Phone.

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