Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Ed Keenan: Toronto Mike'd #1148

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

In this 1148th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike catches up with The Toronto Star's Edward Keenan who talks about his time in the USA and why he returned. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Yes, We Are Open, The Advantaged Investor, Canna Cabana, StickerYou, Ridley Funeral Home and Electronic Products Recycling Association.

Welcome to episode 1148 of Toronto Mic'd. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. StickerU.com. Create custom stickers, labels, tattoos, and decals. Palma Pasta. Fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees. The Yes, We Are Open podcast.

A Moneris podcast production. The Advantage Investor podcast from Raymond James Canada. RecycleMyElectronics.ca. Committing to our planet's future means properly recycling or electronics of the past ridley funeral home pillars of the community since 1921 canna cabana the lowest prices on cannabis guaranteed and sammy cone real estate ask sammy any real estate questions at Sammy.Cohn at ProperlyHomes.ca Joining me today making his return to Toronto Mic'd is the Toronto Star's Ed Keenan. Hey!

Welcome back, Ed. Hey, I'm glad to be here. It's been a few minutes. It's been, Ed, three years. It's longer than that. I got the dates. Yeah, I know. I used to feel like I was in this exclusive club because what have I been three times, right?

You're three times. This is your fourth visit. And as we did that three-third time, I was like, I'm in some exclusive club. And Mark Weisblot just means that there's no actual club. Are you subscribed to his newsletter? I am. Absolutely. Did you notice there hasn't been one since September?

Yeah. I know he wound it up with St. Joseph's Media there. The Toronto Life Empire. And now he's got something else cooking. There's always something cooking in the Weisblot kitchen. But he's still here once a month. You're right. But he's got something else cooking. There's always something cooking in the Wise Blot kitchen, but he's still here once a month.

You're right, but he's actually not the guy with the most appearances on Toronto Mic'd. Cam Gordon, who was recently musked. That's now a word. He got musked like last week. Was that last week or this? Yes, last week. It's all a blur to me.

Friday, I guess. Anyway, he got musked, but Cam Gordon has the most appearances, but Ed, yeah, when you were a three timer, you were like in the lead for a short period of time. And I thought you were going to be a regular,

but you literally up and moved out of the country. And this pre pandemic, as you might remember. Yes. No, you couldn't zoom in. Oh yeah. We're going to get into the details,

but I did not allow guests to zoom in. There was no remotes. Like you had to be in this basement and when you're Oh, yeah, we're going to get into the details. But I did not allow guests to zoom in. There was no remotes. Like, you had to be in this basement. And when you're living in D.C. and we're going to get to what happened, but, you know, you're not making the trek to the studio. No, it's like a 500-mile drive, as they say down there. It's a long bike ride. It takes an entire day.

You can do it door-to-door in about eight or nine hours. It's a long way to go. Like, for lasagna, that's a long trek. So, okay, let's a long way to go. Like for lasagna, that's a long trek, right? So, okay, let's do the specifics and then we'll find out where you're at now. But before we even talk about your previous visits, Edward, Ed, I asked you that question before I pressed record.

I think of you as Ed Keenan. You look like an Ed to me, but I know whenever you publish something in the Star, it's Edward Keenan. Well, I mean, on my driver's license and my birth certificate, it says Edward. Yeah, mine says Michael. But people call me Ed. You can call me Ed.

So, you know, I... It's just... The honest truth is that when I was starting to work as a professional journalist, I was starting to work as a professional journalist you know after I got out of university and and after when I when I finally was starting to work my way back into the business after being outside of it for a long time yeah you have to kind of choose a byline like you know you're publishing something you got to put your name on it and Edward seemed like a more serious grown-up name than ed uh and so i started using that thinking you know that's my professional brand uh and my friends will call me ed but in in the you know the big business world everybody will know me as edward and then everybody still

just calls me ed anyway even if i wanted to switch to edward it's as you say i look like an ed i guess because i go out when i introduce myself as edward people will immediately start calling me ed anyway even if i wanted to switch to edward it's as you say i look like an ed i guess because i go out when i introduce myself as edward people will immediately start calling me ed like immediately i'll say hi my name is edward and they say hey ed how you doing and and so i think i think people whose name is michael who want to go by michael get the same thing they're called mike all the time david's get called Dave. Robert's get called Bob. Yeah, I will say that Michael Landsberg, I asked him if I could call him Mike and he like shot it down like it was an insult.

And you know what Michael Landsberg said to me? Mike is the guy who fixes my car. Fixes his car or invites him on the podcast one way or the other. I mean, and that's at a certain point i i had this image in my head of ed uh as uh as an office manager i probably should have i missed an opportunity to continue going by eddie all of my life when i was in elementary school everybody called me eddie yeah and uh and then in high school teachers and stuff started automatically

calling me ed and i didn't correct them again because it felt like oh i'm growing up i'm not right eddie anymore but then you reach a certain point where we're being an eddie or something like that jimmy starts to seem cool again like yeah you know it's when you when you meet a really successful put together adult who has a name like johnny or jimmy or eddie right then you think well they must have a lot going on because they they still go by their their sports nickname or their childhood nickname that's a good point anyhow so i have my oldest son is named james and i always like from the moment uh his mom and i decided that this was going to be a james we i always thought of it as Jimmy. Like, Jimmy, I thought that's the coolest name.

Imagine being called Jimmy. And I tried to make it stick, and still I call him Jimbo and Jimmy. And no, he goes by James. Like, no, it's not Jimmy. I used to work with a guy named Jim, and then one day I just called him James, you know, as a, like I was being formal.

And he said, that's not my name. And I said, but it probably was your name at one point, right? And he pulled out his driver's license, showed me. He said, Jim is short for Jimmy. And what it said on his driver's license was J-I-M-M-Y, Jimmy. Okay. Shout out to Jimmy James, a great Beastie Boys track from Check Your Head. And Ed, you checked your

head as you did all the way back. You ready for this? Seven years ago, you made your debut in this very basement seven years ago, November 2015. That was episode 143. So do you realize you were episode 143 and now you're 1147. Oh, we missed an opportunity there. I could have come earlier in the week and had the round number. You know, you blew it, man. Okay, so what I wrote at the time, if people want to go back to episode 143,

because that's like the A to Z. They're going to be like, why aren't you doing, they're going to be like, where was the talk about iWeekly and the grid? And I'll be like, no, man, that's episode 143. So Mike chats with Toronto Star columnist Edward

Keenan, I called you Edward there, about his years writing for iWeekly, The Grid, and the Toronto Star but we also make time to talk Rob Ford, the Stockyards, his News Talk 1010 radio show, at Norm, that was the big thing at the time, at Norm on Twitter

and more. So that was your debut. You came back the next year, July 2016. That was the big thing at the time, at Norm on Twitter and more. So that was your debut. You came back the next year, July 2016. This was episode 183 that you came by and we literally just shot the breeze on what's making waves in Toronto that summer and that was a great visit. But then, here, I got a song to accompany this.

Stand by, Ed Heenan. Stand by Ed Heenan. That's Kevin Quain, my friend. Absolutely. And you actually introduced me to this jam and since your visit in November 2017, five years ago, I have basically

been putting this on many a playlist and kicking it out regularly. You introduced me to this great jam. That's amazing. Yeah, I just didn't know it. And I know I should maybe, local talent like Kevin, but Mr. Valentine's Dead,

a little bit of this. Mr. Valentine's Dead When he's drinking Manhattan's Singing a coal miner's tune In his daddy's tuxedo And Fred Astaire shoes He's the best looking corpse in the room When I actually came back to Toronto

Recently, which I guess we'll get to Yes, we will, sir In about two hours we'll be there. One of the things I looked up is whether Kevin Quayne had any gigs coming up. Because if people out there are listening, I mean, he used to do the Cameron House once a week. And that's where I got to know him. I worked down the street and we'd get off and go see him. But his live shows are just a lot of fun.

and go see him. But his live shows are just a lot of fun. It's a mood to be in a bar and have him just sitting there at the piano pounding it out. Sing his praises, Ed. He deserves it. And again, thank you for introducing me to this jam. That was episode 287 where we talked about,

I guess there was a post-media tour star newspaper closure. And then Alt Weeklys, We'll talk about that again because Now Magazine has gone the way of the grid there. But we played and discussed your 10 favorite songs of all day and this is one of them. And we even kicked out a Christmas jam

and we both agree it's the one Christmas song that we could listen to in July and enjoy. People can guess what that is. But go to episode 287 to hear Ed keenan discussing his 10 favorite songs of all time you kicked out the jams i did that was a lot of fun and then i never saw you again until right yeah so that was five years ago it was november five years ago and

then it stopped so why don't you take us so now we need to catch up in the last five years uh where did you go ed keenan why did you leave us fotms well uh i went to washington dc to be the uh american correspondent for the toronto star so my family and i moved down there uh i guess in 2019 uh and had a bit of an adventure well i want to hear the details, but just remind us, who are you replacing? Well, Daniel Dale was the American correspondent, the Washington bureau chief before me. Of course, he, you know, back when I, my first couple visits here, many of your listeners would have already known Daniel Dale because he was the stars, one of the stars, City Hall reporters for a while, the City Hall bureau chief, or acting City Hall Bureau Chief.

He famously almost got beat up by Rob Ford when he was reporting on him. He was taking pictures of Rob Ford's backyard because Rob Ford wanted to buy the public park that had joined it. Yep. And so he went down there and then became sort of internationally famous because the way he approached the job is that he was just fact checking Donald Trump. That was something he had also done with Rob Ford. Well, I was going to say it really felt like the Rob Ford coverage was the ideal training ground for somebody who was going to cover a Donald Trump presidency. Yeah, absolutely.

Donald Trump presidency. Yeah, absolutely. And, and so, you know, he attracted a big enough following doing that, that he was a regular guest on CNN fact-checking Donald Trump. Uh, and then he eventually got hired by CNN to be their, their accuracy expert, basically the fact checker of not just Trump, but everything. Right. Um, and that left a vacancy there. And so when the job came open, I applied for it internally at the Star. Wow. Okay, so what were you doing for the Star before you got this new gig in Washington? I was a city columnist.

I was a city columnist. And that's, I have been, basically I was a city columnist for The Grid. My title there was senior editor, but I basically wrote about the city and had a weekly column and I would do sort of features. Uh, before that I was a editor at iWeekly, but I, I wrote a regular city politics column, uh, city life column. And so, you know, my whole career up to that point had been essentially as a city columnist uh and city feature writer just writing about toronto which is something i love doing and as we'll get to we love doing it that's

like where'd you go okay so just to let people know nuts and bolts here is that torstar owned the grid okay so i weekly becomes the grid so you're already in the family when they shutter the grid rip uh shout out to ridley funeral home uh missing the grid you are're already in the family when they shutter the grid rip a shout out to ridley funeral home uh missing the grid you are like so good they're like hey ed you already work for us like writing for this paper we just shuttered but like we have this other paper called the toronto star you could write there and you're like yes please yeah it doesn't have the same street cred you know but uh it's slightly Slightly higher readership. Yeah, I mean, that's essentially what happened. I worked for the

iWeekly, which was also owned by Torstar starting in 2003. And that was Torstar to compete with Now Magazine. We're actually, this month, we probably just came up... It was actually, no, it was last month. October 2002, I began as an intern, an unpaid intern at iWeekly.

Okay. In June 2003, I was hired there as a full-time staffer. And so then I, you know, I worked there as a writer, as an editor. But you're a young man, so this is the only job you've ever had. Well, I'm not that young. I had spent... I'll check that driver's license. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, I was 29 when I started at iWeekly.

Okay. So you can do the math there now. I just did it, man. You got a couple years on me, but not too many. Okay. So though, just so Torstar, when they launched iWeekly, which when I was a teenager going downtown, like I always picked up the two.

There was Now Magazine and there was iWeekly, right? So like I didn't have a good sense of, oh, iWeekly is a I didn't have a good sense of, oh, iWeekly is a relatively new phenomenon. It was just there. But that's Torstar's reaction to Now Magazine. I had Michael Hollett on this program within the last year. So we kind of dove into the origin story of Now.

But Torstar launches iWeekly to compete with Now Magazine. And then at some point, that that rebranding of course i week and i don't i don't actually understand why but anyways i weekly becomes the grid they shutter the grid you start working for the toronto star yeah yeah basically uh i mean when they shuttered the grid uh the managing editor of the Star, you know, basically almost everybody at the grid except, I think, two of us, one of the business people, ad sales people or marketing people, and me, basically we're given severance packages. And instead, the managing editor of the Star at the time,

Jane Davenport, came and said, you know, don't, your phone's going to start ringing off the hook and don't take any calls or don't accept any jobs until you've had a conversation with us. Nice to hear that. So you're not,

so it was like three weeks or so and I did have a lot of other interesting conversations. But, you know, for a guy who's, who was a city columnist already and was interested in continuing to just do that and for whom that's essentially just a dream job um the toronto star is a place you'd want to be to do that like being a city columnist at a big city newspaper yeah is like jimmy breslin mike royko like this is this is the the job you wanted so there was no better place for me than the star now that name jane davenport is that a fake name

like johnny dovercourt as far as i know it's it's her actual name but i didn't that's an ideal yeah her birth certificate because if i were were you know in a position like that in the toronto paper the toronto's most popular newspaper jane Davenport is a pretty cool name. That's the name. Because Johnny Dovercourt, he's been on the show a couple of times and does a great job covering music venues in the city, etc. That's obviously a fake name because that's a Toronto name, Johnny Dovercourt. Jane Davenport is like the equivalent. It is, yeah.

Just shouting out that name. It's actually like the John Doe, Janeane doe equivalent because jane and then of course davenport because it's like she couldn't go davenport and dovercourt uh you know is an intersection you can go to so and often confused with each other too uh the alternative name might have been uh jane st claire but the uh of course the bernie ladies already got there first yeah uh okay do you have a remind, do you have a personal relationship with any or all of the ladies, the Barenaked Ladies? Not a personal relationship.

Such a random question. I was a teenager in Scarborough, and they were at the time at Wolverine Collegiate. And once I went to like, oh man, I think it was like a Christian youth weekend in Sharon, Ontario, like retreat. My parents had signed me up for or something. Okay.

And Ed Robertson was there. Wow. And had his guitar and said, you know, like I have this band, the Barenaked Ladies. And then he sang like, you can be my Yoko Ono andald's girl and stuff around the campfire so when i got back there was no internet but i like started like talking about the bare naked ladies and went downtown and found that they had that little yellow cassette absolutely um and bought it and

so uh i have met and then tyler used to live down the street from us, and I think my daughter, one of my daughters, went to a birthday party at his house once. But I have no friendships with them. I've had encounters with a couple of them. See, every Torontonian worth their salt has a good story about encountering a bare-naked lady or two. That's pretty good. I will say that in addition to Ed Keenan's Toronto Mic'd appearances,

if you want a golden, wonderful episode of Toronto Mic'd, that Tyler Stewart episode is next level. He came and he brought it. Excellent. As you do every single time, even though it took five years to get you back here. I had to have something to bring, Mike. I left it all on the floor

the last couple times, and so I needed to accumulate some new stuff to talk about. Quick fun fact, of course, is that McDonald's Girl does not appear on the yellow tape. In fact, they've never released it as a recording. So the version you would hear on CFNY, because they played it all the time, would be like a recorded live version.

And nowadays, you know, even Tyler himself doesn't have a decent version of that song. Like you have this crusty old live version that was recorded on the radio. You have it on a cassette tape somewhere that you recorded on the radio where the announcer is in at the beginning and then you've got a few minutes of the ads from the time at the end. So anyway, if anybody has a clean recording of McDonald's Girl,

you've probably talked about this before, but you've seen the guy who actually, the reason they didn't record McDonald's girls because it wasn't an original song. Right. And the guy who originally recorded it, it was just like a novelty one-off, and then it became a hit kind of later.

And he tried to figure out why, and he was like, oh, man, it was the Barenaked Ladies recorded this. See, I've got to find that guy and get him on the show. That's the story we need to find. So if I had known it was going to come up, I would have looked up some of the more specific details.

So I had it, but it was like... He wrote a blog post or a piece about how this song he wrote years ago resurfaced and became a hit in the internet age because it had been a radio hit. Dean Friedman. Dean Friedman, there you go. He's the man.

So Dean, if you're listening, I've had a Dean on my show this week, Dean McDermott, but if Dean Friedman's listening, we need to talk. We need to talk. Okay. So you apply for this opening

because Daniel Dale is taking his talents to South Beach. No, no, no. To Atlanta. To CNN. So Daniel Dale leaves the star, goes to CNN. You apply for this gig and you get it. Yeah, and it's interesting because at the time,

a lot of people, when I announced it, were like, that sounds like a demotion. Really? Like, why would you, why would you? But I mean, some people treated it that way a lot of people thought it sounded like a big promotion like certainly a lot of my aunts and uncles thought well now you've now you've reached the big time um it sounds like to me it sounds like a promotion you're actually going to and and so i mean i think it depends on how you look at it

and whatnot it's certainly a higher profile job maybe a higher status job in some ways there's certainly a bigger um it's not necessarily a bigger platform because this city columnist at the toronto star uh gets a lot of play in the toronto star right uh but but you know you certainly are hobnobbing with uh important people from around the world on a more regular basis and all of that um the thing is though the reason i applied for it and this is what i think might be worth not just skipping over is that i always loved being a city columnist and i love this city but i had lived here my entire life i didn't go away to go to school or anything i never lived outside of toronto um and uh and and i had never i i you know in my career i've occasionally written pieces

about sports and i've i've done some you know federal politics and provincial politics and i've written features that are about like you know music and arts and whatnot but i i had toronto had been the subject of my writing for so long. And it's, it's one of those things, like I said at the time in a column that I wrote where like, you know, you listen to your favorite song for years and years on end and you still love the song,

but the drums don't kick the way they used to. the, the, the way the hook used to like surprise you every time is, is just becoming a little routine. Right. And, and so I just kind of wanted to change a pace and boy, uh, to surprise you every time is just becoming a little routine, right? And so I just kind of wanted a change of pace. And boy, the United States in the age of Donald Trump

looked like the most exciting story in the world to cover. And as you mentioned, when I got down there, Daniel Dale had moved on to CNN, but Jackson Prosko from Global, who you'll remember finally re-asked the question that got Rob Ford to admit that he had smoked crack, was down there. Katie Simpson arrived around the same time I did. Adrian Morrow from the Globe and Mail is all the old gang from City Hall. Well, I still think of Katie Simpson running down the hallway with her microphone.

Mr. Mayor Ford? Mayor Ford? When he talked about the buffet that was the Ford marital bed, the look on Katie Simpson's face is inextricably tied to that moment in my head because we were all watching it on cp24 feel like a fever dream now like when you you know when i have these you know these guys on like matt elliott or whatever and we go back and we talk it feels like a fever dream like i know we all lived it and uh i remember rinse on like i remember being you know engaged as as much as i could be in any municipal politics it was happening happening daily, crazy. Like that happened, man.

And you were there. It did happen and I was there. And I mean, there are lots of other crazy stories, but Toronto City Hall has not been like that before. And it might not be like that again. There are very, I mean, weirdly, you started by saying Donald, the Rob Ford was a good training for Donald Trump. And in a lot of ways, it's true because there are a lot of parallels.

And one of the strongest parallels, though, which doesn't necessarily go to their politics or anything, is just that they always take it further. They'll never do what the conventional thing is to do. And they'll always just make it crazier. how can i ramp up the crazy like i it was take take our daughter to work day take our kids to work day last week and my daughter came with me down to city hall where i have a a desk in the city hall bureau at the star uh so you know we went to the council chamber and with the staff who were there it just kind of came up like you remember at the height of the the crack scandal and i think it may have been after the more than enough to eat at home moment the entire like world media the new york times and the bbc and the daily show and

stuff were all at city hall so like like the normally already crowded press gallery at the time was just like overflowing with all this international press. And there was this full house of people there to watch the meeting. And Doug Ford, reader, he would go on to other things, listener. You know, his story was not over yet.

Doug Ford start picking up like a fight uh what threatened to be a physical confrontation with some of the union guys who were in the front row just screaming at them and kind of gesturing to them to to provoke them so they stand up and start screaming back at him so of course rob ford stands up and starts barreling over, like, as if to save his brother, and knocked over Pam McConnell. Right. Who was a much older city councilor, a veteran from the 80s of city council. Wow. And it was just like, so I was explaining this to my daughter, and it's just like, that came back into my head when you said, you know, like, or when we were talking about how like every time, every day, the story just got more and more nuts.

And in a way, Donald Trump's presidency was like that too. He just kept taking it to another level right up until even after he had been voted out. And of course, you know know i was there when his supporters tried to take over the capitol building so man i'm so many i mean now i'm before we get to the highlights from your like dc years and oh my god you were there for that too you know there's a book or two in you as we all i'm sure though it'll come when you're older but are you working on a book right now you're writing a book right now oh i're writing a book right now? Oh, I don't know. Cause you did the Rob Ford coverage. You did the, you know,

okay. All right. You got your, what? Your beacon. Okay. So the family. Okay.

So you're not a single dude with no kids. Like you're, you got a family. There's kids. No, I have, I have three kids. Right.

Three kids. Right. Like, was it difficult to sell them on, or I guess you only have to sell your wife and you make the kids. You're going with us. You're okay. You have no choice, but the move the family to another country that's a big uh a big deal it is it is and um you know the kids actually so here here's some background i had never lived outside the city and i had always thought i never wanted to make my permanent home anywhere

else but i did think it would have benefited me to see something, some other part of the world, just be somewhere else. And I thought it would still benefit me in adulthood. But my wife, Rebecca, she lived in Halifax and she moved from Toronto to Halifax and then to the Bronx when she was in middle school age and then back to Toronto. And I think that experience had always like, she had always thought of it as a good experience. Her dad was a university professor and so, you know, he taught at Fordham University in the Bronx for years and years.

His family only lived there with him for a shorter period of time. And then he commuted. Her parents are still married, but he then for decades drove back to Toronto every second or third weekend and came back for the summer. But she had thought that that was a really good experience. And so we were talking about like,

what happened is that when the Star sent out the announcement to say, we're looking for expressions of interest in this position. I came home and said to Rebecca, is it crazy to think about this? And she said it might be like an adventure, right? Yeah, it might be crazy not to think about this. Yeah. That's an exact quote. So, you know, we started thinking about it, and then I had conversations with the senior editors

of The Star who were going to do the hiring, or some of them, Irene Gentle, who was the editor-in-chief at the time. I went into her office and said, and she had been my direct supervisor when I first came to The Star, so I had a good relationship with her, but I went in and said,

is this the kind of thing you would consider a columnist for? Like, could I go down there and still be me and she said you know or would you even consider sending me right like uh and she said you know she wasn't going to ultimately make the decision there were a lot of the people like the editors who who reported to her but who are in charge of that section would ultimately be, you know, making that decision. They were empowered to make that decision, but that she didn't think it was a crazy idea. So, you know, my wife didn't think it was crazy and the editor in chief didn't think it was crazy. So I applied and interviewed like everybody else. And I'm trying to remember where I started. So once I got the job though, we didn't tell the kids that we had applied for it.

We didn't want to. So it was a difficult conversation to have with them, especially. And I don't want to get. Like without their permission. I'm one of those people who does post pictures of my family on Facebook and stuff, and I talk about it with my kids and and they're older now, like my my eldest is 16, so they're at an age where they understand what's going on and all of that. But I don't want to get too much into their private thoughts and feelings on it,

but I'll just say my son was going into grade 8 at the time. And for him, he and his friends had been talking about high school options. They'd been talking about their, you know, essentially their valedictory year of elementary school. He'd gone to a kindergarten to grade eight school. Grade eight was going to be their year to be the kings of the school. Right. They're already planning out which high schools they're going to go to. He started just at

an age where he's starting to feel like he has some agency in his own life. Right. And so sitting down and telling him, we've already decided we're moving you to a different country where you don't know anybody and we don't know anybody. Right. It was hard for him. And it was actually hard. Like my kids reacted differently once we were there. One of my kids really thrived there and made a lot of friends and was disappointed to move back. One of my kids had a really hard time with a lot of friends and was disappointed to move back. One of my kids had a really hard time with it.

The other one was kind of like, eh, a little bit of each. Right. But, I mean, what we hoped then and what we hope now is that that experience of having gone and started over a little bit in a new place, now that they're back home and back in touch with the things they loved here and the people they loved here, that provides them not just a perspective. Like, D.C. is not a radically foreign culture from Toronto in a lot of ways, right? It's like they have the same fast food joints and they watch the same TV shows more or less, right? Right. But it is a different place in the world. And also just the experience of starting to try and build a social circle or adjust to a new school or, you know, figure out, explore new neighborhoods and new things.

I mean, I hope that that winds up being a really positive experience in their life. I hope so. Otherwise, you know, they fuck us up, our mom and dad. They don't mean to, but they do. That's the foundational origin story of every great superhero and poet and everyone else. So maybe it'll be fuel for that. Who knows? Okay.

So before we get you back here and welcome back, you're like the prodigal son. You've returned, Ed Keenan. Good to see you. I can't believe you're here. Five years has been too long. But can you, I don't even know how you want to approach this, but I just want some highlights from the D.C. years. There's so many big highlights, but what say

you are the highlights of covering Washington politics? I mean, the thing is that we just were talking about the Rob Ford years at City Hall, and one day Marcus G. turned to me and said, I said something like, this is just an amazing story, right?

I think it was actually the All Night Deputations, another of those famous, but anyway, I said, this is an amazing story. And Marcus G. of the Globe turned to me and said, horrible for the city, great for us. And that's the problem of being a journalist or whatever, is that a lot of your highlights are actually lowlights in everybody else's view, right? Absolutely.

And not just because, like, you know, bad news sells and all of that, but just as a storyteller, the most fascinating and interesting things that you get, the stories you tell, have a lot of conflict and a lot of tragedy often, and sometimes comedy resulting from that. So, you know, while I was in the United States, obviously there was a pandemic here as well as there. It was an interesting perspective to have on the U.S. But I also covered the Black Lives Matter movement and the protests in the streets, some near riots in the streets. Like from beginning to end, I covered those street protests, not just in D.C., but elsewhere. I covered two impeachment trials.

That is now half of the impeachment trials conducted in American history. I have been an eyewitness to. Okay, so can I, just because I want to get the history right, is it Nixon and Clinton? Are they the first two? Nixon was never actually impeached.

Oh, because he resigned before. So it was Andrew Johnson. Andrew Johnson, okay. You were just a kid back then. Post, you know, 1800s, post-Civil War era. And then Bill Clinton. Right, okay. johnson okay uh back you were just a kid back then post you know 1800s post-civil war era uh and then and then bill clinton right okay uh nixon would have been impeached right uh but when he realized that he didn't have the votes to fend it off he resigned he peaced out yeah no exactly um so i so i covered you know donald trump's two impeachments and impeachment trials. Wow.

Then I covered the Uvalde shooting, the Buffalo shooting, massive gun rights rallies. I was in Minneapolis when the Derek Chauvin verdict from the trial for George Floyd's killing was announced. I was in Philadelphia on the day of the Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference, but I actually decided not to go to it. I drove back to D.C. because I was expecting the official results to come that day, and they did, and I wanted to be in D.C. to see the reaction to that. But I had spent days in Philadelphia where they were,

in DC to see the reaction to that. But I had spent days in Philadelphia where they were, that was like the real locus of the debate about whether they should stop the count or count every vote. And there were conflicting Trump protests and democracy protests in front of the convention center

where the counting was happening, which is why Rudy Giuliani flew in to have his press conference. Well, okay, I want to talk about that press conference. Because it was all going down there. Sorry, go ahead. And then I covered the election. I'm so excited you're here. And then I covered the insurrection as well, right?

Okay, we're going to get to that insurrection. So what I found interesting about Trump, this is what's interesting about Donald J. Trump. But in the states where he was down, it was like, keep counting, keep counting. And then in the states where he was like down it was like keep counting keep counting and then in the states when he was up it was like stop the count stop the count like it's just so wild i think there's a quote from him uh where he says something to the effect of like

if we win it's all because of me and if we lose it's not my fault like this is sort of that was that was just like uh like the other other night about the midterm elections. But that's Donald Trump in a nutshell. He actually said that, right? Like I think if they win, I should get a lot of credit. I should get all the credit. I should get none of the blame.

Yeah, it's not my fault. It's not just that like as a psychologist, you can look at a lot of people and say this guy's a narcissist. This is the way he thinks about the world. It's that he'll just say that part out loud. And he believes it. He's not self-aware.

He's not joking, right? He loud like yeah and he believes he's not self-aware he's not joking right he's like that's what he so for us reasonable people like when we hear that it's sort of like tough to process like is it a parody is it a satire like uh is he in on the joke and leaning in and then when you realize like he's being sincere and he's he's uh and he means what he says and he believes it it's quite uh shocking and disturbing i'm not a psychologist yeah no no i'll leave it to the psychologist it is i mean his his niece who is a psychologist right uh you know diagnosis him yeah diagnosis him as a she says as a just a malignant narcissist, right? And so, I mean, there is something like just pathological there. It's weird because you say like he's sincere and all of that, and he honestly believes or convinces himself of a lot of this stuff. But he's also like his main mode of operation is kind of cynical,

like openly cynical, like he talks about, you know, getting the better of people and deals and he's one of these guys who thinks like openly like that you have to be the macho alpha male and we'll talk about it in those terms. And so like he has a real view of the world in which everybody's cheating,

and I'm going to be the king of the cheaters, right? Right. But then he also, it's like you can see, and I haven't spent personal time with him. Not only am I a psychologist, but I haven't had reams of access to Trump. I have been in the same room with him. I have heard him deliver speeches in person and whatnot,

but I have not spent one-on-one time with him, so I don't know the contents of his heart. But I do know from watching him that you can watch him in public talking himself into something that's absurd, and then days of talking about the same subject, you know, accept it as an article of faith. I knew we were in trouble. I mean, you were right there in the heart of the storm.

But when he made that public declaration before the election in 2020, I guess the election was in 2019, right? The election was in 2020. Okay, yes, November 2020. Right, right, right, of course. Okay, so election was in 2020. Okay. Yeah. It's November, 2020. Right, right, right. Of course. Okay.

So the inauguration's in 2021. Got it. So here I'm all set now, but he, uh, when he said out loud that like, if we lose this election, it was rigged. Like he just makes this declaration to his, uh, large legion of followers that if the count comes back and we have less votes than, uh, Joe Biden, they cheated and the game was rigged. And to this day, there are, you know,

candidates winning who believe the 2020 election was stolen. Yeah. And he was laying the groundwork for that from the spring of that year, talking about how he thought there was a plot afoot to steal the election from him and all of that. And he was telling people openly that you'll know it was rigged if I lose. Right. That's that's going to be the proof and there is a big strain of the republican party's base uh and i and a big strain of the mainstream republican party now across the u.s who basically has adopted that that like democrats winning is evidence of fraud period like on its own because uh it's just impossible to conceive that they would win on the merits, right? And there's a bit of this phenomenon in some of those believers. I think there's a lot of people who are genuinely maliciously manipulating this, right? I think there is a lot of regular people who have cognitive impairments.

Yeah, maybe. But it's like, so in Toronto, my dad once said to me, and I didn't realize until later that he was paraphrasing like another American famous quote, right? But he once said to me sort of like, Mel Lastman won 80% of the vote. He said, I voted for Tucker Gomberg. Everyone I know voted for Tucker Gomberg.

My priest voted for Tucker Gomberg. Like, everyone I've met in my life voted for Tucker Gomberg, and yet somehow Mel Lastman won the vote. I don't understand how this happens. And I think, you know, especially in the United States right now, depending on where you live, but most places you live, like if you live in Bethesda, Maryland, if you live in New York City, you almost never meet anyone who's voted for Donald Trump. But they must be out there, right? Sure. Trump country, like all the media you consume, Fox News and whatnot and Newsmax and talk

radio. AM radio. Yeah, AM talk radio in the US is like telling you one thing and your Facebook, TikTok, Twitter feeds, whatever social media you are on. Alex Jones. The followers, the people you follow are all on the same page and you go to a trump rally and you see like 20 000 people out there and then you think and that that's what donald trump would say is like it's impossible that we lost georgia look at the size of my rallies

right and look at the pathetic little car rallies that joe biden was having and so they can't imagine why there would be a difference between I mean, by that standard, of course, like the University of Michigan football team would have the most votes. Right. But I mean, so there's a genuine sense

in their mind where like... Is that where you can't see the forest for the trees? And you'll talk to people who actually have that yeah but but like they're like they see the trees and they assume the forest must be all made up of that kind of trees that are right in their uh immediate vicinity right right well it's like but like they honestly don't like it's like it's a lot of that like um you you know there's an availability bias where what they can see right that must be true right right and so

it's it's inconceivable to them that that that the opposite could be true the opposite must be fraud right and so like anyhow anyhow that people who should know better and including, you know, like anybody who wants to pay attention to it should see through that. But yeah, there's a big strain of the Republican Party now who basically are saying

we need to fix the fraud problem. And in their mind, the fraud problem is that Democrats win. That's the problem. Like those dirty Democrats are actually showing up and marking a ballot right for someone other than a republican and that's not fair and that's why that that statement by donald trump is so like so on point which is basically like if we win it's all because of me if we lose it's i had it's not my fault like just just type that out

and it's amazing okay but this whole uh i i yeah go ahead no so i mean i i need to i need to take a quick break just for uh one minute i know we don't do this but i oh yeah yeah that's okay you get a small bladder it's okay i'll thank some sponsors you go there don't'll thank some sponsors. You go there. Don't worry. Let's do it. Okay. You take your time. In fact, I'll put back on your music while I do this here so we can't hear the stream here. He's got a very small bladder, ladies and gentlemen. That's okay.

I want to thank Great Lakes Beer. I would say that Ed's in the washroom now because of Great Lakes, but it's a morning recording and we have not consumed any, but delicious, fresh craft beer. We love Great Lakes here. We love Palma Pasta. I've already shouted them out, but TMLX 11 is going to be on December 3rd at noon. I hope Ed Keenan shows up. That would be amazing. Everyone's

invited. You're going to eat free pasta. I'm going to go talk to GLB, make sure we got fresh craft beer. I'll have, hopefully, stickers from StickerU.com. I have a Toronto Mike sticker for Ed. Thank you, Stickeru.com. I have a Toronto Mike sticker for Ed. Thank you, stickeru.com. I don't know if Ed's smoking the reefer, but if anyone out there wants cannabis,

whether you smoke it or drink it or eat it, Canna Cabana will not be undersold on cannabis or cannabis accessories. Shout out to Canna Cabana, over 140 locations across this country If anyone has a real estate question Any real estate question at all Ed Keenan just moved back to Toronto

We're going to find out about where he set up shop But Sammy.Cohn At ProperlyHomes.ca Cohn is K-O-H-N Sammy By the way we talked about Bare Naked Ladies earlier But Sammy Cohn is the drummer for The Watchmen I love The Watchmen.

I love The Watchmen. Speaking of 90s CFNY go-tos. I love The Watchmen. I had Danny Graves perform live at TMLXX, which took place at Great Lakes Brewery on September 1st, and it was amazing. So shout out to The Watchmen. Shout out to Sammy. It's Sammy.Cohn at ProperlyHomes.ca. Let me give you something, Ed.

There you go. I'm giving you something. Ed Keenan has a wireless speaker. Box! And that's courtesy of Moneris. Moneris wants you to have that wireless speaker. Do you know why Moneris is giving you... You don't have to stop the music tonight. I'm not sure the syllables work in quite...

Oh, it's probably this. You don't have to listen to Al tonight because Al Grego hosts Yes We Are Open. That's a Moneris podcast production. Al Grego has been telling the stories of small businesses in this country and their perseverance in the face of overwhelming

adversity. You can go to YesWeAreOpenPodcast.com Subscribe right now. Al Grego just won an award. He's going to come over later this month, and we're going to talk about it. He's an award-winning podcaster. I'm not an award-winning podcaster,

but Al Grego is. Shout out to Al Grego. And one day, Chris Cooksey will be an award-winning podcaster because he hosts the Advantaged Investor Podcast from Raymond James Canada. The Advantaged Investor provides valuable perspective for Canadian investors who want to remain knowledgeable, informed, and focused on long-term success. Here, industry specialists share resourceful insights on economic events, longevity, and retirement planning, growing your financial legacy, and more in each discussion-based episode. Again, it's hosted by Chris Cooksey. Welcome back. And yeah, you can, you know, if you need

to take shifts, just let me know, man. I can roll with it. It's all good. But now that you're back, okay, I want to just share this and everybody knows the story, but I think it's such a wonderful story that the Four Seasons Landscaping, you did not attend this conference and it was, so the anniversary like was just a couple of days ago and on my twitter feed twitter's a whole other tire fire we can talk about in a minute but uh my twitter feed i saw a photo and they're like oh it's the anniversary of the four seasons landscaping press conference so the fact is uh four seasons total landscape okay but so when rudy giuliani's speaking at this thing, and it was during this whole, like, oh, you know,

the stop the count stuff that was going on with the 2020 election, but they legit thought they were booking a four seasons, right? All right, so here's what happened. So I was in Philadelphia there for days, right? Because, you know, there were a few states outstanding where the vote was so close that they couldn't declare a winner. And if you'll remember uh donald trump's remaining path to victory like was like if he wins georgia and

nevada and pennsylvania right you know well i remember it can come down but pennsylvania was the important one because if biden won pennsylvania none of the rest of it mattered right the electoral college victory was secured right and so they start you know he starts tweeting like stop the count stop that he like in all caps and he was for a few days or a part of a day there anyway his his mantra was stop the count they're right they're cheating i have already won and now look at how they're adding mail-in the delay is mail-in ballots, right? These are mail-in ballots and absentee ballots. Why in this country we don't have that? Is it because we count our mail-in ballots before Election Day? Yeah, and in some states they do that, like Florida,

which the Republicans have started routinely winning. Florida, there's a long tradition of... They reformed all their laws. Jeb Bush reformed all their laws after the hanging chad fiasco of 2000 you'll remember i'll never forget and because of that they now have like huge absentee ballot uh donald trump voted as an absentee mail in ballot guy uh uh in florida and they count all those votes in advance and so they are one of the fastest and most accurate which by the way to me just makes sense like i don't understand why you don't start counting like what is it i mean

and you i mean i understand keeping those results under lock and key oh sure yeah but tabulate the ballots in advance like oscar votes you know you got yeah but well also i mean there's an issue where you don't want in canada we used to have a, and it just became too difficult to administer, so they actually changed the timing of when our polls are open. But you don't want voters who are leaving their house to already have a sense of what the vote is. If you said, oh, based on the early vote, the Democrats have won, maybe lots of Democrats don't show up on election day. Maybe other people who get discouraged or whatever. You actually reshape the whole thing by giving partial results in advance, right? So I understand why, but I mean, most American states now, I think all, I'm trying to just think if there's an

exception. I mean, in Nevada, they're fighting it and they insist on hand counts in some counties, or they're trying to. But there's machine counting in almost every part of the United States now. So the early votes can be scanned into those machines. You just have to keep the results secret, right? And any person operating the scanner would only know their precinct-level results anyway because they're being aggregated in some you know central office right right uh but yeah no it makes perfect sense but

if you count those votes in advance then it's harder to say look we we already counted all the votes on election night now they're changing the totals they're changing the totals of course because they were counting more. Counting the mail-in, which were favoring Democrats for the obvious reason that, for some reason, they politicized COVID-19.

And this is a whole separate conversation, but somebody was tweeting, like, why have masks been politicized? Because masks seem to have been politicized, like in this country, the conservatives are anti, I mean, it was a person who read it, and I said, well,

the moment they politicized, this was my, well, the moment they politicized, this was my Twitter response, the moment they politicized the climate emergency, the climate crisis, like everything gets politicized now. Like if that can get politicized, anything can get politicized. And COVID-19 got politicized.

It did, it did. And, and. So, so, so Democratic voters were going to be more likely to mail in. Not only that, Donald Trump was openly discouraging people from mail voting in advance because he was saying that was a mechanism of fraud. And a lot of Republicans were saying, don't do that in Utah and in Florida.

Like, we count on the mail vote. We have all these senior citizens who don't live in Florida, but who vote here, and we need their mail vote. Yeah, because they do count which is the fact but so donald trump had basically done a like vote in person on election day is the only legitimate vote campaign and so a lot of his supporters didn't vote by mail and right also they were less afraid apparently of getting covid by going to the polls yeah because it's safer to just mail in you don't have to go right you know so uh they

had come out of quarantine a lot earlier than everybody else uh forced themselves out of quarantine it's a side note yeah when when the side note you remember when uh vaccines first came out and they were hard to get of course uh and they were easier to get in the united states but they were still the first couple weeks really hard to get right uh United States than here, but they were still, the first couple weeks, really hard to get. And so what my wife and I did, because Washington, D.C. and the surrounding area, you couldn't get an appointment for weeks. So we actually Googled what in Maryland,

what jurisdiction was the highest Trump voting county. And then we actually searched their map, and every drug store there had appointments available so we we drove three hours to rural maryland to get our first shots that's using your brain keenan that's smart i will say uh fo fellow fotm mike wilner i remember during those that period of time where you can get it in the states but we didn't have it yet in Canada. He actually flew to like Pennsylvania or something to get the shot and come back. And I remember thinking, oh, yeah, I guess if you want it badly enough, you could do that.

Yeah. But I mean, the politicization, it shaped up similarly in a lot of different parts of the world. So who knows how much you can attribute to Trump. But it does seem like early, you remember here in Torontoonto really early in the pandemic and some people were starting to say masks could help and i remember i in in dc made my first mask out of paper towel and elastic bands because i saw a thing telling you how to make a

jerry rig a surgical mask, right? Right. You know, put three layers, and if you can, put a layer of cloth in it. But there was a left-wing, like, progressive warrior movement for a couple weeks of, like, do not wear masks. I remember this. Because you don't know how to wear it properly, and you're wasting a mask that should be worn by a medical professional. And plus, they probably don't help. They may actually hurt because you're wasting a mask that should be worn by a medical professional. And plus they probably don't help.

They may actually hurt because you're going to handle the mask and get the virus on you. Thank you for bringing this up because my wife was making masks. She's a, for fun, for, in her spare time as a, for fun, she's a,

she's a sewist. I think that's the term. And she was sewing these masks. And I remember I tweeted about the fact that she had a little, like an Etsy store and she was selling masks for like four bucks each or whatever. And they were really good masks, like Raptors. And they were cool.

I still have a bunch. But I got tweets from people like, we should not, don't wear masks. They're more harm than good. Like there was like an anti-mask, like an education issue. And it was like a real left-wing based at first. Like it's sort of like sanctimonious

minding everybody's else business crowd was really like mask shaming like how dare you wear a mask and i think what happened is that you know medical evidence like public health authorities who initially didn't want people using n95s that were in short supply right for their own trip to the grocery store they wanted like a nurse to be able to have that for a shift right um we're so that message got caught up in the they don't actually work message um but i think once the sort of public health authorities and medical evidence started to come forward and they were saying, no, no, these actually will help. And in fact, like surgical masks or their equivalent, if it's worn by both people, like my mask protects you,

your mask protects me. So it switched. But what happened too, though, I think, is that then Donald Trump, for vanity's sake, and he basically openly admitted that he just didn't like the way it looked and he thought it made him look weak he thought it made him look whatever refused to wear one most of the time right and you know but he did get up and say you know we are implementing mandates

even right right mandates uh but you know i think it should be everybody's choice like i don't i choose not to wear one we recommend you wear one right but i choose not to because i'm a real man basically right like i'm not and he got pretty good right like he was he did he was hospitalized uh very severely just think about what you like since your last visit five years ago think of what's happened like the whole pandemic happened. That happened. You know, I remember Donald Trump was on oxygen. I can't remember what the details were.

Yeah, I was outside the hospital, Walter Reed Hospital, where he was. And there was a vigil of Trump supporters there. Some of whom thought the deep state had finally got them there. Like, because they still thought covid was a fraud but others who were just you know praying praying for them and and convinced that their prayer was gonna uh do the job and whatnot um in the end those are the guys who would show up at the insurrection right like we didn't even talk about january 6th yet but uh like this is like a coup they there this was this happened we saw this

live on television yeah yeah well i saw a lot of it live uh in person wow um wow yeah wow so i mean and it is it was certainly the time i was in the united states was a fascinating time like and well and a lot going on you know you talked about the Rob Ford years being just this kind of avalanche and when you're the only American correspondent for the Toronto Star that avalanche like it is nationwide right and it's constantly happening and so you know uh there's a whole saying of like drinking from the fire hose right but like if you when I was down there you actually just had to choose the fire hose. Right. But like, when I was down there, you actually just had to choose

which fire hose you wanted to put your face in front of because it was like, there's just hundreds of them gushing. Okay, so you said you were the only American correspondent for the Toronto Star, but here you are living in Toronto. So what happened that you came home? Was that an Ed Keenan decision?

Was that a Toronto Star decision? Give me the real talk. Well, it was an Ed Keenan decision, but it was a conversation that was started by some of the editors at the Star. And so the honest truth of it is that I had planned to stay another couple of years. plan to stay another couple years um but uh my wife rebecca in particular even i uh we're also starting to think like we were starting to really feel like being away from toronto hurt partly

because there was stuff we missed but also um like my my parents are both alive and relatively healthy uh for for being in their mid-70s and and rebecca's parents too but something will happen like um like covid happened and we basically couldn't come home hardly at all for like two years right um which which you know that's different we're only an eight hour drive away so our plan had been to come home or have somebody come and visit us like essentially once a month right like um and come home for like a few weeks in the summer and uh at christmas and and basically we we almost nobody came to visit us and we didn't get to visit anybody here. But also, you know, when you're thinking about COVID and you're being trapped on the other side of the border and you think, what

if my parents get really sick from this? What if they're hospitalized with this? And I can't be there, right? Even if I wanted to come home, I would have to quarantine for two weeks before I could even go and see them. Right. And, you know, uh, so like one of our parents had a hip replacement last year and, and that's not life threatening, but it is the kind of thing where it hurts to not be able to go over to their house and make them dinner and just check if they're okay. And, and bring the kids by, right? Right. You start to think there's a limited number of years, um, when you're going to have this relationship, right? So you start to think there's a limited number of years when you're going to have this relationship,

when your kids are going to develop this relationship. And so things like that, there were a few things like that that were starting to make us think, you know, as much as I wanted to cover another American election campaign, basically, like when there wasn't COVID, hopefully, and it could be a more conventional campaign, basically, like when there wasn't COVID, hopefully. And it could be a more conventional campaign. There were also personal reasons that we wanted to come home. And so one of my editors at the Star called to say, we're really happy with the work you're doing

down there. And we're happy for you to continue doing that work. If that's what you want to do for as long as you want to do it. But, um, we also really miss your voice as a Toronto city columnist. And, um, you know, they have other people at the star who also write on city issues and whatnot,

but they felt like there was a particular kind of thing that I did that a newspaper like the star needs. Uh, and if, if, if I wanted to come back and do that, they were willing to have that conversation, um, about how to make that easier. Um, and, and if not, that's fine. But if not, they also might have to go out and try and see if they could recruit somebody to fill that role because it was a necessary role and so so you know that having started that conversation with Rebecca and then we didn't want to have the conversation with the kids because if we chose one way or another we didn't want it to you know break their hearts or whatever uh but you know the more we thought about it with more, it seemed like the timing was right. Like it was, uh, professionally a really exciting job to have.

Um, and for, for, for us personally, it was also like a real adventure and a really interesting thing. I mean, Washington DC is actually just a great city to live in and, uh, maybe more so than I expected before i moved there uh but it also felt like to me it was the right time to come home so the star was happy to pave the way for that um they they were excited about it but they didn't sort of force me into it they presented to me as like hey here's just something that. Like, we're looking for somebody who does what you used to do. Yeah, they're looking for an Ed Tina. And your name came up.

Like, hey, what about Ed? Well, what's his plan? How long is he thinking about being there? Because maybe we don't need to go hire somebody if he's going to come back. But I have a question, Ed. Did they need to, like, who's the current American correspondent for the Toronto Star? There isn't one.

See, there's tough questions on Toronto. No, no, no, that's okay. And if I had, like, the authoritative answers, I would give them to you. There's not one right now. The most recently I was told is that they haven't made a final decision to not replace me ever there, but they're not currently replacing me there. And I think there's a... The Star used to have a lot of foreign bureaus in Hong Kong and in...

London. South Asia. London, Ontario. London, Johannesburg, South Africa, in Israel. They used to have a lot of foreign bureaus. And the Washington Bureau has been the last one. All the rest had been shuttered, basically as cost-cutting measures over the years,

where you're trying to decide when the very continued thriving and existence of the paper is the subject of of the strategic discussion it's like do we cut costs in investigations or do we cut costs in our south african bureau uh where we can pick up wire services and right and so you know slowly they've made the decisions to close those other ones they haven't made a decision to permanently shutter the washington bureau as far as i understand, yet. But there's a...

Yeah. There's a... I am not involved in this conversation, but my understanding is that there's a strategic conversation about how to approach foreign coverage going on in the Star right now, and that the results of that conversation will decide how they want to tackle that.

Right now, also, Alan Woods, who lives in Montreal, who just actually had been living in Russia for years, is providing sort of American analysis, reporting mostly by phone. And I think that if he needs to travel to cover a story in person, they will send him to do that. But I think for the last few weeks,

at least as far as I can see, Alan Woods is doing some coverage of the United States. Well, we should just address the elephant in the room, which is that there's this looming deadline at Torstar, because you have the owners, these what does Weissblatt call them?

No longer BFFs, he calls them. But there's literally a deadline to sort this out. These two people can't coexist, and to the victor will go the newspaper, which is, by the way, I'm going to ask you about what's up with One Young Street, because for years my wife worked at One Young Street,

but not at the Star, but at some other business in there. And I guess, so there's two things going on here, but to do the One Young Street thing quickly, do you still have an office? Like is One Young Street done as a Toronto Star office? Let me just check my calendar here. Is it?

No, actually, so as of Monday, we are speaking on Thursday. Right, the 10th. The 10th, yeah. So as of the upcoming Monday, the entire Star office is moving to the well at King and Spadina.

End of an era. It's actually Spadina in front, sorry. So at the corner of Spadina in front where the well is, that used to be where the Globe and Mail was. Before that, it was the Toronto Telegram. There's a long newspaper history on that site. Before that, it was the Toronto Telegram. There's a long newspaper history on that site. But yes, it is absolutely the end of the era

because the Toronto Star Building at 1 Yonge Street is no longer going to be the Toronto Star Building. The company built it there. The Star's office was originally... Well, I actually don't remember the street names.

It was originally like in a storefront when it was founded as a strike sheet. But for generations, it was at the corner of Bay and King. And they sold that site to the developers of First Canadian Place, the Bank of Montreal Tower. That has been there since you and I have been growing up in the city, right? The big white marble center of the banking and Bay Street legal community. So that used to be, for generations of people, that was the Star Building. And then, you know, for 50 years now, it's been one Yonge Street, which was built by the Star to house their offices.

The Star sold that building to a property management company. Man, I've seen those blueprints. Years ago. That development's going to be wild. But they sold it a long time ago, the building. And then they had a long-term lease on whatever terms to stay there as tenants um and this is the last week it was the writing was always they were always going to eventually move

out of there because i mean it was built 50 years ago and you wouldn't build a build it needs updating right it needs a lot of updating. And also, it was built at a time when the Star was a much bigger organization than it is now. Sure. Both because technology, partly because the newspaper business isn't massively profitable the way it was, but also partly because you used to have to have armies of, you know, copy boys and steno girls and a live switchboard and a printing press in your building, and you no longer need that stuff, right? And after the pandemic, everybody learned, oh, well, many of us don't even need to be in the office on a regular basis. We can, in the journalism, lots of people were already

not in the office on a regular basis because as michael cook the former editor of the star once said to me there's no stories in here boy get out there and chase it down right right like you're not gonna find the story sitting at your desk uh and you gotta get out in the city but but even more so than ever before like you don't need to be in the office. So, so, but it is the end of an era. End of an era, but also how much is this,

uh, this, this legal battle or whatever, this mediation, the two guys who now own Torstar who no longer want to work together. Like this must be the, the, the chatter and there's no cafeteria anymore to have the talks. But,

uh, like, yeah, like a lot of decisions I'm sure are waiting on that to get sorted out they are now um so so paul and jordan who bought the star together uh who are no longer friends and you know what you know what bffs you know what i love that here's just an aside yeah i love the topics where we can talk and i just feel like this is the most casual thing and i can just say whatever I want. Oh, and that reminds me,

you are the only guest I can think of who required an edit to a Toronto Mic episode. And now it can be told that the reason was because I revealed information to you that was under

a publication ban and I had just completely forgotten that that publication ban had been in place. So just to let the FOTMs know because I love this moment, it's like we finish up,

like you know, in all mine, I don't edit anything as people know. It's part of the charm of this podcast, unedited moment. It's like we finish up, like, you know, in all mine, I don't edit anything, as people know. It's part of the charm of this podcast, unedited, but at the end,

you look at me like, oh, he's like, oh, I said something that could get me in big trouble and then I said,

what did you say? And potentially get you in big trouble too. Well, yeah, I guess so. And then I said, well, I can edit that for you,

Mr. Keenan, because I don't want us to get in big trouble and we took it out. But yeah, I just remember that. So don't say anything that's going to require an edit because I don't want us to get in big trouble, and we took it out. But yeah, I just remember that. So don't say anything that's going to require an edit, because I don't want to edit this podcast.

No, and I don't plan to. But what I was going to say, though, is that here's my commitment, is that I try to tell the truth, right? And I'm trying not to spin. I know. I'm watching you sweat over there. It's fun.

There are things that I don't know, and it would get me in trouble to speculate on. And then there are things that are just matters of like, you know. So here's what I will say that is like as honest as I can be and as open as I can be without getting into like office gossip, right? Like this is more like the truth as we understand it, being employees of the star, is that Jordan Bitov and Paul Rivette got together to buy the star

in the early days of their partnership. John Hondrich, who was the representative of the families who had previously owned it and had this commitment to, you know, his driving, as it turned out, dying wish was to keep the paper alive and give it the best possible chance to succeed in the future and still be the star, still be dedicated to the Atkinson principles that his family had made and then lost a fortune in the service of, right? So, you know, they got it and started making what looked to a lot of us like encouraging investments and stuff.

There was some hiring done. There was some whatever. And so I think recently they no longer agree about the direction of the paper or the direction of the business and how it should proceed. They have filed court documents that, and Jordan Bitov has, Paul Rivette filed some court documents. Jordan Bitov has responded with some public statements. They disagree about whether certain kinds of cost cutting need to be done to save the

business and other, other things. And as a result, they, they seem to no longer trust each other. And I think that's all public. And so as you know, inside the company a lot, there's, there's been a sense that like mom and dad, and maybe our recently adoptive mom and dad are getting a divorce. Right. and maybe our recently adoptive mom and dad, are getting a divorce.

And what they're deciding in, they went to court, but in court what they decided was to go to arbitration and to try and break up the company and sort its assets between them through a private arbitration process, mediation process. They're in that process now. And so yes, to come around, I'm not privy to the discussions of, like, the strategic direction of the paper anyway.

Right. are on hold right now because uh it's unclear who who among the two manage the the owners who are activists they're proprietors right right they consider themselves proprietors not like passive investors they are like managing the company and they it's right now it's's unclear who gets to authorize new spending or budget cuts or whatever. So when they first took over together, they started planning our move to the well, right? And they announced that fairly early, and that move to Front and Spadina out of One Young has been in the works for a year, and now we're still moving there. But other decisions, possibly including how to tackle foreign coverage, but lots of other decisions

are probably going to... They're going to be... We have to wait and see who gets to decide. Right? Which makes sense to decide. Right. Which makes sense to me. Like, like you'd pause those decisions until you have the dust settles on who owns this thing. And there are some,

some of those kinds of decisions. Like, like we recently had a couple of business reporters go on and take other jobs. One at, you know, wire services and whatnot, Bloomberg in the States.

And so did they have posted the jobs and hired one new reporter to replace one of those people. They've posted another one. There's some hiring going on. Some of the strategy is just continuing to unfold. The paper hasn't ground to a halt to wait for this dispute. But I think the big strategic decisions about how things are going to unfold over the next few years

are in flux right now, would be my understanding, because it's not clear who ultimately is going to own this paper and who ultimately is going to be making those decisions. The Torstar, which Jordan and Paul bought, owns a lot of other assets right it owns other daily newspapers um in ontario it owns a whole chain of uh community newspapers

uh these guys started together a gambling operation a legal gambling operation that's also under under the same corporate umbrella uh they own some online properties vertical uh vertical scope i i believe they still own uh although they sold i haven't kept up on all the corporate stuff but that it's it's a company that owns other things besides the toronto star and basically what they're deciding now is that they're breaking up as business partners and they're splitting up the company, and who gets what, right? And so the question ultimately is going to be which of them winds up being in charge of the Toronto Star, and it seems like at the core of their dispute

is that they have fundamental disagreements about the best way to make the business a roaring success, right? It's good that both of them still believe that it can be a success and want it to be, from what I can tell. So we will have to wait and see, just like everybody else. But yes, potentially, decisions like, should we keep open a forum bureau and or open new forum bureaus or should we attack foreign coverage a different way might be the kind of decision that's going to be waiting on ultimately who's going to authorize that decision, right, and what their strategy is. You mentioned John Hondrich.

Did you read his memoir? I have read his memoir, yeah. And I attended the launch of it the other day. Okay, not much chatter in that memoir about iWeekly or The Grid. Almost none. And you know, that doesn't really surprise me because I think...

I mean, I would have thought... But you must be a little disappointed when you read it and realized that there was, like, didn't, you know, wasn't worthy of a chapter or two. I don't know. Here's the weird thing, is that when I opened the book

when I first got it, as many people do, many people who, when you read a memoir by somebody you know. Right, you want to know if you're in it you flip to the index right

and I did look up my own name and I'm not mentioned in it anywhere as far as I can tell unless I skipped a page I did this with Ben Maregi's book

Ben Maregi put out a book and I actually the first thing I did was oh because we've worked pretty closely together the last few years and it's called I Thought He Was Dead

and I realized I went to the index and I was not in this book he just erased me but I don't think I even checked if iWeekly or The Grid were in the index like it was not in this book and he just i don't think i even checked if i weekly or the grid were in the index like it's like you and mark wiseblatt tweeted something and i was like oh yeah i guess that is a bit odd that it didn't at least you know we're

all over this but here's here's the thing in michael hollett's mind yeah uh there was a sense that like i weekly was like this corporate assassination project. And I think legitimately, I wasn't around at the start of this. So his story, he's told to you. And I think The Star maybe made a play to buy now. So you heard that episode? You just told me about it earlier today. I didn't actually listen to it.

But I've heard Michael Pollitt's version of this story a few different times. I worked for his main competitor for years. The Star made a play to buy uh now and when that play was rejected um and they had already launched the what's on section of the star i think too as i like let's be entertainment you know also came out on thursdays um but so i weekly was was launched as a competitor to get into that market and and i think so i i'm not privy to how big a play the star thought it was at the time and all of that.

But by the time I got there, there was still a lot of chatter in like alternative Toronto, encouraged by now. As like, there's this well-funded corporate entity that is like fake alternative, trying to drive us out of business and they're just following the marching orders of john honridge right like their star overloads are like sending them their marching orders and they're going out and executing them whereas like by the time i got there what it felt like to us who were on the staff was more like you know like heart of darkness where kurtz is out there just running his own entire thing like the apocalypse now like like at some point they had started this thing and as far as we could tell nobody in the toronto star was still still knew it existed nobody in in tor star knew it existed um except that occasionally

they would slash our budget by another like 25 percent over what it had been before um but like and and we kind of liked it that way we would have wanted bigger budgets but it was also just like i as far if if any uh senior executives at the star and at tour star knew i weekly was still being published they might just shut it down but in in the meantime that's funny we just kept going so you liked it that like so that that was though my impression of things and so it never occurred to me that um that that it would have been a big part of the book because as far as i could tell it was an afterthought uh almost entirely for all of his existence and then at a certain point when it changed into the grid we uh we were

reporting up to john cruikshank who was the publisher of the star and there i think there was a corporate uh investment in trying to see if it could turn it into something that would be more sustainable and profitable and have more of a cultural impact and be more of a, potentially a skunkworks for the star. I was going to say, you're describing StarTouch. I almost brought you a StarTouch screens... How's StarTouch doing anyway? Shuttered a long time ago.

I know. There was that time. It never worked on my phone, by the way, or my laptop. I never owned a device that would actually get StarTouch. It was specifically designed not to work on phones and not to work on laptops. It was a tablet-only platform

and we named it like what you would name a sketchy massage parlor. StarTouch, yeah. If it's neon lights i could see that yeah yeah like a robin tug but i i mean i i'll say a lot of people at the start were really skeptical from the beginning uh that the strategy of going tablet um based was was wise uh but i i will say that like the company threw both feet into earnestly trying to make that

work because they believed it would. Oh they sure did they put their money behind it. They put a lot of money behind it, hired a ton of people who worked really hard on it and it's a sad chapter in the history Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home

I know you're scrimming but we were I'm trying to remember because I feel like Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. Yeah. I know, I know. You're scrimming. Go ahead. I'm trying to remember because I feel like we digressed a long way and we had originally, there was a question I was answering. I was giving you space. So I know I'm giving you space

to meander and figure it all out. This is sort of part-time therapy. But because we're talking all weeklies, even though John Honerich didn't know about iWeekly, they didn't tell him about the grid. But, but, but, but, but, you just wrote about the grind. So since you were last in Toronto,

iWeekly, belly up. iWeekly's no more. I mean, I don't know if it's definitively flatlined, but as far as I'm concerned, there's no... Now Magazine. Now, what did I call it? iWeekly?

Yes. Now Magazine, I mean. Yeah. I'll fix that in post. I don't think that's actually a surprise, right? So. Right. Is that because the massage parlors,

there's not enough massage parlors like Star Touch advertising in the back of those things? It's a million things, right? But like, no. And actually, I think making those things illegal was like another small tick of the pendulum or whatever, right? Right. But basically, at a certain point, classified advertising in general, not just the prostitution ads or whatever, but classified advertising was the cash cow of the newspaper business, and that includes free weeklies, right?

Advertising was, by definition, the only way the free weeklies made any money, right? And so the internet made classified advertising completely redundant, like just a giant waste of money for anybody who would engage in it, right? First, places like Craigslist and then other places redundant like just a giant waste of money for anybody who would engage in right uh first like places like craigslist and then other places meant that there are just better legitimately better ways sure to to do this advertising right um and and so you know that's like strike one right and then strike two is that retail advertising,

including big national advertisers, are taking their money and putting it into other things. Google and Facebook. Yeah, especially Google and Facebook. But I mean, for Alt Weeklys, I feel like there was a genuine mission issue that comes up too, where you start to wonder what purpose do we serve for our readers. And as I wrote recently, I think there were purposes that were served

that haven't been adequately replaced elsewhere. But while I was working at iWeekly, there's a situation where it's like, it used to be if you're a young person in Toronto, let's say you're in your 20s, or even if you're an older person, but especially if you're the type of person who goes out multiple nights a week and is looking for something to do. You and your friends meet at a future bakery or something, and you open the Alt Weeklys, and you see who's playing at the Horseshoe, who's playing at's palace but what um theater stuff is going on what what's playing at the bluer cinema like it's all in there yes and that's the only way to find out without going in person to every location to see right um it's it's the easiest way and you can just pick them up all over the place you can flip through it on the subway right so those listings both the advertisements that like the bars bought but also the listings that we had a whole armies of staff compiling right were the way to find out what's going on in the city absolutely and it was around the time when message boards, but also Facebook arose and whatnot,

where online groups and stuff started replacing that listing's functionality for people. The people who were really into live music would be finding out about shows on their phone, not in their alt weekly. Movie listings, like the Show the show times they started to be able to see them easily on look them up on their phone directly through the for the cinema companies and whatnot right and so bit by bit these things where alt weeklies filled a hole in the marketplace and did something that nobody else was doing were absorbed by other things and often like more easily available things, right? Or more targeted things, right?

And so your core reason for existing as a valuable service to your readers starts to get really slowly watered down and watered down so i think the relaunch of the grid of iWeekly has the grid was an attempt to try and see if if there was a way to reinvent that free weekly model that that tackled things from a different angle it wasn't a massive listings-based thing. It didn't have classified advertising from the beginning. It was trying to, like, fulfill a different purpose. And I think, you know, you and I may have talked about this

in one of my earlier visits, but I think there was a bit of cultural success to the grid, a bit of zeitgeist uh capturing for some people uh who who um remember it very fondly that's me by the way it was a not an economic success right right and and so ultimately like it got put down before it could waste away um but i i think now had a stronger from its founding sense of its own mission uh both in sort of as like an alternative leftist politics voice but also like a really independent voice in the toronto arts community and was dedicated to that mission all along um and alice Klein pushed it as far as she could and then tried to sell it to somebody

who might carry it into the future. But I think for probably five years or more, I think the one time you and I were on here talking about Alt Weeklys and I had talked about some of this same stuff and the then editor of now tweeted at me to say like you know that's all nonsense right that alt weeklies aren't redundant and all of that but in toronto in vancouver in new york city in los angeles like across north

america uh alt weeklies have basically either hollowed out or shut down. And I think there's something sad about that because, you know, I think there was a role that we played. Well, nostalgically, it's very sad because you and I are of an age where we have such memories, the 90s basically, but yeah, we have such great memories of these alt-weeklies, but the internet did kill the alt-weekly

and, you know, it's just part of the evolution. And a lot of the stuff that they used to do is done, is still done, right? It's like, whenever I get nostalgic about things like, like my favorite old bar closing down or whatever, right? It's like, I realized that the things I used to get from that, a new generation of people is getting somewhere else. Like they're still doing the stuff, right?

Right. They're just not doing it in the places that I did it. And so that's sad to me as an old guy, but the world does change. I miss the video store that I used to go to. Like I miss talking to the guy and he'd say,

hey man, you'd like this new director. This thing's called Reservoir Dogs. I think you'd dig it. And then I rent it and I'm like, it blows my mind. I'm like, whoa, like I miss that, but I that but i'm not the event of going out there to the video store and wandering around for an hour and a half trying to figure out if there was something you're in the mood to see or is it going to the record shops to hear new music like now we just

do that you know in our bedrooms here okay but just to put a bow on this all weeklies talk because i mentioned the grind what can you just tell me, is there even going to be another issue of The Grind? Like, what is The Grind trying to, you know, fill that void now that, now, pun intended, now that Now Magazine is no more? I don't have any window into the future of The Grind, because I haven't even spoken or communicated

with the people running it, but I think they're, I donated some money to them because I wish't even spoken or communicated with the people running it, but I think I donated some money to them because I wish them really well. It's basically like a bunch of journalists. TMU journalists maybe? Took their own money to pay for that first issue. And a lot of them already write for socialist

or leftist online publications. And they're reprinting stuff that's already been published there. So that's why The Grind has not got its own website with that stuff, because almost all of the stuff is already online, right? But they think there's a street-level way to reach the working class

with that needed independent political perspective through that alt-weekly model with that needed independent political perspective through, you know, that alt-weekly model of a newsprint paper that you can pick up and read on the subway or at your coffee shop and whatnot, right? And, like, I wish them really well with it. When I wrote about it, I said, like, reading it, it doesn't scratch that itch for me.

It isn't trying to be their dad's Alt Weekly, which was me, which was mine, which is fine because it's not for me, right? It's for them. So we'll see. I imagine there'll be at least one more issue. They put it out, and they said it was an Alt Weekly style thing,

but I think the first issue was labeled for two months. They're planning to have another one at the end of the year or something, and then we'll see. We'll see. style thing but i think the first issue was labeled like for for two months like they're planning to have another one at the end of the year or something and then we'll see we'll see um but i think you know their their funding model is going to have to be that the people donate money to it or pay for it uh it may be free to pick up on the street but people are going to have to uh pay for it another way um you know which which is, I mentioned at the time too, that's what Dave Bedini's doing with the West End Phoenix, right? Is that they sell subscriptions and they hold fundraisers.

And that's how they pay to keep that spirit alive there. So I'm a subscriber to the West End Phoenix. I was a donor to the grind. I want a million alternatives to flourish, even when they're the alternative to me at the Toronto Star. Well, you love newspapers. I do.

We don't want newspapers to go the way of the dodo bird. No. No. Okay, so a couple quick hits here because I know it's almost time for your next bathroom break. Very quick hits.

Very quick hits. This came through in the live stream, so we're live at live.torontomike.com and Steve Leggett wants to know, have you made a trip to Jumbo Burgers since you came back to Toronto? I have. I've made a couple trips to Jumbo Burger,

which is under new ownership, but seems to have, like what I was concerned with is like, if the picture of Ty Domi would convey with the business, and it did, it's still there. The orange seating is still there good uh the orange uh seating is still there but also the recipes and in particular i love jumbo burgers burgers like actually cooked on that flame broil like fire grill yep it's a particular kind of toronto

diner burger that that i is among among my favorites i don't have my favorite kind of burger i like a smash burger sometimes. I like a, you know, but it's like, there's a certain flavor there that I wanted. And also, but I love their onion rings so much, and I was so desperately afraid that they were going to ruin the onion rings. Right.

And at least in my experience so far, they didn't. So did you return to the Junction neighborhood? Like, you don't have to give me specifics, but what neighborhood do you live in now? It's a good question because I was such an obnoxiously loud and proud Junction resident before. Yeah, you and Siobhan Morris, as I remember.

We moved to the United States. We used to refer to our house as the Junction Embassy. But we live in Bloor West Village now, which is adjacent to's an upgrade. More expensive there. Adjacent to the junction. Yeah. But yeah.

But Stockyards... I know my real estate. Shout out to Sammy Cohen. But you moving from the Stockyards to Bloor West Village, that's a... You know, you're rising on up. I feel like I'm going to sing the theme song to the Jeffersons. It's a more expensive neighborhood, that's for sure. I feel like I'm going to sing the theme song to the Jeffersons. It's a more expensive neighborhood,

that's for sure. I still love, where we live is at like Runnymede between Annette and Bloor Street. I know it so well. I worked at the McDonald's at Runnymede and Bloor

for 18 months as a teenager. So the thing is that our kids can still go to the same schools that they went to before or were going to go to before. And we, our friends who lived in the junction and my kids'

friends who lived in the junction were still a short walk to go to their house and visit them and stuff. And the Dundas Street Strip, which we loved, is still a short walk away. You don't have to take a bus or drive it's like 10 minutes up the road and so uh but but we're closer now to bluer street and the access to the subway is just life-changing and awesome that's the thing about this city my daughter

goes to high school downtown and so she gets to ride the subway every morning and i think that that changes a lot of your experience. I've lived in places where I had to take like half hour bus rides or more than one bus to get to a subway line on a lot of my routes and that makes TTC commuting a real unpleasant whereas living near the subway line

makes it much more. But do you have data on the subway now i bike everywhere now so like i'm literally like if i need to get anywhere in fact i actually later today i'm gonna be you do not have data on the subway and it is like one of the most yeah frustrating things i mean among the among the aspects of living in washington dc is that yeah you can you can use your phone on the subway. It's no problem, right? I just remember hating that part. The Toronto subway system has the technology installed in it to provide cellular signal underground,

but Rogers and Bell refused to provide the service. Wow. You can read about that in The Star if you Google it. The details I don't have in the tip of my mind but essentially like the the tdc put out like got all the infrastructure installed and and then there's a company that was supposed to manage it yeah i remember this and rogers and bell are refusing to play ball with that company well that's fucked up and so it's like i think it's one of the services like freedom mobile or something like that like you can you can get into it in the station only but not in the tunnels and it's just

like well my memories are like you know that part in keel when you go above ground certain parts it's like that's when all your texts you come out on the bluer viaduct and all of a sudden a thousand notifications yeah it's like or old mill there's that nice part of old mill when you come above yeah and it's like oh all my texts are flying in and out it's uh it's yeah we got to fix that uh man you've been awesome honestly you got to come back you can't wait another five years to come back my last question for you any chance that we hear ed keenan uh back on news talk 1010 uh formerly known as CFRB. Well, still known as CFRB, but any chance we hear

Keenan back on CFRB? I'm not sure. I was at News Talk 1010. Then after that, I was at Global News Radio AM640. Which they rebranded back to Talk 640 or something like that. And so, you know,

since I've been back, I've done a few things with Global, just, you know, panels and whatnot. But I don't have immediate plans to get back on the radio regularly, but I'm certainly open to it. So program directors, news directors, if you're out there listening. And they are. You know, my ears are opening. You're taking offers.

But you know what? As we've gotten back, it's been a couple months where i'm just really focused on getting my feet back under me learning the city doing my star stuff and then of course the next thing on my agenda was come back to toronto mike uh and re-establish myself as a as a friend of the show fourth time buddy uh but that was a five-year gap so we can't go another five years but dude dude, honestly, when I saw you in the driveway and I gave you a big hug, I'm like, there's my buddy Ed. It was like,

man, I miss this guy. It does feel good to be back. I mean, in five years, there are new different sponsors and sponsor gifts by the look of it. So I got a speaker here. You got a speaker. You're going to get lasagna. You got beer. You got it all, man. You a sticker uh you're you're gonna be taken care of my friend thanks for coming over

this was awesome now we get to take that photo again because you yeah five years ago i was doing the photo i have to make sure some people uh are pre-photo before i realized i should probably do that and that brings us to the end of our 1148th show. You can follow me on Twitter. Yes, I'm still there. I'm just kind of seeing what happens. That's a bit of a tire fire lately. Shout out to Elon Musk, but I'm still there checking it out.

And you're there too, Ed. You are the Keenan Wire. That's right. I am still there. I'm still at the Keenan Wire. And people should subscribe to the Toronto Star and keep that awesome newspaper going and keep Ed employed there. Yeah, and get access to all of my stuff. You don't have to navigate the paywall and all of that.

Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Don't leave without your lasagna, Ed. Sticker U is at Sticker U. Moneris is at Moneris. Raymond James Canada are at Raymond James CDN. Recycle My Electronics are at EPRA underscore Canada. Ridley Funeral Home are at Ridley FH. Canna Cabana are at Canna Cabana underscore.

And Sammy Cone is at Sammy Cohn. That's K-O-H-N. See you all tomorrow. And my special guest is Barney Bentall. I know it's true. How about you? I'm picking up trash and then putting down roads. And they're brokering stocks, the class struggle

explodes And I'll play this guitar just the best that I can Maybe I'm not and maybe I am, but who gives a damn because everything is coming up

rosy and gray. Yeah, the wind is cold, but the smell of snow warms me today. And your smile is fine, and it's just like mine, and it won't go away. Because everything is rosy and gray. Well, I've kissed you in France And I've kissed you in Spain And I've kissed you in places I better not name And I've seen the sun go down

On Sacré-Cœur But I like it much better Going down on you Yeah, you know that's true Because everything Is coming up Rosy and green Yeah, the wind is cold

But the smell of snow Warms us today And your smile is fine And it's just like mine And it won't go away Cause everything is rosy now Everything is rosy and Everything is rosy and gray Thank you.