Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Mitch Azaria and Mark Hebscher: Toronto Mike'd #619

Episode Date: April 14, 2020

Mike and his special co-host Mark Hebscher chat with Mitch Azaria about his years on Global's Sportsline and TSN before diving deep into his new documentary for TVO Tripping the Rideau Canal.

Welcome to episode 619 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times, and brewing amazing beer. You can now order cases of Great Lakes beer for free. Well, the beer is not free, but the delivery is. Go to their website to do that today. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville.

They're still open. Head over to palmapasta.com and eat well because you got to eat even during a pandemic. Stickeryou.com Create custom stickers, labels, tattoos, and decals for your home

and your business. And the Keitner Group. They love helping buyers find their dream home. Text TORONOM Text Toronto Mike one word to 59559. Ask Austin any questions you have about GTA real estate and get that Zoom link to their virtual open house. I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me is a man who has been uh honored with a hot doc award and seven gemini nominations the producer of tripping the rideau canal on tvo

mitch azaria nice to meet you mitch nice to be here Have you met my co-host, Mark Hebbshire? I'd love to say no, but too late now, buddy. I want to talk first about the photo I teased this episode with. So there was a photo posted by, I think Mark, I think Hebsey posted it. I think maybe Jim Taddy posted it. And it was a picture of a sports line reunion. Can you guys tell me who was in the photo and a little bit about how did that golf match come to be that 18 holes? I think Mark, you probably, you probably know this story better than I do. I don't know about that. It's a long time ago now. I think what happened was during the course of playing golf at Crosswinds last year, somebody had mentioned something, you know, about, hey, you ever see Jim or stuff like that? And then I didn't know at the time, but the other person in the picture with me, Mitch and Jim is a guy named Brian Salvatore, who was a cameraman for many years at CHCH that I worked with, a good buddy of mine, his nickname is Skeet. many years at CHCH that I worked with, a good buddy of mine, his nickname is Skeet. And he told me that Jim Taddy was his cousin, that he had just found out recently through another relative

that his family, Salvatore and Taddy, were cousins. And so it all kind of fell together. It just so happens that Jim lives around the corner from Brian in Hamilton. And Brian mentioned it to him. And he said, yeah, that sounds great. And I said to Mitch, come on, we'll go have a good time. I think there was a bit of trepidation at first, if I recall, Mitch, because neither one of us had seen Jim in a few years, and, you know, we used to work with him, but that's a long time ago now, so there was sort of that, you know, like, I don't know how to explain it, but it was a bit of an odd sensation, not knowing, and then during the course of the day, we just had so much fun. it was fun wasn't it i i i had the same thought like because you know jim was our boss right i mean more so my boss than your boss but he was my oh no no come on mitch he was still my boss

even though we co-hosted he was still the boss yeah and i guess that was part of it right is that you still remember him even that many years ago as your boss so you don't know and yeah you know what it was fun he was he was he he got relaxed he was uncomfortable though when people would recognize the two of you oh you think so did i thought he was i didn't think he was he didn't seem as relaxed as you are when people recognize you yeah i guess so um but i think he warmed up pretty quickly though i and i think the defense mechanism is he likes to crack jokes and you know yes guy and stuff like that and so you know after a while um he became more and more comfortable for sure but i just uh it was like sort of one of those things and i don't recall us really talking that much about the show or back in

the day or any specific shows that we did or stories that we covered but it was just a kibitz and the funny thing is that all those years that we worked with a Mitch never played golf with him never really no never I mean you're working with the guy eight hours a day you know you don't want to you don't want to spend that you're not spending all your time with him but people's assumption was that since we work together on the air, that we must be great friends and we hang out together. And isn't that the assumption about, you know, anytime you see two people who work together, you just assume that, you know, that's how they're married. You fear they're married. Right. It was like, it's like Siskel and Ebert, right? They didn't

hang out, but people assume they like live together like Bernie and Ernie and Bert, right? Like it's like you guys share a room or something. So Mitch, how long had it been since you had seen Jim Taddy? And then in a moment, you're going to have to give us a bit of background on, on,

uh, you, you working with sports line and, uh, we got to talk a little sports line before we get to the Rideau canal, tripping the Rideau canal, which I've seen and like hypnotized me. Like I found it mesmerizing and beautiful.

And I can't wait to talk all about that. But maybe how long has it been since you saw Jim Taddy? I saw him, well, more recently than Mark saw him. I saw him probably about seven or eight years ago. And he was selling real estate in the beaches. And either he got in touch with me or I got in touch with him. And funny, you know, what he said to me that day, we were having a nice lunch together and he said that he never wanted to be on air. He always thought of himself as a manager. And he said, you know, I think I'd like to go do some managing up at TSN.

But every time I talk to Keith Pelley, he wants to put me on air and I don't want to be on air because that's not what I ever wanted. And that surprised me. Did you know that about him, Mark? No idea, Mitch. What a revelation that is because he's a natural on air. He's naturally engaging on air. But I guess he either didn't enjoy it

or he thought his calling was with management. He thought he could bring a lot to a management team at TSN. And he said that's where he wanted to be. But Keith kept insisting, if you're coming to TSN, then you're going to be on air. I mean, he's still on the air, right?

I hear him on 1050 TSN radio all the time still. Yes, guy. He's still there, right? Yeah, he's still there. And when I met him for lunch, he was selling real estate. He was quite happy. He was a member. I can't remember the golf course up in, I think it was in Stouffville. So he's a huge avid golfer. And you can see even the round we played, he was, you know, he wasn't happy when he was missing shots. Not like you and me, Mitch. If we miss a shot, we go out of the hell with it. It's just golf. Well, me anyway. So Mitch, let's take you back here. How did you end up at Sportsline? And what, so give us a little background on how you ended up at Sportsline. line and what what so give us a little background on how you ended up at sports line well i i was at global and um well i'll take even further back when i started at global they had um a program

where you could volunteer there you could be an intern and um i i was an intern and i was working full-time at the granite club as a waiter and working full-time at Global as an EA. And slowly but surely, I got offered a job at Global doing overnight assignment desk. And that was maybe the worst job in the entire building because you start at 11 o'clock, you finished at 7 o'clock, and every hour you had to make a round of phone calls. And, you know, in those days it was phone calls to every police shop, every, you know, all the first responders. So you'd be talking to these guys every hour and they didn't want to hear your call and you were asking them, anything going on, anything going on?

Anyway, long story short, I wanted to be a reporter. I went out with Kevin Newman, who was a news reporter in those days. I shadowed him for a long time. And then they said, we're going to move you to Sportsline. And Jim didn't want me. He might not have been the only one. I can hear Jim saying, no guy. Well, he didn't want me because I was coming off the heels of Andrea Carmen, who was also a first-time reporter.

And I think he wanted a real veteran reporter who could kind of go in, you know, immediately and start filing really good stories. And he didn't want to sort of, you know, have to tutor another kid. So, yeah, he didn't want to sort of, you know, have to tutor another kid. So yeah, he didn't seem to want me. So he put me in the field before he allowed me to start reporting. So I was getting clips and that kind of thing. And then slowly but surely, he trusted me enough to be a regular reporter. So it was me and Bill Burt. But wait, the background though, too, Mitch, is that prior to Andrea Carmen being hired the reporting staff at Global was Vic Router, Jerry Dobson, Mike Anscombe, Jim Taddy the journalists were Jan

Tennant, Peter Truman I mean you had I mean this was a real top-notch shop when it came to journalism and so at the time with Andrea sort of and i guess at the time it was you know let's have a female reporter this would have been 1985 mitch i'm thinking even earlier or 85 yeah 84 so to have a fee at the time the only female sports reporters were debbie van kiekevelt and ann romer i think i don't believe i mean you know to my knowledge and so to bring in a someone who's never been a reporter before and a female at that, and for Jim to be not frustrated isn't the word, but you're trying to build a sports show going. And you're used to these veteran reporters, like I had mentioned before.

Now you sort of have to tutor someone. You have to teach them, take them by the hand and say, this is what we want to have. So on the heels of Andrea leaving and Mitch coming in, I think Jim's thing was, geez, want to have. So on the heels of Andrea leaving and Mitch coming in, I think Jim's thing was, geez, another youngster who needs to be, you know, babysat or taught the rules of journalism or something like that. And so, you know, he would have rather, like Mitch said, gone with another veteran reporter. But Vic had already left a couple of years earlier. And Jerry, when I came in, I basically replaced Jerry. They went to a two-man show. McCallum was gone.

Jim was there. Jim and I anchored the desk. But by this time, Vic had left, and Jerry was about to leave to go to, I think, CTV. So there were a couple of openings on the Sportsline show in the sports department that had to be filled. And I think what happened that Jim wasn't expecting is that, and I didn't really understand it at the time, but when I look back at it now is I was the same age as the players. So I actually had ended up developing, you know, great relationships with the player. I didn't know it then, but I think it was because we were the same age, you know,

and they were coming up and I was coming up and, and, you know, and I still remember hanging out with, you know, with Russ Cortnall and Wendell Clark. Wendell, yeah. I remember with Wendell, you spent like the day with them, right? Oh, tons of time and going, they were living at, on, on the Lake shore at Palace Pier and, and, you know, eating Kentucky fried chicken with them. I mean, they had no idea in those days of, you days of diet or just kids, right? They're

kids, kids from the prairies, right? Well, you're a Gary Lehman away from the hound line. There you go. Wow. Now, when you look back, Mitch, at your years at Sportsline, and it's funny, I bet you've done 100 interviews in the past few weeks, and they've probably all been about the Rideau Canal. And here you are, this guy just wants to talk sports line, but we will get to Rideau Canal. But when you look back at your years at Sportsline, A, do you look back fondly? Like were these, these were good years in your professional career? And B, do you realize how influential that show was to a lot of our prominent, you know, hosts today from Jay and Dan to Tim and Sid, like it was Sportsline that sort of inspired them and motivated them to pursue such a career.

Yeah. And I'll answer those questions in order. So yeah, I mean, I, I, the hardest decision I think I've made in my career was to, was to leave global. Cause you know, I knew that that was a, you know, that was a pretty good gig. I mean, that was, you know, to, to, to, to be paid to go global because, you know, I knew that that was a, you know, that was a pretty good gig. I mean, that was, you know, to be paid to go to a, you know, Jays game or a Leaf game or a Leaf practice. I mean, that's pretty great. So I understood that, but I also understood that in the long run, I would be happiest if I had my own business. So, yeah, I understood it then and I understand it now. As far as the influence of Sportsline, I mean, let me give you a sense of the landscape back then. I mean, there was no TSN.

I think CNN maybe was doing an extended sportscast. And the idea that sports could be entertaining for more than three minutes of very, very traditional highlights. I mean, you know, every every local station had their anchor, maybe a co-anchor, a weather person, a sports person. And each of those sports people were interchangeable. I mean, you couldn't tell if you were flipping channels one to the other. There was you know, There was no real personality. And then you get Jim and Mark, and particularly Mark, because he did some unbelievably, and I'm not saying that because I'm not that nice to Mark, but he was doing some very,

very creative stuff. And to carry an entire half hour in just sports, it was unheard of. And it's hard to imagine today when there's an entire station devoted to a single sport. But in those days, it was a very, very novel concept. Okay. Mark wants me to have you repeat that praise so I can isolate it. It's a one-time only. The other thing is, and I think Jimim especially we didn't maybe realize this but but jim especially wanted the balance so that it wasn't just known as a sports highlight show

with two guys you know that you're sitting in your basement with hanging out having a beer and so the journalistic aspect of it was very important and you know you know when we were there i mean imagine the ben johnson story hitting and you're a show that's when you're doing highlights and you're doing stories on the jays and the Leafs and stuff like that. And now now a real news story comes along like a real story, the Ben Johnson thing. And I mean, and so now you kind of have to shift gears and say, OK, we started doing our highlights every night because they're sports. But we have to cover these big stories. You know, I remember when Mitch and I and a camera person went, we covered, since Global had the Super Bowl every year, we used to go and do stories on the two teams leading up to the Super Bowl.

So the week before the Super Bowl, we would be in, I mean, Mitch and I and Dave Pearl went to New York City. The Giants were playing the Dolphins, I think, one year. Mitch, I don't even remember. It might have been Giants-Dolphins or whatever it was. Yeah, definitely. Denver? Giants-Denver? Denver, yeah.

Okay, so here's what happened. So now what happens is, Jim, and this is great too, because back in those days, the decision would be made within like a couple hours saying, geez, you know what? We've got a Super Bowl coming up and we just found out that it's going to be the Giants in Denver.

Okay, you guys go to New York and go do some Giants stories. We're going to go to send someone else to Denver, right? You'll do three, four days of you'll shoot stuff, you'll get some interviews, whatever it takes, and then you'll bring it back to global, and we'll edit all that stuff so that leading up to the Super Bowl, we've got these great previews, right? You know, Mark and Mitch were just in New York, and Mitch did an interview with Bill Parcells where he basically took the entire press conference over from the New York media. Parcells is looking at, who is this guy here? Who are these guys from Canada? And, you know, Mitch is asking these real, you know, he's producing these features that

we're going to do in New York. We're taking the Staten Island Ferry. There's the Statue of Liberty. And he's asking Parcells questions and like sort of rapid fire, like Parcells answers the question and Mitch comes right back at him with a follow-up question. And these New York media guys are going, who the fuck is this guy? Who are these guys? And then Mitch, do you remember? We wanted to get some video. They closed practice, of course, once they're doing their warmups on the field, media all has to leave because now

they're working on plays. They're working on plays from the playbook. And we don't have enough video of action, of guys catching passes or even running drills. We have none of that. We just sort of got them doing exercises. So Mitch comes up with the idea that we're going to pretend we're going to leave, but we're going to go upstairs. We're going to take the elevator and we're going to go up into the concourse level and surreptitiously record their, their practice. Maybe just get a couple of plays and then, and we'll have that video. What are they going to do?

We're from Canada. What are they going to do? Take our credentials away. Remember this Mitch? Pre 9-11. Yeah. Remember that? They shoot you today.

Oh my God. So we're thinking, yeah, what are they going to do? We're from, and plus also it's really, when you're anywhere and you tell them you're from Canada and you kind of shrug your shoulders,

we're from Canada. We do this all the time. They tend to believe you. It's like, all right, don't let it happen again. Cause I had gone through this before too, where we,

I had been told, you know, you cannot record. And I've said to my camera operator, I don't care what they say. We're not going to be here for much longer. You know, let's just do

it. And so what happened was we take Mitch and I and Dave Perot, take the elevator up to the concourse level, right? We hunkered down behind so no one can see us up there. And then we take the tripod and Dave kind of from below the level of the railing, he turns the viewfinder down towards him so that he's not exposed. And only the lens of the camera is peering over this little railing to shoot the practice. And as it happens, the Giants are doing a fake field goal play where the holder, I think it was Jeff Hostetler, fakes that he's going to put the ball down and then throws to Zeke Moe at the tight end. And they're working on this play and we're recording this going,

this is great. And suddenly we hear, hey, what's going on up there? And one of the coaches or somebody that was looking out saw that we were recording. Do you remember this, Mitch? I remember. I'm just getting a little shiver right now. Oh, my God.

We're thinking we're screwed and we've got to get the hell out of there because if they find us they're going to take the videotape they're going to take the tape and they're going to confiscate it and we're going to have nothing right mitch i'm sorry so now we press the button for the elevator because the elevator's got to come to get us we're pressing the button you're hitting it a thousand times and we hear the guy coming closer and closer to us we finally get on the elevator the three of us we come down a level and we run right through the giant executives offices towards the parking lot where our cars park like we go flying through get in the car jump in we never see them again

and we've got the footage and the footage is fantastic. And they use that play in the Superbowl. Wow. They use that fake field goal play in the Superbowl. I wish they killed Denver that year. Anyway, that's what I remember. That was fun. That was a fun trip.

Now, Mitch, before we leave a sports line behind and find out what you did next, uh, what do you think are the chances of a Toronto Mike reunion special with Jim Taddy, Mark Hebbshire and yourself? Like, do you think it's that, that Jim would, would buy into such a concept? You know, before the golf game, I would have said no chance,

but it seemed to me that, that Jim, I think you said it, Mark. He really enjoyed himself. We really reconnected well. And I think that he would be quite happy to come on. And I think that really, you know, you need to just have him and Mark because I think they're the two guys that have the chemistry.

Yes, guy. I agree. I think Jim has let his guard down sufficiently. Sorry. I wanted to tell you one last story. Cause I think. Yes, please. Either Mark or you Mike had mentioned that, you know, sports line was unique and allowed us to do big stories. And yeah, we did the Ben Johnson story and Gretzky traded and, you know,

there was a Calgary Olympics in there. There was a lot of stuff, but it also allowed us to do stories that ended up on the front page. And I remember the Spinner Spencer story, because that to me is still a story that gives me, you know, shivers. And how he, you know, went from a sports story to a news story and ended up on the, you know, on the top of the newscast. And do you remember him, Mike? Brian Spinner Spencer? Yeah, Brian, I'm forgetting the story, though. So here's the story.

Brian Spinner Spencer makes his NHL debut with the Leafs. This is in the early 70s. He's from a small town in British Columbia, I think Fort St. John, if I'm not mistaken. 70s. He's from a small town in British Columbia. I think Fort St. John, if I'm not mistaken. The people in Vancouver in those days on Hockey Night in Canada, they would show not the Leaf game, they would show the Vancouver game. Spencer's father wanted to see his son make his debut with the Maple Leafs. In BC in those days, a game you could get was from a local affiliate, the CBC affiliate, and they showed the Vancouver game.

The father was so upset that he ended up going to the station, which was just sort of a one little building with like an engineer sitting there, a repeater station, and I believe had a shotgun with him and threatened, threatened the guy that if he didn't switch the feed to the Leaf game so he could see his son play,

he would go crazy. And the cops, yeah, the cops came and they arrested him. Take the rest of the Leafs game so he could see his son play, he would go crazy. And the cops came and they arrested him. Mitch, take the rest of the story from there. Yeah, they arrested him. And, you know, Brian was not, you know, was sort of a chip off the old block, right? He also had a very short temper. And he, you know, he played for the Leafs, played for Buffalo, played longer in Buffalo than in Toronto,

and then retired, went to Florida, was accused of murder, and put into a U.S. jail for quite a long period of time. And I somehow got in touch with him, and he was getting out within a year or two because a whole bunch of folks were you know trying to trying to help him out and he came to Buffalo as soon as he got out of prison and ended up in this hotel room and Gail Mugford and I went to talk to him and you know I talked to him for you know for months over the telephone I remember sitting across from in that hotel room and Gail was shooting and we're talking about different things and Gail's rolling.

And I said to him, I said, you know, Brian, you know, did you kill that person? I think that's Jim Taddy. Jim, it's Jim. He's like, hey, can you get me on the show? He wants to copyright the story. No, you know what it is? He heard me say yes, Guy, and he's sending me an invoice. That's right. That's right. That was my fax machine with the invoice, yeah.

No joke. I tweeted yes, Guy, and I don't think he was kidding. He was going to send me an invoice. He trademarked it. He's got that trademark. Anyway, go on with the Spencer. I'm sitting across from him, and he's three feet away from me. And, you know, a hair trigger kind of guy.

And I said to him, you know, Brian, and I'm looking him in the eye. I said, did you kill that person? And he's looking me in the eye and he says no. And I'm looking in killer's eyes. I know absolutely that he did. And it was still when I still tell the story, it sends shivers down because I'd never met anybody who was a killer. Sure. Wait a second.

Hold it. Hold it a second, Mitch. Wait, wait. Did you not interview Reuben Hurricane Carter? I did. I did the first interview with him when he got out. First ever. Wow.

He came to Canada. First ever, I believe, after he got out of prison. Well, it was Canadians that got him out of prison. Right. It was a bunch of Canadians that got him out of prison. And I think I might add a little to do with the story. I remember that I knew about the story from the Bob Dylan song, Hurricane. Yeah. And then when we found out that he was being released from jail and he was coming to Canada, we've somehow managed to find an address and a phone number for him.

And Mitch went and did the interview with him. And man, that to me was wild because he was accused of a double murder, went to jail. They had another trial, went back to jail, right? It was just a whole thing.

And he was an amazing fighter, but never had a chance. Obviously he went to jail and here's Mitch going up and doing a story about this guy who again was alleged to have killed two people and spent a lot of time i think a decade or so in jail well den yeah denzel washington played him in the in the film right yeah wow which was shot here in toronto yeah absolutely right now mitch why do you leave this great gig at Global Sportsline? Argos in the fall. I just, I knew that at a certain point, and I was projecting way too far for a guy my age, that it would, it wouldn't, at some point it wouldn't work. And having come from a family of people who had their own businesses, I thought, I've always wanted to have my own

production company and produce my own stuff. And I thought, you know, this is a great opportunity to do it. I had a few dollars in the bank. I still had, you know, some connections. So I thought I should go do that. Is that good earth productions? Nope. We had one series and, um, and then couldn't keep it sustained and, um and went out of business. And that's when I went to TSN to kind of lick my wounds and build up my bank account and worked with Dave Hodge on his show, Inside Sports. Shout out to Dave Hodge.

I should promote that just last week, he came on this show to kick out his 10 favorite albums of 2020 thus far so there's an episode of with dave hodge from last week hey mitch did you and dave hodge used to talk music all the time i'm sure you must have just talked about all the concerts he used to go to hey dave you you and dave he's he's a bigger music fan i think than a sports fan oh for sure i mean he well you you know now, Mike, right? He's a massive, massive music fan. Mitch, if you're bored

in the Toronto Mic'd archives there, you can hear him kick out his 100 favorite songs of all time. Did you sense that he was doing it with a lot of notes or did you think... I think what i love about

my dave hodge because he's been on i think five or six times and when i have hebsey on we don't really talk before i press record and we do it but with dave hodge there's a production meeting before i press record where he discusses okay so i'm going and i can hear the notes and i'm going to do this then you're going to play the song and then i'm going to come out and then we like he produces the, and I'm like, I always think he's Dave Hodge. So I'm like,

yes, sir. Whatever you like, Mr. Hodge. But I don't do that with any other episodes. Like I'm, I'm the producer of Toronto Mike.

Well, that's why they walked me out the door, Mike. I was trying to produce Dave. How long did you last? How long did you last at TSN? So I was at SportsCenter for the first while, and that was fine, and that was great. But then when I started with Dave, as you said, Dave's a great guy, but he's not a guy that takes to producing well. I totally relate.

takes to producing well i totally relate even even uh i aired on toronto mike there was a reporter's reunion at the uh is it called the paradise yeah the paradise uh theater uh and uh just and and just i mean it was great you got to hear this thing the reporters on stage and then brendan shanahan is a special guest it was fantastic but yeah i i can totally relate to what you're saying right now. It can't be easy to produce Dave Hodge. No, that's why I started a new business. Hey, now, the new business you start, is that Good Earth Productions? Yeah, that's good. So I left. TSN left me in 92 and I started good earth productions. And yes,

it's almost been 30 years. Yeah. Wow. Coming up on it. Yeah. Now I, I see you've won. I mean,

I want to talk about the highlights of good earth productions and then spend a lot of time talking about tripping the Rideau canal. But like, I see you got a hot dog award. You got several Gemini nominations. Do you want to give us the hits? Could I give you the Genesis? Because the Genesis was kind of fun.

Let's do it. Discovery Channel is just starting out. Again, early 90s. The specialty channels, again, almost like Sports. And, you know, the specialty channels, again, almost like Sportsline, unimaginable in that day. And nobody ever thought something like a science, you know, channel would work 24 hours a day. But Discovery was starting and we thought, you know, we need to... That's Dave Hodge on the phone. It is actually. So we thought we need to, we need to, we need to do some pitches for Discovery Channel. So we came up with the idea of Canada's got the greatest parks in the world, national parks, provincial parks, let's do a series on parks. So we put together a, you know, a really nice pitch and we pitched

Discovery Channel. They say, you know what, this is a great idea. We like it so much. We're going to let five other production companies all make pilots and you'll make a pilot. We'll put them on the air at consecutive Sundays. Whoever gets the biggest audience, whoever gets, you know, the most, you know, positive reviews, they'll get the series. And we thought, how does that work? Our idea, and give it out to six, you know, six people. Anyway, we all produced TV pilots. And fortunately, we got Peter Truman involved in our pilot, which was, you know, was massive, because he brought great credibility. We got a really great review from the Globe and Mail. We drove the biggest audience and got the greatest feedback, so we got the series.

Awesome. Do you remember who wrote the Globe article? John Haslett Cuff. Is that right? Yep. Hebsey, at this point, are you aware Mitch is producing content for television again? Yeah. Yeah, I am. Absolutely. Mitch and I stayed in touch after he left Global.

I've known Mitch and his family for, I don't know, Mitch, 35 years or whatever. Yeah. The whole family. And I recall a discussion that Mitch and I had had where he had mentioned just to like that he had told the audience where the idea was, you know, we're going to go and film parks and rivers and lakes and all that. And I just remember thinking, wow, what a great idea, because that will never go out of style in the business. Mike, we call it shelf life. There's something that I shelf life a hundred years from now. shelf life there's something that has shelf life a hundred years from now hopefully those parks and rivers and lakes will look the same and all the shots that they took and it's the it's beautiful photography and sound it's absolutely beautiful similar to trip in the rito which you will uh if

you've seen it same thing it's beautiful you could take the audio soundtrack alone and it could be you can make an app out of it for relaxing right spiritual sound effects to fall asleep by to relax by really is quite something it's mesmerizing actually uh and so if you combine the video with that you say wow you know what this was produced in 1992 or 1993 you could you could air this in 2047 and it wouldn't make any difference it would be the exact same it's the same square footage it's the same beautiful foliage it's the same um majestic beauty and i thought at the time i thought well there's something that you can put on a shelf bring it back five years later or whatever and probably not have to make any changes to it at

all whereas a lot of stuff that's shot is good for that particular time period. But then a few years later, you look and go, wow, when was this done? Boy, that looks really out of style. Not these shows. Because they're literally evergreen, right, Mitch? I was waiting on that, Mike. Good setup, Mike. And just to add, Mark, thank you very much.

Those are nice words. But Peter Truman, too, his writing, his voice were quite special. Now, as we build up towards the Rideau, tripping the Rideau Canal, which is on TVO.org right now as we speak. But we're going to get into that. And again, i've seen it uh hebsey have you seen it in its entirety uh twice that's eight hours no no but i'll tell you what happened you're talking about four hours right real time it's like okay get on this boat and we're going to take a 20 some odd kilometer trek up up the rito towards parliament hill

and so you can look at it and listen to it. And you can look away and do a few things. You can look back, okay, you've gone another few hundred yards up the river. And then you can go into the other room or make something to eat. And you're still listening. You still hear the bird chirping, that type of a thing. It's all natural sound. And so to me, what I did was I originally watched some of it, went to bed, recorded it, got up the next morning, put it on, watched a bit more, did a bit of work, made a coffee, heard a bit more of it, and then went back to the beginning to sort of see the setup to it once again. So you could probably pick any spot in the four hours,

just hit play and watch a portion of the trip if you wanted to do it that way it's funny mitch because i mentioned dave hodge was on last week but two weeks ago uh steve pakin was my guest and i always think you know that's the face you're going to see the most often on tv ontario well that's no longer true like now i think it's your work because i stumbled upon they replay your uh documentary so let's let's talk about the genesis of this like what made you want to uh tell us about tripping the reedow and what made you want to make this uh film well we we had done um some work with tbo in the past because tbo was airinging some of our other series.

And out of the blue, they called us and said, we'd like you to come up. We have this notion, but we don't really know what to do with it. And so we went up and met with Jane Jankovic and Linda Fong. And they said, we'd like to do something in real time. We don't know what we want to do. We want to do something in real time. And we thought, OK, well, what are we talking? They said, long. We don't know what we want to do. We want to do something in real time. And we thought, okay, well that, you know, if what are we talking? They said long, we want it long. We should, we should do something really long. And we said, well, okay. We said, you know, they said we could

put it between our two newscasts. And we thought, wow. And, you know, of course we don't have commercials on TV. I went, wow. So all of that sounded very intriguing but um what could you do that could sustain sustain itself well you knew we had to stay in motion i mean you know you can't you know you've got to you've got to take some kind of journey so we had a list of about 20 things um the agua canyon train ride um the famous boat that goes on Lake Muskoka. We had the car ride from Wawa down to, geez, I can't remember. We went on the Trent Severn, the Welland Canal.

We had a whole bunch of places. We got it down to two, the Welland Canal and the Rideau Canal. We shot both just in small camera format we love the rito we took it to tvo and we said what do you like best and luckily um they agreed to i mean it was it was hard to dispute the rito it's an incredibly beautiful place so they they picked the rito and then it was our job to try and you know make four hours out of it that would hold people for you know for some portion of it we never you know, make four hours out of it that would hold people for, you know, for some

portion of it. We never, you know, we never really thought that we could hold people for four hours, but we thought, you know, we might be able to get them to do what Mark did, which was come in and out of the broadcast. And Mitch, of course, when you're filming this and producing this, you have no idea we're going to have a pandemic, right? Like the timing's kind of amazing in that suddenly everybody's being told to stay home. There's no sports to watch, right? And there is this four-hour mesmerizing, like Mark used the word spiritual, and I think it's appropriate here. I always found the water, like there's a spiritual aspect to being on the water and near the water, and I've always felt myself drawn to the water. And I flipped this on when it debuted, which was only a few days ago, right? This debuted on TVO very, very recently. And I flipped it on

for my wife, and she saw me just staring at this thing like I was hypnotized. So the fact we have the pandemic makes it where something like this four hours in real time becomes far more like it's far more plausible. Someone will sit down for four hours and watch this thing straight. Right. Yeah. And you're right. I mean, these are troubling know, we're trying to find comfort in all kinds of things. I mean, you know, our daughter, Eric is in Ottawa. We wish she was under our roof here. I mean, you want, you know, you want to be together. You want to be comforted. You want to be distracted. You know, you're, had we known two years ago, there's no way had, had even TVO when they programmed it, you know, four or five months ago known. Right. Yeah. I mean, if we can be, you know, a bit of a distraction for, you know, four or five months ago known. Right. Yeah. I mean, if we can be,

uh, uh, you know, a bit of a distraction for, you know, for some period of time in, in, in people's days and when the broadcast was on Friday, um, the social media, the, you know, was, was unbelievable. People were, you know, we're, we're talking to each other about, you know, how, you know, for the first time they had stopped thinking about the pandemic and they were, you know, they were just sort of, you know, carried out, you know, carried into this program. And so, I mean, it's really gratifying. I'd love to say, you know, we were smart and knew this, but no, this was all completely at fluke. But, you know,

it's funny that you say Mike, because I was expecting this pandemic to bring out more creativity in television makers and in content makers. I've been kind of, I've been disappointed in the lack of creativity with, you know, with our industry's reaction to this troubling time. Well, you got to elaborate on that. What do you mean exactly? troubling time. Well, you got to elaborate on that. What do you mean exactly? Well, I thought, you know, that, you know, social media would bring out more kind of stars because they're, you know, YouTube, Facebook, you know, it's a more nimble way to kind of, you know, create content as opposed to, you know, a broadcast on television that, you know, traditionally requires people to be

in close proximity. And, you know, those, if we're talking about Rogers and Bell, those are slow moving entities, right? Where, you know, you and I can have an idea and pop it up on YouTube and in 30 seconds. And I just thought that, you know, there would be someone would come up with bingo, a trivia show, you know, cooking shows shows what's in the fridge. I mean, just something that's more creative. I find that, you know, I, I know that, you know, TSN and sports net are bringing back the Jays run and and the Raptors run. And but there's no, there's, there's no curation of it. There's no, you know,

I saw the golf channel did something where they had the masters, I think from Oh six and they had Phil Mickelson from home on his cell phone, you know, talking about, you know, shots that he missed or made. And they were at least giving some attempt to like, you know, update content to make it interesting. I just find, I don't know, to me, it's been disappointing what's been out there. Well, we can bring Hebsey back because if I haven't mentioned it already, Mark Hebbshire has a fantastic sports podcast called Hebsey on Sports. It's every Friday. I mentioned it in the Globe and Mail today, by the way, Mike. Yeah, I tweeted it yesterday.

I mentioned it in the Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper, although the newspaper, and by the way, Mitch, you still owe me from the paper that I got. Mitch, there was a great article about Trippin' the Rideau in the Globe last week or the week before, I think it was. And so Mitch calls me. He says, hey, I'm quarantined here, man. Can you pick up a newspaper for me? Right.

Do you know how much it costs? Do you know what it costs, Mike? What do you think it costs? Oh, good question. For a Globe and Mail, the actual physical version of the newspaper. Was it a weekend edition? What was it? No, no, no.

Weekend edition is $100. Okay. My guess is, and this will prove I haven't bought a paper like that in a long time. I'm going to guess it's now a Toonie. $4.20. Holy shankies. And you wonder why. Yeah.

So, yeah, there was a great article. And, you know, it's nice to have it online, but it's nice to have the actual physical, you know, the newspaper there. So I got one from Mitch. And then today I ran out. I go out to the corner to get a copy of The Globe because I know that this big article is on it. It dropped last night online. Right. And I'm like, I go to grab a toonie, like you said, and I went, oh, wait a second. It's like, it's over four bucks for a newspaper. I would just screen cap the digital version. That's how cheap I am. Yeah, that's okay. So Hebsey and I do have this conversation now

because, you know, there's not a lot of sports to talk about right now, Mitch. I don't know if you noticed that, but on Hebsey on sports. But I saw a tweet from a guy whose name came up earlier in this episode because Mark Hebseyer mentioned that Bob McAllen used to work on sportsline so bob mccowan he started it well he didn't own it right did he uh no no he owned he owned a show called talking of sports which was his radio show

i think his production company was called that before right he's still he's still even though he's a founding host he's still a hired gun remember that you hire the guns you can fire the guns okay so baumacow and tweeted yesterday about tsn and sportsnet being down 75 percent in the ratings i guess year over year or something like that and i kind of snarkily tweeted uh i i'm think it might be because of the lack of sports like it might be but i think lack of sports. Like it might be, but I think you're touching on this and I think it's something to explore here before we get back to the Rideau, which is that all I'm seeing is replays of these classic games.

I mean, I've now seen Joe Carter. I watched Joe Carter walk it off. I've seen, you know, Dave Winfield hit the double and extras. I've, I've seen Robbie Alomar hit off Eckersley.

And I've seen the high stick on Gilmore that wasn't called. And I've seen all these Raptor games from just less than 12 months ago. It's kind of easy to do that. You just replay these old games, which are running dry now if you want Toronto success stories, unless they play black and white stuff from the 60s. They don't have it. That's the shit. If they had those games, trust me, they'd stick them out there.

We're out of Leaf highlights now, and we're out of Raptor highlights, and now we're running low on the Jays highlights. We're going to watch that seventh inning again, I guess, against Texas. It really is a good point you're making, which is that be creative. I kind of like that pop-up video thing for sports point you're making, which is that like how, like be creative,

maybe something. I kind of like that pop-up video thing for sports that you're talking about. But anyway, I don't know what they can do, but there must be something that could be more interesting. Wait a minute. My pop-up thing for sports. What are you talking about?

Phil Mickelson. Oh, right. What, what, what, what money though? That costs,

that's, that's nobody's money for production. You're going to, you're going to set up the feed. Okay. One sec, Mark. Cause it doesn't though, really. A, I think it's, it's partly, you know, Rogers and Bell. I mean, if we had, you know, a city in the mix in the eighties where, you know, they were nimble and they were creative and they were doing all kinds of interesting things. Because no, it isn't expensive, Mark. What you do,

so let's say you did Joe Carter's home run. Right. So you got to go to Joe and you got to get his reaction in the corner of the screen while the home run's being hit or the lead up to it. Well, no, no. So this is what they did for Mickelson. It's, it's dead simple. So you get that at bat, right? You got Mitch Williams, you've got Joe Carter, you've got, you know, you, you, you can take seven or eight perspectives of that at bat. You get whoever, you know, whoever was, you know, sitting in the dugout, whoever. Alfredo Griffin in the lead in the on deck circle.

On deck, yeah. Yeah. I mean, so you get a bunch of perspectives all those people the way that um shulman's been doing it a little bit with um with interviews of paul molliter and different people you just get those people on on cell phones on on facetime and you you talk to them about that you know that moment and what they were thinking and what was going through their minds and you you know you can break that one at bat into an interesting half hour. Yeah, you could have Jerry Haworth and what he, yeah, I can totally see this. What's the cost?

There's no cost. The cost is time. It's time. Why can't you get Doug Gilmore on to break down that game seven against Los Angeles? I mean, I don't know, it seems to me that there's all kinds of interesting, inexpensive things that you can do that can just enhance this, you know, this programming that they have. Or even if you didn't do that at a very basic level, why don't you curate each channel so that TSN1 is, you know, level why don't you curate each channel so that tsn1 is you know is blue jays but you know there's actually somebody on the helm you know introducing things and and telling you what to expect and

what's going to be on this night and right now it just seems like they've thrown a bunch of stuff up up on on the channels without any you know any thought any curation any i don't know i just i'm disappointed i think they're waiting i think what they, they thought was we're going to let the social media aspect of it, handle all of that. And somebody on social media is going to say, Hey folks, if you didn't know, here's the setup, the Joe Carter's thing. Whereas if they would have done it themselves, they would have created much more discussion around it because what, here's the thing. I, I interviewed Carter after that game. Okay. Everybody did. Everyone stuck

microphones in his face. What you get at the time isn't the same as when someone has had a chance to reflect on it over a number of years. Remember, Joe Carter didn't see it on TV. He experienced it live. To take that years later and say, hey, Joe, let's look at this. Now that you've settled down and it wasn't the heat of the moment, describe what was going on. I think that you're going to get much more clarity years later that's worthwhile recording that and putting it as part of the broadcast than you did at the time when the heat of the moment, Joe Carter said,

oh, I'm the happiest guy in the world. And the same with Doug Gilmore. After that game, I remember Doug Gilmore was in no condition where he wanted to elaborate on whether he thought it cost against. I mean, he was stuck in the emotion of the fact that the Leafs had lost that game. But years later, for Doug to sit down, watch the broadcast and go, oh, yeah, here's what happened here. Oh, and Glenn Anderson got that penalty. I thought this and I thought that.

That, to me, would be super interesting to watch. And this is a like Mitch says this is a perfect opportunity you've got no games going on let's take those games let's break them down and let's get the participants the people that were there to comment on that you get fantastic it's like a director's cut right you get no more you get somebody else and you literally let them call the game. They're not going to call it play-by-play, but they're going to say, oh, I remember him, and he was one of the hardest hitters in the league.

Oh, when he hit me here, or I remember. They're going to give you just something different. The total lack of creativity. The three of us could sit down, and in half an hour, we could come up with a whole bunch of inexpensive, doable programming with proper social distancing and, and, you know, make this a more enjoyable time for the rest of us who are, you know, who are sitting dying for something fresh. Nothing's been done. Absolutely nothing other than Dan Schulman talking to, you know baseball players i haven't

seen a single frame of new programming and mark you make a good point but maybe they're relying on it all being on social because i think joe carter had a convo of hazel may like in the last week or so but i think it was like uh it didn't get what mitch is describing like i call it the pop-up video because that's what I think of when I think of like, you know, except it's not pop-up. So there's,

it's much cheaper. You can literally have a little box in the corner from zoom or FaceTime or whatever with, you know, talking head Joe Carter from his home in Kansas city or wherever the heck he's living now. But, uh,

yeah, uh, good points on that front. Um, can I elaborate for one second there, Mike? Yeah, of course.

When we watch the blue Jay games, when we watch the blue jay games when we watch the live broadcast of it jamie campbell and joe siddle for the most part come in a couple of times during the course of the game it might be a couple innings after a controversial play but then during that segment between innings they break something down sure this is what happened here on this particular play or whatever. Why could you not, since you had the entire telecast in front of you, why couldn't you set it up so that you had Jamie Campbell in a studio by himself or remotely? And he's doing the same thing, not on the live broadcast.

He's doing a better job because he can come in after every half inning, right? Or every couple of innings to update as to what was going on at the time. And to maybe throw in a couple of clips that to update as to what was going on at the time and to maybe throw in a couple of clips that we had pre-recorded with dave steve or tom hanky or whatever the people were would really enhance that broadcast so what happened was instead of watching uh and at that that meant nothing in the third inning where the guy fouls off seven pitches right and you haven't maybe you haven't edited down what there's a perfect opportunity to fade out of that now jamie comes on and says okay and nothing happened in the fourth

and then in the fifth but in the sixth there was this this this and this and this and now you've you've made the broadcast way better now because you haven't you've only gotten to the key moments of it and you've now got the participants who can comment on it the only other way you could do that is if you had a live sporting event going on like they did this year in spring training and you actually miked up the player that to me was fascinating that's inside baseball at its best the only way you can duplicate that if it's not a live game is with these games we're talking about that's inside that's the stuff people want to know what was going through your mind what happened there what did we not see on the telecast originally that you can add to? That's what we want. We want some context. We want some texture, but we want

background from the participants there. What were you thinking? What was going on? Mitch, I have an idea. I like the last part of what you said, Mark, a lot more than the first part. I don't really care about Jamie Campbell's thoughts. Well, not his thoughts, Mitch. I was just talking about being able to set it up in a broadcast as opposed to just watching the old telecast. No, no. But it doesn't have to be that complicated.

Take the first period of the Leafs and Kings in 93 and have Gilmore and McSorley with a broadcaster who can prompt questions, just do the audio on top of the first period. Second period, you have Gretzky and somebody else. All you want is them to talk about what was going on in the game that you didn't realize, what was going on before the game, what went on after the game, where those people are today, just anything. I'm interested in anything about a new sort of look of, of those guys. Just talk, where are some of these guys now?

Like they could be talking about that overplay. I could have Kerry Frazier on this zoom call to break it down in two minutes here. Hey, I have an idea for good Earth productions here. Okay, a four-hour documentary about that seventh inning of Game 5 of the ALDS Jays and Rangers, okay? That's how long it took, didn't it, the seventh inning? Yeah, because there is a one-hour documentary they made already. Rogers made a one-hour documentary, but you can make it four hours. You could have Joey Batts, Od could have you could have the whole thing it would be uh i would i mean

i would love to hear russell martin talking about that that throw to third that went off the batter or whatever like yeah let's break that down into a four-hour doc and then i'll bring us back maybe bring us back to ottawa now and uh the the the redo uh And by the way, Mitch, what percentage of Canadians mispronounced the word Rideau? Based on what I've heard about 50%. Well, thank goodness you're here to coach me now. Okay. So I have questions about the logistics of this whole thing,

because again, Hebsey and I have seen it. So we have, we have seen it and maybe now's a good time to say, if somebody wants to watch this on demand, you can watch it on demand right now at tvo.org, right? That's correct, yeah. And sure, I'd love to take you behind the scenes

because there's some, this was definitely a carpenter, measure twice, cut once kind of production. All right, so give us a little bit, now this will be like the pop-up video. Now it won't be four hours long, but unless you've uh, unless you've got that kind of time, because there's a pandemic, we have the time here, but, uh, tell us some of the like little things like recording the audio, like, like things like, like, why don't we just hear the motor going on that boat?

Like tell us what kind of boat it is, where that came from. Like, give us some of the nuts and bolts of, uh, logistics of how this thing comes together to be such a beautiful four hour piece. Like, I can't imagine the stuff you had to iron out to get it to that shape. And, you know, I'm glad you mentioned all that because you're right. You know, I think sometimes the simplest things are the most difficult things or what looks simple. So for us, the two things that we wanted to do, we wanted to put the viewer into something that they were really comfortable and sort of happy to be in. And that was why there was the illusion of getting into that 1948, 24 foot, you know, mahogany shepherd boat. The illusion was that you were a passenger in that

boat. And we thought we literally went window shopping to try and find a boat that people would be, you know, thrilled to be in. And we thought that one kind of ticked a lot of boxes because it was quite beautiful. Then the other thing that we spent a lot, a lot of time on was, Then the other thing that we spent a lot, a lot of time on was how is it that you're going to sit in that boat and be at a comfortable level and at a comfortable speed? And what what are you going to be able to see and how are you going to turn your head? So since we do have lots of time, I'll talk you through how we did all of that. Oh, sure. I'll talk you through how we did all of that. Oh, sure.

So we did tons and tons of scouting with our DOP, Peter Warren. And we started by putting the camera at different levels. Then we tried, once we got a level that we were happy about, which was about six feet from the water, not from the bottom of the boat. And then we tried to figure out what lens and speed of the boat would match each other. And we realized that we had a perfect speed and a perfect size lens so that it would feel like your natural eyesight. But then we realized that when we got closer to a shoreline or when we got into the part of the canal that was quite narrow, we'd have to cut the speed because obviously anything that's closer to the sides makes it look like you're going

faster. But how do you cut the speed without being too obvious? So we did lots of rehearsals about that. And then we rented a mount. There's only one in Canada and it's called a G1 shot. And it's about a $300,000 mount. We rented it for quite a period of time. What that mount does in addition to having a gyro on it, it's got this beautiful mechanism that allows for panning and tilting that can be preset. And we, we set it at the rate that we thought that somebody would turn their head and come back again, somebody would lift their head and come back again, because we wanted everything to feel like the motions were true to the human body. Wow. And how did you make sure you don't capture the, because you know,

you hear the birds chirping, you hear that water, that beautiful sound of the water. And it's very soothing to listen to this. Like I would just listen to the audio, the podcast version as I fell asleep, like it's beautiful. But how do you make sure you don't have just the motor? So John Morrison, our director did the audio and he took a lot of pride. And if you could imagine trying to, you know, polish four hours of audio it was a massive massive massive job and we purposely you probably heard right off the top we had the sound of the the 48 Shepherd and it's kind of rumbly sound but as soon as we made that dissolve into the POV we lost the sound of the motor and we did that on purpose

because we had the motor in there for quite a while. And we found that anything mechanical might sound good. It's kind of like music. It could sound good for 45 minutes. It could sound good for maybe an hour. But for four hours, the only thing that really works is anything that's organic. So that was a very conscious decision on our part. And now what about these locks? So I was fascinated by these manual locks.

Like, you know, you literally have to kind of pull over and then it seems like there's a lot of manual work to be done to get you down. Like, how do you manage all those kind of stops? Yeah. So I'll even back up a little bit about what a lock is because, you know, I didn't really know. Look, I didn't know what a canal was before we started never mind i mean i i thought canals were you know the panama canal was a bunch of these you know like you said locks where the boat goes into

a chamber and that chamber gets dropped down and then the boat goes out that chamber and continues along a long, you know, channel and then goes into another. Well, I mean, canals are actually in this case, 90% you know, natural waterways. I mean, these guys weren't stupid in the 1830s. They didn't think, you know what, we're going to build a 200, you know, kilometer channel, we're going to look at where the lakes go and the rivers go, and we're going to use all those natural waterways. So only 10% of the entire canal is, you know, been handmade. The rest of it is, you know, either a river or a lake. And when those two didn't attach to each other, or you were at a height of land that you had to,

you know, create a liquid staircase for, that's where locks and these chambers came into. To get to your question, these locks, of which there's 45 of them on the Rideau Canal, they're operated by Parks Canada. That was done in the 70s because before this, the Rideau Canal was a transportation route and it was run by the Transport Canada. But they moved it over to Parks Canada and that's when it started to become sort of more of a tourist recreation waterway. And Parks Canada, of course, you know, I mean,

there's nothing more Canadian than Parks Canada. I mean, not in just the fact that they're in these beautiful natural places, but, you know, the way these men and women conduct themselves. They understand the history of the places they're in. They understand, you know, how to, you know, have engaging conversations with the people that come through. So when you come into one of these locks, first of all, the locks are all original. And I'll get to that in a second. But any one of them you can camp at. They have camping at all of the locks are all original and I'll get to that in a second, but any one of them you can camp at. They have camping at all of the locks. They have washrooms at all of the locks. A lot

of them you can actually stay on your boat and camp like that. Some of them have showers. Some of them have more sort of sophisticated huts that you can stay in. And they're quite beautiful. They have, you know, beautiful grounds and so forth. But the stuff that the Parks Canada guys, the cranks that they're turning, the metalwork that is attached to the doors or the gates, the metalwork that's allowing the water to come through, those are all in almost entirely original metalwork dating back from 1832. almost entirely original metalwork dating back from 1832. So for 200 years, all of that metalwork has existed and not having to be changed. And somebody told me, some scientists told me that was because in those days, they made metal out of better ingredients. And I don't understand the science of it, but I'm impressed that it can last that long. Wow. Now, real talk, this is a four-hour doc, but how long was it really, that 27-kilometer journey? You must have had to cut out some waiting periods, right?

Mike! What's the true... Well, how long was it to get it down to four hours? Because I know there's some secret little edits, some ninja edits going on in there. some ninja edits going on in there. So the truth of the matter is we wanted to run exactly four hours and we backed ourselves up to a point. And again, this was in the scouting where we knew if we could get through the locks without anybody else being in the locks. And that's part of the reason why we went when we went was because the worst thing that could happen to us is we got behind a boat at a lock and then it takes more time so we backed ourself up to a spot and this was on our production boat our production boat was a very large pontoon boat where the camera was mounted onto and so forth and we

wanted to go in four hours of real time and you do all the research you can to make sure that that can happen do we have enough battery power do? Do we have enough record on these massive 2TB cards to record 4K for 4 hours? Do we have enough gas in the motor? Do we have all the things that we need to get down there? The answer was yes, all the way across the board, including the same boat captain that we had run with 4 or 5 times in rehearsals. We waited until very late in September to get it so that the weather was good, the wind was down, we knew the wind had to be under 7k, we knew that there would be very few people there, Parks Canada knew we were coming and off we set. To answer your question,

we get about 30 minutes in and the boat captain who's been with us since the beginning of the summer says, yeah, you know, this time of year, we got a lot of weeds. We're going to have to stop a few times to clear the weeds. Like the weeds are what? The weeds are attached to the propeller? Yeah. So, you know, like what happened, you don't count on this, right? Sure. Like flying all year long, except at the end of the year, the weeds get really high and go into the propeller. And we said, what do you mean we've got to stop? So, we…

And you didn't know this, Mitch? You weren't aware? Well, we asked every question about except how tall the weeds are. We'd run it, you know, We'd run it nonstop for months. That's funny. To be honest, we ran for four hours pretty well nonstop. There's two dissolves in it where we did have to make stops, but they were literally clear restarts. So They were 10-second, 15, 30,

40-second stops, but we ran it pretty well in 4 hours. Then the Sheppard, that was done separate too, but the actual run is the actual run. That's why you see that the weather conditions really don't change much. Everything's real it's it's it's it's real we had one crack at that uh at that final shot in the in the Ottawa locks yeah it was beautiful and Hebsey and I are going to be Siskel and Ebert we're giving it two thumbs up okay you know what I really liked about it Mitch first of all you got a spectacular day which was which made to me made the production i mean if i mean just blue sky and white cloud it was gorgeous what i really liked about it was the way you introduced in post-production obviously the graphics the information

the hero notes right the pop-ups like mike talks about pop-up video there is no there is no narration or music or whatever but there is some script that appears in the water to show the route, where the locks are, and some other little hero notes, little information, things that you did. It's a really nice production that was within that four-hour time period. So it was almost like, well, we're going to leave the boat for a second and show you what this area looked like or what our what our route is right yet that was done within the real time frame really nicely done thank you mark and i think that might comes back when you ask me about um you know the kind of forethought is that we thought that if we could get you into this kaleidoscope in the boat and we could get your eye line in a certain place, in a natural place, we didn't want your eye line to wander.

So if we were going to give you a map, we didn't want to take over the whole screen so we blended it into the water. If we were going to give you information, you probably noticed we did 2 things with the boards where we come up with information. We oversized the font so we made sure that it was really easy to read. You guys probably know, or Mark, you do for sure from television, traditionally you put up an information board for 10 to 15 seconds because we figured that's enough for people to read.

We left these up for 25 seconds, and we did it right from the start so that people wouldn't be anxious to get the sense that they had to read it really quickly. Once they understood those are going to be up for a long period of time, I think it automatically relaxed you to not have to feel rushed. It's funny you mentioned that, Mitch, because when I first was watching it, I was, you know, I'm on a computer, I've got a few other things going, and I'm looking back towards it as I would if I were on a boat, let's say. I might just very well look down at my device or check something, whatever, or turn my head to whoever I'm talking to and take my eyes off of the river. In this particular way, I found it, I loved it because

a few times when I turned back to look at the screen, I noticed that the graphic was up there. I don't know how long it had been up there for, but I certainly had the time to read it and absorb the information that you put up there. So that's a real good point. That's a four hour show. If you were doing a half hour show, you wouldn't be putting the graphics up for as long because you're trying to condense, you know, whatever your material is. So I thought that was great. And a real great way to learn. I mean, I can see something like this being part of the curriculum at schools when they get back of something like, do you want to know about that? Well, here's a great thing. Watch this, glean some of the information from it. And while you're at it,

take a bit of a journey and get a sense of it is a really great teaching tool. and get a sense of it is a really great teaching tool. I always remember what John Grisham said. He was living a very hectic life, and he went to Nepal, and he went to see, and I can't remember the name of the valley, but the valley is famous, majestic, one of a kind, and so forth. But he was at a point in his life where he was just too busy, too busy. He couldn't, he couldn't, he was rushing the guide. He goes, okay, let's just get there.

Let's get there. And then they get there and he goes, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. That's great. Yeah. Let's go. Let's go.

Let's go. And the guide's trying to tell him about all the information about this place. And Grisham was way too busy. And he said years afterwards, one day I'm going to have to go there and see it. and see it. I always think about that is that if you can give people information about what they're seeing,

it's going to give them a deeper appreciation for the experience they're having. Absolutely. If I were a teacher right now, I'd be like go to TVO.org, watch this thing, and then go write a report on the history of the, that's your assignment. There you go.

The Rideau Canal. One final thought here is that when I, you know, the whole idea of this real-time journey on the Rideau Canal reminds me of a show I used to watch on Global back in the day. YouTube, I don't know. I hope I get the name right. Night Ride?

No, Night something else. It wasn't Night Ride. Not Night Ride? I know the one. the saxophone player and you're just driving the streets of downtown toronto exactly you're just you're just in a car driving the streets of downtown toronto at night and you got jazz smooth jazz kind of going i don't know who it was mo kaufman who knows but uh it was really soothing and again like a spiritual journey and you just watch this thing late at night. And it's the same kind of effect, right?

It's the same deal. So you could have like another alternative version with some jazz over top of your 27-kilometer Rideau Canal journey. And that could be like the remix, the night. I gotta find out. I should Google this. Not night ride, Hebsey?

You sure? Not night ride? I don't think so. I don't. I think it used to air after Sportsline as a matter of fact. It was like all night, right? See, it all comes full circle here. I'm just

quickly in real time, but go ahead, Mitch. I'm just Googling this. It's called Night Ride. I'm looking at it. Is it Night Rider? Night Ride? No, Night Ride. Yeah. Night Rider was a TV show, right? Yeah, with Kit. It's called Night Ride? Mike, you must get tired of being right all the time with Mark.

You never get tired of that. Come on. Too funny. But any inspiration there at all? You remember Night Ride, right, Mitch? I do. And we did about 10 years ago when the first big screens were coming online and people were buying all the big monitors. Bob Makowitz. I don't know if you remember Bob.

Senior? Yeah. I mean, Junior has been on this program, but yeah, Senior at Q107, I remember him. Yeah. So he's always a guy that's kind of, you know, years ahead of his time and he and I were friends and he said, you know what, we need to fill these because people are just going to put them in their living rooms and they're just going to be these big black spaces. So we did a series of two hour fillers. And so we did the aquarium, we did the fireplace, um fillers and so we did the aquarium we did the fireplace we did puppies of course yeah a group of seven and it comes back to what you were saying we put these beautiful soothing you know jazz music uh underneath it all and the puppies one was just puppies playing you know six of them you know rolling around together for two hours with the kids kind of fun music underneath

it oh that was would you would you call that was that called slow tv is that what they were calling that back in the day no we we called it mood tv mood tv because slow tv was that show you're talking about mike night ride which was just you know they they could plug that show in and air it for hours right and it was you know guys real time but it was it was it took its time and you were part of the journey i think they that was known as like slow tv and then eventually it became you know fireplace or aquariums and all that same kind of an idea was right not condensed into a half an hour or an hour it's you know i guess they called it slow tv if there's a silver lining to the, the horrific,

you know, pandemic that we're all kind of, uh, working our way through right now, if there's a silver lining, it's that we've been forced to slow down, right? Like,

like how else was society ever going to slow down if, if not for some catastrophic thing like this. And here we are. I know that we're a month into this thing now and everything's slowed all the way down. So this is the time to take a four-hour journey with Mitch and the people at Good Earth Productions. And again, free on TV. That's TVO.org. Us Ontarians can just access that for free and play it on demand. And this is the time to slow all the way down. It's really soothing. And that educational aspect just makes it work. So great job, Mitch. Thank you, Mike. It was really fun to talk to you and Mark.

Well, to you and Mark. Yeah, and Mark too. Hebsey, any final words? Go ahead. I have an update here. Night Ride aired from 86 to 93, from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. on global TV. There you go.

And one of the creators was Bill Elliott, a friend of mine and Mitch's, who was a tremendous director for many years at Global, and whose son, Brian Elliott, is a goalie for the Philadelphia Flyers now. Of course. So Bill was the mastermind behind that. And what they did was they only made three episodes of the show. They shot basically three episodes and just put them on repeat for seven years, ran from 86 to 93. Wow. And it's wild.

Same three shows, same three shows. That's unbelievable. And it's wild that, you know, that gentleman's son plays for the Flyers with Andy Frost's son. Morgan Frost, there you go. It all comes full circle. In fact, on that note, we close off by just announcing the next documentary from Good Earth Productions is going to be a

sports line retrospective. Right? Hebsey and Taddy, the origins of the show, am I allowed to promote that or no? Now I got myself in trouble. Hey, look, never say never. Got to get the right people. Hebsey, you are a fantastic co-host.

Tell us about this Globe and Mail article you referenced talks about how you were going to do all these great speaking engagements at University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere. And you had a bunch of books for this purpose. All these engagements were canceled because of COVID-19. So why don't you let people know how they can pick up your educational fantastic book? Yeah, get in touch with me, Hebseyman on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. You can email me,

markhebsher at gmail.com. And yeah, I got a bunch of books because like you said, there was, you know, I think like a lot of people in this Globe and Mail article was everybody had plans. Not everybody, but those of us who were freelancers or whatever had plans, you know, to earn a living. And one of mine, of course, is, you know, when you write a book, you got to go out and you got to hustle and try to sell some books. You can't depend on Chapters, Indigo,

or Amazon to sell the books for you. So, you know, I've been actively trying to, and arranging for speeches, book tours, personal appearances, whatever you want to call it. And they, of course, are all canceled. You know, you can't talk in front of anybody. So all those gigs that I had lined up where I was going to sell books, which I had bought from the publisher at 50% off, and, you know, basically sell them out of the trunk of your car, if you want to call it that way. Gone. So I got all these books. So if you would like to buy a copy of The Greatest Athlete You've Never Heard Of, and I know you have plenty of time to read, plenty of time. How much is that? A lot of teachers actually contact me and say,

can I read my book? Is this book suitable for my classes? You know, history and that. Absolutely it is. So a lot of teachers have come on board. So yeah, there you go. So you and Mitch are educating the children right now with your projects here. So how much is a book that you're going to sign the book, but how much? Look, it's $30 delivered to your door.

It costs about six bucks to mail a book in Canada. So I have to take that into consideration. So for $30, I'll sign it and autograph it and however you want it. And I'll get it off to you in the mail. And there you go, you'll have something to read and a story like Brad Wheeler in the article in the Globe and Mail said, this is something that where a lot of people who I was hoping to introduce to George Orton and the story, I can't because these gigs have all been canceled. These are people I was going to directly deal with, see them in person, right? Afterwards, shake their hand and have a selfie taken and, you know, spend some time with them. And that type of interaction is very important,

I think, for someone like me. I want to meet these people and, you know, face to face, and I can't do that now. So the next best thing now is to sell them a copy of the book from a distance and hopefully they can enjoy the story that way. Well, Hebsey, thanks for being my co-host today. I couldn't have done this without you. And Mitch, I've only done it without you 617 times. Mitch, thanks for giving us all this time today and talking about both the sports

line and tripping the Rideau. Fantastic dog. I hope people see it. What did I say? Rideau. I'll get it right one day, but don't hold your breath. Thanks, Mitch, for doing this. You're very welcome.

Great to talk to you, Mike. And that brings us to the end of our 619th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Mitch isn't on Twitter, but Hebsey is. He's at Hebsey Man. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewer He's at Hebzyman. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer.

Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Sticker U is at Sticker U. And the Keitner Group are at the Keitner Group. See you all next week.

This podcast has been produced by TMDS and accelerated by Rome Phone. Rome Phone brings you the most reliable virtual phone service to run your business and protect your home number from unwanted calls. Visit RomePhone.ca to get started. kind of rosy and gray. Yeah, the wind is cold, but the smell of snow warms me today.