Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Peter Shurman: Toronto Mike'd #498

Episode Date: August 9, 2019

Mike chats with Peter Shurman about his career in radio, his years as an MPP, and his current work at Global News Radio 640 Toronto.

Welcome to episode 498 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Propertyinthe6.com, Palma Pasta, StickerU.com, and Capadia LLP CPAs. I'm Mike toronto mike.com and my guest this week is a guy with radio and politics on his resume peter sherman and i got hemshire on my right so how bad can it be what this is the first time hemshire's crashed a recording since 150 with David Schultz. But you invited me both times. That is true.

But that ruins my story. Yeah, crashing would be unexpectedly dropping in. So Mark Hebzior, we just finished recording Hebzion Sports, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes ago. And you heard Peter Sherman was coming in and you told me how you're connected to Peter. So yes, I invited you in because in because please let's start there like how do you know peter sherman okay so i was working in toronto for 1430 radio which is now 590 the fan but at the time it was the station that was owned by foster hewitt and they had the blue jays they had the leafs they were a big sports station and i worked there and my boss at the time was an anti-Semitic alcoholic. Bad combination. Wow. Fired me for no reason whatsoever.

Must have had a good reason. And I was unemployed. So I was a young, it was in my early 20s. I had no future. It looked like I got, I'd been fired from a low ranked radio station in Toronto. And I was about to accept a job in Ottawa. And I got a phone call from a man named Greg Stewart, who worked with Peter was the program director at CJ FM radio in Montreal, Peter was the general manager. And Greg was the program director, and they were looking for a sports director. And so they, and I think Peter, I think what happened was George Balkan, who was the longtime morning man at CJAD in Montreal, and just a great guy, was friends with my cousin, Cookie Lazarus,

who is a lawyer and a sports agent. That's a great name. Isn't that a great name? And Cookie said to him, he said, well, my cousin is a sports guy and that kind of thing, and so I had met with him, and I don't know what happened after that. Peter could probably fill it in. Balkan probably talked to us.

Balkan is long deceased, but he's one of the great mourning men of Canada. And Cookie Lazarus was a lawyer who fancied himself as well an agent, so he made connections in broadcasting and other businesses in Montreal. I had some times with Cookie, some good, some bad, but fond memories and great memories with Balkan. But he's talking about Greg Stewart, who lives in Scottsdale, Arizona these days and is in a completely other business, but he's a great program director.

We had a radio station. He talked about CJFM. We called it FM 96 in those days. Today it's one of the virgins. But at the time, it had been on the air for 13 years. It had never made a dime. I think it was grossing $400,000, somewhere like that, which in radio terms,

even then was babkas, as we call it. We got a chance to hire this sports guy. I'm learning so much Yiddish. We hired this sports guy, this Mark Hebbshire guy, and he turned out to be great because we had, we created a morning team. And I think

Hebbshire knows it better than anybody or hebsey as he likes to be known now and you know this as well and anybody who's watching us is from the radio business it's not just about doing sports it's about being part of a team being funny and interacting and he did all of those things and i'm not saying this i didn't even know he's going to be with us today i'm not saying this because i'm being gratuitous he was a good guy he's still a good guy but he was a great guy then and he was a terrific contributor to a team. And we took that station partly due to him, but partly due to the other aspects of that organization turned it into a multimillion top 10 FM station in the country. And, um, it's been rocking ever since.

Yeah, it was, uh, I, when you're a sports caster and especially in those days, you weren't a personality. You read the scores, tell the stories, and then off you go. There was no room for commentary. I was a young guy. And so when I got the call from Greg Stewart, and this was on the phone.

I'm living in Toronto, and I'm looking for a job. I was about to take a job in Ottawa. And he's like, yeah, hi, listen, we were doing some auditions here. We're going to put our morning man on, a new guy named Mark Burns. He was going to be the new morning man.

I believe Dean Hagopian was the morning man before that. Dean Hagopian had been the guy before that. We tried a few things. Right, and Abe Hefter was the sportscaster, but he was a sportscaster. He read the sports scores in the news and stuff like that. You know, I ran into him a few weeks ago, but that's another story. Yeah, great guy. I love Abe, and I've spoken to him many times since.

So anyway, they were looking for a new morning show, like, you know, an actual team. And so Mark Burns, I'd never met him before. Here I am am on the phone with him and it was right after the super bowl and he's like well what do you think of the super bowl we just chatted back and forth on the phone greg was listening i don't know if you were listening as well but anyway and uh we talked for about three or four minutes or whatever and then great okay that sounds great when can you start literally when can you start i'm like oh uh i gotta call the people in ottawa say i'm not coming and now i'm on my way to montreal and i'm part of a morning team so there's myself and mark burns and i'm on i don't know a couple times an hour and we're chatting about all kinds of stuff terry fox's run was that year this was 1980 montreal canadians had won four straight stanley cups montreal expos were a fantastic team the alouettes were defending i

think defending great cup champions uh The Grand Prix was every summer. There was lots going on in Montreal. It was phenomenal. It was great. So myself and Mark Burns, a news director named Rob Joyce, Matthew Cope had a show

called People, which was very, very good. And like Peter said, the station suddenly went from being, who cares, like a non-entity to FM Quatre Vingt-Sez.

It was a monster. It became a monster. It was one of those ones that you look back on and I know you do and I do. It became legendary and I can tell you how legendary because I always say in this business, you find

out who your friends really are in broadcasting if you're still talking to them and you're smiling and you're happy about it like we're doing today. I witnessed this this yeah uh before i pressed record on the periscope i kind of got to kind of watch you guys chat and it was pretty awesome like uh you guys seem to really respect each other and like each other and hebsey you pretty much owe your career to this man well listen i mean that was a huge stepping point because had i not worked there i wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to come back to toronto have a talk show do sports line on tv so that allowed my personality to come out and it's because of mark like mark burns was great

like mark burns could have said screw you you're a freaking sports guy just read the scores and shut the hell up but what happened was the promotion of the morning show and see the way radio stations are now are much different back then like peter was the general manager right there was a sales manager there was a promotions director there was a music director there was a program director well we had money yeah a lot but we had money there was a new director the bean counters take care of it and the radio stations have to do the best they can with budgets that are much more monitored than they were in those days but for the most part fm radio was not considered to be serious radio. A bunch of long-haired disc jockeys playing music, who cares, right?

And at this particular time in 1980, this was the first station, FM station, that should have been taken seriously like an AM station when it came to its personnel. So, for example, FM broadcasters were never, ever given credentials by the Montreal Canadiens or the Montreal Alouettes or the Montreal Expos. Peter and Greg went to those teams. I think we drafted a letter saying, look, Mark Hepsher is an experienced sports guy. He wants to cover your teams.

He wants to talk about them every morning on the radio. And we want access. And we were granted access for the first time ever by an FM station. He was it. He became that guy. So he got to do the things that FM guys weren't doing. And you know the secret? People say, what's the secret?

Are you a genius? I wish. Or Greg, was he a genius? No. We looked at the market the way anybody does in radio. But in those days, FM was still on the way to coming into its own. And we said the target market, the fine target market, is 25 to 34. Who were they?

They were us in those days. So we were programming to people just like us, and we were doing things like creating full service. Cars were now being equipped with AMFMs, not just AMs. Right. You didn't have satellite to compete with. The share numbers, the big one, which I wound up running too in Montreal, was CJAD, the sister station.

Right, because just to step back, you were running CJAD and CJFM. Not then. I took over the AM side in 1981. But when Mark was there, we were running FM only. And we were growing like Topsy because we had given a group of people who were coming into their own the product of us coming into our own, and we were able to grow with them. It was, to this day, I mean, there's a group on Facebook that's FM96 alumni, and all the people who work there pretty well get on.

You should join us. I'm not kidding. I've got to tell you, they're all on there. They're all on there, and I talked to them, and I once sat down with one of them, a guy named Steve Manit, who was our production manager, who stayed with the company until he retired. So he was there 40-something longer than I was ever there. And he wanted a production director for CJAD, CJFM, and SHOMFM, all owned by Bell Media. show them FM all owned by Bell Media. And I said, what was it about that place back then that has kept us all in touch and actually liking each other when we're not paid to do it or to be right.

And he said, it was something that you gave us. And I said, what did I give it? He said, pride, pride. We were always the poor sister to the AM. And I think all FMs can say that. And in that particular period of time, I said, you're as good as anybody in the building. You're better than most. You're going to wind up being stars because of this thing. Do your best. And everybody did.

It wasn't because I whipped them or any of that nonsense. It was because people really had talent. They were allowed to perform and show their talent. And Hepsey got to do it. And Hebsey got to do it. And Mark Burns got to do it. And all those people did. So that was the culture there, Hebsey, when you were there. When I first got there, yeah, Peter and Greg said basically,

like, just be yourself. And in those days, this was before the days of political correctness. So I'll give you an example. I came up with a character named the swami right so swami was an indian speed with an indian voice can't do that today man can't do it today but there was a restaurant in montreal called kiplings rudyard kipling right and the i'll never forget because you mentioned steve mann at the production manager hands me a script one day and says can you do an indian accent yeah and the script basically was a guy with an indian accent talking about

kipling you know i do you like kiplings i don't know i've never kippled before like stuff like Yeah. And the script basically was a guy with an Indian accent talking about Kipling. You know, do you like Kiplings? I don't know. I've never kippled before. Like stuff like that, right? And quotes from Rudyard Kipling and the Jungle Book and stuff like that. And so you could do stuff in those days you get away. But one of the great things was, Peter, do you remember this? We staged a bank robbery. Mark Burns and I put on cowboy outfits with like six shooters and cowboy hats and they rented a stagecoach. And this stagecoach pulled up in front of one of the banks right near, we were right at Mountain and St. Catherine, right downtown,

the bank on the corner. And we pull up in this stagecoach, and it's a fake robbery, right? And I think we got the TV cameras, the local TV cameras came, and we pull off this fun fake robbery. Two guys, the two morning guys, those nuts from CJFM, are robbing a bank right and it's because the price of gold at the time had reached an all-time high in 1980 close to a thousand dollars an ounce it was ridiculous so the idea was and i and i think

the promotion was the winner of the promotion was going to get a bar of gold value a thousand dollars that type of a thing the other one was, one of the other stations, and I think, what was Showm on the dial? 97.7. Okay, so Showm was 97.7 on the dial, and FM 96 was 95.9. So Showm used to give away $97.70. You know, whoever comes up with the song of the day,

it was 97.70. And ours was, geez, if we give it away, it's only going to be $96. And somebody was like, we've got to give more money away. And I think there was a phone call and someone said, hey, congratulations, you're the winner. You've won $96 from FM 96. And the guy on the other end of the phone says, $96? I can make more from Sequoia, which was $101.

Or I can make more money at the other station. Stuff like that. Peter also came up along with the sales manager, Joseph Levyvy of broadcasting the grand prix de montreal live on the radio in stereo in stereo which is a big deal then huge deal and there was no english carrier sort of went through left to right yeah but there was no there was no english carrier what happened was one of the fm state one of the um the french language stations would cover it every year because Gilles Villeneuve was a big star and Jody Schechter and James Hunt. Of course.

But there was no English. So they went and said, well, how do we get the rights? And they said, well, you can have them. You can go ahead and take the rights. It was incredible. It was amazing. We got Vidal Sassoon and a bunch of other sponsors.

And I did, like not the play-by-play, I was like the host, but we did the Grand Prix de Montreal on FM 96 in beautiful stereo. And would bring their their radios to the track and listen to our broadcast it was the coolest thing you know the promotions you're you're bringing back to mind the promotions we did it was one of those days like we've had the past couple of weeks it was 35 degrees or whatever in those days i guess we called it 95 degrees but it doesn't matter it's very hot no no we had switched to celsius by then had we 77 i can't remember i'm too old but we we

made it snow in july we we rented a a truck that had an ice chipper yeah and we blew a snow mountain in front of the station and we said the first i forgot about that the first two people male and female who come down in a bathing suit whatever the the prize was. So we did that stuff. It was fun. Oh, there was another one where one of the rival stations on St. Patrick's Day, the guy had painted a black man, had painted a green line down St. Catherine Street. And so

the idea was you one-up the other stations with your promotions. So what had happened was, that was in March and then a couple weeks later, it's April the 1st. Do you remember this? So it's April Fool's Day. Now now when you wake up on april fool's day you don't you don't know it's april fool's day when you wake up that morning you don't go oh it's the first of april you do if you're in radio in radio though you're the first crack the morning radio is the first crack the first opportunity for you to play an april fool's joke right so the deal was this

larry robinson the all-star defenseman for the montreal canadians was a big listener to the show he loved the show he loved the shtick that mark burns and i did he just enjoyed the music everything and he was in a couple days earlier to do what we were going to pre-tape an interview and steve mannett came up with the idea he says wow wouldn't it be great if larry robinson got traded we pretended that he had gotten traded so he was the top defenseman marcel dion was the top player in the league playing for the LA Kings. Right. And we get Larry in there. And so we taped this segment.

I say, okay, Larry, we're going to pretend that you're getting traded on April Fool's morning. We're not going to tell anyone. But let's make the interview. And he was great, a great actor. We roll the tape. I say, well, Larry Robinson joins us. And wow, you got big news.

And he goes, I've just been traded to the LA Kings for Marcel Dion. Now it's Larry Robinson, okay? I mean, you don't got to go to any other source maybe larry robinson it's larry robinson it's him and he's and i never forget man at the look on man it's face he's got a cigarette in his mouth he's great this is gonna be great so larry robinson goes on to make it seem as if he's just been traded and i'm like well what do you have to say to the fans of montreal and he says i just want to i just want to say and he's like pretending that he's crying i I mean, it was beautiful. We're going to hitch the boat onto the truck and we're driving to LA

and I want to thank the Montreal fans and you're getting a great player in Marcel Dion. He was fantastic. Okay, stop tape, cut, beautiful. So we hold on to that and seven o'clock in the morning on April Fool's Day, we roll this tape as if it's live. People are going nuts.

The switchboard hasn't even opened yet. People are wild. They don't know what to do. This is the days before, you know, there's no one on Twitter that can ruin this. We also snooker every other radio station in town. Every other station. And so the other stations now are going, where did they get this information? Right. And Claude Ruel,

who's the coach of the Habs, phones me and goes, what the heck is going on? What the heck? Right? And so the other station, and Jeff Rimmer was on the other station, CFCF, he hears this, he goes, oh my god they're pulling off an April Fool's joke these bastards and then he does he tries to get we were too yeah and he tries to get he said and he goes on and he says oh Jeff Reardon's been traded by

the Axios but it was too late by then so anyway for about two hours we have the whole city going nuts and what you have is you have the reaction from Larry Robinson like you know that's the that's the goal we had it all. Mark Burns, the morning man he was working with, we held a press conference one day at the Bonaventure Hotel, and Mark declared himself a candidate for the mayoralty of Montreal. We were nuts. We were

basically 20-something-year-old guys who had the keys to a radio station in a major market, and we went out of our minds. And so you hear the enthusiasm all these years later coming from Mark Hemsher And so you hear the enthusiasm all these years later, coming from Mark Hebbshire, and you hear it from me because... Well, how did you get the gig? I mean, we're going to step back once.

I know Hebbsy's got to roll out soon, but... Yeah, get him out of here. You're interviewing me, remember? But how did you, Peter, how did you end up... Running FM 96? Yes. I named it FM 96. Up to the time I had it, it was 95.9, 52 minutes

of beautiful stereo music in every hour here's a amount of Annie, that kind of thing it was just like CKFM in Toronto 99.9, so Toronto, the equivalent Toronto for standard was CFRB Wally Crowder in the morning, news is all I ran that one too and then CKFM

which was 99, Don Daynard, whatever it was 52 minutes, candlelight and wine, all that kind of stuff. That's the way the FM stations for standard broadcasting were in those days. The AM was the powerhouse and the FM was the weak system. You also ran. Yeah. Yeah. So how did I get the gig?

I was, I'm an interesting story. I walked into the radio business in a way that I would have to think nobody else has. I walked in the radio business in a way that I would have to think nobody else has. I walked in with a screwdriver. I was a ham operator as a kid because if you were a geek, which I was back then. Right. I know. Back then. And now too.

Okay. I get hired by the radio station as a junior tech. I'm going to service the transmitters and stuff. And I do it. And then people start telling me, you know, you have this deep, rich voice. Which you do have. I'm hearing you in the headphones. and you seem like you're a pretty smart guy and and so you should aspire to get on the air so i'm sneaking into the studios at cjad every night and i'm practicing on tape reel to reel of course in those days right and one day i get the nerve to give it to the program director at the time a guy named bill hamley and uh bill listens to it and he says, can you do Saturday night?

I'm like, yeah, I can do it. So I did Saturday night. I think they probably had to bring in fire hoses to clean the sweat off the floor. But my debut on on-air radio, I was still a tech, but I was doing Saturday nights. And in

those days, it was on 50 kilowatt number one CJAD Montreal simulcasting on 50 kilowatt, number one, CJAD Montreal, simulcasting on CJFM, 52 minutes of beautiful stereo music in every hour. And I got, there was nobody else in the building. You ripped the news off the broadcast news wire, and you read it verbatim. And what year is this? And that was it. That was 1969.

Okay, so 50 years ago. 50 years ago. Okay, let's listen to something I pulled. This is from 1968, but maybe it'll sound familiar to you. C-J-A-P, my trio's number one. It's your station. It's your station C-J-A-P Radio 804

Montreal The mic, you're going to make me cry. I was there. I wasn't on the air then. I joined the company in late 1966, and I was a teenage kid. Right. And those were the jingles that they were using. And in those days, much like its sister, its big sister in Toronto, CFRB,

it was what we called MOR, Middle of the Road. And Middle of the Road radio stations, there was no News Talk. Middle of the Road radio stations did a combination of what you would hear on news talk type radio stations today, like 640, where I work as a fill in and 1010 are the two big guys in Toronto. But that was just some of what you did. In between, you played music. You had full service newsrooms with large staffs. You had sports departments that generally had one or two or three people. Because if you added all the money together that it cost to run that kind of an operation, and you looked at the fact that radio in those days was a big-time medium. It was a major league advertising dollar.

There was no social media expenditure. You bought radio, television, or print. That's what you did. So the radio stations made big money. And CJAD in those days had a 25 share. And interestingly, it is an anachronism because it still has a 25 share. And the reason is Montreal is landlocked. And for English, it's truly not just a physical island. It is an island of Anglo citizens living largely in the West End. And CJAD in that context is an institution.

Wow. 25 share. Can you imagine? 25 share today. One in four people listening to the radio are tuned into that station. Yeah. What a powerhouse. Yeah.

So when I, and so when I went from Toronto to Montreal, I went from a like a 17th ranked station in Toronto to now at the time, like you say, Peter, CJFM was not anywhere close to number one, but it was on the rise. But it was the sister station to CJAD.

So it was in the same building. Right. The big eight, the powerhouse. My biggest, I had worked for CJAD, and my biggest challenge when I ran CJFM was to kick them in the ass. Yeah. And ultimately, if you take a look at demographics, we did.

Amazing, amazing. Okay, so Hepsey, when do you leave montreal so i so i was in montreal for a year um and what happened was i always look i was doing sports but the personality part of it i enjoyed as well like i really enjoyed being part of the morning team and just the team and the other thing like peter mentions in the building we were one floor above them so when i first got there was like oh you're the new guy for fm like off you go but after a few months we started to get respect from the employees that worked for cjd they were like hey this fm 96 is going places it was fun to listen to and so before when no one paid attention to you because you worked for the

the weak sister suddenly now people were like hey you guys are pretty good i guess and so once you once your peers in the same building that worked for the am station have been there for years the bill hamleys and john mccombs and george balkins and all those you know bob looney guys aaron rand and all these top you know we're like hey i guess you guys are pretty good so we're like the up-and-comers the young guys so that was great so i lasted a year and i got an offer to go back to Toronto to take over for Bob McCown. First of all, they asked me if I would produce Bob McCown's show. And I said, why would I want to be a producer?

I'm on the air here in Montreal having a great time. And then I said, I'm not going to come back as a producer. And then they said, we're going to let Bob go. And do you want to come back and do his show, like a sports talk show, which is all I wanted to do. And Al Strachan had said to me, he says, oh, you've got to take that job. I mean, who wouldn't want to be a sport? This is the life history of Peter Sherman and radio.

Yeah. Who wouldn't want to have him? Once we get Hebsey out of Montreal, he gets out of the house. So that's how this works, Peter. That's exactly it. Right. So anyway. So you got an offer you couldn't refuse to go home.

I got an offer to go back to do sports talk on the radio two hours every night from six till eight o'clock. I think it was ten to midnight, whatever it was. And I don't recall. I think I went to you guys and said, look, I got this great opportunity. And I thought I was going to be and they were like, look, good luck, man. That's great. I mean, follow your dream. That's fabulous. We'll get someone else. At the time, there was someone who worked in our newsroom and i don't know if it's you or greg but she was a an asian woman and her name was a very asian name i'll tell you but but but she had been told listen if you if you use the name mitsumi takahashi on the air in 1980

you know it might it might not be right so they changed her name to lee taylor i'll never forget this and so here's this lovely... That wasn't me. That was Greg. It must have been Greg. So I'm like... So I'm working with... And now with the news, Lee Taylor.

Okay? And it was Mitsumi Takashi, who is a legendary anchor at CFCF TV in Montreal and has been probably since that time. Oh, yeah. She's been the major anchor in Montreal for 30 years. Which name did she... No, no.

But anyway, she didn't like... She's Mitsumi Takashi. Yeah, but she didn't like being known as Lee Taylor. Which name did she... No, no, but anyway, she didn't like... She's Mitsumi Takahashi. But she didn't like being known as Lee Taylor, but at the time it was like, listen, let's not, you know, you're... Well, that was in the days of radio, Mark. Like, Greg Stewart was your typical radio white guy. He's a great guy, but Aaron Rand,

who's the drive guy on CJAD to this day, at the time wound up doing sports. I guess he came in after you. No, no, he was doing sports on CJAD while I was doing it on CJAD to this day. Yeah. At the time, wound up doing sports. I guess he came in after you. He was doing sports on, no, no. He was doing sports on CJAD while I was doing it on CJFM. But we got him on doing sports, but Greg didn't like Aaron Renz, so they named him Larry Kane. That's right.

And then he ended up getting Ted Bird. Yeah, well, then he got Ted Bird. He got Ted Bird because Ted Bird's a great radio name. Well, remember, Gordon Martin was just here, and they tried to make him Gordon Martin because it sounded too French. Like, that's the air we're talking about. Okay, Hebsey. Hebsey on sports.

Just to let people know. When you do this for me, I get to tell people that you're on Hebsey on sports every Monday and Friday morning. Hebseyonsports.com if people want to subscribe. We literally just recorded

this morning and you had a lot to say about Bo Bichette and Rogers Tennis and it was pretty passionate and real talk for sports fans just recorded this morning and you had a lot to say about Beau Bichette and Rogers Tennis and it was pretty passionate and real talk for sports fans in this city.

And unfiltered too. I don't have to cater to Rogers or Bell or who owns you? Or Chorus. He's a Chorus guy. Is it Chorus? I'm a Chorus guy.

You're a Chorus guy. So I don't have to do that anymore. Chorus doesn't own any hockey teams. I don't have to worry about that. Or any sports teams.

But listen, it was a pleasure. Have a great rest of the show. Thanks for doing this. Great to see you, Mark. See you, buddy. All right. We'll talk soon.

Thank you, Hebsey. I'll shut down the Hebsey mic. You are the blue cable. There you go. And your episodes online, people should go listen to Hebsey on Sports. It's the best sports podcast in the city. And I'm not saying that because I'm on it. It's fantastic. So, okay, Peter, now that Hebsey's left the city. And I'm not saying that because I'm on it. It's fantastic.

So, okay, Peter, now that Hebsey's left the building. Okay. So we're going to go back a tiny bit and then we're going to get us. So that was great. Cause I don't have any,

um, I don't know what a, a CJAD is or a CJFM is. Cause you don't have the Montreal background. Or all those names. I mean, I heard the names I recognize Al Strachan I recognize and Ted Bird's a name. Uh, he's been through here. Absolutely. Yeah, for names. I mean, I heard the names I recognize. Al Strachan I recognize, and Ted Bird's a name I recognize. Well, he's been through here, absolutely, yeah.

For sure. But you literally, you came straight from doing the morning show. You were on the air this morning at 6.40. Yeah, and I'm on the air all next week filling in for Stafford. Would you ever call it GNR 6.40? I always call it, I call it GNR 6.40, Global News Radio 6.40. I came on board with them a couple of years ago when they were still using AM640, but they wanted to put the global brand out there across Canada and marry television and radio.

Probably a good idea. But you're calling it Global News Radio. You're not calling it GNR. GNR 640 is the abbreviation that they use out there when the radio guys are talking. But we call it Global News Radio 640 Toronto. I'm trying to get you guys to start saying GNR640 on the air. No, no, no, no, no. You've got to tell people.

It's global. Same as global TV. Right, right, right, right, right. Now, you're the second Peter on the show in a row. I just want you to know I'm all Petered out at this point. I'm sorry for you. Peter Gross was my last guest. Got it. Now I'm doing a Peter

Sherman. So thanks for coming straight from Corus Key. I was there, yeah. I guess you could have just taken, I know when Stafford, because Stafford lives west of here, but he just takes Lakeshore. He lives in Port No Credit, as he says. Which is like, yeah, Port Credit

adjacent. Something like that. But he just takes Lakeshore. He doesn't jump on the Gardiner at all. Well, I came from Corus Key, so I took the Gardiner and here we are. Kat the Dog Walker. This is a Twitter tweet I saw this morning. It wrote, Hi Peter, so lovely to wake

up early and hear you in the AM. So Kat the Dog Walker enjoys you filling in for Stafford on mornings there. Make sure you stop in Gabby's on the Danforth this weekend and say hi. Oh, she heard me say that I'm probably going to go out to taste on the Danforth, taste of the Danforth this weekend.

It says her brothers Ricky and Maurice run the place. So it sounds like you can get a free drink if you jump into Gabby's this weekend. That's nice. And if I'm there when you come, I will have a cool libation to soothe your throat after a busy week. An enticement. Yes, so there you go. Can we start with you telling me the origin, because you threatened to tell me the origin of the Shermanator nickname. Shermanator. Boy, is that one that stuck. Shermanator was a Twitter handle. It's still a Twitter handle.

Back when I ran for office, which was in 07, I had a campaign manager who said, you have to get on Facebook and you have to get on Twitter. Now I'm going to tell you to try to get a frame of reference for 2007. I said, what the hell are those? Well, that was early days. Because it was really early days. I didn't even know if Twitter was around in 07. So I think the Twitter came later.

But they showed me how to sign up. And I don't know. Today on Facebook, I have pushing on 5,000 Facebook friends. I don't know how long I want to keep Facebook. I'm not a big fan of Facebook anymore. Me neither. It's too much. Here's my grandchildren.

And here's the story of my life. And here's what the doctor did to me today in graphic detail. And I'm just not interested. So if you take a look at my Facebook page, you're going to find not very much that's personal, although there is a picture on there of me at age 20 sitting at the console of CJAD on Mountain Street in Montreal. So you can take a look at that.

And to look it up, you have to know that Sherman is S-H-U-R-M-A-N. I digress. The point is, you asked about Shermanator. Yes. So I picked Shermanator because the Terminator was popular then. And I didn't think very much about it. Then I wind up elected, and I'm in Queen's Park, and I find all of these new colleagues are calling me Shermanator.

And the liberals across the way are calling me Shermanator. And every time I stand up to speak, I'm hearing, Shermanator, hey, Shermanator. And the liberals across the way are calling me Shermanator. And every time I stand up to speak, I'm hearing Shermanator, hey, Shermanator. And I've got, you'd know her, Lisa McLeod, who was Minister of Social Affairs and Children. And she became more recently Minister of Sports and Culture. And she had the office next door to mine. And every time she saw me, and to this day, if I go to Queen's Park, she does a little dance. She calls the Shermanator dance. She goes, Shermanator, Shermanator. She does this thing. And so that

made its way into radio and people come into the studio and say, how you doing, Shermanator? So I guess it's there for the rest of my life. But as nicknames go, that's a pretty good one, I'd say. Like, you could have done far worse than Shermanator. I think that's cool. It's dated, because who remembers the Terminator?

I think it's coming back. Like I feel like a new one is about to drop. I don't know. I'm the Shermanator. There's no question about it. I trademarked it and I got it. Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing.

By the way, what does I have here? Back in the day. Okay. So when you were, this is, I got to ask you this. This is an email I got. This brings you back to Montreal. So we'll get you back to Montreal here. Because you're a Montreal guy.

Like you're born and raised in Montreal. Born and raised in Montreal and spent the first 35 approximately years there. Yeah. Somebody wants me to ask you about, what is it? Okay, this is a tweet you wrote. So this person sent me a link to one of your tweets and said, you have to get this story. It goes, this is you talking now.

Ah, yes. Back in the day when being an Anglo-Montrealer meant being liberal, how things change. He was the first of several Canadian prime ministers to tell me to, and you didn't type out the word, but the word is fuck off. You're talking about Pierre Elliott Trudeau here. Pierre Elliott Trudeau was the first Canadian Prime Minister to tell me to fuck off, but he wasn't the only one.

Okay, I've got to hear this story. That sounds like there's a story here. I was a reporter. That was what I did before I got hold of the FM station that Hebsey and I were talking about with you, and so I was a reporter for CJAD, and so I drove one of those cars

that they had in those days, and it was a big deal. So there were three of us, and we had three dedicated mobiles. We took them home at night because you could be called in the middle of the night to cover a fire or whatever. So we were out there, and we were really well-known. As a matter of fact, that's a story in a story. It was Rick Lechner and Sid Margulies and myself. We're still friends today, and we're all Jewish.

So they called us the JMS, the Jewish Mobile Squad. And it was done tongue-in-cheek, but you know what? That was another one that stuck. And I was assigned. Sidney was my assignment editor. I think he was deputy news director then. And he said, go to town of Mount Royal, which was the area that Pierre Elliott Trudeau represented,

and interview the prime minister. There's not much going on in the news. It was summer, so he's doing a writing visit. And see if you can grab him. It's his 60th birthday today. So see if you can ask him a question about his 60th birthday. You know, make it fancy like a man on his 60th birthday looks back in retrospect and looks ahead and what's he going to do.

So I asked for an interview from his then press attache, a guy named Vic Chapman, who had spent time in the Canadian Football League. He's a great big bruiser. And I said, can I have an interview with the Prime Minister? And I knew Vic. And Vic says, no, there's not going to be any interviews, one-on-one.

If he holds a press availability, okay. That kind of thing. So I hung around and hung around, and he's going to the second floor of the town of mount royal town hall in an elevator that only goes two floors and it's kind of jammed and as the doors are closing and vick's not in it i jump in and the door is closed behind me and i'm sandwiched up against pierre eliot trudeau and i say prime minister peter sherman cjad can i uh ask you a question or two and he's surrounded by people so he goes yes, yes, of course. The way he spoke. And I said, Prime Minister, your 60th

birthday is today. I wonder what your reflections are on what you've done as Prime Minister and what you see lying ahead. And he looked around and he cupped his hand over the top of my microphone and leaned in and he said, fuck off. I said, yes, sir. And then the elevator door opened up and a hand clapped me on the shoulder. And it was Vic. And he said, don't sir. And then the elevator door opened up and a hand clapped me on the shoulder. And it was Vic. And he said, don't try that crap again. So that's how, that's the story.

Oh man, I'm so glad I got that story. And while we still have you in Montreal, a proud sponsor of this program is Brian Gerstein. He's at propertyinthesix.com. He's a real estate agent with PSR Brokerage. He recorded a question for you. So these words belong to Brian. Hi, Peter. Brian Gerstein here, sales representative with PSR Brokerage and proud

sponsor of Toronto Mites. The July Treb numbers came out and competition is fierce between buyers looking for semi-detached homes, townhouses, and condos due to their more attainable price points. I have my own buyers experiencing this right now as we navigate that tough marketplace. Call or text me at 416-873-0292 so I can break down all the July numbers for you in your neighborhood. in your neighborhood. Peter, as an ex-Montrealer like you living in Thornhill, I indulge with St. Urban Bagel and Center Street Deli for my bagel and smoked meat fix. How do you go about it?

And have you tried out Sumalicious Deli at 5621 Stills Avenue East between McCowan and Markham Roads for Montreal-style smoked meat? It's run by an ex-Schwartz's employee. I haven't yet, but will soon. Well, I'll answer the question. Yes, please. I lived in Thornhill for 15 years,

raised the kids there, and represented it in the legislature. No, I'm living in central Toronto now. But I still have a great fondness for Thornhill, many, many friends there, and absolutely the Centre Street Deli, and absolutely St. Urban Bagel, because we Montrealers need our fix.

This is what I hear. Okay, so Brian is an ex-Montrealer too and now he lives in Thornhill. But yeah, it sounds like the best bagels are coming out of Montreal. That's what I hear. You know, you have to be a Montrealer. If you talk to Torontonians, average Torontonians,

everybody loves bagels the world over. But Torontonians say, why do you Montrealers think your bagels are special? They're thick and heavy and I have to chew them and that kind of thing. The reason that the bagels are different from Montreal is they're boiled in honey water and then they're cooked in a wood oven where they actually burn wood and so they take on the smoke and all the rest of it. New York is similar, but nowhere else. Everywhere else, they're kind of rolls with holes in the middle. Right. And we Montrealers, well, it's like everybody everywhere.

You get used to what you remember when you were a kid. And I remember those bagels as a kid, and the Montrealers all have to have them. And I've got to tell you, we've got family in Florida. When we go to Florida, we get a call. Can you bring two or three dozen in a suitcase? And we do it. We do it. Right, right.

Amazing. Now, before we pressed record, you mentioned you had watched or listened to the Dana Levinson episode. Yeah. She brought me bagels. So she came with a dozen fresh bagels. I saw that. I don't know Dana, although I've watched her for years on television. She's great,

and I wish her well in her next whatever it's going to be. But yeah, I saw she brought you bagels. I didn't bring you anything. I should have brought you some. I'm trying to guilt you. I should have brought you some smoked meat from Center Street. Oh, that sounds amazing. Or Sumalicious, because he says it's good,

and I'll try it. Now, I mentioned this on the episode, the last Peter episode, Peter Gross, I mentioned a comment I got from long-time listener, Basement Dweller, about apparently there's this Montreal-style bagel you can get at the St. Lawrence Market, which he says is...

Pretty much, it's true. Yeah, the best you can get. Well, that's St. Urban Bagel as well. Is that? Okay, good to know. A number of branches, and one of them is in St. Lawrence Market, and I can even tell you, because I go there on the way to or from chorus, they're on the second floor.

I'm giving them a big commercial here. They're on the second floor in the southeast corner, and it's the same bagels done the same way as you'd get on Eglinton, and there's one in Thornhill. Yeah, you've got to have St. Urban bagels. I'm learning so much about bagels this week on Toronto Mike. Follow me. Montrealers lead the way.

Right, right, right. I don't have bagels for week on Toronto Mike. Follow me. Montrealers lead the way. Right, right, right. I don't have bagels for you, but I have... Do you like Italian food? I love Italian food. Okay. So I have a frozen lasagna for you. Now... I was wondering why when I put my hand on this box,

it's cold. It's frozen solid. So you won't be eating that this afternoon. But this is a courtesy of Palma Pasta. That's a family-run, authentic Italian food. They have four locations now. I believe three in Montreal. Did you hear what I just said?

Three in Mississauga. I don't think there's any in Montreal. Not yet. But three in Mississauga, one in Oakville. Fantastic people. Palmapasta.com to get directions. So please enjoy. Take that home with you and enjoy lasagna.

I'll give you some feedback. That's very nice. Thank you. Who doesn't like lasagna? Anyone who doesn't like lasagna, although there are some, I will say if you're lactose intolerant, I give you a pass, but everyone else must love lasagna. Absolutely.

So you've got your lasagna, palmapasta.com. Great partners for the show. Speaking of great partners for the show, Great Lakes Brewery, that's a local craft brewery here in southern Etobicoke. They make the freshest, tastiest craft beer in the city, actually in the province. I'm getting beer with a lasagna? You're getting a six-pack.

Oh. It was worth the drive, my friend. It's worth coming a little west after the morning shift at GNR 640. So Great Lakes, yeah, you're taking this six-pack home with you. So a six-pack of beer and lasagna. Reason enough to come, but even more so to meet you. Well, I'm already, like, what are we in here?

I think we're actually already 40 minutes deep, believe it or not. I haven't got you out of Montreal yet. We haven't even scratched the surface. Yeah, so I hope you're buckled up for a long haul here. But I want to tell everybody, this is now official. Like, it's now confirmed that September 19th, that's coming up September 19th from 6 PM to 9 PM. And if anyone's listening to this in the future, I'm talking about the year 2019. Theoretically, someone might hear this in

four or five years. You got to throw in a year. So September 19th, 2019, we're all getting together. All the listeners and guests are going to get together at Great Lakes Brewery for a live recording of Toronto Mic'd. And everybody in attendance will have an opportunity to come on the mic for a little chat. Like we're going to have a lot of fun. What was that? And it's at Great Lakes Brewery. So everybody who can hear my voice right now, stick that in the calendar

to be at Great Lakes Brewery from 6 to 9 p.m. on September 19th. I'm not done giving you gifts, Peter, because I need you to have a Toronto Mike sticker. Well, I have one now. Thank you. That's courtesy of stickeru.com.

For custom stickers, you go to stickeru.com. They're in Liberty Village. Great people. There's even a temporary tattoo. You want to rock that maybe when you're going to Gabby's or on the Danforth this weekend. So yeah, let me know where that sticker ends up. And don't worry, even if it ends up on the side of a garbage can or whatever,

just snap a picture and share it. I would love to see it. So thank you, StickerU. You got pasta, beer, stickers. We heard from Brian. Now I just want to urge everybody to get a free consultation with Rupesh Kapadia. Kapadia LLP, they're CPAs. They're accountants that see beyond the numbers. I often talk about Rupesh as the rock star accountant, and he's very easy to talk to. discuss with him. He'll give you good advice, best practices, lead you in the right direction. Let's hear, this is actually a call made by Rupesh that I recorded. So let's hear from Rupesh. Hello, Toronto Mike listeners.

Okay, that's not actually, I'll play that actually since I started it, but that actually is not Rupesh. That's Milan, but let's hear what Milan has to say about Capadia. Hello, Toronto Mike listeners. This is Milan from Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair. We've been using Capadia LLP for many years, providing guidance for all of our corporate and personal accounting needs. Over the years, Rupesh Capadia has put together an effective tax plan for his clients. And the bottom line is he and his expert team of accountants save you money. Thanks, Toronto Mike. And thank you, Capadia LLP. Thank you, Milan. Peter, things sound like they're going amazing in Montreal. You're a Montreal guy. You got the great bagels there.

You got the two stations, right? Things are wonderful. So what brings you to Toronto back in, I guess, 83? Well, that takes a little bit of explaining. The stations at the time in Montreal and what brought me to Toronto was standard broadcasting. Standard broadcasting for the radio people, they know exactly what standard broadcasting is. For people outside of the business, standard broadcasting was a company that was owned, it was a public company, but it was majority controlled by Hollinger Argus. Hollinger Argus goes back to the days of the legendary E.P. Taylor and John Angus Bud McDougald. And it passed along to the Black Brothers, Conrad Black and his brother Monty Black, late Monty Black. And that's how I got to know the blacks. And what happened was I was doing a pretty good job, I guess they thought,

of the Montreal pair, which by then it had become a pair. I was running AM and FM, and they were profitable, which had not always been the case. And I get a call one day to come to Toronto. That was not so abnormal. You came to Toronto because that was HQ, and you had to meet, and the president was another the late Donald Hartford, Don Hartford, good guy. And he was president of radio. So he at one time

had also been general manager of CFRB in the halcyon days of 20 shares when you could do that and CFRB did. And I went to see him, which again was not abnormal, but the conversation that day was out of the ordinary. He said, I'm going to be retiring next year because I'm turning 65, because that's what you did back then. Right. And you're going to be the president of the radio division, so you've got to move to Toronto. Wow.

I fought it. I fought it. I loved Montreal so much. I said, well, you know, can't I do this out of Montreal? Airplanes are a dime a dozen. I can do this. And his boss, who was my mentor in Montreal, H.T. McCurdy, Mac McCurdy, legendary guy in broadcasting also, said, Peter, he had a very proper way about him. Peter, this is a lot like being fired. You can't say no. And it would behoove you to be a little bit more down to earth and accepting and gracious about accepting the fact that you've just been promoted

to president of the radio division. So that's what brought me to Toronto. And I was to report the day after Labor Day that year, I guess it was February. So I had six months to take care of my business in Toronto and in Montreal and find some people to replace me as management in Montreal and then move to Toronto and take up stakes, which I did. And so in Toronto, the stations were CFRB and CKFM. And CKFM, it's Virgin 99.9 now, but it was CKFM 99.9 in those days and cfrb was the wally crowder cfrb and um so i did and it was daunting i i remember arriving here and thinking as i drove down the 401 it was scary i'd never moved cities in my life and i'm'm a big, brave guy, but this was really daunting.

And, you know, for that position, you're in your mid-30s. I was in my mid-30s, and I had had a conversation probably a year, two years before sitting in a fancy restaurant in Montreal with the same Don Hartford. And I guess he was feeling me out on this position before revealing what he's going to do, and I never twigged to it at the time. He said, what do you think is going to happen to the next guy who manages CFRB? And I said, he's going to do. And I never twigged to it at the time. He said, what do you think is going to happen to the next guy who manages CFRB?

And I said, he's going to get fired. And he said, why would you say that? I said, because the guy who comes after the most successful era ever, as you've got an aging demographic and you have to be the agent of change, always pays the price. And I became the next manager of CFRP, so there you go.

Yeah, you want to replace the guy who replaces that guy. That's what you want to be. That's what you want to be. But I'll tell you one thing. We had an interesting time. When I inherited it, there was still a Gordon Sinclair. There was still a Betty Kennedy. Wally Crutter wasn't going anywhere for a number of years,

and the Slates hadn't considered buying it at that point. And so the writing on the wall for me was, you could be president of the radio division, and I guess having been there 20-something years at that point, since the days of the screwdriver, I had every reason to think that when Mac decided to step aside, I could probably become president of the company. But who knew that the Black blacks had designs on the newspaper business

and they were going to divest of Dominion stores and Massey Ferguson and Standard Broadcasting and go put their eggs in that basket. And I was going to get Alan Slate, which turned out to be not a good thing for me in the short term. But in the long term, I look back on the reign of Alan and Gary and I think pretty amazing businessmen. Yeah, absolutely, for sure. Now, let's linger a little bit at this time in your life

when you're basically in charge of CFRB and CKFM, but you talk about the old guard that was there. Can you maybe share a little detail about this old guard that you inherit when you come to Toronto? You mentioned Wally and stuff. So what kind of guy was Wally? He was a good guy, but I'll tell you something. He and other people in that place were resentful of my coming on the scene.

First of all, I'm from Montreal. What is a Montreal kid? Cause when you're 30 something and you've got the morning man is 60 or 62 or whatever he was at the time, who the hell are you to come in and to, and be my boss? It was kind of that attitude and it was palpable. It was at the time, who the hell are you to come in and be my boss? It was kind of that attitude, and it was palpable. It was a very different, it was a day when Toronto was a white bread city, and that was a white bread radio station.

And we had to make changes, and I ultimately wound up forging ties. I remember the first time I decided I had to break the ice with Wally, and so I invited him to lunch and I even remember where it was Cowan's bottom line. He liked to hang out there. I found that out surreptitiously took him there for lunch and we downed a fair amount of alcohol and, and that breaks inhibitions and we got to know each other and we, we spent a couple of hours and he liked it so much that he said, look, I've enjoyed this conversation. I've gotten to know you better than I ever thought I would in this couple of hours.

Why don't we go home and take a rest? And why don't we get our wives and go out tonight and continue the whole thing? And we wound up going again. I remember it was at Rossini's, another place that he liked to go, on Avenue Road. And so I met Lynn Crowder, and he met Carol Sherman. And we got along after that quite well, except that when I wanted to have a meeting with him, I'd have to go to the Thornhill Golf and Country Club,

because that's where he was every day. Right. What about, yeah, name some of those other... Well, Betty Kennedy was imminently going to retire. Who knew it at the time? She did an afternoon for ladies show. She was a nice lady. She had a unique office at CFRB.

This is a whole other day in radio. She had a private office. She did one hour in the afternoon, but she was Betty Kennedy. So she had Louis XVI furniture in that office. I remember the day she came to tell me that she was going to retire, and we had the conversation, and I wished her well.

The last thing she said to me was, would you mind very much if I took the furniture from my office with me? And I thought to myself, well, who the hell is going to sit at it if not you? So I said, of course, you can have that. I'm happy to have it. Bill Stevenson was the sports director, a great guy who gave me stock tips. And Bill Ballant was the sports director, great guy who gave me stock tips. And Bill Ballantyne, terrific guy, ran CKFM. He's the fellow, I would have to say, who single-handedly figured out that FM radio could be dominant in a market and did it with CKFM. And it went on to be a number of different things in various incarnations. But in those days, his making big

money and grossing in the millions at a time when FMs weren't supposed to do anything at all. So we had that. Bill Deegan was on in the afternoon. And here's a major thing, and this addresses the beginning of the change. I brought a guy with me from Montreal, ultimately. He had been running CJAD, and I brought him to Toronto as program director, name of Ralph Lucas, still around in Toronto,

doing very well today. And Ralph was the architect of a lot of things that we were able to pull off. In Montreal, he pulled off a coup, bringing the two best guys possible over from the competition and defeating them. And in Toronto, in great lengthy conversations that we had about what we had to do with CFRB,

and it was a hard thing to make the decision. We were the guys, and very particularly I give credit to Ralph, who said, you know, this is going to have to talk. This station is going to have to talk. This station is going to have to talk. It's going to have to stop being middle of the road because that's not going to survive and it has to talk. And he said, Ed Needham. And Ed Needham had been, we had a station in Ottawa, short-lived.

It's not there anymore. It was a 50 kilowatt AM that was replaced by Gary Slate with an FM called The Bear, which is still on the air. But that station, CJSB, had talk, and this fellow named Ed Needham, who is quite an amazing veteran of the broadcast business, had been with ABC News in the States, and he was a talker. And we brought him to Toronto, and he did the first talk radio in the evenings on CFRB and built up an amazing following.

And that was Ralph's idea. And from there, we kind of wrote the plan on what was going to happen to CFRB going forward now somewhere in there and you'll probably ask about this the slates came along and Gary wanted my job and one thing led to another and I left but that story if you want me to expand on it I will in a moment but of course I do what happened was we we wrote the book and then we left, but to Gary's credit, not suggesting that he took my book,

but he wrote the same book, because I think anybody who was thinking in radio, and Gary, pretty smart guy, was doing the thinking. That's where the Motts, and Bill Carroll, and Ted Walsh in the morning at the time.

All of those things were Gary, and they were the follows on having Ed Needham in the evening. And I remember having a fight with Alan Slate when he was the vital guy in the president's office next door to where I sat in the president of radio's office. And we were talking. I said, I'm going to take it. I'm going to take it and talk. And he said, well, you know, he had a particular way.

He got very angry. You know that talk doesn't work in toronto talk never worked in toronto but he had been a veteran he'd been the program director of chum when it was uh top 40 chr and uh he had had i guess it was john gilbert on in the mid mornings and these chr contemporary hit stations in those days did a break in the middle of the day to fulfill some kind of a newsy commitment and they put on a talk guy and I guess Alan didn't like that and it had never been a great big hit in Toronto but you know what talk was a hit in Toronto because there was nothing unique about Toronto that said that people didn't want to tune into a radio station that had personalities who could also lead you through the stories of the day,

interview the people that you wanted to talk to or hear from, and that's what CFRB proceeded to do. Well, Peter, there's guys my age who don't know anything except about 1010. They don't know 1010 as anything other than a talk radio station. That's because you weren't there then. Our parents, well, not my parents, because I came from somewhere else, but our generation's parents and their parents listened to CFRB.

And more recently, as you call it, GNR 640, Global News Radio 640, because it came along the way after playing music and sort of it. It came from country and western roots. Slate had owned it when it was, what were the call letters? They were in Richmond Hill, CFGM.

And it was on a high frequency and they procured 640 and did a great big fancy antenna array out in Grimsby so they could hit Toronto and points north and became a monster signal. And they wrestled with how you move this country and Western station into talk and have gone through a number of incarnations. I remember it as the hog. The hog, yeah.

So it all comes from that. And the incarnation today, I think, is a successful incarnation. We've got a bunch of really good talkers on that radio station, and it gives CFRB a run for its money. So that's the Toronto talk scene today, aside from the non-commercial government-supported CBC. Right. He said with the left, leaning to the left.

Well, we're going to definitely, before I get you out of here, we're going to do more 640 talk because that's where you are today. Yep. But let's talk about quickly the CKFM though. So let me see, like who are the folks at CKFM when you show up? Don Daynard. Okay. So actually Paul and Don Daynard,

he's never had him on the show. He's in Toronto. He's around and he's in Toronto and you see him pop up every now and then, but I think he's a fairly private person. I remember a couple of conversations where we'd go out

and we'd share a few and he would unload because that's what you have to do right with their personalities and uh i didn't run it so i was his boss's boss but i i got along very well with don is a nice guy and uh we had people like um carl bannis legendary voice commercial voice that and he's still with us yeah still around still around. But Russ, Russ, Russ. Russ Thompson. Russ Thompson.

You see, you've done your research. A little bit, yeah. And I'm searching, I'm plumbing my brain. So we had a variety of people, and it was another station where Bill Ballantyne, who's also not with us anymore, he had said to himself, I've run AM radio stations,

I can run an FM station in the same context. And he developed the things that some people who are listening to us will remember, the Our Toronto vignettes, and the kind of, I guess, soft approach of the evenings, but the more raunchy approach of the day times. It was never a rocker, but it was an adult contemporary offering with personality hosts on it, or jocks, if you want to use the terminology of that day. And it was, if not the first, certainly one of the first to be a very, very successful radio station, irrespective of the fact that it had

FM tacked onto its call letters. Right. And another chap who was, I guess, also on CFRB, right? Fred Napoli? Fred Napoli was doing overnights. And Fred Napoli, what a voice. He recently passed away. He passed away too, but he was a really interesting guy. And he was a golden throat, but a real thinker. And one of the things that people say, you know,

I get all the time. Well, no wonder you're in radio. You get this nice, deep, bassy voice. And one of the things that people say, I get all the time, well, no wonder you're in radio, you get this nice deep bassy voice. That's not the reason you're in radio. It might have been once upon a time, you know, 50 plus years ago. But today, if you're on radio,

and Fred Napoli was one of the fathers of this, you can have a nice voice. You don't necessarily have to have a nice voice. You have to have something to say. You have to have a brain that you can put in gear. You have to have a unique ability that allows you to think at least a sentence or two ahead of what your mouth is saying so that you can process and not go, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, Justin Trudeau. Right. Because it's live. There's no editing. It's live. There's no editing. And you're using a guideline. Maybe it's a story from a newspaper or an obscure blog or something like that,

and sometimes there's nothing in front of you at all. So essentially what you're hearing from a guy like me or any of the people on Global News Radio, Oakley would be a good example, Kelly Cotrero would be an example. There are a lot of people there, and the people at RB as well. I call it RB, but they call it News Talk. You're ad-libbing. You've got the story in your head because you read it when you prepped the show. And people don't know this, but preparing for a show, if you're doing it properly, is almost as much of a time commitment

as the show itself. So I did the morning show this morning. I was in the radio station at four o'clock and I was reading for an hour and a half solid before I ever got on the air. Now we change in midstream because things change. Chris Hatfield, the astronaut, came in in the middle of the morning. I didn't know he was going to come. Oh, cool. So Heather Purden, who produces the show, flips and says, I put this in, I took this out. And you don't have time to read it except you kind of scan during the commercial sets.

Sure, sure. But you're really, depending on your ability to ad lib, which means you have to think, you have to know the story, you have to have some background in life to be able to speak to it. And that's, I think, one of the joys

and the challenges of being in talk. Now, Don Daynard, again, I mentioned, never been on the show. Maybe it's not too late. Maybe I got to get Don Daynard on the show. But if he had been on the show. Maybe it's not too late. Maybe I got to get Don Daynard on the show. But if he had been on the show, it might have sounded something like this. So I'm just going to play it. Just a couple

minutes clip of him talking about CKFM. And this is, by the way, this was dug up by a friend of the show, Mark Weisblatt, who comes on once a month here. So thanks, Mark, for this. Let's hear Don. On Friday nights,

I used to go into the CKFM studio. They were side by side. And it was Russ Thompson who was doing that show before Carl Bannis came on. And, oh, God. The sports guy, Dave Hodge from RB, they'd come in and shoot the breeze and I'd go in and shoot the breeze with them.

And they mentioned that Stu Daley was leaving. So he said, they both said, why don't you give it a shot? So on the Monday morning I roared down, talked to Bill Ballantyne, who was the manager. And I said I want to do the morning show and I think it was a couple of weeks later I got the job. And I was there twelve years. It was announce operate. You played the news carts. The news guy would bring you in his carts. Remember the old carts? And a cue sheet. And you'd read, he'd do the news and you'd fire the carts. You played all the music, everything. And it was, I did the morning show. Oh, God, I think McKellar did Middays until the incident.

And he left and Jay Nelson came in. And then it was Russ in the afternoon drive, and Carl Bannis at night. Peggy Graham did overnights. In fact, the morning, I came into work one morning, and I walk into the studio, the first thing Peggy Graham says,

too bad about the Duke. That was the first I'd heard that John Wayne had died. And I remember that and I also remember we played Beatles, but not a lot, when Lennon was killed. I went into the library and grabbed all the stuff I could find of the Beatles. I think it was every third tune I played a Beatles track. But that was the beauty of CKFM in those days. There was no, I guess you could say there was a format, but they literally did almost what the hell you wanted to do. Well, there you go. There was an awful lot of difference.

well, there you go. There was an awful lot of difference. When you had general managers who had the level of power and program directors who had the level of power that was bestowed on you by your owners, and when the bean counters were people who you saw once a month when they gave you your profit and loss statement, your income statement and your balance sheet, and explained to you what you were doing and what you might do better,

there was more liberty. And he's describing the liberty that we were able to give to people who are on the air. I don't think you would do that anymore. No, you wouldn't. No, they don't anyways. But I always liked that. So one of my favorite episodes was David Marsden coming on and talking about his you know, his philosophy at CFNY when he got there, which is giving so much,

you know, he says, you hire these creative people who know the music and they're well-spoken stuff. Then you tell them what to say. He says that he used to give them freedom, like what you don't see anymore. They could even have great,

you know, leeway in what songs they played. Like this is all, this is unheard of now. It's true, but I mean, you know, leeway in what songs they played. Like this is all, this is unheard of now. I mean, it's true, but I mean, it's, it's equally true in talk. I'm going to bring it back to that because my career has been, I've been in music radio, as you know, and I've done music shows on air, but I always gravitated towards talk. And I think that the reason why you've got talkers, uh, of, of the ilk of, uh, well, I'll use the Oakley example again. Alex Pearson has joined us.

You've got people in the midday like Jeff MacArthur and Mike Stafford in the morning, Kelly Cotrera. And if you look over, I have to give some credit, Jerry Agar, certainly John Moore, fabulous broadcaster on 1010, and people in the afternoon, my one-time producer, Ryan Doyle, people like that. These are people who like to talk, who know how to spin a yarn. And talk is a creative form that in today's radio, where you can't give very much creativity to the people sitting behind the microphone, in music radio, you have to give that creativity to the talkers

because the talkers are by definition storytellers. And if you know how to tell a story and you can do it well and you understand the formatics of radio, that's a talker. Now, before we get you out of standard broadcasting, Don Dainard mentioned the name Phil McKellar. So can you tell us in a nutshell, those who aren't aware, what was the scandal here? There sounds like whatever you can share about that.

Was it, well, scandal. I guess it was a scandal. And I was going to say it probably wouldn't have happened today, but it would have happened today. And it would have happened today in a much larger way than it happened then. He was a jazz guy. He was a real jazz guy. And he played a lot of jazz. And he did a jazz

show, a dedicated jazz show on CKFM at the time. And he had many friends in the jazz community. And in the jazz community, musicians very often tended to be black. And so he had black friends. And he shared their jargon with them. So where they could call each other the N-word, you couldn't. Right. And one day there was an open mic. There's no such thing as a closed mic in radio, by the way. Just assume every mic is hot.

Assume the mic is hot, and if you're going to say, you're going to drop an F-bomb, then know that you're going on the air. And as I used to say to a fellow named Dave Woodard, can I say this on the air? And he would always answer, once. That's true. Anyway, he had an open mic, and he used something that would be described as an epithet to describe a black person

in talking to a black person. So it wasn't really scandalous in the sense that they were having a conversation they would have everywhere, but it got on the air, and there was hell to pay, and he paid hell. Was it the N-word, Or was it something else? I can't remember, honestly. I think it may have been, but I can't remember. Yeah, I actually didn't know that story. All I had learned was there was a racist incident with Phil. I can tell you this.

There was no racism there. He was no racist and there was no intent. But like today and worse today. Well, I mean, it's going to come up later in the show, but is there a difference even? Like intent versus content like content versus context i would say like the content is perceived as racist does it matter anymore what the context was i think it i think it matters more today i think that today there's a sensitivity to everything hebsey when he was in was talking about how he had done an Indian accent

for some commercial sponsor in Montreal. I remember another sponsor that had us use an Italian accent to describe something that was going on. But that one would probably be okay still today. It might be and it might not be. But I can tell you that if you tried doing that nonsense with an Indian accent today, you'd have brown people from all over the GTA saying,

what the hell are you doing? What do you think you're doing? Are you making fun of us? Or try using a Chinese-oriented accent when you're making fun of how you order in a Chinese restaurant. You can't do it. You think you might like to do it, but you're going to hurt somebody. So you have to be doubly cautious

and not hurt anybody. And this, I mean, it wasn't that long ago when this was commonplace. I'm thinking of the Jesse and Jean show. Okay. Like Jesse and Jean had characters. They would do accents of people of color.

And that's only, we're not going back that far here. This is like early 90s. I can take it further. I can take it into the 80s. And somebody mentioned, I guess Hebsey again, mentioned can take it into the 80s and somebody mentioned, I guess Hebsey again, mentioned Dean Hagopian

who was once my morning guy, legendary morning guy in Montreal way back when and he did a bunch. He had characters and they were all him. Well, like Keats Romo. Yeah, same thing

and one of the characters was Mr. Hitzel. Mr. Hitzel, he was a Jewish guy. He spoke like this and I'm doing that because I can get away because I'm Jewish.

You have license. And I've heard that accent in my life. But he did that. You do that today, you might be talking to the Anti-Defamation League. And that's the thing that you have to be cognizant of. People have become, it's too bad because most of these things,

I'd have to say 90 plus percent of them are only ever meant in fun. And if we can't make fun of ourselves, who then? That's the question that I would ask. That said, the thin skin in a country that celebrates diversity so much is a pity. It's just a pity. But it is the way it is and we have to be observant of that.

I don't want to offend anybody. Why did you leave standard broadcasting in 1987? Well, I quit and got fired. Which one first? Well, that's and got fired. Which one first? Well, that's the way I remember it. Look, it was real simple. When Alan Slate bought it, which was in 1985, most people, the whisper campaign was,

well, I wonder how long Sherman's going to be here, because everybody got fired, because he wanted to bring his own people in. And when I look at it as a businessman, which I've also been in my life, he's totally correct. You have to have people who are loyal to you. I got along very well with Alan for a while, but it became clear that what people in the street were saying was true. He wanted his son to work with him because he had before at Q107 and CFGM. And Gary was,

and I would have to say still is if he chose to practice it, a really good radio man. I had been friendly with Gary, not friends, but friendly. We'd gone for the occasional lunch and that kind of thing when he was running Q and I was running the standard stations. And now all of a sudden I have his dad, and he's our competition over at Q. And so people are saying it's a matter of time before he takes over for Sherman. So what was going on was, and I can't ascribe this to anything, I was finding it more and more difficult as time went on,

and Alan was being more and more pushy in terms of what he wanted the stations to sound like. And one day we got into a kind of a push and shove match in his office. I don't mean physical, but verbal fisticuffs, if you want. And I can't remember what it was he said that triggered it. And I said, you know what? Maybe it's time that you started considering getting a new president for the radio division. And he said, don't say anything precipitous. And I said, I don't give a damn if it's precipitous.

If I have to go away for you to be happy, then I'll go away. And I don't know what the rest of the conversation was. But by the middle of the afternoon, I was talking to the HR guy and negotiating a settlement. And the next day, there was a notice out with the famous phrase, wish him luck in his future endeavors. That's the phrase. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Now, I literally- I hated him that day, by the way. And by three years from that day, I thought, what a great business guy. And I still think it. Yeah, he did all right. But you did all right too. I copied and pasted a few sentences

from your Wikipedia page. So we can see how accurate this is. That's for some page, that one. So this is about after you leave Standard. It just says, his activities immediately thereafter included buying 14 radio stations for a total of $22.5 million in less than one year for third parties. So let's pause there for a moment.

What was that about? Like, what is that? It was about New Cap Broadcasting. And you know New Cap Broadcasting. Yeah, well, Stingray just bought them. Yeah, Stingray bought them. And they're running boom and stuff like that. But I was involved in their Dartmouth properties.

I was involved in their Calgary properties. I was involved in their Calgary properties. I was involved in their Newfoundland properties, Thunder Bay. So I was all over the country. And I'm going to tell you something that I guess can be told now. I had worked out a deal with Harry Steele, who I think is now retired. And John Steele runs the New Cap Empire. And I don't know if they're in radio anymore. I think Stingray took it all over.

But they own Hall Term, which is the shipping container people, and I don't know if they still do, but Clark Transport, the big trucks you see on the road. Very wealthy, and then run by a real rugged individualist, an interesting guy named Harry Steele. A really interesting guy named Harry Steele. He said, I'm going to meet you. He sounded like that.

I'm going to meet you at the Inn on the Park, and I'll be the guy you'll recognize me right away. I'm going to meet you at the Inn on the Park, and I'll be the guy. You'll recognize me right away. And I walk into the Inn on the Park at the appointed time, and there's a guy walking around in a lumberjack jacket, you know, the red and black checked ones. Of course. And duck boots.

And one of those hats that you would wear. Oh, yeah, yeah, the flaps on the ears. With the flaps on the ears. And I said to myself, it's got to be him. Nobody else would be dressed that way. So I walk over to the guy, and I say, Harry, yeah, you must be Peter. Nobody else would be dressed that way. So I walk over to the guy and I say, Harry, see this? Yeah, you must be Peter.

And we worked out a deal. And frankly, he got what he wanted. And I never made more money in any year before that. And I have never made more money in any year since. So you did all right. I did all right. And so did he. And then undertaking an assignment to grow a minor Toronto paging company into one of the area's largest and most important operators in only 18 months. What's that about?

We tripled the size of a company called Scott Paging. Paging companies, of course, don't exist anymore because who needs pagers when you've got smartphones? So the owners of that company ultimately sold to Rogers and they integrated the paging company and, of course, have since turned it into smartphones. But this was a Montreal-based operation that wanted to expand to Toronto. They had had growing pains. I knew the guy quite well. He's still around today, and I spoke to him the other day. He's 80, 82.

And he said, come and manage my Toronto organization. If you can manage radio, you can manage this. It's, it's basic administration. And so I partnered up with the sales manager who was not invigorated, reinvigorated him. And we came up with promotions that tripled his,

his compliment of the installed base, which means the number of pagers out there under rental in 18 months. But I didn't like working in the paging business. So I left. Oh, well, paging business, so I left. Oh, well, okay. Well, there you go, because then the next line is also interesting. Then applying for an FM radio license in Toronto

in 1990. Now, I did some homework to find out this was eventually won by Kiss FM. It was won by Kiss FM, who correctly identified As Did We Country as the format, and I was in partnership with a guy who you may have run across he's in the states now robert white robert k white robert um had been a competitor of mine in montreal he'd been sales manager for shome when it was owned by jeffrey sterling and

i was running we talked about fm 96 right but robert and i became fast friends and uh he moved out to calgary after he went out and successfully got a license for KKFM in Calgary and ran it. But he only ran it for a couple of years before he tried to sell it. He did sell it. And so my look back on that now is I got together with Robert and we put together a fabulous presentation. And there were like 25 different organizations competing for 92.5 in toronto and we had to pick a hole in the market and the hole was definitely going to be country and uh the the winners of kiss fm who were the rollinson family from out west they got they they

got the thing but they had a better reputation than we did and my reputation was good i hadn't done anything but they weren't very i think the the CRTC was not very happy with Robert White because he had gotten the license and profited by it in a short span of time. You're not supposed to get a license and then sell it and make millions of dollars two years later. But you know what? More power to Robert White who continues to thrive today. All right, last Wikipedia line I copied is this.

When the license was not granted, he purchased an ailing telephone answering service, The Receptionist Limited, and renamed it Universal Tele-Response Corporation. UTR became a multi-million dollar enterprise handling 7x24 communications for Fortune 500 companies. It's true. It's true.

And he didn't bring me bagels with all the success I'm reading about here. Well, you know, we had to pay back the mortgage. But we actually had a good time. I was looking for what to do, and it was really hard to find something to do. I'm in my 40s. Yeah. I love radio. There's nobody in radio that's handing out freebie general managerships.

I don't really want to go back on the air at that point. If anybody believed that I had any credit in being on the air at that point in my life, I'd been in management for so many years. And so I looked for things to do and I explored a lot of opportunities. I was looking at opening a car wash because that was going to make a ton of money up on Highway 7. But ultimately somebody mentioned telephone answering service and I thought, boy, what a twilight industry that is. You're going to have voicemail. Who's going to want their phone answered by a live operator somewhere?

But what if you married computers with telephones and you were able to be a third-party answering facility where you could do customer service and customer relationship management on behalf of a company that would pay you for it instead of running their own call center. Right. So let's build a call center. So I bought the majority control of this little company

in Yorkville called The Receptionists, and I kept a 50% partner as a junior partner. And that was a godsend because she understood how to run a telephone answering service and I didn't, but I understood marketing and sales. So I hustled and got the marketing materials together, found some people to do some selling for us, wound up, the company was in such insolvency that I was writing a check every month to pay everybody out of my personal bank account. Thank God I'd worked for Harry Steele and made all that money because that's where it went.

Out of my personal bank account, thank God I'd worked for Harry Steele and made all that money because that's where it went. However, we were able to parlay that thing into what I said. And by the time we sold it 15 years later, we were in, I think, about 5,000, 10,000 square feet in Don Mills. We had 120 positions. When I bought it, there were six. Wow. And the 120 positions were all computer telephone integration.

And we were doing stuff on behalf of Bell Express View and organizations of that size and scope. And we did a huge business in not-for-profits like World Wildlife Fund and Foster Parents Plan, things like that. And we did quite well. And we sold it to another company. And I was never so happy to get out of

anywhere in my life because although I met great people I never enjoyed the business wow see you've done many different things because then what's next you end up back on the radio is this next yeah I I it's funny within a month of selling the company I had lunch with a friend who had been in sales at the CFRB that I ran. And she wanted to have lunch at a place called Didier's, which was downstairs at Yonge and St. Clair in the same building where CFRB was. And it turns out that that's where Gary had his lunch every day. So I'm waiting for my lunch date in the lobby. And Gary comes striding out and he says Peter Sherman man of leisure I remember it very well and I thought gee Gary's being nice to me because we had been we had been on the outs for a while right you hated him for a little bit well I hated him

for a little bit and I guess he didn't like being hated and he hated me back and uh that was okay but he was nice and I thought that was nice. So I was nice. And I said, good to see you, Gary. I said, I'm amazed that you would keep up with my exploits. How do you know that I sold the company? He says, oh, you know, word gets around about good guys. I said, you know what? We should have lunch too. So he said, that's great. Call me. So I called him about two weeks later and he said, come to Didier's again and we'll go for lunch. And it was a kind of a nervous lunch, but we got together and uh i said look i wanted to have lunch with you because i want to know if there's a way back into radio for me he said if you're asking me if you have the chops to still do radio absolutely i know you do but i have nothing

in management for you unless maybe you want to go to winnipeg because he'd expanded by then i said i don't want anything to do with winnipeg and frankly i don't want anything to do with Winnipeg. And frankly, I don't want anything to do with management. He says, so what do you want? I said, I said, I want to be on the air. He said, you're out of your fucking mind. And that's a quote. So I said, well, we both know what's self-evident, but I want to be on the air. And within two hours, I had a call from Steve Couch, who was programming CFRB at the time and was a friend for 45 years from Montreal. We were kids. He was a Gazette, Montreal Gazette crime reporter, and I was the radio reporter I described earlier. And he said, boy, am I ever happy to hear you buried the hatchet with Gary. When can we get together? I want to talk to you. And we got together and had some Thai food a few days later,

and the next thing you know, he says, I want you on the air on thursday night mark elliott recently deceased you know right neil's johansson uh he says he does the overnight and he'll show you the ropes and how the studio works because then you're going to come back on saturday night and you're going to do your own show just one night we're going to see how you do. So I went and I sat with Nils, Mark, and his great guy, and he described the talk radio of the new millennium from the talk radio that I knew and used to do. And he said, here's what it is. He says, talk radio is music radio,

except the songs are you talking about stuff. Right. That's all it is. Other than that, it's stop sets, commercials. Everything's the same. News at the top of the hour, sometimes the bottom of the hour. But the songs are you talking about the police are talking about gun violence or you're going to have an astronaut come in and talk to you about a conference.

Anything that you might do that I was doing today, those are the songs. Right. So I watched him do it and went outside with him when he took a smoke break and went back in and watched him do it some more. And when the show came to an end, I went home. And Saturday night, I came in, and Steve Couch came in because he wanted to sort of hold my hand, sit in the producer's chair on the other side of the glass.

And we had talked about, what am I going to talk about? You know, I don't have a producer. I've got to come up with a show, and I haven't done this before. He says, I've got an idea. You have this fascinating career. Talk about small business. Talk about what fascinating career. Talk about small business. Talk about what you did. Talk about what you achieved.

And when you talk to the callers, ask them their experiences. And it worked. Except Steve and I, we get together to this day. We were together for dinner the other night. And he always likes to recall, you know, when that happened, he says, I remember sitting and watching you. I never saw anybody perspire so much in my life. I think they had to clean the studio after you finished.

And he's right. But I took to it like the proverbial fish to water. It's like riding a bike, as they say, because I'd done it before. And I wound up doing a weekend show and then very quickly thereafter a noon show and ultimately wound up splitting the drive with John Moore. John was doing three to six, I guess, or four to six, and I was doing six to eight. And when John went to mornings and I went wherever I went,

the guy who took that over was a fellow named John Tory. Wow. So, interesting. You brush with greatness every step of the way. Wow. Now, what you went on to do is you went into politics. Didn't I? For the same John Tory, who was the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party at the time. And John recalls when we talk about this meeting with me, me with him, at a little Starbucks on Avenue Road. And I was living up there at the time and talking about where I'd run and what I'd do. And we came to the conclusion that I would run in Thornhill.

That was an ill-fated election for him, not so much for me, although I expected, because I thought the world of John, and still do, I thought that he'd take us into government. And the polls were indicating, because it was April or May of that year, and the election wasn't until October, and he was indicating that he could defeat McGinty. And I thought, you know, I'm going to wind up being in government. This is kind of interesting, and I'll get a chance to help pull the levers and maybe make a difference in Ontario.

And that intrigued me. So instead of talking about it, I'd get to do it. Right. And so I agreed to run, and what happened was somewhere along the way he brought in this issue of faith-based school funding. So if you're a Catholic, and still to this day in Ontario, if you're Catholic you can go to the Catholic school board, but John felt that if you were going to be righteous you had to take any religion and say we'll fund your school and you should be able to claim it and be reimbursed.

People didn't like that very much. So John not only didn't win the election, he lost his own seat. And I wound up, because it was Thornhill, which is heavily Jewish and heavily Catholic, the Italians were the second largest group. So the Jewish people, they liked sending their kids

to private school, but the ones who didn't, didn't because they didn't want to because they couldn't afford it, but here was an opportunity to afford it. The Catholic group didn't care because they were already going to Catholic school. Right. So I won fairly handily and I beat the incumbent liberal member. And that's when Thornhill became conservative, which it still is. 2007. 2007. So you're the MPP

in Thornhill. That's correct. Wow, Queen's Park. Pretty cool. It was really interesting. Boy, what an interesting time. Well, the thing is, I don't know if I've ever had somebody who was an MPP

or MP on this program, actually, now that I think about it. Because we could theoretically do a whole episode about your political career or whatever, but we're going to just hit a couple of interesting hot spots.

Oh, I have a feeling I know some of the ones you're going to hit too. Alright, so in fact, maybe I'll, there's a lot here, but maybe I'll frame this as a question. I'm trying to find the question here, but okay. So Steve on Twitter asks, could you ask if he is still

friends with Tim Hudak? Absolutely not. I am not friends with Tim Hudak and I will never be friends with Tim Hudak. I have no respect for him. I wish him well. I mean not friends with Tim Hudak and I will never be friends with Tim Hudak. I have no respect for him. I wish him well. I mean, you always wish people well. I don't wish him any harm, but I don't respect how he ran the party. I think Ontario would have been ill-served had he become premier and I don't respect his approach to the world. Sorry if I'm being nasty, you know? No, I mean, on September 8th, 2013,

so you were the finance critic. I was, which was as senior as it gets in the party. Sat on the front row, questioned the finance minister, or in fact, two finance ministers in succession, and the premier when the leader was away, which was Tim, I generally got lead questions, which means you stand up first and you confront the opposition, which is all of 18 feet

away from you. And I had a really great time doing it. And frankly, I'm not good at everything, but I was good at that. Well, you've got lots of things, actually, but you're removed from that position by Tim Hudak. And I have here in quotes, I put in quotes,

it was referred to as a heated exchange. Tell us like what happened between you and Tim Hudak that he removed you as a PC caucus finance critic. There was an article that appeared in the Globe and Mail. We could discuss how that article

got in the Globe and Mail. I had, I had wanted, I had moved to Niagara-on-the-Lake and I had wanted to run in Niagara instead of Thornhill. And Tim didn't want me to. And we had had a meeting about that probably two years prior. It was a friendly meeting at the time in his office, and I had said, I've moved to Niagara-on-the-Lake, as you know,

and representing Thornhill from Niagara-on-the-Lake is a bit of a hardship. I'm doing it, but I want to run in Niagara in the next election. And he said, nope, need you in Thornhill. Absolutely need you in Thornhill. I don't think I can get anybody else who can win in Thornhill. So I said, well, it's pretty hard because I've got this monster commute. And he said, look, you can get an apartment in Toronto. And I said, who pays for the apartment?

He said, if you're 50 kilometers or more from the center of government, which is Queen's Park, you can claim. You don't get the whole reimbursement. You get a piece. So I went and I checked with financial services, and they said, yeah. And they started paying this partial reimbursement for my apartment. And two, three years go by, and the Globe and Mail one day, out of the blue, pulls out stuff that was public for the whole period of time

that says Sherman was in receipt of this money. They publish all of the expense claims of, and they're all legitimate because they have to be or they wouldn't pay you. They're published every year. So for the past three years, they've been publishing that I get an expense allowance that helps defray the apartment and the Globe and Mail suddenly, for some unknown strange reason,

nudge, nudge, wink, wink, wants to know why I'm claiming for a living allowance when I'm from Thornhill. I don't live in Thornhill. There are a lot of members, probably a third in the House, who don't live in the writings they represent. I live in Niagara-on-the-Lake, which is more than 50 kilometers from the seat of government. So to be very clear here, you were entitled to this reimbursement. I don't like the word entitlements because it carries this negative connotation,

but the fact of the matter is that's true. And Tim had said, go ahead and claim it. I claim it. My home is in Niagara. He had a dual home in Toronto as well, but his home address was in Niagara because he represented Niagara. And that's what I want. My home address was in Niagara, but I didn't represent Niagara and I had asked for that change. And so up to that point, you know, I'm my own guy. The Globe and Mail had interviewed me for this thing. However, the story got to them. It wasn't a lie. And I don't suppose I gave them really very good answers. I said, I bought the houses of potential retirement investment. And the next thing I know, there's the front page story that says, Sherman is getting the people of Ontario to pay for his retirement residence,

which was horse shit. But that's the way they published it. And that's the way it appeared. And I had to respond. I never got such heated, venomous email from so many people across Ontario in my life. And then the next day, the Toronto Star publishes, we got information from four different sources in Hudak's office that say Sherman

asked to run in Niagara a couple of years ago and he was refused. And then Hudak holds a press conference and they say, did you know that Sherman was taking this expense allowance? And Hudak says no. And they asked me and I said yes. So it was he said, she said, because nobody

was in that meeting, but I will affirm to this day that, uh, Hudak and I had that discussion. He certainly knew. And when he was asked that question, he said he didn't. And that's where the falling out occurred. And I didn't want anything more to do with the guy. Because you, he lied. Yeah, he lied. That's exactly right. And, uh, and so I said to myself, I am not going to stand up in front of this guy in the 2014 election and preach his gospel. So I decided to stay an appropriate amount of time. And I wanted to know how Thornhill perceived me. So we did a poll in Thornhill, and I would have been elected by a huge margin. But I decided I didn't want to run. And at the

end of December, I left. And I should add, because somebody will hear this and say, well, you know, you forgot the part about the car allowance. They tried to pin on me. I was going to bring it up. There's mileage here. Yes, they tried to pin on me that I accepted reimbursement for my car mileage, which was also legitimate. And it was really funny how that happened.

They presented me with a letter saying you can't do that. Dated December 3rd. They presented it on December the 8th. Chased me around the building trying to find me. And then they were able to say, he also took his car mileage. And when the media asked me about it, I said, bogus crap. And it disappeared. And so did I. And that's how I wound up back in radio. And I can tell you something. And I'm affirming it here in no uncertain terms, probably for the first time publicly ever, I value nothing, nothing more highly than my own integrity.

I don't lie, ever. And I can't stand people who lie. That's the worst sin you can commit as far as I'm concerned. So don't lie to me. And if you don't lie to me, this was how I was as a boss for all of those years. If you don't lie to me, if you tell me I made this mistake and here's what I'm doing to fix it, you were praiseworthy. But if you lied to me, you were history. Yeah, scandals go. This one sounds pretty wishy-washy because if it's cleared by the legislative finance department, there's no, as McAllen would say, there's no there there. It was a great big nothing bar at the end of the day.

And Tim has gone his way and he's done fine. And I'm happy for him. And I've gone my way. Are you really happy for him? Yeah, I am. And he's got a nice family. I know his wife. And I've certainly met his daughters.

And I don't want to be his friend. But like I said, I wish him well. And I've gone on my merry way and I'm fine as well, but I don't look back on that as a very fond point in my history, because frankly, I would have liked to stay. And if I, if I had stayed, I'd probably still be there today. I might even have run for leader. And if I hadn't run for leader, I would have been happy to work for Doug Ford. And I would have been happy to work in a, in a cabinet portfolio. It would have been great. But that wasn't to me.

Is it too late, really? You could still return? There are guys who are 70 years old, which is where I'm at, who run for everything. There's a 73-year-old in the White House, whether you like him or not. There are a lot of people like that. There's a guy who's 78, Bernie Sanders, who wants to be

in the White House and has a premier position in the Democratic situation. There are people of people like that. There's a guy who's 78, Bernie Sanders, who wants to be in the White House and has a premier position in the Democratic situation. There are people in Canada like that. So if I wanted to, I suppose I could. But no, I think that the ship has sailed and I don't want to be in politics anymore. But as an overall, if you ask me the question, did you like it? I didn't like the way it came to an end,

but I really enjoyed the time that I was there. I learned a lot. Honestly, I was about to ask you overall, how was your experience as a member of Parliament? It was great. And people say, what do you miss? I miss two things greatly. One of them is the constituency work

where you get to talk to real people with real problems, and sometimes, sometimes you can make a difference and solve them. That is incredibly rewarding. And it's not because you're a hero. It's because you have a key to power. So I can't get into the hospital and I have cancer can be answered with, give me a moment. And you call the CEO of the hospital who takes your call and you say, look, I got Mrs. Smith here and this is what's going on. And he says, make sure that she gets here at 2 o'clock and sees this doctor in the emergency room. And the next thing I get is a thank you card because they're in the hospital.

That was incredibly rewarding to be able to use power that way. And the other thing that I liked is, I guess, a reflection of what you're hearing now and what I do, which is I love debating. I just loved standing up in the legislature, and anybody who ever watched me debate knows it. I liked oration rather than speaking. I liked being as robust as I am now answering your questions and making sure that aside from touching the specific points that had to be made in debate, that I could make it entertaining and

fun for the people who are listening. Terry, big fan of yours, by the way, Terry wrote me and said, this is actually a question for you, Peter. When you were hired by 640 two years ago, did you envision it would become a virtually full-time, part-time job? And did it factor into your decision to move from Niagara back to Toronto? No, it didn't factor into my decision. And I'll tell you a little secret that some people know, but a lot of people out there wouldn't. There are some amazing digital devices these days.

And most of the time when I filled in when I was in Niagara, I was in Niagara. I had a nice quiet office in my house. And it had equipment in it and a microphone. And I could operate the phones. Everything you could do in the studio, I could do there. The only thing I couldn't do, although we could have if we do Skype, is I couldn't see my board up across the room,

and I couldn't see my producer in the booth over on the side. So no, it didn't factor into that at all. But the 640 thing, it started being small. It became larger in the sense that there isn't a shift that they don't ask me to fill on. And I enjoy doing them all. And I would tell you that I don't think that if I were in the market at this stage of my life for a full-time gig that I would be particularly open to it. So it presents a real opportunity.

I think Stafford's a way better morning man than me, but I love doing his show. I think Oakley's a way better afternoon guy than me, but I love doing his show. I think Oakley's a way better afternoon guy than me, but I love doing his show. And fortunately, I'm adequate, or maybe I'm a bit better than adequate at doing some of these things, so I get a chance to be versatile, and I love that. So how did you get the gig at 640?

I was doing panel work at 1010. So I was on round one and round two occasionally with John Moore in the morning. I always enjoyed John, and we're still friends. And I was on round one and round two occasionally with John Moore in the morning. I always enjoyed John and we're still friends. And I love his company. I think he's one of the brilliant radio guys around. Would you believe he was booked for this program and excited to come on?

I think his dear friend Maureen Holloway told him she had a great experience here. And he was denied permission by some PR layer at 1010. I have no idea why that is. No, you would never by some PR layer at 1010. I have no idea why that is. No, you would never know. But I'm just sharing. You mentioned, I think he's great too.

Stuff happens. But anyway, he's great. And so I was doing these round one and round two things. And I was certainly not making any coin doing it. An honorarium, you could call it. And I used to fill in, like I do for 640,

and that became less and less. And I didn't know what it was. I had always gotten along. I think I still do with Mike Bendix and the program director over there. But I don't know what's in Mike's head. He didn't seem to want as much of Peter Sherman at one point as he used to want.

I always perceived that he had an age issue. Maybe I'm wrong. Mike can speak for himself. And I also perceived that he saw me as a part of the old CFRB and he was trying to remake it as News Talk 1010. So one day, a couple of years ago, the schedule came out for the fall and Becky Coles, who runs that or ran that whole thing, said, you're going to appear once a week, and it's going to be in round two on Fridays. And I said, really? Who put together that schedule? And she looked kind of sheepishly at me, and she said, Mike.

And I said, take that piece of paper, fold it up real tight, and tell Mike he can stick it up sideways. And I walked out. it up real tight and tell mike you can stick it up sideways and i walked out and uh and that day i called uh nathan smith at who was programming 640 at the time i said my name is peter sherman do you know who i am and he said of course i know who you are can we get together and have a chat and he said sure and the next thing you know i'm doing fill in on 640 who's the program director now that's your story really good guy but he's got a heavy job. He's programming four stations for Chorus. But he just got

Mobile News Radio, and I've had a chance to chat with him a couple of times. Smart dude. And okay, so you joined 640. Is it literally part-time? Is it a pay-as-you-go? Or how does it work? It's per shift. Beyond that, I won't give you any details,

but it's per shift, which is the way I want it. I have a company that does various kinds of work and they pay the company. And so I'm not beholden to anybody, but I'm happy to make myself available whenever I can. So I do panels and I do shows. And in the summer and particularly in the summer and around Christmas when everybody wants vacation

because in other parts of the year they're otherwise occupied and it's ratings and things like that. I work, I guess I could work almost every day. And this summer, I think I've had one week so far and I'm going to get another piece of a week in two weeks. So that's it.

But then in September, I'll do a little bit of work for them, but not a lot. Okay, now, Rixie in Oakville, listener to the program, writes in, having been, I've been hearing a lot of Peter Sherman's voice in Mike Stafford's

time slot. He's an old pro and can do the heavy lifting when called on. Don't have any question for him, but Chorus is lucky to have him on call when needed. That's really nice. I really appreciate that, because you know what? Being compared to Stafford who I think is a very unique

and excellent broadcaster is a pretty decent comparison. I agree with you on both counts. Stafford is unique and excellent broadcaster. I agree with you on both counts. Do you have anything you can share with us about this recent controversy with Stafford? We talked about the guy who

got fired at CKF, CKFM, uh, the guy who, who had the set of a racial slur or whatever on a, on a microphone that was hot. Now Stafford didn't do that, but he,

he sent a couple of tweets that were, uh, I, I, I read them a hundred times now. I think there's a racist element to these tweets. That's my opinion. I'm going to tell you, and I'm, and I'm being as honest as I can.

I don't speak for the station. I just speak for Peter Sherman. I saw the tweets. I know Mike Stafford. I think I have a good feeling about the fact that there was nothing meant by them. And I think that he had to go through a situation with the management at Global News Radio that he did. And to their credit, they said, let's not have a repeat.

And he's back. And I think that's a great thing. I think the big change is, I think he, what did he do? He shut down his Twitter account. That's the big change. Because the staffer's Twitter account is no longer active.

And I think maybe, so he's, Twitter's gone. Obviously he didn't lose his job, which is good. Give him a, give him another chance. And when is he back from vacation? A week from Monday. Okay. He's already been back, but he did that week after. Yeah, but he had this scheduled two week vacation and I think he's away and good on him.

He needs the rest and relaxation as we all do. All right. So straight up, the only thing I was surprised by, and I had this lengthy conversation with the aforementioned Mark Weisblatt on an episode of Toronto Mike, where we went in pretty detailed about the Stafford tweets and everything. And I'm glad, I really liked him as a broadcaster. And I even like him as a human being. He's been on the show a couple of times. Good guy. He's a good guy until he called me a turd in my basement, but that's okay.

What I am saying, we'll hear what you say about me. Never call a person a spade when you can call him a fucking shovel. Right, right. I was surprised that when he returned to the airwaves after that one week of whatever, that was a suspension or whatever, when you had all those meetings of management or whatever. You seem to know more about this than me. I do have some moles on the inside. But I was surprised that there was zero acknowledgement

of the tweets or even like an apology or explanation. Like it just wasn't referenced at all as if it never happened. I'm going to give you the stock answer that the media training tells me to give, which is that's something you have to ask Mike. No, I knew you were going to say that. Really, what do I know?

I'm not in his head. I guess my question, are you personally surprised it wasn't acknowledged on the air? Like if you were in charge of the station, because in the past, you've been in charge of stations, talk radio stations.

Like, would you have had Mike, you know, own up to what he did and then put it into context and maybe even hopefully from the heart apologize? No, I wouldn't have done that. And the reason I wouldn't have done that is the same reason why I can drop F-bombs talking to you,

because we're not on broadcast radio and I don't have to conform to certain norms. And the radio station, as far as Stafford is concerned, he never did anything wrong on the air. And the problem that I guess he came up against is a problem we all come up against when we do something on social media that backfires. And so lesson learned, let's move on.

And I think the station made that decision. I think that's good. And in the ratings, do you have any insight into like how he's doing? Because I hear, and I don't see these books at all, but I'm told he's doing very well. Believe it or not, neither do I. You know, I wondered if you could see like,

I understand he's, Stafford's morning show is holding its own, doing very well against the John Moore on 10. It's true. Look, these things are up and down like a toilet seat. And the days of the 20 shares are long gone. And a six or a seven for either of those radio stations or both of them is

a great share. And they've both had them. So CFRb has been around doing what it's doing with the staff that it's doing uh so longer than global news radio but you know what global news radio gave them a real run for their money over the course of the past six seven months i don't know what the ratings say today and i don't know what they're going to say come the fall but um don't ever rule out Global News Radio. It's doing just fine. Good stuff. Happy to be there. Kelly Couture is a dear friend, and I like a lot of

you guys, so I'm rooting for y'all. But I... You mentioned, of course, you lived in Thornhill for a while. You represented Thornhill. You mentioned there's a very large Jewish population in Thornhill. So this next federal election, what are your thoughts? I know that it's scheduled for a date that is a Jewish holiday.

Do I have this right? Oh, the election was, yeah, there was a controversy, which has been resolved, maybe not to everybody's liking, but it's resolved. Oh, resolved in that they're not moving the date. They're not moving the date because the chief electoral officer who was tasked by the court to take a good review of that, reviewed and said, no, I'm not changing a thing.

And the reason I'm not changing a thing is there's ample opportunity to cast a vote that doesn't have to be on election day. Right, of course. I think the thing that maybe he wasn't as cognizant of as he should have been is that there's also the issue of get out the vote, which is one of the most important things

in electoral politics. So the office of get out the vote, which is one of the most important things in electoral politics. So the office of the candidates has to be open, and the lists that have been generated by all of that walking that's going on right now and knocking on doors as to who's going to go out and vote for you, whether you're a liberal or a conservative or whatever you happen to be, the day that you want to really be calling those people and banging away with robocalls and everything else is Election Day

and the day leading up to it. And those days are verboten when it comes to Orthodox Jews. So that's the concern. But you know what? It's not going to change. And the ones who want to vote will vote. They'll find a way to vote. Pardon my ignorance. What holiday is it exactly? It's called Shemini Atzeret. And it's celebrated primarily by Orthodox Jews. And I should point out that I'm not the guy to really ask, although I'm very proud of my heritage. I'm not an Orthodox Jew. I'm a non-practicing Jew who is very much an acknowledgement of what my father's German

family went through and who died in gas chambers and all that stuff. But, uh, going to synagogue is, I don't know if you go to church, but probably Christmas, or maybe you don't. I don't. So we're kind of, we're kind of together. I don't know if you go to church, but probably Christmas. Maybe you don't. I don't. I'm allergic to church. We're kind of together. I sometimes go to synagogue, but I'm not a regular. So I can't speak for the people who would celebrate Shemini Etzeret,

but it's considered by a rabbinical friend of mine to be an important holiday that comes at the end of the Feast of Booths, or Sukkot, which is where Jewish families who observe eat their meals in a booth that's built, a makeshift, a shed outside, so that they can understand what it is to be outside and to realize how lucky they are to live inside normally. Oh, interesting. Okay.

Now, I guess I want to close with finding out, is the goal, you speak for yourself, of course, but you're doing the part-time fill-in work. You're kind of jumping in when they need you at 640 and you're doing a great job of that. But is the goal here to get your own permanent time slot? No. So what is your, what's next for you?

I'm retired. To all intents and purposes, I'm retired and I'm at an age where I can say that. The nice thing for me is that I've kept what I hope is a quick wit. I've somehow or other managed to maintain a more youthful voice. I try to stay actively involved in the happening pieces of our society. You can't be a teenager if you're not a teenager, but you can certainly be observant of what they're doing or what 30-year-olds, 35, 40-year-olds are doing, even if you're not.

And as some of my friends say, in fact, I remember Duff Roman. You know Duff Roman, legendary chum guy. He's a friend of mine and another Niagara-on-the-Lake occupant. And I remember walking around the golf course one day with him. We'd walk and play nine holes. And he said, you're really lucky to still be on the air because I have this old man's voice now and you haven't gotten it yet. And I said, I don't know if I'm ever going to get it. It's that thing with

phlegm in the throat. But is that from smoking? The older guys? Well, Duff never smoked. So, you know, you get that kind of a rasp in your voice. And I don't have it. So, I don't know why I don't have it, but it stands me in good stead when it comes to being on radio. Well, listen. Long may you run, my friend uh this was like a super treat for me what a great conversation

i'm sorry have he you're right he didn't cry i did invite him to crash the party but i think that added a like a wonderful little uh it was great it was a look back into my past we had when there was a reunion of old friends so i couldn't believe it i tell him so you know we spent a lot of time together we record together twice a week and i said i always tell him upcoming guests and he'll be he'll either say something like oh that's great guy or whatever or you know he'll say what an asshole or whatever and then i mentioned peter sherman's coming on and he's like he stopped down and he said uh i owe peter sherman my career that's what he said and i'm like there are there are people out there who say that, and here's my response to that as you play your theme out.

I don't... Nobody owes me their career. The best you could say is I opened some doors for some people. They're the guys who walked through and made it happen. I owe you... I am indebted to you for episode 498. I'm just sorry that you didn't come next week, maybe, and beat episode 500. You're so close. We'll come back if you want. I'm anxious sorry that you didn't come next week maybe and be episode 500. You're so close.

I'll come back if you want. I'm anxious to hear who 500 is and I'm sure I will very shortly. And that brings us to the end of our 498th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Peter is at Shermanator.

S-H-U-R M-A-N-A-T-O-R. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery or at Great Lakes Beer. Propertyinthesix.com is at Raptors Devotee. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Sticker U is at Sticker U. And Capadia LLP is at Capadia LLP. See you all next week

when my guest is Scotty Mac Thinks. You've been under my skin for more than eight years It's been eight years of laughter and eight years of tears And I don't know what the future can hold or do For me and you But I'm can hold or do for me and you. But I'm a much better man for having known you.