Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Remembering FOTM David Onley: Toronto Mike'd #1188

Episode Date: January 15, 2023

In this 1188th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike remembers FOTM David Onley who passed away earlier today at the age of 72. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Canna Cabana, Ridley Funeral Home and Electronic Products Recycling Association.

I'm so sorry to learn today that David Onley has passed away at the age of 72. I first knew David Onley as a fixture on City TV, first as a weather reporter, before he moved on to cover science and technology stories. David was afflicted with polio as a young child, and that left him partially paralyzed. He was the first differently abled person I remember seeing on television, on a regular basis.

seen on television on a regular basis. David went from City TV to Cable Pulse 24, as CP24 was known then. But he became an FOTM on September 5th, 2019, when I celebrated the 30th anniversary of Breakfast Television by speaking with the original crew of Anne Romer, David Onley, Steve Anthony, John Whaley, and producer Bud Pierce. You can hear that episode in its entirety by searching the Toronto Mic'd archive for episode 505. for episode 505. Here's my conversation with the 28th Lieutenant Governor of Ontario,

the Honourable David Onley. 30 years ago today, this exact day, September 5th, that's today, right? I'm lost, right? So it was a Tuesday morning right after Labor Day. Right. We did our rehearsals on Labor Day. And I remember getting up that morning on the 5th.

I was living with the man who would soon be my husband. We married the year after, Bill Barker from Global Television. And I left him snoring in bed. And I remember putting the key in the lock as I was closing up the front door and thought, this is either going to go really well or really badly. I know that feeling. What time did you wake up that first day? Do you have that memory?

I don't think I went to sleep. Oh, wow. But imagine starting at 7 a.m. I mean, now shows start at 4 and 5 in the morning. So that's like sleeping in. It was 7 o'clock start that first day. But we were in the office, I think, a couple of hours ahead of time. And we were every morning in by 5 o'clock for, you know, just for run through and makeup

and reading headlines and that sort of thing. There's a lot of morning show hosts right now who would dream of waking up, but getting there at five o'clock, that would be like. I know, it's, it's, that's like sleeping in. And then it sort of started to inch its way back. Kevin Frank has joined us, I think about five years into the run. and we sort of rolled back the start time. He became our news guy, and then it kept rolling back. Right.

And we would get in earlier and earlier. Give us right now, for the record, the opening day on-air host lineup of Breakfast Television 30. It was yourself, of course. Who was joining you that first day on the air? I have no idea. Well, not guest wise

i mean actual uh on your side oh you mean the the talent the talent sorry because the guests yes they're talented but it's the people that that i was lucky enough to work with and i know the answer of course but let's hear you because uh we're able well let's hear the list of who was on air host that day and oh i should, I should tell the people, yeah, that your phone is connected to the... Well, it's one of the people that we worked with. Well, answer it. Do you want to answer it? Okay, yes.

Let's do this. It's exciting. Hello. Hi, Ann. How are you? We're live right now with Mike. How are you, David, on Lee? Good, good. Good. Just wanted to make sure that I was not supposed to call you at 2 o'clock.

No, but here we go. We're live, and shall we carry on, Davey? Now, Mr. Onley, this is Toronto Mike. We've never met, but what an honor it is to speak with David Onley. Grew up watching you. I don't know if you want to hear that or not. I know it could be an insult, but... Oh, no, thank you.

It's a real privilege to be on the show, especially on such a specific season with one of my dear friends, Anne Romer. Yeah, well, Anne Romer. I just finished asking Anne who was her co-host, like who co-hosted with you the first day, which was 30 years ago today.

And you were about to say the name David Onley. David Onley, yes. And I wonder, David, are you able to move off speakerphone? I don't know whether that would, because it's kind of reverberating just a little bit, your audio. And I love hearing you just loud and clear. Okay. Let me just get to my desk. Okay.

You carry on and I'll tell tales out of school while you're getting organized. Actually, and I think David will hear this. This is kind of an exciting feature here of the Bluetooth channel, but I'm going to play a very short clip of David Onley from City TV. So this is David Onley in 1987, so before breakfast television. Hi, I'm David On Lee. Behind me is the new City Pulse weather system. And here's what it can do.

Our Camorra's computer has exclusive state of the art satellite pictures. Easy to understand computer graphics. And most important, it's accurate. Check it out. Only on City Pulse. Every night at six and ten. That's brilliant. That was 1987.

Two years before, he was the news anchor for Breakfast Television. He was Mr. Weather Extraordinaire. Such a smart man and a scientific man and a kind man. Oh, thank you. Oh, I thought she was talking about me. Now we're still hearing you sort of reverberating. Mike, how are you doing? I don't mind it.

It's authentic. I can make out every word, so I'm okay with it. Very good. Well, I'm just moving to the end, my guy. Okay, good. Okay, very good. Very good. And so while David is doing that, the other members of the team,

the originals, as I call them, the Fab Four, as I like to refer to us, members of the team, the originals, as I call them, the Fab Four, as I like to refer to us, David Onley, news anchor, Steve Anthony, live-eye guy, and John Whaley, floor director slash sportscaster. So it was this kind of brand-new role that was introduced 30 years ago. So, of course, we want to hear from David now. Thank you, David, for calling us this fantastic but

just to let people know the plan is during this episode where we reminisce about breakfast television the plan is to make phone calls after we talk to david we're going to talk to steve anthony and the original producer's name is bud pierce we're going to talk to bud and we're going to talk to john whaley which is really talk to John Whaley, which is really exciting. So that's the plan. But for now, the spotlight is on David Onley. Very good. Perfect. Oh, David, you sound fantastic.

Well, thank you. It's going to take me about another 30 seconds to get there. Okay, very good. And Mike, may I say that this is an exclusive? There isn't anyone else on the airwaves or podcasting or you know anything like this that has the original form plus the producer of the show bud pierce honestly it's an exclusive when i look back this is why i started this up several years ago was for this moment it's because we have the forum now and we can, we have this and people like yourself can come in and we don't have to worry about who's employed by who. None of that matters. We could

actually just put together some colleagues and talk about, reminisce, if you will, about the good old days. I should probably, while David's getting set up, explain how this happened. I had heard that City TV was going to celebrate on September the 6th, and that's not the correct date. It says that online, but you don't always believe what you read online. We were there. It was September the 5th. And so I reached out to you. I hadn't heard from City TV at that point, and they had the wrong date.

And I thought, well, you know, I want to pay tribute to our show and show it the respect that it deserves. So I reached out to my good friend, Mike Boone, and said, could you give us a shout-out on September 5th? And you said... I can do better than that. A shout-out. I said, breakfast television turning 30

deserves more than a shout-out. It deserves its own episode. And I couldn't believe we were able to put it together for the exact day. You did it, my friend. And thank you. Couldn't have done it without you, Ann. Come on.

Wonderful. All right. It sounds like David is ready to go. He takes you back to live TV days. He's almost ready. Yes, very good. I was at the right end of the house when I made the call. So when...

We had a last bungalow and I was in the TV room, which is what we laughingly call the north wing. It means it's the north end of the house. The one at the lifestyle bungalow, you can call it a wing. It's the screening room a la TIFF right now, so... Yeah. So where do you want to begin? Can we talk about,

and I want to hear both of you on this, but I'm interested in, like, when were you made aware that this project existed at Chum City, that they were thinking of doing a live morning show? Like, what is the true origin, and when and how did they approach you about being the first

co-hosts like just bury me in some of that great detail from 30 years ago well there should be some definition in in this i was the host david was the news anchor so we each had titles we weren't co-hosts we were we were uh but we were best friends now. But we each had our roles to play. So I was the host. David was the all-important news anchor. That, to me, is the integral part of a solid, friendly, exciting morning show. It's good news anchoring, and David did great news anchoring. Well, I think the thing we have to take into account is that back at that time, morning television

was unbelievably boring. It was essentially your middle of the afternoon, Sunday afternoon news magazine type show. I remember very clearly taking off the last two weeks of August in 89 on vacation, deliberately to adjust my body class to getting up early. And each morning I was up and walking on intelligence. At the time, in terms of Toronto, the greater Toronto area, it was exclusively Canada AM. I mean, you could watch the Today Show or Good Morning America or whichever it was on at that point. I don't recall. But I ended up watching Canada AM.

And the very first day that I tuned in, about two weeks before BT went to air, they opened the show with a 25-minute debate on abortion. Oh, dear. Yeah, have a nice morning. Have a nice morning. Yeah. 25 minutes. Yeah. Started at, you know, 7.05 and went straight through to 7.30.

And at 7.30, they had the news. Excuse me, the recap of the news. The news was a recap of what they had spent the previous 25 minutes discussing. And that's all there really was available. David, do you remember, do you recall, that the idea behind this show, as per Moses Neimer and Bud Pierce, was radio on television. Give people information, but don't tie them down.

And also some levity, but also some serious, if the news is serious, then it's serious. But also news that you can understand and move on, have a little fun, and then you're out the door with everything essentially that you need in order to make your day a little more pleasant. That's very true. Very true. And I remember on the day that it was announced to the general media, and there was a media conference at the front of the 299

Queen Street West building where the different shows were held, and where a good portion of what you did on DC was held, but not the studio portion, where Jeannie Petty's show went to air. And I remember we had it there, and a question was posed to Moses, well, why do you think this is going to work, having humor and entertainment in the morning.

And, you know, why not just a steady diet of news? And he said, well, and I'm paraphrasing here, he said, despite all of the things to what's going on in the world, essentially, we have it pretty good. And by and large, there's a lot more to be happy about and entertained about than there is to be worried about yeah well that's that i hope that somebody recorded that somewhere because it was

it was great that's very astute yeah yeah very astute and it gave us kind of a bellwether for the on how to proceed but the lord knows we had some very strange entertainment. And demonstrations. And demonstrations and the quad dancers and some groups that came on that we, dubious titles that, in retrospect, you just wondered whether they, this is straight out of the gong show, made it up in order to get on,

BP. It always ended well. Yeah. Do you remember that Bare Naked Ladies had their debut, their television debut, on Breakfast Television? And we should qualify that as being the group.

How do you know? Maybe it was the other two. Could have been. Even for BT, that would have been a bit of a stretch. Yeah, yeah. Here's what I remember. People poo-pooed the show prior to it. Even some of my closest friends and my soon-to-be husband kind of said,

are you sure you want to do this? It might not work. It's probably not going to, it might not work. It's probably not going to work. And honestly, David and Mike, I think it was just our families watching and our close friends for the first little while we were hash marks. We didn't have any ratings.

And no, there were no ratings. Not for the first while. And then all of a sudden, they just started to climb and climb and climb. Yeah. I wonder why. Well, I think it was pretty programming climb and climb. Yeah. I wonder why. Well, I think

it was great programming by Amaric. I can talk about that when he gets on the line, Bud Pierce. And our dear friend Rick Rocha, the associate producer, who passed away a few years later, tragically, at a very young age.

And so... But he had a good eye for entertainment. And we always knew there was going to be something a little bit different, a little bit goofy on Breakfast Always. But you also got the news, the weather, the traffic, everything you needed to get going and out the door. And that was kind of the radio portion of what they were trying to do. I believe it was also based on, loosely on a show in Great Britain. Might've been called The Big Breakfast. And I think that might've been, it's sort of the germ of the idea and

then it just blossomed. The other thing is, and I say this with the greatest respect, they put together a team of just regular people. You know, I'm a regular schmo. I've always said that to you. I'm a regular schmo. I've always disagreed with her. David is a regular schmo.

Steve Anthony is a crazy regular schmo, but a big heart. And John Whaley, regular schmo. Just real people, you know, not sitting with stuffed shirts and perfect hair and, you know, sometimes not so perfect grammar and so on. It was just people that you would be comfortable waking up with. Now, David and Nan, sorry, David. That was a consistent pattern. It was very true.

And, you know, even the opening music with the tempest, right under the military cup. Would you like me to hum a few bars? Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do first bit of music that came out of that show on that day, September 5th. And for the length of time I was there, 12 years, that certainly was the wake-up music. Yes, it was. And I recall how they shifted and got different trumpeters,

different groups to do the opening. And then when live bands started to become fairly regular, one of the deals was that we would often try and get the band to open the show with the opening scene. And so it was a great way to start your day. We also had giveaways. We wanted to make sure the audience was included and had more than one reason to watch and to be a part of our show.

They were our family, and we wanted to give them something every single day if we could. Yeah. We'd bribe them. Watch this show and you can get stuff, you know. Watch this show, you can get tickets to different programs. It sounds pretty to events. It sounds pretty common today, but back then, nobody was doing it, not on television. Radio had been doing it for decades.

You know, be the second caller in and tell us. I think the other thing that happened, too, and you're mentioning about the news, and because we had traffic cameras as well, and that was an innovation that was on CityPulse. While people trying to get to work in the morning, we were showing them where the traffic jams were. And it wasn't like today where everywhere is a traffic jam. I mean, back then, more than 30 years ago, there were ways of getting to work.

Not completely. We had a segment with one of our cameramen, Mike Henson, I think you might remember that, Ann, where his job was to show the cameraman how to get to work. And I recall in my recording days I learned more about the model

point A to point B because they had to know the short cut in order to be able to go out, shoot a story, get back to the station, and do it in a timely fashion. And that ran for several months until

some people started to complain saying, oh, you've given away my favorite route. Now it's gone up. David, knowing that this show that you started 30 years ago is turned 30, like not many shows make it to 30,

does that fill you with any personal pride that you helped give birth to something that's still around today? Very much so. Very much so. And the lady sitting with you is a large part of that because

she's definitely the face and the voice of Western television for more than that first decade, 12 years. And that's kind of unheard of in television news and broadcasting of that nature. There aren't many people that stay in the same slot for that time. I moved after five years to do education reporting for City Hall. So I'm glad I did because by that point, our youngest son was five years old, and he was fucking me into bed.

Telling you bedtime stories. That's right. What is wrong with this picture? You know, people say, well, how do you get up so early? And the answer was, well, it's completely exhausted. It's falling asleep at suppertime at 530. You go to bed early. 5.30, you go to bed early. And so I recall

meeting Don Gaynor and Aaron Gideon, the cancer fundraiser for the TV setter. It was a lunchtime event. You never get anything after midday but you could possibly

avoid it. And they were both on CHFI, I believe, at the time, during the morning show, their morning show. And so we got talking, and the question was, well, what time do you get up to the show? And back then, both GT and their morning show started at 7 a.m. Well, G.T. and their morning show started at 7 a.m. And I said, 4.17, and John said, 4.21, and he said, 4.32, and we all bowed.

So true. Yeah, because you were just pushing to get to sleep for the last minute. Yes, and three alarm clocks. Every minute counts at that point. That's for sure. May I say something to David Onley as we wrap up? Because I'm so happy to have heard your stories. You know, you and I have been best friends for a long time, and we have been through a lot together. But these are some stories that I had never heard from you.

And so what a delight to hear that. You were the best news anchor on Breakfast Television. But these are some stories that I had never heard from you. And so what a delight to hear that. You were the best news anchor on Breakfast Television. You were the best Lieutenant Governor of Ontario. And you are my best friend. Thank you. That was beautiful. That was great.

No, and thank you so much for doing this, David. You're worthy of a three-hour deep dive unto yourself. So we'll save that for another day. But thanks so much for calling. That was incredible. Thanks so much. My privilege. Thank you for doing this. And David, shall we say... It's a joke.

It's a joke. Shall we say what we normally say? Toodles poodles. Later, later. Bye, David. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. later later bye David thank you bye bye bye bye