Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Roy MacGregor: Toronto Mike'd #1357

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

In this 1357th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike and Gare Joyce are joined by Roy MacGregor, an Officer of the Order of Canada, who shares stories from his five decades of storytelling. His new book is titled Paper Trails: From the Backwoods to the Front Page, a Life in Stories. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, Electronic Products Recycling Association, Raymond James Canada and Moneris. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail]

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hosted by FOTM Elgo and ridley funeral home pillars of the community since 1921 today making his toronto mike debut is order of canada recipient hockey hall of famer and now fotm roy mcgregor welcome roy thanks mike well done And now, FOTM, Roy McGregor. Welcome, Roy. Thanks, Mike. Well done. Thank you. Now, I recently had a gentleman over here.

He was the drummer for Moby Grape. His name is Don Stevenson. And he was here, and he was joined in my studio by Gare Joyce. And Gare was my co-host for that episode. And Gare did such a great job. I'm going to bring him in. He's coming in from Kingston, Ontario, to help co-host this episode with you, Roy. Welcome, Gare.

I'm the third banana right here. Hey, Gare. Hey, Roy. Too long. When was the last time that we saw each other face-to-face? Was it your going away? Your send-off at the Globe? Yeah, I guess so.

We walked outside for a bit. Yeah, June 2019. I chased you and Ellen down. I was just out of the sickbay, so I was in dire shape. Yes, I remember. So, yeah. I was going to say, before I pass you the baton, Gary, because you're going to do the heavy lifting in a moment here, but I find it interesting that I'm chiming in from Toronto, ontario canada you're chiming in from kingston ontario and pretty close to ottawa whereabouts

are you roy canada right it's a suburb of ottawa right where the uh the hockey arena is yes yep okay amazing so garrett this is you know when you were watching um you were watching happy days and suddenly this new character showed up, Mork, and the next thing you know, Mork's got his own show and it was like a backdoor pilot for a new show? Think about it that way. If you kick butt hosting this episode with Roy McGregor, you might get your own podcast.

Oh, my God. Don't put the pressure on. And listen, the Mork reference, I mean, that's after the shark jump, right? I mean, don't lead me in like that. No, I had so much fun with my friend Don Stevenson. I just kept thinking, who are other friends that I could recruit? And Roy was right at the top of the list. And I thought timely

because he has a memoir out right now, Paper Trails. What's it been like touring with your own story rather than someone else's, Roy? Totally different. For one thing, you don't seem to do book tours anymore. do zoom tours uh any place that i appear i have to drive to i haven't been on a single airplane it's so different from the way it used to be you'd go winnipeg calgary edmonton victoria vancouver and back and so they still say that books are selling it's just that the book business has changed dramatically. And, of course, as you said before, now I'm supposed to talk about myself after 50 years of not talking about myself.

Well, the one thing I would say is that's a bit of a relief, in my experience anyways. It seems like every time I did an event, it was so poorly attended or not attended at all. There is that awful feeling of, I remember sitting at a table beside John Irving. He's got a stack of books and I have a stack of books and mine didn't move at all. It was pretty awful. Well, I did a signing in Montreal on Sunday with Ken Dryden. Ken Dryden, R.H. Thompson, and myself.

I mean, guess who had the longest lineup? Yeah, I can imagine. I can imagine. R.H. Thompson, he comes in in your screen career, in your screenwriting career. But see, I did read your book. Yes, obviously. So by way of introduction for the Toronto Mike demographic,

which is not exactly, I think, the globe reading demographic, globe readers would be really familiar with you. traffic uh cold breeders would be really familiar with you but um I've always said that you are the most Canadian guy that I know um you remember that zosky uh contest on Morningside as Canadian as yes remember that right it was supposed to be a Canadian equivalent of as American as apple pie. Can we put a pause for a moment, please? I've got to answer the door. Gary, that's okay. We'll shout out a couple of sponsors if you want to do a quick shout out.

Great Lakes Brewery. Gary, you love your fresh craft beer. I do. I'll set the crack one here. I should have. Oh, well, you love your fresh craft beer. I do. I was all set to crack one here. I should have. Oh, well, you can always, you can still do that. So shout out to Great Lakes. Shout out to Palma Pasta.

Real quick, two podcasts you need to listen to. Season five of Yes, We Are Open is now dropping. That's a Moneris podcast hosted by Al Grego. He's collected inspiring stories from small business owners. He's sharing them with us, and it's a great, inspiring podcast. Also... He's kind of a business Roy McGregor, crossing the country

for these stories. I've heard him referred to as such. And by the way, Gare, since Roy can't hear us right now, I'm super excited. I know just enough to be dangerous about Roy McGregor. I'm excited for you to kind of walk us through this man. Like, this man's life and his career. I've got that audio

that he doesn't know about all loaded up and I'll fire it off when you kind of call for it. But I'm totally excited to learn from you about Roy McGregor. He can hear us now. I feel like we've lost our privacy. So you pick it up, Gare. Yeah, I was going to say that the real winner, the winner

of the Zosky contest was as Canadian as possible under the circumstances. Right? And I think the real winner should have been as Canadian as Roy McGregor under the circumstances. Roy has a maple leaf tattooed on one cheek of his ass and a faded red ensign on the other he's an Order of Canada

honoree as you mentioned and in the Hockey Hall of Fame Matt Sundin was lucky to go in in the same class as you I think it was when I sat beside Roy Dean was lucky to go in in the same class as you. I think it was. You know, when I sat beside Roy in press boxes for a good couple of decades, and before the game when they play Old Canada, I'd always say, Roy, they're playing your song.

So tell me, Roy, let's talk about Paper Trails, your memoir first. So you said that you're not touring for it. Tell me how it came together and what challenges it presented. There were a great many challenges. One was of course COVID, and I lost Ellen during it. So that was tough. But I didn't really know how to do it, so I forced myself to sit down and I wrote what I called vignettes, and they'd be little anecdotal things.

They might be a couple thousand words long. They might be a couple hundred words long. And it just got me in the in the mood of remembering especially funny things that i could and or things that made me look like a fool which i enjoyed but then after i had 65 to 70 of those together i started working on chapters so the chapter one would introduce myself heading off to kindergarten with my two buddies that became lifelong buddies brent and eric and then the next few chapters would start to deal with work, you know, how I got on at McLean's, how I almost got fired at McLean's before I got hired, and subsequent jobs and

how much I enjoyed working in sports and in politics, spending the night with Elijah Harper before he said no to the Meat Cycle Accord agreement, getting to know certain prime ministers quite well, and traveling around the country. That's what I really enjoyed. You know, I have never been happier in my life than when I've landed at an airport in a town that I don't know, and I've rented a car, and that moment where you're looking left and right

and you're trying to figure out which is the road into town, I just knew at the end of the day I'd have a story because I'd bump into someone who'd be interesting. Well, I know in the book you talk about McGregor's luck. Yeah. Right? And you put it down to luck. I put it down to something else.

I say that luck is the residue of attendance. If you're there, you can get lucky. You can't get lucky not being there. Well, it's being there that it's all about, as you well know yourself. Many, many times in doing a feature, I would do the sit-down interview with someone because they expected that. But it was of no use to me for the most part, and you never really gained any real insight out of it. What I wanted to do, I called it experiential journalism. If I was doing a profile with you, I'd figure out a way that I could hang around with you for a few

days. And if I got really lucky... You're not going to hang around with me, Roy. I'm sorry. If I got lucky, you'd forget I was there. And then I'd catch you doing all the things that really revealed the true Gare Joyce. Don't let that out. Can I ask you a quick question about paper trail? Is there any Gare Joyce references in this book, Roy?

Not a one. There was. But I had to drop, I was a hundred thousand words over. And so they said, well, can you drop some of the vignettes?

And I dropped a whole bunch of vignettes that had to do with journalism. And of course he, and a whole bunch of others, I've had a few, not angry notes, you know, just, I could tell there's a little hurt there,

you know, like somebody like Eric to hatchet might send me a note saying great book, but I a little hurt there. Somebody like Eric Duhatchit might send me a note saying, great book, but I thought I was there. I've got broad shoulders. I can suck it up. I barely missed making it into the book, and Roy doesn't remember why, but we'll get to that a little later on with another FOTM, Dave Schultz. But let's walk it sort of through the chronology

that you lay out in the book. Going back to Huntsville, tell me about your, and tell our listeners about your growing up basically kind of in the bush and, you know, kind of a rough and tumble town. What was that like growing up? Well, we moved in, so that my older brother could start school, we moved from near Whitney, which is on the edge of Algonquin Park. We're in a little tiny, tiny, it wasn't a village, we called it Airy. It's only five houses right in the bush. And we moved to Huntsville so that Jim could start school. And just so happened, the house we moved to on Lawrence Street

right next door was my friend Brent Monroe, and right next door to him was our friend Eric Ruby. We started kindergarten on exactly the same day. And our mothers walked us down, and that's the last time they walked us to school. The rest of the time we walked together, usually fighting and that. We became lifelong friends, even though we were so different. Both of them ended up in jail at different times. Both of them ended up in psychiatric places. Both of them fought alcoholism. But we remained true to each other and i remember that first week of public school i wrote about it and mrs robinson the teacher she was so proud of the fact that she now had her toilet in the basement kindergarten so that the little kids wouldn't

have to run upstairs and go to the big kids toilets and bathrooms and that so they had but it didn't really have a roof on it was just like kind of a shield and that with a toilet inside so i remember sitting there and i was upset because i think i peed my pants and eric was having a meltdown over something else and brant put up his hand he wanted to go to the bathroom and so we went this is the first time i remembered anybody using it and eric and i start giggling because we can hear the splashing sound in that. And then we hear the sound of a zipper followed by and then a kid starts crying inside. And it's Brent and Mrs. Robinson, 60 years old at least, matronly. Brent, Brent, what's wrong? He says, I got my weenie caught.

And so she goes and gets the janitor, goes in with a pair of pliers, opens and closes the door, works for a while. And finally, Brent's let out, and he's crying. And I was able to use the line, and I asked his sister, and I asked his wife if it was all right if I used this line. And they said, of course, because it's Brent. So the line in the book is,

it would not be the last time Brent Sweeney would get him in trouble. Oh, God. Well, I know if I was a kid in that situation and I saw a janitor with pliers, I would run no matter what the pain was like. But I was amused, although it rang quite familiar in my own life that you were an indifferent student for a good many years. Not necessarily an underachiever, but it didn't seem like you were headed for any sort of post-secondary scholastic achievement or something like that. Right. So like a lot of kids, I did the accelerated program in public school. I did three grades in two years. So it's grades three, four, and five together in two years, which would tend to suggest that I was fairly bright.

But then I hit grade 12, and I was interested in, well, girls and sports and not much else. And my grade 12 report card, which I got right here, I'll reach and get it. Sorry. My average was 37%. I stood almost dead last in the class. And the principal took a red pen and wrote across the bottom, going, going, and then a big dash for me to fill in the word gone. So he holds me out of the office,

and he says that it's his recommendation that I stay away from school for a year, get a job, work, decide whether or not I want to apply myself. If I don't wish to apply myself, then that's the end of my school. I'd be leaving with a grade 11 education. And this is a mystery, Gary. You can hardly believe this part of the story. But the English teacher came along, Clyde Armstrong, and asked if he could speak to us both.

And he came in and sat in the office, and he said that he'd like the principal to reconsider the suggestion that I leave school for a year. I want Roy to come back because I've got something in the works for him, something I'm planning. What's that? The principal says, well, I want to start a school magazine up. And he did. So they let me back in. I became the editor of the school magazine, hooked on journalism immediately. It was just a gift. And even better, this new girl had moved into town from St. Catharines, really cute, and she was the business manager. And we spent the next 56 years together. We had 49 years married and four kids and six grandkids.

And so really my whole life came together in that one moment in the principal's office. Well, the way the portrait that you paint of yourself, I really don't see what she saw in you. Nor did her father. It's a pretty dire portrait that you paint, especially with the 37 average. But I love the title of the student newspaper, too. Your ears must have perked up every time you heard the word pundit. Yeah.

Yeah. It seemed so pretentious. It wasn't my choice. The other thing, Gary and Mike, is that this girl came because her father got a job at Huntsville High School. He was the new chemistry teacher. And I had really failed chemistry badly. He was also the guidance counselor. So he had access to these things that you used to do as you entered grade 9 called aptitude tests, and they had a small IQ variation to them. They would somewhat

measure your IQ, which would be a guidance as to what you might become. Mine had turned out they suggested I become a bus driver, which I think would have been great, but I didn't. And so he didn't much care for me, and he was able to get access to this information. He got her IQ test out and my IQ test out, and he took them home. And he sat down at the kitchen table, and he showed her mine and hers, and he said, he is not smart enough for you.

Wow. Wow. Get rid of him. So I didn't hear this for years after, and it kind of really pissed me off. But then Ellen and I had three rather lovely, wait, four kids, but three of them girls who became lovely young teenagers. And so I began to admire his ingenuity because I was always looking for ways of getting rid of some of these guys that come sniffing around.

That's great. Oh, God. That's great. I love it. I do. You just paint, like, such a picture of, like, you were almost a casualty at that point. Yeah, well, look at the boys, eh? The education system fails boys left and right.

Yeah. Let me add this too, Gary, and I don't know whether you'll understand or not, it makes any sense. I don't think I ever felt more like I belonged than when I failed, because Brant had taken five years to get through grade 10 so that he could go off and become an OPP police officer.

Eric had spent four years doing grade design in 10, and he was eventually headed off to become a ski bum skiing around the world before he went to work for the family store in Huntsville. You took two cracks at grade 13? I had one crack at grade 13.

Two at 12. See, I was two at 13, which was kind of like freshman university year. Oh, yeah. But by the end of grade 13, we were playing poker with the janitors. We had the keys to the school, right? Old enough to drink. It was the five-year club is what we called it, because it started in grade 10.

But the five-year club was an exclusive way. But you know what? It was a great learning experience for me. Until I got to grade 13, I really had no idea that I wanted to write or that that was going to be something I could or wanted to do and my English teacher just died this last couple of weeks at Monarch Park

the guy that really sent me on my way Mr. Rempel Victor Rempel and Jim Coyle was in my class from the Toronto Star there were like three media types in our little grade 13 class. He was key.

Who was the key teacher for you besides the teacher that didn't kick you out of the house? Mr. Armstrong. And then the key teacher in my life was the woman who taught us in that grade three, four, and five, over two years, Miss Parker. Yep. And Myrna Parker was her name. She lived to be 102 years old.

I remember going to her 102nd birthday, or 100th birthday, and she recognized every single person that came up to her. And her line always was, keep up the good work. You know, she'd write that on my report card. Yeah. So when I got the Order of Canada, I get this little note in the mail. I open it up. It's signed Miss Mernbarker.

She never married. And it all says is keep up the good work. That's amazing. That's amazing. So you went from you were a non-contender in your first crack at grade 12 for university. I didn't realize that you had gone to Laurentian originally. So what was the chronology there? Well, look, the reason that I went to Laurentian was that my really good friend, Ralph,

who is now my brother-in-law, his dad owned a Chrysler dealership in Huntsville, so he had access to cars. And he was able to go off to university and go back and see his girlfriend who was still in high school at that time. And I would go back and forth, so I could go back and see Ellen, who was one grade behind. So I was able to get, it was purely because I had rides home. Right, right. And what were you, you were doing general arts there or what was it? Yeah. Yeah. And so how did you refocus to end up, uh, I, was it Western for journalism that you

went to and, and, and sort of take it. I don't want to say that you were an, uh, an overnight success coming out of, success coming out of journalism school, but what was the sequence there? Well, I'd gone off to Europe twice with friends to bum around. Almost lost my connection to Ellen through that, of course. And then when I come back, another teacher at Huntsville High School, whom I didn't have and who hadn't been there before, was a friend of my cousin who was teaching there.

And he decided to take a year off and take the one-year journalism course at the University of Western Ontario, which I hadn't even heard of. I talked to him about it. And Ralph and I, my now brother-in-law, we went off with him. So the three of us went from Huntsville and took that course. It was unbelievably bad. But we had a lot of really good people come out of it who did very well in the media business. But it was so bad that, you know, Wilson Brian Key was the professor that everybody couldn't bear. And he was teaching

feature writing. And at one point, one of the kids, we'd gotten up nerve to challenge him. He was really a paranoid guy, wouldn't let anybody take his lessons or anything like that. So they said, could you show us something that you've written, please? He said, I'd love to, but I can't. You can't? No, I can't. It's all top secret. And I wrote the manual for NORAD.

North American Defense? And this guy's teaching magazine feature writing? Anyway, he believed that all advertising had subliminal sex in it. So that if you saw somebody modeling underwear, for example, there would be some prop inside the crotch to make that person look kind of excited. And everything was about sex. If you looked at a glass, let's say somebody was selling selling a drink, a whiskey, in the ice cubes would be embedded, in his opinion, very suggestive stuff, naked women,

people making love and that. There was an episode of Columbo with that, that Robert Cole was sending coded messages in the screening of a commercial. It had like, it was a completely 70s thing. And it's just completely repudiated at this point. Yeah, he was famous for it. He wrote a couple of books and

oh, he was awful. One day in the morning, I remember most was coming in and I can't remember the exact issue, but he had the newest issue of Playboy up on the screen. And it was a lovely young lady with a huge afro. And he tried to convince us that through art and special effects, they had twisted the curls of her hair so that it spelled out,

I want you to F something or other me. And if you looked at her hair, you were subliminally reading this. Well, about a year later, Western bought him out, sent him packing, and off he went and never heard from him again. But he was the worst of the lot, and the rest of them weren't much better. Now, we have one little musical cue here. Mike, let's bring Roy back to Huntsville with a little song. Now, Roy, you are the only person I know.

I drove by the Empire Hotel, but you're the only person I know that worked at the Empire Hotel. Yeah. What was that like? And I read about this at the Empire Hotel. Yeah. What was that like? And I read about this with Joni Mitchell. She's never admitted that it was the Huntsville Empire Hotel. But good luck finding another. I think it was the only one that was out there. Well, I understand there's one in North Bay,

and one in Saskatoon, where she was from. But it could have been Huntsville, because a lot of folk singers were operating out of the riverboat and up toward Gordon Lightfoot country. And of course, we always acted like it was about us. So it was called the Snake Pit. And you went down several steps to get to it. Ladies and escorts.

A woman could not be on the men's side at all the men's side was really tawdry and awful you know every step you took you said you had that squeak of beer in your shoes and then on the other side it was smoky of course but they had uh you know better tables and better chairs than that but oh my god it could get wild. I mean, we had to cancel a concert one night because the lead guitarist broke his guitar over the head of one of the guys who didn't like his music or something. We had a wedding down there once, and poor family from out of town, I don't know what they were doing there for a wedding.

Anyway, the groom got lost, and they sent me to find him and I found him on the men's side. He had been in the ladies and escorts side, but I found him on the men's side. Sound asleep in the toilet after having thrown up partly over himself and into the toilet. I got him out and cleaned him up a bit. Got him back with his bride. Oh my god, Gary. It's just crazy. And then the last night I was there, they all took me out. They had some beer and they said, we're going out somewhere. And there was a guy who did Elvis Presley impersonations and he was pretty good.

And in the middle of the night, it's about September the 1st or something like that, high on a hill over Huntsville, we stood in the backyard while he sang the Lord's Prayer. I'd never heard it done this way. It was so evocative, and it just took me to tears that these people would care about me. I was more or less making jokes about them and thinking they had not very great lives and that. They actually were wonderful people.

And you could have easily never left Huntsville. You could have been the career bartender at the Empire Hotel. If not the mayor. No, you are the nation's mayor. You're not prime minister. You're the mayor of any town that you land in. There's no doubt about that. of any town that you land in.

There's no doubt about that. You came out of Western and you landed at McLean Hunter when that was actually a going concern. And people now, I don't think anyone younger than my generation, and you're slightly on the top end of my demographic, I guess, know what McLean Hunter was like. Now they know McLean's magazine and maybe Canadian Business and Chattelain. But back in the day, they had hundreds of magazines. Back in the day, they had hundreds of magazines. Magazines on every single thing you could imagine,

from snowmobiles to office equipment to furnaces to shoes. And, Gary, I just shake my head to think about that. We were so-called journalists, and we sat there all day long, eight hours every day, five days a week, writing reviews of products we never, ever saw. Roy, I wrote a story for Canadian Hairdresser. Absolutely true. And all I got out of it was a haircut. Nice. God's honest truth.

I had a friend there that worked for Canadian Safety Magazine. That was everything. Yeah. would he just picked any subject he didn't think anyone ever read the the magazine a fellow named peter kenter that i went to school with so he just he would talk to people that he uh he liked and wanted to meet i remember he did and wanted to meet, I remember he did a piece about Dan Ferroni, offensive lineman with the Argonauts. And one of the drops in the display said, helmet's a must, right?

It was, the trade magazines, there were hundreds of them. You have no idea who was reading them. No, and they came in, and you wrote your review, and it got printed up, and then sent out to all these people who were in those businesses, like snowmobiles or whatever, and they'd put them down on their desk, and maybe somebody might flip through them, but they would be full of ads. They made a lot of money there.

You've got to remember that. They were making a fortune. Yeah. And yet, all the reviews, if that, they were making a fortune. And yet, all the reviews, if that's how I call them, the description, you never saw the product. You never played with it. I didn't go to ride on a snowmobile

to see what it worked like. I just took their word for it. I'm going to skip a little ahead here. So in your time with the trade magazines, you had occasion. I know everyone thinks of you as among all the different writers you are. They think of you as a hockey writer. all the different writers you are.

They think of you as a hockey writer. The greatest moment in Canadian hockey history, and you saw it from a distance. Do you have the clip, Mike? Yeah, here we go. 102 left in the game. Cleared pass on the far side. The Yapkin rolled one to Savard Savard cleared the pass to Stapleton

he cleared to the open wing to Cornwallier Cornwallier took a shot the defenseman fell over, the Apkin and the Cornwallier has it on that wing here's a shot Henderson made a wild, staff-work spell here's another shot right by the sword! Henderson!

And sword to Cavanaugh! Henderson right in front of the net! And the players of the team are going wild! Henderson right in front of the goalkeeper! We have friends, or had friends in the hockey media, I guess most

are gone at this point who were covering that series in, in Moscow for that game. Roy, where were you when Henderson scored? I was in a Marina up by Barry doing a cover story on, on the Marina of the year. And they were gathered around a black and white set, I believe, and everything came to a halt, and I was in the showroom with the sales managers and that, watching it.

It was pretty exciting, but it would have been a lot more exciting to be there. And I'd even missed one of the key games, you know, the time that Phil Esposito made his famous speech? I was getting married that day, so it was the wedding dance, and I never saw that. So I've written about the series, here's a little secret, you know this to be true, I've written with great authority on that series. I even served as a consultant on a recent movie about the series called Icebreaker. Think about it, that's all I saw.

I'm sure that you could be a consultant on a movie about marinas as well. Thank you. Well qualified for that. Now, when you're working at McLean's, you managed to develop a relationship with Peter C. Newman. What was Peter C. Newman like? He could be brooding. He could be very helpful. He was soft-spoken.

He always listened to Stan Kenton jazz as he wrote, with the headsets on like you have right now. And he'd like to drum himself. He played in a band. He drummed. He was awfully kind to me. I mean, he wanted to take my head off of the first thing I ever wrote. He played in a band. He drummed. He was awfully kind to me. I mean, he wanted to take my head off of the first thing I ever wrote.

Well, I think that we have a musical cue for that. Roy, are you hear me? Can you feel me near you? Roy, are you still there? Tommy, can you see me? I thought this would be the point that you might hang up on us. Well, anyway, I kept begging him for a chance to work, and he said, well, he didn't really have a job at the moment, but if I wanted to try a column, fine. So I had been a music critic at the University of Western Ontario, even though I'm tone deaf.

But you got free records. All you had to do is send a note off to the record companies and they'd send you the records. And you get it and write about them in the school newspaper. So, of course, I'm a great authority at this point. And I thought, well, I'll write a, I cleared it with Peter Newman. I'll write a piece talking about, there's not a whole lot of creative stuff going on in music right now in Canada or around the world.

It's kind of a dull period post Beatles. It was 1973, I think. And so I write the piece up and hand it in. I'm so proud of myself. It's supposed to come out on Monday morning. It'll be shipped right across the country. Monday morning, I get a call from Edna Tilbury, Mr.

Newman's secretary. Would you get up here right away, please? I'm down in the, you know, writing about marinas. And so off I go. I look up there, and I have a boy. He must love the story. He wants to congratulate me. I go in there. He's sitting there. He's got the headphones off, and he's just steaming. He turns the magazine around, pushes it toward me and circles

great big red letters. He's my lead. And my lead is not since the guess who released the rock opera Tommy as music and da da da da da. The guess who? Tommy? No. The who?

So I'm mortified. He says there'll be an apology in the next magazine, and I think that's it for your tryout. So I go back downstairs. Thank God we used to work with carbon paper. Do you remember? Carbon paper? And I had kept my carbon copies.

I go right through my little desk, and I find out not since the Who is what I'd written, released the Rock Opera Commie. So back upstairs I go. I ask if I can see Mr. Newman for a moment. He says, okay, I shall see. He checks. He said, come in. He looks

at it. He looks at it again, and then we start marketing. Now we go to the assignment editor who says he did not recall me making that reference, and he would have caught it. We go down through the line. The very last person to see the copy was Miss Joan Wetherseed, very British, very proper, lovely woman. She looked at it, she looked at it again, and she just went white. She said, oh, I thought that because Roy mentioned the Guess Who at the very bottom, I thought maybe he'd just forgotten to call a group the gas

who at the top. And so she had inserted the word gas. So I was lucky to escape that. Oh my gosh. So from thereafter though, I guess being put through the ringer by Peter C. Newman without real cause, I guess you fell into his favor somewhat. And thereafter, you were drawing assignments and not writing about marinas or hairdressers or anything like that anymore.

Yeah. No, it worked out well. I remember at one point he called me into the office and he showed me a magazine about truckers. And he said, by Bill, I forget his last name. And he said, you know, you need some work in your cadence and rhythm. He said, why don't you read this aloud while I sit here? So I read it aloud.

And it was a nice piece and rhythm. He said, why don't you read this aloud while I sit here? So I read it aloud, and it was a nice piece and that. And then Newman produced his own memoirs, Here Be Dragons, many years back, and he said that he considered me his best young talent, young writer at the magazine, which really flabbergasted me, because I would have Do you remember Marcy McDonald's beautiful stuff at McLean's? There are a lot of good magazine writers around,

yourself included. To have him say that, wow. That's so neat. Well, Roy, I wouldn't put myself in there. That was a little before me, but there was a full roster um you know just

just pulling names uh out of out of a hat um what was it like working uh with uh don ob who was my magazine instructor at Ryerson, which was what it was called back in the day. Yeah. And I got a C in magazine writing from Don Obe. Did you? I never let him forget it at the magazine awards. But what was that one?

I loved Don. Just loved him. And, you know, Earl McRae, who was one of those good writers at that time Earl McRae could impersonate anyone and he would do Don Obe in a way that would leave you in stitches you know looking for cigarettes trying to find a cigarette, trying to get it in his mouth

and going ah ah yeah yeah everything would sound perfect yeah to do a Don Obe impression all you had to have, all you had to do was run six sentence fragments together and snort. Well, I, I, he kind of, he would, that was a Don Obe impression. Great editor. Great ideas guy. I would say not a great judge of talent, but that's just my personal experience.

You worked with Barbara Meal, who famously shows up in one of my stories I've told on this podcast. What was Babs like at that point? It was fine. We shared an office for a few months, and we weren't always there together. But, you know, you knew when she was in the building, let's say, because of the smell, she wore so much perfume. And she was always so well turned out. I remember there was, I won't mention his name because it would embarrass him.

One of the editors was just like a sick puppy around her. He'd stand outside our door just baying at the moon almost. He was head over heels in love with her, and she wouldn't give him any time. She was going with the poet George... Anyway, Jonas, thank you. And he'd show up in his leather jackets Wearing his motorcycle stuff I found her

Quite fine to deal with And she wasn't the right wing Rightish Kind of person she later became At the Sun Papers She seemed quite sensible She was on the first cover of Toronto Life No

She was like A first cover of Toronto Life. No. Yeah, she was like a peace and love cover, you know, hippie girl in New Yorkville or whatever, and it was Barbara Meehl. Wow, I did not know that. Well, you can work that into the next edition. Yeah, and for listeners of this podcast, you can go back. I think it was the second time I was on. You did 10 stories, right?

We did like Gear Joyce presents 10 stories. And this is the great nude swimming story is in that mix, right? This one was actually me ending up in the bathroom at the Sun, the women's bathroom at the Sun next to Barbara O'Meal, which we won't rake over the coals once more here. How did that opportunity to write for Maclean's? Now, I think people today have an idea of, you know, they know Maclean's in the 21st century. But in the 70s, it was a really dynamic magazine.

And I guess into the 80s. magazine, I guess into the 80s. And you were given a lot of freedom to chase down subjects. What was it like writing for Maclean's back then? Well, it was so different, Gary. It was such a powerful voice. People talked about it. It was in the news each week. It was the most important publication in the country at the time. I'd at least put it up there with the Globe and Mail.

And you had people like Walter Stewart writing about business. You had Alan Fotheringham on the back page. You had Newman doing editorials. You had Marcy MacDonald doing profiles of politicians. Bob Lewis. You had tremendously talented people there. politicians. Bob Lewis, you had tremendously talented people there. And

once you phoned up someone and said you were from McLean's, every door opened. They couldn't do enough for you to get you access and that, so you started to feel pretty powerful. And, I mean, it was a different time. There was money, money, money, money. You know,

twice I rented helicopters without asking anybody if I could. Isn't that hard to believe now? You know, if, money. You know, twice I rented helicopters without asking anybody if I could. Isn't that hard to believe now? You know, if you wanted to cover something, you know, if you wanted to cover, let's say I wanted to do a profile of Marcel Dion. Well, you never thought twice about hopping in an airplane and going to L.A. It's just that's the way you worked. Not so long ago, I had an assignment with Toronto Life, and they refused to give me gas money to Kitchener.

Like back in the day, back in the 80s for Toronto Life, I went to France in a car rally for a week. You know, the economy of the media is just so different than it is today. You mentioned Dr. Foth, Alan Fotheringham, and a columnist for Maclean's, and he was like a national brand. Absolutely. He was, I mean, he poked fun at Ottawa all the time, and Ottawa still cringes about being called the town that fun forgot

we worked there you know all those references they sting and if he wanted to really get on some hobby horse he could have a very powerful effect but usually he just kind of joked around my sister Ann she was his fact checker and

Paul called her my guardian angel. My first day in journalism school, we had to do a man on the street interview. First person I stopped, Alan Fotheringham. Perfect. The second person I stopped with a high schooler was Mark Jones, who's now a broadcaster with ESPN and has been for years. So you go from Maclean's to newspapers. What was that?

I guess you were working for Newspaper Supplements, the Canadian. Yeah, Supplements with Don Ove. I went over with Don Obe and then Walter Stewart. Then I got into newspapers. After the big merger in 1981 that caused the commission and everything like that,

supplements, well, a supplement I was working on at the time today was dropped. And so I freelanced for about a year and then I thought, I'm going to have to get something. And a friend offered to get me an interview with Gary Lawton who's at the Toronto Star. So I went to the Star as my first newspaper job.

I was there for a few years. I asked to go back to Ottawa and was able to, and started covering politics, and then switched over to the Ottawa Citizen where I had 12 wonderful years, loved it there. And then the National Post started up and Ken White wanted me to join the National Post and I said no initially. So I was so happy where I was. And then he came back with a better offer and basically a message that said, you know,

if you work for, well, it wasn't a sublim back then, if you work for this chain and we want you to go there, you have to go. So I went, and that was good, too. That was four good years before things started to go south. That's a real crossover for us, right? Because when I went to the Globe in 94, they called me up. They had some type of headhunt, and I didn't even bother applying for it. And, uh, they called me up and said, would you be interested in coming in?

And I said, I thought they, I thought you were just going to give the job to Roy. Right. And they told me that they'd actually offered you, uh, the, the, uh, sports columnist hockey columnist job at the, at, at the globe. And then when you left, I didn't know anybody knew that. And I didn columnist job at the Globe. And then when you left... I didn't know anybody knew that, and I didn't put it in the book. But, you know... There's things about you I know, Roy.

Well, they hired me, and I agreed to go. And the next thing you know, I get this terribly awkward call from Mr. Langford saying that William Thorsell, his editor, has quashed it. You're not coming. And I'd already said to my current employees that I'd be leaving. It was a bit of a shock. Then to get back to the Globe pretty well 10 years later,

and I really enjoyed the Globe. Again, it was that power thing. The Globe then became the powerful voice of say mclean's had once been but mclean's was to go back to mclean's they had little features like this country in that various people writing about how much they loved the country it really was an important organ and it really did cover the country well now i don't hear anybody ever talk about it i don't even ever see it i think it it's mostly online now, but I'm not too sure. Yeah.

And it's not just that the voice of McLean's or the presence of McLean's is muted and just newspapers are less influential than they once were. But the type of journalism that you were doing, like at the Globe doing My Country, like you had pretty much a free hand to tackle any issue, any place in the country you went. And it was really a great, you could get a great sense of the country at a point in time through reading your column.

Yeah, well, when this book came out, Michael Farber, who's a great friend of ours, he tweeted out, he said, when I first came here to this country, he said, I had two teachers and he named me as one and Peter Zosky as the other and I was just wow, wow, Michael Farber, he's our hero, right?

There you go. Too true. And Sheila Rogers is on the record as saying that you, Roy, are the heir apparent to Peter Zosky. So it all comes full circle here. All right. You're right.

Thanks, mate. Nicer guy than Peter Zosky. Come on. You're a far more respectable character than Peter Zosky. But I don't know. My dealings with Peter Zosky, not quite as... I know. Remember what he said? He always said I'm not nearly as nice in real life as I

am on the radio. Oh, man. He showed up at the National Magazine Awards to host one night, just completely gassed. That did it, right? Like, Morningside was an institution. I think... I was at that National Magazine Awards.

That was the first one, wasn't it? No, it wasn't too far from the first. It was the first one that I won something at. Yeah, but Garrett, correct me if I'm wrong, but our special guest today, he won the first Canadian National Magazine Award, right? For excellence, right? The overall excellence award. I'm here to recognize

the greatness of Roy McGregor, so I chime in periodically with his accolades. What was the story? About a farmer. It was called The Canadian Tragedy. And it became the basis of, CBC then came to me and said we want to turn this into a film, which

I thought was a great idea. And they said, we want you to write write the script I'd never even seen a script and so they gave me a few scripts to study and then I was told that Ralph Thomas who was a producer at the time said he was going to direct it it was going to be his first direction ever of a movie and they had a new young

talent that was going to star in it and the kid's name then was R.H. Thompson he was going to be his first direction ever of a movie. And they had a new young talent that was going to star in it. And the kid's name then was R.H. Thompson. He was going to play the son. And Murray Westgate played the father. Well, they did the film. Great reviews. Murray won an actor award. I won the actor award for screenwriting.

It won the World Film Festival Award, Grand Prize at Montreal. It won at Banff. I mean, it was just insane. And it started RH's career up. A man, not only Order of Canada and Hockey Hall of Fame, but he has his own IMDB page. But on that note, so Roy, of course, no one mostly for print and for the written word but did you ever consider pivoting into a television or radio personality no

not with my personality I did write about 5 or 6 scripts and then kind of stopped doing that it didn't work out for you like it did Tom Headley yeah I remember that kind of stopped doing that. It didn't work out for you like it did Tom Headley. Yeah. Yeah, I remember that.

For our listeners, give the thumbnail on Tom Headley. Well, he was, he had worked at Esquire, so they brought, he was Canadian. They brought him back as very much a Tom Wolfe type character for his clothes and his style and everything. He was a friend of Tom. He edited Tom Wolfe.

Yeah, and they were friends, and he brought him up to talk, give us a session of talking once. Yep. And then he wrote a screenplay based on a story that wasn't even actually true. I mean, he would have admitted that. It was the famous dance one. Help me out here. Flash dance.

Thank you, flash dance. He would go to a strip joint, a notorious strip joint on Victoria Street in downtown Toronto that was probably employing strippers who were cutting high school classes. And everyone said, Tom, what are you doing? And he said, I'm researching a script. And everyone's going, oh, my God, like he's gone. And next thing you know, the screenplay for Flashdance. Yeah, he's a millionaire, multimillionaire probably. He would get half a million dollars for films that weren't produced. And he did a bunch of them like that.

But I don't see you as a Hollywood guy. It sounds like your last film experience went sideways. Yeah. What happened there? Well, it was a Hollywood production. This is when the Ontario Film Board was handing out money and grants, and there were all kinds of funds available. And so if you got so many points, if you used a Canadian writer or a Canadian book, you had a book called The Red Fox by a Canadian,

and you wanted a script out of that, you're going to pay me $16,000. $16,000 American. So I wrote the first draft of that he was going to pay me $16,000 $16,000 American so I wrote the first draft of it sent, got it to him through my agent and didn't hear back, didn't get any money the next thing I know he's taken that script and he's gone to this special fund

Greenberg or something like that fund and gotten like $150,000 to continue so they never saw their money. I never saw my money and no one ever heard of them again. It was a complete scam. I knew his brother, Chris Hind. He tried to get me into, uh, into mystery writing.

I should have listened to him and I could have done it a long time ago, but like that, but when I was in, when I was coming out of Ryerson, uh, he was trying to get me into, and I wrote a few things, and he was trying to mentor me a bit. But I always thought the Hyde brothers were more hype than Hyde. Well, you never know what's going to happen in the business. I remember Doug Gibson, the publisher at MacLellan and Stewart, coming to me at one point saying that, you know, we hear a lot from librarians and teachers about the so-called reluctant reader, meaning boys.

And we think that there should be a series. There hasn't been a real series on hockey since Scott Young's, he said. He said, would you consider doing a series of kids' books? Well, I'd never written a kids' book. I didn't have anything to do with them, no interest in them. So I said, well, I'll give it a whirl, I guess. So I tried one, and because I didn't really believe in it in 1995, I made the team deliberately a United Nations team. The best player

is a girl. The goalie's a girl. I got a Muslim player. I got a Russian player. I got Polish players. I got Chinese, Asians, which people thought was very insightful. Years later, as they look back, and the next thing you know, the thing takes off. And I know it'll be the one thing I'm actually going to be remembered for. This is the Screechells Mystery Series. 30 volumes, 29 little ones in one big scrapbook, sold millions, translated into Finnish and Swedish and Czech and Mandarin and French.

Millions of copies. I remember your cameo in the TV series. Do you? Yeah, and I understand completely why you really didn't go into dramatic acting or into TV as a pursuit, as an on-air. I know. I come across as an old, it was a two-part series, I remember. And in the early part, I come across as a nasty person,

maybe even a pervert. And I'm thinking, well, what if somebody didn't see the next show on that, in which I turn out to be a good guy? Yeah. The camera did not love you. The camera on your screen loves you right now. And like people, people do love you. But somehow, maybe they didn't light you right.

Let's put it down. Let's put it down to that. So Gare has already given me a heads up that I'm going to get a great David Schultz story. So I don't need it yet. It's coming soon, though. I'm just going to tease everybody. But how many books have you written in your career, Roy? 68, 69, or 70.

I'd have to really go back and count. You've lost track. That's how many books you've... I don't think you've read that many books. I like to tell people I've written more books than I've read. Unbelievable. Of all the books

and all the stories you've told in your career, and again, the book that you're now... that's about you is called Paper Trails from the Backwoods to the Front Page of Life and Stories.

And that's where people can go learn more about you. But of all the books and stories you've told, which is your all-time favorite? A book that I didn't think I should write, would write, or would do anything. And I'd written a few books for Penguin, and I was requested, you know,

you sit around sometimes, you tell stories about your dad who lived an entire life in the bush, you tell stories about your dad, who lived an entire life in the bush, best red guy I ever knew. And they said, why don't you write a book about your father? What's this interesting, strange life he's led? So I wrote a book called A Life in the Bush. And people still come up and talk to me about it. It's very simple. It's just the story about Duncan McGregor, an and he wanted to be a hockey player, but at 22 went off to work in the bush and never left.

Wow. Okay, and that's won you many awards, too. We should point out, I know you're a humble guy, but the Rudstrom, if I mispronounce, please correct me, Rudstrom Award. Yeah, it's the big American award that nobody's ever heard of, but every's for they every every five years they give it out to what they deem to be the best book in the wilderness

right and so i got it okay twenty thousand dollars american not bad now uh i i have spent time uh and you're one of the few witnesses surviving who've ever seen me golf, but we spent time together up at your place overlooking Algonquin Park. Yeah. What was, how did that come together? Was that close to where your father was from and working in the bush? It was Ellen's father loved to fish and they opened up this lake that had not been previously opened the cottages in 1966

and they bid on the lots and he got a lot for 1400 he put up a six thousand dollar beaver lumber prefab cottage we added to it over the years and built bunkies and really gutted it and made it different, you know. And now it's worth hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. But now it's like $1,400. There's only cabins on one side of the lake because Algonquin is on the other. Yeah, there's few, but there's about 60 cabins in total.

And it's a lovely, clean lake. It's at the very top of the Biscoco River chain. And, well, I won't say anything about the fishing because I don't want to give anything away. Well, we have to get to the Schultz story. Now, I have like a slight, uh, uh, I, I have a slight association with, with this in that I was supposed, I was with you guys that day that this went down and I was back at the hotel

working, uh, as, as it were while you and, and Schultz were, were out. Uh, do you want to, do you want to cue the music, Mike?

I think that gets the mood. I was standing by my window on one cold and cloudy day. When I saw that purse cover rolling for to take my mother away. Will the servant of Bob Dylan be unbroken? By Ramblin' Jack Elliott. And you and Schultz. Well, you're part of it because I think you had the newspaper. We're there at a couple of the playoffs.

Yeah. Near the end of the playoffs. Yeah. Near the end of the Eric Lindros era, right? And we're doing a playoff, I don't know. And we have a day off or an evening off. There's no game that night. You had a paper and you had it open on the arts section. And it said that Ramblin' Jack Elliott would be playing that night at a little upstairs bar very new to our Marriott Hotel. Very near.

And I got so excited. So does Marriott. Yeah, I really, I loved Ramblin' Jack Elliott. I love Bob Dylan. And Dylan would like Elliott too, and he's an older performer. I remember seeing Elliott with Rolling Thunder at Maple Leaf Gardens back in 75. Yeah, huge fan. So we're going to go. We find out.

We go racing down there. You couldn't go because you had to work. You were on deadline. So Schultz and I go in there, and it's sold out. The girl says, sorry, it's all sold out. It was sold out weeks ago or something like that. So we repair to the bar. There's a bar downstairs.

We repair to the bar to have a Jameson, his idea. You know, Jameson, remember that? Oh, yeah. And this guy hears us talking about hockey. And he says, where are you guys from? And we tell him. And he says, oh, yeah. He says, well, I'm a musician. He says, I said, oh, I wanted to see Ramblin' Jack Elliot so badly,

and my heart's just broken. He said, you want to see him? I said, yeah. Well, I opened for him. So come on. But it sold out, remember, Gare and Mike. We go up through the back entrance, into the back hallway, Ramblin' Jack's in the midst of a set.

And he does a lot of talking songs, as well as songs like you just heard. That was a much younger Ramblin' Jack that Mike played. And the talking one's 912 Green and that, so a song I'd really liked. And so he takes us in, but there's no place to sit, so we're at the back, and he puts us in there's no place to sit so we're at the back and he puts us on stage out of just barely out of sight now the stage opens up and the acoustics are such that rambling jack hardly has to whisper and everything just goes around right out and you know schultzy because he can't help himself after we're there for about 15 20 minutes and rambling jack's into that

particular song that exact one, did you ever stand and shiver just looking at a river that's the last lines and Schultz with that baritone sarcasm, he goes wow I know now why they call him Ramblin' and it goes

shooting out onto the audience Ramblin' Jack turns around and the whole audience is going, they're booing. Schultz is booing. And Schultz is there. He does that, you know, the way his eyes go sometimes. And like, Schultz would have been wearing a shirt

that would have made him conspicuous to everyone. A Hawaiian shirt. There is no way that you can hide getting out of there. And it's Philadelphia, right? The toughest people on Pat Hatcher. Right? If you're going to get booed

someplace, it's Philly. Ramblin' Jack, bless his heart, he said, just laughed it off, kind of, and then went back to his song, finished the whole set. Later on, got to talk to him he got to sign a cd back in the cd days and schultzy didn't apologize or anything but it was when it just absolutely stopped the concert dead schultzy story that's that's amazing now that night i this

i remember distinctly i was so i wanted to go with you guys. I had to file and I was writing away and, uh, I, we were, the Marriott was off kind of in the middle of nowhere. Yes. There was nothing close. And I went downstairs and, uh, the, the restaurant had stopped serving like at nine or something like that. So I sat at the bar and I had a beer and, uh, and I had a bowl of peanuts. This guy reaches over right into my peanuts and just like, they're sitting right in front of me. And so,

uh, you know, I was like, Hey, you know, what's, what's the, what's your story. Right. And he goes, I'm a baseball scout. Right. And I was like, hey, you know, what's your story?

Right? And he goes, I'm a baseball scout. Right? And I was like, well, it means nothing to me. Right? But I said, like, I follow scouting in hockey and race sports. And he was like, ah, you don't know anything. Jim Fregosi Jr.

No way. Yep. The son. Same night. Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home for both Jim Fregosi and Jim Fregosi Jr. No way. Yep. The son, shout out to Ridley Funeral Home for both Jim Fregosi and Jim Fregosi Jr. So he was scouting for the Phillies, right? And he just sort of, like, when I said I was a sports writer, he just lit into me. And I was like, hey, you know, I read, I read Prophet of the Sandlot, the book about tony lucadello the uh the scout for philly for the phillies for 50 odd years whatever signed mike schmidt and ferguson jenkins and

ernie banks and everything anyways yeah jim fragosi jr just the rudest asshole ever uh and just so much attitude and he was talking up we've got a guy we've got a guy, we've got a guy, he's like, you know, save a plaque for him in the Hall of Fame. You know, this guy's the real deal. Yeah, like you don't know anything. And it was J.D. Drew who was the second pick in the draft. Phillies took him with the second pick in the draft and he never signed with them. who was the second pick in the draft. Phillies took him with the second pick in the draft,

and he never signed with them. And I always put it down to Jim Fregosi Jr., shout out Ridley Funeral Home. You got your revenge for the peanuts. That's it. That's it. All over a bowl of peanuts. Now, I guess trying to bring this long trek together, and really you probably deserve like a five or six part,

uh, series of, of podcasts. But, um, I read your stuff and I, I always get a sense that there's an optimism, uh,

positivity, uh, that underlies what you write. In contrast to me, I guess. What would you take away from your body of work on that count? An intense love of the country, and before the phrase was ever popularized by Keith Spicer,

ordinary citizens. I'm much more interested in people who aren't used to being interviewed or aren't to never get bothered bothered never get their story told those are the people that really intrigued me and a girl who's been my editor and friend off and on ever since the days of the pundit she was in ellen's class edie van elstein she serves as an editor on this book uh she just always says oh mcgregor she's the one who uses the line horseshoes and she also says you see the world through rose-colored glasses. Get over it. Well, I can't get over it. I do.

You know, I would take it one step farther. I mean, you say that it's a love of the country. When I read your stuff, I take away a belief in the country, not simply a love.

Canadians, and Canadians country, right? Not simply a love that Canadians as a people and Canada as an institution will prevail. Yes, I believe that. And excel and be on the right side of things. Yeah, even though, you know, you double the tuition for English students going to Quebec, Danielle Smith wants to have her own Canada pension plan, and there's always going to be those issues.

There's always going to be pensions. There's always going to be pensions at the centre for this country, and whatever prime minister happens to be in office, basically he or she wears that until it wears him or her down, and people get tired of them. You know, we far, far, far more toss people out of office than toss them in. The only time I ever remember anybody getting tossed into office was Bob Ray in Ontario. And you can see it coming with Justin Trudeau now. I can't see anything that could possibly save him. Does that make him a bad person and a bad prime minister? Not necessarily.

anything that could possibly save him. Does that make him a bad person and a bad prime minister? Not necessarily. It's just the way it goes. It's the rhythms of our crazy country. What would your globe column look like these days? Well, I'd be very, very cautious in terms of talking about the Middle East tensions, because I've kicked this around in my head a million times. There doesn't seem to be any way to win, to make your thoughts clear without offending one side or the other. There's no good answer, only bad answers. Only bad answers. So I've said a number of times I'm kind of glad that I'm not writing these days

because that story strikes me as an impossibility. these days because of that story strikes me as an impossibility and the the you know there i would see i would see aspects of our our lives and and times you know like you have a belief in this country but you also have how does that wash with the the the freedom convoy and, and you know, like, I don't know that there, there were, um, there were,

uh, phenomena in society like those that are just such a drag on everyone's hope and, and optimism. Yeah. Social media. Yeah. That was a real sad moment in our countries.

The ordinary Canadians, the people I praise and I always argue are far more brighter than the people in the big cities give them credit for. They get looked down. And I find these people coming to Ottawa saying that we've planned to form a coalition government with certain parties in the Senate. What? And 12 or 14 people sitting around that guy nodding as he says this? I can't remember who the guy was, but it just blew my mind.

Sometimes the ignorance is flabbergasting. The other month in the House of Commons, The other month in the House of Commons, when suddenly they're standing up to salute someone who fought against Russia, our ally, and nobody did the smell test on that before it was said aloud? It just made me think, how can people be so ignorant? Now, when you took on Paper Trails, you mentioned that Ellen was your wife of all those many years, was still alive. Had she been diagnosed at that point, and what was the sequence there? was the sequence there? Well, we were cross-country skiing in early February of

2021, and she thought that she had pulled something in her muscle. She thought she had a hernia, and she was badly bruised around there, so she went to the doctor, and the doctor ordered an MRI and such and such, and they did that and found out that she had a cancerous growth around her abdomen and it was not looking good so they put her in the

hospital this is early days of COVID they put her in the hospital they finally moved her to a ward from emergency and in the room where she was in it was right next door to the COVID ward I could reach out her door and touch my hand against the plastic hanging and saying do not enter covid ward not yeah to no surprise she ended up getting covid and it took her very quickly and i got covid from my last visit with her which meant that i couldn't be with her in the last several days it's just you know it's a crazy time i know that when susan was uh hospitalized and having surgery in the height of covid at the dropper at the door you know and she's in for days like it was so many people went through through hell so you know to say goodbye to your wife by a cell phone, at least we had a cell phone.

How did that influence or change your approach to paper trails, that sequence there? Was it at all therapeutic? Was there a tribute built into it? Was something that life changing has to change every little thing you do and writing

an autobiography like yours your memoir it would have to change it well that phrase McGregor luck for example where was the luck there but one of the good things if I can dare say something like that about writing the final chapter. My final chapters are saying goodbye

to Brent and Eric, who both passed away, and then Ellen. And in Ellen's chapter, I was able to reproduce fully a story that our daughter from France, Carrie, was a good writer, beautiful writer. She wrote a story that our daughter from France, Carrie, was a good writer, beautiful writer. She wrote a story about carrying her mother around in her pocket. And it's so evocative. It's so beautifully said that I put it all in there. People still come up to me and say that, you know,

your daughter wrote the most beautiful tribute to her mom that I've ever read. So that's in there. So that gave me great satisfaction that I was able to do that for her. But in terms of writing the earlier stuff, I had written a lot of the earlier stuff before she got sick, and don't forget she went very quickly so that it didn't affect it at all. But then I would see that line, McGregor luck, and at one point even the editors thought that might be a good title for the book,

and suddenly it didn't work anymore. Do you know what I mean by that? It would be completely rueful at that point. Yeah. It's an amazing read and it's not just your story, it's a country

story over the arc of it and I loved it. I wish I was in it. You should be. If I had been able to get away and be on stage with you that night in Philadelphia I loved it. I wish I was in it. You should, babe. If I had been able to get away and be on stage with you that night in Philadelphia, I guess I would be in it.

We've had, I have twice, both at the Globe, you turning that job down and going to the Citizen after you left to go to your post I had to try and fill your shoes good luck right there was no hope of that the most you're filling Earl's shoes so the citizen no I was filling yours you had gone to the post right and I had an offer at the post and at the citizen and I took the one at the citizen that was that was a good job at the citizen I loved working for them they did not love me

I can tell you that I was too Toronto for them I think well you know I mean you got a sense of that nose forever out of joint here in ottawa about toronto oh yeah and and it's it's a price people pay it's it's everybody always talks about it coming one direction you know the hatred for tsa and the toronto sports network and that but it also goes the other direction and they don't realize they're doing that yeah i just i know that i i had

flop sweat and the phrase flop sweat in my copy one time and an editor said you know what's flop sweat is that is that like a toronto phrase and i was like no it's like a universal thing like i guess they don't use it in the valley right I don't know. I was so frustrated there. I did well to get out when I did. But, you know, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. I appreciate you guys, too. It's been fun and good questions, good laughs. And my dog's patiently waiting to go to the park.

Is your dog going to get a book next? I already wrote a book on dogs. I know. The dog and I. A book about everything. What's next? Yeah, what is next for you, Roy? I don't know.

I'm 75, and I do not have a project. So I need something. I need to get doing something. You can golf and canoe, right? You shouldn't feel obliged to do something. Well, writers tend to write and they don't know how to stop. An officer in the Order of Canada, the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal

and now an FOTM. Thank you, Roy, for chatting with us today. Thanks, Roy. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Gare. And thank you, Gare, for making this happen. Good job. I think you're going to take over for this will be Toronto G job. I think you're going to take over for, this will be Toronto geared, I think. Kingston gear.

F-O-K-G. And that brings us to the end of our 1,357th show. You can follow me on Twitter and Blue Sky. I'm at Toronto Mike. Pick up Roy McGregor's book. It's called Paper Trails from the Backwoods to the Front Page,

A Life in Stories. Gare, where should we follow you? Instagram or Twitter? Where do you want us to follow you? You can follow my sub stack, How to Succeed in Sports Writing Without Really Trying. Which is great.

And my memoir on Audible of the same name, How to Succeed in Sports Writing Without Really Trying. And much love to those who made this possible. That's Great Lakes Brewery. That's Palma Pasta. That's Raymond James Canada.

That's Moneris. That's RecycleMyElectronics.ca and Ridley Funeral Home. See you all tomorrow when my special guest is Art. Another gentleman with the Order of Canada. That's three in a row, by the way. Tom Wilson, Roy McGregor, and then Art Bergman. See you all then.