Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Scott Stinson: Toronto Mike'd #571

Episode Date: January 13, 2020

Mike chats with Postmedia's Scott Stinson about writing for the National Post, choosing Pospisal as Canadian Male Athlete of 2019, Don Cherry, the CFL, women's hockey, Neil Peart, and more.

Welcome to episode 571 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, StickerU.com, The Keitner Group, and Banjo Dunk from Whiskey Jack. and Banjo Dunk from Whiskey Jack. I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me this week is National Post journalist Scott Stinson. Welcome, Scott. Hey, Mike. Thanks for having me. Are you a journalist or a sports journalist?

Well, at present, I am a sports journalist. I have been a plane journalist previously as well, but my job right now is national sports columnist. So you're only writing about sports-related topics right now? Yeah, and frankly, for the last five years. See, this is what I think. Because I think it's a maybe it's a national post bio or something that says you're uh it maybe it needs to be updated probably

it's talking about how you're you're covering like yeah i used to do so yeah probably it's one of those things where i'm sure there's some bio that was written 10 years ago that uh that is probably if you click enough times on my profile you'll eventually get there kind of thing right yeah there was a point where i was a columnist that covered some politics i was did some television writing and and some sports and then a little while ago i went full sports Scott are you a music fan? sure this is Rush

you win you just earned your takeaway door prizes RIP Neil Kirk I learnt you're supposed to say here I'm going to be very pretentious now no pedantic I guess is the word I'm looking for

but Neil Neil how did you say it? Peart I believe you're supposed to say Neil Peart really? it rhymes with tear well sure I can see that I've never heard anyone say Peart I only just learned this.

My source for this information is the great Alan Cross. Okay, well, that's a pretty good source. Yeah. So Neil Peart passed away. Would you consider yourself a Rush fan? You know, Rush is a strange band because I don't mind Rush, but I feel like they were one of those bands that they had so many really aggressive fans who are like, this is the be all and the end all. And I wasn't one of those people.

So there was a little bit of Rush pushback at times. Because you weren't in the club. I didn't feel like I was. I was not one of the people who could tell you you know what the lyrics from xanadu meant or whatever right you know i was like yeah sure tom sawyer fine i liken it to uh like uh lord of the rings fans you know what i mean like it seems like when you're in it you're in deep yeah yeah yeah and if you're only casually like maybe you saw the movie or something like and you're

just a casual tolkien guy then like you're not really in the club yeah you're never quite sure if bilbo is frodo's uncle or the other way around right you just know yeah you know like the guy from you know that that other movie you saw whatever yeah you know rudy like the guy from rudy he's doing exactly but uh this song subdivisions uh as retro ontario's very own ed conroy uh told us on toronto mic uh there's a voiceover in this like where a voice goes subdivisions uh do you want to are you first of all you born and raised in toronto uh sort of kind of yeah i was born in Scarborough and have lived here more often than not. I moved around a bit as a kid. Just checking before I drop this fact on you.

Do you want to guess whose voice is saying subdivisions? Mark Daly. Correct! Actually, it was just a guess. No, but a good guess. Thank you. You're correct. And if you were like... Okay, I fall into this trap of

assuming everyone was born and raised in Toronto. Okay. Fair. Including my wife. And I'll do things like that. Do you know who it is? It's Mark Daly. And she'll be like, I don't know who that is.

And I'll be like, how do you not know Mark Daly? And she'll be like, I was born and raised in Edmonton. We didn't have Mark Daly in Edmonton. But okay. So Rush, I always liked the hits. am i allowed to say that like so i went out and bought like one of the rush greatest hits when i was a teenager and i thoroughly enjoyed the rush greatest hits but again i like yourself like i don't there are rush fans are like they know every part of like 2112 and they're going on about these overtures

and this and that and it's like i feel like I'm not in the club. Yeah, I agree. It's, I remember there was, I want to say I was in grade eight and maybe seven. And there was these two, a buddy of mine and another guy who I wasn't as close friends with.

And they had this whole thing where some class, one guy would quote a lyric and the other guy would guess the song. And I mean, I like, I was completely useless at this game. if the lyric wasn't today's tom sawyer i i had nothing and i it blew me away how they seem to know every song and like the eighth song on some album that you know like back then you had to listen to whole albums in a as you know in a very linear way and like nobody ever got that far like right you just wanted to play the play the hits play the hits you know and honestly like i i probably know more rush songs than i think i know but i i mean subdivisions tom sawyer uh closer to the

heart closer to the heart that's yeah that's you remember okay the other one do you remember because we're similar age very similar age and we both like music which means we both watch much music do you remember roll the bones yeah i do okay but see i wouldn't have until you mentioned it you're like yeah all right i get that yeah but they played the video a lot on much music and it was like rush had there was a rap part of this song i'm guessing it might be the only Rush song that had a rap part. But songs like this one, I'll play

a little bit of... So I would thoroughly enjoy this, but I will say my brothers hated Geddy Lee's voice passionately and would never touch it where I actually paid real money to buy Rush Music. Not all their albums, but their greatest hits. But Neil Peart, I trust the experts on this,

and by all accounts, it's true, is perhaps one of the most technically proficient drummers in all of rock and roll. This guy was exceptional. Yeah, that I do not dispute at all. I'm the same. I'm with your brothers on the Geddy Lee voice. I find it a bit on the grading side, to be honest with you.

But Neil Peart as a drummer. There you go, Scott. You got it. You can't, I mean, it's just, you just watch it. He's got this giant kit that goes all the way around. And, you know, there's very few bands, I think, where the drumming is such a distinct part of it. And this is one of them.

Absolutely. And somebody explained it to me where there's these drum fills and drummers, they do their thing. But Neil would do the drum fills the same every time because he knew the fans were doing it with him. Right. And they could predict what it was and do it with them. Like there's a whole, I mean, I don't want to,

I almost said the word nerdy, but I don't know if nerdy is the way to do it, but that's kind of a... Are there drum nerds? Right. If you're a drum nerd, you're in love, I think, with Neil Peart's drumming, is what I think. But I think it's a great loss.

And I will say this, because behind you, you don't have to look, but there is a picture of Gord Downie behind you. Gord Downie died of the exact same disease. Really? Exact same disease. Where Gord, we had this whole, like, we got to say goodbye. Right.

And Neil suffered the exact same disease, passed away. There was not an inkling of this in the public domain. Like, we had no clue Neil was dying. Yeah, but that's not because we just didn't pay attention, right? Like they just didn't tell anybody. They just didn't tell anybody. No, I wasn't sure. I was like when he announced that he had been fighting this battle of cancer,

my reaction was, he did? Like did I just miss that? But apparently I did not just miss that. No, the family and friends kept it in the vault as per his wishes. And yeah, great loss. And I know a lot of people though are feeling it far like i'm feeling it like this great canadian you know rock star is dead and i feel that but there are people like we said who are so deep into the music of rush and he's also the

lyricist yeah and uh in the drumming hall of fame wherever that is i don't know where that is but he's in it and uh i want to say a shout out to two special FOTMs who I've met at several TMLXs. Now we get nerdy on the Toronto Mike scale here. But I want to say my condolences to Rush Mike. Literally, we call him Rush Mike. You can guess why.

And James Edgar. Always like this part here on then but yes james edgar who's also a big rush fan and uh my condolences to everyone hurting right now scott you're a sports guy so we can tie this all together by saying getty lee is a diehard blue jays fan he is fact i remember seeing him him there at games when I was a kid, long before I was in the business. So yeah, that dude knows his Blue Jays. Yep. It's not uncommon to be watching the Jays on TV,

and there's Getty. Yeah, in good seats. Right. Not far from the home plate lady. All the famous Blue Jays. Season ticket holders here. But okay. So rest in peace, Neil Peart.

And now forever I'll be saying Peart and people will be like, you mean Pert? And I'll be like, well, actually, Alan Cross says it's Peart. I'm going to be that guy from now on. All right. Before we get to you, Scott, I have to give a shout out to,

I want to say hi to Ralph Ben-Murgy. Do you know this guy, Ralph Ben-Murgy? You've heard of this guy? I know of him, yes. Have you met him? I don't think so. Just this last week, he launched his new podcast. It's called Not That Kind of Rabbi with Ralph Ben-Murgy.

The first episode is an interesting conversation with Humble Howard about the spirituality of golf. Basically, I Believe in Golf is the name of this. And it's very interesting. Ralph and Howard talking for an hour about, basically about Howard's take on spirituality and how it relates to golf. And I highly recommend everybody subscribe to Ralph's podcast. It's fantastic.

And not just because I produce it. It really is good. Also, another guy is dropping a podcast this week. Larry Fedorek. Now, Larry Fedorek, he was a long time, like, on 610. But that's in, like, St. Catharines or something. But I know him best as from CFTR. I used to listen to 680 CFTR when I was a young man. And Larry's new podcast is called I Was Eight. And he's a great storyteller. And he tells stories about when he was eight years old.

And it's like, I want to say like Wonder Years or A Christmas Story. You know what I mean? It's really good. The whole podcast is about when he was eight? Every episode is a difference. Yeah. He's been writing this for a while. Okay.

And he's a great writer. So he writes it and it's fantastic. It's called i was eight and it's not quite available everywhere yet but it will be by the end of this week so it depends when you're listening but go look for i was eight i've been on his show a couple of times okay and 610 yeah uh yes wherever it is it's gone now you know is it they let them go i guess i'm not gonna be on that show anymore. I have bad news for you, Scott. Well, you know,

most quality broadcasters end up being let go for, I don't know, for a variety of reasons I don't pretend to understand. But okay. One more thing here. One more housekeeping note. Do you love movies? Like, do you enjoy watching movies? Yes, I do.

Yes, I do. Did you follow, like oscar nominations i did not only because i was driving here and uh also i've you know i'm kind of off on the oscars and i don't know maybe it's just an old person thing now i'm getting to the point where i i mean part of it is i don't see as many of the quote-unquote like oscary type movies as i might have because i have kids and i see a lot of marvel movies and things like that how old are your kids they are just about 14 and 17 so i'm actually getting to the point with the older one where like we can watch good movies as opposed to just superhero movies which are fine but, but they're not. So anyway,

I went through this whole period where the Oscars were like completely befuddling. Cause I had never seen any of them. You're watching Iron Man or whatever. Yeah. And then, and then eventually you get to a point where you're like, Oh,

I've actually seen a couple of these movies. That's so I'm kind of there, but I'm still not to the point where when they, they announced the nominees, I've, you know, I've seen barely any of them. I'm a,

I like, I like to see the nominated movies for best picture. So I like to see the list and then try to see them all right and sometimes i'm able to like preemptively strike like i'll be hearing things like i kept hearing from people i know and trust would be like you know this jojo rabbit is really good and it's like what's a jojo rabbit well everyone i trust tells me it's excellent maybe i should see this thing and i'll give you the list here real quick. You can tell me which ones of these you've seen. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

I have not seen it. Dude, it's fantastic. I've heard it's good. Are you a Tarantino fan? Sure. Oh, you're going to love it. It's my favorite movie of the year. Not that they asked me, but that's true.

There's a movie called 1917. i very much want to see that i'm going to i have not seen it i'm going to see it because of the uh the critical acclaim uh the irishman i've still not seen it i intend to see it but i it's very long as everybody knows and i've i've heard from enough people that you want to watch it in one sitting don't try to break it up because i do that all the time with Netflix. I'll watch the first hour of a movie and I'll come back. Sure. So I want to give it the full three and a half hours of commitment.

I just haven't found that. That's long though, right? It is. I find that because the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is pretty long. I did it all in one sitting though. Right. But this one's a lot longer. Like it's almost an hour longer or something.

And I did it in two sittings. actually did you because i just don't have that because i got two little kids right like the teens i have i have similar as your kids i got a 15 and a 17 right although that 17 year old turns 18 in like one one week from today so it's very exciting but adult yeah but uh it's hard to get that kind of, because with the toddlers, they're not toddlers, they're five and three, but it's hard to get them

to give you like four hours of uninterrupted time. For sure. But okay, so The Irishman, which I did see it. I haven't seen any of them. Parasite. You know, I know people love that movie

and I have no idea what it's about. Apparently not a parasite. South Korean film. Yeah. Uh, and I'm fine with subtitles. I like, I even like putting subtitles on for English movies just so I can kind of soak

in it, whatever. So I'm fine. But there are people who, for whatever reason, some people losers, Scott is what I call them. They won't,

they don't like to read their movies, but I hear this is great. I can't wait to see it. I haven't seen it yet. Jojo rabbit. Have you seen this yet? I have not. Is don't like to read their movies, but I hear this is great. I can't wait to see it. I haven't seen it yet. Jojo Rabbit. Have you seen this yet? I have not. Is that even in theaters?

Yeah. Like actually in wide release? Yeah. That's another one I definitely want to see. That's very good. If you like your Holocaust humor, you're going to love this. That's fantastic.

That's Takeo Watiti, right? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's in it. He plays Hitler. Okay. You got to see this. It's good.

Joker. I've not seen that. Okay. You got to see this. It's good. Joker. I've not seen that. See, we're like six in. I haven't seen any of them. Well, Joker is technically, is that, oh, it's a Marvel character. Does that, no, it's a DC character. I just showed my, you're right, because that's a Batman guy. You're in trouble.

I saw 1989's Batman with Michael Keaton. I quite liked it. Sure. And I got the cups i think it was burger king i got these big cups and they had the batman symbol on it yep uh the thing with that version of the best thing about that was the fact that michael keaton could barely move in that costume it was so thick and and he would like if he had to look up he'd have to like lean way i was gonna lean way back to that mic but he would almost have to lean back so far just to peer up

because his neck wouldn't bend. We're almost done here. Little Woman. Still no. I haven't seen it, but I will eventually see it. Hopefully I'll watch that with my daughter. Are you a Simpsons fan? Sure.

Do you remember when Mo read to the children? He was reading Little Woman to the children. Do you remember the scene? It's from the good seasons. Okay. And he goes like this, he's reading the book, most is lack.

And he goes, they weren't little girls anymore. They were a little woman. And then he kind of wipes his tears. So until about a month ago, I believed that was the last line of the book. Have you read Little Woman? No. Okay. So until a month ago, I believed that was the last line of the book. Have you read Little Woman? No.

Okay, so until a month ago, and this is many days, I saw that, I don't know when I saw that, it was probably 1991 or something, or 1992, whatever. And now it's, in 2019, is when I learned for the first time that is not the final line from Little Woman. I just assumed, it just seemed like that'd be a good line a good closing line so it's not amazing the simpsons not they made that up

yeah but they've been known to joke on that show they fooled me for literally for decades uh anyway um yeah i'm gonna watch that with my 15-year-old daughter too. Very good. Marriage Story. We're still going. Yeah, there's nine of them. We're almost done. Another one I have not seen and intend to see. It's on Netflix. I did see it.

It's good. It's tough though. I'm a divorced guy. Like I think it's tougher for divorced guys. I feel like this is one of those like trigger warning for divorce. Well, but I've also heard that, you know, if you watch it with your significant other, it's... Which I did, it can be risky. Oh, like it might blow open some...

You might have papered over some cracks that perhaps are going to get exposed in the watching of this film. Let's warn guys out there. But I'm not scared. I'm just confident I could watch this with my wife and we would not get divorced. I know. I'm worried about you now. Are things okay at home? Oh, yeah.

Great. I have a Bluetooth channel on this mixer. Can we call in your wife? Are you married? I am. Okay. Let's call her up here. Okay.

Last one. Kind of sports related. Ford versus Ferrari. Nope. Man. So I have not seen any. There you go. 0 for 9.

Wow. Nope. So I have not seen any. There you go. 0 for 9. But although I will say, of the normal Oscar lists, I probably intend to see all of those. Will I before the Oscars? I will not. But I'll definitely see some. Yeah, it's all good. The only one that's missing I thought kind of might be there is Knives Out. Yeah.

Did you see that one? Nope. So other than Marvel. I've seen Star Wars twice. Okay. Did you see that one? Nope. So other than Marvel. I've seen Star Wars twice. Okay. You know, it's funny. This is the first

of the nine real things, like the nine movies that are part of this three trilogy thing or whatever. This is the first one. The first one I didn't kind of

jump at seeing. Like, it's the first time I haven't had any like, oh, I got to see the new Star Wars. Right am i missing out um have so you've seen seven and eight i've seen yes yeah like this is so i was a total star wars nerd still am i guess and then my my son was super into star wars and now my daughter is like she's picked up the baton and really is quite into Star Wars

so I was quite happy I've enjoyed seeing the new movies with my kids in the theaters like that part of the experience has been cool and that's it that's an important part of the experience however on their own I don't entirely know why they made these new movies I mean I know why they made them to make a bunch

of money right but they didn't like my this is my non-spoiler critique of the new movie it's just like you sort of come away with that going well they didn't really like they just kind of they're playing the hits you know like they're doing the same thing kind of all over and in some cases a lot more explicitly than you might expect well that episode seven that's how i felt exactly like seven seemed pitch for pitch like a new hope. Like it's like, you're right, playing the hits. Yeah.

And in the theater though, I do know while it's happening, I feel like I'm enjoying it. And you got the fanfare, the music. Yeah. Oh, there's Chewy and Han Solo. And you get the nostalgia thing going. Yeah, yeah. And then like five minutes after you see it,

I found myself kind of angry at the whole thing. Yeah. Like I haven't had good thoughts about it since. My takeaway of episode seven at the time was I was fine with it because the prequels had been such a disaster that it was like, okay, so Disney's taken it over and they've basically said, we're going to have a cleansing ale, which is going to be this movie that is exactly like you remember a

star wars movie being and everyone get to feel good about it again and that's that and so so then it was like oh i feel better now like they made a star wars movie it wasn't terrible it felt like a good star wars movie and then it was like what are they going to do now and what they've since gone on to do is not thrilling really in a as a did they break any new ground not from what i could tell but uh and even this weird thing where episode eight was like a bit of a surprise and then with this new one it's like they said well let's just go back to what we did oh yeah so that part of it is like kind of lame that they just said yeah yeah, we don't really have any new ideas. We'll just do the same stuff over again.

And that's why they didn't get an Oscar nomination. Yeah. Screw those Star Wars. Disney, Disney owns it. You know, Disney owns the Simpsons now. Yes,

they do. I always think it's funny that they literally like Disney owns like almost, almost everything. Okay. Including the Simpsons. Okay. So there's lots to cover with you, Scott.

But timeline, a timely note, I just want to know, did you wake up with the alert on Sunday morning? Was it Sunday morning? It was Sunday morning. Yeah, it's been a long day. Okay. Did you wake up to the alert? I have somehow managed to disable those alerts on my phone.

And it happened when I was in korea for the olympics in 2018 because um when you get an emergency alert in korea and you're not far from north korea it gives you a little jolt right and uh so that happened three times in the first couple of days like you got amber alerts well i got i got like and and you go oh my god and it turned out like one of them was for it was windy it was like be aware there's high winds oh my god and so then i'm like look i'm gonna have a heart attack because i keep thinking north korea's launched nuclear missile right and it's just like it's uh watch your footing it's kind of icy so then i i turned it off somehow and i to this day don't know how i did it because people have asked

me well how do you do that and i what if i try to figure it out on their phones i have a similar story that's interesting now so you were getting uh south korean alerts yes it's all geo-targeted i guess okay do you know does south korea have different levels of alert system like do they have the whole like like the presidential alert or whatever it's called which is like nuclear wars in and into whatever and then like different because because here in ontario as far like like the presidential alert or whatever it's called which is like nuclear war is imminent or whatever and then like different because because here in ontario as far as i know it's a one-size-fits-all like all these alerts are the same damn thing which pissed me off so much because i got jolted awake of this like like i thought it was a nuclear holocaust or something and it was uh and it's

terrible by the way we're parents here yeah i have to be careful because for some reason whenever i voice this opinion people think like i don't care about kids or something right and if it was your kid whatever no i'm honest honestly i do care about kids but at four in the morning the way it woke me up is that it was so jarring i actually for like 24 hours i was i was fucked up for 24 hours okay so i went to reddit of all places where else would i went to reddit and i there was a whole conversation about in america apparently they have degrees like you can say i want the presidential alerts which are basically like right you know kiss your ass goodbye we're toast or whatever right but i don't need these and i or i don't i don't need the noise to come up with like you can set for because we

didn't have that i i did a number of things what i mainly did was i created a do not disturb period where uh alerts of any kind make zero noise on my phone. Like, so I actually, I, that happened just before on Sundays, my do not disturb ends at something like eight or something. So,

so it did wake me up, but, uh, I was, I don't know how I did this either, by the way. And if people ask, I just know I followed steps on Reddit and I,

while I'm sleeping, I don't hear alerts, but, uh, I, I just wondered uh like if we know like do we know who screwed up was it like a one person pressed the wrong button like do we have any idea yet i think it's something like that um there there was a minister

saying today it was human error so you know they have apparently they do these tests all the time like they do them multiple times a day. I don't know why you need to test your emergency alert system several times a day. It either works or it doesn't. But apparently, they do these tests, and somebody obviously had this wrong switch flicked, and there you go. But I don't know if you remember, this happened a while ago in Hawaii? Yes. Similar thing, where it was like, I think at that time it was like we've detected a nuclear event or something.

Right. Or some imminent airstrike or something. N missiles or something. And everybody went, what the hell? And then it turned out they were like, Oh, sorry,

wrong button, which is alarming that they can, this seems to happen at a surprisingly regular amount. Also, there's this syndrome. I don't know if it's a syndrome. I want to sound like it's fancy, but it's called the if it's a syndrome. I want to sound like it's fancy. But it's called the Boy Who Cried Wolf Syndrome.

Yes, exactly. And that was the thing when I was in Korea. It was like, if you're going to send me alerts for the weather is a bit... It's windy. Yeah, then I'm not going to notice when there's actually a missile coming at us from Pyongyang. Well, this is now my problem.

It's because all these alerts are being treated the same. If there really was a nuclear thing like i kind of do want to know about it but now i when i'm sleeping i'm not being awakened up by my alerts because it's because things like this happen so it's kind of like it's the whole thing i think is uh broken and we i just hope we fix it because this seems like it could be a handy tool it does seem like it it should work better than it does and yeah i, I agree that there should be levels. And clearly when they're doing tests, the first and last and middle thing they should be checking is we've got to make sure we're not doing this accidentally

because it just undermines the whole point of the system. Agreed. Okay, so I want to get you to the National Post. But first, because you correctly answered the earlier trivia question uh it was in fact mark daly who was saying subdivisions in the rush song subdivisions i have a fresh wow six pack of uh craft beer for you that's very exciting thank you very much courtesy of great lakes brewery uh they're fiercely independent at great Lakes Brewery. Ignaz Stout. So that's actually,

if you buy, that's too late now, but I believe if you buy that before Christmas, a dollar from every can sold went to the Daily Bread Food Bank. So that's a good cause. But thank you Great Lakes for sending over a six pack for Scott. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. It's tasty fresh craft beer.

And I do look forward to having another TMLX event on the patio of Great Lakes Brewery in June 2020. So I'll let you know more details when I have them, but that's going to happen. But the next TMLX is going to happen at Sticker U, which is at Queen and Bathurst, but they're online. So here, let me give you a sticker, Scott. Thank you.

Toronto Mike sticker. Makes your day. Fantastic. You're not just saying that. That fantastic, I could tell, was genuine. That's very genuine. Who doesn't like free stickers? That's true.

That's true. I hope it ends up on your laptop or somewhere very important, or your car, whatever. Okay, so the website is stickeru.com, and you can order as many quantity, whatever quantity you like of stickers, et cetera. I have decals here on the wall from StickerU.

I've had a bunch of stickers made up, really amazing stickers and great prices. But if you go to the bricks and mortar store, which is at, I even have the address now, 677 Queen West, go there. They have a store there, but I will let you all know there's a party going on on January 30th. Details to be announced, but it's a Thursday night. They're launching a sticker museum and a permanent sticker art exhibition there. So I'm going to attend this. And like I said, there's going to be some musical performance, which I'll be announcing shortly, but that's january 30th at sticker you

so thank you sticker you palma pasta has sent over a lasagna for you it's frozen lasagna it's in my freezer right now okay don't leave here without it all right it's fantastic that'll that'll feed the family uh best. Best pasta you can buy. Wonderful people, palmapasta.com. And let me play a special message from our newest sponsor. This is Austin Keitner from the Keitner Group. Welcome to another Real Estate Minute with Austin Keitner at the Keitner Group with Keller Williams.

Joe asks, is it possible to purchase a home in Toronto as an income property with part being rental and part Airbnb? It's a great question. We get a lot of Airbnb questions. They just passed some new laws regarding that. It's been two years in the making. They finally approved it where you're only allowed now to Airbnb your primary residence. You cannot buy an investment property to Airbnb in Toronto anymore. And your primary residence can only be Airbnb 180 nights out of the year. And it's limited to bedroom counts. We can send you all the details. Just text Toronto Mike to 59559 and we'll send you all the new rules and regulations around Airbnb in Toronto.

Thank you, Austin. Austin. Austin. You see what I did there? That's great. And, you know, he spells Austin the way I thought everyone was spelling Austin until Austin Matthews showed up.

Yeah, he spells it funny. All right. Tell me about, I'm curious to know, Post City Magazines. Remind us, like, what? First of all, does it still exist? Does this exist? I believe so, as far as I know.

What the heck is it? I should know this, but I want you to tell us. Well, so the interesting thing about Post City Magazines is unless you live in one of the neighborhoods to which it delivers, you wouldn't know about it. And only rich people get this. Pretty much. So I can't ever live in the neighborhood i'm with you now uh i don't know how many neighborhoods it serves now at the time i was there it did um it was basically forest hill rosedale leeside uh then up into north york like the bayview village area. And basically up the spine of Yonge Street. Then into Thornhill and Richmond Hill.

Neighborhoods with high income levels. Yep. That's exactly right. And that explains why I never heard of it. Seriously, though. Well, yeah. I mean, but I will say in those neighborhoods, you know, there is a lot more of of housing than there was at some points and and you know when you get up into thornhill and richmond hill which were kind of it expanded into those

neighborhoods purely for geography reasons i think because they're like connected to the other uh neighborhoods right um yeah no like thornhill and richmond hill are not crazy they're not rosedale um but yeah so it's a monthly at least it was when i was there it was a monthly publication kind of like it was like a local newspaper but a bit more magaziney and in uh feel you know more features less news free right yep free so it's a free it's basically it's a if i may it's a free, so basically it's a, if I may, it's a free newspaper for rich people. Yep. And what did you do for the, for the publication? Well, I started there as some, I went, gosh, I think the title might have been assistant editor.

And I was eventually the editor of them. I think that's right. Yes, I was the editor before I left. And then I don't even know how long I was there. Probably two, three years, something like that. That was my first job out of school. And then I left and joined the National Post in the fall of 2000. Your final title at Post City Magazines was Editor-in-Chief.

Okay, there you go. is to me that's a big title yeah it sounds fancy i'm editor-in-chief of toronto mic.com so that's a big title now okay so is this a okay so did you go to school for journalism now i went to school for business at wilford laurier and started working for the school paper, uh, there and then decided that I wanted to do journalism, but there was no journalism program to switch into. So I just kept working at the school paper. I was also the editor in chief of that paper.

And then, uh, yeah, that was it. Just kind of fell in love with, it was much more fun to write and do those kinds of things than, uh, whatever it was I might've done in a business career.

At least that was my feeling at the time. Now remind me, what year is the National Post launched? 98. Okay. I was one of the last full-time hires before they realized they had to stop spending as much money as they were spending. I was not there at the time of, the stories of the early days of the National Post,

like the very early days, and they were just throwing money left, right, and center. Conrad Black was drunk with power and money. And so I got there right after the sort of taps had been not turned off, but dialed down somewhat. You missed the good old days. Yeah, I missed the total. I was there for a couple of extravagant parties, but nothing like the very early days.

Now, okay, so there was rumors, though, I guess from the time you get to the post, there's been rumors it was going to close down any day. Yeah, sure. Like the Asper family. Can you just tell us about that like what it was like back then um sure so i get hired when i get hired in september of 2000 uh september of 2001 of course is famous for a whole different reason but a week after 9-11 was when the Post had major cutbacks,

like very significant cutbacks. They kind of whacked a third of the staff, half the staff, something like that. It was a huge number. And it was dialed back in terms of the size of the paper. For a period of time, like sports and arts were like down to a couple of pages. I remember they cut the page out with the crossword and like that led to a huge nightmare where all of a sudden the the phone lines were full of people complaining yeah grandpa simpsons i know this is you can't do that it was

crazy and uh so that all happened and then after those couple of weeks, it started to build back up. The stuff that had been cut was restored. There was ownership changes in there, Mike. There was all kinds of stuff that happened. Ken White, the founding editor, left. There's been a bunch of editors since. Along the way, I should note too, like I actually work technically for Post Media,

the parent company. When I moved to sports full time, I was hired essentially by Post Media to be the national sports columnist or a national sports columnist across the chain. So my work appears in the National Post, but also if you're outside of toronto it's in the calgary herald or the edmonton journal yeah that distinction is important that's

like i work for google no you work for alphabet but there's some we're doing some google shit here uh part of the alphabet umbrella here okay so so before so tell me like when you first started uh writing at The Post, what were you doing at the beginning? I actually wasn't hired as a writer. I was a copy editor in my first job. So there was a department, which no longer exists, called Special Reports that was, in addition to homes and travel and driving

and those kind of things, we did one-off sections like technology and uh i'm trying to think what the other ones were there was all kinds of them but they would be like a one-off ad supported thing here is a special report on x right and in yeah it would be technological gadgets or it would be housing or it would have some other thing so i i was in a copy editor there which was essentially like you had to lay them out but you were did a bit more than copy editing you also in those days were hiring the freelancers and like getting the content for for those things so i did that for a while um after that uh big day of layoffs that i mentioned i actually changed jobs

then and not only was i not fired but i got moved to the new section so is this because you were inexpensive what was your secret probably this the story with that mike was the day everybody got fired yeah uh you got an email to This is one of those classic corporate things. You got an email to say, like, come to this meeting at whatever time. Or you didn't get an email. And so we weren't sure whether the email was good or bad. Right. But basically, if I hear you correct, because this is very common,

you're right, these mass layoffs, is sometimes they have certain people, everyone, if your name's on this list, go to this room. Yeah, if your name's on this other list, don't go to this room. Right, and one room is going to survive to fight another day, and the other room is going to get their marching band.

And you don't actually know which room you want to be in until you go in and you see the HR person at the front of it, and you're like, oh, this is bad. But do you look around and say, oh, that person's in my room, and there's no way that person's getting it,

so I feel good? Like, do you start doing that game? I think there's no way that person's getting it. So I feel good. Like, do you start doing that? I think there was some of that going on, but it was weird because it was early in the morning and at a newspaper, like people come in, kind of trundle in throughout the day. Like there's no guarantee at 10 a.m.

Right. It's not like everyone's there at 10. So you can tell who's missing and who's not missing. Like they might just not be there yet. Right. So there was a real like uncertainty for a period of you know an hour or two anyway so that happens um obviously bad for a lot of people they lose their jobs and the rest of us are kind of sitting around wondering what's supposed to happen now near the end of the day one of the guys who's like an executive editor comes over and says scott can i talk to you and your thought is like oh whoops

like they just forgot like i i should have been fired and i am not well you know prior to you arriving here for the 11 o'clock recording i recorded with mark hebbshire he's got a podcast called hebsey on sports yeah When he was at CHCH, there was serious bloodletting, except theirs was like they were declaring bankruptcy and then like everyone in this room is gone. Everyone in this room, you're gone,

but we'll rehire you back at a lesser rate. Anyway, Hebbsy was in the room of we'll rehire you back on a lesser rate, but it turned out he accidentally went to the wrong room. Like he got his boss tapped him on the show and said, you're in the wrong room. So he was supposed to be in that get the hell out of here. Security's walking you.

But yeah, that's unfortunate. Yeah. Anyway. So, so I get told here, please come with me. We need to chat.

And I get basically have to follow him through the entire newsroom. And I'm sure everyone's looking at me going, Oh, Scott's totally screwed. Like they forgot him. But anyway, I get into his office, and they wanted me to do a new job. And as you say, probably because it was to do it cheaper

than whoever they let go. Sure. Because I was quite young at the time. Like, I went in, I don't know what I was, 27? And you had come from Post City Magazines, where they were paying you probably peanuts. I haven't seen your t4 anything but i just yeah it was i mean that whole that at the time certainly post city magazines model was we hire

people right out of school who just are happy to have a job and then once they get any good and want more money then they just leave and we'll hire more young people to backfill them now i having said that to the people who are still there, I think it has changed. I do think that the people who are running it now have been running it for some time. I think they realized at some point they had to kind of mature a little in terms of their staffing.

So I think it is different. But yeah. So yeah, I was not getting paid a lot when I started at the National Post. And that probably had certainly something to do with the fact that they kept me on. So what job did you get after that? So then I moved to the news section. I was a copy editor at the news section,

like the daily, A section of the paper. I did that for a little while and then i became i'll give you the very short version is that i became a a rewrite writer which is a position that doesn't exist anymore but you were like a night reporter so you had to you had to rework people's stories or you took here's this story and this wire story and this other wire story and melded into something Cause we need this for, you were basically always doing the late breaking kind of stuff. I did that for a while.

Then I became the night news editor. Then I became the national editor and then I became a columnist and that's the, the columnist was like 2010. So the last 10 years I've been a columnist. But you didn't start covering sports, right? Like you were like a TV guy. Yep. Yep. 2010 so the last 10 years i've been a columnist but you didn't start covering sports right like you were like a tv guy yeah yeah the my first columnist gig was it was kind of columnist

without portfolio i did uh some politics i did some television critiquing critiquing uh but that doesn't exist anymore like no one's critiquing TV. Not really. No. And in fact, most of those jobs like just don't exist in Canadian journalism. Now the people who, who did do it for a long time, either do it kind of freelance or, uh, or on their own, you know,

they have a blog or something like that, but that, that business has completely almost entirely disappeared. I always read that stuff. I was, I was always reading tv talk back in the star week and jim bodden and uh yeah and i know i'm friendly with uh bill brio who did that for you know he's doing it for himself yeah yeah yeah he's he was sort of the last of the

the long time tv critics and i guess he's still doing it he just doesn't he was i think cpu when i knew him right um but they yeah they don't have that job anymore i heard like all the uh restaurant critics are done too like apparently all these things that we kind of grew up with guys our age and older uh they're all being eliminated yeah i mean it's it's unfortunate the tricky thing with with tv at least i found when i was doing it was i was doing it as part of like, it wasn't my full-time thing. I was also writing sports.

I was writing politics. I had this really weird role where I was like covering Queens park and then going to a TV set to write about Degrassi or whatever. I love Degrassi. Yeah. But the tricky thing with trying to do that in, especially you're based in toronto is you do sort of want to cover the local stuff the stuff that's being shot here the stuff that the ctvs

and the cbcs are producing but then you know what people are reading about they're reading about jersey shore right and things like that i mean i'm dating myself but that was the time when i was writing about tv uh so it was always tricky to find that balance of what are the shows that everyone's watching? What are the stuff people want to read about? Do they want to read about Game of Thrones? Or do you want to cover this like, you know, here is a story about this procedural that the CBC is making because that's often what the CBC does. Right.

So it was always kind of tricky to find the right balance. And I'm not sure. And I think to a certain extent that probably contributes to why those jobs don't exist anymore is because you're trying to write about the local stuff, but I'm not sure that stuff necessarily gets the readership that the Game of Thrones does. I think that's a virtual certainty, although I was just reading,

because apparently there's a milestone episode for Murdoch Mysteries. Yeah. Which I've never seen an episode no i know that's but i do i will say i've seen working moms and i've seen uh kim's convenience so i'm not anti-canadian television right but i haven't seen murdoch misery but apparently like over a million people watch murdoch mysteries on tv like that's a lot to me, it's a big Canadian number. They have done amazingly well over a number of years. And, uh,

the fact that like people sort of roll their eyes at Murdoch mysteries, I can't believe, I mean, this guy has been solving all these murders in an era where like nobody ever was murdered. That's a great point. Like, yes,

early is turn of the century. Yeah. Yeah. There's no, yeah, there's, he solved like hundreds of murders in a, in in a at a time in a place where there was no murders yeah but you know they managed to get a lot of murders but no it's it's been it's been very very successful i mean yeah and to their credit you know they've just kind of kept kept on keeping

on in in an era where most shows don't last a tenth of the time they've been on. The other show I've never seen an episode of that gets not quite a million, but close, uh, Heartland. Yeah. Like these are the Canadians that, you know, you know,

we all know about like Schitt's Creek and whatever, but like Heartland's, I don't know, cruising along, still bringing in like 800,000 eyeballs a week or whatever. I got to assume from every, like it's all people in Alberta and Saskatchewan that watch Heartland. I maybe, but I could be wrong.

And I will say, that's another one where Heartland was a show I didn't write about because the time I started, again, it was like four or five seasons in. And it was like, it's too hard to you know, you want to be able to write about something without going,

I don't know what's going on in this show. So I just, there were certain shows that I never really jumped into because there was too much history to bother trying to catch up. Whenever they do the series finale of Heartland, I hope it ends like this. They weren't little girls anymore. They were little. They were little women. By the way, I only now realized you're not wearing a Jack Daniels shirt. You're wearing a Star Wars shirt.

I didn't know until now i thought it was a it's obviously meant to look like jack daniels but i hadn't my kids got i hadn't stared at you until now it says han solo smugglers whiskey or something in 12 parsec yeah the kessel run people are popular people like it it occasionally you know i've had a starbucks and the guy will be like hey this is a cool shirt man where can i get it i say i don't know have you ever been to a Rush concert? No. Okay. I was going to ask you if you ever saw a woman there. I was told

that it's a... Talk about a sausage fest. Yeah, I would think that's true. I will say I don't believe I've ever met a female Rush fan. Interesting, because, you know, Star Wars has a lot of female fans. Yes. My daughter among them. Right. There's a lot.

But Rush does not. Anyways, I brought it all, bringing it all back to, still rest in peace, Neil Peart. We're sorry, we lost you.

Okay. So, TV, by the way, music critics still exist because Ben Rayner's been on the show and he's, and I know Jane Stevenson's been on the show.

Like they both still cover music for newspapers, but like, is that a like is that a all is that going to 2020 like i think that's a harder it's a tough beat to do because i would say the music is so splintered now i don't know how your general interest music critic like what what taylor swift yeah well that's it right like taylor swift uh jonas brothers ed sheeran ed sheeran for Taylor Swift Jonas Brothers Ed Sheeran I don't know I think that's a tough

sort of beat to have because so many people can listen to whatever they want on whatever device they want in any way they want nobody really needs to review an album anymore it's interesting things change in the newspaper business but we'll get into this but we gotta get you to sports here really needs to review an album anymore right like just yeah just it's interesting uh things

change in the newspaper business but we'll get into this but we got to get you to sports here okay so you're doing some you're essentially a tv critic uh but you're doing other thing you described slash queen spark columnist right sports writer you're all over the place so uh i'm like i'm gonna you were always a sports fan. Yes. Yes. Yes. And, and I would say, you know, when you, when we touched,

I started writing when I was in university, I started writing for the sports section of the school paper. And I think if you had said to me then, like, what would your, you know, where would you like to be in journalism? Like being a sports columnist would have been the thing I most wanted to do.

So I have ended up doing this thing. That was kind of my dream job when I was a kid. And so when people say, well, do you miss this other part of the business or do you like writing about that? Yeah, to a certain extent, but I also do kind of have to remind myself now and again that the role I have now is, is pretty great. Scott, listen, trust me, you, you make a living writing about sports. Okay.

Like how many of us, when we were like, I don't know, 12 years old, was this a dream? Like I'm reading Mill Dunnell or something in the Toronto star. And I'm like, I'd like to do that.

You're doing that, man. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's true. Maybe one day they'll pay you. I don't know.

I'm just kidding. Of course you now get paid, right? They did. They do get paid. Of course, of course, of course.

Um, I'm going to play a quick message from FOTM Banjo Dunk because he's got a big event coming up on April 16th at Zoomer Hall. So here's Banjo Dunk. Duncan Fremlin here. You know me as Banjo Dunk. And on April 16th, 2020, I'll be bringing my band Whiskey Jack to Zoomer Hall in Liberty Village

to host the 7th annual Stompin' Tom birthday celebration. This is the highlight of the year for our touring show, Stories and Songs of Stompin' Tom. This year, we'll be joined by FOTM and Funny Man Sean Cullen, as well as Great Big C's Murray Foster. More guests will be announced soon. The show will be broadcast live on Robbie Lane's nightly show on AM 740 and 96.7 FM. It'll also be streamed on the internet. But there's nothing quite like being part of the crowd when everyone stands to sing what is clearly our national anthem, the hockey song.

It's not a large theatre, folks, so get your tickets early. Go to hellooutthere.ca and click on show to buy your tickets. We'll see you April 16th. You're not supposed to be crazy to write songs like that, but it helps a hell of a lot. We'll see you there, Banjo Dunk. By the way, Scott, I once saw Stompin' Tom perform the hockey song on the Conan O'Brien show.

I went to the live taping. Really? I think it was 03, I want to say, at Winter Elgin Theatre. So I I went to the live taping. Really? I think it was 03, I want to say, at Winter Elgin Theater. So I'm there for a live taping. The big guest was Adam Sandler. Huh. This was the episode where Triumph,

the comic insult dog, or whatever the hell the name of that Ed the Sock ripoff is. I think you got it. Ed the Sock ripoff. You agree, right? Sure. Still angry about that.

But he went to Quebec and he pissed off a lot of French Canadians. Okay. Anyway that's that episode but yeah so I did watch him perform it but did you ever see Stompin' Tom? No I did not. Well you got to check out the

the what do we call this? The Stories and Songs of Stompin' Tom by Whiskey Jack. April 16th everybody go do that. Okay, your sports. I'm going to ask you some questions I got from Twitter, and then I'm going to sprinkle in my own questions. Sure.

Because I'm interested. I follow you on Twitter, and always a good read. You write a good column there at the Post. Thanks, sir. Tom Mikbowski. I wonder if that's a real name. Mikbowski? What do you think?

Fake name? Twitter name. Anyway, is he anything like Bruce Arthur? Well, Bruce and I were colleagues at the National Post for a number of years and he's a good friend. Yeah. I consider Bruce a FOTM as well. He's been on the show.

And also I brought the world the reunion of the reporters that was live at Paradise. So I consider that two times technically. There you go. There's the rest of tom mcbowski mcbowski's tweet was hoping not happy face i think i think tom is confusing bruce the writer on uh with bruce the twitter presence yeah he's really combative on twitter i i actually i don't know how bruce has time in the day to do all the things he does because he tweets so much and is so like committed to the, not the act,

but like he's very engaged with his Twitter followers and, and sort of opining on the issues of the day, as you know. And I just don't, I just don't have, I mean also the patience in order to like deal with the blowback like i i've actually found i've i don't tweet nearly as much as i used to partly because like issues like politics it's just a lost cause like you it's so toxic that uh

as soon as you touch any of those things it's like oh, oh, here we go. I totally get what you mean. Like, I do tweet a lot, I will admit. But if you look at my tweets, I'm not really chiming in on Trump and stuff. Like, there's no tweets. I don't, you know, he wants a blue moon. It's hard to ignore him sometimes. But almost never. You're right.

Bruce goes right in there. And it would be a lot of effort. I told Bruce to his face. He sat where you're sitting. I said, delete your Twitter account, okay? bruce i believe bruce is an excellent writer he's a great columnist and uh and i think he's great even on the reporters and stuff whenever i hear him on the radio whatever he's great too yep but everybody still just sees him as the angry progressive twitter guy yeah but i mean obviously i i think bruce would tell you that he doesn't mind

being seen as the angry progressive Twitter guy. Well, clearly not. That's part of what he does. You know, he could never get a full-time gig at TSN, right? Because they have that rule, right? Have you heard this rule? About what? Like you can't... No political tweets from TSN people. Is that really a TSN rule?

I've been told by good authorities. And have you noticed noticed if you look back and look at tsn people because you follow all these sports people right yeah the sportsnet people can do whatever they want i don't think there's any rules of sportsnet twitter people the tsn people if the ones who are full-time i'm not talking about like a steve simmons or bruce arthur but uh they don't they simply don't there's i don't i don't see it from you can't point to a single, because Leo Routers doesn't count

because he's not a full-time TSN guy. He's both. So, yeah. But that's pretty weird though if their attitude is people like Bruce and Steve who appear on our airwaves can do whatever they want on Twitter.

Because they can't stop them, right? Like they can't say that, you know. Well, you could say if we're going to pay you to be a contributor, you have to follow the same rules as a full-time TSN employee. right? Like, isn't that like, they can't say that, you know, you could say if we're going to pay you to be a contributor, you have to follow the same rules as, as a full-time DSN employee.

But then we would lose all those wonderful Bruce Arthur and, uh, Steve's and, and Steve's not bad really. Uh, but it's the, um, Leo Roudens is a real big political tweeter. Do you follow him on Twitter?

Does he really? Yeah. Like I see a lot of stuff really goes hard on, uh, Mr. Trump and, uh, Trump and quite a bit actually. But yeah, no one's told him he can't and I don't think he'd listen if he did. So Leo fucking routins. He'll tell you what he wants.

Okay, mister. I got to ask you about the most controversial thing in recent memory that has come out of anything you've written. Hebsey and I talk about this all the time. Sure. Tell us who was Post Media's Male Athlete of the Year for 2019. Vazik Pospisil. All right, now look me in the eyes. Now you're right here.

You look me in the eyes. How did this decision get made? Like, is there a vote? Certain people have a vote? Or is it one person like does scott stinson decide who the male athlete of the year is well there's not like it's not a total uh there there has it has been at times there has been a vote this was more of a decision of a few people collectively made uh and i wrote the piece on it okay now uh the seat's

getting warmer. Do you feel that? I see you starting to sweat there. No, I'm not. Were you basically told, he is our male athlete. He is our athlete of the year. Is it male or just athlete?

Male. He's our male athlete of the year, right? Do your thing. Did you have a say in that? I was fine with it. It was my suggestion. That's a different thing, being fine with it it was my suggestion that's a different i i i put him forward as my nominee so and i don't know ultimately where the decision was made but

i suggested here's the thing with with 2019 in sports the female athlete of the year pretty easy call uh there was obviously bianca andrescu team of the year, pretty easy call, Toronto Raptors. Male athlete of the year was like, hmm, who is the male athlete of the year? There was no obvious. Conor McDavid had a good year. Jordan Bennington had a good year. You could throw out a handful of names. Who's the Braves guy?

Yeah, Soraka. Yes. Sure, you come up with a few different names. But he was a fine baseball player, but he was on nobody's list of greatest baseball performance of the year. He just happened to be Canadian. Right. So the reason I put Pospisil forward as a possibility was

he had this incredible story of starts the year getting back surgery for a herniated disc and doesn't know if his career is over. Ends up having this, you know, misses most of the season, comes back, has a huge upset win at the U.S. Open, goes to the Davis Cup, beats three guys who are ranked much higher than him at the Davis Cup, is a key part of the Canadian men's team making a Davis Cup final. Right, where you finish second.

First time ever. So it was the story of, like, overcoming adversity. And I thought of it in the same way of I used to be a subscriber to Sports Illustrated. They had a sportsman of the year. It was not best athlete of the year. It was, what is a good story of somebody in sports who has done something impressive? And to me, that was the Pospisil story. And that's why we did it.

And it wasn't a, and if people want to get angry about it, that's the whole point. Maybe you want to go nuts, I guess. But like, I don't know. It was a pretty interesting story. It was pretty compelling.

And I thought it was worth telling. I think, uh, what, it's not like we give the guy a million dollar prize and somebody else has been denied it. Oh, that's not okay.

Now here's the thing here, because, uh, I think if you went to, here's my thoughts, very, very, all of this is subjective. Sure. Norm, you's the thing here. Because I think if you went to, here's my thoughts. All of this is subjective. Sure. You know Norm Willner?

He writes about movies for Now Magazine. I hope Now makes it. They're no longer controlling their own destiny. Okay. Norm was surprised. This is a quick tangent. He was surprised that Hustlers didn't get an Oscar nom. I watched Hustlers with my 15-year-old daughter,

my mom, and my wife. Okay, so we all watched Hustlers this past weekend, okay? Hustlers is not a very good movie. Now, I'm very subjective. I said, Norm's like, it should be nominated. I'm like, it really wasn't good. Why are we even considering nominating a movie that's not very good?

But art is, that is art. One man's treasure is another man's trash or whatever this is art uh now um this this male athlete of the year i think if you had gone to like i don't know you've gone to 10 random sports fans in this country and said name canada's male tennis athlete of the year like you just said tennis athlete yeah most will not say i don't think i think most would say maybe uh shabba volove or uh felix that's so so when you think of that and then you realize oh we just extrapolated that this uh that uh sorry hospital hospital is uh post media's male athlete there i think it's really really surprising to a lot of people but again it gets people talking right maybe that's and again it's not like so we the loom arch is handed out to the athlete of the year male or

female right and everybody knows that the loom arch is for like clearly the best performance on field or on court or whatever your chosen sport is of the year so it's purely an an achievement you know you can always find somebody in canadian sports who's done amazing things whether it's bianca in this case wins the loom arch or whether it was uh joey vato or one brooke henderson yeah exactly you know like people who are doing like pretty amazing things especially in an olympic year it's easy in olympic it is very easy a selection of people to choose from. But with this, it was like,

well, we already had this year where we had Bianca winning the U S open. First time ever. We had the Raptors winning. It seemed to me that telling a different kind of story for the male athlete, when there was no other obvious candidate. I mean,

I have people like, why didn't you pick Conrad Davis? Like, I don't know. Cause you can pick them every year. Like he's really good. And I, again, I, I don't like, why didn't you pick Conor McDavid? It's like, I don't know, because you can pick him every year. Like, he's really good. And again, I don't think Conor McDavid minded. I don't think he was left saying, if only I was Post Media's male athlete of 2019.

Okay, but I'm glad we got to the bottom of this. Because some people are like, did somebody just force you to do this? But you put this name forward. You were behind this pick and you wrote about it and you believed it. And you stated your case and if we want to debate it over a beer or a Great Lakes or whatever, that's part of the fun, right? Sure. No, I don't mind that people

get shirty about it. I just think it's funny. It's such a strange thing to get upset about. Now, the other thing, and this is not very sports related, but I have to read this question. You might have seen it on Twitter. Jed, what did he think

of his boss stating that he must suckle at the teat of conservative propagandists in the run-up to the last election?

Now, I read that verbatim there. Obviously, there's some heated language he's using there, but I want you to have an opportunity now the open mic here

to respond to that well i have no idea what that guy's talking about to be honest with you like was there a directive at some point that i missed okay now i i've seen the one for the toronto sun so post media is sun and post yep and like also there's broadsheet papers in every city in the country east of the maritimes okay or west of the Maritimes, sorry. So now Steve Simmons and you work for the same boss. That's correct. Okay. I know Jesse Brown at Canada Land did publish,

we've seen, I would call it a smoking gun, which is basically for the provincial election anyways. It was like, this is our strategy to get Doug Ford elected. Right. I would say that, and again, I'm not even trying to be political here, except that it seems, and I understand that Post Media has a conservative slant politically, and they, similar to what we might hear about from Fox News and some other publications, and you can argue about a lot of different papers, but there is a

an editorial slant to favor the Conservative Party of Canada over the Liberal Party of Canada. I would say there is a slant on the editorial pages. Certainly there are far more columnists who are

of the right-wing persuasion than otherwise. But from a and i mean i say this as somebody who is the national editor of the national post at one point from a news section like from writing about the news of the day they're covering the news like it's not for supposed to be you know doug ford is the premier now and he'll get criticized when he puts a budget out in the same way that Kathleen Wynne was criticized when she put a budget out. So it's key here to differentiate

between the editorialization from people's opinions and the actual reporting. Yeah. So when it comes to the reporting, you're here to tell us that as far as you know, there is no interference uh to favor or to to bury anything that might be work against uh the conservative party as far as you know on the news side they're just trying to report the news straight up well and i'd add too

that that we get told and it's not just post media but of course the trudeau government has this bailout quote-unquote bailout program of the print media so we're told all the time that like we're now in hock to justin trudeau and the liberals and we've been bought and paid for so i'm told that we're bought and paid for by justin trudeau and the liberals and also we're not allowed to criticize conservatives so then you're like well obviously like i guess i guess we're gonna go really hard at the then you're like well obviously I guess we're going to go really hard at the NDP is where that comes from. And you Scott

you are a sports writer there really is pretty much the one bastion that seems to be unscathed by bipartisanship. Pretty much I will make Donald Trump jokes now and again and that always gets people angry

and then you get emails from people going i cannot believe i'm reading sports and you dare make a joke about donald trump what about justin trudeau and it's like yeah i didn't i actually i had that happen when the don cherry thing happened well i'm gonna ask about don next i wrote about it i had people saying why didn't you write about justin trudeau and blackface i i've heard this strange strange argument to and i would say well uh it's because i'm a sports writer and just me writing a column about why it was bad that justin trudeau wore blackface would be really strange to read in the sports section. And it is a little bizarre. Like, Rogers employed Don Cherry. Yep. And Justin Trudeau,

although his party did not, you know, they didn't have that non-confidence that changes the leadership or whatever. They kept him on as leader. Yep. And then democracy did its thing.

Yep. So a lot of people, I heard of this too. Like, how come Don lost his job and Justin didn't? Yeah, it's like because there was an election? And I'm sure if Justin was a political commentator on a Rogers outlet, I bet you he would have lost his job. That's correct.

Oh, 100%. Absolutely. If he was merely a panelist on the CBC's at-issue thing, I'm pretty sure that would have been the end of his panelist career. Right. But, you know you can't equate the two things although it was a man lots of people tried it was weird that whole that whole john cherry thing was a strange let's talk about it mark it is close late in the recent history that is the closest you've come to because it got very political very quickly it did it did

and and it was interesting as a oh i mean i wrote it about a few times but it was interesting as a, oh, I mean, I wrote it a few times, but it was depressing as a window into what a lot of people really thought. And the number of people that wanted to email me and say, not just like, you know, he didn't really mean it because there was some of that. I mean, I think he meant it. I think he meant what he said. I think he was talking specifically about immigrants I don't think you can realistically think that that's not what he was getting at when he said what he said

but it wasn't just that people wanted to sort of defend him on that level it's that there was people that wanted to say it's I'm glad somebody really said the truth this is what I think about there's too many immigrants in Canada. Like he stood up for real Canadians.

Yeah. It's about time somebody, you know, spoke truth to how, how we're letting too many people into the country. And, uh, you know,

there are people who founded this country and, and they're getting lost in, you know, blah, blah, blah, and all that kind of stuff. And,

and I will say say i was surprised by not only the number of sort of feedback i heard along that line but the people who are like emailing me from their work account saying like there are too many immigrants like there was one guy who was a financial advisor who's like i'm assuming some of his clients were immigrants or recent immigrants or or daughters and sons of immigrants. And he's basically like, you know, the problem with this country is that there's too many people from other

countries getting here now. And you're like, wow, that seems like a crazy thing to be publicly to somebody who's a public facing. But it seems like people are more like unabashedly. So like, it seemed like it felt maybe this is all like perception. I have no but it felt like we people were more secretive like uh like if you

had these thoughts and beliefs like you weren't as uh you didn't wear them because because because you didn't you didn't want people to know and it seems like there's an a bit emboldened somehow i always think this might be a trump effect i think that that's true, Mike. I think that Donald Trump's success has caused people to be more upfront about the things that they might have just said privately before. I mean, I was talking about this with a colleague. We were in Washington covering the World Series. And there was one of us, he saw, it wasn't me. There was one of us, he saw, it wasn't me, but he saw outside the ballpark, you know, three or four guys all very proudly wearing their Make America Great Again, like hoodies and hats. And he was like, it's kind of like if you wear that stuff now, you're basically saying like, I'm racist. Like, I'm, this is the thing I'm proudly saying.

like i'm this is the thing i'm proudly saying i wholly support you know every part of this person's agenda because why else would you put it on in such a you know bold sort of way and i think that's where that that thing has gone in in a way and and allowed those people who at one point might have been a little more subtle about some of their beliefs they're they're now just throwing it out there and again he's another guy trump is saying like here's what he this is what he thinks and he's he's you know talking about people from shithole countries and he's he's saying rather inflammatory things about senators who are from different countries and and lots of people are like yeah it's about time somebody said it. So I think the cherry thing kind of came on the heels of that. And, and a lot of people who felt that way about Donald Trump sort of felt that,

that cherry was somebody who was merely saying the same kind of things and yet was getting punished for it. And then it kind of turned into this whole, like, if you're going to fire our guy, you got to fire, uh, Jess Allen from the social. And it's like, well, you know, and it's such a strange time we live in.

And I feel like it has finally, it's died down now. But there was a couple of weeks there where it was the sports landscape and the sports media landscape and politics. And it just seemed very, uh, it was strange. And I will say, you know, a friend mentioned,

we were talking about this on the weekend, but Dawn left obviously like, and had the choice to apologize and to say, I, I, I didn't think clearly through what I was saying. And this is not how I meant it to sound like, however,

he needed to walk it back, but he refused. And so they let go of him and, or let him go. And then he announced that he was doing a podcast with his grandson, I think. I think it's with his son. His son's producing it, and his grandson is at the table. I don't know if he speaks on the microphone. So they've been doing that for a while, and it occurred to me that, like, I've never heard anyone mention it in the wild i listened to the

first episode like a lot of people did because he needed to hear what's going on here and i actually never and i listened to a lot of podcasts i've never felt an itch to go back and listen to more don't share like i i decided i okay i wanted to hear what he would say about the whole rogers thing i think and then he would be about the whole Rogers thing, I think. And then he would be- And he didn't really say much. He didn't say anything. I don't need to hear him

tell an old story about Cheevers. I don't, I just, it's not for me. But it's interesting that he, and I could be wrong about this, maybe he's saying

crazy things every week, but it hasn't, he apparently hasn't said anything inflammatory enough to get him in any trouble yeah or get him any press like get him any press or tweets even we're both on twitter like somebody would tweet the hell out of some controversial statement you'd think but i don't i mean i also i say this not even entirely sure that it has been produced it was on a i mean i think maybe he took a break i don't know either took a break around christmas i don't know but

he may have found, I mean, you would know better than anybody. Maybe he thought he would set up this thing and all of a sudden sponsors would be kicking his door down. But he might have realized that all they're doing is basically producing a contest for the three people in the room and whoever happens to listen to it.

I don't think Don Cherry's listenership is particularly podcast savvy. I think, I don't know Don Cherry's listenership is particularly podcast savvy. I think, uh, the people that were, the people that were emailing me to defend him, we're probably just watching him because they were watching hockey on Saturday nights.

They're not going to go seek out his opinions wherever they can find them. Did you get the emails I got, which were, you sent like, I got these and I'm sure you got these, uh, 20 fold or whatever, but,

uh, I'm canceling my rogers subscription internet and i will never watch hockey night in canada again i don't believe those people for a second so these guys are saying that and maybe they did cancel rogers i have no idea go to bell like whatever i don't know yeah that's the thing with this country you really got the two options okay some will resell one of those two but at some point you're taking one of those two yeah okay so like let's say're taking one of those two. Yeah. Okay. So, like, let's say your beloved Maple Leafs, who you've loved since you were six years old or whatever, let's say it's playoff time.

It's another game seven against the Bruins. Really? Yeah. Like, you're so angry. And I always defer back. My buddy, Jeff Domet, who came on the show, he produced Hockey Night in Canada for Sirius XM, the radio. And he worked closely with a lot of these guys. And the way he said it, and in canada for serious exam the radio and he worked

closely with a lot of these guys and the way he said it and he's like you can't say that shit like at the end of the day you can't say that shit on on national television don says stuff you can't say that shit and don you know withheld it he was like oh i i think at this point most reasonable people even if they aren't happy he's gone understand why he's gone and i think you're down to the small segment of people who see this as like the uh what's the term with the shield to die on or the the hill to die on or whatever and it's become this like freedom of speech issue which of course because people don't really understand what freedom of speech is yeah well i mean that was one of the elements of the feedback was like,

you know, he has, his freedom of speech has been compromised. And it's like, well, no, the freedom of speech doesn't mean you get to say whatever you want. And he can say it on his podcast. Yeah, and, you know, be employed forever. And people would say, how can you as a journalist defend somebody for losing their freedom of speech? And I would say, because I don't have that freedom of speech, I could get fired tomorrow if I wrote something if i wrote what he said and it got to press that would be it like you can't say that shit because you can't say that shit i mean you

would say you can say it but you don't have the right to be employed in perpetuity if you say things that your company doesn't want to be responsible for so yeah it was a it was a weird time and it is interesting that it's not that long since then i mean as you know it was around remembrance day so we're two months later right but it does feel like yeah dawn has essentially kind of disappeared from the media landscape and we'll see what happens i mean well maybe somebody else will hire him but i don't know i i would honestly i'd be surprised but the very next week you had the ron mclean apology spiel which uh i mean i i i'm a little biased here and that i like ron and i feel he's i feel he was being sincere and i don't know i i was fine with the ron spiel yeah i i felt bad for ron in that you know people were rightly critical

of him in the moment to say like how could he just sit there and let this go by? And the one thing I will say, I have done, you know, a teensy tiny bit of live TV in my career. And that stuff is hard, you know, or live radio, similar thing where you get asked something, stuff happens. You got a producer in your ear trying to process things. You're throwing to a video yeah you're throwing to a thing whatever's going on and and and i did think about that like so he's listening to don do his thing and it's at the end of a segment and i'm not entirely sure what he was supposed to do because the the clock would have been ticking down to the end of the thing right like they have a hard out where the commercials start so i'm honestly not sure what ron even if he had realized as don was saying what he's saying that whoa we are like really getting into dangerous territory here is he

gonna say like anyway thanks for watching and don't please don't like you know all the all what he said was wrong like i just like to register my displeasure with everything even beyond that remember this is kind of Don's thing, the Remembrance Day thing, right? And I think Ron would be sensitive to be ultra careful of stomping on that message, which is so near and dear to Don's heart. And you're right. I think he just blew it.

I think he just whiffed. I think he just saw it. He probably went, oh, Don Zoon has remembered the troops, you know, support the troops thing again. And he might have saw it. He probably went, oh, Don Zun is Remember the Troops, you know, Support the Troops thing again. And he might have tuned out a little because that's one of Don's biggest things. He's heard it 30 times. Yeah, exactly. So let me ask you this.

Are you aware of the fact, like, okay, and I should get somebody like, who is it? Shorali Najak is going to come on this show and I'm going to ask him this question because he produces Hocking in Canada. He can tell me the answer. But there were three different markets getting the coach's corner that night so i guess is one live and the other two are just pressing play on the recording yeah that's how it would work so whoever

whoever sort of goes first uh gets the live coach's corner and then whenever the other intermissions are having their intermission uh they would just get the the recording the recorded version okay so there is like even though it was pretty it's probably only two or three or four minutes or whatever later because it's only staggered a bit but yeah there is they did press play on this thing twice they did and and obviously you know i they they knew it pretty quickly because i think people were reacting on social media uh you know almost almost immediately, but I don't, you know, it,

it got through the, the one thing I will say, one thing I know about the way that show was produced is that it was very much like, like Don had this weird thing where he just wanted to be able to look at the camera. Like, so there was no other distractions

and he did not have a producer in his ear and i think all they ever did was they they like did a tiny bit of prep in terms of what they were going to say so i think the way that show was always done is like they just would barge forward and and part of the way it worked was they had that interplay with each other they didn't know what each other was going to say necessarily and eventually this is what tripped them up is that they didn't have somebody to say wait a minute what are you going to say exactly right you know and that part of i i intend to go out here and to criticize the people that i see from other parts of the world who are not wearing poppies.

I've got to assume that part of the discussion was not forecasted at all. No, that's all Joe Warmington's fault. You know that. You can tie a direct line. Because the day before, Joe calls up Don, his buddy, and says, hey, I'm writing a piece.

I noticed there's not many poppies. I don't see a lot of poppies downtown. And Joe gets quotes from Don Cherry on this topic. hey, I'm writing a piece. I noticed there's not many poppies. I don't see a lot of poppies downtown. And Joe gets quotes from Don Cherry on this topic, like riles him up like the day before. So I believe the whole Joe Warmington interaction just the day before for a Toronto Sun thing, speaking of post media, I believe that put the thing in Don's ear,

that bug in his ear that he couldn't couldn't shake and yeah so it's joe's fault yeah oh you know what the weird thing about it too i will say is that what was the evidence for fewer people are wearing poppies like is that like it's very anecdotal yeah no that to be true like i know it was it was uh basically i believe the evidence was uh joe had a meeting downtown or something and didn't see a lot of poppies. Yeah. I don't know.

That part of it was always strange to me. Like there probably are comparatively fewer poppies, but only the population has grown and I'm sure the poppy distribution might not be what it was. And time. There's less connect. Like now. Also, the damn things fall off all the time. That is true.

Like I must have had four this year, which is sort of of my over under for a number of poppies right then you look around you're like god damn it so yeah those uh you know get a pin is my there's yeah just a piece of cork on the other end or something i gotta do a better job there but yeah okay so fascinating now i'm gonna do a couple of quick hits here uh because believe it or not yeah we're already at hour and 20 minutes i feel like we just started here so i'm gonna do a couple of quick hits here. Cause believe it or not, we're already at hour and 20 minutes. I feel like we just started here. So I'm gonna do a couple of quick hits. Is there a future for the CFL in this city,

Toronto? I don't, I mean, I think the Toronto Argonauts will exist for as long as they are. Always a rowing club. I think as long as MLSSE cares to own them, they will exist because there's weird interplay where half of MLSE or a big chunk of it is owned by Bell and Bell owns TSN.

TSN owns the CFL. CFL wants a team in Toronto. So the value of the Argonauts to television, so the value of the argonauts to television to television and to bell's media arm tsn far exceeds whether or not it makes any money at the gate or in terms of fan support that makes sense like it so if i hear you correctly you're saying it it needs to exist uh for television purposes as a function of the cfl you have to have a team in toronto you can't not have a team but could you put it in the could you call the toronto organauts and have it in i don't know mississauga or something like maybe the problem that they've done now like so the suspicion has

long been that the the argos fan base such as it is is in the suburbs in mississauga and pickering and places like they're not in liberty village, they're not in Liberty Village. Yeah, they're certainly not, right? And, but because they now went to BMO Field, which is quite inconvenient if you live in those other places, I don't know that they can go back and try to turn themselves into a team

of the suburbs. I mean... But it's only inconvenient if they insist on driving their cars. Yeah, but that's what people do, man. i'm not i don't just need that at all i know but the react like that part of it was a shock to me in terms of i was like everybody well if they go to bmo at least that gives them a chance and it's been a complete disaster at bmo and and the times i have written about them i have been very surprised to learn how many people

would email and say i used to go all the time when i was at the roger center and i don't go anymore because it's a pain to get to bemo field i don't like it and i and i'm like really because like the roger center was a terrible place to watch a cfl game it was half empty the atmosphere sucked so that part of it has been a big surprise i don't think they realized that they would be cutting off their nose to spite their face or whatever that expression is like they they moved into this new stadium and thought they'd attract all these young people not only has it not attracted young people it's alienated the olds who actually liked going to art so now you're down to your your 9 000 core like yeah i mean there was a game only because i it was like the same weekend i saw a wolf pack match at lamport stadium right and it was the same attendance right yeah no it's like

so literally within yeah and i think they maxed out at lamport because there's some fire code where they can't exceed 9600 or something and i think they had like 9800 attendants at bmo yeah and i think they averaged something like 12000 or maybe a little bit more than that. But it's a big problem. And, you know, I did a piece with Jim Lawson, who's the outgoing chair of the CFL. So he's no longer there. And I asked him about Toronto, and he basically was like, yeah, I think it's a problem.

I think it's going to continue to be a problem. We people, young people, the people they need to be Argo fans do not care about the CFL in this city. They just don't. They do, if you go to Winnipeg, the Blue Bombers are a big deal. So the 25-year-olds are like, I love the Blue Bombers.

You know, I want to go, that's what I want to do is go to a CFL because that's what the cool kids are doing. In Toronto, in the Toronto area and surrounding environments, people don't think of the CFL as a cool thing to do. They think of TFC as a cool thing to do. They obviously, the Raptors and the Leafs, and I guess now the Wolfpack. But the CFL just, you know, it's a really tough sell for them.

And it's been a generational thing where they've not been cool and trying to force the issue has not really worked. So we'll see, as I say, I think they'll continue to exist because there is a, there is a purpose for them, but I do wonder how many years you can, I mean,

I kind of feel like the, the BMO field thing has already kind of come and gone in terms of the likelihood of them ever getting a bounce from going there. Like now it's known as that place is half empty. So, you know, like, what are you going to do, move again? Right. So, I think that's where their big challenge is going to come from. This Jim Lawson you speak of, is he the guy at Woodbine?

Yep. Okay, I talked to him this week. Okay. Because, a little heads up for horse racing fans, of which I'm quickly becoming one, but Peter Gross is launching a new podcast called Down the Stretch, in which they cover, I guess there's these three different genres

of horse racing in Ontario. And I'm only learning all this, but there's one at Woodbine, there's another at Ajax, Ajax Downs, and there's another out not far from Milton, I can't remember the name of this place, but it's another one. There's three of these things, like a thoroughbred and a standard bred

and some quarter horse thing. Yes, yes, I agree with all that. Okay, thank you. See, I'm really out of my comfort zone here, I got to admit. But I do watch the Kentucky Derby on television now. But we had two phone conversations I recorded this week for future episodes. And one was with Jim Lawson. So Peter and Jim, obviously.

I shut up because I got nothing to add to that. But Peter and Jim. And then Peter and a woman, Emma Jane Wilson, her name is. And Peter was telling me about Emma Jane Wilson. And he made a compelling argument for Emma Jane Wilson being the Canada's female

athlete of the decade. Okay. I know. And anyway, I let Peter jockey. She's a jockey, a very successful jockey. She's won the queen's plate.

She's won like these 1500 races or something. Right. And again, I, it was a phone conversation I was listening in on as we recorded it, but she very well spoken and a very good ambassador for her sport. But all that is just, you mentioned Jim Lawson and I thought that that's just small world because we just talked

to jim lawson same guy and i only yeah gotcha so one more thing before we go i want to ask you about uh women's hockey because you've been so um can you just tell us where we're at with like women's professional hockey and oh yeah so last spring, the Canadian Women's Hockey League abruptly folded. That was the big outlet for the people that anybody who watches the Olympics or the World Championships would know. That's where they would play professionally, the Marie-Philippe Poulin, the Natalie Spooners of the world. The league folded after years of struggles basically they never really got many

fans they didn't pay their players much at all um so it folded the there is another league based in the u.s called the national women's hockey league um that has had similar problems doesn't really pay it's kind of like more of an honorarium than it is a salary uh and the the the good players the ones who are on the USA team and the Canadian team, they have all agreed to not join the NWHL in hopes of an actual viable, sustainable league being formed by someone.

Because they're looking for, yeah, salaries. They would like there to be an actual, yeah, to be able to say, I'm a professional hockey player and this is what i do what what has existed for a few years is if you are good enough to be on the canadian team or the american team you do get some money you get funding through their various support mechanism so somebody like natalie spooner would not have to work another job. She would get funding through team Canada,

hockey Canada. And then she would also play on this professional team when she's not off doing national team duties. But for everybody else, who's not good enough to be on those, those elite elite rosters, you would be playing in the CWHL on the Toronto Furies or the, the Markham Thunder or whoever.

And most of them would also have other jobs. You know, they'd be like a, you know, PWHL on the Toronto Furies or the Markham Thunder or whoever. And most of them would also have other jobs. They'd be a veterinarian's assistant during the day. And then they'd be playing hockey professionally on the weekends. Or they'd be going to practice at 11 o'clock at night. Like in the same way that a AAA hockey player who's a teenager might do. So they're trying to get to the point where someone can come and actually form a league that has money behind it and resources and maybe a broadcast deal and the big question is could these women have a

small scale league that gets support from fans and we haven't seen it yet but i also don't think anybody's really tried do you think it would work i do i think if you started in an area and you know with a small league at a 5 or 16 league based in the northeast you know maybe three teams up in canada and three in the u.s and you kept travel costs relatively low and you got some sort of broadcaster to do some sort of arrangement i mean the fact that there is a tsn and a Sportsnet and they all have multiple streams, they have digital properties, like it should be doable.

And I think people would watch it. It would not, you know, I'm not saying you get a million people to start, but I think if you start somewhere and you build up from it, it's possible. I mean, I always look at it as, I'm sure there was a time 50 years ago where people said, well, people would never watch women play tennis. Like they're not real professionals.

And now, you know, Bianca addressed you was the story of 2019 Toronto Raptors excluded. Right. But, you know, like there people will. Brooke Henderson, another example, like people will support that stuff. But you can't just assume that because it's not the absolute best level of hockey you know it's not the nhl that doesn't mean people won't support it okay here's hoping here's hoping and uh i just realized this we're not quite done because i just need to read a question from a guy named matt and i need to tell the listeners okay so for forever

now i've been getting emails from matt so have i okay i see i this is good okay so i get these emails all the time yeah i think your problem is you respond you know what you're right because i i'm gonna say nothing i'm gonna say that i do respond because i feel like being kind to matt yeah leave it at that he's at some point he i think i might have said something like oh you can always i don't know at some point he switched it to twitter i still get the emails but now he's moved it to twitter so here is the most recent one of the many i've got when i told him you were coming on yeah hi i was wondering if you could please ask scott stinson to ask jordan banks to hire tessa bonham to replace don cherry as the lead studio analyst for Sportsnet's

NHL coverage so I just thought he did want me to ask you to do that so I'm here now officially asking you Scott to ask Jordan Banks if you could to hire Tessa Bonham because you know Sportsnet's in hiring mode right now you know trying to yeah so uh they might want to go out and get tessa to do that right yeah i honestly say with all sincerity that if i having a sit down with jordan banks i'm pretty sure my hiring recommendations for his various properties are not the way that discussion is going to go i did have uh scott scott moore has been on my show twice, but I did notice he only came on the first time after he gave his notice there. So maybe that's it.

Scott, I thoroughly enjoyed this and I need to get you back here at some point because I never got to ask you about killing the playoffs. And I need to ask what you've been smoking, drinking. What's going on here? Another episode then for sure. We could do a whole 90 minutes on this. Scott wants to kill the playoffs. I think you got that backwards, but we'll talk about that later. Smoking, drinking. What's going on here? Another episode then for sure. We could do a whole 90 minutes on this.

Scott wants to kill the playoffs. I think you got that backwards, but we'll talk about that later. And that brings us to the end of our 571st show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Scott, remind us. Is it Scott underscore Stinson? Scott underscore Stinson. Thanks for having me, Mike.

This was fun. Thanks for doing this, man. And make sure I give you that lasagna before you go because it's in my freezer. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Sticker U is at Sticker U. The Keitner Group are at keitnergroup.com. That's K-E-I-T-N-E-R.

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