Читать книгу That Wasn’t the Plan - Reg Sherren - Страница 9

Just about everything I owned could still fit into several cardboard boxes. They were loaded into the storage compartments beneath me as I rode a Greyhound bus across the top of Lake Superior. By sheer coincidence, my best buddy, Larry Hennessey from Labrador, had also just taken a job in Thunder Bay, on the radio, with the same company that had hired me. It was a wonderful thing. A best friend for support and someone to help pay the rent. I would need it.

Thunder Bay wasn’t a big market in the Canadian scheme of things, but it wasn’t small either. The station broadcast across Northwestern Ontario, and in 1981, the place was booming. Huge grain-handling operations and the forest industry employed thousands, and Mini Queen’s Park provided hundreds of government jobs.

The city had two daily newspapers, a morning and afternoon edition, and I was soon meeting some of the characters in the business. One of them was Howard Reid, who wrote a popular local social/gossip column and didn’t pull any punches. A portly little fellow with a shock of white hair, he would march into a news conference and look around. If there wasn’t a complimentary and completely outfitted bar in the room, Howard could be heard exclaiming, “No drinkie-poo, no interview. No booze, no news!” before turning on his heel and marching out of the room.

Newspapers were still a huge influence and dominated the news market. Gathering information for television was still cumbersome but changing quickly. Of course, there was no internet. We did have the news wire, with a slightly more sophisticated contraption spitting out the information than the big old green machine, and when I first started, video cameras were not used. All news events were shot on film, brought back to the basement and developed using a chemical process. The film was physically cut and taped together into a news reel. Some nights you didn’t even know whether you had pictures until almost six o’clock. It could be a delicate dance, adding stories on the fly to fill time if the pictures did not appear. Within months videotape arrived, and the speed at which you could turn pictures around for broadcast now seemed practically instantaneous.

I was the main anchor from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. I wrote and lined up the show. I also assembled and hosted the late news and did radio and television news reports. If that wasn’t enough, I also organized, wrote and hosted a weekly half-hour public affairs program. My starting salary was $900 a month gross. It was barely enough to live on, but who cared? I certainly didn’t. I was working so much I hardly had time to spend the money I didn’t have anyway. To survive, I shared a house with my buddy Larry and another friend, Gord McLaughlin, a fellow I’d met in college who had since been hired to write at the Chronicle-Journal, one of the two local newspapers. Besides covering city hall, Gord was also a talented young playwright, making a name for himself in local theatre. We had it all covered: radio, TV and the newspapers. Heady times for three young men, and good friendships that continue to this day.

There were no cellphones. No computers or internet. We banged out the scripts on five-part paper using manual typewriters. You had to bang away hard to make those keys impact five copies, thanks to the carbon in between each sheet of paper. One for your script, one for the director, one for radio, one for the producer, and one for the files.

The CKPR station itself was a unique beast. It was what was called a twin stick, meaning the owner, Fraser Dougall, had both the CBC and CTV affiliates, technically competitors, under one roof. It was the first place in Canada where such a broadcast licence had been granted. The master control rooms were side by side. All newscasts were first aired on CBC (CKPR), recorded and then replayed on the CTV channel (CHFD) during the following hour. It was an arrangement eventually adopted in other markets too, places that were not big enough to support two separate stations. It meant that each night you might see CBC News stories on CTV and vice versa. To add to the confusion, we chopped off the reporter sign-offs. Dougall also owned two radio stations, AM and FM, with all of it broadcasting under the same roof.

What this meant was that I was on the air somewhere on a television in Thunder Bay, and across Northwestern Ontario, three hours a day. You might say I saturated the market. It was also my first experience with celebrity, and the feeling that folks were watching me all the time. I remember being mobbed by a crowd of high school girls outside a Cow Palace once (Thunder Bay’s version of a 7-Eleven). Instead of exciting, it was a somewhat unnerving experience. They pushed me into a corner, and some even demanded I autograph their cigarette packs.

I like to think it didn’t go to my head … much. The fact that I never seemed to have more than $5 in my pocket helped. The good people of Thunder Bay adopted me. One older woman who worked in the corner shop near me always asked if I was eating well enough. Sometimes I would walk into the store and she would have a big pan of homemade lasagna waiting for me behind the counter, and she’d insist I take it back home. Once, after a trip to Vegas, she presented me with one of the silver dollars she had won, “for luck.” I still have it to this day. My neighbours had become my family.

Decades later former viewers from Thunder Bay would approach me in an airport or on a street somewhere in the country to say, “We remember when you started out with us in Thunder Bay. We’ve been following your career.” It was always gratifying and very much appreciated, as if they had been cheering me on.

There were some interesting characters working at the “station on the hill,” as it was sometimes known. Ray Dee programmed radio. Early in his radio career he brought a new band into the station’s studio to record a couple of songs. They had wandered into town from Winnipeg to play a few gigs and Ray thought they sounded pretty damn good. The band leader was a guy named Neil Young. Decades later Neil came looking for those original recordings and used several of them on his Anthology CD collection.

My CKPR production team, a great bunch who did their best to teach me all they could. Back left to right: Me, Jon Ogden, Bill Kallio. Front: Bill McKirdy.

Rick Smith was a broadcasting icon in the city. Rick told me he had gotten the first North American interview with the Beatles. Apparently he was working in Montreal back in 1964 when his buddy at Trans World Airlines told him the Beatles’ plane would stop there to refuel on its way to New York, where they had a date with The Ed Sullivan Show. Rick borrowed his buddy’s TWA overalls, walked out to the plane and snagged a quick interview as John, Paul, George and Ringo stepped off for a breath of fresh air. That’s how the story goes, anyway.

Weatherman Bob MacDonald was another character. Bob’s claim to fame was his ability to stand behind a Plexiglas weather map and, using grease pencils in both hands, write the temperatures while doing the forecast. Of course, he had to write them backwards so they appeared normal on camera, while at the same time drawing a little figure up in one corner. I have never seen anything like it, before or since.

Mostly I anchored the news, but sometimes I stepped into news reporting, and I also did the weather segment on the late news. It resulted in an interesting relationship with some of the folks of Thunder Bay, especially my neighbours.

Thunder Bay was a diverse city with people from around the world. There was a large population from Finland, and then there were the Italians. They too had a large, vibrant community. In the fall some made wine the traditional way—barefoot, stomping around in large wooden barrels. In addition to growing their own, sometimes tractor-trailer loads of grapes would arrive from California. They loved to garden. Their greatest pride was their output of produce: the tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and of course their grapes. I lived in a very Italian neighbourhood.

In the fall, I would arrive home after the late news, close to midnight. When I pulled into the driveway, sometimes a crowd would have gathered just down the lane. The first time I saw them I didn’t know what to think. Was it an unruly mob? Was it something I’d read on the news? After a few days, I grew used to them and would get out of my car and greet them. Then the designated spokesperson would shuffle toward me shyly, hands in pockets, kicking at the ground. Eventually he would look up and say, “You think maybe frost tonight?” Depending on what forecast I had received from Environment Canada, I would give him my opinion, which seemed to carry a great deal of weight. (I guess he needed an update from my last forecast on TV!) He would nod and return to the others to deliver the wisdom of a fellow who probably knew far less about it than they did. A short discussion would ensue before they dispersed. Later in the fall I would be presented with fresh produce and some of their fabulous homemade wine. I suppose my forecasts weren’t too far off. Lovely people.