“Mac, I think I’d like to become a teacher.”

At the time with my law degree I only needed one year in the Education program at SFU in Burnaby and I could qualify as a teacher. I have always been a communicator. Where I have succeeded it was when I stayed close to that fact. Being a teacher would be a perfect fit. To this day I admire teachers and have always been proud as the father of two children who teach, Jono in university, ‘Niffer in elementary school. I would still like to teach but let’s get real here, I’m seventy-one and I’m running out of runway.  It wasn’t an easy decision, we had two young children, Mac was working shifts and we had no money. But we set our minds to doing it.

And then Fate popped up once again, mischievous spontaneous Fate.

My good friend Jon Michaels, a morning show host on a local radio station, took me out for a beer,

“Why don’t you come and do radio on my show.”

I laughed, “Oh I don’t know Jon, maybe because I wouldn’t have a clue how to do it.”

“Don’t worry about it. You just flip on the mic and start talking. I’ll take care of you.”

I had a few months before I was due to start my year at SFU so I eventually agreed.

My wife Mac is probably the best one to describe just how bad I was. The poor girl remembers to this day the first time I was on the radio with Jon. I was so bad that she actually rolled over and put a pillow over her ears. And I’m not telling you this to seek sympathy or to be self deprecating. No, I’m telling you this because I really was terrible. It can’t be overstated.

But I had one problem. I loved it. I absolutely fell for radio from the first minute. A popular TV show at the time was ‘WKRP in Cincinnati’, an hilarious sitcom set inside a radio station. I had no training and no orientation. I was just thrown into the deep end, surrounded by a bunch of young people, graduates of the BCIT radio program, all of them at the front end of their working lives. ‘Sink or swim’ floated above me in the water as I sank to the bottom.

Radio had me at ‘hello’. At its best it is full of bright, creative people, with a kind of vivacious positive energy rippling through the building. To be any good ‘on air’ you had to have a quick mind, a quick wit and a sense of humour.

It was a complete change from everything I knew. I had spent the last twenty years using my brain to defend people, some of whom were flat out evil. I loved it but it was a dark place to spend much time in and it took a toll on me. If I was to succeed in radio I would have to use all of that, the same skill with words, my quick mind, my sense of humour but in a positive, happy and creative place. And it was hard. It would take me years before I finally broke through and became good enough at least that Mac wouldn’t have to roll over and put a pillow over her head.

I didn’t head down to SFU that fall. Mac was anxious and worried about me but as she has always done she supported me when I said, “I think I’d like to see what I can make of radio.” She was teaching me what being a friend was.

It would not be easy and if  I was to have any chance whatsoever I would have to dance as fast as I can.

I remember that first year I was paid $600 a month, a pittance at the time. It was 1989. I was competing for opportunity against young, ambitious people fully trained at BCIT or other broadcasting programs. But I had a secret weapon. Had I been a farm animal (oh boy, here we go) I would have been a Belgian plow horse. I have always worked harder than most people around me and I came to understand over time that it separated me from most of the competition. I simply worked harder and longer than they did. Six hundred dollars a month aside, I would typically work ten, twelve, fourteen hour days and I did that for years. I have watched with pride as all four of our children have shown the same willingness to work hard, and harder than others. As it served me well in radio, so too will it help them.

Jon was hilarious, one of those friends who could make me laugh so easily and we got up to some funny stuff. One day Eric Thorsen arrived at the station. Eric was a legendary news voice from CFRB in Toronto, one of those news anchors whose voice was a generational signature for decades of listeners back east. When he arrived in Kelowna he was older and it turned out quite sick but he was hired as our News Director. Gruff, bad tempered, a smoke hanging from the corner of his mouth, Eric had the Voice of God on-air and he made up the third member of our morning show crew.

One day Jon asked Eric what he wanted from McDonald’s for breakfast.

“Hey Eric, McDonald’s delivers now. We want to get you some breakfast for your birthday.”

“God damn McDonald’s doesn’t deliver!” came his sharp reply.

“Sure it does Eric, what do you want?” Jon would not be deterred.

With Eric’s order in hand we set our plan in motion. The next morning a young woman arrived at the front door of the station with McDonald’s breakfast in hand. It was raining out and I remember she was wearing a knee length rain coat.  It was 5:58am and Eric was about to go on-air with the 6am news package. I showed the young woman into the newsroom and pulled out Eric’s breakfast order. As he began, she took off her coat.

“Good Morning it is 6 o’clock, my name is Eric Thorsen.”

She was naked. Completely naked. We had hired her as Eric’s ‘birthday present’ and were collapsing in laughter as we watched this beautiful, naked young woman do everything she could to distract the legendary broadcaster. We were in our studio looking through soundproof glass to the newsroom as she rubbed her body all over him;

Eric was impeccable, not wavering once, not stumbling on any words, not once. It was the best and she was a great sport, almost competitively trying to get Eric off his game. Eric signed off on the newscast.

“It’s 6:10, ten minutes after six, five degrees in downtown Kelowna and you’re up to date. I’m Eric Thorsen.”

And he burst into laughter. This radio thing was proving to be a good time. It seemed as though something new was happening every day.

Ratings came out every six months at that time and I anxiously awaited our results. They are determinative and often lead to abrupt layoffs so I had more than a passing interest. And listeners could add in ‘diary comments’ when they sent their survey results back in.

‘PEYTON IS THE WORST THING EVER IN KELOWNA RADIO. HE MUST GO!’

Ouch! That hurt and the worst part was, whoever he was, the listener was right. I was terrible. To this day I don’t know why I wasn’t fired. It didn’t help my cause that I had replaced Bob Harrison, a giant presence of a man, a former BC Lions lineman and a man with a great deep radio voice and sports cred. And I was being sharply judged inside the radio station as well. I can remember one day as I stumbled my way through yet another newscast being acutely aware of a person staring at me from maybe five feet away. It was the station Sales Manager, fixed stare, hands on his hips. I would learn later that after my newscast he marched down to the General Manager’s office and said, “Peyton is the worst. Either he goes, or I do.”

He was gone that afternoon. Someone was watching out for me. Quite quickly I moved up in the ranks, my salary increased somewhat and I became the News Director. It seemed like a good gig and right in my Communicator wheelhouse.

One day Nick Frost, my boss and the station owner, called me into his office. He knew of course that I had been a defence lawyer and told me he needed my help. Then he introduced me to ‘Fred Stanton’. Discretion recommends, as you will soon understand, that I not use his real name.  I turned to greet the man; he was tall and severe in appearance but he seemed friendly enough.

“Fred’s joining us and I want him to work in your newsroom.”

This was unusual to say the least. I had no idea of this man’s qualifications or resume nor what role he could fill in the newsroom but this wasn’t a request, it was an instruction so away we went. My staff were as confused as I was and privately asked me who the guy was and about his background in radio. I had nothing. A day later I asked Nick for more information.

“Well look I’ll tell you but I think you need to keep his story to yourself. I know you can handle ‘Fred’ but I’m not sure we want the rest of the staff knowing about him.”. I was all ears.

“Fred is a federal parolee. I have hired him on a parole work program which helps reintroduce these men to society.” I knew that Fred must have done something serious. Prisoners are sent to federal penitentiary for sentences of at least two years and you don’t serve two years or more for stealing candy.

“Well what did he do?”.

“He killed his wife.” he replied with a deadpan expression, as though he was telling me it was a nice day outside, “Shot her dead with a shotgun. Apparently he found her in bed with another man. Shot him dead as well.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

“Has a bit of a temper, does he?” I asked gamely, mustering understatement to the conversation.

“Well I think you’ll be fine if you don’t sleep with his next wife.”

My boss Nick Frost was not given to being funny but that cracked me up. And that was that. I was charged with babysitting a violent man who had a bad temper. This oughta be good. In fact before he blew a tire, Fred had built a fine career in radio in Saskatoon, SK.  He was ‘the news voice of the Prairies’. He had a magnificent news read and I gave him the plum newscasts. On the face of it he was a quiet man, not given to displays of temper but he did have a kind of solemn, brooding presence in the newsroom and kept to himself which was confusing to my young staff. I never did tell them about Fred. They would eventually find out about their newsroom colleague a few months down the road when he once again became a headline story on the CBC National news.

Things were mostly uneventful for a few months. Until they weren’t. I was on the ‘Jon Michael’s Morning Show’ so I arrived at the station very early each morning. One winter morning I arrived as usual and began my news prep. When Jon arrived, about a half hour before our show opened at 6am, he came into my room.

“What have you done with the mics Tony?” he laughed, assuming I was playing a practical joke on him.

“What mics?” I asked, bemused by the question.

“Cut it out. I’m on-air in a few minutes!” his reply sharper now.

I really didn’t know but a quick search of the studios revealed that all of the Sennheiser mics were gone and were nowhere to be found. Jon had gone out for a smoke and when he came back in he said,

“Hey who took the station news vehicle?”.

I didn’t know the answer to that question either. Jon went to the bathroom and a few moments later shouted out,

“Found it. Wait a minute. I’ve found all of them.”.

He had tried to flush the toilet and when the lever wouldn’t depress Jon had opened the cistern to see what the problem was. The lever wouldn’t depress because someone had submerged every single station mic in the cistern, all six of them. They were ruined and what’s more it was nearly 6am.  I hurtled down the road to another radio station, knocked on their door, told them our sorry story and they gave us a mic to do our show. Of course the question remained. What the heck had happened?

The answer came on the midday CBC National news. There was ‘Fred’ in handcuffs being escorted from the Falkland RCMP station for a court appearance back in Kelowna. Turns out Fred was the bad guy. He’d had enough of life in Kelowna and decided to find his way back to jail. Ruining $10,000 worth of mics and stealing a company car will do that for a federal parolee. Why Falkland you ask? It’s really in the middle of nowhere between Vernon and Kamloops. Fact is Fred had simply run out of gas and actually drove right up to the RCMP detachment in Falkland. I always smile when I drive past the detachment building in that little town, imagining the reaction of the young constable on the desk the day Fred the Killer, walked in and announced himself.

The next time I saw Fred he was once again on the national news but this time as the subject of a CBC documentary, ‘Federal Inmates Return to Work.” Fred was heading up a broadcasting program at the federal penitentiary in Prince Albert, SK.

I marked the whole thing up to experience. Human beings are fantastic creatures. It’s little wonder people write stories about them. For me, it was just another reason to fall in love with radio. Everyday was new, everyday had some sort of spontaneous moment. For a guy like me it was a good fit. I felt lucky to be a part of it all.

In 2019 I retired from radio. I had a great run, part of a very popular morning show ‘David, Kelly and Tony’ and then ‘K Mornings with David and Tony‘. I had been blessed to work with my great friend David Larsen, a man who came into my life twenty five years earlier and changed it forever. I’ll be forever grateful to David.

I know that this may be read years from now by Bailey, Koby, Freddy or Rowe or Clementine or other grandchildren who may come along or perhaps their children, and radio will seem to them about as old fashioned as the phonograph was to me in my childhood. Technology, the machines, the software and apps which have allowed each generation to communicate with one another and with ever increasing efficiency will always change, not the least reason for that being the intentional obsolescence built into the ‘next great breakthrough’, so essential to market capitalism. And terrestrial radio has indeed seen its best days. But one part of radio, the heart of radio will never get old and it is why it did achieve incredible success in its day.

Radio understands that the most compelling medium for us all is the sound of the human voice. Since recorded history, back to the cave hieroglyphics of ancient times depicting people around a fire, human beings have gathered to share, eat and tell stories. Over millennia guttural primal sounds became meaningful, communicating happiness and anger, laughter and arousal, the spoken word evolving into what we know today. And through it all we never stopped gathering and sharing our stories. In the middle centuries story tellers would travel from town to town telling tales to the illiterate. Technology notwithstanding, the spoken word has always been at the heart of communication between humans. The technology of radio aged, as does all technology but the compelling sound of the human voice has not aged a day.

I have no idea what extraordinary dimensions of communication the future holds but I know with certainty the sound of the human voice will never get old.  We are born to it, perhaps even before birth we are made aware of comforting tones and the sound of song from our mothers. We don’t know what it is, all we know is how much we like it, how soothing it is to our spirits. Babies have been settled before bed for centuries with bed time stories, read in gentle and loving tones. As we get older we learn skill with words through grammar and vocabulary and tone of voice.

We learn the efficiency of tone, often as not in our homes as we first hear gentle voices, laughing voices, and then inevitably as we get older and perhaps not quite as obedient as our parents would have us be, we hear voices raised in anger or instruction. The short point is that the human voice is the most powerful, impactful ‘communication technology’ you have and you don’t need to buy it in a store, you came equipped with it.

Radio succeeded because the sound of the human voice was at its heart. When I finally figured that out was when I finally became good on the radio. I could ‘feel’ listeners respond to something I said, I could ‘feel’ them laugh, or cry or shout back at me.  I could get people to respond with emotion to a child’s story, or donate to the Food Bank, or the Kelowna General Hospital Foundation. It is what radio does better than any other medium I know because it understands a basic truth about us all: The best way to describe the human story and human emotions is with the human voice. The human voice is emotive; it can bring words to life in a way that the typed word can never do.  Perhaps a future technology may come up with a better way but I’m afraid I won’t be here to see it. But if I was, I’d embrace the new technology and use my voice to say so.

Next week: ‘Alpha’ A Love Story