That Wasn’t the Plan. Reg Sherren
be in that lounge) when a gentleman came in with his wife. I was sitting at the bar with empty seats on either side of me. I saw he was looking around and the place was full, so I said, “Would you like me to move over so you can sit together?” He appreciated the gesture and we struck up a conversation.
Turned out he was a journalist with the Montreal Star. I told him I was from Newfoundland and Labrador, and he told me he had travelled across Newfoundland covering the last passenger train. It was called the Newfie Bullet, which was kind of an ironic joke: the Bullet was being discontinued because it was too slow. I told him the joke about the fellow who decided to commit suicide by lying down on the tracks but died of starvation waiting for the train to show up. He laughed and laughed. I also told him I had a little radio gig at our local station. He said, “Well then, you should come to the Press Club with us!” We grabbed a cab over to the Sheraton Mount Royal Hotel on Peel Street.
The Press Club was around the back, in the basement of the hotel. I remember the heavy wood panelling and all these serious-looking people in suits, and thinking, “I’m way out of my depth here.” In one corner I saw Peter Kent, who just the year before had become the main anchor of The National on CBC Television. I had watched him introduce the stories about the air disaster in Tenerife. At that moment I didn’t have enough nerve to introduce myself, but I remember thinking, “That fellow is a big deal.” Did it leave an impression? Absolutely. So when I got back to Labrador and learned about a new college radio and television broadcasting program opening in North Bay, Ontario, I decided to check it out.
Canadore College had state-of-the-art equipment and, as part of the program, students operated a radio station and even broadcasted a nightly TV newscast on cable. It was a perfect fit, but I was honestly scared to death at the prospect. Wabush was familiar and comfortable. I could go off on adventures, but I could always come home. Somehow, I knew making this change would change everything—forever.
As things turned out, the decision was made for me. I didn’t leave home, home left me. My family, the only family I knew, was going up in flames. Divorce was in the air for my parents, and change seemed inevitable.
But because I was from outside Ontario, getting into Canadore College was not going to be easy. I had to write several essays and complete manual dexterity tests. I guess I didn’t put any square pegs into round holes, though, because I landed one of the four available first-year positions for non-Ontario residents.
Then something happened that has stayed with me ever since. Two weeks before I was to leave for school, I was walking behind the Sir Wilfred Grenfell Hotel in Wabush when I saw a wallet lying on the ground outside the entrance to the hotel’s pub. Inside it was one piece of ID from the University of Toronto and $800 in cash.
I didn’t recognize the face on the card, so I thought, “He must be staying at the hotel.” I checked at the front desk and sure enough, he was. I went upstairs and knocked on his door. He proved to be an engineering student working for the summer at the mine. He couldn’t thank me enough and wanted to give me a reward. “No thanks,” I said. “It’s your wallet and I’m just glad I could get it back to you.”
Two weeks later, I was on a train out of Montreal bound for North Bay, Ontario. Everything I owned was in half a dozen cardboard boxes in baggage. I was staring out the window—miles away really, worrying about the future—when a fellow tapped me on the arm and said, “Are you Reg Sherren, by any chance?”
I said yes, wondering what sort of trouble was headed my way now, when he said, “I just found your wallet in the bathroom and thought you might want it back.” I had $2,000 in cash and even more in traveller’s cheques in that wallet, as well as all my ID and a credit card. I did not even know I had lost it. It must have fallen out from the motion of the train while I was fumbling around in the confined space of the washroom.
If you believe in such things, good karma found me that day and paid me back. It was a lesson I have never forgotten. It has been said many ways: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” or “What goes around, comes around,” or “Kindness begets kindness.” They are all true.
Getting Educated
For two years, I trained at Canadore College, which was nestled on top of a hill amid silver birch trees just outside North Bay. It was a fabulous place to learn. I worked as a DJ at the college’s radio station, participated in the nightly newscast and did some semi-professional acting on the side (that dream was still alive). During school breaks I managed to get gigs as an announcer/operator back home at CBNLT, broadcasting on television across Western Labrador.
But my first work placement had more to do with selling than broadcasting. It was down in Toronto, where I apprenticed at a national advertising agency. It was all demographics and data spit out by a cool, brand-new tool in radio advertising, something called a “computer program.” It was fascinating that a machine into which you typed simple facts and figures could then analyze the ratings in the ten largest radio markets in the country. In mere moments, it would do its magic and spit out the most cost-effective way to reach between one and two million eighteen-year-olds across Canada. It was the very beginning of a new form of technology that would change the world forever. But to me, it was about selling advertising, not making radio. I was fascinated by it and perhaps a little afraid of it, but I did know one thing: it wasn’t for me.
When I returned to North Bay some months later, I was close to broke. College was ending and my future was looking rather hopeless. Then I heard they were looking for a television news anchor in Thunder Bay, Ontario. I hadn’t done any television in months, and at twenty-two, I was pretty sure this job possibility was a long shot at best.
But I went into the studio, wrote up a newscast, set up a camera in front of the old news desk and played one of the most important acting roles of my young life, that of a television news anchor. I fired the tape off. Three days later I got a call telling me I had landed the role—I mean the position—of main television news anchor at CKPR-TV. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I was still almost broke and a long way from Thunder Bay. I was even farther from Labrador, and apparently heading west.
That same morning a good college buddy of mine, who for various reasons was unable to finish the course, dropped by to see if I’d gotten the job. I told him I was now a television news anchor—if I could figure out how to get to Thunder Bay. “Do you have any money?” he asked. “I have a hundred and fifty bucks to my name,” I replied. “Give it to me,” said Bob, and I did. Later that evening he returned with almost $400. How he had accomplished this feat I was afraid to ask. “Go, man, and do your thing. You’re going to make it,” he said. Bob had a lot more faith in me than I did. He went on to a career in computers and raised a fine family. I have never forgotten his support and kindness. It was that good karma again.
A Full-Time Professional
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.
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