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Beyond the Broadcast with Canadian Icon Ron Maclean · Imagine The Good

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Imagine the Good Podcast.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_03: Have you ever watched something or heard an idea that makes you want to tell everyone?
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_03: Because it ignites hope and inspiration for their beauty and goodness, and you want to expand it in the world?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's the catalyst for this podcast.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_03: Having conversations with inspiring people, elevating goodness, and reimagining what we can be together.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Robin Maher, and I'm here with my husband and co-host, Jason Dorland.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_03: Join us as we explore ideas, stories, and conversations that invite us to live with greater purpose, compassion, courage, and connection.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_03: Today, we're joined by someone who is living that invitation.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_03: And we'll explore what their story might mean for the way we live, work, and relate to one another.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_03: Let's get started.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Imagine the Good.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Robin Maher.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm Jason Dorland.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_03: We are absolutely delighted and so grateful to be sitting here with Ron McLean.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: And Jason's going to say a bit more about Ron's exceptional career.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and I'm going to read this just so I don't miss anything.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: But uh today we are honored, and I don't use that word lightly, to welcome a Canadian icon to our podcast, Imagine the Good.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: For decades, Ron McLean has been one of the defining voices of Canadian sport.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: As the longtime host of Hockey Night in Canada and Hometown Hockey, and at countless Olympic Games and World Championships, he has helped tell the stories of sport, the people who participate and the communities who gather around it.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: He's an award-winning broadcaster, a trusted storyteller, and someone who has spent a lifetime close to the moments where sport becomes more than a score, where it becomes a memory, identity, belonging, heartbreak, joy, and sometimes even healing.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's that piece that we want to explore with Ron today.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: Not just what sport is, but what sport can still become.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: Beyond entertainment, how can it help us create what's possible culturally, socially, personally, and collectively?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: Ron, welcome to Imagine the Good.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, Robert.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: That can't be me, you two are talking about, but I really, I really sincerely appreciate it.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll just tell the viewer right off the get-go.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh much of my research, especially when doing an Olympics, but really in all the theater sport, has to do with Jason, books he's written, topics about coaching, about his time at Ridley College in southern Ontario where I live.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, Robin's experiences at the Olympics, uh certainly the Commonwealth Games in 1994 at Victoria, BC was a really defining experience for me, and we can get into that a little bit later on.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: But you're both uh woven into this crazy lucky break that I caught to share the story of sport in the country.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: And and we talked before that we wanted to, as much as this is about your doing and all of the incredible things you've done through your career, we wanted to tell each tell a story that perhaps shines a light more on your being, who who Ron McLean is.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: So did you want to go first?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_03: Well, one of my last major uh events, the World Championships in 99 in Sevilla, I um didn't have the race that I aspired to.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_03: I was my lungs were burning afterwards, feeling full of uh disappointment, trying to make sense of what happened there.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things that comes up the most is as athletes, you're given so much and you're the recipient of so much support.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: So when things really come together, it feels like a gift you can give back to all the people that have supported you.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_03: And so, with that disappointment and making sense of my race, I'm greeted with Ron in the press area with these warm, kind eyes and just caring presents, and it felt like soul bomb.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_03: And that still stays with me because uh for me, the people and I I go back to, I often tell the story of my Uncle Terry, who lived in Ontario and would come to Nova Scotia for summer visits.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_03: He didn't spend a ton of time with us, but you just felt good about who you were and comfortable in your skin in his presence because of the kindness and caring that he emanated.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_03: And you exude those qualities and elevate the athletes that you interview and the people you interview.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: You celebrate them, you express compassion, and you bring nuance to the conversation that you have in a way that is truly exceptional.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_03: So I I just want to start with that because it so touched me and it's so much of what I think we as an audience appreciate about how you you frame the experiences and bring out uh the experience from the participants as well as uh having a special position to observe the culture and what's happening in the hockey and in the Olympics and other sports.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think to steal from a coaching expression, uh it's athlete-centric.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: So it isn't about getting the story, it's about it's about the person in front of him as well.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: My story is um 2010, summer of 2010, and Chariots and Horses is my first book is just about to come out.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: You're at a golf tournament in Victoria, Ron, and you're staying at The Empress, and one of the one of the guys who worked who was in charge of marketing for the book, uh, who published my book?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: Heritage.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: Heritage House sends me a text and says, Ron McLean's staying at The Empress.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna go drop off uh, you know, sort of a printed copy of the book at the at the front desk.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: And he did, left a note for you, and I think a few days later, boom, he got an email back with with uh the liner that was on the cover of the book.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, that's just it's uh I just you know when he sent me the note, oh Ron McLean, blah blah blah, I said, yeah, good luck with that.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: And um and to my surprise and and great delight, uh your your piece was the liner of the cover.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I just think it says a lot about you, that you would take the time to read that book, provide a liner from an athlete you'd never met.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: And uh yeah, I just anyway, I've never forgotten that.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Jason, you you and Robin both know that achievement is the learning, it's not climbing.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I I go back to my childhood, I was an only child, so I think that accounts a lot for when you mentioned Robin, you have a team around you, and when you have a poor result, you feel like you've disappointed the team, never mind the province, the country, and all these other weights we throw on ourselves.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: But I I saw my mom sit at our kitchen table in Red Deer, Alberta, and I was shocked at how people opened up to mom.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Her name was Lila.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: They're both Nova Scotians.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: My parents are Cape Bretoners.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: Mom is from Iona, and my dad is from Sydney Mines, outside Sydney.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so there's a little bit of the storytelling kind of uh DNA from Cape Breton.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but also that uh mom had a great, you know, compassionate, empathetic way about her.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh she'd get hot at me because I was the only child I was probably doted upon, and they had pretty high expectations.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: And when I would let her down during the day, she would really let me have it.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Tough love.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then she'd come and sit on the end of the bed at night and say, Hey Ronnie, I'm sorry I led India today.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: That that really wasn't about what you did.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: That was about what was going on with your dad and me to try and keep the two jobs and that's and everything in order.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just at my wit's end and I took it out on you.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so don't ever forget that.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I and from that moment on, uh first of all, apology became, you know, not a sign of weakness.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I really liked that about you know, growing up that way.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: And and I I you know, I can remember Robin being at uh the World Championships in Sweden in Gothenburg would have been 05.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I just congratulated uh a runner on a fifth place finish, and the producer got after me.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Why would you commend them on a fifth place?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Are you serious?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like fifth place in the 1500 in the world?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh is just you know, everybody runs.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: And if if you could be top five in a thing that everybody does, sure, that's commendable.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that was people would sometimes criticize you for being uh soft on performance, but I and God, Jason, that's you know, the whole uh crushing experience you had, sixth in the world uh at Seoul in '88 and uh you know, Canada checks.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now you've imagined all the things that you imagined and were torn apart by for several years.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: I saw that way too often.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: I I I will admit my my first foray into loving sport was Mark Spitz's five gold medals at the Pan American Games in 1967 at Winnipeg.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Thought, wow, you know, he had the you know the five medals on his chest.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it it was me as a child, seven years old, being impressed with You Could Be King.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I still uh have always felt a little bit worse for the performer that hasn't achieved their goal than I have felt good for the Mark Spitzes.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's a big space, there's a lot of participants, and so uh exceptional performance is beautiful to witness and watch, and we should celebrate that.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_03: And yet, if it's only for the the very top, we're missing a lot of opportunity and richness and how we hold that space.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember Lynn Williams having the best race of her life in Seoul, finishing fifths and and getting questions, and she's thinking, I just had the most awesome experience of my life, and yet, because it wasn't on the podium, it it didn't get recognized in the same vein that you're speaking of.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I remember Leah Pell's uh at Atlanta, you know, that fourth place in the 15 was uh for me all world.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: It was and it had a very tough I don't know, was it the heats or the semi, um, but she kind of scrambled her way into the final and then that great race, you know.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: And in your time, you know, the the Leah yourself, Angela Chalmers, obviously, Kevin Sullivan over on the guy side, Graham Wood.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, these were these were unbelievable performers.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Unbelievable.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I saw it.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: I just saw how difficult it is to wind your way through a wind, your way through a pack and to survive.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, amazing.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_03: It it's that that balance of results versus process.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_03: And even my my first Olympic trials, I finished fourth, didn't go to uh Seoul and had blinders on and and thought, well, I'm I'm so focused.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: If I want to explore my potential, if it's only about how I achieve at the end of a result, there's a lot of living miss.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_03: So how do I want to take this ride?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_03: And if there's not intrinsic value in how we show up and engage, uh there's a lot of life missed in that opportunity.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_03: And and so the the work that uh we do with the mental health program, you know, identity and relationships are cornerstones of issues that come into the mental health work that we do.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_03: Who am I independent of this pursuit of sport?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_03: And when relationships fall apart, it's crushing for people.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_03: So um what does it mean for us to go for it in terms of exploring our potential, whether it's in sport or any position or pursuit that we have?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: And so um the framing of that relative to all the children that are watching and all the people that want to actualize their potential, what is the story we're telling one another about what matters?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's that's a big thing.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh because people will always I'm reading Margaret Atwood's uh biography.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's her memoir.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's called Book of Lives, right?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: 600 pages of only about 150 in.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but she talks uh a little bit about uh people will say something about you for your own good.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm telling you this for your own good, but of course they're actually doing it for their own good.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: And he said I had to really come to grips with that early on, and I had to also realize that uh even although my writer and myself are probably separate beings, I can never think about the process of writing because if I'm outside looking at, you know, I'll freeze.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: And uh kind of what you were just saying there, Robin.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, m my you know, look, I had severe exam, wicked panic attacks from the time I was 18 to the time I was 35.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: And back then it would have been uh 1988, sorry, 1978 on.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody talked about such a thing, and I was the only one in the world that ever experienced fighter fright while going on stage.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that was a little bit of you know uh an insecurity about how I was being perceived and taking the stories out there in their head and seeing my spell through their eyes, it's all wrong.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and the only way to get out of it for me was to suddenly well, why am I here?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm here to make someone's day.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: My whole mission choosing the career I chose was to make someone's day.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: I thought if I can't be a doctor, I just didn't have the you know I felt the wherewithal to become a doctor.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to be a teacher and then fell into broadcast.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it was to make someone's day.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: That that seemed like uh, as I said, mom at the kitchen table, my dad, my dad worked for the RCMP after an Air Force career.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: My dad was a civilian member of the RCNP, he was a dispatcher.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: So when there would be a severe accident, it was a Mountie once came to me and said, Your dad was on the night that we had a two-car crash in Gillam, Alberta, and six were killed instantly, and nine were critically injured.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I was the first RCNP officer on the scene, and I was the first person.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I called your dad, who organized for the ambulances and the orange air enables and the backup policing.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and he said he was so good in that situation.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: I tried to imagine my dad kind of being trioch for such an event.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't seem like that guy home.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: It looked like mom ran things.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: But he had that.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I I did, you know, I'll I'll just quickly summarize one other funny story about this when I think of mom and dad.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: When I got the job at hockey, it was 1984.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: I was auditioning to be post to the Calgary Flames, and they put me through a battery of tests.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Me and eight other men were applying for the job as post of Calgary.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: And my little section was to do some hockey highlights, to interview Jim Poplinski, who was a current member of the Calgary Flames team, to interview the play-by-play announcer, a legend named Weyland.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I had to do an opening to a broadcast.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then one of the things they said, we're gonna ask you a question.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: One question, Ron, and you'll have two minutes to give us the answer.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: But the key to the deal is you have to stop at exactly two minutes.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Television happens on time counts.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm thinking, I'm wondering, what's the question gonna be?
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I've got to go two minutes.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the question was, tell us about yourself.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: I say, oh gosh.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, do I present that I'm confident and uh, you know, know it all?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Do I present humble pie?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just uh A-seed from small town Alberta.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: What what do I do to impress this person?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: And somehow, divine intervention uh it came to me, and I'll just mention what I think I am is a reflection of mom and dad, and I'll tell you for a few seconds about mom and then a few seconds about dad, and somehow I stopped at two minutes.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so that influence, I was lucky.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Not everybody has that connection.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I just think the years of moving around as a military brat, um seeing, you know, uh seeing my mom and dad, you know, whatever money they had for hockey gear, they found a way to get it together.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, that was an easy example of how to do something for a person.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: I I uh I very much relate to your story, and I think it's beautiful when we can see sometimes it takes a bit of of life experience to appreciate the fullness of the gifts that our parents give.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: And uh the last thing I said to my dad who uh adored uh sport, he saw it.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_03: I remember at 12 years, I got a phone, I was at my nana's house, got a phone call from my dad, and I'd been invited to go try out for the provincial Legion team.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_03: It was like a miniature Canada Games for track.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_03: And uh dad was so excited because he saw sport as an opportunity for um lower socioeconomic kids to um to have opportunities that weren't available.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: And he did everything he could to give us experiences and opportunities and saw sport as that way.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: But if you were off course, uh directness was his manner of delivery.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: But all they asked of us was to do our best to be kind and fair and appreciate uh the opportunity, and they wanted us to be happy.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_03: I looked out over over Cape Breton Island growing up in the small town of Mulgrave before I moved to the to the West Coast, but uh appreciated the roots and not everybody starting to travel across the country through sport, visiting different provinces and then extending that out to other countries.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: It was like, oh, not everybody lives and thinks the way I do in this small Catholic town.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: And so it invited an expansion of there's more than one right way to live.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_03: And yet I also within that small Catholic town appreciated the values of compassion and and giving and community.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: You look out for one another.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so the last thing I said to my dad when on on his deathbed was, thank you for being so generous.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so when I I I listened to some interviews that you had talking about your mom and her humility and down to earth, and I just felt such uh some parallels with my own parents in terms of even your story about um her false teeth.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um when when I was at the Pan Am Juniors my first time representing Canada, my parents came down to the Bahamas to watch this the race, and it was um neck and neck between myself and the American Suzy Favor.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: And um I over I took the lead in the last bit, but I overstrided about 10 meters before the race, and so I did a face plant and then crawled across the finish line.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: But my parents were so excited and shouting that my dad's front plate popped out of his mouth and he grabbed his teeth, and they were killing themselves laughing.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_03: And I crawled over the finish line and ended up finishing second.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: But um, anyhow, just uh the the story that you share about your mom's uh sense of humor and just how down to earth she was.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um year's Eve, we everybody be televated off as the expression of the time, dressed well, and uh they would be having their champagne, and mom would go upstairs and she'd come back down in a baseball sweater and a cap sideways and her denture pushed out.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, she hated she hated pretense.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's just this is all well and good, but I can't take it anymore.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one of the things she I don't know if you've heard this story, Robin.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: I told it to Perdita Felicianne because the co-uh hosted with Perdita, who is our world champion hurdler, and had a terrible, you know, misfortune.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I call it a terrible misfortune.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: She was the favorite at the uh 2004 Olympics in Athens.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll never forget Mark McCoy coming by where I was in the mix zone prior to the race.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, You know, Ron, she's got a tailwind.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I just fear when you're the favorite and you have a tailwind, you know, chances are she'll be on the first hurdle.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: He was so right.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um anyway, Perdita fell and uh her world crashed, as she said in her book, I had an axe suddenly drawn between everything before and everything after.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's gone.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Although to this day, like even while we did the Olympics and Lindsay Vaughn crashed, and she was great on that talking about it, but uh to a point.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: She doesn't want to revisit 04 too often.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's still like a DTSD situation.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I was grateful to learn from her, you know, how how that kind of was trauma in her life, how she has uh adjusted in her life and gone forward in her life.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: But uh that that whole thing of mom always sort of breaking the tension of uh what seems like a serious occasion was again kind of built into me and luckily.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: Ron, at this point uh in your career, and it's been a long one and a fruitful one, you know, when you hear introductions like this, and I'm sure you've heard many before, um I think to the you know, maybe to the uh to the general public who listens to that, they would assume it's the accolades, it's the accomplishments that sport has given you.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: I'm wondering if there's something else that you want to share in terms of what sport has provided you personally through.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's funny, Jason.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Whenever Wayne Gretzky was And he has interviewed.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to be with Wayne here shortly doing an event for Scott Oak at uh Winnipeg Recovery Center to honor his son, Bruce, who died of addiction.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: And he's built two recovery centers, one for men first, and now the new one for women and children is opening.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's incredible how he's turned that uh disaster into a paradise.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so Wayne's coming to support, and Wayne will always say, I owe everything I have to hockey.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, Wayne, you don't owe everything to hockey.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, we're so lucky, you know, hockey had you, uh, period.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: But it's always a mix of both.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then for me, um you know, I I I go back to that um Mark Spitz swimming in '67 and the show wide world of sports.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that really appealed to me because I was a military kid.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: We were moving around discovering a huge problem, you know, that there's more than what went on in one little town.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that that learning was great.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I I just think uh my story seems like so hard to believe in my own mind.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and not because of the accolades or the tenure or the connection to big events, which is just a blessing, right?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you you become kind of famous because you were the one holding the microphone at the Olympics.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but I uh it's Lincoln log cabin kind of story, um, which is really what I cherish.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: Spitz was the king, and I admired that.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the woman who ran the uh Commonwealth was the queen, was a woman.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there were all these little sort of lessons on the side.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: I remember there was a song by Lorde.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: She's a New Zealand singer, it was a number one song in 2012.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh see if I can drag this up for you.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and she wrote a song called We Could Be Royals.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's essentially uh an idea, you know, you could be a king or a queen, or you could be famous.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: But this is a photo of George Brett.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: George Brett was a baseball player for the Kansas City Royals, a world champion.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: Notice there's baseballs.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: He's signing baseball.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Millions and millions of baseballs.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: And Lorde, who knew nothing about Major League Baseball living in New Zealand, she saw that guy.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: She thought, that's kind of like for me, Mark Spitz with the five gold medals.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: She saw him signing all these, and she thought, wow, I could be, you know, a royal.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's her play on the name of that Kansas City baseball team, Royals.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, is is kind of how I see everyone.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I live in a neighborhood here with uh Donovan Bailey's about a block away that way.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Cody Golibuff won bronze in Pyongchang and hockey, he's about another block this way.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Larry Kane, who won gold and silver in canoe, he's right there.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Anita Anand, who's kind of almost the second in command to the Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, she's over here.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Alan Thompson, a great paddler, is over here.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Just all these, and they're all the same.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: They're kind of pinch me folks who uh, you know, I mean, Donovan just he knew what he wanted.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know that.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: He came to the uh sport late.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but uh when you go back to his uh initial life in Jamaica, uh he he was just full of questions.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: He he he maintained that curiosity to this day.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: He has that curiosity.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: When I did the Paris Olympics with him, I couldn't believe how he had commanded all the uh hundred meter runners in our country.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it wasn't like he showed up and uh presented his you know medals and uh his photos with stars.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: He he did the work, and I just uh I think because he appreciated that he was given an opportunity.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: We all kind of look at it that way, and I as we say I myself daily.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think Donovan posted maybe within a week or two ago uh the anniversary of Atlanta, and and you know, yeah, I just had to see that post, and I was in front of the in front of that little television at the cottage, and we were all cheering, and the nephews and nieces had made Go Canada banners and you know, as uh was it Don Whitman who was it who said Yeah, for sure.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great day to be a Canadian.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta love Saturdays if you're a Canadian.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: And you gotta love Saturday nights in Georgia.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: There you go.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: What a timestamp that was.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I I remember seeing him, and Robin, burst onto the scene the year before at Gothenburg.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: Again, Bruni finished second, and Donovan won the hundred in the world championships.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I I will say that one two-year window, he he's as great an athlete ever.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Wayne Gretzky, you name them.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um Donovan was special.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's again an incredibly difficult crown to achieve because of the fact that everybody runs.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, what a story he was.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and I enjoyed, you know, just we watched degrass and the team win the relay there in Paris, and that was almost to the day, 21 years uh before Atlanta.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but yet uh we say my my highlight, Leah Pell's the fourth in the 1500, and uh Marianne Limpert, who was from Fredericton, New Brunswick, and she finished second in her event, the 200 IM.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that Jason's the most excited I've ever been in sport.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's on the pool deck, which so the finish of a swimming 50 is so different than the finish of a 100 meters, let's say, or even a 3,000 meters.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, people are moving when when a when a 5k or a 10k happens at the Olympics, you're gobsmacked at how fast they're going.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you've got to be kidding me, they're gonna sustain that for 1,000 meters.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but swimming's not like that.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Swimming is everybody's tying up and it's uh kind of really slow uh to the naked eye.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's like sailing.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: I did a lot of sailing, and when we raced a boat, we'd be so excited we're going nine knots, which is nothing.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that's how swimming is, and and Marianne's performance, you know.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of grew to like her Robin at Commonwealth in Victoria.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: She was uh wearing a black cap while all the other Canadian swimmers had white rubber caps.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, Oh, she's a pistol.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: I hope she does well.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: She did.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: Nice.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, in terms of uh you know, just wanting to explore the sport as its as its potential and and where it goes, uh you know, I think uh as we see it now, or as you see it now, do you feel that sport is influenced by culture or does culture?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yes.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I mean as an example, you know, like um we were talking, I think before we started the podcast, uh, but one of my favorite books is Recollections of My Non-Existence by Rebecca Solnit.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: And in it, she talks about conversation.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: And this is, you know, why you're doing this series.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh through the power of conversation, because at its best, conversation is the building of an idea.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's the developing of an idea.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: At its worst, it's a battle for territory.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, sport is kind of like that.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: At its best, it is the building of an ideal.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, at its worst, it is this battle for territory.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it can be corrupted by anything from steroids to money to own the podiums, uh, you know, or whatever else might be dedicated solely to the purpose of victory versus honor versus, you know, uh sport has to be virtuous.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, what you the PWHL is an example, is uh, you know, you go to that building right now, it's just a shining example of culture.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's given us this new glimpse into how a hockey game can be conducted and how a crowd can experience a hockey game.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing wrong with the uh, you know, scene in Raleigh when the Carolina Hurricanes won this year.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: I sincerely came away thinking they deserve a stand up, those fans who are uh and it's funny because you know, being from Canada, I might think of the South as uh I don't know what I'm gonna think of, and I want to be careful, but uh it's a it's a tech sector.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: So whenever I was in the uh bar or a restaurant, you know, and having a conversation with the locals in Raleigh, North Carolina, it's like, oh my god, you know, they're speaking way about my uh big range here.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're uh ITI, all these things are second nature to them, and that's uh really wise.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think to myself, but for their hobby, they go see the hockey game.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of fun.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's our little thing.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm glad that within their discovery they enjoyed hockey.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: Do you feel that in those moments we put um pressure?
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, not just the pressure, but would do we do we would the exp would the experience have been the same for those individuals if their team hadn't won?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like i is it is it you can celebrate with the win?
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: No, you have to win, right?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: Jason and I hate that.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'll give you an example.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: I hope he won't get mad at me, but Eric Lindross I admire greatly because Eric Lindros fought for players' rights.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: He did it at the junior level when he refused to report to Sault Ste.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Marie because it was too far from home.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: And he did it at the NHL level when he refused to report to the Quebec Nordiques who drafted him first.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he said, No, I have leverage.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: Players are the show, like Marvin Miller in baseball used to say, the players are the game.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and he fought for that.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: But he never won a Stanley Cup.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: And recently he kind of said to me, I would trade all my, you know, good work in the lay on the labor front.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: I would trade it all for my name on the Stanley Cup.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Oh, Eric, don't say that.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: But but I can't blame him for it.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's a it's so understandable that you know we all play cards, play just about anything, and and hope that we do well.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's just fun.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: But it's never, you know, I I always say like the great performance by let's say the Vancouver Cux, either in 2011 or in 1994 or in 1982, all came up short in the final.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: But those teams are remembered fondly and loved forever.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the fan, even although they would love that cup parade, I mean, they see the effort, they see the uh ride, uh, and and they covet that.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: So but it's hard to convince uh, you know, in a in a world where status anxiety is too prevalent, where uh you know the the metrics seem to be, you know, like we're in an analytic world now.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you can almost put a measurement to your performance.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's I I think, you know, even back to your Sevilla in '99, Robin.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: I remember Donovan was now doing the color.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: He was done as a memory blown out as Achilles in uh 97, and he kind of got back to Worlds that year, but in '97, that is, in Rome.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: But by 99, done.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: Bruni is now the guy.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: And Bruni's racing Maurice Green for the gold medal.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember, this is interesting, I went over to interview Maurice Green before the final.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: He was with Atoll Bolden, they were training partners, and they were watching Ben Johnson from Seoul and his start in 88.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and pointing out to me, they had a little like machine with a VCR, and they were playing the tape of Ben Johnson.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: Maurice Green is telling me, look, Ron, he's got four steps before anybody else is at two and a half.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what he uh we started with, right?
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then and then so the race happens, and Bruni's on the lead with 70-meter mark, he's on the lead.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: And Donovan starts to say, Oh no, Bruni, Bruni, don't, oh no, no, no, Bruni, don't tie, don't get nervous.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: Relax, man.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: No, don't no.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, he lost by a hundredth of a second to Maury's green, and Donovan saw it.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: None of us would have seen it, except uh somebody who's walk to walk.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: Crazy.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: That is crazy.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_03: And when you can elevate that process and and what's happening inside the performance, there's so much richness there.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_03: So the the way that sometimes you have to go to um inspection to see who's the champion because the race is so tight.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_03: And then we amplify that.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's really um a curious thing.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_03: And yet uh if we take the lens off who crossed the finish line first and just look at the beauty of the speed of the whole, the whole pack.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um, of course, it it as we've you know discussed before, it's fun to win.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_03: It we're erasing because um there's there's uh something that's um inherent in that assumption when you compete that you're you're wanting to pursue winning.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_03: And yet, again, allowing space for the experience, the process, and what it means to the participants, it strikes me that um uh you really hear it in the in the hockey culture of there's the Stanley Cup, and then there's like that's what matters.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_03: And um and so how to balance the the beauty of the performance in ways that might create a little more space for how we hold sport relative to sport being a reflection of society, but also what it can be in its as it evolves in terms of Well, you go first, Robert.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then Jason.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'd I uh you're really strong on this.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd I'd like your answer first, and then I'll what I think is meant to have to be.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_03: Well, um a big part of of our exploration of uh of in our work of healthy high performance, it's about pursuing um uh having a focus on the process because that's what we influence for one.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_03: And the the element of uh just honoring our humanity uh I go back to young athlete, stressed, uh anxious like you, thinking, I've got knots in my stomach, I can't wait for this to be over.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_03: And um, if I'm gonna be in this for the long haul, I want to figure out a better way to do it because it's a big chunk of my life, and I don't want to just endure it.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: I want to feel like I'm living and a few bumps along the way where first year university got hit by a car, woke up in the hospital, and don't remember it.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_03: But it was just a moment of, well, what if the lights didn't come on again?
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_03: How do I want to do this?
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_03: And again, revisiting that theme of, and one of my favorite quotes is our our life is made up of moments, you know, days, weeks, how do we want to make them count?
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: And so we're much more of a we than a me.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_03: And when I feel full of fear and and contract it because I don't feel generous towards my other people, I feel small and restricted.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_03: And my best moments is when I want something good for us, not just me.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_03: I feel generous.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_03: And when I'm in that state of openness, what can we be together?
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_03: I I explain it as the difference between plugging into the sun versus a little nine-volt battery.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_03: We honor our humanity by playing in a zone of we.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_03: We have competitors, opponents, but when we have generosity in how we pursue that excellence, everything is elevated and new possibilities emerge.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_03: So I think something is lost when we uh put things in an us versus them mentality and put us in a fear state, a threat state, in order to uh go after it in a war metaphor versus what's possible and are in a more expanded state.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: When you commentate and you have that care for others, you're activating um a socially engaged state that really honors our humanity.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_03: And so moving from that me to a we, it ripples out in into community and how we be together.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_03: And for me, that's where sport as it is best.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_03: People are attuned to one another and we're lifted together.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think you exemplify that in how you come to sport and tell stories and meet people in that arena.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_03: I just would like to see that expanded uh for what we can be.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_03: The the ideals of sport are there in the Olympic ethos together, we you know, competeer together, we strive together.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um I just think there's a gap between the reality of what's played out that reflects the broader society that pits people against one another in order to get the job done or to win uh in a way that it's um it's not truly honoring who we are as a people.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: Just before you jump in, Jason, uh on on that, Robin, like uh one of the thoughts I have we're all dealing with a world very poor, it's not to go off away from sport here for a second.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_03: But it's okay if you do.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but one one thing that has struck me is uh the tearing down or attempted tearing of institutions of bureaucracy.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: So again, when you think about sport, you generally think about the athlete beyond that.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: But the athlete understands it's technicians and massage therapists and nutritionists and sports psychs and all this team that's behind that one athlete.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh when governments move from one to another, maybe one on the left and one on the right, that happens in the public eye.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: But behind the scenes, the bureaucracy is always, or most of the time, quite similar.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, a lot of the same people are the diplomats, a lot of the same people are running up post office, whatever it happens to me that's government at arm's length.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that's that's vital.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: You, you, you, that infrastructure.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: So when you have a a 100-meter final or a 3,000-meter final, all that's at play.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: All those uh competitors and their support staff and the public and the TV, we're all in it.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and it never changes from one Olympics or Commonwealth Games or Multisport to the next.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: So very important to have that that infrastructure uh and not have it torn apart, which is kind of what's happening with uh you know lately.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so Jason, go ahead on.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think my the shift or the penny drop for me was and you there were sort of two, one one you spoke to, Robin, was just that change, that shift in word from against um instead of with.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_02: So when I began to see competition as a with instead of against, the impact that had on my coaching was was quite something.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_02: Inviting teenage boys to consider that it was not combative, that it was from your competitor's best race you would find yours.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_02: That that was a completely different paradigm that I was raised on.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_02: Now, the athlete that I became was I was a good soldier.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_02: I became the athlete I was told to be.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_02: So hate your competitors, it's not about winning, it's about not losing.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, you grind, you work harder than the next guy, you take care of all of the tangibles.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_02: And and I was that guy.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_02: I was a I was um, yeah, I was a good student.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: I think what where I where I changed as a coach, where where my perspective changed, almost a paradox, if you will, was that instead of focusing on winning, having the crews focus on trying to achieve winning and success, what we consider success, the focus became bigger.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: So how do we change, how do we transform the lives of these athletes through the sport of rowing?
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that became my goal.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: Now, what I realized was that it turns out that what transforms the lives of young athletes is exactly what's required to build very fast crews.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so, even though winning wasn't the focus stated at the beginning, it came along as a byproduct of transforming the lives of those young boys.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_02: And and and that forever changed the way I coached.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: When I started to adapt Robin's approach, the idea of process versus outcome, the idea of a holistic approach where health was actually a word entertained.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it was just it was just different.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_02: But when I saw that it wasn't just West Coast flaky fooie, that it was actually a high performance strategy, that was that was the shift.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: When I couldn't argue back, I realized like if you if you're in this, then this is how you move forward, because this is the best way to move forward.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: And when we work talk with coaches or work with coaches, we just invite them to look, if all you want to do is win, then try this way.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you will not go back to that to that sort of old school, highly combative stick and carrot traditional military process.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_02: You do you just won't because the other is far more fruitful.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: And John Wooden, right?
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: The NCAA basketball coach with the UCLA Bruins won his tenth title in 11 years.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: And the TV presenter had John surrounded by all the young men on the Bruins.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the interviewer said, John, what do you make of these men?
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Ask me in 25 years.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: Well, good one.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and that that's again his his whole purpose was never about the win.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: It was all about the process and becoming a citizen and becoming a whole person.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: Which is, you know, I I I look at uh how the Carolina Hurricanes won the Hockey Stanley Cup, Rod Brindemore, their coach from Campbell River, as you know.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he he refused to abide questions about the first line, second line, third line.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: There was no such thing in his mind.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: And his third line center ended up with the most valuable player award.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: And uh he he just really created that dynamic of team.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: And well, when I go back to 1972, well before a lot of our time, but not ours.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um but in 72 we won the summit series, uh hard-fought series against the then Soviet Union.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: The hero was Paul Henderson for Canada.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: Just before camp, he was on the sixth line.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: The odds of him being the hero of that series were about the same as Toronto's of winning the lottery to get Gavin McKenna.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: But uh, you know, if you if you can realize that uh the opportunity someone and if you can cultivate that that you know unity, uh not uniformity, unity.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's incredible what uh and you know, rowing has got to be one of the great great uh lessons.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, Adam Creek would always tell me about how Jake Wetzel, uh, you know, he was half the boat hated him because he he was he was a bull of a guy, like just the best guy, the engine of the boat.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um but he had some really good, you know, like as an example on the erg, he would always tell the athletes' teammates, you know, you can let it win once a week, but you beat it six out of seven because you don't want to get used to losing.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: So he even he, as a the old school maybe type, uh had a way of l making it inclusive and making it uh tolerable and softening some of these measures so that his his love was actually apparent to Adam before it might have been to some of the other guys.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: Love is, you know, you you and I I tell you this, uh, like I've been on the TV now or in broadcasting for 50 years.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: I started as a 16-year-old doing radio, and I still make the same mistakes, and I still have you know the same apprehension about performance.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I I understand emphatically that to get out of myself and into serving, you know, the elevation of my panelists, my co-hosts, my athletes, not my joy means uh that that is the secret to kind of getting through some of that anxiety.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I just want the viewer to know or someone experiencing this uh to know that it it doesn't like I I when I was 12, I would get caught being lippy in school or telling uh you know one-liner that the teacher is just runny, that's unacceptable.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I would know it's unacceptable, and I felt like I just couldn't help myself, and then I'm 66 making that same mistake.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, uh, you know, cut yourself a little bit of uh slack.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: Keep working at it, keep keep recognizing that, you know, without selling your soul, without losing your soul.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because all that, you know, criticism, and we all you know, it's a it's a really uh thin line between where you sort of drift from having been in the critique to having to becoming part of history, you know, and I'm really close to that edge now where I will no longer be in the critique.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: I will no longer be part of the active story, I will be part of that past.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, that will that will be something for me to continue with.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I won't be clinging to, you know, the guy on TV part of it, but I I will be clinging to, okay, what's your purpose?
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, as as Bono when he started off the elevation tour in Vancouver years ago, he said, as we always do, it's in his book, uh Surrender.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: He said, We got together and had a little short prayer before the concert.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_01: Not that we would perform well and remember the lyrics, but to have a purpose.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's the prayer we always said before each show.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_02: And and as your purpose perhaps begins to shift and you start to wear, you know, maybe a mentor hat, what what do you see, what do you want for the for this next crop of of storytellers coming up?
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like if you were to look back on your career, yeah, what would you have wanted to do differently and what would you like to share with with them and and hope that perhaps they they pick that up?
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I definitely got a lucky break.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: I had a Boston Red Deer uh program director of the radio station named Wayne Heinrich, who taught me the communication of one-to-one.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny, Vancouver, C Fund Vancouver, they had a jingle package.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: You are the reason we do what we do.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: 14C Fun, you.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: You are the reason we do what we do.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it was called the You Package, and it was a famous jingle.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but Wayne taught me, you know, it's not Hi Canada or Hello Canada, it's not hi everyone.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's just always a one-to-one communication with a listener, a reader, a viewer.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: I always try to impart that.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I so believe in what Wayne taught me, 10 hours of prep to every one hour on the air.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: You really, you know, I mean, I didn't do Carnegie, but apparently Dale Carnegie said you are able to speak if you know your subject.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that's you know, that's why you two in this realm feel so comfortable and so passionate.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I was the same about the industry.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: I I hired a guy up from Fresno, California to do a seminar for our broadcasters when I was young.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: And Jay Trockman was his name, and he he published a service called One to One, tidbits about songs and how to do radio and such, and just loved that learning.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I want the next one to uh feel that same energy, you know, keep keep learning, keep studying.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: But that said, David Byrne, lead singer of the Talking Heads, I always um I already got a kick out of the fact that when uh David Bowie went into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he got David Byrne of the Talking Heads to come and do the introduction.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: When David Byrne and the Talking Heads went into Cleveland Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, they got Red Hot Chili Peppers lead singer Anthony uh Keatis to come and do the introduction.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: Anthony Keatis said, he said, you know, music has made me feel a lot of things, but until the Talking Heads, music had never made me feel smart.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I love that.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: I I I agree, you know, and David Byrne wrote a book about how music works.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: And David's known to be uh pretty buttoned down and uh I wouldn't say ruthless, but he he knows what he wants when he orchestrates puts the stage performance together.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but he said at the end of the book, I like a good story, I also like to stare at the sea.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: Do I have to choose?
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that uh decision, are you gonna let this moment handle itself?
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: Is this gonna be a sunset, sunrise, or is this gonna be your story?
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that that would be for me the best advice I could give the broadcaster is to is to really weigh when is the time, and I don't do it always successfully.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's gosh for sure.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I get so angry at myself because I'm keyed up and I want to contribute, and I end up imposing myself on a on a moment that would have been so much better if I could just shut up.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um Matt Galloway of the CBC does the current, and he has a post-it note on his microphone, stop talking.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll teach them that.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_02: In terms of the the idea we that we sort of touched on where what sport has missed, who's been left behind by sport, if you will, is there a role for the broadcaster in in changing that story going forward?
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like who have we left behind?
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_02: And and and it's one thing to identify them, but how how can the broadcaster, the storyteller, how can how can they change that outcome?
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: By asking the question that unlocks their story.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: Simple as that.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: That it gives them their voice.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so you know, when I when I have my or you know, when I feel like my because my my sort of mental approach is to look down the barrel of the camera and say, I'm talking to someone, one person that's kind of like me.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: Same sensibility, same intelligences, same humor, um, same values.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but of course, Jason and Robin, that that doesn't include you know, 90% of the viewership.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: They they all will have their own way of doing things, that as again you learned, Robin, just with your first foray into competitive sport.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, I I can't possibly be all 100% of uh these sensitivities.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like um John Ralston Saul wrote a book, uh uh uh uh Unconscious Civilization, and he kind of breaks down what goes into a thought, and he has sort of the six ingredients of a thought that we have is your common sense, your creativity, your ethics, your memory, which is basically history, your intuition, and reason.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: So you have all six elements that have to go into each thought that you have, whether you realize it or not.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and you you have to decide how to trust some of those.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: So intuition's the tricky one.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's where I mess up.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's also a gift, and I know that.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's like Hamlet, your daemon spirit is your Achilles heel.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I I just try to liberate always, you know, that it's you know, you you you you're gonna hear what you need to hear.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_01: Don't don't listen to uh everything, but but don't ignore everything either.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because you don't have its zest, I don't have its zest.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's fun to to sort of experience what others are thinking.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I back to your point, Robin, is you know, it it has to come to a we.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: It has to be that we're in it together, um, pure and simple.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that that it's not about you.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's definitely not about you.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's about way big and and I think about sport in my life, and I think, okay, how much did it thwart my education?
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: How how many times was I throwing a golf ball against the side of the wall at high school in Red Deer and you know, pretending I was fielding grounders?
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: How many times was I kicking field goals by myself at East View School?
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: How many times was I in the front yard hunting the ball up in the air and catching it instead of reading or picking up a guitar or piano because you know we all think we have something that's peculiar to us, that's our gift.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and genius generally arrives when that gift and the subject matter happen to meet or collide.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think it really was for sport, it's funny, I don't think it really was my gift.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_01: I I decent at everything, but not by any stretch, but at anything.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, so I yet it gave me all the lessons, it gave me all the uh, you know, I mean it's it at core, it's the hunt.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: The the idea of sport was uh sort of a microcosm of the hunt.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: How do you how do you survive?
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_01: How do you actually go and get that nourishment?
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that's why you have to win in a hunt, you know, at some point if you don't succeed, that's it.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, you know, recognizing all that, uh recognizing all that's at play around the Olympism, um, you know, it it's it's the best uh and it's the worst.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_01: At its best, it's the collaboration toward an idea.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_01: At its worst, it's a territory fight.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_03: I I will say the the the fighting and the violence piece is a challenge for me in sport.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I love the athleticism, but that part in terms of uh stepping over that line is one.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_03: But I I just want to acknowledge what you're saying, Ron, in terms of your intellectual curiosity.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_03: I think of David Epstein's book, Range, in terms of how you show up, because you have such a breadth of curiosity, and you bring that to the context of of how you use sport as a great teacher, because you're I I share your enthusiasm for learning and uh and uh curiosity, but it really uh colors how you come to commentary uh with with a context that is open and and inclusive of so many different elements beyond the sport arena.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_03: So I I think you found a beautiful place to be a teacher and to be uh a lifelong student in in how you engage your work.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_01: The trick I'll ask you, Robin, is how to not make that heavy-handed.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like a Tanahasity.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh not make it heavy-handed, not to make it sort of a didactic, you know, uh, I'm here in my ivory tower looking down upon you with my uh, you know, I bestow you now with wisdom.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: Please enjoy and use.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's the trick, is you know, and and that can be, you know, for me, the disarming nature of humor, but that gets me in trouble sometimes.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's just it's finding ways to uh to make that conversation happen.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because we're there is a uh you know a glass wall between us.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I realize it's not an interactive experience, and yet I want it to be.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I know, you know, the the thing with social media is it's it can be great, but as a general rule, and again I'm generalizations are risky, but uh usually the socials are good at uh explaining what they're not in favor of, and they're not as apt to say what they're in favor of.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that's why your show here uh you know it you want to cultivate that uh enthusiasm for uh all the benefits, uh all the and and you know, and it won't defend fighting in hockey other than to say, you know, this is sort of an ingre because it's about the hunt, because uh there's also that militaristic, you know, de Coubertin created the modern Olympics because Paris had done so poorly at war.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he felt French uh soldiers weren't up to the you know job, and that maybe the Olympics could reinvigorate the qualities that he thought would make for a good soldier.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: So the these that might be a horrible idea.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_01: I was just reading uh Lester B.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: Pearson's grandson put out a book.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's called Uh Private Letters, Public Matters, and it's the letters between the Prime Minister Lester B.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: Pearson and the Prime Minister's son, Jeff.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: So the books put out by Jeff's son.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but those two are back and forth on uh on all kinds of diplomatic concerns.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this is when the Cold War was underway.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_01: And just seeing again the differences in us, it's almost like 50-50 on everything.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, whether it's politics, it's it's incredible how humankind is is kind of split down the middle.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what the lesson of that is.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but be aware of that.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_01: You you're you're gonna meet your match at every turn.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then you know, you just can't take it personally.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: You you have to accept that you you're doing a good job if you're evoking that conversation.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the criticism is the only growth.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then you just don't want to back, you know, you don't want to, you know, where do you stand, as Rebecca Solnit says, you know, it's sometimes that's personal.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that is, do you feel you're gonna have the rug pulled out from underneath you?
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_01: Do you feel that you don't have the right to that space?
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have the right to that seat at the table, that you know, those are devastating feelings.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think we need gatekeepers or you know, a watchdog uh uh on that one in particular, uh, to make sure that's yeah, you know, I mean just the the the saying Ryle had was uh love is the motive, but justice is the instrument, and that is great, except what if the Supreme Court is rigged, or what if the judiciary is gonna take you know all really important questions.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_03: And uh as a public figure, you you become the recipient of projections as well as um you didn't get it right, and we're gonna straighten you out.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so uh such a deep fundamental need for all of us to belong.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_03: And so public shaming is something that uh all of us will dig deep to avoid.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_03: And for myself, uh I after the 96 Olympics, some of the the frustrations with uh conflict and things that happened there, I felt angry about how some people were treated.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_03: I went and did training in restorative justice while in conflict resolution because I didn't want to hurt people with my anger.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_03: I wanted to figure it out.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_03: But uh uh I think you've uh recogni I like you, love Brian Stevenson's work, and I worked as a mediator in victim offender reconciliation.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_03: Because holding we're we're like Brian says, we're not the worst thing we've ever done.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_03: And it's really important if we're going to grow forward together to hold people with respect and dignity dignity while we figure out how to get better.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_03: And so when there's a spirit of this is uh I I I come back to a moment in grad school 24 years ago.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_03: I was sitting beside the prof was talking, and I was sitting beside a woman who was running commentary on the professor speaking.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_03: The woman beside me was lesbian, and she was speaking in my ear how she felt excluded by the heterosexual normative language that the prof was using that I was oblivious to.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_03: And so she was educating me as she spoke.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_03: But again, uh, we have our experience, and the best we can do is educate ourselves and be curious about we don't all experience the world the same way.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_03: So, how can we understand what it's like for other people?
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_03: But can we have mercy in the face of we all step on each other at times?
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_03: And is there a way to uh create a space where we can learn together so we're not deflecting from it?
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_03: Your mom taught you in your bones how to apologize in a way that you know how helpful that is.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but having compassion for ourselves and one another while we grow forward together.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_03: I think your holding of kindness in the space of sport allows a space to expand the context where we have more sensitive questions or dialogue about how do we handle this, what's not working, and what's the way forward.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes in the moment, in a public space, we don't have the words to quickly, like, oh, something didn't feel right there, but I'm not sure I have the words to address it in the moment.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_03: And then you're getting lamb-based it in social media for, well, I'll tell you how you can do better.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_03: So uh to me, the way forward uh collectively, there's elements of compassion and mercy.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_03: While that those things allow us to have more honest dialogue about who wins, who loses, and how can we move forward together.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_03: But I I celebrate the heart that you bring in how you do that as a commentator because it's not easy being in the public eye, um holding space for things that uh can be contentious.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_03: But you show a lot of grace in how you uh apologize and and try and grow with that.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's one of the elements that will help us move forward as we evolve not just sport, but some of the places where we're more combative rather than competitive in a spirit of what's the best way for all of us.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to say um Brian Stevenson is the book is called Mercy that Robin's referring to.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_01: And he he was a uh a lawyer who went down and worked on death row in the uh south in the United States.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I I I really believe in that.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_01: I I think, you know, whenever I'm in, you know, the crosshairs, I I always go back to, as I said earlier, uh, my mom coming to the corner of the bed and she said, you know, don't worry, Ronnie.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't, you know, all that came at you afternoon wasn't necessarily uh legit.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and it's not like um I I I learned so much in the last decade or 15 years of you know, me thinking, you know, like the the example we use is I I don't see color.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's because you didn't have you you you you had no understanding of life lived.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and that blind spot, you know, is just shocking to me now.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it's uh it's why those questions uh and I I don't have enough uh information to even go down this subject, but the transgender athlete in sport.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um I just see that as another uh you know ethical question that's gotta be really intriguing for those who specialize.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've read best I can, you know, whether it's Brian Mercy Brian Stevenson's Mercedes or Beverly McLaughlin, uh you know, who was our Supreme Court justice and who actually did a dissent.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_01: She she actually favored Jim Kekstra, who was uh, you know, saying that the Holocaust was a hoax.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_01: He was teaching this to kids in Caroline, Alberta.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_01: And and as Beverly explains in the early part of the book, you know, I grew up in Picture Butte uh Pincher Creek.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_01: Pincher Creek, Alberta.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_01: She said, everybody would yell and scream at one another at the table the night before, and the next morning it was like no big deal.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_01: Life moved on and everybody was happy with one another.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_01: But she realized that there are so many things that keep her kept her awake at night and keep her awake at night.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um boy, I I I I really admire the.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: That particular part of this whole challenge is uh the judiciary, is policing, uh, is education.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and we play a small part.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_01: And the great part sport does play, as you know, is uh is the bringing us together.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_01: That that is the first step uh is to is to come together.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then from there you can have these uh realizations that oh, you know, that person I thought I hated I actually like.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and it goes from there.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_02: So as we start to wrap up, you know, you may have just touched on on the direction of of of the show, Ron, in uh this notion of what's left for sport to do.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe we're already doing it, but we just need need to be more purposeful.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_02: We need to we need to do it more.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_02: Is that perhaps how you'd feel?
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_02: Or is there something altogether different that sport hasn't ventured into yet?
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_01: No, you know, the only thing Jason struck me is when the Four Nations hockey tournament took place, it was at the kind of apex of the 51st state.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, yeah.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_01: So there was a subtext that made it uh you know, must see TV.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um there the it does feel like whenever you wrap yourself in the flag right now, that's when you get the most eyeballs.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_01: FIFA, the World Cup of Soccer was a tremendous outpouring of support for each of the countries.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_01: Here in Toronto, you saw it on in Vancouver.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_01: Here in Toronto, we had if it was Croatia playing Portugal, well, we had you know 100,000 Croatians over here, and we had 100,000 for Portugal marching somewhere into downtown Toronto, and it was beautiful to see.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but it's a fight, it's a battle.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a family feud.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so yet um I I do think that that uh implicit feeling of uh we're in something together.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's you know, again, not heavy-handed, it's just their, you know, uh the representation is automatic because like when I did uh 88 Euro Olympics, Jason, my job was beyond anchoring a five-hour show, the morning show to Canada.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_01: I did field hockey.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_01: And field hockey was incredible because we had Pakistan and India, and we had Kenya, and we had Australia, and we had uh Argentina was a powerhouse, and the Netherlands and Greek, everywhere.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_01: All five continents um had representation.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I I remember s when the whistle would blow on the pitch, uh, and everybody knew what to do, and I just thought, God, that's great.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_01: I bet none of them can speak to one another, but they all intuitively know uh, you know, the rules of engagement.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it was uh it was a very rewarding experience in South Korea.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_01: So that that that we're building on again.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, everybody like the NHL All-Star Game is going to an international format this year on Long Island, and the success of whether it's the Ryder Cup and golf, um that that seems to be um it's an Olympic uh afterglow.
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it's really I think important to to nurture.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that said, again, when when I hosted Sochi, the last Olympics I did as a solo host, because I wouldn't tell Perdito what to think.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_01: But when I was doing the show from Sochi Russia by myself, I didn't show the medal standings for 16 days, not once.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_01: And nobody noticed.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody nobody tweeted, you know, where are the medal standings?
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_01: We need to know how much better we Canadians are to those Germans, or how much uh superior those uh Russians are to those uh whatever.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_01: I I didn't I nationalism for me is not a favorite thing, but it's but that said, we're in a period of a kind of uh again, uh healthy wake-up, I guess.
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, patriotism scares me a smidge, but I I I see that you know that we're kind of working together because we have to right now.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_01: Good.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_01: That that that's not a bad thing.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's just really really you know, vanity it's kind of vanity, patriotism and pride.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and you know, we all have vanity uh that allows us to uh deal with you know our fears and have desires.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Big trick is what to do with that vanity when you do get what you want.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh now how are you gonna tame that vanity?
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_01: How are you going to maintain that humility, that questioning, uh that curiosity?
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's a big challenge.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's interesting you mentioned, you know, I didn't know that you did that with the middle count.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's fascinating.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, what we often talk about is if you were to go down downtown Vancouver and ask someone to reflect back on the 2010 games, um, and ask them what are the memories, what are the stories?
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_02: And and I mean they'll pull them for sure.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_02: They'll pull them.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_02: And but if you ask them what was the medal count for Canada, how many gold did we win, how many silver, there's no way on earth, unless there's some hardcore statistic person who just yeah, but but it it it is the story that that that brings us in.
• 1:11:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's why you've been so successful as a broadcaster, is because whether you've done it on purpose or not, you've recognized that it is the humanity in sport that people connect with.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's why we come to it, because it reminds us of the human experience.
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_02: And we get to see and we get to see what our dreams and wishes might have been and see them play out.
• 1:11:23
  SPEAKER_02: And and and it's entertaining as hell, for sure, but but it also moves us.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_02: When I think of um, you know, some of the most moving moments in sport, they aren't they aren't ho hoisting the Stanley Cup.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_02: They aren't they aren't standing on the on the on the top of the podium and receiving a gold medal.
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_02: Far from it.
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_02: And that's right.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I think, you know, if I'm gonna answer my own question, what's left for us to do?
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_02: I think to your point, we we need to do more of it.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_02: I remember back to the first time Robin shared with me her perspective on competition, where she used the analogy of geese, together we fly, that geese fly together because it helps them get where they want to go faster and with less effort.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_02: And and I tried to counter back with no, it's you know, it's you got you gotta, if someone gets in your way, push them out of the way.
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like you it you're trying to win.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_02: And but when she mentioned that if we all run faster, we all run faster, I didn't have a counter for that.
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_02: And it was the first time I realized, wow, okay, so this with and against thing is much bigger than I ever thought it was.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so now I think through the through the nationalistic lens, can we invite nations to see sport as a we, as it as a with, as a combined effort, the the synergy of sport as opposed to the to that combative nature, and what's possible through that paradigm.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_02: I I think, you know, for me that's the exciting piece because you know, as someone who embraced what he was told to, I can tell you it didn't work out well, right?
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_02: It it blew up.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I think um and I think the other counter that I often get, we often get is that uh the notion of with or synergy is dialed down ambition.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_02: You you have to you have to accept that you're you're not as as hell-bent on putting your foot on the throat of your competitor.
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I would absolutely disagree with that, that that synergy invites just as much ambition, I would say, if if not more, because you step into the realm of mastery and service as opposed to reward and reputation.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_02: And um or survival.
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_02: Or survival.
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I just think I think that's what I when I see people on on opposite sides of the cheering spectrum come together in a crowd, like they do a crowd shot, and and you you see people high-fiving the parents of a competitor's team, like that's what it's about.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we need to we need more than the the Blue Jays uh were playing the Boston Red Sox last night, and the Boston catcher made great catch right in front of the Toronto dugout, and John Schneider had a chirp for him, and then he had the biggest laughs, the catcher, and the two of them were laughing, and I just thought, oh my god, good for you two.
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I could give you a million examples of this year's British Open.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the winner was Ryan Fox of New Zealand, and on the Saturday he was playing with a guy named Xander Shoffley.
• 1:14:46
  SPEAKER_01: Shoffley hit a great shot, and Ryan Fox picked up the divot.
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know how in golf there's a divot that comes from the iron, uh a little pelt of grass.
• 1:14:55
  SPEAKER_01: He picked it up and frisbee it back to uh Xander and said, nice shot.
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, oh, you know, that's the golf gods are gonna, you know, give you a reward for that.
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the next day he had to make a 12-foot putt to win the uh tournament.
• 1:15:07
  SPEAKER_01: And God, he he hit it poorly and his hands were shaking, and somehow the ball ended up in the hole.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, It's because you threw the divot back the day before.
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Always, you know, like Kevin Biecka, you know, Robin and Jason, we were we had the fires in uh Los Angeles.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_01: God knows we're having fires everywhere right now.
• 1:15:25
  SPEAKER_01: But last year it was in LA in the Palisades, and so they, Luke Robotay of the LA Kings, invited Kevin Viexa and myself to go down to a charity hockey game there.
• 1:15:33
  SPEAKER_01: And Kevin ended up playing with his old Vancouver Canuck D partner, Alex Edler.
• 1:15:38
  SPEAKER_01: And they were unbelievable.
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like I felt like I was watching Bruni Surin and Donovan Bailey at Gothenburg in '95.
• 1:15:45
  SPEAKER_01: They were so fast.
• 1:15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, really great.
• 1:15:48
  SPEAKER_01: And yesterday I was talking to Kevin Viexa, and he was just teeing off with Sam Gagni, who played in the NHL, and Alex Edler.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_01: So those two guys who were part of that cup run in 2011 in Vancouver, that you know, disappointing seventh game loss in the final, they're they're together uh still.
• 1:16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I I get such a kick out of that.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the the bonds that we we form, uh the examples that we set.
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_01: But they but they can be in your spirit, Jason and Robin.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_01: They can they can definitely be about love and about we uh uh you know, about togetherness.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and you every chance we get, the three of us, we'll make sure, like a little, here's the final one.
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm rambling here, but uh the first night of hockey night in Canada this year, whatever we call it, won't be called that because the rates have changed.
• 1:16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_01: CBC owns that name, and Rogers will have to have another.
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um but that opening night we have Montreal's playing at Pittsburgh, and there's a sign on the wall in the Pittsburgh Arena, it's a quote, it's a great day for hockey.
• 1:16:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the legendary Bob Johnson who was at Wisconsin and came to Calgary and coached the Calgary's Glames and brought 10 NCAA players to Calgary in the 80s.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was unheard of, uh, and then coached Pittsburgh to a Stanley Cup.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a Wisconsin guy who had a really great impact on our game, Calgary in particular.
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the coach for uh our soccer team at FIFA, Jesse Marsh from Wisconsin.
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a guy from Wisconsin who came and built a bridge with Canadians uh by being the coach of our national men's soccer team.
• 1:17:21
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, uh Gordy Howe's dad came from Wisconsin.
• 1:17:25
  SPEAKER_01: He left uh Good Ben, Wisconsin and moved up to Humboldt, Saskatchewan in the early 1900s to try and become a farmer.
• 1:17:31
  SPEAKER_01: That failed during the Depression, so he became a laborer in Saskatoon.
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_01: But the long and short of it is there's a Gordy Howe, his son, there's a Gordy Howe bridge in Saskatoon, and as you know, there's now one connecting Canada and the United States.
• 1:17:43
  SPEAKER_01: So there's three people from Wisconsin who just came through sport to Canada and built a bridge that you can't tear it up.
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, beautiful.
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_02: Nice.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think that's a good note to end.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:17:59
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you very, very much, Ron.
• 1:18:01
  SPEAKER_02: Appreciate your time, your wisdom, and yeah, and just be w being willing to come on in here and and shoot the breeze and uh discuss, you know, the ins and outs and all the important things for I'm sorry that it was uh on my phone, but one funny thing I'll show you.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Look, uh this was the support.
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_01: I put it on a dictionary.
• 1:18:24
  SPEAKER_01: I was either gonna have to get my neck uh massage this evening or I could put the phone on a dictionary.
• 1:18:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I hope that uh my full of new words come October 3rd.
• 1:18:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's all good.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's all good.
• 1:18:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, uh the the it didn't uh diminish it up in the least.
• 1:18:41
  SPEAKER_03: Very thankful for your your sharing and uh how you do what you do.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you again.
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh same, Rob.
• 1:18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:18:50
  SPEAKER_01: I I hope I see you one of these days out of Victoria.
• 1:18:53
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah.
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Keep in touch.
• 1:18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, keep up the great stuff.
• 1:18:59
  SPEAKER_02: Before we go, we'd like to leave you with the guiding questions at the heart of Imagine the Good.
• 1:19:05
  SPEAKER_02: What's good in the world?
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_02: How can I build on that?
• 1:19:08
  SPEAKER_02: And what might become possible if I did?
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_02: Take a little time to sit with those questions.
• 1:19:14
  SPEAKER_02: And if this conversation brought someone to mind, consider sharing it with them.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for spending this time with us.
• 1:19:21
  SPEAKER_02: If you'd like to help others discover Imagine the Good, please follow or subscribe to the show and leave us a rating and review wherever you listen.
• 1:19:31
  SPEAKER_02: Until next time, keep finding the good in your world.
• 1:19:34
  SPEAKER_02: Look for moments to elevate and celebrate life in your circles, and imagine what we can become together.