Our last conversation with Lloyd Robertson

For countless Canadians, Lloyd Robertson was more than a trusted voice. He was a fixture of their nightly routine.

The chief anchor of CTV News for nearly three decades, Robertson helped people across the country understand the moments that shaped our nation and our world. "That's the kind of day it was," he said at the end of every newscast.

Robertson died this week at the age of 92.

In 2022, long after he retired, Robertson sat down for in-depth interview with Village Media's Scott Sexsmith. As they talked about his extraordinary career, what came through more than anything was his humility, warmth, wit, and genuine love for storytelling — and for Canada.

On this week's episode of Closer Look, we look back on that conversation with Lloyd Robertson.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Don't believe everything you read and hear and see on your Instagram or whatever. Try to find out where that came from.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

It's Sunday, August the 9th, across the Village Media Network and wherever you get your favorite podcast. Welcome back to Closer Look. I'm Scott's Text with Frisco is off this week. There are a few names in Canadian broadcasting that carry the respect and admiration of Lloyd Robertson. On Tuesday, Robertson died at the age of 92. For generations of Canadians, he was a trusted voice in our homes. A journalist whose calm presence, integrity, and unwavering commitment to the truth helped us understand the moments that shaped our country and our world. This week on a closer look as we remember and celebrate Lloyd's remarkable life and legacy, we wanted to share a conversation that meant a great deal to me personally. Lloyd joined us back in March of 2022 on a show that we used to do here called Up Close and Personal. And what came through during that interview wasn't just his extraordinary career, but his humility, warmth, wit, and genuine love for storytelling and for Canada. It's a conversation we're honored to revisit, and one that reminds us why Lloyd Robertson will always hold such a special place in Canadian journalism. Here now is that conversation with the legendary Lloyd Robertson. Welcome to Up Close and Personal. I'm Scott Sexmith, a very exciting episode. Today I'm thrilled to welcome the former chief anchor and senior editor of the CTV National News, Lloyd Robertson. Lloyd, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you here today.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Thank you, Scott. Great to be here and great to be visiting Sault Ste. Marie again.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Absolutely. Now you've got some uh some ties to the uh to the Sue. Your uh half-brother was the police chief here.

SPEAKER_02 2:11

Irvin L. Robertson, yes. He was the chief from 1942 for 22 years, one of the longest-serving chiefs of all time, I think. And he told me all of interesting stories about that period because it was, of course, during the Second World War. And uh they were concerned in the Sioux about Nazi Germany uh making them a target because of the shipping lanes and the locks and all of that. So they set up a joint task force uh 1942-1943 with the Americans uh to be sure that uh everything was protected there. And he also told me about the fact that uh in 1943, 1942-43, uh the first submarine, HMCF Sufferie, was launched from there, and uh it went on to become convoy in the Battle of the Atlantic. So quite a famous time for him to be chief, and he knew that uh you know that would be challenging going there at that time. And then following the war, uh large immigration in the Sioux, coming into the Sioux, and uh the Italian population grew exponentially during that period. So it was a very interesting time for him, and he and I talked a lot about that. He was my um half-brother, but he was really like a second father to me because I was, as they say, the last of the litter of a second family. My father's first wife died, and then I was one of two from the second family. Irvin was from the first family, and uh, he was the one who really took an interest in me and helped me along in my career path. Uh, as I was growing up and going from radio station to radio station, he followed me, and then when I joined the CBC and I was on the network, he would call relatives around the country and say, Lloyd's on, and they'd hang up the phone just to be sure that everybody was watching what I appeared on national television. Great guy. Great guy. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

Uh terrific story, Lloyd. Now, there's lots that I'd like to cover uh today, starting with your amazing career that has spanned over six decades, that started in 1952 in your hometown of Stratford at CJCS Radio, followed by uh a couple of years at C Joy and Guelph. What do you remember about your radio days and and your time in Stratford?

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Well, I first remember being absolutely thrilled when I was hired after school on Saturday for a job at the local radio station, CJCS. And um I was an operator on the board, on the big sound board at the time, for the other announcers. Uh and I'd come in at four o'clock and I'd do a run from four until six. And then on Saturdays, I would occasionally get to announce a program. And one of the announcers there, followed by the name of Norman Jerry from Wealth, he um offered me one of his shows. He had a lot of them, and he said, uh, listen, kid, you may as well get you start. Do this thing called Musical Personality Time, very original title, of course. And it was on every Saturday morning from 11:30 until 12. And we would pick one of the major band leaders of the time and play his music. Betty Goodman, Artie Shaw, so on, Tommy Dorsey. Um, and uh that was my first real show on the radio when I was still after school on Saturday. Then when I finished school, I got lucky because two announcers from the station left around the same time. And they thought uh, I guess the kid has some promise, so we'll give him a chance. So they hired me as a full-time announcer, and I did the morning show, Rise and Shine, 6 until 9. I did a noon run called Suggestions of Music. The suggestions were commercials for the most part, and uh the music was very limited uh during that time because we had the major newscast of the day. And then I came back in the evening and I did Uncle Lloyd's Birthday Club at five o'clock, and I did the evening news at 6:30. So it was a pretty cool day, and you know what? I would have done that all over again. I enjoyed every minute of it. I worked all those long hours every day, but I loved it because I was one of those lucky people who happened to fall into what I love to do. And uh I got interested in radio years before that. Uh, at the end of the Second World War, I remember clustering with my friends around a platform in Stratford uh at the corner of Downey and Waterloo Streets, and we were um there watching the boys march home and the third regiment from the Second World War, the returning parade. This was 1946 and January, and I can recall this day listening to those broadcasters on the platform just above us and thinking, wow, what a wonderful job. Because when you're in broadcasting, you can be right at the center of things. And that's of course where I wanted to be. And uh I got there and I've had a wonderful, wonderful career.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

You certainly have. Uh, your first TV uh job came in 1956 at CBC Winnipeg. Was it any one specific thing that that prompted the switch, Lloyd, from radio to TV, or did it just kind of happen?

SPEAKER_02 7:22

Well, I had been hired by the CBC in 1954 in Winnipeg, or Windsor, sorry. And in Windsor, uh there wasn't a lot to do. It was more or less a repeater station. And I was a little bored with my activities there. And I was thinking about moving on elsewhere, and then television was coming on stream in a big way in Canada at that time, and positions started coming up on the uh job board for slots here, slots there, some in Winnipeg, some in Halifax, some in Montreal, some in Toronto. I knew I wasn't ready for Toronto, so I applied for Winnipeg because I thought if this is the coming thing, and at that time, a lot of the old radio broadcasters felt, oh, this won't last, this TV thing. Who's gonna sit and watch a box in the corner all the time? You know, that doesn't grab anybody. So, as it turned out, of course, it did work, and uh, and I made that that move to start in television, try it out. And that was a wonderful experience because at that time there were no schools to teach you anything. There were no there were one or two journalism schools, I think there was one at King's College in Halifax. Uh there was a there was a radio school, Radio Academy in Toronto at Ryerson, but that was about it. And nobody to teach you any of the skills that you needed for a life in television. So we all learned on the job, 1956, and we just literally jumped into the deep end of the pool. And uh that was uh that was my beginning. And I moved on from there from one show to another show. Eventually, I was the host of the evening news magazine show, uh, the six to seven with interviews, weather, all that kind of thing. You know those type of shows, they're absolutely now. And that was my uh that was my main show when I got up to about 1958 in Winter. And then an opportunity came along to go to Ottawa, and I grabbed that because uh I knew that this would give me a chance to learn a little bit more about the political scene in Ottawa, spent a lot of time around Parliament Hill, and then a few years later, I applied for and was transferred to Toronto. And when I came to Toronto, I started right at the bottom of the pile, uh doing overnight shifts and radio news uh on the hour, two minutes here and there, that kind of thing. Uh again, loving every minute of it, and moved up the ladder from there. That was in the early 60s.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

And then eventually uh in 1970, I believe you became the anchor of CBC's The National and rode that right through till uh 1976. And and then if I recall the story while covering uh the Montreal Olympics, you got a phone call and a lunch invite that led to uh what some might say is a dramatic move to cross the street and join the CTV network. Was it was it just time for a change, Lloyd, or was there something specific that precipitated that move?

SPEAKER_02 10:23

Well, it was a very difficult period for me at the CBC at that time, because uh while I was doing a lot of things I really enjoyed to do, the fact is there was a a jurisdictional dispute going on between the announcers union and the news guild, which was which handled all the union activities for the news people. Now they were the writers and reporters and this kind of thing. So when I was working in on the news every night, I had no say, no say in anything. Uh change of comma, maybe if I asked nicely, sure, but couldn't do anything on my own. And also I was noticing that in America, in the United States, and all overseas also, people who fronted the news were becoming news people. But as you had to know something about it, you know, I go out and go into a bar across the street from the CBC once in a while, and uh, someone would start talking to me about the news. Oh, what do you do? How do you do that kind of thing? And I would have to admit, well, I don't really have anything to do with the putting together of the news. I go in at 9:30 at night, do a rehearsal, and then at 11 o'clock I read it. And uh I could see that the business was changing. So CTV came along, they had none of those kinds of restrictions, and they made me this offer. Well, I went through a very tortuous time because I really didn't want to leave the CBC. So my heart was there for a while, uh, even after I moved, and uh my mind was telling me this is what you've got to do. You've got to make this move because this is your future. Uh that is more involvement in news, uh, being in the newsroom all the time, being a news person. So I made the jump, and uh I've never looked back since 1976. Um, there was a brief period there, a few months in, but there was a little fluster on the weekend because uh CBC made a call to me to tell me about uh a grievance against me that had been removed by the news union. And they said, uh, you know, if you come back now, you'll be able to do all the things you wanted to do. Uh and that phone call was leaked. And of course, out came the press report on the weekend saying, Lloyd's going back. Not true, of course, but it was enough to steer the plot. And uh I closed that down very quickly. And uh after that, I just said, that's it. I'm here, I'm staying, let's go.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

So the uh the move to CTV from CBC had you now co-anchoring uh the national news with Harvey Kirk. There must be a huge adjustment when you go from anchoring solo to all of a sudden having a partner.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

It was a very big adjustment for both of us, uh, but we had to get used to it. And my my arrangement with uh CTV was that I would do specials there and I would anchor with Harvey, and every so often I would go to the field to a big story, uh, you know, to to a war in Ukraine, that kind of thing, uh, or out here and there. Uh so that was our arrangement. But we both had to get used to sharing an anchor desk. And I think we did that because we were both professionals. We'd been in the business, each of us had been in the business many years by that time, and we knew that we had to make this work. So we made it work because we became good friends. And our uh friendship, our professional relationship blossomed into a friendship. We became friends with Harvey and his wife. We spent weekends together sometimes. And he and I worked together for a total of uh seven and a half years, and then he decided that uh he'd done 20 years, and his health began to cause him problems at this at this point. He had congestive heart failure, uh, which he died of about um 10 years, I guess. Let me see. About 15 years after that, he he passed. And uh he was he was a very big guy, as you know. Uh he lived well, enjoyed life, and I think he just uh felt that uh you know 20 years was enough. So he departed. And I was on my own. And that was in that was in spring of 1984. And I was on my own from then until uh September of 2011.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

Yeah, uh that's a long run. In fact, um, as part of that run, um you became the longest-serving news anchor in television history, outlasting the likes of Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings. I'd say that's some pretty good company.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

Yeah, yeah, the longest one on the national side.

unknown 14:58

Right.

SPEAKER_02 14:59

So I understand that there is some guy who was anchoring a local newscast in California uh who lasted a little more than the 41 year span that I put in. Uh, because I started 1970 at CBC, ending 2011 at uh CTV, total 41 years. So there was somebody who uh who anchored local news for that time, uh longer than than I did. But uh we don't have to count that because that was on a local sign.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Yeah, we will we won't even include him in the conversation. Uh Lloyd, news anchors typically have a signature sign-off. Uh Walter Cronkite, uh who anchored the CBS Evening News uh for almost two decades, would sign off with, and that's the way it is. Here in Canada, our days always ended with yours, and that's the kind of day it's been. Where did that come from?

SPEAKER_02 15:49

Well, it came up uh late in the 90s when I decided I would try it, just you know, for a little while to see how it worked. And uh it caught on. People began to say it back to me when I was on the street. And I thought, okay, well, uh maybe it's getting a little much. So I stopped doing it in the year 2000, about the turn of the century. And the next day, the chief news editor walked to me and said, Lloyd, Lloyd, please put the sign up back on. I got all kinds of calls and emails from people saying, you know, what happened to, and that's the kind of day it's been. So I put it back in and continued on with it for the rest of my time on the desk. But it was just it was purely by chance, just for fun.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

Our guest today on Up Close and Personal is Lloyd Robertson. Lloyd, I want to talk if we can for a couple of minutes about the state of journalism today. It seems like people are somewhat losing faith, and in some instances, there seems to be almost a hatred for journalists. We we don't have to look any further, of course, than the uh recent events in Ottawa, the verbal abuse being spit on. I'm curious as to your view on why this is happening, and is there a way for the media to fix this mistrust and fake news narrative?

SPEAKER_02 17:06

Well, I think a lot of people, including myself, have been trying to deal with that. And it all started because of the proliferation of channels available, uh, the news channels and then the internet and social media. And of course, all sorts of information is flowing from all sorts of different sources every day. So now the key thing is to try to identify your source, see whether you can find a trusted source for your information. Now, a lot of people don't bother to do that. They just pick out the latest thing they've read on social media or something someone sent to them on Instagram, and they believe that's true. So it's a matter of, I suppose, to put it in an old boring way, public education. Uh, and that's what we have to do as broadcasters and journalists. And what I say to people is, you know, try to find what you think is a trusted source. Your your favorite newspaper or your favorite website, um, or your favorite television source, or your favorite radio source. Use those because you know then that you're getting the straight goods. Uh and what happened in the US also is uh that with the proliferation of uh cable news, when Fox came on, they decided to do something very different. They said, okay, we feel that the left of center has had a lot of play over these last many years. We're gonna we're gonna play more to the people across the spectrum because we feel that certain parts of the country are not represented in the news. So they took that on as a project on their own, and uh it became hugely successful for them. Uh because they were providing what what some people would call an alternate voice, which uh someone from the Trump White House described as the alternate facts. I don't know how you have alternate facts, but there you go. So that also confused the picture, muddy the waters. So we've had a lot of this muddying of the waters through the last several years. And I think all we can do is try to keep saying to people, you know, don't believe everything you read and hear uh and see on your Instagram or whatever. Try to find out where that came from. I mean, right now, uh as we watch this Ukraine war going on, we know that the Russians have had all individual enterprises in the Soviet Union, individual journalism enterprises in the old Soviet Union in Russia cut off from them. And they're only hearing what the state decides they are allowed to hear. And that of course is totally wrong and uh should not be allowed, but it is, uh, because it's uh it's you know a dictatorship, it doesn't call itself a dictatorship, but that's what it is. So uh that's a particular problem uh uh uh at the present. But uh, you know, the the fact is that if we can just pull back and each one of us say, let me think about this, let me find out where I can get my information from that I can trust. And I think that's uh that's just being an individual good citizen. That's what we have to try to be.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

When you see mergers, uh Lloyd, like the pending uh Rogers acquisition of Shaw that's in front of regulators uh currently, do you worry that we're headed down a path that leads to one voice and that journalism and storytelling will lack diversity of objectivity and balance?

SPEAKER_02 20:45

Well, that is always a danger when this kind of thing happens, and no question about it. Uh and we're always caught in that dilemma of companies saying, well, I'd have to be big enough to compete with the big guys. Okay, fine. But then you cut back on the diversity of voices. So for the CRTC and other broadcast regulators like the FCC in the United States, it's a matter of striking, trying to strike a balance, not letting some of these companies get too large, uh, and allowing lots of diversity in the voices going up. So that's a challenge. I think that will continue to be a challenge.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Here at uh Village Media Lloyd, our mission is to strengthen the communities that we serve, and and we do that in a number of ways. The biggest, of course, is through providing balanced, credible local journalism from teams of editors and reporters who live in and who are entrenched in those communities. Why do you think local journalism is so critical?

SPEAKER_02 21:45

Well, it's always been, because it goes right back to the beginning of uh people telling one another stories about what was going on on the street. Uh, you know, you just have the town of Pryor uh going around and doing the headlines to people. Um, so news is really quite a basic function in our lives. It's uh telling people about what's going on in their neighborhood, in their cities and towns, and right across the world. And uh villages, the village voice, uh, you know, and your own operations, uh become extremely important because you're right there on the ground giving people the information they need to live day by day. And unfortunately, over the last several years, because of the big conglomerates that have been formed, a lot of the local services have dried up because they can't afford to compete. Or if they are competing, they're competing with one little column in a big newspaper. So that's unfortunate. And it's great to see that so many of these other operations are cropping up to serve those audiences that are left behind in these situations because of the evolution of the industry.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Through your career, you have covered or reported on some of the biggest events of our time: Expo 67, the moon landing, the Quebec referendums, countless federal elections, uh, royal weddings and funerals, of course, most recently uh that of the Duke of Edinburgh, and of course the attacks uh on 9-11. You've always said that you've had a front row seat to history. Is there one or two things that stand out to you as being significant that you got to witness firsthand?

SPEAKER_02 23:25

Well, I think two things, because they're kind of at the bookends of my career. One was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, uh, and the other one was 9-11 in uh September two September 2001. And those two uh shattered people's perceptions of what was going on in the world, you know, because we never thought that uh we'd see live on TV, almost live on TV, the assassination of a president. And uh on 9-11, a total shock, out of the blue came those planes hitting the towers. And both had a considerable effect in kind of moving public consciousness right after those two events. In 1963, it was a matter of um the rest of the world realizing that the presidency was now this vulnerable. Uh there had been assassinations before, but never one that was so public, never one that had the kind of international response that the Kennedy assassination had. I mean, even the president of the old Soviet Union at the time commented on the fact that he liked John Kennedy. You know, this was felt around the world, everywhere. Uh, and it for for a long time after that, um, there were there were things that indicated that you know he he sacrificed in in many ways his life in order for things to move forward on the American scene. Like that's after uh after his death, all the civil rights legislation was passed in the United States in 64-65. Martin Luther King, who was assassinated later. But you know, all of that happened in the window of that period. At 9-11, it was entirely different, but a mass reaction around the world at the same time, because we had then all the security checkpoints set up at airports, uh, the whole all of the security systems that we have in place now, many of them originated right after 9-11. So these were two events that changed society. Now, on the national scene, certainly, in my view, uh '67 was huge. Because that was the country coming out of its own, you know, coming into its own, as it were, recognizing that, hey, we're big boys and girls now. We're on the national stage, on the international stage, and we've made our point to the world. Uh in 1995, the referendum, big, big challenge, very close shade that night for Canada as a country, and we came through it. So we've had these moments where you know we define ourselves by those times. And I feel very fortunate to have been able to live through so many of them.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

You're a you're a three-time uh Gemini Award winner for best host, anchor, and interviewer. You've got a star in Canada's Walk of Fame, but I suspect the award that you're most proud of, because I know how proud you are to be Canadian, would be the Order of Canada that you were awarded uh back in 1998. And if I'm not mistaken, I think that might be the uh Order of Canada pin on your lapel.

SPEAKER_02 26:34

That's right. Uh Scott, I never put much stock in awards, believe me. Uh I think they're nice to have, but I I don't worry about getting them or not getting them. Uh but the Order of Canada is indeed something special. That's the one that that really matters to me because I've spent so much time covering this country. You know, when I joined the CBC, uh, it was a great learning process for me because I had a chance to go across the country, uh, get to understand the regional aid and synthesis of Canada, uh, the the east, the west, the north, the south. And I also uh got to meet a lot of people and really understand on the ground what the issues were, what the problems were, how we had to meld these various parts together in order to make it a country. And I've always said that when kids come to me and say, you know, why do you like journalism so much? What is it about broadcast journalism that attracted you? And I said, Well, you know, I think from my point of view, it's learning how the world works. That's what I really appreciate about having been a frontline journalist all of these years. And that's something that I carry with me all the time. Just that basic appreciation.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

As someone, Lloyd, who is so clearly uh proud to be from uh Canada, have you ever seen a country so divided in what it means to be Canadian?

SPEAKER_02 27:59

We've never really figured that out, have we? And I think it's because we I think we figured it out more over the last 10, 15 years than we ever have. Because we are really a polyglot of a lot of different cultures. Uh, and we had to, we had to resign ourselves to the fact that this was a country that we were going to share with with another culture, another big, big culture, the French. So we've had to had to accommodate those two. And I think that taught us that if we can accommodate the French, with all the battles that England and France have had over the years, and they were our ancestors, you know, if we can accommodate those two, then certainly we can bring in all these other cultures and allow them to be part of uh our mosaic as well. Uh so I I think that's taught us that under the banner of Canada, under this wonderful Metal League banner, we can be a lot of things. Uh and we've we've got our own values now. We have our own value system by which we live. And I think we can be very proud of that because we've established that through experiences over a long period of time.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

Do you do you miss it, Lloyd? Do you miss the daily rush of putting a newscast together and and breaking news and getting behind the desk and telling the stories to Canadians? Do you do you miss that?

SPEAKER_02 29:24

I'll tell you, Scott, for a very long time, I certainly did. I wanted to get out there and get on that horse again. But uh, you know, there comes a time. I was 77 years old, after all, when I stopped doing the nightly news. Uh, and that was I I was the oldest anchor anywhere at that point. Uh, probably the oldest anchor who'd ever been at that point. But it was time. And uh, it was time to move on. It was time for someone else to take the chair. But I continued uh doing W5 for five years beyond that. And then when I finished W5, uh at the age of 82, I guess it was, 83, uh, I kept going, doing little bits and pieces of things for people, including, uh, as you mentioned much earlier, uh commentary on the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral in April of last year. So I'm I'm there to help out where needed. And I enjoy being called almost a while for that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Yeah, I was I was gonna say, I I know you've got kids and grandkids, but uh, how do you occupy your time uh these days?

SPEAKER_02 30:25

Well, since COVID, like everybody else, we're pretty well grounded. Uh, but Nancy and I have had a lot of opportunity to spend time together because when I was working 41 years every night, uh weeknights, Monday, Friday, all that time, um, we had to shape our lives around that work schedule, and it was tough sometimes. Now we have much more freedom. We can go out and go places. As I say, it's been difficult during COVID, but um, because we've all had to adjust to that. Uh so I have been less busy, but uh, I've spent a lot of time reading and uh catching up with grandkids and that kind of thing. Uh so I'm just enjoying this part of my life, and uh I hope that uh that it'll last for a while. You never know, but there you are.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

Yeah, you're right. Yeah, we we never know, and and we're certainly blessed that uh you've certainly been a part of uh uh so many lives for as long as you have. Lloyd, I can tell you the kind of day it's been, and for me it's been a pretty good one because I got to sit down with you. It's it's been a real joy doing this. Thanks for doing this today.

SPEAKER_02 31:32

Scott, it has indeed been a pleasure, and thank you.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

Lloyd is survived by his wife Nancy of 70 years, his four daughters, and seven grandchildren. Our heartfelt thoughts, prayers, and condolences go out to each of them. That's our show for this week, as always. We appreciate your time each and every week. Be sure to follow us on our social channel, subscribe and watch back episodes at closerlookpodcast.ca, and reach out anytime at closerlook at villagemedia.ca. Today's show is always produced by Doc Tronzo. And for everyone who makes Closer Look possible each and every week, thanks for watching. I'm Scott Stexmith. In honor of Lloyd Robertson, we'll leave you with the words that became his signature. And that's the kind of day it's been. Rest in peace, Lloyd. We'll see you next time right here on Closer Look.