♪ (upbeat) ♪ >>Jim Deeks: Hello, thank you for joining us on Canada Files .

I'm Jim Deeks.

Our guest on this edition is Peter Mansbridge who, two years after his retirement, is still perhaps, one of the most recognized faces in all of Canada.

Peter spent 49 years with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation .

The last 29 of those years as chief correspondent and primary anchor of the CBC National News .

He is as respected and well-known by Canadians as Walter Cronkite and Tom Brokaw were by Americans, during their careers.

We sat down in Toronto recently with Peter Mansbridge for a good discussion on his life, career and being Canadian.

Peter, before we go back in time, let's start with your perspective today on the career that you've had.

29 years as the face of the CBC National News.

Given the changes that we've seen in television news and journalism in general over the last 10 years or so, do you think it's possible for anyone to have the same kind of career opportunity that you had?

>> Peter Mansbridge: I was very lucky.

You know, I was lucky the way I started.

I was lucky with the people I worked with.

And I was lucky with the times.

I mean, times have changed.

Times have changed specifically in the way consumers get their news.

How they want to get it.

These things have changed our world.

>> Jim: Have they ever.

>> Peter: That's had a huge impact on television ratings.

In a way, I was kind of lucky... (chuckles) in the time period that I was in.

Because the challenges right now are considerable.

Doesn't mean they can't be met.

But they're considerable.

>> Jim: Being one of the most recognized faces in Canada for three decades basically, some might think it's an honour.

Others might think 'what a horrible burden or even a curse'.

How did you think of it?

>> Peter: Never as a burden.

I mean it was always a treat.

Occasionally, you'd have people angry at you and that would take forms through e-mails or in the old days, mail.

Sometimes even on the street.

But that was rare.

It was a honour for me to be in the role that I was in.

Travel the country and the world as a representative of Canadian television and Canada.

So I never considered it a burden.

>> Jim: What about today?

Two years into retirement, you must get tired of having to say hello and be nice to people when you're just trying to go out and have a pizza some night.

>> Peter: My wife is an actor.

She's known for what she's done on television as well.

So, we do still have people come up to us and want to say hello .

But that too is not a burden.

Canadians are pretty friendly.

They know when to talk to you and when to leave you alone.

For the most part, they leave you alone.

>> Jim: Okay, let's go back to the beginning of your career.

Because it's a story, I think a lot of Canadian viewers probably already know but certainly a lot of our American viewers wouldn't know the story of how you got your start.

And it's very much like the old yarn about Lana Turner at Schwabs Drugstore sipping a soda and gets discovered by a producer.

Tell us where you were and what happened.

>> Peter: First of all, I never finished high school.

So I never went to university.

It was the 1960s... the mid '60s and I was having fun.

I was travelling around the country in the carefree way that we used to do things in the 1960s.

But at a certain point, money runs out and you can't call on your parents anymore.

You've got to actually get a job.

>> Jim: Terrible when that happens!

>> Peter: Yeah, terrible... so I ended up working for a small airline in Northern Manitoba.

An airline called Transair .

Churchill, Manitoba so it was right on Hudson Bay.

For Americans who are watching, you look at a map, you see Hudson Bay up there.

You see it's well on its way into the Arctic.

Churchill was right there.

It was the gateway to the Arctic for supplying by air.

I was working in there, for the most part running the freight operation.

19 years old.

One day, the ticket agents were overwhelmed at the counter and they asked me to announce the flight over the PA system.

So I did !

"Transair Flight 106 Thompson-The Pas to Winnipeg ready for boarding at Gate 1."

We only had one gate at Churchill, a small airport.

Everybody went rushing off to the gate except one guy who came over and said, "Hey, I'm the manager at the local CBC northern service radio station and I'm looking for someone to do the late night news.

I can't find anybody who's interested."

Not the late night news, the late night music show... He said, "Would you be interested?"

I said, "Yeah, absolutely.

I'd love it!"

I'd never thought about broadcasting.

Never crossed my mind.

Next day, I started.

That tells you a little bit about what the 1960s was like and the hiring process in broadcasting.

>> Jim: Sure >> Peter: I got in and I was there for almost 50 years... in the CBC starting in that spot.

>> Jim: Unbelievable.

>> Peter: It is unbelievable.

Try to explain that in a journalism class at university and the kids want to riotright?

>> Jim: Exactly.

It couldn't happen today.

Your parents lived well into the 21st century.

They would have seen your career at its absolute height.

They must have been very proud of their son.

Was there anything that they taught you that perhaps affected your character or even your style as a broadcaster?

>> Peter: My character, I think in a sense.

We were a family that always discussed around the dinner table.

Because we always had dinner together.

My sister and I, my younger brother and my parents.

We always discussed the news of the day.

Which could be local, could be national, could be international.

We'd grown up in England and Malaya in southeast Asia before we moved to Canada.

We always discussed issues.

In a way, that's what journalism is about, right?

You're talking about the issues that are confronting you on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.

So they instilled in me that interest.

The curiousity about what was going on around me.

The ability to ask questions, to tell people what you learned.

That's journalism.

You elevate it through training and expertise that you pick up along the way.

I think they instilled that in me.

I don't think there's any doubt about that.

>> Jim: But being anchor requires more than just obviously curiousity, or even the ability to assemble facts to make a story.

Being an anchor, you have to be a bit of an actor.

Did you find that transition, from being a reporter into being an anchor difficult, in the early years?

Did you practice it at home in front of a mirror?

>> Peter: No, never practiced it in front of a mirror.

I was a good reporter but not a great reporter.

There are few great reporters.

People who have that amazing ability to boil down a story into a few moments.

>> Jim: Some great ones that you worked with at CBC.

>> Peter: Absolutely.

Great writers.

I was good but I found my way in anchoring by doing live shows.

Where I was thrust on the air a couple times because no-one else was around to handle breaking news.

They saw in me, this guy's got some potential for more than just reporting.

That's where the anchoring part started.

I started doing weekend news and then took over the newscasts in the late '80s.

>> Jim: Were there anchors, either in Canada or on American television, in Britain, for that matter... that you emulated yourself after?

Whose style that you particularly liked?

>> Peter: There are a couple who I really like.

I try not to-- I tell this to students, don't copy anybody.

Learn from what they do but you don't want copying.

You want your own individuality.

Aside from the ones in Canada, my predecessor, Knowlton Nash, I was close to.

The two that I really looked up to were David Dimbleby with the BBC in Britain who I felt was the best anchor in the world.

He knew when to talk, when not to talk.

Which is one of the secrets of live broadcasting.

And Tom Brokaw.

Who I had an enormous admiration for and still do.

Those were the two.

>> Jim: Most Canadians will remember how you became the CBC anchor.

It was your predecessor, Knowlton Nash who made the bold gesture of stepping down so that you would become the Canadian CBC anchor.

But there was more to it than that.

Our American viewers may not know this but at that point you were very close to leaving Canada entirely.

Tell us that story.

>> Peter: As you know, a lot of Canadians are picked up by American networks because they are good journalists and story tellers.

When you look at all the major American networks there's all kinds of Canadians there.

Many Americans don't realize they're Canadians.

In the early '90s, both NBC and CBS came after me as a reporter and wanted me as a correspondent in a number of foreign locations.

I ended up saying no to that because I has having a good career at the CBC in terms of being a correspondent.

I moved into anchoring and I was doing the weekend anchoring when CBS came after me in 1987.

Howard Stringer, who was the legendary boss at CBS and then elsewhere since, came after me and offered me the morning news program.

The network morning show.

It's been through so many different name changes.

I can't remember what it was called at that point.

I think it was the CBS Morning News .

I was gone.

I mean this was huge!

When you compared it.

>> Jim: And bigger money I assume as well.

>> Peter: A lot more money.

Then Knowlton said, "Peter, you know we took that gamble on you in 1968 and I'm ready to step down because I want to write some books.

This could be yours!"

When he put it that way, he was right!

I mean, they had taken a huge gamble on me.

I was this kid loading bags, right?

>> Jim: Unbelievable story.

>> Peter: Unbelievable.

So I turned down CBS .

I'd actually accepted and I had to phone Howard and say, "Look, you know....".

He was great.

He was mad.

But he understood what was at stake for me.

So I ended up doing The National .

And doing it for a long time and never regretted it.

CBS is a great network with a great news division.

But they've never really been successful in the mornings.

They've tried everything from Walter Cronkite to.... well, you know the list.

It's pretty impressive.

>> Jim: So you stayed here and succeeded for 29 years as the face of The National news.

Through those years, you competed with the other Canadian networks, CTV News .

And its anchor who was on for all those years as well, Lloyd Robertson.

>> Jim: How fierce was that competition?

>> Peter: We were good friends.

Lloyd used to work for the CBC .

In fact, when I started reporting Lloyd was the anchor at The National .

He gave me lots of good advice in those days and continued to after.

The first phone call I got, when they announced that I was going to take over The National was from Lloyd congratulating me and saying, "Listen, we're going to stay friends through all this".

We always made time for each other.

Strangely enough, he was born and raised, and had his first job, in Stratford, Ontario, 1.5 hours outside Toronto.

And that's where I live now!

When Lloyd comes to town, we go out for a coffee, and people get a kick out of it.

>>Jim: In the competetive years, did you two ever quietly get together and say, "I won't wear a red tie... if you don't wear a blue one"?

Or talk about your colleagues?

Or did you keep church and state apart?

>> Peter: We never had conversations about ties.

But I won't go beyond that.

(Chuckles) >> Jim : Alright, fair.

You know there was one on-going controversy, particularly in your early years as anchor.

That was about your hairline.

As each six months went by, your hairline.. >> Peter: You noticed, did you?

>> Jim: Well, I didn't.. but I know there were some tv critics, newspapers and some viewers, who did.

I'm being facetious.

Was it ever a topic of discussion at the CBC editorial board?

>> Peter: No.

It never came up.

If it came up, it was never in my presence.

I went through, as most men do as they go through hair loss, trying to decide, should I do this, shouldn't I do this?

You get over it.

When you realize, with some of the people you cover, the real stars of the news business.

Not the journalists but the people who are making the news.

You see for some of them -- it's the last thing on their minds.

I used to watch Pierre Trudeau.

Was that an issue for him?

No.

>> Jim: No.

Over the course of your career and including the number of years, several seasons you did hosting an interview program called Mansbridge One on One .

You've conducted over 15,000 interviews.

Tell me who some of those people... >> Peter: The top 1,000?

>> Jim: Yeah, the top 1,000 of the 50.

(laughs) But who are some of the ones that really stand out for you?

>> Peter: The obvious ones are well-known figures.

Desmond Tutu... Barack Obama... The Trudeaus, both of them.

And great athletes and artists.

All of whose names ring a bell to people.

Quite frankly, the people I found over time that were the most interesting were those whose names would mean nothing... to you or to your audience.

People who, for some reason or another, found themselves in an extraordinary situation.

The telling of their story was fascinating.

With all those others, the well-known figures, they're... almost predictable.

It's rare that you get them talking about things they haven't talked about before.

You know what it's like.

It suddenly starts to be like a tape recorder.

Out pops the answer that they've given hundreds of times already.

With real people, for lack of a better term, with real experience, whether it's from some natural disaster, or a conflict, or whatever situation, their answers don't have spin.

It's the real deal.

You can feel the emotion in the way they talk about the experience they had.

I've always found those most interesting from the time in the late '70s when I was covering the exodus of the boat people from Vietnam.

Listening to what they went through to give an opportunity to their families, their kids for a better place to live.

To covering the tsunami in the early 2000s that left hundreds of thousands dead in Southeast Asia.

Those stories are ones I will never forget.

I won't remember the names of the people I talked to.

But I remember what they talked about.

>> Jim: For sure.

Was there ever an interview subject that you just didn't like or you didn't respect?

And you really had to bite your tongue from saying something that you would have liked to have said?

>> Peter: You mean Margaret Thatcher?

(chuckles) She was tough.

I interviewed her three times.

The first two times when she was prime minister of Great Britain.

It was all fine.

After she got booted out of that position, she wrote a book, The Downing Street Years .

She was on a book tour so she ended up in Canada.

I got the interview and it was brutal.

She kept accusing me of not having read the book which is an easy claim to make if you're an author because most people haven't read the book.

Either their researcher has read the book or they've read the book cover or they've read a review.

And they go from there, which is not a criticism.

It's just time.

I had, in fact, read her book.

Because I was fascinated especially in the Falklands War ...trying to understand the leadership role that a wartime prime minister has, especially in Britain given its history.

My questions were generated around that.

She kept pointing at me, "You never read the book!"

I said, "I have read the book".

It was a disastrous interview.

I was frustrated by it and have kicked myself in the years since that I didn't say, "In fact I did read the book.

Did you write it?"

....because she hadn't.

I didn't and I should have.

I regret it.

>> Jim: That was all part of your unflappability.

Your trademark on the air was your calm, and as I said in the intro, your stolid reliability and impartiality.

One of the things that you also did for viewers was to give viewers a sense that you really understood the issues and the stories that were on the news.

Whether it was the war in Afghanistan or Syria or starving children in Sudan.

Part of the reason for that is you actually took the news to those places.

You didn't just have reporters filing.

You actually took The National news out there.

Was it your idea to say to your managers that we should go to these places?

Why was it important for the CBC to go to those locales?

>> Peter: For the very reason you just explained.

It gives you credibility on those stories whether you're on the location or later back in the studio.

That you have some understanding of these.

It's the hardest part about anchoring.

Most of the time, you don't know.

And you forget what that reporter went through to get that two minutes.

To go to Afghanistan or Iraq.

Anywhere in the Middle East or different parts of the world.

Going through the Northwest Passage.

>> Jim: Yeah.

>> Peter: Doing The National live from the Northwest Passage was a big deal.

Those underline to people that not only did you want to do this and it was important to do this, but that we had the capability of doing it.

My predecessors didn't.

What you can do now on television.

I can do the newscast with this!

>> Jim: Yes, you can.

>> Peter: It's crazy.

And from anywhere in the world!

As long as you can get a signal you can get on the air.

>> Jim: I won't ask your opinion of the current political situation in the United States.

I know you're too diplomatic to give me an answer.

Let me ask you this.

Two years into retirement, the world seems to have gone to hell in a hand basket the last couple of years.

Do you itch to get back?

Do you wish you could be back in the saddle reporting on some of these issues?

Giving Canadians that sense of perspective that you were so good at?

Whether it's the American political situation or Brexit or other geopolitical issues?

Climate change.

Or are you happy in your retirement?

>> Peter: I'm happy in my retirement.

There's no question about that.

But it is a world in disarray.

There's no doubt about that either.

So you want a piece of that action.

So I've chosen to find that piece... by doing documentaries.

I only do two a year.

But they're one hour.

That's a different world for me than the two-minute world I lived in before.

To do a one-hour documentary, to do it well, that's three or four months of hard work.

Especially when you're taking it global.

The last two that I did have been global in nature.

One was a look at the progress, or lack of it, on human rights since the end of the Second World War.

The last one which aired just before the summer was on the future of war which is a huge topic.

>> Jim: For sure.

>> Peter: But it involves a lot of the things you mentionned about the disarray that's going on and where this could lead.

And the likelihood that it could lead there given the analysis by a lot of these people that I talked to around the world.

Who are considered their leaders in the analysis of defence and the geopolitical situation.

That kind of journalism is different for me.

I've really thoroughly enjoyed it and feel that I'm offering something different and concrete.

To a world that is desperate for information and context.

We live in this 24/7 world where what's news in this hour... is not news 24 hours from now.

People have forgotten it and moved on.

That is dangerous.

>> Jim: For your style, talent, and unflappability, you've acquired a lot of honours in your career.

You've got 13 university honorary degrees.

>> Peter: That's still not the same as one real degree.

(laughs) Although I keep offering to trade.

How about all those honoraries for one real one.

>> Jim: You've got all those university degrees now.

You've got an Order of Canada .

Which I know is your proudest possession.

You wear it, as all Order of Canada members do proudly, on your lapel.

For a guy who didn't get past Grade 12, you must sit back and think, "Well I feel pretty proud and I'm sure, very humbled."

>> Peter: Very humbled.

I've been lucky.

I've done what I've wanted to do.

I've been in a profession that allowed me to be myself.

Simply ask questions.

Tell people what was going on.

I got to stand on the shoulders of people who pushed me along the way.

You know this business as well as I do.

You can't do it on your own.

The viewers rarely see everybody who's behind us.

And that's what makes or breaks a lot of people.

>> Jim: I have one last question for you.

You have three grown-up kids now.

What's the most important lesson you've taught them from all the experiences you've had.

>> Peter: It sounds trite but... believe in yourself.

Life can throw some curve balls at you.

I remember a chief I met in northern Manitoba.

In the late '60s or early '70s.

He said to me, "Life is like a creek or a river.

It doesn't go straight.

It bounces off rocks, logs, here and there.

But it eventually gets to its goal.

So believe in yourself.

Set a goal.

Go for it."

>> Jim: We're out of time.

This has been delightful.

Thank you so much for joining us.

>> Peter: Thanks Jim.

>> Jim: If I can borrow your sign-off phrase, thank you for watching.

And I hope you'll join us again for another edition of Canada Files .

See you next time.

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