View from the Cheap Seats is kind of an extension of the newsroom. Whenever our three regular reporters, Calvin Daniels, Thom Barker and Randy Brenzen are in the building together, it is frequently a site of heated debate. This week: Who were the three best interviewees you’ve had in your journalism career?
Pacing the cage
It’s amazing to look back on a career in journalism and realize just how many amazing people you’ve met. Of course, the most famous leap to mind, but honestly, a high level of fame does not necessarily a good interview make.
It was tough picking my top three until I started thinking in terms of the best interviews, rather than the most recognizable names.
Number three, for me, was a British Columbia provincial court judge. It is a rare thing to get an actual interview with a sitting judge, but when I was a reporter with The Interior News in Smithers, Judge W. R. Jack retired and gave me an exit interview.
He was a really interesting guy and in addition to an inspiring life story of working his way up from labourer to RCMP officer to lawyer to judge, he gave me a thoughtful, candid and fascinating insight into the inner workings of the Court.
My second greatest interview was Senator Landon Pearson. The fact she was daughter-in-law to Lester B. Pearson was only a bonus. I was working part-time for the publisher that published her book Letters from Moscow—actual letters that went back and forth in diplomatic pouches between her in the Soviet Union and her family back in Canada, when her husband Michael Pearson (Lester B.’s son) was Canadian ambassodor. I was also writing for Ottawa magazine at the time.
We sat in her office in the East Block of Parliament, overlooking the statue of the Famous Five—the women who won the legal battle that women are persons, thus making it possible for Landon to be named a senator. She told me wonderful stories and was just so nice that despite her prodigious accomplishments, it felt like chatting with my grandmother.
My best interview delves somewhat more into the world of celebrity although Bruce Cockburn isn’t exactly what you’d call a superstar. He is, however, my all-time favourite songwriter and despite having seen him in concert dozens of times, I had never met nor talked to him.
By the time I did get to talk to Bruce, I had been a fan for 31 years, since I was 17. You might say I had been preparing for that interview most of my life, but I still did a tonne of research and wrote out a bunch of questions.
As soon as I heard that all-too-familiar voice on the other end of the phone say, “Hi Thom? This is Bruce Cockburn,” most of those questions went out the window, though, and we were just two guys chatting for 45 minutes.
I published excerpts of that conversation in full and verbatim in an interview format rather than as an article, something I have rarely done in my career.
The best part was when I told him my favourite songs of his were the deeply melancholic ones and that that sadness was sometimes as satisfying to me as pure joy. I asked him if he ever felt the same and he said, “… you’re right, and it is almost—maybe more sometimes depending on your own mood—as satisfying and kind of soul-feeding as anything joyous and up-tempo might be.”
It did not necessarily surprise me that we are kindred spirits considering how much his music has spoken to me over the years, but it sure was cool to have it confirmed by him directly.
-Thom Barkerr
Hard choices
Each week we (that being the trio of scribes who contribute to this look at the world around us), sit around the office production morning and bounce ideas for topics around.
This idea of what my best-remembered interview came up in a random conversation recently, and I suggested that would indeed be a good topic.
Then I sat down to the keyboard to write this week’s contribution and quickly realized I had selected a near impossible topic.
I’ve now been at this business for nearly 30-years, or about 1560 editions of a weekly newspaper, although in my earliest days in Yorkton The Enterprise published twice a week, so the number would be higher.
That is an awful lot of interviews, a list in my case made longer still by a rather active freelance career to publications in a number of countries, and two books on hockey, both based on a long list of interviewing those involved in the sport in Saskatchewan.
So picking out two or three is at best a daunting task.
The list includes several members of the Hockey Hall of Fame, Saskatchewan Roughriders, Saskatchewan Premiers, musicians from Toby Keith to Ian Tyson to Tommy Hunter to the lead singer of Trooper, to Robert Munsch, Mr. Dressup, Catriona Le May Doan, and… well you get the idea.
In the end it’s not just the person, but the timing of the interview.
So my first thought was an interview with then Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow. It was at the end of a Western Premiers Conference held in Yorkton just a couple of days after the Quebec Referendum to leave Canada. That event had created a media frenzy awaiting the Premiers in our city. But at the end of Conference I was in Romanow’s room, the Premier’s shoes were off, and he was answering my questions.
Then there was a telephone interview with Todd McFarlane. The call was arranged because a film on the comic book artist and creator of Spawn was the topic of a documentary ‘Devil You Know: Inside the Mind of Todd McFarlane’ by Saltcoats native Kenton Vaughan which was part of the local film festival. I’m a comic book fan, Spawn included, so McFarlane was a thrill.
It helped too that McFarlane, a baseball fan, had spent nearly $3 million to buy Mark McGwire’s 70th home run ball. As a baseball fan that just added to the awe of it.
And that leads me to what was the biggest thrill. I had not been in Yorkton so many years when I was sent to interview Bobby and Dennis Hull who were going to speak in the city. To say I was in total awe would be an understatement. What could I possibly ask two of the greatest hockey players of their era that would not seem repetitious and frankly boring?
I asked a question. I likely stammered. I can’t recall what it was.
And the brothers answered, for 45 minutes they took my long forgotten questions and weaved a response that filled a page in the paper that week.
And then they signed a very humble reporters hockey cards, and he walked away feeling like he had won a Pulitzer Prize.
- Calvin Daniels
Picking ‘The Flower’
It’s never easy to break it down to your top three anything. Top three interviews, however, are even more difficult to determine.
I’ve only been doing this for nearly three years, but in that time I’ve spoken to many an important person.
After careful deliberation, my top three interviews begin with number three – Jeremy Guthrie. Guthrie was/is a professional baseball player, who actually won a World Series last year with the Kansas City Royals. I spoke with Guthrie back in 2012 while working for British Baseball. Guthrie was a part of the 2012 European Big League Tour that also involved Rick Van Den Hurk and several other major league players.
Number two on my list isn’t one single person. Instead, it’s a team, as the runner-up on my top three interviews is the 2014 Olympic gold medal winning women’s curling team, Team Jones. I’ve spoken to the team (or members of the team) several times over the past couple of years, including once at an event at the Painted Hand Casino where the quartet of Jennifer Jones, Kaitlyn Lawes, Jill Officer and Dawn McEwen actually sang me Happy Birthday.
The final entrant on my top interviews list goes to an NHL legend, and occurred only a few months ago.
The top interview - at least for me - is Guy ‘The Flower’ Lafleur. I had the honour of speaking to Mr. Lafleur at the Montreal Canadiens alumni charity game for Big Brothers, Big Sisters in 2015, and to say that I was humbled to be in his presence is an understatement.
Mr. Lafleur is as much of a class act now as he was when he played, and I can’t imagine I’ll be interviewing anyone as impressive as him any time soon.
-Randy Brenzen
