Peter Mansbridge One on One

Author Essay

Ron Finch was the first person I ever interviewed. He was a nice fellow: funny, smart and happy in his job. It was the summer of 1969 in Churchill, Manitoba. The summers there are short but there’s always lots of action at the grain terminals in the harbour. Finch was the Canada Customs agent monitoring the arrival and departure of foreign ships feverishly taking part in the grain trade. Time was always ticking down on Hudson Bay’s ice-free days. When the ice returned, the Port of Churchill was shut down — there was no negotiating that fact.

Customs agent Finch had become a friend during that northern summer forty years ago, and our interview was probably one of the worst I’ve ever done. And I’ve done a lot. I’ve lost track of how many there have been since then, and I certainly couldn’t name all the people involved (most of them probably can’t remember me either). But in my career as a reporter and correspondent for two decades, and as a nightly news anchor for two more, it is probably safe to assume I’ve done an average of one interview a day. That begins to approach fifteen thousand interviews. So let’s be ultraconservative and say I’ve done around ten thousand. Remembering the first one may sound impressive — something like an NHL veteran recounting, years after the fact, his every move as he potted his first career goal. But I remember this interview for one simple reason: I was scared silly. As I lugged my heavy, briefcase-sized 1960s “portable” Nagra tape recorder down to the customs office, I had no idea how to do an interview.