Drivers are the worst passengers, doctors make terrible patients and journalists hate being interviewed. But since I decided to give up after almost a dozen years as a host of the Calgary Eyeopener, I thought I owed them all an explanation. It’s just the time.
I love this job. In my opinion, it’s the best job for a journalist in the city, and to assert my prejudice (I grew up in Calgary and feel as attached to our foothills and mountains as a grizzly bear in the spring), I’d say it’s the best shit. work in the country.
David Gray and Dana Peers, then executive director of Calgary Stampede, at the 2019 Calgary Exhibition and Stampede. (CBC)
I have been a working journalist for 33 years. I started with The National in Toronto (a great first concert), got a job as a journalist in my hometown in 1990, became head of the legislative office in Edmonton two years later and after some memorable getaways with Ralph (he was with him). when he met Yasser Arafat at a beach house in Gaza), he moved to Toronto to do a national reporting show with CBC Venture’s defunct business program.
It was a good seven years. I presented reports from Cairo to Beirut, from London to Jerusalem. On this continent, I chased corporate gamers to Las Vegas, tech dreamers to New York, double-dip doctors in New Orleans, and white-collar thieves in Houston (anyone else remember Enron?). It was a great concert. I lived on a plane, told stories from each Canadian province and two of the three territories, and somehow got married and raised a family along the way.
When our second child was born, we decided to raise our children where my heart was, in Calgary. I went home.
David Gray in Lebanon in the 1990s. (CBC)
That’s when I fell into a reception chair. The first five years were spent at Newsworld, when it had a national presence outside of central Canada. That’s where I really developed my interviews, learning from Kathleen Petty, the late Henry Champ, and other veterans of the game.
Michael Enright gave me the best advice, “the second question always lies in the first answer.” He was right. It’s mostly a listening job.
In 2008 I was given the opportunity to move into the “service of the elderly” and present a radio program. That show was The Homestretch and it hooked me. Two years later, Eyeopener’s job opened, and I’ve been here ever since.
Like most hosts, I have a long list of “most memorable interviews.” I’ve had all the prime ministers from Mulroney on the other side of my microphone, movie stars and musicians, prime ministers and self-promoters. I’ve spent time on other shows (As it Happens, Sunday Edition, Cross Country Checkup), but the Eyeopener has always been where I feel I belong most. And honestly, it’s thanks to you.
Let’s be honest, there’s a lot of flour in the daily news; our job is to find the raisins. Time and time again, it is the everyday people who illuminate the waves with their stories. I will always remember the Yukon Midnight Sun Plant Food entrepreneur, the farmer who saved an injured antelope and broke his arm in doing so, the women who tirelessly offered to help strangers clean their gardens after the flood of 2013.
Angela Knight, David Gray and Allen the Alpaca social distancing at CBC Calgary in October 2020. (Paul Karchut / CBC)
In the end, it is Canadians who tell other Canadians the stories they are passionate about that makes it worth listening to the radio. This is what wakes me up in the morning. The tales that make you sit on your driveway with the engine still running to hear the ending before you head to the grocery store. The ones you like to tell your children or your mother. I hear taxi drivers and CEOs telling our stories again. This is what public broadcasting is all about.
And I love radio. I’ve always done it, since I was little. CBC radio is the country’s cultural railroad, and it goes out the windows and crosses lakes and mountain ranges like smokescreens in a summer breeze. Technology and the journalistic profession seem to be constantly shrinking and changing, but somehow radio endures. Thank God for that. It was a privilege to be able to get into your cars and houses. I will always be grateful.
Speaking of gratitude, thanks to all the technicians and producers and camera operators and assemblers and dreamers who come together to build shows every day. I get to be at the end, but they’ve made it possible. Special thanks to my wife, Kim, and my older children, Jackson and Emma, for enduring all the first few hours.
David Gray and his better half (working). Angela Knight. (CBC)
And last but not least, thanks to my partner and friend Angela Knight, with whom I have shared more than a thousand sunrises. I will miss that. He will carry the show forward, as capable and talented as ever. Maybe the “One Gray Knight” coffee will become “One Knight Only”. It would be appropriate.
So why am I leaving the Eyeopener at the end of this month? Well, getting some sleep would be fine. I just know it’s time to do something else. And no, I’m not sure what it will be, but I want to know. I retire, for the time being, marching in search of new adventures. Thank you for listening. Talk to you soon and keep up the good content.