I was crossing Bay St. at Richmond in downtown Toronto when I saw two former acquaintances coming toward me walking side by side, neither of whom I’d seen in over twenty years: Bill, with whom I had played hockey, and Jack, whom I had taught in a Dale Carnegie Course. Both greeted me at the same time and I turned around and walked back to the sidewalk with them. We’d been chatting and catching up for a few minutes when I asked how they knew each other.They laughingly informed me they’d never laid eyes on each other before.
I don’t remember the exact date, but I do remember it was a Monday in 1985. I was at Anne Murray’s office to be interviewed by someone from Westwood Radio, an LA-based, US network that was doing an hour-long feature about her. Anne, her personal manager Leonard Rambeau, and her husband Bill Langstroth, had already been interviewed. It was about 10:00am when I walked into the boardroom where the Westwood interviewer had set up his equipment, and although I was told later I didn’t show it, I was very surprised to see that the Westwood interviewer was none other than John Dean, a key person in exposing the Watergate scandal which eventually resulted in President Nixon’s resignation. He shook hands with me saying, “Hi, Lyman, thanks for doing this. I’m John.” (No mention of his last name.) That particular week I was filling in for Betty Kennedy on her very popular afternoon public affairs show on CFRB, and I wasn’t going to let this opportunity go to waste. When my interview with Dean ended, I said, “John, I know who you are, and I’m going to ask for a huge favour.” I told him about filling in for Betty and asked if he’d let me interview him. He replied, “I’ll do it on one condition, Lyman; that you don’t refer in any way to what I’m doing now. Anything else is fair game.” I readily agreed and said, “I’ll call CFRB and have them get some equipment here right away.” “No need to do that,” he said, “we can tape it on mine.” I opened the Betty Kennedy Show that afternoon with an exclusive half-hour interview with the legendary John Dean.
Another CFRB interview I did a few years earlier also attracted attention. I was filling in for evening phone-in host Ed Needham. A major spy story had broken in the UK and there were suggestions its tentacles may have reached even the corridors of Ottawa. The producer decided it would be a good idea to interview Igor Gouzenko, the main player in Canada’s most famous spy saga. In 1945, Gouzenko, a cipher clerk at the Russian Embassy in Ottawa, defected, admitted he was a spy, and exposed a number of other Russian espionage agents around the globe. Gouzenko was now living under an assumed name on a farm just northwest of Toronto. Any time he appeared on TV (which in those days was frequent) he wore a paper bag with eye and breathing holes cut into in it, just like disgruntled sports fans sometimes do in arenas these days. Unlike the Dean interview, which was taped, Gouzenko’s was live on the telephone from his farm. But he was mumbling so badly I couldn’t understand what he was saying and I knew our listeners wouldn’t understand him either. I said, “Mr. Gouzenko, would you please take the paper bag off your head.” He hung up in a snit and I entered Canadian broadcast lore.