Charlottetown, Birchwood High School, 1956. I made the Reach For The Top team and was invited to join classmates on a quiz show at Radio CFCY. We were ushered into the studio with a big microphone suspended from the ceiling and an announcer behind double glass windows in the control room. It was magic.
In the corner of the studio I spotted a drum kit with the initials “D.M.,” bandleader Don Messer. He was the most famous Prince Edward Islander in Canada. This was the very studio Messer used for his national broadcasts.
Messer studied violin in Boston but played old time fiddle tunes. Today we’d call his program a celebration of Canadian folk music. Don Messer And His Islanders drew an audience of three million a week on the CBC. I was in awe.
From that moment I began hanging around the radio station. Could I sweep the floors? Anyone want coffee? Management got used to me. Later they wanted a host for a CFCY teen show, Club 62. “I’m your man,” I said. It ran for two seasons.
Looking back 67 years this is how my media career began. I recall my father gave me the best advice I ever received: “Don’t burn your bridges. Don’t tell anybody off. Don’t be a smart ass. Don’t think you’ve got it made. Just be humble and thank them for all they’ve done for you.”
In high school I worked as a stringer for Canadian Press in Halifax. I’d call in the scores from the football games, then write up a column of school news and record reviews every Saturday for the Charlottetown Patriot. I spent more time on radio and press work than I did on my studies.
My big break came June 7, 1963. An Irving Steamship tanker the Seekonk exploded and burst into flames in Charlottetown harbour. The whole waterfront was evacuated. People were terrified. Oldtimers recalled the 1917 Halifax explosion.
I was in French class at school. My teacher said, “I have lessons to teach but you’re not paying attention anyway,” so he gave me the name and number of an editor at Radio CHNS in Halifax and I ran down to the waterfront to call in the story.
I spotted explosions like fireworks off the Seekonk and there was the fire chief speaking to big-name reporters. I was 16 and in the front row. The desk in Halifax walked me through it: “What do you see? What is on the deck?”
A CHNS editor, Ken Lawrence, was on the line, teaching me the Five Ws of reporting: who, what, when, where, why? Then he taught me something I never forgot.
The captain of the Seekonk wouldn’t speak to reporters and went to the Queen Hotel for dinner. I’d worked at the hotel as a bellhop when I was 14. Lawrence told me, “Call the radio station from the pay phone in the lobby, then go tell the Captain there’s a long distance call for him.” I did, and CHNS got the biggest Island story of the year. This was a lot more exciting than sitting in class.
I left high school before graduation and went to Saint Dunstan’s, now the University of Prince Edward Island. My old French teacher was now the registrar. One day he called me into the office and said: “Duffy, your head isn’t in this and your time would be better spent learning a trade.” He called The Guardian. I landed my first newspapering job at $30 a week.
This was the heyday of the newsroom apprenticeships. I covered police court. Later I was promoted to out-of-town correspondent in Summerside, 39 miles away. I was 17 and on top of the world.
It was a different era. Editors were smart and experienced. Reporters learned from the ground up: courts, school boards, City Hall, legislature. The summit of years of work was assignment to Parliament Hill.
Today we have journalists who know little of on-the-spot news or school football or the police beat, all the minor tragedies and triumphs of community life. Yet they pontificate in news columns and opinion pages. I bet today there are reporters on Parliament Hill who have never even covered a house fire.
(Editor’s note: Senator Duffy retired in 2021 after more than 60 years in public life as a reporter, radio personality, TV host, foreign correspondent and legislator)
