Jeff Douglas - Canadian Actor and CBC Radio Host

Christina chats with Jeff Douglas - the host of CBC Radio One's Mainland Nova Scotia's afternoon show  Mainstreet - about acting, making mistakes, imposter syndrome, and his role keeping Atlantic Canadians company during the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona in Fall 2022. 

He's a born storyteller with a background in theatre. Born in Truro, N.S., Jeff Douglas was the host of the award-winning unscripted series Ancestors in the Attic, Working Over Time, and Things That Move. Jeff's received three Gemini nominations, and a Kari Award for his popular commercial work — which includes playing Joe Canadian in the now-legendary "I Am Canadian" campaign. He was the co-host of As It Happens and the voice of CBC TV's The Stats of Life.

Chapters

• 0:00 Greetings from Christina
• 0:30 Theme Song - Talk About It
• 0:56 Introduction by Christina
• 3:27 Imposter Syndrome
• 5:51 Acting and Joe Canadian
• 16:18 Jeff's start in radio
• 24:06 Hate mail
• 36:07 Fucking up is part of life
• 46:46 Difference in perspective
• 48:00 Jeff's coverage during Hurricane Fiona
• 57:48 Heartbeat Hotline 1(902)-669-4769
• 58:22 Podcast Credits
• 58:44 Support the Podcast on Patreon

Transcript

Podcast theme song 'Talk About It': [00:00:02] (Instrumental music in the background)

Christina: [00:00:03] Welcome to a Chat with Heart Podcast. I'm your host, Christina Martin. I'm here to help guide heartfelt conversations with new and old friends I've made from just being alive, or touring my music around North America and other parts of the world. I chat with people I feel a kinship with, and that I genuinely believe we can learn from. Our personal stories have great power to heal, influence, and inspire. All we have to do is show up for the conversation.

Podcast theme song 'Talk About It': [00:00:30] If we just talk about it, we can shine a light, we can break a dark day. If we just talk about it, we can cut away, we can make a brighter day.

Christina: [00:00:56] Hi, everyone. It is pizza night here in our household. God, I love vegan pizza night. It's taken me a few years, and it actually took a pandemic for me to figure it out. But I've got a great recipe for gluten-free crust. And you can watch me making vegan and gluten-free pizza on YouTube. Just Google vegan and gluten-free pizza recipe cooking with Christina Martin. That's me.  
  
 This is going to be a short intro because I have to go put the toppings on the pizza. You might be able to hear the freezing rain tapping up against our window. I love a good pizza night coupled with freezing rain, it's just a good combo. Cozy.  
  
 But this is also a great chat, so I want to get to it quickly. And hey, if you're listening from Nova Scotia, a question for you. Maybe you want to call my Heartbeat Hotline and leave a comment about this. But who were you listening to when the power went out during Hurricane Fiona? I was listening to the voice of my guest today. He's a born storyteller with a background in theater, and he was born in Truro, Nova Scotia. 
  
 Jeff Douglas was the host of the award-winning unscripted series Ancestors in the Attic, Working Overtime, and Things That Move. Jeff's received three Gemini nominations and a Carey Award for his popular commercial work, which includes playing Joe Canadian in the now legendary I am Canadian Molson Canadian campaign.  
  
 He was the co-host of As It Happens for a super Long Stretch and the voice of CBC TV's The Stats of Life. Here in Atlantic Canada, where I live, we are so lucky that he returned to his home province of Nova Scotia in June 2019 to host mainland Nova Scotia's afternoon show, Main Street on CBC Radio One. And get this, he's in a really cool dance party band called Height Requirement. 
  
 So clearly he's going to have a lot of cool stuff to share with us. I love this guy. I love this chat, particularly when we start gabbing about making mistakes and how it's just part of life. Enjoy my chat with Jeff Douglas. Right on time. Look at you.

Jeff: [00:03:27] Look at that, recording in progress. Can you hear me?

Christina: [00:03:29] I can hear you great. Can you hear me?

Jeff: [00:03:31] I can hear you perfectly. Yeah. It's like we've done this before.

Christina: [00:03:35] Well, I know you do it a lot. I know you do it a lot--

Jeff: [00:03:38] Oh, you do it a lot, too.

Christina: [00:03:39] Oh, my God. I'm so scared to do this with pros. I'm always like, "What am I thinking? What the fuck, am I crazy?"

Jeff: [00:03:49] It is the same thing I think every day, every single.

Christina: [00:03:52] Isn't that funny, though? So you actually have, I guess, imposter syndrome?

Jeff: [00:03:58] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And my wife and I talk about that a lot. The thing is that ultimately you're just you, it doesn't matter. Whenever you're going into anything, it's like you're you and you have all the doubts that come with that. At a certain point, though, you just realize that everyone else feels the same and no one else is more qualified.  
  
 So it's like, well, why shouldn't it be me? And so you just reconcile. It's the same, you go on stage, you perform, and think about "stage fright." It's usually just excitement. You're happy to go on. You love doing it. And after a while, you come to love the nervousness. So, yeah, I don't mind the impostorness.

Christina: [00:04:48] Well, that's good. Do you think there's also that element of like, "Well, fuck, I have to pay the bills." I actually have to do this thing. I set this up so I do have to show up, even though I'm terrified or whatever.

Jeff: [00:05:01] Oh, yeah. And I make the best of it. 

Christina: [00:05:03] And then they give you a paycheck and you're like, "What just happened? How did I get paid for this?" Oh, well, I love doing this because-- we've known each other for a bit. But you get so carried away and distracted with life and trying to keep yourself, paying the bills that you-- and certainly I live in the middle of nowhere as you do sort of.  
  
 I think you're closer to more civilization than I am. But this gives me a chance to find out where people are from, what led them to what they do. I didn't know you were born in Truro, and we both grew up in the Maritimes, although I wasn't born in the Maritimes. But I'm a fellow Gemini--

Jeff: [00:05:46] Yeah. Are you Gemini?

Christina: [00:05:47] Yeah. June 11th. Yeah.

Jeff: [00:05:49] Holy cow. So close too.

Christina: [00:05:51] Yeah. Yeah. Jeff's June 8th just so everybody knows when to send him best wishes. Okay, I'm embarrassed. I should have known this. I do remember Joe Canada. I remember having a crush on Joe Canada and I didn't know it was you, dude. I did not know.

Jeff: [00:06:11] I know. It's part of the career, corn, maize, that is mine.

Christina: [00:06:17] I do want to hear a summary of you getting into acting and was that a big step up for you, like a big outdoor opening opportunity or--

Jeff: [00:06:30] Yeah, it's funny in a way.

Christina: [00:06:36] Tell my listeners a little bit about Joe Canada.

Jeff: [00:06:39] Okay. So Joe Canada, and I think it was 2000 or 2001, Molson Canadian decided to return to the actual I guess campaign of I am Canadian. They'd gone away for a bit. They were like doing things with chimps writing. They had a bizarre campaign and so--

Christina: [00:07:02] With chimps.

Jeff: [00:07:02] With chimps. Yeah, I think there was that old saying that if 10,000 monkeys set at 10,000 typewriters for 10,000 years, would they write the works of William Shakespeare? And I think it was something like if 10,000 monkeys work for 10,000 years, would they create a beer like Molson Canadian?  
  
 So anyway, they came back, they wanted to do this campaign, so they started off with a speech. This guy, I guess they came to a different ad agency. They fired a team, I guess, their ad company agency is what the word is that they'd had for decades and decades and decades, because of this monkey thing. They were just like, I think you guys have jumped the shark.  
  
 And then they hired this new agency. And the head of Creative, the Don Draper at this agency was this brilliant, brilliant guy by the name of Glenn Hunt. And they came to Glenn Hunt and they were like, "What would you do for us?" So a huge, huge, huge, huge contract, a huge client. And they said, "What would you do?" And he was like, "You've already done it, man. You're never going to get better than I am. I would just do it a little more on the nose." 
  
 And they were like, "On the nose how?" So he wrote this speech. He had worked as an ad man in Manhattan. He'd worked in LA or in New York. And as a Canadian, working in New York, he had all these questions, all these things. So we wrote this thing. We ended up doing a test. I got hired to do a test because Molson was pretty scared about it. They just thought, oh, this is going to ostracize people and it's too on the nose, it's too whatever.  
  
 But anyway, yeah, so I did it. But I've been shooting a series for Disney for I think it was my third year, third shooting year. So it would have been the fifth season of that series. And I was a regular or what they call a recurring role on that. So I'd been working and that show was on all over the world. It's like 100 in some countries. The show is called The Famous Jesse Jackson. And actually, the guy who ended up running that show, Shawn Levy, now is one of the creators and showrunners of Stranger Things.

Christina: [00:09:24] Oh, cool.

Jeff: [00:09:25] Yeah. So his career has taken off. He was awesome to work with him. But this the Joe Canadian thing, I am Canadian thing happened landed in the middle of that but it was the exposure of that was incredible. But no one knew. People didn't know.  
  
 They just thought that that was Joe. They thought it was Joe. They didn't realize-- I don't know what people thought because it was a weird thing that happened with that ad. Even seasoned journalists would call my agent looking for Joe, and she'd be like, "Who's Joe?" And they'd be like, Joe--

Christina: [00:10:05] Joe Canada?

Jeff: [00:10:06] Canadian. Joe Canada. Joe was like, he's an actor. He's whatever. But that was a weird thing.

Christina: [00:10:13] You were convincing, really?

Jeff: [00:10:15] I think so. And look, if you can see, I've got a mullet hockey hair, horrible haircut going now.

Christina: [00:10:21] I like it.

Jeff: [00:10:21] And one of the reasons that I got hired as Joe Canadian, the producers told me after when we went to shoot the actual commercial because I had gotten a cut. And at that point, like a mullet, people would just call it hockey hair because it was coming out behind your helmet or whatever.

Christina: [00:10:38] So Monckton.

Jeff: [00:10:40] So Monckton. Yeah, yeah. And so every smaller center is so hoser.

Christina: [00:10:48] Totally.

Jeff: [00:10:48] It's so hoser. And I came into the first audition with this hockey hair, and they were like, "That's the guy. That's the guy. They were like, You're hockey hair." And then I had the hockey hair because I'd had other roles. I'd cut the hockey hair by the time. And the first thing they said to me when we came in to shoot the commercials, they were like, "Where the fuck is your hockey hair?" 
  
 I was like, "Oh, no, it's gone, it's somewhere." But anyway, I got to see, Christina, that was my first time really getting out across the country. I went to a whole bunch of places and hockey games and car races.

Christina: [00:11:26] It's so fun?

Jeff: [00:11:26] Everything. Yeah. Yeah, it was a good time.

Christina: [00:11:28] How old were you at that time? Were you like early in your 20s?

Jeff: [00:11:33] Yeah. Yeah, 27, I think.

Christina: [00:11:35] Okay. Yeah. That is a good time to be seen--

Jeff: [00:11:36] That's like a lifetime ago now.

Christina: [00:11:39] in the country. Did I read this thing correctly that you had for this as part of that campaign you had done within a certain number of hours you'd gone across Canada?

Jeff: [00:11:50] Yes, we did Canada Day 2001 maybe. The goal was to start a new plan at midnight. So we flew out to St John's on June 30th and then at the stroke of midnight in Saint John's, we did a hit. I did a live thing at a pub and then hopped on the plane. They had chartered a Learjet and we flew into Halifax, I think, and PEI. I don't know if we hit New Brunswick. I can't remember.

Christina: [00:12:24] The forgotten province. That's my home province.

Jeff: [00:12:26] Is that that I know? And David Miles said, "Please don't." What is it? Don't just drive through or something, or there's-- I grew up-- I spent all my family's from New Brunswick, so I spent a lot of time in New Brunswick.  
  
 And New Brunswick might not have been one we missed. Quebec, they definitely gave the swerve, too, because they didn't think I am Canadian. I was going to fly super well, within five years of the referendum. So they're like, now-- and Canadians didn't play well anywhere there. But yeah, a couple of hits in Ontario as one would, and then Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Calgary, and then out to Victoria, and then back to Vancouver.  
  
 And the idea was that I should be on stage at the Roxy, I think it was in Vancouver at about 5:00 to midnight or between 11:30 and midnight. And I think we were-- you think of the logistics of it like it was huge because landing at Pearson if you've flown into Pearson recently, it's an absolute shit show. But at any point getting from Pearson to downtown is a gamble and it was a very tight schedule.  
  
 So they hired an actual police escort from Pearson to the beaches to Cugat and it was so rich. And there was an intern. I'll never forget there was an intern, a marketing intern from Molson who was in the Molson van. And he had this four motorcycle police escort with them, and they were just boom. And they'd drive up. One would drive ahead and come up behind the cars in front, and just pointing like, get out of the way. And people clearing.  
  
 And this kid was just like, oh my God, driving like 140 kilometers an hour down the Gardiner. And they drive into an intersection. If we're at a red light, they just drive out into it and stop the cars in both directions. We'd scream through and I was like, I'm asking the head of the marketing person. I'm like, "How do you do this?" They said, "Anyone, can do this at any time. You just pay."

Christina: [00:14:34] You pay the money.

Jeff: [00:14:35] You can pay for a police escort.

Christina: [00:14:37] I want to do that next time I fly into Toronto.

Jeff: [00:14:41] Holy cow, it's not cheap. I don't know what it would cost. Probably you're talking five figures, I would think.

Christina: [00:14:46] But imagine I'm going to put the grant money towards that. And you imagine people find out about that, that would be just-- I didn't know. I did rent a limo one time for before a show and that was extravagant. But then I felt so guilty. So I think I'll pass on this, but that does sound really like fun.

Jeff: [00:15:03] And we did like the thing. They got us across the country and from Victoria because we flew into Victoria and then took a helicopter back to Vancouver and I was on Roxy. We missed it by 5 minutes. I think I was on stage at 5 after 12:00. So I did that trip in like 24 hours. And it's funny, there's a cameraman, Carla Collins came with us.  
  
 I think she was working for Global at the time, and she came with us to cover it. And this guy, Adam, cameraman, who I subsequently ended up when I was working for History Television and then doing some stuff for CBC TV, we'd end up shooting together and we'd always reference back to this. 
  
 And Leslie Berlinger, who actually now runs the whole podcast thing at CBC, she was Carla's producer. And so we all went on this thing. And the only thing, the only nourishment they had on that Learjet for 24 hours was Molson Canadian and Pringles.

Christina: [00:16:02] Oh, my God.

Jeff: [00:16:04] By the time we got to Vancouver, all of us had got wrought just because you get hungry, man. You just eat a lot of Pringles, a whole tube of Pringles three or four times a day. You imagine doing that? A lot of sodium.

Christina: [00:16:18] Okay, so how the fuck did you get into radio? Because you don't have a face for radio. You have a voice for radio and everything, and your face as well for everything. I'm objectifying you, but--

Jeff: [00:16:33] That's perfect.

Christina: [00:16:34] Yeah, well, right as we get older, it's like, "Please do."

Jeff: [00:16:37] Yeah, that's a little bit of objectification. It goes a long way. I appreciate it. I worked as an actor, that's where my training is. And I worked as an actor for, I don't know how many years in Toronto, strictly as a performer, mainly TV. And at a certain point, Barbara Budd left as it happens, and they were looking for someone and Denise Donlon-- do you know who Denise Donlin is? She used to be a VJ at much music. Maybe not a VJ, but a music journalist.  
  
 And she was running CBC, obviously like a super multifaceted, brilliant woman. And she was top of the heap at CBC Radio at that point. And she was pretty set on finding someone that was different. She wanted a different feel to it, a different sound to it. So they hired a headhunter.  
  
 So I got an email saying, "Hey, as it happens, is looking for the guest host and if you know the guest host position, blah, blah, blah" said all that stuff. And I was like, I quite frankly didn't know it because I didn't like a lot of people. I didn't grow up listening to a lot of CBC. My parents were huge country and Western fan, so I just grew up listening to a shit ton of eight tracks and cassettes of Alabama and George Jones. And even the radio we listen to was commercial country and Western music.  
  
 And so I didn't know. I was like, okay, great. I just wrote back the guy and I said, "I don't think this is me. It's current affairs show. And I don't--

Christina: [00:18:45] I don't have a face for radio.

Jeff: [00:18:47] I want to say we started off talking about impostor syndrome. And I knew what I was and I knew who I was and I knew what my interest in current affairs was and politics and all that shit. And that was almost zero. I was completely disengaged. And so I was just like, no, I don't think CBC is and still is I think largely-- it's a very cerebral place and a very intellectual space. And that's not me. I've never been.

Christina: [00:19:22] I think I know what you mean. Like, it can get pretty serious.

Jeff: [00:19:27] It's a little heady. And anyway, it just didn't feel like me. And I was very aware that this is not my milieu. I know what CBC radio is. And I'm not it. So thanks, but no thanks. And he was like, "Can we talk?" He responded and said, "Let's just talk on the phone about this." 
  
 So I was like, "Sure, whatever." I said to my wife, to Anna, at some point in these email chains, "Do we even know the show?" Because we knew the morning stuff like I knew the current, a new metro morning by this point. But in the evening I didn't listen to CBC. And she goes, "No, I know that show. I know that show. It's the woman who always sounds like she's had a couple of drinks." And yeah, Carol Off.

Christina: [00:20:15] Carol Off. Slightly off? No.

Jeff: [00:20:17] And I was like, "Yeah."

Christina: [00:20:18] No, just kidding.

Jeff: [00:20:19] I was like, "Oh, I don't know." She goes, "Yeah, it's actually a pretty good show." And she said, "It's kind of the funky theme song. Do you know it?" And I was like, "I don't think so." But it's probably like anyone who's generational as it happens, this is going to be like, sacrilege. This is going to be sacred for a long time as it happens, listeners.  
  
 But this was where I was. And anyway, the guy called up. We talked on the phone. And I was like, man, you got to see. I said, "Have you seen any of these shows?" He said, "Someone said, you're a show on history or a host on History Television." I was like, "Have you seen the shows?" He's like, "No, I haven't seen it." I said, "You should probably watch them." Like, I do things. I fart in elevators.

Christina: [00:20:58] Yeah, like you really want me farting on radio?

Jeff: [00:21:02] It's not a Medinah. It's not a world at war. They hired me to bring in the dumb guys. They wanted this guy called Discovery Dan, Discovery Dan who was dirty jobs and stuff. And History was like, we're not advertisers. We want more impulsive younger guys who bought the Ginsu knife and shit like that. So they're like, "Bring in this guy. Bring in the beer guy." So I told him, this is what I am. And he said, "Why don't you just try it?"

Christina: [00:21:39] Yeah.

Jeff: [00:21:39] And it's because he said, it's the CBC, it's network, it's an international show, at least get your name on their Rolodex, because even if it's not, if you don't end up taking the job, you don't get the job, if they know you, maybe from time to time you sit in a chair when someone goes on vacation called backfill at CBC, you backfill somewhere. Do your thing. And I was like, "Whatever."  
  
 And the truth is, I was actually doing one of these History Television shows, and I went in, they sent me something. They're like, "Read this script. This is part of the process, a big audition process." And they sent me this script. I print it off. I didn't really look at it, but I went to this narration session for one of the History Television shows I was doing. And I knew that those shows were not going to be renewed. They'd run their course. And so I knew that these things, we'd already finished all the photography, we were just doing the post-production stuff, the narration, and shit like this.  
  
 So like I said to Grant Edmonds, who was our post-pro guy, "Hey, after we're done with the session, can I just run a few trips through this script they have here?" And we finished the session. He said, "What's the script for?" And I said, "Hampens." He was like, "Oh, are you auditioning for this role?" And I was like, "Yeah." He was like, "Oh, it's a big deal." And I was like, I said, I don't know much about it.  
  
 And I think that that's what I had going in my favor was that I wasn't nervous about it because I didn't know what it was. But I remember getting the script and pulling it out my bag or whatever it was, probably my pocket filled it up and I put it on the music stand in there in the booth, and I started reading it.  
  
 I was like, "Fuck, this is good. It's a good script and it's fun and it's rich and there's a lot to it." And it was like 75 or 90 seconds. I was like, "Man, this is really dense, fun material." So I think at that point I did a couple of run through and it flowed like it was just like, oh, like whoever this writer is, this is simpatico with me. I was like, this feels good.  
  
 So I sent it off. And then I started getting tested. And then there was a process. You come in and do a couple of improv sessions with Carol and then do a week on the show for two weeks on the show, whatever it was. And then they offered me the job and I was like, "Oh man." Then the comments start and all that.

Christina: [00:24:06] Oh, I was going to ask you about this. So before I ask you about the transition to Main Street and coming back home to the East Coast, weird requests, hate mail, all that kind of stuff, do you get that?

Jeff: [00:24:21] Not here. Not as much here in Nova Scotia as in Network when I started there. And it was also like change. People are resistant to change. And again, when Denise Donlon was like, no, we want something different, it was bound to happen. I know that now, but--

Christina: [00:24:42] I want examples. Do you remember any?

Jeff: [00:24:45] Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah.

Christina: [00:24:47] I don't mean to retraumatize you. Let's laugh about it after.

Jeff: [00:24:50] No, it's really interesting because it turned out to be a really amazing transformative experience. Getting some really personal and negative shit said about you by complete strangers, I know what it sounds, but I'll tell you what. When I first started there, I'd talk to other hosts and I'd say, "Any advice starting off?" And they'll say, don't read the email. Don't read the email. Don't read the email. Everyone would say, don't read the email. Jeff Keith, who at that time was head of communications, was like, don't read the email. Don't read the email.  
  
 And I was like, "What is this? What is this?" And he said, "It's horrible. It's horrible. They're nasty. Our listeners can be really, really nasty." And I was like, "Okay, I won't read the emails." And then Michael Enright came around and who he had hosted, as it happens, for years as well. And he'd been over at CBC at that point on the Sunday edition. He had his own show and Pia does that Sunday magazine, but in that time slot, it was him. And he was the last of the giants from the '70s and stuff, the last of-- he and Paul Kennedy at RDS were the grand damns I guess as it were.

Christina: [00:26:10] Yeah.

Jeff: [00:26:11] But I remember saying, Enright, he came by "Hey, kid, welcome. Just welcome to the corpse," as they called it. Welcome to the corpse. And I said, "Hey, Michael, thank you so much for that. Any advice beyond, don't read the email?" He goes, "Read it."

Christina: [00:26:24] Yeah.

Jeff: [00:26:24] I was like, "Really, read it?" He goes, "Read it. Read every fucking last one until you see it for what it is." Because he said, "Honestly, kid, if you cannot live with the fact that complete strangers are going to hate you, you're in the wrong game." I was like, okay.

Christina: [00:26:40] Wow, that's amazing advice.

Jeff: [00:26:42] Yeah. I was like, okay, I'll do it. I'll do it. And I started reading them. I was like, "Oh, fuck." It was bad and it was bad.

Christina: [00:26:50] Give me one. Give me one.

Jeff: [00:26:51] Well, I remember this one, in particular, stayed with me because this was amazing. And this has a good ending. But Barbara Budde, the woman I replaced had been on the show for 16 years, something like that. Maybe more. Maybe over 20 years.  
  
 And Jean and Carol had been together, I think, for five years. Mary Lou Finlay had been there before. So it had been two women for a long time. And this woman wrote in and said, "Not only have you ruined this show by bringing a man in, but you somehow managed to go out and find the most idiotic, clueless baboon-- buffoon. Sorry, buffoon.

Christina: [00:27:37] Important.

Jeff: [00:27:38] In the world, it was an important distinction. And I remember going, holy shit, talk about imposter complex because I was like, I was aware that. I wasn't sounding and people would just write in and say, amateur.

Christina: [00:27:52] Hold on. Wasn't it also partially scripted or like--

Jeff: [00:27:56] It's all scripted. It was all scripted. What I was doing wasn't my thoughts. It was just my delivery, my personality.

Christina: [00:28:06] The name. You're the name that people are going that's--

Jeff: [00:28:09] They didn't like me. So this is what you're thinking. And it's interesting that through all of this, I remember like a month in, maybe two months in I was like, I'm not going to make it. I'm not going to-- that's just like, who signs up for this?  
  
 You take a massive pay cut if you go to CBC. If you're working in television, like in the private, you take a huge pay cut coming to a public broadcaster. And I thought it was a cool project to do radio, but I was like, "You have to be masochistic to be in for this. This is bullshit. I'm done."

Christina: [00:28:49] Yeah.

Jeff: [00:28:49] And I remember going for lunch with my agent. And his name is Chris Oldfield. Theo called him Carol Off too. But he'd be like, "JD, how's it going? Oh, my God, how great is it?" And I was like, "CEO, I think I'm going to quit." He was like, are you kidding me? You've been there six weeks. And I started to explain to him what it was. And I said, I just think I suck. I think that I'm not good at this. I'm not cut out for this. And I had that suspicion going in. But it's being confirmed over and over and over again.

Christina: [00:29:24] There must have been some good emails.

Jeff: [00:29:27] This is what I learned. The people who are happy with things typically are just like, oh, those are at peace and go on making dinner.

Christina: [00:29:34] Yeah, they're busy.

Jeff: [00:29:35] Do you know what I mean? And so this is what Chris said to me, my CEO, my agent at this dinner because I said, people hate me and I don't know, like, maybe I just shouldn't be doing this. Maybe I shouldn't be doing anything that I'm out there. Apparently, I'm fucking completely annoying. And he was like, JD I think you've got some faulty logic. And I was like, "Oh, how so?" And he said. "Because I think what you're doing is you're thinking, "What would someone have to do? How bad would someone have to be to make me write that email?"

Christina: [00:30:15] Mm-hmm.

Jeff: [00:30:15] He said you're running that through your own logic, your own mind.

Christina: [00:30:20] Pretty bad. Pretty bad.

Jeff: [00:30:21] Yeah. And he said, "I don't think that's what these people are doing." He said, "I think these people probably have a lot of shit going on themselves and that you're a handy target. That's it." And it's funny, so I kept reading the email, as I said, and slowly over time, you realize that, okay, this is part of the role. Part of the role of the public broadcaster or to be out in public anywhere is for some people, it's all about relationships.  
  
 Now at the end of the day for some people, the best relationship they can have is to take their anger and discomfort and disenchantment, their feelings of whatever it is failure, smallness, whatever they have and take it out on this person who's in the radio somewhere. So they don't take it out on their family and the people in their lives. You know what I mean? And they don't take it out on themselves.  
  
 And so I reconciled myself with the fact that there are those people out there who-- and now the nice thing is, is that at the end of all of this, you realize, well, I'm going to do what I do and I'm going to be really careful about my intentionality. I'm not going to be flip about it and I'm not going to bullshit it. I'm going to bring it to the best I can on any given day because you're in a different place every day. And I'm doing now mainstream doing like 15 hours of live radio a week. You're not hitting it out of the park every single day.  
  
 But I think that we like the team, we every day set out to do the best show we can with the resources we have on that day. Sometimes that's the stories just aren't there. Some days people are working from home because they've got COVID or their kid's sick or whatever. But we bring it and we do it with the best intention and that you are never going to please everyone and that's okay. That's okay and it's incredibly liberating.

Christina: [00:32:22] Yeah, I agree.

Jeff: [00:32:23] The woman who wrote in about the most--

Christina: [00:32:27] You being an idiot?

Jeff: [00:32:28] Yeah. Yeah. The most idiotic buffoon on the face of the planet, I wrote back to her.

Christina: [00:32:33] Okay, good, good.

Jeff: [00:32:34] Yeah. So I wrote back to her, and I was like, "Agnes or Dolores or whatever her name was in Wisconsin, I said "I wonder if you can imagine what it's like to open your inbox on a Monday morning and reread the email you sent and imagine what it's like to open your inbox on a Monday morning and see that from an absolute stranger.

Christina: [00:33:00] Good for you.

Jeff: [00:33:00] Imagine that you're doing a new job and that you know that you're not the best at it, you know it's new and that you're failing in a very public forum. Put those things in your brain, reread your email, and then ask yourself, why you wrote that email.

Christina: [00:33:25] What did she say?

Jeff: [00:33:26] She wrote back. It was a couple of days later and I got an email because that first email came to the, as it happens, mailbox. The second one came directly to me and it was like, dear Jeff. I got your email. I'm so ashamed. I'm so ashamed of myself. I guess I never thought that you would see it.

Christina: [00:33:53] Oh, well.

Jeff: [00:33:54] And I also quite frankly wasn't thinking of you as a person. And yeah, it's big. And so she said, I do find you very annoying, but I also find my nephew, Donny, very annoying and I love him very much. So I will endeavor to love you like I love my nephew, Donny.

Christina: [00:34:19] That's sweet.

Jeff: [00:34:20] And then she signed it, Aunt Agnes. And every year at Christmas for probably five years after that, I would get a merry Christmas email from Aunt Agnes in Wisconsin.

Christina: [00:34:32] That's sweet. That is a good ending.

Jeff: [00:34:34] That was a good one. Not all are like that.

Christina: [00:34:37] It's nice when people can be honest. And you can't expect it. I know there are people that don't like my music and don't like a lot of things about me. I'm sure of it. I don't have the celebrity you have, so they're not telling me, although I did get a hate mail once, but I feel like it might have been a robot or something.  
  
 And the email just said, you ugly old hag. And I wrote back and said, thank you so much for your email. It made me laugh so hard. And I've been thinking a lot about my age and aging in the music business, that kind of thing. And so this is the worst email I could ever possibly receive. But no, I just had to laugh about it, and then I think I got a response. But it just seemed very much like a bot or something. 
  
 And I think when I hear about people getting mail like you have that, "Oh, my God, that person has really made it." I was just like, I'm so excited for you. And I guess I shouldn't wish for more hate mail on myself. I'm sure that it would affect me emotionally. But there's just that part of me that's like that's something that celebrities get to deal with.

Jeff: [00:36:07] Yeah. Public broadcasters, anyway. CBC also, people have a special relationship because the public are shareholders in it. And so they feel like we're their employees in a way. That's the nature of the relationship. And so they're pretty good. And to be honest, we get a lot of critical emails. Critically, emails are fine.  
  
 We get a lot of people writing and saying, I don't think that your bias is showing on this one. And a lot of times those people are getting on, that Just because something is critical or not necessarily fan mail doesn't mean it's inaccurate. And some things to be unpacked there. You say, okay, well, is my bias showing at a rate that can I not hear the other side of it?  
  
 Sometimes it's worth a little introspection and then sometimes it's like you have to have a separate bin or hatred. You just go, this is something that's swirling around inside that person. And I've just got to keep that off of me because that has nothing to do with what I'm doing here.  
  
 And part of it is it's the same in any relationship. And I guess the great thing about having it happen to me through this work filter is that it's been a real opportunity for me to learn a little bit too about how to keep myself a little safer and cleaner and impersonal and in real-world relationships too and to be resilient, fuck, people don't like you. They don't like what you do. It's like, whatever.  
  
 Who am I doing this for? Ultimately, who am I doing this for? And I don't mean making music or making radio or whatever, but living life. Who am I doing this for? And so I think that at the end of the day, I was just like, I do this ultimately for my wife, my dogs, and me. 
  
 That is it. Maybe not necessarily in that order every day, but pretty close. And beyond that, it's like if I can come home and go, look, I think I fucked up today and their reaction is, yeah, you did, but tomorrow's another day. Then you go, okay, yeah, tomorrow is another day. And as long as I'm not doing something that's hurting people close to me I feel okay.

Christina: [00:38:28] It's not something that I guess growing up, you learn it through life, through living, and we're in these positions where you're hearing yourself back, you're getting feedback. So maybe we are so lucky. We do have this opportunity to fast-track our growth if you're up for that. But that's how I think of it, like, oh my God, how lucky am I get to edit this podcast and then get feedback?  
  
 And there was a moment where in one episode I was making light of something, I guess, or sorry, somebody who called my Heartbeat Hotline had asked me a question if I could trade places with one person, who would it be? And I was oblivious to what was going on overseas. But I had been in terms of Russia and Ukraine and I knew there was strife there happening for years, but it wasn't really on my radar. And it was January of last year.  
  
 I had been binge-watching James Bond movies to interview my friend Chris Distin for an episode because he has one of the largest James Bond collection paraphernalia-like collections in Europe. And so on my mind was like Cold War, espionage, spy-like. And so in my response to my this person's question of who would you like to trade places with for a day, guess who I picked?

Jeff: [00:40:04] Not Putin.

Christina: [00:40:07] And guess when the episode launched, it was like--

Jeff: [00:40:12] Oh, yeah.

Christina: [00:40:12] It was like the week of or the week before Russia officially invaded. And so we're launching episodes and going on with our lives. And then a friend of mine called me and was like, "Do you think you should maybe pull that?" And I was like, "Oh, I don't know, because I certainly didn't say that I admired him. It came from a very curious like, what is fucking day like?"

Jeff: [00:40:43] What's his mind like? Yeah.

Christina: [00:40:46] But I also was like, oh I looked him up and it looks like we have a lot in common. We both like routine and all this stuff. I'm like, humanizing the guy. Anyway, long story short, we ended up pulling it. And luckily with podcast episodes, it's really easy to replace, unlike with a song where you can just quickly replace it if you need to edit something with an episode in a podcast, it's really easy to do that. 
  
 But I had to think about it, and then I felt, I could go through the process of like, how could I be so insensitive? I'm a monster. And how many people I have offended? And then eventually I was just like, it's just an opportunity to really think about like you said earlier, your intentions behind what you're doing and I love humor. I'm not a comedian. So I don't know what I'm doing. And I can't claim that I have that right to go and this is not a comedy show.

Jeff: [00:41:49] That's also what I mean, they don't own that. They don't own that just because someone has done it more. You have your own perspective, and your own sense of humor. And the way you engage is the same way we do Main Street. We don't have the luxury of-- we're always scrambling. Things are happening throughout the day. So like I say, the lineup, the rundown that we have at 1:00 in the afternoon is Plan B, because the day will create plan one.  
  
 And so ultimately, all I can do in that show and what you're doing here is show up and be present in the moment, in that moment. And you make mistakes. You make mistakes. You say the wrong thing. And that's part of life. And I think that right now, one of the things-- we've been talking about a lot. When I came back here, I grew up in Nova Scotia, I didn't know anything about African Nova Scotian history. I didn't know anything about Mi'kmaq culture. I didn't know anything about the move to reservations, centralization.  
  
 I didn't know any of that shit. I was taught white history and lived as a white man. We come back here, start having these conversations, and I make mistakes all the time with people. I say things that people have been incredibly patient with me, the elders in the African Nova Scotian, Black Nova Scotian community, Mi'kmaq community, super, super generous and patient.  
  
 And one of the things, in conversations with them, as long as they see your heart's in the right place. I think you get. People go, you make mistakes. And part of what we need to see more is how do you admit that? How do you acknowledge that and how do you model that that's okay? That doesn't make me a bad person. But I do have to acknowledge that that was not cool, not good and own it and move on. Own it and move on and hopefully, you say, okay, well, my mind is changed now.  
  
 I will think about people outside my experience next time. That's part of doing anything live or even live to tape. You say things and say-- like, I'm a Gen-z, so I say "shit" all the time that I shouldn't say. I think I said, "psycho." That's psycho. That's sort of crazy or something like that. And I am so thankful for my colleagues who are Gen-z and millennials. They're like, "Dude, you cannot say that."

Christina: [00:44:33] Yeah, exactly.

Jeff: [00:44:34] Yeah, you cannot say that stuff. That's not cool.

Christina: [00:44:38] But I remember learning, a long time ago through university, I volunteered with some, oh, my God, Cam H. No, not Cam H. No CMHA. Sorry. I mixed the two. It's a Center for Addiction in Mental Health in Toronto based in Toronto and the Canadian Mental Health Association. Sorry.  
  
 So in volunteering with them in the social programs in Halifax and Dartmouth and meeting Mark Murray and just not being basically completely clueless as a lot of things with mental illness and I remember she was telling me about that, just how they were really trying to educate the radio, television folks about not using certain words that are very offensive. 
  
 But had I not been in that space hearing this and then trying to practice it myself, and then there's you practicing this with your friends or you're still saying it sometimes, but in certain, it's a process of getting-- you have to be uncomfortable for a while. But--

Jeff: [00:46:07] Yeah. And you have to also admit that you're not always right. Do you know what I mean? That's a big part of it. And I do think that that is something that we right now societally are struggling with. We're not very good at admitting when we're not right, when things are just we're not right. That's it. Oh, shit, I was wrong. That was wrong what I believed or that was wrong what I did. And not be like, oh, come on. Don't be so sensitive, don't be holistic. So when was being too sensitive ever the problem? When was that?

Christina: [00:46:46] Yeah.

Jeff: [00:46:46] Sensitivity is not the problem. Do you know what I mean? It's like, yeah, admit that your perspective is not the only perspective and that everyone else's perspective is worth at least as much as yours.

Christina: [00:47:00] I think it's safe to just come at it from I'm wrong all the time and then maybe you'll get lucky.

Jeff: [00:47:05] You don't change your perspective in an afternoon. Typically it's an intentional thing and it happens, and ultimately it happens. I think for me, anyway, it happens to personal relationships first and foremost, and then you come to see someone else's reality, you come to learn. 
  
 Oh, my God. Like that, for me, has been with Main Street as much as any coverage, like any story or anything we've covered, but that is information. It's great. It's great to have information, but it's been mainly the relationships, that seeking the information has led to relationships that have really started to change where I sit in my world and my view of where we are as a society and where we have to go and stuff like that.

Christina: [00:48:00] I want to ask you about your experience during these intense periods that we go through, like Hurricane Fiona. For us, we had our battery-run radio and you were the voice on in the back-- you were in room with us. You were keeping us company. We were hearing other stories, feeling less alone. It made us feel comforted. I couldn't help but wonder, though, like, what is Jeff going through and his team? What was that like for you leading up to it and then going through it?

Jeff: [00:48:42] Well, it's an honor. It's Ryan Staunton, who is our afternoon meteorologist here in Nova Scotia, he and Tina Simkin were the two meteorologists who were up for three days I think in the lead-up to it and the aftermath of it. Fiona came through overnight Friday night. That was it. I got a call on-- can you hear my dogs in the background?

Christina: [00:49:18] I can. They're sweet. They're sweet. That's great.

Jeff: [00:49:20] Peanut. Peanut, Mia. That's my life. Those are my dogs. Fiona. I got an email from our executive producer, Ken Macintosh in the afternoon on Friday because I had actually taken that Friday off. I can't remember why.

Christina: [00:49:36] What? Like knowing?

Jeff: [00:49:37] No, no, no, no. I booked it off months in advance and I took it off and it left them and they had someone who had been off and wouldn't have to pull through a full 24-hour shift or whatever. And I got an email saying, "Can you come on the air from midnight till 6:00 AM? And I was so torn, because I know I had been on the air during I think they called it Snowmageddon or whatever in Newfoundland a couple of years ago.  
  
 My partner Rob and I, my work wife, Rob Doblin, and I were on the air and talking to a guy from Newfoundland as the snow was rolling in. And then someone came running down. I could see because from my studio I can see the whole length of the CBC Nova Scotia newsroom. At that point, someone had come running up and into the control room and Rob got in my ear and said, "Apparently we're on the air in Newfoundland." 
  
 I was like, "Well, that's weird." So I said to this guest from Newfoundland, I'm like, I think we're on the air. Have you guys lost power? And he was like, "Yeah." So then Rob and I just stayed on till about midnight that night. And I knew that that was one of the most special things I've ever been part of because people were calling in from Newfoundland, same thing. They were totally cut off. Lost power. And some of them were anxious and freaked out. Some of them were having the time of their life. And it was just spectacular. 
  
 So when this email came in about Fiona saying, do you want to come in and do overnight, I was like, "Yeah, I do." But my wife, like, we live right here on the Bay of Fundy. We're completely exposed to the northwest, which was where Fiona was going to come in from, and I was like, "Oh my God." So I called a meteorologist. What's it going to be like here? He gave me the best detail he could about that. But it was a hard decision to make and ultimately it was my wife Anna's decision. She was like, "Yeah, you can go, go ahead. I'll be fine."  
  
 And she said, "You'll be on the radio. I'll hear you anyway." And she lost power like boom, immediately within 15 minutes of me going on the air. But the experience of that, everyone who was on that night, who is Natalie Dobbin, the team that night was Diane Paquette was producing it. Natalie Dalton was there as an associate producer chasing, trying to find people. And Dua Ketio was checking it. Jack Julian was also trying to do what he could do to find stories in case people don't call in.  
  
 But we open the phone line and everyone was super amped before doing it because this is the prime mandate for the public broadcaster, is to connect people and to provide information and succor in times of distress and crises and whatnot. So it's such a pure-- like sometimes you're like, "What am I doing? Why am I doing what I'm doing? "

Christina: [00:52:39] Sure.

Jeff: [00:52:40] And so that night, it's a very distilled, the sense of purpose is super, super strong. And then people come through. You know what I mean? People would call. I remember there was a young family who got through at 3:00 in the morning and it was a young couple and they have a three or four-year-old child and they sang in Joel Plaskett's song for us, right like--

Christina: [00:53:03] I wasn't up for that. 

Jeff: [00:53:05] No, that was deep into the-- deep, deep, deep into the night.

Christina: [00:53:08] That's cool.

Jeff: [00:53:09] People were amazing, and it's super humbling. Those moments are super humbling to be trusted and to have people come through and call in and share their experiences.

Christina: [00:53:27] Did you go through a bit of like when it's all over, like, damn, well, I can't wait for the next storm?

Jeff: [00:53:32] Yeah, yep, yep, yeah. It's like I take it again. We worked all weekend because then we lost power and Monkton took over. So we were providing information there and it was hard. That was a hard one because cell phone service was down, and all that stuff. But absolutely, it's like, I wish it was like that every day.  
  
 It's the same for you when you go out and you do a show and you just kill it and you're like, I just want this to go on and on and on and on and on. Your brain operates differently in those moments and operates at a frequency or in a state that it was absolutely designed to do. And it just doesn't operate like that all the time. But also it's the feeling of connectivity as well. On a night like that, there's no debate, you're not doing accountability interviews, there's not someone feeding you bullshit about something or anything.  
  
 It's like people just being people. And I think the thing too, is that it's just the public. But I I find honestly here on Main Street when I came back to Nova Scotia, the vast majority of the time, it's very different. CBC at a local level is a very different beast than it is at that network level. It's a lot more--

Christina: [00:54:53] You know, it's personal. You're like, I know I'm getting through to people, and because people really do listen here, and I think a lot of people would be very sad if all of a sudden it wasn't there. And I'm actually somebody who can't listen to music or anything else when I'm working on other things because it's just sensory overload for me.  
  
 But as soon as the power goes out, we turn on the radio and or we're cooking, and the radio goes on, the battery-powered radio. And during those times you're like, "God, I'm so glad we still have a radio" because there were years where it was like talk of like this not being around much longer how print is.

Jeff: [00:55:42] Still is. Yeah, still is. On social media, a lot of Canadians just don't feel that they're getting what they paid for. A lot of people feel that way. They'd rather have-- I don't know if people honestly when they say that, realize what a bargain really they are getting for how much each of us individually-- I can't remember what it was, but I think each Canadian pays something like $47 a year for the CBC. It's less than a dollar a week. I don't think that-- let me Google that, too.

Christina: [00:56:15] I think people don't know how much. So they think like, oh, I'm paying for this, but they don't really know what that means. So like, they know they're paying $999 for a Spotify subscription. They don't complain about that because they also know that they're getting a real bargain. But my God, it's set for $47 a year, everybody's paying it. And also, certainly, as an artist who benefits from the CBC, and I don't know where I would be, what I would be doing for work if I wasn't able to collect--

Jeff: [00:56:56] Me, too.

Christina: [00:56:58] Yeah. So I'm certainly grateful and happy to pay every year.

Jeff: [00:57:07] $33, by the way, per capita.

Christina: [00:57:09] Less than $47. That's even better. That's incredible. Well, there you go, everyone. I pride myself this podcast is educating people, maybe helping in that way. Y'all can rest easy. You are getting a bargain.

Podcast theme song 'I Don't Want to Say Goodbye to You' : [00:57:34] (Music playing in the background) It's Love. Oh, I don't want to say goodbye to you. Oh, I don't want to say goodbye to you.

Heartbeat Hotline: [00:57:48] Welcome to the Heartbeat Hotline, 1-902-669-4769. I'm the host of a Chat with Heart Podcast, Christina Martin, and I'm so excited you called. Leave me your question, suggestion for the podcast, or a comment about this episode. Please be aware your message may be used on podcast and social media. Tell me your name, where you're calling from, and it's also fine if you want to remain anonymous. Thanks for listening. Have a great fucking day.

Christina: [00:58:22] Thanks for listening to a Chat with Heart Podcast, produced and written by me, Christina martin, and co-produced and engineered by Dale Murray. Check out Dale's website, dalemurray.ca. The podcast theme song, Talk About It and I Don't Want To say Goodbye to You, were written by me and recorded by Dale Murray. You can find my music on Bandcamp and all the places you stream music.  
  
 Visit my Patreon page to become a monthly or yearly supporter of this podcast and my music endeavors. If you're new to Patreon, it's a membership platform that helps creators get paid. Sign up at patreon.com\christinamartin. I would love it if you had time to share, rate, leave a review, and subscribe to a Chat with Heart on all the places you listen to podcasts. Wishing you, my Little Heartbeats, a great day.