Conservative Sen. Pamela Wallin attends a Senate Committee meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday Feb 28, 2013. With CTV's morning program "Canada AM" set to go off the air on Friday after a 43-season run, Sen. Pamela Wallin reminisced about the decade or so she worked on the show. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
June 02, 2016 - 11:46 AM
TORONTO - With CTV's morning program "Canada AM" set to go off the air on Friday after a 43-season run, Sen. Pamela Wallin reminisced about the decade or so she worked on the show.
On her beginnings with "Canada AM" after working for CBC Radio and the Toronto Star:
"I started off working on-air out of Ottawa and then moved on to become the host and was there on and off for the better part of 10 years. I was there the longest time, right at the beginning with Norm Perry, and it was an amazing experience."
On her travels with the show:
"We were one of the first programs that went into China (in the early 1980s). We did a week's worth of programming out of China, when Western media just weren't there. There were some print reporters but there wasn't any broadcast media.
"I went from there to cover the Falklands War. I was the host of the program then. I went down for three or four days and ended up staying for three months and reported for the news at night and 'AM' in the morning.
"It was an amazing show and with very limited resources we did incredible things. And for me personally, it was the experience of a lifetime."
On the strengths of "Canada AM" during her years with the show:
"I think we had leadership at the time that was forward-thinking. Our news boss was a guy who had worked in the U.S. and covered the Vietnam War and he was edgier in his thinking.
"He would come up to the office and look at the board and see what the stories were and he'd say, 'That's not interesting to people. Reinvent the whole damn thing.' So there was a real edge, there was always adrenaline.
"We ran on adrenaline because we certainly didn't have the sleep. That was a 3 a.m. wakeup call for that show."
News from © The Canadian Press, 2016