Number Two by Jay Onrait

Author:Jay Onrait
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2015-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

Dana McKiel is a man who never ages. He looks the same today as the first time I met him back in 1994. I had known the man in the back row for twenty years, and I probably owed him as much credit for my career as anyone. Dana was a lifer at Rogers Community Cable channels all across Ontario, but mostly in the Toronto area. He had been an on-air host for Rogers Community Cable for longer than anyone in the province. He was a huge part of their Ontario university, college, and high school sports broadcasts, either doing play-by-play or hosting.

Dana was an incredibly friendly and chatty character who dressed a little bit like a used car salesman and probably would have been great at selling just about anything. But he also loved sports. I mean loved sports. It takes a pretty special person to continue to follow and maintain a passion for amateur sports for so many years beyond just following the exploits of your own kids. Dana was a man who was truly born to be a host on his channel. He was really perfect, and Rogers was very lucky to have him.

Just a month or so into my first year at Ryerson I saw a posting on the bulletin board in the audio laboratory, where we spliced together reel-to-reel tape and hosted radio shows. The posting asked for a reporter for Rogers Community Cable live sports events throughout the Toronto area. An actual on-air position while you were attending broadcasting school—albeit not a paying one. I was almost vibrating, I was so determined to get the job. I knew there were several other people at Ryerson, not just in my class but second- and third-year students as well, who would be just as desperate to get the job as I was. Ultimately, what sealed the job for me were two things: volunteering at ITV News in Edmonton during my second year at the University of Alberta, and more importantly, asking the nice crew at ITV News to allow me five minutes of on-camera reading from the teleprompter. This awkward, stiff, and rather robotic performance formed the basis of my very first demo tape, of which I carried at least five VHS copies around with me at all times. I mailed a copy of the VHS demo to Dana and about a week later got a message on my answering machine in my dorm room on the sixth floor of Pitman Hall.

“Hi, Jay, it’s Dana McKiel calling from Rogers Cable 10. We’d like to bring you on board, big guy!”

I went sprinting out of my dorm room and leapt over a couch in the common area of the senior suite I was sharing with four other students, like I was a young Perdita Felicien during Canadian Olympic trials. My friend Allan Thrush, who now works as a freelance editor and producer in Calgary, says it was one of the funniest things he has ever seen in

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