CHEK Republic by Diane Dakers

Author:Diane Dakers
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-77203-000-6
Publisher: Heritage House
Published: 2014-11-13T16:00:00+00:00

AT THIS POINT, JUST one month had passed since Canwest had announced its intention to close CHEK. That month, and the following week, was later described by various staff members as “an emotional roller coaster,” “a very intense emotional experience,” and a “nervous but exciting” time. For Bill Pollock, who was part of the team negotiating with Canwest, it was nerve-wracking. “There were moments when we thought this just wasn’t going to fly, that this just wasn’t going to work.” One of the hardest things through it all, he said, was the responsibility he felt to his co-workers:

There was a core group, four of us who were working on it. We told everyone else, “Concentrate on your job. Just come in and do your job, and that will take your mind off it. Let us worry about the other stuff. We’ll give it the best shot we can.” . . .

So people didn’t show it, but you could tell they were pretty nervous. I was as nervous as anybody else. John and Rob and myself and Rod Munro our accountant, we were talking, literally, 24 hours a day and making phone calls, talking to anyone who would listen, trying to work out plans, how much it would cost to do this, that, and the next thing. And where were we going to get all this equipment [if CHEK stayed open]? . . . We were trying to keep ourselves busy and not worry.

In addition to the “core group” was a larger working group—including Dana Hutchings, Richard Konwick, and human resources manager Peggy Heyer—liaising with staff and the union, bringing ideas forward, and getting the community on board. “We worked every single day, [including] weekends and nights,” said Hutchings.

In the final few days of August 2009, the pace further intensified. “It was about as tense a negotiation to purchase this place as it could be,” said Pollard. “It was crazy. It was the most fun I’ve ever had really, but it was absolute insanity. We’d have two telephone conversations going at the same time . . . It was just like in the movies. It was crazy.”

What the CHEK group didn’t know was that things were just as crazy on the Canwest side, with more than a dozen Canwest executives and lawyers working on the CHEK proposal. During the last week of August, they sent almost one hundred internal emails back and forth, addressing everything from how to word a response letter to CHEK to the CRTC approval process involved in a transfer-of-ownership to the potential financial liabilities for Canwest and its bondholders if the CHEK group bought the station. They held in-person and telephone meetings. Andrew Akman even returned from his vacation to continue negotiations with CHEK. And unbeknownst to the rest of the players, Asper and CHEK’s lawyer Sandrelli shared many off-the-record phone calls during the latter part of August, working together behind the scenes on the CHEK deal.

“Basically, people worked seven, eight, nine days in a row, around

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