Wednesday 6am - "Our Plan Was To Be In The World Trade Centre on Sept 11"

0:00Do you hear that? That's sound right? That means that summer is officially here. It means that grown adults just sprint into the street for a frozen dessert shaped like a cartoon. But this summer, Mint Mobile has a better tree. Every plan including unlimited is $15 a month. And unlike Ice Cream, it won't drip down your wrist or look nothing like the picture. Does anyone have any cash? Give it a try at minemobile.com slash switch. A front payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 month plan required. $15 per month equivalent to taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow and network is busy. See terms. FanDuel is now available everywhere in the US. I'll be there, I'll be there, I'll be there, I'll be there, I'll be there. So you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are. Including these places. Ben Georgia, he's including Minnesota Buffalo, Lincoln, Chattano, Arizona. May this year, most rewarding season ever with FanDuel. Agent location restrictions apply product availability varies by market. See FanDuel.com for eligibility gambling problem called 1-800-Gembers. This is the Toronto today podcast. I'm your host Greg Brady.

1:02Today will also be the third last show before September 11th. It's the 25th anniversary of September 11th. And maybe we're all just a little more retrospective about it. We've seen some of what's happening in the United States as a huge push by the way in New York City to make sure the current mayor, Zora and Mamdani does not show up at a 9-11 memorial on Friday morning. Like they are adamant. Some of the people that have lost husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, parents do not want them there. Now sometimes the people that probably want them there aren't going to have their own news conference. So it's hard to tell whether it's split and you say anybody who shows up and shows support and grief should be allowed. And it shouldn't be exclusionary anyway. You've heard me say this over and over again, though even would be politicians, current politicians, sometimes former politicians. The photo op just seems to be more prominent sometimes than actually having opinions and policy.

2:04And that drives me. I want to dig my nails into a chalkboard and annoy you with the most annoying outside of what ever Jim Kerri and Jeff Daniels were doing in dumb and dumb. But I want to make the most annoying sound in the world to show my displeasure at the photo ops. I've seen with my own two eyes. People show up late like they've missed everything. They've missed everything. A politician has missed utterly everything. But they just want a photo of being there as everybody's leaving. They bring people back from the parking lot and go take a picture with me. Let me prove I was here. It drives me mental that it fools some of the people some of the time. But that's going to be fascinating. And of course, I think everybody has their own reflections of this. You know, a third of the population in the US. So why would it be any different here? Third of the population wasn't alive for 9-11. And I, again, I'm born in the early 70s. There's plenty of things. Paul Henderson's goal, Vietnam, the Beatles, JFK's assassination.

3:05You'd learn about that stuff and you'd realize it would evoke your memory and you'd realize, oh, that's why this is so important. That's why this mattered so much. There are people kind of worried that 9-11 doesn't resonate with a younger generation as in what you'd have to be. I think you'd have to be 32 to really remember it. You're seven maybe. And I don't remember everything as a seven year old. But it's amazing what sticks out and what doesn't. Like I said, I can't remember if my kid was in full day JK 12, 12 years ago. But I remember how something that happened in 1987 or 1979 made me feel. Those are those things. Speaking of mayors, I'm going to get to the debate, the Jewish lawyers debate last night, the JLD held a cracking debate that was more of a forum, more of a couple of separate interviews. There wasn't a lot of, you had a choice, sir. There isn't a lot of that last night. And current mayor Olivia Chow wasn't there and she will kick off her campaign tonight. Let me start here.

4:05You might be very aware, no matter who you are, that we're in a bit of an economic scenario with the United States right now. And I don't like it and it makes me mad and it makes me terribly sad as well. But even late yesterday afternoon, this was escalated. And we've done some escalating before in the trade war. I think threatening to turn off an entire state's energy, Doug Ford, is an escalation, certainly in rhetoric and threats. But last night or yesterday afternoon, practically the president of the United States escalated the trade war. He did do that and he targeted a lot of goods that he thinks will be, well, important to American consumers that they can't get anymore and damaging to Canadians and Canadian products. A lot of it is about alcohol. Thought everybody was drinking less. I guess not based on this trade world. Booze seems really important in the trade war. But either way, Trump's now banning the importing of Canadian alcohol.

5:07Well, there's been an American booze ban. That's a, that's a harsh word for it. You can get it. You can sell it if you're an independent. It's just the state, the province run, practically state run alcohol stores, including grocery stores and including the LCBO stores in Ontario, haven't been allowed to put American booze on the shelf basically since the beginning of this. So it's been 19 months. That's $1.5 billion Canadian worth of alcohol sold to the US each year. One billions in the spirit sector alone. I would have no idea. Crown Royal, a lot of debate about Crown Royal. It's made in Gimli, Manitoba. That's going to be very hard hit. It's more, more Crown Royal sold in Texas than in all of Canada. What on earth? How long are their days? Anyway, it's Canada's number one exported spirit. Second on the list, Black Velvet. Not the Atlanta Miles song. This is a booze brand made in Lethbridge, Alberta. And it's not as big as it used to be, but the Americans love it. They love the option of having that Canadian booze.

6:10But they've been in a bunch of other products as well. Look, bottom line is this. We've got a stark mathematical reality here in North America. I'm not very at all optimistic about our short term. I keep hearing this. Mark Carney walked away from a bad trade deal. No trade deal is better than a bad trade deal. Okay, let's say I take you at full on face value. Please don't tell me a bit later on two things. One, Canada's not asking for special treatment. We are. You are. I'm not, but we are. We absolutely are. We're friends. We're neighbors. We're buddies. We're neighbors. We're buddies. We're pals. You protect us. We send you crowned royal. We are asking for special treatment. Sixteen other nations have found a way to put pen to paper, make a trade deal, and not one, not a single one of the 16 Mexico, UK, France, Japan. They've all made trade deals in the last year and a half since Trump point to a 2.0 began.

7:15And of course, that's going to leave a stain, a legacy, all that stuff. We're the whole notes. We are asking for special treatment. And you might say we should demand it. We deserve it. With again, there's the, there's the relationship, but we can't win this. What do you not tell me? We're not asking for special treatment and then don't go around and say, well, we're going to win this trade war. I'm still hearing this from politicians. I'm hearing it from federal liberals. I'm hearing it from Ontario PCs. And I'm not hearing it from anybody who actually has any skin in the game outside of getting voted in again. Mark Warner is a trade lawyer. He was on yesterday at Mark Warner and Ian Lee on the day. Ian Lee is going to join me around 730 this morning. Let's first hear from Mark Warner. He was described by the interviewer on CBC. They're a little bit of a skeptic about the carny policy here. And Mark Warner just laid it out as it is. I just think Canada is too small. We're one tenth the size of the United States. And just the essence of that is when you get into a tit for tat war, it is going to be

8:18felt more on the Canadian side than the American side. And I know there are lots of politicians who say they'll feel it too. They won't feel it as much. And yes, I suppose you can target certain states for political purposes. But as I've said before in other places, I think that that's a complete mystery to have of where we are now. The view that you could affect congressional elections was dates from a time when the source of protectionism in American politics was in Congress, not in the president. I think it's a fundamental misreading of how this works now. The problem we have is with Mr. Trump who doesn't really care about Congress. So I just think this is all wrong. They get it wrong on the law. They get it wrong on the politics. They have it wrong on the man. But it's what everyone seems to believe in the establishment in Canada. And I guess we'll have to play it out. I think when you talk to farmers, I think when you talk to small business owners, I think when you talk to people absolutely panic that they've got to pass their exorbitant increase and costs onto consumers, look them in the eye over a cash register and say, pay up.

9:23They're the ones that are pretty stressed about this. And I'll say it again, this claim, well, you can't make a deal with try. It's impossible to work. I got all that stuff, but your claim doesn't hold up. The White House signed 16 plus straight agreements, Japan, the UK and Mexico. And they have violated none, changed none, altered none. Ian Lee's on at 7.30 this morning. He was on the news forum yesterday and said this. This is an excellent question that goes right to the core of this. A lot of Canadians, I'm not condemning them. They believe legitimately in their mind that you cannot do a deal with Donald Trump. I hear it every day, it's in social media and so forth. And yet, when you look it up and people can look it up, the Trump White House has done over 16 trade agreements, including Japan and including UK and Mexico. And so now what they did is they did it at the, you know, their being blackmailed by Trump because he did the same thing to them that he did to us. Sign it or I'm really going to punish you. And they decided that they were going to, you know, put some water in their wine, use

10:27that phrase and compromise and accept a deal they didn't like because they thought it was more important to have a deal and to walk away. I got two sports things for you. You know, boxing has weight classes. Of course you do. One of the most entertaining divisions ever was the welterweight division. I can name big name, sugar ray Leonard, Roberto Durant, Thomas Herons. They were all welter weights. You can't be more than 147 pounds entering the ring. These guys were chiseled. Leonard even went up and fought marvelous Marvin Haggler in 1987. You can only go up to 160 pounds. And yet even if you're bigger than Marvin Haggler, you can be remarkably entertaining. The welterweight fights and the welterweight division was way more entertaining than the heavyweight division. But if a heavyweight gets in the ring with the welterweight division, heavyweight is going to win, isn't he? Yes, almost universally. That's what we're talking about here. By the way, the athletics lost to the blue jays last night. Their payroll is one 17th of the Los Angeles dongers.

11:31Can they outspend the dongers they can't? Can they win a random gamer to? Of course, what do you think the odds are they'll win more over a 162 game season, spending 117th as much? This is just simple stuff. We can't. Won't win a brute force tariff war. And that's not being uncannadian to say it. It's not an act of capitulation. It's actually effective understanding of our goals here. What are our goals? Cost certainty. What are our goals? Calm the waters. Stop panicking people. We haven't been attacked. We're not at war. There's nobody sitting in parliament right now. The federal government's not coming back for two weeks. The provincial government's not even coming back to what? Halloween. There's a lot of work to be done here. Safeguard these industries. Protect supply change. Preserve domestic prosperity. I'm seeing no urgency on that. We're just going all in and being performative about this. I get it. I understand your relationship probably with Donald Trump in the White House.

12:35You're just ticked off as I am. Believe it or not. But we got to face some realities of who has leverage and who doesn't. Ask a business owner. Ask a worker. Ask a farmer who's got a combine and a tractor. And all those parts come from the United States. It's kind of an unwinnable contest. I think we'd agree. And we're going to continue to fight an unwinnable contest. So it would seem. I got thoughts on the debate last night, of course, for the Jewish lawyers. And they had a debate last night. What I thought was really, really interesting was John Torrey's perspective on it. Let me give you that. John Torrey weighed in during the daytime yesterday on CP24. And I think he's got this right on Olivia Chow deciding not to show up for the discussion. This debate, the mayor says she's not going to because she hasn't started campaigning yet. Well, I mean, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, she had a tax policy, for example, last week. That's campaigning. You only have a tax policy because of that. And I think it's a big mistake for her not to go.

13:37On the other hand, I think the organizers made some mistakes in that on this very important issue, they maybe should have had as opposed to a debate where people are almost invited to attack each other, a moderated discussion among, say, the three leading candidates to say, okay, what can we collectively do about anti-Semitism? It's a real problem with the Jewish community in Toronto being intimidated. Now, I think that's really good, John Torrey. Sometimes we all talk to talk in your life. Is there a point coming? Look, you probably spot that maybe with me sometimes. I spot a with Torrey. That's really on point for John Torrey. That's a guy you go, you should be mayor ever considered. He decided not to run, but he's right. And this evokes just the fact they had this last night without the sitting incumbent mayor. That's a sad moment. We've got this enduring fracture in the civic fabric of the city. There's a permanent divide. I think it's permanent between the Jewish community in Toronto and the current mayor. I'm more sad than mad about it. But I also, then I get mad because she's harvesting votes of those who either enjoy the Jewish community's struggles and their intimidation or they're indifferent towards them.

14:39So yeah, I was reading in the New York Times yesterday, you have to go back. You have to wind the clock back about eight months or so. And there's a really good opinion piece in their business section on why Mexico avoided this trade escalation. And I wrote it down and I highlighted it and I copied and pasted it. And it centered on two concepts, preemptive concessions and deliberate non retaliation. Don't take the bait. Don't take the rhetorical bait. Don't take the actual physical bait and get into this. Offer them a mild win on their top priorities. Then you can have an economically flexible future. Do you ever hear anything about the U.S. battle with Mexico and the board? Remember what a big deal it was and they've spoken with one voice, just the president, just Claudia Shindbaum. I admit, I don't know many other Mexican politicians, but I've only heard from her. Steve Pagan joins us right now from the Pagan podcast and of course from TVO as well. Now I will say, welcome back by the way, you've been gone a bit. I need to be with you this morning.

15:39Hi there. Yeah. You will certainly note that the midterm elections probably you kind of, I geek out on it. You probably geek out on it. Is this appointment viewing for most Canadians to be watching the results come in in early November for all these random Senator and Congress races? First of all, there's nothing random about it. It's really important stuff and yes, I hope so. It should be certainly appointment viewing in my house. But I think the bigger question is will it actually make a difference regardless of what the outcome is? By all indications, Trump is heading for abruising that night. The Democrats are looking to gain certainly the House of Representatives and who knows maybe even the Senate as well. But given the way that Donald Trump has, has frankly been able to cow, both houses of Congress so far into doing what he wants, is it going to change anything other than, you know, new impeachment hearings and new investigations into Trump's grifting? That will certainly happen. Will it change policy? Will it change the way Canada is treated by the United States?

16:42Not sure about that. Yeah, I'm not sure either. I'm up to mine's one really, how important would you, you wouldn't go behind the curtain, pull the lever and vote and then you come out and they're like, what was your most important issue? Our relationship with Canada. But I would say in the border states and certainly the states in which people are going to be more hurting economically. The small business owners on that side of the border are the same ones on our side of the border. They hate all of this. None of this. No, again, I still would maintain that this is an unwinnable fight. We just might lose a little harder, but there is ticked off as we are about it. I agree and you don't even have to look at the border states, Greg. I mean, we saw the stories come out of one of the red estates in the union the other day in Kansas, where when Trump made his, I guess, questionable moves against Bombardia saying we're not going to allow any of those products into the United States, there were 1200 jobs in Kansas for goodness' sake. 1200 people who said our jobs are in jeopardy. If you do this, please don't do this. That's Kansas. Not Michigan.

17:42That's not Ohio. That's not Pennsylvania. That's not New York. That's Kansas. So it's further evidence about how when you get into a trade dispute, everybody loses, and it's stupid. Yeah. And I think there's, for all the politicians, there was a Republican congressman that had to make that point yesterday in Kansas, who's up for reelection, all the congressmen and congresswomen are, not all the senators are, and he made the point. All these jobs are here. We don't want their stock, their stock flailing. That felt like 4% yesterday, Bombardia stocked it. But at the same time, I also think there's probably Democratic governors in Illinois, New York and Michigan, and if some of the promises from Trump and his election campaign were true, it sounded good on paper. We'll bring a lot of manufacturing jobs back. All those governors, Steve, aren't necessarily going to complain. Everybody's just whistling past the graveyard. You're hoping not to piss them off. It was what it looks like to me. Yeah. No, I hear you. And everybody's still scared of the guy, even though he's a 33% approval rating. But if there's one thing we learned from Brexit, and I think the lessons of Brexit from what are we now, 10, 11 years ago, are still very germane here, which is to say, when cultural

18:48values, when sovereignty, when a country's sense of itself runs headlong into economic headwinds, we know what wins. You know, Britain made the completely economically illogical decision to drop out of the European community and to go on its own. And the economic results have been absolutely disastrous for the United Kingdom. But they're not going to revisit the decision. I mean, the fact is they are where they are, and that's where they are, and they're going to remain there until somebody has, I guess, the guts or the foolhardiness to reintroduce that issue. Now, that's what we found here as well, right? When push comes to shove, yes, they may be 10 times bigger than us. Yes, they're economy. Obviously, I heard the two clips from me and Lee and Mark Warner, and they're both very sensible, but rationality does not always carry the day in these circumstances. And our sovereignty feels like it's been, you know, completely challenged in a way that we find inappropriate. And so far, I repeat, so far, Canadians seem prepared to pay some kind of economic price

19:53in order to teach this guy a lesson. Yeah. And so here we are. Yeah. I've never talked to you before about you 9-11 reflections, and maybe it's our chance to talk about it before Friday. I find them thinking about it every day. Obviously, it's getting massive coverage in the US and Friday will be. There won't be many other stories except the 25th anniversary and memorial of that terrible day. Where were you and what do you remember about it? I'm going to tell you the craziest story here, okay? This will take me a minute, but this is a completely crazy story. Today is my 25th wedding anniversary, September 9th. I got married September 9th, 2001. It was in April of 2001 that I took my wife to New York, my, I guess, then girlfriend. And I hope so. The story doesn't work otherwise. It's less romantic if it's the quite so. We went to a restaurant on September 9th. And then, excuse me, September 10th went to a restaurant and I proposed on September 11th.

20:57I'm blowing the story on September 10th. And then the morning of September of, oh, Greg, I'm screwing up. No, no, no, Monday, Monday, September 2st, AC 11th. Okay. That may be that. It was in April. Oh, sorry in April, my bet. I proposed in April. And the next morning in April went to the top of the World Trade Center for breakfast. And we had decided we were going to repeat the same procedure in September. We were going to get married on the 9th. We were going to go have dinner at the same restaurant on September 10th. And we were going to go to Windows on the World at the top of the World Trade Center on September 11th for 8 o'clock in the morning. That was the plan. And my boss would not give me any time off work to go do that. And as a result, we did not go to New York and we did not end up at the top of the World Trade Center at 8 o'clock in the morning on September 11th. And there's a young girl who's 23 years old today who is alive as a result of that. She otherwise would not have been alive.

21:58And I think about that, I mean, obviously quite frequently, but particularly as we approach the 25th anniversary because it just shows you how completely ridiculous and serendipitous and in some respects how we're all hanging by a thread. And I'm sure thinking about that a lot today and the other 4,000 people who are lucky as us to kind of have other plans and unfortunately died on that day. I have never known that story about you. I share that with many people besides me and thousands and thousands of listeners right now. Well, I don't think I've, I don't think I've told that story before, but it's, it's true. And it's just, it's, it's, it's, well, you can tell I'm having trouble even with the words here right now. It's a little off putting as I think about how close we came to, you're doing the segment with somebody else this morning. Yeah, that's. And so how do you get back from New York City to Toronto? Sorry, when do we get back?

22:58What? No, how do you get back? Oh, you couldn't take the trip at all. So you're not in New York at all that weekend and that stretch. I got you. I thought you had to come back early. Your boss wanted you back early. You didn't go at all. Got it. No, we didn't go at all. We were, we were married on the Sunday and instead of going to New York on the Monday and having dinner at the restaurant and then when there's in the world at the top of the World Trade Center of the Tuesday. I think we got Monday off work and we went to see the group of seven up in Kleinberg and that was our day off. That was our honeymoon. That to this day has been our honeymoon. But so first of first first first Tuesday morning, first plane goes in, second plane goes in. It's after nine o'clock. Are you saying to her? Is she saying to you like you both know exactly what you dodged when you see that? Well, not yet because I was at work at that moment. And when the first plane hit, I think I had the same reaction that everybody had, which is to say, oh, obviously some private small little plane went into the building accidentally and and and then of course 15 minutes later, we knew that was absolutely not the case. And the you know, this past week or so on podcast that I do, the Pagan podcast, I had David Colin and on last week, who was the transport minister for Canada at the time, who had to make the decision.

24:09He was actually in Montreal at the time, giving a speech and his staff passed him a quick note at nine o'clock in the morning and said, wrap it up. There's been a tragedy and he suddenly, you know, when the drive back from couldn't fly, obviously on the fly on the drive back from Montreal, Ottawa made the decision to ban all travel in Canada. And that was his decision to make and he made it on the spot. And then we had John Manley, the foreign minister and deputy prime minister on the podcast as well, who was in Europe and trying to get back into Canada on his plane. And you know, that was another adventure in itself. And it all just comes flooding back. I bet it does. From now, I bet it does. Yeah. And then these two, I think back to back decisions that I think we put partisan politics aside and we should, because John Crèchon made, I thought a very important decision to support the coalition in 2001 and he made a very important decision not to go into Iraq in 2003. He was two for two.

25:09Those were the right things to do at the right times to do them or not do them. History stands up and supports those decisions in those ways. Yes. For sure. Well, I'm glad we didn't have to book somebody else this morning. For the last 25. Yeah, I think well, yes. You're not always glad to do the segment, but yes, I get the extra oomph this week for sure. Steve, the contrary, my friend, I am always glad to know you are. I know you are. Particularly so today. Thank you, Steve. Great to have you on. Be well. Steve Pagan from the Pagan podcast. All right, into the newsroom. What's story? Amazing. What happens when you just ask questions? Steve Pagan. Great stuff. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile with your summer price forecast. Now, unfortunately, we're seeing rising costs across the country with possibility that big wireless hates you. 100%. Now over here at Mint Mobile, we're seeing sunny skies and dropping prices every plan to just $15 a month. Give it a try at minmobile.com slash switch up from payment of $45 for three months,

26:10$90 for six months or $180 for 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan to remotely greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow and network is busy. See terms. Ryan Reynolds, everybody knows who he is. You know who he is. Sometimes there's those people. Sometimes you can't quite escape. And sometimes they feel like they're always around. There's there's two different ways to look at that. One, people are clearly interested in either their work, their art, their prominence. And they will sometimes put a microphone in front of them and ask them questions and get opinions on things. As we said, everybody's allowed to have an opinion, of course. And some opinions stack up and you go, what a thoughtful person. I didn't know that person had that club in their bag. That's great. Fantastic. I mean, one of the Ryan Reynolds reminds me a little bit of how it was with Phil Collins in the 1980s. You'd remember Phil Collins and you'd be like, he's never not on the radio.

27:11Like what's going on? He's doing a soundtrack album. Now here's a solo album. Now here's Genesis. What's this easy lover song with the guy from Earth, Wind and Fire? He's just everywhere. Now he's singing duets for movies about two guys doing ballet. Not that kind of movie. A movie called White Knights. He did a song called Separate Lives. We wanted separate lives from Phil Collins and we couldn't get it for years on end. Ryan Reynolds is a little bit like that for me anyway. Maybe you can't get enough of the guy. And if we don't hold against him, how do you not make relationships work with either a Lannis, Morissette or Scarlett Johansson? That's fine. Everybody has passed. But Reynolds is making a new Apple TV show called Mayday. And he plays a US Navy pilot whose friends with Kenneth Brana, an eccentric ex KGB agent, British actor who's been great in so many things. He was doing a lot of Shakespeare movies that actually we would go to. He directed Mel Gibson and Hamlet. Think about that. Anyway, the KGB agent, ex KGB agent is obsessed with 80s American culture.

28:16But Reynolds decided to variety to explain that the 80s were a terrible time for like all of us, all of us. And I'm just like, wait a minute, there's a couple holes in his story here. Again, everybody gets a take and an opinion. But here's Ryan Reynolds saying all this 80s nostalgia, nah, it ain't really how it was. I think there's always a lovely feeling associated. It's almost like you pave over all the trauma with like puppy dogs and ice cream. And the 80s was a brutal, brutal time for people. It was a mess. And like, you know, people forget that it was like, that was a tremendous strike. Sociopolitical tensions everywhere. You know, we're still like pretty fresh off like a Cuban missile crisis, which is only like what, 15, 20 years before. So, you know, it's a tumultuous period. But you look back at it now and you're like, oh yeah, top gun! cocaine! Like, no, it was like a really scary. So I think, you know, I think when you look back at 2026 and this era, I think you're gonna like pick on the big ticket items that don't really

29:18didn't really leave the footprint culturally that you would think it would. Like, I don't know so much of the odds were like a mix of all the decades previous. Whereas the decades previous were their own things. So, I don't know. I wonder what it's gonna be. It's gonna be like, oh, the COVID era or something. I have no idea. I, he has no idea. Like, that would have been, if you start your answer with, I have no idea. We'd get a better sense of Ryan Reynolds being able to describe what the 1980s were like. Or sociopolitical events. So let me clear up a couple things. I mean, he's born in, we're both born pretty close to each other in the early 70s. We both are. I want out him or me. But Ryan Reynolds grew up in Vancouver. Okay. So this Canadian kid on the West Coast. I'm a Canadian kid in London, Ontario. I don't know what the school yard chit chat was about. It was mostly like, like, okay. So when the 80s end, he's like 13 years old. He's not even in high school yet. But Ryan Rodney Reynolds has a few things wrong here.

30:21A lot of things wrong here. Okay. I'm little Greg Brady. He's big Ryan Reynolds. But nobody, nobody was our parents weren't. Our grandparents who lived through the depression weren't, you know what? It's 1986 and this is the most tumultuous, difficult time of my entire life. And you're like, grandpa, wait a minute. You lived through the, all the tensions in the 1960s and race riots and, and Kennedy getting shot and you live through World War II. Wait a minute. You went to World War II and he's like, yeah, I went to it. But I'm telling you this, this Cuban missile crisis that ended 18 years ago in 1962. It's still on my mind. What are you talking about? Not a soul. Nobody. I had a lot of exchanges in the 1980s with everybody from everywhere. No one was talking or worrying about the Cuban missile crisis.

31:24Maybe just maybe there'd be a moment where you'd go to bed and go, huh, if the Soviet Union and the United States stop getting along and aren't worried about nuclear armageddon, maybe we'd be in trouble. Let me bring the point up because it's salient for the time being right now. It's a good thing in Canada that the United States are our big brother and big friend and make sure that when we go out on the school yard, Russia doesn't decide to take our lunch money. The Soviet Union doesn't decide to, because they've invaded other countries. They have a bit of a track record for that. The Soviets do. We're really glad we've got our American buddies and nobody was talking or worrying about the Cuban missile crisis. The eighties were amazing. What was that? Someone writes below his, the post about it. Reynolds remembers every year is traumatic before he got hair transplants. That's just no need to be nasty. It gets nastier, but yes, people are documenting that he was four years old when the 80s started.

32:27Not a single person in the 1980s. Maybe a quality could have, we could have done better. Maybe we had to lift more people out of poverty. Maybe all of that was true. But compared to now, nobody was afraid to have kids. Nobody was afraid of becoming the 51st state. Nobody was like, honestly, I have no clue. No clue what he was talking about, but it's fine. It's fine. One of those things. Speaking of celebrities and their chitchat, you may know the broadcaster in the states, Aaron Anders. She's very talented. She's been on ESPN and Fox forever for NFL games and whatnot. She's taken some stick for this. Let me step up and defend her. Here's, here's somebody I will defend and go, this is your, you're playing the role of being on a provocative kind of women men discussion podcast. She's on the call her daddy podcast, terribly, terribly significant in, in, in the United States and probably around the world. And Aaron Anders married a NHL player who played mostly for the LA Kings named Jared Stoll.

33:30And you meet people in your travels. One, one thing I think is important to note, she wasn't covering him at the time. And even if you do that, that's fine. You just have to stop covering that team. There's been a history of some female reporters in male professional sports, eventually, well, settling down with a player that they covered. Fine, but stop covering that person. Will Middlebrooks was a third basement for the Boston Red Sox. Jenny Dell was a reporter for the New England Sports Network. Once they started dating, relationship revealed, she stops covering baseball and covered something else. That's, that's what you're supposed to do. There's no conflict of interest here. This is an Aaron Anders covering the NFL and marrying Dak Prescott or Jordan Love, some NFL quarterback. But she does does note this about NHL players. This also, we'll throw acid on the idea of the male toxicity of the hockey culture and hockey players. This is just what Aaron Anders thinks. But again, like everybody, she gets an opinion and this is fine with me.

34:30Here's what she says on marrying Jared Stoll. What is it like to date a hockey player? They are the best. They are the best. And any NFL players, because obviously I'm around a lot of them and friends with some of them, are like hockey guys are the best. They're so laid back, as you know, A comes out of my mouth all the time. I'll be honest, hockey players are good looking. They are. They are gorgeous. Great, but yes, fantastic. Started their shoulders, some of them, you know. They're just the best. They're so chill. They're great guys to go to the bar with. They're great guys. They're the best. They look down the earth. Down to earth. A lot of them are farm boys. A lot of them from small, small towns. It's funny to make fun of the stories because they're all the same. It's my best girlfriends or all the wives that were on the King's teams while we were together. That's fine. She's just talking about marrying her husband. They're happily married. She thinks he's gorgeous. Okay. So he's got like a flipper and missing some teeth. She did document that a little later on in the interview.

35:31Big deal. That's fine. And she was not covering the NHL. There are standards that you should follow. Now I will say, social media would have exploded if a male sports reporter said this about female athletes. There's no coming back from that. Suddenly now he's a show venous. I'm defending Aaron Andrews here. I think that's fine what she said. I got no problem with a whatsoever. She's very good at her job. There's never been a conflict. And naturally she went through something horrible with that people and the spying and the voyeurism and whatnot in the hotel. And it's awful. She's dealt with a lot of adversity on her way. But I think this is fine. Not a big deal whatsoever. There's always a cost to action. But it doesn't come close to the cost of standing still. This is about who we are as Canadians. It's about our livelihoods and the country we leave to our kids. The truth is adversity only makes us stronger.

36:32It always has. That's a video Mark Carney made yesterday. A long form YouTube video. Some of the music behind it, they put in some jump cuts and whatnot. But he references John A. McDonald and he described McDonald as quote, the iron spine of confederation. It's an important time for Canada right now. I think you degree. We are certainly getting tested. We're also looking to go, are we doing all the right things to pass the test. But perhaps the moment, and I think you degree there was a moment when John A. McDonald was, well, if not being cancelled, there was significant public pushback and reassessment in terms of removing him from many public spaces. And I think we agree. He faced it. Canada's first prime minister. He faced it probably for about a three year stretch and certainly more than any other prime minister. Even the prime ministers, by the way, that sort of resided over the residential school scandals that came to light around 2020 or 2021. That people, my parents included just, they just said it.

37:33I remember sitting on the front lawn with them and they're like, we just missed this. Like we missed this and they were genuine about it. I'm very excited to have on the author of a best-selling book, hardcover book called The Prime Ministers. JDM Stewart joins us now on Toronto today. It's a pleasure to have you on. Thanks for the time. Good morning, Greg. You took note of this yesterday. Karney evoking Sir John A. McDonald. And it was sort of, it was sort of more one side of the political spectrum that would wish him a happy birthday or talk about his legacy for a few years there. I think we'd agree late in the Trudeau years and maybe even in the initial months of this prime minister, John A. McDonald was still a lighting rod for some. Is that safe to say? Yeah, it's, I guess it was a bit of a surprise that the Prime Minister evoked Mark or John A. McDonald's name. And the reason for that is that McDonald's been kind of like a third real in Canadian politics and people didn't really want to celebrate his legacy because it has some controversial elements to it.

38:33So this was unusual particularly also for a liberal Prime Minister, as you mentioned, because McDonald is a conservative. Liberals under Trudeau in particular were really suppressing and apologizing for Canadian history and not celebrating it. So this was, this was a new move that was interesting to see. You'd note as well. I remember it actually became at least for a day. It was a story during the last Ontario provincial election. The then liberal leader, Bonnie Cromby, noted that John A. McDonald's statue was just boxed in. Nobody could see it at Queen's Park. And she urged the, I guess more right leaning. We're doing the party thing. The right leaning Premier Doug Ford. Get John A out of the box. This is wrong. And that was in 2025. So we started to have some movement on this a little bit. Didn't we after a few years? There's always been groups of people. There's one historical organization called the Canadian Institute for Historical Education. That was fighting pretty hard on this lobbying to see a more balanced and informed portrayal

39:35of Canadian history given. And so the tide's been starting to turn. And then the unboxing of the statue last year of John A. McDonald at Queen's Park. I think it was a big moment in showing the public that there's more to see in the history of McDonald. So you've seen pockets of people coming forward and doing things. And I think this is good for Canadian history when we see this more balanced portrayal of it. What was your observation as to, I mean, there are often moments in politics. But around, yeah, around 2018, 2019, certainly going into 2020, 2021, we started making a lot of big decisions. Didn't we? Not just prime ministers, but Ryerson University is no more. Dundas Street is, is it was up for grabs as to whether it was going to stay or not. And they've obviously changed young and Dundas squares name. Did you look JDM and say this is, this is only a short live trend and something will turn this around back the other way? Yeah, and I would take it back even further, Greg, and go back to 2015 after the release of

40:37the final report on truth and reconciliation that I think really got people evaluating things differently. And I think, you know, I was thinking that history does move and sort of swings and public opinion obviously moves in swings too. This took a little longer than I thought. And it's, there still are significant pockets of people who won't be happy with the prime minister of Ocons or John and McDonald's name. There are many people out there who still don't want statues of McDonald's returned because let's remember there still are several in storage in places like Hamilton, Ontario, Charlottetown, Victoria, and elsewhere. So this is really maybe it's the beginning of this positive look at Canadian history or a more balanced look I'll say because history isn't just either positive or negative. We've got to have a balanced view of things. So it's starting, but there's still a ways to go. It's tricky, right? Because we do want to tell our history fairly and we do want to explain wrong paths that we went down. I would make the case

41:40that any man, maybe anybody at all born in 1815 is not going to measure up to the standards of men or women born 40, 50 years ago. We've all adapted our parents, our grandparents. They all adapted as life went on and decided to have different opinion about things that they may have been forthright about. So it's really grating on a curve, aren't we when we do this? Well, it's really it's poor history as you say to expect someone born in the early 19th century to see the world as we do. And I think that's one of the problems people who our historians have with what's been happening is people are bringing in their present day view of the world and expecting everyone else to have acted the same way. And let's you know, you bring up grandparents and parents and that's not not that long ago for someone who grew up in the 60s to have had opinions that would be way out of line with what we view today. But you know, we're not throwing our grandparents or our parents overboard. So it's important to have an understanding of history

42:45that people acted differently in an age that that we were not around. And just like people in the future, 50 years from now, people are going to think we did a lot of things that were strange and and they'll try to, you know, make judgments on us, but they shouldn't they shouldn't expect us to have acted the way that they are acting in say 2075. Just look at cell phones, for example, Greg. Yeah. The way that we've let people use cell phones, there's going to be a time in the future where people are like, how did you let your kids do that? So, you know, we have to think about history in a balanced way and not bring our values and impose them on a different period. I'm already there. Why should a 14 month old play on an iPad? Well, you're, well, he's getting a haircut in a salon. Why should that happen? How did how did we go so wrong? That's me. That's me on that kind of stuff. Thanks for further perspective on this. I hope we can chat again soon. Okay. Great. Thanks a lot. JDM Stewart is great. Folks called the prime ministers goes through them all from Johnny McDonald to present day with Mark Carney and a remarkable, remarkable history and it's certainly worth noting.

43:50I like I take for granted. We've got an amazing colleague in Ben Moroni and his dad just what 42 years ago won the most massive majority. We mean, never see a prime minister with over 50% popular vote again in a multi in a more than a two party system. Thanks for listening to the Toronto today podcast. We drop the highlights of the Daily Show every weekday morning. Don't forget, you can hear the entire show on the radio at home on your smart speaker ask Alexa or say, hey, Google play 640 Toronto or Toronto today. You can hear us on between 530 and 9 weekdays on 640 Toronto. Have a great day. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile with your summer price forecast. Now, unfortunately, we're seeing rising costs across the country with possibility that big wireless hates you 100%. Now, over here at Mint Mobile, we're seeing sunny skies and dropping prices every plan to just $15 a month. Give it a try at minmobile.com slash switch.

44:52Up from payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 month plan required, $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes me slow and network is busy. See terms.