CTV Vancouver’s The Last Word may last, on average, less than 180 seconds, but it takes even less time for its host Mike McCardell to show his passion for happiness. Mike admits when he first pitched the idea of a short but concentrated segment that focused on wonder and quirkiness in a person’s everyday life, he was met with more than a bit of reluctance. With a lifetime’s worth of hard-hitting police reporting, the switch from covering race riots to riots at the boxcar racetrack seemed, ironically, like a dangerous shift. His boss, at the time, told him outright, “if you do these fluff pieces, I’ll bury them where no one will find them.” Which, in his case, meant the end of the show.
When ratings spiked at the end of every episode, the change became a welcome one for more than just Mike. But the journey to becoming that harbinger of happiness was far from simple and quick. Mike’s story is complete with the car chases and grisly murders of police reporting, and a devious early love of tabloids. Alongside capturing his experience, he divulges his secrets to telling a great story.
In his latest book, None of This was Planned, Mike dedicates a chapter to what he calls “how I got to do what I am doing” and paints a vivid picture of what sparked his career.
“Lucky me, I was in a classroom where the teacher’s only job was to keep us quiet and read the newspaper,” he says. “He brought in tabloids. Right there, in that classroom, I decided I wanted to be a reporter and meet the people in those stories.”
Mike quickly dispels any notion of chasing “the nobility of journalism” and admits he was an excited kid who wanted to “hang out with Two-Finger Louis and Shotgun Sally.” Armed with nothing but enthusiasm and a subway token from his mother, he ended up at the personnel office at the New York Times. He was offered a job as an outdoor messenger, which was promptly upstaged by the Daily News’ offer of a heated mailroom. All it took was hanging around in the City Room (better known as the News Room) when he was supposed to be sorting the mail.
“I started changing typewriter ribbons, getting coffee and beer and inhaling the excitement of people on deadlines yelling: HOW MANY DEAD?” With lungs full of a contagious and morbid kind of thrill, he asked for a transfer to the deafening City Room. He went from bottom copy boy to top copy boy; bottom reporter to, in his humble words, “a not so bad reporter.”
The simplicity of his start seems surprising considering the excitement of the career that followed, but Mike revels in these acts of simplicity. “I was doing what I always dreamed of, mostly because of a subway token and a walk across town.”
The career that followed is impossible to describe without veering into action-movie-synopsis territory. A prison riot leads to a sawed-off shotgun at the belly of a dedicated journalist. A daring reporter pushes through stunned crowds to the scene of a deadly robbery. Thrilling tales of dramatic scenes and close encounters could easily take the place of this entire article. Mike, however, couldn’t be less interested in being painted as Bruce Willis in Die Hard and more interested in the role of an emotional Sherlock Holmes on the search for minute details that paint a beautifully complex picture of the human condition.
From the beginning of Mike’s professional career, he tried to find a humanistic approach to each story. A tall order for a police reporter, who was thrown into the city’s most hostile environments. No matter where Mike found himself, he searched for a perspective within the chaos, a point of sympathy inside the controversy. He recalls being at the centre of a street riot in the 1970s, incoherent yelling, and violence on all sides, until he looked up five floors to an elderly women looking out her window at the street below. When he reached her floor, she unlocked the first chain lock, but not the second. She had lived on the street most of her life and witnessed the slow escalation of community violence first hand. Instead of another mass protest report, Mike got an in-depth history of the neighbourhood from a relatable perspective. All it took was simply looking up.
Eventually, however, Mike needed a change.
“The first story was like the second, like the third, like the 10th, like the 100th after over a decade of police reporting. You get tired of seeing people get hurt over and over again.”
After gaining unrestricted access to the city’s most horrific crimes during its residences most dire moments, Mike and his wife decided they wanted to raise their kids in a safer environment – for them that meant Vancouver. His colourful reporting resume earned him a job at BCTV (now Global TV), where he spent the next 37 years relaying uplifting tales at the end of the show, that is until he got the less-then-subtle news that the newly imported managers “wanted to go in a new direction.”
He describes standing in that Burnaby parking lot feeling lost, having spent almost half his life there. They had waited two days before his vacation. Little did they know this was the same young man who jump-started his dream with a subway token.
“A week later, I was talking to the news director at CTV.” He dedicates his newest book to that director, Les Staff: “three years ago he saw my age and experience as a plus, not a negative.” He debuted with CTV News Vancouver in September 2013 and remains a beloved reporter for “The Last Word.” He encourages anyone in a similar position to push forward. To make a simple decision to keep doing what you love in whatever way you can. Adapt, be creative and be happy. He urges everyone to “enjoy your life, your job, your family; you’ll stay healthier than those who don’t.”
Mike has now has written 11 books and has no plans to stop telling stories. “I feel as good as I did when I was young, only I have more sense.”
Nowadays his everyday process is nothing like most reporters. He leisurely drives around town, instead of speeding towards a scene, searching for a quiet individualism. As far as requirements go, Mike doesn’t have any and despite a lengthy day’s search (three-and-a-half hours is his record), he defends how easy it is to find a wonderful story: “It’s easy because everyone has one.”
The question is whether or not he can capture it on any given day. If he interviews someone and they end up not being featured, he considers it his failure and not the interviewee’s. Although he often admits to luck, he is not without his methods in wooing a reticent subject. “First you apologize for interrupting their day, then you apologize again, then it’s simple. Get them to talk about themselves – the only topic anyone knows anything about.” The story never ends after a successful hunt, either; the key to a great story lies in the editing and the secret to success for Mike is to “watch the editor’s face, instead of the screen. If I see a smile, I know what needs to stay.”
Now, Mike is advocating once again for the small and the wonderful, by donating half the proceeds of None of This Was Planned to the Vancouver NCIU, a cause that is also advocated by CTV Vancouver. He sees it as a way to not only help the community he loves, but also as an expression of love and support for his TV family, who support the NCIU so passionately.
Whether the story he covers is joyful or not, the joy Mike takes in storytelling is constantly evident. He started his career covering crime, yet was shaped into a force of positivity. What pervades Mike’s career – and personality – more than anything is the insatiable need to seek out and encourage others to tell their story. His message is joyfully simple: “it could happen to you. You could have an adventure every day or whenever you want it.”
His books are a collection of proof that no story is too small or too big. From a pizza-eating horde of guinea pigs to the heart-warming stories of immigration and family bonds, Mike pushes us to recognize our own quiet moments as extraordinary.
“Stories are gold,” he says. “Gold is not bad in itself, but stories are better. The more you share them, the richer you are.”
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