BOB MCDONALD: “Just Say Yes”

“I thought I was going to be an actor,” says broadcaster Bob McDonald, longtime host of CBC Radio’s science magazine Quirks & Quarks. As a promising college thespian, he could have gone far, but he felt uncomfortable with the auditioning process, so he gave acting a pass. “Now I’m on stages in front of audiences and performing, so it worked out,” he says, referring to his many public appearances. “That acting training helps when I give speeches.”

It’s a cute story, one of many ironies revealed in his latest book, Just Say Yes. The book shatters some myths. First, Bob is not a scientist, and he did not just walk into the job. Just Say Yes covers his trajectory from a “half-educated, low-income kid” (his words) to an internationally respected commentator. It’s both a memoir and a call to action.

Bob McDonald was born in Wingham, Ontario, the youngest of three siblings in a working-class family. It was not a happy childhood. His alcoholic father had a Jekyll and Hyde personality—warm one minute, cold and critical the next—leaving Bob in an existential no man’s land. “It’s a fundamental sentiment I have struggled with all my life,” he says, “not feeling good enough to do what other people do.”

He admits he was not a good student. “I barely passed,” he says of his two years at York University. “My marks were always in the 50s. The only thing that kept me in university was acting. They told me I was pretty good at that.”

And even that didn’t last. When he left school in his second year, he worked for a sign company installing billboards, unsure of his calling or his future.

He was a science nut, though, a fan of John Glenn, Alan Shepard, and the moon landings, so when a girlfriend told him there was a vacancy for a presenter at the Ontario Science Centre, he jumped at the chance.

“It was the combination of theatre and science. It was perfect,” he says. “That was the big change for me, and I jumped at that opportunity even though I wasn’t qualified.”

Bob was hired on the spot, not for his scientific knowledge but for his enthusiasm. Hands-on demonstrations were in vogue at the time, and the Science Centre wanted performers.

“They said, ‘Be as crazy as you want,’ and they gave us all kinds of background material to study.”

Scientists at the Centre also gave the team little tutorials to help them out.

“We were not science specialists, but we were good at presenting. It was really learning on the fly.” Youthful enthusiasm carried the day.

“I thought I was pretty hot stuff because I was wearing a white lab coat and I was up on stage. I had to shake my head about that because I got tripped up a couple of times when I was answering questions afterwards from people who did know the science, and I would give the wrong answer. I’ve learned to say, ‘I don’t know. I’ll look it up.’ That’s why I’ve never called myself a scientist. I say I’ve learned a little bit about this, and I want to tell you what I see as a journalist.”

Bob considers himself a translator of science, a link between science and the public. “I’m not handing out PhDs. I’m just trying to get people interested in science.”

He did well at the Science Centre. Various media were calling him up for his opinion. He accumulated contacts. But after six years as a presenter, he yearned to strike out on his own.

Armed with a contract to produce a radio series on oceans for CBC’s Ideas, Bob hopped on his motorcycle for Nova Scotia and the life of a freelancer.

“The whole world was before me. I was free,” he says. “It was just the most wide-open feeling of throwing yourself out there without a net. If it doesn’t work out, you can always find something else to do.”

The Ideas series led to other work: guest commentary for TV and radio, writing and presenting documentaries, and hosting the CBC children’s science show Wonderstruck. Then Quirks & Quarks called up.

“Quirks was a real change for me,” he says. “Up to that point, I always did my own stuff. I always did my own research and my own presenting. I was faced with subjects I was not familiar with. For example, I really have trouble with medicine. I would suddenly find myself trying to understand it. What the heck are we talking about here?” So, he developed his trademark delivery—making it simple for people to understand.

“If it got too hard, I would try to visualize it and make an analogy. For instance, we’re talking about how drugs work. You’ve got this protein and a cell that wants to fit in. Like a lock and a key, I’d say? Yeah, yeah, it’s like a lock and a key. I’m struggling to understand the science myself, so I screen it back to [the guests] and say, ‘Let’s see if I’ve got this right?’ It’s genuine. That’s me. On the spot, trying to understand where we are right now so we can move on to the next chapter in the story.”

Four presenters have hosted Quirks & Quarks since its inception in the 1970s, and Bob’s been with it the longest—an astonishing 32 years. Despite his success, he admits he’s experienced imposter syndrome from time to time, a carryover from his childhood. “When you have that feeling of not being good enough, you carry that with you,” he says.

Which brings us back to his book Just Say Yes. “It came about because people are always asking me, ‘What’s your background?’ and when I tell them I’m an uneducated construction worker, they go, ‘How come you sound so smart on the radio? What happened?’”

Bob left Toronto for Victoria in 2011 and has happily embraced the next chapter in his busy life. Contracted to Quirks & Quarks three days a week, his schedule leaves him free to pursue other endeavours.

He’s written seven books, two of them on space, his lifelong obsession. “But I also play hard. I take my playtime very seriously.” That includes sailing his 41-foot ocean-going sloop, Liberty, or taking his 125-horsepower motorcycle on an extended road trip. Now in his seventh decade, Bob shows no signs of slowing down. Quirks & Quarks will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2025, and Bob intends to be there. “I’ll keep doing it until they tell me not to,” he says, embracing curiosity, learning about the world, and contributing to its understanding.

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