CBC puts Nancy Wood front and centre
The veteran Montreal journalist calls her new anchor position an ‘incredibly revitalizing experience.’
Two years after wanting to crawl into a hole, Nancy Wood is back in the spotlight. The veteran journalist has spent 18 years at CBC Montreal, and before that worked at the Toronto Star, Maclean’s and The Gazette. She’s been a national TV reporter, and was the host of Radio Noon for more than a decade. But type her name into a search engine and much of what comes up relates to one of the deepest lows of her career.
“It’s a sickening feeling. Just to have your whole life laid out in public at a horrible time is a horrible thing to go through,” she said during an interview last week to discuss her career as she takes over a new role as the anchor of CBC Montreal’s late-night television newscast.
It was February 2010, six months after she became the most prominent personality at CBC Radio One in Montreal: the host of Daybreak. Not only did her professional experience make her an obvious choice, but she was also the first woman to take the job. Gazette columnist Mike Boone devoted a column in 2006 to suggesting her as a candidate for the job, though he admitted to “a degree of bias” because he worked with her here in the 1980s.
But then, halfway through her one-year contract, she was told it wouldn’t be renewed, and she would go back to her previous job as a reporter.
“They never told me (why). They never will tell me,” Wood said, her eyes getting misty as she relived that time.
When news of the change leaked to the public, there was a backlash. Four Gazette columnists, including Boone, panned the decision. Letters to the editor poured in to The Gazette supporting Wood. CBC was inundated with calls, emails, Facebook posts and other messages from outraged Daybreak listeners. Some fans started a Facebook group to petition CBC to change its mind. People were debating in newspapers and online whether Wood was a good host.
But the corporation stayed silent. Management refused to comment on “personal and confidential information regarding our employees.” But listeners only responded with more anger at the CBC.
Henry Aubin, who devoted four columns to the subject of Wood’s removal and CBC’S refusal to explain itself, received about 250 emails from readers, “the most I’ve ever had on a single subject,” he said. “All but a handful wer esupportive. People said she had warmth, a probing interview style, a real feel for the city and that she was just coming into her own when the axe fell.”
Aubin forwarded the emails to Wood, who said she was surprised at the outpouring of support. But she said she couldn’t bring herself to read them. “Maybe one day when I’m 80 I’ll go through them,” she said.
The decision to remove Wood from Daybreak came the day before Pia Marquard became the new managing director for CBC’S English services in Quebec. Many in the public directed their anger at Marquand. But Wood said that was unfair.
“I don’t think Pia had anything to do with it,” Wood said. “She was always nice to me. She couldn’t do anything about a decision made before she came here.”
In fact, Wood said, Marquand worked hard to get her into another job. At the end of April 2010, Marquand announced Wood was part of a special cross-cultural project, working as a reporter with Radio-canada’s investigative unit. Over the next two years, she filed reports in French for the show Enquête and in English for CBC News. She reported on conjugal violence by soldiers returning from Afghanistan, on Loto-québec spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to lure high rollers from abroad to Montreal’s casino, and on the health risks of an anti-malaria drug given to Canadian soldiers.
With the project ending at the end of this season, Wood said Marquand convinced her to take the late anchor job. It was one of the last things Marquand did before she left her post at the end of March, citing declining health.
Every weeknight, Wood hosts a 10-minute local newscast, sandwiched between The National and George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight. Wood took over April 23, replacing Amanda Margison, who is moving to southern Ontario for family reasons.
Why take a job in the public spotlight again after her experience with Daybreak?
For Wood, her identity as a CBC personality is always there, no matter what her job is. Her neighbours all know where she works. “I represent the CBC to them,” she said.
Wood said the late night job offers her a chance to try something new. In addition to hosting the show, she is responsible for lining it up, editing reporters’ stories into bite-size briefs so they can all fit into a 10-minute newscast with a weather segment and a 60-second commercial break. She also contributes behind the scenes to the evening newscast.
It may sound silly, she said, but “I know how to do supers (onscreen graphic labels) and how to time out a newscast. It’s an incredibly revitalizing experience. I like learning new things.”
The job also comes with some challenges, chief among them the schedule. Her two teenage children, like most, are rather non-verbal on weekday mornings. By the time she gets home from work, everyone is asleep. But she’s found ways to manage, leaving dinner instructions for her husband and finding time for her children on weekends. “I made a date with my son last week,” she said, laughing a bit at the absurdity.
Wood, 48, doesn’t know where else her career might take her. She said she’s happy in either TV or radio, though she prefers a desk job like this to that of a national TV reporter where she can be called at a moment’s notice to go to some far corner of the province to cover breaking news.
But she knows she doesn’t want to leave Montreal. “I left the Gazette (in 1989) and went to Toronto because I couldn’t stand the language debate,” she said. But whenever she would come back to Montreal, “my heart would swell.” Even seeing the eyesore that is the Metropolitan Expressway made her homesick. She took a job at CBC Radio in 1994 and has worked at Maison Radio-canada ever since.
Later on, the decision to stay here also became about her family. “Once your kids get into high school, they don’t want to move,” she said.
So she’s here to stay. And though she said she’s “still crying over Daybreak” (she admits her tear ducts are easily set off), she sees there was a silver lining to that dark cloud. If not for losing her job at Daybreak, “I wouldn’t have had the two years at enquête,” living the dream of being an investigative journalist.
As for keeping the low lights of her life out of the virtual tabloids, she jokes: “I guess I can’t get divorced now.”
CBC News Montreal Late Night airs weeknights at 10:55 p.m., after The National. Start times can be delayed during the NHL playoffs.
sfaguy@montrealgazette.com