The Word - Vol 92

Mike’s Goodbye

The other night at Blue Frog Studios, a patron came up to me and wondered if I remembered Mike Winlaw. My answer was “Of course I remember Mike!” For those who don’t, he was the first host of a television show called The Vancouver Show, a live interview/current affairs show that aired live, Monday to Friday from 7 pm to 9 pm on TV station CKVU.

The Vancouver Show, as I may have mentioned in The Word previously, was the creation of the station owner, film Director, Daryl Duke. Daryl was born in Vancouver and became one of CBC Television’s earliest regional producers. His credits include producing the series “This Hour Has Seven Days,” he won the Canadian Film Award for Best Director for “The Silent Partner,” and an Emmy Award for the miniseries “The Thorn Birds.” He and business partner Norman Klenman gave birth to CKVU-TV which is now Citytv in Vancouver.

Daryl’s vision was to create a television show that reflected and celebrated the city and offered a platform for the disenfranchised. This was a show that television insiders claimed couldn’t be done. To come up with 2 hours of live content every night of the week was said to have been impossible. The Impossible Show was on the air for 10 years, from 1976 to 1986, with the final year of its life being reduced to a 1-hour show. To accomplish this impossible feat meant that anything and everything ended up on the show. If it could take a breath, we’d book it. There were authors, politicians, musicians, jugglers, and clowns, and because it was a 2-hour show we always had time for “specials” that ranged from Bikini Contests (yes it was a different time) to music specials and political forums. You name it, and it was probably on the show. I was one of the co-hosts from 1979-1983, then again for the final year of 1986.

The show first went on the air September 5th, 1976, with hosts Mike Winlaw, who had come from hosting the CBC’s news and current affairs program Hourglass, and Pia Shandel, an actor who had a role in “Shadow of the Hawk,” a film directed by Daryl Duke. Laurier LaPierre who had a connection with Daryl as a co-host of “Seven Days,” would soon join Winlaw and Shandel, and as the years went by, scores of other co-hosts would cycle through the show. As far as producers of the show, at one point in the Vancouver Show history, it had more producers than Canada has had Prime Ministers! It was a difficult show to produce. We used to joke that accepting the role of producer was to accept a bomb in the briefcase, it wouldn’t be long before it went off!  

There are a million and one stories to tell from those 10 years of the show. Long-time make-up artist, Sandy Dennis always threatened to write a book about the stories behind the scenes but admitted that nobody would believe them! Truth really is stranger than fiction, but oh how I wish she had written that book. 
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But let’s get back to Mike Winlaw. Mike was a terrific guy and when the show first went on the air, for the first couple of years, Mike carried the weight of the show. Pia was an actor and new to journalism and current affairs programming, so it was left up to  Mike, who had come from the Hourglass show on CBC, to carry the bulk of the heavy interviews. As the years went on, Pia became a first-rate interviewer, even taking on one of the more difficult interviews of the day, the then Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. 

But it was the early years that Mike held the show together, and as different producers cycled through, many tried to put a more entertainment spin on the show and it started to drift away from a journalistic, hard interview direction which didn’t sit well with Mike. It all came to a head one night in the middle of the show. There was a short segment we called “mid-show promos,” a time halfway through the show where we would promote what was coming up in the second half of the show. During the commercial break as Pia, Mike, and I sat on the main set surrounded by chaser lights that would have fit well with a comedy/entertainment/Hollywood Palace style of show, Mike announced to Pia and me that he’d had enough. He wasn’t comfortable with the direction the show was going and he was going to quit. I think it was Pia who asked him when he was going to quit, and Mike answered, “As soon as we come back from the commercial break.” Pia and I looked at each other and were speechless. The floor director finished the countdown to come back from the commercials, 3, 2, 1, and pointed to us. Pia and I both swung our heads around and looked at Mike. Mike calmly told the audience that this was his last show, he thanked them very much for their years of tuning in, but he was done. He leaned over and gave Pia a kiss on the cheek and thanked her for the years they had spent together on the show, we all stood up, he shook my hand and said thanks for being a co-host these years, turned, and walked off the set. Pia and I sat back down and watched him walk away, heard his footsteps, and heard the studio door close behind him. 

Pia and I looked at each other, then looked at the camera and said, “Coming up in the second half of the show...” 

And this sad postscript, we lost Daryl Duke to pulmonary fibrosis on the 21st of October, 2006 he was 77. 
Laurier LaPierre passed away from a pulmonary embolism on December 16, 2012, at the age of 83. 
And Mike Winlaw was 76 years old when he died in his sleep on September 29th, 2014.

WATCH: The Vancouver Show Promo ft. Mike Winlaw

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