TORONTO – Throughout his six-decade career, Lloyd Robertson developed an unassailable reputation for delivering an authoritative account of the day’s news.
His classic style in presenting “the kind of day it’s been” became as distinctive as his rich baritone, and established the silver-haired anchor as the quintessential detached newsman.
Now retired from “CTV National News” and in a reflective mood with the release of his memoir, Robertson is delving into the little-known story behind his cool demeanour – a painful childhood that he says ingrained a steely ability to clamp down on emotion.
“For some reason I glommed on to radio as the place where I wanted to be,” Robertson says of a troubled youth that sent him searching for escape.
“It opened a whole world to me that I didn’t even know existed and I could live in that world of imagination and ignore what was happening around me on a close personal level at home.”
Home was Stratford, Ont., where Robertson was born Jan. 19, 1934. His father was a 60-year-old machinist’s helper with the Canadian National Railway. George Robertson already had eight children from a previous marriage, another son nine years Lloyd’s senior, and a pension so meagre that the cupboards were often left bare, Robertson says in his biography “The Kind of Life It’s Been.”
Robertson received little comfort from his mother Lilly, a woman tormented by a slew of mental and emotional disorders including paranoia, obsessive compulsive behaviour and bouts of anxiety.
A prefrontal lobotomy in 1948 only distanced her further and eliminated any possibility of developing a meaningful relationship, Robertson says in a frank interview that took place in the sky-high downtown offices of HarperCollins Canada.
“Our relationship was very scattered from the beginning and then she had the lobotomy which kind of flat-lined her emotionally,” Robertson says matter-of-factly.
“We had very little emotional contact.”
As a result, Robertson says he became self-reliant at an early age but also withdrawn and emotionally “cramped.” He says that would make it difficult “to be truly intimate with anyone” later in life.
Even as a teen, Robertson possessed a deep sonorous voice and a budding passion for politics. It wasn’t long before he wormed his way into the local radio station CJCS and landed an after-school gig spinning records for the announcers. He was 17 and earned $7 a week.
Looking back, Robertson says he traces much of his teenage drive to a desire to break free from his unhappy home.
“I was trying to shut out the concerns of my mother, the concerns of my father and I wanted to go out into the world and behave like all the other kids,” says Robertson, who now has four daughters and seven grandchildren.
“I wanted to get away from home and I wanted to do my own thing. And that was the driving force for me – I found something I was fascinated by, I was interested in. I wanted to do it, I wanted to work at it and I did.”
Did he ever.
Over the ensuing decades Robertson would rise all the way to the top TV anchor desks at the CBC (as host of “The National” from 1970 to 1976) and CTV (where he helmed the flagship nightly newscast until last year).
With a combined 41 years behind both desks he is considered the longest-serving national anchor in North American TV history.
Along the way, Robertson covered nearly every major event of the day including the moon landing, the Quebec Referendum, the 9-11 attacks, several state funerals, numerous papal visits, 14 Canadian elections and nine Olympic Games.
A blow-by-blow of career highlights form a loose framework for “The Kind of Life It’s Been,” which devotes much of its ink to repeated clashes with CBC bosses and union rules that culminated in Robertson’s bitter exit to CTV in 1976.
The 78-year-old says he initially resisted suggestions he write a memoir until his agent argued in 2010 that it was the right time.
“From my era, you didn’t talk about yourself. It was considered rude and impolite to put yourself out there and all your dirty linen in public,” says Robertson.
“(My agent) said, ‘Everybody’s doing it. Everybody’s out there now, this is the age of Oprah, why not?'”
Robertson says the hardest part was writing about his mother but once he got beyond the early chapters, he “just started going at it.”
Among the revelations: before putting his voice to use on the radio, Robertson was part of a barbershop quartet as a teen; both the Conservative and Liberal parties tried to woo him into federal politics; Jean Chretien’s office asked if he’d consider a seat in the Senate; and while at the CBC, a bout of hallucinations sent him to hospital for nervous exhaustion.
“That really for me was a health scare because it said to me: You’ve got to keep control of yourself and keep control of your mind because your mother’s genes are in there,” Robertson says of the episode, in which he recalls “losing touch with reality” and “fighting for control of (his) own thoughts.”
Robertson says his whole life has been haunted by fears he would suffer his own mental breakdown or pass those genes onto his children.
In fact, he says one of his four daughters does battle mental health issues, and they recently spoke about their experiences in a speech to the Canadian Psychiatric Association in Montreal.
Robertson admits he hasn’t slowed down much since turning “CTV National News” over to Lisa LaFlamme. Aside from promoting his memoir, he continues hosting and correspondent duties for CTV’s current affairs show “W5” and keeps busy with speaking engagements.
“I think I’m a workaholic who hasn’t figured out yet how to stop,” says Robertson, who boasts of still being able to do 35 push-ups.
“I get up in the morning and (I think) ‘What’s on the agenda for today?’ I can’t imagine waking up and saying, ‘I’ve got nothing to do today.’ Maybe that day will come. But I’m not there yet.”
He says he learned a lot about himself in writing his memoir, notably the impact his demanding career has had on his family. The welcome trade off of stepping away from the anchor desk has been more time with the people he loves.
“Doing a book does allow you to look at your own life in minute detail and discover things you’ve done right, things you’ve done wrong,” he says.
“I knew that I was such a workaholic that in the early days I didn’t spend as much time with my girls as I would have liked to have done. So in the latter years I made a point of being close to them and making sure that I’m a part of their lives…. Work comes and goes and even though I’m a workaholic, I know there is this other dimension and you have to pay attention to that. Because that’s the important part.”
“The Kind of Life It’s Been” goes on sale this week.
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