It was one of 500 news tips we get every day in the Global BC television newsroom. Like many, this one seemed inconsequential, but it led to the single most dramatic piece of videotape in B.C.’s history – police raiding the home of the sitting premier.
The date was March 2, 1999. The tipster said police were raiding a private gambling parlour in the North Burnaby Inn. It was a busy day – ironically legendary reporter Jack Webster had died that morning – but an antenna went up and I passed the tip on to our top investigative reporter, John Daly. It started a political ball rolling and ultimately caused the downfall of Premier Glen Clark.
Daly takes up the story: “The tip caused a loud bell to go off in my head. Months earlier I had read a memo by an angry man alleging that cops gambled at the North Burnaby Inn, and that a fellow involved in getting the inn’s private gambling club transformed into a casino claimed he had an “in” with his neighbour, Premier Glen Clark.”
Premier resigned
That man with the alleged “in” was Dimitrios Pilarinos and following his hunch, Daly headed to Pilarinos’s East Vancouver house. Nobody was there. So he drove to Clark’s house, close by. Cameraman Karl Casselman spotted undercover cops at the corner.
“Were they there because of security concerns? A threat? Was it too much to connect police in an unmarked car with the raid on the North Burnaby Inn?”
Suddenly, the undercover cops were running up the steps of Clark’s home. Daly and Casselman smelled a scoop. They were the only news people there along with a second Global cameraman, Gary Hanney, called to the back of Clark’s property.
“As a light drizzle fell and detectives rummaged through the premier’s basement and under his deck, I felt a chill. Never before had police executed a search warrant on the home of a sitting premier. We were witnessing history,” says Daly, reliving the moment.
Pictures of the unfolding drama were soon dominating our broadcasts here and across Canada. Later, the premier resigned. He was charged with breach of trust and receiving a benefit, but eventually acquitted.
As for Daly, it was yet another in a string of exclusive stories he has broken for us over the years.
I’ve run the assignment desk at Global BC/BCTV for most of the last quarter century.
It is like being air traffic controller. Some days, a root canal is preferable to the pressure and demands of the desk. Speed is the essence of our job and we use helicopters, small jets, float planes and even boats, along with every type of vehicle, to get to where the news is breaking.
I know what competition is. I started out in probably the most intensely competitive city in the world. I was heavily involved in the tabloid wars in London’s Fleet Street as half a dozen tabloids fought tooth and nail in the brutal circulation battles of the early 1970s. It was a dog eat dog world.
London tabloids have merrily delivered stories about politicians having affairs, celebrities taking drugs and royals shaming themselves. Gossip can end careers, giving the tabloids’ enormous power.
I fell in love with Vancouver and then British Columbia when I was hitch hiking around the world in the late ’70s. I stayed.
News of choice
Global BC, or BCTV as it was known then, gave me my start in television – it was a very different landscape back then. Only a handful of channels were on the dial. BCTV had just knocked off the CBS News with Walter Cronkite, and the CBC, as the dominant news of choice in this market.
BCTV was built largely on the business acumen, forward thinking and brilliance of Ray Peters, who ran the station and controlled the purse strings. Cameron Bell, a television news visionary, was years ahead of his time. As news director his mantra was let pictures tell the story. The journalistic guru was Keith Bradbury, who was trained as a lawyer and had one of the sharpest editorial minds in the news business. He was ruthless.
Using reporters and cameramen as their puppets, they honed BCTV into an aggressive news juggernaut, at one time making it the third most watched local news show in North America.
Their luckiest break was the day they made Tony Parsons the anchor of the 6 p.m. flagship show, The News Hour. That was 35 years ago. Their existing 6 p.m. anchor had walked off the set in a huff one afternoon. Bell looked around for a replacement and saw Tony, then a CTV reporter, sitting in the newsroom. They put him on the anchor desk and he remained there until last Christmas.
Household names
Tony became a true B.C. icon and played an important part in keeping us No. 1 in the ratings.
His looks, his professionalism and that voice set a benchmark in the industry. But behind Tony, and all the anchors, is an army. It takes a whole team to put a news program on the air.
All our anchors would be the first to agree that it is the excellence of the people behind the camera that helps make them look so good. Producers like Randy McHale, who has brilliantly and seamlessly written and produced The News Hour for most of the last 30 years. He is one of the best writers in the business.
When Tony departed, surprisingly our ratings didn’t suffer. New anchor Chris Gailus is already a proven asset to the team.
All told, we have about 20 reporters, most of whom are household names, but another 60 editors, cameramen, producers, graphic artists and writers. Over the years the cast of characters on our reporting staff have been hired for their reporting abilities not necessarily their looks. Some of them wouldn’t have blessed the front cover of GQ magazine. Aggressive, brash and cheeky, you’ll remember some of their names: John Gibbs, Pamela Martin, Clem Chapple (sadly now dead), Mark Schneider, Mark Miller, Harvey Oberfeld, Alyn Edwards, Neale Adams, Eli Sopow, Elaine McKay, Margo Harper, Keith Baldrey, Ted Chernecki, Brian Coxford, Doriana Temolo, Deb Hope, Linda Aylesworth, Lynn Colliar, Jas Johal, Tara Nelson, Steve Wyatt, Bob Ireland, Belle Puri, Dale Hicks, Jim Hart, and, of course, the unique Mike McCardell. In many ways it is like conducting an orchestra: everyone has a unique talent suited for the wide range of stories we cover. And by the way, what are the most watched stories we routinely cover? Extreme weather wins every time.
I’d like to end with a personal note. When I was still doing some reporting back in 1990, I was assigned mission impossible. A court case involving sexual abuse charges was going ahead in Creston in South Eastern B.C. It emerged that the alleged assault had happened in a secretive Mormon community called Bountiful, just a few miles from Creston. Stories were emerging of men with multiple wives and fathering dozens of children. But would we get our cameras inside?
Cameraman John Chant and I arrived in Bountiful. The early signs weren’t good: we were kicked out. But as we were leaving, we came across a man, aged around 40, walking along the side of the road. His name was Dalmon Oler. We explained who we were, and begged him to talk to us, on camera, about his lifestyle, his family and his community.
We hit television gold. As we toured his house he showed us his photographic gallery of his children. Astonishingly, he had 45 of them, from six different wives. They were grouped by names, and it turned out that every child born to his first wife had a name starting with the letter A, second wife the letter B and so on.
Television gold
Then he showed us the sleeping arrangements – all six bedrooms, and explained how he decided which wife to visit on which night. We met the wives and many of his 45 children, and even some of his 48 grandchildren – they were preparing dinner in their house, which was more like a motel. They seemingly all got on well together. We all had dinner, and the night ended with 25 of his children singing “My daddy is the greatest daddy in the world” as he sat in an armchair. It was haunting. The pictures have been shown all over the world, most recently on Oprah.
Our first 50 years have been rewarding as the station has gone from strength to strength, and everything points to a future equally successful and enduring. New staff coming through the ranks will keep the traditions. It has been a great ride, and is now a wonderful place to work – thanks to the most recent news directors, Steve Wyatt and now Ian Haysom.
Haysom and I are both Brits, and I have a small plaque in my office at home with a quote from Evelyn Waugh’s book Scoop. It says: “There is no reason, thank God, to bribe or twist the British journalist. For seeing what the man will do, unbribed, there is no reason to.”
You never know what will happen next in the news business. That’s what makes it so exciting. Stay tuned.
Clive Jackson is the managing editor at GlobalBC.
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