KEY RECORDS
Max, as a veteran news anchorman with over 7,000 new casts under your belt. Was it your dream to become a broadcaster when you were a kid growing up in Grand Bank, Newfoundland?
MAX KEEPING
No, I don’t think when I was in Grand Bank, Newfoundland I understood very much of what I was going to do. At the time when I was working up, if you were a kid in Newfoundland, the choices were pretty limited. You could go to sea like your father did. You could join the army, join the RCMP or go to Toronto. None of those appealed to me. My brother went to sea like my dad and my brother was lost, lost at sea off Ireland in 1952. My mother died when I was 9 years old in 1951. My father was a master mariner for 33 years sailing between Newfoundland, Portugal and the Caribbean. And I’m not sure that I knew anything of what I wanted to do. I certainly understood that I wanted to help people. I don’t know if I would have expressed it that way when 10 or 11 years old. But certainly as I turned 13, I started work at 14. I was working for the newspaper at 14. I finished high school at 15. I really got into Journalism because I was going to a boy’s school and the only guys the girls talked to were athletes and I wasn’t a athlete. So how the hell do I get into that little cliché. So the only way I could get in that cliché was to become a sports writer for the newspaper. Which got me in with all the in boys at school and the girls at the girl’s school across the street then could meet. That’s how I got here. Once I went to work for the newspaper, once I saw, you know, I started in sports and by 17 I was covering the legislator. Paul was threatening to throw me out of the legislator, things like that so I got the bug very quickly once I went to work for the newspaper.
KEY RECORDS
We read that you got a job with the St. John’s evening Telegram at the early age of 14 which is unbelievable. How is that possible? Did you lie about your age?
MAX KEEPING
No, no, I used to hang out at the ball park. Baseball was my favorite sport and one night the sports editor for the paper, I guess got drunk, didn’t go to the game and needed to write a story for the paper so he kept saying, “who’s that little kid that’s always hanging around wanting to score the book.” So they found me, and I’m not sure how they found me, but they found me and I was able to tell him without score pad how all the runs had been scored in the 9 innings and he owed me. So he gave me the job for the summer and then I continued to work weekends over the course of the last year of high school. After Newfoundland I had two years in Nova Scotia working for TV and Radio. I did a radio open line show called, “Keeping Speaking,” and I did sports on television.
KEY RECORDS
In 1965 you moved to Ottawa to work for C.F.R.A Radio. What was your position with the radio station?
MAX KEEPING
In 1965 I arrived in the city of Ottawa. I’d been fired in Halifax for embarrassing the President of the company who was the President of the PC party and the PC’s were in power. Some stories I did embarrassed him so he fired me. I came to Ottawa looking for a job and I walked in on CFRA at 9:30 in the morning and that morning at 9:00 o’clock one of the reporters had resigned to take a new job so there was a job opening. The news director was from down east so he knew of me. So I had a job. My job plan to get to Ottawa would have taken 5 years and I would have worked in every small town in Ontario to get to Ottawa. But I happen to walk into CFRA on a day there was an opening of 30 minutes and I got that job.
KEY RECORDS
We read that you entered politics in 1972.
MAX KEEPING
I ran for the Conservatives. It turned out the man who had fired me in Halifax was actually the campaign manager in 1972.
KEY RECORDS
In November of 1972 C.J.O.H Television approached you with a job offer to work in their news department. You accepted the offer and rose to become chief news anchor of CTV Ottawa. Who did you replace at the station?
MAX KEEPING
There had been a series of anchors at CJOH. Peter Riley who was a former CBC journalist had become a Member of Parliament, there was a man named Don Renney, there was another, one of my friends, Finley McDonald Jr. After Riley no one had gotten the job permanently. I took the job as news director, not knowing that I was to become the anchor and then one day the owner walked in and said, “when are you going to start anchoring?” because I had not really anchored a local show. I had worked for the National for 7 years, I mean I was support and had never done a full newscast. And he said, “I’m expecting you to anchor too.” So in early December of 1972, I did my first newscast and finished 37 years later, over 7000 newscasts.
. KEY RECORDS
Max, when you started with C.J.O.H TV were televisions still mostly broadcasting in black and white?
MAX KEEPING
No, by 1972 we were broadcasting in color. I’m trying to remember when the first color program was in Canada. I was in Halifax, so it would have been in 64 or 65. CBC did an hour long music special. It was the first Canadian programming in color, but that was mid-sixties.
KEY RECORDS
In 1995 it was a tragedy for all Canadians when your friend and colleague, fellow broadcaster Brian Smith was gunned down by a lunatic in front of the CTV studio. Was that the most difficult news broadcast you ever had to make?
MAX KEEPING
Oh, I don’t think there would be any…it would be tough for a person…but to know the professional, the professional needs to be able to go to air and not show his or her own feelings. I think you can show some, but you have to deal with it professionally. That night for example, the late Leigh Chapple was doing nightline and Timothy Walker was doing sports instead of Smitty. And when Timothy started to get teared up, Leigh said, “pull yourself together, this is what we do.” That was as their going to air. So those four days were certainly the most challenging of anything I’ve ever done, had to do. You know, we’re dealing with an assassination, we didn’t know who it was. We were told that the first person to come out through the door that the shooter recognized was the one he was going to kill. So it could have been any of us. There was a tremendous out pouring, of outrage, of anger and of support and of beauty. Brian’s family donated his organs. Seven more people got to live because of Brian.
KEY RECORDS
It was a sad day recently to hear of the passing of your colleague, Leigh Chapple. We read somewhere that you were the one who hired her. Do you remember when you hired her?
MAX KEEPING
Oh yeah, we also lost Bill Patterson, who was a sports casting partner of Brian Smith. Billy died of a heart attach one morning and that’s just another one of us. And now that many of us are in retirement and Leigh Chapple had joined us in retirement just a year ago. She was only 58 years old…and she died peacefully in her sleep, but so young. And yes I do remember when she walked in, a beautiful, extraordinary eyes and great passion to be a reporter. And I think part of the appeal for me was the passion she had for the Ottawa valley. But, I didn’t have a job to give her. I didn’t have a reporting job. So I said, take a job as my assistant. And you know, once you get into the news room, I hopefully will be able to get you into reporting. But for today you got to take what’s available and she did. She got there, then took off. And you know, she spent three decades as the host of the late night news show. And what’s extraordinary about that is, the concept behind late night news philosophy is you tune in to see if everything is okay in your world, the world you live in. What’s the weather for tomorrow and how did my favorite sports team do. So Leigh every night, five nights a week, was one who reassured the people who live here that all is okay. It’s okay to go to sleep, when you wake up tomorrow it’ll be an even better day.
KEY RECORDS
Max, after approx. 50 years in Journalism is there one news story that is more memorable to you then all the rest?
MAX KEEPING
One of the stories that is memorable is the one that actually, I guess, got me to be able to stay in the industry. And that’s going back to 1963. And I had arrived far from Newfoundland, right off the turnip truck. When I was not ready. I was not ready for working in Halifax and I broke the story, it was an international story. The sinking of the USS Thrasher. A US Atomic submarine. The loss of 118 men on board. And I broke that story and it was fault radio station in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was subject of a congressional enquiry as to how the information had leaked out because we broke it to the world. It was a huge loss for the Americans. And I remember at 11:00 that night being able to talk directly to the chief of the US defense staff. And I’m this little guy in Halifax, Nova Scotia and I get a interview with the top military guy in the United States cause their trying to figure out how did we get there. So that story I would never forget. But I would say the best moment, the best experience of that entire career is 2006 is spending Christmas in Afghanistan with the troops. To be there on Christmas day. You know, as a kid who was born during the Second World War, so I didn’t really know the Second World War and the Korean War. But here we were, Canada at war and I was with the Canadian troops. On Christmas eve were on board the HMCS Ottawa in the Persian Gulf . The Iranian planes flew over and checked us out. We had stayed the night previous on board the ship and then flew into the base at Kandahar on Christmas eve. And we served dinner on Christmas day. And then on Boxing Day we went to Kabul. And I don’t think I will ever forget, just, I remember walking up to one Office and saying, Merry Christmas sir. And he said, “Oh, is it Christmas day?” And you know, I had read that so often, in books on the Second World War and here, you know, I was able to tell this man yes it is Christmas day and some of us had come from Canada to thank you for your service. To thank you for being here.
KEY RECORDS
You must have met a lot of people during your years at the news desk. Can you tell us some of the names of famous people that you have met?
MAX KEEPING
Well, famous people don’t necessarily register with me. You know, I got to shake hands with Richard Nixon when he was President of the United States, before he became turkey dinner. You know, I’ve met monarchs and Presidents and sports stars, movie stars. That’s a benefit I guess, hey, he got to shake hands with some fabulous people. But I got to shake hands with some neat, some extraordinary people who make a difference to the planet. Who make a difference in the lives of people. I met a 14 year old boy who had cystic fibrosis. I took him on a plane for a trip to the North Pole. For the next 19 months before he died he really taught me about living, when to die. About living each day. You know, we can go to a McDonalds and he had to take 33 pills before he could have a Big-Mac. That was Johnny Payne. I met another person named Norm Johnson. He was a United Church minister. He was a drunk and he’d been drunk and on the streets for nearly twenty years. And when he got himself back on the straight and narrow, and the church offered him a parish, he said no, I’d like to go back on the street from where I came. There is a need for a pasture on the street. And he founded Operation Go Home, which today is called, Operation Come Home. But over the course of the last two and a half three decades has brought more than two hundred thousand young people off the streets. Some to their homes, some didn’t need it, shouldn’t move, but to get them off the streets. Somebody, and Norm Johnson was the first to say, you know, your God’s children, somebody loves you and you shouldn’t be living on the streets. You can come off the streets. Go home if you can. But if you can’t go home, we’ll find somewhere for you to stay. Get you back in school, we’ll help you. Those are two examples of people like that. And dozens and dozens and dozens and hundreds of others are the ones that stick with me.
KEY RECORDS
Max, you are a great public speaker. Did you ever take courses in the field of public speaking?
MAX KEEPING
No, I think most Newfoundlanders inherit the oral society of the Irish. And so most Newfoundlanders, even people who have never been to school, stand up and do a right speech. So I think I have that, I remember my first public speech was to the Kiwanis’s club in 1971 I believe it was and boy was I scared, and just shaking holding on. Now I give as many as two to three hundred speeches.
KEY RECORDS
Being a media celebrity in the nation’s capital city…can you tell us any funny stories you remember of people who have recognized you on the street and their reactions to you?
MAX KEEPING
No, not really but I could tell you...I remember being at the Montreal forum and somebody started talking to me in French and I didn’t understand. I thought he was recognizing me from TV and I started shaking his hand. One of my friends came along and listened in and said, “he is asking you where the washroom is.” That put me in my place. No, I consider myself to be very fortunate. I consider myself to be blessed to have had the position in this community that has come with being the anchor of the newscast. To be part of so many parts of the community. To seeing so much of the good things that have happened in this community. I also see where the community shares some of the pain. I’ve been in the position of raising the money and then watching it be spent, seeing it make a difference.
KEY RECORDS
Max, we know your works have been recognized by the community. You have received the Key to the City of Ottawa. Max Keeping Boulevard is named after you and you also received the order of Canada in 1991. In 2004 you were inducted into the Canadian Association of Broadcasters hall of fame. Where did that award ceremony take place?
MAX KEEPING
The hall of fame was here in Ottawa. I’ve been very fortunate over the years to be recognized but nobody goes out to win an award, win a trophy. I wear my Order of Canada, my Order of Ontario very proudly but you know, I see my name on the Children’s hospital of Eastern Ontario and nothing, nothing can wipe that one away. I go back to how fortunate I have been and I just wish that a lot of the people who do things quietly and never get recognized could be recognized for their good works. I remember a man we found who every morning, spring, summer and fall, would get up at 6 in the morning, and not to far from here, go and clean up the ball park before the kids would come out. He would pick up the broken bottles and the needles and anything wrong and nobody ever knew who cleaned it up. We found he was doing it for about 8 years and I said I want to give you an award, publicly and he said no. And there are thousands of people like that. I got recognized for what I do because I’m in a public spotlight and I use the power of television and the public spotlight to shine the light on things that need to be done. There are so many people who make a difference in the lives of others that never get recognized. I just wish I could share mine. And actually, at one point when I was being nominated for something my sister said to me, “you don’t need anymore, let somebody else win.”
KEY RECORDS
We bet a lot of people don’t know that you appeared in two movie feature-films. The first one titled, “April One” in 1993. The second film titled, “Random Factor” in 1995. How did you end up in the movies?
MAX KEEPING
I’d forgotten. Those movies were produced by a young man from Ottawa who’s moved to Hollywood for the last 25 years. He shot parts of those movies here in Ottawa and I got cast as an anchor in one and a reporter in another one I believe. You’ve really done your research.
KEY RECORDS
There was a horrible fire in the Merivale TV studio that destroyed almost all of your news tapes just before you retired. You then did your last newscast on March 26, 2010 with Carol Anne at the studio in the Byward market. What was that experience like?
MAX KEEPING
It wasn’t only the news tapes that were burnt, it was my home. CJOH died in the fire. What you have today is the success of CJOH which is CTV Ottawa. CJOH which was one of the first major stations in this country, that building went up in 1961. CJOH was started down on Bayswater and moved into broadcasting house. So much of broadcasting history took part in that building. Including the first political debates were done out of that building. CTV national news started in that building and I lived there. I had somewhere else that I paid rent, where I changed my clothes but I lived there. My work day was anywhere from 18 to 20 hours a day. And so…a lot of broadcasting history was lost in that fire, a lot of video history was lost. It was a landmark for Ottawa. So it was a lot more than a fire in a building. Although, on the Monday morning, through the graciousness of the Citizen we had a meeting with all the staff of CJOH and I was able to say CJOH was not that building. CJOH was you, you and you. All of us were working in that building. You created it, you did all that. That was CJOH. The building is a structure but is was very sad. It was very traumatic and just two months before my retirement. I think it helped me get rid of all the stuff I had collected for 37 years. It probably helped me to say, its time to go.
KEY RECORDS
After being a journalist for 51 years with 37 of those years at CTV’s Ottawa studio…What advice can you give to young people wishing to enter the field of Broadcasting?
MAX KEEPING
Try plumbing. (KEY RECORDS laughs) Be patient. I had to speak to the graduating class at Carleton University 4 years ago and not one of them have a job. My opening line was, Are you sure you chose the right profession? But what I genuinely feel is that the world will always need the story teller. There is so much information now with the technology that you can’t consume it all so you are dependent on someone else to sift through it. And so, I tell young aspiring journalist, be patient, because we don’t yet know what platform were going to land on, where were going to make money. So far, none of the geniuses who own the media have figured out how to make money. You and I have been getting all this information for free from the internet, but suddenly being told we have to pay for it. Every newspaper, every TV has got a pay roll. Well, were not going to pay. And so, still looking for a way to make it work. But the world will always need the story teller. I also suggest to young aspiring journalist, all it takes is one camera and one laptop. I mean, go start your own all local news network on Youtube. Get a Youtube channel. They just had a hundred new channels sprung open last year. You can do that. You can start your own channel. Maybe you can make money from that. Don’t be afraid to take a risk. The world will always need a story teller.
KEY RECORDS
Today you are known as the TV station’s community ambassador. And your work as Master of Ceremonies for the children’s hospital telethon has raised over 100 million dollars in donations for charities. Is that connected to the Max Keeping Foundation?
MAX KEEPING
No, there’s a whole series of things in there. Over the course of the 37 years at CTV I got the privilege of hosting the CHEO Telethon for 30 years. It’s the longest running Children’s hospital telethon in Canada. There’s only a couple of stations in America that have been doing it for 31 years or more. So great privilege to be able to be a part of that broadcasting and to continue even though I’m no longer with CTV. I didn’t raise 100 million dollars I helped to raise 140 million but that was collectively within the community, with United Way, with cystic fibrosis, with the Ottawa Senators Foundation, CHEO, with the Heart Institute. You know, the first telethon from the Heart Institute with Brian Smith and me broadcasting live when the Heart Institute opened and inviting people to send donations, that was the telethon. And it was live, we were live from there. The Max Keeping Foundation was set up 19 or 20 years ago. Because I was seeing at the news desk so many kids who were in need. And you know, you don’t have any choice how you come into the world and what economic space you are in. So if you can even the playing field, don’t let money get in the way of a kid having the opportunity to soar. Give every kid the same chance. And so that was the basis for the Max Keeping Foundation. With the foundation we raised over ½ million dollars mostly from a single Bowlathon. We’ve helped thousands of children, 500 last year, 300 kids the year before. To access the recreational sports, the arts and to give scholarships to young women who stay in school after they become pregnant or had their child. Also give scholarships to kids in the children’s aid. So it’s evening the playing field and that’s been a part virtually of everything that I’ve been a part of. The Senators Foundation was based on the concept of the Max Keeping Foundation. And that is…you give kids the chance. Don’t let money get in the way. We have 90,000 charities in Canada and people still slip through the cracks. Doesn’t make sense but they do. And you and I, every one of us, has the capacity and I believe the responsibility to make a difference for others.
KEY RECORDS
Thanks for the interview Max and for giving Ottawa the evening news for all those years. Those were magical times and were talking before news organizations like CNN existed. Back then it was like you were a member of our family being beamed into our home each night. So we are honored to say thank you for all those years you brought us the news. You were our window to the outside world. Thanks Max.
MAX KEEPING
It is always the highest compliment when somebody said you’re like a member of the family.