Michael Atkins

When I was in my teens in the 1960s, I used to steal away from Don Mills, Canada’s first completely planned and boring community, and go downtown to Yorkville in Toronto where something really seemed to be happening.

It’s been a long time since I took a little time out waiting for the old swing bridge at Little Current, Manitoulin Island to grant me access to this fantastic “largest freshwater lake island in the world.

It was a modest start, but my fabulous career at the CBC began at the old Parliament Street radio studio in Toronto where each Friday night the Nimmons “N” Nine Jazz Trio played a fantastic live jazz concert.

A couple of weeks ago the Laurentian School of Architecture held an auction; for fish huts. I can’t tell you much about it because as of this writing it hasn’t actually happened.

As I watch the January spring rain pelt the window pane it is hard to imagine just two weeks ago there was a good-sized tree sitting on the back of my car, electrical wires down at both ends of the street and Santa’s milk and cookies only half eaten.

I have been extraordinarily lucky. When I was 22 years old I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. When I was 23 years old, I fell into a journalistic job in Thunder Bay and knew that was it.

It’s hard to avoid the question of Rob Ford wherever you live in this country. He brings a larger than life “wince” seldom achieved in this highly contested category of public service. He can take you from rage to compassion in an afternoon.

Around 1965 I travelled to North Bay for the first time. Actually, I hitchhiked from Burk’s Falls to North Bay to visit a friend of mine from camp. His name was Barry Pond and we were councillors at a now long-defunct boys’ camp called Big Doe Camp.

It’s a complicated time to consider the matter of leadership.

It began as many things do. I didn’t have a clue what I was getting into.