TROUT CREEK, Ont. — A personal connection between a Powassan resident and former CTV News anchor Lisa LaFlamme has helped the Powassan and District Union Public Library raise about $14,000.
Marty Schreiter, the library’s program coordinator, reached out to LaFlamme over the summer to see if she would speak at the library fundraiser and she agreed.
The tickets to the September 23 event sold out within days and 200 people plus about 30 volunteers, support staff and Friends of the Library listened to LaFlamme give a fireside chat at the Trout Creek Community Centre about her journalism career.
LaFlamme, 59, considers herself lucky that she knew very early her passion and life path was to pursue a career in journalism.
“I was in Grade 9 and knew I wanted to be a journalist,” she told her audience.
Born and raised in Kitchener, Ont., LaFlamme attended St. Mary’s High School, an all-girls Catholic school.
One day she talked to the school’s guidance counsellor about her aspirations and was surprised by the counsellor’s response. “For some strange reason, [the guidance counsellor] said I would need to know physics”, Laflamme said.
The Grade 9 student couldn’t see what physics had to do with journalism and to make matters worse, physics was not exactly a strong subject for LaFlamme. But, she persevered and landed a physics mark in the 70s.
After graduating from high school, she spent two years in France working as a nanny and then returned to Canada to enroll at the University of Ottawa.
LaFlamme’s broadcasting career began in 1988 at a Kitchener radio station which also operated a TV station, although the news departments were separate.
To this day she thanks the television reporter who failed to show up for a shift one day and LaFlamme got her break when she was asked to fill in.
“It was my first assignment and it was going to a bar to cover a psychic fair,” she said.
Another lighthearted TV story LaFlamme covered was about a three-legged cat that got stuck in a tree and needed to be rescued by the Kitchener fire department.
“And the cat was named Tripod,” she said.
The assignments might have been minor in nature, but LaFlamme said it’s covering those kinds of stories early on that helps you hone your skills and learn from your mistakes. And, LaFlamme admits there were many on-air mistakes on her part which involved mispronouncing many well-known names.
LaFlamme is not big on sports and early in her career one of those mispronunciations involved saying NHL player Steve Yzerman’s name incorrectly.
Years later during a live segment on Canada AM, there was a story about the American country band The Dixie Chicks now called The Chicks. For whatever reason, when it came time for LaFlamme to name the all-female band, it wasn’t "The Dixie Chicks" that came out but rather "The Dixie Dicks."
When LaFlamme got the call to start co-hosting Canada AM, she admitted to being afraid because the program involved four hours straight of live television and that’s a tall order to do every weekday.
After her first broadcast, LaFlamme said she went home and cried.
“I felt I had made the biggest mistake of my life,” because of the heavy demand for the Canada AM gig.
That was September 10th, 2001 and no one on the set, or other broadcasters anywhere, knew what was in store for them the next day.
The morning of 9/11 started normally enough until word came that a plane had struck one of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center. Everyone thought this was an accident. LaFlamme told the audience even when the second plane hit the second tower her first thought was the studio was accidentally replaying the video from the first plane-tower collision. It wasn’t until word came about a third plane, which struck the Pentagon, that people began to realize the United States was under attack.
Information was coming to the media fast and furious and LaFlamme recalled, “You’re trying to navigate through all this,” while appearing live and trying to remain calm.
One of LaFlamme’s most memorable and loved moments on Canada AM was when she got the call to interview Paul McCartney.
“I’ve been a Beatles fan all my life and the very first album I ever owned was by the Beatles,” she said.
Her Canada AM producer said McCartney was out with a new album and wanted LaFlamme to head to the Abbey Road Studios to interview one of the world’s greatest songwriters.
LaFlamme said the thought of interviewing one of her idols was overwhelming but added, “It was a great interview.”
In 2003, LaFlamme was in Baghdad with many international reporters covering the invasion of Iraq. She missed Saddam Hussein’s capture because she was infected with a parasite that damaged her kidney and had to be flown out of the country for medical attention. Despite being ill, LaFlamme told the audience she felt bad because she “couldn’t fulfill her job.”
However, three years later a healthier LaFlamme returned to Iraq to cover Hussein’s execution.
In 2011 LaFlamme replaced long-time CTV news anchor Lloyd Robertson and her star continued to rise. It was during this period as an anchor that LaFlamme was approached by the big guns at CBS about joining the 60 Minutes news magazine show. LaFlamme thought her dream job had arrived.
“But then the Me Too movement happened and the big bosses at CBS got booted,” she said.
Among them were the individuals who were wooing LaFlamme to jump networks. But her disappointment in not ending up on 60 Minutes didn’t last long.
“A week later I received the Order of Canada and I said I can’t leave this country,” LaFlamme recalled.
LaFlamme said very little about her dismissal from CTV in August 2022.
Despite the firing, the matter has not changed who she is or her values. The former news anchor says if there is anything in life she would change it’s wishing she “could have learned self-acceptance earlier,” because as women “we beat ourselves up too much.”
She had a parting message for the crowd and it was to “take criticism seriously but not personally.”
Nowadays, LaFlamme works on special projects and is currently working on a six-part series with Phil Fontaine, the former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations. She says this has been an illuminating project because she’s learning things about Indigenous history she never knew and should be taught in schools.
LaFlamme said she has thoroughly enjoyed her journalism career and one part that never got boring was covering federal elections over the decades. But if the audience thought this was a hint that LaFlamme may at some point enter the political arena, she put any notion of that quickly to rest.
“It’s not my path,” she said, adding she can bring about change by pursuing initiatives that don’t involve politics.
Rocco Frangione is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the North Bay Nugget. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
