It was a cold winter day in Canada on January 10, 2010. (01102010) < — I thought that looked weird
Colder still was the cruel hand that fate dealt the Caribbean country of Haiti as a 7.0M Earthquake devastated the country.
Nearly two weeks later, after nations around the world had begun mobilizing in order to provide financial and physical aid to the people of the small island nation, the three largest Canadian broadcast television networks banded together to host a joint telethon in hopes of raising money from the Canadian populous.
It was at 12:23pm on that fateful day that I received a text message from David:
“Call me ASAP; journalism is afoot!”
I know that’s what it said because I still have it saved in my cellphone. Kills me every time I look at it.
Ever since coming back from Christmas break, on Friday mornings I wake up at 3:00am and huff it over to the t.o.night office in order to get to work on making the paper – on this particular Friday I was asked to stay even later to work on some advertising materials that were going to be needed over the weekend for presentations or some such.
After finally getting a hold of Mr. Davey Weisz around 1:00, I learned we had press accreditation for the Canada for Haiti event and needed to go there and shoot interviews for an online magazine called The Mark News.
By 5:30 I’d rendezvoused with Dave while he was getting a straight-edge shave in order to look proper for the interviews….. in complete contrast to my full-faced beard (I call it the beard-facé – read: Bill Lawrence reference for the win)….. and while waiting for his beautification to end I was falling asleep in the barber’s shop chair, my hands still clutching the video camera we intended to use.
The moment we arrived at the CBC where the event was being held was momentous – though not nearly as such as when we emerged from the elevator upstairs and took two steps outside before the adrenaline kicked in: we had walked right into the middle of a press photo scrum trying to garner the attention of Atom Egoyan, Metric, and Dragon’s Den’s W. Brett Wilson.
Over the course of the night we met and mingled with some fairly big celebs and made some great contacts with the press – though it definitely didn’t hurt to notice we were the only non-network video crew there (ie: CBC, CTV, Global, CityTV, Entertainment Tonight, ETalk…. and us…)
After cutting the piece over the following two days we brought it to The Mark News, who after viewing it said they’d be more than happy to feature it on their site (pro bono of course).
This was never to come to pass however, as ever since that fateful meeting in the Spadina Ave. office The Mark News has failed to post our video and failed even more greatly at returning our numerous phone and email messages. As such, the video we created has now been hosted here on the SFP YouTube account – as the longer we wait, the less timely this piece becomes.
In the end we felt that the sooner we told the story we discovered there that day the more beneficial it would be.
