CTV’S DEREK CONLON: STILL A GOOD OLD VERDUN BOY

They belong to Derek Conlon, who unknown to many, is a Verdun product and has gone through the local school system, Riverview’s class of 74 and Verdun High’s class of 79. So we recently had a chat with Derek as part of our “They Remember” series to talk about his younger days here and a bit of his enviable media career.

Derek vividly remembers some of his elementary teachers. “ I started in 1967 with kindergarten with Miss Smith, Miss Gallen was my grade 1 teacher, Mrs. Richard was grade 2 , I had a Miss Halifax and a Miss Brown a couple of times.

It was great then, walking to school, we grew up on Stephens, walk along Monteith, over to the school (Riverview), and then continued on to Verdun High. Back then in school, it was great, the same kids who were in your class in kindergarten were the same kids in grade 1, 2, 3 and you would be in the same class all the way to high school, so those friendships that you formed were truly lifelong friendships,” recalls Derek.

Back then, as Derek recalls, summers were easy going, not like the distractions of today like web-surfing or video games. Derek mentions that a gang of friends would ride around on their bikes everywhere, and depending on the summer, he would have one best friend for the summer. Derek continues, “One year it was a kid named Kevin Law, and one was Kenny Drover, we would spend endless days at Angrignon Park, along the boardwalk, hanging out in people’s backyards.”

And with a bit of prodding, he also mentions of knowing a familiar Verdun family well. “I do know the O’Reilly family very well, I went to school with Brian, we’re about the same age, the family grew up just up the street from me, I can remember Brian O’Reilly, while playing ball in the Riverview school yard, and the ball rolling down to home plate, Brian would knock it out of the schoolyard with his foot,” says Derek with a laugh.

During the high school years, Derek, who says he was an average student, would do the usual teen thing those years, like going to the school dance, go to Woodland restaurant, and the late lamented Kosta’s at the corner of Godin and Bannantyne.

But a special memory for Derek remains the Natatorium. “My fondest memory growing up on Stephens, right up the street from the pool, was spending my entire summer in my elementary school years and spending entire days at the Nat, you couldn’t have gotten better value for a buck if you tried. You would spend a dollar to get a pass for the summer from 10 am to 4 o’clock; you’d roll up your bathing suit in your towel and walk down the street. They’ve done a good job rehabilitating with the grass, it was nothing but a big concrete jungle and it was scalding hot when you rolled out your towel when you lay down. Absolutely my fondest memory,” says Derek happily.

Derek originally didn’t want to be a radio or TV guy. He wanted to be a writer, but thought newspapers wouldn’t be a bad thing after watching the Lou Grant show back in the 70’s.He took some journalism courses at Dawson College, but still wanted to be a writer and write books, and figured if Ernest Hemingway, who started as a journalist, could do it, then why not, but he had to start writing somewhere and a job as a newspaper reporter where you had to write everyday would do that.

An intro radio course at Concordia in his second year, showed Derek that writing for radio was much simpler, as you’re emulating for speech, unlike the newspapers which is writing for the eye, and got himself a stint at a campus radio station, and rewriting the copy that’s supplied to the station by the wire services. I’ve done it, so I know the feeling. The radio medium now seemed to be the way to go.

So Derek sent out copies of tapes and CV’s to the stations in town and beyond and got a few nibbles and people saying he was green and got the same reaction from someone named Gord Sinclair, the news director at a radio station called CJAD, and a letter advising him to get a job in the boonies. Ever been to Kapuskasing anybody?

Brief stints in weekly papers in Shawville and Sherbrooke were followed by a stay at CJSS in Cornwall, and after 3 ½ months, sent out tapes to CFCF and CJAD.This time he got a call from the master himself, the late great Gord Sinclair, and was hired for a part-time weekend overnight gig doing news. Derek would go on to stay at ’AD for 18 years until 2005, including the afternoon traffic copter beat up in the air, Lunch with Derek and Kim and the Free-For-All show. He was being groomed by his mentor Gord Sinclair to be the successor one day, and was named news director in 2002 under untimely circumstances, with the passing of his mentor, Mr. Sinclair.

Derek would stay until 2005, where after he was hired by Mike Piperni, another native of the southeast, who was News Director at CTV aka CFCF-12, where he is to this day as a reporter for CTV News. Derek is a resident of the Crawford Park area, the Westmont of Verdun and would probably be the first one to say he’s been lucky being the CJAD News Director and a reporter at CTV News, arguably, the most influential voices of English Quebec. Not bad for a good old boy from Verdun.