Inside View: The Eye Behind the Lens

By Michael G. Varga

My job as a sports cameraman took me around the world. I met thousands of people and worked on hundreds of assignments. I recorded stories at nine Olympics, four Commonwealth Games, the Pan Am Games and World Track and Field, FIFA World Cup, World Cup skiing events around the world, figure skating championships, many Grey Cup Games and six Canada Games as well as hundreds of NHL hockey games. When I look through the lens I read people instantly. A lens can amplify facial expressions. I see the emotion written on their face. Are they happy or unhappy, worried or confident, relaxed or anxious, secure or insecure? After working for over forty years in this industry I've come to realize that being the guy behind the camera was a comfortable place to be. Three things were important in my life: family, work and the women I loved.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael G. Varga
• Release date: Dec 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781999402617

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Picture This

MY FRIEND DOUG Crone and I were lunching in the bustling Vancouver CBC cafeteria on Hamilton Street when television manager Fred Engel walked over to us.

Do you guys want to go to the Montreal Olympics?

Montreal? Are you kidding? Sure! I replied.

To a young guy who grew up in Southern Ontario, Montreal spelled Party town. To boot, I had never been to an Olympics. I had joined the CBC in 1973, and I was eager to learn everything I could to advance in my new career. The ‘76 Summer Olympics were Canada’s first kick at the can, and Montreal was eager to host another successful international event after Expo ‘67. The sports event would put the city back in the world spotlight.

In the early days of TV broadcasting and before the Olympic Broadcasting Service (OBS) became the official host broadcaster responsible for delivering pictures and sounds of the Games to the world, the country hosting the Olympics recorded and televised the Games and then sold that coverage to other countries through broadcasting fees. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) needed to hire thousands of people to cover the entire event.

Everyone in Canada was looking forward to the Games, but there was also a certain tension. These Summer Games would be the first since the tragic events of the Munich Games in 1972. Eleven Israeli athletes and a German police officer were taken hostage and eventually killed by the Palestinian terrorist group calling itself Black September. After Munich, the security in Montreal was going to be tight, surveillance pervasive, and there would be guns everywhere.

My Vancouver colleagues Chuck Lere and Bill Reimer had been working in Munich in ‘72. They were in the athletes’ village doing some interviews when the terrorists attacked. The two Canadians recalled how all hell broke loose. Hundreds of international photographers were filming and photographing the chaos. Chuck Lere’s grainy video of those terrorists stalking the athletes went around the world. When Chuck and Bill walked through the village the next day, literally thousands of little yellow Kodak film boxes were strewn everywhere. Strange what pictures stick in your mind!

One week before the XXI ’76 Summer Olympics officially opened on July 17th, Doug and I flew into what was then Dorval Airport. We loaded our bags into a cab and headed downtown. As I stared out the taxi window, I could hardly contain my excitement. I was in Montreal for the Summer Olympics! I was twenty-five years old and working in my dream job as a television cameraman! Life couldn’t get any better.

I was staying with a small crew of CBCers at the Berkshire, a horrible, dumpy, downtown Montreal hotel. A hovel, really. The Berkshire was condemned but still had tenants living there who had been officially evicted prior to the Games because every room in the city was needed.

Eventually, the unions got involved. The French CBC complained on behalf of the English crew about the quality of the facilities. Soon we were moved to a Holiday Inn. I was so happy to be in Montreal; I would have slept in my car! I didn’t think the Berkshire was all that bad. I remember the restaurant there made the best French onion soup.

I worked with the booking studio out of the old CBC building on Dorchester Street, now called René Lévesque Boulevard. There was a studio and television crew that any country could book for interviews or shows. We were using antiquated equipment, but it served the purpose. I was booked in there for a 24-hour cycle because of international time zones. We didn’t do a lot of work, usually, only 2 or 3 shoots a day.

Meanwhile, over at the Olympic stadium, Caitlyn Jenner, then known as Bruce Jenner before his much-publicized sex change in 2015, was a handsome all-American track star who was setting world records in the decathlon.

And a tiny 14-year-old Romanian gymnast called Nadia Comāneci was wowing the judges and a world audience with her perfect scores. She became the first gymnast to score a perfect 10 in the Olympics. The scoreboard actually blew a fuse! Television cameras fell in love with her pale, serious, face and shy smile and she would be the biggest star of the Montreal Summer Olympics.

One night after work Brent Heywood, a CBC producer friend from Winnipeg, and I headed over to the Sir Winston Churchill Pub on Crescent Street. Winnie’s was one of Montreal’s most popular Anglo bars, a favourite watering hole for the likes of writer Mordecai Richler, political cartoonist Terry Mosher (Aislin) and other well-known Montreal personalities. Owner Johnny Vago had opened his downtown bar in time for Expo ‘67. Vago (not to be confused with Varga!) had a colourful past. He claimed to be Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s economic adviser in 1959 and was a good friend of the famous Argentine Marxist revolutionary, Che Guevara.

I was sharing a few beers with Brent, who we affectionately called Beaner, and Dave Hodge, the host of Hockey Night in Canada, when we saw two men stroll into the bar. Everyone at my table immediately recognized CBC cameramen Chris Elias and Al Mountford. Before too long, these two guys had taken over the bar, telling stories and taking good-natured jabs at each other. They were wearing cowboy hats, the CBC exploding pizza shirts and dark blue polyester pants a tailor had cut down into shorts. We weren’t really supposed to do that. It was a security issue; we had to wear long pants on the job. I didn’t blame them. Montreal was in the middle of a major heat wave that lasted all summer.

Chris and Al were two of the best television camera operators in the business. They were larger than life, proof that media attracts people with a lot of character. Based in Toronto, these two cameramen were assigned most of the work. No one could touch them.

As I sat there staring at them I thought to myself: That’s the life I want! But these two men weren’t about to let some new guy, who was originally an Easterner and now lived in Vancouver, come into their professional orbit that easily. I could tell that if you wanted to be part of their world, you had to go for it. You had to rise to the occasion. This would be the start of my drive to be the best at what I did. It was when I developed little patience for inexperience, especially my own.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but Fred’s offer to work at the ‘76 Olympics would jumpstart my career as a television sports cameraman. The Montreal Summer Games will always hold a special place in my memory.

Over the next four decades, I would meet thousands of people and work on hundreds of assignments. I would record stories at nine Olympics, four Commonwealth Games, the Pan Am Games and World Track and Field, FIFA World Cup, World Cup skiing events around the world, figure skating championships, many Grey Cup Games and six Canada Games as well as hundreds of NHL hockey games.

My job would take me around the world. And for ten great years, I travelled to the farthest corners of the earth with a woman I happened to meet under some pretty unusual circumstances.

CHAPTER TWO

A Young Cameraman

MY FIRST JOB was working for my dad’s janitorial business in our hometown of London, Ontario. My next job was working the graveyard shift making tire rims on the Firestone Tire assembly line. From midnight to 8 am I punched holes in the middle of long, narrow, metal casings. There would be a quota for each shift. Once we hit quota, we’d earn an extra ten cents per rim. When we heard the supervisor yell, We hit quota, those tire rims began flying down the assembly line.

When I had my first flat tire, I leaned the bike against a wall and ran to tell my dad, hoping he would offer to fix it for me.

Fix it yourself, he said.

He went out and bought me a patch kit and showed me how to fix the flat myself. When the other kids saw the patch, I became the instant go-to guy for fixing flat tires for the entire neighbourhood. It taught me that once you start learning how to fix things, you become comfortably self-reliant.

My first girlfriend was Susan Yates, but Vicky Welch was the first girl I took for a spin in Dad’s car after getting my driver’s licence. Vicky worked at the local A&W restaurant as a carhop. Do you remember those days? You would order a burger and fries, and a waitress placed the food tray on your car window. Carhops usually worked on foot but sometimes used roller skates, like in the movie American Graffiti and on television shows such as Happy Days.

I drove to the restaurant to show off my new license, and I asked Vicky if she wanted to go on a date. She said yes. We drove over town to a friend’s party, but Vicky was so tired having worked all day that she fell asleep. I woke her up and took her home. That was my first and last date with Vicky. My dates got a bit better after that.

I don’t remember how Michelle and I first met, but she was my first heartbreak. We attended different high schools and dated for a short time in grade nine. As we slow danced around the school gym to the song To Sir with Love, Michelle turned to me and said, Mike, I don’t want to go out with you anymore. Every time I hear the song I remember that breakup and how she crushed my heart. She later went out with some other guy who had a much nicer car than mine.

My first car: a 1962 burgundy Chevrolet two-door Corvair. I loved that car and the freedom it gave me.

I had better luck dating girls after Michelle but I remember those teenage years were such a tender time in my life. I was a bundle of conflicting, tangled emotions in an awkward body of raging adolescent hormones, not knowing what the hell I was doing most of the time.

Recently I went to a high school reunion to reconnect with some school chums. Some of our friends met in high school and had married their first sweethearts. There were four or five couples who were still married to each other. I thought to myself, What amazing luck, but I guess it wasn’t for me. Marriage is a wonderful invention. But then again, according to Scottish comedian Billy Connolly, so is a bicycle repair kit.

When I think back to those early memories, I realize everything in my life was made possible because my father, Gabor Varga, made an exceptional decision in his life: He immigrated to Canada. He came to Canada as a penniless Hungarian immigrant but with a boatload of energy and ambition. There were tremendous opportunities here after the war and many openings for growth. Like many others, Gabe proved if you worked hard you could do well.

My favourite family photo of our arrival in Canada

My parents were barely out of their teens when they first met in London, England’s Hyde Park. They were married in England on September 25, 1949, when mom was only 19 and dad was 23. Within a year they had me, the first of their three sons. My brothers Peter and Tom were born in Canada. We became a typical middle-class Canadian family. I was your typical rebellious teen, locking horns with my dad over doing chores and helping out around the house. My brothers and I never realized all the sacrifices our parents made to give us a good, comfortable life in Canada.

Yeah, sure, kid

The inspiration to become a television cameraman first hit me when I was a nine-year-old kid pushing a broom. Dad had the cleaning contract for the local station CFPL, and from time to time he would let me tag along when he visited a customer. Occasionally I helped carry out the trash, empty overflowing ashtrays and sweep the floor. As we walked through the CFPL reception area, I looked up at the framed glossy photos lining the walls. My parents watched the evening news every night, and I recognized the photo of popular news reader, Hugh Brenner. I peered through a large glass window, and I could see an enormous grey machine chugging along with a two-inch roll of plastic tape running in it. I turned to ask my dad to say, What’s that? but he had marched past me into the studio to chat with the station owner.

CFPL was founded by Walter J. Blackburn, who also owned London’s major newspaper, the London Free Press, as well as radio stations on both the AM and FM dials. Dad was an excellent networker, and he drummed up business throughout the city. Over the years he became friends with many business owners, including the Blackburn family. My mother didn’t approve of him going out to meet people at night. Booze was the generally recognized social lubricant and drinking at night with his professional associates was one way to get business.

CFPL first came on air on November 28, 1953, and it started out by broadcasting only four hours of programming daily. The London station was only the second privately owned station in the country but the first station in Canada to schedule its nightly newscast at 6:00 p.m., during the supper hour, and that set the standard for all the other stations in Canada. Owners and managers of local stations carrying CBC programming bet on the daily news to raise the ratings and lift the rest of their programs. I didn’t know any of this background history, and I certainly didn’t care. I was hypnotized by the tape going round and round in that gigantic grey machine.

From the very beginning, I was fascinated by the environment in a studio: the equipment, the busy activity, the smell of the place. Even today when I walk into a television studio, all my senses get a real rush. I remembered thinking: I like this environment!

In the 50s, 60s, and 70s most television shows were broadcast live. You would see bright lights, curtains, ropes, cables and people milling about the studio doing various jobs. There were a lot of people working those cameras. Each camera had heavy cables, and it took two men to move them. Those television cameras were enormous beasts.

I walked up to a fellow standing in front of a camera.

What are you doing? He looked down at me and smiled.

Waiting for that guy over there to tell me when the show starts.

He let me touch the cold metal of the camera. He showed me the lens and the viewfinder and the lever he pushed and pulled to focus the camera.

How much money do you make? I blurted out.

Oh, I don’t know, maybe $10,000 a year.

I was a pretty brash kid to ask that kind of personal question, particularly when I didn’t have a single clue what that amount of money really meant.

As dad and I walked back to the car, I said, I want to work in a television station just like that when I grow up.

Without breaking his stride, dad looked over at me and said, Yeah, sure, kid. That look said it loud and clear: If you want to work in television you’ll have to make it on your own. There wasn’t the slightest chance that he would make it happen for me, even if he could.

Even after I started working at the CBC, and though dad loved watching television, he never understood what I did for a living. Now, if I had been a plumber or a carpenter that he would have understood. But I didn’t take it personally. Dad may not have paid much attention to me and his youngest son Tom, but he did like my middle brother Peter who grew up to be a very skilled carpenter.

In the 50s and 60s when I called London, Ontario home, it was predominantly a middle-class, white-collar, Anglo-Saxon town. Like many urban centres in post-war Canada, it was booming. London is located halfway between Toronto, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan. It was the centre for large insurance companies. It was a major hub for education, medical research, and technology. It was a town that offered a comfortable lifestyle for many ordinary families just like ours.

Margaret, Peter, Gabe and Michael (London, ON circa 1954)

Gabe, Margaret and their boys (London, ON circa 1957)

Michael and Peter playing outside the London home

Our hometown once had illusions of grandeur. London, Ontario and its river Thames were named in 1793 by John Graves Simcoe. He thought it would make a great capital of Upper Canada. The first European settlers arrived between 1801 and 1804. The city attracted many different people from around the world. Even in 2011 eighty per cent of Londoners were found to be of European heritage.

Successful men and women often grow up in smaller Canadian towns. You didn’t have to come from the big city. London was home to many famous people: Frederick Banting who co-discovered insulin; beer brewer John Labatt; bandleader Guy Lombardo; film mogul Jack Warner of Warner Bros Studios; Academy Award-winning director Paul Haggis; CBC personality Max Ferguson; hockey players Eric and Brett Lindros; actor Ryan Gosling.

Skating champion Tessa Virtue was born in London. Her mother Kate Virtue and I were good friends. At the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games, Tessa and her long-time skating partner Scott Moir became the most decorated figure skaters in Olympic history winning five medals for their outstanding performances.

My high school friend Bonnie Brooks grew up in London, and she became the CEO of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Ontario premier John Robarts put his hometown of London on the map. He was a popular and handsome politician who had the nickname Chairman of the Board during the GoGo Swinging ‘60s.

Pot activist and libertarian Marc Emery grew up in London. Before moving to B.C., where he established the Marijuana Party and became the Prince of Pot, Emery owned a London bookstore. In 1985, he was jailed for four days for breaking the Lord’s Day Act by violating Sunday shopping laws.

The first television channel we watched was broadcast by the CBC and in those days even televisions went to sleep. After the national anthem around 2 a.m., the network would broadcast a test pattern of circles and lines accompanied by an ear-splitting sine wave tone. The pattern usually had an image of a Native American in a full-feathered headdress. There was nothing but static in the wee hours. There was a purpose behind that static bullseye. A broadcast engineer could glance at the drawing and know if an adjustment was needed to focus and contrast settings.

Television test pattern

In the 1960s, people went to work, and they wouldn’t know what was going on in the rest of the world until they turned on their TV at the end of the workday. Stay-at-home wives did their ironing in front of an afternoon soap opera and game show. On Friday, November 22, 1963, the soap As the World Turns was interrupted with the news that President John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.

My brothers and I attended Riverview Public School, and we came home for lunch every day. We would park ourselves in front of the 21-inch RCA black and white television in its wood console that looked like a piece of furniture. Colour television was available only on American channels. Some people said it was just a gimmick and not much of an improvement over black and white.

My father usually came home for lunch. Our Hungarian grandmother Julianna, our father’s mother, came to live with us. Grandma may have been small in stature, but she spent all day cooking big, delicious Hungarian