CBC Radio host Gill Deacon on leaving Here and Now and starting a new chapter

September 4, 2024 Canuck

“This river I step in is not the river I stand in.”

For a long time I didn’t really understand those words, written in the metalwork spanning the Queen Street bridge across the lower Don River. They are based, I came to learn, on the early Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who famously observed that a person could not step into the same river twice. The waters around us are ever-changing; the river’s constant flow means that wherever you step first is technically not at all the same river into which you step next.

I get it now.

In late November of 2022, after several months of pushing through mysterious symptoms and growing increasingly run down, I took a few days off work to shake whatever had been plaguing me. More than 18 months later, I have shaken it. The mystery illness was long COVID, a debilitating condition I would not wish on anyone.

It is, I am beyond thrilled to report, behind me. My energy and stamina restored, I am excited to live my life again. I am deeply, hugely grateful for the patience and support of colleagues and loyal listeners, cheering me on from afar.

My body has been through a lot in the past 15 years, but something about this experience of suffering through long COVID has shifted the waters. My gut is telling me that it’s time for a change. It’s time to leave the host’s chair at Here and Now and let someone else shape the program into its next iteration.

I hosted Here and Now for just over 10 wonderful years, a decade of radio adventures great and small. One lasting memory is my first Oct. 31 at the Canadian Broadcasting Centre, when I showed up dressed as a fortune teller and learned the hard way that no one at the CBC dresses up on Halloween.

CBC Radio's Haydn Watters, left, joins Gill Deacon to dress up for Halloween while producing Here and Now. — CBC Radio’s Haydn Watters, left, joins Gill Deacon in dressing up for Halloween while producing Here and Now. (Here and Now/CBC)

Not only did that turn out to be the day of an in-studio interview with the Governor General (his Excellency did appreciate my costume), it would also turn out to be the day of then-mayor Rob Ford’s admission of smoking crack.

Needless to say, it turned the entire afternoon of live broadcasting into a breaking news scramble, with me trying to be taken seriously in a ridiculous costume.

That breaking news energy is what makes Here and Now an electrifying show to work on and can’t-miss radio to listen to.

Nelson Mandela died while Here and Now was live on the air; David Bowie died just as we went to air. The Bataclan attacks, tractor-trailers jackknifing on the Burlington skyway, power outages and, of course, COVID emergency measures. The list goes on.

We rode the high-wire of breaking news and community change together. We found lifelines of hope and kindness in the darkest days of lockdowns and COVID’s relentless unpredictability.

What a true joy it has been to celebrate our collective love of a great song through Gill’s Jukebox, to forge connections through shared storytelling about precious things lost and found, epic temperatures survived near and far, holiday turkey debacles, the quest for Dempster’s malt bread, our shared muddle over misinterpreted lyrics.

I am so proud of the radio magic the Here and Now team has put together over the years. Never forget, listeners, that the show you listen to starting at 3 p.m. literally did not exist at 11:00 a.m.

I feel extraordinarily lucky to have had the chance to connect with audiences over the airwaves.– Gill Deacon

The tiny but fearless and mighty team of Here and Now producers pulls meaning and relevance and critical journalism literally out of thin air in record time. Theirs is without doubt the toughest job in radio. The Here and Now team puts wind in the host’s sails and smart conversations in the listener’s ears. I am honoured to have worked with some of the very best.

For all your kindness and generosity when I have been unwell, I remain forever uplifted. Until you have been faced with something truly dark and frightening, it is hard to explain the significance of that kind of support.

Letters, gifts, messages of hope and encouragement, tokens of appreciation and unwavering cheer meant everything to me during my second round of breast cancer in 2018-19, after my father’s death in 2022 and over the past 18 months as I rode the roller-coaster of long COVID. The goodwill of listeners — an invisible forcefield of good wishes — has bolstered my spirits when I really needed it.

And now as I re-emerge, a shift has occurred. Reading Naomi Klein’s book Doppelganger recently, a line leapt out at me. Her words, written about something else entirely, perfectly explain this moment in my life. Being a good journalist, she writes, implies “a commitment to following one’s research wherever it leads, even if that turns out to be a very different place from what was originally expected.” And, perhaps most resonantly, “be willing to be changed by what they discover.”

Radio a place of ‘powerful magic’

I have been changed by going through long COVID, in what I hope are all the best ways.

We appreciate the preciousness of life even more when we stop taking it for granted, and my battle with long COVID has been a stark reminder of that. As the poet Mary Oliver asked with powerful simplicity: “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Gill Deacon hosts Here and Now from the Glenn Gould Studio for CBC Toronto's Sounds of the Season — Gill Deacon conducts an interview on the Glenn Gould Studio stage during a CBC Toronto Sounds of the Season event. (Richard Agecoutay/CBC)

I am excited to be of service to my community in new ways: as a broadcaster and host, as a podcaster and an author. And maybe something else. The most genuine and authentic way forward for me is to follow this change of circumstances and see where it leads; to explore what comes next and to use my creativity and energy in new ways.

I feel extraordinarily lucky to have had the chance to connect with audiences over the airwaves.

Finding community with invisible strangers has been powerful magic for me to be a part of this past decade — in my opinion, that shared connection and the learning and questioning we do together is CBC Radio at its best. Thank you for letting me be a part of that.

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