Free Number Two by Jay Onrait

in Toronto ended. Steve was a mile-a-minute talker with a terrific broadcast voice. Nowadays, Steve plies his trade as co-host of the CP24 breakfast show. His most notorious recent incident happened in late 2013 when, while reporting live from the Rogers Centre on an upcoming Monster Truck event, he made the inexplicable snap decision to perform a running drop kick on one of the massive tires on the Monster Truck in the background. You can actually hear his bones crack in the clip. Steve suffered a broken hip that required surgery. Every time I talk to him on the phone I just listen because I can never get a word in edgewise.
    That evening back at Christmas 1996, however, Steve didn’t differentiate me from the twenty-five other broadcast students on hand all trying to make valuable contacts while handing out drinks. And frankly, if I were him I would have paid more attention to the girls anyway.
    Finally, after pretty much everyone else had arrived, the kingpin, City/Much boss Moses Znaimer, strolled in. He had his sister and CityTV reporter Libby on one arm and Fashion Television host Jeanne Beker on the other. It was a little bit like watching Hugh Hefner arrive at a party thrown at the Playboy Mansion, except instead of twenty-one-year-old surgically enhanced nude models, he was strolling in with his most trusted lieutenants. I wandered inside to help out in any way I could, mostly just making small talk and trying to flirt with Monita. After Mr. Znaimer arrived, it was time for the show—unfortunately not a band called in from his contacts at MuchMusic, which was a missed opportunity really. (I like to imagine it would have been someone cool from the early days of Canadian music video prosperity, maybe Platinum Blonde, Honeymoon Suite, or Maestro Fresh Wes—the possibilities are frankly endless). Instead, the show involved a yearly ritual utilizing the resources the network had already set in place, namely Speakers’ Corner.
    Speakers’ Corner was a small video booth, just slightly larger than a standard telephone booth, that had been installed on the corner of the City/Much building. The idea for the booth came from its namesake in old London where Londoners could park themselves on a crate in Hyde Park and air their grievances about the current state of the British government (and the monarchy too, within reason). The original spot exists to this day, and I remember the digital team from Fox using it for a story they put together during the London Olympics when they had no rights to shoot anyactual Olympic footage in the venues and had to improvise (something Dan and I would become very familiar with at the Sochi Games in 2014).
    The City/Much Speakers’ Corner was a more updated version, featuring a camera that accepted one dollar coins for charity. Insert that loonie and you had exactly one minute to say whatever was on your mind. Unhappy with the current government? Job prospects for young people in the country? The Toronto Maple Leafs? This was your chance to have your say. It became a very popular tourist attraction and was actually turned into its own television show that aired Friday nights on CityTV. Innovative and cheap Canadian content.
    About half an hour after Znaimer arrived on the scene, we were instructed to place chairs in front of a big screen that was being set up at the front of the room for some sort of presentation. The very front row was to consist of only three chairs: one each for Mr. Znaimer, Ms. Znaimer, and Ms. Beker. Once everyone had taken their places there was a palpable buzz in the air. Everyone here clearly knew something very interesting was about to happen, except for the volunteers—who were about to get a major shock.
    I discovered that evening in December 1996 that the camera in the Speakers’ Corner booth was active at all times , not just when you inserted your loonie. Everything that was said or happened in that booth on the corner of Queen and