I got to do so many amazing segments as feature reporter for the former Montreal morning show, “This Morning Live”! My goal each morning was to infotain Montreal viewers by making my segments as visually compelling as possible and fun to watch, which, I must say, made them great fun to do. Over the five years that I did the job, we built up some wonderful relationships with locations in and around Montreal.
Visits to La Ronde were always a highlight for my cameraman, Gilbert Laporte, and myself. Management at the amusement park was always willing to open early and bring in staff as we came rumbling through the gates at 5AM with our camera and microwave truck. They would gladly put me in elaborate make-up and costumes to help promote their popular events. It provided wild visuals for viewers of our morning show and gave me a chance to act like a goofball, which I always love doing.
Over the years, we helped promote several events, rides, shows and anniversaries at La Ronde, including the park's horror extravaganza, Fright Fest! On those mornings, the park would bring in a slew of actors and makeup artists. Our camera would show our early morning viewers a flurry of wandering zombies, ghouls and other assorted creepy beings, live, as I would interview enthusiastic witches and mad scientists.
You can see excerpts from some segments I did at La Ronde on one of my demo reels.
I don’t like roller coasters, but on September 15th 2005, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Monster, I climbed aboard the ride with the park’s media relations person at the time. I managed to speak into the microphone as we climbed to the top of the first 40 metre drop but for the rest of the ride, I closed my eyes, held my breath and didn’t say a word. I guess I was better at promoting some things than others. Gilbert might not want me to admit this, but park officials actually offered to let us do some stuff we were just too chicken to do!
We also helped promote the spectacular fireworks competition that happens at La Ronde. One of the people I often interviewed was Paul Csukassy, the Technical Director of the competition. When my son didn’t have school, he would come with me to some of the locations that our morning team visited.
One morning Paul arranged to have my son set off a test firework, live on the air. Neither Tristan, nor I, have ever forgotten it! I hadn’t seen Paul for several years but he agreed to be a guest on our show this week! We have a segment called “From The Lookout”, where we meet interesting Montrealers and talk with them about their connection to the city. It was nice to see him again, share his passion for his work and hear about how he started out as a member of the fireworks clean-up team and then worked his way up to Technical Director, a position he’s held for 20 years now.
This past season, Paul worked with legendary Quebec singer/songwriter Serge Fiori on the soundtrack to the final show of L’International des feux Loto-Quebec. Paul talks about the collaboration in our interview, which you can see here (at 22:30).
Thanks to Paul for coming in for this week’s interview and thanks to La Ronde for the great people and great memories.
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