Illustration by Photo illustration by The Globe and Mail. Source images: TIFF, Getty Images.
As usual, the pressure is on for Toronto International Film Festival chief executive Cameron Bailey, who knows the show must (literally) go on. For its 50th edition, the prestigious star-filled festival kicks off the Thursday after Labour Day – whether it’s ready or not. For the last “How I Spent My Summer” of the season, Bailey tells us how he learned the art of deadline juggling many years ago.
From the time I was 12 or 13, I was expected to work. I had a paper route and I worked at my mom’s hospital in the kitchen, washing these huge soup pots that were big enough to stand in. Once, for two days, I even sold advertising to convenience stores to hang in their windows. I did lots of weird things.
But my first legit job was 40 years ago, during the summer of 1985 and right in the middle of my undergrad at Western University. I got a summer job at Contrast newspaper in Toronto, on Bathurst Street by Dupont. The paper is not still around, sadly. Our competitor and the only other Black community newspaper at the time, Share, survived. I’m glad somebody made it.
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I suspect I found the job posting in a classified ad, because I didn’t have any connections or contacts or anything. I was studying English Lit and thinking about taking journalism for my masters, so I was working for the campus newspaper as the culture critic. I wrote about music, theatre and, eventually, films. I tried to get that kind of job at Contrast, but the only available job was in design and layout, which I had no training in. I had seen it done, though, and I had an eye for it, and didn’t have many options. They needed somebody, so I was hired.
The editor-in-chief was an older gentleman from Barbados, where my family is from, so I suspect that had something to do with getting the job. He had come to Canada as an adult, whereas I came as a kid, but we still had a lot of shared experiences. I lived in Barbados with my grandparents, and my grandfather was a farmer and a stonemason who worked outdoors. The graduation to working indoors with an actual desk was kind of a big deal. Many families take generations before someone can do that, so I definitely appreciated it.
I was young and eager, totally into journalism at the time and had that stupid confidence of youth – but I was still brutally ill-prepared. This was before everything was done on computers and instead, everything was manual. You’d make sure everything fit and was lined up properly, then you’d stick it on the layout pages and send the whole thing to print. Somehow I landed on my feet and figured it out.
I like to think I did an okay job, and I certainly learned a lot. It was a nice little community, maybe 10 people working there. We’d hang out at the famous greasy spoon right there called Vesta Lunch, which has been there for like 70 years or something, and it’s open 24 hours. When I could afford it, I’d go there at weird hours and splurge on a big meal. Different times, man.
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I made connections that last to this day, such as photographer Fred Lum, who of course went on to become a prominent photojournalist at The Globe. I’ll sometimes see him out and about and we’ll just smile at each other, having come up together in this little storefront office 40 years ago. At Western, I worked with Kevin Donovan and Susan Delacourt at The Gazette. You can’t replace relationships like that.
They couldn’t pay me very much, obviously, being a community newspaper. My hours, like they are at most papers, got very long as you approach the deadline. Once the paper’s gone, though, that day is quieter and everything slows right down. I still work this way, always under the pressure of an approaching deadline that cannot be missed. No extensions, no exceptions. It has to be done, even if it’s not done.
Even though we’re very much a year-round operation, TIFF has that same kind of rhythm. We’re building up to this one thing that’s always approaching. When it’s over, you can take a breath, but until then, you have to deal with stress that just gets higher and higher. I’m so glad I had a summer of practicing this skill with low stakes, because the stakes are much higher now and I know how to deal.
As told to Rosemary Counter