Four words are notably absent from the list of attributes afforded to Mark Szyszlo on his LinkedIn page: voice of northern Manitoba.
Now after 30-plus years on the airwaves, the personable radio journalist has hosted his final episode of CBC’s North Country.
“I feel so privileged to have been part of northern history,” Szyszlo said in a phone interview from his Thompson studio on Friday, March 31, his last day on the air. “It’s really the end of an era. I…never realized until today that, yeah, that’s really quite a milestone. I’m really grateful to have seen it all and to have been a part of it. I’m really happy that my career rolled out that way. I’ve got no regrets.”
Szyszlo, still amply energetic at 57, was something of an unusual choice when he joined CBC’s northern Manitoba radio bureau in 1986.
For one, he hailed from Ottawa, a city better known for attracting journalists than shipping them to remote outposts like Thompson.
For another, Szyszlo graduated from the University of Ottawa not with a degree in journalism or broadcasting, but in kinesiology and exercise science.
While in university, he had gone behind the mic as a deejay at the campus radio station – and fallen in love with the profession. He brought a natural interest in people and knack for conversation to the job.
In Thompson, Szyszlo started out as a freelance radio journalist. He was named host of the noon-hour edition of North Countryand later took over the morning edition, too.
Asked what he has enjoyed about covering northern Manitoba, he reverses the question.
“What have I not enjoyed?” Szyszlo said. “It’s a unique place. It’s special in this world, you know, going back to the cradle of the fur trade 300 years ago and we’ve got a huge First Nations heritage. It’s amazing. People here are special and they have special stories, and every time I think that I’ll just get the same old kind of boring reply [to a question], I’m surprised by what people have to say and just how much is really going on despite the fact that we’re disconnected physically from the world around us being here in the North.”
Across his decades with CBC, Szyszlo travelled to most every community in northern Manitoba. He covered, in person or from the studio, stories ranging from slice-of-life fare to more hard-hitting material.
One of his favourite news items came out of Lynn Lake in the late 1990s. A mining company was getting ready to leave town with its final gold bars despite allegedly owing back taxes to the town.
As the story goes, the Mounties were summoned to prevent the company’s plane from taking off. Gold from the back of the mine manager’s pickup truck was said to be locked in a safe to ensure the town got the cash it was owed.
“It was a pretty important gold heist, something that I honestly had never seen,” said Szyszlo.
Szyszlo also covered many stories out of Flin Flon, including one of the most troubling of his career – the fatal 2000 explosion at the now-defunct HBM&S copper smelter.
“It touched so many and a lot of people were just so shocked by it,” he said.
While not nearly on the same scale as the smelter accident, another story that upset Szyszlo and his loyal listeners came in 2009 when CBC announced it would close its Thompson bureau.
Northerners revolted with a petition that went straight to Ottawa. CBC backed
down and kept North Countryon the air.
In recent years, Szyszlo gave thought to when he would step away from the microphone on his own terms. Having crossed the 30-year milestone, and with his wife already retired, he chose the spring of 2017 to bid adieu.
His final day on the air did not go unnoticed. During a phone interview shortly before his radio swan song, Szyszlo took a brief break to serve as receptionist at the one-man Thompson studio.
A listener had stopped by to give him a beautifully decorated, hollowed-out Easter egg on behalf of the local Ukrainian community.
“I never expected to get gifts on my retirement, so it’s a bit of a surprise to be honest,” Szyszlo said.
CBC had not named a replacement for Szyszlo as of his final show. Some listeners now worry the network may shutter the Thompson studio just as closed its La Ronge studio following the retirement of its former northern-Saskatchewan-based host.
Szyszlo knows he has no control over the future of North Country, but he is looking forward to the control he will have over his schedule. He looks forward to spending more time with family and perhaps visiting the few northern Manitoba communities he has yet to see.
And since he will no longer have to be on the air by 7:30 am five days a week, he may just catch a few more z’s.
“I could learn to sleep in,” Szyszlo said with a gentle laugh. “I can get into that kind of routine.”
