Transcript

Steve Paikin: ‘The thrill of exploration really has been quite a gift’

Published:  April 25, 2025
"That is what has been so wonderful about my job, the thrill of exploration, of learning something new every day."

Steve Paikin was the winner of the 2025 Hyman Solomon Award for Excellence in Public Policy Journalism, awarded at PPF’s 2025 Testimonial Dinner Honour Roll. Paikin is a veteran journalist and author, who as host of TVO’s The Agenda for 19 years helped Canadians better understand their world. 

Here is his acceptance speech:

I have been to this dinner many times in the past, and the notion that I would be up here joining a list of Solomon award winners, most of whom I know and have great respect for, frankly, it’s a little bit tricky. And you know what? I got an email earlier today from 96-year-old Bob Nixon, who’s a former leader in the Ontario liberals.  I didn’t have the pleasure of knowing Hy Solomon. Mr. Solomon covered Queen’s Park. I covered Queen’s Park, have for about four decades, and to be following in his footsteps was obviously somewhat meaningful to Mr. Nixon and hugely meaningful to me. So I’m pleased to be in that same conversation. 

Eddie Greenspon a few months ago and give me the news about this tonight. And he said, If you have any questions, and the only question I could think of asking was, why? I don’t work for a big national newspaper like Stephanie Nolan, or a big circulation newspaper like Susan Delacourt, previous winners. I don’t work for a big national broadcaster like Peter Mansbridge and Craig Oliver did – past winners. I spent the last three decades at a relatively small regional television station. 

Beyond that, I didn’t think I was old enough to get one of these lifetime achievement awards. But the other day, I was on the subway and a young woman looked up at me and said, Sir, would you like a seat?  Maybe I am that age when you start getting consider for this kind of stuff.

It has been my great good fortune to have worked at TVO over 32 years, the last 19 of which I spent hosting a program called The Agenda. Every night when I sign off, I usually end by promoting what’s coming up the next day, and then I say, we’ll explore that tomorrow. And that is what has been so wonderful about my job, the thrill of exploration, of learning something new every day. It really has been quite a gift. 

The Agenda is actually the sixth show that I have hosted in my time at TVO, and I’m delighted that the Public Policy Forum thinks that some of what TVO and I have done together has been useful in making some kind of contribution to the public’s better understanding of our world. 

Now you can’t spend more than four decades of journalism without wanting to thank innumerable people for the role they played in this wonderful ride. I could thank hundreds, but we do want to eat. So here goes only two. More than five and a half decades ago, there was an Ontario education minister who thought that learning ought to be a lifetime pursuit, and he liked the notion of the province of Ontario having his own TV station to help in that mission. And so he created TV Ontario, and in doing so, I think he changed the lives of millions of people in this province and around the world, because TVO has sold its wares in 100 plus countries around the world. 

That education minister saying was Bill Davis, and he would go on to become, in my humble opinion, the best, most impactful premier of my lifetime. He often teased me by saying Paikin, if it wasn’t for me, you would have been unemployed the last 20 years. I never argued for fear that he might actually right. 

Anybody in this room who has had the pleasure of knowing Mr. Davis will know that he was not a perfect man, but he was as good as it gets in public life in this country, and I appreciate the chance to remind people of that whenever I can. So, I am here tonight. He died three and a half years ago at the age of 92 having lived longer than any Premier of Ontario ever, having retired as the second longest serving Premier of Ontario ever, and having changed this province and country immeasurably for the better. 

Our relationship started with me being a kind of a young snot-nosed punk who would stick microphones in his face and try and get clips at Queens Park. But it ended up in a quite wonderful friendship. In fact, I wrote a 600-page biography of Mr. Davis, and I’m quite sure he never read any of it. But I do miss him every day. 

The second person I need to thank is the person who has shared me with TVO, and that’s my wife, Francesca. She has had the misfortune of being married to someone who truly loves what he does, and that has often meant my not holding up my end of things in the rest of our lives. And she would be the first person to tell you that. But she has done so with love and understanding, if not always completely happily. I do know I would not be standing here today without her, and I hope she knows how grateful I am. She really should know how grateful I am, because I just said in front of nearly 1,000 people, so we do have witnesses to that now.

I should just finally tell you the TVO did announce earlier this week that The Agenda is coming to an end at the end of June. Both TVO and I agreed when I signed my current contract three years ago that this would be it. Why? Well, this goes back more than 30 years to a conversation I had with Barbara Frum when I was working at CBC still, and she said, Steve, one day you’re gonna wake up and people will just get sick of looking at your face. So I wanted to be sure that I left the party an hour early, rather than a minute too late. 

I will still be doing this very little podcast I do with John Michael McGrath, called the onpoli podcast. It’ll be on every Friday night on TV. And I’m going to be doing a weekly column so I can continue to inflict my views on the unsuspecting public. But I got a bit of runway and a lot of energy left, and I want to try a few new things, which you can’t do when you’re hosting a daily show. And I’m in the process of sort of figuring out what all that’s going to be right now. 

I watched a lot of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson when I was a kid, and the words he signed off with the year I started at TVO really resonated with me today. He said I found something I always wanted to do, and I have enjoyed every single minute of it, and that’s all I feel, too. Thank you for having me. Have a great evening. 

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