Mansbridge celebrates 20 years in the chair
Peter Mansbridge marked 20 years as the anchor for CBC Television's flagship nightly newscast The National on Thursday night.
"Wait, wait, wait, there's another story that we haven't talked about," Allan Gregg of Harris/Decima said.
Mansbridge coolly replied, "Well, we're out of time."
Gregg then cued a clip of an old newscast showing a younger Mansbridge.
"On behalf of everyone including the millions of viewers that invite you into their living rooms every night, congratulations for 20 years being in the chair," said Gregg.
Mansbridge, 59, was born in London, England, but moved to Ottawa at a young age. He later served in the Canadian Navy in the mid-1960s.
His career with the CBC began by chance when someone from the corporation overheard him on the PA system at an airport in the northern Manitoba town of Churchill, where he was working for the airline Transair, and asked him to come work at the local radio station. He was 19 at the time.
"When I go through airports now and I'm listening to them calling flights, I always think this could be the next big anchor of the National," joked Don Martin of the Calgary Herald, another panelist.
The Churchill station didn't have a newscast so Mansbridge started one and began filing pieces to Winnipeg. He later moved to Winnipeg and joined CBC Television.
After that, he worked in Saskatchewan and went on to become a parliamentary correspondent in Ottawa for four years.
He became anchor of The National on May 1, 1988.
"Time has really flown by," Mansbridge said after Thursday's newscast.
He said that while he gets much of the attention, it's what goes on behind the scenes that brings the show together. "You end up appreciating so much the people you work with."
Asked about what he sees for the future, he simply responded: "I love this job … Hopefully I've got a little time left. We'll see."