While in many professions most people can be replaced, Roy Green is not most people – he’s irreplaceable.
I tease it would be better if this column was about Justin Trudeau leaving office this weekend but, unfortunately, it’s about the final on-air shifts for the legendary radio host.
Some people you want to see retire. Some you don’t. But, after 60 years of hosting talk radio, the 78-year-old Canadian treasure is hanging up his microphone after his two weekend shows on CORUS radio stations, including Toronto 640 on the AM dial.
And in true Roy Green fashion, he’s going out with a bang.
“Utter arrogance! Mark Carney doesn’t need Canadians to become prime minister,” Green posted to X Friday. “To Hades with elections, he’s used to starting at the top. Tells you everything you need to know?”
Green pulls no punches and doesn’t worry about the power structure of his country or employer. If he feels it, he says it.
Damn the torpedoes. It’s not personal. It’s radio – Roy Green style.
“When I signed my last contract, I told the boss that while I am employed by you, I work for the audience,” Roy once told me.
That independence is why he was able to stay on the air for so long.
He started on the air as a teenager in Montreal and spent decades as the go-to guy on CHML in Hamilton and for the last two decades doing the national weekend show, which will be missed by people across the country who used it to catch up on the news of the week or to set up the week to come.
Roy has always had a way of championing the underdog, keeping the government on its toes and bringing out the dirt, but in a way that was not mean or vengeful. From gun crime to international spies to Canada’s military to honouring our police, Roy Green has always been fearless and a Canadian patriot first.
He is also a trooper. For the past few years, despite battling stage four cancer, he has stayed on the show battling through much pain and discomfort because he knows many of his listeners are going through the same thing.
Doctors worried he only had weeks to live thanks to a cancer diagnoses, but Roy Green didn’t pay any attention to them. He just kept going. In doing this, Roy also sent a message that getting cancer does not mean the end of one’s career.
His philosophy is to not let it beat you and to persevere. That is what Green has been doing – even on days when it was clear it was an uphill fight. The Swiss-born immigrant to Canada, doesn’t believe in quitting and never did. With the media landscape rapidly changing, in my view, Roy’s retirement is more related to those realities than his cancer battle or age or any other reason.
In fact, on X Friday he mused, “As I’m contemplating the one item on my bucket list, riding the Harley up the Alaska highway several emails warning me, ‘No cruiser, ride something smaller.’ And ‘be prepared for the closest bike shop to be about 100 miles away. Road service here provided by Grizzlies.’ Uh..oh!”
No one can roll on forever – although it does seem like if there was someone who ever could it would be Roy Green. It has been a busy few years. And while the world reeled at the atrocities that occurred at the Israel-Gaza border Oct. 7, 2023, or with the Ukraine-Russia war, Roy was appointment radio because he brought on people directly from the ground of those horrors.
While he has been awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and many other honours, the one he deserves is the Order of Canada. He’s been a friend or favourite uncle to Canadians whether they are in the halls of power or bed-ridden looking for someone to spend time with them.
His friendly radio voice has been a soundtrack to many of Canada’s biggest moments and history for so long. He does radio in a time of social media but like all great radio stars, Roy is able to make the listener visualize, taste, smell and feel the moment. He feels people’s pain and wants to help them – like he did with the Afghan interpreters who assisted out troops but were at risk of being killed by the Taliban once the west pulled out.
Roy, along with fellow radio peers Senator Charles Adler, John Oakley, John Moore, Mark Patrone and Bill Carroll, used their microphone to save those lives. Today, many of those men and their families are in Canada and thriving. Roy Green led the way and that is a legacy that is bigger than any award anybody can present.
The bad news is that with his retirement, Canada is losing its preeminent fairness ombudsman. The good news is we still have two more shows to savour from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. eastern on Saturday and Sunday.
The newsmakers always make sure they get on there to be heard, and this weekend will be no different. The planned guests include Adler and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. Who knows, maybe even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will call in.
If he does, Roy Green will ask tough questions. He never worried about being fired before, so he sure as heck won’t be worried during his final weekend on Canada’s national airwaves.