Lloyd Robertson spent more than six decades helping Canadians understand the news. I was lucky enough to learn something different from him.
When I first moved to CTV in Agincourt in late 2015, they gave me an office smack dab in the middle of the CFTO newsroom. It was not an easy time to arrive. Change was moving through the building, and few people welcomed it. Within months, jobs were being eliminated. As a Senior Manager responsible for 3 CTV newsrooms and TSN SportsCentre editors, I could feel the anxiety in the conversations and the discontent almost everywhere.
Still, there were many bright spots. One sat in the office beside mine.
Lloyd Robertson.
He was a Canadian broadcasting legend. For years, his voice had guided millions through elections, disasters, wars, celebrations and moments that changed the country. Yet in person, he carried none of that weight as entitlement. There was no ego. There was warmth.
When I told him I had worked for years at CP24 with his daughter Sue, his eyes lit up. After that, he always made a point of greeting me.
“Hello, Jonathan!”
You could hear that burly baritone from down the hall. It was unmistakably Lloyd: commanding enough to open a national newscast, gentle enough to make a new neighbour feel like he belonged.
I have met plenty of famous people in my career while roaming the halls of 299 Queen Street, where I spent my first 10 years in the broadcast news industry. Lloyd was one of the very few who left me genuinely floored. Maybe it was because his voice had been part of Canadian life for so long. Maybe it was because he occupied a place in journalism most people could only dream of reaching.
What stayed with me, though, was how little he seemed to care about status when it came to people.
At a moment when the newsroom felt uncertain and heavy, Lloyd made kindness feel easy. He didn’t need a grand gesture from me (even if I gave him one, at first). He remembered my name. He said hello. His door was always open.
These things sound small until you realize how much they shaped the way you want to treat others.
Lloyd never sat me down and taught me how to write. He never coached my voice or showed me how to hold an audience, as he did for so many journalists. I did not have years beneath his mentorship. I simply had an office next door for a while.
But I was still lucky enough to sit under his learning tree.
The lesson was about leadership. It was about treating people with care even when you have earned every right to be the most important person in the building. It was about understanding that a name remembered, a door left open and a warm greeting can change the temperature of someone’s day.
Newsrooms often celebrate the people who command the room. Lloyd taught me to notice the people who make room for others.
