Erin's Journals

Just a thought… Hope is being able to see that there is light, despite the darkness. [Desmond Tutu]

You can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

Now, in case you think “sadness” is that feeling, you’d be right, but it’s not strange to us. Plus, we’re fighting off the May 11th and Mother’s Day emotional minefields in a different way (or ways) this year. Stay with me – this’ll be fun.

So Rob wakes up yesterday morning and says, “I had the most vivid dream: I dreamt the Leafs made it into the second round of the playoffs and beat Tampa Bay to get there.” Of course I laugh with him, because being the Leafs fan he is, there have been plenty of nightmare scenarios. And given that he remembers their last Stanley Cup win, back when Canada was celebrating its Centennial, and the most recent elevation to the second round, which was in 2004 before I even started working with Mike Cooper, it’s been a long time.

Superstitions are a funny thing. Rob isn’t overly cautious, but he does make a point of wearing his hockey fan gear – a shirt or fleece Giant Tiger pyjama pants – each game.

But on Saturday night, as the Leafs and Bolts were getting ready for overtime, he chose that break to take Dottie for a quick walk to relieve, well frankly, both of them of the pressure they were feeling for entirely different reasons.

The walk wasn’t so short after all. When he hadn’t returned, but overtime had started, like a good wife, I paused the game. While I continued to edit my Drift with Erin sleep stories on my laptop, he kept walking. And then, the final score popped up on my screen via a Toronto Star breaking news tweet:

They’d won. I got up and ran to the door, looking for Rob to return. When he finally did, I had taken away his phone in case he was texted (which, it turns out, he was, by his diehard Habs/Leafs fan brother in Montreal). But the surprise was not ruined and Rob hooted loud enough for all of the neighbourhood to hear through our screen doors when the Leafs scored to win the first round.

But here’s the very important realization that Rob came to: having gotten out of his jammie pants to walk Dottie, he watched the extra minutes in his street clothes. And guess what? They still won.

This is quite a revelation.

It turns out – and hear me out here – that it doesn’t matter if we have jerseys or pants on, hats backwards, inside out for a rally or no hat at all, the game is going to go as it goes, without any interference or help from those of us urging our team onward.

It reminded me of a tweet that Jamie Campbell, who is one of the Blue Jays Sportsnet team, put out a few weeks ago after someone tried to lambaste him for saying the Jays could sweep. They did not, as it turns out, and this chucklehead blamed Jamie, since his mere mention of the possibility obviously affected the outcome LOL. I tweeted in response that if Jamie had that kind of power, would he please just say “lottery winner Erin Davis” and I’d be grateful. Now, I could meet him halfway and buy a ticket, but if Jamie truly has those kinds of powers, he can make a ticket fall into my wallet.

Sports fans are weird. We are. We plan our days and weeks around game schedules and try to stay in a cone of silence if, by chance, the big game is on the PVR. But here’s where we kind of messed up: we are going away tomorrow for 8 days to a place with lots of TVs but too many distractions to watch them. Yes, Las Vegas. It’s been a long, long time, and with our travel schedule being curtailed in the most delightful ways by lots of summer fun here at home, we decided to bite the bullet and go. So, before the win Saturday, I tried to calm Rob’s nerves saying this: “If the Leafs lose, you still get to go to Vegas. And if the Leafs advance (which they have) your biggest problem will be finding the game. Poor you.” Maybe they’ll even have the coronation on somewhere, too. After all, people will bet on anything.

Here’s the thing: whatever the Leafs do, they’ll do without us. Fortunately, this means that Rob won’t have to wear his pyjama pants when we’re out seeing the town. I mean, he wouldn’t be the only one in ‘em, but still, not my husband.

So, enjoy your May and I’ll be here on Facebook, Insta, Twitter and the usual haunts while we’re gone. It’s all good. The delightful Winnie the Pooh is the latest story on my Drift with Erin sleep podcast and this Thursday, Lisa and I have a fresh episode 18 of Gracefully and Frankly for you, so yeah, I can use this break. And thanks for being here one more time. Talk to you again soon! GO LEAFS!

Just a thought… The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. [Carl Jung]

You can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

Thank you for coming in today…and I wish I could tell you that this is easy. A man who was a big part of my past (and my beginning) has left us.

After a long illness, Don Daynard passed away last Thursday at the age of 88. I can tell you his age, his birthday without a pause, because I had them tattooed on my heart. He was a year younger than my dad, Don Davis, and you know, this man, Don Daynard, also had a role in raising me to an adult.

You see, I began with CHFI in 1988. Don had been there for a year, having been lured over from 99.9 CKFM.

It was a year later that CHFI management decided Don would flourish with a co-host at the older-skewing also-ran station. I’d been doing news in at another Toronto station, and then I’d moved into being a music host at 97.3. CHFI picked me and I picked them: the same week in August 1988 I was offered morning news jobs with either Don Daynard or Wally Crouter on CFRB. I chose the show that I thought would be the most fun.

I was right. Almost immediately, we had that most precious of radio team rarities: chemistry. He was 54, I was 25…separated by a generation, but also gender. See, Don came up in a time when women on the radio were rare, like Betty Kennedy or “promo girls” and giggling traffic reporters. I was none of those. He was John Wayne to my Jane Fonda. (Or in my dreams, Oprah.) Despite my ambitions, I was never going to be his equal, and I knew I’d have to earn my time there. Still, we had that magic. He knew it, I knew it, and the listeners really knew it.

Soon we had catapulted to the top. I remember clear as day the moment when I asked him in passing if I could have “co-host” printed on my business cards (remember them?) and he shrugged and said, “Why not?” And so, I was. Management did his bidding, and what Don said went.

After all, he was the star of the show. Don had his own vast and loyal legion of fans. My job was to soften the edges while bringing in and keeping the younger listeners. When Don brought up movie stars from the black and white era, I was trying to balance things out with Seinfeld and the Spice Girls. But together, somehow it worked: in a demographic that exactly mirrored the 25 and 54 that we were, our show was more a family reunion than a marriage. 

Add a tremendous producer, first “Cousin Dave” Creelman, and then Ian MacArthur, my big/little brother, and you had a winning team. 

It all could have been upended when we announced my pregnancy, but I wasn’t going to step away from this magic! So we made it work when I did my part of the show from home for three months in 1991.

But, in a sad twist of fate, Don lost his son Britt later that very same year at age 33.

I had no idea how to approach that kind of grief, sit beside it, or help ease it for him. He didn’t talk about it; we just did the show and he battled through. But he did ask me on a flight en route to shoot one of our many commercials featuring TV icons whether I thought he should talk about it. I asked if he worried about being associated with that sadness, when he was known for making people laugh. But, thankfully, he did the interview which ended up in a front-page story in the Saturday Toronto Star.

It was a rare moment of vulnerability that I think only helped him connect with listeners and loss parents everywhere.

Later, when Rob and I suffered the death of our own child (who funnily enough, went to high school with Don’s grandson), I was touched almost beyond words when Don called us at our Ottawa motel to offer his support. Then in 2019 when I went into rehab, it was his loving and caring wife Lynda who reached out to Rob. Don and Lynda, married 31 years, stayed in the periphery of our lives and Don was often on my mind. I knew they lived here on Vancouver Island, and that Don would spend hours listening to old radio tapes, or so we were told when we ran into Lynda’s daughter Jewel.

Now, “looking back” (the name of one of Daynard’s biggest radio shows, along with his Saturday Night Oldies when he brought it over to CHFI) I have the hindsight to understand that my star shone bright because of him: this life we have now in retirement is partly because he and I made it work. I’ll forever be grateful for having the chance to soar with him. As a young “broad” in broadcasting, I learned more in 11 years with him in mornings at CHFI than 20 years in an easier position could have taught me. And I will forever be grateful.

Rest well, Don. I loved when you called me “kiddo,” just as my dad still does. I’m still thrilled that the station went along with my crazy idea to have a horse take you out of that Sheraton Centre ballroom on your final show, Dec. 10, 1999! Yeah, and the drum kit was also my idea – sorry, Lynda!

May you be reunited in spirit with Britt. May you know peace at last and, oh, lots of that wonderful wheezing laughter. Goodness knows you gave enough laughter to everyone else, for a good – a very good – long time. Thank you.

Just a thought… Think positive, test negative. [Erin Davis]

You can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

Well, well. Guess who came to our house for a visit last week? I’ll give you a hint: there’s a beer by the same name and you could sing it to the tune of “My Sharona.“

It all began two weeks ago when Rob was invited to play in goal at a seniors’ hockey tournament. There were teams coming in from Saskatchewan and even Tokyo. And Rob will cringe to know I’m telling you he was voted by his teammates first star of each of the three games he played. There was no trophy, although upon undressing after one of the games, he did discover a puck that got lodged in his padding somewhere (which is weird). Oh, but he brought home more than some kudos and an errant puck.

By Saturday (over a week ago now), Rob felt something coming on. At first he thought it might be a dog hair lodged in his sinuses – he was sneezing that fiercely – or allergies because of all of the trees here in riotous bloom. But then Sunday, it seemed like a cold. Okay, so Tuesday the cold was mild enough that he played hockey on his birthday and all was right with the world. Except…that night he got an email from a fellow player in the tournament who had tested positive for Covid. Rob swore, took a test and there it was: positive.

Great. Not only was he going through Covid for the second time, but we’d all had dinner together, our family, for his birthday that night. He’d sat between three-year-old Jane and her mom Brooke. We’d been passing food at the Chinese restaurant, and we gathered for birthday cake later at home. Here Rob is with the kids, pretending to blow, not wanting to add extra spit to the cake when he’d had what he thought was a cold.

Now this is where pure luck and some precautions come in. When Rob first started sensing a cold, he moved into another bedroom for a few nights. We didn’t want me getting sick for our upcoming trip to Ontario. I tested negative. Then Brooke and Phil and the kids tested negative. Again and again we tested and took precautions like keeping Colin out of school, masking everywhere and so on.

And I’m relieved to tell you two things: we are all negative, including Rob, and yes, Rob and I are on our way to Ontario tomorrow for a few nights in Toronto so that I can be on CTV’s The Social this Thursday at 1 pm local time (set your PVR) and for a visit with my radio partner and best friend Mike Cooper. A lot was riding on us testing negative, including the main reason for our trip, which is an appearance for a live podcast recording on stage in Ottawa for the Canadian Real Estate Association a week today.

We are thanking our lucky stars. We’ll continue to be careful and mask on the plane trip tomorrow, pray that our luggage arrives this time (unlike the debacle last November) and hopefully have some fun stories to share with you. And speaking of stories, we go back to mythology for our newest Drift tomorrow: Narcissus and the Echo, a tale of nymphs, of vanity and love-caused insanity.

Take good care and we’ll talk to you then, and on Thursday this week for Gracefully and Frankly.

Just a thought… I have just three things to teach: Simplicity, Patience, Compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. [Lao Tzu]

You can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

Welcome in and sorry to have missed my usual Monday journal here. I appreciate your patience; to say that it’s been busy around here would be an understatement – and, of course, a lot of that is my own doing.

Last week I shared with you the news that we’re surrogate parents to a one-year-old Havanese named Dot Calm. We’ve gotten pretty good at calling her by her proper name; when it’s an urgent situation – like when she mistakes a mat for a pee pad – we call her Rosie, after the puppy who had a lot of, shall we say, emergencies…although sometimes we go back even further and call her Molly.

Truthfully, though, she more resembles Pepper, the black and white boy here, and if she turns out to be as sweet as he was, we’ll be lucky indeed.

Looks as if Dottie won’t be needed for making puppies for four months or so, so that’s a relief. We will find it hard to be without her while she’s back at the ranch, so to speak, but maybe we’ll make a point of going out more. She cries when I leave, but when we both go out, Dotty is put into her crate with no fuss at all.

But what to do at night? Last week I so proudly told you that she was out-sleeping us. I shouldn’t have said anything. Soon, she and I were getting up – and staying up – at 5:30 or 6:30 am. But we soon remedied that: pee pads in the house meant she could do her thing and then she and I could then climb into my nice warm bed together. I checked with her breeder and Bev gave us the okay to do that, so long as Dottie still likes her crate for when we’re out.

I’ll be honest: a lot of my stress is self-imposed, as I don’t want her to upset Rob or cause any friction between us, as Rosie did. But this is a different experience and Rob has said that he wants to make this work, because I want to make it work.

Now, I’m the one who gets up with her, and walks her before bed in this glamorous ensemble of bathrobe, runners and long coat…and laughingly remembers the days when I moved here and wouldn’t even walk Molly without making sure I had full makeup on! I mean, seriously, Davis. Time to get real.

And we have. And at this point, I want to thank Rob for his open heart, for his love and patience (oh, and with the dog, too!) and everything he brings to our lives.

It’s his birthday today and I hope he’ll enjoy a few surprises and a dinner with his grandkids. One day they’ll forgive him for making them Leafs fans, but for now, gathering to watch hockey and, of course, Blue Jays is just the icing on his birthday cake. Which reminds me…I still have to pick up a cake. I told you I had a lot to do!

Oh, and if you haven’t heard the latest Drift with Erin sleep story, I heard from Kim who said she’s listened four times to Beauty and the Beast and still hasn’t gotten to the end. So, yay!

And don’t miss this Thursday’s Gracefully & Frankly podcast with Lisa Brandt and me. In episode 14, we’re sharing the good, bad and downright gross of online dating, a story that will give you chills, and how I inadvertently drove right into the future this past weekend. It’s pretty amazing.

You take care, have a Happy Passover tomorrow night and a peaceful and joyful Easter. I’ll be back with you next week. Promise!