Nunn with CBC colleagues: "Where else can you stick your nose in other people's business?" Photo: Marie Macdonald

He can be charismatic and he can be cantankerous. Which side you see of Jim Nunn depends on who you are. If you're not used to being interviewed, he's nice to you and tries to help. If you're a politician or other public figure, he considers you free game.

Scene One: It's an unseasonably warm September morning in Halifax. Jim Nunn is on location on Veith Street filming a CBC special about the Halifax Explosion. He's waiting for producer Marie Thompson and cameraman Alan Inkpen to settle their debate on where the interview with explosion expert Jim Simpson should take place. They choose a patch of the sidewalk shaded by tall hemlocks. Nunn steps into position in front of the camera, but Simpson keeps jumping out of frame as Thompson tells him to move a foot this way or that. Simpson is anxious; he keeps dabbing his forehead, wondering if the powder is showing.

"Now Jim," says Nunn, "you're going to forget my friends are here. Don't listen to them. When they're happy we'll proceed."

As Thompson and Inkpen make some final adjustments, Nunn tells Simpson a story about the time he saw Nick Nolte at Pearson airport, for some reason wearing a silk sheet with his breakfast down the front of it. Simpson laughs and stops fidgeting with the papers he's holding in his hand.

Scene Two: Nunn is interviewing Brian Mulroney, who's on a visit to the south shore of Nova Scotia. Nunn questions him on the thousands of dollars being spent to renovate the closets of 24 Sussex Drive to make room for his Gucci shoes. Mulroney bristles. He's furious with Nunn, but Nunn doesn't back down, and Mulroney keeps on talking. As Nunn fires off questions, he overhears Mulroney's press aide at the time, Bruce Phillips, asking a CBC producer to stop Nunn's questioning. But the producer refuses, saying, "This interview is over when the Prime Minister says it's over." Eventually, Mulroney storms out.

"I was going to change the world. Bring down capitalism"

Jim Nunn grew up in Antigonish, the second of eight children, all but one of whom have been journalists at one time or another. For him, journalism was a great opportunity to travel, and he says, it's the most fun you can have. "Where else can you stick your nose in other people's business?" Even his mother worked in broadcast. She had a program on CJFX called "Today's Tunes."

Nunn got his start in broadcasting working as a disc jockey at his father's radio station, CJFX, in Antigonish. He was 14 years old at the time, earning 85 cents an hour. His father wanted him to be a lawyer. But Nunn says he caught the end of the hippie movement and was part of the anti-establishment crowd that ended up in journalism. "I was going to change the world. Bring down capitalism. Make the world a better place."

In his second year of university, he was kicked out of St. FX for protesting for the rights of students to own a car, to drink on campus and to allow women in men's residences. His mother, Nora, said her son wouldn't have known what to do with a woman if he'd had one in his room. His father got him into Dalhousie, thanks to a favour from the president, Henry Hicks. Nunn hated school. When his father died in 1970, he quit the next day.

Nunn joined the CBC in 1979. He worked in newsrooms in Edmonton, Halifax, St. John's and then back in Halifax again to host the suppertime news show, First Edition. The producer at the time, Ron Crocker, came up with the idea of a political panel to run every Thursday evening. Nunn selected the participants, journalists Harry Flemming and Parker Barss Donham. He picked them because he knew them both and had a high regard for their experience, and because he knew they would clash.

Every Thursday morning, Nunn called each of them to come up with topics for that night's segment. He poked and prodded to find out what would get them riled up. He says if they had six topics, and Flemming and Donham agreed on three of them, he would always ask about the other three on the air. Donham says the Harry and Parker show was popular in the same way car races are popular: everyone's watching for the crash.

Jim Nunn says his drop from hosting Marketplace to regional reporter was like being busted back in the British navy. Photo: Marie Macdonald

"He has a commitment to the little guy" -- brother Bruce

His brother Bruce says Jim has a sense of cause behind his work. He believes it's important to speak for the little guy, to put leaders in their place. "As corny as it sounds, he still has a commitment to that. It's not as common in the business as it used to be."

When the Westray mine exploded in 1992, the CBC provided almost round-the-clock coverage of the disaster. Nunn says someone who was following the story would realize something was wrong; they would see that the manner of mining there was dangerous. Nunn knew the men trapped in the mine, and he knew their families. "I wanted someone blamed," he says. He says someone should have been charged with manslaughter, and despite the findings of the judge, he says the CBC let people know the truth. Nunn won an Atlantic Journalism Award for his coverage of the disaster.

His political savvy is widely known, but his brother Bruce says people don't have it completely right when they assume it's solely because of their father's influence. Their father, Clyde, was the Liberal MLA for Inverness county from 1954 to 1963. Bruce says, however, that Jim gets a lot of his strengths from their mother. She has strong opinions and she's not afraid to share them. "She was not the quiet housewife who served tea while the men talked about politics," he says.

Jim Nunn hosted many of CBC's election debates in the mid-eighties and early nineties. One particularly electric debate happened in 1993, when candidates Don Cameron, John Savage and Alexa McDonough joined him at the CBC studio in Halifax. Minus the usual podiums, the scene was more intimate, like sitting at a kitchen table. At one point during the debate, John Savage suggested capping taxes. In a flash, Nunn asked if he was saying there would be no new taxes if he were elected. Savage said yes.

Nunn's friend and colleague, Dan O'Connell, said it was a huge mistake for the future premier to box himself in like that. "Everyone in the studio that night was thinking, 'That's it. That's the moment. Save that tape.' Jim just nailed him to the floor."

Nunn with producer Marie Thompson: "I would like to cover federal politics." Photo: Marie Macdonald

A trouble-maker

Parker Donham says anyone who comes under Nunn's gaze looks like a fool once in a while. But beneath that dynamic is an exceptionally quick mind, a discerning mind. Donham says there's no one in Nunn's league in interviewing skills. And although Nunn often injected his own opinions into interviews, the viewers were better for it. It was a livelier approach and it challenged the interviewee. But it didn't make for comfortable sound bites, and this makes trouble for the board and for producers. Donham says Nunn would be regarded as a trouble-maker. "He was controversial at a time when the CBC abhorred controversy."

Nunn doesn't suffer fools gladly. And Donham says that people who aren't confident often regard him as abrasive. He says that at a story meeting, if someone makes a bad story proposal, Nunn is the type who will say, "That's a stupid idea." His bluntness helped earn him the reputation for being hard to get along with.

In 1995, Nunn left the supper hour news because he wanted a network job, and he wanted to travel. He moved to Toronto to work on the CBC consumer program, Marketplace.

Sig Gerber was the producer of the show at that time. He hired Jim to replace Bill Paul, who had been with Marketplace for 17 years and had come to symbolize the show. "Jim had big shoes to fill," says Gerber. "I liked Jim very much. When I hired him, I knew he could be cantankerous, I knew he had that reputation. I knew not all people were fans of Jim Nunn. Jim was aware of this, and he knew I was aware."

Gerber had Nunn interviewed before a board. He says Nunn was insulted because he'd been a big star back home. The board asked him tough questions, and that floored him, but he came back with solid answers. He was straightforward and not at all evasive.

Gerber says there were two camps on the subject of hiring Nunn. One said he's great, the other said keep your hands off him. "I brought him on with my antennas out. I said, 'Don't let me down, Jim.' And he didn't -- not once. All I'd heard, maybe it was true. But it was not the Jim Nunn presented to me or his colleagues in Toronto. "

Jacquie Perrin, who co-hosted Marketplace with Nunn for five years, says working with him was a lot of fun. The two would often be left sitting in the studio for long periods of time as the crew worked on technical problems. To pass the time, Nunn would spout out in Gaelic or start belting out Maritime ditties. Perrin often sang along with him. She says Song for the Mira was one of Nunn's favourites.

Perrin says Nunn didn't like his 40-minute commute to work from Oakville. And he didn't like not being able to drop in on friends and family. He missed the Maritimes, and persuaded the show's producers to let him co-host it from Halifax. This worked well for Nunn. He and his wife Cathy were glad to come back east and both their daughters are at St. FX.

Before he left Toronto, however, Nunn had upset a producer of the show, and they'd had a serious falling-out. Donham says that being in Halifax, Nunn was out of the loop about what was happening at the CBC in Toronto. He hosted Marketplace from Halifax for a year before he was suddenly presented with a retirement package.

According to Donham, the package was completely unfair. "It was a vicious thing to do, a stupid thing to do," he says. Nunn countered with a series of chess moves that led to a stalemate. They nearly settled, but then Nunn ended up working as a regional reporter in Halifax. "His current state is a loss to Nova Scotia," says Donham. "It's not a reflection on him, but on the cowardice of the managers of CBC right now."

Nunn has no comment on any of these events, but he's obviously hurt. He refers to the drop from Marketplace to regional reporter as "some rough years." And he says if this were the British navy, he's someone who has been a first lieutenant and has been busted back to ordinary seaman.

Sitting back in a chair in a small meeting room in the CBC building on Bell Road, Nunn snacks on chocolate chip cookies and muses about what may be in store for him next. Although he says he has no more grand designs, and plans to retire soon, he also says he would like to have a bird's eye view of what's going to happen when Paul Martin becomes Prime Minister.

"I would like to cover federal politics. And I can do that in a variety of ways. Right now as a reporter, I'll follow things closely from Halifax."

Though he's uncertain about his future, Nunn clearly understands he has a certain reputation that precedes him. While standing outside the third floor elevator in the CBC building, he responds to a question of whether or not his King's Journalism Review interviewer was too easy on him.

"Probably," he says. "But I'm cranky and hard to get along with."