After almost 40 years as a fixture on the nightly news, Colleen Jones vividly remembers her first day in the CBC Nova Scotia newsroom.
She started as a sportscaster at CBC shortly after Labour Day 1986, just 12 days after delivering her son, Zach.
CBC was seen as a “pinnacle” of broadcasting, Jones says.
“I just remember going into that morning meeting and looking at the people that I had been inspired by,” she said.
“It was a big-time newsroom with big future stars and I knew It.”
Those future stars included Jim Nunn, Ian Hanomansing, Susan Bonner and Susan Ormiston, Jones says.
Jones went on to garner many accolades herself during her CBC career, including being appointed to the Order of Canada and named to Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame.
Jones is now ready for the next chapter and is retiring from CBC, after many years of telling the stories of Canadians from all walks of life.
From curling to reporting
Growing up in Halifax as one of nine children, Jones first entered the public eye behind a curling rock.
She was 19 years old, she won her first of 16 provincial women’s titles in 1979, and a silver medal at that year’s Canada Games.
At 22, Jones became the youngest skip to win a Scott Tournament of Hearts title when her team emerged as champions in the 1982 event in Regina.
She went on to become a six-time national women’s champion and two-time world women’s champion, and added a world senior women’s championship in 2017.
Jones became the first female sports anchor in Halifax when she joined CBC and says being known as a sports figure helped her be accepted in what, at the time, was a male-dominated field.
She says the tricks of the trade she learned in those early days and her experience in curling set the tone for the rest of her broadcast career.
“I approached sportscasting and journalism the exact same way as I pushed my curling career, and that was pick apart – dissect, look at it. Make it better all the time,” she says.
“Even to this day, I would critique my work and it’s never good enough.”
A master of the ‘kicker’
In 1989, Jones became part of the early morning team presenting weather and sports on the fledgling all-news network CBC Newsworld, now known as CBC News Network.
From her earliest days, Jones’s approach was to draw the viewer into the stories that she tells.
She said she decided that she wanted to be a master of the “kicker,” the broadcast term for lighter stories at the end of a show.
“If you can make it this meaningful moment and connect with the person whose story you’re telling and make the viewer love that person as much as I love them, then I know I’ve done my job. “
She returned to local news with CBC Nova Scotia in 2012 and continued telling stories in a style that is uniquely her own.
Jones said it’s all about simple writing and putting herself into the story to make it more relatable. Her participatory style has become one of her trademarks — sometimes in the most unlikely of scenarios.
Over the decades, viewers have seen her bungee jump, skydive, cycle, arm wrestle, take part in a polar bear dip and even play tennis while having a live conversation with CBC News anchors.
Taking the viewer somewhere is the philosophy behind all of her segments, Jones says.
“I’ll never forget the time I had to take a detour on my way to work and I wound up in Hubbards. And there was a woman with a big sign saying slow down,” Jones says.
“I didn’t have a story idea and a detour took me to a great story of a woman in a small village trying to get people to slow down.”
Achievements
With sports firmly in her blood, Jones says when she critiques her own stories she rates them as gold, silver or bronze.
And sports, particularly curling, has remained a constant in her life. She’s covered 11 Olympic Games for the CBC.
She was voted one of Nova Scotia’s top athletes of all time.
Jones says she hopes when viewers look back at her work, they think of her as someone who loves a good story as much as they love a good story.
“There’s only been three things in my life and that’s my family and curling and CBC — those have been the priorities and that’s what I’ve always done,” Jones says.