Article content continued

Jennifer Ditchburn, The Canadian Press

[/np_storybar]

The real reason he quit CTV in December of 2008 and accepted Harper’s invite to the Senate, Duffy said, is linked to a big round of job cuts the network had recently made.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever been through a big corporate layoff, Mr. Bayne,” he said, “but it is awful. It hurts the people laid off, but it kills the people who are left behind.”

So with that background, he said, he went home that night and talked things over with his wife, Heather. “She said, ‘I’ll do whatever you want to do, but if you go (from CTV), it’ll give the bean counters more money” and perhaps in that way the jobs of some young people could be saved.

He did it for the kids! He was sacrificing himself for the youth!

On how the trial reminded him of his days as a court reporter for the Charlottetown Guardian:

Walking the courthouse halls “reminded me of those days, and it’s been a humbling experience … how many people … make mistakes and how we need more treatment centres for the poor and disadvantaged.”

See how he cares!

On when he realized he was truly bitten by the politics/journalism bug:

At the 1967 Progressive Conservative convention in Toronto that elected Robert Stanfield, Duffy said, “I realized it was a spectacle, but it was a spectacle that mattered. It became to me a fascination and it became what I commanded my life to.”

By comparison to all this, he mentioned his first wife, Nancy Mann, but in passing.