Hudson Mack remembers his entry into the world of journalism — and it’s likely Doug Collins does, too.

Mack, at the time 20 years old and recently graduated from SAIT Polytechnic, he was handling news duties at the Broadcast Centre one night when a report came in a body had been found in the Thompson rivers.

“It was a memorable night,” Mack said. “I went on and announced police had fished a floater out of the river. It’s 10 p.m.

“At 10:05 p.m., the phone rang and it was Doug Collins.”

Needless to say, Collins advised his young employee somewhat more sober language was expected.

Then there was the time the young Mack accompanied then-anchor and reporter Stu Blakely to an accident, lugging camera equipment because the regular cameraman wasn’t answering his page.

Mack, recently graduated from the SAIT broadcast-journalism program, knew how to work the equipment.

A transport truck carrying cyanide pellets had crashed in front of Royal Inland Hospital.

It started to rain, but the pair continued to cover it, despite the rain triggering the release of cyanide gas.

They were OK, as were others at the scene, but as Mack wrote in his autobiography Hudson Mack: Unsinkable Anchor, “I learned something that night about Stu and myself.”

Mack lasted a couple of years at the Broadcast Centre before moving on in a career that eventually took him to Vancouver Island, to CHEK and, later, The New VI (now CTV), where his career came to an end in February, 2014, when he was let go after being one of the faces of the station for a decade.

Mack hasn’t been in the Broadcast Centre since those early years, but he’s returning this week as he comes to Kamloops twice on a tour promoting his book. He said he’s looking forward to the visit.

“It was a great first experience,” he said of his time at CFJC.

“Good people, great people. A great learning experience” that also worked for him because his mother and sister still lived in Salmon Arm. At that young age and driving a red truck he bought at Dearborn Ford, there were plenty of adventures to chase down.

Mack starts his story with the end of his career and the email he received, telling him to meet management off-site.

He writes how it didn’t come as a big surprise because the same management had been showing sudden interest in overnight ratings, staff wanted to improve the newscasts and viewership and “most of all, a salary that I knew put a target on my back ever second Friday,” Mack wrote.

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