It was 20 years ago this week when the biggest story of Kevin Newman's career broke wide open.
The Toronto-native was coming off a five year stint with ABC News in New York City and had just moved back to Canada's west coast to help launch Global National.
"It was 5:30 a.m. in Vancouver," he recalls, "when I got a phone call that something was coming up — a plane, they weren’t sure how big, had hit the World Trade Center and I should probably come in. So, I jumped in the shower, and then while I was in the shower, my wife yelled out that another plane has hit. And like everybody, it was when that second one hit you went, “Oh, that's no accident.”
Newman raced through traffic, got to Global's news studio, and took his place behind the anchor desk. For the next 16 hours straight he kept Canadians appraised of the horrors happening in the American city he once called home.
Kevin Newman has anchored newscasts on all three major Canadian broadcast networks as well as with ABC in New York. He helped launch Global National 20 years ago, premiering the Vancouver-based newscast just days before the attacks on the World Trade Center and elsewhere in America on 9/11.
He's now the executive producer of a new documentary airing Sept. 10 entitled, "Disruption: 20 Years of Global National." It airs on the main network as well as on-demand with Stack TV and on the Global TV app.
Listen in for much more about his Gemini award-winning career, including his early days on CBC’s Midday. Plus find out what fellow Canadian-born anchor Peter Jennings gave him when he left New York to return to Canada.