Michael J. Fox 1994 Interview: Edmonton, Burnaby & His First CBC Job

In this 1994 broadcast of The Dini Petty Show, Michael J. Fox calls in to Toronto to talk to Canadian television about where he came from. He was booked to promote Greedy with Kirk Douglas, and he starts with a story about a midnight bowling alley. He is 32, a young dad, and in great form.

A Toronto studio audience cannot settle a debate: was he from Alberta or Vancouver? Fox sets them straight. He was born in Edmonton and grew up an army kid in Burnaby, and he walks through a childhood spent moving from town to town across Ontario and British Columbia. Then he remembers his first day of work, on a small regional CBC show, and the very famous date it happened to fall on.

He is just as quick about himself. He explains why he once called himself “a potato with arms,” the earring his son talked him into, and what the J really stands for. And he promises Dini, again, that he will fly up to Toronto. What nobody in the room knew was that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s three years earlier and would not tell the world until 1998.

Fox has since been named a Companion of the Order of Canada, the highest rank of the order, for what he did next. Unseen since its original 1994 CTV broadcast, this master tape has been meticulously optimized and preserved via the official archive of The Dini Petty Show.