MONITA RAJPAL

From a T.O. reception desk to CNNโ€™s anchor chair, this cable news icon dishes on landing her dream job and growing up in North York

MONITA RAJPAL IS momentarily stumped. Until this point, the face of CNN International’s daily World Report has been answering questions over the phone from London with a bright voice and self-assurance honed through years in live television.

Then a softball question comes and she pauses. The question:Who would you most like to interview? For the North Yorker, who got her start in journalism answering phones for Citytv and now reports nightly for an international audience, the question isn’t a flight of fancy.

Rajpal has interviewed renowned world leaders and politicians for CNN, including Al Gore and former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev. No one is off the table.

“I wish I thought about that one,” she says with a light laugh before eventually settling on U.S. President Barack Obama. “He is someone who has already started changing the way people think about politics and about the power of your own abilities.”

It is an apt but unintentional choice of words for Rajpal, who grew up in Toronto’s North York community and turned to broadcast journalism after a high school councillor told her that her abilities were too strong to ignore.

Today she lives in London — the hub of international news, she says — and interviews the world’s most influential people and covers the most important stories. Rajpal hosts CNN International’s “World Report,” a live, daily half-hour news show broadcast around the globe.

She is also a presenter on the channel’s new arts and culture program icon.

“I absolutely love it. I feel like I’m the luckiest girl in the world to get to do what I get to do every day,” she says. “I get my news fix because I do love news. I get to be able to anchor the show. And then I get to travel the globe and get to meet some of my heroes.”

As a child, the idea of hosting her own news program was beyond her imagination. Born in Hong Kong, Rajpal moved with her family to North York when she was 14. The area was much as it is today, a suburban paradise filled with rows of homes and shopping centres, with a direct connection to Toronto’s core.

It was the picture of suburban living. Some of her fondest memories come from the nearby Fairview Mall, where she and her friends would roam in packs on the weekend.

“We’d end up with bags and bags of things that we bought.We don’t know how we did.We only had a little bit of money,” she said.

“It was a great place to grow up. It was one of those idyllic suburban areas of Toronto. I would walk to school through the ravine. It was lovely; it still is a beautiful part of the city.

“When I started working downtown, I still lived up there. It was such an easy commute.”

She attended A. Y. Jackson Secondary School and participated in the school’s Amnesty International program.

The vice-principal saw Rajpal giving a presentation to a packed auditorium and asked if she would read morning announcements. “I said great, no problem. It got me out of class 15 minutes early,” she said. That led Rajpal to Ryerson’s radio and television arts program, after a guidance counsellor familiar with her work suggested she apply.

“When I was in high school, to be honest with you, journalism wasn’t something that I had even thought about,” she said. “You go through these meetings with your guidance counsellor, talking about universities and what you want to do. I said I really didn’t know what I want. They said, ‘You are good at writing, you are good at speaking, so why not try journalism?’ So I said OK.”

She graduated from Ryerson in 1996 and secured an entry job at Citytv, working her way up from the bottom.

“I was a receptionist at the front desk. I answered phones. I gave tours of the old building at 99 Queen West. It has changed now. But back then it was one of those iconic buildings in Toronto, and that was the heart of Citytv and MuchMusic,” she says.

“After my work shift, I would go in to the newsroom and try and learn as much as I could. At that time, I just really wanted to learn about the whole process of being a journalist and being in television. It is not just about going on camera. There is so much that is going on behind the scenes.”

Her dedication paid off, By the time Citytv launched its 24-hour news channel, Rajpal had earned a chance to read on air. “I remember it was a Sunday, 5 p.m. My whole family was watching. It was such a surreal moment, but I remember feeling at home on set and in front of the camera. And even when I stumbled a bit, I remember thinking, ‘OK, I got the first stumble out of the way. Now let’s move on.’”

Glen Baxter, the host of In Fashion on the Fashion Television Channel, was working at Citytv when Rajpal made her debut. He said she was a natural from her first day on-air.

“She was working at reception at Citytv, and just a few months later, I am in the newsroom and I look up at the monitor and she is live, reading the news,” he said. “She was reading the news like she had been doing it for a decade. I almost quit my job and started a career in forestry because she made it look so effortless.”

Despite being a world away, Rajpal returns to Toronto, a place she considers home, as often as possible.

Her family — parents, aunts and a married brother with two young girls — still live in the city and, for the most part, still in the Yonge Street and Steeles Avenue neighbourhood where she grew up.

When asked about home, her mind slips between North York and Queen Street where she spent the majority of her five-year career with Citytv. “I do go down to Queen Street, but it has changed since the time I was there,” she said. “It’s nice, but it is also a bit of a shame because Queen Street West had its own character. It was my home.”

She said her Toronto roots deserve much of the credit for her success in journalism, affording her an opportunity to dive into the industry while covering internationally relevant stories.

“I think being in Toronto, because it is such a cultural hub, such a cosmopolitan city, I was able to really be a part of something,” she said.

“Toronto is such a multicultural city. I really feel, as a young professional person who is just starting out, that it was difficult but not impossible.”

 

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