Legendary Windsor Radio Personality
Celebrates Forty Years In Broadcasting
Story by Matthew St. Amand
Photography by John Liviero
When it comes to broadcasting and newsgathering in the City of Windsor, for the past forty years, Patty Handysides has lived up to her aptly bestowed name. She is handy on all sides.
This year, Patty celebrates forty years as an integral part of CKLW.
It is tempting to view Patty’s time there as one seamless, forty-year-long continuum, but her career in broadcasting more resembles her show The Shift, which is divided into multiple separate segments, each with its own details and demands.
Not only is Patty a matchless voice in local radio, but she also works within a very unique market in the larger media landscape.
“I think we’re really lucky in Windsor that we still have local programming,” Patty says. “Unfortunately, it is disappearing—so many outlets are going to a national feed. Many of the talk stations are gone. Competition is tough with social media. I feel very fortunate to be here and have listeners who stay with us.”
One does not have to look far to see where Patty got her tenacity, drive, and energy.
“My mother is ninety-three years old and still lives in her home, cuts her own grass,” Patty says.
Patty is a Windsor native, growing up in the Roseland neighbourhood with her family: Isabell Dalgleish, Bob Handysides as well as siblings Nancy and David.
Patty attended Ivor Chandler public school and Vincent Massey Secondary School. It was during high school that an interest in news began forming in her mind.
“Something about news appealed to me,” Patty says. “I enjoyed English class in high school. I learned to love words and knew I wanted to get into news in some way.”
Following graduation, she attended Centennial College in Toronto, where she took a news writing course.
“I loved that course!” Patty recalls. “I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with it, but gathering facts, telling a story—a true story—really appealed to me. That was back in the pre-Internet days, so gathering information involved a lot of legwork and investigation.”
Her first job out of college, Patty was hired to work in the newsroom at CBC Windsor.
“I was there for three years, and in 1985, I was hired to work at CKLW,” she remembers. “It was great—there was always something happening. We had lots of listeners who lived in the United States, so we gathered news from everywhere. Back then it was all men in the newsroom, but they were welcoming.”
Just as Patty got up to speed in the CKLW newsroom, a program director wanted her to work as a disk jockey.
“I had never done that, but the program director said he liked my voice,” Patty ex-plains. “They had me training with the legendary Johnny Williams, one of the Big-8 jocks. I did that for about a year and a half.”
Shifting gears has never been a problem for Patty. Following her time as a DJ, she worked as a news anchor.
“It was the best of both worlds,” she says. “I enjoyed being on-air, but I also wrote all of my news. I had a great time in the newsroom—it was bigger back then, of course, very fast-paced. I was always learning. The other reporters were very experienced. We were really good at deadlines. I kept up with them!”
The only constant in that environment was change.
CHUM bought CKLW in 1993. It was a tumultuous acquisition.
“They let a lot of people go,” Patty says. “I thought I would stay in news, but they put me back on the air as a DJ.”
She was paired with Tom Shannon, this time, doing an “oldies” morning show: Tommy and Patty in the Morning.
“I loved working with Tom—he was another of the old Big-8 jocks,” Patty says. “We did that for about eighteen months and then I was back in the newsroom. What can I say? I love being a reporter! That was what I was doing at CBC. I loved being on the scene where things were happening. There was so much competition between CBC, the Windsor Star. We were always trying to be the first to a story, but we were also friends.”
And Patty could be pretty hands-on with her stories.
“I loved the action,” she says. “I once flew in a Canadian helicopter to a moving Canadian navy ship on Lake Erie. I sailed with them for a little while… on the HMSC Ottawa. I went up in a two-seater stunt plane, the pilot did ‘barrel rolls’ and we glided, at times, with the engine turned off. That was so much fun. Plus, I repelled off the top of the casino building.”
Patty is also a licensed pyrotechnician.
“I have been for twenty-five years,” she says. “I do fireworks shows—big fireworks shows!”
Patty did reporting right up until 2015. That year, she got the show she has now, but at that time hosted it with Paul McDonald and Kathie McMann. It evolved over time until Patty took over hosting duties alone.
“My show, now, is more news-oriented,” she says. “Listeners are driving home from work and they’re not as able to text or call in. I look at the news of the day and choose whatever I think listeners should hear about.”
As anyone who listens to Patty knows, she is not sitting there reading headlines. Her four-hour show is broken up into eight segments
“Sometimes there is just too much information,” she says. “I like to do fun things, too. The other day, I was talking to Dr. Dan Riskin, evolutionary biologist and host of Daily Planet.”
It is a rare milestone for a person to work in the same company for forty years, much less in the same building. Patty’s plans for the future are just to keep on keeping on.
“I have stayed in the same building all these years, but the job has changed many times,” Patty says. “So, you never know. But it’s very humbling to know that so many people are listening.”
Among her mentors who saw her along the way, Patty fondly remembers high school English teacher Bob Marchand, who taught her to love writing as well as the venerable Gino Conte, a reporter who retired from CBC Windsor after forty-one years in the business.
“Gino was brilliant,” Patty says. “One thing he told me was: ‘You won’t get a promotion lying in a story. Don’t do it,’ and I never did.”
Patty is host of The Shift, which airs on AM800 each weekday between two and six p.m. and she can be reached at pattyh@am800cklw.com.
Published in the September 2025 Edition.
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