Dini Petty was in a group with her sunglasses on when she overheard some people talking about her new TV special, “Trailblazing Talks with Dini Petty.”
“Is Dini Petty still alive?” a man asked about the woman who once lived inside Canadian living rooms every morning. About the pink-jumpsuited helicopter pilot turned daytime television star who was as much a part of Toronto’s fabric as the CN Tower.
At 80 years old, Petty is very much alive. She goes to the gym three times a week (often starting with rowing), is proud to be on zero medication, and, as she puts it, “The cheese is still firmly on the cracker.” So the comment amused her. She whipped off her glasses and looked at the man.
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“Sort of. She’s kind of still here,” she recalls telling him. “So I’ve been out of the public eye, but now it’s like, ‘The b — — is back.”
Back she is. Sitting down with the personality at the Soho House in Toronto, she’s dressed down for a day of print and radio interviews with a soft grey sweater and jeans. Her silver hair and impeccable makeup aren’t the only things that shine about her. Her eyes light up as she recalls story after story. The seasoned interviewer in her leans forward with each question, matching body language and firing questions back. This is a woman who built a career on her innate curiosity, and now she’s pushing the conversation with trail-blazing men and women on her hour-long special and subsequent half-hour series. It all kicks off Mon., Oct. 13 on The News Forum.
So why now? Along with Petty’s belief in the importance of recognizing the past, she too has been watching the news with disbelief over women’s rights and the setbacks in reproductive rights.
“We’re arguing about abortion again?” she says, shaking her head. “Never forget how far we’ve come, and never forget how far we have to go.”
For the special, Petty sat down with Tonya Williams and Sen. Marnie McBean, an Olympian, to reframe the conversation around leadership, resilience and aging with purpose. Filming the special in a St. Catherine’s, Ont. studio marked the first time Petty was back on that kind of stage in 29 years, but once she got going, it felt like a homecoming.
Filming went so well that The News Forum quickly expanded the special into weekly, 30-minute episodes that run until December, with a planned second season for the new year.
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The resurrection, comeback, rebirth, or whatever you want to call it (Petty herself isn’t sure) is thanks to creator, showrunner and executive producer Kate Campbell. Campbell is also an actor, international vocalist and recording artist, and she struck up a friendship with Petty in 2019 after being introduced through a mutual friend. Campbell went on to cast Petty in her short narrative film “Boundless,” about the women pilots of the Second World War, and discovered that her grandmother, who also flew out of Buttonville airport, had known Petty.
With Campbell’s strawberry hair and Petty ready to subvert expectations around age as a female, 80-year-old talk show host, the pair have been likened to the real-life “Hacks” characters Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder). Petty has never seen the Emmy-winning comedy, but Campbell appreciates the similarities — “without the abuse,” she adds.
“Our friendship has been beneficial for both of us to grow and to create something really special,” Campbell explains. “It’s not a fluffy kind of show. We’re having real conversations. That is who Dini is, and that’s why she’s the perfect person to lead this. I feel like this is a movement.”
If anyone can remind us that women should never be erased or forgotten as they age, it’s Petty. Unforgettable firsts defined her career. She was the first woman in Canada to pilot a helicopter — pink, of course — while reporting the traffic. (There’s some metaphor in there about shattering glass ceilings from the sky.) From there, she landed on television screens, first with Cityline and later with “The Dini Petty Show” on CTV, where she built a world of lively, unpredictable conversations. She interviewed everyone from Michael Caine and Harrison Ford to Julia Child and Sarah, Duchess of York, often drawing untold personal stories from her subjects.
“I knew where interviews would work,” she says. “I work off kinetic energy. If I were interviewing you, I would go into your personal space, shake your hand and just feel it. I know right away.”
Petty’s success was part instinct, part perseverance, and part luck. She likes to remind people of that — she was in the right place when Toronto television was being reinvented. She happened to be lunching with a friend, discussing her career, when a broadcast person who knew her penchant for skydiving tapped her on the shoulder and asked if she’d fly a helicopter.
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She’s had several close calls with death, including the time a male helicopter mechanic refused to listen when her engine kept missing. (After the third time it almost crashed, an investigation revealed the engine was dissolving, and the mechanic apologized.) Then there was the time a handsome stranger pulled a fake gun on her at the CNE right before a broadcast. She calls that one her “certain death” experience.
“I know Lady Luck. She’s saved my ass many times, and she’s been with me,” Petty says.
But even luck only goes so far. Grit, curiosity and an ability to connect with people were the cornerstones that got her to where she is today. Her first interviews and public speaking engagements weren’t memorable for the right reasons: she froze. But with some practice and inspiration from personalities like Phyllis Diller and Leonard Cohen, she learned to be there and give 100 per cent of her attention, every time.
“You’ve got to be prepared when luck shows up,” she says. “And I was.”
For years, Petty seemed unstoppable. Then, in 1999, CTV opted not to renew her contract, and she went off the air. Networks chased younger faces: Tracey Moore, Marilyn Denis. Anne-Marie Mediwake. Mary Berg. As for Petty, she guest-hosted episodes, embarked on a one-woman show, and dipped her toes in business ventures, including a natural menopause product. She was never truly gone, but she was also living in cultural margins, a fond memory. Some people, like that man, wondered if she was still alive.
Petty has more to say, more anecdotes to tell, more stories to share. She’s almost shocked at her own age, but sees it as an opportunity at a moment when women are demanding representation across age, race, and identity. She’s determined to bring her experience and boundless energy, which she’s had her whole life, to a new slate of subjects.
“It’s such a weird world,” she says. “I am a matriarch, but inside you never age. You’re just you. I never could figure out why my enthusiasm would piss people off.
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Campbell adds that it’s such a “backwards thing” that our culture doesn’t celebrate or respect matriarchs, yet patriarchs continue to be the decision-makers of the world.
“Why are all these older men making these decisions that are destroying our world?” asks Campbell. “This is countering that. We start having conversations. We start respecting the people who have gone first and celebrating that. We show people there are other ways to age, other things to talk about. That’s been the fight.”
It also matters to Petty that her return isn’t pure nostalgia. This is about proving that women’s stories don’t end at fifty or sixty. She knows what it meant for audiences to see her flying that helicopter over Toronto traffic, to watch her claim authority on daytime television. She wants her next chapter to carry the same weight — to show that life at eighty is not a closing act, but a continuation.
“Trailblazers are fascinating people, and there’s so many of them around,” she says. “We’re women, and we’re all standing on the same road, and the women behind us have got us to where we are. They are the trailblazers, and they need to be honoured and respected, and they also give us the strength and courage to keep going on with this show.”
For a generation of Canadian women, Petty was proof you could be smart and stylish, funny and forceful, unapologetically yourself in a world that doesn’t always accept or like you. Those qualities don’t disappear with age; they deepen. Petty is very much alive, ready to retake her place. And in a culture that still too often sidelines older women, that may be her boldest first yet.
