And if this is true for those dreary eyed 5:30am wake up calls, then 3:30am might just be the most ungodliest hour of them all. It's an inconceivable hour to be waking up; a time that represents the very depths of night. An hour so perfectly wedged between being an extremely late night out, or unthinkably earnestly start, that even a city as bustling as Toronto can seem eerily quiet and calm in even its busiest corners.
But each weekday morning, 3:30am is precisely the ungodly hour that Matt Galloway's alarm goes off. And not long after, once he's finished his short morning routine, he'll gentle close the door of his Toronto home, mount his bike, and ride off in quiet blackness of 4 am as the rest of the city sleeps soundly in their beds.
However, as many Toronto residents will know, the reason Galloway subjects himself to a routine that for most of us would constitute self-inflicted torture, is because of the unique and important role he plays (along with his fellow CBC producers) in the life of Toronto. For when 5:30am rolls around, Matt Galloway will hit the airwaves across the GTA, as the host of CBC Toronto's morning drive program Metro Morning. And once that ON AIR light goes on, for the next 3 hours, in-between newscasts, traffic & weather updates, tens of thousands of Torontonians will wake up to the sound of his voice, and Metro Morning, in order to connect with the news, politics, events, culture, and debates of the day in Canada's biggest city.
As they put it succinctly on their website, "Metro Morning is Toronto - its face, places, voices and stories." And to that end, each day Matt Galloway will speak to up to a dozen guests, from local politicians, and journalists, to artists, and bring Torontonians what they need to know about life in the city, that day, that week, and that year.
One morning a few months ago, after Metro Morning was off the air for the day, I peddled down to the CBC myself (at a decidedly more godly hour) to speak to Matt Galloway about his love for Toronto, how Metro Morning comes together each, day and what it's like to be the connecting point for life in Canada's biggest city.