ALUMNI DIARY

PROFILES

A Canadian walks into a studio …

RTA alum makes his mark at ESPN

BY SEAN FITZ-GERALD, JOURNALISM ’00

IN 2010, a few months after Adnan Virk, RTA ’00, began work as an anchor at ESPN, he went over some of his tape with a talent coach: “The first thing — ‘Man, you really sound Canadian, huh?’”

Virk also enrolled in a course with interviewing guru John Sawatsky, and he had a question to ask.

“Sorry, John,” Virk said one day, “I was just curious …”

“Oh,” the instructor responded. “How very Canadian — to begin by saying ‘sorry.’”

Virk smiled as he told the stories.

“I asked somebody recently: Do you think I have a Canadian accent?” he remembered. “And he goes, ‘ah, it comes here and there, but it’s not as strong as when you were first in the United States.’”

His parents are from Lahore, Pakistan, and moved to Canada in 1972, before he was born. The family bought a convenience store outside Kingston, Ont., and his mother would run the day shift, before his father covered the night shift, after wrapping up his day job as a computer programmer with the provincial government.

Virk moved to Toronto to study broadcasting at Ryerson University, and graduated into a diverse career that led him to work across the television spectrum. He worked as an associate producer at TSN, then a co-host on Omni Television, and as a host on an upstart Canadian sports network called The Score.

When he joined the U.S. sports broadcasting powerhouse ESPN, it was more than a turn in his career path. He became the first Muslim hired as an anchor. Virk became a trailblazer.

“I don’t know about that,” he said with a smile. “I don’t think kids are flooding the mosque, and running to Ryerson RTA: ‘I’m going to be like Adnan Virk one day.’”

He chuckled.

“But I mean, hey,” he said, “if that changes anything, it’s a good thing.”