As long as there’s CBC Radio, I’ll never live alone
David Common, Piya Chattopadhyay, Matt Galloway, and Tom Power are just the latest generation of my roommates. It began, as many of my habits did, in East Wawanosh, where I was the only kid on the 10th concession whose TV-less status meant I couldn't watch Saturday morning cartoons or Sesame Street. Instead, I had opinions about CBC Radio’s annoying “Fresh Air” hosts and I could hum the theme to Peter Gzowski’s “This Country in the Morning,” the program that held the coveted weekday morning spot where we now hear Q with Tom Power. And I absolutely knew to be quiet after lunch on Sundays so we could listen to the “Air Farce,” where I eagerly awaited my favourites: Big Bobbie Clobber, Dave Broadfoot’s send-up of hockey players, and his gentle mockery of the police system with Sergeant Renfrew, with his dog, Cuddles. Damn, that stuff was funny, even to a little kid.
Yes, CBC Radio 740 AM from Toronto was the relentless backdrop to my childhood (FM coverage being a far-off dream yet for Huron County). When I had a rare sick day from school, I lay in the den beside the panelled built-in cupboard Dad made. It showcased the family book collection, the pristine National Geographics (you can read more about them here), and the Electrohome stereo receiver and LP player. It was there, lying on the couch under a crocheted afghan, where I formed my first political memory. News burst from the green fabric-fronted speakers that thirty-one year-old federal NDP Parliamentarian, Bob Rae, proposed the budget amendment motion that toppled the minority government eight months after Clark’s Progressive Conservatives wrested power from the senior Trudeau’s Liberals. Funny the things we remember.
My CBC life transformed a few years later when I introduced a TV into the farmhouse (click here for my homage to TV), and we made new family friends like Knowlton Nash from “The National.” We also got a visual on old friends like “The Journal’s" Barbara Frum, whom we already knew from radio’s “As it Happens.” I’m not sure why we watched the news except perhaps as a doublecheck against everything we’d learned each hour on the hour from those green speakers.
When I left home for university, I replaced the CBC blatting at me with CFNY and McMaster campus radio. Visiting my parents’ new London, Ontario house, though, would let me catch up on changes to CBC on-air personnel. Retirement to the city where FM radio was reliable allowed Dad the delight of CBC Radio 2, all classical in those days. It was duelling stations - each of my parents trying to drown out the other’s choice from their respective locations in the kitchen and in the workshop. But I still withstood the urge to follow in their commercial free public radio footsteps.
It was in graduate school that I began wandering back to the national broadcaster’s fold, with CBC TV news as my gateway drug. It wasn’t long however before it was CBC on radios in every room of my rental flat and then my condo. By the time I left school on the west coast, I spent more time with Metro Morning’s Andy Barrie and his sportscasting sidekick, Kevin Sylvester, than anyone else and was therefore more likely to miss them most. Colleagues had them say ‘bye to me on-air, one of those high points in the life of this CBC-ophile.
Every Canadian road trip I’ve taken, including my cross-country trips to law school in BC and back, had CBC radio as the backdrop. It was comforting to know, when living elsewhere in the country, that I could count on the quality relevant programming that I had grown accustomed to.
Imagine my surprise and disappointment to hear Jack, a few months into our relationship, wax on about a fantastic Polish radio station where they showcased a variety of music styles, had interviews with people from politics and entertainment, and had in-depth discussions on a range of relevant topics. He lamented how there was nothing like this in Canada. For, you see, he had never heard of CBC radio! How was it that this great institution had not infiltrated his life? And, more worrying, was he the aberration among immigrants or the norm? Soon, however, he was driving around town accompanied by my friends and filling me in in the evening on programs I missed while working. We reeled with the catastrophic fall of Jian Ghomeshi, each having enjoyed Q, the morning arts program. We were delighted at an encounter in a downtown pub with George Strombolopoulos, who was as charming in person as he was hosting The Hour, his late-night CBC TV talk show. Near the end of Jack’s life, he was as sad as I was to see Stuart McLean in the blood lab at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. McLean’s stories of Dave and Morley, all new to Jack, were added to Jack’s long list of things he thought were ‘fucking amazing.’ We both mourned when cancer killed him 18 months before Jack died.
When people ask me whether I’ve caught this podcast or the other one, I reflect on how I’m the original podcast listener - the OG, if you will - because I’ve got the CBC. No data usage, no app, no vetting for quality content, no fees, no ads. Just a radio in every room and an endless stream of well-researched, often funny, insightful programming.
Every time I hear of further reductions to Canada’s national broadcaster, as we did in December, 2023, my heart breaks a little. Click here to learn about those cuts from the interview of CBC CEO, Catherine Tait, by Adrienne Arsenault of The National. Tait talks about the special role of the CBC in Canada, as set out in Canada’s Broadcasting Act, a piece of legislation originally enacted in 1936. That act defines CBC’s lofty mandate to, among other things, “be varied and comprehensive, providing a balance of information, enlightenment and entertainment for people of all ages, interests and tastes.” As a public broadcaster, critical to the function of a healthy democracy, I think CBC does a pretty damned good job.
And CBC Radio is a terrific roommate too!
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