Today was a rather sad day for me, as I did my last regular radio broadcast in a career that has spanned just over 40 years. So in my midweek blog post I thought I would reflect on that a little bit, waxing nostalgic as I am.
Since last September I have, as you may know, been hosting a weekly radio programme at the Brock radio station, CFBU-FM, titled Inquisitive Minds. I interviewed many Brock University professors, graduate students and other interested parties about research being done at Brock as well as other items of interest to Brock and the wider community. In addition I worked to develop other spoken word programmes for the station, which is why I was hired on a temporary contract basis for eight months.
It all ended today, as I hosted Inquisitive Minds for the last time. Oh, the show will still be around, going into summer reruns for a while, but I will no longer be spending many hours in a small editing studio making some digital magic as I have been doing weekly since last September. Today's show will air again at noon on Saturday, and will then be archived on the website, which you can access here:http://www.cfbu.ca/archivei.php. In fact, all the shows from week one are there for you to peruse should you wish to.
This was a part-time position I was thankfully able to keep when I started my new career in the financial services industry beginning in March, in order to honour my commitments to Brock radio until the end of my contract.
It has been a challenge coming up with three interviews for each show, researching the topics, drawing up the questions and conducting the interviews, followed by many hours editing to make the interviews flow smoothly and time out for the show. But it has been all worth it. If nothing else, it taught me, after some doubts of my abilities following my departure from my former employer last August, that I still had it. I could conduct an intelligent, accessible interview on any number of topics and have fun doing it. It was gratifying to me how people I had never met before opened up to me in the studio and gave me some great conversations.
We shared laughter, such as on the subject of amorous mosquitos; tears, as one guest confessed her battle with mental illness during her student years; and almost everything else in-between. It is the type of discussion you don't often hear anymore on commercial radio at least; people talking to people about any number of subjects ranging from cancer research to the Laura Secord Trail to hockey and even The Beatles and their impact on today's society. We discussed all these topics and then some, and I loved every minute of it.
My time at CFBU-FM was the culmination of a career that saw me handle positions as producer, on-air host, interviewer, music programmer, promotion and public relations person, and community liaison. I also acted as a sort of historian for my final commercial stop, CKTB Radio in St. Catharines, where I worked for 32 years until last August. Perhaps it was because I was there longer than anyone else, or even I appeared older than anyone else, but people always turned to me (and still do!) about the history of the station I called my second home for so many years.
It all began innocently enough. As a kid growing up I was always fascinated by radio and at one point even thought all the musical acts actually appeared in the radio studio one after the other all day long! It wasn't that way, of course, at least not in later years, but in the early days of radio live studio broadcasts or on location remote broadcasts were the norm rather than the exception.
I could not wait to get into radio, so between grades 10 and 11 at Neil McNeil High School in east-end Toronto, I got a part-time job producing weekend overnights at CHFI-FM in Toronto, where I grew up. I produced the overnight classical programme, eventually moving into daytime shifts, and then into music programming at the station, including the long-running Candlelight & Wine evening show hosted for many years by the late Don Parrish. I worked for the princely sum of $3.00 an hour back then, threatening to walk down Yonge Street to another radio station, CKEY at the time, if I didn't get a raise. I did, to $ 3.50 an hour!
In the summer of 1977, four years after my time at CHFI began, I moved to Oshawa, hosting the morning show and programming music for CKQT-FM radio. The days were long and the pay was slight. I remember being thrilled when I found out my weekly pay cheque would be $140! Oh, how innocent we were back then. But I learned a lot while there, including both German and Italian languages to an extent as I also produced weekend programmes in both languages for a time.
This was the time I started conducting countless entertainment-related interviews with everyone from dancer Ginger Rogers about break-dancing to singer Tony Bennett about his painting, and even the infamous cross-dressing entertainer Divine, appearing in Toronto one year. Others were hesitant to interview Divine but I went ahead and found myself with a particularly entertaining and insightful entertainer who was often misunderstood by many. I loved that aspect of my job: delve beneath the surface to find the real story, and I did it countless times over the years.
An ownership change in 1980 made it necessary for me to move further east, to CIGL-FM in Belleville, Ontario, where I hosted the afternoon drive show and conducted entertainment interviews for a show airing Friday evenings. Again, pay was not great, just over $10,000 a year, but I got a lot of valuable experience back then and made a lot of new friends. But I never felt I was part of the team for some reason, so after eight months I made another move.
In April of 1981 I came to St. Catharines for an interview at CKTB Radio, then owned by the Burgoyne family, who also owned at the time the St. Catharines Standard. I got the job and moved here on Mother's Day in 1981, and never left. I felt at home in Niagara and in spite of the fact I thought I would move on at some point, I set down roots here and realized my life was very good in this little corner of the world.
I survived seven ownership changes over the years, several format changes and outlasted countless managers. But all that came to an end last August when yet another ownership change resulted in several of us being let go. It was painful, but in time proved to be a good thing for this writer.
I had to step outside of my comfort zone, challenge myself to learn new skills, and make the leap to an entirely new career, which I have now done, and which I will write more about in the near future in this space.
But for now, I am looking back on a career well lived, richly rewarding and now, part of my past. I don't regret any of it for a moment, and have made many lifelong friends along the way. You find a way to move on and reinvent yourself as I have done, and challenge yourself yet again. I know no other way, and have no regrets at all about my rather interesting career path. You can be bitter if you want to; I choose to be thankful for the great opportunities I have had in a business I have loved, and now move on to even more exciting things.
Perhaps I will never say goodbye to radio totally. I hope to pursue some freelance work at some point when I can, and hope to continue my long-running Midnight Mass broadcast on Christmas Eve from the Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria, which I have been doing for almost 25 years now. I might even return to CFBU-FM in the fall to host another show on a voluntary basis, but we'll have to see about that.
So while today is an end, it is also a beginning. I look to the future and embrace change. Because truth be told, change is all around us and that won't change!
Here's to the future, and I hope you'll join me in this space as we share the adventure together!
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