Fantastic Tribute to the Montreal Expos

Annakin Slayd put together this wonderful montage. Hopefully, MLB won't have YouTube take it down, as they are prone to doing to material that contains game footage...

Shortwave Radio and RCI

I still have a shortwave radio I purchased in 1989. I took a trip oversees and wanted to see if I could pick up Radio Canada International. It's hard for younger people to imagine a time when you weren't able to have instant access to information, but yes that is the way it was. Back then (late 1980s), about the only way to keep in touch with home aside from long-distance calls (which were still a big deal!), was to pick up the U.S.A. Today or try to pick up shortwave signals.

It was really amazing when you picked up a signal in english that was clear enough to understand! Voice of America was beamed around pretty well, but RCI seemed harder to catch. You had to acquire a schedule which included frequencies. It was necessary to send a request to the broadcasters by mail and wait for them to send it back to you. Oh yeah, things have surely changed since then!

You knew you had found the right frequency/time combination when you heard the first four notes of O'Canada right as they were about to begin their transmission. Then the voice said that you were listening to Radio Canada International - from Montreal. Instantly, you had access to Canadian news, weather and sports scores, among other things.

RCI is run by the CBC, sort of... I think right now they broadcast in 7 languages. The service used to broadcast in considerably more languages than that. RCI launched in 1945, primarily as a way for Canadian service men to stay in touch with news from home.

Pretty much all of their stuff is now available online. They can also be heard on Satellite radio. I'm not sure about their current situation, but I know for a while they were struggling to stay alive. Some federal budgets announced cuts that threatened to do away with the service altogether. Many claimed that the Internet makes shortwave services obsolete, but that is pretty naive thinking. There is still a sizable portion of the planet that does not have access to the Internet.

The Great Flood of 1987

I can remember a lot of heat waves, and most weren't as bad as the one Montreal just went through. One exception might be the one Montreal experienced in July of 1987. Maybe it's just me, but I can't recall it ever having been that warm in Montreal. Thermometers were pushing the 40 degree mark, but that might have been with the humidity. Obviously, there was no Internet and no Weather Network back then. Whatever the official stats were, it was excruciatingly hot, and it seemed to go on for at least a week.

The heat led to something that is still talked about by all who lived through it. That was the great Montreal flood of 1987. It happened on July 14th,  23 years ago today. Around 100 mm of rain fell in a few hours. We kind of had a mini version of that a few days ago, but nowhere near on the same scale.

The day started off hot and muggy, but by early afternoon, ominous dark clouds began to cover the island. It seemed to be very localized to Montreal. The storms began in the early afternoon. Wave after wave of storm cells hit for what must have been a good few hours.

So on went the radio, and there was long-time CJAD weatherman Bill Holdament (I’m hoping that was the way his name was spelled!) saying something to the effect of how you'd better tie up your lawn furniture or it might end up in your neighbour's yard. He wasn't kidding...

Montreal's sewer system couldn't keep up with the continuous downpours. Remember the images of the Decarie expressway under water? People lost an awful lot of possessions that day, including a lot of vehicles.

If something like that were to happen today, you'd go online and share your observations, or you might check out the weather channels or tune into one of the many all-news TV channels. Back in 1987, none of those things existed. You had to open your local TV channel and hope they were covering the happenings live. Or you did what most people probably did at the time, especially if you had lost power: you grabbed you transistor radio and listened to live coverage as it happened. I wish I remembered how the day was covered on local radio, but all I can recall are Holdament's comments. It's been a recurrent theme of mine that even today, when disaster strikes, radio is still going to be the best option for news and information. After all, technology becomes pretty basic when power and communications infrastructures go down.

Classic Canadian Children's TV

We've got these 24 hour kids channels now that show all kinds of stuff. Back in the late 70s and most of the 1980s, there weren't any specialized channels like that. If you didn't have cable, you had to watch what was on either channel 12 or channel 6, and if you felt adventurous enough, you'd check out what was on the french channels.

Who can forgot the CBC's morning programming? Look Up, way Up! Friendly Giant was only on for 15 minutes at a time, but there was something really cool about that show. Jerome the giraffe sticking his head through a fake window and Rusty the rooster sticking his head out of a bag? That was classic television! There were over 3000 episodes and the show ran for nearly 30 years! Did you know that the Friendly Giant originally aired in the United States? Bob Homme, who played the giant, was actually from Wisconsin.

And speaking of another American who created some classic Canadian children's television, we can't forget Ernie Coombs. He was Mr. Dressup. It's probably the most remembered Canadian children's show. It ran for about 29 years and stuck around in repeats though the mid-2000's even after the show was no longer in production and Mr. Coombs had died. Why did Casey and Finnegan have to live in that tree house anyway?

Then there was Canadian Sesame Street. It was the same show as down south, but with Canadian segments thrown in. It was an introduction to the french language for many, I'm sure. It was yanked off the CBC sched in the mid-90s, and that's really too bad.

And then there was Rocket Robin Hood. Listen to the theme music, it is brilliant... The overly dramatic description of RRH and his Merry Men is priceless. And then you get to see the same descriptive vignettes over and over and over again... To this day, it comes across as pretty damn funny!

I have to mention The Flintstones, even though it can hardly be considered Canadian content. For what seemed like forever, the show would air at noon on channel 12. It would disappear when school let out and then return "fresh" as ever in the fall. If you were home at noon, you watched the Flintstones, even if you had seen the same episode a million times already. There was an instance back in the 90s when the show was yanked off the sched for a while. A group of McGill students began a petition and campaign to get it back on. They succeeded - for a while.

Of course times have changed, and none of the above shows are on local TV anymore. The specialty channels do have some great stuff though, especially the retro channel.

Why Hell's Kichen is a Riot

I do watch it, only because I know nothing about cooking and thus find it amusing. I discovered the British version of Kitchen Nightmares a few years ago, and found it to be quite entertaining. It is far less contrived than the American version, where someone is always set up as the bad guy and all is nicely wrapped up in a matter of a few days... Of course, it can't be that simple. Not that the British show doesn't also try and give the impression that any failing restaurant can be turned around in a jiffy if the owners are only willing to listen by Ramsay - who apparently is never wrong...

Hell's Kitchen also started in England. I've never seen it, although I guess the premise is the same. The American version is very "Hollywood". I have no idea if the patrons of the "restaurant" are invited or actually pay to get in. It seems to be a pretty exclusive ticket...

It's obvious that the show wouldn't be very much fun if most of the participants were excellent cooks. There wouldn't be much entertainment value in that, would there? Let's face it, most people tune in to watch Gordon Ramsay go ballistic. It's strange really, why would he be so mad about a TV show? He knows what people want to see. The thing is, either he is a fantastic actor, or he has a very severe split personality. He doesn't seem to be acting...

I don't know what it is like to work in a famous restaurant's kitchen, but I kind of doubt that any head chef could get away with treating his staff the way Ramsay treats the contestants. I doubt anyone could get away with treating their employees that way... But then again, you can be sure Ramsay probably has some people watching his back in case one of the wannabe head chefs inevitably snaps.

Hell's Kitchen is a great show in its level of over-dramatics... The narration is just too much! Every single episode is a can't miss with something happening that you just won't believe! Of course a lot of so-called reality shows say the same thing. They'd like to give you the impression that the unthinkable happens next week, when in reality, it's not much of anything. Add to that the very dramatic background music, and you'd think they were about to reveal the cure to some awful disease instead of who has the best risotto.

Then there are the standard contestant comments, that are thrown in to every reality show. You know, where they pretend to spontaneously confess their feelings to the camera? What you never see is the guy out of view or in the control room asking them questions. The Office does a brilliant parody of this style that has been copied on just about every single reality show since Survivor. Obviously, contestants are also encouraged to trash talk and insult each other, because that is supposed to be entertaining.

The best part about this show is the silliness of the whole thing. You've got Ramsay ready to decapitate a contestant for having burnt the scallops... When asked why one person was put up for elimination, another contestant responds: "Because she ruined the mash potatoes!" It's just so funny.

The Earth Moved

Like millions of other people, I felt the earthquake yesterday. I was actually sitting in front of my computer screen when it began to sway... That and the floor was vibrating! My initial instinct was to turn on the radio. I did that, but the person on the air knew as little as I did at that point. I then turned to my TV and frantically searched through the news channels to learn more about what just happened. Of course, we now expect instant explanations, don't we? It took a few minutes, but the news channels were up and running with earthquake coverage.

On the Internet however, eyewitness accounts were instantaneous. Within an hour, there must have been dozens of YouTube videos - not of the earthquake, but of people talking about it! Twitter was overloaded at times, and Google reported huge traffic as people searched for information.

Indeed, we might assume that the days of gatekeeper-controlled information are over. Maybe not. You can have a million people posting about what they see or just saw, but in times of emergency, you need trusted sources of information.

We also saw cell phone communications infrastructure go down or be pressed to the limit in Ottawa yesterday following the quake. We have seen this happen before in many places during emergency situations. And we've also seen overloads of Internet resources happen many times, just like that of Twitter.

One other thing to consider is that during extreme emergencies, you may lose power and communications. You may not be able to go online or even place a phone call. Your best source of information once more may just be the simplest one of all: radio. We saw this back in 1998 during the ice storm. Granted, the Internet was nothing compared to what it is today, but it wouldn't have mattered, because power and phone lines were down for millions of people. Their only true source of information came from battery powered radios. And ever radio stations themselves got knocked off the air.

On the Air!

I managed to prepare and deliver my first solo effort yesterday. I thought I'd have enough material, but I fell a little short. Lucky for the musical pauses! I'll have extra stuff ready for next week. I think it went ok, but I haven't had much feedback yet.

The mic is a powerful force, even in community radio. You go through training and preparation and hope to one day get an opportunity to create something of your own. I know commercial radio will be a very different environment, if I ever make it there. But I can't change the past or control the future - all I can do is work on the present.

When I was at radio school, several people ended up interning at some local commercial radio stations. I know they spent a lot of time at the stations, mostly doing behind-the-scenes stuff, but also made some on-air appearances. I didn't have an opportunity to intern on commercial radio while I was at school. And in all honesty, my work schedule was just so terrible... I couldn't have managed it if I had gotten the chance. I also felt it better to wait until I finished the six months before I took on anything else.

So I took an opportunity to volunteer at the community station I have already mentioned a million times on this blog. I was only able to manage one hour a week as a tech for the longest time, but eventually I was able to expand my duties at the station. The main point is that with every new opportunity came more of a chance to learn hands-on, and with every new opportunity to get on the air, the comfort zone would increase.

I'm not going to pretend that I'm a seasoned veteran by any stretch of the imagination. What I do believe is that the direction I took was the best one for me at the time, especially since leaving town was not much of an option. Someone else might be better off going in an entirely different route. It's great to be able to have nearly complete creative freedom on my show. Still, I would never have thought that a half hour show would require no less than 10 hours of preparation!