The As It Happens Files

For David

Introduction

ONE:
The Man Who Wouldn’t Drown

TWO:
The Princess of Love

THREE:
Cabbages and Kings

FOUR:
Tim and Colin and Julie and Yulya

FIVE:
Touching the Earth

SIX:
Rugged Roses

SEVEN:
The Man in the Bear Suit

EIGHT:
There’ll Always Be an England

NINE:
Verse and Worse

TEN:
Runaway Chevy

ELEVEN:
This Is the Dance Portion

TWELVE:
The Wrath of Grapes

THIRTEEN:
The Maple Leaf Forever

FOURTEEN:
Millennium Madness

FIFTEEN:
Air India

SIXTEEN:
Mike the Headless Chicken

SEVENTEEN:
War and Pax

EIGHTEEN:
Mike the Music Man

NINETEEN:
It’s All About
Ubuntu

Acknowledgments

As It Happens
Interview Credits

As It Happens
Producers 1997 to 2003

A
few months after taking my leave of the CBC and my job hosting
As It Happens,
I tuned in one night to hear this listener’s phone call:

The caller was expressing what thousands of people from across Canada and around the world have told us for years: however good we may be at covering the Big Story, it’s the half-eaten-by-Richard-Nixon-ham-and-cheese sandwiches that really stick in their minds.

As It Happens
is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s second-longest-running current affairs show
(Ideas
is the longest), and on good days it still sounds younger and brighter than almost anything else on the dial. I can say this because I don’t claim credit for it; I think the credit is due mainly to the format devised in the early years by Mark Starowicz and exploited so brilliantly by a succession of producers and hosts, including Barbara Frum and Al Maitland. Basically, it’s a phone-out show that daily chases down the stories the producers find most beguiling and delivers up people for one of the hosts to talk to. On any given day, the topics may range
from war in Chechnya to a nettle-eating contest in Yorkshire and anything in between. Sprinkled among the interviews are bits of music and readings and recorded speeches and humour that add colour and texture.

The show has been drawing fans to CBC Radio from around the world for 40 years. When I left, over one hundred U.S. stations were broadcasting
As It Happens,
and we were breaking new ground at home; the ratings at that time put AIH in first place in its time period in the very competitive Toronto and Vancouver markets. Not that markets are a prime concern since CBC Radio is commercial free, deriving its financial support from a government-mandated annual taxpayer subsidy.

Perhaps it’s because CBC Radio doesn’t have to worry about advertising sales that it’s developed into such a different animal than its TV cousin, or maybe it’s because radio as a medium is so different. In any case, CBC’s radio arm has been more successful at creating an identity that sets it apart from its competitors at the same time as it unites Canadians across the country. What people say they like about
As It Happens,
in particular, are its breadth and depth, its fairness, its sense of humour and its ability to take them immediately to the heart of unfolding events, be they regattas, riots or bank robberies.

But, above all, listeners seem to cherish the show’s devotion to the odd and the eccentric. During our 30th and 35th anniversary years, when we invited the audience to tell us what they would like us to dredge up from our archives, the most common request was for Barbara Frum’s Big Cabbage story, otherwise known as the Goddamn Cabbage Story (see Chapter 3).

Now, as the show celebrates its 40th birthday, it seems like a good time to remember some of the weird and wonderful
people I met while hosting AIH—people like the Canadian inventor of the bear suit, the guy who walks naked across the U.K., and Mike the Headless Chicken from Fruta, California (not, strictly speaking, a person).

I couldn’t write about these exotics, though, without also remembering a few of the seekers, adventurers and heroes whose tales have thrilled and moved me over the years. Their names include Ignacio Siberio, the man who wouldn’t drown; Canadian astronauts Roberta Bondar and Julie Payette; and Mike Stevens, who brought music and hope to a remote village where both were in short supply.

Sometimes the people make the story, and sometimes it’s the story that brings forth the people. It was 9/11 that introduced us to Kathie Scobee Fulgham. As the daughter of the man who was in command of the space shuttle
Challenger
when it exploded in 1986, Kathie Fulgham knows what it’s like to watch your father die over and over and over again on TV. The Air India crash, recounted in Chapter 15, brought us Anant Anantaraman, who planted flowers among the ashes of his life. And the war in Iraq led us to Salam Pax, the Baghdad blogger who provided a rare insider’s view of the conflict.

Combining these themes—the silly and odd, the brave and pioneering, the big news events—will result, I hope, in a kind of print version of the radio show. Of course, I’ve omitted more than I could include. To mention all the men and women, boys and girls, fish, pigs, turkeys and uncooperative parrots who informed and delighted me over the years would be to embark on a never-ending journey. I hope all the people who are not mentioned will forgive me. To all of them, from the bottom of my heart, a big thank you for being part of our great conversation.

To CBC Radio, too, I owe a huge debt of gratitude for having provided the opportunity, in
As It Happens,
to air this
conversation and for allowing me to burrow about in the archives to retrieve material for the book.

Above all, I am beholden to my former colleagues at
As It Happens.
It’s partly to honour them that I’ve written this, for without their dedication, patience, brains and perseverance, the show would not have lived up to the lofty standards set by its creators, and it wouldn’t have been such a joy to host. I salute them and thank them. I hope I haven’t misremembered too much.