“It is really a two-step career journey, in the writing world. Writing, then editing... If you want to get regular promotions and raises, you will, for the most part, accept the fact that your path takes you away from writing and into editing, in some form. The number of pure writing positions that offer salaries as high as top editing positions is vanishingly small.”
I get the impression this applies to a lot of creative pursuits. Now that I’m ostensibly ‘in charge’ of making a radio show, I’m spending a lot less time actually making radio and a lot more doing… well, other things. I’m enjoying it, but would I permanently trade it for the daily craft of writing and audio production? Time (and my financial health) will tell.
In a review of the fantastic Radiotopia podcast network, Bill McKibbon points out the (rather odd) absence of radio from virtually all media attention:
“[I]t annoys me how little attention gets paid these programs. The Times reviews almost every movie that comes out (I enjoy reading their reviews of part 6 of some slasher series) and even though I’ve never seen Breaking Bad I can tell you pretty much everything about it because of the number of stories I’ve read. Radio not so much—the people who make it do so without much public feedback about what’s working and what isn’t.”
It’s a good point. I’m not saying play-by-play announcements every day about what happened on-air, but aside from losing funding, it’s as if CBC- let alone any other radio stations- don’t even exist in the physical and digital pages of this country’s papers (and most of the coverage there is about what should or shouldn’t be done about the television side of things, with only a line or two acknowledging radio).
A few years ago, I remember reading that one of the British newspapers was coming under fire for combining its radio and TV sections into one, and my mind was blown that radio got any coverage at all, let alone had its own section. Even now, the Guardian actually has a radio section online (the Telegraph has TV & Radio, but it’s mostly TV, so maybe it was them).
Anyways, it’s an interesting thought. Despite popular belief, people listen to radio in this country- in big numbers- and it’s curious that we’ll get coverage of virtually all other forms of media (concert reviews, amateur play previews, video game breakdowns, and yes, slasher films) while the thing thousands of people across the country start their day with goes by unnoticed.
This November, the people of Prince George will be asked to vote for a new mayor and council. And the people asking for those votes are going to lay out their vision for the city. Is there a performing arts center? An engineering program at UNBC? But for my money, one of the best chances to understand how our current council envisions the future of Prince George will be in the discussion surrounding 85 new homes proposed for a small neighbourhood east of the city.
The proposal is to take a 45.5 hectare piece of land and divide it up into 85 smaller lots. The land is in city boundaries but outside of “the city”, past the airport and in what might be more accurately characterized as the “country” part of town. In fact, the land is currently classified as agricultural, something that would have to change for this development to go ahead.
Let’s go back to the notion of “vision”. Back in 2009, the city started a process called “MyPG.” It was a comprehensive set of community consulations basically asking people “what kind of city do we want this to be?” Hundreds of aspects of life in the city were looked at, and an overall plan with lots of smaller plans were put into place to help guide future decision making.
Fast forward to 2014 and this proposal. City staff receive the request for the 85 new lots and they prepare a report to help the mayor and council decide whether to support it. That report was presented back in April. In it, city staff recommend that the new lots not be approved. Why? Because of the city vision.
One bullet point in the report given to council was about something called “Complete Communities.” The vision for Prince George is that it be easy for people to work, play, and shop close to their home without having to rely solely on cars (ie that they be able to bike, walk, and take the bus to the places they have to be). Staff warn:
“The Blackburn neighbourhood offers limited services beyond an elementary school and a community hall. The lack of services results in residents having longer vehicle trips to meet everyday needs. The proposed development would be considerable distance from common destinations such as highschools (Duchess Park – 12.3km) or commercial centres (Parkwood Shopping Centre – 12.1 km). Without any conventional public transit routes in the Blackburn neighbourhood, these longer trips are almost entirely dependent on the private vehicle. There are also no formalized pedestrian or cycling routes serving the Blackburn area at present. The Active Transportation Plan (2010) identifies the potential to create a shared Bike/Traffic lane along Blackburn Road and Giscome Road in medium term forecast, but any trail or cycling connection from the Blackburn area to the Downtown is a low priority.”
To put it more simply, approving this development would contribute to urban sprawl. In fact, the staff report says exactly that later on:
“The term sprawl often refers to settlement patterns that feature some or all of the following characteristics: subdivision of unused agricultural land; large residential lots; tie-in to municipal services; lack of public transit and pedestrian connections; and, considerable distance to other land uses. The proposed rezoning and subsequent subdivision has the characteristics of sprawl.”
There are other concerns surrounding this: the cost of building and maintaing new roads and sewer, the problems of taking agricultural land and making it residential, that sort of thing. But to me the real interest is in the question of how we want the city to grow.
Right now we have roughly 80,000 people. There is an unofficial target of 100,000 in the next decade or so. How do you make space for those 20,000 new people? You could do it by focusing on making smaller lots, apartments, and duplexes in what we already consider the “urban core” of the city: downtown, the Millar Addition, and ‘the bowl’ generally. Strategic building can accomodate quite a few people in urban centers.
Another method is to keep on expanding. If you drive from the university to College Heights, you will see a number of new and developing neighbourhoods that have been created in the last decade. You can see empty space in all directions of town that could be turned into large family homes. We have the space to grow out and out and out.
It’s not an either/or scenario, either. There can be a combination. Certainly, one of the selling points for a place like Prince George is that you can own a home with a yard and still be a few minutes drive from the city proper. One of the supporters of this project argues that by developing Blackburn you will support downtown, because it will be the closest shopping center for anyone who moves there. To hear the case for this development as a counter to the staff report, I recommend listening to this.
None of this is a science. You can’t say for sure that any single subdvision or highrise is “right,” and certainly one highrise or subdivision does not a city make. But listen to the discussion around those subdivisions and highrises and you might get a sense of where the vision’s looking.
I am a lucky person. I was born in a safe, stable country during a safe, stable time. I have no major health or genetic issues and come from a supportive, loving family. These are huge contributors to succes that I did absolutely nothing to earn– pure luck.
Recently, though, I’ve realized that attributing any success I’ve ever had to pure luck isn’t entirely helpful. For example, a few aspiring journalists have asked me for any advice I might have on how they, too, can work in the exciting world of broadcast journalism. Telling them “be lucky!” isn’t exactly useful. So I’ve started re-examining the narrative I tell myself about how I got to be where I am today.
The short-hand version that I use to tell people about how I started working at CBC is that I happened to apply for a job at a time when the local bureau was looking for someone to fill in, and I was lucky enough to be given a chance, which was followed by several other circumstances that led to more openings that I was able to fill. And boom, here I am. Lucky.
But let’s analyse that a little more. I’m thinking about luck because I was just re-reading some research on it from pyschologist Richard Wiseman. He’s spent time studying the difference between “lucky” and “unlucky” people and has come to a number of interesting conclusions including the fact that so-called “lucky” people are more likely to look for and find opportunities:
“I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. On average, the unlucky people took about two minutes to count the photographs, whereas the lucky people took just seconds. Why? Because the second page of the newspaper contained the message: ‘Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.’ This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than 2in high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.
“For fun, I placed a second large message halfway through the newspaper: ‘Stop counting. Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win £250.’ Again, the unlucky people missed the opportunity because they were still too busy looking for photographs.”
So, spotting opportunities. Now let’s go back to how I started working at CBC and my luck at applying for a job at the exact right time.
I was applying because I had started looking for work several months earlier, while I was in a temporary position. Rather than wait for it to end, I was hunting for a new job four months before I needed one. I updated and honed my resume, I scoured the job market in several cities, I cold-called, I networked, I applied. I sent out dozens of applications and had multiple coffee meetings, and it still only led to two interviews– a success rate of less than 5%. Oh, and I didn’t get either of those jobs. I was unemployed for the next four months.
Eventually I got an interview at CBC… and did not get the job. The rejection continued. But then I got a call saying that I had performed well enough that I was offered some casual work to fill in when other employees were away. And we went from there.
Yes, I applied for the right job and the right time, but not before applying for the wrong job at the wrong time (and the right job at the wrong time- I didn’t get an interview at CBC the first time I applied) far, far more. I was looking for opportunities… and only eventually found one.
And even then, it’s not entirely true to say my luck had begun. I had no training in radio, so I spent spare time teaching myself new skills and finding, listening to and analyzing award-winning radio so that I could have a better sense of where I could go next. When my job was to answer calls and manage the office supplies, I used spare time to learn how to book and write stories. When my job was to book stories, I used time to learn how to do investigative journalism and file for news. I started asking questions about how other jobs work, including the producer role. Eventually, this meant that when the producer was away, I had the skills to fill in. If I had just kept my head down and answered phones, I wouldn’t have gotten to that point. I showed an interest, asked questions, and learned, a process I’m still involved in.
Another part of Wiseman’s research that intrigues me: how lucky and unlucky people view their own lives.
Here’s an unlucky person:
“We had a subject named Carolyn. When she would come to the unit to be interviewed, it would be just this whole string of bad-luck stories: “I can’t find anyone. I’m unlucky in love. When I did find someone, the guy fell off his motorbike. The next blind date broke his nose. We were supposed to get married, and the church burned down.” But to every single interview, she’d bring along her two kids. They were 6 and 7 years old — very healthy, very happy kids who’d sit there and play. And it was interesting, because most people would love to have two kids like that, but that wasn’t part of her world, because she was unlucky in her mind.”
“Lucky people tend to see the positive side of their ill fortune. They imagine how things could have been worse. In one interview, a lucky volunteer arrived with his leg in a plaster cast and described how he had fallen down a flight of stairs. I asked him whether he still felt lucky and he cheerfully explained that he felt luckier than before. As he pointed out, he could have broken his neck.”
Again… there are a number of major factors in my life that I absolutely attribute to luck. I did nothing to earn my parents, where I was born, or my genetics. I live in a country where you can be unemployed for months and be taken care of, and my support network helped me. I don’t subscribe to the view that anyone and everyone with problems in their life just needs to work harder and be better to fix them.
But if I attribute everything I have to luck it gets me nowere. I can’t believe that I’m completely subject to the fates and nothing I do can affect where I am.
Even when I was four months unemployed, I don’t remember thinking to myself about how unlucky I was. I just kept looking. And it’s worth mentioning that the first time I applied for a full-time job at CBC (while working there), I didn’t get it. And that a couple years ago I applied for a host position, and didn’t even get the interview. Still didn’t consider myself unlucky, just tried to get better so I would have better “luck” next time.
And eventually, I did.
Image: “clovers” by groovysui
Further Reading:
A while back I posted about my last day as a host of CBC Daybreak North. That post came a little early because, as it turned out, I was back on the air the next week and stayed there until early last month.
At the time I wrote that the next steps for me were back to my original role as an associate producer, helping put together the show. But that didn’t last long.
I’m happy to say that for the next nine months I will be the producer of Daybreak North, the most-listened to morning radio show in northern British Columbia.
This is an interesting step for me. When I started as a part-time fill-in researcher four-and-a-half years ago, my goal was to get a job. When I got that, I thought that maybe a decade or so down the line I might make it up to producer. So to be stepping into that role now is, well, humbling.
A few things. First, this isn’t permanent. The regular producer is great at his job and the only reason I’m doing it now is because he’s taking some time off to spend with his family (for real, this isn’t one of those haha-there’s-really-a-secret-plan-here-we’re-just-not-saying lines, he’s legitimately spending time with family. This has been planned for years). So I should only be doing this job until next spring.
Second, I’m still super nervous about this. I’ve done the producer job before, but only a few days or maybe weeks at a time. There was always a very nearby window when this would end. This is far longer. It’s big.
Third– HOLY COW, I’M THE PRODUCER OF A CBC RADIO SHOW. Do other people ever feel like this? Where you mostly just do your job but every once in a while realize how crazy it is that you’ve actually achieved it? I have so much respect for what CBC is and stands for. I still think of myself as more of a fan than an actual part of it that I have these moments every once in a while. This is one of them.
Fourth, my viewpoints of what a producer/manager is have definitely evolved the closer I’ve gotten to taking on this role. My uninformed outsider view is that you’re “the boss”, giving orders and shaping things to your vision of how they should be. Not true at all. Yes, the buck stops with you, but it’s not as simple as being a top-down manager. I’m working hard at having the decisions I make be based on agreed-upon values, ones given to us from CBC mandates and agreed-upon locally. This isn’t “what does Andrew want to do?” but “how can Andrew best make sure what we’re doing aligns with what we should be doing?” So now a lot of the stuff I used to think was kind of silly, copororate talk has a lot of value for me: mission statements, pillars, etc. These can easily devolve into pointless mumbo-jumbo, yes, but if you hone it down and focus I think they can be a valuable tool. So learning to use them well will be a challenge.
Finally, I’m learning how to help other people do their jobs. The last five years my role has been to get a task, do it, and find ways to do it better. Now I’m still doing that, but I also have a direct impact on the ability of other people to do their jobs. I want to be good at that. I don’t want to be an obstacle-creator, over-assigner, or micro-manager. This means a lot more paying attention to how I interact with others, and how I can do simple things like ask questions and have conversations better. It also means getting out of the way as much as possible, and getting other annoying things out of the way, as well. A lot of my job is going to be making sure technical things are working, mailing letters, and washing dishes. For more on this line of reasoning, see this piece by Sash Catanzarite called “Wash the Dishes When Nobody Else Will.”
Anyways, this isn’t a real thought out blog post, more of a status update of where I’m at professionally and how I’m feeling at this point in time. Excited, nervous, hopeful. Here goes.
One of the first questions I get asked when I meet someone new is almost always about my name. “How do you spell that?” “What nationality is that?” “Where does that come from?” So today I’d like to share the story of what the name “Kurjata” means to me.
The first thing I associate with the name “Kurjata” is my grandmother. Mary Madeline Oster was born in 1930 in St. Walburg, Saskatchewan, and later met and married my grandfather George Kurjata. He passed away when I was just one year old, so my vision of the family is a matriarchy- with “Grandma K” at the top of the family tree.
And it is quite the family tree– my grandma had fifteen children, most of whom had children, and many of those have had children, too. Over the span of my memory the number of people in my family has climbed from in the fifties, to the seventies, and ever so closer to the one hundred point as spouses, cousins, and cousins’ kids have been added to the fold.
So, not surprisingly, the second thing I associate with the name “Kurjata” is large family gatherings. Christmas, weddings, Easter: when I was really young it was out on the family farm, but most of my memories are of a large custom-built house in Dawson Creek some of my uncles made for her. It was specifically designed for entertaining: a huge kitchen overlooking a second living space so that you could easily fit a full gathering, including lots of young kids running around.
* * *
We just had another family gathering. My grandmother moved out of her large home about twelve years ago, into a smaller assisted living unit. Earlier this year it was into a care home. A week ago she passed away there, peacefully, at the age of 84.
* * *
And so we gathered, in the church I used to attend on family visits. It was smaller than I remember, but big enough to hold my extended family – 101, according to the going count.
When I was a kid I didn’t think much of these family gatherings. I knew it was a big group, but beyond that I didn’t see anything special.
Today, there’s something that impresses me more than the size: the closeness. There are smaller families who refuse to be in the same room with each other for any length of time, or who just don’t make the effort, even if there’s no particular animosity.
That my grandma and grandpa raised fifteen kids who still wanted to see each other into their adult years is a testament to the kind of people they were. You have to have a certain amount of patience… and love. As one of my cousins said while looking at everyone gathered at the funeral, there was no need to talk about my grandma’s legacy. You could see it in the room.
* * *
One more thing I think about when I think about Kurjata, and about the grandmother who bore the name: socks.
With so many people in the family, we went towards having a gift exchange system at Christmas where you would draw a name and that was the person you would get a gift for. It was a lot easier than trying to remember everyone in the family.
But inevitably, each grandkid would get a gift from grandma– and during my formative years that gift was socks and a bit of money. When you’re younger the money’s the exciting part, but today I have no memory of what I spent it on. I remember the socks, though. I also remember the hand-addressed cards I would get on my birthday, and I think about the fact that my grandma did that for fifty, sixty, seventy people as time went on. I have a hard time remembering to get birthday cards for about a dozen people in my life. But she took the time to show she cared about every one of us individually.
She made us feel loved.
That’s legacy.
Mary Madeline Kurjata
1930-2014
Bob Greenaway is retiring.
Almost every Wednesday for over 19 years, Bob has made juice, muffins and granola bars for students at Duchess Park Secondary School as part of a breakfast program aimed at making sure no students go hungry. He also runs breakfast and lunch programs at other schools throughout Prince George.
The principal of Duchess Park recently wrote Bob a letter of commendation, saying he has made a difference in the lives of generations of students by running this program. “Our students are seldom exposed to selfless generosity with ‘no strings attached,” it reads. “Undoubtedly, as a result of Bob’s example, many of them have made a conscious decision in their own lives to help others.”
Lecia Beetlestone lives in Prince George. She has always loved animals. Her husband Tony, not so much. But over the years, she’s got him to be more interested in helping them out. Right now he’s working on the road and while staying in Pemberton he found a stray, scraggly cat hanging around his motel room. A few years ago he would have never gone near the cat, but now he decided to help out. He started feeding him, and eventually got him to come for a truck ride to a shelter in Whistler, run by volunteers who give their time and money to helping animals in need.
I had never heard of Bob Greenaway, Tony Beetlestone, or the Whistler shelter before I started writing this. I found them by going onto community event announcements and Facebook groups to find out what else was going on in the world aside from what was in the news.
You’ve heard the news, right? Today it’s mostly focused on the 24-year-old who shot three RCMP officers in Moncton. It doesn’t take much digging to hear about him. I have heard interviews with friends on the radio. I have seen his image on TV. I have learned about his Facebook statuses from national publications, and that one of his former co-worker believes he wants to go “out with a bang”.
If he does go out, it will be in the style his former co-worker believes he desires. Already there has been more than 20 hours of near-continuous coverage, his image plastered on the front page of every national media site, a trending topic on Facebook and Twitter. “What is this world coming to?” reads one of the statuses in my Facebook feed.
34.87 million Canadians woke up yesterday and didn’t go on a shooting spree. One did. Guess whose name will be in the most headlines.
* * *
We (and I’m saying this as both a member of the media and a person who gets information from the media) pick and choose which stories and individuals shape our understanding of what the world is and the type of people who are in it. We pay rapturous attention to the actions of a lone gunman while Bob Greenaway, Tony Beetlestone, and the stranger who smiled at you in the grocery store are largely ignored.
Does this make sense? For the people of Moncton, I absolutely understand the up-to-the-minute coverage. This is a matter of public safety, and the reporters who are there are completely right to help the public understand what they need to do in order to best stay safe.
But why do I, here in Prince George, British Columbia, need to know every detail as it unfolds? What purpose does it serve? If I were to hop in my car right now, it would take me 58 hours to drive to Moncton. I could be halfway through Mexico before then. I have no idea what happened in Mexico today.
I’m not asking these questions because I’m absolutely certain the mass coverage of what’s happening in Moncton (or another mass shooting in Seattle that’s unfolded as I write this) shouldn’t be happening. I’m just not certain it should, either. Obviously there are people who want to follow along, but I have a sense that responsible media should strive to go beyond just chasing eyeballs. I believe there’s more to our job than that, and it involves weighing questions of ethics and responsibility and representation and so many other considerations beyond “will people click on this?”
We cannot offer a perfect summary of the world as it stands. The world is a messy, complicated place with so much happening at any given moment that it’s impossible to contemplate. And so we, as media, filter. We look around and we choose to present a few people and events out of near-infinite possibilities, and we call that the news.
It seems almost inevetiable that the tragedies and the horror stories will get more coverage than the mundane, everyday kindnesses of people just doing their best. But it is important to remember that the tragedies and horror stories are just one part of what the world is coming to, a part that has been filtered through hundreds of other stories that might have been chosen, as well. It’s important to remember that there are bad things in the world, but there are good ones, too, and the volunteers and animal-lovers and people smiling at you at the grocery store are just as representative of humanity as anyone else. Even if they never make headline news.
Before
After
The long weekend is (nearly) here. Last weekend we got a start on prepping our yard for the summer, which included an hour plus of cleaning up after those two dogs in the picture up there. It also involved repairing our cat jail from the weight of winter, but it was a pretty minimal task: just going around and angling it upwards again. If you’re looking for a way to keep cats in your yard, this seems to be effective.
I get why people don’t want pets wandering around, but with the right group of people it can certainly help create a bit more of bond between strangers. When I was growing up, the neighbours across the street from us had a dog who could leap over their fence in a single bound. She only did this so she could go for walks with us, and eventually she became a joint dog with both families caring for her.
More recently, my parents have had a neighbourhood cat decide it lives with them part-time. They are not sure where it comes from, but it is definitely cared for- it just apparently likes to come over in the morning and get some extra pets. Eventually they’ll find out where it lives, and that will be how the ice is broken between them.
There are so many people I only know in the context of the dogs I see them walking in local parks, to the point that if we see each other say, grocery shopping, we identify each other by our dogs names. But it turns out these low-level bonds are an important part of creating happy cities.
Who says? Charles Montgomery, the author of Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design. I heard him on this episode of Tapestry a few weeks ago, and immediately put his book on my reading list.
At one point in the interview, he talks about what happened to him when he started walking around more and bumping into neighbours:
“Not having deep conversations, just ‘hello, how are you?’ It turns out these superficial conversations are really good for well-being. They’re much easier than the conversations we have with fellow employees and family sometimes.”
He goes much deeper into this concept in the book, but anecdotally I’ve definitely found it to be true. Stopping for a chat with someone while I bike, having brief conversations with the panhandlers near where I work, and knowing my neighbours in the contexts of their dogs have all added to a sense of connection and belonging in the spaces I spend my time.
Just over a year ago, I sat down in the host’s chair for the CBC Radio program Daybreak North. I’d already been working on the show in various roles since 2010, and more recently had filled in as host a couple of times when someone was away. So when there was an opening, I was asked to step in for a longer duration. Now that duration is coming to an end, and tomorrow is my last day as host.
This isn’t an unexpected change. In fact, the unexpected part is that I’ve been doing this so long. Initially, I was only going to be filling in for a few weeks. That few weeks turned into a few months and, ultimately, thirteen of them, almost to the day. It’s a bit of a complicated shuffle: we have a two-host show, with one person in Prince George and one in Prince Rupert, and there have been multiple bits of leave throughout. Suffice it to say my time on-air was always limited and has far exceeded my initial expectations.
Some people move into radio with the goal of getting on air. That was never me. I enjoyed (and enjoy) researching stories, finding leads, and putting together produced segments. I didn’t think I would have much fun coming in and reading scripts other people wrote, all while having half my work day taken up conducting interviews and reading weather.
But it’s an undeniably fun job and I’ve enjoyed the challenge of growing into the role. Doing an interview-based morning drive-time program, you have to be aware of many things at once: how much time is left? What’s happening on the roads? Do I sound relaxed? What question am I going to ask this guest next? Is it interesting to the listener? At the same time you’re thinking about your cadence, queuing up musical stings, communicating with the rest of your team, and a half-dozen other tasks. All while trying to sound spontaneous and effortless.
There is also a certain amount of celebrity that comes with being the voice on the airwaves. I’m not super in to being recognized, but it is gratifying when someone knows who you are and likes what you do. For better or worse, the person on air gets most of the credit for what gets heard. The fact that I am, even on a small scale, a “CBC personality” is something I still can’t quite wrap my head around.
That being said, there are things I don’t like. The hours, for one. Getting up before 4 in the morning is not something I’ve gotten used to even after this long. I never really settled into a rhythm and have consistently oscillated between napping, going to bed early and, more often than I’d like, simply functioning on five hours of sleep or less. This lack of sleep spills over into my eating habits, my exercise schedule, and my overall ability to be “with it” for the rest of the day. As the days get longer I’m already finding myself unable to get more than a few hours of sleep at night, and I can’t say I’m sorry to move back to working the day shift.
There are also things about being behind the scenes that I miss. There are dozens of ideas for stories I have that require more investigation than I have time for while hosting. I also have various bits of raw audio that I haven’t had time to flesh out into fully produced pieces. I look forward to being able to delve into these projects more.
I was asked recently whether I found it more rewarding to put together a well-timed, beautifully produced piece of radio or if I got more satisfaction out of improvising something live on-the-air. There is definitely a satisfaction that comes with being able to pull off something live- executing a challenging interview or chasing down a breaking news story- but in my heart of hearts I’m proudest of the work that took time for me to create. Maybe it’s just because I spend more time with them, but looking back over the past year I remember the segments that I edited and crafted far better than any of the live interviews I conducted, and I think of them more fondly. In part it’s because you’re only ever half of an interview- you’re dependent on the guest to bring something to the table- but in a produced piece you have the final say. If an interview is good, it’s part you and part the guest, but if a produced piece works it’s all about the choices you made. Or at least that’s how I feel.
The one thing I will miss about being on-air that can’t be replicated off mic is the relationship I have with the listener. As a radio fan, I’ve long known that audiences can develop a relationship with the hosts of their favourite programs, feeling like they actually know them. What I didn’t know is that this is a two-way street. Over the past year, I’ve gotten to know the people who listen to this show, and it really does feel like I’m saying goodbye to a group of friends. Through emails, phone calls, and office visits I’ve gotten to know the truckers, students, ship captains, construction workers, city councillors, musicians, bankers, lawyers, street cleaners, retirees and families who tune in every morning. I have family and friends throughout the province who know bits and pieces about what’s happening in my life simply because of a remark I made on-air. I’ve learned all sorts of things from grammar tips to weather patterns to hidden swimming holes thanks to people who would be total strangers if it weren’t for my time on-air. Ultimately, I work for a show that focuses on things I’m interested in, and so connecting with this audience is connecting with people who share many of the same passions. I’ve been connecting with my tribe for the two-and-half hours I’m on air every weekday morning, and I will genuinely miss that.
So what’s next? Well, back to where I was supposed to be all along. I am still in Prince George, still with CBC, and still working on Daybreak North. I will once again be an associate producer, tracking down stories, researching topics, and crafting the most compelling bits of radio I can. I hope you’ll tune in.
Note: this change happening at the same time as the equivalent of 657 positions are cut at CBC is entirely coincidental. I’ve known my time as a host was coming to an end for a long time, the news of today is completely unrelated. As for the future of both my job and CBC in northern B.C., I will direct you to these quotes from CBC management: “CBC/Radio-Canada will maintain its presence and news-gathering capabilities in the regions”, and “We will retain our presence where we are now.” For more information, see here and here.
Death, apparently, gets easier.
Which isn’t to say it’s easy. It never is. Tears have been shed today. Full-body sadness. But even as it’s happening you recognize that this is one of the stages you go through towards getting better.
I’m probably writing in the third person to distance myself from the events. Let me be clear: this is my experience. I don’t pretend to speak for anyone else. But I imagine I’ll lapse into the universal rather than the personal tense again before this post is over.
Today, for the sixth time in five years, I’ve said goodbye to a pet. Nine times if you count those I bonded with who lived with other family members. I know that sounds like a high number, but it’s a combination of family pets from childhood getting old and the emotional toll that comes with rescuing abandoned animals, some of whom were abused, some who were on their last legs when previous owners gave up on them. We’re not a hospice, but we are definitely not having these guys come into our lives at a young age and in tip-top shape.
Look, I know: people lose worse. People lose family members. I’ve lost family members, though, blessedly, not immediate ones. Grief isn’t a zero sum game. There’s enough of it to go around.
Gus the ferret came to us five years ago. He came from a loving home, but his owner got a job long-haul trucking and couldn’t keep him or his sister. So they came to live with us. This was the first time I had ferrets. There’s a lot to learn.
We lived by the ocean at the time. Gus enjoyed going for walks out there. One time, he decided he would try to go for a swim, so we had to run out into the water after him. Another time he decided to go poking around the place we were renting and wedged himself between a lead pipe and 100 years worth of new walls, built layer upon layer of each other. It took a combination of power tools and olive oil, plus a full day’s work to get him out of that one. He was a lucky guy.
Some ferrets have trust issues. They don’t know how to play, and their reaction to people is to bite them and/or hide. Not Gus. He was basically the definition of happy-go-lucky. And he was tough, so that if some other animal decided to try and pick a fight, he could shut that down pretty quickly.
Not that he was ever aggressive. Just that he could stand up for himself. Which meant that when we would get a ferret with an attitude problem, Gus was our helper in rehabilitating them. He was friendly and playful and didn’t freak out if attacked- he would shut it down, then start playing again. If there was a ferret that was scared of everyone else, they would go with Gus and he would gain their trust. He was also our go-to for classroom demonstrations or information days– people who didn’t like ferrets for all the usual reasons people don’t like ferrets would like him. And he liked everyone else. Even our cats, who are the “don’t touch me” variety most of the time, found him tolerable.
Last summer, we found out Gus had cancer. Cancer in a ferret is pretty much untreatable because of how small they are. It’s definitely a case of the treatment not necessarily being better than the disease.
We didn’t know how long he would last. He made it through the rest of the summer, then through Christmas. We thought he was on his last legs after that, but he rallied and kept on going. We had two “we don’t trust anyone” ferrets come in, and he helped turn them into affectionate adoptable pets. He just kept going.
Then he didn’t keep going. He lost his ability to walk, and stand, and most of his appetite. His breathing was laboured. He couldn’t sleep properly.
The hardest part about it was his spirit was still strong. You could see he wanted to walk around and explore, but physically couldn’t. We even had an appointment for him to be taken away peacefully, and then he rallied again. But just a little. Just for that day.
The decision to say goodbye is a tough one. Rationally, you know it’s time, but emotionally you’re holding out hope for a miracle. You do battle with yourself over what’s best for the pet, second-guess if you’re taking the easy way out, even though you don’t know whether it’d be easier to choose euthanasia or watch them slowly get weaker and weaker and weaker until they die a more painful death that you didn’t make an appointment for. Every time they raise their head on the drive to the vet you question if you’re doing the right thing, and every time they wheeze because they can’t breathe properly you wonder how long you’ve been making them suffer.
The decision to have a pet in your life is a decision to feel pain one day. Every time this happens I look at my other animals and think “I’m going to have to go through this again, soon.” And then you think of friends and family and loved ones and realize it’s going to get even worse.
And yet we keep letting people and pets and children and causes into our lives. We get married to people we can’t imagine life without, even though every love story ends with a loss. It’s inevitable. The only people who don’t lose their parents are the ones whose parents lose their children. Someone’s going to be the last in their circle of friends to keep on living.
All around us people have lost. Car crashes and miscarriages and escapes from war-torn countries and murders and suicides and, in the best case scenario, gone peacefully in the night. When you’re in the immediate aftermath of a loss, or at least when I am, the mere fact that the world continues to function despite all this sadness seems not only miraculous, but downright impossible.
But I’ve been down this road before. I know it heals. I already feel better than I did an hour ago, and by tomorrow I’ll probably be pretty close to normal. It’s quicker now, probably because I’m so practiced at it. I wonder if that’s the case for other people. I know many who have lost more than me.
I’m writing now, and without a filter, because having been here before I know that as it heals, you forget. You forget how precious it all is, how when you were saying goodbye you wished you had done more before, before you knew just how limited time was. But if you’re always sitting there remembering how limited time is, how do you function? How do you move on with the day thinking every moment you spend with someone could be the last? It’s all too crushing. So we put it off. We don’t say the things we want to say. We surf the internet and watch TV instead of picking up a phone and asking how your day was or taking a moment to remember how lucky we all are to be here. How lucky we are to have each other in our lives.
We don’t think about it because this isn’t the last time. Not this one.
We’ll see you again.
Right?
I’m doing the newsletter now. I like it.
So a week ago the Prince George musician Jamie Bell posted this message on Facebook:
“After years of getting tweets directed at the actor Jamie Bell, it looks like I might finally have a way out! (I’ve got @jamiebell, he’s got @1jamiebell)”
Along with it was a screenshot of the actor Jamie Bell (star of Billy Elliot and the upcoming Fantastic Four, among other things) asking:
“Ok, how much do you want for it?”
I thought this might make for a fun interview on Daybreak North, and Jamie was game, so on Friday morning and we had a fun little discussion about it.
I thought that would be it. But to quote ViralNova, what happened next blew my mind…
The interview went international on CBC’s As It Happens. It went up on cbc.ca. It went up on the Huffington Post. Basically, it went viral.
https://andrewkurjata.ca/wp-content/uploads/@jamiebell-on-as-it-happens.mp3
Meanwhile, the man who really started this all- @1jamiebell- is just acting like it never happened.
And @jamiebell_ is floating along pretty obliviously, too.
This is proof that you can never predict what will go viral. In all honestly, I wasn’t sure it would get picked up for Daybreak. It was my third pitch, and it was basically “This MIGHT be something….?”
I guess it was.
Fortunately, Jamie Bell the musician is taking it in stride. Hopefully all this attention gets more attention for his music, of which I am a big fan. He just released this teaser for an album from the Cutest Band Ever.
By the way, I just launched a newsletter. The next edition will have some more updates about Jamie Bell the musician, as well as other northern B.C. music news and some other things. If you’re interested, enter your email address below:
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August 26 2014 | ∞
The desire to sell used video games after 8 pm may be the best thing to happen to local democracyOh, it warms my heart to see it.
The Prince George city council meeting was full- full!- last night. This does not happen often. And why was it full? Not because of some controversial neighbourhood development or group lobbying for more funding.
It was full because people want to be able to sell used video games after 8 pm.
More context: a newcomer to Prince George’s downtown business scene is GameQuest, a shop specializing in retro video games and systems. It’s a cool place: arcade machines line one wall, and tournaments in things like Street Fighter and Smash Bros. are a regular after-hours occurence. It’s a community as much as a store.
But there’s a hitch. The owner of the store, Kelsey Polnick, was informed that because he buys and sells used goods his store falls under city bylaws targeting pawn shops.
City bylaws. Blech. Boring.
But as those of us who sadly and solitarily read through city council agendas know, bylaws affect the way we live our lives. They are the rules created by our local governments in an attempt to nudge the development of our cities and neighbourhoods in one direction or another.
So yes, bylaws affect your ability to buy and sell that vintage edition of Super Marios Bros 2.
You can read the details here and here, but essentially there are rules in place aimed at targeting illegally acquired goods from being sold in pawn shops that include a holding period of 30 days and no sales after 8 pm. At some point, the city saw a problem and created bylaws to try and fix it.
I’m going to take a guess that most of those hundred plus people who showed up at council last night hadn’t heard of this bylaw before Polnick discovered and started a petition to try and get it changed. And I know for a fact that most of them don’t regularly show up to city council meetings.
But whether they knew it or not, those bylaws were in place, affecting their lives! And your life!
And so they showed up, and Polnick presented to city council, and council voted unanimously to look into changing the rules. Democracy in action! That’s the awesome thing about local government- get a hundred or so people together and you will definitely be noticed by the people making the rules. Heck, I’ve seen delegations of like two people make a change. You’re not guaranteed to get your way, but it’s a heck of a lot easier than provincial or federal politics. There are much fewer layers.
And look, I don’t expect these guys and gals to show up at every single city council meeting from here on in. But here’s what I hope: I hope that this is a small example of why local government matters. Bylaws can be boring but they have real consequences. They tell us what we can build where, how many parks we have per thousand square feet, and whether we can buy and sell used video games after 8 pm.
So even if you don’t want to sit through every single council meeting and read every single bylaw change proposal… pay attention to the people who do. This November we are going to be electing a new mayor and council and the decisions they make will affect your life. You may not always notice it, but trust me, those rules are there, shaping the way the city develops.
Only 28.8% of Prince George’s population voted in 2011. Voting day is November 15. Let’s see if we level up.
Filed under: Prince George | Comments Off on Super Municipal Election Race 2014: The Quest For City Hall