Author Archives: Brian Brennan

Rutherford shuts off his microphone

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Dave Rutherford

Dave Rutherford

Dave Rutherford, the king of Calgary talk radio, will quit his long-running show when his contract expires in July 2013. The 64-year-old broadcaster had been thinking about this for some time. His decision became final when the station, AM 770 CHQR, said it was looking for chatty on-air talent to provide “smart, stimulating and respectful conversation on a diverse range of topics.”

“I think the broadcast news industry, for lack of a better term, is dumbing down,” Rutherford told the Calgary Herald. “I don’t think there’s the desire to ask the next question, maybe to ask any questions.”

So what else is new? Rutherford knows better than anyone that, for the longest time, commercial morning radio in Calgary was about pandering to the lowest common denominator of public taste and intelligence. That was before he became the self-styled godfather of redneck broadcasting in the early 1990s.

Listeners didn’t want lumpy cereal for breakfast when Rutherford first hit the Calgary airwaves. They wanted instant junk food, pre-cooked and easy to swallow. Morning radio had to be banal. It couldn’t be otherwise. The alternative to banal was nobody’s listening.

In 1990, Rutherford was co-host of a top-rated breakfast program on QR77 that dispensed a lightweight combination of elevator music and vacuous commentary on stories ripped from the tabloid headlines. He characterized the format as “somewhat informational, somewhat humorous and warm, like a morning chat over coffee.” While sober CBC Radio gave its listeners tax tips and investment advice, Rutherford and his jolly sidekick, Jim Jeffries, talked about beauty pageants and pumpkin-growing contests. “Everyday information,” Rutherford called it. “Some of it entertainment, some of it trivia. You have to shake off some of the ivory-tower aspects of journalism when you do this kind of programming.”

Within two years, however, Rutherford had decided to trade triviality for substance. In February 1992, QR77 switched to an all-news format with a sharp focus on politics and current affairs. CFCN television news anchor Darrel Janz first accepted and then rejected a job hosting the QR morning show. Rutherford put away his beauty queen jokes and moved into the slot offered to Janz. Initially, he was paired with former CBC Radio announcer Sharon Edwards. But that combination didn’t work and Edwards was gone by July 1992. Rutherford was left to fly solo and The Rutherford Show was born.

At its height, the show was heard across Western Canada and simulcast on television. Rutherford became widely known for his rightwing views on topics such as welfare, justice reform and pay equity, and his ability to roast politicians and business leaders in the hot seat. His followers were proud to identify themselves as rednecks. When Rutherford asked them to define what they meant by redneck, one replied: “A politically incorrect Westerner stumbling around in the wilderness after being robbed by the people in the East.”

Now, it appears, the station that provided a pulpit for Rutherford’s right-wing rants over the past 21 years wants to return to something resembling the happy-talk format that worked successfully for it in the 1980s. No more depressing talk about carbon taxes, “radical environmentalists” and what the station calls “an undying commitment to keep listeners up to date on the latest crime stats.” Instead, opportunity knocks for a radio host in tune with the zeitgeist of the times; someone who can identify with those diverse segments of the population who voted for Naheed Nenshi.

If AM 770 wants to grow its audience in the future, it has to change direction and look beyond the rednecks who want tougher penalties for violent criminals, fewer immigrants allowed into Canada, and a radical reduction in welfare spending. It cannot do otherwise. The alternative to change is nobody’s listening.

Kelly Jay cleans house

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2013-04-11 13.36.19

Crowbar

I’d known for some time that Kelly Jay was a bit of a pack rat. He told me about his collecting passion back in September 1989, when I interviewed him for a magazine story about his experiences as a rock ‘n’ roll musician during the 1970s. But I didn’t realize his passion had become an obsession until I watched him the other night on an American reality TV show, Hoarding: Buried Alive. What had started out as a hobby, as a personal exercise in musical heritage preservation, had progressed to the point where Kelly clearly needed help.

In 1989, the 47-year-old semi-retired rocker was living in Canmore, operating a three-table eatery that he grandly named the Hilton Café. He welcomed the opportunity to talk about his years with Crowbar. In its day, this Hamilton-based group had been the hottest, the fastest, the wickedest, the tightest, the baddest rock ‘n’ roll band in the whole world. Not just in Canada – in the entire universe. Everybody said so. Rolling Stone magazine, Creem, Fusion, the Toronto Star – everybody. “The best bet for international stardom of a lasting nature since the Guess Who,” gushed a Star writer, Earl McRae. “Mama, get your dancing shoes on,” urged Creem. “Then steady yourself for the jivingest rock ‘n’ boogie band in the land.”

The reason for all this adulation was a song, Oh What a Feeling, Oh What a Rush, that Kelly and fellow Crowbar member Roly Greenway had written in 1969 to celebrate the birth of Kelly’s daughter, Tiffany Rain Fordham. (Kelly’s real name is Henry Fordham. His stage name had its genesis in something that happened to him in high school. His pals nicknamed him Machine Gun Kelly because of his red beard and formidable build.)

Oh What a Feeling was the hit single that launched Crowbar as a major force on the Canadian pop music scene. The single quickly went gold in Canada and the accompanying album, Bad Manors, was hailed by critics on both sides of the border as the best recording since the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper.

But the hoped-for breakthrough in the States never happened. The Nixon administration alleged that Oh What a Feeling contained drug lyrics, and the record was banned from the U.S. airwaves. Crowbar had to settle for concert touring in the States. For a while it was fun. The band opened for the likes of Van Morrison, Alice Cooper and Bob Dylan, and made friends with such pop luminaries as Paul McCartney and John Lennon.

But every time Crowbar went to the States there was potential for trouble. “We went to Hollywood, and ended up drunk in James Mason’s swimming pool,” Kelly told me. “We got drunk with the Rolling Stones at Sunset Recorders. We could have done a John Belushi real quick if left to our own devices.”

Kelly Jay2

Kelly Jay

So they opted for Canada, where mostly they could stay out of trouble and be a big fish in a little pond. But even here there were problems. The conservative Canadian music industry wasn’t ready for an unconventional rock band that featured strippers jumping out of giant birthday cakes and volunteers dressed in Mountie uniforms who gave away kilos of free pot to the delighted fans. How the band managed to avoid getting busted, I’ll never know.

By the early 1980s, the music and the partying had run their course. Crowbar entered into a state of suspended animation while the ever-changing cast of band members busied themselves with other musical projects. They still got together occasionally for reunion gigs but mostly moved on to other things.

Kelly moved to Alberta because the air pollution in Hamilton was affecting his breathing. “I thought, ‘I gotta get out of here if I’m going to survive.’” He filled two school buses with the souvenirs of his rock ‘n’ rolling life and hauled them out to Canmore, where he and a female friend named Janet settled in a small cabin he described as “one step up from camping.”

He showed me the collection. It included suitcases filled with autographed band pictures and newspaper clippings. The gold record Crowbar received for Oh What a Feeling. Another gold record, received from Alice Cooper, crediting Kelly with writing a couple of songs for the Billion Dollar Babies album. A black-and-white photograph of Kelly and Paul McCartney with silver crowbars – the official Crowbar insignia – around their necks. A photograph of a fur-hatted Kelly presenting Pierre Trudeau with a plaque recognizing the former prime minister’s efforts to “make it possible for Canadians to be heard in their own country.” A more recent photo, of Kelly in biker regalia, taken when he made a guest appearance on the long-running CBC TV show, The Beachcombers.

Aside from the pop music memorabilia there were artifacts of 20th century pop history. Photographs of the Rockies by Byron Harmon and Bruno Engler. Coca Cola posters from the 1940s (“the year-round answer to thirst”). The ultimate in 1950s’ kitsch: an embossed map of the North American continent with a Neilson Jersey Milk chocolate bar located where Greenland should be.

“We’re the generation who must collect the treasures of the past two generations,” Kelly said. “Because the stuff they’re making now just won’t be worth collecting in the future.” He had two Aylmer ketchup bottles from the 1930s with the labels still intact and the 15-cent price rubber-stamped on the caps. “You’ll never see another pair of bottles like that.” He also had such prized contemporary junk artifacts as a Max Headroom puppet, an R2-D2 robot arm, and a set list scribbled by John Lennon when he worked with the White Elephant band. “A good photograph of Elvis, to this day, I can’t pass up,” said Kelly. “I have to add it to the collection.”

Kelly left Canmore in the 1990s and moved into Calgary, where his growing collection of stuff eventually took over his entire house. Some of the items, stashed in suitcases and plastic bags, had a deeply personal and often tragic connection for him. They included plush toys that had belonged to his daughter Tiffany, who went missing without trace while teaching and modelling in Japan in the late 1990s. He also kept bags and bags of clothing that had belonged to his wife, Tami Jean, who died suddenly of a heart attack in their home last summer.

Some of the rock ‘n’ roll items, had they been in better shape, might have found their way into museums and archives. However, a representative for Calgary’s nascent National Music Centre, interviewed on the TLC Hoarding program, said he found nothing worth salvaging. Weather and neglect had destroyed all items of possible value.

The TV cleanup program came about, with Kelly’s reluctant co-operation, at the instigation of his daughters, Shawna and Bella. They feared for their 71-year-old father’s safety and wellbeing. EMS paramedics had been unable to get a stretcher through the clutter when Tami Jean had her fatal collapse. His daughters worried that the home had now become a fire hazard.

The TV cleanup crew worked with the daughters and some of Kelly’s friends to turn the junk-filled house into a more liveable place. They asked him to decide what should be kept, what should be trashed, and what might be donated to a worthy cause. It was clearly a difficult process for him, but he went along with it.

To help him through the process, a therapist hired by the cable channel talked to Kelly on camera about his hoarding habit. I don’t know how much good this did, or how much it will ultimately do. I tend to be deeply suspicious of TV programs that purport to find short-term solutions to long-term problems. But if having his home decluttered has made life easier for Kelly Jay, and brought solace to his family, then he and the family have taken an important step in the right direction.

Remembering Ralph Klein the reporter

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Ralph Klein circa 1975

I first met Ralph Klein in April 1974. He was a 31-year-old city hall reporter for CFCN TV in Calgary. I was a 30-year-old police reporter for the Calgary Herald.

As a newly-arrived staffer at the so-called “newspaper of record” for Southern Alberta, I was led to believe that television reporters were a lower form of journalistic life. They did little more than parrot on the six o’clock news the stories the Herald had broken earlier that day. “We have a saying about Ralph Klein,” one of my newsroom colleagues told me. “There are eight million stories in the Naked City and Ralph doesn’t have any of them.”

As it turned out, Ralph had lots of them. But they weren’t necessarily the kinds of stories Herald reporters were encouraged to pursue. We interviewed business leaders, sports heroes and politicians. Because of the unashamedly pro-establishment bias of our editorial bosses, we referred to ourselves, ironically, as the “fearless champions of the overdog.” Klein talked to bikers and hookers, and saw himself as a voice for the dispossessed. He offered the view from the street, focussing on those marginalized by society. In the process, he abandoned all semblance of journalistic objectivity.
He told me this after he’d been mayor for eight years. He said he eventually had to get out of television news because he reached a point where he wasn’t reporting fairly. “It bothered me when I realized I was writing one-sided stories instead of getting all the facts.”
Case in point was a year-long crusade he had waged, starting in 1978, against a grandiose city council plan to spend $234 million on a civic centre complex to house an ever-expanding city hall administration. Klein never tried to hide his feeling that this monument to civic bureaucracy would be a colossal waste of taxpayers’ dollars. “I really couldn’t present a balanced report because I thought everything that was happening was so wrong.”
Calgary voters who shared Klein’s concerns about the exorbitant cost of the civic centre rejected the proposed expenditure in a 1979 plebiscite. When the mayor of the day, Ross Alger, announced he would try to get the project approved when he ran for re-election the following year, Klein saw red. He decided to do something about it and run for mayor himself. “Nobody suggested I do this. Everyone thought I was absolutely crazy.”
But Klein didn’t think he was crazy. He felt Alger had lost touch with the voters, and that a television reporter who knew the inner workings of city hall could be a viable alternative. With a 27-year-old political science student named Rod Love orchestrating his campaign, Klein ran on a platform of keeping the lines of communication open at city hall. He soundly defeated the incumbent by more than 15,000 votes.
I never thought he was going to win. Neither did my Herald colleagues. We thought that if Alger lost, it would be to an opportunistic former alderman named Peter Petrasuk, not to a 37-year-old reporter named Ralph Klein. So in a spirit of journalistic solidarity we gave Ralph our sympathy vote. But in the end he hardly needed it. His support came from not from the suits who frequented the Petroleum Club and occupied the Stampede boxes but from the ordinary folks who went to the beer parlours and the curling bonspiels. In his first speech to the Chamber of Commerce Club after his victory, Klein quipped: “I’d like to thank all the people who voted for me in the recent civic election. I understand they’re all working in the kitchen.”
After having asked the tough questions as a reporter for 11 years, Klein was more than ready to mix it up with other reporters when he found himself on the opposite side of the microphones. When a CFCN newsman, Murray Cunningham, criticized the mayor’s office for refusing to act on a sexual harassment complaint from a Handi-Bus passenger, Klein – in the presence of other journalists, with cameras and tapes rolling – accused Cunningham of “torquing” the story, i.e. giving it a harder edge for the sake of urgency. Replied Cunningham, “Well, you should know about torquing. You did enough of it in your time.” Retorted Klein, “That’s how I can tell when a story is being torqued. I’ve been in the media long enough to know all the tricks.”
Afterwards Klein conceded that had he been in Cunningham’s shoes, he likely would have played the story the same way. “But maybe being mayor has taught me a little bit more about getting both sides of the story.”
There was nobody on stage to talk about Ralph’s journalistic achievements during his memorial this past Friday. All the eulogies were given by politicians, present and former, who talked about his political contributions and drinking escapades. That left a big part of his story untold. Ralph was a reporter before he was a politician. Though he often wore his heart on his sleeve, he did so because he cared. Even if he only told one side of the story, he could never be accused of having willfully distorted the truth for the sake of being sensational. He carried that reporter’s passion for truth telling through 26 years of often turbulent political life to the end of his days.

The once and future Calgary Public Library

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The Calgary Herald, in three separate articles this past week, has come up with a stunning revelation: The city’s new central library will be “more of a community centre than a book depository.” One of the paper’s bloggers, David Marsden, is even moved to suggest, “please, call it a community centre, not a library.”

Well, folks, I have news for you. The Calgary Public Library has always been a community centre. It has never been just a repository for books. The first librarian, Alexander Calhoun, called it “a real civic and social centre.” With an art gallery in one room, a natural history museum in another, and a suite of other rooms set aside for meetings and discussion groups, the Calgary library of 1912 was a buzzing hive of social, educational and intellectual activity.

Full disclosure here. I don’t work for the library, but I was hired to write the centennial history of the institution. That’s how I learned what a vast array of services and programs the library has always offered for the edification and entertainment of Calgarians.

Before the advent of television, Calgarians went to the library to watch movies, for free. Before the arrival of Saturday morning cartoons, children went to the library for storytelling sessions. Before record players became common in city households, Calgarians went to the library to listen to recitals of recorded music.

When people could afford record players but had limited funds to buy records, they went to the library to borrow albums. They now do the same with CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs. When immigrants wanted to practise their English, they went to the library to converse with other immigrants. They still do. When people had no access to personal computers, they went to the library to check their email. They still do. Just stand outside the central library on any weekday morning, half an hour before opening. You’ll see dozens of people waiting there to get in and use the computers.

Want to know how to give an effective toast to the bride? The library has a program for you. Want to know how to best prepare for retirement? How to do your own bicycle maintenance? How to get started on your family tree? How to achieve a better understanding of teen issues? The library has programs for all these and more.

You’re doing a research paper. Do you need access to databases you can’t connect to with your home computer? Do you want to find out what other databases are out there that might be of assistance? The library has a team of highly qualified reference librarians on hand to help you.  All you have to do is ask.

The Herald says there will be less emphasis on books than in the past. This needs explaining, because it is somewhat misleading. The library has always been a creature of time and circumstances. While remaining true to its beginnings – as a memory bank of human thought and action, and as a centre for the pursuit of truth and ideas – it has grown and evolved to adapt to a changing environment. If “digital first” becomes the mantra for tomorrow’s book publishing industry, as it already has for the newspaper and magazine industries, then the library will be there to ensure its customers have online access. It doesn’t exist as a hidebound literary alternative, hermetically sealed within a changing society. Having said that, there will still be plenty of books. This public library will continue to be one of the great knowledge institutions of North America.

The Herald is currently conducting a poll on the merits or otherwise of having a new central library. I don’t have to tell you which way I voted. Aritha van Herk put it well when she described the library as a “bright light centering this city.” It was, is, and always will be “home to Calgary’s book lovers and word purveyors, endless community services, and a tent full of information.”

The Calgary 1988 Olympics – 25 years on

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It began not with a hockey game, a figure-skating contest or a ski-jumping competition. The Calgary 1988 Olympics began with the biggest festival of music, theatre, dance, visual and literary arts ever staged in conjunction with a Winter Games. It was also, as you would expect, the biggest cultural bash in Calgary history. We will never see the like again.

It cost $10 million to produce. It ran for five weeks, before and during the Games. More than 3,000 artists took part. I didn’t get to see all of them, but caught enough to be spoiled for the rest of my life. When the last curtain call was taken, I happily retired from arts criticism. Everything in the future was bound to pale by comparison.

The preparations had started more than two years beforehand. Even at that early juncture, it was already too late to try booking the likes of Pavarotti or Baryshnikov. Such heavyweight performers kept their datebooks full for at least three years at a time.

Then there were the disappointments. Placido Domingo looked like a definite possibility for a while, but couldn’t get released from his Metropolitan Opera commitments. West Germany’s famed Pina Bausch dance company sent regrets after landing a movie deal. The Stratford Festival pulled out citing a scheduling conflict. A rock concert featuring Neil Young had to be cancelled when only 3,000 of 15,000 available Saddledome tickets sold.

But there were compensations. Instead of Pina Bausch, we got Peter Brook’s riveting La Tragédie de Carmen. Instead of Stratford, we got a stylish performance of the Shaw Festival’s You Never Can Tell. And we enjoyed Calgary’s first literary festival; an event so successful it sowed the seeds for WordFest. More than 400 attended a sold-out Glenbow Theatre reading by W.O. Mitchell, Marie-Claire Blais, Robert Kroetsch and J.P. Donleavy; then an unprecedented turnout for a literary event in Calgary. Rudy Wiebe, Pierre Berton and June Callwood were some of the other Canadian literary lights who attended.

After the five-day Olympic Writers’ Festival, the first to be held anywhere in 40 years, there was talk of a “draft Trevor Carolan” movement to sustain the momentum. Carolan was the Vancouver-based leprechaun who had persuaded 60 published authors – 40 of them from Canada – to take part in the festival. He wasn’t available to organize a sequel, but an experienced Calgary arts pro named Anne Green was ready to answer the call. Eight years later, she launched WordFest with a sparkling lineup that included Margaret Atwood, Roch Carrier, Wayson Choy, Tomson Highway, Paul Quarrington and Sheri-D Wilson.

The newspapers and the airwaves are filled this week with recalled memories of Eddie the Eagle, the Jamaican bobsled team, Elizabeth Manley’s surprise silver medal, Brian Orser’s disappointing silver medal, Katarina Witt, Matti Nykanen and “La Bomba.” I remember those, of course, but I also remember the great Oscar Peterson, the first Canadian production of Porgy and Bess, the multi-talented Andre-Philippe Gagnon, the Spirit Sings, the National Ballet and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens dancing on the same stage together, the Calgary Philharmonic’s haunting “Verdi Requiem,” the Joffrey Ballet, and Robert Lepage.

And, as I look through one of my old notebooks, I recall some of the more memorable quotes:

“We didn’t want him to do “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” again.” (Arts festival boss Michael Tabbitt explaining why Brian Mulroney wasn’t asked to sing a duet with Games organizer Frank King during the Olympic Eve gala.)

“We felt like one of Liz Taylor’s husbands. We knew what was expected of us but we didn’t know whose turn it was.” (Jointly attributed to Games co-organizers Frank King and Bill Pratt.)

“The biggest media event since Ronald Reagan’s polyp removal.” (The Royal Canadian Air Farce’s Don Ferguson.)

“Edmonton didn’t think of it first.” (The Royal Canadian Air Farce’s Roger Abbott explaining why Calgary got the XV Winter Olympics.)

“Edmonton isn’t really the end of the world – although you can see it from there.” (Mayor Ralph Klein spreading a little neighbourly goodwill for the benefit of Olympic Writers’ Festival visitors.)

“When this is over, I’ll either get a job as an NHL commentator or go to work for McDonald’s.” (Writer’s festival coordinator Trevor Carolan modelling the aquamarine blazer issued to him as part of his official Olympics uniform.)

“A Chinook could cause great havoc here.” (Competition organizer Gordon Taylor nervously checking the skies on the first day of the outdoor Olympic snow sculpting contest.)

“Canada is the cry of the loon, Gretzky worship, rye and ginger in a paper cup, vinegar on the fries, and talking gas pumps.” (Satirist Nancy White getting all patriotic at the Olympic Folk Festival.)

“Let the eastern bastards publish in the dark.” (Nancy White’s comment on OCO 88′s attempt to prevent Maclean’s magazine from putting out an unofficial Olympic issue.)

“Is 68 too old?” (A visiting pensioner from Zimbabwe wondering if he could play a walk-on role in the Joffrey Ballet’s production of Petrouchka. He got the part.)

“Science fiction is the only genre I’ve discovered which assumes there’s going to be a future.” (Author Spider Robinson explaining why he made his living out of fantasy literature.)

“It’s very hard on the knees.” (Edmonton’s John Pichlyk describing what it was like to be a Shumka Dancer.)