Today is my mom Margaret Brioux’s 100th birthday.
I love my mom, and am amazed at her longevity, but this website being about television, what’s the tie-in? Well, there have been a few, so allow me to get a bit personal this post.
Maragret Rose McCarroll Brioux pretty much pre-dates television. Even in her native Scotland, where inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated the world’s first live working television system – a mechanical spinning wheel of sorts – on January 26, 1926. That was about 14 months after mom’s birth. I’m pretty sure the McCarroll’s had nothing to do with it.
Mom and her brother Eddie and sister Mary came to Canada with their mom Peggy during the dark days of the Depression. She married my dad Ross Brioux in 1947 and their first little bundle of joy, a 17-inch Marconi, arrived in the early ’50s.
I arrived in 1957 and one of my earliest memories dates back to the early 1960s. It was the time I accompanied my mom to the then-brand new CFTO Toronto studio in Agincourt for a taping of the Canadian version of the panel show To Tell the Truth, which aired between 1962 and 1964.
Mom had enough Lucy Ricardo in her to want to be on game shows. She was not shy about wanting her 15 seconds of TV fame. Being Scottish she also dearly wanted to win prize money.
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On To Tell the Truth, the idea was to trick the judging panel into thinking you were somebody you were not. Any wrong guesses by the panel at the end of the show won you twenty-five bucks Canadian. This was a woman who would dent cans at the supermarket to save three cents. She applied through a newspaper ad and was chosen to go on the show. She had to present herself as a qualified nutritionist. Trust me, this was a stretch. Everything we ate came out of a pressure cooker, which in our house was basically an anti-nutrition machine.
I was very young, maybe five, and — probably because she couldn’t get a sitter — mom took me to the To Tell the Truth taping. I sat in the bleachers and watched, fascinated, with the rest of the studio audience. The host of the Canadian show was Don Cameron who warmed up the gathering. There was a piano on the studio floor, and seeing a little kid in the audience, he called me down to be part of his schtick. Cameron pointed out two keys, probably “C” and “F,” and played a song, nodding when it was my turn to hit them. I followed his lead, and we killed. I still haven’t gotten that bug out of my system.
The judges were Toby Tarnow (also a princess on the Canadian Howdy Doody), Robert Hall, Dorothy Cameron and Stan Helleur.
My mom, I seem to recall, was able to fool two panelists into voting for her, winning fifty bucks. I learned a valuable life lesson that day from my mom: Lying pays.
Later on, when I started working for TV Guide (where lying also paid, but not great), mom lobbied to get on a game show shot in Toronto called Guess What? The short-lived CFTO effort from the mid-’80s was hosted by Robin Ward. It featured such typically Canadian game show prizes as bathing suits, sneakers, sweat pants, a word processor and a sewing machine.
Earlier this year, when we moved to Orangeville, I finally threw out the sewing machine.
A team of three contestants was required, with two teams competing in answering trivia questions. The catch was you had to enter as a family. My mom dragged my dad, Ross, and me into it. We answered trivia questions by raising paddles marked A, B, C or D. Dad, whose hearing wasn’t great by this point, chose his paddles at random. He did way better than me and my mom did.
We wound up winning four games in a row. We missed out on the grand prize, awarded after seven victories – a trip white water rafting down the Ottawa river. Thank God we lost, mom would not have made it to 100.
My mom and her sister Mary, my aunt, always reminded me of Lucy and Ethel on I Love Lucy – ever scheming to get on TV. To me, this never needed ‘splainin.” It was an endearing trait.
Margaret was certainly the star today at Tall Pines Long Term Care in Brampton. A hugh thanks to my Sandra for completely organizing and setting up a moving and memorable family party on the Third Floor. Mom was embraced by her as well as by grandchildren Katie and Dan, Katie’s husband Mo and their little boy and Margaret’s great grandchild Yousef. The lad turns one on Boxing Day. After the party, his mom, Katie, took the “1” from my mom’s “100” ballons home with her, leaving us “00”. The force is strong with the Scottish gene.
There was plenty of cake left over for mom’s LTC pals and several of the very valued caregivers who have extended and enriched mom’s life. They pulled her through COVID, call her a princess and really made her feel like a superstar today. It was a blessing to see it all come together, 100 crazy years, for wee Margaret Rose McCarroll Brioux — and that is the truth.
