The issue of Canada’s all-time favourite TV shows has risen again thanks to Canadian History EHx, a podcast from Craig Baird. Mr. Baird, a Canadian history enthusiast living on Treaty 6 land, has over 53,000 followers on Twitter. He set up a playoff format where shows went head-to-head over a number of weeks. There were
If you grew up watching such iconic Canadian children’s TV shows as The Friendly Giant, Mr. Dressup, or Passe-Partout, you have until the end of this week to visit with some fondly-remembered friends. On Friday, September 1, the Canadian Museum of History in Ottawa is set to close down “From Pepinot to Paw Patrol,” their
Together with my son Dan, I finally had a chance to visit “Mr. Dressup to Degrassi: 42 Years of Legendary Toronto Kids TV.” The colourful, multi-media exhibit is scheduled to run through mid-August at Myseum of Toronto at 401 Richmond Street West (eastern entrance). This is a great place for kids of all ages to
Rod Coneybeare, the puppeteer and CBC radio host who brought Rusty the Rooster and Jerome the giraffe so vividly to life over 24 season of The Friendly Giant, has gone to the big castle in the sky. He passed away last Thursday in Lindsay, Ontario. He was 89. The CBC children’s classic, which ran weekday
My partner Sandra Puglielli is possibly the coolest person I know. Her TV knowledge is deep, and sometimes scary. In part two of an on-going series, these are her picks for greatest TV themes of all time: The Rockford Files: “My ringtone forever. The buzzy synthesizer and breakout bass were ahead of their time on
Podcaster Mike Boon, a.k.a. “Toronto Mike,” invited me back on his show Monday to “kick out the jams.” Mike, a fellow Michael Power grad, who, as he liked to point out, graduated from that high school many years after I did, invites all manner of media types over to his basement studio and quizzes us
If you follow @CBC_archives on Twitter, you may have noticed a post Wednesday about a “Giant” milestone in Canadian television: Bob Homme was born 100 years ago this month. Homme, for those too young to remember, was for a quarter of a century The Friendly Giant. His simple, 15 minute series aired mid-mornings from the
Monday was the 45th anniversary of the launch of Sesame Street. It was produced by the Children’s Television Workshop and funded by the U.S. Office of Education, the Ford Foundation and the Canarnegie Corporation. I was already too old to be interested in Sesame Street when it came out. I grew up on wildly diverse