Post 2481 - A Change In Plans

I am NOT writing this from the cottage.  I remain in Halifax along with Patricia.

She hurt her back on Friday, and the pain manifested itself over night in such a way that any thought of travelling was out of the question.  She hasn't come downstairs all day long.

This afternoon, I drove to Bayers Lake, there to see seek provisions and to see if the Pat Connolly book was out.  To my great delight, it was.  I found exactly one copy of it at the Chapters store.  There are supposed to be a couple dozen copies, but they are extremely well hidden.  Here is the cover, by the way:

Pretty good looking guy, huh?  That picture was taken around 1952 when he was first starting at CJCH radio.  Danny Gallivan had just left the station, and Pat got Gallivan's old job.

I wasn't prepared to discuss it before, but I can now.  Pat, and Joel Jacobson, saw fit to give me a credit in the acknowledgements section.  There is a list of folks who provided transcripts and photographs.  My name is at the first of that list.  It's nice to see that I made at least a small impression.

I perused the book this afternoon.  Some of the material looked a bit familiar as Pat discusses how he got into radio, and how he became friends with Foster Hewitt.  The book deals much more with his sports career than I did, but there are still lots of radio anecdotes.

If he were still around and in a position to speak with me, I'd ask Pat more about his 1970's radio career, things I have found out in the years since our interview.  He had a mid-day show on CFDR for a time in the late 1970's.  It was a music program but also had lots of spoken word content.  You see, radio stations did that type of thing back then.  It wasn't just all wall-to-wall music.  There was a time when radio talk shows proliferated in Halifax.  I don't think the world ended or anything, but you wouldn't know it from the way today's PD's disavow that period.

I am looking forward to reading the book.  And I am especially grateful to Pat and Joel for choosing to acknowledge me in his book.  Thank you.

Please, everyone reading this, go out and buy this book about Pat Connolly.  If it sells well enough, then it can lead to other books about local radio broadcasters.  You just know that I would buy them.  We need books about Don Tremaine and Frank Cameron and Brian Phillips and so many others.  Get out there and buy this book!

That's it for tonight, folks.  See you tomorrow, either from Halifax or the cottage.  Not sure yet.

Bevboy