There’s something about being away from home that makes me yearn for the CBC. (Yes, by “home” I mean “Canada.”) I’m grateful to live in a time that allows for podcasts and streaming videos: it helps me feel connected.
It also has an interesting side effect that, to be honest, I just don’t remember from the days when the only station my radio would play was CBC Radio One. Perhaps it’s that, when the radio played I cycled through the daily programmatic offerings, taking both the rises and falls in emotion, music, banter. Perhaps listening via podcast just doesn’t lend itself to the same emotional separation. Or perhaps it’s that I constantly find myself behind in my listening, scrambling to catch up, and listening to several days’/weeks’ episodes from the same program in a row. Whatever the reason, the result is almost always the same. I start to tear up. Sometimes it’s easier to go unnoticed than others (I’m fairly certain the two young women sitting across from me on the 1 train thought I was in great distress; there was that couple on Metro-North who noticed me sniffling, trying to stealthily wipe away a tear, and looked too uncomfortable by my display to resume their own display of, uh, animalistic attraction.)
I find that a biographical snippet submitted to OutFront, even a well penned letter from a fan read aloud by Stuart McLean, can elicit from me the same raw reaction. It’s comforting and comfortable to react to these strangers’ lives as they reach out to the CBC in their own ways while I reach out to the CBC in mine.
Filed under: canada
