Sun sets on CBC Plaza

Vancouver CBCer Benoît Ferradini snaps this from the CBC Plaza in Vancouver, days before it’s demolished for redevelopment.

So remember kids: Monday morning and for the next year it’s the servant’s entrance on Cambie Street, morning calisthenics and wake and bake sessions are postponed, earplugs, hardhats, and dust masks must be worn at all times, and condos are sold out.

9 Comments

  • Anonymous says:

    Keatley, Keatley…I should know that name from more recent CanCon TV work…

  • Allan says:

    Anonymous seems to want to pick a fight. But before I put up me dukes, let me ask ‘ did anyone say the totem pole was found in the basement of a museum? or that removing it was an act of cultural sensitivity?’ I think it’s generous that the piece was given back to the artist and his community.
    As for watching the destruction of the CBC, what’s happening is of course similar to the sight on the east side of the TBC and doesn’t affect the minimal production going on inside the Vancouver studios.
    I’m sorry that the west coast facility has become a giant Moloch for Anonymous, but if you seek humanity and sense of place just step outside.
    But bring an umbrella, or you’ll be all wet.

  • Allan says:

    Doesn’t the CBC own shares in Sirius satellite radio?
    It’s the only one of the two services that means anything to me, and it means a lot.
    Because … two words … HOWARD STERN!
    After 30 years in broadcasting, he’s in top form for five hours every weekday.
    Don’t have a receiver and $13 a month?
    On Oct. 25 and 26, you can hear Howard and the gang for free by going to
    THIS PAGE
    You cannot possibly imagine what it’s like to hear uncensored radio until you experience it.
    This latest technology is one huge, scary can of worms in the face of other media, and incredibly exciting. (Happy birthday iPod, you’re 5 years old today!)
    Closer to home, Mike Bullard began a morning show this week on XM, the Sirius competitor. What are we to make of Bullard vs. Stern?
    I really liked Mike’s show from the Masonic Hall, but something went sour, and what a train wreck when he moved to Global. And I was rooting for him.
    But now, with no ratings system in place yet, Bullard could be on for a year before anyone realizes that no one is listening. If he’s still there until then, it’s because he learned to accept that giving good radio is hard work.

  • Anonymous says:

    More on “Tidewater Tramp”

    idewater Tramp

    Fri 5:00-5:30 p.m., 2 Oct 1959-25 Mar 1960 Fri 5:00-5:30 p.m., 6 Oct 1961-29 Jun 1962

    A half-hour dramatic series for young viewers, Tidewater Tramp originated at CBC Vancouver, and told stories of the Flying Kestrel, a tramp steamer that sailed the Inland Passage of British Columbia and up to the Alaska Panhandle to carry cargo to remote port settlements. The skipper was Captain Martin, a widower played by Reg McReynolds, whose crew included his twelve year old daughter Gail, played by Maureen Cook, and the young coast cadet Peter, played by Robert William Chambers. The cast also included Wally Marsh, Brendan Dillon, Ted Greenhalgh, and Edith Matheson Dean. Produced mostly in studio, the program also aimed for authenticity with exterior sequences shot on film from a B.C. freighter. The scripts were written by Capt. Thomas Gilchrist, who had created the CBC radio series, Don Grey, Marine Investigator, Doug Forrester, and Peter Statner and Christine Best. The series was produced by Philip Keatley and John Thorne.

    —-
    http://www.film.queensu.ca/CBC/Tid.html

  • Anonymous says:

    “Tidewater Tramp” was a youth drama set on a coastal steamer, not a tug.

    And you can watch the destruction o the CBC via their webcam

    http://www.cbc.ca/bc/redevelopment/webcam.html

    renewed every 5 minutes, but unable to penetrate the clouds or fog below.

  • Allan says:

    Time passes, and so do the great ones.
    ” Daryl originated the first television shows from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’™s station in Vancouver, CBUT, which went on the air in December of 1953. There he produced and directed variety programs, classical music series, dramas and public affairs documentaries for west coast audiences and for the CBC network.” (from his website, here) He gave us “Wojeck” and “The Thorn Birds” and “I Heard The Owl Call My Name”.

    “We had our own performers on camera with our own people producing,and when you hear people prattle on about the ‘500-channel universe ‘ … remember that the greatest thing we can do (in TV) is to protect a society ‘s memories. As we had to protect memories in 1953, we still have to in 2004.”
    ~Daryl Duke

  • Anonymous says:

    My condolences to them what’s going to miss that place. I’m sorry that I never got to see it in person myself before this, too…

  • Anonymous says:

    Press Release: http://www.cbc.ca/bc/redevelopment/totem.html

    CBC/Radio-Canada Returns Kwaguilth Totem Pole
    to Traditional Territory

    “The Kwaguilth totem pole that used to sit at the front of the CBC/Radio-Canada building at 700 Hamilton Street has been returned to the traditional territory of the Kwaguilth people. The pole was lowered on Monday, June 26 under the direction of the artist, Richard Hunt, and was transported to Fort Rupert, B.C. This initiative is part of the ongoing Building Redevelopment Project currently underway at CBC/Radio-Canada in Vancouver.”

    It’s a 1982 artist commission, not an artifact that was found in the basement of the Royal Museum. The CBC is removing the only object that gave the Vancouver building any humanity or sense of place, and calling it an act of cultural sensitivity. Amazing doublespeak!

  • Allan says:

    Ahh, the Vancouver Post Office.
    Of course I’ll always remember the December spent inside it’s bowels as a temporary helper for the Christmas parcel overload.
    In fact, that building was there when, as a teenager, I’d wander the quiet streets on weekends exploring my new hometown.
    And it was few blocks over on Smythe street, where one day I stepped in the open door of what turned out to be a rehearsal hall for the CBC Orchestra, which may have been the Dal Richards’ Orchestra “coming to you from the Ballroom atop the Hotel Vancouver” (with more radio studios in the basement).
    On this day, a man named Maurice was the sole singer with the orchestra, and he was a very smooth vocalist, a very white Johnny Mathis.
    I came back every weekend, and we became friends.
    Occasionally, there was no band when I arrived.
    Instead, a group of actors would be rehearsing their lines, so I stayed and watched them.
    Their show was called “Tidewater Tramp” and was a weekly CBC broadcast shot in the studio, with sets that gave it the credible appearance of being the interior and exterior of a tugboat, because the show was about a young boy who lived on the boat with a motley collection of charming curmudgeons of the sea.
    The boy and I became friends as well, and I would attend the live tapings in studios at the foot of Georgia Street just blocks from Stanley Park.
    TV was black and white then, and if a scene called for backdrop other than vacant sky, it had to be projected on to a wall-sized screen.
    The show was on for a few years and then was gone.
    The young boy would later pop up in L.A. as a ‘special guest star’ on an episode of “Bonanza” and “Gidget”.
    Another member of the cast took his character with him and ten years later re-named himself “Relic” in a series shot on location called “The Beachcombers”.
    A couple of years after “Tidewater” was history, I found myself in the same studio, sitting in the bleechers watching “The Jack Humphrey Show”, a cabaret-style half hour of interviews and music.
    Jack and I had become friends when he had hosted a late night talk radio show on CJOR.
    He later moved his wife and four children to Toronto and sold corporate insurance.
    When I found myself in Ontario as a camp counsellor in Algonquin Park, he would visit, and once wrote me an incredibly funny and skillfully written letter.
    So it did not surprise me when Jack became scriptwriter for a new CBC show called “King Of Kensington”, eventually owning the show, and it’s successor “Hangin’ In” and greeted me years later in Yorkville with the words “I’m rich!”
    Jack beat alcoholism but not cancer.
    When I first visited those Georgia Street studios Tommy Hunter was on the air back east, and the Beatles would soon make their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
    In a matter of five years my cultural world would change – young people were becoming disillusioned with a futile and unwinnable war, among other things – and the last time I was in the studio was to deliver Alan Ginsberg for an interview, and I still have some slight regret about lighting up a joint during the live broadcast.
    Those studios have naturally disappeared, and the CBC moved uphill to be across from the Post Office in the picture.

    I suppose it’s not very prudent on my part to date myself by telling you this pointless story of meaningless memories.
    But it sure is nice to have someone to tell it to.
    (It’s kind of long, so don’t feel you have to post it, O)

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