Page 4 - SASKATOONEXPRESS - December 1-7, 2014
Time at CFQC best of Lumby’s life
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(Continued from page 3) vonna and I were freshies on the University of Saskatchewan campus. One day, I asked her if she’d like a ride to the symphony concert on Saturday night. I picked her up and out she came with a violin case. I wondered why. Then she told me she played violin in the symphony orchestra,” said Romanow, reflecting on the beginning of what became a 65-year marriage. Romanow spent 11 years with CFQC and the experience was valuable when he pursued an academic career. With degrees from Saskatchewan and Windsor, he gained his PhD at Wayne State, Michigan, and spent 30 years at Windsor as a professor of communications studies. Among the bright stars in the first decade at CFQC-TV was Sally Merchant, who joined the staff in 1955 and was host of Sally Time for 10 years. She was equally comfortable in home economics settings, in community projects and with the stars. There was an occasion when CFQC learned that Robert Young, star of the highly popular Father Knows Best, was taking a train ride across the Prairies. Rather than depend upon a quick interview at the downtown CNR Station, Merchant, with microphone, and Lumby, with camera, drove to Biggar, boarded the train and had Young at their disposal for an hour on the incoming train. It was typical of the creative thinking that happened at the station. Merchant turned politician in 1964,
winning a Saskatoon seat for the Liberals in the provincial election. Her stay at CFQC was also valuable in serving with the Canadian Radio and Television Commission from 1983 until 1988 Another of the stars was Helen (Hase) Lumby who, after a 1956 summer in Toronto, came back to Saskatoon and was hired by noon the day after her arrival. “Spike phoned me and invited me for an interview,” said Lumby from her home in Kingston. “It was in a day when Kindergartens weren’t yet in existence within the school systems. Spike asked me if I could play the piano. I could. He asked if I sang, and I told him I sang in a choir. He wanted me to produce a show every day of the week and I loved it. “My time at CFQC was the best of my life. By December 1956, I married John. And life at the station was so exciting because everything was a new adventure. Spike gave me free rein to do whatever I wanted. He encouraged creativity and just allowed us to fly.” There was one less-than-thrilling experience on the Kindergarten set. “The circus had come to town, so it was arranged for a chimpanzee, a large one, at that, to appear on the show. I was assured the chimp wouldn’t cause me any harm. So the chimp sat beside me while I played the piano. “When I got up to move to the story corner, the chimp went ballistic. He didn’t like it that I left him. He tugged at my hair, at my skirt, and, all the while, the guys in the studio and in the booth were doubled up in laughter. Finally the trainer
Helen Lumby hosted a show named Kindergarten in the early days of CFQC (Photo QC-851-1, courtesy Saskatoon Public Library – Local History Room) took the darned thing away.” After being host of other programs, like Hit the Deck, and doing TV commercials, she and John left CFQC to launch Lumby Productions. The big coup was Size Small, where she gathered family members around her to produce a show that began in 1982 and was still enjoying replays in the early 1990s. The show was on STV, the forerunner to Global, and it was followed by a Christmas special and two other programs, Size Small Country
and Size Small Island. She wrote all of the music for the shows and there were 10 album releases as well. After initial success in Canada, it played on PBS in the United States. “I was proud that John was one of the originals. The first three years, he carried a 16-mm camera, without the availability of the sound, and for him, cinematography was always an ongoing learning experience. He loved the news business, too, and he was very good at it.”
Fill in the blanks with your toxin du jour: Schwarcz
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Adele Buettner is executive director of Farm Animal Council (Photo Supplied)
JW12024.L01 James
(Continued from page 1) t’s all of agriculture, it’s all of the food chain getting together for the first time as an industry, saying, ‘Let’s make that our mission. Let’s make that connection to consumers.’ ” Anyone can register to attend the event, which will be held at the Sheraton Cavalier. Schwarcz speaks twice: once for free on the evening of Dec. 10, and again at the conference on Dec. 11. Another topic he regularly tackles is gluten intolerance, shrouded these days in mystery and controversy, he says. “There’s absolutely no controversy about people with celiac disease having to stay away from gluten. These people have to stay away from even trace amounts of gluten,” he said. “All these people who are recommending to stay away from gluten as a weightcontrol regimen will have some success, because if you stay away from gluten, you will stay away from a lot of calories.” However, gluten in and of itself is not bad for most people, he said, and neither is glyphosate — known to most people under the brand name Roundup. “There are allegations of a link between glyphosate and gluten intolerance, which are totally not scientifically sound. There are repeated attacks on glyphosate being blamed for every disease known to mankind. That just doesn’t wash. The body just doesn’t work like that.” Fear mongers are connecting glyphosate with every disease known to human beings, but they are also connecting
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bisphenol, fluoride, aspartame and many other chemicals with the same ailments. “It’s almost fill in the blanks with your toxin du jour. Obviously, they can’t all be right,” said Schwarcz. “We should all be dead, according to dogma.” Debunking agricultural myths is extremely important as the world’s population grows, he added. “If you don’t use agrochemicals judiciously, you cannot produce food in the amounts we produce it now. “Soon 10 billion people will be coming to dinner. Organic agriculture, while it can be used on a small scale, is never going to feed 10 billion people. We can’t feed people today without the scientific chemicals used.” Schwarcz’s free speech takes place at 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 10 at the Saskatoon Public Library, Rusty Macdonald Branch. His presentation is entitled Nutritional Advice: Is there a solution to the confusion? Farms at the Table: Menus of Opportunity A conversation about food and farming Presented by Farm & Food Care Saskatchewan $75 day one $155 day two Students half price Dec. 10 and 11 Sheraton Cavalier Register at: http://goo.gl/o7NeAS
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