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position in the Corp. Regina, a provincial capital of ninety thousand people, represented the big leagues to me. There I might have a chance to be heard network wide, and making it to the network was what career advancement at the CBC was all about. I responded to Hankinson’s question with an unequivocal yes and literally danced out of his office.
    Within a few weeks, my mother was standing at her front door, fighting tears as I threw my suitcase into the trunk of the Meteor. She knew better than I that I’d never be back. The dirt road out of town followed the Skeena River, its current flowing swiftly past me as the river made its way to the Pacific. We were hurrying in the opposite direction, my alter ego and I, exulting in a new beginning. I turned east at Prince George and headed at last into the Prairies, the mountains fading from view, perhaps for a lifetime. I felt prepared for whatever lay ahead. Rupert had given me a graduate degree in the vagaries of life.

    Early spring on the West Coast was late winter in Saskatchewan, and I was completely unprepared for the cold. Real winter was so beyond my experience that I fell for an old trick often played on innocents from British Columbia. After any lengthy exposure to temperatures well below freezing at an outdoor parking lot, my car would refuse to start. I could not help but notice that those cars plugged in to the lot’s accessible electrical outlets had no such difficulties. Making inquiries, I was told that it was necessary to buy a car with an electric engine. I went from one smiling car salesman to the next, each directing me to another dealer who might have an electric car in stock, before I finally got the joke.
    I could take no offence. Regina was the first city I had lived in, and its sophisticated bars and restaurants, its colleges and arts institutions, and its vigorous political life were rife with opportunities for learning and advancement. Plus it had television, a transfixing medium that had not arrived in Rupert before my departure. I watched so much of it in Regina that the family with whom I boarded called me the “test pattern kid.”
    CBK Saskatchewan was radio only, the CBC network not yet having granted television broadcasting to the province. Its offices and studios occupied two storeys of a downtown building and accommodated a youthful staff of twenty, including announcers, producers, engineers, a sportscaster, a farm commentator, and a record librarian, plus a bevy of young female secretaries. It was, in sum, nirvana.
    Regina, while far from the centre of power in Toronto, was an important regional station and the only one in the province. For that reason, there was much more airtime for original local programming, especially in the afternoons and early evenings. Ihad been at the station a year when the network created a new position in the department known as “Outside Broadcasts.” Its elite group of producer/commentators was responsible for just about everything that was broadcast outside the studio, except entertainment programming. Famous CBC names like Byng Whittaker, Frank Willis, and Thom Benson were among its members. I applied for the job and joined them, still based in Regina.
    It was the closest thing to a news department that CBK could boast, since it offered no local newscasts. But clearly there was a hunger among listeners. Next to the Saskatchewan Roughriders, the province’s favourite obsession was politics. The average citizen was ready at the drop of a Wheat Pool hat to debate national or international affairs. Farmers read Hansard for entertainment. Decades of identifying themselves as the hapless victims of forces beyond their control no doubt contributed to the locals’ strongly held opinions. The weather, the railways, those eastern bankers, and the devils in Ottawa were easy targets.
    Although I had no formal journalistic training or experience, I persuaded the program director that our