As It Happens

We came home from the gym tonight - Friday at last - a big day, a tough week DONE. 

I readied dinner and Allan searched for a playlist and we popped a Prosecco. 

And then we remembered.

We remembered we needed to listen to something.

Allan hooked up his phone to the speakers and dialed us in to CBC Radio just before 6:30pm.

As we used to do every single night long, long ago.... in our first apartment in this new land we had arrived in... trying to find our place, our identity.  

Trying to understand what it was to be Canadian.  

After a few months in my parents basement we managed to get in to a housing co-op and we spent what little money we had on essentials - like a bed and a couch .  We bought this fantastic blue check ikea couch - man we loved that couch - it lived on in at least 2 friends apartments after we moved and replaced it.... but I think Allan and I miss it to this day....

Anyway...there was no money left for a TV that's for sure. 

But we had a radio.

So we'd come home from our jobs and as we made and ate dinner we would listen to CBC.  The "World at 6" followed by "As It Happens" followed by "Gzowski in the evening"......and we learned Canada as we listened.   We laughed, we puzzled, we raged, we teared up as we heard story after story after story from here and around the world. 

The day dismayed friends left a portable TV at our door we found ourselves very torn.  And notwithstanding the giant TV that hangs on a wall of our house now, we have remained devoted to CBC.  It wakes us up every morning.  

Tonight "As It Happens" celebrated 50 years of broadcasting.  And we ate our dinner and then moved to our coordinated-couches-not-from-IKEA, and we listened.  We did admirably well in the AIH trivia quiz and we laughed and I teared up at a listeners story of what AIH means to her.  We listened to old stories and new ones and we felt that same connection to this land, this place, these people.

In these days of "fake news" and media manipulation, a publicly funded broadcaster is a precious thing and I think we will forever listen to CBC at some point each day.

We've come a long way since that blue checkered couch that we spent days and nights on with our tiny babies who are now university students.  The Killers are now blaring, the brown lab that weaseled his way into our lives is cuddled up with Allan and we have our devices out checking in on our worlds.

We have changed so much but our gratitude at being able to live here in Canada, in British Columbia is deep and abiding.

We owe so much to so many who have befriended us, helped us, been our tribe, our village... and tonight we were reminded of that through the airwaves and the power of story.