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Expired CDs!

OK, they didn’t really expire. We just said that on our April 1st news broadcast where we advised you could recycle them with CKBJ-FM. CDs made before 1990 will all still work of course. But the advice remains the same!

It’s quite possible you have a lot of CDs you never play hanging around. You can give them new life by donating them to Town Radio Beausejour, CKBJ-FM. Music can get expensive over here, and anything you donated would be received with appreciation. And the bonus is, we’ll be playing music you actually like. It used to be *your* music after all.

If you’d like to donate some CDs, call our answering machine at 204-268-3956 and leave a message on how to pick them up or to contact you. Or you can email info at townradio.ca (replace the at with the @ of course).

Thanks Gerald

You may have heard the news that Gerald Hawranik will be moving on from elected office and will not seek re-election as our MLA this October. He will continue to serve as our MLA for Lac du Bonnet Constituency until his term ends in October. Gerald Hawranik made the difficult decision to put his family first in his life, and looks forward to spending more time with them.

Gerald Hawranik was first elected to the Manitoba Legislature in a by-election in 2002, was re-elected in 2003 and again in 2007 and has served previously on the council in Beausejour. In his time at the Manitoba Legislature, Hawranik has served in a number of critic portfolios, including Aboriginal and Northern Affairs, Advanced Education & Literacy, Justice and Finance.  He has also played a key role in the Manitoba PC Caucus as House Leader.

Town Radio Beausejour would like to take this opportunity to thank Gerald for his many years of public service to our community, and to wish him well in his future endeavours.

I’m on TV!

Watch Shaw TV channel 9 on Friday Wednesday (Feb. 2nd) for a segment on Town Radio Beausejour and yours truly. Their Open Road show has segments in rotation that repeats, and we’re one of them.  It’s a great chance to see what happens behind the mic. If you don’t have shaw tv cable service, you can watch online here.

Article in The Review

I’d like to say thanks to Mark from The Review for his nice article on Town Radio. One important oops in it though, the station frequency is 93.9 FM, not 98.3.

One thing the article discussed is how I’d like to get a committee formed with community members that can help guide the station’s programming and fund-raising efforts. If you’re interested, feel free to call 268-3956, or email us here.

Also, about the picture. Please note the camera ads a couple hundred pounds *ahem*.

One Man Out

Local Beausejour resident Colin Graves was inspired as he watched the rescue of the Chilean miners. He wrote and recorded One Man Out, and released a video to youtube.

Here is the interview I did when Colin when I was lucky enough to have him visit Town Radio.

colin graves interview 20101023

And here is the video and song.

get by with a little help from your friends …

Town Radio Beausejour is coming up on a year old. We launched during Shades of the Past last year, and I guess I’m thinking of that day as our anniversary. We’ll be on hand during the Shades of the Past to chat with folks. Feel free to stop by our trailer beside the Town Office.

We hope to be able to continue with Town Radio long into the future. To do that, we’re probably going to need a little help from our friends. You might notice a “Friends” page along the top of this site. Folks interested in joining together to help shape what Town Radio becomes are invited to read that page, and join this committee. The role of this committee is to discuss and plan fund raising opportunities, and to help shape the programming heard on CKBJ-FM, in Beausejour, Manitoba.

We want to keep providing non-commercial, community based programming to Beausejour. Come and help us do that!

bomb threat rant

You want to know what sucks? Receiving a bomb threat to your school, and having to enact emergency measures to evacuate everyone.  You want to know what sucks even more? This happening again. And what do you think might suck even more than that? I think you know where I’m going with this. Less than a week later it’s happened a third time. Someone has yet again given a bomb threat to Edward Schreyer School.

So what happens?  All the kids are loaded into buses. And they’re stuck there for hours until it’s time for them to go home. Parents can come to the Sun Gro Centre to sign out their child and take them home.  There’s one problem with this. Parents aren’t easily notified this is even happening. It takes time.

So I thought to myself. Hey, I happen to be running a radio station. I’m going to try and spread the word. So parents, or grandparents or even friends of parents of children attending Edward Schreyer School, let them know they can go to the Sun Gro Centre to sign out their children and take them home. You have to go right inside to sign them out, and they’ll radio the buses to release them.

With that out of the way, I have something to say about the person sending in the bomb threats.

Grow up!

I can’t fathom how you gain from doing this. If you want out of school early on a Friday, there are better ways to get what you want that do not impact the entire student body and their families.  Think for a moment what you’re doing.  Let’s put aside the fact you’re scaring the willies out of everyone. There are special needs kids in that school who may not comprehend what is happening, and who may be impacted by a disruption in their routine and difficulty in assisting them through this.  There may be special events planned in a classroom that won’t happen now, because during that time, the students were sitting on a bus.  Parents and guardians are impacted because they have to take time off work to pick up their child rather than see them sit on a stuffy bus for hours.  And do you think it’s fun to sit on a stuffy bus for hours? The lucky ones get to leave, the less lucky ones are not having fun. It’s cold today. There was no time to dress for the weather. I repeat. It’s not fun sitting on the bus. I can’t begin imagine what the school staff are going through to evacuate everyone safely and in an orderly fashion. Actually, I do have some idea, since it took a half hour to sign out and have my own child released. It’s controlled chaos at the sun gro as I write this.

And then there’s the fact you’re scaring the willies out of half the town.  This kind of act takes a very small number of brain cells. It demonstrates a level of immaturity that puts you in the baby bottle and soother club. I know your friends know what you did. People like you need to brag. I’m aiming this plea directly at them. Dear friends of this immature troublemaker, rat this person out. We’ve all had enough!

And I’d like to have a round of applause to the staff at Edward Schreyer School who are rising above and beyond the call of duty to manage something that is very difficult to manage. They’re doing a terrific job. Our kids are in great hands. When you see them, thank them.

The Gift of the Magi

This is my favourite Christmas story.  It’s actually one of my favourites stories of any type. I won’t say why. I’ll let you discover the reason for yourself. -Lane

“The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name “Mr. James Dillingham Young.”

The “Dillingham” had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called “Jim” and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling–something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim’s gold watch that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s. The other was Della’s hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty’s jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.

So now Della’s beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.

On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.

Where she stopped the sign read: “Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds.” One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the “Sofronie.”

“Will you buy my hair?” asked Della.

“I buy hair,” said Madame. “Take yer hat off and let’s have a sight at the looks of it.”

Down rippled the brown cascade.

“Twenty dollars,” said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.

“Give it to me quick,” said Della.

Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim’s present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation–as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim’s. It was like him. Quietness and value–the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends–a mammoth task.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

“If Jim doesn’t kill me,” she said to herself, “before he takes a second look at me, he’ll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do–oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty- seven cents?”

At 7 o’clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.

Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: “Please God, make him think I am still pretty.”

The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two–and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.

Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.

Della wriggled off the table and went for him.

“Jim, darling,” she cried, “don’t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It’ll grow out again–you won’t mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!’ Jim, and let’s be happy. You don’t know what a nice– what a beautiful, nice gift I’ve got for you.”

“You’ve cut off your hair?” asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.

“Cut it off and sold it,” said Della. “Don’t you like me just as well, anyhow? I’m me without my hair, ain’t I?”

Jim looked about the room curiously.

“You say your hair is gone?” he said, with an air almost of idiocy.

“You needn’t look for it,” said Della. “It’s sold, I tell you–sold and gone, too. It’s Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered,” she went on with sudden serious sweetness, “but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?”

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year–what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.

“Don’t make any mistake, Dell,” he said, “about me. I don’t think there’s anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you’ll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first.”

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.

For there lay The Combs–the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims–just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: “My hair grows so fast, Jim!”

And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, “Oh, oh!”

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

“Isn’t it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You’ll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it.”

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.

“Dell,” said he, “let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep ‘em a while. They’re too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on.”

The magi, as you know, were wise men–wonderfully wise men–who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

One Month Later …

We’ve been on air for a month. It seems like six!  I’m still working on little nips and tucks to have it all run smoothly, and that’s coming along nicely.  The next little while will have me working out insulating and finishing off the studio trailer.  I’m looking at ways to increase my antenna height, which will increase my range. I’d like to be able to reach Garson well.  And of course, securing sponsorships is pretty important so my creditors can be paid and the station can grow.

We added an Old Time Radio show on Sunday evening. I used to love the old radio shows that I would hear replayed on AM station when I was young.  We’ve stared off with the Mercury Theatre On The Air shows that feature a very young Orson Welles.  I’m looking at expanding the Old Time Radio show to two hours with other shows following the Mercury Theatre ones, so be sure to tune in to find out what we can dig up and air.

Launch Day!

Today is the day.  I have a busy morning packing things up and getting ready to move them to the Park Avenue location I’ll be transmitting from until Sunday, August 30th.

Are we ready? hmm. Probably not.  Always more to do. But never let not being ready stop you. 🙂

Drop by for the 1pm ‘flick the switch’ time.  We’ll have some cake on hand we can share.  We’ll hang out for the afternoon for anyone who wants to drop by and chat with us about the station. We hope to get a lot of feedback from folks on what they’d like to hear on the station. Musically, we want to play something for everyone, so please be sure to tell us what you like.