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interview.”
    Which is why, four decades later,
As It Happens
can still sound as fresh as the day it was born.
    Al Maitland, the man with the golden voice, claims he was mucking out stables when they called him in to co-host
As It Happens.
He was crazy about horses and always kept one or two about somewhere—not usually in the studio. But one year on his birthday, the crew did bring one in, wearing a blanket that said “Happy Birthday, Al.” He was a bit disappointed, he said, that he only got to keep the blanket.
    At least the horse didn’t mistake the studio for a toilet, unlike the beaver that came calling when the show was campaigning to have
Castor canadensis
anointed as the country’s national animal.
    “It was,” Harry told us on the 30th anniversary, “more fun than I realized at the time.” Also on that anniversary show, Barbara Budd recalled Grumpy the Goldfish, who was given the kiss of life by his doting owner (yes, in England); Dennis Trudeau impressed us with his memories of commuting to work every Monday morning from Montreal and returning Friday night; and Elizabeth Gray dazzled us with her ability to pronounce Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwlllantysiliogogogoch, the name of the Welsh town where her mother was born, which means “the church of St. Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool by St. Tysilio’s of the red cave.” Some of you probably knew that already.
    Apparently, that’s not even the longest place name in the world; the Maoris have a longer name for a hill in New Zealand. It’s
Taumatawhakatangi …
plus 40 more letters, and it translates as “the place where Tamatea, the man with the big knees who slid down, climbed and swallowed mountains, known as ’landeater,’ played his flute to his loved one.” More like a short story than a name really.
    But to get back to the anniversary. Michael Enright recalled the lady in Alberta who killed and stuffed little prairie dogs and then dressed them up and put them in tableaux: the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, the Nativity scene at Christmas. We talked about the Reading Man and the time they tried to change the theme music and Al Maitland’s debut as “Fireside Al” and the struggle that producer Pam Wallin had had to get Zimbabwean guerrilla fighter Joshua Nkomo on the programme.
    Pam flirted shamelessly with him, we heard, finally inveigling him into agreeing to an interview with Barbara Frum. Unfortunately, the day he finally acceded to Pam’s entreaties, Barbara was away. Enright was filling in for her, and Nkomo insisted on addressing him as “Barbara” throughout their talk.
    And we remembered Barbara. More than anyone else, it was Barbara Frum who must get the credit for making
As It Happens
a daily event in the lives of many Canadians.
    “She was the consummate journalist,” said Harry Brown. “She was meticulous and hard working, and she had a most beguiling tone.”
    Harry recalled how she had taken him aside one day and told him that she’d been diagnosed with leukemia; she probably wouldn’t live to see her grandchildren. But then, he said, she seemed to put it out of her mind and carry on, and she never mentioned the subject again. Frum went on to host
The Journal
on CBC Television (with me) and died in 1992 at the age of 54. She lived long enough to welcome her first grandchild, Miranda.
    November 18, 1998, was also the last time we had Al Maitland and Harry Brown on the air together. Al died a couple of months later of congestive heart failure; Harry’s heart gave out three years after that. Happily for us, their voices are preserved on tape. CDs of the collected readings of “Fireside Al” and “Front Porch Al” are steady favourites in the CBC gift shop, and Maitland’s reading of Frederick Forsyth’s
Shepherd
is an absolute must every Christmas Eve.
    As It Happens
probably gets more questions about
The Shepherd
than any other single thing on the show.
Who wrote it? Will