Remembering Bruce
One thing I’m grateful for is my long term memory. As my memory of what I did yesterday fades, my memory of youth is ever clear: playing hockey on the frozen ponds of childhood, travelling with grandparents to Old Home Week in Prince Edward Island, and taking, while still a teenager, an audition as a summer announcer at a CBC station in nearby Sydney on Cape Breton Island. I was fifteen years old and the manager who auditioned me, the late Barry Macdonald – he later became an executive in Ottawa – summed up his verdict this way: “You read well – but you sound like a boy and that’s because you are a boy. Try again in a year or so.” (I did, went to work there and elsewhere, now and then, and still today in voluntary work.)
Over the years, I’ve retained my interest in the craft of the announcer, a craft sad to say, that’s now fading for specific reasons. But I’m grateful, not just for what I learned from good announcers, but the friendships I made with some, memories that accompany me still. One of the most vivid memories is of Bruce Smith whose Toronto afternoon program, aired in the 1970s, after over 20 years as the morning man. I often contributed as a commentator. (I was then on The Globe& Mail.) Bruce, a fine broadcaster and even finer person, is recalled by the renowned Lloyd Robertson (a subscriber here) as a “great talent and a fine man.” His years on the Toronto morning program were in Lloyd’s estimation: “a model of excellence.” Fortunately those good qualities are now explored in print, in a new book called “Bruce Smith” by Catherine Ross. Its subtitle is a reflection of the man but also the era he lived in: “A Life of Service to Family, Country and God.” A CBC announcer serving God? In today’s media culture that last word would, as we used to say, raise eyebrows. And for various reasons, most having to do with the secularization of our time in which few broadcasters are given, certainly in their public lives, to serving God. Secularism rules.
Ms. Ross has been given access to much written memorabilia, much of it dating to Bruce’s childhood in Sault St. Marie, Ontario. She records his enlisted life overseas in World War II (“Why did I enlist?” he once wrote, “So that I could sing Onward Christian Soldiers convincingly.” She records his most vivid and ugly memories overseas, the slaughter of colleagues: “a tangled mess of steel. A cloud of smoke and flame, our battalion headquarters obliterated – every member dead, not wounded, DEAD.” He had been drawn to radio very early at 15, working during summers and said to be, at 15, the youngest announcer in Canada. In 1937, he entered U of T, taking law, then education, and along with studies became a writer on The Varsity, the student paper in years of a distinguished staff: Editor A.C. Forrest, (later Editor of The United Church Observer, and two men who became his friends as well as A.C. Forrest’s for life: Frank Shuster and Johnnie Wayne.)
In his working life he stood out quietly, as a man of moral purpose. He was by any comparison with today, “old school.” One example: back in 1931: while in grade school he signed The Pledge, rooted in Methodist and Presbyterian tradition. It began with the words: “I hereby pledge by the help of God, to abstain from the use of all intoxicating liquors……..” He was a lifelong and truly dedicated United Church member, rarely missing Sunday worship from university days, (1937-1942) to military service, (1944 to 1946) and his radio career which lasted 32 years, in a culture that by its very nature, was ever more competitive, I never heard him say an ungracious word about anybody. In fact the opposite was likely: he took pleasure in seeing young newcomers who showed great promise, one being Alex Trebek, whose future success he predicted with pleasure and accuracy. I knew, from one example he confided, his worry over someone -– not on the air — he felt was being put under greater pressure than he deserved and thereby in danger of health breakdown. He felt, too often, that the CBC culture wasn’t as appreciative or supportive of its people as it should be, and could be.
Naturally, I had a particular interest in the era of the announcer, which is now mostly past. Several became friends for life. My now-and-then work as an announcer in time brought me an interesting benefit: I could “talk shop” not just with journalists, but also announcers. I regret that the announcer’s day at the CBC has largely passed. It began to wane in the 1970s, its approaching demise reflected in a snide phrase that seemed to have been created to downgrade announcers as “talking heads.” It suggested they had nothing but vocal skills, thereby lacking insight and IQ for, say, election coverage or economic issues.
That overlooks something — in their own field of expertise some were virtually English language scholars. One I recall (from private radio in Nova Scotia back in the 1950s) would spend an hour or two many evenings when he wasn’t on the air, studying Webster’s International Dictionary, checking on pronunciations he wasn’t absolutely certain of. When Bruce Smith joined the CBC he was given a document setting out, in a general way, the standards expected, including this firm statement: “there is rarely any excuse for a mispronunciation.” Today, I’m afraid the standards are, to put it mildly, not that high. Thus, even on national CBC Radio, the word “official” too often becomes “afficial,” and Tuesday is too often “Toosdee.” There’s more, but that’s enough. This isn’t trivial. Our language is owed something by those who use it professionally: an effort to preserve it. In his gentlemanly way Bruce Smith would agree. We in turn should be grateful for his years of respect for our language and for his listeners.
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Bruce Smith’s biography is available by emailing: admin@tanamakoon.com. Price: $25.00 plus shipping.
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