Brampton/Toronto Ontario Radio Skip

[OTB]

I was up in the mountains of western Maryland this weekend; we get some weird micro-climate stuff. Anywho I was driving along in the morning and, as usual, was having trouble pulling in any AM stations (I like talk radio when I'm driving) and suddenly got 1010 signal clear as a bell...except they were talking about backed up traffic on the 401 and the Gardiner Expressway and the latest scandal in Ottowa..... and I knew I wasn't in Kansas anymore, baby....

Anyway, it was pretty cool listening into another perspective, again. I grew up in northern Minnesota back in the 50's and 60's, my father worked as an announcer for a guy who had a number of radio stations in Ontario (CFOB in Ft Frances, as well as others in Kenora, Sudburyand Dryden (my mother went into labor with my brother while they were up at Dryden where my father was TDYing to help out, which is how my brother was born in Ontario)).

I grew up listening to Canadian news on CFOB, listening to my father, and I learned to read French from the cereal boxes and came to appreciate Habitant pea soup.....we were very poor, so my folks shopped with US dollars on the Canadian side to make the money go further. I remember the Quebec Separatist bombings back in the 60's and worrying about our friends who had to travel to Toronto and Montreal regularly during the time when things were really bad.

We lived in a very economically depressed area, and things on the Canadian side weren't much better; but everybody had friends on both sides of the border and most folks worked a couple of jobs...like my dad, who worked a day job, the night shift on the radio on the Canadian side, and janitor job on the weekends and we still lived barely hanging on.

It seemed like things were simpler back then (he said, wistfully).

Anyway, I got the signal for about an hour before it faded into static and this brief atmospheric anomaly brought back fond childhood memories.

To my brothers and sisters up north...have a safe winter as the riding season fades...