News of a death does not always
bring only dark sadness. Sometimes it brings illumination.
That was the case last week when
we learned that Stuart McLean, an unpretentious Canadian icon, had passed away.
He died at 68 of cancer.
McLean’s death came at a time when
we needed illumination. Our prime minister had just returned from Washington
where his visit was considered of so little importance that they forgot his
first name. Sean Spicer, Trump’s vacuous press secretary, called him Joe
Trudeau.
That, along with the avalanche roar
of attention paid to Trump’s megalomania, fed our Canadian inferiority complex.
Once again overshadowed by the loud and hugely important cousin to the south, our
Canadian littleness diminished to the size of a crumb fallen from a table.
However, the sorrowful news of
McLean’s passing reminded us that small and unassuming always trumps egotism
and braggadocio. It reminded us that we are a humble people, willing to listen,
willing to help and not afraid to laugh at ourselves.
It was indeed an illumination. The
kind of illumination that McLean transmitted across the nation through his
Vinyl Café variety radio show.
McLean was a CBC radio and TV reporter
who moved away from covering the so-called big and important issues concerning
Canadians. He began reporting stories that might be considered less newsworthy.
They were stories about everyday folks and provided insights into ordinary
Canadians and their communities.
He started the Vinyl Café show in
1994. It was presented before live audiences in smaller communities across the
country, and from time to time on the BBC and dozens of public radio stations
in the United States. It toured 100 days each year, broadcasting roughly a
quarter of those on Saturdays.
The Vinyl Café was a fictional
second-hand record store owned by Dave – he never had a last name – a bumbler
who too often found himself in a pickle. His wife Morley was the sensible
partner, usually extracting Dave from his predicaments.
The show also
featured musical entertainment performed by lesser known musicians and McLean
reading essays about communities and letters from the ordinary people who lived
in them. People who worked with him said he regarded his essays as journalism
and did extensive research before writing them.
“He reminded us that
everything is important, even little things, and that means we’re all
important,” Jess Milton, his producer for the last 13 years, was quoted in the
New York Times’ story on McLean’s death.
The Vinyl Café told
us about and helped us to understand parts of our country that are seldom
reported on.
I recall first
meeting Stuart McLean in the hallway at a broadcast industry meeting in the
early 1980s, long before he invented the Vinyl Café. He reminded me of an Ichabod
Crane character, long-limbed and angular in brown corduroy pants and a tweed
jacket hanging off his frame. Hanging from one shoulder was a leather-cased
tape recorder - a Sony TC-110 if my memory is correct – on which he captured
his interviews.
Stuart McLean moved
into fictional storytelling on the Vinyl Café, but he remained a reporter.
He was like
thousands of journalists in Canada and the U.S. who work at (in many cases for
small money) honestly and fairly reporting the theatre of our lives. They vigorously
seek out facts and balanced opinions to get as close to the truth as is
possible.
Sometimes parts of
society do not like to hear the truth and reporters are given the blame for
telling it. But that’s just part of the job.
That’s why it was an
insult to Stuart’s memory when Donald Trump this week called journalists the
enemies of the American people. And most assuredly he meant that for
journalists everywhere, including Canada.
Stuart McLean, through his
reporting and his trademark storytelling, illuminated our lives and made us
feel proud to be Canadians. He did that in a folksy, positive and humorous way.
Donald Trump, evidently suffering
the advanced stages of malignant narcissism, makes the entire world feel
afraid. Some worry that someday he will have us feeling like radioactive ash.
And he says journalists are the
enemy?
