Spider-Man mixes it up

So, so bad. But funny. I wonder how many hours I spent watching this stuff as a kid.

Randy Neily

About a month ago, I interviewed Randy Neily. I was working on a documentary for the CBC Radio One show Maritime Magazine. The piece was called "Where There's Smoke, Will There Be Firefighters?" and you can listen to it here.

Randy was the deputy fire chief in Blandford, whose volunteer fire department the documentary profiled. A few weeks later, Randy passed away (there's a Facebook group celebrating his life here).

On the night I was at the Blandford fire station recording a lot of my material I wanted to speak to Randy, but something about him intimidated me. He was physically large, and didn't do a lot of the social niceties with me. We were introduced, and he went back to his business without showing much interest. I approached fire chief Philip Publicover and said I'd like to interview Randy but was feeling a bit intimidated. Did he think Randy would be amenable?

Philip laughed, said Randy might seem intimidating but wasn't. On the other hand, he didn't know how much he'd be willing to talk. Later, I approached Randy, and after some initial hesitation he agreed to be interviewed.

We sat in the fire station office, Randy under a poster for the movie Backdraft, and talked for half an hour. A couple of times we'd seem to be done and I'd turn off the recorder, but then the conversation would carry on and I'd start recording again.

In the end, I didn't wind up using any of those interviews (although if you listen really, really closely you can hear Randy laughing in the background at one point). There just wasn't room. But I learned a lot, and it was helpful.

Randy was a volunteer firefighter, paramedic and former firefighter instructor. He visited every single fire station in Nova Scotia (there are over 300 of them) and had taken photos at each place. I suggested it might make a good book -- and he said he had thought about that. I hope that archive of photos winds up somewhere where they'll be appreciated.

Here's a short clip of Randy expressing his worry about the future of the fire service, and his photos.

Adventures in closed captioning

I've posted before about truly awful closed captioning. Here's a good one, from this morning.

After a knee injury, in his first game back Marian Hossa had a great night. Or, as the closed captioning on TSN's SportsCentre would have part of the sentence:

first game backhoe sa...

Leaving Fort McMurray

CBC radio news ran a story this morning on the cost of living in Fort McMurray. The intro said that the high cost of living was too much for many residents, and that some were thinking of coming back east.

So, does this mean that the Nova Scotia government's efforts to entice people to give up their jobs and come home was working?

Don't pat yourself on the back yet, Premier MacDonald. The story quoted one man, retired, who has been in Fort McMurray more than 20 years and is now finding that he can't really afford to live there, so he may sell his trailer and move with his girlfriend to Newfoundland.

I guess we can expect the local labour shortage to continue a while longer.

Falling needles

A CP story notes that

The Nova Scotia government is providing some funding to help researchers produce Christmas trees that hang on to their needles.

The Department of Natural Resources has given $250,000 to the Christmas Tree Council of Nova Scotia to research needle retention.

That's because consumers want trees that are low in maintenance and without a lot of needle loss.

Maybe we could save on the research money if people didn't insist on putting up their trees a month before Christmas -- and then whine about how the needles fall off. What do you think is going to happen to them? It's a dying tree in your living room!

Etch A Sketch clock

NYC engineer Angela Yuan built this clock. Every minute it erases itself and draws the new time. A perfect marriage of lo and hi tech.

Where there's smoke... will there be firefighters?

"Where There's Smoke, Will There Be Firefighters?" my radio documentary on the challenges facing volunteer fire departments, is now online  It was produced by Christina Harnett, aired on CBC radio regionally, and runs 25 minutes.

The piece focuses on the fire station in Blandford, Nova Scotia, but a lot of the issues they face hold true for other departments across the country.

Listen to it here.