Tag Archives: Jacques Emond

Funding drive is a stressful time at CKCU. For two weeks, an environment that normally stimulates creativity is all about business: the business of raising sufficient funds to keep Canada’s original campus-based community radio station afloat for 12 more months. And as I meekly entered the phone room to tackle my first shift all those years ago, it was intimidating. Here was I, a lowly would-be announcer and Hog’s Back High student, doing my volunteerly duty while awaiting the chance to inflict my musical tastes on an unsuspecting listenership. (A chance that would not come until months later.) On either side of me were voices already legend at the station: Ron Sweetman, host then and now of the Wednesday-night jazz program In a Mellow Tone; and Jacques Emond, whose Sunday-afternoon Swing is in the Air stands as a veritable online textbook for those wishing to delve into everything from vintage Artie Shaw to the latest in bebop adventurism. Hurriedly pacing up and down the hall and doing his best to instill in all of us a sense of urgency, was Black and Blues host John Tackaberry. And at the end of that hall, in the on-air studio, Chopper McKinnon, whose Canadian Spaces routinely left all others in the dust come funding-drive time. Continue reading →